Food

Things worth eating

Salmon on Rice

Alas, sometimes when I take photos of a meal; they don’t come out at all well. This evening was one of those times.

In any case, Salmon on Rice was for dinner.

Rice was black sticky rice which was boiled, and finished with butter. Traditionally, black sticky rice is used for making desserts; however, I’m rather fond of its sweet flavour, and the colour of it is fantastic from a presentation perspective.

Salmon was coated in pesto, and baked for the most part; with a brief grill to brown the pesto (baking turned it a tad sludgy. Grilling it, crisped it up nicely).

Imagine, if you would, a white plate with a circle of black-ish burdgandy rice; with a long, narrow, piece of salmon lying demurely across the center of the plate, skin side up.

Roast Vegetables

Carrots, potatoes, parsnips, mushrooms and capsicum roasted together.

Potatoes and parsnip go in first; carrots 15 minutes later; mushrooms another five minutes; then capsicum five minutes later. After another ten to fifteen minutes, roast veges are go!

Caramel Cream

Sometimes, mistakes happen. Sometimes, mistakes are salvageable!

I had whipped cream (about 150ml, thereof); and made some caramel (enough sugar to just cover the bottom of a small pan, covered in water; heated gently until a medium-dark caramel formed).

The theory, was I’d whip the liquid caramel into the cream; and something delicious would result! I was hoping for thin strands of caramel.

Turns out, the caramel liquified the cream; and the cream refused to be whipped back up.

Fear not!

Luckilly, cream comes in 300ml bottles; and I had the rest of the bottle. So, I whipped the remaining cream, then introduced the liquified-caramel-failure slowly; and I ended up with a mousse like dessert treat. Hoorah!

It ended up being quite bittersweet; tasting a little bit coffee-like.

Lemony Fusion

I wasn’t so fond of how this turned out; so I doubt that I will make it again.

It’s diced chicken, stirfried with a handful of mushrooms; and noodles. The liquid I used for the noodles was one tablespoon each of lemoncello and lemon vincotto. The resulting flavour was quite bitter.

No matter. Next time I’ll try something different!

A dish with rabbit; with a terrible name.

I have been thinking about the sorts of things I might cook over Easter weekend, and rabbit is something that seemed just perfect, in a perverse sort of way (don’t hit me!). I had a poke around some recipe books to see what I could see; and nothing I saw was compelling.

I thought some more. Stroked my chin; and pondered. Then it struck me: I could prepare rabbit loins using a tried and true method that I devised for chicken!

First: Create a marinade using a combination of verjus and honey with salt, and marinate the loins for an hour or so, stirring occasionally. I used two heaped teaspoons of honey and about 1/4 c of verjus making this dish for two people; but by all means vary this as you see fit.

Second: After the loins have finished marinading, heat up a cast iron fry pan. Once the pan is hot, take each of the loins out of the marinade, and place in the pan. Hold on to the rest of the marinade! Brown each of the loins.

Then: Once all of the loins are nice and brown; and the honey is starting to caramelise, add the rest of the marinade back into the pan, and continue to cook until the marinade is all caramelised and the rabbit is coated in a delicious sticky glaze.

That, is all there is to it.

Of course, every dish needs a name. With this dish, however, the name came first. This, will be forever known as….

Honey Bunny.

Morepork

(Nothing to do with the owl)

Monday night, involved roast pork. Since there are only two of us, that means Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and by the looks of it, Thursday night also involve roast pork.

Tuesday night was roast pork sandwiches. Delicious, but hardly worthy of making a blog post about it.

Tonight, though, we had stirfry.

First up, make “delicious liquid #94” (Okay, so 94 is a somewhat arbitary number. Don’t ask me what the preceding 93 delicious liquids are.): So called delicious liquid #94 involves combining about a tablespoon each of soy sauce, golden syrup and mirin (It’s Japanese, sweet, white, rice wine) and mixing everything together.

Next, chop some stuff up! For the two of us, that was about two handfuls of roughly diced roast pork; Eight mushrooms sliced, and two bunches of pak choy (I used one. Two was the correct number, it turns out).

Finally: Fire! Heat up a wok with a little oil, and toss in the pork. Cook until it browns up. Next up, the mushrooms go in. When the mushrooms are starting to brown, add about 1/3 of delicious liquid and continue cooking until the liquid has evaporated off. Add another third, and evaporate again. Add the final third of delicious liquid #94, and add the pak choy. Continue to cook until the pak choy has wilted.

Unfortunately, this smelled so delicious I forgot to take a photo. Oh Noes!

Pork/Carrot/Parsnip

The pork goes into a hot oven (about 240C) for about 15 minutes; and at that point, the carrot and parsnip are added. Drop the heat down to around 180-200C, and cook for about an hour.

Mushroom+Bacon Risotto

Melt butter in a pan, and add chopped bacon. When the bacon is browned; add risotto rice (arborio or carnaroli), and fry until just starting to brown.

Deglaze the pan with a couple of glugs of vermouth; then add finely diced onion and saute until translucent.

If there is still fond on the pan (uh.. brown bits), use some chicken stock to deglaze further. Then, add enough chicken stock to just cover the rice.

When the stock has evaporated off; cover the rice with stock again.

This time, when the stock evaporates, add sliced mushrooms; and again, cover the rice with stock.

When the stock evaporates this time; the risotto is probably ready. Sample a grain of rice, and if it tastes about right; stir in grated parmesan cheese and serve. Otherwise, continue adding and cooking off more stock until it’s finished.

Tomato-less Lasagna

Lasagna is cooking as I type this; so I must hurry! Pictures might follow, depending on just how starving I am when it is finished.

The lasagna is tomato-less for good reason – Cyrus has an irrational dislike of tomatoes. I think I’ve teased him about this before…

The ingredients are: 4 chicken thighs, chopped finely and cooked through; a bag of baby spinach; a generous handful of mushrooms, sliced; one red onion, diced finely; about two good handfuls of grated cheese; 2-eggs of pasta, rolled into a sheet (or equivalent); salt, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, and milk (for bechamel sauce)

The way I approached this, was to deal with the chicken, mushrooms, onions and cheese first; then make and roll out the pasta; then the bechamel and finally the assembly of the lasagna before baking.

For pasta: Place about three handfuls of flour into a bowl. Make a well in the flour. Crack the eggs into the well. Mix the eggs into the flour, and when all of the flour has been absorbed; add more flour and continue to work the dough. Roll the dough through a pasta machine until about the second to last setting.

For bechamel: I’m.. uh.. not so good with bechamel. Put a bit of a sprinking of flour, and a couple tablespoons of butter into a saucepan; and cook until the butter starts to brown. Add about a cup of milk, little by little. Continue to cook until the sauce thickens a bit (it will continue to thicken as it cools).

For assembly: Coat a lasagna dish with a thin layer of bechamel, then a layer of pasta, then more bechamel. This provides a handy solid layer for retrieving pasta later. Next, add half the chicken, half the mushrooms and half the onions into an even layer; then a layer of spinach; then a layer of cheese. The next layer, is pasta again; which is covered in more bechamel. The next layers are the same as before: chicken, onions and mushrooms; then spinach; then cheese. The top layer comes next: one last layer of pasta, bechamel sauce, and the last of the cheese.

The lasagna is then baked for about 25 minutes in a 200C oven.

Cupcakes

I had intended on making these on Tuesday; but with the cat, it didn’t end up happening. However, since it’s Jesses’ birthday on Saturday, and my co-worker Geoffs’ birthday on Friday, I made a batch of cupcakes this evening instead.

The cupcakes are made from the Night and Day cupcake recipe in Nigella Lawsons book; however instead of the icing in the recipe, I made one of my own devising – it’s a splendiferous bittersweet chocolate icing. The pink and white are both white chocolate.