Æbleflæsk

Since we had some real Danish bread, we obviously had to make some real Danish meals.  Other than just eating it straight with butter, the most famous use of the stuff is Smørrebrød (lit: butterbread), which are basically just open sandwiches of... any kind of flavoursome stuff on bread. Tasty and awesome, but not exactly worth writing a post about, since it's essentially "Cut bread. Put stuff on bread. Put bread in face."

So I decided to make something very slightly more involved - a breakfast dish called "Æbleflæsk" (lit: applepork).

Fry a pan worth of bacon, cut an onion and an apple into slices and chunks respectively.  Remove the back to some paper towel, then fry the onion and apple in the rendered baconfat until they're both slightly mushy.  Add a little sugar (we used three not-all-that-flat teaspoons), a dash of cider vinegar (which was a bit of genius culinary improv from Steph, actually) and half a cup or so of water, lower the heat and let it thicken a bit.

Butter some rugbrød (or any bread you like, toasted if you prefer), and dump the mix from the saucepan  straight onto it, then top with the bacon.

Mmm. Makes one feel like plundering the English coastline.

Rugbrød

So, my parents have recently been baking their own bread - particularly danish rye bread, which is a very dense sourdough with amazing flavour that is sliced thinly because otherwise your colon just can't handle it.  Apart from the fact that it's delicious, this is basically Dwarf Bread. The relatively small loaf pictured here weighs 1300gr and has the structural integrity of a housebrick.

I won't go into details about the recipe (interested parties can find it here), but it involved mixing buttermilk, yeast, flour, water and salt, parking that in the fridge for a week to ferment, then mixing that in with rye flour, rye grains, linseed meal, beer, molasses and some other stuff. I think I overcooked it slightly - the crust is a little too dried out, because it was really hard to judge doneness as apparently it's supposed to be slightly sticky in the middle when it's done - it solidifies in the 24hr rest time it requires after baking.

The finished product.  Serious bread!  I think this compares quite nicely to the picture in the recipe link above - nailed it!

And a consumption shot.  This stuff is flavoursome enough to be eaten with nothing but butter - it tastes of grains and malt and seeds and awesomeness.  Note the butter thickness - the Danes call this "tand smør", or "tooth butter", as it's thick enough to leave toothmarks in when you bite.  This is apparently how it's supposed to be done. I figure eating bread that's an order of magnitude more wholegrain than wholegrain qualifies you for a few health credits that can be spent towards buttery goodness.

(note also the silly soldier mug - hooray for hand-me-down stuff!)

Chicken and green stuff casserole

This is what I like to call "Pretend health food". You start with a bunch of super healthy ingredients - in this case chicken breasts, peas, broccoli and green beans - and then you entomb them in deliciousness.

Start by throwing the three different kinds of green stuff into the bottom of something ovenable and casserolific.  The beans and peas can come straight out of the freezer, and follow up with the roughly chunked broccoli.  Then cut some chicken, onion and garlic, and grate as much cheese as your arteries permit.  Brown the surface of the chicken in a super hot pan for just a minute or two, then toss the chunks straight onto the green stuff.

Lower the heat, fry the onion and garlic a bit, then add some extra oil and a couple tablespoons of flour.  There should be roughly equal amounts of fat and flour for this.  Yes, it looks horribly unhealthy, but trust me.  Then lower the heat again and add a cup or so of milk, a cup or so of chicken stock and a decent pour of white wine. Start with something other than the milk so curdling isn't a problem and add slowly at first - pour, stir it in, pour again, etc.  Should take a minute or two to get everything in there.  Then add half the cheese and some herbs (I went with sage and a little thyme) and simmer it until everything's smooth. It should have thickened up quite a bit from the starch and cheese.  It should be a little thicker and taste a little stronger than what you want the final result to be - water is going to come out of the veg during cooking.

Pour roughly over the casserole and smear to coat.  Follow with the other half of the cheese and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.  Throw it all in the oven for half an hour.

Eat.

Get more.

Eat.

Hey, it's lean chicken breasts and no less than three (3!) different kinds of green stuff. What could be healthier?

Macadamia pesto chicken pasta

Arise, long-silent blog of old, to walk again amongst the kingdom of man!

So, Steph and I haven't really made much in the way of novel foodstuffs in the last little while, being quite content to cook things already found within the archives of this place, but I thought I should post a few things that were somewhat more adventurous.  To start: Macadamia pesto!

Thanks to our herbaceous planting session a month or so ago, we're now suffering from a pleasurable condition known informally as "all of the basil". Despite not having any pine nuts or a blender, I decided to attempt to remedy this through pesto.

I very-finely-chopped two metric tons of basil, a good few handfulls of raw macadamias and a clove of garlic.  This all took a while, but would be so much quicker with the correct equipment. To this I added a handful of good quality parmesan cheese (the label should say "parmegiano reggiano"!) and a few good lugs of good olive oil.

I browned some chicken, mixed the pesto with it after taking it off the heat, and cooked some fettucine while all this was happening.  Top with a few whole maccas and some cherry tomatoes, and consume!

Beef Medallions with haloumi and prosciutto

Time for some nice, tasty but still reasonably posh comfort food.

 

These are easy as anything to make. Just buy some nice beef steaks, put a couple of pieces of spinach and haloumi on top and wrap it in prosciutto. Then bake it in the oven for 15 minutes at 180 degrees for a lovely medium rare. Take it out, let it sit for a few minutes, and serve with your choice of accompaniments. We chose corn and garlic bread. St back and relax!

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Baked Salmon Toast

If you're looking for something to go with your comically oversized glass of $2 wine, look no further! Salmon on toast is the way to go.

Start with a good sized salmon steak and a piece of foil. Season with what you have on hand - in this case some lime juice, chilli flakes and some lemon, herb and garlic seasoning. Use heaps of each as it's baking and will lose flavour otherwise.

Wrap it up good and tight, and pop it in a preheated oven at 180 for 45 minutes. In the meantime, toast half a baguette and get some lettuce ready. Spread some cream cheese on the bread prior to putting the lettuce on it.

Then, put the salmon on top of the lettuce and enjoy as an open topped sandwich! Tasty with a good white wine. Try to pretend that you're on a windswept beach tanning and enjoying a samba. I don't know why, but it really amps up the flavour for me.

Growing Herbs

OK, so, this isn't strictly a Stuff We Cooked post, it's a Stuff We Intend To Cook When It's Grown Up post.  I figured it was food-related, and thus close enough.

Steph and I are irritated by the portion sizes of fresh herbs bought at the supermarket.  Supermarket portions for things like meat are fine - you just make twice as much as you need and get some lunches.  But with a bundle of dill, chives or rosemary, you'd have to make an order of magnitude more food than you need just to use up the bunch. And that's silly.  Our quest for customisable herb portions led us to the somewhat archaic idea of end-user agriculture.  Subsistence farming is totally where it's at!

Step one: Things in which you can put the things that will turn into things you eat.  (I am really down with the farming lingo! Splice the plough furrows! Make fast the combine harvester!)

Step two: I'm told (by my mother, who has considerably more Not Killing Things That Live In Dirt experience than me) that soil coming out the bottom of pots when you water them is a problem, and she provided us with this fibrous matting stuff designed to line the bottom of pots.  The stuff was cut, stabbed at regular intervals and then placed at the bottom of the dirt receptacles.

Step three: Dirt.  This is "Seed raising mix", which runs about $11 for 25 litres. Experts in the domain say it's good for raising seeds. We used about half of it for our two pots, retaining the rest for when the dirt gets too... dirty or something.  I dunno how that works.

 Step four: Distribute seeds according to instructions on pack. The different plants have different recommended planting depths, from 5mm to 12cm, so that's probably important. Oh, yes, I should mention: You will need packs of seeds.  Apparently this does not work very well without them.  I am not entirely sure what they do, but they are clearly important. We went with coriander, chives, basil, sage, dill and spinach.  We already have a jalapeno chilli plant and a small oregano thanks to my mother, so we think that this should cover most of our herbquirements. Yeah, the spinach isn't really a herb, but we needed a sixth, and baby spinach leaves are delicious.

 Here is my finger (safely ensconced in a latex rubber glove, because dirt is dirty) prodding at some dirt:

And here is Steph and my sophisticated planning of plantage: "I dunno, five maybe.  And put two in each hole".

Water the whole thing thoroughly (until it's dripping out the base!) and you're done.  I water these every morning, it probably takes about half a litre of water a day to keep these two pots looking slightly damp but not waterlogged.  If you miss a day it's no big deal: the soil shouldn't dry out for a few days.

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Now, here's what it all looks like two weeks later:

We made living things!  From dirt! AHAHAHAHAH!!!!

That's chives foreground on the left, basil centre left, and spinach background on the left.  Coriander is foreground on the right, the bare ground on the right houses slow-growing sage, and the right background has dill.

I shall update this post weekly with growth progress until these plants are rendered consumptible!

Sausage Rolls

Today's cooking masterclass involves the ancient art of Sausage Rolls. 

For the one's we're making here, we made one batch with chicken filling (courtesy of a couple of chicken breasts leftover from previous night's dinner) and one with beef mince. You can use whatever you want to make the filling, and every combination gives a new and exciting taste to this simple classic. To make the filling, I blendered the meat (obviously not the mince since it already had been) and mixed it with a cup of breadcrumbs, some random herbs and spices, half an onion and an egg. Mix them all together in a bowl till they're sticky.

Defrost your puff pastry and cut it into rectangles. Put the filling in it lengthways and then roll them up.

Using a brush, coat the outside of the pastry with either milk or oil or melted butter. Place them on a tray with baking paper on it. Pop them in the oven at 200 for about 45 minutes (less if you're using precooked meat). Take them out, serve with your favourite sauces, and you're done!

Roast Lamb and Gravy Rolls

So what should you do if you're feeling lazy and want something tasty and filling for dinner? My recommendation? Roast lamb and gravy rolls. Easy, simple, and awesomely filling.

First just buy some lamb steaks and fry them up. You want them rare->medium-rare as otherwise lamb is completely wasted. Make sure to season them with rosemary and thyme.

Organise your bread rolls (the crustier the better) and some cheese if like me you can't go one meal without some.

You could make your own gravy, but we're aiming for lazy awesomeness so crack open the Gravox. 

Put the lamb (and cheese) on the rolls. Slather everything with tasty, thick gravy. Devour. Have a second roll afterwards to mop up the leftover gravy. Pass out on the couch in a warm haze of meat and deliciousness.

Repeat as necessary.

Chicken Nachos

We're big fans of Mexican food. Of course by Mexican food I mean the kind you get from Old El Paso boxes that have little or no connection to Mexico past some random Espanol on the box. We do, however, make our own versions of the classics, which we present to you tonight.

Start with a lump of chicken. Some people with better habits than me like to either get fresh meat or at least defrost it, but fuck them, partially defrosting it in the microwave and then chopping it up is just as good. If you disagree, well, just go try it your way and see how much I care. 

If you've followed my advice, you'll find it's easier to slice it into steaks and then chop it up. The more you know.

Cook the chicken until it's done all the way through. Whilst this is happening...

Prepare your corn chips and make some guacamole by mixing avocado, lime juice and pepper. Easy as anything and you'll think you're south of the border. The USA/Mexico border, not the NSW/Victoria one. Just in case you were confused.

We decided to add refried beans from a can this time, not cat food. Please note the difference, since they look identical and if you were just looking at the photos you might be in for a nasty surprise.

Add the chicken and some hot salsa to the chips, stirring liberally. Add some cheese to the mix.

Next, add as much cheese as you can find over the top. Anyone who doesn't like cheese in abundance should give up now. On life, I mean. Seriously, cheese is awesome.

See! This is the level of cheesiness you should be going for. 

Bake it in the oven until it's all melty, or until you can't wait anymore. We left ours for 30 minutes, but that's because we're forgetful and also drinking while cooking.

Pull your concoction out, and serve it up in your normal style.

Serve with the guacamole and some sour cream, and if you have any taste add some chilli. As much as you can handle. Serve and devour immediately!