Squash, Cauliflower and Sweet Potato Curry

I'm back!! 17 weeks pregnant and I've renewed our subscription to Food Connect after my trip to the USA. It's great to feel my energy coming back. First trimester was quite a fog. Still, I'm not quite back to normal, so we're going to try buying a mini-box for a month.


How inspiring! Those green things are like zucchini, but so fresh and sweet. I'm calling them 'squash'. Please let me know if you know a more precise name for them. I wanted to honour the cauliflower tonight. This dish is a warming, winter curry full of comfort. Even if you skip on some of the spices, make sure you use the cardamom.

Ingredients

20g butter (or ghee)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion finely chopped
2 small red thai chillies (makes it quite hot)

1-3 cloves of garlic minced or chopped
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground corriander seed
1 tsp cardamom seeds (or six bruised pods)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp tumeric

1 can coconut cream
1/2 cup stock
1/4 cup dried shitake mushroom slices (use fresh mushrooms if preferred)

2 sweet potatoes chunks roughly peeled
1/2 head cauliflower broken into small florets
1 can chickpeas
2 squash sliced

1 tbsp palm sugar
3cm x 1cm lemon zest in strips
Lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste

Paneer cheese cubes (or haloumi)

Method


Cook onion on low heat with the oil. Add chillies after 5mins. Add spices after 10 mins. Cook until fragrant (1-2 mins).


Add a can of coconut cream (not coconut milk--you want the richest stuff they have). I used Trident coconut cream. Add stock, shitake mushrooms and sweet potato cook for 15mins. I love using dried mushrooms to add a thick umami flavour to dishes. You can grind them up in a spice grinder to really release a gorgeous mushroom flavour. I'm also being conservative with my fresh mushrooms. I'm holding on to them for use later in the week.


Add cauliflower and chickpeas. Cook for another 10mins.


Add squash, palm sugar and lemon zest.


Cook until squash is tender (approx. 5mins). Add lemon juice salt and pepper to taste.


Serve with fried paneer cheese. To cook cheese, heat up some vegetable oil (not olive) and drop cheese cubes into the oil for a minute or two until golden brown. Drain on paper towel.

Yummo! We don't have much of a winter in Brissy, but it's cold enough to enjoy a cheesy, flavourful winter curry. I hope you're all snuggled in!

Broccoli and potato pizza

Broccoli and potato are two pizza toppings that taste fantastic, but I haven't enjoyed them since living in New York and Melbourne respectively.



Broccoli heaped high on a pizza slice is a classic choice at Penn Station at 34th street. Now, the Yanks like their pizzas fairly plain. They often go for a single topping, such as pepperoni, broccoli or even just cheese. That's their culture. Where as I'm the sort of person who orders a vegetarian pizza and add chicken.



Potato on a pizza might be seen as carb-loading, the sort of thing Michael Phelps might inhale before an Olympic swimming event. However, when done modestly, the crackle and softness of herb encrusted roast potato pieces is the perfect addition to any pizza. I first tried it in Lygon St. Melbourne and suddenly remembered how good it tastes.



Anyway, before the toppings comes the dough-making athleticism of my beloved husband Morgan! See the recipe here. Last night he even allowed me to touch the stuff mid-knead. I felt like a bit of a duffer, every time I tried to gently squish the dough, it tore. Ah well, practise, practise, practise. :)


While the dough sits to rise. Chop up a sweet potato, 1 potato and 1 beetroot into 3cm-5cm cubes.


Oil a baking tray and add veges. Cover with a little oil, rosemary, tarragon, salt, pepper and smoked paprika. Put in a medium oven for 40mins. Take out the sweet potato and beetroot. Let the potato cook for another 10-20mins.

We use Alfa One Rice Brain Oil Cooking Spray. Rice bran oil has a mild nutty flavour and a high smoking point, which is good in the oven. We use it to spray around the metal bowl for the pizza dough too.


Dough is ready!


Chop up broccoli florets. Make a mixture of olive oil, vinegar (I used pomegranate balsamic), lemon juice garlic, salt and pepper. Use this mixture in addition to tomato paste for the base of the pizza. You can also sprinkle it on top of the ingredients before they go into the oven. You don't want the broccoli to get dry.


Put tomato paste onto rolled out dough. Add grated mozzarella cheese next. Finally add: broccoli, torn salami and slices of roasted sweet potato.


Mmmm, broccoli


Finished!


For the potato pizza, start the same as above, but then add cubes of roast potato, roast beetroot, 2 slices prosciutto, sliced olives, some crumbled feta and sliced mushrooms


Delicious!

Honey Garlic and Rosemary Roast Lamb

Easter Sunday and roast lamb feels appropriately sacrificial. I haven't reinvented the wheel here, but there's a couple of flavours that I couldn't resist adding.


Roast lamb

Start with a classic garlic roast lamb recipe. That is, make 10 slits on a 1.5kb leg of lamb and stuff holes with slivers of garlic and sticks of rosemary. Then, mince up another couple of cloves of garlic with 3 tbsp olive oil and 2tbsp honey. Slather the lamb in honey mixture. Coat with 3tbsp rosemary leaves. Add pepper and salt and pop in a hot oven...



...prepare potatoes and sweet potatoes by washing them and dicing them. Coat in olive oil, smoked paprika, cumin seeds (whole seeds are important here), rosemary twigs and leaves, salt and pepper. Pop into a hot oven for 45mins, move them around and then leave in a medium oven for another 30mins or so.

After putting in the roast veges--approx. 20-30mins after lamb started cooking--add 1 cup of white wine and/or water to the bottom of the roasting pan and turn down to 180 degrees for approx. 1hr. The water stops the honey from burning. Cover in foil after taking from the oven and let rest for 20mins.


I made mint sauce with a bunch of mint, 1/2 cup of cider vinegar, 2tbsp brown sugar and some water.


Parsley, fetta, red onion and lemon juice to sprinkle over steamed broccoli (start steaming when lamb comes out of the oven).


Serve lamb next to heaped broccoli sprinkled with onion mixture and roast veges. Spoon over mint sauce to taste.


Lovely broccoli

Enjoy the rest of the autumn equinox folks! Next festival is Anzac day and remembrance.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Leek and Tarragon Risotto

Tonight we had guests who either weren't keen on mushrooms or chilli. I wanted to use up my sweet potatoes, so risotto was the answer.



Ingredients

3-4 baby sweet potoatos
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 leek (white bit finely chopped)
2 spring onions roughly chopped
4 cloves minced garlic
1 tbsp tarragon (dried or fresh)
2 cups arborio rice
500g chicken breasts
1 litre chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine, sherry or vermouth
1 bunch spinach
1/2 lime
Cream to taste
Parmesan to taste
Pepper to taste
Chilli to taste

Roughly-peel the sweet potato, cut in halves, drizzle in avocado oil and a little salt and roast in a medium oven for 30mins. Avocado oil is really lovely to make roast vegetables and we support Queensland farmers by using it. I bought this little bottle from the Kelvin Grove markets on a Saturday. Roasting makes root vegetables sweeter.



Sorry not to get more photos tonight. Having guests makes things a little hectic! :)

Sweat the leeks and the whites of the spring onions in some butter and olive oil for 5mins. Add garlic and tarragon (if dried, leave to later if fresh) and cook on low for another few minutes. Add arborio rice and cook for 1 minute. Add wine and raise the heat a little. Add chicken stock 1-2 cups at a time. Stir the mixture, but not constantly like a stir fry. Keep the heat low enough to enjoy talking to your friends. Add cream if desired.

In a separate pan cook chicken breasts on fairly high heat to sear both sides to a golden brown (about 3mins each side). Take off the heat, let rest for a few minutes. Carve up into chunks. Chicken should be undercooked because it will then be tossed into the risotto with sweet potato and cooked for another 10-15mins.



Add parmesan and the greens of the spring onions towards the end of the process. Put lid on the risotto and let sit for the final 3mins before serving.

Wilt spinach in a pot, drain excess liquid, squeeze lime juice over it. Mix through risotto as you serve.



Add pepper and Frank's Hot sauce to give it a final zing! [Not shown in picture]

BBQ Roast Kangaroo

Sunday is a good day to do some work on my PhD. After messing about for the morning I cycled off to the office with my lunchbox full of treats.



Banana cake, figs, banana, honey-encrusted macadamia nuts and apple slices. I took a side jar of yogurt to schlorp over the top of the fruit when I got to work. Yummo!

For dinner Morgan and I made BBQ roast kangaroo. We cooked the mini-roasts by searing the roo on both sides for a couple of minutes and then covering the lid of the BBQ for 25mins on a low heat. Once off the heat wrap in foil and let sit for 10mins before slicing. Cooking times are similar to the same amount of medium-rare beef, but without the damage to the Aussie environment! :)

I served roasted sweet potato and butternut pumpkin in rosemary and olive oil (30mins on 180 degree oven). I made a quick rocket salad with lime juice and olive oil. Plus chickpeas and quinoa on the side.

Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
1 tin chickpeas
2 cups beef stock
3 tbsp sour cream
3 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 red onion finely chopped
handful of olives finely chopped

method
simmer quinoa, chickpeas 1/2 garlic and stock for 5mins (covered). Add red onion, sour cream and remaining garlic and simmer for 10mins. Take off heat and add olives and pepper to taste.


Serve roast kangaroo with sides, cranberry sauce and Dijon mustard


What you're going to see on this blog is some repetition of ingredients. This is what happens when you're a real person with a finite kitchen and fresh produce.


Some items get used over and over again until they're used up. Sorry if it seems predictable! luckily we get a new box of exciting ingredients each week to experiment with.


Speaking of exciting ingredients. I've begun storing my vegetables inside these crisper snap-lock bags. They let the ethylene out, which helps prevent spoilage. I reuse the same bags over and over again. They really help keep all my produce fresh.