Sparkling Meals - Prawn and Squash Spaghetti with Champagne Sauce

Sometimes, you have multiple things to celebrate in a short space of time. Like having an award winning Chocolate Beer Jam. Or having it confirm that your recipe will be included in a cookbook. Or having a birthday. And all of those things individually might require a toast…but together, they definitely do. And sometimes, you somehow are left with a half bottle of bubbles when such an occasion arises. I am a little funny about drinking bubbles after the day I open them. Even though we have an incredible re-corking stopper, it’s just something I don’t enjoy as much after the fact. And so I was left with a little champagne (in reality, sparkling wine, but I’m gonna be fancy and call it champagne) that I couldn’t bear to waste. Well, cooking with it seems like the best use!

I’d seen (and eaten) quite a few champagne cupcakes in the last few months. Seems like quite the trend in Perth at the moment! But I wanted dinner, not cupcakes!

My next thought went to my gin and crab pasta, and then to the good deal of seafood pastas with vodka sauces over the years and thought that a seafood pasta sauce was definitely the go. But, I wanted the flavour of the champagne to shine through. It’s not as strong a flavour as the gin, so I didn’t want a thick creamy sauce, so I went with a buttery base. I added some delicious Shark Bay Prawns, and some finely sliced yellow squash for a mellow, summery addition. All complimentary, but subtle flavours. And here’s the kicker. Vanilla. Adding a vanilla bean to the reducing champagne takes this from tasty to next level delicious. It adds a sweetness that you can’t quite put your finger on, but you’d immediately notice it’s absence. Trust me on this. Then you’ll probably want to open another bottle of bubbles to drink with the dish. And you might end up with a little leftover…

This is a very simple dish with very few ingredients, so it pays for them to be good quality. I recommend using fresh spaghetti if you can, and although my champagne was day old, it was still good champagne. You can use anything you would ordinarily drink. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but given the scope of sweetness and dryness you get in sparklings, make it something you enjoy drinking.

Oh, and the last note I will add is that this dish comes together really quickly once you start cooking. I’d say it’s maybe a 15 minute meal. So prep all your ingredients first, get your pasta water boiling (especially if you have dried pasta) and then begin cooking. I used salted butter as that’s what I had, so I needed less salt than you will if you use unsalted.

Prawn and Squash Spaghetti with Champagne Sauce 

1 ½ cups champagne (sparkling wine)

2 shallots, finely diced
3 small cloves garlic, minced
1 vanilla bean
125g butter, cubed.
Salt and pepper
500g fresh pasta
250g peeled prawns
4 yellow squash, very finely sliced
Chopped parsley to serve
Red chilli flakes (optional)
More champagne to drink with it!

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.

In a large sautee pan, pour in the champagne, shallots and garlic and a little pepper. Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the pan, then throw the pod in too. Bring to the boil over a medium heat and keep it simmering until it’s reduced by half. Add the butter, a few cubes at a time, and whisk well after each addition to blend into the sauce. Stir well for a further 1-2 minutes to thicken the sauce, then discard the vanilla pod and add the squash slices and prawns. Check for seasoning.

Put the fresh pasta into the boiling water.

Stir the prawns and squash into the sauce well, coating in the sauce and allowing to cook through. 2-3 minutes. At this point, your pasta should also be cooked, using tongs, pull the spaghetti into the sauce, allowing some (not too much) cooking water to come with it. Stir well to coat all the noodles in the sauce and blend the cooking liquid in.

Serve with some chopped parsley and some chilli flakes, if you’d like

Inauthentic Deliciousness- Pumpkin, Chicken and Banana Curry

When Lance and I were dating, he took me to an Indian restaurant in Vic Park. Both of us particularly liked the Mango Chicken Curry at our local Indian takeaway, and so it was one of the dishes we ordered that night. It was served up in one of those beautiful copper bowls, which was sat on a plate. I accidentally knocked the plate and threw Mango Chicken Curry all over me. ALL over me. Lance just shook his head and laughed. “I can’t take you anywhere!”

That story isn’t hugely relevant to this recipe, but I wasn’t too sure how to start this post and that story came to me. I guess it’s because the Mango Curry is a sweet, fruity and mild curry, and this is too. Lance isn’t a huge fan of banana (unless it is in a chocolate peanut butter smoothie), but he still really enjoyed the fruitiness it added to this curry. The secret is to use ripe, but still ‘hard’ bananas. You don’t want them to break down too much, or be too sweet. The rest of the flavours are just normal curry spices. I don’t know a great deal about cooking curries, I only know I enjoy eating them. So it’s in no way traditional, but it is incredibly flavoursome.

So, if you’re clumsy like I am, and you can’t be taken anywhere, at least you can still have a good curry

Pumpkin, Chicken and Banana Curry

2 tsp salt
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
1 tsp cumin seeds, ground
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 brown onion, diced
thumbsize piece ginger, peeled and finely grated
1/2 butternut pumpkin, 2 cm dice
1 chicken breast, chopped into 2cm chunks
1 red capsicum, 1cm dice
1 tin coconut cream
2 firm but ripe bananas, peeled and cut into 2cm chunks
to serve
black rice
cashews
chopped coriander leaves
 Heat a large pot to medium heat and place the dry spices in. Cook until nice and fragrant – around 1-2 minutes. Add a good splash of olive oil, then the onion, garlic and ginger, stirring well to coat in the spices. Cook for 10 minutes until the onion is translucent.

Add the chicken pieces and stir to brown, 5 minutes. Add in the capsicum and pumpkin, the coconut cream and rinse the can out with water (about 3/4 of the tin), adding that to the pot as well. Stir well, then put the lid on and simmer 15-20 minutes until the pumpkin is almost cooked through. 

Add the banana pieces in for the last 10 minutes of cooking so they heat through, but don’t completely break down.

Check for seasoning, then serve with black rice and cashews and coriander leaves, if desired

Slow Cooker Love - Chinese 5 Spice Osso Bucco

Where do you stand on bone marrow? I know it tends to be a fairly divisive kind of food. Personally, I love it. Sucking the marrow out of the shank on a lamb roast is one of life’s joys (that I have to take turns with Lance on). It’s so rich and delicious. If you have a family that requires sharing the marrow, osso bucco is a perfect way of everybody getting some bone marrow, without forking out for just marrow bones and paying just for the bones. Osso Bucco is generally a fairly cheap cut of meat, as quite a few of the slow-cook meats are, but it is so delicious.

Traditionally, osso bucco is cooked in Italian style flavourings. Tomato and oregano and garlic. This dish is a little different in that it uses Asian style spices instead. It’s a bit sweet, a bit spicy and still totally rich and soul-satisfying in the way that all good casseroles should be. This is a prep and forget kind of dish, once you’ve got everything in the pot, it can be left alone to cook itself. Don’t let the longish list of ingredients put you off, they’re mainly flavouring ingredients that just get stirred together. The coriander gremolata adds a fresh hit against the richness. I wouldn't skip this. I've added a recipe for orange braised kale that goes well, but isn't necessary for the dish.

If you don’t like bone marrow, you can remove the bones and shred the meat into the sauce before serving. I did this for a dinner party and then Lance and I stood over the kitchen island and sucked out the bones.

I’ve also made this exact dish with a large cubed sweet potato in place of the mushrooms. Also worth doing.

 

Chinese 5 Spice Osso Bucco

4 osso bucco

2-3 tbsp coconut flour (can sub cornflour)
Olive oil
½ cup rice vinegar
½ cup honey
½ cup rice wine (from Asian grocers)
1 ½ tbsp. five spice
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 red chili, finely minced
1 tbsp salt
1/4 cup raw sugar
1 tbsp oyster sauce
500mL water
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 capsicum, diced
300-400g button mushrooms, quartered.
Steamed brown rice

Coriander Gremolata

1 bunch coriander
2 tbsp hazelnut meal
Zest one orange

Preheat the oven to 150C

Season the osso bucco with salt and pepper, then dust in coconut flour. In the base of a lidded casserole or tagine that can go on the stove and in the oven, heat a layer of oil to medium high heat. Brown the osso bucco on both sides – around 3 minutes per side. Remove to a plate.

Add the onion to the same pot and cook the onion for 10 minutes, stirring often until caramelised. Add the garlic and capsicum and cook another 5 minutes, until the capsicum has softened. In a bowl, whisk together the rice wine, rice wine vinegar, five spice powder, ground ginger, oyster sauce, chilli, salt, sugar and water. Add this liquid to the pot and turn the heat up to high. Bring to the boil, then add the osso bucco back to the pot. Scatter the mushrooms around the osso bucco in the casserole. Add the lid, then put it in the oven and cook for 2 hours, or until the meat falls off the bone.

Meanwhile, pulse the coriander, hazelnut meal and orange zest in a processor, then put in a container in the fridge until ready to serve.

Remove the meat to a plate and cover to keep warm. Put the casserole back on the stove top and simmer the sauce on medium heat for 15 minutes, or until the sauce has reduced by half and is syrupy. Serve each osso bucco with some freshly steamed brown rice and a generous ladle of the sauce. Sprinkle the gremolata on the top.

Orange Braised Kale

1 orange, peeled and segmented

Juice one orange
¼ cup stock
2 tbsp butter
1 Tuscan Kale bunch

Cut the leaves off the ribs on the kale, then shred. Heat the butter in a frypan over a medium-low , then add all other ingredients and stir well. Cook, uncovered for 15 minutes or until the kale is soft, and the liquid has reduced to almost nothing.

Marinaded to Perfection - Orange Chipotle Chicken with Braised Greens and Barley

With the exception of slow-cooked meats, it’s very rare that the meat is the main star of our everyday meals. If I’m BBQing or grilling meat, I tend to leave it plain and cook it well, then make salads and sides that shine. Or make a kick-arse sauce to go on it. That tends to be the same when you eat out as well. It’s *just* a steak (albeit a good quality one) until they add the mushroom sauce or pepper sauce or red wine jus. Partly at home, it’s a cleaning issue. And partly a timing issue. I rarely think ahead enough to marinade the meat before I cook it. But the acid and booze in this orange juice marinade only needs a small amount of time to make a big impact on the chicken. So you can marinade the meat for half an hour while you prep the veges and get the barley cooking. You then use the same marinading liquid to braise some kale and cabbage and bam! Flavourful dinner with zero wastage. Cook the chicken over a medium-high heat to get a nice crispy brown outer layer and still have the centre juicy.

The barley with greens still is kinda the star here, with it’s tart/sweet pops of cranberries, briny capers, crunchy cashews and sweetly braised greens – but the chicken holds it’s own without any further accompaniment if you served just the chicken. And that is a rarity in my household!

Orange Chipotle Chicken with Braised Greens and Barley

Marinade

Zest and juice from one orange
Thumb tip size piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
30mL dark rum
1 chipotle in adobo, minced
3 tbsp olive oil

3 chicken thighs
¾ cup barley
1 ¼ cups water
¾ tsp vegetable stock powder (or salt)
Olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks celery, diced
½ bunch kale, ribs removed and shredded
¼ cabbage, shredded
2 tbsp dried cranberries
1 tbsp capers
¼ cup roasted cashews
2 tbsp minced fresh parsley

Mix all of the marinade ingredients in a glass or other non-reactive bowl add the chicken thighs, toss to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to marinade for 30 minutes. Drain the chicken, reserving the marinade.

In a medium size pot, mix together the vegetable stock powder or salt. Add the barley. Cover, bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the barley is tender, but still retains it’s shape and a slight ‘chew’ – around 25 minutes.

While the barley is cooking, heat a splash of olive oil in a frypan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook 10 minutes until softened and golden. Add the garlic and celery and cook a further 5 minutes or until the celery has softened. Add the kale and cabbage, stir it through to coat in the onion mixture, add the marinade and braise for 10-15 minutes until the kale and cabbage is wilted and cooked through.

Heat a second pan or a BBQ grill to high and add the chicken pieces. Cook for 5 minutes until nicely brown on the outside and half cooked through, then turn and cook on the other side for 3-5 minutes until cooked through and brown on the other.

Stir the cooked barley through the braised greens, take off the heat and stir through the cranberries, capers, cashews and parsley.

Plate up the barley, then place a grilled chicken piece on top

Slow Cooker Love - Lamb Ragu

I love slow-cooking in this weather. Especially meat. The flavours of slow-cooked meat are incredible, as is the ease and versatility of cooking a big hunk of meat. My go-to meat for slow cooking is pork. But when I saw a recipe for Italian pulled pork sandwiches I thought that a leg of lamb would suit the flavours so much better. And wondered why I hadn’t done it before. Slow cooked Italian lamb. Perfect, right? Having a weekend of baking for my brother’s Cake Club and having my parents over for dinner the same day was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. I’ve used the herbs that I add to my usual bolognaise sauce, and used tomato in the braising liquid to give it a real Italian richness.

In the morning I rubbed the meat with the herb mix, browned the meat, then left it to do it’s thing while the oven was full of biscuits. The cooling/skimming the fat step is fairly crucial, seeing as a lamb leg is quite a fatty cut.

The end result is a rich, meaty dish. A dish that warms you the whole way through. A dish that leaves you satisfied but still wanting more. Wanting a chunk of bread to clean the bowl with. A dish that serves five big eaters, with leftover lamb for Lance and I for the next two days – realistically it could have done 3 nights if it wasn’t so delicious! Sometimes that can be the best part of slow-cooked food. The leftovers make brilliant sandwich or taco filling, or poured over more pasta or couscous or your other favourite grain.

Lamb Ragu

3 tbsp. ground fennel seeds
3 tbsp. dried parsley
2 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp. dried thyme
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tbsp pepper
1 tbsp salt
3 tsp. red chilli flakes
1 lamb leg – approx 2kg
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tins crushed tomatoes
2 cups vegetable stock
2 cups water
1 (generous) cup red wine
1 brown onion, diced
2 tsp sugar
pasta to serve

Combine fennel seeds, parsley, oregano, thyme, basil, chilli flakes, salt and pepper. Cut a long line down the lamb leg to open it up. Rub the inside with the herb mixture, then half of the minced garlic. Pull back together. Rub the entire outside with a generous amount of the herb mix, you might not need all of it.

Heat the base of your slow cooker (or a pan if your insert can’t be heated) to medium high heat and generously coat the bottom with olive oil. Brown the lamb on all sides. 5-10 minutes per side. Remove to a plate. Add the onion, remaining garlic and 1 tin of the crushed tomatoes to the slow cooker base and cook for 10 minutes or until the tomatoes are reduced by about half and caramelized.

Add the stock, water and wine. Mix well then add the lamb back to the base.

Put into your slow cooker and cover. Cook on high for 5 hours or until the meat is falling off the bone.

Transfer the lamb to a tray and shred with two forks, removing the skin, bones and as much fat as you can. Set the meat aside. Allow the cooking liquid to cool and then skim the fat off the top of it.

When ready to serve, prepare your pasta as per cooking instructions. Put the cooking liquid back on the stove top over medium heat. Add the second tin of crushed tomatoes, half fill the tin with water to rinse it out and add that to the sauce. Add sugar and mix well. Bring to the boil, then reduce to low and simmer for 15 minutes until the sauce is reduced by a quarter. Add the shredded meat back in and stir well.

Serve with freshly cooked pasta and a side salad