Courgette and mint salad

One thing we are never short of in the garden is mint, we have two plants, a standard mint and a basil mint, and they just grow grow grow, you can cut them back, abuse and misuse them but they just keep growing and if kept unchecked I'm sure would take over the garden. This salad will take good advantage of a glut of mint, and add a good zing to fresh crisp courgettes, we got ours in the garden a bit late, but buds are coming so hopefully we’ll get a late crop. The salad is bright and zingy that really highlights fresh courgettes and is perfect on a hot summer's day.

4 decent sized courgettes
Handful of mint leaves and tips
1 Lemon
Olive oil
Chilli flakes
1 Garlic clove
Flaky Sea salt (or kosher)

• Get a griddle pan on a high heat.
• Slice the courgettes as thin as you can, or use a mandolin (I used the second thinnest setting).
• Griddle the slices on one side until charred.
• Arranged cooked slices on a board in a single layer, don’t stack them or they will steam.
• As they are cooling sprinkled with salt.
• (Optional) Slice the lemon in half and griddle until caramelised.
• In a large bowl squeeze in the juice from the lemon and add olive oil, I like a 2 parts oil to 1 part juice but do it to your own taste.
• Finely mash or grate the clove of garlic into the bowl, and add chilli flakes to taste.
• Take the larger mint leaves and thinly slice and add to the bowl.
• Toss the courgettes through the dressing, use your hands, taste and adjust the seasoning.
• Let it rest 10 minutes or so before plating up.
• Arrange on a plate and sprinkle over the mint tips.

Garlic parsley mayonnaise

I have quite the collection of containers and jars sitting under the stairs, pulled out whenever needed, mostly for mise en place or temporary storage, but there are a few jars, usually pickle jars, that have a different purpose and aren't grabbed for any old use, they are just the right size and shape for my stick blender. These jars are ideal because the opening is just bigger than the wand of the blender, widens slightly and there isn't too much of a bulge at the base to interfere with the blade. When it comes to making mayonnaise these jars make it a cinch, you don’t have to be gentle with oil addition, usually I just get the emulsion started and then dump in a few slugs of oil at a time rather than a dribble, or drop by drop.

Garlic parsley mayonnaise (for a 670g pickle jar)
1 egg yolk
Juice of a lemon
2–3 Garlic cloves
Mustard, Dijon
Parsley
Olive oil
Sunflower oil
Cider vinegar
Salt

This method can of course be adjusted for plain mayonnaise, just leave out the parsley and garlic, the lemon juice can be substituted for vinegar, or vice versa, however mustard is a must as it’s an important emulsifying agent.

• Put into the jar the lemon juice, parsley, garlic, a spoonful of mustard and egg yolk.
• Insert the blender and whiz on high speed until everything has been puréed.
• While the blender is running, slowly pour in about a quarter of a cup of olive oil, this is the only slow addition you should have to do, it’s important to get the emulsion started otherwise it wont happen. It should be thick and homogeneous.
• Add another quarter cup of oil and blitz until incorporated. Taste and add salt, go a little heavy as more oil is being added, and splash in 2–3 tablespoons of cider vinegar, depending on taste. Blitz again, it will loosen but don't worry it will thicken up when more oil is added.
• With the blender running start pouring in sunflower oil, keep going until the jar is full.
• If you’re worried about it being too thick, splash in a little vinegar or water, but be careful a little will drastically loosen the mayonnaise.
• Taste and adjust the salt and acid if needed, blitz. It should be nice and thick and have a good wobble to it. Screw on a lid and store in the fridge until used.

Duck Confit

When life gives you the opportunity to buy 4 ducks legs for a completely crazy price of $10, those moments should be embraced, I was at, of all places, the local supermarket in Karori where I spied a pair of packets of a pair of duck legs heavily reduced by a third because the expiry date was looming. I swear they never sell at this supermarket and sit in the fridge until they are reduced. So they were swiftly procured with the aim to cure and confit. Small problem was the lack of duck fat, but no matter the legs got deposited in the freezer until I managed to pick some up, which I also managed to snap up cheaply at Moore Wilson’s bulk section, they sell duck fat frozen a lot cheaper than they do ‘fresh’.

I’ve previously posted about sous vide duck confit, but this time I wanted to do it traditionally and also give this lot a chance to age submerged and protected in its fat, so at the moment I have four portions in the fridge and an agonising wait for at least a month before I dig beneath the lush white fat and dig out a leg or two.


Duck confit is simple to prepare just a little planning and patience, but it’s all pretty much hands off work. You’ll need enough Kosher salt to coat the legs, I used about a cup, and a good bunch of thyme. In a bowl bash the thyme and salt together to release the aromatics, toss the legs in the salt and pat on the salt, then in a dish just large enough to fit the legs in a single layer make a bed with the thyme and enough salt to cover the bottom, lay the legs in the dish and pat on any remaining salt, make sure all the flesh is covered. Cover the dish in clingfilm and refrigerate for 24 hours.


Remove the duck from the salt, rinse and thoroughly pat dry with some paper towels or clean tea towel, place the legs in a ceramic or non-reactive metal oven dish just big enough to hold them. Scatter over a couple of bay leaves, peppercorns and peeled cloves of garlic. Heat enough fat to cover the duck in a pot to 100°C. Carefully pour the fat over the duck and place the lid on the dish, or cover in tinfoil. Put the dish in an oven preheated to 100°C and cook for 4 hours. You can tell it’s cooked when the flesh is pulling away from the bone.


Remove the dish from the oven and leave it somewhere until it’s cool enough to handle. Carefully remove the legs from the fat and place them into a sterile container. Ladle the fat through a sieve into a bowl, be careful not to disturb the layer of liquid on the bottom it will spoil the confit, it is confit jelly and is an amazing stock for sauces, pour enough fat over the duck to submerge it and then cover with some clingfilm and leave to until cool enough to transfer to the fridge, any left over fat can be frozen and reused for the next batch of confit or roasting potatoes, you should get a couple of confits out of it before it becomes too salty. Pour the jelly through a sieve into a container and refrigerate.

The confit should last six months in the fridge, and I’m planning on aging my batch for a month, but you could just refrigerate overnight and cook the next day. When ready to eat the lush legs remove the confit from the fridge a couple of hours before to let the fat soften, preheat the oven to 220°C, carefully dig the legs out and gently scrape off any excess fat, place skin side down on a very hot oven proof sauté pan and cook for 5 minutes, the skin must be crisp, place in the oven and cook for 5–10 minutes.

Potatoes baked with cream

I haven’t abandoned the blog, it’s been awhile since my last decent sized post, but not a whole heap of cooking or experimenting has been going on recently, time and other commitments keeping me occupied, and to top it all off, I fractured a tiny bone in my wrist which has ended up with my arm in a brace and the simple tasks of slicing or even lifting the smallest weights is painful and impossible. It certainly makes me appreciate the ease I normally have with even the simplest of tasks, like being able to successfully use a knife and not be menace with it, not knowing which way it’s going to slip because I can’t apply the right pressure. Thank goodness for the Mandoline I say! At least with this great little kitchen gadget I can still whip up one of my favourite comfort dishes, layers of thin potato and onion smothered in thyme infused cream and baked to a golden cheesy goodness.

There’s not too much to this, butter to coat the dish, floury potatoes, garlic (if you wish), onions, cream and thyme, with it being so simple I find taking the little bit extra effort carefully layering everything quite rewarding in the end result, a compact slice of cheesy potatoes rather than a sloppy mess.


Get some cream in a pot with the thyme and garlic and bring it up to the boil, remove from the heat and let the herbs infuse. Slice the potatoes and onions on the thinnest setting of the mandoline. Not too hard. Now carefully place a layer of potatoes in the bottom of a greased dish, having each slice slightly overlapping, next a thin layer of onions, and then season with salt and pepper. Repeat this until the dish is full or you have run out, make sure to end on a potato layer. Pour over the cream, it should cover the potatoes when pushed down. Cook in a 180°C oven for 45-60 minutes, cranking up the heat near the end to get a nice golden crust. Rest on the bench for at least 10 minutes before serving.


The miso egg yolk finally made it’s way out of the cure, and is dehydrating slowly in the fridge, I have a few plans for this amber gem, so do expect a post on that in the coming weeks. Also we’re heading up to the big little city for a long weekend, avoiding the easter crush though, and am looking forward to eating far too much, and quite excited to finally get to a few places I've been champing at the bit to try.

Confit Garlic

I came across the recipe for confit garlic on the Modernist Cuisine blog the other day and I had to make it. It seemed like a great thing to have sitting ready in the fridge, and the idea of caramelised garlic goodness mashed on crusty toasted bread was too irresistible to pass up.

So on the way home I picked up an extra bottle of olive oil (the alternate suggestion of duck fat sounds pretty good too) and half a kilo of garlic.


Fill a Mason jar three quarters of the way up with garlic cloves, a sprig of rosemary and some thyme. Fill almost to the top with olive oil and screw on the lid, do a quarter turn to loosen it so steam can escape from the jar.

Place the jar on a trivet in a pressure cooker and pour enough water in to come 2 cm up the side of the jar. Cook for 2 hours on high pressure.


The cloves turn an amazing deep caramel brown and smell of deep slow roast garlic. I have a feeling this will be a staple in my fridge (they should last 2 months in the fridge).

Check out the Modernist Cuisine blog post for a heap of tips and information and more detailed recipe.


Modernist Cuisine - Pressure Cooker Safety : Garlic Confit from Modernist Cuisine on Vimeo.


I made up another batch of Garlic Confit and got a video of the jars just as I pulled them from the pressure cooker, the jars are sealed and still under pressure, the boiling stopped as soon as the lids were removed.