After three failed attempts to load the posts about the Melbourne International Food & Wine Festival and Adelaide's Tasting Australia events that I went to, including the most excellent photographs taken, I give up. This blog system has obviously determined that those experiences are too much even for the web to take. The ensuring swearing from losing the posts is enough to drive a person to drink. A McLaren Vale 2004 cabernet sauvignon, that is.
So, instead of looking to the past and being annoyed at how the Internet thwarts me when I am prepared to share my happy moments, I look to the present and the future. I crown this week Try A New Recipe week.
Masterchef Australia has helped to keep me at home during dinner time, enthusiastic about cooking properly (that jalapeno sorbet on International Invention Test night - genius!) Coupled with enough workplace frustration to make the wielding of a good knife an actual comfort, it seems a good time to start being adventurous while working with market produce.
New dishes I have tried thus far (started on Sunday) include:
- Beans with miso and sesame dressing, from a little taste of Japan: ridiculously easy, as it just involves boiling and then refreshing fresh beans before pounding toasted sesame seeds with miso and a touch of mirin as the dressing. Great match with grilled mackerel (at four dollars a kilogram from the South Melbourne Market, a good bargain), miso soup and rice. :)
- Roasted chicken with leeks, from Jamie Oliver at home: this recipe asks for sustainable firm white fish, but do-able with chicken. A good use of current produce such as lemons and leeks, and the roasting results in such fantastic cooking juices that you want to drench your choice of carbohydrates (mine was rice). I do recommend that you follow the recipe in terms of:
*using fresh rosemary and thyme,
*parboiling the leeks before tossing them together with the fish pieces/chicken + thin lemon slices + pounded together lemon juice & herbs & seasoning for the roasting phase, and
*making sure that the streaky bacon is thin enough to become crispy in 20 minutes when laid on top of the meat(s) at time of roasting.
- Stuffed aubergines, from Silver Spoon: I was looking forward to tucking into the shell of an eggplant filled with the slow-fried chopped up eggplant flesh, chopped red capsicum, chopped onion and chopped celery stick (all stirred together with a lightly beaten egg before going into the eggplant shells), especially the golden bubbling melting parmesan component. I would probably recommend that:
* add some dried or fresh herbs of your choice into the mixture for depth.
* If you cannot handle the no-meat option, bacon or pancetta chopped and slow-fried with the vegetables.
* the recipe said "bake until golden and bubbling". What this really means is "it depends on how hot your oven is - if it is not very good, then this may take up to 40 minutes"...
- Potato onion and gruyere galette from Donna Hay's 50th edition magazine (the one with the very delicious looking chocolate cake): it is wonderful how thinly sliced potato, onions and grated gruyere & mozzarella (you can use other hard cheeses as well) with thyme can create an extraordinary side dish. However, remember to flip the baked galette on a kitchen towel to drain the butter and olive oil first before serving it because this has to be one of the greasiest vegetarian dishes ever! Match with a good steak or roast chicken.
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