Food & Wine — Food and Wine

I found this recipe in a newspaper years ago and have found it simple and successful.  Serves four as a starter or as a canapé on melba toast or crackers. Excellent with a Yarrh Riesling.

6 roma tomatoes                                                   5 sprigs thyme         

2 tblsp baby capers                                                3 tblsp balsamic vinegar

2 cloves garlic sliced                                             6 tblsp extra virgin olive oil

24 ligurian olives, pitted                                       salt and pepper

100g fresh goat’s cheese, cubed                            

• Heat oven to 150C
• Cut tomatoes in half lengthways and remove half the seeds
• Press pieces of sliced garlic into tomatoes, scatter with capers and a couple of olives in each half.
• Press cubed goat’s cheese into tomatoes
• Sprinkle tomatoes with half the thyme leaves and drizzle with 3 tblsp of the oil.
• Place on lightly greased oven tray and roast for 45 minutes.
• Combine rest of oil with balsamic vinegar and thyme and season with salt and pepper.
• Place tomatoes on serving plates, drizzle with dressing and serve with crusty bread

 FW

2 tblsp glutinous rice (plain is fine)

400g pork meat (pork belly is good), finely chopped

¼ tsp salt

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 dried chillies, crushed

2 shallots, thinly sliced

1 tblsp fish sauce

1 tblsp lime juice

1 tblsp vegetable oil

A good bunch of herbs such as mint, Vietnamese mint, basil and/or coriander, coarsely chopped.

Toast the rice until golden, then cool and pound to a course crumb.

Mix the pork with the salt and garlic, then combine with the chillies and shallots, and let marinade for 10-15 minutes.  A few minutes before cooking, mix in the fish sauce and lime juice.

Saute the pork mixture in the oil in a large frypan or wok until almost cooked.

Sprinkle 1 tblsp of the toasted rice over to thicken the juices.  Taste and adjust fish sauce, lime juice and salt to taste.  Toss the herbs through then place on a platter and garnish with the remaining toasted rice.  Serve with steamed rice and a chilled bottle of the Yarrh Riesling.  Better than beer.

NM

Right.  I’m now ready to share my favourite lamb chop recipe.  This is a bit of an amalgam of dishes I’ve made over the years, sometimes with added root vegetables, sometimes with pork, and with various herbs and flavours.

Seems to have its roots in the Mediterranean, but what could be more local?  This one is flexible, quick, simple and delicious. Starts on the stove and ends in the oven.  Made perfect with the addition of some crispy fried potatoes, a tomato and onion salad and a nice glass of Yarrh Shiraz or Sangiovese.

• 4-6 chump or loin chops
• Salt
• Olive oil
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 3-4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• Fresh or dried oregano, chopped, or a few rosemary springs
• 1 lemon, juiced

Preheat the oven to 200°C, then rub the chops with salt (rest for an hour or so if you have time).  Heat a small amount of olive oil in an oven ready pan (eg small paella pan or similar) and brown the chops to your liking over medium-high heat.  Turn the chops, sprinkle with pepper, chopped garlic, chopped herbs and the all important lemon juice, then put them in the oven for 5-10 minutes, depending on their thickness and your liking.  Rest for 5-10 minutes then eat with gusto!

NM

Chicken Sate

Serve with a good peanut sauce (see below), a nice green salad or just chunks of cucumber and tomatos.  Rice optional, but nice cold Yarrh Riesling is not.

Cut the chicken into dice.  Blitz the chillies, onion, ginger, lemon juice, salt and soy sauces, then stir in the sesame oil and sugar.  Marinade the chicken for an hour or overnight in the fridge.  Thread 4-5 pieces onto soaked bamboo skewers.

Grill over charcoal (yes, charcoal!) and serve straight off the grill.  Heaven on a stick when served with Yarrh Riesling!

My Favourite Peanut Sauce

Years ago I brought a very unprepossessing “Tastes of Indonesia” cookbook by Jacki Passmore (1992) that has some of the best Indonesian recipes I have ever come across.  The Penguin website tells me that Jacki has travelled extensively across Asia and written over 20 books on Asian cooking.  There’s (literally) thousands of recipes out there for satay sauce, but this one, the very first recipe in the book, reminds me most of the best we’ve tried across Bali, Java and Malaysia.  Thank you, Jacki.

Blitz or pound the chillies, garlic, shallots and lemon grass into a paste, then fry in the oil in a small, heavy based saucepan for 5-6 minutes until very aromatic.

Dry fry the shrimp paste and seeds until aromatic and toasted. Grind these, then add to the other ingredients and cook through for another few minutes.

Add the peanut butter and coconut milk, and some water if needed (it usually does).  I like to now simmer it down gently for a while (15-20mins, add more water if necessary)  – make sure it doesn’t catch.  This brings it together.

Check seasonings and add tamarind, sugar and salt to taste.  Allow to cool.

(Sometimes I also add some deep fried, thinly sliced garlic – adds a nice crunchy element.)

NM

Serve accompanied with raw or steamed seasonal vegetables, grilled vegetables, grilled fish, sweet pork or a thai style omelette.

Pound the garlic, salt and shrimp paste in a mortar and pestle.  Slowly add the chillies. The more you pound them the hotter the sauce – suit yourself.  Then pound in the sugar, lime juice and fish sauce.  Adjust the balance between the hot, sour, salt and sweet to your taste, and serve with a nice, cold Yarrh Riesling.

Wow did this make a hit.  I’ve since found it in some of the better Cafés around.  This recipe was adapted from Donna Hay’s “Marie Claire Dining” book.

It’s worth making the sweet flaky pastry at least once. The pastry stays crisp and crunchy even 2-3 days after baking (if they last that long).  Otherwise use store bought puff pastry, sprinkle sheet with a little caster sugar and cinnamon, roll up, slice into rounds and roll out.

Sweet Flaky Pastry

Filling

Put flour, sugar cinnamon and butter in food processor, and process until mixture forms fine crumbs.  With motor running add water and process until mixture is a smooth dough.  Roll dough on a lightly floured surface until 45cm long and 2cm thick.  Spread softened (not melted) butter over 2/3 of pastry.  Take the pastry with no butter and fold over 1/3 of pastry. Fold over other 1/3 with butter to encase butter.  Press edges to seal.  Cover and refrigerate 15 mins before rolling.

Put sugar and water in saucepan over low heat and stir until sugar dissolves, then simmer 1 minute.  Mix a little of the milk with cornflour to make a smooth paste.  Whisk remaining milk, cornflour paste, sugar syrup, egg yolks and vanilla in a jug and then return to saucepan over low heat.  Stir until mixture thickens, cool and cover surface with plastic wrap to prevent skin forming.

Roll out pastry on lightly floured surface until 3mm thick.  Cut into 10cm circles and place in oiled muffin tins so pastry comes up side of tin. 

When custard is cool spoon into pastry shells.

Bake in preheated oven 200 degC for 20 minutes or until custard is golden and firm.

Makes 12.

There are a huge and varied array of recipes for this famous Portuguese dish.  We had a lot of fun trying a few and this one really stood out for flavour and presentation.

Cut slits in the chicken thighs, then marinade overnight in the remaining ingredients. 

Drain the chicken from the marinade, remove any garlic, lemon slices, bay leaves.

Grill the chicken over charcoal (or the barby), start with the cooler part of the fire to cook them through, then move to the higher heat to finish them off.  We first roasted in our wood fired oven, then finished them off over charcoal.  Baste with marinade as required for the first half of cooking.  When close to done, baste with the piri piri sauce to colour them up and form a nice crust.

Serve with Piri Piri sauce on the side, perhaps with coleslaw and chips, and a chilled Yarrh Rosé.

Piri Piri Sauce

Blend all the ingredients together until smooth. Cook over low-medium heat for 15-20 mins until the garlic and onions are cooked, stirring regularly to emulsify.

After being inspired by the beauty and sheer volume of the aubergines in Sicily last year, we made the traditional purchase of the local cookbook, in this case “Sicily in the Kitchen” by Maria di Marco and Marie Ferré.  Pasta a la Norma seemed a fairly run of the mill pasta dish, but its simplicity hides a beautiful, complex combination of flavours and textures.  We all loved it, and knew we’d found a new favourite for home.

Then suddenly Pasta a la Norma was everywhere!  ABC Classic FM described how Bellini’s opera Norma was considered perfection, so anything perfect was “a la Norma”.   Then Rick Stein cooked it on television, and told a similar story.  Then we were seeing it on traditional Italian restaurant menus everywhere.

So eventually it twigs that Pasta a la Norma is quite a famous dish, and of course comes with many variations.  The recipe below is our mash up of a few of them, and goes really well with the newly released 2017 Riesling, the wine cutting through the richness of the fried eggplant and complementing the acidity of the tomatoes and goat’s cheese.

Ingredients

Method

Leaving the skin on the eggplants, slice across in half, then cut into 1cm X 1cm “battons” (alternatively, just cut lengthways into thin strips, but we prefer the chunkier version).  Salt for 30mins, then rinse and dry.

Fry batches of eggplant in hot oil until golden, then drain.

Gently soften the garlic in olive oil, then add passata and reduce to a thickish sauce.  Add sugar, salt and basil to taste.

Cook the spaghetti al dente, drain and dress with tomato sauce and fried eggplant.  Sprinkle with crumbled cheese and a few leaves of basil.

Serve 4 as a main or 8 as a first course.

These are very hearty fare on a cold winter’s day with a glass of Cabernet.  They freeze well too.  Makes about 12 small pies.

Ingredients

1kg chuck steak, cubed

2 medium onions, sliced

1 ½ cups Yarrh Cabernet Sauvignon

6 gloves garlic, chopped finely 

Salt and pepper

Puff pastry (1 sheet will make 2 small pies)

300g bacon, chopped

Plain Flour

1 ½ cups beef stock

Bouquet garni

2 mushrooms, chopped

12 pie cases

Method

Preheat oven to 150ºC.

Fry the bacon over medium heat in an ovenproof casserole pot and remove.

Dust steak with flour and brown in bacon fat in batches and remove. Brown the onion.

Add bacon, steak, garlic, bouquet garni, extra tablespoon of flour, wine, stock  and salt and pepper.

Cook uncovered in oven for 1.5 hours. Check every 30 minutes, give the odd stir and add a little water if needed.  Baking it uncovered really improves the colour and richness of the dish, but be careful it doesn’t dry out.

Add mushrooms and cook another 15 minutes, then remove from oven. Increase oven to 200ºC.

Using pie cases as a template, cut a piece of pastry for the bottom and sides and one for the top.

Line pie cases with pastry, add filling so it is level with the top.

Brush edges of top with water, place on top of filling and press edges down to join with bottom piece. Cut a vent in the top. Trim edges if desired.

Put pies on a baking sheet (this ensures the bottom pastry cooks and browns) and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes.  Polish off (oops – I mean share out) the rest of the Cabernet.

FW

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I like this recipe as it reminds me that prunes don’t only go with pork, and that there’s more to cauliflower than just cheese. Excellent with 2011 Shiraz.

Heat oven to 150°C

Heat 1 tblsp oil in large casserole and brown lamb on all sides, remove lamb

Add garlic and ginger and saute for 2-3 mins

Add vinegar and allow to bubble up, scraping pan w wooden spoon

Add honey and whiskey and allow to reduce by half

Return lamb to dish along w nutmeg, prunes and stock

Cover and cook in oven for 1.5-2 hrs or until lamb is tender and falling off bone

Cut half the cauliflower into florets, toss in 1 tblsp oil and season

Put in baking tray and roast for 20 mins or until golden, reserve.

Remove lamb from oven and cool in cooking liquid until room temperature

Grate remaining raw cauliflower to the texture of coucous, stir in zest, parsley, mint and 1 tblsp oil, taste and season with salt.

Shred lamb and arrange on a platter, sprinkle  with roast cauliflower and raw cauliflower mix

Drizzle  with lamb cooking liquid including prunes and top with thyme sprigs

FW

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From the Archives

2013