An Impromptu Soup

I spent Wednesday afternoon at Alfred Hospital being scratched and prodded to once again confirm that dust mites are the bane of my existence. Upon leaving with a very sore arm, knowing I hadn't eaten at home since the weekend and there was absolutely no food in the house, yet a mass of dishes with Robs name etched into the grease, I called my man only to find he was stuck at work.

This set me on a mission. As Rob had left that morning he had mentioned it was bread night, so since he had just posted the bread blog, I decided to put his words to the test and make my first loaf to cheer him! A humble batch of one of my favorite soups would be the bread's side... after all the way to my man's heart is through his tummy.

So an hour and a half later, all the dishes done and two loads of cloths washing down (I was channeling some domestic goddess),  I can safely now tell you, Rob is a genius!
I read every instruction twice praying the whole time for 'Goldilocks' not because I have any knowledge of the word in the baking sense but hey it's Goldilocks... the thing of fairy tales! Luckily the nursery rhyme gods were also with me (thank-you brothers Grimm), and it was not only easy but so very, very perfect for loaf numero uno.

For the Rustic White-Bean Soup... you will need:

Olive oil
8 rashes of bacon diced
1 red onion diced
1 brown onion diced
3 leeks sliced
3 cloves of garlic crushed and diced
4 celery stalks chopped
a handful of fresh thyme
some bay leaves
2 tsp of white wine vinegar
3L of chicken stock
4 cans (400gms each) of cannellini beans
some white wine
salt and pepper
fresh parmesan

This soup is pretty simple and very yummy. Heat some olive oil and brown the bacon in a pan till it's beginning to crisp, add the onion and garlic and stir till golden and slightly soft. At this point you should be getting some nice brown sticky bits on the base of the pan. Pour in a small amount of white wine to deglaze. Try to scrape all the brown bits off into the liquid. Add the leek, celery, bay leaves and a handful of thyme stalks. I also like to add a small amount of salt and pepper here (be sparing). Saute for 10 or so minutes until the leek starts to become transparent and sweat.

Add the stock and vinegar and 2 cans of the beans and after it has come to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 15-20 mins.

Once done, take out the thyme and bay leaves (these will not break down) and add the remaining 2 cans of beans. Puree (straight away if you have a metal hand blender, or let cool if plastic) until smooth and the soup begins to ripple like silk. Heat back through on the stove before serving and once into the bowls add some freshly shaved parmesan and a grind of salt.

Baking Bread

K wanted a Kitchenaid for her birthday. By that I mean a big benchtop mixer made by Kitchenaid, the one with the many colour choices and the retro styling. I made some financial arrangements and involved my dad in some deep deception and intrigue, clandestine meetings to transfer goods and what basically amounts to money laundering. All this so the purchase could remain a secret from K and I could pretend that she was about to receive a lesser offering.
Seven months later, and it seems that it has been used about twice (by K) and twice a week (by me).
I haven't bought bread from the store in months, and this is why:

Basics	You Need
Mix flour, Improver, sugar Mix yeast and water Mix Watermix into Flourmix and add oil Mix it a bit then add salt Mix it more Pull out the dough and oil the sides of the bowl, Put it back in, cover and sit in warm water for 40 mins Punch down the dough, shape, put in tin for 40 mins Bake for 40 mins let it sit for aaaageess Slather in butter and jam, serve with hot tea.	500g Strong (protein rich) Flour 2 tsp Bread Improver 2 tsp Sugar 2 tsp Yeast 350ml Warm water 2 tsp Salt some olive oil some plain flour Glad wrap a measuring jug a baking tin an oven insane upper body endurance OR a grotesquely expensive Kitchenaid Marital device.

Flour comes in 1kg packets. I used to make 2 loaves at a time (usually the second loaf was olive bread) but this bread will go stale pretty quickly.So pinch the packet halfway down and invert over the mixing bowl. when the pressure between your fingers eases, you've probably emptied half the packet in, therefore 500g.

I use Lighthouse Strong Bakers Flour (for Pizza and bread) because they sell it at the supermarket near me. Normal flour apparently has less protein/gluten which means that the bread wont be as stretchy and thick. I once tried with 00 flour, and I found that my bread had a very very fine grain and was very very dense and I didn't use it again.

I am blessed with a nearby grocer who sells fresh yeast, but I'm usually on the supermarket stuff.
Keep it in the fridge. If you do use fresh yeast, bear in mind that you'll need less water.
I add the yeast to the measuring jug before I pour the water in to compensate for this.
To measure out fresh yeast, raid your bar supplies for a shot measure. 1 shot packed full of fresh yeast will do (the big end of course.. what kind of shot do you pour?)

My supermarket also sells the Wallaby bread improver. As far as I can tell, my bread tastes a little softer and maybe keep a little longer. I usually add suger, but I cant really determine the effect this has.
I always add oil (except once and I found my bread cardboardy). Oil and butter softens the bread. The more you add the softer it gets. I bake bread to have for breakfast, and so there is a limit to how soft I want it.

PROCESS:
Put the flour, bread improver and sugar into the mixing bowl. You probably should use the mixing attachment to stir it all up, but thats extra washing so just put the dough hook on and start it up.
Don't set the speed too high or you'll be wearing it.
Put the yeast in the bottom of your measuring jug, run the tap til its hot (if you burn your hand, its too hot, so change hands and try again) and fill up to 350ml.

Keep the mixer running and pour your warm water/yeast mix in. try for the side of the bowl. Pour in a couple of glugs of oil too. At this stage you will have an intense urge to keep pouring random liquids into your mixing bowl. exercise restraint. a too-dry mix is easy to fix by adding gentle sprinklings of water, but a too-wet mix is painful and tedious, and seems to take a whole extra box of flour to fix.

When the dough starts to take shape around the dough hook, you will be able to tell if you have a too-dry/too-wet/goldilocks mix. add the salt and kep mixing for another 10 minutes.

Too dry - Your mix will have a little pool of flour at the bottom of the mixer. he dough itself will shred and shed flour everywhere.

Too wet - This may take longer to recognise, but rather than crawl its way up the dough hook into a nice dough (with just a little spindle connecting to a thin patch at the bottom) the too-wet mix will stubbornly ignore the pull of the hook and flab around at the bottom of the bowl, hating you and insulting your cat. It will mess the sides of the bowl and laugh at your efforts to dry it out with more flour.

Goldilocks - The just right mix should form a nice ball at the top of your dough hook, which will then form a couple of funny cigar shapes and then fold back into itself over and over. it will take about 6-8 minutes for the sides of the bowl to be cleaned by your lovely silky little dough ball, but clean they will be as this happy little friend makes less work for you.

During the making of this post (or rather the making of the bread in this post) I got sidetracked, playing with the camera and I probably mixed it for almost 20 minutes. Mixing too long will apparently break down the gluten chains that the kneading process is supposed to create. In the same way that over-beating egg white will eventually liquify them again. I expected that I had ruined the mix, but It seems to be fine. In fact its bloody good, so if you over-mix it, dont sweat it, keep going anyway, just dont make a habit of it.

PARTE THE SECONDE
All your "hard" work is now done.
Fill your sink with warm water, pull out your dough, oil the sides of the bowl (tricky to do one-handed) and then rest your little dough ball in its oily womb. Now that your dough ball is resting inside the mixing bowl, cover the bowl with glad wrap and put the mixing bowl into the warm water bath to rest.
Yeast loves to be warm. the bath is basically only to keep the temperature up. If you live in Burkina Faso, you may not need to do this.
If you refer to the photos at this point you may notice that the sides of my bowl are all messy. This was another frustratingly wet mix. I just couldn't help myself. It was just a few ml's per gram too many.

Set the timer on your oven for 40 minutes. The idea is that your dough ball will double in size. Keep it warm and secure until this happens. If it takes longer, it takes longer. I usually preheat my oven at his point and go off to do something else.

When the dough ball doubles in size, cast flour across your benchtop (this is what the plain flour is for) and take the mixing bowl out of the bath. Gently pull out your dough, lovingly rest it on the bench and then brutalise it with your knuckles. Sort of a hard massaging motion to push all the bubbles out and stretch the dough.
You may need to throw some more flour around to stop the dough sticking to the benchtop.

Roll your dough up on itself and try to shape it into a loaf that will fit your baking tin. try to make it pretty. If it was a Goldilocks mix, this will happen automatically. It may even kneed itself.
Put it in the bread tin (maybe oil the sides first i dunno)

Cover your newly shaped dough in glad wrap, put it in a warm place (maybe run a fresh bath again if your house is cold) and set the oven timer for 40 minutes. Again, we want it to double in size.
You have another 40 minutes to yourself go play.

When the dough has doubled in size again, take off the glad wrap and make any final cosmetic arrangements.
for whatever reason I was struck by the idea that I would sprinkle a mix of flour, sugar and salt over the dough, and then score the top with a knife, so as the bread bloomed it would look cool.
I dont know why.

Put it in the oven (fan forced, probably supposed to be 180 degrees, but my oven says 220) and set the timer for 40 minutes. maybe spray the sides and bottom of the oven with water so the steam will create a nice crust on your bread. Maybe do this again at the 20 minute mark.

I ended up baking this one for almost an hour. When you pull it out of the oven, take it out of its tin and tap the bottom. if it sounds hollow, its good.
In the final photo, you'll see a dark ring around the edge of my bread. this is the excess "sprinkle" that I put on before baking. This tells me that I should have brushed the top with water or egg or milk or something so the sprinkle would stay in place. Nevermind.

Let your bread rest for a while, maybe 20 minutes before eating.

Food for Friends

We just had friends move back after a year living in Singapore and wanted to get them round for a good old fashioned roast. It was really a great night and it's so fantastic to have some of my best friends back in our everyday reach. 

After an amazing run home on PT getting every connection between my tram and two trains, successfully lugging my 2kg leg of lamb through peak hour commuters, I did manage to forget the beans!  This however was Thursday night's only hiccup. It was last minute decision to cook roast lamb, and being a weekday and not wanting my guests to be eating dinner at 11pm it was a challenge, but in all truth this roast probably ran smoother than any we have previously done. We have cooked this particular version 2 or 3 times now and since investing in an in-oven meat thermometer we are no longer playing guessing games with our gas oven. Dinner was all prepped, cooking and filling the house with beautiful smells well before the guys arrived and even allowed me enough time to leg it down the street to get the beans!

So here's what we did:

Leg of Lamb with Salsa Verde and Feta Beans

The Prep!

A cup of red wine
1/4 cup of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic crushed and chopped
2-3 large sprigs of rosemary chopped
a good pinch of salt
5 or so grinds of black pepper

Throw  the above into a jar, seal and shake till mixed, then pour this over your meat. In an ideal world I'd let the meat marinate all day (over 5 hours) but in this case i had only 40 minutes before it had to be in the oven, so I popped the meat and the marinate in a plastic bag and massaged it thoroughly in (about 5 mins). This doesn't give a result as good as the long marinate time but it does help the process if you are pressed for time. I then transferred the meat and marinate to a bowl and let it sit covered in glad for my 40 mins. You can marinate the meat in the fridge overnight but be sure to take it out 4 hours before cooking. It's important that the meat is room temperature when you are ready to cook, it allows the meat to cook more evenly and means that the meat is relaxed and cooks for a shorter amount of time allowing the end result to be more tender and juicy.

In the mean time I made the Salsa Verde to be served with the meat. Now don't get discouraged by the ingredient this is AMAZING! and goes so well with the lamb. You just keep going back for more.

1 tbs of washed capers
1 tbs of chopped cornichons
2 anchovy fillets (you can leave these out, but don't)
1 crushed clove of garlic
1tbs of dijon
1/4 cup each of dill, basil, mint and parsley
zest and juice of a lemon,
1/4 cup of olive oil
A few grinds of black pepper

This is super simple, just put all these in a bowl and blend. And then put aside to serve later.

Potatoes wise i just love roasted Kipfler. They taste amazing and their slight waxy nature lets them hold their shape well, while being crunchy on the outside and fluffy and moist on the inside when done.

When the marinating time is done, sear the meat both sides on the stove (bbq is good for this too), before transferring it to a well headed oven at 200 degrees fan forced. The meat will go in for 20 mins on this high heat and then get turned down to 170/180 for the remainder of the time. We go by the meat thermometer for timing, medium rare was around an hour after the initial 20 mins. Before putting the meat in the oven tip the marinate in the roasting dish with 1/2 a cup of water.

The Cooking!

 
So with the meat in the hot oven and the time set for 20 mins, put your taters in a pot of cold water on the stove and bring to the boil. Let them cook till you can just get a fork in (15mins), then drain and let dry for a minute. Then (and this is the key to fantastic roast potatoes) shake them in the pan or a bowl to bruise the edges while adding a good drizzle of olive oil and salt. This means the fluffed up edges will go slightly crispy and yummy.

Pull the meat out of the oven when your timer goes off and add some more water (don't worry if the liquid has caramelized and blackened at the bottom when you add the extra cup now it'll be fine). Tip in your potatoes and return to the oven, now at 180, for about an hour.

We like to rest the meat for a good 15 - 20 mins. So once the timer goes off transfer the meat to foil, cover tightly and let it sit with a teatowl over. You can either turn the oven off and leave the potatoes in or leave them to cook the extra 20 mins depending on how they look. They should be nice and golden by now.

For the beans we like to cook them the same as asparagus. A large flat shallow pan allows the bean to not get crowded and to cook evenly. Place a pan on the heat and bring the water to boil. Then add salt (don't add salt before the water is boiled as it will take longer. Salt raises the boiling point of water). Add the beans and let them boil till their colour intensifies. About 2-5 minutes. They should be cooked but crunchy. Remove from heat and quickly plunge the beans into cold water. This stops them cooking further.

In a pan lightly toast some almond flakes, be careful not to burn. It'll look like nothing is happening for a long while then bang they colour really fast. Once browned tip the beans into the pan and lightly fry to heat back through (only a minute or so). Move the pan or stir constantly to avoid over-cooking the nuts. Serve with feta crumbled through.

Carve your meat and serve with a tiny bit of the meat juice poured over to keep the meat from drying out on the table. You don't need much.

And then just enjoy. It's a really yummy meal that cooks itself after the initial prep, so it allows for plenty of time with your guests. The last 20 mins is really the only time you need to be back in the kitchen. It's also a nice light roast not one you'll feel like you have eaten a whole animal after. The salsa verde and the feta beans keep the meal fresh.

Purple Potatoes

Not a way to start a cooking blog!

Purple potatoes!!?? A picture says a thousand words and this one says 'painting by numbers'.... but in all truth contrary to the digital evidence it tasted amazing!

The purple potatoes are not usually what accompanies this mustard and parsley chicken dish (thank-you Nigel Slater), however I couldn't resist picking up colourful non-descript vegetable goods with absolutely no idea what to do with them. Guess cooking with colours is my thing.
This chicken dish is fantastic and dead quick! We have adapted it slightly to suit our laid-back cooking approach but we highly recommend it with grilled aubergine, zucchini and asparagus. We'll do it again with the usual sides and presentation to show we're not totally insane.. but if you care to brave the bizarre... here goes:

Mix a large handful of fresh chopped parsley, a tbs of dried tarragon, a heaped tbs of dijon (thought I tend to add a bit more...mmmmm), 2 tbs of red wine vinegar, and about 3 seconds worth of oil through a bottle with a pourer, a good pinch of salt (maldon all the way) and some pepper, in a bowl and then put in 6 free range chicken thighs or 2 breasts, scored. Massage the marinate in and let sit (a long time in the fridge is good, but if your like me late home and rushed i try to give it 40 mins on the bench, if I can). Scrape the excess marinate off the chicken and place in a well heated heavy pan on the stove. Cook the chicken on a medium temperature till it has good colour then turn. When the second side is nearly done I add a cup, give or take (give) of white wine to the remanding marinate and then add this to the pan. The liquid should bubble and start to turn golden as it mixes with the burnt bits that have cooked with the chicken. Mix this well in and get all that yummy golden goodness into your sauce. Cover and let the chicken and the jus slightly simmer and steam for a few minutes. Odd and i'm sure Nigel would kill me, which is sad because I love him and I nearly only cook from his example but it's just the way this dish has developed for me.
Serve the chicken with some vegies and spoon some of the sauce on top (it's the best bit!). Serve with a LARGE glass of white wine. Tonight we had Brancott Estate Ormond Chardonay and I tell you what... rich, toasty and buttery...yum yum yum.

So after all that welcome to adventures with Rob and Keelie in the kitchen. It may not always be pretty but lets hope it's colourful and yummy at least.

Purple Potatoes

Yeas truly hideous. I like how the camera flash has picked up a glob of orangeness which makes it look like caked on fat. The purple potatoes came in some sort of multi-potato pack. We identified Kipfler and Pontiac, but these dark purple, hard-staining potatoes are as yet unknown. Wonderful colours. Surely could only be improved with a bit of pale sickly green like brussels sprouts or sliced (steamed) asparagus.

The killer punchline is that it actually tasted great. The potatoes were more colourful than flavoursome, and we did forget (again) that turning off the oven while leaving the fan-forced on will result in the grill being activated. This in turn results in us thinking that the "heat box thing" is no longer producing heat when in fact it is producing scorching temperatures focussed directly at our defenceless potatoes. "Crunchy" is a word best used to describe crisps, not burnt chunks of potato, but Keelie always does great with her mustard chicken, and the crunchy potatoes simply aded an extra dimension to the dish.
Next time - Vegies