Crackle with Jamie

Mothership Roast Pork

I'm sure that you know how much I love Jamie Oliver. Now, if it's possible, I think I love him a little more. His new(ish) book "Save with Jamie" is a great concept. He has recipes for a "mothership" recipe using different types of meat and large fish to make that special Sunday night dinner, and then a selection of recipes to follow that use up all the leftovers in tasty and creative ways. I've always been on the look out for good ways to use the leftovers of a roast - which, otherwise, invariably sit in the fridge for a few days to be picked at and then tipped into the bin a week later when another roast comes along!

Anyway, I digress, it's not exactly for his handy recipe book that I love him more. It's for the Mothership Slow Roasted Pork recipe. If you go back through my blog, there are a few things I love - crackling and slow cooked meat, juicy and falling apart.

Cripsy Pork Tacos

Combine Jamie Oliver, and these two things and I
believe you have a WINNER. The recipe was so easy (but you did have to plan ahead a little to make sure it was in the oven quite a while before you would think of putting a roast on normally) and turned out the most amazing crackling as the top crispy layer to succulent - pull apart - don't need a knife pork.

Then, we got to enjoy it in a fantastic Crispy Pork Taco recipe too - crackling and all crisped up with some paprika, blackbeans and capsicum & red onion pickle. A completely different take so we didn't feel like we were eating leftovers at all!

If you could choose only one meat, what would it be?

We were having a dinner party conversation last week "if you could only eat one meat from now on, what would you choose?" It's a toughie for most meat lovers but my answer is most definitely a PIG! Whilst Pork wouldn't be the highlight of a last meal (I'd be choosing Roast Beef with Yorkshire puddings and horseradish sauce for that!) pork is an all rounder. Let's play it out over a weekly meal plan - for which I am famous!

Rick Stein's Pea and Ham Soup

Monday - on Monday at our place we like to have fish so maybe for "porker" week I would choose Jamie Oliver's bacon wrapped fish on a bed of asparagus. (Roasted white fish wrapped in smokie bacon, with lemon mayonnaise and asparagus)

Tuesday - often I am out on Tuesday nights so I leave something for my hubbie to prepare for himself - how about bangers and mash - a Dude food speciality!

Wednesday - whilst trying to lose weight, I am always looking for fast and lean. One of my favourite ingredients these days is pork loin.  Marinated in hoisin sauce and quickly seared in the pan is a quick, delicious mid week dinner. (Hoisin Pork Fillet with Stir Fried Chinese Greens)

Thursday - typically by Thursday I am starting to get lazy so a delicious  pea soup with ham hock that I've
prepared earlier in the week will be just the ticket. 

Friday - Friday night is pizza night in our place, a prosciutto and rocket pizza takes us right back to our Italian Honeymoon. 

Crackling with Roast Pork

Saturday - Saturday I like to spend a bit more time in the kitchen. Maybe some homemade pasta with a bacony carbonara sauce, or a classic slow cooked pulled pork, falling apart in some yummy BBQ sauce? (Curtis Stone's Pulled Pork Sandwich)

Sunday - Sunday kicks off with a big breakfast with poached eggs, garlic mushrooms and of course bacon. And of course, it finishes with a roast - juicy Roast Pork with mouthwateringly crispy crackling! 

Now do you see what I mean? So, which meat would you choose? 

*this post was not sponsored in any way by any Pork authority, but if any of them felt like giving me a lifetimes supply of pork, I could happily find ways to use it! Oink oink! 

Eat Drink Blog 2012: My Top 5 Highlights

Last week was the wonderful Eat Drink Blog 2012 Conference in Adelaide organised by a fabulous South Australia based group of bloggers. The bringing together of like minds for a weekend has certainly been one of  the highlights of my blogging career, as it reinspired and energised me to lift my blogging game. Of course, I could walk through the days one by one, but since we'd all be asleep by the time the plane touched down in Adelaide, I thought I'd pick the top 5 learnings to share.

1. Sydney pulled the market short straw
I don't quite know how I've made it to Adelaide on a few occasions but never been to the Adelaide Central Market. It's a bit like Central Station in Sydney, that is, not quite in the centre, but now that I know about it, it will be the centre of my next visits to Adelaide. What happened to Sydney in all of this? We ended up with Paddy's Market, selling cheap souvenirs, while Adelaide has this great hub filled with hundreds of vendors collected under the same roof selling their speciality products at what seemed like reasonable prices, creating a real community feel whilst supporting the farmers and growers.

2. Don't gush
Diane Jacobs, an expert in food writing who has written the food writers/bloggers bible, Will Write for Food, (which I can't wait to get my hands on) was the keynote speaker. As well as many other nuggets, her key advice was: don't gush... It's boring. I guess I knew that already, but do have a tendency to rave about things I love, and it would be very easy for me to gush about the Eat Drink Blog Conference, but I'll keep that in check. When I receive the book I have on order right now, I'll be putting my new found food writing knowledge to the test!

3. Write the recipe ingredients in the order they'll be used
One of the themes running through a variety of presentations was that keeping it simple for readers is the key. Readers and, more importantly, our recipe triers, don't want things to be too complicated, or they'll just go elsewhere. I hadn't really actually thought that people would really be trying my recipes, but in case they are, I'd better make them clear. One of the simplest ways to do that is to list out the recipe ingredients in the order they appear in the recipe. I can put that one into practice straight away!



4. Email subscribers are like gold

Email subscribers are the loyal friends who have requested blog posts straight to their inbox. Instead of having to go seeking through the facebook feed, competing with their friends wedding pics, the next fun event, they have opted to be sent the posts each week to distract them from work, and therefore I might actually get a look in! I had never thought about it like that till Jules from the Stone Soup's presentation. By thinking about what I am wanting my readers to do when they get to my blog, I can hopefully make it a little simpler for readers to engage when they arrive!

5. There really is too much of a good thing

Who says you can't get enough of a good thing? I love food and tasting everything I can! The Eat Drink Blog Conference 2012, however, actually pushed me to the limit! There were so many tasty offerings provided for us to feast upon by the generous sponsors: Breakfast from Red Door Bakery, Lunch from the market producers who came in on their day off to feed us at Adelaide Central Market, Coffee from Breville, A Mexican feast from the Hilton, Chocolate fountains from Providore, cheese from Barossa Cheese Company, cakes from the Cupcake Table to mention a few that I can remember! I think it's clear that I'll not make the grade as a competitive eater, but I had a great time trying!

Thanks again to Lambs Ears and Honey; The Hungry Australian; Eating Adelaide; Travelling in MaryJanes; She Cooks, She Gardens; The Natural Foodie; Playing House for organising a memorable, insightful but also fun weekend! And the South Australian Tourist Board for showcasing their beautiful state!

MasterChef Live

I am the biggest MasterChef stalker groupie fan as you know, so I was so excited to attend MasterChef Live yesterday. It is the best of it's kind with so many cooking demonstrations, in between the exhibitors, we were hopping from stage to stage watching MasterChef contestants past and present sharing tips and tricks they have learnt and learning from the real life Sydney chefs.

I have several new little techniques that I'll try in our kitchen now - deep frying enoki mushrooms seems all the rage with the Season 4 contestants. We love mushrooms, and this little technique to add some crunch to a plate sounds like it will be great for summer entertaining!

Darren Robertson's sherbet is something I'll definitely test out at home. After a meal last year at Ritual where a cardamom sherbet lined the plate, it's been something I'd love to put my own spin on, and now I know how to make it!

Prompted by a fabulous meal at Ms Gs on Friday night, chicken was on my hubbies mind, and a causal conversation with Audra Morris sparked a few ideas for him to try for a fried chicken coating to rival Audra, Mindy and Kylies "3 Pepper Chicken" from their pop up, or Dan Hong's "Naked Chicken" that we loved the other night!

Duck from the Three Blue Ducks

Of course, it wasn't just picking up on techniques for the kitchen. We came home with lots of heavily discounted booty (including pre-sale of MasterChef 2012 winner, Andy's new book "The Next Element" and our bellys full of some amazing food - the highlight for me being the Three Blue Ducks slow roasted duck with Asian greens which fell off the bone and melted in your mouth - a perfect dish for eating with a plastic fork (and I hate eating with plastic cutlery at the best of times!) whilst sheltering from the light drizzle!

Convenience foodie!

I have been to a few restaurants recently but for some reason today I wasn't inspired to blog about my eating out experiences. I am going to turn to something closer to home. Since we got our iPad about a year ago, we have been managing our weekly menus with an app called Paprika. I haven't been paid or sponsored in any way to write this but is one of the most fabulous apps.

As you may know, I am an avid menu planner. We have more variety and less waste by planning for the week. Up until this year I used a diary to note down our dishes and write the shopping list. Now all I need is the phone and/or the iPad. I can either read through my magazines and add in a note manually which page to go to, or search for recipes an build my virtual recipe collection from many websites where you can save straight into the app with one touch of a button. Ultimate convenience - with the menu designing, not with the food itself!

Hungry Homestay

Vac Packed Beef Chilli

Our friends know us to be hospitable and always generously opening our dining table to anyone who requests an invitation! We also have a stream of international guests travelling through our dining room who stay with us on an overseas Homestay program. Auzzie Families send us students from far and wide to sample our cuisine, and experience life at the home of a (not so...?) typical Aussie family.

Our most recent homestays are staying a bit longer than the usual month, hopefully due to the great food and fun company. Over the holiday period though, we spent some time away from home and to honour our commitment of a home cooked meal every night, I made sure there was plenty in the freezer to keep them going while we weren't there to cook every day.

Plenty food and in the freezer are not phrases that usually can go well together in our household. We have a small apartment and an even smaller freezer, so we've been typically limited on the number of dishes we can tupperware up and cram into the couple of drawers. Recently though we invested in a Food Saver, Sunbeam's groovy vacuum sealing machine. It is not just food that it saves. It saves space, money and our waist lines, as it allows us to portion up bulk packs of meat into smaller serving sizes and properly seal it up ensuring no freezer burn.

It has also meant that we have been able to prepare a few weeks worth of home cooked, healthy unprocessed meals for our homestay "kids" to defrost while we're galavanting off on holidays. I just multiply whatever I create, or throw something in the Slow Cooker and we vac a bag or two, flatten it out and slide it into the freezer. Even when we're not in town, we're able to provide quick, healthy and diverse meals each night of the week to our hungry homestays!

Eat Drink Blog 2011

Slow Cooked Lamb with Broad beans and Tomato Salad for Lunch

One of the great things about any hobby is the ability to share it with others! Foodies are lucky in that there is never a shortage of friends hanging around when a piping hot roast comes out of the oven, or a freshly iced cake gets sliced! It's always nice though to meet other like minded food bloggers from whom you can share war stories, pick up tips and tricks and exchange ideas.

The Eat Drink Blog 2011 Food Bloggers Conference was that opportunity!

As you would expect from a Food Bloggers Conference there was no shortage of delicious food and one of the highlights was the delicious Slow Cooked Lamb lunch followed by the Lamb MasterClass by Nonie Dwyer. It was just like being in a MasterClass on MasterChef as Nonie broke down the lamb and whipped up some deep fried lamb bacon, lamb neck stew and demonstrated how to replicate her amazing lunch. The aromas of the spices that had teased the audience through the first half of the days sessions on legal and copyright matters,  SEO techniques and an insightful presentation on blog writing by Valerie Khoo, were revealed!

To work off the bellies full of food in the afternoon, Peter Georgakopoulos got the creative juices flowing in a Food Styling Workshop, Quentin Jones gave workable tips to the every day Food Photographer and some filled up even more at Kingsleys Crab MasterClass or Brasserie Bread's Sour Dough session.

After even more info on ditching the day job for full time blogging, and bloggers ethics, the Conference kicked on to Kingsleys Steakhouse for a wonderful dinner. Thanks to the Eat Drink Blog crew for an inspiring informative day meeting great new friends!

Thanks to the organisers: Trina from the Gourmet Forager, Jen from Jenius, Simon from the Heart of Food and Reemski from TummyRumble
and to the generous sponsors who enabled such an awesome experience:

Electrolux for the conference venue
Toby’s Estate for providing tea, coffee & a barista
Breville for providing a juice bar
Daylesford and Hepburn Mineral Springs Co. for providing non-alcoholic beverages
Brasserie Bread for providing breakfast as well as morning and afternoon tea
Meat and Livestock Australia for providing lunch
Pacific Restaurant Group for providing dinner

Snap, Crackle and Pop!

Crispy skin is one of those amazing inventions that features in kitchens all over the globe in different guises. My favourite is pork crackling! To me, the test of the oven of my rentals is the crackling test. If I could make perfect pork crackling I was on to a winner! I still remember the disappointment of my last rental place with the elements on the bottom of the oven making crunchy crackling almost impossible.
When making roast pork for friends I never like to promise crackling just in case it doesn't quite deliver,  but even though I say so myself, I'm getting quite consistent at putting up a great attempt each time.

I've picked up a few tips along the way that have helped which hopefully will help you succeed with a fantastic snap, crackle and pop!

Perfect Crackling & Roast Pork

• Preheat the oven really high. The recipe might say 200 but I crank it up to the highest setting!
• I dry the skin really thoroughly and score through just the top layer (not through the fat makes better crackling, I've heard). Some supermarket porks are already scored but sometimes not enough!
• Be generous with the oil. I don't measure out, I just pour and generous amount into my hand and rub it all over the skin.
• Be extra generous with the salt. I used to salt my pork on the baking tray before putting it in the oven, but I put so much salt on it, it can make anything else really salty! Now, I prepare my pork on a plate with salt covering the whole skin and rubbed in. I then transfer it to the baking tray leaving the excess salt out!
• After preheating the oven on really high, don't turn it down for 15 - 20 mins. I really give it a good chance in the first few moments of cooking so at least I am confident of how it's going to go.
• Turn the pork when cooking. I try to turn it a few times so all surfaces get a go of the hotter sources.
• Don't fill the baking tray too much with the roast veg. Anything that will make the roast start to stew will impact on the overall crispiness of the crackling, so if you like using the pan juices and fat from the meat for your roast veg, give the pork it's space!
• Finally, don't put the crackling on top of the meat to be doused by gravy. I set mine to the side and on top of any juices and sauce!