My favourite potato side dish, is a gratin.
It's everything against the waistline, but it's just soooo good.
Simple, tasty, creamy, and you don't need to do much if you serve it with a roast, the creamy sauce from the gratin, is a great compliment to the roast, especially for simple roasts like a roast chicken, goes well with the white sauce.
My favourite gratin recipe, simple easy one, has always been Neil Perry's version.
500g potatoes thinly sliced.
Melt some butter and grease the baking tray (I used a quiche dish)
Lay the slices nicely and evenly on the tray, spread a bit of salt and pepper once each layer is done.
Lay potatos just under the top of the tray.
Put on some dulops of butter and pour over around 250ml of fresh cream, just enough to cover the potatoes.
Some times, I spread on a bit of mozerella cheese but this time, I reckon this is rich enough.
In 140C oven for about an hour, and mean time, roast the chicken.
Chicken was washed and cleaned and left uncoverred in the fridge overnight. Rub on some salt and olive oil.
Serve with steamed greens.
What's the best part of the roast pork? Both hubby and the girls say... the crackling, the super crispy, crunchy, fatty crackling... As a matter of fact, they'd hope the whole roast has only got cracklings.
Over the years, I've been avoiding roast porks as I haven't been able to achieve the best crackling, most of the time, I get some part good crackling, but not all. I tried quite a few different recipes.
So when I started this roast pork leg today, I didn't really try at all. I have been doing my roast in slow ovens lately so I started slow for the pork as well.
Rub the scored skin with salt, cracked black pepper and olive oil and in the 125 Oven. It's not a big piece of the leg, just around a kilo, so it took around 1 hour and half. After that, I cranked the oven to 220C.
After around 30 minutes, amazingly, I got the perfect crackling... all over.
The only complaint was... not enough crackling.. again? Maybe next time I should buy pork skin only.
The perfect Sunday roast... is classic Aussie. Out of all the roast meals, my favourite is the roast leg of lamb.
First of all, I make the marinate. As the children can't eat a lot of spicy food, we have to go with some flavoursome spices but not spicey.
Roast Leg of Lamb
Marinate
2 cloves of garlic
fresh rosemary
Thyme
Oregano
Parsley
Black pepper
Sea salt
Olive oil.
Pound the herbs with pepper and salt in mortar and pestle, and move it to the bowl and soak the herbs in enough extra virgin olive oil. Leave aside for 1-2 hours.
Score the leg of lamb, and rub it with the marinate, place on the roast rack and leave it for 1-2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 130-140C or 285F. Put the lamb on rack and let it go into the oven. 3.5 hours.
Without taking the meat out of the oven, put the oven to 200C or 390F for 10-15 minutes.
Cut in slices or just take it off the bone, and serve with yoghurt sauce, or gravey, this time we served with creamy potato salad...
It seems so long ago that the Christmas Lunch was over... Was a big job for us and never got around to write about the food that day, apart from the Christmas pudding and the Christmas log - I am a dessert person after all? So this blog is the recap of the last bit of cooking I did last year, and as we are renovating the house, the project is finally starting, my new year resolution is at least to get the new kitchen, bathrooms and outdoor decking in... Cook more, in and out doors! Oh, I didn't have to do much for New Years Eve, went out to friend's place for a lovely BBQ.... I did make the salad, but that was just a minor effort.
Alright, so the last bit of major cooking of last year. The Christmas Lunch.
MIL brought over some salad, brandy sauce for the Christmas pudding and mum made some nice spring rolls and pan fried dumplings...
I did this sushi platter for the entree.
And the roast pork loin stuffed with figs and orange.
Figs marinated in orange juice, zest and liqueur, and spread on pork, rolled and tied...
Roast turkey roll, we only had 6 adults and 2 children, so not big enough of a crowd for the whole roast turkey. We bought turkey on crown, and I de-boned the turkey, made it into butter fly cut.
Rolled in with some mozerella cheese, parsley and dill and some olives and bacon.
Tie up in a roll just as I did the pork.
Sear with olive oil first and then in the oven for roasting.
I also made cranberry juice to serve with the turkey. It's hard for us to find fresh cranberries, so I used dry cranberries, with red wine and maple syrup and the cranberry sauce was just devine.
We also had roast potatos in duck fat and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.
I haven't been doing a lot of cooking lately as I have been running around trying to finalise a few things for renovations, starting with the kitchen. We bought ILVE cook tops and oven which has a setting for pizzas, and BLANCO dishwasher, sink and tap, and it's just exciting talking to the designer about designing the new kitchen....
We will have outdoor decking as well and the 4 burner will be put to much better use....
Until then, I guess I will just try to cook as much as I can with my current kitchen!
The family like roast chicken, with potato, rice, pasta, it's just an easier meat for the children and because the meat itself is pretty plain, you can basically cook it with any flavour... mix and match, more varieties... very simple as well, when the children are still young and not eating a lot, a small chicken, quick to roast and a nice dinner.
With in budget...
This one has a bit of oriental flavour so we have it with rice. Master stock can be made up from different spices... I actually use whatever on hand and whatever I can think of at times, but this is what I did this time:
Master Stock Roast Chicken
1 tsp 5 spice powder
1 tsp clover powder
2 pcs of dry mandarin peel
½ piece of brown rock sugar
1 whole chicken 1.2kg
1 Cassia Bark (or cinnamon stick)
1 knob of ginger
½ cup shaoxin cooking wine
Method
Add all the ingredients to a pot apart from Chicken,
add enough water.
Boil the liquid until it’s bubbling and add the chicken, simmer and turn sides for 15 minutes.
Roast chicken on rack without cover, in 185C for 15 minutes, turn and roast for a further 10 minutes.
Cut in chunks and serve with rice...
Thicken a bit of master stock with extra orange juice and brown sugar for dipping sauce.
Because the children are still young, we do tend to eat chicken a fair bit, it's tender enough for them and is pretty meaty, the meat itself is neutral in flavour, so it's suitable for whatever spices or flavours...
And it's always an option for a budget dinner, can be prepared quickly as well.
Sometimes when the family go to some of the small Chinese restaurants, hubby would like to order the Tong Kong Salt Roast chicken, usually they use free range chicken, and traditionally it's a chicken wrapped in paper, and roasted in a big clay pot of salt, on stove top, slow cooking. The main flavour came from a mix of pepper, madarin peel powder, and most importantly, the sand ginger (kencur), with out that, the flavour is not there. Tong Kong is one of the Cantonese names for Hakka, and it's quite a popular dish in most Cantonese restaurants with a Hakka chef.
Of course, it's a bit hard to replicate the whole recipe with a lot of salt - what I'm going to do with it afterwards? So I did a quick version using the oven:
Tong Kong Paper Roast Chicken
2 tbsp salt
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp Sichuan pepper
1 whole chicken 1.2kg
1tsp 5 spice powder
1.5 tbsp sand ginger (kencur) powder
1 knob of ginger
1 onion – sliced (or spring onion, cut in chunks)
Several pieces of dry mandarin peels, soaked
Mix all dry ingredients, salt, peppers, ginger stout, and 5 spice powder, in a small bowl, use 3/4 of it to rub the skin of chicken and marinate inside of chicken.
Put ginger, onion (or spring onion) and mandarin peels inside chicken and secure with skewer.
Marinate chicken for 1 hour.
Wrap with baking paper and roast in 185C oven for 45 min – 1 hour, till cooked (traditional method was pot roasting in salt).
Cut in chunks, drizzle the chicken with the juice left in the paper bag, serve with the rest of marinating spices and serve with rice.
It has been cold in Melbourne and another winter warmer... for the cold and wet and miserable days that we can't even go out, restless children...
Pot Roast Lamb Shanks
4 Trimmed Lamb Shanks
½ cup pearl barley
½ cup red wine
½ cup split peas
½ cup chick peas
½ cup kidney beans
2 small onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 medium size Roma tomatoes
1 can of diced tomato
1 carrot
2 tbsp tomato paste
Herbs: oregano, thyme and rosemary
1 tsp all spice
Black pepper, crushed
1 tsp smoke paprika
Olive oil to cook
Salt – to taste
Sugar, 1 tsp.
Method:
Soak beans and chick peas the night before in twice amount of water and soak split peas 2 hours ahead, drain.
Put generous amount of olive oil in non stick oven and stove top friendly top, brown the sliced onion and crushed garlic.
Brown the sides of the lamb shanks, and add all spice, salt and paprika, add herbs and brown all sides more for 3-5 minutes.
Add red wine, deglaze.
Add chopped carrots and tomatoes, add diced tomato from can and add tomato paste, let it simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the peas, beans and pearl barley, cover the lid and transfer the pot to 175C oven.
Cook for 2 hours.
Serve with olive & yoghurt sourdough bread - recipe listed separately.
My family must have loved oranges so much... we use oranges a lot and one of our family old favourite is the Duck in Orange sauce.
Instead of the trendy duck bread pan seared version, we actually prefer the whole roast duck version with crispy skin...
However, when I was about to make it, I can't seem to find my favourite recipe, so I cooked this with my memory plus some common French cooking knowledge, and it has got more herbs? My version that is.
1 x sz 16 Free Range Duck
2 Orange Peels
1 Orange
1 lemon
3 Sprigs of Parsley
1 sprigs of rosemary
2 Bay Leaves
Couple of black pepper
1 onion
2 Shallots
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp dry herbs
1 tbsp all spice
2 tbsp salt
30g butter
1 tsp salt
½ cup raw sugar
½ cup white wine
¼ cup white wine vinegar
½ cup chicken stock
Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 130C.
2. Clean duck, cut off neck and wing tips, rub outside and inside of the duck with the mixture of 2 tbsp dry herbs, 2 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp all spice, put in orange peels and "sew" up duck with a metal skewer,
3. Juice the Orange and Lemon, keep the skin, cut in slices.
4. Put duck on rack, in oven and set time for 1 hour.
5. Meanwhile, add a bit of cooking oil to pan and add sliced shallots, onions, garlic and brown.
6. Add the neck and wing tips and head, and caramelize all sides.
7. Deglaze with wine and white wine vinegar, add chicken stock, add rosemary, parsley, orange & lemon peels, bay leaves and black pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.
8. Drain sauce through sift, retain sauce, and discard the onion, herbs etc, and add to a smaller saucepan. Add sifted orange & lemon juice and bring it to boil. add butter and raw sugar and the 1 tsp salt, more if needed, adjust salt and sugar amount slightly to personal taste.
9. Add butter, and reduce sauce to 2/3 - or the thickness as desired.
10. When duck is cooked for 1 hour, heat oven upto 230C and set for 20minutes each side.
11 Cut duck into portions, and serve with sauce…
We had it with mashed potato and beans...
