Finally Christmas

The Albertine may have gone, but look what has come out just in time for Christmas Day.

We are having Christmas with my mother-in-law who is the most wonderful cook.  Always a very traditional lunch: turkey, ham, mountains of vegetables (including the old fave, tomato and onion pie).  Instead of plum pudding she makes a rather sensational sago plum pudding with custard. All I am contributing is the ham and some ocean trout tartare on blinis, both of which I am yet to make but if they look okay tomorrow I will take some photos.

Here is the glaze I use for the ham.  It is one that I snipped out of a newspaper years ago and works a treat:

Heat the oven to 180.  Put some foil or baking paper in a large roasting tin and put the ham on top.  

Pour over a couple of cups of cider.   Bake in the oven as is for about 45 minutes, basting every so often.

While that is happening, mix together:

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 teasp hot English mustard

2 teasp Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of marmalade (sieved)

Take the ham out of the oven and using a sharp knife make a criss cross pattern over the ham.  Insert a clove into each diamond.   Spread with the glaze and return ham to the oven for about 30 minutes until nicely glazed.

We will all fall into a screaming heap over the next few days and enjoy the fact that there will be no shearing and no trucks of lambs to load.  Trying to fit Christmas into our busiest time of the year is quite a challenge.  The exhausted husband stepped in the door half an hour ago and asked why we weren't either going to or having Christmas drinks when all he's done over the last week is complain about how flat out he is.  In other words, Lambchops why have you not organised some entertainment for me this evening???   I am just loving a glass of wine on the verandah and the serenity, thanks...

Merry Christmas

Behind

I am so behind with my posts in the frantic lead-up to Christmas.  I picked these strawberries a couple of weeks ago and still have not had time to write about them.  They were beautiful but the birds got quite a few.  I decided to make some lovely pink Peach Sorbet to go with them:

Peach Sorbet


2 cups of sugar
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons
3 ripe white peaches
2 egg whites

Combine sugar with one cup of water and juice of half a lemon in a saucepan and heat, shaking pan occasionally over a medium heat until sugar dissolves.  Bring to the boil, remove from the heat and cool.

Peel peaches (plunge into boiling water for 30 seconds to do this), remove stones and process flesh in a food processor with remaining lemon juice until smooth

Stir into cooled syrup

Whisk egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form, fold into peach mixture and churn in an ice cream machine (or transfer to a freezer proof container, freeze until just set around the edges, whizz in food processor again and freeze until set).

More from the fatted calf

Just when I thought I was getting the freezer under control,  two lambs have now arrived.  It's scary in there.  I know there will be things that I won't see for years.  I'm battling on though and because they take up so much space I thought I should start making stock out of all those bones.


BEEF STOCK


1 bag of beef bones (from the butcher).  I'm not sure of the weight, just what will fit into your stockpot.  Try and get some knuckle bones and some with marrow which will add gelatin.
Olive oil
2 onions, not peeled, cut into quarters
2 large carrots, cut into chunks
Celery tops if you can get them or 2 sticks of celery cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic, not peeled
handful of parsley (use leaves and stems)
2 bay leaves
10 or so peppercorns

Preheat the oven to 190.  Place bones, onions and carrots in a large roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil.

Roast in the oven for about 45 minutes until nicely browned.

Pour the whole lot into the stock pot, getting all the brown bits off the bottom of the pan.  Add the celery, garlic, parsley, bay leaves and peppercorns.  Fill the pot up with water and bring to a gentle simmer, reduce to low and do not let it boil madly, use a simmer pad if you have one, and cook for 3-6 hours.

Skim the stock every now and then but do not stir the stock while it's cooking. 

Cook for as long as you can then take out the bones and strain the stock into a large bowl, cool and refrigerate.  Remove any fat that has set on the top (don't be too fussy, the fat has flavour too) and put into containers to refrigerate or freeze.  It keeps for 3-4 days in the fridge.

This is what happens if you go off and do something else and it boils a bit too hard:

See how it is a bit cloudy....try not to do this, although the flavour is just as good.  Five hundred times better than those crappy dried stock cubes you get from the supermarket.

This was the Albertine rose ten days ago.  I so love the look of a pretty climber on a bluestone wall.  Sadly the rain last weekend completely trashed the flowers and I have had to cut them all back. 

Love a good tray bake

I do this sort of food all the time.  It is so easy and a sort of no-brain, use what's in the fridge, chuck it in when you get home dish that always gets a rapturous reception from the starving hordes.

I find that bone-in chicken works the best for flavour and the cooking time required means that the skin gets nice and crispy.  I usually buy chicken marylands and cut off the drumsticks so the pieces are more manageable:

Then I add whatever vegies are at hand, usually red onion, cut into segments, red capsicum, cut into strips, sweet potatoes/carrots/pumpkin and sliced zucchini for a bit of colour. Throw in 4-5 whole cloves of unpeeled garlic, drizzle with olive oil and grind over a bit of pepper and a sprinkle of sea salt and that's it.  Into the oven for 45 minutes.

I put some asparagus in for the last 15 minutes.  Pour over the delicious pan juices when you are serving. Very good.

This was the sky on Thursday evening...looked very foreboding but we didn't get much rain.

Busy Week

It's been a busy week.  Tuesday night in Geelong, Wednesday night dinner for my mother-in-law's birthday, Thursday night in Robe, driving driving.  Thank god for talking books (this week The Distant Hours by Kate Morton).  It had been raining when I left home but when I got to Robe it was glorious sunshine and from my ailing parent's house we saw this tall ship:

It looked so majestic out there on the bay, it could have been a scene from Hornblower.

Back home to the rain and the news that my husband's grandmother had died.  She was 103 and died at home with the peaceful dignity with which she conducted her life.  A stylish woman to the end, at home she often wore a deer stalker hat, tweed trousers and a battered pair of desert boots, which made me love her even more.  To my children she was known as Very Old Gran (so not confuse her with their other, younger grans), and signed her letters to them thus.   One can only imagine what she has seen over the course of her life after having grown up in Toorak with a pony and a house cow at the bottom of the garden.  She loved roses, reading and racing, and I'm sure her interest in those things and the love of her large family of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren was what kept her going for so many years.

Vale VOG (she loved a good Just Joey)

Not much time for cooking but this is what I did for Susie's birthday on Wednesday:

Yummy smoked trout on toast (sorry, no photo)

Roast pork belly (I used the leftover fennel/orange zest/salt from the seafood kebabs to salt it....delicious)

with

Crunchy potatoes, roasted asparagus with vinocotto and a green salad with roasted beetroot and Udder Delights  Goat's Curd (may very nearly replace Meredith Dairy if it's not careful)

and grilled stone fruit with honey and brown sugar

Anniversary

Fifteen years ago last Thursday in this wee church at Mt Schank, built by my husband's great grandfather, we were married:

We had a lovely anniversary dinner on Thursday night.  It is easier to stay at home in the country, I wanted the kids to join us and it was a school night.  It was too cold to sit outside as planned so we had it in the kitchen.  The Little Princess (10) set the table:

I made the yummy Jamie Oliver Seafood kebabs, with some extra fish and home made chips:

We washed it down with some Crawford River Rose, which I think will be my preferred drink of the summer.  A perfect match for seafood.

For pudding we had Nigella's Chocolate and Raspberry Pavlova, which is a firm favourite in our house:

There is a section with no strawberries because the LP doesn't like them.

Here is how I made the seafood "spiedini":

I put prawns, a fillet of fish cut into chunks and some ciabatta bread (a few chunks) in a bowl with a crushed clove of garlic, chopped chilli, the zest of one orange and a good slug of olive oil.

I picked about 8 long stalks of rosemary and threaded on the fish, prawns and bread.  You need to have the top of the rosemary stalks in tact as it looks nice.  

Wrap the kebabs with some pancetta and cook over a hot flame on the barbeque.   I just put the pancetta over the top so that the prawns would cook properly underneath, then flipped the whole lot over to char the pancetta.  We cooked it with the lid down and this seemed to work.

Jamie then had a flavoured salt to sprinkle over the top, which was good but a squeeze of lemon would do:

Pound a teaspoon of fennel seeds and the zest of an orange in the mortar and pestle and add 1-2 tablespoons of sea salt.  

As usual from Jamie, really delicious.

And I was most surprised to receive an actual present:

Drum roll....

Yes, behold the His and Hers spades.  I was actually quite pleased as he always pinched my old one and then it broke.

Jamie (and the fatted calf, part one)

I love Jamie Oliver.  Love him.  Love his beautiful food and love that he is a man with a social conscience who puts his money where his mouth is.  Love that he fully gets flavour.  I also love that he performed an experiment that I have always wanted to do but could never be bothered.  On his website I found a recipe for beef casserole and he says that he has tried both sealing the meat first and not sealing the meat and chucking it all in.  I am delighted to report that he says there is no difference in the end result.  

Sealing casserole meat before cooking is supposed to a) seal in the juices and b) create nice brown bits on the bottom to enhance the sauce.  Which it does, but the trouble is it is a bit of a pain if you are in a hurry, because to be effective you need to put only a few pieces in at a time otherwise they stew, which at that point you don't want to happen.

So I found a bag of stewing steak from the fatted calf in the freezer (it seems like there are a thousand in there so I thought I'd better get cracking), and vaguely followed his recipe:

Beef and Root Veg Casserole (Jamie calls it Jools Favourite or some such if you want look here:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/beef-recipes/jools-s-favourite-beef-stew )

1 onion, peeled and chopped

handful of sage leaves (don't chop)

800g stewing steak, cut into cubes

salt & pepper, flour to dust

2 parsnips, peeled and quartered (or eighths if large)

4 carrots, peeled and quartered

(He had pumpkin and new potatoes in his as well, but I didn't have either, didn't matter)

2 tblsp tomato puree

1/2 bottle nice red wine

300ml beef stock

Heat the oven to 160C.

Heat a nice heavy pot on the stove and add a tablespoon of olive oil and a knob of butter.  Add onion and sage and cook gently for 3-4 minutes until softened.

(Sorry for the blurry pic, I was having camera troubles)

Toss the meat in seasoned flour.  I do this in a plastic bag.  One tablespoon of flour should be enough.

Add meat to the pan with all the vegetables, puree, wine and stock.  Mix it all together gently.  Season with salt and pepper.  

Bring to the boil, put on the lid and cook in the oven 2-3 hours until the meat is tender.  Beautiful with mashed potatoes.  Jamie made a gremolata of chopped rosemary,  lemon zest and garlic which would have finished if off nicely.  It was utterly delicious and I suddenly realised why: grass-fed beef has such superior flavour to grain-fed.  All the more satisfying to know it is home grown too.  Always buy grass-fed beef if you can.  Worth every penny.

And since it is our 15th (gasp) wedding anniversary today I am cooking a slap-up dinner for the family, starting with some yummy looking seafood spiedini (on rosemary stalks) that Jamie did in the last issue of delicious magazine.  I'll let you know if it works.  He's a clever boy...