All The Dumb Things

July 2009
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Jun
	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

I hae meat tha ye can eat! The perfect roast pork recipe.

Posted by razzbuffnik on 23rd May 2009

I had some friends over for dinner on Friday night to help celebrate my birthday (which was the day before).

the usual suspects

For the main course we had a pork roast stuffed with mushrooms. The pork was cooked in a kettle barbeque over charcoal and served with a potato and celeriac mash and also with roast carrots and beets. For dessert we had an orange and almond cake served with quince and sherry ice cream, topped with a marmalade and Gran Marnier sauce. All home made.

I have to say, that the pork was absolutely perfect and here’s how I prepared it.

Serves 10

Ingredients

A large deboned pork loin with the belly and skin (check with your butcher as you might have to order this a few days ahead). The piece I used weighed about 4kg (about 8.8 lbs)
1kg (2.2lbs) of mushrooms (I used about half field mushrooms and half rehydrated mixture of porcini and chantrells)
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup of chopped fresh thyme
Zest of 4 lemons
1 cup of salt
2 tbs of fennel seeds

Method

Prepare the pork by using a box cutter (or any other type of razor in a safety handle) to cut thin strips about 7mm (about 1/4″) deep and about 7mm wide into the skin.

Roughly chop up the mushrooms and fry with the garlic and thyme until the mushrooms begin to brown. When the mushrooms are cooked season with salt and pepper, then add the lemon zest and remove from the heat.

Lay out the pork, skin side down and use a very sharp knife to cut a pocket into the loin (the large solid piece of meat at the end)and stuff it with about half of the mushrooms. Spread the rest of the mushrooms on the belly (the flat flap hanging off the loin).

Roll up the pork into a log and tie up with cooking string. Then rub olive oil all over the skin. With a mortar and pestle, grind up the fennel seeds with the salt and rub the mixture well into the cuts in the skin of the pork. Cover the pork and put to one side so it can warm up to room temperature.

In the meantime get your barbeque ready. Load up the charcoal trays up high to make a hot fire. It usually takes about an hour for the charcoal to be ready to cook with after it has been lit, which gives the pork time to warm up a little. Don’t start to cook until all the fuel is coved in a thin layers of white ash. If you don’t have a kettle barbeque you can use an oven at 180 C or about 375 F.

The best way to calculate how long to cook the roast (this works for the oven and barbeque) is to lay the pork down and measure how high the end sits above the surface that it is laying on. You cook the roast 1 minute for every millimetre. For example, my roast sat 140mm high so I cooked it for 140 minutes.

When your roast is cooked, take it out of the heat and let it sit for 30minutes. Don’t cover the meat with a non breathable material like foil because it will trap the steam and make the crackling go soft.

This roast was PERFECT

Posted in Recipes | 6 Comments »

Macadamia nut tart

Posted by razzbuffnik on 11th April 2009

Sorry for not posting much stuff lately. I’ve been pretty busy with real life and the socializing that it involves. Yesterday I had some friends over for a churrasco (Brazilian barbeque) and I made a macadamia nut tart for dessert.

Macadamia nut tart

So in the hope that you will forgive me for my tardiness, here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

Pastry

225gr (1 and half cups) of plain flour
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
125gr (1/4lb) unsalted butter
2 egg yolks

Filling

5 egg yolks
200gr (7oz) caster sugar
2 tablespoons of corn flour or you can use custard powder
600ml (2 and a half cups) of light sour cream (it has half the fat of normal sour cream and there is enough fat in this thing)
2 teaspoons of vanilla paste (or vanilla extract)
200gr (7oz) of macadamia nuts. Toasted and roughly crushed.

Method

Pastry

Combine the flour, sugar, and butter in a food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add one egg yolk and process until it turns into a ball of dough. Roll out in so it will fill the bottom and side of a 25cm (about 9 and a half inches) greased flan tin. Line in pastry dough with baking paper and fill with weight (like rice or dried beans) and blind bake for about 30 minutes at 200C (390F). When the pastry is cooked, take out the weight and paper and brush the pastry with the other egg yolk and bake for another 5 minutes (this water proofs the pastry and stops it getting soggy when the filling is put in).

Filling

Heat the sour cream until hot but not boiling. In the meantime mix up the egg yolks and corn flour with the sugar in a bowl. Pour the hot sour cream over the egg yolk mixture and when it is combined return it the saucepan and heat over low heat, continually stirring until it thickens. Take care that you don’t boil the mixture. Just before you pour the filling out, mix in the vanilla paste.

Place half the nuts in the pastry and pour the filling over them. Sprinkle the rest of the nuts over the top of the filling. Chill the tart in the fridge and serve cold. The tart goes well with frozen yoghurt and a berry coulis (I made blueberry one yesterday).

Posted in Recipes | 8 Comments »

Spongati cake recipe from 1820

Posted by razzbuffnik on 29th March 2009

This is an updated version of a spongati cake recipe by Ivan Day. Day got the recipe from William Jarrin’s “The Italian Confectioner” which was first printed in 1820. The cake is sort of like an English mince tart but in my opinion, much better.

Ingredients

For the pastry

225gr (8oz) plain flour
50gr (2oz) caster sugar (I use pure icing sugar)
100gr (4oz) unsalted butter (the Danish brand, Lurpak is excellent)
3 egg yolks

For the filling

115gr (4oz) white bread crumbs
115gr (4oz) walnuts
20gr (2/3oz) currants
20gr (2/3oz) pine nuts
450gr (1lb) honey (I use macadamia honey)
Pinch of ground cinnamon
Pinch of black pepper
Pinch of nutmeg
Icing sugar to dust the finished cake

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C (300F)

Sift the flour and sugar. Chop up the butter into small cubes and mix with
the flour, sugar and egg yolks until you get a breadcrumb like, consistency
(I did this all in a food processor). Roll the mixture into a ball and chill
for about an hour or so. I always rush this step and it makes the pastry
more difficult to control (it splits and cracks) when it’s rolled out, and
on a side note, in Jarrin’s original recipe he says to let it sit in a cool
place over night.

The next step is to mix the filling ingredients together.

Take 2/3 of the pastry dough and roll it out into a 22cm (8 1/2″) circle and place
the filling in the middle leaving a 4cm (1 1/2″) clear border which you turn upwards
to make a rim. I actually do all this in a 22cm (8 1/2″) springform baking dish lined
with baking paper which makes it all easier to control. Roll out the rest of
the pastry to cover the filling and base, then press the edges together.

Put several holes in the top to let out the steam and cook for about 40 to
45 minutes.

When the cake has cooled down, lightly dust it with some icing sugar.

This cake goes well with ice-cream, frozen yoghurt (my choice), custard or coffee.

By the way, for my regular visitors, sorry for not posting for a while and
my only excuse it that I’ve been making arrangements for my up coming
trip……. plus I’m just slack!

Posted in Food, Recipes | 15 Comments »

Vietnamese butcher. Hanoi, Vietnam. 2007

Posted by razzbuffnik on 17th February 2009

This is a photo of one of the cleanest and nicest butchers I’ve ever seen in a developing country. When I saw the big piece of pork loin in the front, it looked so fantastic to me at the time that I remember wishing to myself that I had my Webber barbeque with me.

The meat looks better than the mat from the supermarket near home

Usually butchers in third or second world countries can be disgusting and very bad smelling, but in Hanoi they looked pretty good and didn’t have the usual sickening pong I’ve come to expect in tropical countries. As a matter of fact I felt pretty confident eating anywhere that served freshly cooked food where there were lots of locals eating when I was in Vietnam.

After seeing this post, my mother sent me this recipe:

How I make a good “German Schnitzel” ( and fooled a lot of people!)

Slice the pork loin up, into 1/4 inch slices. I pack the unused portions in zip-lock plastic bags and freeze them ….then we have schnitzels whenever we want for a fraction of the cost of a Vienna schnitzel (which of course is veal) which I find a little too bland for my taste.

One slice is enough for a man sized meal, by the time you’ve pressed the crumbs into it.

(I use seasoned bread crumbs and an egg with a little water or milk in it)

First score the pork, criss-cross, on both sides, dip it into the egg mixture, and then cover it with the breadcrumbs, and push them in hard, with you finger-tips. The meat will press out to double the size. Turn them over a couple of times, to maximize the covering of breadcrumbs

Heat about 3 tablespoons of light oil, to right temp for frying. Re -dip the schnitzel in the egg mixture again, and drop into pan carefully.

That last re dipping is the secret, it STOPS the absorption of a lot of oil and also stops the whole thing from sticking to the pan, they only need a few minutes on either side. I usually just cut into one to make sure it’s cooked to pink juicy,(not bloody) so it still is cooking when you are ‘plating up’

Its not greasy and it’s crispier outside, If you leave it too long before you eat it, yes it will go softer, and overcook itself……Try it you’ll like it!

Posted in Recipes, Phenomena | 5 Comments »

Our first week of the new year

Posted by razzbuffnik on 5th January 2009

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and an excellent new year!

As is usual, the time between Christmas and New Year’s day is packed with feasting and socialising. That’s my excuse for being slack with posting and I’m sticking to it.

Here in Sydney Australia it’s stinking hot right now and for reasons I don’t understand, I always get highly motivated to do major projects around the house at this time of the year. The smart time to do most of these laborious jobs would be in the cooler weather, but no, that would make too much sense. I never really feel like doing such things until it gets uncomfortably hot and humid.

Further proof that I’m a complete idiot.

Last year at about this time I landscaped the front yard in the blazing sun. This year I’ll be toiling in the backyard making a pond and replacing two toilet sets in the house.

The photo below is of Engogirl on the first day of this year, helping me with the construction of some bench seating that will surround the pond we are constructing.

Engogirl likes using the drill press

After sweating our butts off for a day, we decided that instead of getting stuck into our backyard work and knocking it over quickly, we would rather get into an air-conditioned car and take couple of days off to visit Engogirl’s parents at their holiday home in Tallong (2 hours south of Sydney).

There are a few orchards in Tallong and stone fruits are in season. Engogirl’s father loves jam and makes his own.

This man is powered by jam

Here’s Engogirl’s father’s recipe for apricot jam

Ingredients

Equal quantity of firm (slightly unripe) apricots and sugar. For the jam that was being prepared in the photo above, 1kg of apricots and 1kg of sugar were used.
Pectin (use only half the amount that is recommended on the packet or the jam will be too firm).
Water.
Glass jars.

Method

Place freshly washed jars with lids and sugar into an oven and heat up to 100 degrees C (which is boiling point at sea level or about 212 degrees F). The sugar is preheated so that it dissolves quickly and completely when it is added to the fruit. Wash, pit and halve the apricots. Place prepared apricots into a saucepan with a cup of water, then heat for about 15 minutes, until the fruit begins to soften, over medium heat.

When the fruit is soft add the sugar and pectin stir until dissolved. Bring the mixture to the boil and cook for about another 5 minutes, whilst continually stirring. You will know when the jam is ready to fill the jars when the jam mixture sticks to the side of the saucepan in thick blobs. When the mixture is ready, take the jars and lids out of the oven (don’t forget that they will be hot, so use oven mitts) and fill with the hot jam mixture and screw on the lids straight away. It’s probably best to perform this operation in your sink in case there are any spills or accidents.

Posted in Food, People, Gardening, Recipes, Carpentry, All the Dumb Things, Friends | 8 Comments »

My version of mango sorbet

Posted by razzbuffnik on 27th December 2008

It’s summer here and that means mangos are in season! My wife and I love them and have already been through 4 whole boxes of mangos this season. We usually make mango smoothies to beat the heat, but every now and again we use mangos in salads or I make a sorbet out of them.

My version of mang sorbet

Unfortunately many mango growers have opted to grow the large reddish mangos (such as the Calypso or the Bowen) that look so spectacular but don’t taste as delicious as the smaller yellow mangos (such as the Kensington or the Turpentine).

Trust me on this, the smaller yellow mangos are WAY better.

I usually start this recipe the day before I want to serve it and it makes about 2 litres (about 2 quarts).

Ingredients

Enough mango cheeks to fill up a 1.5 litre (3 pints) blender
400gr of sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
100gr liquid glucose (3.5 oz)
Juice of 2 limes (about the size of a golf ball)

Method

Blend the mango cheeks until liquid. You may have to push the mangos down every now and again (Now I don’t have to tell you not to do this, while the blender is switched on…. do I?). When the mangos are liquid pour in the condensed milk, lime juice and glucose (you might have to warm up the glucose in the microwave for a few seconds so that it pours easily) while the blender is running and blend until it is thoroughly combined.

Chill the mixture for a few hours and then churn in an ice cream maker and return to the freezer until ready to serve.

I usually time this recipe by doing the blending just before I go to bed and I leave the covered mixture in the fridge until morning to cool down and I churn it in the morning and then place it in the freezer until the evening. I do it this way so the texture is firm but not hard and it’s easier to scoop.

If you’re wondering why glucose is used, it’s because it keeps the sorbet soft enough to scoop and gives it a smoother, less crystalline texture.

Don’t use frozen mango cheeks or tinned mangos (they taste like crap). Another reason why you shouldn’t try and blend frozen mango cheeks to speed up the churning is because the glucose will go as hard as a rock and won’t mix in properly.

Posted in Food, Recipes | 9 Comments »

My version of Merguez with Amadou & Mariam singing along

Posted by razzbuffnik on 26th June 2008

I’ll be having a bunch of French friends over for dinner in two weeks time for Bastille day celebrations and I though I’d trail a meal I’m going to make for them, John dory with shellfish , saffron and merguez broth.

For you non-cognoscenti out there merguez are a sausage from North Africa that are popular in France. I make my own merguez from scratch and I thought you may want to try making them sometime, since most of you live overseas and are unlikely to ever come to my place for dinner.

The music I was listening to as I was making my merguez was my new favourite CD, Amadou & Mariam on their album Dimanche a Bamako

Ingredients

1 kg lamb
2-3 teaspoons harissa (you can test how hot you want it by frying up a little mince and tasting it)
5 large cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon smoked paprika (pimenton)
1 teaspoon ground allspice
250ml iced water

Thin sausage skins

Method

Try and use whole spice for recipe as the flavours will be more intense. Put all the whole spices into a dry frying pan over medium heat. Keep the pan moving so that the spices are evenly heated. Take off the heat when the spices start smoking and grind them up in a mortar and pestle. When the spices are fine, add the garlic and pound it all together.

The meat should be cold.
Trim any skin from the lamb, but leave a good proportion of fat and cut it up into chunks.

Toss all the ingredients (no, not the skins as well) into a food processor and mince. Then spoon the mince into either a sausage maker (not necessary) or, the way in which I do it, a cloth reinforced piping bag (the sort of the used for icing cakes). Place the sausage skins over the end of your filling device of choice and fill them up. Easy!

Cook sausages slowly on low medium heat and don’t prick them, the fats inside help the meat cook and the flavour will be better.

I didn’t bother putting any photos of the merguez up because they just look like ordinary sausages.

Posted in Music, Food, Recipes | 4 Comments »

Semi dried tomatoes

Posted by razzbuffnik on 25th February 2008

We had a good crop of beautiful organic tomatoes this year. We had both cherry tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes and we grew way more than what we could eat so I decided to semi dry and preserve them in olive oil.

Ingredients

Tomatoes
Light olive oil (enough to cover the tomatoes)
3 cloves of garlic
1 Table spoon of salted capers
1 Teaspoon of dried basil

Method

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and the larger tomatoes into 1cm (about a third of an inch) slices.

Dry the tomatoes in a dehydrator for 12 hours at 60 degrees C (about 140 F).

Place enough jars and their lids in a oven heated to 120 degrees C (about 250 F) for 30 minutes. Leave the jars in the hot oven until you are ready to use them.

Heat up the olive oil with the three cloves of finely sliced garlic, a table spoon of salted capers and a teaspoon of dried basil. Heat the oil until it starts to cook the garlic then it take it off the heat. You don’t want to really cook the garlic, it’s heated just to help infuse the flavours into the oil and help with keeping things sterile.

Pour a little of the hot oil with the garlic, basil and capers into each the hot sterilised jars and then place the semi dried tomatoes in the jars a little at a time, covering them with a little more hot oil as you fill up the jar.

If you try this, I’d suggest that the oil pouring is done in the kitchen sink in case the jar breaks. Needless to say, hot oil can cause very serious burns so take care at all times.

Posted in Food, Gardening, Recipes | No Comments »

Have crepe maker. Will travel.

Posted by razzbuffnik on 11th June 2007

This weekend I went to my in-law’s holiday home with my wife and an old friend (Doug) with one of his co-workers (Sebastian). Doug suggested that he and Sebastian bring Sebastian’s crepe maker and they would make breakfast for us the next day. Sebastian is from Alsace in north of France and we thought it would be a great idea to have authentic crepes made by a Frenchman, and it was!

Sebastian making crepes

The humble crepe is so versatile. Not as heavy and stodgy as normal pancakes, the crepe is good with sweet or savoury fillings. Fortunately Sebastian made too much batter and we had crepes for breakfast one day and crepes for lunch the next. The breakfast crepes were filled with fresh fruit, cream and maple syrup and the lunch crepes were filled with mozzarella cheese, sautéed mushrooms and smoked salmon. Heaven on a plate.

Recipe for 4 people (about 2 crepes each)
Batter Ingredients

3 Eggs
250gr plain flour (you can substitute 1/3 of the flour with buckwheat flour)
500 ml milk
Pinch of salt
Dash of olive oil

Savoury Crepe suggested ingredients
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Smoked salmon or ham
Sautéed Mushrooms

Sweet Crepe suggested ingredients
Sliced fruits of choice
Double cream or Crème Fraise
Maple syrup

Method
Mix all the batter ingredients in a bowl and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Longer is better as it reduces the bubbles that are formed when the batter is cooked.

Grease up the crepe maker (or pan) when it gets hot, with either butter or olive oil. Pour about one and a half ladles of batter onto the crepe maker and spread quickly with a T-scraper (or spatular) using an arching motion. Allow the crepe to cook until the up side of the crepe is dry and the edges are starting to brown.

Next, lift the crepe with a spatular and flip it over.

If you are making a savoury crepe, this is the time to sprinkle on some cheese and what ever other ingredients you wish over the cooking crepe. Leave the crepe to cook for about another minute or two and then, using the spatular, fold over the sides and remove to a plate to serve.

If you are making sweet crepes, just remove the crepe and place the ingredients in the middle and roll it all up on a plate to serve.

Another sweet variation is to sprinkle some sugar onto the flipped side of the crepe and squeeze some fresh lemon juice over the sugar as it caramelises. When the sugar has melted and mixed with the lemon juices, roll up the crepe with the spatular and serve.

Doug in crepe heaven

One of the really good things about crepes, besides their simplicity, is the fact that each person can make their own. It’s all a bit of social fun that tastes fantastic.

On an interesting side note, Sebastian who has lived in Australia for nearly ten years, told us of how when he travels, he “couch surfs”. Couch Surfing is a worldwide network of people who contact each other over the Internet and arrange free accommodation with other like-minded people. Sort of like hitchhiking but from couch to couch rather than car to car. Sounds like a great way to meet the gregarious and generous people of a society. If Sebastian is anybody to judge “couch surfing” by, then I’d say it’s a good way to meet interesting nice people from overseas.

Posted in Travel, Photography, Food, People, Recipes | No Comments »

Perfect Blueberry Pancakes

Posted by razzbuffnik on 30th May 2007

Makes about 10 of the most delicious side-dish sized pancakes

This is a modification of a Neil Perry recipe from his book “Good Food”. Neil Perry is one of Sydney’s gods of food and amongst many other things he owns and runs two of Sydney’s better restaurants, XO and Rockpool. I’ve tried several of Mr Perry’s recipes and they are superb.

The pancakes in this recipe are similar in taste and texture to the buttermilk pancakes that are in Neil Perry’s book. I found the original pancake recipe took too long to cook and the middle was still a little too moist for my taste, even when I spread around the dough during the pouring. In his cookbook Neil Perry says that his recipes are a starting point. So I started, and changed things a little.

Ingredients
150g (5 ½ oz or 1 cup) fresh of frozen blueberries
150g (5 ½ oz or 1 cup) plain (all purpose) flour
2 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
½ teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of cinnamon powder
2 eggs
500ml (2 cups) thick natural Greek style yoghurt
80g (3oz) unsalted butter melted

Method
Sift all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. In another smaller bowl beat the eggs until they are frothy. Add the yoghurt and eggs to the dry ingredients and mix well. Then stir in the melted butter.

Pour out enough dough for a pancake into a heavy based frying pan over medium heat (I use an electric grill plate). Spread the dough around a little so the pancake isn’t too thick and place several blueberries on the cooking dough. Cook the pancake until the formed bubbles have broken and the top has started to look a bit dry. This is the time to turn the pancake over and cook for 2 more minutes.

Serve with maple syrup and butter.

Posted in Food, People, Recipes | No Comments »

All The Dumb Things

A cautionary tale in development

Categories

Archives

Subscribe

Recent Posts

Top Posts

Recent Comments

Blogroll

Archive for the 'Recipes' Category

I hae meat tha ye can eat! The perfect roast pork recipe.

Macadamia nut tart

Spongati cake recipe from 1820

Vietnamese butcher. Hanoi, Vietnam. 2007

Our first week of the new year

My version of mango sorbet

My version of Merguez with Amadou & Mariam singing along

Semi dried tomatoes

Have crepe maker. Will travel.

Perfect Blueberry Pancakes