mountain masala

a moroccan kind of evening

had some friends over for dinner last night. for the mains we made naaan bread,
a tomato and eggplant tagine with onion, coriander, cumin, chilli and mint
couscous with apricots, dates, almonds, pistachios, raisins, pomegranate seeds and cinnamon
with harissa and mango chutney yoghurt on the side

and a fish recipe that I made up:

baked rainbow trout. a bit of oil in baking dish. slivered ginger and garlic cloves in and around the fish,
french shallots, cherry tomatoes, lemon slices, honey drizzled on top, fresh coriander, black pepper
it went pretty well i thought

some Adelaide Hills and Barossa white wine and steve brought a nice NZ pinot

thanks for the good company folks. travel well steve!

tomato beef

about time for a recipe post. i cooked this the other night - recipe from martin yan's 'chinatown cooking - 200 recipes from 11 chinatowns across the world. i recommend it'.

thinly slice beef and marinate in 1 tbspn cornflour, 1tbspn oyster sauce, 1 tbspn soy sauce, 2 tspns whisky (I used bourbon...), 1 tspn minced garlic.

prepare the sauce by mixing 1/4 cup tomato sauce, 1 1/2 tspns chinese rice wine or dry sherry, 1 tspn soy sauce, 1/2 tspn worcestershire sauce, 1 tspn sugar.

stir fry beef in oil and remove from wok. stir fry your veg of choice (he uses onion, celery, green capsiucm, button mushrooms.

add sauce and 1-2 tomatoes cut into wedges. add beef and bring to boil.

simple. very tasty.  i love tomato in asian dishes.

vale cru

spent this afternoon at a wine tasting afternoon hosted by small wineries in mclarenvale. we're on the samuels gorge mailing list so we got an invite. the event was at the victory hotel, sellicks beach overlooking the ocean. stunning view. we heard they were planning for 40 people and a couple of hundred turned up.

so it was rather packed in, but a lovely warm afternoon and dozens of wines to taste, we took some cheese, pate and strawberries, assuming there'd be somewhere to sit. we ended up perched on the stone wall behind the serving benches, giving strawberries to winemakers.

the event was focusing on the soils in which the wines are grown, so each grower had a sample on their table. we couldn't hear the brief winemakers 'soil chat'. most of the winemakers were serving. had there been fewer people it would have been a great chance to chat. as it was, i was told by one wine maker that the iron stone in his vineyard 'gave the wine really rich flavours....'. really...?

mexican pizza and asian prawn omlette

a dreary day yesterday - hanging out for spring! i reckon that one of last night's pizzas was a brilliant innovation, if i do say so myself. it needs some fine-tuning, but ....

i used our regular home-made pizza base (bread machine - 200 ml warm water, 2.5 cups bread flour, 1 3/4 tsp yeast - makes 2 thin pizza bases.) tomato base plus tsp pesto, some grated mozarella. using a pizza stone makes all the difference, and they don't cost much.

the topping consisted of sliced, baked french shallots, slices of atlantic salmon, mexican tomatillos (you buy them canned...), baked1/2 cherry tomatoes with basil, slices of grilled capsicum, and a bit of grated gruyere cheese. on the cooked pizza I put avocado slices and sour cream on each slice of fish and splashed mexican chilli sauce over the top. i could have added some lime juice and fresh coriander... next time...

i sometimes buy local prawns cheap on a friday, put some on saturday pizza and then cook up the rest on sunday. tonight i tried the excellent prawn and tomato omlette from kylie kwong's "recipes and stories". i didnt quite get it right (overcooking omelette while trying to cook prawns).

the omelette has a fantastic sauce - saute 1 tbspn julienned ginger, 1 tsp sea salt, 1 large tomato cut into wedges (cook 2 mins), add 2 tbspn shao hsin rice wine (or sherry) and 1 tbspn white sugar (cook 1 min), then 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1 tbspn light soy sauce (cook 2 mins), then add 1 tsp black vinegar (or brown...) and 1/2 tsp sesame oil.

the omelette consists of 5-6 eggs. i didnt have the suggested ingredients so i added julienned zucchini, chopped french shallots, chopped baby spinach. in another pan I cooked the prawns and a bit of atlantic salmon. the recipe also said chinese cheong sausage - instead i used the leftover pizza toppings - chopped chicken, chorizo sausage and some kanmantoo bacon).

omlette and prawns/fish/sausage/chicken/bacon with tomato sauce on top. stunning.

GOT GET KYLIE'S COOKBOOKS! what she does with flavours is remarkable.

this afternoon i had the privilege of attending the ordinations of kynan brookes, marty rosenberg and ernest sorensen, all of whom i've known for various lengths of time. a great service and i was deeply moved by their gift of service to the church.

smoky eggplant & chicken soup

about time for a recipe!
adapted from "big flavours of the hot sun" by chris schlesinger and john willoughby

cook 2 medium eggplants over a flame until the outside skin is blackened
slice an onion thickly. fry it on moderate heat until cooked and brown-black on top and bottom. meanwhile fry some garlic cloves and thick slices of 2-3 tomatoes.
puree the above, eggplant skin and all, with a couple of tbspns olive oil.

put in a pot with 1 litre chicken stock. add up to another litre chicken stock to get the consistency you want. simmer with rosemary, black pepper and a bit of salt.

brown and chop some chicken breasts and throw them in to simmer on low heat for a while.

that's it. easy and fabulous.

(the books adds rosemary & garlic butter as dollops in each bowl - i just put the stuff in the pot!)

sushi and sashimi

here's the evidence from the other night.  the sashimi has greens around it! not bad for a first attempt I reckon!

last night's dinner menu

we had friends from melbourne over last night .... somehow that seems to say "baked baby"... please keep reading!

roast honey-orange chicken

i blogged a while ago about a chicken dinner with geoff, sandy and cheryl where I made three spice crusts or marinades for the chickens that we then barbecued on the Weber. I made up a spice mix on the day and recorded the ingredients without any amounts.

today I tried one of them again, and as far as I'm concerned it was fantastic. the family gobbled it up in their own polite ways. i apologise for not measuring the ingredients.

I was roasting two smaller chickens. one of our local shops sells a twin pack, and I always find that these smaller ones cook much juicier than the big ones. I kind of split the earlier ingredients so it went like this:

I rubbed the chickens with mixture of sumac, cinnamon, orange zest, olive oil, indian chilli powder and pepper.

they went into the oven, while I simmered the juice of 3 oranges (really dry, so make it two), freshly ground cardamom seeds (at least 1 tsp), about 1/4 cup sugar, and then later about 4 tbspns honey). simmered it down until it was pretty thick, then cooled.

I poured the orange syrup over the chicken twice during the last half hour of its cooking.

the veg were a tray of baked shallots (you know, french onions, not spring onions), sweet potato and red capsicum, with dates (softened in water) added towards the end and honey drizzled over the top. the kids said they loved the veg the most... I call it sugar...

served with coucsous, pan juice from the chooks sprinkled over the meal.

this was so good that I have to work out an actual recipe. with better orange flavour this could be a winner.

the dark night of the sardine

we  should have been out last night with a bunch of friends, celebrating the long night of the soul (solstice), making and eating pizzas and talking about 'fresh church' stuff. but i was still far from healthy and realised that i needed another night or two to get over the flu, so we stayed home, lit the fire and watched tv.

i had been making pizza toppings for the night at michelle's place for a couple of days, though unwell... and not surprisingly the fridge is now full of pizza toppings. (we'll be having pizzas for  a week i suspect - so good that they're now multigrain and low cheese or no cheese ...)

yesterday on the way home i bought some cheap prawns for the 'emerging pizza' night, and got cheap sardines as well. we had a few sardines last night for tea, and tonight i cut up the rest and made theo's (very simple) sardine pizza. we nearly died, it was so good. really....

... the usual bread machine pizza base, leggos herb/garlic tomato paste with a tbsp pesto sauce (sorry, i hadnt made it from scratch!), mozarella (sliced from a ball, not the usual gratey stuff, but it didnt matter), tomatoes (theo had sliced ones, i used halved cherry tomatoes that i fried for a bit), sardines - had been marinated in olive oil and thyme and then quick fried), topped with parmesan.

marvellous pizza and and I still feel bad about missing the group pizza night. here's this afternoon's sardine photo to add to the not-quite-donna-hay photo food collection!

rice to riches

jill is blogging about food

http://ricetoriches.typepad.com/

yum. looking forward to more of her recipes.