Cooked a hole shit load though!
French pepper corn rissoto with crispy skin salmon.
Slow roasted chicken with herb crusted vegetables.
Rack of lamb with fetta olives and roast capsicum.
Rissoto with chilli pork sausage.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Busy Kitchen.
I've been flat out of late.
Cooked a hole shit load though!
French pepper corn rissoto with crispy skin salmon.
Slow roasted chicken with herb crusted vegetables.
Rack of lamb with fetta olives and roast capsicum.
Rissoto with chilli pork sausage.
Cooked a hole shit load though!
French pepper corn rissoto with crispy skin salmon.
Slow roasted chicken with herb crusted vegetables.Rack of lamb with fetta olives and roast capsicum.
Rissoto with chilli pork sausage.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Does Pasta Work With Beer?
Fuller's ESB Champion Ale:
A classic English dark ale. Smooth full bodied and bursting with flavour, with marmalade fruitiness throughout, ESBs rich malty notes are balanced by a unique blend of Northdown, Target, Chalanger and Goldings hops, to give a long, satisfying finish.
One all to common fault I found with this beer is that only comes in a 500ml bottle. (European standard pint.) Ye olde British pint weighs in at liver swelling 638ml.
As for beer with pasta:
I went as far north as possible with this one. Think German Italian boarder, wild boar, fungi, soft cheeses and the like. Big tastes in a pasta like this one call for a full bodied beer sreved a bit warmer than most Aussies like at around 12 degrees C.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Meatballs
Meatballs in a tomato sauce with pasta. Cheap and easy. Like me.
Good meatballs are made with cuts of beef like shin, and blade. Osso bucco would be the choice for the ultimate meat balls but it is usually the more expensive cut. Cuts like rump, eye fillet, and t-bone don't work so well, this is because the muscle fibers are to long, (wrong texture) and they lack the conective tissue, (flavor). Plus they cost a bloody fortune!
The other night I cooked them like this:
Ingredents:
5oog Osso bucco trimed from bone. (Reserve bone).
3 cups of a good quality, (like home made) tomato based pasta sauce.
2 carrrots peeled.
1 large brown onion.
4 cloves of garlic.
1/2 tea spoon of choped rosemarry.
1/2 tea spoon tyme choped.
1/2 tea spoon choped oregano.
1 tea spoon of fresh cracked pepper.
2 tea spoons of salt flakes. (Not rock salt or that refined shit)
2 table spoons of bread crumbs.
1 table spoon balsamic vinagar.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Crispy Skined Barramundi in Balsamic Reduction
Alot of people I talk to say they don't like fish.. I'll bet my tackle box it's because there not eating fresh fish. Freash fish smelles & tastes like the essence of the sea. Anything beyond a day old, you end up with a smell like a hookers knickers after a bucks night. Probly tastes about the same to!
Same day fish can be a bit pricey, as a result most Ausies being tight asses tend to go for the stale stuff. The smell aloan will turn even the hungryest buggers off a feed o fish...
So if it means you can only afford fish once in a while; Go for the freash stuff. If you still can't afford it, buy a fishing rod get out there and get your own...
The beer of choice for this meal is the Erdinger dark bock. A dark roasted wheat malt haveing a chocalate and nutty esspresso start with a late Amorillo hoped fruity finish. This classic dark German needs to be pored allowing a generous 5 cm head. Sedement distubance opitional but recomended for a more rounded flavor.
Crispy skin snapper with a balsamic reduction on a bed tomato & cucumber with a side of lamb coffta!
If you have the paticence to put up with my spelling I would like to share some thoughts on cooking fillet of fish.
Same day fish can be a bit pricey, as a result most Ausies being tight asses tend to go for the stale stuff. The smell aloan will turn even the hungryest buggers off a feed o fish...
So if it means you can only afford fish once in a while; Go for the freash stuff. If you still can't afford it, buy a fishing rod get out there and get your own...
The beer of choice for this meal is the Erdinger dark bock. A dark roasted wheat malt haveing a chocalate and nutty esspresso start with a late Amorillo hoped fruity finish. This classic dark German needs to be pored allowing a generous 5 cm head. Sedement distubance opitional but recomended for a more rounded flavor.
Crispy skin snapper with a balsamic reduction on a bed tomato & cucumber with a side of lamb coffta!
If you have the paticence to put up with my spelling I would like to share some thoughts on cooking fillet of fish.
On most ocations I would recomend cooking meat over hot coals. But fillet of fish is very delicate in texture and flavor. It can easley fall apart when turning on a grill. Also direct contact with head and flame can over power the taste of some fish so you get nothing but BBQ flavor and nothing else. So this time I can recomend useing a hot plate, so long as it's super clean. I'll even go so far as to say a non stick pan is OK, only because you need the cleanest surface possible so as to avoid roge flavor contamination.
So now we got all this I'm going to asume that you are either useing a non stick pan, or a stainless steel hot plate that has been scrubed to within an inch of it's life. Rub the sikn side of the fish with salt flakes and cracked pepper. Heat your pan to allmost smokeing. Give a quick swigg of olive oil to aid heat transmission and place fish skin side down in the center of the pan. If your pan is nice and hot you should see a contraction of the skin, that how you know it'll be nice and crispy. Assumeing your fillet is about 2.5cm thick allow about 3 minutes on the skin side before turning. Give another 2 minutes and your done. Or, if your fish does'nt have any skin. Add salt flakes and cracked pepper to a hand full of flour and dust the fish with it. Shake off the execess, and cook in a moderate pan with a splash of olive oil for 3 minutes a side.
Cock Bike
Just a quick blogie...
My boss, who loves a drink, and a drive. Well, he's managed to lose his licence coz he blew .18! So he decided that he should be able to do what ever the fuck he want's. That meant that he continued to drive everywhere. Untill that is, he got busted driveing while suspended. Mummy took his keys away. Now he rides a bike.
Inspite of what he thinks, nobody likes him very much. So....This is what we did to his ride.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The Fat Sausage!
Here are a few sausage recipes:
Why? Coz ya gota love a good sausage...
My only recomendations are: That when makeing your own snags, use natural caseing (skins). I know some people are a bit turned off by the thought of useing sheeps guts to hold there sausage together. But the synthetic alernative is made from boiled cows toenails....Yuk!
Also, sausages are not for the health conscious. Don't get freaked out by the stagering amount of salt and fat that goes into the average sausage. If you skimp to much on the salt and fat you'll end up with a bland dry lump that tastes a bit like my work boots!
I was given an antique sausage machine as a wedding present by a dear friend of mine, it's a big brutal cast iron jobie. Great to use, whatch the fingers though. The following are recipes that I've thought up:
Chicken Sausage.
Ingredients:
1 kg of minced chicken.
250g pork fat.
250g red onion.
250g bread crumbs.
1/3 cup chicken stock.
6 cloves of garlic.
1 & 1/2 heaped table spoons of salt flakes.
1/2 table spoon of fresh cracked pepper.
1/2 tea spoon of mace.
Method:
Very finley dice the onion and garlic, fry gently in a pan with a knob of butter. When the onion becomes translucent and the garlic is fragrent add the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer uncovered for 2 or 3 minutes and add the bread crumbs, stir untill combined then remove from heat and set aside to cool.
Dice the pork fat into small pieces and combine with the chicken, salt, pepper, mace, and cooled bread crumb mix. Pump mixture into caseing leaveing enough room for the filling to expand when cooking. This should be enough for about 2 dozen 100g sausages.
Spicey Pork.
Ingredients:
1 kg minced pork.
250g bacon.
250g bread crumbs.
4 long red chillis.
3 spring onions.
3 cloves of garlic.
5g fresh ginger, peeled.
3 tablespoons of ket chap manis. (Indonesian soy sauce).
1 tablespoon cracked pepper.
Method:
Blitz the bacon, bread crumbs, chillis, spring onion, garlic, ginger, ket chap manis, and pepper in a food processor. With the processor running add a little water untill the mixture comes together. Add minced pork and pulse untill combined. Fill caseings leaveing enough room for the mixture to expand when cooked. This should be enough for about 20 sausages.
A few notes on cooking:
I've been to more than a few barbys where the snags were: Bought from the supermarket, cooked on a gas fired grill, and burnt to a crisp. Wrong , wrong, wrong.... Meat is slaughtered for sausages, theres no need to murder it on the barbeque. Store bought generic style sausages contain the most horrendous list of ingredents imaginable. Strangley heaps of people think they taste alright. Just think how good a sausage that contains top quality meat, and spices will be!
One of the best (and easiest) ways to cook the perfect sausage is to grill/bake over hot coals. Heat beads are prefect for this. Most people either own a Webber style BBQ, or have the means to light a fire useing heat beads and bug a grill on top. For this example I will asume ownership of a Webber.
Fire up your Webber with enough heaped up heat beads to cover the area of the average dinner plate. Place the coals in the center, when the beads are well alight place the lid on top, with the vents full open allow to heat for about ten minutes.
Now it's time to cook the snags. Remove the lid from the BBQ and arrange the sausages fitting snug against one another on the grill, but only so many as to cover the area of the coals. Replace the lid and leave to smoke/grill/bake for 4 minutes. Open, turn, close for 3 minutes. Now it's time for the bakeing. Move all the sausages to the outer edge of the grill away from the coals, the idea is to roast the sausages the rest of the way through. This will help to preserve the moisture and flavor. Under no curcumstances are you or anybody else to prick or puncture the caseing (Skin) in any way... Thats how you kill a sausage, plus it defeats the purpose of haveing a skin in the first place. Coz all the goodness leakes out..
Anyway you'll need about ten minutes roasting before there done. I like to use this time to cook the steaks over the coals. (Six or seven minutes to cook. Three or four minutes to rest). As an added extra the smoke from the steaks cooking gives extra flavor to the sausage.
Now it's time for serving.
Plate up with what ever extras you feel is appropriate and score lightly the caseing as if you are cutting into thick slices. This will let the juices run and allow a natural gravey to form. You now have sausage perfecto. ENJOY.
Why? Coz ya gota love a good sausage...
My only recomendations are: That when makeing your own snags, use natural caseing (skins). I know some people are a bit turned off by the thought of useing sheeps guts to hold there sausage together. But the synthetic alernative is made from boiled cows toenails....Yuk!
Also, sausages are not for the health conscious. Don't get freaked out by the stagering amount of salt and fat that goes into the average sausage. If you skimp to much on the salt and fat you'll end up with a bland dry lump that tastes a bit like my work boots!
I was given an antique sausage machine as a wedding present by a dear friend of mine, it's a big brutal cast iron jobie. Great to use, whatch the fingers though. The following are recipes that I've thought up:
Chicken Sausage.
Ingredients:
1 kg of minced chicken.
250g pork fat.
250g red onion.
250g bread crumbs.
1/3 cup chicken stock.
6 cloves of garlic.
1 & 1/2 heaped table spoons of salt flakes.
1/2 table spoon of fresh cracked pepper.
1/2 tea spoon of mace.
Method:
Very finley dice the onion and garlic, fry gently in a pan with a knob of butter. When the onion becomes translucent and the garlic is fragrent add the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer uncovered for 2 or 3 minutes and add the bread crumbs, stir untill combined then remove from heat and set aside to cool.
Dice the pork fat into small pieces and combine with the chicken, salt, pepper, mace, and cooled bread crumb mix. Pump mixture into caseing leaveing enough room for the filling to expand when cooking. This should be enough for about 2 dozen 100g sausages.
Spicey Pork.
Ingredients:
1 kg minced pork.
250g bacon.
250g bread crumbs.
4 long red chillis.
3 spring onions.
3 cloves of garlic.
5g fresh ginger, peeled.
3 tablespoons of ket chap manis. (Indonesian soy sauce).
1 tablespoon cracked pepper.
Method:
Blitz the bacon, bread crumbs, chillis, spring onion, garlic, ginger, ket chap manis, and pepper in a food processor. With the processor running add a little water untill the mixture comes together. Add minced pork and pulse untill combined. Fill caseings leaveing enough room for the mixture to expand when cooked. This should be enough for about 20 sausages.
A few notes on cooking:
I've been to more than a few barbys where the snags were: Bought from the supermarket, cooked on a gas fired grill, and burnt to a crisp. Wrong , wrong, wrong.... Meat is slaughtered for sausages, theres no need to murder it on the barbeque. Store bought generic style sausages contain the most horrendous list of ingredents imaginable. Strangley heaps of people think they taste alright. Just think how good a sausage that contains top quality meat, and spices will be!
One of the best (and easiest) ways to cook the perfect sausage is to grill/bake over hot coals. Heat beads are prefect for this. Most people either own a Webber style BBQ, or have the means to light a fire useing heat beads and bug a grill on top. For this example I will asume ownership of a Webber.
Fire up your Webber with enough heaped up heat beads to cover the area of the average dinner plate. Place the coals in the center, when the beads are well alight place the lid on top, with the vents full open allow to heat for about ten minutes.
Now it's time to cook the snags. Remove the lid from the BBQ and arrange the sausages fitting snug against one another on the grill, but only so many as to cover the area of the coals. Replace the lid and leave to smoke/grill/bake for 4 minutes. Open, turn, close for 3 minutes. Now it's time for the bakeing. Move all the sausages to the outer edge of the grill away from the coals, the idea is to roast the sausages the rest of the way through. This will help to preserve the moisture and flavor. Under no curcumstances are you or anybody else to prick or puncture the caseing (Skin) in any way... Thats how you kill a sausage, plus it defeats the purpose of haveing a skin in the first place. Coz all the goodness leakes out..
Anyway you'll need about ten minutes roasting before there done. I like to use this time to cook the steaks over the coals. (Six or seven minutes to cook. Three or four minutes to rest). As an added extra the smoke from the steaks cooking gives extra flavor to the sausage.
Now it's time for serving.
Plate up with what ever extras you feel is appropriate and score lightly the caseing as if you are cutting into thick slices. This will let the juices run and allow a natural gravey to form. You now have sausage perfecto. ENJOY.
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