Fried Rice

Tonight I used up some leftover roast beef and made delicious fried rice. There is probably nothing at all in this recipe that resembles anything "authentic", but nonetheless I love it. The measurements are approximate!

Ingredients

200 g leftover roast beef, sliced (or any other meat, fish, shellfish etc.)
3 sticks of chorizo sausage (or any spicy sausage, if desired)
4 eggs, whisked together well with a pinch of salt
2 shallots, finely sliced
3 spring onions, chopped
1 pkt (about 70 g) of slivered almonds (or whole blanched ones if you prefer)
2 cups basmati rice
2 tbs butter
2 tbs oil
4 tbs good quality soy sauce (I used Kikoman)

Method

1. Cook the rice using the absorption method, then fluff it up and leave it to cool a bit.

2. In a big frying pan, toast the almonds over dry heat, then set aside.

3. In the same frying pan, melt the butter and make an omelette with the eggs.  When set, put aside.

4. Add the oil to the pan and gently cook the shallots until they are brown and caramelised, set aside.

5. Add the meat and sausage to the pan and cook till it starts to brown, then add the rice and mix with a spatula to break it up.

6. When the rice is heated through and separated, add the egg, almonds, shallots, spring onions and soy sauce, and mix well. Taste and adjust seasoning with more soy sauce if desired.

David's Cheese Muffins

I've made these with a variety of cheeses. Also, adding chopped parsley, caraway seeds, olives, sun-dried tomatoes etc would be great. A sprinkle of parmesan on top is nice too. The recipe makes between 30 and 35 depending on how big you make them.

Preheat oven to 200°C

Ingredients

4 eggs
1 L milk
200 g melted butter

8 cups plain flour
8 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
2 cups cheese (I used about a cup of grated Mainland Egmont, half a cup of grated Kapiti Aged Gouda and 2 packets of crumbled Castello Blue)

To sprinkle on top:
pumpkin seeds
sesame seeds
sunflower seeds

Method

Beat eggs and milk together, then add the butter and mix well.

In another bigger bowl, combine the dry ingredients including the cheese, make a well in the centre and add the wet mixture. Mix till just combined.

Spoon big tablespoons of the mix into greased muffin tins, sprinkle seeds on top and bake at 200°C for 15 mins.  Let them cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rake to cool down a bit. They are delicious while still warm.  If they are chewy then you probably mixed too much.

Bircher muesli

I like Bircher muesli when I go to hotels, but hadn't tried it at home.  I bought a box of pre-mixed stuff from the supermarket, and it was OK soaked overnight with milk and the next morning mixed with grated apple and yoghurt, but many internet sites that mention Bircher say it is best when home made.  So, this is my attempt.  I chose to add a bit of everything I like in a muesli.

Bircher Muesli

500 g fine rolled oats (e.g., Uncle Tobys Milk Oaties)
575 g rolled oats
250 g shredded coconut
150 g dried cranberries
100 g sunflower seeds
125 g pumpkin seeds
400 g sultanas
400 g pitted dates, roughly chopped
70 g hazelnuts, coarsely chopped
100 g linseed
100 g raisins
60 g sliced almonds, lightly toasted
1 tbs ground cinnamon

Mix all of the above in a large bowl and store in an airtight container. This amount made about 6 L of Bircher muesli.

The night before, mix half a cup of Bircher muesli with half a cup of milk, cover and store in the fridge overnight. The next morning, mix in one grated apple (or any fruit of your choice) and about half a cup of yoghurt. Enjoy!

Portobello and porcini mushroom soup

We've started a soup club at work, and this was my contribution.  I've tried to recall the weights of some of the ingredients after the fact, so you might need to tailor the measurements to your own tastes.

8 onions, finely diced
4 tbs olive oil
800 g button mushrooms, sliced
800 g portobello mushrooms, sliced
70 g dried porcini mushrooms
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
125 g butter
6 tbs plain flour
500 mL white wine
3 L chicken stock (recipe below)
2 L whole milk
2 tsp nutmeg
500 mL cream

Soak the porcini mushrooms in about 250 mL of boiling water for at least half an hour. When cool, reserve the liquor and finely slice the porcini. Cook the onions in the oil in a large pot, then add the button and portobello mushrooms and cook them down well, adding the garlic near the end. Meanwhile make a roux by melting the butter in a small saucepan and stirring in the flour off the heat, then cook the flour for about 1 minute.  Deglaze the mushrooms in the large pot by adding the wine, and then add the roux to the mushrooms, followed by the stock, milk, porcini (the sliced mushrooms and the liquor) and nutmeg. Bring it to the boil and it will thicken after a couple of minutes. Blend the soup well with a hand-held blending wand and then add the cream. Reheat carefully without boiling or the soup may split. Season to taste.

Chicken stock

1 chicken
2 onions
1 stick celery
2 carrots
2 bay leaves
8 whole peppercorns
salt for seasoning

Put the chicken in a large (6 L) pot with hot water, bring to boil, then discard the water and refill with cold water and the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil again and simmer for a few hours. Remove the chicken and reserve for another dish, discard the veggies and skim the fat off the top, then boil down the stock to reduce it by about one third.  Season.

Classic half-pound venison burger

Someone gave me a big hunk of venison the other day, and I cut some into steaks and fried them up, but there was a remaining 500 g or so, so I decided to mince it and make burgers.  I'm not sure what cut it was, but I'm guessing it was rump. I've never minced red meat myself before, so thought it would be worth a try.  It turned out great.  The mince was less homogenous then bought stuff, but the texture was interesting nonetheless.

Serves 2

For the meat patties:
500 g venison cut into cubes
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 egg
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp mixed dried herbs
salt and pepper

Put all the above in a food processor and pulse on and off for 30–60 seconds. I just did it until it had chopped up all the meat and just started to form a ball.

Using wet hands, divide into 2 and shape each into thick patties. If you're not cooking them straight away, put them in the fridge.

To cook, season them, then fry in olive oil on both sides till just brown, transfer to a preheated (180°C) oven for about 15 minutes, or until done.

For the burgers:
Anything you like!  I used sesame buns that were warmed in the oven.  I stacked some sliced cheese (Swiss would be best), the meat, caramelised onion, sliced beetroot, some BBQ sauce and lettuce.

Enjoy!

Christmas Cake 2010

OK not much time to write this, but for the record, here's the Christmas cake I made this weekend. It's currently wrapped in plastic and I'll ice it in a few weeks.

Christmas Cake

1.5 kg of mixed dried and glacé fruit

I used the following:

• 320 g sultanas
• 320 g raisins, chopped in half
• 300 g currants
• 130 g glacé orange slices, chopped finely
• 165 g glacé red cherries, quartered
• 125 g glacé apricots, chopped
• 140 g glacé pear, chopped

125 mL orange juice (about 2.5 oranges)
125 mL brandy
140 g walnut halves
250 g unsalted butter
230 g light brown sugar
160 g orange marmalade
5 eggs
250 g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg

Pick over the fruit and remove stalks from sultanas and currants, and seeds from the raisins. Combine all the fruit, add the orange juice and brandy, cover with cling film and let it soak overnight, stirring every now and then. [Note: other fruits could include glacé ginger (not popular in our house!), mixed peel (also not popular, but I have compromised by adding the glacé orange slices, which have some peel on them). Glacé figs were available in the shop I went to, but figs have a gritty texture so I avoided them for the cake.]

Next morning, preheat oven to about 160°C (150°C fan-forced) and bake the walnut pieces on a baking tray for 8–10 minutes until lightly browned. Let them cool, chop them up, and add them to the fruit. Put the softened butter, brown sugar and marmalade in the large bowl of an electric mixer and mix until it's light and creamy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each one. Transfer this butter/egg mix to the largest bowl you have.  Sift together the flour, bicarb and spices, and add 1 tbs of this flour mix to the fruit (this makes the fruit a bit sticky and gluggy and prevents it sinking in the cake). Then alternately add the flour mix and the fruit to the butter mix, beginning and ending with the flour (so that's 1/3 flour, half the fruit, 1/3 flour, remaining fruit, remaining flour). Combine it well but don't overdo the mixing.



Put the mix into a double-layer lined and greased 20 cm square tin. Drop the tin on to the bench a few times to dislodge big air pockets, smooth over the top with wet fingers and then wrap the sides of the tin with a few layers of newspaper tied with string. Sit the tin on more newspaper in the oven and bake for 3–3.5 hours. I'd recommend testing it after 2.5 hours, as I used a larger tin so it cooked a bit faster than I would have liked. When the tester comes out clean, take it out of the oven and splash some more brandy (around 1/2–2/3 of a cup) over the top. Cool the cake in the tin, then turn it out, remove the paper and put in an airtight container until it's ready to be iced.


I left the icing far too late—in fact I iced it the day before our work Christmas party—but luckily it turned out OK anyway.  I bought marzipan (without almond essence—yuk!) and Royal icing from the supermarket.  I trimmed the top of the cake to remove the raised edges, then turned it upside down on to a tray. I filled the holes formed by sunken sultanas with little bits of marzipan, then glazed the whole thing with warmed, strained apricot jam. I rolled out the marzipan on a bench dusted with icing sugar to a fairly thin layer (about 3 mm I'd say) and smoothed it over the cake. Then I left it uncovered on top of the kitchen cupboard (out of the way of cats) overnight.  The next morning I rolled out the Royal icing in the same way, this time making it about 7 mm thick (I'd do it thinner next year—it was a bit too sweet).  I washed the marzipan with whisked egg white, smoothed the Royal icing over the top and down the sides, and trimmed the edges with a sharp knife.  It was a last minute icing but I think I got away with it.  A few weeks later the remains of the cake were still really delicious—in fact I think it was getting moister and the layers of icing had really begun to stick together well.

Cheese on film!

This video is a couple of months old now, but I thought I would put a link to it here. I was asked by talented University of Otago Science Communication student Nicole Schafer if I would participate in a video she was making about cheese. Most specifically the video was about the charismatic "Evansdale cheese man" and his family, who sell delicious cheese at the Otago Farmer's Market. I demonstrated the cheese making process by making haloumi and ricotta in the lab, and I talked about some of the microorganisms involved in cheesemaking, including Brevibacterium linens (which forms the smelly yellow rind on wash-rind cheese), Penicillium (forming white and blue mould on some soft cheeses like brie and blue cheese), and Propionibacterium (gives holes to Swiss cheese). It was pretty good fun, but as is the nature of these things, about 4 hours filming me and my cheese making was tamed into a couple of minutes of cheese film goodness. I hope you enjoy it!


Cheese from Nicole Schafer on Vimeo.