Recipe: Imam bayildi (Stuffed Eggplants)

Harvest time!

I had been planning on making eggplant moussaka, but discovered upon arriving home that I didn't actually have a recipe at hand. No matter - stephanie offered this recipe:

3 eggplants, halved lengthwise
1 large onion, finely sliced
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped (I used a can, rather than fresh)
1 bay leaf
pinch of ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley
salt
freshly ground black pepper
juice of 1 large lemon

Scoop out eggplant flesh, then chop and lightly salt and set aside. Lightly salt eggplant shells and leave upside down for 30mins. Rinse and dry shells.
Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Cook onion slowly in 2 tbsp of oil. Add garlic and saute for 1 min, then add tomato, bay leaf, cinnamon, parsley and cook for another 5 mins. Tip into bowl. Rinse and dry eggplant flesh. Heat 3 tbsp oil and saute eggplant, then mix.
Pile filling into eggplant shells and brush with a little oil. Pack shells into an oiled baking or gratin dish. Pour in enough water mixed with lemon juice and remaining oil to barely cover eggplant. Bake for 30-45 mins until soft. Allow to cool and serve at room temperature or cold.

I halved the recipe, since I was only cooking for two.

First up: Let's start with the fresh harvest from the garden:
The eggplants were a bit seedy, I guess I had left them to grow for a bit too long. Cutting the flesh out and cubing it was quite easy. The silverbeet is my parsley substitute.

So here we have the filled eggplant shells heading into the oven. Already they look quite delicious!


40 minutes later, I couldn't wait for them to cool to room temperature, so I ate them after 5 minutes resting. In the introduction, Stephanie says: "Folklore claims that a Turkish priest, the imam, fainted with pleasure on being served this dish by his wife."

I can see why: such simple ingredients, but it takes on an added dimension with the ordinarily plain eggplant melding everything together and making it oh so moreish!
There were no leftovers.

Recipe: Braised Duck with Orange and Pearl Barley

I bought a few months* ago some duck fillets from Pepe’s ducks. After nearly fainting at the price ($26 for 4 fillets) I tried roasting a pair, and was very disappointed at the result, not having managed to ‘burn off’ the fat underneath the skin. The remaining two were then stored in the freezer for another day.

Then I saw this recipe in the weekend paper:

Braised Duck with Orange and Pearl Barley (Sun Herald "Sunday Life" Magazine, Karen Martini 17/3/2010)
10 blood plums, split and pitted
1 tbsp raw sugar
200ml verjuice
400g peeled and cooked chestnuts (vacuum-sealed)
3 star anise
2 oranges, zested and juiced
sea salt and cracked black pepper
130g fine pearl barley
50mL extra virgin olive oil
6 duck marylands
2 brown onions, finely sliced
1 celery heart, finely sliced
5 sprigs thyme
1 tsp ground allspice
2 bay leaves
100mL white wine
1 1/2 litres chicken stock
Preheat oven to 165C fanforced (185C conventional). Toss plums in raw sugar and place on a baking tray with verjuice, chestnuts, star anise and orange zest. Season with slat and pepper and roast in the oven for 25 minutes. Boil pearl barley in lots of water for 10minutes, then drain and set aside. Heat oil in a large pan over a high heat. Brown duck for 4-5 minutes, season well, then remove from pan. Add onion, celery, garlic, thyme, allspice and bay leaves to pan and cook over medium heat for 10minutes. Return duck to pan, and add wine, stock and orange juice. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Add barley and simmer for 20 minutes or until barley is tender. Spoon plums and chestnuts over duck and simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve on a platter.

And I thought it would be a good use of the remaining duck fillets.

It didn’t begin well.

I didn’t make it to my favourite grocer on time, had to make do with a supermarket, so I was missing blood plums and chestnuts. I substituted purple skinned plums, and a ‘low cholesterol’ nut mix of walnuts, cashews, almonds, pepitas and sunflower seeds. I didn't have allspice, so some freshly ground cinnamon was used instead.

I pan fried the duck fillets on high heat for the 4-5 minutes, managed to fill the kitchen full of smoke, and cover the stove with bits of splattered fat. I had to evacuate the pan to outside to cool off, wipe down the stove, and then in order to distract the smoke alarm and the mozzies: turn off the light, open the screen door, and run around like a madman fanning the smoke with a giant newspaper.

Okay, lets keep going. I drained the exuded fat from the pan, added the other ingredients (substituting beer for wine, so that I would waste less alcohol), and tried to simmer the pot over a low heat.

The burner decided that it would join the fun, and switched itself to ‘high’, even though I had it on low.

A burnt caramel smell later, I didn’t want to start again, so I mistakenly scrapped up all the bits that had stuck to the pan, added more stock and beer, and kept going.

And the burner did it again. Add more stock and beer, wait 5 mins, then add the pearl barley. After the 20 mins of cooking, I added the roasted plums.

And the result was…. Interesting. It was such a shame I burnt the sauce, because this would’ve been a really nice dish otherwise. The duck tasted very gamey, almost liver-like in flavour. Unfortunately it was a bit tough – either because of its extended sojourn in the freezer, the random high heat input from the burner, or I had just cooked it for too long.
The pearl barley/sauce mixture was – burnt. It had some nice elements to it, but I couldn’t rescue the sauce despite much internet research. I think that the chestnuts, if I had used them, would’ve added a creamy texture to the dish. My favourite bits were the duck and the plum, so I saved those for the leftovers, and tossed the rest. I think that this would’ve gone quite well with some English spinach.

* it may have been ‘years’ ago.

Recipe: Low GI Congee (Jook)

With a Chinese background, I'm always craving congee ('jook'). It's the dish most Chinese turn to when they're feeling under the weather. It's fed to babies when they first get introduced to solids. It is the ultimate comfort food.

It is, essentially rice that has been cooked down to a 'soupy' consistency.

Unfortunately, since it is made with white long grain rice, it has a high GI, and no sooner have you eaten it, then within 2 hours you get hungry again.

I have been experimenting with ways to make a low GI version: comfort food that keeps you fuller for longer.

Various themes on this work, it depends on how far you are willing to depart from the white soupy original. Servings are for 5-6 people, I eat this for breakfast.

Make up 1 1/2 cups using part or all of the following:
quinoa
rolled oats
basmati rice
pearl barely

3-4 dried shittake chinese mushrooms
stock cube (optional, for flavour. Sorry - my stock-making skills are not up to scratch).

Enough water to cover this 3 times. I have a giant thermos pot which I cook this congee in overnight. It's like a slow cooker pot, but you don't need to connect it to power.

My favourite combination is
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 basmati rice
1/2 pearl barley
tablespoon of quinoa.

It looks pretty authentic, doesn't it?

I have tried making versions with more quinoa, but unfortunately it tends to turn the congee yellow, and it tastes very 'beany'.

Oats and pearl barley work quite well as well. The oats give you a very gelatinous texture, the rice loosens it up, and the pearl barley adds texture and makes you feel wholesome whilst eating it.

Once the mix is cooked up, I pull out the mushrooms, slice them up, and then add them back in again.

Of course my downfall with this dish is eating it with traditional accompaniments - like yao jar guai (deep fried breadsticks) for dipping, and salty egg.

Recipe: Shish Kebab Marinade

Have you ever grated an onion?

I spotted this recipe in the weekend paper, had a craving, so I tried to make it.

Beef Shish Kebabs (Sun Herald, 17/1/2010, Karen Martini)
Serves 4-6 (8 kebabs)

2 brown onions, grated in a bowl with 2tbsp salt on top. Leave for 10 minutes, then strain and discard the solids.
1 tsp extra salt
4 cloves garlic
4 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp caraway seeds (I substituted Nigella seeds)
Pound the above ingredients in a mortar and pestle, then add
2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
2 tsp harissa
Juice of 2 lemons
Onion 'juice'
1/2 bunch flat leafed parsley
1 bunch coriander (it's fine without it)
Then marinate the following for 4-6 hours:
900g scotch fillet, diced (I used whole steak)
Skewer and chargrill the kebabs (steak) over high heat for 3 minutes on each side until tender & just cooked.
Serve with plain yoghurt, drizzled with a little olive oil & freshly baked flatbread.

I thought that I could get away with dicing the onion, but you don't get the amount of onion 'juice' that you need. I then tried to retro-grate the onion by using my microplane and its attachment for grating very small things, but really: just grate the darn onion from the start.

I forgot to buy harissa, so substituted Indonesian chilli sauce (Brand: Capibu Jari Jempol Sambal Asli), which worked quite well. The smoked paprika added the smoky flavour, without needing to char the meat.

I found that adding the paprika after the lemon and onion juice worked better for me; if I I squashed it using the mortar and pestle, the paprika turned paste-like and didn't meld well with the marinade

You can marinate this overnight with beef, in accordance with the instructions, or you can spike them meat with a fork and marinate it in the time it takes to warm up the bbq. The flavour isn't as intense as an overnight marinade, but if you have some of this stuff lying around, it is quite acceptable.

Delicious.

Also - (attempt no. 3) don't try to take a shortcut by not straining the onion is also a mistake. I ended up with a kind of paste that the meat didn't really absorb as a flavour.

Pancakes!

I am sure that I have blogged about my pancake shennanigans before...

My tried and true recipie for pancakes has been "the jaime oliver one, ripped out of the spam email a few years ago that purported to be the proofs for his new book".

Essentially, it was: separate the egg, beat the egg white till fluffy, fold it back into the mix.

I have tried, several times to get the non-egg separation version working (ala Stephanie Alexander), but it never worked for me. I suspect it may be because, not being an egg person, the eggs I have on hand probably were never very fresh, and the result was rock hard and inedible.

Recently, I tried the Joy of Cooking Version. This book, to Americans, is like The Cook's Companion is for Australia. This book is bizarre: it tells you how to prepare wild game such as opossum, raccoon, beaver and muskrat, to name a few.

Onwards! No need to separate the egg, and the ingredient here was: double acting baking powder. I have no idea what that is, but I put in the same quantity of bicarbinate of soda, left it overnight to prove, and cooked it up the next morning.

Here is the result:

There are a lot more bubbles appearing in the mixture than I am used to, but the result indeed was delicious!

the top 10 influential cooking books in australia

Good living had an article on "the top 10 influential cooking books in australia" , and I have three of them. This is my odometerage ...

The Cook's Companion , by Stephanie Alexander.

Probably my first proper recipe book purchase, about a year after it was first published I have had a few recipies not quite work out of this one. E.g. pancakes, and a friend didn't have much luck with the peach pie. However, I have had some success and 'favourites', crop out of this book, like pesto, bbq chicken wings and lamb roast marinade (the lamb roast itself was terribly undercooked according to the weight/time/heat ratio that she offers).

Thai Food , by David Thompson I bought this for myself a few years ago, coveting the pretty pink silk cover, and the fact that it came with TWO inbuilt ribbon bookmarks, not just one. I tried to read this cover to cover, and only made it through the introduction and lengthy descriptions in the first half of the book. However, after having owned this one for a year, and not really having cooked from it, I made the resolution not to buy any more cookbooks. Generally I use this one more as a reference, to look up the composition of dishes that I have enjoyed at thai restaurants. E.g, "Nam dtok", after I sampled this at the Jindabyne thai restaurant. Dishes that I have tried to cook from this with varying degrees of success have been: tom yum (much better if you don't substitute everything out of it), vietnamese dipping sauce, and green papaya salad.

The Complete Asian Cookbook , by Charmaine Solomon. A friend of mine was given a copy of this almost ten years ago, and I have coveted it ever since. I read it cover to cover whilst sitting in her couch! I later received it as a gift one Christmas. I use this as a handy reference for some Asian ingredients, looking up undecipherable ingredients that I have found on the back of some packets. I haven't actually cooked a dish from it. A handy tool is the index in the back which has lists of alternative names for ingredients. My one gripe is that it needs more illustrations. Having accidently bought warrigal greens once, it took a while to identify it from this book.

Steamed Bonito

I love making up a Chinese steamed fish. Some ginger, spring onions, dried shittake mushrooms, red dates and silken soft tofu. Fish of choice is usually barramundi or silver bream. Yummo. I get cravings.
Yesterday,I gave Bonito a go. I've eaten this as sashimi, and I know it's the main ingredient in dashi or japanese stock.
Its texture was very dense, almost like tuna. Very filling too - we could barely finish half a medium size fish. Today, when I panfried the leftovers I worked out that texture and density- wise, it's much more like chicken!
ps - I find out later that Bonito is actually a type of tuna!

Mmm.. duck

We tried the duck with 'ginger & star anise' pastabilities pasta on Sunday night.

I prepared as suggested on the packet, with a bit of soy sauce flavoured "asian greens" (spinach). It was quite nice, although the presentation was terrible. (I don't know how you could do it if needed at at dinner party). The inside tasted a bit like those little roast chicken livers you get from the chinese bbq duck places. (Also Suan-i-san thai place on Pitt St in Sydney).

I also tried to pan fry a few, to get a 'healthy version' of the ones they do at the markets for samples. Not much luck… I think you really need to deep fry them. I ended up with normal looking pasta, with some uneven brown dried bits where it had been in contact with the pan.

New England Scallop Chowder

L had bought a bunch of scallops, and had a craving for scallops "with cream". The directive was for cream with mushrooms, and my reaction was 'ew'. So I attempted New England clam chowder - with scallops instead of clams. I think it turned out quite well.

This is what I did, based upon elsa peterson-schepelern's "Soups" book.

250g frozen scallops
water to suit (125ml fish stock - I used beef stock powder)
Dried chinese shrimp
1/3 can of spam (preferrably 500g smoked pancetta or bacon!)
3 small onions, diced
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 carrot chopped
2 bay leaves
a few small potatoes, cubed
1 patty butter (10g?)
1 tablespoon flour
250mL warm milk
parsley bunch, coarsely chopped to serve.

Put scallops in large pot, add bay leaves, carrot, celery, potatoes, pepper, shrimp. Add water/stock to suit. 1.5L or so. Simmer for 10 minutes (when the potatoes are cooked).

Meanwhile fry up the cubed spam until 'crunchy' , or the sides have seared.

Instead of adding cream, I made up a roux, so this could be reheated later without separating.

1 tablespoon of flour, and butter, melt together. Add warm milk. Stir constantly to prevent it clumping. When it goes 'thick', add the roux to the soup.

Serve with chopped parsley and spam/pancetta/bacon on top. Garlic rubbed toast on the side.

One sauce, many dishes

Lots of chilli based cooking from me this week. very easy to do so: just bought a small bag of the birds eye chillies (scuds), and put them into everything.

Tried Volum Tom Yum soup in a can. Awful. Flat. My 'substitute everything for every other ingredient' version tasted better.

What I'm really loving is the salad sauce that you pound up in a mortar and pestle. Clove of garlic, pinch of salt, one chilli, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar. It tastes different depending what you add it to. Yum!

I made a recreate-a-dish-from-the-plane vermicilli noodle and cucumber salad (accidently forgot the cherry tomato); And I also added the sauce to a fried rice that made it tasty and spicy, and ever so moreish.

Tonight I used the chillies, and rubbed them on some t-bone steaks before cooking. Mmm.

Pizza Night

Made pizza from scratch, on one of the hotter days we've had this year. I think it was 33 degrees during the day.
The dough refused to rise (I was using Stephanie Alexander proportions; not Donna Hay ones, which I am used to), The oven was either too cold or smoking and threatening to set off the smoke alarm. They were very tasty pizzas though. Next tme, I think I'll wait for winter to satisfy the homemade pizza craving.