Food & Wine — The Tin Shed

Try this one with Mr Natural Sauvignon Blanc - its a natural!

2 bunches asparagus

200g goat’s cheese

Sourdough or good bread to serve

Tomato Vinaigrette

2 large ripe tomatoes                                2 tblsp red wine vinegar

100ml olive oil                                           1 tblsp finely chopped spring onions

1 clove garlic finely chopped                     Pinch sea salt

Black pepper, ground

• Brush tomatoes with a 1 tblsp olive oil and cook under grill or char grill on BBQ until slightly charred. Place in plastic bag until cool enough to handle
• Peel, de-seed and chop the tomatoes finely
• Whisk together vinegar, spring onions, garlic and remaining olive oil. Add to diced tomato and season with salt and pepper
• Meanwhile, steam asparagus for a few minutes until tender. Place on individual plates, top with a round of goat’s cheese and drizzle over tomato vinaigrette

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

Vegetarian fare seems to be all the rage at the moment, and maybe a trend that will just keep growing?  We certainly find a growing number of our customers looking for vegetarian options. 

This is another really simple dish that just comes together well, from Tom Kime’s book “Balancing Flavours East and West”.  Sweet potatoes are in season now and tasting fabulous.  A definite hit matched to a Yarrh Rosé or Mr Natural Sauvignon Blanc. 

½ large sweet potato per person

3 green chillies, seeded and finely chopped

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp sugar

Salt and black pepper

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

Bake the unpeeled sweet potatoes at 200 degC until done to your liking, might take an hour or more.

Mix all other ingredients together.

Thickly slice (or halve) the sweet potatoes, skin on, and serve with sauce.

Serving suggestion: grilled garlic and butter mushrooms and a green salad, or if you can’t help yourself, a T-bone steak.

NM

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.