Cicken & Ricotta Quiche

Quiche: Short crust pastery with an egg bound filling.

Aubergine Lasagne

I got the most awesome eggplants from my parents garden. Plucked fresh and cooked soonafter, eggplant takes on a whole new dimention. Super fresh eggplant has a texture kind of like granny smith apples; Crisp and firm, with a hint of flour as an after thought.

So I used the eggplant in a lasagne, it was bloody beautiful mate, check out the pix, good looking grub hey? Oh and I put in a pic of two thirds of my kids.

The following recipe will feed eight hungry people:

Ingredence:

6 egg plants. (600g).

1kg minced beef.

1kg tomatoes skinned and diced.

2 brown onions diced.

1 bulb, (not clove) of garlic diced finely.

8 large feild mushrooms sliced.

1 large green capsicum sliced.

250g of chedder cheese grated.

300g of reccota cheese.

250g of fetta (Australian) cheese.

Enough fresh rolled pasta to do about 6 or 7 layers.

Salt flakes and fresh cracked pepper.

Olive oil.

Method:

In a large heavy based pot, fry the onion slowly untill well softened. Max the heat and add the mince and garlic, cook untill done. Add the tomatoes with a pinch of salt and pepper. Lower the heat, simmer and reduce untill well thickened.

Roll out your pasta and set aside. Dust with extra flour beforhand to prevent the pasta sticking.

Ladle a small amount of sauce into a rectangle pyrex oven dish, this will form a layer to stop the pasta sticking. Now lay down pasta, sauce, mushrooms, pasta, sauce, chedder cheese, pasta sauce, capsicum, and repeat untill the dish is almost full.

In a mixing bowl combine the reccota and fetta cheeses with a little milk. This will be the sauce to go on top. As you pour over the sauce be careful not to disturb the other ingredence on the lower levels, it will blemmish the white look of the sauce. Crack a bit of pepper over the top, also try a sprinkle of ground Sumac, when it cooks with the cheese sauce it will release it's purple pigments. I recon that it looks abit like the colour of egg plant skin, so you get a bit of a visual aspect to the egg plant flavors.

Bake the big bugger in the oven at 190c for about 1 hour. As an extra touch turn on the overhead oven grill for a minute or so to brown up the top abit if not all ready that way.

Serve by cutting into squares and carefully lifting out onto a plate...... Yum.

Salt bush lamb. (Simple is best).

The guys down at Kitchen & Butcher, Hi, got me on to what I would say is the best lamb that I've ever tasted.

It went like this: Brock walks into Kitchen & Butcher. "Hi guys, how it going, blah, blah, blah. So, whats good today?"

Behind the counter bloke says: "Give us a sec and I'll go and get the chef. He'll know whats what."

Chef walks in. Says: "Hello, nice day...... Blah. Look at this lamb. Salt bush lamb. It's been grazing on salt bush and wild herbs. You've got to try it. You wont beleve how good it is. I cooked it for lunch. Heaven, perfict, the best.

Me and the chef had a bit of a chat about how he cooked, and how I plan to cook the lamb. After a bit of advice here's how I did it:

Ingredence:

2kg hind leg of organic salt bush fed lamb. No shank.

Few sprigs of rosemary.

Salt flakes, fresh cracked peper.

Olive oil.

Method:

Prepare a kettle (Webber) BBQ with about 20 heat beads. In the mean time; Lightly score the lamb. Denude the rosemary sprigs, (pull the leaves off), chop roughly and massage into the lamb along with a fair pinch of salt and a generous cracking of pepper. Drizzle the lot with oil. Place on the grill in the BBQ. Give it full vents for about 40 minutes, then turn to half vent and cook for about 4 hours. Low and slow is the aim here. Proper salt bush lamb doesn't loose much moisture, so it ok to cook it slowly, just make sure you seal it on high heat at first so as to seal in the liquid goodness.

Rest the joint for about ten minutes before carving. When carved salt bush lamb has an extra fine grain, so it's possible to slice extra thin.

Coz this lamb is soooo good, don't bother jazzing it up to much. Keep it simple, just appreciate the excelent flavor of the lamb. Don't stuff it up with sauces or the like. Just taste the lamb for what it is...... Bloody beautiful mate!

Three Meat De-Lux!

Veal rib eye, Scotch fillet, and Sir loin.

Like I always say. "Top quality beef doesn't need any jazzing up. Just a crack of salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, and a bloody hot grill."

A quality butcher should be happy to cut beef as you ask for it. If your butcher gets abit shirty when asked to cut a steak for you, just politely ask them to recomend a butcher that will.

While your at it. Take time to inquire about the lenght of time the beast has been hung for. Any less than three weeks is to fresh. It wont be tender and will lose moisture on cooking, as the conective tissue won't have had a chance to break down.

Lastly; Don't kill your beef by over cooking it. I know I've said it a thousand times before, but it's better to er on the side of caution and under cook your steak. After all high quality beef can and is eaten raw, kind of like sushimi.

Keep it beefy bloggers!

White Wine & Rabbit.

Organic free range rabbit is not as strong in flavor as the wild variety. Although wild rabit is often dry, farmed rabit is allmost allways tender and suculent.



Cooking, cooking, cooking...

At the table.....

Ingredence:

4 buck hind quarters of rabit.

4 midim sized carrots.

6 sticks of cellary.

1/2 bulb of garlic. Finley choped.

1 Lage brown onion. Finley choped.

4 bay leaves.

1/2 a letire of chicken sdtock.

750m bottle of chardoney.

Olive oil & pepper.

1 potato to soak up the salt.

Method:

In a large heavy based pot fry the rabbit untill lighly golden, set aside. Add onion and thickly sliced carrot, cellery, garlic, and potato. After about 5 minutes add a light sprinkle of plain flour to make a thickened sauce when the wine is added. Bung in the bay leaves and stock add the wine and a real good cracking of peper. Brig it back to the boil toss in the rabbit, Place lid on top, stuff into a pre heated oven at 180C for 2 hours. After the oven stint the sauce may need to be thickened up some. Do this by simmering on the stove for as long as it takes to come good. Be careful not to break up the meat.

Serve on a bed of mash. Pictured is Duchcream potato 8 cloves of garlic and a beetroot added for colour and flavor.