Osso buco - with a touch of orange

Yummy, yummy osso buco! I'm always very open to temptation when I go shopping. I can reframe that easily into meaning that I cook things seasonally and like trying new things. On Monday I went shopping and saw lots of osso buco in the meat section of Piedimonte's. I hadn't cooked osso buco for ages and thought it a great idea for a cold, wet week here in Melbourne.



I thought I had all the basic ingredients: osso buco, tomatoes, red wine. But I found when I checked out a few recipes that that I had forgotten the gremolata and didn't have any parsley. This meant I had to be a bit more creative about the recipe. So I looked at some of my Greek stifado recipes and finally got inspiration from the use of lemon and pickling spices in some of the recipes I had been reading.



I would try a new flavour by adding some of my Stephanie's Spiced oranges and the spicy liquid! I also cooked the dish over two days for a minumum of 2.5 hours and added some carrot and parsnip in the last half hour of cooking. This recipe is definitely not your traditional Italian osso buco apart from the meat used, but it is delicious. Tomato and orange and carrot go so well together, and the little taste of orange that comes through is a lovely taste sensation!

Ingredients

4 pieces of osso buco
Plain flour
Olive oil
Pepper
2 onions
5 cloves of garlic crushed
1 can diced tomatoes
4 quarters spiced orange
2 dsp Spiced orange liquid
Glass red wine
2 cups water (or more if needed)
1 carrot
1 parsnip

Mode

Heat oil in stovetop pan or casserole which will be large enough to contain all ingredients
Pepper some plain flour
Coat osso buco lightly in flour
Seal in olive oil and remove from pan
Cook roughly chopped onion and garlic until tender
Add red wine to sear pan
Return meat to pan and stir
Add canned tomatoes
Chop the spiced orange and add spiced orage and liquid to pan
Add water to cover all ingredients
Bring to boil and simmer over low heat for about 2 hours checking regularly that meat doesn't stick and adding more water if needed
About half an hour before serving peel and slice the carrot and parsnip
Add vegetables to pan and stir to integrate
Cook for another half hour
Serve with mashed potatoes

I cooked this over two days, about an hour the first night and then 1.5 hours the next day. The flavours intensify and the taste improves over a couple of days!

Spiced Orange Roast Chicken

It really is feast or famine with me! I can't think when was the last time I cooked a roast chicken before I was enticed into it on Sunday. Though there are still some leftovers from Sunday's delicious Librarians' Lemon Thyme Chook, when I was walking home tonight in the wet and was approaching Piedimonte's I was struck with the desire to do another chicken!



So what would I do this time? The Librarians' one again or just Stephanie Alexander's normal one with fresh lemon and rosemary? What else could I try? Suddenly I thought of my stock of Spiced oranges high in the pantry. That was what I was going to try.



Ingredients

1 fresh chicken
2 cloves garlic
Spiced oranges (orange and syrup)
4 potatoes
1 orange sweet potato
Olive oil


Mode

Preheat oven to 220c
Quarter potatoes, chop sweet potato and place in bowl
Dribble with olive oil
Pull up your sleeves and mix vegetables to coat with oil
Rub the chicken inside and out with several pieces of the spiced orange
Place remnants of spiced orange inside cavity
Crush the garlic cloves rub over chicken
Sprinkle several spoonsful of the spiced orange syrup over top, bottom, sides and cavity of chicken
Place chicken in baking dish on its side
Arrange vegetables around
Rub chicken with remaining oil from bowl
Place in centre of oven and cook for 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken to other side
Turn the vegetables
Cook for another 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken onto back (ie breast facing upwards)
Turn the vegetables
Cook for another 20 minutes
During this final 20 minutes of cooking prepare salad or vegetables to accompany.

The orange sauce provided the basis for a lovely glaze and the trick was to ensure that it didn't burn. I served it with a simple rocket, parmesan, oil and balsamic vinegar salad on the side. It was yummy! And I am sure it will be yummy cold as well. What will I try next? Something with plum sauce is very tempting!

Librarians' Lemon Thyme Chook

You might think with the new series of The Librarians coming up next week that that TV program might be the inspiration for this recipe. But how wrong would you be!

Oh the power of suggestion! Tonight several of my friends on Facebook were roasting chickens for dinner. I had planned making meatballs with some "organic" meat that I sincerely hope did not go through the traumata I saw in the great doco Food Inc yesterday. But what happened to me? I went off to do my regular Sunday night supermarket shopping to my favourite Piedimonte's, pleased to notice their pledges about preservatives and organicness at the door and to note that most of their fruit and vegetables were "Product of Australia" and hence somewhat seasonal. I was just about to leave when I thought: hmm roast potatoes would be nice. I bought some potatoes and next thing you know I was back in the meat section buying a chicken! Thanks Stephanie McGlinchey and Michelle McLean for the inspiration: this recipe is for you!


My chicken recipe has at its basis Stephanie Alexander's roast chook, 220c, chook with vegetables around, 20 minutes each side, 20 minutes breast up. But I used preserved lemons, dried thyme, garlic and salt instead of her condiments. I haven't done this before, so I really looked forward to the flavours. It was delicious.



Ingredients

1 fresh chicken
2 cloves garlic
4 quarters preserved lemons
1 dsp salt
4 potatoes
Olive oil
Dry thyme sprigs

Mode

Preheat oven to 220c
Quarter potatoes and place in bowl with thyme and dribble with olive oil
Pull up your sleeves and mix potatoes to coat with thyme and oil
Rub the chicken inside and out with quarter of preserved lemon
Place other quarters of preserved lemon inside cavity
Crush the garlic cloves and place inside cavity
Sprinkle salt over all top, bottom and sides of chicken
Place chicken in baking dish on its side
Arrange potatoes around
Rub chicken with remaining oil and thyme mixture from bowl
Place in centre of oven and cook for 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken to other side
Turn the potatoes
Cook for another 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken onto back (ie breast facing upwards)
Turn the potatoes
Cook for another 20 minutes
During this final 20 minutes of cooking prepare salad or vegetables to accompany.

I served it with a simple rocket, parmesan, oil and vinegar salad on the side and was delighted to have chicken for lunches during the film festival this coming week.



Thanks Stephanie Alexander, Stephanie McGlinchey and Michelle McLean for the inspiration to try this out! You can't go wrong really with the ingredients. Pretty good hey? The power of four librarians in the kitchen! Now I need to get on with those meatballs and use up the meat waiting for that!

Stephanie's Mushroom Confit

On the recent Queen's Birthday holiday when we went to Canberra to celebrate Pat's birthday (see previous blog posts and Flickr photos referred to there), one of the other recipe books that was used was, of course, Stephanie's bible which we all refer to regularly. I think we only had one dish that actually came from Stephanie and that was Mushroom Confit that we had served on biscuits as a pre-dinner nibble a couple of times. Actually I lie. I had forgotten the Stephanie's Spiced Oranges which we did have the odd nibble of with cheese.



I was impressed by the Mushroom Confit and made a batch of it when I got back to Melbourne. I basically used Stephanie's recipe apart from a few variants. I don't have any sherry vinegar and don't even know what it is like so I used cider vinegar. And I didn't empty the final mixture into a food processor to pulse as Stephanie suggested: I just whisked it with a hand-held chopper. Otherwise I think it was really Stephanie's recipe.

Ingredients

15 gr dried porcini mushroom
1 head garlic
300 gr button mushrooms
Couple bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
100 ml olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup cider vinegar






Mode

Preheat oven to 180c
Pour boiling water over the porcini and leave to soak for 30 minutes
Wrap garlic head in oiled foil and bake in oven until tender (30-45 minutes)
Squeeze liquid from porcini
Place porcini, roasted garlic, button mushroom, thyme, bay leaves, and 1/3 oil in a baking dish which can also be used on top of stove
Grind on pepper and cover with foil
Bake until mushrooms are tender (about 30 minutes)
Place baking dish on top of stove over medium heat
Add sherry and stir to dislodge stuck bits
Allow to boil and reduce
Remove garlic, peel and press flesh through coarse sieve
Discard thyme, bay leaves and garlic skins
Chop the mushroom mixture with hand-held device or else pulse roughly in food-processor
Pack into hot, sterilized jar and pack down firmly
Cover with remaining oil and seal
Leave for at least two months but once opened eat within two weeks.




My jar of mushroom confit is still sitting high in kitchen cupboard waiting for its time to come. I hope it is as delicious as the batch that Margie made for Queen's Birthday! I think she used field mushrooms that had been picked around Yarralumla so the flavour might be a bit different from bought button mushrooms! We'll see in the fullness of time.

Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese

It's cold and wet in Melbourne at present and there's lot of cauliflower in season. So what better to do that whip up a vat of comfort food like cauliflower cheese? Lemons are around also and I always have Greek yoghurt and fetta on hand so I thought I would give it a bit of a Greek flavour by adding the quintessentially Greek flavours of lemon, yoghurt and fetta. There was nice broccoli around at the shops too, so I used both cauliflower and broccoli as the vegetables.




Ingredients

1 cauliflower
1 bunch broccoli
1 lemon
1 cup water
1 tbs margerine/butter
1 tbs flour
1 cup milk
2 heaped tbs Greek yoghurt (low fat)
150 gr fetta
Grated low fat cheese

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c
Break or chop cauliflower and broccoli into flowerlets
Add vegetables to large pan
Grate the rind of the lemon over the vegetables
Juice the lemon and add
Add a cup of water, stir and cover
Steam on stove top until vegetables are tender
Meanwhile in a saucepan melt the margerine/butter
Add the flour and stir until mixed
Add yoghurt to the milk and stir until combined
Add yoghurt/milk mixture slowly to butter/flour mixture stirring all the while
Crumble the fetta and add to mixture
Stir until fetta melted and mixture starts to thicken
Place vegetables in an oven-proof dish
Pour over cheese sauce
Sprinkle with grated low-fat cheese
Bake for about 45 minutes until golden.



This is delicious by itself with some crusty bread and a glass of retsina, or serve with any main meal as a side dish. The night I made it, it was served with chicken schnitzel (take note @shewgirl) but it also goes well with Abla's chicken from the previous post.

Lime garlic chicken - after Abla

Over the recent Queen's Birthday weekend several of us journeyed from Melbourne to Canberra to stay with Margaret and Tony and to celebrate Pat Miller's 60th birthday. You can see some of my photos here. You may notice in the dinner photos that there was a lot of food. Margaret had cooked up a storm before we came and, though I had come up the night before the others with a view to helping with the cooking, there wasn't much to do!

The major themes (apart from the requisite pavlova) were Greek and Lebanese and the recipe sources were Abla Amad's the Lebanese Kitchen (now sadly out of print) and a book on Greek cooking by Andy Harris. As I had given both of these books to Margie I was pleased to see them so well used and literally stained. I always think this a sign of a well-loved cookbook!



The good thing about such a feast where we are sharing lots of dishes is that it reminds one of old favourites. One of those that I hadn't eaten for a while was Abla's chicken wings in garlic. Needless to say, once I got back to Melbourne and my kitchen and my copy of Abla's recipe book, I cooked up a variant.

As I had a whole lot of limes I substituted that for the lemon juice, I used little chicken drummettes instead of wings and I just used already prepared and purchased minced garlic from a jar. So the principle and the cooking methodology was Abla's but practically no ingredient remained the same! Well, that's how I like to cook: getting ideas from different sources and seeing what's at the shops.

Ingredients

12 chicken drummettes
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Juice of 6 limes
1.5 tablespoons minced garlic (purchased prepared)

Mode

Preheat the oven to 220c
Place the chicken pieces in a single layer in a baking dish
Sprinkle salt over
Roast for approximately 30 minutes until browned
Meanwhile squeeze limes and add minced garlic to resulting juice
Remove chicken from oven and pour over garlic and lime mixture
Stir through
Cook for another 20 minutes


These chicken pieces melt in your mouth. I served them with a simple rocket, pear and parmesan salad which we had also had at a Canberra meal over the break. I was flattered at the reception this simple main course had when I was told I was serving restaurant quality food! Well, it was: Abla's!

A few days later I tried another variant. I had some chicken breasts that I had intended grilling souvlaki style but as I still had limes that were also needing to be used, I chopped up the chicken breasts and cooked them using the same method above. They ended up being a little dry and probably didn't need the whole first 30 minutes of cooking; probably 20 would have done. But nonetheless they were delicious in salad for lunch and I'll be making them again too. Thanks, Abla, for being such an inspiration.

Ceylon Curry Pasties

Having a few days off work before and after Easter means that I have time to do a few things during the week - such as cooking and blogging about it. I have been very slack in this department recently. So what took my fancy on this cold, autumn day in Melbourne? I decided to revisit the idea of cooking pasties. I had last done this just after Christmas to cope with Christmas leftovers.



Today I wanted something warm as I stubbornly refused to turn the heating on during the day. I used a mixture of vegetables which I had on hand as well as ready made short pastry from the freezer. My friend Graham makes his own Ceylon curry powder (ingredients are secret) so I used some of that to add flavour. This made a quick, hot, tasty meal in about an hour.



Ingredients

Potatoes
Brussel sprouts
Broccoli
Red pepper
Short crust pastry
Graham's Ceylon curry powder
1 egg


Mode

Preheat oven to 220 c
Take pastry from freezer and leave to thaw for 15 minutes
Chop vegetables and place in steamer with Ceylon curry powder to taste
When vegetables are tender and pastry thawed, roll out puff pastry to desired thickness and using dinner plate or smaller plate if desired cut circles for pasties
Beat egg
Spoon vegetables onto pastry circle, making sure not to overfill
Brush edges of pastry with beaten egg
Bring the edges together and pinch to form pastry
Brush with beaten egg
Repeat to make as many pasties as desired
Bake in 220 c oven until golden (20-25 minutes)