Quick Post - Roast Strawberry, Corn and Ancho Chili Salsa

 

I know it’s not summer yet, but strawberries have started popping up more and more at markets and grocers and supermarkets around me. I had avoided temptation to buy the out-of-season and therefore expensive fruit…until I came across a punnet for .99c. I could resist no longer. Strawberries are delicious. Knowing that they weren’t in their peak season and therefore not going to be the sweetest they could be, I thought I would roast them to intensify the flavours. This salsa is sweet and juicy and warm. Perfect for tacos in these nights that still have a chill. I’ve used ancho chili powder because I wanted the smokey flavour, but didn’t want it to be “hot”, and ancho is a very mild chili. Feel free to use what you have. The corn adds a pop of texture and creaminess to the smoke.

I served these in tacos using shredded leftover roast pork fried with a tin of lentils. So apart from the roasting time of 15 minutes, this is the perfect midweek (taco) dish because it takes no more than 10 minutes prep time. Leftover roast chicken (or one from the supermarket or takeaway) would also go really well with this salsa and still be a quick meal. Add your own accompaniments if desired, such as cheese or shredded cabbage!

And check out my shopping spots if you can't find ancho chili powder

Roasted Strawberry and Corn Salsa

250g punnet strawberries, hulled and halved

2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp ancho chili powder
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp honey
pepper
½ cup corn kernels (if frozen, thaw by rinsing under water and draining well)
2 tbsp finely shredded basil

Preheat the oven to 170C

Mix the olive oil, chili powder, salt, honey, pepper in a bowl until evenly distributed. Stir in the strawberries and corn kernels, coating them well. Tip out onto a lined baking tray.

Put the dish in the oven and roast for 15 minutes until strawberries start to soften and go a bit jammy. Scatter basil leaves on top.

Serve!

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

Hot Damn - Tasty Hot Vegan Dips

On a ‘oh-my-god-these-are-so-cute-AND-on-sale’ whim…I bought a set of individual casserole dishes. And I LOVE them. But to justify my purchase of said cute-but-not-entirely-necessary dishes, I want to use them all of the time. We were having people over for some casual drinks one cold night and I thought of the perfect plan for using the casseroles and having a delicious snack to go with said drinks. Hot dips. In my experience, if you get served a hot dip it’s invariably cheese based. Often served in a cobb loaf. Nothing terribly wrong with that…but we were having mac and cheese for dinner. Didn’t want to over-do the cheese. Plus one attendee doesn’t really do cheese. My mind was blown when I was first served warm hummus – essentially chick pea mash and now it’s become a frequent side dish in my house. Which made me think of my white bean dip. I love it because it only contains a handful of ingredients, all of which are always in my pantry so it can be made in under 5 minutes when unexpected guests come around. That is pretty much flavoured white bean mash if you heat it up!

Knowing a few of my readers are vegan, and already rebelling against the hot cheese dip in my head, I thought I would make the second dip vegan too, seeing as my first one was by sheer coincidence. I had some roasted beets waiting for me in the fridge and basically came to the same conclusion as with the white bean dip. I could make a beetroot mash and serve it as a dip. To the beets I added coconut cream to help loosen the mixture while adding that sweetness that pairs beautifully with the earthiness of beetroot, and then chia seeds to help it gel and give it a lovely texture.

Pop both in casserole dishes, heat in the oven for 30 minutes and voila!

White Bean Dip

One tin white beans

5 sundried tomatoes in olive oil
1 tsp mixed dried Italian herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, parsley)
1-2 tsp sriracha (to taste)
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 150C

In a food processor, combine the white beans, sundried tomatoes, sriracha and herbs. Process until a smooth paste. Add olive oil from the tomatoes if you need more liquid to form a proper dip consistency. Taste and add salt and pepper.

Put in a casserole dish and heat for 30 minutes or until warm through.

 Roast Beet Dip

2 roasted beetroots

¼ cup coconut cream
¼ tsp caraway seeds
2 tbsp chia seeds
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 150C

Chop the beets into quarters and add to your food processor with the coconut cream and caraway seeds. Process until smooth. It will be fairly liquid at this point. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the chia seeds and pulse to distribute.

Put in a casserole dish and leave to sit for 15 minutes while the chia seeds absorb some of the liquid and makes it a more dip-like texture. Heat in the oven for 30 minutes or until completely warm through.

Grilled Crab with Gin and Pomegranate Sabayon - with Warm Pink Grapefruit, Zucchini and Buckwheat Salad

Sometimes I see trends in types of recipes that go through my foodporn news feeds and it makes me think, hmm, I’ve never tried that before. It’s such a common dish, or component of a dish and despite being quite adventurous in my cooking, it’s not something I’ve ever made. Or even contemplated making – like mac and cheese. Can you believe this last weekend was the first time I’d ever made béchamel sauce? As I was stirring the milk and it was magically thickening and turning into a delicious thick sauce in a way I’d never seen before, I was thinking about starting this blog. It was initially about trying new things and opening myself up to new cooking experiences, so that we didn’t eat the same dishes on rote. But although the flavours I mix together are often unique and different and new, my methods of cooking haven’t really evolved much.

I watched Julie and Julia on the weekend (with a large bowl of mac and cheese using aforementioned béchamel sauce to cope with all that delicious food on screen) and watching Julie debone a duck and going through the calf leg gelatin section of Julia Child’s cookbook made me determined to make a few more things requiring a different cooking technique to my usual. Whilst I don’t think I’ll ever buy a calf leg, or possibly even debone a duck, I will definitely try a few new things.

I wrote before about being scared of roasting a duck, and that experiment turning out deliciously well. And one of the other things I’ve never really attempted seriously before is sauces or custards with egg. Even making ice creams I try to avoid using custard based ones because cooking eggs like that scares me. I figure I’ll end up with scrambled eggs and ruin the whole thing. But I made a chocolate pavlova for Mothers’ Day and ended up with a whole bunch of egg yolks and decided it was the perfect time to make a pink grapefruit curd. Again, I enjoyed watching the magic of the yolks and grapefruit juice thicken and become creamy and turn from ingredients into an actual dish. So the next step was to make a sabayon sauce. Sabayon (or zabaglione) is a light and fluffy sauce, drink or dessert made using some form of alcohol and egg yolks as the main ingredients.

Things I’ve learnt in these two egg-based sauce dishes is that you need to be patient at first, slowly drizzling the hot liquid into the eggs and whisking first before putting it on the heat and whisking consistently at a brisk pace. But it’s definitely a trick worth trying, you really do feel there is a science behind cooking.

Given that it’s Autumn and the markets are full of pomegranates, this sabayon is pomegranate flavoured and paired with one of my favourite spirits – Gin. I again used the West Winds Sabre for it’s specific citrus notes, but if you can’t get your hands on it, substitute Bombay Sapphire. And like my last Gin dish, it uses crab meat. I had this frozen from our very successful crabbing trip in summer, but you can generally get your hands on crab or crab meat at most supermarkets. There’s something about gin and crab that just *work*, you know! I then put it under the grill to heat the crab and lightly toast the top of the sabayon. The end result is a toasty, airy, citrusy puff of rich sauce on top of the flaky crab meat. So. Good.

This was paired with a warm buckwheat salad. I think next time, I’d like to add a few plain salted tortilla chips as well, for a textural counterpoint.

Grilled Crab with Gin and Pomegranate Sabayon

2/3 cup West Winds Sabre Gin
4 tbsp pink grapefruit juice
2 pomegranates, seeded
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt to taste
300g cooked crab meat, picked over for cartilage and shell

Seed the pomegranates and reserve ¼ of the arils for the salad. Put the gin, grapefruit juice and pomegranate seeds into a small saucepan and simmer until the liquid has reduced to about ¼ of a cup.

Line a baking tray with paper and divide the crab meat into 4. Tightly pack with your hands into patties and set aside until sauce is ready.

Once the gin mixture has reduced, strain through a fine sieve into a glass bowl that you can set above simmering water. Set a small saucepan of water to simmer. Add the egg yolks to the reduced gin and whisk briskly for a few minutes to fully incorporate, then place over the simmering water. Whisk constantly and briskly until the sauce becomes light and fluffy, the colour will turn a pretty pale purple. It’ll take about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and drizzle the olive oil into the mixture, whisking slowly for a few minutes until emulsified. Taste and season as needed. Set aside until salad is ready and you can grill the crab.

Spoon the mixture over the crab and place under a pre-heated grill for 2-3 minutes until toasted and brown.
 

Warm Pink Grapefruit, Zucchini and Buckwheat Salad

2/3 cup buckwheat
1 ½ cup water
½ tsp salt
Big pinch fresh black pepper
Olive oil
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
¼ tsp coriander seeds
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium zucchini, diced
2/3 cup corn kernels
1 pink grapefruit, segmented and diced
1 tbsp tamari
2 silverbeet leaves, stripped and shredded
1 Avocado, sliced
Handful toasted almonds, roughly chopped
¼ of the pomegranate arils reserved from making the sabayon

Put the buckwheat, water, salt and pepper in a medium saucepan. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until the buckwheat is cooked, but still chewy, around 15 minutes. Fluff with a fork and set aside.

In a frypan, heat a splash of olive oil and fry the garlic until translucent. Add the cumin, mustard seeds and coriander seeds, stir well to coat in the oily garlic mix. Add the zucchini and corn kernels and cook for 5-10 minutes until the zucchini is soft. Take off the heat.

Stir through the cooked buckwheat, tamari, grapefruit pieces and silverbeet leaves.

Serve with sliced avocado, toasted almonds and the reserved pomegranate arils on top.

 Gently remove the crab with sabayon patties and serve alongside

 

One Dish Two Ways - Gunpowder Smoke Mackerel

 

My husband has recently gone a little crazy for smoking foods. He’s bought a bunch of hickory chips and uses the hooded BBQ and various trays and levels he smokes sausages and bacon and steak and garlic and jalapenos and whatever else he can find. He’s constantly trying to think of ways to improve his set-up and experimenting with different ways to do it better and hopefully find the best, most consistent way. So far the things he has had the most success with are sausages. He’ll smoke up a dozen or so and I’ll use them to make gumbo or cowboy beans or whatever could benefit from some hickory smoke.

With his smoke-obsession in mind, I recalled seeing a recipe for tea-smoked chicken in a magazine I was flicking through while waiting for a physio appointment. A quick google showed that tea smoking is a fairly common and simple task. I thought it was different enough to not step on his hickory smoked toes, but still a delicious experiment. This smoked mackerel is perfect served hot with soba noodles and sauteed Asian greens, or on some jasmine rice with a simple salad. But I think I loved it most cooled, flaked and served as part of a cheese board.

To be honest, I don’t know the science behind requiring the rice, but every traditional tea-smoking recipe I came across used equal parts long grain rice and tea. And who am I to mess with that? Make sure you turn your rangehood/exhaust fan on if you’re making this inside.

 

Gunpowder Smoked Mackerel

½ cup gun powder green tea (or other green tea)

½ cup jasmine rice
2 tsp brown sugar
2 mackerel cutlets
Salt and pepper
Zest of 1 lime

First prepare your ‘smoker’. You’ll need a pot/wok and a steamer that fits it and a whole bunch of foil. At least double fold a piece of foil that will fit the bottom of your pot, fold up a few centimetres of each side to create a sort of foil bowl. Mix the green tea, rice and sugar together and put it in the foil bowl. Put this bowl into your pot/wok then put over a hot flame.

Pat dry the mackerel cutlets, then season each side with salt and pepper, and some grated lime zest. Place these into your steamer basket.

When the tea mixture starts smoking, put the steamer over the top and leave to cook for 10-15 minutes or until cooked through.

Serve immediately with rice and salad or allow to cool, flake and refrigerate. Serve on a cheese board with Pickled Pink