On the move again

This time it’s a new home in cyberspace!

Slow Food Adventures has finally found it’s very own home at slowfoodadventures.net. Over the next few days, I’ll be moving all the recipes over to the new domain name, and this blog will go to the great web in the sky where all good blogs go when their days are done.

I would like to sincerely thank the guys over at Velocity Internet who made it possible – their help has been absolutely invaluable. Some days, it amazes me what a good tagine will buy you (oh yes, the tagine got blogged, and will appear on the new site as soon as I have everything transferred over)!

Roasted Cherry Tomato Pasta

Hey, I’m back! The new kitchen is unpacked and fully functional (finally!), and so I would like to present a brand new recipe for you. Not all pasta sauces need to be very liquid. This one is a roasted sauce, with the focus on the cherry tomatoes. I used a few different varieties here, but just pick whatever you like the look of. If you can find (or have growing) some different coloured tomatoes, that’s fantastic. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you using diced ordinary tomatoes, but you will lose some of the wonderful texture that comes through with the blackened skin. If you do use big tomatoes, consider throwing in a punnet of cherry tomatoes as well to try and mitigate that. The chorizo adds a lovely flavour, and the sour cream lightens the whole dish.

As I was cooking this dish, I was thinking about variations, and here’s just a couple that I dreamed up:

Vegetarian: leave out the chorizo and add some zucchini, and yellow and orange capsicum with the tomatoes. You could also steam some broccoli florets and add them in at the very end. Leave out the sour cream and the cheese on top, and it would work as a vegan dish too.

Chicken: use half the chorizo, and add some diced chicken thighs. Cook the chorizo with the garlic and paprika, take it out, and then cook the chicken in the pan before deglazing. Then add the chicken in at the very end (don’t roast it).

Salad: Let the pasta and the sauce cool once they’re cooked, and stir everything together cold. Sour cream can stay or go, but stir some parmesan through, and throw in a handful of pine nuts. Slap it all into a plastic container and pack the picnic basket!

Very much a spring dish! Some crusty Italian bread on the side, a sprinkling of parmesan, and a glass of red. Imagine sitting out on the verandah, watching the sun go down, with some pasta in a bowl on your lap, and a glass of wine in hand. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Excuse me, while I find a new kitchen

You might have noticed the dearth of posts in the last week or so. The reason is that Slow Food Adventures is having a little adventure of its own, and will shortly be coming to you from a brand new kitchen.

Yes, that’s right, we’re moving home. I have photographs ready to go for heaps of great recipes (you can get a sneak preview by checking out the Slow Food Adventures Photobucket albums), and will be posting them up as I find the time. This means that posting might be a little sporadic as we undergo The Great Upheaval.

In the meantime, feel free to revisit your favourites, and get cooking!

Beef and Red Wine Pot Pies

Nothing can beat a pot pie on a cold winter’s night, and these are fabulously warming. Easy to make too, as long as you have a little time up your sleeve. I’m a big fan of putting these on in the late afternoon, and letting them simmer while you run around like a mad thing, until – voila! – you pull them out of the oven ready to eat.

Beef and red wine are popular partners, and it’s easy to see why – they complement each other perfectly. Add some garlic and fresh herbs into the mix and it’s really quite difficult to go wrong with it. You can do a whole range of things with these. I’ve only just developed this recipe, but I’m tempted to add carrots to it, baby carrots would be just divine. You could also top them with mashed potatoes (a la Shepherd’s or Cottage Pie) and some grated cheese, and brown them off in the oven. They would also work really well as a fully-encased large pie, too.

I’ve made this one twice now, and both times I’ve kept it fairly chunky, although you need to be guided by your ramekins. I’ve possibly made them too chunky for my little tiny ramekins, but I haven’t had too many complaints yet

Try them, see how you go with it, don’t be afraid to experiment. And remember to let me know how it turns out!

Beef Stroganoff

Beef Stroganoff is a Russian meal, although it’s popular just about everywhere, I believe. It seems that everyone has their own versions of this one. Even amongst so called ‘traditional’ versions, the only similarity seems to be the sour cream.

My Mum – who doesn’t like mushrooms – used to make a stroganoff that was almost the same as this one, but sans the mushies, and I suspect she used to sneak all sorts of other things in there that us kids didn’t know about, as well. This is, I believe, very close to Mum’s, but with the mushrooms added back in, and I put steamed vegies on the side instead of stirring it through. If you do want to stir it through, though, pick broccoli and cauliflower florets, as they hang on to the sauce really well.

This version is an easy weeknight meal, with the main flavours being the mustard and the paprika. I like to throw in a good dose of garlic, and a few grinds of black pepper as well, just for the extra oomph.

I have always served this one with pasta, probably because that’s how we always had it as kids. It doesn’t seem quite right to me to have it any other way, but I believe that it is often served with crisp potato pieces, or rice, depending on who’s doing the cooking. You can stir the sour cream in at the end, as I have done this time, or you can put the tub on the table and let people add as much or as little as they like.

And on one final note, this is my daughter’s favourite meal, and the only reason it’s here is because she’s been hassling me to make it for weeks. So, T, this one is for you, my love …

Cheat’s Rice Pudding

Ever had that problem where you made too much rice for the meal? I do it all the time. But, because I hate throwing perfectly good food away, it often gets put into the fridge in a bowl until – two days later – I look at it and think “must do something with that”. It’s at that point that I decide what we need is a lovely rice pudding for dessert. It really doesn’t matter what type of rice you use, and I’ve been known to mix varieties depending on what I have that needs to be used up.

It’s a very simple dessert, which is the basis of its appeal, I suspect. It’s known as either rice pudding or creamed rice, and it really is nothing more than rice, coconut cream, cinnamon and vanilla. I love it served warm with some dark brown sugar sprinkled generously over the top. And even this cheat’s version is a mile better than the horrid pasty stuff you buy in tins (I swear that’s where they got the idea for Clag glue).

This is a quick hit – keep it on your files for next time you have rice to spare.

Chicken Chasseur

Happy Bastille Day! In honour of this auspicious occasion, I was planning a boeuf bourgignon, but I’ve cooked so many heavy meals this week that I was begged to do something different. So, keeping in theme, I present for you … Chicken Chasseur. ‘Chasseur’ is a French sauce, the chief ingredient of which is mushrooms. The basic sauce is based on a roux of butter, flour, and white wine. It has quite a delicate flavour, yet very filling, and the lighter tastes of thyme and garlic come through really nicely.

Serve it over rice with a glass of white wine. Just delicious!

Osso Bucco

Osso Bucco is an Italian dish that is currently quite popular, although the modern versions vary quite a bit from the traditional. Even within the current vogue, though, there is a huge amount of variation from recipe to recipe. I rarely make it the same way twice. This is probably as close to a ‘traditional’ version as I get though.

The term Osso Bucco can be literally translated from the Italian to mean (I am told, and I’m happy to be corrected by any Italian speakers out there!) ‘hole bone’. It is either veal or beef, and it is cut from the leg, which leaves a single large bone in the centre of the cut, filled with marrow. Veal osso bucco can be hard to find, although some butchers will stock it on request. I have – just once – been lucky enough to find it on the shelf in Coles, which surprised me enormously, and of course I snapped it up. This time, I got some yearling, so it’s a little more tender than the beef ones you buy normally, but without the delicate flavour you get from veal. Accordingly, I cooked it with beef stock, and went heavy-handed on the chilli and other flavours. A veal cut would require quite a lot more of a light touch!

In terms of variations, you can literally do just about anything. I’ve done versions with bacon, pancetta, a thick beefy gravy without tomato, and with all sorts of variations in the vegetables. I haven’t specified vegetables in this recipe, just throw in whatever you have. Traditionally, it would be carrot and celery. I’m not a fan of celery in this type of thing though, so I’ve left it out. Leek and capsicum is always a lovely combination in this type of cooking, though, at least to my mind.  Try it according to the recipe the first time if you’re unsure, and then just go nuts and throw in whatever you like the look of.

Don’t forget to drop your comments in at the bottom of the post, either, and let me know how you go with it. What did you hate? What did you love? What did you change? What will you be trying again next weekend?

Lamb Roast Dinner

Lamb Roast – is there anything much more Australian than this on a Sunday night? Served with roast potatoes (‘crunchy taters’, if you live in our house), kent pumpkin, sweet potato, baby carrots, and lashings of gravy. Awesome.

It took me many years to get the timings right on my roasts. I was constantly serving burnt potatoes with bloody meat, or dried out meat with underdone spuds. But, my hard work is your gain, and I’ve tried to be as detailed as I can on timings in this recipe. Of course, it all depends on a few factors, but the main one is the size of the cut of meat you have. This one is 2.5kg lamb leg. There are many sources out there that say an hour per kilo, and they’re right if you want a completely cooked through lamb leg. In my opinion, however, lamb should never be cooked right through, but left with a little pinkness. And therein lies the rub: a roast is such a huge chunk of meat that when it’s still red in the middle against the bone, it’s cooked through at the very edges. The trick is to get it red at the bone, but not too red. Daunted yet? Don’t be. If you’re worried, grab a 2.5kg lamb leg from your butcher and follow my timings precisely. Once you have that down pat, start experimenting with smaller or bigger.

Interestingly enough, there’s a story in our household about my partner attempting to cook a lamb roast in an electric oven, starting with him trying to ‘light’ it (thinking it was gas). So, if you’re really stuck – try just turning the knob first, before you get the matches out

Banana Bread

My partner adores banana bread, but it’s horribly expensive to buy (out here, anyway – perhaps it’s different elsewhere), so for the past few months I’ve been working on a recipe for it. This was originally based on a Delicious magazine recipe. But, like always, it didn’t stay that way for long. In fact, I’m not entirely certain it even started that way, now I think about it.

As a diabetic I tend to shy away from these things, they’re generally very high in sugar, and the low sugar ones are dry, flavourless, and tough. This one, however, uses only half a cup of sugar (which is still not great, but it’s not as bad as some!). What makes it truly awesome though is the yoghurt and the buttermilk for lightness, and the pureed apple for a lovely sweet tang.

Buttermilk is almost like a magic ingredient in baking. It reacts chemically with the baking powder (either added, or the baking powder in self-raising flour) and creates a fabulous light and fluffy texture. I use buttermilk almost exclusively in my baking now – don’t even dream of making a chocolate cake without buttermilk! And it freezes well too: once you have the carton, use what you need in the recipe, and then just throw the carton in to the freezer for next time. You can also use it for crumbing meat, so it’s not just for sweet dishes.

The final product of this recipe, however, is a very light, crumbly bread. The dominant flavours are the banana and the cinnamon. It’s not overly sweet, relying on the fruit (particularly the apple) to add the sweetness rather than the added sugar. Just lovely warm from the oven, or the next day toasted with butter. You can also wrap the slices individually in glad wrap and pop them in the freezer for later.