Photo post part 2

Roasted Chicken drumsticks with fennel/potato salad and glazed carrots

Sliced fennel

There are heaps of photos in this post so you'll have to click continue to see them all...

Round up with photos

Pork Shoulder with Braised cabbage
Braised cabbage:
Use a heavy pan, soften some sliced onions then add a grated apple (granny smith is good), a spoon of mustard, glug of wine, a couple juniper berries, enough cloves, salt and pepper & 1/2 of a cabbage shredded.
Cook on a low heat until soft.

Pork: score skin, oil and salt heavily, cook at 220-230°C for about 20 min to get the crackling going then down to about 160°C until internal temp is about 65°C (about 25 min per 500g).

Oven Thermometer
Recently got around to buying a thermometer for our oven, and found out that our oven is 20°C hotter than what we set it at! I always suspected it was hotter, but didn't realise by that much, on the plus side it can hit 270°C.

Pulled beef pitas
Rubbed spices over the beef and gave it a heavy sear in the pressure cooker and set it to high pressure and let it cook till tender and falling apart.

While it was cooking made up some Hummus (chickpeas, Lemon juice, garlic, a drop or two of sesame oil (as didn't have any tahini), olive oil, paprika, yoghurt and salt. Puree, add more yoghurt or oil if it's too thick, place in bowl, sprinkle paprika over it, drizzle with oil, and munch away with pitas)

And also made up some aioli to toss with some shredded cabbage, I make mine with a stick blender in a fairly tall narrow measuring jug (not much bigger than the foot of the blender). Put an egg yolk, garlic, mustard, lemon juice and dash of cider vinegar in the container, start blending and when it is pale yellow and increased in volume slowly start pouring in oil (a mix is nice, soy oil and olive just olive is too strong). once it is all blended check the seasoning and adjust with salt and lemon juice or vinegar.

We Toasted some pita's (bought not made, lazy) stuffed them with the shredded beef, hummus and slaw, and a spoon or 3 of jalapeno jam. Very tasty, and filling.

Pork Belly (AGAIN!!!!)
Well the pressure cooker has been getting a work out, and I'm trying to find the ultimate pork belly. So thought I'd try it in the new toy.

I cut a couple of onions in half and placed them cut side down in the pan starting to caramelize them, I also put in half a lemon to caramelize, after they had taken on a tasty brown colour I poured in a glass of wine, a dash of cider vinegar and some mustard and let that reduce to almost nothing.

The pork (scored and seasoned) was placed in the pan using the onions as a trivet, and then cooked on high pressure for about 45 minutes. After that time I took out the pork and let it sit until it was cool enough to handle.

Once the pork was cool enough, the bones were removed from the underside, and the bottom half was wrapped in foil with the skin still uncovered, the skin was then patted dry and a bit of salt gently rubbed in to it (it's very fragile when pressure cooked), the oven was set to 230°C on grill (broil) and the meat place slightly above the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes.

Well, it tasted great, and the crackling was perfect but there are problems, the main issue was the fat didn't render out, it was very soft and had the texture of very lightly set jelly, so was easy to scrape off. And the meat wasn't 100% melt in mouth, I think 5 more minutes in the pressure cooker would of solved that, or perhaps letting the pressure drop naturally.

I'm not sure why the fat didn't render out of the meat the temperature should be more than plenty for it to happen. I will have to investigate further because I like the idea of pork belly in an hour rather than my other method of slow cooking for 3-4 hours.

Things I have to try
I've found a great way to make some crackling at ideas in food and is something I have to try, but I need a dehydrator first. They basically pressure cook the skin in liquid to make a pork skin stock for other uses, then take out the skin, gently scrape the fat off and dehydrate, then deep fry.

Still have to try Stock, caramelized eggs, garlic in milk and egg bread in the pressure cooker,

Butter makes the world better

Is there nothing butter can not improve?

Butter Burgers

In a bowl mix together with your hands minced beef, a couple of good tablespoons of tomato paste, garlic powder (if using fresh garlic, finely grate it in(or crush it) you can also add grated onion too, but make sure you use a fine grater so it produces a pulp), and grated butter.

Then roll up balls of the meat mix and flatten out in to patties, ready to fry or bbq (I usually can't be bothered with the clean up that comes with a fry up on the stove, so chucked them in a super hot oven)

The meat patty, slice of tomato, cheese, and tomato relish with a bit of aioli on a toasted bun = super tasty burger. After it had been scoffed down, i remembered i had some home made pickled beets in the fridge that should of got between the buns but oh well next time.

Aioli

I think the greatest condiment invention is aioli, so simple to make and alter the flavour and perfect on roast potatoes, french fries well just about anything.
I had an odd experience the other day though, when whisking the oil into the egg yolk it plain out refused to thicken at all, it was quite a humid day, anyone know why this could of happened?