Sweet Potato Mash, Chicken & Mushroom Sauce

1 Large Sweet Potato (roughly the length of your forearm)
2 Small potatoes
1 clove of garlic, crushed
6 sage leaves
dash of milk
pepper
salt

1 large diced onion
olive oil
1 bay leaf

4 chicken thigh fillets
8 button mushrooms, sliced (these could be replaced with something like Swiss Browns or another mushroom with more kick in it)
5 sprigs of thyme (just the leaves)
1 cup of chicken stock
1 tsp of cornstarch

1. Peel and slice the potatoes. Put the potatoes, sage leaves and clove of garlic in a pot of heavily salted cool water and bring it to the boil.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, heat a good slurp of olive oil in a fry-pan and cook the onions and bay leaf until the onions are translucent.
3. Into the onions, put the chicken fillets out flat and remove the bay leaf.  Brown them in the pan.
4. Remove the chicken and then put in the mushrooms.  When they are starting to soften and change colour, put in the stock to deglaze the pan. When the pan has deglazed, add in the cornstarch to thick the sauce up.
5. Drain the potatoes (leaving in the garlic), take out the sage leaves and add in a good amount of cracked pepper. Crush the potatoes with a fork or potato masher. Then add a dash of milk and make it into a moderately fine mash.  Force it through a sieve to remove the last of the lumps.

Serving:
(I'd recommend you put boiled peas with it)
Put out a small pile of sweet potato mash, the chicken on top then surround it with peas before putting the mushroom sauce over the top of it all.

A Sort of Cornish Pastie

3 fist-sized potatoes (pick a starchy variety), sliced into thin pieces
125g of beef mince
1 fist-sized onion (diced)
1 carrot, finely sliced
2 small zuchinis (courgettes), finely sliced
1 fist sized tomato
1 clove of garlic, grated/minced/crushed
1 bouquet garni (mine had a lot of sage, thyme and a bay leaf)
1 tsp beef stock powder
1 tsp potato starch
3 sheets of puff pastry
1 egg, whisked (for an egg wash)

Method

1. Put the potatoes into well salted water and boil them.  You should boil them fairly vigorously and keep them in the water while you make the rest of the mixture.  Preheat an oven to 180C.
2. Fry off the onion in olive oil, they should go a nice translucent and slightly coloured colour.  Then add in the zuchini and sweat it down a bit (it should start changing from white to a gentle yellow). Add in the carrot and the bouquet garni and leave it all for a minute or two on a fairly high heat.
3. Put in the garlic in along with the mince and beef stock powder. You should try avoid using actual stock since it will make the mixture too wet.  Brown off the meat.
4. Add in the potato starch and stir it through thoroughly. This mixture should get fairly thick and sticky. You want to keep it on the heat until most of the liquid is gone. The drier you can make this mix without burning it the better.
5. Take out the puff pastry and allow it to thaw so it is pliable.
6. Take the potatoes out of the water and dry-mash them. Mix the potato into the meat mix and keep it on a low heat so that it gets quite dry.
7. Put a large spoonful into the middle of the puff pastry sheets and fold it over.  You can make it any shape you like, but the 'traditional' pastie shape is a semi circle with a nice pinched-over edge if you're any good at manipulating pastry.  Once it has been folded over, wash the whole thing with egg wash and bake in the oven until the pastry goes golden brown and puffed up nicely.

Roast Pumpkin Soup

Last night's little experiment for today was a roast pumpkin soup with a little twist on my usual.
100g triple smoked shaved ham
2 medium cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 medium-to-large pumpkin
300mL of cream
250mL of chicken stock
2 tablespoons of crumbled dry feta cheese

1) Dice the pumpkin, without skin, add salt and olive oil to them on a tray and roast/bake them until the pumpkin just starts to charr or on the corners at around 180C.
2) Cook the onion until it is translucent. Dice the shaved ham and put it in with the onion. When it is fragrant, you should crush the garlic cloves and put them in the pan.
3) When the pumpkin is cooked, remove it and put it into the 250mL of stock in either a large bowl or a pot. Then add in the garlic, onion and ham mix. Use a stick blender to turn it into a puree.
4) Heat this through in a pot. When it has been warmed through, add in the cream and bring it to the simmer.
5) Once the cream has been combined with the puree and is simmering, add in the crumbled dry feta cheese. Continue heating it until the feta starts to dissolve into the soup.
6) Serve this with crusty bread.

A Wild Chicken Leap...

Okay, I've never really cooked a stuffed meat.  I've also never really tied meat around a stuffing.  So this was a BIG jump into the unknown.


Stuffed Chicken Thighs

 

4 chicken thigh fillets
a bunch of parsley
1 round of brie
a large handful of almonds, toasted (I'm not sure of the amount, but they 2/3 covered a medium frypan)
3 medium garlic cloves
olive oil
pepper
salt
(You will need string)

1. Heat an oven to 180C.  Put a frypan onto a really strong heat (so you can get a nice browning on the chicken)
2. Put everything but the chicken into a food processor/'blitzer'.  Buzz it into a dry paste.
3. Put a few big spoons of the blitzed mix into the centre of the chicken thigh fillets and then tie them up like you would tie a beef for roasting.
4. Put it in the pan and let it brown and start cooking through.
5. Turn it and let it brown. Repeat until its browned all the way around.
6. Put it into the oven for 15-20min to cook through.

This has actually come out really well... I'm quite happy with it.  It was served with grilled eggplant (aubergine), mashed potato (cooked with thyme in the water) and blanched green beans.

Making a Stew...

Winter is coming, and coming FAST.
Stew is an easy weekend meal for almost anyone to make.

Step 1: Meat
You can use any red-ish meat.  Lamb, beef, veal, pork, mutton... any of them would be excellent for a stew and usually the 'tough' parts of the animal can make good stews.
I use skirt steak most of the time.  It's cheap (at most $9/kg), it has a strong taste and is easy to handle.  But you could use any great meat.  I was very tempted to make one recently with a big rack of smoked pork ribs...

Step 2: Vegies
You need three things for a stew to taste beautiful.
1) Sweetness
2) Starchiness (to add thickening to the liquid)
3) Texture

Carrots are brilliant.  Swedes, Potatos (sweet or regular), 'white carrot', etc.  The big trick is to buy the things that come out in winter.  Pumpkins are brilliant.  I love sweet potatoes in things like mock-tagines...

Step 3: The Soupy Stuff
On the cheap end of things, I'd suggest you need to have about 3 things in the soupy stuff.
1) Stock
2) Starch (flour, cornstarch, potato starch..)
3) Caramel-tastes

Caramel tastes come from onions usually.  I can't help but also put mushrooms into almost every stew.  I end up starting all of my stews with basically a chopped onion, olive oil, mushrooms and beef.

Tricks and Tips
Coat meat in a starch mixed with salt and pepper.  I love paprika in stews, particularly smoked paprika.
Garlic and bay leaves should be in almost all stews...
Parsley goes in while you're letting it cool down on a bench so you don't make it sour/bitter.
LOW temperatures and LONG times. (150C for 2.5h + )

Mother's Day Food

Here is another one of my "Get out of Jail Free" dishes...

Hazelnut Cheesecake with Dark Chocolate Base & Butterscotch Sauce.

Like many of my recipes, this started out as something else (it used Pecans).  But I'm not a huge fan of pecans, plus my wife is a sucker for Ferrerro Rochere chocolates which contain hazelnuts.

So, my version of the recipe.

Preheat your oven to 160C (140C fan-forced)
Dark Chocolate Cheesecake Base
150g of Nice Biscuits (these should be mild-tasting-to-no-real-taste sugary biscuits)
50g of melted butter
50g of melted dark chocolate (70% or darker)

Break up the biscuits and either crush them or put them in a dicer/food processor.  You want them to be granular and about three or four times the size of a sugar crystal.  While you're breaking them up, melt the chocolate and butter together (I use a coffee pot for this). Once the butter and chocolate are now nice and fluid and the two are starting to almost become a single liquid, pour them into the biscuit and hand-stir with a spoon.  The entire mix should be a gentle brown colour when you are done.  Take this and pack it down into the base of a 22cm springform pan (I recommend you actually wrap the base of the springform pan in grease-proof before you do this and lock the base in upside down springform in place).  Refrigerate this for at least 30min.

Cheesecake
500g of cream cheese
165g of caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tbspn of plain flour
60g of hazelnuts
a dash vanilla

Trick: Let the cream cheese come to room temperature (have it sitting on the bench while you make the base).
Get the 60g of hazelnuts and toast/roast them in the bottom of a pan.  Don't be afraid to have the skins burn a little.  When you can easily smell the roasted hazelnuts, take them out and cool them.  Then either crush them (I use a mortar and pestle and crack them against the mortar) or very gentle chop them with a knife or food processor.
Put the cream cheese into the bowl of a food mixer (I don't recommend using a hand blender, because you want to leave it to sit and keep mixing) along with the sugar.  "Cream" the cheese with the sugar and when it is starting to look very smooth and much more fluid, put in the two eggs one at a time allowing each egg to be mixed through.  Put in the dash of vanilla (if you want it to have a more "vanilla and hazelnut" type taste, be a little heavy handed with the vanilla).  Sprinkle in the flour and let it mix through.  Last, but by no means least, put in the hazelnuts (don't be put off by putting in the skins, I have found it genuinely adds something to the cheesecake).

Pour the cheesecake mix over the biscuit base.  Then bake it for 45min.  When the timer goes off, turn off the oven and have the door open a crack.  When it has cooled, make the butterscotch topping.

Butterscotch Topping
75g of DARK brown sugar
40g of butter
1 tbspn of cream (any cream will do)

Put all three into a pot on low-to-medium heat and just keep stirring until you can't hear the sugar scratching on the pot.

Pour the butterscotch over the cheesecake (while still in the springform) and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours.  I recommend overnight with plastic wrap over it.


My wife never really quite appreciated cheesecakes, she'd mostly had chilled cheesecakes, but this decadent little experiment is now one of the desserts of mine she loves best.  By the way, this is the first time I have told people how this dessert is made.  Go win friends and influence people with this little dessert.  If you want something to really go over the top with this... chantilly cream will just about make people's mouths explode (and also likely to kill their GPs level of calm with your cholesterol levels).

"Stuffed" Mushrooms

This is probably going to become one of my "Get out of Jail Free" meals*.  It takes a little longer to prepare, but it wins super-food-brownie-points with a particular woman in my life... and that's a good thing to have.

Stuffed Mushrooms

• 4 large cap mushrooms (They should have a cap larger than your palm)
• 1 bunch of asparagus
• 8-10 green beans
• sundried or semi-dried tomatoes
• shaved Jarlsberg cheese
• Optional: A red chilli slided finely

1. Take the stems off the large-cap mushrooms and dice them.
2. Dice the asparagus into small pieces along with the beans and semi-dried tomatoes.
3. Fry the diced stems and diced vegetables in a pan with barely enough oil to make sure they stick.  Take them out when they are 3/4 cooked. (Include sliced chilli here...)  The tomatoes will be very fragrant by this point.
4. Spoon this mixture into the underside of the caps.  Then either pan-fry or, even better, put the caps into a grill-pan.  Use a pan you can put in the oven.
5. While you are grilling/pan-frying the mushrooms, heat an oven to around 150C.
6. Take the mushrooms off the stove heat in the pan and put the shaved Jarlsberg on top of all of the ingredients.  Melt the cheese over the mixture in the oven and make sure that mushrooms are now cooked, but still able to hold their shape.  Depending on taste, they can have a sprinkle of salt over the cheese at this point.  They are gorgeous on their own, rarely need any pepper and I'm yet to think of a side-dish for them.

*Get out of Jail Free Meals: These are dishes or complete dinners that allow you to apologise, bribe, or otherwise get yourself out of troubles with your significant other.  They are often to their personal tastes, but many of them are generally approved by others.  I've made some of these and given them to coworkers and been pestered for the recipes... So they work well.