Jamie's steak

We've had the most wonderful weekend here at the cottage. Our wonderful friend Nick came to visit, and we had a grand old time catching up. He is the new head of some important business, and has been travelling all over the globe the last few weeks. Together with us living with other people and painting every spare moment until just recently, there wasn't a lot of socialising done. A lot to discuss, then.

And with discussion came food. On Saturday night The Fabulous Man and Nick decided they're going to have a braai, ie a barbeque over proper fire, not sissy gas (I know there are fire restrictions and all that, but still). They made beef sausages and a butterflied leg of lamb, and I thought I was in heaven. That wood smoky taste you only get from cooking over fire is second to none, and I felt like crying thinking about home. (Sometimes I still find myself thinking of "home" as South Africa. I'm sorry fellow Australians, I'm working on it). Sunday morning was spent over cups of tea and good old english breakfast, and a lazy walk into town. All in all a great weekend.

Back to normality on Monday night, and I decided to try a recipe of Jamie Oliver I've been saving for a while. It's roast beef cooked half over the coals, and finished off in the oven, served with a capsicum and chilli salsa. It's the salsa that caught my eye initially. I think it's good to have a little something up your sleeve that's easy to make, but jazzes up a normal meal. This sounded the perfect accompaniment to the barbeque that can unfortunately so easily turn into burnt sausages in bread and overcooked lamb chops. We've all been to those.

Of course the recipe is vintage Jamie, which means six hundred different ingredients cooked meticulously from scratch. He suggests you roast red peppers, red onion and chillies over the coals for about half an hour until nicely charred, and then fiddle with them a bit more. Then chop it all up with all the other ingredients. Now, in a perfect world, this is what I would do, but in my world, not so much. Actually, dinner time in our house is turning out to be a bit of a stressful time. The Little Girl is usually tired and grumpy by now, usually still needs a bath, and the Fabulous Man is trying to recover if he's been away during the day. And I'm trying to cook dinner. It sort of works if I feed the girl early, have dinner cooked late afternoon, and then give the girl a bath while the Man catches his breath. Sort of. Mostly not. Hence anything cooked over coals for hours doesn't get done on a Monday night if it can be bought ready made from the shop. My recipe then contains a jar of red peppers from the supermarket, and I slowly cooked my onions in some olive oil in a pan while chopping up the rest of the ingredients. The meat was cooked on the stove. No woodfire either, alas.

I substituted the beef with sirloin steaks, as suggested by Jamie, however, I am keen to try the rib-eye next time I make this. And there will definitely be a next time. This dish was sensational. We loved the marinade for the beef, and the salsa lifted the whole meal from the ordinary to the divine. Highly recommended, dear readers.

Seared herby beef with spicy capsicum salsa
Serves 6

Bunch of thyme
3 garlic cloves
olive oil
1kg piece rib-eye (on or off the bone), or 4 250g sirloin steaks
3 red chillies, seeds removed
4 red capsicums, halved, seeds removed (or a jar of ready-roasted capsicums)
1 red onion, cut into wedges
50g capers
6 anchovy fillets (or, if you're anchovy-shy like I am, only one)
small bunch of basil, leaves picked, smaller leaves reserved
red wine vinegar
rocket
1 lemon

If you're using a gas barbeque, preheat it to high heat, otherwise light the fire. If you're in South Africa the men will take care of this. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Pick leaves from half the thyme, then pound in a pestle and mortar with garlic and some salt. Mix in some olive oil until marinade-conistency, then massage into the meat. Leave for at least 30 minutes. Use the remaining thyme sprigs as a brush. You can tie them together with string if you could be bothered.

Meanwhile, for the salsa, chargrill your chilli, capsicum and onion on a medium barbeque for 20 minutes, turning occasionally until slightly charred all over. Alternatively, use bottled chargrilled capsicums, and caramelise the onions on the stovetop. Put in a food processor with the capers, anchovies and basil and process until finely chopped. Add a generous splash of vinegar and some olive oil until you've got a good dipping consistency. Taste, and season if needed.

Put a roasting pan in the oven to get hot. Put the beef on the barbeque and cook for 10 minutes, turning every minute to give a good colour. Use the thyme brush to brush with any remaining marinade. Transfer the meat to the roasting pan and cook in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes or until done to your liking.

Alternatively you can use 250g sirloin steaks. Marinade them the same way, then barbeque for 7 minutes, turning every minute. They will cook through on the barbeque or in the pan.

Serve the meat sliced with some rocket dressed in olive oil and lemon juice, and the salsa on the side.Yum!

On the Edge

I almost gave up today. I had defrosted beef mince to magically transform into dinner tonight, and I just couldn't be bothered to come up with something nice to do with it. Normally we do the nice but very, very boring tagliatelle bolognaise. Easy peasy. Defrost mince, fry with some onions, add sauce (from a bottle, we'
re not into being virtuous these days), serve with some pasta. It's quick to make, tastes good, and is Little Girl friendly.

I used to be quite proud of the usual suspects in my little freezer cubby hole: mince, chicken breast fillets (the Fabulous Man doesn't like the brown meat), prawns. Maybe some lamb chops. It's amazing how many recipes are out there to jazz up your boring beef mince or boring chicken fillets. I have quite a stash of them, and I used to be able to make a few different dishes with some basic ingredients. But you know what? I'm bored with beef mince and chicken fillets. So bored, I felt like throwing the defrosted mince in the bin and get take-away pizza.

Good thing I'm not into waste. I vowed to come up with one last mince dinner for at least a month. Maybe two months. Browsing the internet, I saw that there are basically two kinds of mince recipes out there: different versions of savoury mince, usually with pasta, and different versions of meatballs, including that horror of all horrors: meatloaf. Boring. I persevered. More Google searches of Best Mince Recipes. Still boring. I racked my brains, and came up with this brilliant idea: hamburgers.

Yesterday we went for lunch at a pub the Fabulous Man wanted to go to for ages. As soon as I set foot into the place I was unimpressed. Dirty carpet, cold room. Unfriendly waitress. Boring specials (I can't even remember now what they were). I decided to have a hamburger, because it's pretty hard to mess that up, right? Not in this place. Stale roll, limp lettuce, blah meat. I had a few bites, and politely left the rest. Good thing the waitress didn't ask me if I enjoyed my meal, because it's tough if you have to choose between being rude or to downright lie. Surely it can't be that hard to make a decent hamburger?

So, I decided that I am going to make proper burgers for dinner. Not a burger with the lot, which in Australia means beef patty, bacon, cheese, egg, beetroot (!), lettuce and onion rings. Just a normal burger, but a bit fancy. We had some brie in the fridge, and I vaguely remember eating hamburger patties as a child which was stuffed with cheese. I thought it would be nice to bite into the meat, and finding a creamy cheesy centre.

I wasn't wrong.They turned out fabulous. I was really surprised by how good they tasted. They were spicy, meaty and creamy, all in one. I made four, meaning to save two for lunch tomorrow, but we had them all, they were that good. You'll see that the brie is the only slightly different thing about this recipe. The rest is pretty basic. This is not rocket science, and it makes me wonder how people justify serving bad food to paying customers.

So, a pretty good recipe to say au revoir with to my former freezer staple, methinks. Now I just have to use up the last of the boring chicken breast fillets, and I'll be back with something a bit more interesting.

Hamburgers with Brie
Makes 4

500g beef mince
1 onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 egg, beaten
a small handful of chopped parsley
50g brie

4 hamburger rolls
lettuce
roasted tomato jam

In a bowl, mix together the mince, onion, cumin, egg and parsley, using your hands. Divide the mixture into four.

Cut in the brie into four pieces, and form each share of mince around a piece of brie, making sure the cheese is well covered. Flatten the patties. Cover, and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Heat some oil in a pan, and cook the patties for about 5 minutes each side, or until done.

Serve with the rolls, lettuce and tomato jam, and any other topping you like. I served them with some butternut roasted with olive oil and cumin, which was fabulous.

Daring Cooks: Brunswick Stew

No, your eyes are not misleading you: I am also now a Daring Cook (as well as a Daring Baker, but more about that later). Every month from now on, in a very daredevil way, I am going to take up the challenge and cook the chosen dish with grace, style and, unlike today, on time. I do realise that the reveal date was yesterday, only yesterday I spent the whole day with the Fabulous Man looking at houses. That's right. You think the Daring's Cook's a challenge? Try moving house, having a baby, and then moving house again, all within one year. So I would like to apologise very sincerely for my lack of reveal post yesterday. Not a good way to start, I know. I was considering not doing it at all,  but decided rather late than never, as they say.

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I was pleased to see my first challenge turned out to be a stew. Impossible to mess up, right? Just chop a few things, throw in the pot, simmer for a while and voila! Dinner is served. And this is exactly what you do to make Brunswick stew, almost to the letter. What makes it interesting is the bits you chop up. The recipe asks for chicken and rabbit, which sounds great, except you can't find rabbit in the usual mums-with-babies haunts. What you do find next to the normal everyday chicken and lamb in Australian supermarkets is kangaroo. Which is amazing, because the number of Aussies I've come across so far who actually like kangaroo I can count on one hand. No, actually I'm wrong. I can't think of anybody I know who likes it. Supposedly it tastes too gamey. I don't know about that. I think it tastes marvelous. And it's a winner in Brunswick Stew.

My Brunswick Stew will not win any beauty prizes. In fact, let's just be honest and call a spade a spade: it looks like a mess. But it's a delicious mess, let me tell you. I'm not sure if it's the kangaroo or the chicken stock I used, or maybe just the magic of the right ingredients coming together. The smell was delicious straight from the start, and I couldn't stop my self from fishing out little bits of chicken to taste. The Little Girl also had a few slivers of chicken, and obviously thought it was much nicer than the organic sweet potato, pumpkin and apple baby mush I was trying to get her to eat. Sophisticated tastes, this Little Girl. I don't blame her. It tastes great, and according to the recipe it will taste even better tomorrow when the flavours had chance to develop. Yum. Can't wait.

Brunswick Stew
Serves 6

50g bacon, diced
2 dried red chiles, stems trimmed, sliced, seeded, flattened
250g kangaroo fillet, diced
1 kg chicken pieces, skin removed
sea salt and pepper for seasoning
4-6 cups chicken stock
1 Bay leaves
1 large celery stalk, chopped
3 Yukon Gold potatoes, or other waxy type potatoes, peeled, rough diced
2 carrots, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1 cup corn kernels
1 cup butterbeans
1 can tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
juice of 1 lemon
Tabasco sauce to taste


In the largest stockpot you have, fry the bacon over medium-high heat until it just starts to crisp. Transfer to a large bowl, and set aside. Reserve most of the bacon fat in your pan, and with the pan on the burner, add in the chiles. Toast the chiles until they just start to smell good, or make your nose tingle, about a minute tops. Remove to bowl with the bacon.


Season liberally both sides of the kangaroo and chicken pieces with sea salt and pepper. Place the kangaroo pieces in the pot and sear off all sides possible. You just want to brown them, not cook them completely. Remove to bowl with bacon and chiles, add more bacon fat if needed, or olive oil, or other oil of your choice, then add in chicken pieces, again, browning all sides nicely. Remember not to crowd your pieces, especially if you have a narrow bottomed pot. Put the chicken in the bowl with the bacon, chiles and kangaroo. Set it aside.

Add 2 cups of your chicken stock, and deglaze the pan, making sure to get all the goodness cooked onto the bottom. The stock will become a nice rich dark color and start smelling delicious. Bring it up to a boil and let it boil away until reduced by at least half. Add your remaining stock, the bay leaves, celery, potatoes, chicken, kangaroo, bacon, chiles and any liquid that may have gathered at the bottom of the bowl they were resting in. Bring the pot back up to a low boil/high simmer, over medium/high heat. Reduce heat to low and cover, remember to stir every 15 minutes, give or take, to thoroughly meld the flavors. Simmer, on low, for approximately 1 ½ hours. Taste the stock, according to the recipe, it “should taste like the best chicken soup you’ve ever had”.

With a pair of tongs, remove the chicken and kangaroo pieces to a colander over the bowl you used earlier. Be careful, as by this time, the meats will be very tender and may start falling apart. Remove the bay leaf and discard. After you’ve allowed the meat to cool enough to handle, carefully remove all the meat from the bones, shredding it as you go. Return the meat to the pot, throwing away the bones. Add in your carrots, and stir gently, allowing it to come back to a slow simmer. Simmer gently, uncovered, for at least 25 minutes, or until the carrots have started to soften.

Add your onion, butterbeans, corn and tomatoe. Simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring every so often until the stew has reduced slightly, and onions, corn and butterbeans are tender. Remove from heat and add in vinegar, lemon juice, stir to blend in well. Season to taste with sea salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce if desired.

You can either serve immediately or refrigerate for 24 hours, which makes the flavors meld more and makes the overall stew even better. Serve hot, either on its own, or with a side of corn bread, over steamed white rice, with any braised greens as a side.

Persian lamb in a Tagine

I love gifts. I love looking for the perfect one, wrapping it beautifully, handing it over. I also love getting presents, unwrapping it, oohing and aahing about it, thanking whoever gave it to me. Some people are natural gift givers. I already told you about my friend Anelle. My sister-in-law, Simone, is another.
My family does Kris Kringle for Christmas, a custom I cannot recommend highly enough. Each of the grown-ups pull the name of another grown-up out of a hat (the children aren't deprived). Then we go to our little website, and everybody makes a list of things they would like. There's a $100 limit, which might seem like a lot, but it still beats buying something for everybody. So everybody gets a decent gift they really want. Great, isn't it?

Except I don't play by the rules. My entry on the website says "I like to be surprised". It's the anticipation, the light shaking of the present (you never know if it's fragile),and then finally unwrapping it to reveal what you got. Which unfortunately makes for a slightly more stressful Christmas for whoever has to come up with something to get me. Luckily for me, the last two Christmases it just so happend to be Simone. The first Christmas she gave me a tagine. How fabulous is that? I always wanted one, and was happily surprised when I opened my present. Except by then I was pregnant with the Little Girl, and having a helluva time with morning sickness. In fact, I spent Christmas morning outside on the deck, as I couldn't take the smell of the lamb roasting in the kitchen. I also couldn't eat any of the said lamb, or of the turkey, or of anything else, for that matter, when lunch came. Hence, as glad as I was about getting a tagine for Christmas, there would be no eating anything at all for the next 7 months, tagine or not. It was put away in the cupboard, waiting for hungrier days.

Until last weekend. It was time for the tagine to make it's debut. Now I realise that just because a dish is cooked in a tagine, doesn't mean it is a full-blown bona fide tagine. This one definitely isn't. As I researched some recipes with our friend Google, my mind kept going back to one of the recipes in my secret little recipe book. It's called Persian Lamb, and consists of shoulder of lamb slow cooked with spices and dates, and some yoghurt and ground almonds added towards the end. It's delicious (hence it's inclusion in the little book), and I made the executive decision of adapting it to the tagine. It's basically the same recipe, except I cut up the lamb, tweaked the spices a bit, and cooked it for slightly less than the original 6 hours. We had it with couscous and Moroccon carrot salad. It was even more delicious in it's reincarnated form.

And I can't wait to be surprised again.

Persian lamb in a Tagine
Serves about 6 people

one shoulder of lamb, cut into pieces (David Lebovitz suggests you massage your lamb with salt beforehand and leave it in the fridge. I didn't have time for this, but I might try it next time)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup lamb stock
1 teaspoon dried ginger
1 teaspoon tumeric
6 cardamom pods, crushed
2 cinnamon sticks
20 strands of saffron
1 bunch of coriander, rinsed
2 tablespoons ground almonds
1/2 cup whole blanched almonds
2 cups yoghurt
1/2 cup chopped dates

Preheat your oven to 175°C  / 350°F

Heat some oil in your tagine, and brown the lamb in batches. Add the onion, stock and spices, and stir, making sure you scrape the bottom of the tagine to release the nice bits of sticky lamb. Add the bunch of coriander, cover and stick it in the oven.

Cook for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Remove the coriander, add the rest of the ingredients, and cook for a further hour. Uncover the dish if the sauce is too liquid. Taste for seasoning before serving.

Serve with couscous and Moroccan carrot salad.

Enjoy!