Spagetti Bolognese

Wow! Look at my Food Connect box this week. What a crazy amount of delicious food. Yummo.

After a long day on Friday I came home to find Morgan had made fresh pasta. he had seen all our tomatoes and decided to make bolognese!




Fresh pasta

6 eggs
Approx. 550g plain flour (fine flour if you have it)
1 tsp salt

Makes 8 serves

Morgan's method is precise (as always). He says: Knead the crap out of it until it goes 'delish' (approx. 5-min). You will notice that the dough transitions from a thing made out of flour and eggs, to a cohesive, moldable, tangible stuff. When it does that, keep kneading for a bit and put it aside for 1/2 hour minimum. Roll out using a pasta roller into flat sheets, lay them out to dry for a bit, then feed them through a pasta maker to make spaghetti!


Hang the strands to dry on your foldable laundry thingie!

Bolognese sauce

Cook 1kg mince until liquid is gone. Add 1/2 cup wine and cook until the liquid is gone. Add 4 cloves garlic, 3 finely chopped onion & olive oil. Cook, but don't brown the onions. Add Italian herbs and a couple of bay leaves (I threw in some rosemary too). Add 1kg fresh tomatoes + 2 cans of chopped tomatoes blended.



Bring to the boil and then simmer for 1.5hrs with the lid off. We added a little tomato paste 1 tbsp brown sugar, some balsamic vinegar and salt to taste. It's a process of adjusting flavours to suit the palate.


Serve over fresh pasta (3min in boiling water).


I added some Barambuh fetta, spring onions and chopped olives to serve.

When I grew up in Sydney in the 1980s, we ate 'spag bol' quite often. I remember the Parmesan cheese from a long-life can sprinkled on top and the crappy boxed pasta underneath. I love the emotions and memories that come from smell. Cooking this dish certainly takes me straight back to my youth. Not a huge surprise because smell is the only sense to connect directly to consciousness without being mediated by the thalamus. Thus, our experiences and memories are most quickly retrieved through smell. For more on olfaction see my memory blog entries on olfaction.

Eggplant Chilli Paneer

Tonight was 'using up stuff the fridge' night. I saw eggplant, corn and green pepper and immediately thought of making Mexican chilli.


However, with no cheese or sour cream to dollop on top, I made do with frozen paneer cheese and a couple of leftover strips of haloumi


Saute finely chopped onion in olive oil. Add chopped red chillies and a spoon of cumin seeds. Add 2 sliced baby eggplant. Fry for a few minutes. Add 1 heirloom tomato (diced) and 3 garlic cloves finely chopped. Add 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 1 cup stock and tomato paste (I didn't have any paste left). Add fresh or dried oregano at his point for an authentic Mexican flavour. Add some sour cream if you've got it. I used some smoked paprika and ground coriander at this point. Salt to taste.


Add 1 tin of red kidney beans


Meanwhile fry up paneer cheese. You can buy a big bag from the Indian spice store in McWhirters in Fortitude Valley. It's a great place to pick up all sorts of goodies. Keep paneer frozen in the freezer. Frozen cheese makes life so easy! :)


Fry cubes of cheese in oil and drain on very absorbent paper towel.


Add green capsicum and corn kernels to the bean mixture cook for a few minutes. Add 1/2 lime's worth of juice and diced cheese just prior to serving.


Add chopped coriander and sliced olives to serve. I served it over brown rice, but you can make it more brothy and eat with corn chips if you have them.

Shepherd's Stew

After enjoying lovely roast lamb last night and hot lamb sandwiches for lunch today, we thought we'd turn leftovers into a shepherd's pie, although we ended up with delicious Shepherd's stew!



Morgan removed the remaining meat off the bone and then we made fresh stock by simmering the bones in enough water to cover them. I added a roughly chopped onion, carrot, bay leaf and celery.



After 1hr I removed the bits and reduced the stock down to 4 cups and added salt and pepper. Meanwhile I made mashed potatoes with both regular and sweet potato. I used butter and a little cream and whipped them together with a whisk. I also added 2tbsp of Parmesan cheese to the mash.

I finely chopped up one red onion, 2 stalks of celery and 1 carrot and sauteed them in a little olive oil for 5 minutes.



Into the stock I added 2tbsp tomato paste, 2 tsp beef stock powder, 2tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 2tbsp plain flour. Then, I added the diced lamb, new bay leaf and sauteed vegetables and cook for 10mins to reduce the liquid. Finally add shredded silverbeet and dobbed mashed potato on top.

I had too much stock and too little potato, so I just allowed a few icebergs of potato to float on the top of the 'pie' as I put it into the oven.

When I checked on the pie 20minutes later, the potato had spread around the top by itself. Neat! I added a little butter on top to help the edges gain a golden colour. Cook for a final 20mins.


Shepherd's Stew!


Sprinkled with parsley, salt and pepper. Eat with a spoon instead of a fork! :)

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.

Tandoori chicken with persimmon raita and beetroot chutney

Tonight after a bike ride to the Gap and back, we made tandoori chicken. Marinading this overnight is ideal, but you can make a dinner to rival any regular BBQ chook with only 1hr in preparation.


I added fresh cinnamon, cardamom seeds and cloves to this recipe


Mix tumeric, smoked paprika, ground coriander, garam masala


Mix yogurt, lemon juice, spices, garlic and ginger together and rub under the skin of the chicken. It's pretty messy, but don't worry too much. I stuffed a couple of half-lemons into the tummy. Put on the BBQ and obey these instructions.


I grew up with my grandma making banana, coriander, dessicated coconut and lime juice sambal (thank you Charmaine Solomon!). My grandma lived in Kuala Lumpur in the 1930s when my dad was very young. Our family has a long tradition of home-cooked curries.


Another classic of Charmaine is her raita. I made it tonight with julienned persimmon instead of cucumber. Add natural yogurt, lime juice, salt, a little grated ginger and garlic and coriander.


Pop cubes of beetroot and roughly sliced red onions in the oven at 180 degrees for 1/2 hour in some olive oil.


Inspired by Nigella's Beetroot chutney, I poured roasted beetroot and onion into a frypan and simmered with 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp brown sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, grated ginger, chopped garlic, garam masala, one mandarin's worth of juice for 10mins. Serve with mandarin segments and coriander tossed through. The mandarin really gives a complimentary flavour to the beetroot.


Serve beetroot, persimmon, chicken and banana over rice and eat!


A light, delicate variety of flavours all working together to honour the hard work of Brissy farmers.

Brisbane Pizza Dough

Morgan has kindly shared his secret pizza dough recipe with me. He bases his dough on the recipe suggested by Theo Kalogeracos in Theo and Co: The Search for the Perfect Pizza p.61. But, he doubles the yeast recommended! Very cheeky.

Ingredients to make enough dough for two dinners for 2-4 people. That means one giant pizza on the night you make it and two big calzones from frozen dough. Allow frozen dough six hours to fully defrost.

500g strong bakers flour (i.e. plain flour with the highest protein level available)
5g salt (roughly half a tsp)
5g sugar (roughly half a tsp)
20g dry yeast (2 x sachets from the supermarket)
165ml cold water +/-

Mix all the dry ingredients together and slowly add the water and bring the flour into it over a few minutes. Then, knead the dough for 10minutes. This is the most important thing to remember. Set a timer and get sweaty!

The thing about making pizza is that you need to practice. Buy Theo's book for pictures and more help on the specifics. Morgan doesn't really measure anything but the flour and the yeast. Everything else he does by intuition. He adds water to the point it 'feels right'.

Once the dough is made, Morgan oils the bottom of a metal bowl, covers it in glad wrap and sets it next to a boiled kettle--after he makes a cuppa.


Dough re-enactment! :)

He comes back an hour later for his next cuppa and the dough is ready to use. This is what it's like making pizza dough in Brisbane in the late summer.


The combination of Brisbane's flora, fauna and shifting culture makes it an absolutely unique place to live.

When Morgan grew up in the Dandenongs, he would come home from school at 3pm on a cold day and his mum would start making bread dough whilst he chopped wood. It took about the same amount of time to knead ingredients and start a fire. When the fire was ready, dough could be placed beside it and bread would be ready in time for dinner.


Morgan and me walking along the river when we first arrived in Brisbane in 2006. This photo was taken one week before our wedding day.

Calzone

Tonight we made a version of Jamie Oliver's calzone using half the dough from our pizza a week ago. It is great that dough survives being frozen. I don't know how the yeast manages it. :)


Instead of using Jamie's suggestion of 'tomato sauce', I made some using mixed heirloom tomatoes


I fried up 1 brown onion in some olive oil for 10mins and added tomatoes, 2 red chillies finely chopped, 1 stick of dried rosemary (leaves, not stalks) and 1 baby eggplant (not salted!).


I added a big knob of butter, 4 cloves of garlic, silverbeet and tomato paste.


Finally I added sliced swiss mushrooms, 1tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt & some cracked pepper and cooked slowly until the liquid mostly evaporated.


Morgan created the Calzone using shaved Parmesan and feta--we didn't have any mozzarella.


Folded over. We made two calzones. The first had a thinner crust and more filling, but fell apart a little more (pictured here). The second one was more robust (pictured below). With practice we will get the ratios right.


Into the oven on the pizza stone for 15min.


So tasty-looking.


Why go out for dinner?


Yep, it tasted as good as it looks. The pizza dough was crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. I am amazed really. The last time I ate a calzone was in NJ and it was bland and dripping in fat. What a difference this was!

Thai Beef Salad

A new box of produce has arrived! :) This is a really staggeringly tasty set of veges. Tiny perfect eggplants, more persimmons, a secret bag of snow peas that taste so sweet and fresh that we are just eating them straight out of the bag. I love little bananas too. They're the perfect snack as you walk through the kitchen. However, the king of the box this week was the massive haul of basil.


I bow down to thee

It is the Easter long weekend in Australia. It is autumn, not spring, so a great time for reflection, taking stock and catching up on sleep. My darling hubbie made us Thai Beef Salad for dinner which was simultaneously comforting, spicy and refreshing. This is Brisbane eating. This is how we live.

The recipe is from here. We make it with more of the sauce than it recommends.


What a great way to enjoy cos lettuce, limes, ginger, garlic and about 1/2 of the massive bunch of basil we got.


We added pad thai noodles at the bottom. Just for fun. We forgot to add heirloom tomato! What a pair of duffers. :)


What really made me appreciate my life today was that this was our first time being 'City Cousins'. It is our pleasure to offer a safe space for the neighborhood drop-offs. But, what a lovely surprise to find this card tucked away amongst the boxes, welcoming us to our new role. Awwwww! What a great community feeling. Thanks Jeanne and Barry! :)