Memory & food, and Spaghetti Bolognese

It's that classic thing, the mix of food and memory. All it takes is a single taste and you can thrown back in time. Maybe it's a childhood memory, maybe it's the table and kitchen of an ex-lover. But food has an incredible power - it engages all the senses, so is a remarkable trigger for memory.

What's more, a certain dish can itself become a kind of history, combining a whole range of memories of people and places. When this happens, you're experiencing one of the most magical things that food can do.

It's the same for me, but the dish in question is arguably pretty bog-standard, so to speak. Regardless, it's power to take me back to the my earliest memories, and remind me of some of my most missed friends is amazing. And it doesn't hurt that it's a hearty feel good dish.

Spaghetti Bolognese

It's a classic, beloved of parents everywhere for how easy it is to prepare, and how filling it is. I'm sure most of my friends' parents were not unlike my mum in this regard - she had her own version of the dish that evolved from a Women's Weekly recipe to a standard dish that she could cook simply and easily after coming home from work to a hungry kid like me.

I loved any bolognese night. A good portion of the cooking when I grew up was handled by my Nan, and unsurprisingly (she lived through The Depression and a World War) her cooking was... frugal. Meat and three veg was the order of the day.

I don't want to sound like I look down on that, though - she was a remarkable woman. But I think the difference between that utilitarian style of cooking, which was more about feeding than enjoying, and the rich flavours of my mum's bolognese, is what first lit the foodie fire.

Bolognese was also the first dish I ever cooked by myself, like some kind of actual grown-up. Subsequently, it was a dish I would cook whenever I got the chance, so it also started to build up a flavour of independence, on top of that sweetness of memory.

Of course, my idea of the dish was blown out of the water... hell, blown out of the entire lake... when my good friend Helen cooked the dish for me.

This was many years ago now. I was still living at home, but would spend many nights around it Helen's house. Her brother had been a good friend, but Helen became just as important to me after he moved out, and I remained in the neighbourhood. She was of good Breton stock, from Normandy, and she (and her father) kept a killer table.

Man, if you could have her baby octopus... she has the unique status of being the only person who could ever cook an octopus dish that I liked. And her rabbit? Wow.

Unsurprisingly, her bolognese made mine cry. It picked on it, stole its lunch money, and generally made its life miserable. It was a full, proper, rendition of the sauce.

Now I'm going to sound like I'm dissing my mum's version - nothing could be further from the truth. Which is, that she, like me, like my Nan too, couldn't really help her upbringing. Which, to follow that line further, was not the best for a full and proper understanding of food. Mum's bolognese was informed by the spirit of convenience that summed up her own upbringing - it was a more imaginative take on it, but still shackled to that post-war austerity that seemed to infect the greater suburban mass of Australia well into the last century.

I mean... it didn't even have herbs.

Suffice to say that my time in Helen's kitchen opened my eyes to serious, European cooking. And hangovers, but that's neither here nor there. But, watch as I might as she mixed up thick, tomatoey magic, I could never replicate her efforts. My own bolognese sat, then, on the shelf of my mind.

Until a few years ago, that is. Of the many great things about my current relationship (See 'things, many (also great)) is the way it's pushed me to really become a better cook. I was pretty happy with my simple skills before then, but since we're both fond of good food, and I get an almost perverse sense of pleasure from presenting my partner with great food, the last almost a decade has been a real cooking renaissance. It certainly pushed me to rediscover the humble bolognese sauce.

The interesting thing about that initial effort, about three years and two houses ago now, was that it really wasn't too different from the recipe I used way back when inspired by Helen. But what was different was my knowledge of how to apply it, how to prep the food, and how to then cook it.

And it was great.

So, after all this faffing on, you're probably ready for how to make this, right? Right.

ingredients

500gm lamb mince

500gm veal mince

two brown onions

stick of celery

Garlic clove

tin of champignon mushrooms

two tins of diced tomato

tomato paste

chicken stock

oregano

basil

two bay leaves

salt & pepper

olive oil

spaghetti

And yes, this makes about six hungry people's worth of sauce - fiddle the ingredients down if you want to make less, or simply store in the freezer.

Anyhoo... first up, finely chop the onion, garlic and celery and saute in a heavy bottomed pot. Do your best not to let it burn - you want it all starting to turn clear, then dump in the mince.

Mix this up with a sturdy wooden spoon, breaking the mince down into mincey goodness. It's good muscle-building work. Keep stirring and breaking up the mince as it browns; once browned through and starting to properly cook, add a cup of chicken stock, herbs, mushrooms (the champignons always make me think of Helen) and salt & pepper. Let this bubble up to a boil, reduce the heat, and let reduce.

Once you're back to a more or less meaty mix in the pot, add the tomatoes and tomato paste, and the bay leaves. A pinch of sugar doesn't hurt at this stage either, but that's entirely optional. Again, bring the mix up to a boil, then reduce heat, cover the pot, and let simmer away. It's a pretty liquid sauce at this point, so you want to reduce it down again.

Before...

After. With a mess of steam.

What you should end up with is a lovely red, meaty sauce. As you let the sauce cool, boil a pot of salted water for the pasta. I like it just al dente, with just a hint of crunch still there, but that's just my taste.

To plate, I think coiled pasta with a dob of sauce looks best, but you can just as easily mix the pasta through the sauce before serving. Add parmesan, pour yourself a glass of red, and enjoy.

Super fresh seafood goodness

Our latest batch of market freshness arrived over the weekend, and it was a real seafood special. On top of a pretty excellent veg selection and a tonne of blood oranges, it included fresh whole snapper and about well over two dozen mussels.

Our mussels disappeared in a frenzy on Saturday night, and then we had the fish and more mussels (courtesy of some Feedbag friends who felt compelled to share, bless 'em) again on Sunday night.

It was a big seafood weekend!

Mussels in white wine and tomato

I've never cooked mussels before. To be honest, I really don't care for them that much - I tend to find them a bit too seafoody, and often rather too chewy. But these mussels were sublime. I've never seen fresher, and these were a true pleasure to prepare and cook with. When it comes to seafood, you really want the freshest you can get.

ingredients

Two dozen mussels

Brown onion

Garlic clove

Bacon

Two tomatoes

Continental parsley

Two bay leaves

Sea salt

Olive oil

Butter

White wine

Spaghetti

You'll also want some fresh crusty bread for this one - trust me.

First order of the day - get your water on to boil. This dish requires tight timing and you'll want to let the pasta be nearly done before you get the mussels going. While waiting for the water to boil, though, you'll need to get to cleaning them, though.

Mussels, pre-cleaning.

We were lucky - our mussels were mostly beardless and not to encrusted, but your mileage may vary. Debearding is simply a matter of taking the hair-like fringe some mussels have tearing it off; removing any barnacle-type beasties requires a bit more scrubbing. Be careful during the cleaning - mussel shells have been used by coastal peoples as cutting and scraping tools since the dawn of cutting and scraping, and you can easily discover just why when you're scrubbing them clean.

And this learning will sting like a motherfucker. At this stage you also want to get rid of any mussels with broken shells, and any dead, open ones. Do check the deadness, though - rap the shell against a hard surface (without breaking it!) and see if the shell closes. If it does, the tasty mollusc is still good. If it stays open, bin it.

At the end of the process, you should have a bowl of shiny, clean soon-to-be-noms.

Your water should be well and truly boiling, now, so add about a third of a pack of spaghetti. Finely chop the onion, garlic and parsley, and heat up some oil in a large heavy bottomed pot. With the oil hot, melt some butter in it, and add the chopped ingredients and a pinch of salt. Sauté until the onion is soft and translucent, and add roughly chopped tomatos, bay leaves, and bacon.

Timed right, as the tomato is just starting to soften, your pasta should be just about ready. At this point, toss the mussels into the pot, and splash in the wine - about a glass or two, depending on how boozy you like your food. Put a lid on the pot, check the pasta, and - if ready - drain it.

Now, peer at the pot. You are, effectively, waiting for the literal watched heating device to boil. When you get that first gout of steam from around the lid you want to wait maybe a minute or so - what you're doing is steaming the mussels, and being tiny delicate little things it won't take long to cook them. Take the lid off, and if they're ready to go, they'll have all opened up invitingly.

Toss the pasta into the pot and stir through, then plate up as you wish. Butter some fresh crusty bread, top up your wine (we had a lovely pinot grigio), and get ready to slurp and make a mighty mess.

Like I said - I'm not usually a fan of mussels. However, after these mussels... all bets are off. These were practically falling out of the shell during serving, and were not at all rubbery; instead of being overpoweringly seafoody in flavour, were simply rich and full of freshness. And for all that it's a little tricky in the timing department, and takes a bit of time when it comes to the cleaning, it's another quick meal - a real good one to do for a crowd, too.

And boy, oh boy, is that sauce tasty - you will go through a whole loaf or baguette, and you will stand greedily over the pot sopping up all the juices you can...

... and you'll be happy. In your mouth.

It's odd that it's nearly three months months into this blog and have only written up one pasta dish - and a non-typical one at that!

My pasta habit, however, isn't what it it used to be. Time was, practically every second meal I cooked was pasta (and there was even a time where it alternated between pasta and risotto... ), but these days, especially with the excellent driver that is our Feedbag allocation, I cook much more widely.

But if there's anything in my repertoire that I would have to call a 'signature dish', it's pasta with any kind of red sauce. In particular, my evolution of Puttanesca.

Penna alla Puttanesca

Technically, this is not, in fact, a Puttanesca. Also known as Whore's Pasta for wholly historical and rather practical reasons, my version swaps out a few key ingredients based on the taste-buds of various flatmates. A proper Puttanesca features generous amounts of anchovies, and even capers. I omit the capers and add tuna instead of the furry fish.

And yeah, if you're thinking this is a backwards step out of flavour country, you're right. But anchovy isn't for everyone, and if you nail the other flavours you still get a good dish. I do make a proper Puttanesca when I can, however. Hmm... salty...

ingredients

Tin of tomato

One onion

Two cloves of garlic

Water

Tomato paste

Olives

Tin of chilli tuna

Basil

Sea Salt

Cracked pepper

Olive oil

Penne pasta

Parmesan to taste

Couple of things to note. Take out the olives, tuna, and chilli and you've got an excellent base for a red sauce - in fact, ignore them completely in this recipe, or substitute for something else (like chorizo or mushrooms or... whatever) and that's what you'll get whatever kind of red sauce you want.

Secondly, the tuna. There's nothing wrong with good tinned food, and it can be a Gods-send to always have a couple of packs of pasta, tins of tomato and tuna in the cupboard. Of course, there's a mess of brands to choose from, but I find you can't go wrong with La Gina tomatoes(crushed, preferably) and Sirena tuna with chilli in oil. Saying it's arguably the best tuna in a can may not sound like much, but this is really good stuff, and going with the chilli variety makes this meal even simpler to cook, and provides two lovely chillis and a measure of oil suffused with that great flavour.

So let's get cooking.

First up, get a pot of salted water boiling for the pasta, and then slice up the garlic and onions. Add goodly splash of oil (I like oily pastas) to a pan and sauté until turning clear. Pop the tin of tuna, fish out the two chillis, and chop these up - add to the pan. Also add in some basil now - in this instance, I've used a jar of dried stuff.

Take a handful of the olives and either chop or add whole at this point. I prefer juicy kalamata olives (and, if you're interested, my favourite brand is Sandhurst), but this dish works just as well with green olives. Saute a touch longer, then drain most of the oil off the tuna, and flake out of the tin with a fork.

Saute a little bit more, and it's time to make this sauce start working. Add the tomatoes - take the tin, and half fill with water, adding it too. You can if you want substitute a measure of red wine if you want a punchy, boozy sauce - and there's nothing wrong with that! Add about a desert spoon of paste, stir it all up, bring to boil, and then let simmer away until the pasta's ready, and the sauce has thickened and reduced a bit. Add a bit more basil to the mix (adding herbs at different stages of cooking means you get that deeper flavour through all the ingredients, I find, while still keeping that fresher, stronger flavour hit).

Finally, drain off the pasta when ready, stir the sauce through, nom it all up.

This is flavour country right here, even with the most basic, "I have nothing fresh and must eat!" version of the dish. And if you think it's good as is - and it is - with a little planning this can be a real winner. Get good fresh olives from the local deli; use fresh chopped basil, lovely and green and fragrant. Use the good olive oil you save for special occasions.

Or, assuming you've got anchovy-friendly people around, make the real thing. With some fresh crusty bread, oil for dipping, and a bright combat Shiraz, this is about the best way to spend an evening with friends.

Not dead yet, plus loving pork

I do kind of wish I was, though.

Dead, that is, not pork. We'll get to pork later, but for now, I'm stupidly, fiendishly busy. In fact, I've nabbed this time only because I'm waiting for a flight overseas (to Germany, where there will be beer - and sausage!). So yeah, dead - because I figure at least then I could fit in some time to write a bit more.

I've got a backlog of something like... a lot of meals to write up. But life's kind of kicking my arse at the moment, so things are going to be a little slow.

That said...

Two tasty things with pork mince

I'm enjoying bit of a pork renaissance* at the moment. After the last pork dish, I've really been hankering for that typically full and salty flavour, while at the same time wanting meals which are a) easy to cook, but b) still tasty and exciting enough to be worthwhile.

Combine simple Asian flavours with pork and you get exactly that.

First up, we have a very simple Pork and Green Bean stirfry, and then a special bonus round!

ingredients

Two handfuls fresh green beans

Handful of pork mince

Garlic

Ginger

Soy

Shallots

Rice

Dead simple, and as you'll find out, dead tasty.

First up, get the rice going in the rice cooker, and then heat up some vegetable oil in a pan. Saute, while stirring frequently, the pork mince. It may not seem like much mince, but it's not really the bulk of the dish - that's the beans. When the mince starts to cook, pour on a couple of tablespoons and soy, add in the garlic, ginger and shallots, and reduce while keeping on stirring.

When it's starting to cook down, throw on the beans.

Stir through and just let sit simmering as the liquid reduces. You're kind of steaming the beans more than frying them - you want them to still have crunch, but to also pick up the flavours of soy and ginger.

You'll note I'm using a flat-bottomed pan, but this would really be best done in a wok. The pan works, though, so don't be worried if you don't have the right bits.

So with everything all nice and reduced, you should end up with a nicely sticky, almost caramelised sauce on the beans, and lovely, tasty bits of mince to add bite and flavour. Serve up the rice, toss the pork and beans on, and you're in happy town.

Soy and pork is a lovely combination, a double threat of salty goodness. And with all those beans and plain white rice, it's a pretty healthy meal too, for all that tastes quite serious. Even better, it's a fast cook - the stirfry takes about ten minutes tops. If you want a bit of bite, just add some sliced chilli.

Of course, the issue with using such a small amount of mince is you have most of a packet left over. Simple: get a nice fresh head of lettuce, some bean sprouts, onion and more shallots. Ideally some water chestnut too, but we didn't have any and things worked out fine.

Prepare the mince in much the same way, but add in a less soy, along with some oyster sauce. Add onions, water chestnut, and finally the bean sprouts (which should still have some crunch to them when done), and saute away.

Wash the lettuce, and slice the bottom off, then carefully peel away individual leaves. Place a pile of leaves in a bowl, put the mince mix in a bowl, and put on a bib.

Sang choy bow - which you've just made - is a messy but delicious dish. The crunchy lettuce makes a great partner to the pork, all clean and fresh and salty and rich all at once, with that great crunchy mouthfeel as well.

And, again, it's really easy to make - and technically, you don't even need plates to eat it off! The ultimate in convenience food.

One packet of mince and a handful ingredients - two quick and easy meals.

* You, in back - no sniggering at my pork renaissance!

One pot cooking, good prep, plus hearty (vaguely Greek) beef casserole

One pot, slow cooking methods are an odd mixture of convenience and time-commitment. It's not the kind of thing you can really do in a hurry, obviously, and once you start cooking you're kind of stuck with dinner plans from about three in the afternoon.

As someone who has been known to decide on a dish to cook only about half-way through cooking it, it's a very different way of looking at food.

But, on the other hand - the whole one pot thing. Small inner city kitchens do not lend themselves to extravagant meals that require a stock to be bubbling, sides cooking, mains in the oven, and another two or three stations of prep. Oh for one of those Hollywood room-sized kitchens with a chopping island the size of a... well, island.

A lot of the one-pot cooking I do tends to be on the faster side - chop vegetables, throw into large pot with oil or goose fat, saute for a metric bit, then cover with stock and simmer for an hour. But just a little more time spent on prep, ingredients and cooking time can deliver a fantastic dish.

Beef casserole

As usual, our Feedbag delivery came through with some great stuff, including a chunk of sirloin roughly the size of my girlfriend's head. It was a lovely, marbled piece of meat. There was also the usual selection of market fresh veg, and the Feedbag run before, which my girlfriend went on (note, girlfriends are tetchy that time of a morning), we scored a huge bag of 'souvlaki mix'.

We've had this stuff before, and it's an awesome pre-mixed herb and spice powder. The only thing - no one's quite sure exactly what's in there. Undoubtedly there's salt and oregano, and some debate over pepper, lemon or lemon pepper. I think there's more to it, though - the flavour is a touch more complex. Maybe some thyme, or onion powder, it's hard to tell. Regardless, it's extremely tasty, so it seemed the perfect compliment to the beef.

ingredients

Chunk of sirloin

potatoes

green beans

carrot

zucchini

onion

celery

tinned tomato

bacon bones

chicken stock

goose fat

In terms of directions, it doesn't get simpler. There is, however, one complication to be mindful of - the state of your meat.

If you've ever wondered why beef dishes can be so tender and wonderful in a restaurant, but so chewy and disappointing at home... it's all in the prepping of the meat. More specifically, it's in the removal of connective tissue.

Not all connective tissue, however. Good connective tissue, the stuff that surrounds each muscle fibre, is made from collagen. Collagen breaks down with slow heat, and adds that silky fattiness that makes a real gourmand water at the mouth and go weak at the knees. The bad stuff, though, is made from elastin, and this doesn't break down. In fact, it gets tough and will actually curl and warp the meat as it cooks.

So how do you tell the bad stuff?

Well, it's usually the very obvious silver membrane running through a cut of meat. This is the stuff that connects two different muscle groups - it has to be tough stuff, to stop muscles from separating. Good for walking around without tearing yourself limb from limb, bad for cooking. Thankfully, it only takes a bit of effort to remove, and when you get really good at it, you won't waste a bit of meat.

I'm... not that good at it yet. You need a really sharp knife, too, but the trick is to part the two layers of meat gently apart as you stroke the edge of the blade along the grain of the meat. If you've a cut of meat with the membrane running through the center, you'll need to trim twice - once to halve the meat into a good bit and a membraned bit, and then trim again to remove the membrane altogether. Yes, there will be a bit of wastage, but practice will make perfect.

More importantly, a bit of wastage is worth it for the end result. So, with the dreaded silver membrane removed, what do you do for this stew?

Simple. Cube your sirloin into good sized chunks, and lay flat on a tray or pan. Sprinkly with your souvlaki mix - or whatever herb-spice combo you want, really - pat the mix into the meat, then turn the pieces. Repeat - spices, pat etc - and then let sit while you get chopping the veg. Chop roughly and not too small, otherwise you'll end up with beef in vegetable soup. Do chop the bacon bones carefully, though - relatively small, and be careful to avoid too much bone.

With everything chopped up, get a tablespoon or so of goose fat melted in a heavy bottomed pot, and brown the beef. And since we're being all educational, no, you don't sear or brown meat to "seal in the juices" - cooking meat actually cooks the juices off! The reason you do brown is to caramelise the beef, adding an important flavour element.

Once all the beef is nicely browned (it should be rare at this stage, and you'll need to make sure by popping a piece into your mouth - you like rare beef, right?) take the pot off the heat, and add everything else. You don't want to cover the ingredients with the stock, but add just enough liquid that you can see it just below the uppermost layer of ingredients. Give it all a mix, then bung in an oven pre-heated to about 170 degrees.

Cooking for a few hours. Stab a carrot to test if it's ready. If not, up the temperature and cook for a bit longer. Once it's ready, plate in a bowl by itself, or add to a plate of boiled white rice, or even a nice creamy mash if you're really feeling like a lot of potato.

Okay, not my best photo. But man, it was a very good bottle of wine.

My hazy focus aside, this is serious business. This is cooking at not only its simplest and most basic, but also illustrative of the simple tricks you can use to really lift a dish. Cooking something like this in goose fat delivers a triple-threat of culinary oomph: it's flavoursome, silky from the goose fat, and silkier again from the broken down fat in the beef.

It's like eating... something really expensive and melted.

But the real star, the Jewel in the Silky Crown, is that beef. Tender. Fall apart on your fork. Melt in your mouth.

Happy. In your pants.

And that's the whole point of taking the time to properly trim your meat. That investment pays fucking dividend's when it's on the plate in front of you or your guests. Especially your guests. They'll ooh, they'll ahh. They'll ask how you did it.

"It's all in the prep," you'll say. Cool, just like that. When you'v cooked a great cut of beef to perfection, a cook deserves some cool.

The simple things, plus Chicken and Vegetables in Oyster Sauce

One of the things that's guaranteed to get me in a rage are sauces in jars. Chicken Tonight, Leggo's pasta sauces, or any of a million other varieties - with very few exceptions, these are all sauces that are so damn easy to make that it's criminal that these things are so popular. They take up so much space on supermarket shelves that it's easy to believe some people must east nothing else.

That said, I can see the reasoning, at least in terms of the time-poor. It's not everyone who has the time to come home and make a proper meal accompanied by a freshly made sauce and sides. And for a lot of people, cooking is a chore (gasp!), not something to do because you like it.

And let's be honest - I like cooking... and sometimes even I fall back on the one-bottle solution.

Chicken and Vegetables in Oyster Sauce

The other day while shopping a bottle of Oyster Sauce caught my eye. It's a vegetarian one, made from aged mushrooms, and a dingy plastic bottle, with the usual scrawl of Chinese characters that I've often assumed say "The one who purchases this cannot cook".

But I picked it up anyway, because it's always handy to have a selection of good Asian ingredients on hand. It is, after all, a region that really understands fast cooking. And that's what this meal is all about - it's quick, stupidly versatile, and as I've been having it, loaded with good fresh veg, a really good hang-over cure.

It's also, in my opinion, barely cooking, but it's still so damned tasty it's worth sharing.

ingredients

Chicken thighs, sliced

Red capsicum

Squash

Mushrooms

Onion

Shallots

Garlic

Ginger

Oyster sauce

Rice

Start off by tossing two cups of rice into a rice cooker. We only recently got one of these heavenly engines of cooking, and they are a true Gods send. You could add something like finely sliced water chestnuts or shiitake mushroom to the rice, but it's fine just plain - but then again, I loves me rice in any form.

Slice up your chicken thighs, trimming off any excess fat (I'm picky - sue me), and then toss into a pan with a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil. I've been meaning to get some sesame or peanut oil for this, but vegetables been working fine. I've also been meaning to get a proper wok, but again, am making do with a simple pan.

When the chicken's starting to cook all over (and keep stirring, you don't want it to stick and burn, or overcook), add in the chopped veg. Stir for a few minutes, add the garlic and ginger (which I just slice), stir again, then stir in a mess (a very precise measurement... ) of the oyster sauce.

Enough to give it that takeout Chinese shine.

Keep stirring, add a bit more sauce if it looks as though it's cooking off, and by about now the rice should be done. Rice in a bowl, food on rice, eat.

Like I said - it's really not cooking, really just assembly. But it's very tasty, highly nutritious assembly. And, possibly as importantly, it's really fast, maybe twenty minutes all up to cook.

As to the versatility, well, you can pretty much cook it with any ingredients. Bok choy or other Asian green are a no-brainer, and I've done a purely vegetarian version with just that. Carrots and broccoli are another option... basically, pretty much anything fresh will cook up really well.

A rice cooker and a good oyster sauce - essential tools in any lazy cook's arsenal.

Getting excited about food, and côte de porc à la charcutière

As I've mentioned, I recently had a short trip overseas. It's kind of messed up my joy for cooking - I guess getting waited on for a week and a half spoils you somehow.

Who knew?

But the latest Feedbag box has come in, and it had some lovely pork chops. I rarely cook with pork, so I wanted to do something special; something that would re-ignite that passion for cooking and good food. So where do you turn to when you need that kind of kick in the pants?

The Les Halles Cookbook.

Gods, how I love that book. It's essentially the bible to Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles restaurant, containing his philosophy for cooking, signature dishes, and some truly awesome food writing. I only own a handful of cookbooks, and this is the one I refer to almost as much as Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Companion (the true "If you only own one cookbook" cookbook).

So back to the pork, and the recipe at hand. If you google côte de porc à la charcutière the top four or five results refer directly to the Les Hallse recipe. The rest are in French. So now I'm going to add my take on this great dish to the Google Gods.

côte de porc à la charcutière

For all that this sounds rather fancy, what it essentially translates to is pork the way the pork butcher prepares it. So you've got to guess these butchers know their job, more or less. It's also a fiendishly quick meal to cook, which means it's an ideal dinner party meal that you can cook in twenty minutes or so, and then casually mangle some French as you serve the meal.

It's the little things, really.

Please note: my recipe does deviate a touch, thanks to not having the right range of cookware or proper stock on hand. Which... yeah. Bourdain would kidney punch me for a crime like that.

ingredients

Two pork chops (about 300gm each)

Oil

Butter

Small onion

Flour

White wine, the drier the better

Beef stock (which is not only the wrong stock, but is store-bought - egads!)

Dijon mustard

Half a dozen cornichons

Sprig of flat leaf parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

See? Simple! To accompany the dish, I also prepared some cabbage and apple in butter.

First up set your oven to 190 degrees Celsius, and season the pork with salt and pepper - just pinch of each, on each side, and quickly rub into the meat. Heat up the oil, and then add the butter - about a tablespoon of each - in a non stick pan. Throw in your pork, and cook for four minutes a side. Then transfer the pan to oven... assuming you have an oven-safe pan, which I foolishly don't.

So what I did was simply pour the pan's contents into a glass roasting dish, and then put the pan aside. Cook the pork in the oven for eight minutes, which is about all you need for the rest of the prep.

Finely chop the onions, the cornichons (or baby gherkins, if you don't want to fancy about it) and the parsley. Chop the cabbage and finely slice up small apple. In preparation for the cabbage and apple, melt some better in a pan, with another pinch of salt and pepper.

Right about now, your pork should be done. Ideally, you'd remove your pan, set the chops aside under some foil, and put the pan back on the heat. In my case, I reserved the chops, and simply poured off the baking dish into the pan. I don't think it hurt the dish any, but I bet this will taste better once I get the right cookware.

Anyway, with the pan back on the heat, it's time to work on the sauce. Add the onions, and sauté until golden. Add the flour, and stir for a minute. Then half a cup wine goes in (and you'll need a refill by now, too, if you're a cook after my own heart). Reduce this by half, then add a cup of stock, again reducing it by half.

While working on the sauce, you can easily knock off the cabbage. First, toss the apple slices into the butter, toss a couple of times until coated, and then add the cabbage. Toss and stir, and let the cabbage wilt slightly - but not too much. Take off the heat and plate.

The sauce - which you've been stirring and paying loving attention to, right? - should be about done. Remove from the heat, whisk a teaspoon of the mustard through, then add the gherkins and parsley. Stir, and admire the lovely colour, and the rich, mustardy aroma. Take your two well-rested chops, place on the cabbage and apple, and then pour off any juices into the sauce. You do not want to waste good pork fat.

Then simply pour the sauce over the chops. Jobs a good'un.

And man... for one thing, I think we really lucked out with the pork. It was sublime; and pan frying and then finishing in the oven really does a great job of producing a tender bit of meat. To be honest, this would have been great just with plain three veg, but with the sauce...

Sweet fuck, that's a helluva sauce. Rich, creamy, and full of sharp flavours from the cornichons and the mustard. In combination with the pork - well, it made me very happy in my mouth.

I was pleased with the cabbage and apple, too. It's a classic accompaniment to pork, but you really don't need to do much to it. The apple sweetness and crunchiness is a great offset to the heavy textures of the meat and sauce, while cabbage is a much needed concession to a reasonable vegetable intake.

All up, it was so good - especially with a New Zealand Sav Blanc - that I felt compelled to take an 'after' shot of the plate...

What you need to know about this image, is that I am fiendishly picky when it comes to finishing a bit of meat on the bone - gristle, fat, finicky stuff... I usually can't be arsed. After this dish, though, I gnawed the bone, cleaned my plate with a bit of bread, and then set to the saucepan with another piece of bread.

So here's to you, Anthony. To your words, your passion, and most importantly your food. I raise a glass... once I refill it, of course. Anything else would be rude.

Beef bourguignon, or, more accurately, how not to make beef bourguignon...

Sorry for the absence folks. Had a business trip to the US where I had planned to not only cover off on the work I had to do, but also talk about food a bit.

Instead, I'm still recovering from the impacted bowel I always seem to get when I digest what passes for food in that forsaken land. There is good food in the USA, but you just happen to pay through the nose for it, and no matter what you pay, getting a good serve of vegetables, or bread without gallons for corn syrup, is nigh impossible.

Vancouver, which I also visited, is a foodie heaven, however. Awesome seafood, an understanding that vegetables are important, and a mighty fine understanding of how to make a martini.

But, long story short, I'm back. Now to try and get the hang of cooking for myself again after a week and a half of being waited on and making nothing more strenuous than black coffee.

So, let's drift back in time to a dinner party I hosted a little while ago, for a lesson in how far you can push a recipe and still make it work.

Beef in Red Wine, with boiled new potatoes

Normally I like to go through ingredients and do the whole nine yards recipe thing, but the truth is... I really consider this dish a pretty serious failure. So, basically, I'm not even going to suggest you cook it. But it's an interesting and illustrative failure, at least.

Beef bourguignon, which this is a bastardised version of, is a classic dinner party dish. Rich, hearty, and really easy to make ahead of time. In fact, many recipes call for just that - make it the night before, let the flavours intensify overnight, then reheat to the tasty amazement of your guests. The problem with that is simple - who has time to cook a meal that technically should be on the go for hours, put it aside for the next night, then make something so you can eat there and then? It's a time intensive dish, and like a lot of city dwellers, time's a serious commodity for me.

That said, there are some handy shortcuts, and I've made this dish before in about an hour, and it's super good. But when you're already shortcutting a recipe, the last thing you want to be doing is cutting any more corners, and that's where my last Beef and Red Wine really fell down.

The people I was cooking this for presented a range of interesting challenges, not the least of which was a serious dairy allergy. Another guest doesn't dig on pig (I know, it's crazy, but she's a lovely person), and I do believe there was even some gluten issues at hand.

The thing about cooking is that it's effectively science for your mouth. Any really good dish is a series of chemical and organic reactions, as well as complex interactions of mouth feel and flavour; messing about with any facet of a dish often has disastrous consequences. I know this. I knew it then, too, but I was so stuck with the idea of presenting a ballsy beef bourguignon, and cooking it in front of my guests (because, for me, cooking is as much about being seen to prepare good food as it is presenting that good food - it's a performance thing) that I just plowed ahead, and figured I could easily cook a dish that was already flaunting the recipe, and go ahead and remove butter, bacon, and flour.

Rookie. Fucking. Mistake.

Sure, it looks okay. But that's just what it wants you to think. Look closer, and the rich-seeming sauce is missing that all important shimmer of butter. That sauce is also being soaked up by the beef, because it's not been thickened by the flour.

And, when you taste it, it's lacking anything like the body it should have. Oh, bacon, why dids't I forsake thou?!

Because I'm an idiot, that's why!

The annoying thing is that this is dish I can really cook - and in just an hour or so. But it needs those important ingredients. The butter adds richness, a silky mouthfeel, and thickens the sauce. The flour should coat the meat when it's first browned, which transfers a magic amount to the pan, while also adding further thickness when the meat's added again later in the dish, not to mention changing the consistency of that meat. And the bacon - it's bacon! Rich, smoky bacon.

There's simply no stock rich enough, no demi glace ballsy enough (as Bourdain would put it), to make up for not having those important elements. What I produced was a flat, flavourless dish that if you got it in a restaurant, you'd send back to the kitchen with a sternly worded letter to the chef.

Of course, all this whining aside, the final irony is, well, kind of delicious. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, but one of my guests went back for seconds and thirds. He told me it was one of the tastiest things I'd ever cooked for him.

Then again, this is the guy who's allergic to dairy - what would he know*?!

* Actually, quite a lot, as he's a cook I quite respect in his own right. But nonetheless...

Just a quick observation...

It goes without saying, that good spelling and grammar are important. But it's doubly important when you are listing food ingredients.

Now, I admit - I don't really give accurate measurements for my dishes. Mostly because I don't cook with accurate measurements, and much rather the 'cook by feel and taste' approach. But, if I were making something where measures are vitally important, they'd be here.

And that's not something you want to make a mess with. If you look up a recipe here and I've transposed a few digits, you'll be suitably cross. Like if I recommended putting, say, 23 teaspoons of chilli powder in a dish, you might well grow to hate me (once you wake from your coma).

But another area where things can go horribly wrong - as I'll soon illustrate - is in the unfortunate turn of phrase you may end up with by leaving an important word out. Not only can this be clumsy and make a recipe unclear and hard to follow, it too can lead to unfortunate cooking decisions.

Case in point: I point you to this otherwise fine-looking recipe for Stuffed Spatchcock, from the ABC's The Cook and The Chef. I think this will definitely inspire a recipe of my own, but I do hope that the recipe doesn't actually call for...

knob butter

But maybe it does! Perhaps Maggie Beer, delightfully foodie-type that she is, likes a bit of, well... sauciness in her cooking. For all I know, knob butter adds a silky finish, as it were, to the sauce that accompanies the dish. Or she's just an inveterate knob-butter-gobbler*.

Who can say.

Well, I can say one thing - be very careful when transcribing your recipes.

* Did I just call Maggie Beer a knob-gobbler? I think I did. Oops. Expect litigation and firebombs made from tasty food any day now.

What's in the box?

I've mentioned our little local food collective, called Feedbag, a few times, and since this weekend just past was Feedbag day, it seemed a good opportunity to share the awesomeness.

There's some onion and potato from a previous Feedbag run, but otherwise, that's everything we received on Saturday. Impressive, huh? It's effectively three boxes of awesome produce bought direct from Flemington markets at ohmigod o'clock. The brave souls who do the run are starting to get known out there, and are even getting some stuff discounted - remember, there are about a dozen other people in the co-op, so we get a lot of food.

Some of the market guys even thought the two girls who do most of the shopping were running a restaurant.

Anyhoo, here's the complete list of stuff:

Vintage Gouda
Dutch cream potatoes
Kipfler potatoes
Gold sweet potatoes
Button mushrooms
Broccoli
Limes
Mandarins
Baby cos lettuce
Daikon radishes
Yellow capsicum
Baby eggplant

Brown onions

Single clove garlic
Rhubarb
Grape tomatoes
Baby squash
Chinese cabbage (wombok)
Granny smith apples
Fuji apples
Diced goat
Carrots
Oyster blade steak

Spatchcck
Fresh coriander
Fresh mint
Fresh basil
Persian dried figs
Cardamom pods
White peppercorns
Spice mix for goat

See? Huge amounts of goodness, and all for only $50. It's more than enough to last the fortnight between shops, lasts wonderfully long (remember, this is literally market fresh, so it's not sitting in a cool room at a Woolies or something), and is a serious cooking inspiration. I find the surprise ingredients really pushes my cooking in interesting directions.

Like the spatchcock...

... and the figs, for instance.

Not stuff I'd normally consider purchasing or cooking with, but now in my kitchen and in need of a worthy cooking effort.

Feedbag - we hearts it, precious.

French Onion Soup

It's getting colder, and it's certainly been a wet week or two in Sydney. In other words, it's perfect weather for a nice hearty soup.

One of the things I love about a good soup is how easy they are - chop up your ingredients, saute a bit in oil or butter, add stock and herbs, and then let simmer away for however long you've got. Soup can be as structured or as freeform as your ingredients allow - it's a real wonder meal.

That said, there are some classics that really do deserve a bit more attention, and French Onion Soup is one of them.

Interestingly, for a lot of people the term 'french onion' was likely first associated with heavily creamed dips and Jatz crackers. As a kid, I devoured entire bowls of french onion dip at parties and BBQs. When my tastes started to broaden, and I moved out of home, I encountered the real thing. This taught me two important lessons:

1. French onion dip is a crime against food and likely humanity as well.

2. For true disdain and cranky service, you can't go past a pissed off Frenchman.

It was... some time in the early nineties, and the restaurant in question was a converted cellar in a Sydney laneway, called Le Guillotine. Sounds cheesy, yeah, but trust me, this place made a French Onion Soup that you'd gladly form a revolutionary government for. Most of the staff were either French or pretending, and man... they hated anyone who interrupted their busy Gaulish habits. You know - smoking, wearing berets, and wearing onions instead of cooking them.

But that soup stuck with me, and when I was recently staring at the large amount of onions in our pantry, it seemed the kind of thing that an onion would be proud to be a part of.

French Onion Soup

In the classic French style this is a dish that started out as simple peasant fare, but has now become more of a dinner party staple. Say to someone that you're cooking up a pot of French Onion Soup and they're likely to go "Wow, that's cool" instead of "You poor peasant sod." But that's the genesis of this dish - in many regions of France onions are plentiful, grow all year round, and are easy to come by.

It is, in effect, the inland version of bouillabaisse, though far easier to cook, at least.

ingredients

Eight medium onions

Goose fat

Beef stock

Sprig of Thyme

Sprig of Flat Parsley

Bay leaves

Dry white wine

Salt and pepper

Brown sugar

Crusty bread

Gruyere cheese

That's a lot of onions.

The first step is to get chopping those onions up. You'll want to make sure you've got a good sharp knife on hand, too - it'll not only make that much work a lot easier, but the onions need to be sliced as regularly as possible, so that it cooks as evenly as possible. After skinning the onions, I chopped each in half, then sliced away, producing one hell of a mound of onion, and making myself cry like a two-time Oscar-winner.

Once sliced up, add two large scoops of goose fat to a heavy bottomed sauce pan, introduce a medium heat, and toss in the onions. Toss the pan a couple of times, cover, let sit for about ten minutes. This essentially steams and softens the onions for the next phase - caramelising.

This is where you need to be a bit careful. The onions will need constant attention to stop them from starting to overcook; you'll be stirring every few minutes for about fifteen to twenty minutes. It's slightly more intensive than making a good risotto, but soon you'll see the mass onions reduced by about half, a lovely thick yet clear fluid start to build up in the pan, and the onions should be lovely and golden, and smell ever so sweetly.

Add a dash of wine to deglaze the pan, stirring vigorously to make sure you scrape all the tasty stuff up and into the dish itself. Then pour in the stock, and add the herbs and salt & pepper to taste. Turn up the heat to get a good boil, then reduce to simmer, covered, for about ten minutes.

When that time's up, uncover, add a teaspoon of brown sugar, and keep simmering uncovered for about a quarter of an hour. Technically, this is a dish that deserves a lot of time, but it can be made fast with a few tricks - that's where the brown sugar comes in, as it adds a further caramel texture. It's a cheat, but I want tasty food and time to enjoy it, dammit!

After this time you should have a lovely gold brown broth, and the attention of any partners within smelling range. Take off the heat and set aside - time for some cheesy toast!

Slice roughly centimeter thick chunks of bread - I used a fresh baguette - and sprinkle on some grated gruyere before placing under the griller. Technically, you should place the bread on the bowls of soup, sprinkle the cheese, and toast the whole lot, but I don't have oven proof bowls, and this is again a good shortcut. When the cheese is melted and just starting to brown, add soup to bowls, and top with the bread. Sprinkle a bit of spare gruyere into the soup itself, add cracked pepper, and you're done.

And oh... Gods... the tasty.

There's almost more solid onion in this than liquid, but it's rich and smooth without any bite. The goose fat adds a delicious silkiness to the soup, too, one that you just can't replicate with olive oil or butter, which is what most recipes call for. Really... you want the fat.

The toasted bread and gruyere adds great mouthfeel and flavour complexity, too. It's such a heartwarming meal, too - you just can't feel down enjoying something like this. And the brown sugar cheat works a charm - the caramel complexity of the dish is just about perfect.

In future I'll be keen to add some more authentic embellishments, like preparing my own veal stock beforehand, and investing in some properly rustic (and ovenproof) ramekins for an even better plating experience. But even as it stands, this is a keeper.

Roast vegetables on couscous with Moroccan tomato sauce

Sometimes all you can manage when you stand in front of the kitchen is to assemble food, rather than really cook it or get too fancy. On the week that the magazine I edit goes to press (ie, the dreaded... deadline week!), that pretty much sums me up as a cook.

Mind you, the whole point of having good ingredients on hand, such as organic veg, high quality olive oil and a good supply of fresh herbs is that even the most simple of dishes is going to be pretty tasty. Or at least good for you...

Since this has been that very week, I present to you my latest assemblage!

Roast vegetables on couscous with Moroccan tomato sauce

There are four very simple components that go together to make this, and you'll end up with a hearty, filling, tasty and very likely nutritious dish that looks a lot fancier than it is. You've got roast vegetables, a bed of couscous, the tomato-based sauce, and some greens to add visual interest and in this case a really interesting flavour and mouth feel.

ingredients

Two kipfler potatoes

Two carrots

Four single clove garlic

One garlic clove

One whole beetroot (reserve the leaves)

Green beans

Ripe tomatoes

Coriander

Small red onion

Ground cumin

Ground coriander seeds

Cup of couscous

Half a cup of chicken stock

Salt & pepper

Olive oil

Tackle the longest step first - chop up your veg for roasting, peel the single clove garlic (don't bother chopping) and toss through some olive and season with salt and pepper. Get it going at normal roasting temp for your oven, and move on to the other ingredients.

For the tomato sauce you need to get a three tablespoons of olive oil heating in a pan, and then add finely chopped red onion. As it's starting to soften, add more salt and pepper, the ground cumin and coriander, and chopped fresh coriander. Finely chop up the tomatoes - about three medium size will do you - and add to the pan.

Add a touch more oil if the sauce is looking too dry, and cook the tomato down.

When that's done, transfer to a bowl and put aside. Next!

The couscous can take a little time, so get that going next. Simply add a cup to a sauce pan, and then pour over a cup of hot water out of the tap and the stock - so that's half a cup of water, half of stock. This needs to rest, and let the couscous soak up the liquid, so get cracking on the greenery!

You could use english spinach here, but since we've got the leaves from the beetroot - and they are edible - there's no sense in wasting them. Chop the crunchy stems up into inch long sections, add to the pan you've just removed the sauce from, along with a bit more oil and some sliced garlic. Roughly tear the leaves into two or three pieces, and after a minute or two add them to the stems. When the leaves start to wilt, the stems should be cooked but still crunchy, and garlic should just be browning. Take off the heat, and arrange around two plates.

Brush the green beans with some olive oil, and toss on top of the roasting veg.

The couscous is ready to heat now, so add either some rancid butter, olive oil or a dash of blue cheese. Rancid butter is traditional, but not something you can usually sell your friends on ("It's rancid-fresh!") - even traditional cooks tend toward the blue cheese option these days, and it delivers a similar complex flavour. Olive oil will do, and since you've used stock the couscous will be tasty regardless.

Warm the couscous over a low heat the stove, mixing whatever ingredient you've added thoroughly. Stir constantly, as you don't want it to stick and burn on in the ban. Taste test, then plate it up in a mound in the center of the plate.

Your veg should be done by now, so take it out of the oven and make a tasty stack on top of the couscous. Pour the tomato sauce over the veg, and the job's a good 'un.

And pretty tasty, too, though I really did wish I had some blue cheese on hand for the couscous - there are some very heavy, stolid flavours in this dish and the cheese would have given the meal some needed bite.

The big success, however, were the beetroot leaves, which have a lovely fulsome nutty flavour. It's not dissimilar to spinach, so I suspect the leaves would be even better with a dash of nutmeg. My friend Blu has an excellent warm beetroot leaf salad with crunchy croûton that I'm going to have to try some time.

Otherwise this a great meal after a long cold day - warming, filling, and pretty damn healthy to boot.

Lemon Roast Chicken

Ah, the roast.

It's one of those dishes that a lot of us grow up with, and then tend to end up taking for granted and ignoring once we start cooking for ourselves. Which is kinda dumb, as roasting a piece of meat - be it bird, beef or whatever - introduces a whole mess of flavours you otherwise can't replicate, as well as whole lot of cooking methods to explore.

And when it comes to roasting a lovely free-range organic chook, the thing that's really going to set the stage for the food itself is the choice of stuffing. Always important in terms of flavour, it's also very important in the technical sense. A good stuffing both stops the bird from drying out during the cooking process, and shapes it as well, making for much easier serving and slicing.

Plus, if you're a highline glutton like me... it tastes really, really good.

Lemon Roast Chicken

This is essentially Stephanie Alexander's excellent roast chicken recipe, though some small changes of my own have crept into it over the years. And I'm also a much lazier cook than her, so essentially cheat on some of the steps.

But it's still tasty!

ingredients

One realistically scaled organic chicken (so much smaller and tastier than the hormone monsters you normally get in supermarkets)

One lemon

Kalamata olives

Goose fat

Salt & pepper

See? It's such a simple recipe you don't even need to see a photograph! Also, this was meant to be a meal that my partner was cooking, since I was stupidly tired, but I did my usual trick of performing a drive-by take-over of the kitchen, and we worked on this together.

So once your partner realises what's happened and goes off to play World of Warcraft in between chopping vegies and brushing stuff with tasty, tasty fat, you need to stuff the bird. This sounds rude, and feels even ruder - you are essentially shoving stuff in the hollowed out bottom of a dead animal. But it's for a noble purpose.

In this case, we're using a lemon, cut into quarters. Take one quarter and rub the bird down vigourously with the fleshy side, then get stuffing. You want to place the quarters so that the rind is innermost to the body cavity - this insures that the juice of the lemon will cook through the chicken as it roasts. Add the olives as well, sliced up roughly. This adds a wonderful savouriness to the chicken, and let me tell you - they also taste great as you graze over the carcass after the meal!

Then, all you need to do is taking a basting brush, and brush the bird with the goose fat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and you're ready to roast! This is where I get lazy; if you're really serious about roasting, you should turn the bird once every ten to fifteen minutes from side to side, top to bottom, so that it ends right way up for the final bit of cooking. I just left it on the roasting tray.

You can also add whatever veg options you want. In our case, we chopped up some kipfler and congo potatoes, added a couple of small onions, and sliced the top off a head of garlic, and surrounded the bird with it all. All the veg also got a liberal splash of fat. Finally, while the bird cooled, we steamed some broccoli.

So, after about 50 minutes of cooking you should end up with this:

Which when carved and plated should end up like this (and also end up with your mouth watering):

The real beauty of this method is that you don't need to baste the bird during cooking at all, making it a really easy dish to make even after getting home from work. The chicken's flesh is tender and lemon flavoured, with just a hint of saltiness from the olives. The skin is also just about perfect - the goose fat (trust me, a whole entry is coming on goose fat soon!) crisps the skin beautifully, and the lemon rub goes even further toward making the skin the most indulgent part of the meal.

Except maybe for those olives... *drools*

My other half's a baker

As you can likely guess, I like food. I don't consider myself a great cook - I know too many actual great cooks to be that vain! - but I'm very pleased with what I can put together.

But one thing I've never really grokked is the art of baking.

You see, I love all the processes of the things I cook. The slow concentration of a risotto, the expectation of waiting for a well-loved piece of steak to rest. Even the careful consideration of a good chicken stuffing, or discovering a new recipe is a secret thrill. But the process of baking, and of sweet or desert cookery in general, just leaves me uninspired*.

Not so my common-or-garden-girlfriend. Or fiance. Or Moogle. Or whatever she is. She's recently discovered a real love of flour and almond meal, of making sweet treats and clever icings. Bless her for it, 'cause she's making tasty stuff, but now that I'm privy to the making process, it still doesn't do much for me.

But when the end result is something like these great little cupcakes with royal icing, who's going to question things.

Man, these were good. Ever so subtly lemony, and that frosting... well, yeah, it's royal for a reason. Silky and white, it looks a treat, and the eating's not bad either.

And yes, that bowl of icing didn't last long.

So anyway, I guess it's a good split. For serious dinnering, I can knock off a solid entree and mains, but my partner can handle desert. It's almost like it was meant to be...

* There is one desert I love preparing. Calling it cooking seems bit of a stretch, but it's certainly a crowd pleaser, and something a little different. Keep an eye peeled.

Stuffed capsicums with spinach and tomato salad

When you see 'stuffed' in the name of a dish you tend to think that it's a little bit fancy (sorry for quoting a McDonald's ad), but more often than not it's merely a matter of convenience whenever I stuff something.

Usually I'll look in the fridge or pantry, despair of having enough ingredients to make a satisfying meal, and then the wise words of Homer Simpson will come to me - "Bring me your finest dish, stuffed with your second finest dish!". Oddly enough, the idea of simply combining two really good base ingredients into a tasty whole is the start and finish of this meal.

Stuffed capsicums with spinach and tomato salad

You can use any old capsicum to make this, but we had on hand quite sweet baby capsicum, and in terms of plating and presentation, I think they're the best choice. The stuffing is essentially a risotto, too, so you add any of the normal variations of that dish to this one; for this meal, I kept things relatively simple, relying instead on the flavours of stock and mushrooms to strengthen the dish.

ingredients

Four baby capsicums

Chicken stock

Cup of arborio rice

Knob of butter

Brown onion

Garlic

Shallot

Basil & oregano

Snowpeas

Swiss brown mushrooms

Shiitake mushrooms

Parmesan cheese

White wine

Baby spinach

Vine tomatoes

Balsamic vinegar

Salt & pepper

The little bit of brie is entirely for pre-dinner nomming.

First up, melt a goodly knob of butter in a heavy-bottomed pan, get a pot of stock simmering away, and bring your oven up to heat. Finely chop the onion, and add to the butter along with the green herbs, salt & pepper and chopped shallot. Saute gently - you don't want the onion to brown, merely go all nicely transparent.

While the niceness develops, chop the tops off of your capsicum and remove the seeds and the gnarly center bit. Keep the tops. Slice the mushrooms and add to the onion, which should be approaching transparency, and when they get there add the cup of rice.

What you want from your rice, like in any risotto, is for the rice to start absorbing the liquids and oils from the ingredients. Conversely, the pan will start to dry out at this stage, so you need to keep stirring and making sure nothing is sticking to the pan or burning. Like the onion, you wan to wait until the rice is just turning slightly transparent, and then add the first measure of stock. Just enough to cover the rice and other ingredients.

Making risotto this way is bit of a time sink, as you need to keep stirring regularly to stop it from sticking, and keep adding stock as its absorbed by the rice - but it does deliver, I think, the best risotto.

Keep tasting the rice until it's just about losing it's crunch, then stir the snowpeas through (which are chopped roughly in half or thirds). The snowpeas added now will keep their crunch, and that adds a great texture to the final dish. Take the risotto off the heat, and prepare for stuffing!

Take each capsicum and spoon ricey goodness into them, tamping it down slightly but not stuffing them fit too burst. You want a bit of overflow, too. Place your capsicums in a baking dish of a size that will allow them to stand up, and pour some more stock - about a half centimeter - into the dish. We'll be baking the capsicum, so if you don't add some liquid the capsicum will dry out, and using stock adds a lot more flavour to the dish. Being the guy I am, I also added a similar amount of white wine.

With all your capsicums stuffed and standing proud, you can also add a splash of wine to each one - maybe a thimble full. Add some grated parmesan to the top of each one, and put the top of each capsicum back on. Whack it all in the oven, refill your wine glass, and wait about twenty minutes, or until the parmesan is browning and the capsicum is lovely and tender.

Serve with a simple salad of spinach leaves and chopped tomato, with a balsamic dressing.

You get a wonderful layering of flavours in a dish like this. The outer layers of rice take up the sharp flavour of the capsicum, the capsicum itself takes up the stock and wine from the dish as it bakes, and the top layer of rice and the parmesan is infused with white wine complexity. All the while the rice itself is enriched with the strong earthy tones of the mushrooms, and the occasional fresh snap of snowpeas makes for a great taste and a pleasing mouth feel.

It is a bit of a messy dish, though. You should really stir some of the parmesan through the rice mix, as you would a traditional risotto, and that would give the rice much more adhesion and support. As it is, each stuffed capsicum tends to fall apart after a few mouthfuls are cut away. But I think the flavour complexity of my iteration of the dish more than makes up for it.

Roast beef on a bed of bok-choy, with kipflers, peas and tomato

I'm not really one for formal recipes most of the time. I like to look at what's in the fridge or in the pantry and work from there; plus, I like the challenge of making something that looks and tastes good from relatively first principles.

Of course, sometimes this doesn't quite work out - some things that sound great in your head don't quite work on the plate (or palette). Similarly, it can be really easy to overdo a dish or the amount of ingredients when you start thinking that you should start using a certain ingredient (like when it's been sitting there for a while and you want to use it before it collapses under its own entropic field).

My roast beef attempt last night was pretty much a success, but also - I think - one ingredient too far...

Roast beef on a bed of bok-choy, with kipflers, peas and tomato

Pretty much everything here is care of the food co-op, including the excellent slab of beef. In fact, this dish is pretty much inspired by a fellow Feedbagger (our delightful name for our co-op), who used a similar combination a few nights ago to very good effect. She went for a sweet sauce, though, while I was feeling like something a bit more savoury.

ingredients

Slab (it's a metric measurement) of grass fed sirloin

Three Kipfler potatoes

Goose fat

Dijon mustard

Two bunches of bok-choy

Peas

Cherry roma tomatoes

Coriander

Sea salt

Pre heat the oven to around 200 degrees celsius, or whatever's good for roasting - so many inner city ovens in rental houses are so wildly different in their heating that real measurement's a quaint whimsy rather than a hard rule. Unless you're clever and have an oven thermometer.

I'm not that clever.

While the oven's warming up, work on the slab and the 'taters. Arrange them on the baking tray, with the meat resting on a raised grill or similar, for even roasting. Use a basting brush to coat the meat and veg with a liberal coating of goose fat (ah, goose fat... I'll wax lyrical about you in a later post!), then brush on a good coat of dijon mustard to the upper surface of the beef. Sprinkle it all with some salt and pepper, and whack in the oven.

A piece of meat that size should take about a half hour to 45 minutes to cook to medium rare, and you'll also want to give it some time to rest once you remove it from the oven, so now's a good time to refill that glass of wine and check Facebook. Alternatively, it's a good chance to consider why you need to rest meat.

When you apply heat to steak or large fillets like this one, it contracts. It's a muscle, after all, and as the muscle squeezes itself, it squeezes all the tasty juices into the center of the cut. You can perfectly cook a steak, but if you serve it straight off the pan it'll be less than stellar. One cut will see all those juices flooding the plate, and the meat's colour will be quite uneven.

As a rule of thumb, you should rest meat cooked in a pan for as long as you cooked it. With a roast, like this, something like ten minutes will suffice for those juices to have suffused the entire cut. It'll be more tender, tastier, and look a lot better.

So, having pondered the importance of rest, you can now prep the rest of the meal.

Remove the bok-choy leaves from their stalk, wash, and place in a steamer (or a collander, if you're kind of half-arsed about having the right tools). Set a pot of salted water boiling, and then switch off your brain while you're shelling peas. Once you've got a good handful, set aside, and chop up some baby romas quite finely, and add some similarly chopped coriander.

You can plate the tomato right away, making a circle around the edge of the plate. Check the meat, and either guess it's done or be fancy and stick it with a thermometer: 60 degrees in the center means medium rare - the only way to eat good meat. Rest the meat in foil or in a warmed bowl, leave the potatoes in the turned off oven to stay warm, and get to steaming your bok-choy.

You want the bok-choy just wilting, when the leaves no longer look dry and unappetising. Create a mound of bok-choy in the center of the plate, then add the peas to the boiling water you've just used for steaming. Get the potatoes out, chop them into halves or thirds, and arrange around the bok-choy. Uncover the meat, slice thickly, and carefully place the slices on the bok-choy, before sprinkling some sea salt over the tomatoes and potato. Finally, spoon the peas over the meat, letting them fall where they may.

Serve to a salivating partner, and ponder your greatness.

Now, this was quite good if I do say so myself, but I regret including the potatoes. The kipflers are great, and tasted wonderful, but they really didn't add anything to the dish, and I think they actually made it a touch too much - and I'm not pleased with their aesthetic impact, either. I think this would have looked much more appetising without them, leaving the bold colours of the greens, the meat, and the tomato to speak for themselves.

That said, my partner devoured it no time, with a slight look of possibly wanting a bit more. So who am I to judge?

And the meat was perfect. Annoyingly, it was cut in such a way that a seam of connective tissue ran right down the center, but otherwise it was tender and juicy, and the mustard crust was a simply and very tasty addition that did away with the need for a sauce to add interest. The tomatoes with sea salt were fresh and tasty, and the steamed but still crunchy bok-choy complemented the meat superbly.

Done hard, played strong.

Eating out (or in): Crust pizza

It was said by a friend many years ago that I must have a wholly separate stomach reserved for the processing of pizza. Before my metabolism slowed down to a mere sprint, I could easily pack away close to two whole pies, as those whacky Americans call them. I still loves me some pizza, but these days I usually stick to a more reserved rate of consumption.

You know - just one.

There's a lot of quite good inner city pizza joints, but they tend to change in their consistency as staff come and go. Pizza Picasso in Newtown used to be our number one, with their Korfu - a truly wondrous concoction of freshly sliced tomato, fetta, sliced garlic, roast red capsicum and kalamata olives - being a regular guest in our house. Sadly, these days the Korfu tends to be over-oiled and lacking in freshness.

Albert's, also in Newtown, can always be relied upon for an oily mess of a pizza that is nonetheless satisfying and very tasty (and if you like things spicy, try their Acapulco - a true two burn pizza), but one cannot always handle that much oil. Torino's on Enmore Rd is another good choice, but they do tend to over-cheese their pizzas. That said, there are few things more satisfying than staggering into Torino's after a few well considered drinks and chowing into their Margarita. Bliss.

However, for regular pizza action, we've got a new favourite.

Crust

For what's effectively a chain pizza outlet, Crust really knows their stuff. Not too much cheese, not too oily, really interesting ingredient combos, and - unsurprising, given their name - a great crust.

This is Crust's Supreme, and it's awesome. Lots of tasty meats, juicy kalamata olives, and the perfect dusting of cheese. I'm not a pineapple fan as a rule, but once again, Crust gets the ratio just right and I can suddenly understand why people like it on pizza.

And this is Crust's Wild Mushroom pizza (wine glass purely for scale... ), which we had for the first time last night - wow. There's three or four different mushroom varieties, including Shiitake, with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, and the asparagus. Asparagus + Parmesan = awesome. However, poorly prepped asparagus = woody and not at all pleasant.

It looks like they take each spear, chop it in two, and throw it on the pizza - this means every other slice is tender and noms, while the other other slice you can't even bite through properly. It's an easy mistake to make with asparagus, too, but it's just as easy to dodge. All you need to do is take your fresh spear, and bend it until it snaps in two - you'll end up with naturally woody portion snapped off, and it'll snap in a slightly different spot for each spear.

Otherwise, this was stupidly tasty pizza topping.

The only other issue is the closest Crust to us is in Dulwich Hill, and that's just far enough for the pizza to arrive not quite hot enough every now and then. Or maybe it's because they get lost in the maze-like innards of our apartment block.

Who can say...