I Have a Complaint!!

That’s right Mrs Feather! I HAVE A COMPLAINT – about that mutton you sold me.  I purchased some of your Moorlands Biodynamic Texel Cross Mutton. Mutton is supposed to be tough; tough and strong! So I planned a curry for my mutton due to the fact curry is known for tenderising the most stubborn of meats. 

Thanks to my new cookbook by Pushpesh Pant (I may have bought it just because of the author’s name…) I decided to cook Mutton Kolhapuri.  Cook for several hours it says.  I warned Himself and the Wee Girl that dinner might be late. I started the recipe in the morning, marinating the mutton and making the masala paste.  I then race home to get it cooking and then what happens? After browning the mutton, adding the masala paste and water then cooking for a mere hour the mutton was soft and unctuous! Falling apart! I then stirred through some fried potato cubes and fresh coriander. What game are you playing at Mrs Feather? Passing off some of your delectable meat as something which is much maligned and spurned by the Aussie cook, is way uncool.  Are you sure it wasn’t Hogget?

Here’s some I prepared earlier:

We had it with lacha paratha, pickle and sweet lassi (recipe also thanks to Mr Pant). I would love to say the mutton had us panting with pleasure and perhaps it did.

I’ve also added the recipe to my All New! Recipe section which I expect you to go to, print out and then race down the factory, grab some of your mutton and cook up this wonderful dish too.

Yours in muttonation,

FBJ

Enjoying the Ugly Bits

Himself has been talking food (specifically potatoes) to his colleagues it would appear.  He sent an email to me asking me to cook aligot a few weeks ago.  For those of you not in the know, aligot is essentially French for garlicky cheesy mashed potato (what’s not to love about that?) Only the French would give it a fancy name though…  I had my first attempt a couple of weeks ago – I found a recipe on the SBS website but the cheese was some uber-rare French farmhouse cheese.  Apparently to make aligot with any other cheese is unthinkable to that particular French chef.  So of course we couldn’t find the cheese.  Himself scoured the CBD for a substitute and finally came home with some super-stinky Munster cheese.  I followed the recipe but it was waaaay to strong (even after halving the cheese).  Upon further discussion between Himself and Colleague a recipe was forthcoming from Colleague’s French wife for Beef Daube and Aligot.

So I added an urgent extra 1kg of chuck steak to my F&B order (lucky they love me, it was my second ‘urgent’ addition for the week).  I already had some Flying Pig Bacon off-cuts on my order and as the Boeuf en Daube* had pancetta in the recipe I thought this would be an excellent substitute.

The Flying Pig Maple and Sea Salt Cured Bacon is an English style, unsmoked bacon sold exclusively by Feather and Bone.  I’ve been meaning to try it, but is it possible to enjoy unsmoked bacon I wondered?  Surely not‽**

So I prepped the dish (brown beef which has been marinated in wine, stock and spices and remove from pan, add mirepoix and when soft add back in beef and reduced wine mixture then cook for several hours in a low oven).  Some of the interesting parts of the dish were the quatre épices, which is a mixture of nutmeg, pepper, ginger and cloves; very medieval… I think next time I’ll substitute the nutmeg for mace to really up the ante.  The recipe also called for dried orange peel which I found in the friendly local Asian store.

Once this was in the oven simmering I had to prepare all the additions (bacon, eshallots & mushrooms).  I made the mistake, after frying up the bacony ‘ugly bits only a mother (or FBJ) would love’, of sampling a few pieces 'just to make sure it was okay…’

WOW!! SO DELICIOUS!! Himself wanted to take his piece off to a private place so he could have a quiet moment with it I think…  He was in raptures and as he should have been – what a revelation! How can unsmoked bacon be so fine??? Actually, it's lucky any of it made it into the Daube as I had a very hard time keeping my fingers out of it. 

I suspect as an especial treat this bacon will be purchased.  It’s expensive, granted, but there’s a good reason for that and besides, I think it’s the kind of bacon you cook and savour slowly in the privacy of your own home***, akin to an all out chocolate binge for a sweet tooth I’d say.  I’ll continue to buy my free-range smoky bacon for my cheap and cheerful dishes, but this was in a whole other league.

The aligot recipe included used good old gruyere cheese which was much easier to find.  I think a nice raclette cheese would also work well here.

So once the Daube was cooked I added all the additions and served with the aligot.  I actually think I may have overdone it on with orange peel as it was quite hard to decided how much dried peel = 1 orange worth, but I don’t think it detrimentally affected the flavour of the dish.  I will also admit to not marinating the beef beforehand, so next time I will do that and add less orange too, just to see if there really is any difference.  You definitely should use chuck or shin or maybe oxtail for this dish, the sinew and fat once rendered down gave it a really unctuous texture.  Probably throwing a couple of marrow bones in for good measure would also add to the experience.

*Let’s really French it up!

**For those of you wondering, it’s an interrobang…

***Cut to Ben Stiller Dodge-Ball Pizza scene

Nix to the Niçoise – A Meat Free Post

As promised I made the Niçoise salad last night.  Truly it was delicious; steamed baby potatoes and beans, soft poached eggs, excellent quality tinned tuna in olive oil, tomatoes and cos lettuce with a dressing of red wine vinegar, olive oil and Dijon mustard.  What about the olives and anchovies I hear you ask? Well, Himself does not like either, so I put olives on mine and the Wee Girl’s after serving, and the Wee Girl only really likes anchovies on pizza, so I added finely diced anchovies to mine at the very end.

It was a very delicious salad.  Himself ate it happily; enthusiastically crunching the lettuce and sniffing up the potatoes.  I was thoroughly enjoying it too.  But then I glanced over at the Wee Girl and that’s where the enthusiasm hit a bit of a brick wall.  She’s very well trained, and will eat what’s put in front of her but it doesn’t mean she has to like it.  She was eating the lettuce with all the enthusiasm of the brains served in the afore mentioned post The Brains of the Outfit (with the exception of no dry heaving this time) probably for the best.

“Not a fan of lettuce for dinner darling?” “No.” With a look of stoic heroism she finished most - with the exception of some of the lettuce and then we cleaned up. 

After about half an hour… “I’m hungry” says Himself and dashes into the kitchen to grab a biscuit. “Me too” I admit “So am I!!” (This was from the other room where the Wee Girl was).  Damn still hungry!!  After wondering around the kitchen going through the cupboards about 17 times, and seeing the same non-inspiring items for about the same amount of times, I concluded there was nothing really to be had.  Occasionally from the other room “That was a nice starter Mum, when’s the main?” Cheeky girl…

So I suggested a glass of milk and slice of white bread and butter, which was met with A Look (this is what I used to offer the Wee Girl when, as a very wee girl she’d say ‘I don’t like this’ – for some reason she now eats whatever’s put in front of her) it’s now the going joke when a visitor is brave enough to turn their nose up at a perfectly good meal I’ve cooked. 

So a warning to potential guests, when you eat at our house you get two choices – take it, or leave it…

Anyhoo, the Wee Girl finally caved and had a large glass of milk when she realised that salad or no, dinner was done for the night.  I went to bed a bit hungry and not sure what Himself did to get himself through this time of famine.  But the general consensus was:

Ixnay to the Aladsay!

Mincing About

My chest freezer is running low and I still have a week to go until my next F&B visit (never fear – my order went in today).  Luckily we’re not at all adverse to eating less meat when the well is running dry.  I’d rather eat ethically raised meat a lot less often than intensively raised meat always.  Meat is a privilege my friends, not a right (step away from the soapbox FBJ!)

So on taking stock I realised there was only mince* left (oh, and maybe some giant mud crabs from when the Wee Girl was in Darwin last and went out crabbing with her grandfather).  So I sat there wondering what new and exciting dishes I could do with mince as I didn’t feel like spag bol or all those other standard mincey type dishes.  Then, a brain wave! What about Mapo Tofu‽‽ I love Mapo Tofu but needed a great recipe.  So many thanks to Not Quite Nigella who supplied the translated Iron Chef Mapo Tofu recipe on her blog.  It was delicious and incredibly simple.  In fact the dish cost $15 for six serves (excluding the meat which I already had) so three serves for dinner and three serves for our lunch boxes.  There was a bit of fiddling at the start, you buy normal (not silken) tofu and gently simmer it for 8 – 10 minutes in a saucepan.  Once it was drained it sat flaccidly in the bottom of the colander like a sulking milky jellyfish, quietly waiting to be added back to the dish as the star of the show.  All of the other ingredients are mixed together in various groups then the whole lot is quickly cooked in the trusty wok.  I won’t go through the whole thing, just pop over to NQN and check out her recipe plus beautiful pictures.  I did however deviate slightly – I added a handful of rehydrated shitake mushrooms to the dish, not entirely traditional, but entirely fabulous.  I also doubled the recipe to ensure there was enough for lunch.

Speaking of beautiful pictures, I have high hopes of soon including pictures in my blogs.  I beggared myself to purchase a lovely Canon Eos for Himself for his birthday so with any luck he’ll turn into some kind of amazing food photographer and I can reach the dizzying heights of more than six followers too…  Currently the camera’s been sitting lonesome like beside the lounge waiting for the Olympics to finish and Himself to have more in his life aside from watching every moment of the sporting action he can possibly fit in to each evening.  But still, I’m eager for good photographic things to come.

Actually, talking about costs and counting down to next pay day, I needed to do an el cheapo week this week.  Including the tofu dish I’ve planned four dishes (including lunch for three of those days) for $55.  That’s right people - $2.60 per person per meal for seven meals (four lunches and three dinners).  Okay so don’t think that’s how much it really costs, I didn’t have to factor in pantry/freezer items but essentially we’re going with two vegetable only dishes (not vegetarian dishes thankyouverymuch!) one meat dish (the divine Mapo) and one dish with tinned tuna (Salad Niçoise).  I planned the salad for Thursday night so I can do a Friday (pay day hooray!) lunch order.  Himself eats out on Thursday lunch but he just carries his lunch over until Friday - it’s a win-win.  Also on the menu is cream of tomato soup (I’m not precious I used tinned tomatoes, not fresh, as I hate peeling tomatoes to be honest) and the family favourite, eggplant pasta from Jamie’s Dinners cookbook…

I’m really counting down to lunch time I have to say. Bring on round two of the Mapo Tofu…

*I love mentioning mince; Himself will mince around the house for about 5 minutes after the word is mentioned… every time… I try to mention it often.