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!

What's for Dinner, Curtis?

As a chef stalker, I was so excited to meet Curtis Stone and have his new book, What's for Dinner? signed earlier this year. He's managing to muscle in between me and my thing with Jamie, and I've been cooking through a few of his recipes so far.

What I love about his book is the diversity - quick things, healthy things, not-so-healthy-but-very-yummy things, seasonal dishes, classics and new interpretations of old favourites so I wanted to show a few of his collection.

Chicken Cassoulet with Fennel and Bacon, with Endive and Shaved Fennel Salad

I have been trying to hide pulses in our dishes trying to trick my hubbie who claims to be not a big fan. This was an amazing dish for that and he even asked for seconds even after discovering that they were beans). I Apart from the chicken pieces being juicy and moist, the veg and bean concoction underneath was so flavourful. This was a great and cost effective low carb choice on a cool night.

Spiced Lamb Chops with Grilled Zucchini, Feta, and Olive Gremolata (served with Curtis' pickled onions)

I loved the simplicity of this dish, and it is great for preparing earlier and putting on the barbie when everyone is having a drink out on the balcony to admire the aroma - or in our case rushing to try to stop the smoke alarm beeping (think we need to clean the BBQ) The grilled zucchini is a good trick to make veg taste amazing; and with the onions and feta, this dish goes from a traditional meat and veg to a delicious, different but very healthy dinner.

Slow-Cooked Pulled Pork Sandwiches with 'Fireworks' Coleslaw (and Apple Bourbon Sauce)

This recipe, and in particular the sauce, are the reason to buy this book! I amended the slow cooked pork recipe for my slow cooker (I didn't basically the same but cooked it in the slow cooker for 8 hours instead of 2 1/2 which Curtis recommended. The pork falls apart, and it's the amazing sauce/chutney that puts it back together and makes an amazing sweet, tart, spicy sauce. Served with the coleslaw (where I substituted yoghurt for the mayo to make it healthier) this was a great dish for a posh night or casual night in!

Hope you can grab a copy of the book and try out a few. If you're anything like me, you'll love it! 

Game for Jamie!

Me and Jamie! See we have this game. Jamie writes cookbooks with a time limit and show me how to make them on TV and I try to match his time. I am sure it's a game you've played before too!

Jamie makes these stunning meals in such a short time. My goal is not only to get them done in a similar time, but make them look as close as possible to his version! And sometimes, I am pretty darn close. The other day I beat all my records (but not Jamie's) and cooked his 30 min roast beef in 40 minutes. Pretty good since the kitchen didn't look like a hurricane had been through it. We're down to 25 ish mins for his 15 min dishes. Quite impressive really, considering we would spend 25 mins faffing about with a salad if not under the pressure of the clock.

What I love most about Jamie's dishes are the family style rusticness of them and even though I don't have the crockery to match, I think I do a good job. I'll hone my skills and be an expert one day but by that time, he'll probably have released a 5 min meals version to contend with!

Fabulousness in 15 (and a bit)

Crispy Duck 

I'm back on my Jamie bandwagon. I received his 15 Minute Meals book for Christmas and we've already tried quite a few of the recipes. What I have loved is that, although it doesn't take me 15 minutes yet (and my hubbie, when I timed him, took 26 mins) is that he encourages multi-tasking. Whilst something is searing, instead of watching it, I'm blitzing, chopping, marinading so that no time is wasted and a complete dish reaches the table all at the same time.

Chicken with 6 Veg Ragu

I love the variety of proteins and the way that he prepares them sometimes is quite unusual. We've had the Crispy Duck which also includes tofu and is the first time my hubbie has been able to palate it. We've tried a few dishes with lentils and all of the meals have lots of different types of vegetables, salad that are great supplements to get the veggie count for the day up eg. he often uses radishes and sprouts - things that I wouldn't ordinarily put on a salad, but they fit really nicely with the dishes and make the dish extra healthy!

Finally, I love getting the most out of my beloved Kenwood Chef. I can make the dressings blitzing them in the little jars, slice the veg in the food processor and liquidise sauces all with the same machine!

I think the book was made for cooks like me - gadget lovers needing some speedy after work ideas, who enjoy preparing and eating fresh, healthy produce!

Dine with my Valentine

As an old married couple (this was our second Valentine's Day as husband and wife) we now take the opportunity to get some of my hubbie's favourite things to cook at home. After watching countless episodes of Hells Kitchen I wanted to give scallops a go and selected a recipe from Gino d'Acampo's book, Buonissimo: Scallops with matchstick leeks and crispy pancetta. The scallops were served on an onion purée with a sprinkling of crispy pancetta and leeks. The sweetness of the caramelised onion puree was surprising but it went very well with the juicy scallops, beautifully browned in the pancetta fat in the pan.

Next course was duck and mushroom risotto, my husband's two favourite ingredients in one of his preferred dishes. This one seemed to work perfectly with just the right amount of lovingly prepared duck stock. It needed a little more seasoning to really bring out the flavours but we happy to add that ourselves as I was a little concerned I would over season the dish, and once that happens, there's no rescuing!

With a romantic looking dessert (to feature in another post) it was a beautiful dinner in no better setting than our candlelit balcony. Can't beat that for our ideal Valentine's meal!

Fresh from the Philippines

Lumpia Sariwa

All my family who live out of the Philippines seem to have a yellow "bible" of Filipino cooking, Filipino Cooking Here and Abroad and my cousin gave me my very own copy for my birthday! Now there was no excuse for not trying some dishes of my heritage.

There are only a few Filipino dishes that I remember my Mum preparing when I was a kid. One of them is Lumpia Sariwa, fresh spring rolls with a sweet but savoury dipping sauce, so I decided to Christen my book trying the lumpia recipe. I started off with the mince for the inside of the rolls. This was a blend of pork and prawn mince, packed with lots of other vegetables. One of my new favourite ingredients is water chestnuts. These give it a bit of crunch and was the recommendation in the book for those "abroad" folk who can get the traditional vegetables

When my Filipino cousin (the husband of the cousin who had sent me the book) saw me preparing the egg wrappers, he commented that he had rarely if ever seen them made from scratch, as I guess they're normally bought - like me buying corn tortillas for Mexican I suppose. It took me a while to get the hang of them, as my instinct was to cook them till slightly brown. These ones need to be still yellow and soft, perfect for rolling. Once I got the hang of it, they came out nicely, although for next time I have to challenge myself to make them a little thinner!

Rolling the pancakes wasn't as challenging as I expected. I just had to remember my fajita rolling experiences and not pack them too much so they burst at the seams. With a slice of lettuce and just enough filling my Filipino fresh spring rolls looked just like I remembered them. Dipping them into the sauce was also a familiar experience reminding me of what I love about the flavours and textures all melting together in my mouth!

Choc and Cheese

Our current Japanese homestay guest loves muffins, so before we start our big health kick, I thought I'd try my hand at some baking. Apart from the odd birthday cake, I'm not really a huge baker. I definitely don't have the perfectionism required for beautiful baked goods, so my attempts are of the rustic variety! 

We were going on a road trip so I decided to bake some savoury broccoli, ham and cheese muffins, a recipe I found on the internet, as well as some sweet cappuccino and white chocolate muffins from my breakfast bible, the Marie Claire Breakfast cookbook. The techniques and ingredients for both sets of muffins were completely different, leading to two contrasting but equally tasty outcomes.

The savoury muffins were delicious. I substituted the plain flour for wholemeal flour in an effort be a bit healthier. It was a really interesting use of broccoli to pack them with goodness! There was a lot more egg in these muffins, and the lightness came from whisking up eggs. They were more akin to frittata than a cake, but that worked really well with the savoury ingredients and made them less heavy and a great breakfast on the road snack.

The sweet muffins were light and fluffy from the buttermilk added in these. The coffee flavour was subtle and balanced the sweetness of the chocolate. There were however, some hitches along the way! The muffins were prepared wrapped in baking paper lined ramekins. Whilst they were moist and tasted great, they were quite a strange shape given some of my inconsistent baking paper cylinders. The white chocolate chips kind of sunk to the bottom of the muffins too! And they certainly didn't look much like the picture.

All in all though, my efforts were pretty good and those tucking in came back for seconds reinforcing that they were actually very tasty!

Bumper Birthday

Both of my cousin's kids have their birthday in the same month and for a few years now we've made the cake for the youngest whose birthday falls earlier in the month. Last year, however, he declared that he "wanted a different cake" than the very cool (we thought) "4" chocolate cake with orange coloured butter icing, and decoration. Turns out he is not a fan of anything but chocolate cake that looks like chocolate (and not fluorescent orange!) This year we ended up baking a cake for both of them for their joint birthday party.

As fortune would have it, I just received a copy of Fiona Cairns' Bake & Decorate from a competition run by Chris Dreyfus' Silver and Claret  and the Family Chocolate Cake looked perfect for the chocolate lover birthday boys. It's a very succulent cake which I have now perfected after making the recipe a few times for enough mixture for the two cakes - a figure eight and a figure five.

My hubbie loves decorating cakes and took on the icing of the racing track figure eight with a cocoa butter cream, whilst I stuck with a chocolate ganache (from the chocolate celebration cake, also in Bake & Decorate) for the plainer 5. It was the first time I'd made ganache frosting, but it was quite easy to work with, as I just let it drip down the sides, and spent more time wiping around the cake!

The cakes were a great success and both birthday boys were very excited and impressed, and they both tasted fantastic!

Recipes from a hungry cook

Marion, last season's MasterChef favourite, released her cookbook the other day, and at the Good Food Show in Sydney I had a chance to grab my copy of her book hot off the press and meet her to get it dedicated to me! Browsing through the pages I was delighted at the variety of recipes from Marion's kitchen. Her Thai background has influenced many of the recipes but there is also a whole lot that are inspired by other areas of her life: Darwin, South Australia, and her MasterChef experience. There are beautiful images and anecdotes Marion shares about villages in Thailand she's visited where her family lives, markets in Darwin and food memories which really bring the recipes to life!

Unfortunately, many of her more tasty looking recipes are not necessarily compatible with our current health kick, but I leafed through licking my lips at Deep Fried Pork Belly, Sticky Beef Ribs with Sweet Coriander Sauce, Confit Duck and Thai Fishcakes. Another day.....

Marion's Pad Siew (cooked by me!)

For a quick mid week option I chose one of the many healthier items from her menu, Pad Siew - a chicken and rice noodle dish with gai lan (Chinese brocolli). I also added a few bonus veggies from the fridge. The dish is served with a chilli infused vinegar drizzled on which gives it an acidic heat to balance out the slightly sweet flavour of kecap manis, an Indonesian dark soy.

It turned out to be delicious, crunchy, flavourful and very moreish - lucky I had made a whole wok full to heat up for lunches during the week too!

Crock Pot Crisis!

Coming home on a cold winter night to prepare dinner is hard enough! 
Coming home on a cold winter night when you're expecting to walk into the house to the delicious aroma of the slow cooker which has been bubbling away all day, only to find out that the timer for the slow cooker didn't go off is even harder......

Since we got our crock pot a few years ago, our trusty timer is set for midday so that the dish will automatically turn on while we're at work and do our cooking for us. It's a great feeling to come home after a hard day and have dinner prepared: meat falling off the bone, sauce reduced and scrumptious. The other day, however, we were sadly disappointed by timer failure and I had to had to improvise with an inferior but quick meatball dish!

Lemony Veal Stew with Chick Peas and Spinach

Fortunately, all was not lost and with a new functioning timer, we were able to enjoy two nights off cooking and two great dishes from my winter favourite cookbook, and a purchase my trip to Carmel, California a couple of years ago: Art of the Slow Cooker. The first dish was a hearty Lemony Veal Stew with Chick Peas and Spinach. A whole balanced meal in one pot!

After that, with confidence in the crock pot up, I attempted a US favourite, Spicy Pulled Pork which I prepared with Coleslaw and served in soft buns. Not the most attractive dish or healthiest, but it was so good! The spicy pork melted in the mouth with the crunchy coleslaw cooling the palate after a proper Tabasco kick. A fantastic reward after the earlier disappointment and I can't wait to get the crock pot out again!

Yums for Mums

We had three generations of mothers at my in laws this Mother's Day and as usual, we were up in Brisbane to prepare a special lunch to treat them! At first we thought we'd be ambitious and prepare a roast, but since we had to shop in the morning and then prepare, we opted for one of Jamie Oliver's 30 min meals without expecting that the dinner for 15 would take the same time as one for 4, particularly without our favourite kitchen equipment. Our plan to make the fantastic looking Catherine Wheel Sausage and Horseradish mash was scuppered as something similar was served at the restaurant we visited last night with some of the same guests! Instead we opted for scallop on guacamole baguette decorated  with one of my favourite Aussie bush fruits, finger lime,  Mustard chicken with Dauphinoise potatoes and Greens - a dish that would hopefully please all the guests spanning from being in their 2s to 70s all with different tastes and preferences and Damien Pignolet's Eve's Chocolate pudding - a winner I prepared a few weeks ago for our Big Feed Charity dinner.

Cam's Potato Dauphinoise

Cooking in someone else's kitchen for so many was quite a challenge. We had the chicken frying in 2 different pans - an electric fry pan with variable heat control where the chicken was either sticking to the pan at one temperature, or practically turned off when one notch lower and a fabulous portable induction cook top which browned the chicken beautifully - an excellent invention! The oven was more predictable and I was able to knock out the flourless chocolate cake quite effortlessly and Cam's Potato Dauphinoise was a great success!

All in all, scallops were a nice appetizer and the finger lime was certainly a talking point. The Chicken with Mustard Sauce, albeit some not as moist as I would have hoped after a rocky ride in the electric frypan, quietened the table and all you could hear was knives and forks clinking - a good sign! And the best part was that all the Mums had a day off to enjoy lunch prepared for them! It was indeed a Happy Mothers Day!

Our Kitchen Rules?

As any foodie TV watching Australian will know, My Kitchen Rules is showing from Monday - Wednesday evenings each week.

People encouraged me or my hubbie to enter MasterChef, and I have always said that I would never want to be on there, the pressure, the thinking on my feet faced with a mystery box of ingredients without my trusty copies of Delicious Magazine, it's just not for me and how I love to cook, but My Kitchen Rules, however, has spiked my interest a couple of times!

Pete Evans & Manu Feildel are the celebrity judges and I think they are great! In the past few weeks I've had a great experience with both of them! I was lucky enough to get up close and personal with Manu at the Sydney Taste Festival where he was showcasing his restaurant, L'Etoile, and his dish Slow Cooked Lamb (although we were wondering "where's the sauce?")! Pete from Hugos showed his generosity as I was campaigning for raffle prizes for an event this weekend I'm helping to organise, Live Love Laugh, (Sun 27th, 6pm at the Red Rattler in Marrickville, NSW - in case you can make it!) to raise money for St. Laurence House, a charity that helps homeless Sydney young people find their way. He donated copies of 4 of his fabulous looking books, signed and dedicated especially for the event! They both have showed me personally that they are great sports and I feel they're very encouraging and fair to the teams which is a great contrast to some other reality TV shows! So, I would love to have them to our home and cook for them.....

Twice now have I set myself a 3 hour timer to see if I could put up a 3 course meal that has enough creativity to delight Pete, and plenty sauce to please Manu, so the pressure wouldn't be an issue! I could even probably have beaten the Tasmanian couple's poor attempt at picnic food! In the end though my husband and I have a great system of not interfering in each other's cooking processes and I just don't think it would work! We might be a great team but not in the kitchen! We might give the competing a miss! That our friends would think to nominate us for either show is enough for us to already feel that our kitchen rules!

M(i)s Ch(i)ef™'s Month of Meals

M(i)s Ch(i)ef™'s Month of Meals by A M(i)s Ch(i)ef™ compilation of recipes by Michelle Elliott | Make Your Own Book


I was so excited to hear that my lovely friend Tracy was inspired by my meal planning and had decided to try it out with great result. She was enjoying the variety and that she didn't have to think each evening of something to concoct from the ingredients in the fridge! However, unlike me, she didn't have enough recipes to choose.

I decided to make her a cookbook! At first I considered the recipe journal, but the printing and cutting and gluing of recipes sounded like too much of a craft project so I explored the online world and found the perfect site: www.blurb.com - an online book creator. My recipes were not original (you'll see I attributed them all to their original source), but all came from my weekly meal plans and I wanted to make it as simple as possible for my friend, a mother of twins with one on the way, so I compiled enough for a month of meals to be followed in order to give the dishes each evening variety and balance if you followed the book all the way through. It was so fun remembering, finding my favourites (mainly from www.taste.com.au) and ordering them how I would plan my weekly menu!

Next step was to compile them all into a Blurb book which was easy with their simple to use and format software. I put together my cover and there it was - my first cookbook ready to serve!

Blurb printed and shipped my book and Tracy received it with delight yesterday!

The cool thing is that I can share Tracy's book with you! If you are inspired to try it for a month, you can order a hard copy for yourself on Blurb, but equally you can leaf through the pages right here!

Wishing you a delicious month of yummy mouthwatering meals and watch out for more!

Jamie Oliver's "90 Minute Meals"

I love the concept of Jamie's 30 Minute Meals, and I love the results: great family style dishes impressively served. We have been so pleasantly surprised by the delicious flavour combinations with fresh ingredients. The biggest challenge is the timing! The beauty of the book is how Jamie sets you up to work on different parts of the dish so your finished products appear on the table all together.   Following Jamie's instructions and the flow of the meal is so simple but I take way more time than the allotted 30 mins! 

Take the Kimchee slaw for example. It was 15 mins by the time I had fished out the cabbage, radish and onion out of the fridge, found the shredder attachment and assembled the food processor, let alone making the salad, chicken, sauce and plati g it all up! My chicken also doesn't seem to cook as quickly as Jamie's! Maybe the Aussie chooks are bigger breasted!

Green Curry, Crispy Chicken, Kimchee Slaw, Rice Noodles

After several tries, my fastest was 45 mins (featured in my earlier post: Give thanks...) My next challenge is going to be a timed Masterchef "Pressure Test" style attempt, where I'll be under the pump (and maybe have the ingredient I need out on the bench beforehand!)

I'm determined to live up to Jamie's expectations and be able to produce his stunning and delicious dishes in better time!

Practice makes perfect I guess and so far no one is complaining - they'll come back for more!

Buck's Fizz

Even on New Years Day we managed to pull together our creative energies and come up with a theme for our New Years Day dinner party for 8 - Buck's Fizz. And what better way to start 2011 that with a Champagne inspired meal.

We started with a seafood entree - Oysters with Cava Dressing - a fabulous recipe by Jane Lawson in her book Cocina Nueva - which delighted our British friends who had never had oysters before and BBQd Balmain Bugs marinated in orange juice and chili oil.

Main was a whole barramundi with a fresh herb rub (from our little herb garden), wrapped in foil with Cava poured in which keeps it moist and caramelises beautifully. We love cooking whole fish, so the next challenge is to be able to elegantly serve it at the table! Luckily there was plenty of meat to go round despite the somewhat hapharzard carving style!

Finally, we pulled an old favourite from the Readers Digest Cookery Year, but adapted for the ice cream maker. I picked this cooking bible up from a 2nd hand book stall in a market for $4.00. Bargain! It's filled with classic recipes that my Mum cooked for us as kids, but also has sections on cuts of meat, descriptions of produce, and basic techniques.

Champagne Charlie is an ice cream inspired by the cocktail, and was a scrumptious and glamorous but light way to finish our Buck's Fizz inspired menu.

Merry Christmas "Elliott" Style

Christmas Day came around and we finally got to our first Elliott Christmas feast - with the wine to match (Elliott Semillon from Glandore Estate in the Hunter Valley!) And what a feast it was. We had a very relaxed afternoon drinking Pimms, playing games, chatting, handing around delicious canapés and preparing dinner. Sitting down to eat the magnificent spread was fabulous, with lots of wine and champers flowing shared with friends and family and of course delicious tasty food!

The menu:
3 canapés - Double Smoked Salmon Mousse served in individual shot glasses with Grissini Sticks; Proscuitto and Basil wrapped Marinated Bocconcini and Oysters with Tetsuya's Oyster Vinagrette.
The main event - Poached Turkey and Prawn Salad, Maple Glazed Ham, Dad's Gravadlax (whole fresh salmon marinated in Filipino Tanduay Rum, Brown Sugar, Lemon and Dill), Jamie Oliver's Yummy Dressed Potatoes and Green Salad.
Dessert - Tropical Mango Pudding with Mango Ice Cream and fresh Mango.

Give thanks for what we are about to receive

We don’t typically say grace in our home, but occasionally we do feel the need to attribute the maker for helping to create the dishes that find their way on to the table. Last night was one of those times! Thank you Jamie!! My husband’s birthday present to me (as well as a wonderful time in Italy) was Jamie Oliver’s latest 30 Minute Meals. It is a fabulous concept, directing us to multi-task in the kitchen by stepping through various components of the different dishes so the whole meal is ready simultaneously (haven’t quite cracked the 30 mins, but it’s not far off – and does Jamie’s other half insist that he washes up as he goes along??)

Last night’s feast was a flavoursome Indian marinated rump steak with curry sauce and a Spinach and Paneer Salad with mint yoghurt dressing served with naan bread (p 218 of his book!) A great combination and a delicious dish to share with friends!

Hello!

I love, or rather, am addicted to cookbooks, recipes, magazines, MasterChef! I can ‘t help myself! Inspired by my good friend, I am putting pen to paper about what happens in my kitchen!

Here I will share my experiences with kitchen appliances, successes (and failures) with recipes, my new shiny cookbooks and the culinary mischief that I create in my kitchen!