Wheatberry salad

I feel I may be taking inspiration yet again from the same source, but it has been a good few months of eating rather too healthy and no drinking so I'm enjoying heading out now and then, and I am a creature of habit, when I find somewhere/thing I like I tend to stick to it. If you're unsure where I'm talking about I suggest heading over to my Twitter or Instagram feed.

Toast one cup of wheatberries in an oven set to 170°c for 10 minutes, transfer to a pot and cover with 3 cups of water and a good dash of salt. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce the heat to a minimum. Cook for 30–35 minutes, or until the wheatberries still have a bit of a chew but are generally tender. Drain the wheatberries and transfer to a bowl, toss through some good olive oil, I also like to adjust the salt levels now too, a few flakes of a good smoked salt does wonders.

Gently poach a chicken breast in stock with a couple of bay leaves, fennel fronds, parsley and chilli, oh and salt. Leave the cooked breasts to cool in the liquid until it can be safely handled, shred the meat, don't go overboard we still want decent prices of meat, keep the shredded meat in the cooking liquid until ready to serve so it remains moist.

The rest is all just mise en place, finely dice a red onion and fennel bulb, get some sprouts out, sango is a nice spicy choice, a decent portion of micro herbs, very finely chop some parsley and fennel fronds, thin slices of radish make a nice addition, make a dressing, high acid content is the goer for this, good dash of a quality cider vinegar and a nice peppery olive oil seasoned with a bit of smoked salt.

Now it's just a matter of assembly, as with most salads containing leafy greens leave it to the last minute, set aside some of the sprouts and micro herbs to garnish, toss the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl, add the dressing and moisten with a little of the poaching liquid, taste and either season or dress as required. Transfer a portion to a dinner bowl and garnish with some of the herbs and sprouts set aside.

Almond sponge with figs

It often surprises me when baking what a difference technique has, take a sponge cake for example, the basic being equal parts egg, sugar, butter and flour (a little baking powder, salt and vanilla). Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs and flour and you have a pound cake, Whisk the eggs and sugar together, then add the flour and melted butter and voilà a sponge instead. Two quite different cakes, the same ingredients, same ratios, just put together differently.

This recipe should ideally be done by weight, but if you can’t be bothered weighing your eggs the minimum weight (NZ) for size 6 is 53g, 7 is 62g, and 8 is 68g.

200 grams Egg (3 size 7 eggs)
200 grams Sugar
200 grams Butter
150 grams Flour
50 grams Almond meal
6 grams Salt
1 tsp Baking powder
10 ml Orange blossom water
Jar of preserved figs (or fresh), quartered
Raw Sugar

Pre-heat the oven to 170°C.


Line the base of a spring-form cake tin with baking paper and coat the whole interior of the tin with butter. Sprinkle the base with raw sugar and arrange quartered figs.

Whisk the sugar, orange blossom water and eggs together until they have become pale yellow, and tripled in volume.

Sieve in the flour, almond meal, salt and baking powder. Gently fold through.

Melt the butter and stir in.

Pour the batter into the tin, tap the tin on the bench to remove any excess air bubbles.


Bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted comes out clean.


Allow to cool in the tin on a rack until it can be handled without burning yourself, remove the springform and turn out on to a serving plate.

Creamy rice with pork sausage and thyme

Well I should start with a slight disclaimer, the idea of this dish is completely and utterly ripped off, or humble homage to the original, from Loretta on Cuba St. It makes a hearty dinner or a filling warming lunch it can be tweaked and tinkered with to your hearts content. It's a little less labour intensive than risotto, and a little more forgiving, as we're not aiming for al dente but well cooked rice, not falling apart though.

1 Cup arborio rice
1 Litre chicken stock
2 Good pork sausages, removed from casings
1 Medium fennel bulb, finely diced
1 Medium onion, finely diced
3 Cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tsp black pepper
1 Tsp chilli flakes
1/2 Tsp bay leaf powder
6 Sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped off
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Anchovy fillets

If you feel like being a little more indulgent, add 3 tbsp of cream or butter and a third of a cup of grated parmesan to the ingredient list.

Place a pan over a medium heat and add a slug of good olive oil. Soften the onion, garlic and fennel, add the pepper, chilli, thyme, bay leaf powder and cook through.

Add the sausage and anchovy fillets, sauté, breaking the sausage apart, try not to colour too much.

When the sausage has given up its fat, but not browned too much, tip the rice in and stir through. Give it a chance to get coated in the fat and cook a little.

Pour in the vinegar and cook it off.

Tip in a third of the stock and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, cook until almost absorbed, about 5-7 minutes, add another third and cook for a further 5-7 minutes.

Repeat with the last third, you don't want it too thick, the rice should of given up a lot of starch so the liquid should be lush and glossy, while the rice is still loose stir vigorously to release more starch from rice and make the liquid more creamy and homogeneous. Taste and season.

To really gild the lily, beat in the cream and parmesan cheese.

Serve a generous ladleful in a bowl and drizzle over a little peppery olive oil.

sweet, sour, salty braised pork with hand pulled noodles

I’ve covered hand pulled noodles before on this site, so this is not a rehash of the noodle recipe, how to make the slurpy tasty noodles can be found in previous posts. The following is a tasty sweet, sour, salty braised pork dish that is unctuous, sticky and delicious. Served with the liquids and vegetables tossed through the fresh cooked noodles and topped with slices of the wobbly caramelised pork belly, makes for an insatiably devourable dish.

Pork belly, bones removed (put in the braise if you have them)
2 Oranges, zest and juice
1 Large chunk of ginger, peeled and grated
5 Cloves of garlic, grated
Large Bunch of coriander, leaves chopped and root set aside
4 or 5 large dried red chillies
1 Large fennel bulb, sliced thinly
1 Large onion, sliced thinly
3 Tbsp of fennel seed
6 Allspice berries
Soy sauce
Fish sauce
Oyster sauce
Palm sugar (or brown)
Rice wine vinegar
500ml Chicken Stock
Salt

Preheat the oven to 160ºC, fan forced.

Heat an oven proof casserole pan over a medium high heat, or use a large frying pan and transfer to a dish later, season the pork belly all over with salt and then place skin side down in the pan and brown for about 5 minutes, flip and brown on the flesh side.

While the pork cooks, grind the allspice and fennel seeds together. Combine about 2-3 Tbsp each of the fish, soy and oyster sauce, also grate the same amount of palm sugar, you may require more depending on how sweet your oranges are.

Remove the pork from the pan and set aside. Sauté the onion and fennel until translucent, add the garlic, ginger, dried ground spices, chillies and coriander root. Cook until fragrant. Pour in the orange juice and zest and reduce. Add the fish, soy and oyster sauce along with the palm sugar and chicken stock.

Simmer for a few minutes, taste and season with oyster sauce, sugar and rice wine vinegar. You want a good balance of sweet/sour/salty, you need enough sweetness so it will become a lovely sticky sweet and sour sauce.

Stir through a handful of coriander leaves, keep some aside for garnish, nestle the pork into the sauce and cover. Cook for 2.5 hours. Remove the lid and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Slice the meat with a sharp knife and let it rest in the sauce while you prep and cook the noodles. Toss the cooked noodles with some of the soft fennel and onion and a good helping of the liquid, top with slices of melt in the mouth pork, garnish with mung bean sprouts, chilli oil and coriander leaves.

Grape Bread and Chestnut Purée

Slightly sweetened and only a little butter enriched bread makes an ideal match to a warm cup of coffee on a lazy weekend afternoon, and topped off with some sweetened chestnut purée spread it’s addictive.

If you can’t manage to work your way through an entire loaf, sandwich together slices of the bread with chestnut purée spread, arrange in a casserole dish. Whisk 3 eggs with 25 g sugar until tripled in volume, stir in 500 ml milk, pour over the bread, leave it to rest for 30 minutes, bake at 180°C until the top is golden and the custard set, best bread and butter pudding ever.

Grape & thyme bread

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The night before
2 Tbsp Raw sugar
300 ml Warm water
100 g Flour
1 tsp yeast


Dissolve the sugar in the warm water then stir in the yeast, leave it to stand for 10 minutes, until the yeast has bloomed. Add the flour and mix thoroughly. Cover with cling-film and leave overnight.

The morning after
50 g Butter, melted
25 g Raw sugar
400 g Flour
12 g Salt
Grapes, about 18
Thyme, fresh leaves
Raw sugar for sprinkling
Butter for brushing


Mix together the dry ingredients, add the flour mixture and butter to the yeast, which should be bubbly and aromatic, stir together and form a rough ball of dough, cover and leave it to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Tip the dough on to the bench and knead until smooth and elastic, about 15 minutes, letting it rest every couple of minutes while kneading helps the flour hydrate and will speed up the process. My preferred method for kneading, at the moment, is to roll the dough out into a log shape, fold in half and repeat. This seems to speed up the kneading process and results in some seriously fluffy bread.

Place the dough in a bowl and cover, leave it to rise in a warm spot for about an hour or until it has doubled in size.

Knock back the dough and leave it for another hour to double in size.


On a lined baking tray, shape the dough by forming it into an elongated rectangle tucking the ends under, use your fingertips to dimple and push out the dough. Push in the grapes into a regular pattern. Cover and leave it for about 30 minutes to rise.

Pre-heat the oven to 220°C.


Brush the dough with melted butter and sprinkle over thyme leaves and raw sugar.


Bake for 40 minutes in the top third of the oven, when cooked the bread should sound hollow when tapped on the underside. Remove from the oven and cover with a clean tea towel, leave it cool for a while, if you can, before tucking in.

Chestnut purée spread

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This is pretty simple and well you could go the extra step and roast/poach fresh chestnuts but they’re not always readily available, but I find a can of plain chestnut purée does the trick.

440 g Chestnut purée
200 ml Water
100 g Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla paste
Decent pinch of salt


Place a pan over a medium heat and add the sugar, leave it to dissolve and slowly caramelise, be careful not to burn the sugar. Add the water to the pan, it will spit and hiss a little so add with caution. When the caramelised sugar has dissolved stir in the vanilla.

Break up the Chestnut purée in a bowl, and little by little whisk in the sugar syrup to form a thick paste, you may not need it all. Taste and season with salt. I like to pass it through a sieve to get a perfectly smooth paste.


It should store in a sealed container in the fridge for a couple of weeks, if it lasts that long!

Pressure cooked meat sauce

This is one for the pressure cooker club, if you’re not a member I guess you could slow cook it, but it’s really not the same, there is something about cooking under pressure and using next to no added liquid that really pumps up the flavours in the sauce. If you’re on the fence about owning a pressure cooker and have heard nothing but horror stories, the days of exploding pots of hell are well and truly over, the modern pressure cooker is quite unlikely to erupt, and heck you can even get set and forget electric models which are great for freeing up a hob and not adding to the heat in the kitchen, not a bonus on a cold day though.

Melt in the mouth beef nestles into the indentations of the orecchiette pasta, giving an almost perfect ratio of meat/sauce/pasta with each mouthful. It’s definitely my go to quick and easy sauce. It’ll make you think twice about cooking up a batch of mince based sauce again, primal cuts give better flavour and texture, you get to control the fat going in, and as it’s slow/pressure cooked it breaks down to melt in the mouth tender pieces.


500 g Chuck steak, cubed
2 Onions, diced
200 g Tomato purée
1 Carrot, diced
1 Bulb of garlic, peeled
Handful of parsley, chopped
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbsp Tomato paste
Salt
Pepper
Hot sauce, to taste, or chilli flakes

It's dead simple, put everything into the pressure cooker and cook on high pressure for about 40 minutes. Let the pressure drop naturally. Use a wooden spoon to break up any lumps of meat. Taste and season with salt, pepper and white wine vinegar. Stir in another handful of chopped parsley. Serve stirred through orecchiette.

Monkfish Stew

A forced diet tends to put roadblocks front and foremost in the mind, what you can’t have rather than viewing the opportunities of experimentation forced by limitation. As such a negative view of a once loved activity slowly creeps and has the power to become all encompassing if not held at bay and the positives of the situation reflected upon. It certainly didn’t help that along with the prescribed low fat diet, I was told strictly no alcohol and that meals should be smaller and more frequent, breakfast, pshaw. Needs must though and once recuperated, mentally and physically, I tried to push the negative creeping thoughts of “what the hell can I eat, no butter, no fat, no dairy, no good stuff” and the sarcastic “thanks a lot pancreas”.

Breakfast has probably been the hardest adjustment to make, I usually skipped it, having a strong black coffee in its place, but now I have become quite the porridge making expert, thankfully I’ve never been a huge fan of the added milk/cream to my oats so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I find the trick is soaking the night before, one part oats, three parts water, a good pinch of salt, dried sour cherries and figs, all placed in a bowl, covered and refrigerated overnight, ready to be cooked over a low heat until thick and lush.

Lunch wasn’t so much a problem, I miss the cheese I must admit, a crusty baguette just isn’t the same without a schmeer of butter, but I can still have tasty treats like pressed ox tongue on rye with super hot english mustard and a good sour pickle to finish it off with.

Dinner, well, I’m getting there, it’s hard not to add a dash of butter or a glug of olive oil, avoid dressings, no white wine to deglaze with. I started out quite somber, completely no fat added meals, and as you can imagine they weren't the most successful, you need a bit of fat to carry flavour, you can’t soften, caramelise, or sauté a humble onion without a slight dash of oil to keep it from sticking or fry with. Finally I got past the limitation of diet as a roadblock and an absolute, low fat isn’t no fat, and now am slowly starting to introduce a more normal diet, but it’s difficult because what I have tonight could make me sick tomorrow, but as I’ve heard and read, it’s about the only way to know if my body can handle certain things now, try it and if it doesn’t make you feel like shit then it’s probably OK.

1 Medium Fennel bulb, diced
1 Large Red onion, diced
200 g Chickpeas, cooked
1 Carrot, diced
A good handful of Parsley, finely chopped
Juice of a Lemon
1–2 tbsp of Harissa
200 g of Tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or purée/passata)
Monkfish fillet, cut into large chunks
Capers
Olive oil
200ml Stock (fish or chicken)

Place a pan over a medium heat and add the olive oil, add the onion and fennel, sauté until soft and translucent. Stir in the Harissa and cook until fragrant. Deglaze with the stock, add the carrot, tomatoes and half the parsley. Simmer for about 10–15 minutes, the carrots should be cooked and the liquid reduced a little. Add the chickpeas and capers, cook for a minute or two, taste and adjust the seasoning, add the lemon juice. Bring to a simmer and then place the monkfish pieces in the stew and cover. The fish will only take a couple of minutes to cook. When cooked, remove from the heat and adjust the seasoning, stir through the remaining parsley.

Serve in a bowl with some crusty bread.

Recovery

Well the updates may be a little slower than normal at the moment as I’m recovering from a short stint in hospital due to a case of pancreatitis. Which unfortunately means my diet in the coming months is rather restricted—low fat, no dairy, no booze—so all the good stuff really. But I have my health (now) and they didn’t find anything else wrong with me when they were prodding and poking me with far too many needles! Anyway I’ll still be updating this blog as per usual, the post might just be lacking the copious amounts of bacon grease, duck fat and butter as per normal.

Chicken wings the egg white version

I do seem to have lot of chicken wing recipes on here, this has to be version six I’ve published on here, and I wouldn't even want to start with the numerous experiments that haven’t made it to the site, I don’t have enough digits. This is a baked version a bit like the hot wings version I did a while back they’ll spend a little while in the fridge so preparing the night before is probably the best, but at a pinch six hours before cooking should be enough.

500g chicken wings
1 large egg whites
2 tsp baking soda
Chilli flakes
Salt

Prepare a baking tray that will fit in your fridge with a rack and set aside.

Whisk the egg whites until they have increased in volume but still runny, we’re not looking for soft peaks just a little volume so coating the wings is easier.

Add the baking soda, chilli flakes (to taste) and salt (about a teaspoon). Whisk together.

Toss the wings through the egg white mixture and transfer to the baking tray, make sure there is space between the wings. Transfer to the fridge uncovered and leave overnight, or prepare in the morning for the evening.

Pre-heat the oven to 230ºC, cook the wings for 15 minutes, turn the wings over and cook for 15 minutes more, turn over again and another 10–15 minutes depending on their size and how well you like you chicken cooked.


Toss the hot cooked wings in your favourite hot sauce, I’m quite a fan of Tapatío hot sauce at the moment, and eat immediately or at least once they’re cool enough for you to handle. A finger bowl and paper towels are a must.

Brined to Grill

Brining meat is a great way to get a little more flavour in it and retain a bit of moisture. When you brine a couple of already awesome pork shoulder chops you’re almost transforming them into quick brined ham. As it’s a pretty quick brine you don’t have to be too precise with the salt levels, I used about a cup of cider, which adds a nice sweetness and sugars to help caramelise, a good pinch or four of kosher salt, probably about 3 percent, a good dollop of Dijon mustard, because well apple; pork and mustard is a winning combination. The liquid along with the chops were placed in a ziplock bag and sealed, leaving just a corner unsealed, then submerged in a sink of water, forcing all the air out of the unsealed corner which is finally sealed. Placed in the fridge for a few hours or overnight, thrown on a hot grill, letting all the fat drip out and sugars caramelise they made a quick and easy dinner with a side of spicy potato salad. Sometimes quick and easy may take 5 minutes of prep and a little patience.