Mexi-fake Cooking

 

As a student, and really just as a person in this economy, I think it’s important that we recycle. As someone who constantly makes more food than she can actually eat (I have chronic eyes-bigger-than-my-stomach disorder) I think it’s particularly important to recycle our food. For me, a delicious dinner is like a one night stand. No matter how sexy and delicious it might have been for one night, seeing it in the harsh florescent light of a fridge the next morning – it never looks as appealing.

The antidote to this is to use these old ingredients to make a new dish. Last night we celebrated the return of my family all to one time-zone with a rolled shoulder of lamb roasted in star anise and fennel seeds. Fresh from the oven it was mouth-wateringly tender, succulent and moreish; but this morning the juices had congealed and the meat was looking sad and dry.

Loath to throw anything out, no matter how grim the situation, and as always craving Mexican, I decided lamb carnitas were in order. I can’t make any claims as to the authenticity to my version of the classic dish, but I can make some pretty impressive boasts about the fact that each and every family member went back for seconds and thirds. I flavoured it with guacamole in mind, and after not finding any online consensus about what seasonings I should be using: went with my gut. Coriander, cinnamon, cumin, chilli and paprika, all simmered in a rich braising liquid of orange juice and chicken stock. Sound a little like an odd combination? Trust me, it works. The acidity of the orange juice cuts through the richness of the meat and the sweetness of the cinnamon plays off of the chilli in the lamb. It’s all about balance.

The meat is meltingly tender and reminiscent of pulled pork. Add a little smashed avocado and tomato salsa (my personal favourite way of making salsa is simply to dice cherry tomatoes, season heavily with salt and pepper and then douse in vinegar) and wrap it all up in a tortilla and you have dinner sorted.I’ve also included instructions for making this recipe if not using leftovers, it’s pretty much the same recipe just make sure you brown the meat off first and you’ll need to cook for a little while longer to achieve the same tenderness.

I decided to make mini flour tortillas as well, just the size of my palm so that you could pick the tacos up in your hand. I’ve always been on the mind that many small bites beat a few big ones, and the mini tortillas let you play with your combinations so much more than having one big taco. There’s a secret conspiracy that you need a tortilla press in order to make homemade tortillas, but that is a lie. Use a cast iron skillet or a rolling pin; you can really use anything with a flat bottomed surface to press the tortillas flat. Don’t stress about them being perfectly round – you made your own tortillas! That is impressive enough.

 

 

Lamb Carnitas

600 grams lamb shoulder
1 large white onion
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground chilli powder
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup low sodium chicken stock

Slice the onion and fry off in a sauté pan over a low heat until translucent  but not browned. If you’re using leftover meat, chop it roughly and add to the pan. If using uncooked meat, remove the onions from the pan; dice the lamb into small cubes and brown the meat before adding the onions back to the pan.

Bring the heat up to a high heat, add the spices and season to taste. Quickly stir the meat and onions so that they are coated in the spices and cook for three minutes while stirring. If the meat or onions begin to stick you can deglaze the pan with a little of the chicken stock, this will help loosen them up as well as adding flavour. After three minutes add the orange juice and chicken stock and bring to the boil. As soon as the liquids boil bring the heat down to the lowest possible so that it is just barely simmering. Put a lid on the pan and leave to cook for a minimum of three hours, adding more stock as necessary when the liquid absorbs.

If you aren’t starting from leftovers it will take longer for the meat to tenderise, I’d recommend letting it cook for at least four or five hours and once cooked use a pair of forks to pull the meat apart.

 

Flour Tortillas

2 cups flour
1/4 cup cold butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup warm water

Using the back of fork, mix the flour, baking power, salt and butter in a bowl until it starts to look like coarse breadcrumbs.  Slowly add the water while continually mixing the dough – depending on how absorbant your flour is you may need more of less water to form a soft dough. Knead for 5 minutes. Separate into 12 golf ball sized balls for small tortillas and 6 balls for large tortillas. Heat a skillet or flat bottomed frying pan.

Roll the tortillas out between two pieces of baking powder until very thin, they will puff up during cooking or alternately use the bottom of a flat bottomed bowl to press the tortillas down into shape.

Cook the tortillas on the hot skilled on each side for about 1 minute. If it puffs up at all, you can poke a hole in the puffed area to release the steam. Cook it until it is no longer doughy and browned in patches. Place onto a plate covered by a towel to keep warm until you’re ready to use them.

five things

1. Lemon Drizzle Cake. One of my favourite treats from the Riccarton Farmers Market. There’s nothing like a leisurely morning spent debating whether I want golden or purple beetroot this week and then coming home to a slice of this delicious, barely sweet cake for afternoon tea.

2. Dogs. Meet Bordeaux, the fluffiest, largest dog in the world. I spent Sunday at a going-away party for a friend and Bordeaux was the secret guest of honour. I spent the majority of the evening just staring at him slack jawed and wondering how a dog who came up to my waist could possibly be so gentle and friendly.

3. Tea by the fire.My mother’s solution to all of life’s problems is to sit down and “have a nice cup of tea.” That phrase has become synonymous to me with relaxing and taking a moment to reflect on my often hectic day, and there’s something so luxurious about curling up by a warm fire on a cold night and sipping hot, strong tea.

4. Dinner dates with my sister. My older sister and I took a night to catch up together and head out to celebrate my acceptance to Grad School with pizza. We don’t often get to spend quality time together so it’s lovely when we get alone time, especially while eating this (rather inauthentic) antipasto pizza covered in artichokes, cubes of eggplant, sour capers, salty olives and delicious mozzarella.

5. Weeknight movies. I love going to the movies on a Monday night when most people are at home and I get the theatre to myself. I have a massively oversized poncho that I always wear to the movies and use as a blanket, and curling up on the plush seats and letting my mind drift is one of my favourite secret pleasures.

Ice Cream, You Scream

Funnily enough, the best Christmas present I got this year wasn’t actually something I was given, instead it was something I gave to someone else. This present was a long time in the making, for some years my father has wanted an ice cream maker.  Now my father is a good man, a good man who loves food and is a very adventurous, exciting person to eat with. He’s also someone who loves to collect kitchen gadgets, if it’s shiny and goes in the kitchen he thinks it would be a good thing to have. What he is not however, is a man who cooks. So whenever he brought it up this desire to acquire an ice cream maker we would have the following conversation:

“I’d love an ice cream machine”

“But you’ll never use it. I’ll use it. You will never use it.”

“Yes I will; I’d love to make my own ice cream.”

This is a conversation that had been going on for years. So finally this year, my sisters and I got together to make his dream a reality. Purchased in secret and hidden away until Christmas, when he finally opened it we made him promise that he would use it, and that it wouldn’t sit undisturbed in the box for years like his pasta machine. So it was dutifully unpacked, and recipes were researched, and shining and happy, our brand new Cuisineart Ice Cream maker joined the bench along with our other gadgets.

Guess what?

It’s nearly March now and as anticipated, he hasn’t used it. I’ve used it. He has never used it.

But I don’t care because oh how I have used it. I had no idea that these babies were so much fun. I started out small, making strawberry and framboise ice cream, but soon after that things started getting weird. I have a list of flavours waiting to be made that includes but isn’t limited to:

• Chocolate and rosemary
• Lavender shortbread
• Brown butter
• Gin and tonic sorbet

I’ve limited myself to making two batches a month maximum because honestly, otherwise I would be eating ice cream for every meal and pretty soon things would spiral out of control. Out of my experiments so far, I’ve had two particularly successful flavours.

The first has been my hazelnut caramel ice cream (you might remember it from my five things teaser). This is the ultimate in rich indulgence. Thick, vanilla ice cream with ground hazelnuts blended in with a swirl of hazelnut caramel that is just the right combination of sweet, nutty and savoury to stop things from being too overwhelming. If there is any ice cream that is perfect for winter after a meal of slow braised oxtail, this is the ice cream. Yes, the recipe is a little complicated – but in all honesty it’s not that complex. It’s more just a matter of following step by step instructions that are all by themselves quite simple.

The other is the polar opposite. Matcha ice cream is just barely sweet with a strong green tea flavour that resonates throughout the palate. It’s a lot lighter than the hazelnut caramel and is a great dessert to eat on a hot day when the idea of anything too cloyingly sweet seems like too much to handle.  It has a very complex flavour that really tastes of the matcha powder, so if you don’t like matcha you might not like this much. On the other hand, if you do then you will love this. Plus it has an added bonus of being the much simpler of the two recipes.

 

Hazelnut Caramel Ice Cream

1 cup full cream milk
2 cups  cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
5 large egg yolks
1/2 cup ground, roasted hazelnuts

1/2 cup ground hazelnuts
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut into chunks
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup hazelnut-flavor liqueur (eg frangellico)

First heat the milk, cream, and sugar in a large saucepan until just barely boiling. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the milk and  then add the bean pod to the milk as well. Bring the temperature down to just simering and leave for five minutes. Remove from the heat, and let the flavours infuse for one hour.

In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Rewarm the cream mixture and gradually pour 1/2 cup of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Pour the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan. Cook over the custard over a low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom to bring up the vanilla seeds, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. If you have a food thermometer you want to be aiming for about 170 degrees c. If your mixture gets too hot it will begin to scramble, but don’t panic! Just quickly take it off the heat and strain it a few times through a sieve before you put it in the ice bath.

Strain the custard into your ice bath. Stir over the ice until cool and then refrigerate to chill thoroughly. Once completely cool, mix in the ground hazelnuts, freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ground hazelnuts will give the ice cream a slightly grainy texture, so don’t worry if you find your ice cream isn’t completely smooth as that’s to be expected.

To make the hazelnut caramel, in a medium sized saucepan combine the sugar and the butter. Shake the pan frequently to mix the sugar and butter, but do not stir it as this might cause it to sieze. When the sugar and butter are melted together completely and have turned a dark amber colour remove from the heat. Make sure you watch carefully because sugar can go from not dark enough to completely burnt in seconds.

Once off the heat add the cream, ground hazelnuts and liqeur and mix until the caramel is smooth. Return it to the heat and stir until it boils vigorously and then bring back off the hook. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until it has cooled and thickened.

Once the ice cream has churned and the hazelnut caramel has cooled, swirl the caramel through the churned ice cream and transfer into a container and freeze for at least three hours. Check occasionally to make sure the caramel hasn’t sunk to the bottom, if it has – mix with a spoon.

Matcha Ice Cream
This recipe is adapted from Manu’s Menu

2 cups of cream
½ cup sugar
3 tbsp Matcha (100% natural green tea powder)
1 pinch of salt

Put the cream, sugar and salt into a medium sized sauce pot until it comes to a full boil. Keep whisking until it starts to bubble, then remove it from the heat and whisk in the matcha powder.

Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and let it cool down until completely chilled over an ice bath.

Churn for 20-25 minutes in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions and then transfer into a container and freeze for at least 3 hours before serving.

Douhua or: detox dessert

After all the excesses that come with the festive period (which, yes has lasted for me until February) I always find myself craving lighter, more simple food. This week I’ve been heading back to the gym, and forcing myself to try more things that I was afraid to do, which aside from my forays into dance classes – it turns out I was born to be in a Bollywood movie – has included pushing myself out of my food comfort zones.

Do you guys fall into paterns of cooking the same sorts of things most nights? For me, I often find myself falling back on roast vegetable salads, spinach and tomato salads and grilled meats most night for dinner, and a smoked sea salt hot chocolate or homemade ice cream for dessert. While those things are delicious don’t get me wrong, I’m the sort of person who loves to experiment.

So if we combine this love of experimenting with a craving for lighter and yes; cleansing food, I’ve found myself going on somewhat of a detox this week. For me personally (and I’m not advocating that you follow my food plan) that means I’ve been eating a lot of cucumber marinated in chilli and garlic, protein shakes, and a heck of a lot of silken tofu.

Tonight I was craving something sweet, but din’t want to A) put a lot of work into it or B) have anything too heavy. Turning to the fridge for my salvation, I saw a block of silken tofu. I’d been thinking about making douhua, a silken tofu pudding that is popular in Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese cuisene, for awhile now, and seeing as it was literally the only thing in my fridge now was the time.

This version is a very simple take on douhua, which can be served both sweet and savory. Traditionally fresh ginger is infused into a simple syrup, however all I had was freeze-dried ginger powder, so I used that instead. I can’t say if it compares to fresh ginger, but I can tell you that using the ginger powder produced an amazing result. Just in case you are wondering about the mystery empty bowl in the back of this photo… I have only just realised that white bowl plus white sugar makes your bowl look empty.

It couldn’t be more simple, insude the syrup for 10 minutes for a more subtle ginger flavor or up to 30 minutes if you want a strong ginger kick and then pour over the silken tofu and enjoy. I prefer my tofu broken up into smaller, rustic chunks so that the ginger syrup coats it more thoroughly, but I have seen it prepared with a large block of the tofu. I was a little nervous about making this, unsure if I’d like tofu in a sweet arena or not, but it turns out this was everything I wanted it to be: soft, creamy, sweet and light, delicious.

Douhua
serves two

100 grams silken tofu
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon freeze dried ginger or 2 cm long chunk of fresh giner.

Combine the water and the sugar in a small saucepan over a high heat until boiling and then reduce the heat to low, stirring until the sugar dissolves. If using fresh ginger, peel and slice it into thin rounds. Add the ginger to the simple syrup mix and let it infuse for a minimum of ten minutes (I simmered mine for about 20 minutes which gave me quite a sweet syrup that had a kick of ginger heat right at the end, my preference). If using the powdered ginger, make sure you stir the syrup until it dissolves into it – mine had a tendancy to try and just float on the top.

While the ginger syrup is infusing cut or break the tofu into small chunks and put into your bowl of choice. You can choose your own ratio of tofu to syrup, but I preferred to have mostly tofu with just enough syrup to coat the pieces so that the nutty flavour of the tofu complemented the overall flavor, rather than getting masked.

Once the syrup has reached your desired strength, pour through a strainer over the tofu and serve immediately. This is great piping hot in the colder winter months, or you can chill it in the fridge until icy to enjoy in summer.

When life gives you lemons

What do you do when life gives you lemons? Make lemonade? Throw them back at life and childishly yell that you don’t want any of his damn lemons? If you are anything like me then you will take lemons and apply to everything. Lemon is by far my favourite sweet flavour, and the basis of most of my favourite lemon dishes begins with this – lemon curd.

The problem I’d always had with lemon curd was the effort involved with standing over a double boiler for half an hour desperately hoping it wont scramble or split or curdle, because while I love lemon flavoured sweets, I’m not a huge fan of lemon scrambled eggs. I know, call me crazy. So for a while I gave up on the idea of making it homemade and simply bought it from the supermarket, which as we know if simply not the same. The lemon curd of my dreams is rich, custardy and tangy; but the lemon curd I was buying was thin, syrupy and more like a lemon scented glue than anything I would want to put in a tart shell.

So I begged the advice of an old Greek Nonna who had been growing lemons longer than I’d been alive (roughly 70 years longer). She waved a hand at her over flowing lemon tree and said “go fill bag, I write down recipe.” So I did. And she did.She handed me a scrap of paper and pushed me out the door, commanding me to bring her some of what I made “when you get right.” God forbid that I would go against a Greek Nonna, I went home and industriously set home to practise.

This is what resulted. Thick, sour just before the point of puckering but also sweet enough that you know it’s dessert, rich and eggy and almost a custard. This is the lemon curd of my dreams. And the best part of it? It only takes six minutes to cook. From there you can do just about anything you want with it. Fill miniature pie shells with it for a portable snack, slather it over thick slices of french toast for a twist on an old classic, or my favourite spread over slices of brioche, scatter with raspberries and pour over a egg custard mix to make the most delicious bread and butter pudding you’ve ever tasted.

Or… if you’re home alone… you could just eat it with a spoon straight out of the jar. I promise not to tell.

 

Six Minute Lemon Curd

3/4 cup of lemon juice (I prefer to use meyer lemons)
The zest of one lemon
3/4 cup of sugar
3 eggs
125 grams unsalted butter

Combine all ingrediants in a bowl over a pan of boiling water on the stove at a medium-high heat.
Start whisking, and whisk constantly for six minutes until the mixture has thickened and is bubbling – constant whisking is important to stop the eggs from scrambling.
That’s it! Transfer into a sterilised jar and leave in the fridge until cool or preferably overnight.