Home grown tomatoes

We have just spent a lazy weekend of not too much except a nice dinner out on Saturday and lots of cricket .

Nick took me to dinner at a local vineyard Restaurant called Racine at La Colline http://www.racinerestaurant.com.au/ just a few K’s up the road on Saturday night. 
I enjoy cooking very much but there is something very special about being taken to a restaurant that shows spectacularly the talent and dedication of someone that has trained for years, honed their skills and opened a restaurant that producers something traditional (French) but with a great twist of their own, needless to say we had a wonderful evening…bliss.

So my taste buds were working overtime on Sunday wanting something not to match but definitely to satisfy like Saturdays dinner.  I had a big help from the weekend food magazine and took a leaf out of Neil Perry’s suggestion this weekend of a simply marinated fillet of chicken, served with a Rice Pilaf and some vine ripened tomatoes.  For me the highlight really was the tomatoes which I picked that afternoon.

The tomatoes served simply chopped with a little salt and pepper, olive oil and a sprinkle of red wine vinegar, popped the chicken on top and served it alongside the following pilaf.  Fabulous….check out our tomatoes…..they taste just like tomatoes!!!!

Rice Pilaf serves 4

60g unsalted butter

2 tablespoons of Olive oil

2 cinnamon sticks

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 tablespoons currants

¼ cup shelled pistachios

300g basmati rice, soaked in water for 1 hour

500 ml chicken stock or water

Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan with a lid, large enough to fit the rice when cooked.  When the butter foams add the cinnamon and salt, then onion.  Fry over a medium heat for 10 minutes stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft.  Add the cardamom, turmeric, currants and pistachios and cook gently for 10 minutes until the onion is golden brown.

Drain the rice and add to the pan, stirring 1-2 minutes then pour in the stock, cook on high for 5 minutes then reduce, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat, rest for 5 – 10 minutes and serve.

Love Mary

Fruits of our Garden

We have just spent another week in Sydney with paint and scrubbing brushes in hand.  But the results are a house that looks like it did 18 months ago.  Now we face the dilemma of do we re rent or not?  Decisions, Decisions….

Happily back to Orange and I was really concerned that my garden would have been scolded by a week of sunshine and no rain.

How can it be that a country ruined by floods in some areas is dry as a bone in others. 

We had our share of water in and around this area and people have faced devastating effects from flood just down the road but even in Brisbane Maggie is at work, business as usual as she has been right through this period without much effect at all while just down to road people have lost their homes and much worse .  This is an amazing country indeed.

Needless to say our garden was dry but not gone.  Last night we had the produce of the garden on a plate, eggs, tomatoes, zucchini, basil, new potatoes all together in a Spanish Omelette, I think the only thing in it we didn’t produce was the olive oil…..

As a side before going to Sydney I had the issue of too many tomatoes on a vine and needed to take a few out.  What to do with green tomatoes…I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of fried green tomatoes.

I simply dipped them in polenta flour and fried in olive oil, served them with a salad of basil and red tomato and corn fritters.  It was all really tasty. 

The green tomatoes stayed really firm, tasted slightly tart but in a nice way, I’d recommend you give it a try.  Other than pickle the other way I know is to sauté with garlic and we may well try that version tonight.

Stay well and dry

Love Mary

Pork and Fennel just made to go together.

Pork and Fennel, just made to go together.

We had such a nice relaxing weekend, dinner with friends on Saturday night and a drive to Parks on Sunday to witness its biggest event of the year - the Elvis Festival.  Not just any festival, this one is the largest annual event outside of Memphis.  My observation  - why did so Elvis’s choose the year he died to cover…so many peanut butter sandwiches it must have taken to reproduce that look…. And in sparkly and lycra too…maybe once is enough for me.

Saturday dinner in Orange we wanted something tasty but simple.  This is adapted from one of our favourite dishes - 4 hour roast pork.

Take a piece of pork, in this case it was a piece of boned shoulder, laid flat in a pan.

I mixed in my mortar and pestle 6 cloves of garlic, ½ teaspoon of chilli flakes, 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds and the rind of a lemon.  Once mixed add a splash of oil and the juice of the lemon, pour over the pork and leave for a few hours.

When your ready to cook, pop 4 halved fresh fennel bulbs In the bottom of a roasting pan and place the pork skin side up on top.  Add the marinade to the dish.  Rub the skin with a little oil and salt and place into a hot oven for 30 minutes then turn the oven down to 160 for a further 1.5 hours. After an hour or so add a few potatoes to the dish.  That’s it, serve the pork sliced with a bit of the crackling and some of the vegetables from the pan.  Finnish with a drizzle of pan juices.

This was a really tasty dinner and sop easy to prepare.  Really good if you just don’t want to spend the night in the kitchen when all the fun is happening outside!

Enjoy

Love Mary

2 things Australia and New Zealand can’t agree on!

Since coming to Australia all those years ago there has been lots of debate about 2 significant things the first in Bacon and Egg Pie and what should go in it?  And the other is of course who first cooked the mighty Pavlova.

Bacon and Egg Pie to the purest don’t include tomato, peas or cheese, its egg and bacon (I'm a purest), a little salt and pepper and the best flaky pastry you can buy or make. I introduced this marvel of cooking to Nick on a trip out to the Hay Plains last year when we stopped for dinner on the side of the road and I produced a big chunk of cold pie, he’s sold on them.

And how easy to make!  Line a pie tin with pastry add some cooked and chopped bacon (as much as you like) add enough eggs to fill your pie (you can beat these slightly or not), season and pop a pastry top on.  Brush the top with a little beaten egg to add shine and pop into a hot oven.  By the time the pastry is deliciously golden brown the eggs will be cooked and the pie ready to serve hot or cold.

The Pavlova has been in the news recently with a lot of debate over who first produced this desert.  Finally the result has been announced - the first recorded recipe was in New Zealand.  I laughed at one comment by an older Australian and very well known cook who said it couldn’t be New Zealand as they don’t get passionfruit there, actually they grow wild in many gardens in New Zealand (not a native) and in Australia rare to find and when you do, very expensive.  Shows what she knew. 

Anyway, over Christmas I observed a friend making Pavlova and really needing to take the pressure off I have included the easiest of recipes I have tried and fail safe too.

Easy Pavlova

You will need an electric beater for this, I use my Kitchen Aid.

A note about EGGS  you need large eggs, room temperature and several days old – most of you won’t have an issue there your eggs are probably months old if purchased from the supermarket, up to 6 months we recently read!

Preheat your oven to 180C with the rack in the centre.  Place a piece of baking paper on an oven tray.

Make sure your mixing bowl in clean and dry.

4 egg whites

1 ½ cups caster sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla essence

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon cornflour

4 tablespoons of boiling water

Place all ingredients into the mixer; add the boiling water last and beat for about 10 minutes or until the mixture is shiny and stiff.

Spoon out onto your baking paper and place in the oven bake for 10 minutes, lower the heat to 150C and bake a further 45 minutes.  Turn the heat off and allow to cool in the oven for at least an hour.

Transfer to serving platter, cover in whipped cream and fruit of choice.  Just please don’t add bananas ….please.

Good luck, Love

Mary

Wouldn’t want to be a chicken for quids!

Ro and Keith have very kindly been looking after the chooks, apparently they are very well behaved when staying with friends.

We have been rewarded with at least one of them laying so I was in the middle of deciding what to cook that would use both the fresh eggs and the new potatoes out of the garden when we heard a bit of a ruckus outside.  The chooks where outside about 6.30pm and from nowhere appeared 2 little dogs.  One of the dogs had decided although twice his height a chicken might be worth a try….so imagine a chicken being chased down the drive by a dog followed by Nick and a rather larger dog (Tana), comical yes but the poor chicken lost most of its tail feathers, more of its mind but luckily for the dog not its life.  Turns out they had got out of a neighbours yard. 

I’m hoping that wasn’t the laying chicken.  We got back to the house to find another one sheltering in my study of all places.  Once all chickens where back outside I was able to get back to the task at hand.

Crispy potato cake

4 large potatoes

1 small onion

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 T flour

½ cup chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon of olive oil

 Grate the potatoes and onion.  Wrap them in a tea towel and squeeze out the excess moisture.  Put all ingredients except the oil in to a bowl and combine well.  Heat a 22cm non stick oven proof pan over a medium heat and add the olive oil.  When the oil is hot, add the potato mixture, cover and cook for 10 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally to stop the cake sticking. Heat under a grill for a further 6-7 minutes until cooked and brown.

We served this with a simple salad and a couple of sliced of smoked salmon.

This is a photo of the potatoes we grew this year, how good do they look!

Enjoy the potato cake its great.

Love Mary

Happy New Year to you all.

We spent a very happy Christmas day with Maggie and James at the Parkers, Nick followed it up with boxing day cricket which if you follow the Ashes at all you will understand why he had such a huge grin on his face when he finally landed back in NSW that night.

The week between that and New Year was spent in Castlecrag.  Lots of gardening and cleaning to get done but it was nice to have the time there.

We had dinner with our neighbours one evening and as well as being such interesting and generous hosts you can be assured of receiving very good food.  They are both Russian born and arrived in Australia via China so more often than not the food has the flavours of their life and travels.  We had a wonderful evening and I convinced Marina to share this great dish.

She recommends you cook plenty, as  Gary’s said, he likes to eat this dish three nights in a row!

Blinchatie Pirojkl - Meat pies made with Pancakes

This was served with a simple salad of cucumbers and herbs.  Delicious!

We returned to Orange for New Year and had a really nice night with James and Liz, a couple of their friends from Melbourne and John, Tash and Aerin.

Love Mx