A Look at the Menu

I'd hate for you all to think that all we cook are long, slow, luxurious things like roasts and stews, or labour intensive meals like pizza. So just for the sake of it, I'd like to run through our menu for a normal week - last week, to be specific.

Saturday

Menu Said: Stew with Dumplings
Actually Cooked: Stew with Dumplings

Sunday

Menu Said: Roast Chicken with Veges
Actually Cooked: Roast Lamb with Veges

Monday

Menu Said: Leftovers with Veges
Actually Cooked: Lamb and Roast Vege Wraps

Tuesday

Menu Said: Bacon & Egg Pie
Actually Cooked: Soup and Bagels

(No photos here - the soup came from a can and the bagels from a shop. All very nice but no bragging allowed)

Wednesday

Menu Said: Soup and Toast (Fresh Bread)
Actually Cooked: Bacon & Egg Pie

Thursday

Menu Said: Corn Fritters
Actually Cooked: Wedges with Bacon

Friday

Menu Said: Wedges
Actually Cooked: Risotto

So apart from the slow stuff on the weekends and the Bacon & Egg pie, which C had cooking by the time I got home from work on Wednesday, everything else was pretty much easy, quick and reasonably healthy. As for the menu, as the working week gets on, things break down a little, but we stay pretty close to the plan most of the time.

I'll keep the Risotto up my sleeve for next week, since tomorrow the big plan is to make a Lasagne, using freshly made pasta sheets and an old family recipe for meat sauce (not one that I will be making up as I go along, unlike the Top Secret Pasta Sauce debacle), as well as C's famous Cheese Sauce. But tonight's Risotto was a first for me, and it came out rather well, we thought. More on that later.

And for anyone who was wondering, no, the Pumpkins haven't sprouted yet. Will be sure to keep you posted.

Top Secret Pizza Sauce

Right, here's the disclaimer:

Firstly, this recipe is so secret that even I don't know it.

Secondly, it may or may not be Pizza Sauce. It might be pasta sauce, it might be herby tomato concentrate, it might even be some form of as-yet-undiscovered alcoholic semi-beverage. I'll leave a bit in the sun for a while and see what happens.

What follows is not so much a recipe as a transpiration of events.

1. Discover that the really cheap tomatoes you got at the market on the weekend were priced thus for a reason, as you suspected at the time, and will need to be cooked up right away because you just can't see them going on a piece of toast, and you can't bear to throw them away.


2. Cobble together in your head everything you think you remember about making pizza or pasta sauce, but don't bother checking any recipe books or doing any research because its nowhere near as much fun that way.

3. Oil and season the tomatoes on an oven tray and put under a VERY HOT grill. Pull out and turn a couple of times as the skins crisp. Put out the small fire that starts when the baking paper touches said VERY HOT grill. Try to pick the ash off the cooked tomatoes.


4. Peel the skin off the tomatoes. This becomes a task for a knife and pair of tongs as, unsurprisingly, the tomatoes that have been under the VERY HOT grill are also, yes, VERY HOT.


5. Have a moment of hindsight, remembering that this was probably a job for a pot of boiling water and a bowl of cold water. Shrug, chalk it up to life experience, and justify actions by considering how much better roast tomatoes taste than boiled ones.

6. Search the house frantically looking for the sharpening steel, which was last seen on the weekend in the hands of the 16-month old kitchenhand, who obviously had some very important things to sharpen, like the couch and probably Daddy's boots. Fail to find said steel, which will later turn up in the tea-towel drawer.

7. Chop up an onion and put into a pot of RATHER HOT olive oil with some salt. Soften the onion, then try to answer the phone with a bottle of balsamic vinegar in one hand and accidentally over-vinegar the onion. Sadly, there is no way to get excess vinegar out of onion, so it becomes a feature of the dish rather than a suggestion.

8. Break up a head of garlic and place it on the bottom shelf of a VERY HOT oven, with the intention of lightly roasting them so as to squeeze the sweet stuff from the centre into the sauce. While this is cooking, continue to work on Yesterday's Blog Post, and forget all about the garlic until it has largely burnt to a hard crisp. Make a futile attempt to salvage what you can before giving up in despair.


9. Squeeze the peeled tomatoes through a sieve into the pot of onions and garlic, thus preventing the seeds and remaining skin from entering the sauce. Scrape off the bottom of the sieve with a sharp knife, and in the process spill a reasonable quantity of skin and seeds into the sauce. Make a futile attempt to salvage what you can before giving up in despair.


10. Add a large spoonful of sugar, a grind of salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of dried italian herbs. When this sprinkle turns out to be more of a shake, make a futile attempt to salvage what you can before giving up in despair. Just stir it all in and put it on the stove.

11. Allow to simmer very gently for about 4 hours. This seemed to come off without a hitch, probably because my lovely wife handled this part of the process while I was at work today.

12. Examine the final product. A bit acidy, a bit vinegary, not really pizza sauce, not pasta sauce, but maybe a good base for a stew or some other sort of tomato concentrate substitute. Feel at least a little satisfied that it wasn't a complete write-off, and don't think about how much electricity was wasted in the running of the VERY HOT grill and oven for three small tubs of uncertain nature.


13. Determine to get more sleep tonight, and to leave my next attempt at tomato sauce until the market is totally glutted with them in the late summer.

14. Decide that its not even worth putting up the photos of the debacle described above, as it would only add insult to injury. Instead, think how nice it would be to have a nice milo right about now. Act on this most wise of intuitions.

UPDATE - Do to an unprecedented response from the public (See 1 Comment below) I have rescinded my earlier decision and loaded the photos. Now you can decide for yourself whether the mixture above is edible or otherwise.

Making the Most of the Roast

Sunday was Roast Lamb Day again, having found another lovely joint for $12.00 at the supermarket. It replaced Roast Chicken on the menu, but that all worked out.

Without labouring the point, Sunday's lamb was much the same as last weekend's Lemon-Tossed Lamb Roast, with a few changes.

I tossed the Lamb with lemon and lime zest, salt and pepper and 2T of honey. Otherwise it was much the same. It came out crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside, and it went down awfully well. Uncle K, who was treated to the now infamous Sugar-Free Stew a few weeks ago, joined us for Sunday Roast and it was good.

What I really want to cover is what we did with the Leftovers.

In our menu we had planned on getting two nights' meals out of the roast, like we usually do with a chicken. For Monday night we picked up a packet of roti breads so we could have...

Roast Lamb and Vege Wraps

Chop up the leftover lamb and roast veges into roughly 1cm cubes and fry quickly in a hot pan. Butter the Rotis very lightly and fry quickly in another hot pan.
In a third pan, fry a hunk of cabbage, some sliced garlic and a sliced courgette in some butter.

Lay the hot roti on a plate and dish a spoonful of the Lamb and Vege into the top quarter of the roti, followed by a spoonful of cabbage and courgette. Fold up the bottom, then each side, and press down. Dish up a pile of fresh steamed veges, sit down on the couch and enjoy. Of course, sauces are an option too. Normally I would go with an aioli or sweet chilli sauce, but since everything was so moist anyway I just went naked, which was superb.



It was quick and easy, and what's even better is that by the time we'd dished up enough for the two of us, there was still enough for another meal of the same. So one lamb roast for $12.00 ended up making 7 adult servings, for an average cost of less than $2.00 per person. That's what we like.

Next post: Will my attempts to make a pizza sauce meet with success or failure?

And on the subject of gardens

Getting back to my previous post regarding growing stuff, thanks to Jack for this link:

Don't Give Up

To quote briefly:

"Yet the sun still shines down on your garden, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organised vegetable patch (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden centre), you can grow the proverbial free lunch - CO2-free and money-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we're counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you're getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labour that, having replaced physical labour with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment."

Whether you're converted and like to be preached to, or are in need of a bit of convincing that there's something we can do about our vampiric energy needs and its environmental impact, this is a well-written, well-thought out article, imho.

Winter is here

Oh yes. Jack Frost has been about, and the wind is now blowing cold from the north as well as the south.

After a week that has ranged from the mildly annoying to the downright depressing, it's finally the weekend again. We missed our trip to the market last week due to being in the South Island, but we braved the cold and the wind to get down there this morning. The sun came out and it was a clear crisp day at the riverbank with bargains to be found. We spent about $30, and the vege crisper, fruitbowl, and the cupboard where the onions, potatoes and kumaras live are all overflowing.

A quick word about garlic. Without any suggestion of xenophobia, I really have to recommend that you (assuming you're in NZ - if not, replace "NZ" with "local" just to make the same points) buy NZ garlic if you can find it. Most of what we get in the stores is grown overseas, particularly in China, and you'll see it in those jammed plastic mesh bags in the supermarket for bargain prices. NZ garlic is more expensive than the mass imported stuff you can get, but it has a much shorter drive to the market. Besides the reduced carbon footprint of buying local produce and the way that local stuff tends to taste better, we have stringent quality controls in place in NZ to regulate the quality of the soil that our food is grown in. But my main issue with the chinese garlic we have here is that by the time is gets to us, most of it is going green in the middle, and these bits have to be cut out, and the cloves are usually a bit rubbery. For the sake of knowing that you're eating a quality product that you can use completely and has been grown in good soil without having been shipped across an ocean to reach you, look out for NZ garlic.

Beef Stew with Lime, Chilli and Kumara

Cube about 400g of stewing steak (to serve 2 adults, 1 toddler and to leave enough for one lunch)

Finely slice a small head of garlic
Deseed and finely slice one small red chilli (You can up this amount if you are a chilli fiend - I went on the awfully mild side because my lovely wife is a chilliphobe and I thought I should be careful not to burn Isaac's mouth or else he might never eat chilli anything again!)
Grate the zest from half a lime. Combine all the above in a metal bowl. Add the juice of half a lime, a big swig of soy sauce, some freshly ground pepper, a splash of olive oil, and a T of brown sugar. Put aside to marinade for at least half an hour.

Heat some oil (I use Rice Bran Oil for my basic cooking) in a heavy pan and start frying up the fat you've removed from the meat. This is just to get the flavour of the meat into the onion base. While you can eat this cooked fat, I don't recommend it. It might seem crunchy and nice at first, but it doesn't go down quite the same as crackling.

Preheat the oven to 210c.

Normally I would make a base for the stew of onions and carrots, but our visit to the market today convinced me to deviate from this plan ever so slightly. We got some lovely carrots with the tops still on, which I couldn't bear to chop up, and we got some really cheap tomatoes, some of which were on the way out.

Roughly chop one large onion and four overripe tomatoes. Remove the beef fat from the pan, cook the onions and tomatoes until softened (about 7 minutes) and then place in an oven dish that has a lid. Add a little extra oil to loosen up the pan, get the oil very hot, then add the meat. As liquid runs off the meat into the pan, drain through a sieve back into the metal bowl, and tap any solid flavour in the sieve back into the pan. Repeat this until the meat is able to brown nicely, probably about 3 times. Into the metal bowl with the juices, add a cup of hot water and half an Oxo Beef Stock Cube. If you have a cup of beef stock, this will do the trick as well. Stand this by.

When the meat is brown all over and just starting to crisp, remove from the pan into the oven dish with the onions. Heat the pan again and add about 1/4 Cup of Red Wine. Use a spatula to stir up all the residual flavours from the pan, then add the stock mixture. Allow this to reduce. Mix up 1t of cornflour in 1/2 a Cup of cold water and add gradually. You may not need to put all the cornflour mixture in, just judge it as you go. Continue to reduce the gravy, allowing it to thicken, until its about the consistency of cream.

Peel and chop a kumara into bite-size pieces. Pour the gravy into the oven dish and add in the kumara. Combine all and place in the oven, covered. Cook at 210c for 25mins, then reduce to 190c for a further 1 1/2 hrs.

Meanwhile, get your dumplings ready. This comes pretty much straight from the Edmonds CookBook, so if you don't have this fine kitchen manual, I strongly suggest you find a copy. Sift 1.25C of Flour, 1t Baking Powder, a pinch of salt and the other half of the Oxo Cube into a bowl. Add a shake of dried mixed herbs and 50g of butter, cubed. If you have a pastry blender, this is an easy way to crumble up the ingredients. If not, just rub it through your fingers until it feels like a light crumble. Then add milk or water a little at a time until the dough forms into a sticky mass.

The stew should cook for 2 hours, and the dumplings should go in for the last half hour. Get the stew out of the oven. If it seems a little dry, add a splash of hot water over the top. Spoon the dumpling dough over the stew in balls, replace the lid and return to the oven for the final half hour.


For the veges tonight, I sliced the carrots lengthwise so that they still felt all rural what with their tops on and all. I steamed them for about 10 minutes and put the fresh green beans into the steamer for the last 2 minutes. Crunchy fresh veges with tender beef and chewy dumplings! With the fire going and the rain walking down the windows, it was a great night to be inside.

One Double Shot of Roast Lamb, Please.

Monday was Queen's Birthday, and we decided to cook up a Roast of Lamb that we had found at the Supermarket for $12.00. I don't think it was on our menu, but when you spot a bargain like that, you give yourself a little bit of breathing room. After prepping the meat and doing a bunch of stuff around the place, friends called and offered to come help with getting the house ready for a valuation that we're having done shortly, and they brought with them another small Lamb Roast, about half the size but still a little frozen in the middle, which pretty much balanced out the cooking times.

Since I had the first lamb slowly marinating in herbs and garlic, I needed to launch a quick but yummy assault on the second one, which we achieved with a quick run to the lemon tree and the trusty assistance of the Grinders.

If you don't have a mortar and pestle, I reckon its the best $30-40.00 you might ever spend in an Asian Grocery. We've had ours for about 8 years, and it has never had time to gather dust. It doesn't rust, it can't go (any) blunt(er), and it even works in a power failure. Unlike knives and blenders, you can use a mortar and pestle to crush and bruise and smash, and are an effective weapon against such things as coriander seeds, cloves and cardamon. Next to my knives and my cast iron frypan, its the one thing in the kitchen I wouldn't do without.

Garlic Herbed Roast Lamb

Start this first thing in the morning. With the joint defrosted, gather some fresh herbs and a few cloves of garlic. I used mint, oregano and rosemary, because they seem to be weathering the winter cold better than the other herbs. Strip the leaves from the herbs, peel and slice the garlic (just crush the clove with the flat of a big knife and slice off the hard bit at the end), and put it all in the pestle. Crush up to a paste, adding 2T of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a T of balsamic vinegar.
Pierce the lamb every 2-3cm, to about 3/4 deep, on both sides. With a teaspoon and your fingers, force the garlic-herb mixture into the holes, and rub the excess over the entire joint.
Put lamb in the fridge and allow to stand for about 8 hours.

See below for cooking details.

Lemon-Tossed Lamb Roast

This can be prepped pretty much right before the meat needs to go in the oven. Put the lamb in a bowl, add 2T of Olive Oil, grind in some salt and pepper, and grate in the zest of a lemon. Toss the meat vigorously. That's it. Really.

Cooking the Lamb Double Shot

Preheat the oven to 230c, placing one rack low and one higher up. Place both joints of lamb onto a roasting tray, preferably on a raised grill, and put into the oven on the lower rack. Cook at this heat for 25 mins, then turn the heat down to 180c. Turn every 40 mins or so until cooked, probably about 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 hrs (this allows for the cooking of the roast veges in the same oven on the lower shelf).
Pull the meat from the oven and allow to stand for 10 mins before carving. In this time, scrape the good stuff from the roasting pan and mix with water and cornflour over a gentle-moderate heat, to make the gravy. Season to taste.

Veges

Scrub or peel a load of veges that will fit nicely in a tray big enough to cover the bottom rack in your oven. Chop up into good roast size pieces and toss in a bowl with salt, pepper and Olive Oil. You can also add garam masala, dried mixed herbs, paprika, ground coriander, chopped fresh herbs, a sprinkle of flour, brown sugar, or whatever takes your fancy. My veges tend to be flavoured based on how much energy I have on the day. This time around I grated the rest of my lemon rind on the pumpkin, and it was good.

Lay the roasting tray with baking paper, and spread the roast veges over it. I tend to keep the pumpkin in a separate dish on the same tray as it can sometimes bleed a lot of moisture onto the other veges. Place the tray of veges in the oven on the lower shelf and tweak the heat up to 190c to compensate for the extra volume. Turn after 40 mins, then every 25-30. When the meat comes out to stand, move the veges up a rack and put the grill on - but don't forget them as you make the gravy!

Pudding

I didn't make the pudding - its not my strong point - but Aunty A's Self-Saucing Butterscotch Pudding deserves a spot too. Warm from the oven and dished up with cookies & cream ice-cream, it was a dessert to make your teeth hurt. It was much enjoyed.

And finally, there has to be soup

As with previous roasts, I boiled up a stock with the two lamb bones, and the vege scraps and peelings, chopped up the leftover veges and made a roast vege soup. I got two servings out of it, one of which I just had for lunch. Nice stuff.

On top of that, those two little roasts (worth $18.00 all up) fed 4 adults for dinner, made 2 lots of vege soup, and tomorrow will have made sandwiches for three days. That's value, I reckon.

Impromptu Indulgences

On a bit of a spur of the moment, we took a ferry to Picton on Friday night and spent the the weekend on Obi and Nan's boat. The weather came to the party on Saturday and after the morning's frost we had a beautiful day on the water. We motored across Queen Charlotte Sound from Waikawa and anchored up in Kaipakirikiri Bay, where Isaac showed Mum and Obi how to row the dinghy. We had soup and toast for lunch and as the sun disappeared we slipped back to Waikawa and relaxed.

Cheese and crackers and mussels came out for a late afternoon snack, and when no-one could be bothered cooking a proper dinner, we improvised. We grilled up a packet of Gluten Free Smokey Bacon Sausages and began stuffing them with cheese. Mmmm. Then someone had the bright idea that sausage stuffed with creamy blue cheese and mussel might be nice, and I had to try it.

So. Good.

Smokey Sausage stuffed with Blue Cheese and Mussels

Slice a cooked sausage into one-inch long segments, and slice these lengthwise to about 3/4 deep. Slice off a thin hunk of Creamy Blue Cheese (or Cambozola, or something Blue) and squeeze it into the sausage. Slice a Mussel in half and push it into the cheese. Give a few moments for the heat of the sausage to soften the cheese, and eat.

Just to get back to the healthy stuff, we had a double lamb roast last night. Check back here for full coverage in a day or two.