North Indian Lamb Curry

Since we were going to be out this evening, it was time to pull out the slow cooker. I started with some lamb chops - they were the closest to an appropriate cut of meat for the slow cooker that the supermarket had. In any case, they turned out ok. I diced up the meat and an onion and browned them. Then I cut up a couple of capsicums (one red one green, because I like having colourful food) and put them in the slow cooker.

Next I added a bunch of spices: two green chillis (chopped up), a lot of garlic and ginger (blended into a paste), two black cardamom pods and two green ones, a bay leaf, some garam masala, some tumeric and some salt. I was also supposed to put in coriander powder but I didn't have any. I did have some coriander seeds, but not a spice grinder of any kind, so I put them in the blender thingy. It didn't really work that well, to be honest, but at least they weren't whole seeds anymore. I crushed them a bit with the flat of a knife to further break them up and then put them in too. Then I put the meat and onion on top, and then poured four tomatoes worth of tomato puree over it.

Then leave it to cook for six hours or so and come home to delicious curry. Just before serving, stir through some fresh coriander. I served it with roti, which I will put in another post.

Paper parcels

On today's episode of Stuff We Cooked: wrapping things in paper and putting them in the oven.

Specifically, prawns and green beans (top left), chicken and shredded sweet potato (top right) and more shredded sweet potato (bottom) because there was too much. Flavouring for the prawns was chilli and garlic and for the chicken a middle eastern spice mix - the recipe called for za'atar, but the only one I could find in the supermarket was harissa. I don't actually know what either of these spice mixes involve, but it tasted good.

These things were then sprinkled with vegetable oil and wrapped in their respective pieces of baking paper before being put in the (pre-heated to 200 degrees) oven for about 15 minutes. Once done, they were garnished with parsley (for the prawns) and mint and plain yoghurt (for the chicken and sweet potato).

This was a fairly healthy and very quick meal to make, which is unusual for oven things! Having magical gadgets to shred the sweet potato and finely chop the chilli and garlic definitely helped with the preparation speed though, so if you lack such gadgets, it may take a bit longer.

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!

 

 

 

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