An Australia Day Roast - Roast Lamb with Aperol Chickpeas

Even if the weather is hot and gross and the idea of having the oven on is unbearable, sometimes you feel like some roast lamb. That’s not just me, yeah? Thank goodness for hooded BBQs! We will actually roast in the BBQ all year around, not just in summer because Lance likes to get the smoker going to flavour, well, everything. But a smoked leg of lamb is a beautiful thing, so I do not complain. I encourage! This recipe is flavourful enough to not require the smoke, but 9 times out of 10, if you get served a roast at our house, it will be smoked. You can smoke this or not, either way it is pretty spectacular.

Over the past few years, aperitivos have really come into their own in WA as we embrace the bitterness in summery spritzes. I absolutely love the citrusy fresh flavours in Aperol and Campari and the like. We have spritz weather, and a particularly balmy afternoon with an Aperol and soda inspired this recipe. The basic premise of this dish is to balance a leg of lamb atop some chickpeas, onions, garlic and Aperol so that the chickpeas will soak up the delicious lamb juices as well as the boozey liquid below as they cook. It’s important to only rub salt on the top of the leg of lamb, otherwise the chickpeas develop a hard outer shell and become tough. Season the chickpeas at the end of the cooking process. The best part of this recipe is that you can just pop it in the BBQ and leave it cooking and it’s a side dish and meat in one dish. Add a green salad and you are done for dinner, folks. You can rotate the lamb a few times if you want, to ensure even cooking, but I don’t always bother (don't salt the lamb at all if you want to rotate). Still check on the liquid levels every so often to make sure the chick peas don’t dry out. I’ve also added some diced carrots and capsicum to the chickpeas to boost the vege content and that’s also worked a treat. Any leftover chickpeas can be used in salads to take to work the next day, the Aperol scent reminding you that the weekend is no more than 5 days away!

Roast Lamb with Aperol Chickpeas

1 leg of lamb

2 brown onions, cut into thin half moons

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup dried chick peas, soaked overnight.

3 sprigs thyme

1 cup dry white wine (such as Sauvignon Blanc)

1 cup Aperol

1 cup water

Salt and pepper

Rinse your soaked chickpeas and place them in a heatproof bowl or pot. Boil the kettle and pour over the chickpeas. Leave for 20 minutes while you preheat your BBQ to 160C using only the burners on the grill side, not the plate side (alternatively, you can use your oven). Drain the chickpeas.

Spread the chickpeas into the bottom of a roasting pan. Add the onion, garlic and thyme. Pour over the wine, Aperol and water, gently stir it all together. Rest the lamb on top of the chickpeas, presentation side up and put on the plate of the BBQ (indirect heat) and put the lid down. After half an hour, turn the lamb upside-down carefully with tongs. After another half hour, turn the lamb back the right side up. Continue roasting for a further 30-45 minutes, depending on how well done you like your roast. All the while, keep an eye on the liquid level of the chickpeas. They will slowly be soaking up the liquid, but you don’t want them to dry and catch on the bottom, add a little extra water if necessary.

When the lamb is done, remove it from the chickpeas and set aside on a warm plate, tented in foil to rest for 20 minutes. Pop the lid back down on the BBQ, keeping the chickpeas cooking in this twenty minutes, the liquid should evaporate, leaving a sticky gravy-like onion mixture and the chickpeas should be soft. Season to taste, and serve a pile of chickpeas with a few slices of roast lamb and a green salad.

Experimenting with Produce - Smoked Capsicum Hummus with Toasted Lamb, Quinoa and a Poached Duck Egg

One of my colleagues has a mini farm on her property, with chickens and ducks. I’ve been the lucky recipient of a few dozen fresh chicken eggs and when I mentioned I’d never tried duck eggs before, she brought some in for me to try. Lance stressed me out a little by asking what I was going to do with them, because I had to make something special to match the specialness of the duck eggs. The pressure was on! I didn’t know anything about duck eggs, apart from the fact that they’re bigger than chook eggs. And from ducks. I was told to expect richer, creamier eggs. A large yolk. They are fattier than chook eggs, but also have a higher protein content. They’re apparently great to bake with, and great for egg-heavy things like custards and soufflés.

 

Ok. Well, with this knowledge but still no personal understanding of what to expect, I thought the first try would be best kept simple. A nice poached egg to let the flavours shine. (Yes, I know this is technically a soft-boiled egg, but David Chang calls this version a poached egg in my Treme cookbook and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me). Making a poached egg a meal, I thought I’d make some hummus mash of sorts, flavoured with a capsicum Lance had smoked on the weekend (my house is currently filled with an array of yummy smoked things, like salmon, capsicum, cashews as Lance experiments with a new chamber smoking technique). Just some roast capsicums will suffice if you don’t have a Lance/smoking fiend around you. If you do it yourself, really char the skins so they have a little smokiness, and add a teaspoon of smoked paprika to ramp up the smoke flavour more. Instead of tahini, I thought I’d toast and blend some sunflower seeds in the mix, and subbed balsamic vinegar for acid instead of lemon juice to add an extra layer of complexity to the smoke.

 

I beefed up the whole situation with some leftover roast lamb and toasted quinoa adds heft as well as salt and texture. Sub in whatever leftover meat or even chorizo or bacon as you see fit. A bit of a green salad adds some fresh crunch and voila…a lovely meal comes together.

 

So, my verdict on the duck eggs? The taste is basically the same as chicken eggs, but with a creamier mouthfeel. If you are into your #yolkporn like I am, duck eggs will be right up your alley! The yolks blended into the hummus to make it rich, without having added all the olive oil of a normal hummus. Definitely think I’ll be adding duck eggs to the repertoire!

 

Smoked Capsicum Hummus with Toasted Lamb, Quinoa and a Poached Duck Egg

¼ cup sunflower seeds

1 tbsp olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 cup chicken or vegetable stock

1 smoked capsicum (or roasted capsicum if you can’t access a smoked one, with 1 tsp smoked paprika)

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

 

¼ cup quinoa, rinsed and dried

1 cup diced roast lamb

1 tsp sumac

Salt and pepper to taste

 

2 duck eggs, room temperature

 

Heat a medium saucepan to low and toast the sunflower seeds for 2-3 minutes, tossing the pan here and there to stir until it smells nutty and toasty, but not browned. Pour out onto a cutting board or plate and set aside to cool. In the same saucepan, add the olive oil and garlic, and cook for 1-2 minutes or until translucent. Be careful not to burn. Add the stock and chickpeas and bring to a steady simmer.

 

Peel the skin off the smoked capsicum (much like roasting them, it should come off fairly easily), core, de-seed and roughly chop. Stir into the chickpeas and leave to simmer for 10 minutes for the flavours to fuse. Remove from the heat, add the sunflower seeds and blend the whole thing until smooth with a stick blender. Stir through the balsamic vinegar, check for seasoning and set aside with the lid on to keep warm.

 

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil. Prepare a bowl of ice water. Gently lower the duck eggs into the boiling water and set a timer for 4 minutes, 30 seconds.

 

Meanwhile, heat a frypan to medium high and add the quinoa and lamb. If the lamb isn’t very fatty, you might need to add a tablespoon of oil to stop it sticking. Mix around to heat the lamb and toast. The quinoa should go a light golden colour and the edge of the lamb will crispen.

 

Pull the eggs out of the water and plunge into ice water to stop the cooking and cool enough to be able to handle. This should only take 30 seconds or so.

 

Plate the hummus, then gently peel an egg and serve on top, you can either split it to have the yolk spill out or leave it whole for the diner to do. Mix the sumac into the quinoa mix and season. Sprinkle over the top. Serve!

Three Recipes - Coriander Panna Cotta, Cauliflower Crackers, Quinoa Crackers

A few years back I was at a restaurant and full after eating a massive plate of ribs. But they brought out the dessert menu in that usual dance that has me reading the list and nothing really grabbing my eye, so I end up just getting the bill and going. Or maybe a coffee. I can be fairly selective about desserts, if there’s not something that sounds a bit different or exactly what I feel like, I usually don’t bother. Basil panna cotta. Interest officially piqued, I ordered it. A wobbly pale green mound was brought out to me, the aroma of basil evident before I’d even tasted it. The bright herb punched through the cream and sweetness, made brighter still by lime zest. It was such a fun little dessert. Ever since then, I’d had it in my mind to make some herby panna cottas. It sat on my flavour combination list and was largely ignored as I chose to make new dishes that cropped up. Until one day, it just jumped out at me. I needed to make a herb panna cotta. Only I needed it to be savoury.

This makes enough for 6 or so panna cotta, depending on how big your mould/serving dishes are, which meant I got two goes at serving it for Lance and I. The first time I served it with pulled beef and cauliflower crackers and called it Coriander Panna Cotta. The second time I served it with seed crackers and salsa and called it Guacamole pannacotta. The base for the panna cotta is the usual cream, but rounded out by avocado and Greek Yoghurt, which makes it more acceptable, nutrition-wise as a dinner option than just cream. Both ingredients adding their own special silkiness and flavour profiles to the dish. The cream portion is infused with coriander and spring onions with just enough honey to take the bite out of the yoghurt’s tang.

I’ve included both cracker recipes below as well. The seed crackers come together particularly quickly. I made them as some friends stood around one afternoon and they were done and baked before the first glass of wine was finished. They were fairly impressed! The cauliflower ones are almost as easy, but with the added step of steaming and draining the vegetable first. If you were going to make them fresh for a dinner party, the vegetable cooking portion could be done a day ahead and refrigerated. The addition of linseeds also helps to soak up some of the cauli’s excess water and bind the crackers together.

Coriander Panna Cotta

500mL cream

1 bunch coriander

2 spring onions, white and tender green tips

1 tbsp honey

½ tsp pink peppercorns

½ tsp salt

½ cup greek yoghurt

2 ripe avocadoes

¼ cup water

2 tsps gelatin powder

Place 450mL cream in a small saucepan along with the coriander, spring onions, honey, salt and pink peppercorns. Gently heat until just below boiling, then take off heat, cover and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes. Strain into a clean saucepan. Place the remaining 50mL of cream in a small glass and sprinkle the gelatin powder, set aside to ‘bloom’ for 5 minutes. Reheat the infused cream to a simmer and then stir in the bloomed gelatin cream. Stir to combine and continue stirring until the gelatin dissolves, then take off the heat.

Using a blender, combine the avocadoes, yoghurt water until smooth. Blend in the cream and check for seasoning. Pour into moulds and refrigerate 24 hours or so until set.

Cauliflower Crackers

½ head cauliflower

1 tbsp linseeds/flaxseeds

1 egg

Cajun seasoning to taste (around 1/4 tsp ought to do it)

Cut the cauliflower into tiny rice-like pieces (alternatively, process to ‘rice’ in a food processor). Steam or microwave for a few minutes until tender, then set aside to cool. Place in muslin and squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

Preheat oven to 160C. Grease an oven tray.

Mix together the cauliflower, linseeds, egg and seasoning. Mix well to combine, then press firmly into the greased oven tray. Set aside for 10 minutes, then bake for 15 minutes, or until golden on top. Cool 5 minutes, then slice.

Quinoa and Seed Crackers

½ cup quinoa flakes

2 tbsp sunflower seeds

2 tbsp pumpkin seeds

2 tsp sesame seeds

1/8 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp coriander seeds

1 egg white

Preheat oven to 130C

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Create a well in the centre and add the egg white. Gently whisk the egg, then slowly start bringing in the dry ingredients until completely combined. Dump onto a piece of baking paper. Place another piece of baking paper on top and roll out with a rolling pin until very thin – around 2mm. Gently pull the top piece off and discard.

Bake for 7-10 minutes, or until the edges start to look golden. Watch carefully. Remove from the oven, slice into desired cracker size and gently flip over. Pop back in the oven for another 5-7 minutes, or until they’re golden on the other side too. Set aside to cool, then enjoy!

Skamp's Chocolate Christmas Crackers

At Christmas time, I tend to get pretty adventurous around dessert. Not sure why I make an intricate dessert – I guess because if not at Christmas, then when? Last year, I made Gingerbread terrariums which I realise now never made it on to the blog. Gingerbread cake bottom, lime cheesecake “snow”, tiny Piparkoogid (Christmas biscuit) houses and marzipan trees. Time consuming and fiddly to make, but nothing terribly revolutionary in the elements. This year…this year I was genuinely worried about my dessert turning out. Because this year I had gone to the Yelp Elite Event at the new State Building and watched Sue Lewis do a little presentation on tempering chocolate that demystified the whole thing and made it seem really simple. And then I stumbled upon an Adriano Zumbo recipe for Chocolate Christmas Crackers and with this both happening a few weeks before a Christmas party, it seemed like it was something I needed to attempt.  The basic idea is a chocolate cylinder, with chocolate ends designed to look like a Christmas cracker. It’s filled with chocolate mousse and a pop-rocks truffle as the “pop” of the cracker. Cute, right?

Cute but terrifying! I was so worried about actually working with the chocolate, I actually did a trial run. And I never do trial runs for things like this because I’m lazy! In re-reading over the original recipe with Lance, I discovered a few things, 1. The picture from the Adriano Zumbo recipe is inaccurate. I don’t think it’s just styling and camera angles, I think his dimensions of a 5cm x 10cm tube is way too fat for the pictured Christmas Cracker look. And 2, as Lance pointed out to me – they aren’t even real. If you look carefully, they are just “bridges” of chocolate with chocolate ends balanced up against them. The chocolate doesn’t curl around to make a cylinder, so it’s not even the real thing. Tricksy stylists! That scared me even more. But…it’s actually not that difficult – given you can get a few simple items. I had a fairly infuriating trip to Spotlight trying to find sheets and/or rolls of acetate – which is listed as a product they stock on their website. I was sent to various corners of Spotlight by various staff members. I had one try to sell me PVC table cloth material instead. Described as “readily available in craft stores” by every chocolate and cake making resource, it was so hard to get, that I didn’t. In the end, I found a thicker acetate sheet that was designed for quilting templates. It’s less flexible than you ideally want it to be for chocolate, so it was pretty hard to make the chocolate coating – but with no time to search for an alternative (and not trusting posting times this time of year), I had to make do. You can buy 10cm high cardboard tubing for making your own cardboard crackers at Riot Art and Craft (but not acetate). You can prep ahead by making the mold elements (roll, acetate rectangles, baking paper rectangles) way ahead of time.

 The rest I simplified somewhat to make it a bit easier on myself. Not to mention cheaper by removing the gianduja chocolate. Instead of making a truffle centre, I made a long ‘string’ of pop-rock chocolate to simulate the cardboard ‘popper’ in a real cracker. Like the original, it uses toasted rice bubbles to enhance the pop quality, and I added chocolate crumb from the Milk Bar cookbook for extra chocolate-y texture. Feel free to just use rice bubbles and pop rocks if you can’t be bothered with the crumb. The mousse I flavoured with Chambord to play with the berry flavour of the pop rocks I used, and because I was intending on adding freeze-dried raspberries - but I couldn’t find any so used freeze-dried strawberries instead. The tartness of the berries adding to the 'pop' sensation - Lance's idea and it worked brilliantly. I used white chocolate instead of dark for the coating; both so I could paint the outside in a Christmassy fashion, and to lighten up the dessert from a fairly heavy dark-chocolate mousse with dark chocolate truffle with dark chocolate coating. 

The chocolate coating is really the only hard part of this recipe, and it is heat/humidity sensitive - so I was extremely lucky to have a cooler day to temper the chocolate in. This would be easier to make for a Northern Christmas or Southern Christmas in July. They are so cool though, so it's worth giving a go. It does take a little time to do all the steps, but it can be done in stages ahead of time, and they’ll keep in the freezer for a few days – but any longer than that and the pop rocks will lose a little of their ‘pop’. The mousse makes more than you will need. Any extra can be spooned into pretty glasses/bowls and refrigerated a few hours until set.

Skamps' Chocolate Christmas Crackers

For the “poppers”

1 cup rice bubbles

1/2 cup “chocolate crumb” (100g plain flour, 100g white sugar, 65g cocoa powder (the best quality you can find), 1 tsp corn flour, 85g melted butter)
70 gm popping lollies, such as Pop Rocks
200g 70% dark chocolate (I used Lindt raspberry intense)
15g freeze dried raspberries, chopped

Chocolate Raspberry mousse

660mL whipping cream (1x 600mL carton, plus ¼ cup)
150mL whipping cream
8 egg yolks
100g white sugar
30mL shot Chambord
200g 48% dark chocolate, broken
100g 70% dark chocolate, broken

For the casing

500g white chocolate

Decorator pens (optional)

To start, make the ‘poppers’. To start making the ‘poppers’, you need to toast the rice bubbles and make the chocolate crumb, then set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 180C. Spread rice bubbles on a tray and bake for only 2-3 minutes until golden. Watch them, as they toast quickly. Reduce oven to 150C. In a mixer, blend together the flour, sugar, salt and cocoa powder. Add the melted butter and mix until it all comes together into a clumpy mess. Break the clumpy bits onto a lined baking tray, then place in the oven to cook for around 20 minutes. Half-way through, gently toss. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool and harden. Measure out 1 cup of the crumb (breaking up any very large pieces), and freeze the remainder for another use – such as ice cream topper!) When the rice bubbles and crumb are completely cool, mix together in a bowl.

Set a glass bowl over a pot with about 5cm of simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Add 2/3 of the chocolate and leave to melt, stirring here and there. Once it’s melted, remove from the heat and add the remaining 1/3 of the chocolate. Leave to sit for 1 minute, then stir through to completely melt and make smooth. Mix the pop rocks through the rice and crumb, then pour the melted now slightly cooled chocolate over the whole mess. Mix quickly to coat everything. You will hear a few of the pop rocks go off as they get wet then hit the air, but if you work quickly, the popping will be minimised as they’re coated. On a baking paper lined tray, use a spoon to create thin lines of ‘pop’ mix around 10cm long (the length of your tubes).  You want them to be around 1cm thick. Pop in the fridge to set hard.

Before you can make your mousse, make sure you have your molds ready. Cut out 12 rectangles of acetate, 10cm by 12.5cm. Roll into tubes, placing them inside cardboard tube (such as the inserts for paper towel rolls cut to 10cm tall). Cut out 12 rectangles of baking paper, roll into tubes and place inside the acetate. Place them standing upright on a piece of baking paper inside a tray and set aside.

Now you’re ready to make your mousse! Whip the 660mL measure of cream to soft peaks, set aside. Place the whisk attachment in your standmixer and place a bowl ready. Combine the 150mL cream, yolks, chambord and sugar in a small saucepan and whisk to combine. Place over low heat and keep whisking until it thickens, much like a lemon curd would – around 5-7 minutes. Scrape it into the standmixer bowl and leave it whisking on low until it cools to room temperature, around 10 minutes. While that whisks, add the 48% dark chocolate and leave to melt, stirring here and there. Once it’s melted, remove from the heat and add the 70% dark chocolate. Leave to sit for 1 minute, then stir through to completely melt and make smooth. Stir for 2-3 minutes to cool down to around 40C. Fold the chocolate through the whipped cream, then fold in cooled yolk mixture.

Gather your mousse, ‘pops’ and prepared mold tray. Spoon the mousse around 2/3 of the way into the molds. Holding the mold hard against the tray, gently slide a ‘pop’ into the centre of the mold. Tidy the top and/or top up with extra mousse if required. Cover with cling wrap and freeze for at least 4 hours until set.

When set hard, remove the cardboard and acetate, leaving the baking paper casings and popping back into the freezer until needed. Wash the acetate and dry thoroughly. Absolutely no water can remain. Temper the white chocolate by melting 2/3 of the chocolate over heat, then take off the heat and stir through the remaining 1/3. Continue stirring to cool down to where it is a little cooler than body temperature (dip a spoon in the melted chocolate, and place it on your lip. It should be a little cooler than your lip). Place it back over the heat for around 30 seconds, and check the temp again. It should now be a little warmer than body temperature and shiny. Working with one piece of acetate at a time, spread a thin layer (around 2mm) of melted chocolate with a palette knife, set aside until starting to set, 3 minutes. Wrap around a chocolate mousse cylinder, chocolate-side inward. Tape the acetate closed. Refrigerate until chocolate is well set, remove acetate and refrigerate until required.

Brush insides of 24 mini patty cases or the flower ice molds from IKEA with most of remaining chocolate, freeze until set, peel away the cases/pop out the molds and refrigerate chocolate cases until required. Brush underside of chocolate cases with a little more melted chocolate, attach to each end of chocolate-coated cylinders, decorate with edible decorator pens, refrigerate until required.