Are you baking brownies in there?
Real Men Make Their Own Quiche
Originally I was going to make this for lunch but when I realised it was already midday it turned into a dinner instead and I’m sorry it’s another zucchini recipe but they’re in season.
Bacon and Egg Slice
My mum used to make this with puff pastry and no spinach. Puff pastry would have been nice for the flaky top but the short-crust I used still worked.
Orange Stuffed Chicken Marylands with 5-Spiced Carrots and Beans
Orange Stuffed Chicken Marylands with
5-Spiced Carrots and Beans
Boston Baked Beans
Boston Baked Beans - Serves 2-4
250 grams of cannellini beans
1 teaspoon of mustard powder
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
1 tin of tomatoes
150 grams of pork speck
1 onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves
1 bay leaf, torn
Salt and pepper
Heat oven to 180ºC. Soak the beans overnight. In a large saucepan,
fry the onion, speck, cloves and bay leaf until the onions are
transparent. Add everything else except the beans and simmer for 10
minutes to reduce the liquid a little.
Drain the beans and add. Put a lid on the saucepan and bake for
three hours, stirring occasionally. Serve.
Homemade Turkish Bread
The texture is beautifully chewy and has a well developed flavour too. Unfortunately it didn’t have those extra large air-bubbles inside you’d get from your store-bought turkish bread but I think if you left it long than I did you’d be fine, it was also a little cold when I baked mine and that never helps.
Homemade Turkish Bread
Homemade Turkish Bread - Makes 6
Sponge:
½ cup of warm water
1 sachet of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar or honey
1 cup of flour
Dough:
1¼ cup of warm water
1 sachet of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar or honey
2 tablespoons of olive oil
3 cups of flour
1 cup of whole-grain flour (I used rye)
1 tablespoon of salt
Sesame seeds or nigella seeds (black onion) for garnish
1 egg, beaten for a glaze
Mix the sponge ingredients, except the flour together and set aside
until foamy, about 15 minutes. Add the flour and combine well.
Cover with a tea-towel or loosely with plastic wrap and set aside
overnight. Don’t cover the sponge tightly because the air inside
with become anoxic and the yeast will die.
The following day, mix the second lot of yeast, water and
honey/sugar together until foamy then add the remaining ingredients
except the sesame seeds or nigella seeds and egg then knead until
the dough is smooth and very elastic. Add more flour if the dough
is too wet. It should be slightly damn but silky smooth. Mine took
20+ minutes.
Pre-heat your oven to 250ºC. Once the dough is the right
consistency, ball up and place in an oiled bowl covered with a
tea-towel or loosely with plastic wrap for 3+ hours or until the
dough has doubled in size. Punch down the dough then kneed again
for another 10 minutes or so. Divide into six pieces and roll out
to the desired shape, quite thinly and put on a greased baking try
and put in a warm place for an hour or more until the dough has
risen significantly. Brush with an egg wash and sprinkle over the
sesame or nigella seeds.
Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until the crush is golden.
The Daily Grind @ The Peppermill Cafe
Peppermill Café, Milsons
Point
At a recent contract I went out myself and failed miserably picking
the Kirribilli Village Café and Restaurant. I tried their steak
sandwich and it was just awful, chewy, tasteless and very
overpriced. $25 off for the sandwich and a coffee. That’s when I
asked. The team I was working with and I went around the corner to
The Peppermill Café in Milsons
Point, their coffee is a little to be desired considering it’s
Campos Coffee, but it
almost always seemed burnt but the service and food was always
pretty good.
The first day I went I was recommended their regular special, a
chicken and leek pie. Not what I expected in the presentation
department but it was tasty. An individual baking dish with mashed
potato on the bottom, a regular chicken and leek filling and a
square of golden puff pastry balanced across the top. Almost every
day since then I went to Peppermill for either lunch or breakfast,
often for both. When I had breakfast, brunch, or afternoon tea, I’d
pick up a smoked salmon, ricotta and avocado croissant, the
combination of the soft buttery pastry and the oily smokiness of
the salmon was a winner.
Smoked Salmon Croissant @ Peppermill
Café, Milsons Point
They serve an all day breakfast here,
and the majority of the menu was based around breakfast but almost
as often as I’d see someone have a burger I saw someone else have
either the pancakes or french toast, both served with either bacon
and maple syrup or a mixed berry compote. Delicious stuff and well
worth a try if you want a bit of extra energy before hitting either
the Kirribilli or North Sydney Markets one weekend (I worked
weekends too). The beef burger is nice, standard fare, but the
chicken burger was the winner, chicken, bacon, avocado. Damn
tasty.
It’s also licensed and they won’t pass judgement if you have a
Bloody Mary on a Monday!
Chicken & Bacon Burger @
Peppermill Café, Milsons Point
The Peppermill Café
30 Glenn Street, Milsons Point (map)
Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm
Saturday and Sunday 8am - 4pm
T: (02) 9954 1444
F: (02) 9954 1444
www.thepeppermillcafe.com.au
That's not strawberry blond! He's a ginger!
About to be eaten ginger
The wonderful people at Gingerbread Folk make organic,
free range gingerbread people, house kits, flowers, christmas
decorations and custom made gingers for special and corporate
events. Keeping the environmentaly concious theme they even package
their individual bloodnuts in compostable plastic!
As they’re made of all natural ingredients there aren’t any
preservatives in them so don’t expect to keep these for months on
end like you can with commercial ginger bread (next christmas,
check the expiary date on the gingerbread in supermarkets, it can
keep for years, that can’t be good). Lucky they’re tasty and beg to
be gobbled.
Oatmeal and Blueberry Cookies
Not long afterwards they invited me to their house for dinner to meet some of the other people from the street. It was a dinner party, a real dinner party with linen table cloths, napkins and the good silver.
Oatmeal and Blueberry Cookies
As a thank-you I thought I’d make a
small batch of cookies for them, but what? They had to be
wholesome, they were a gift for a neighbor afterall and you can’t
get any more wholesome than oatmeal cookies but of course I had to
jazz it up a little. Forget the raisins. Blueberries were the go! I
was going to use dried cherries but I couldn’t find them anywhere.
Of course the week after I found them at David Jones.
To give them a bit of extra depth you don’t usually find in oatmeal
cookies I used rolled oats and rolled rye that have an earthier
flavour that isn’t overpowering. If you cant find or cant be
bothered, just use all oat.
Oatmeal and Blueberry
Cookies - makes 24
150
grams unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup of brown sugar
⅓ castor sugar
1 large egg
¾ cups of rolled oats
¾ cups of rolled rye
¾ cups of flour
1 teaspoon of bicarb
½ teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 cups of dried blueberries (or any other dried fruit)
Preheat your oven to 200ºC. Beat together the butter and sugars
until they are light and fluffy. It won’t be as pale as regular
creamed butter and sugar because of the brown sugar so don’t worry
about that. On a lower speed, add the egg and vanilla. Sift the
flour and mix in the dry ingredients.
When well combined, but not over mixed, place dessert spoonfuls of
the mix on a greased or properly lined baking tray about 4 or 5 cm
apart. Learn from my mistake - if you use cookie sheets be prepared
for the excess butter melting out of the cookies and going all over
the place!
If you’ve got an even temp oven, bake two sheets at a time for 12
minutes. Mine isn’t so good so I did 1 sheet at a time checking
after 10 min and rotating the tray.
His Name Was Robert Paulson
Jack (Ed Norton) and Bob (Meat Loaf) at support group in Fight
Club
I was considering calling this post “My Meatloaf has Bitch Tits”
but that doesn’t really portray the damn fine tasty meatloaf that I
made tonight. I know it’s a bit of a tenuous link but Meat Loaf
played the character Robert Paulson, the guy with bitch tits that
Jack meets at his testicular cancer support group... With torn off
pieces of fresh buffalo mozzarella and sun-dried tomato this
meatloaf really is a notch above what you’ve probably ever
considered a meatloaf could be.
The original recipe for this meatloaf comes from Mario
Batali’s father (via Epicurious), which might explain Mario’s
own bitch tits. The entire loaf, if made as directed weighs in at
2-3 kg! I intended to make half of this but I wasn’t paying
attention when I went to buy the ingredients and bought enough to
make the full recipe, luckily meatloaf can be frozen well. Sort of
like Meat Loaf’s assets. I
cheated a little in this recipe, David Jones had some great looking
beef rissoles that had onion, carrot, parsley and a few other bits
already mixed through in what looked about the right proportion so
I bought that instead of just plain minced beef. For a little more
vegetable matter in a meal that will be almost entirely meat I made
some balsamic roast vegetables to go along side - just baby
carrots, red onion, parsnip etc tossed with some olive oil and a
splash of balsamic and roasted along side the meatloaf for the last
half hour.
Beef and Italian Sausage Meatloaf
with Sundried Tomatoes and Mozarella
Beef and Sausage Meatloaf - Serves 8 or
more
1kg of lean beef mince
500g of buffalo mozzarella, torn into pieces
500g of italian sausage, cases removed
2 cups of chopped fresh basil
2 cups of fresh breadcrumbs
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup of sliced sun-dried tomatoes
5 garlic cloves
1½ tablespoons of dried oregano
2 teaspoons of salt
2 × ½ cup of tomato sauce
3 eggs
½ cup of dry red wine
Pre-heat your oven to 190ºC. Thoroughly mix all of the ingredients
together in a bowl except one of the half cups of tomato sauce.
Mould into a loaf shape and place in a loaf tin and even out the
surface. Brush on the remaining tomato sauce. Bake in the oven for
about an hour and fifteen minutes or until a meat thermometer
reaches 70-75ºC at the centre of the loaf.
Olivada Roast Chicken with Thyme Roasted Vegetables
Olivada Roast
Chicken
Olivada Roast Chicken with
Thyme Roast Vegetables - Serves 4-6
Olivada (can be made a day ahead)
1½ cups of kalamata olives
4 teaspoons of fresh chopped rosemary
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
Chicken
1½-2kg whole organic chicken
¼ cup of melted butter or olive oil
⅓
cup dry white wine
⅔
cup chicken stock
Vegetables
1kg of mixed roasting vegetables
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt and pepper
Fresh thyme
To make the olivada, pit the olives if they aren't already (press
down on them with the back of a kitchen knife is easiest), toss
them all in a blender and wizz until you've made a paste. Stir it
halfway through if the bits are clinging to the side. If you're
making this a day or two before, put in in an air-tight bowl and
and keep in the fridge until ready. Let it come back to room
temperature before cooking otherwise it will slow the chicken
getting to a safe temperature making it dry out.
For the chicken, pre-heat your oven 200ºC. While the oven is
heating rinse the chook under cool running water and dry it out
with either paper towel, or a hairdryer (no, really). Once that's
done place the chicken on your work surface with the neck facing
you and gently slip your fingers under the skin on the breast side.
Continue rummaging around the gap between the skin and flesh like
you're looking for your keys under the couch until the skin is
separated across the breasts, legs and most of the drumsticks. Take
a small handful of the olivada and insert it in the gap made
looking for your keys. Keep doing that until you've filled the gap
or run out of olivada. Massage the chicken to spread the olives
evenly.
If by the time your oven is up to temp and your chicken is room
temperature, place it on the roasting rack in your roasting tin,
brush it with the melted butter and roast until the chicken has
reached a safe temp 85ºC which should take about an hour and a
half. Otherwise let it warm up before roasting. Add the vegetables
to the bottom of the tin about half way through.
When your chook is looking like a retiree from Miami, take it out
and place the roasting rack and the vegetables on a chopping board
or somewhere else to rest, cover with foil to keep them warm. Put
the roasting tin on the stove across two burners on medium to low
and add the wine and enough chicken stock to make 1, swirl it
around and scrape off all the sticky bits on the bottom of the pan,
simmer and reduce to about ⅔
of a cup.
Batteling Turks seemed an easier way to get my croissant
Macro Café, King Street,
Newtown
Unsurprising for the neighborhood, the
post-hippie generation feminist matriarchal vegan families seem to
be flocking to this place in numbers as large as the uni-students
taking advantage of the free wireless internet. If you can at all
avoid it while queuing to place your order (no table service),
don't stand behind one of the aforementioned feminist vegan
matriarchs placing her order especially if they're heavily
pregnant. Instead of picking something off the menu board that
meets their stringent dietary requirements they seem to instead
rattle off all of their dietary restrictions and the reasons why to
the poor waitress trying to find something they can eat. 10 minutes
later she settled a garden salad with a hard boiled egg. Obviously
she's not a real vegan. I bet she doesn't even pocket-mulch. If I
wasn't afraid of loosing my seat I'd have tried to sneak into the
kitchen and slip some bacon into her food.
As far as what I ate, I settled a simple ham and cheese croissant
and a pot of byron chai. $4.50 for the chai I could understand, but
I was a little concerned at the $9.50 for the croissant! If it
wasn't for the fact that I'd already queued and there weren't many
more options for breakfast in the direction my travels were taking
me I'd have probably left and found something else. WIth a bit of a
surprise I ended up being presented with a substantial croissant
with either emmental or jarlsberg cheese, good quality ham. tomato
and baby spinach. It really was a meal in itself. I did think it
odd that the menu board didn't mention it. Now I understand why it
cost so much.
Croissant from Macro
Café
I tried to make croissants from scratch many moons ago and even
though they tasted okay, they were a right pain in the arse and I
vowed never to make one again. I might give it another go some time
but no. Real hand made croissants can easily take a professional
days to make, mine took four days and another two days to
clean the kitchen! There are plenty of rumors as to the origin of
croissants, including Polish bakers hearing the early morning
tunneling of Turkish soldiers whom alerted the local authorities
and ambushed the Turks. To honor the victory in the battle, the
bakers supposedly made croissants in the shape of the crescent moon
on the Turkish flag. All this in the 700's, nearly a thousand years
before the earliest reference to puff pastry! They are more likely
a French variation of a Viennese pastry. I'd still rather cross an
armed Turkish soldier than cross the feminist vegan to ask her to
hurry up and order.
Smoked Bunny Sausage Gratin with Organic Cannellini Beans
The sausages themselves were fantastic, only slightly smokey and with a bit of a cheesy flavour that works well with the parmesan cheese crust on the gratin. The best part of bunny, more dramatically seen in sausage, is that bunny is very low in cholesterol so it's still really quite healthy. Even though the bunny stands out in this dish and there's a very soft fennel back-note, the texture of the beans really stands out pulling the dish together, not to forget the blended beans making the sauce thicker and more substantial.
Smoked Bunny Sausage Gratin with
Organic Cannellini Beans and Wantirna Estate Amelia Cab Sav
Merlot
Smoked Bunny Sausage
Gratin with Organic Cannellini Beans - Serves 2
2 Smoked Bunny Sausages
1 Onion, sliced thinly (about a cup)
1 Fennel Bulb, sliced thinly (about a cup)
1 Capsicum, sliced thinly (about a cup)
400g tin Cannellini Beans
1 teaspoon of dried Oregano
1 teaspoon of dried Parsley
2 Tomatoes, diced (I used halved grape tomatoes instead)
½ cup of Chicken Stock
½ cup of Bread Crumbs
½ cup of Grated Parmesan
Fry the sausages in a little oil until cooked through
In the same pan, fry the onion and fennel until the onion is
translucent. Take half of the beans and their liquid from their tin
and blend to a puree; add this to the pan and stir through. Add the
remaining vegetables, chicken stock and herbs and beans; cover and
simmer for 5 minutes.
Slice the sausages thinly and add mix through the vegetables. Spoon
the mix evenly between two bowles or ramekins and top with the
breadcrumbs and cheese.
Heat a grill or broiler to medium and place each bowl under the
grill and cook until the cheese has melted or the bread crumbs are
golden.