Apologies

No new posts have been made recently due to overwhelming busy-ness, but rest assured we will be posting more in our new kitchen in our new house when we finish moving.

Boeuf Bourguignon

English - Burgundy Beef

(With apologies to Simon Bryant)

I first came across this wonderful recipe among the pages of Mapie, the Countess du Toulouse Lautrec's wonderful La Cuisine De France. But it is Simon Bryant's version that has made this a regular at our table, and it is his version I would like to share today.

If you have no Madeira in your kitchen, you may use brandy infused with orange rind, or orange juice instead. Tom and I also use a lot more zest than Simon's quantity, but we're mad for citrus, so I've put down the original quantity rather than the orange or so worth of zest that Tom and I get. Although I have written Simon's ingredients, I must admit that I have rarely had all the ingredients on hand when I have made this recipe. I used big Dutch Creams tonight rather than tiny new potatoes, we put carrots in it, I had no pickled onions so we omitted them, and we used porcini mushroom stock instead of beef stock, and we had no muslin, so we used a paper towel to strain it instead, but you know... it's a recipe, not a tax return. You've got to make the best of what's on hand and fudge the bits in the middle. Although I have written the ingredients faithfully to Simon’s original, I have elaborated in the method, as the version on The Cook and The Chef website is quite open to mis-interpretation if you’re not au fey with the whole concept. Might I also add that I have never been bothered with straining the marinade properly prior to this evening, but Tom did it properly and the result was a massive change in the quality of the colour. It’s worth doing, but if you don’t do it, it will still be edible.

The beef we have been using is topside roast. If you buy the roast, you can trim the fat, and cut it yourself, reading the grain of the beef to guide your slicing. I have found that this is a far better way to purchase your beef than buying it already diced. Speck is double smoked bacon. The best way to buy it for this recipe is to buy it in one half inch slice. That way you end up with juicy cubes of crispy bacon. Enjoy with a good glass of your favourite red wine and some buttered bread to mop up the gravy.


Ingredients

The Braise

1kg of Topside beef, cubed
120g streaky bacon
2 onions
4 sprigs of thyme
1 bunch of parsley
2 Bay Leaves
100ml of Madeira
250ml of red wine
500ml of beef stock
6 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup plain flour
80ml of olive oil
100g of butter
2cm square orange zest
Salt and pepper to taste

The Garnish
200g speck
2 cups baby button mushrooms
12 pickled onions
12 baby new potatoes



Method

1. Firstly, put aside at least 2 hours (but preferably an overnight) to marinate the beef. First, cut the beef into cubes and place it in a shallow wide bowl. Add the onions (cut into moon shaped segments), roughly cut herbs, and orange zest.

2. Once the beef has marinated, turn on the oven to 180ºC to pre-heat. Drain the wine from the marinating bowl into a pan and boil it. By boiling the marinade, the proteins and blood contained within it will congeal. You may then remove these by running the marinade through muslin. Discard the lumps and set aside the liquid. This will stop your braise from taking on a grey colour or lumpy texture.
3. Add oil and butter to a crock-pot (or heavy based saucepan with lid) and add the bacon, onion, before adding the garlic and herbs. Dust the beef in the flour and add to the pan to seal. Stir occasionally for 5 minutes until the beef is browned off. Deglaze the pan with Madeira.

4. Once you have browned the meat, add the red wine and boil down by half. Then add the stock to cover the meat. Put the lid on your crock-pot and pop it in your pre-heated oven for two of your Earth hours. Pull it out and stir every hour.
5. Whilst your braise is braising, boil your spuds in some salted water and set them aside once they are cooked through and soft.
6. Whilst your braise is braising and your spuds are boiling, cut your speck into 2cm cubes and fry it over a low heat in a little butter. Once the speck is lightly browned on all sides, add mushrooms and fry until they are also browned. Set these mushrooms, speck and spuds aside. Roughly cut a bit more parsley for garnish.
7. Once the two hours are up, stand the braise for 10 minutes or so to make sure that you don’t burn your mouth on the hot deliciousness. Slice and butter your bread, place the potatoes in the bottom of the bowl, place the braise over the potatoes, and then scatter the mushrooms, speck and parsley over the top. Serve with salt and pepper. Small children (and myself sometimes…) enjoy ketchup with this dinner.

Serves 4

Pimms Cup

Refreshing!

1 jig of Pimms
Cucumber
Orange
Lemon or lime (whatever's handy)
Ice
Mint
Strawberries
Dry ginger ale
Lemonade

1. With a vegetable peeler, slice at least 3 thin strips of cucumber into a tall glass. Hull two strawberries for each glass, and set aside.
2. Slice orange and lemon into segments, placing 2 slices of each in the glases.
3. Arrange ice in the glass, and add a couple of sprigs of mint and your strawberries. Pour your Pimms over the top.
4. Top with equal parts lemmonade and dry ginger ale.

*Today I had no strawberries. The strawberries and mint are optional extras. What's most important is the cucumber. For some reason it doesn't work without the cucumber.

Swordfish Tagine

(with apologies to Sam and Sam Clark)

I have adapted this recipe to use local ingredients. Ain't no Hake or Charlotte potatoes in my 'hood as used in the original recipe. Other fish that would work would be Pink Ling or Trevalla. The Swordfish was a bit of a revelation, as it keeps it's shape well, but can become dry and flaky easily. Not in this dish. It's succulent and deeply flavoured by the charmoula, which is a fancy word for marinade/sauce from what I can tell. The original recipe is form page 183 of the wonderful Moro cookbook, a book that I strongly recommend for anyone who enjoys Spanish and Middle Eastern flavours. I have adapted it slightly to suit my kitchen and cooking techniques. If you wish to compare it to the original, off to amazon.com with you.


Tagines sound a bit wanky, don’t they? If you've not heard of one, they're earthenware cooking pots that look a bit like a casserole dish with a distinctive triangular lid. Tom’s sister gave us one from the store she works in the other day, so we thought we’d give this one a go. The technique is such that you use a layer of potatoes to hold the fish steaks above some boiling water, thus steaming the spiced steaks of white firm fish fillets. The tagine collects the juice from the tomatoes, fish and capsicums and the potatoes stew a little bit in this delicious, light sauce. You could successfully do this in any wide bottomed pot that allows you enough height to raise the fish above the water level. Any adequitely sized crock pot would do.

Ingredients

4 swordfish steaks
20 small waxy potatoes, peeled (Pink Eyes would be ideal, but I didn't have any so I used Dutch Creams.)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
4 garlic cloves, cut into slices
15 cherry tomatoes (today I couldn't get any cherry tomatoes, so I used roma tomatoes. They were not quite as good, but passable)
3 large green capsicums
A handful of black oily olives
100ml water
Sea salt and black pepper

Charmoula
2 garlic cloves
1 level teaspoon of sea salt
2 teaspoons of cumin seeds
Juice of one lemon
1/2 tablespoon of good-quality red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 small bunch of fresh coriander
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Method

1. Put the garlic, the sea salt and the cumin seeds into your mortar and pestle and give it a good bash. Once the garlic has been mashed up, add the lemon juice, vinegar, paprika, roughly chopped coriander and olive oil. Rub two thirds of the charmoula on to the fish steaks, and pop them in the fridge for at least 20 minutes (preferably 2 hours).

2. Peel and boil your spuds in salted water for 10-15 minutes in a medium sized saucepan. Once the potatoes are done, arrange them in the bottom of your tagine (or substitute). Set aside.
3. Cut the cheeks away from your green capsicum, slicing down from the core to the base, removing the seeds and pith as you go, and coat the skins with a little olive oil. Grill your green peppers in large slices under the griller until they are charred and blackened on the skin (this takes about 20 minutes). Put the capsicum in a plastic bag to soften for a few minutes (this makes them easier to peel). Remove the skins and discard them, and cut the remaining soft, grilled capsicum cheeks into bite sized pieces.
4. Rinse your saucepan, heat your olive oil and fry your garlic slices for two minutes until they begin to brown. Add your cherry tomatoes and toss them for two minutes until they begin to soften. Stir in the green peppers, and the remaining charmoula and taste for seasoning.
5. Scatter three quarters of the capsicum and tomato mixture over the potatoes in the tagine and then place your fish steaks on top. Add the last of the tomatoes and capsicum and pour the juice into the bottom. Scatter the olives over the top and pour the water in the bottom. Put the lid on and place on a medium-high heat for 10-15 minutes until the fish is cooked through.
6. Serve in bowls with a slice of bread and butter.

Pad Thai

Thai la Thai in Lygon Street is a reason to move to Melbourne in itself. Their Pad Thai is the best Pad Thai I've ever wrapped my chops around. My other half has concocted plans to have friends send him Thai la Thai Pad Thai in the mail, but it's probably illegal. In the meantime, we have this recipe to keep us going between visits to Melbourne.



Ingredients

1/4 of a block of tamarind or 3 tablespoons of tamarind concentrate
The juice of half a lime
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
2 tablespoons of palm sugar
White pepper, to taste

250g packet of dried, flat, long life, noodles
1 free range chicken breast
8 prawns (pre-boiled makes this easier)
1/2 a block of firm tofu
2 eggs
1 cup of peanuts

2 cloves of garlic
1 inch of lemongrass
1 inch of ginger
100g of bean shoots
2-3 spring onions
1/2 a red capsicum
Fresh coriander to taste
Wedges of lime to serve

Method

1. Prepare the tamarind by mincing it with a knife, put it in a heat proof bowl and pour 2 cups of hot water on it. Mush it around with a fork, and let sit for 5 minutes. Force through a sieve to get the lumps out. Add the lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar to the tamarind. Set aside whilst you prepare the rest of the dish.
2. Put the noodles in a big bowl and cover them with water. Let soak until soft. Alternatively you can cook them as per the instructions on the packet. Wrap the firm tofu in a fresh, clean, tea towel and place a weight on top of it. I like to use a carton of unopened soy milk to weigh upon the tofu. This will remove excess water from the tofu, and improve its texture when you fry it.
3. Slice the chicken breast into strips. Melt some butter in a wok and brown the chicken pieces in batches on quite a high heat. Set aside.
4. Crack the eggs into a bowl and beat with fork. Using the fat and butter still in the pan, empty the eggs into the pan. Flip when solid enough to do so. Cook until it is completely solid, take out of the pan and slice into strips.
5. Throw out the oil that's in the wok. De-vein and shell the prawns, leaving the tail on for decorative purposes. Fry in a little oil until cooked through. Set aside with chicken and omelette.
6. Pour 1cm of peanut oil into the bottom of the frying pan. Slice the tofu into 2cm x 2cm x 5cm rectangles. Shallow fry in the peanut oil until the tofu is puffy. Set aside with the chicken, prawns, and omelette.
7. Drain the noodles and shake well to get as much water as you can off them. Mince the lemongrass, ginger and garlic. Put 4 tablespoons of peanut oil in the wok. Fry the lemongrass, ginger and garlic for about 1/2 a minute, add the noodles, and fry for a further 2 minutes, being careful not to let it stick. Add the tamarind sauce and cook for another minute or two, stirring constantly. Put the chicken, omelette, prawns, and tofu in the wok, along with 1/2 the peanuts and bean shoots and the sliced spring onions. Heat through all the ingredients.
8. To serve, arrange the noodles in a bowl, put bean shoots, peanuts, coriander, slices of red capsicum, and lime wedges on top. Heavenly!

*Eat the prawn tails. They're crunchy and have lots of calcium. My friends in Japan got me into it, and now I think it a terrible waste to discard these tasty little morsels.

PS: I had the left overs for breakfast. It's even good cold.

Roast Chicken

Petrified of poultry? Fear not. Roasting a bird is a pretty easy, lazy dinner. Just have to return to the oven every 20 minutes and turn it. Other than that, you can watch a video, or whatever.

The first thing you've got to think about is getting yourself a nice, free range bird. Go to a butchery and ask the butcher how long it will take to cook the bird and at what temperature. Butchers know these things.



If you're in the stupidmarket and have no butchers on hand, the sizes equate to weight in kilos - ie: a size 16 bird weighs no less than 1.6kg. Per kg expect it to take about an hour at 220ºc. I usually start testing the chicken for doneness from 1 hour into the cooking. To test a chicken, insert a long skewer into the chicken around the fattest part of the thigh. If it comes out red, put your chicken back in the oven. When the chicken's juices run clear when you stab it, pull the leg away from the body and cut down toward the hip joint. If it's fluffy white without any bloodiness, your chook is cooked. I have a crap oven that doesn't seal properly, so if you have a modern fan forced oven, your bird may cook a fair bit faster.

Cooking a bird does involve a fair few hygiene considerations.

Firstly, NEVER stuff a bird until you are ready to cook it. If you stuff it ahead of time, you're just giving food to bacteria. Don't do it.

Secondly, always keep your chicken chilled in the fridge until you're ready to use it. If you're going to be diverted on the way home from the supermarket, ask the butcher to give you a cold pack to keep against the chook until you get it home.

Never cook a chicken that is partially frozen. If you have to use a frozen bird, give it a day or two to thaw slowly in the fridge. Don't thaw it at room temperature, there's too much room for bacterial bloom if you let it thaw that quickly. My advice is to avoid frozen chickens purely for hygiene reasons. Fresh birds are far superior.

The last thing for you to think about is whether you prefer crispy skinned chicken, or super juicy flesh. You can have both, but the technique for highlighting one or the other of these characteristics varies slightly.

If you want a juicy bird, cook it in a crock pot. Brown it on the cook top in a little melted butter on all sides first. Cook it in the oven with the lid on the crock pot for an hour. Take the lid off for the last 20-40 min to help crisp it up a bit. It will be nice and juicy.

If you want a crispy bird, cook it in a baking dish with no cover. If it starts looking dry, baste it and then cover it with aluminum foil for a while to keep the juices in.

The crispy bird will mean that you'll have to clean the inside of the oven, because it does spit a bit. Do it sooner than later so it doesn't go all charred on the inside of the oven and turn into a real chore.

I alternate techniques depending on my mood.



Ingredients

1 whole chicken

1 lemon
Olive oil
Salt

Herb stuffing
2 pieces of stale bread, ground into crumbs
1/4 cup of pine nuts, whole
1/2 - 1 cup of continental parsley, chopped roughly
1/2 a lemon - zest and juice
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
1 egg
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Clayton's stuffing - the stuffing you have for when you can't be stuffed making stuffing.
1 lemon, cut in half.
1 whole onion.
1 bay leaf.

Gravy
1 tablespoon of plain flour
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1/2 cup of white wine
1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
OR
Instant gravy powder if you're being lazy


1. Preheat your oven to 200ºC. Clean and prepare your bird. Wash the outside and the cavity with running cold water. Pat dry with paper towels. Trim any excess fat away from the neck. Lift the skin away from the breast and back and push little knobs of butter up under the skin.
2. Make up your stuffing. If you don't have a blender, use a mortar and pestle to grind everything up. Mix all ingredients together and then spoon into the cleaned cavity. Fix the cavity closed. Some people take the time to sew it closed. You can just use a moistened skewer to fix it closed. Or if you don't have any of the above, just remember not to stuff it too full, and you'll be right. If you're using Claytons stuffing, just slice the lemon and the onion in half and pop 'em in the cavity.
3. Brown off the chicken on a cook top if you like (see photos) turning it so that each side is allowed to be sealed before entering the oven. Pop it in your prefered cooking vessel and put it into the oven. Put the timer on for 20 minutes.
4. Once your timer goes off, turn the chicken and return it to the oven. Continue turning the chicken every 20 minutes until it runs clear when stabbed on the inside of the leg. First poke it with a skewer, and if that runs clear, lift the drumstick away from the body of the chicken, and cut down toward the hip joint. When hip joint is no longer pink or bloody, your chook is done.
5. Take it out of the oven and let it rest for at least 10 minutes on a serving platter before carving it. Whilst waiting for the bird to rest you can make gravy. Take the cooking pan and pour off the fat but try to retain the juices and add just a little water to it to deglace it. Scrape the blackened bits up. Pop it on a cook top and scatter in the flour. Make sure that the flour is fully incorporated into the slurry and that there are no lumps. Add tomato paste and white wine. Stir for a little while. Add a the stock gradually, stirring all the while. If you want to have a thick gravy reduce it for longer. If you prefer a thinner gravy, call off the cooking earlier. If your gravy goes lumpy, wizz it with your noise on a stick (hand held blender) for a second. If you're being lazy, just pour off the fat, sprinkle the gravy powder into the pan juices, and stir thoroughly to avoid lumps. Serve in a jug to accompany the chicken.
6. Don't use an electric cutting knife because it will rip the flesh of the bird. Cut gently with a very sharp knife. First, glide the knife through the breast. and cut slices of breast meat for everyone to share. Then with a heavier movement, joint the chicken at the drumstick, wing and thigh.




*If you're watching your waistline, then save the wings for stock, because they are fatty little bastards. When you've taken as much meat from the chicken as you can, use the bones for chicken stock.
*I like to serve with roast spuddies (I like Dutch Creams or Kenebecks for roasting). In another baking tray, toss the peeled potatoes in salt and olive oil and pop them in the oven whilst you're cookin' le chookin. The potatoes can be turned when you turn the chicken. 80 minutes in the oven will make 'em good and crunchy on the outside and fluffy fluff on the inside.
*Gravy can be made with white or red wine. I like white wine better for chicken gravy, because it doesn't compete so much with the flavour of the chook.
*A slice of bread to mop up the gravy is always a good idea. Yum yum.

Tamagoyaki

(Rolled Japanese Omelet)

This is a good izakaya staple. You can have it for breakfast, lunch or tea, as a mains or a side, it's good hot, warm or cold. And it's pretty easy to make once you've got the knack. the Japanese have these wonderful rectangular pans for making nice, neat edges. However, I don't have one of those, so I use a regular, circular, pan cake skillet.



Ingredients

4 eggs
A splash of soy sauce
A little mirin
Pinch of salt
Tablepoon of dashi
2 teaspoons of oil for frying.


Method

1. Crack eggs in a bowl or measuring jug (I use my Pyrex jug for this one). Whisk until yolks and whites are totally combined. Add, soy, mirin, dashi and pinch of salt.
2. Heat oil in a smooth surfaced fry pan (pancake skillet rather than a cast iron pan). Once the oil is hot, roll it around the surface of the pan to coat the pan entirely.
3. Pour about one third of the eggs into the pan and roll them around to cover the bottom of the pan. As the eggs begin to harden, fold about 1 inch worth of omelet onto the slowly hardening eggs. Reposition the rest of the omelet in the pan to make room on the open edge. Fold over the next inch worth of omelet, and reposition it in the pan once more.

4. Into the open edge side of the pan, put another third of the egg mixture. Continue rolling, inch by inch, repositioning it in the pan, and adding more eggs until you run out of egg mixture. To illustrate what I mean, there's some pictures down the bottom. By the end you should have a log of omelet.
5. Serve the omelet on a plate, and slice it into 3cm wide slices. Serve hot. Traditionally tamago yaki is served with grated daikon radish and soy sauce, but I prefer it just by itself or with a little aijipon.








Mmmm, yummy.

Mapodofu

Inspired by Chen Kenichi, I learned to make mapodofu. It's quick, it's cheap and by God, it's tasty.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

400g minced beef or 1 cup of beef mince style TVP, soaked in 1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of fermented black bean paste (or locally available equivalent - ie: Tenmen jyan)
1 inch of finely chopped fresh ginger (at least!)
2 birds eye chilli, chopped finely
3 spring onions, sliced into thin rounds
1/2 cup of vegetable stock
2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon of chilli paste (or locally available equivalent - ie: Shisen toban jyan)

1 teaspoon of miso (optional - red miso works best)
2 tablespoons of Chinese rice wine
450g of firm or silken tofu, according to your preference (I like silken best)
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon of cornflour
2 tablespoons of sesame oil
Szechuan Pepper, to taste (if not available use white pepper)


1. Crush your Szechuan Pepper (also called Prickly Ash) in a mortar and pestle. Heat the oil in the wok, add the mince and season with salt and pepper. Break up any lumps with your wooden spoon, and brown the mince.
2. Add the black beans, ginger, spring onions and chilli and stir fry for a further 2 minutes.
3. Add the stock, soy sauce, chilli paste, miso and rice wine. Cut the tofu into little cubes (about 1.5cm) and add to the wok with the garlic and stir until the tofu is well coated. Cook over a low heat for a further 3 minutes.

4. Comine the cornflour with 3 tablespoons of water and stir with a fork until it forms a smooth paste. Add to the wok with the sesame oil and Szechuan pepper. Stir over a low heat until thickened slightly. Serve by either pouring over rice or in an iceburg lettuce leaf.


*The Koon Yick Wah Kee Soy Chilli Paste that I use is reallly intense. Approach with caution.

Overfeeds 2 people, 2 times.

Updated 7 April 2010.

NOTE: this recipe is also an excellent way to hide vegetables from fussy eaters. Just slice the vegetables into tiny cubes, fry them off briefly in a little oil before commencing step 1 of this recipe. Acceptable vegetables include eggplant, onions, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, capsicum, or similar. Makes a delicious dinner treat into a nutritious espionage dinner.

Tabouleh

Tabouleh is an excellent salad. People think you're cool if you can make tabouleh. Boys will want to know you, and girls will want to be you. It's also something that you can make using your own sensibilities and flair once you know the gist. It's healthy for you too! What a winner!

For the uninitiated, burghul is cracked wheat. It's available from The Spice Store, and most supermarkets.

Ingredients

1 cup dry burghul
1 big bunch of parsley, curly or Italian style according to taste - this time I used curly
1 bright red juicy tomato
2-3 spring onions
1/4 cup of mint leaves
1 clove of garlic
1-2 lemons, depending on how juicy they are
Salt
Cracked black pepper

Method

1. Put the cup of burghul in a bowl. Cover it with water and stand for an hour. If it soaks up all the water in that hour, give it some more. When it is soft, drain off the extra moisture and put it back in the bowl that you plan to serve the whole dish in.
2. Slice the tomato into 4 quarters. Use a teaspoon to pull out the remaining seeds. Dice into small, square-shaped pieces. Add to bowl. Slice up your spring onions, nice and small. Roll the mint leaves around each other so that they look like a cigar and use a sharp, sharp knife to mince them up. If your knife is a bit blunt, then use kitchen shears instead. Put the mint and onion in the bowl and stir it around a bit.
3. Mince the garlic, very finely. Add it to the juice of one lemon. Pour over the rest of the salad, and stir it about until everything is coated. Taste it. If it isn't lemony enough, add another half a lemon, or a lemon's juice. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve in the mixing bowl, allowing people to dish it out for themselves.


Here's some tabouleh in context with some spiced beetroot dip, home made hummus, and felafel. This dinner was served with fresh pita bread made by the wonderful Tom. Yum yum.


*Keeps well if you cover the bowl with cling wrap and store it in the fridge.
*If you wanted to, you could peel your tomatoes as well as seed them, but that's not entirely necessary if you're a lazy bastard like myself. Hell, I'm bothering to seed the tomatoes. What more do you want!
*You could also put in a seeded, diced, Lebanese cucumber if you liked.

Spaghetti Meatballs

Oh, I know, I know, it's not very authentic. It's that horrible 60's bastardisation of Italian restaurant food. But nothing feeds your inner child as well as spaghetti meatballs.

But look at them. I mean, how could you not adore something so succulent and juicy?

Meatballs
1 minced onion
1/2 of a carrot, grated
1 stick of celery, cut into tiny pieces
1 teaspoon of dry oregano, or 2 teaspoons of fresh oregano chopped very finely
The zest of 1/2 a lemon, cut into very tiny pieces
1-3 teaspoons of djion or sweet German mustard (depending on how much you dig mustard)
Pepper, tabasco sauce and salt to taste
1 egg
1 slice of good quality bread
500g beef mince
2 tablespoons of frying oil

Sauce
1 minced onion
2 cloves of garlic, minced
425g can of crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons of rich tomato paste
1/2 cup of minced parsley
Wine, sugar and salt to taste
Parsley and parmesan to garnish

500g spaghetti
A large pot full of boiling water
Olive oil
Salt

Method


1. Cut up your, onion, carrot, celery, oregano, lemon zest, mustard, pepper, salt, tabasco sauce and eggs in a large mixing bowl. Break your bread into pieces and grind it up (I have an electric coffee grinder thingy that I use to make breadcrumbs). Stir these ingredients together until they are well combined. Place the beef mince into the bowl, and press the ingredients together until they are evenly dispersed. With clean hands, form into small balls about 3cm across. Put formed raw meatballs on a plate. If you have the chance, cover them with plastic wrap and let the meatballs set in the fridge for a while.
2. Heat oil in a pan. Boil a couple of kettles full of water in preparation for boiling the pasta and keep on a high heat on the stove. Fry the meatballs, rotating carefully in batches being careful that they get cooked right through to the middle. Put them aside in a bowl when they are cooked through.
3. When the last batch of meatballs is cooked through, add the minced onion to the pan juices, and stir about. Add a little water if the pan is getting sticky. Stir for about 3 minutes.

4. When the onions have taken on a clear, shiny quality, add the garlic and toss the garlic in the hot oil briefly.
5. Add the canned tomatoes and tomato paste. Rinse out the tin with a little water and swish it about to get the last bits of tomato out of the tin. Add the water to the pan. Heat it until it begins bubbling away.
6. When the tomatoes have begun bubbling. add a little salt and olive oil to the water you prepared for the pasta before. Add the spaghetti to the water and stir with a fork until the whole length of the spaghetti is submerged. Put the timer on for 10 minutes or so.

7. Taste the pasta sauce. Add a little wine, salt and sugar to bring the flavours out. Add some of your parsley to the sauce. Use your judgement as to how much of each element it needs. Take the heat down on the tomato sauce and re-introduce all the meatballs to the hot sauce. Stir gently to cover the meatballs in the sauce.
8. Drain the pasta. Put it in the serving bowls, and ladle the pasta sauce and meatballs over the top. Garnish with parsley, parmesan, fresh cracked black pepper and a bit of sea salt.

Serves 4.

*Note: If you like more vegetables in the sauce, feel free to add as many as you like. I've done it with capsicum and pitted kalamata olives and that's pretty fine eating there.
*If you don't have a grinder to wizz your breadcrumbs up, you can just use commercial breadcrumbs from the store.

Omu-rice

Got kids/boyfriends/husbands/rellies that aren't too sure about Japanese food? Try omu-rice. This unsophisticated dish is completely non-threatening to people who find raw fish completely petrifying. And check it out! It's cute!


This recipe is for one omelet.

Ingredients

1/2 cup of cooked short grain rice
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon of light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of oil
Barbecue sauce
Mayonnaise

Method.

1. Cook the rice so it is nice and hot. If you're using left over rice from last night, fry it in a little oil and sake to get it hot (kill off the bugs) and to give it a little extra flavour if you like - if you wish you could also add some vegetables to the rice, but that's entirely up to you. With freshly cooked rice, I like it just plain, or sometimes with a little bit of finely chopped pickled ginger mixed into the rice for a bit of extra flavour.

2. Whisk the eggs with chopsticks or a fork in a little jug so that they are well combined. Don't use an eggbeater. Add the soy and sugar to taste.

3. Once your eggs are completely combined, heat the oil in a pancake skillet (smooth bottomed fry pan) to a medium heat and wait until it shimmers a little and rolls across the pan smoothly. Test the heat is sufficient by dropping a tiny bit of the egg into the pan. You want it to be just hot enough to sizzle straight away, but not so hot as to have any burning quality to the heat. Add the egg to the pan and run a chopstick quickly around the pan straight away to scramble it up just a little, but not enough to leave holes in the finished omelet. Roll the egg mixture into the holes you've made with the chopstick so that the bottom of the pan is totally covered. This will give you a lighter, fluffier omelet.

4. Once the omelet is nice and solid (but just before all of the moisture has disappeared from the omelet), add the rice to the left hand side of the pan (if you're right handed). Flick the right hand side over using an egg flip. Roll it right over so that the edge of the omelet is on the bottom of the rice.

5. Slide it on to your plate to serve. Write your message on your omelet using your mayo and barbecue sauce. I made this one for Tom, and he's mad keen for pickled ginger, so I served a little on the side as well. If mayo and barbecue sauce turn you off, then you could use any sauce that takes your fancy. Tomato sauce is a favourite for many.

Serve hot.

*Note: This one is pretty impossible to bugger up, but it might not look quite perfect your first go. It's easy to destroy omelets and end up with scrambled eggs. Don't cry over a cracked omelet. Just serve that one to yourself. It still tastes exactly the same as a pretty one.
*Some people like to make fried rice and then stuff the omelet with fried rice. I've tried it and it's nice too. Do whatever takes your fancy, of course. It's your kitchen!

Japanese Steamed Rice

Good rice is good food. It is flavourful, with a fine texture, and makes a perfect accompaniment to almost anything. Stinky, sticky rice has nearly none of the good characteristics of well-made rice. I have learned to love rice just by itself with a bowl of miso for breakfast. I offer this recipe with thanks to "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" by Shizuo Tsuji - no matter how entirely unfaithful my version is to the original.



This is a photo of my rice storage. I keep two types of rice. Koshi-hikari rice grown in Australia, which has a short grain, and a standard long grain rice. I use the short grain rice for risotto, sushi, and accompanying Japanese dishes (which I'm awfully fond of making at the moment), and I use the long grain rice for fried rice, accompanying Indian curries or Mexican styled dishes. I don’t know if rice is expensive where you live, but where I am I can buy 10kg of rice for $12-15 AUD. 10kg of rice keeps me going for at least 3 months, and I’d wager I eat rice far more often than most Aussies do. So cheap!

The following instructions are for short grain rice, but can be used for long grain rice also. Long grain rice absorbs more water, so please use the higher suggested water content for longer grains. Tom likes to toast his long grain rice briefly before adding hot water to the pan, but I don't go in for that kind of caper. Everyone's got their favourite way of making rice, and this is mine.



Method:

1. Allow 1/2 cup of uncooked short grain rice per serving.

2. If possible wash your rice well in advance (30 minutes to an hour beforehand). Tsuji says: "to wash, put rice in a large bowl and set it the sink for convenience. Cover the rice with cold water from the tap and stir quickly with your hands for about 30 seconds until the water becomes milky. Never let the rice stand in this milky water... Pour off milky water and wash again with fresh water from the tap. Repeatedly wash until the water is almost clear. It takes about 5 minutes of washing, pouring off, and washing to clean rice sufficiently. The penalty for rice washed to hastily is "smelly" rice." However, for those of us who don't have time to labour quite so much over our rice, I have found rinsing thoroughly under a quick running tap in a sieve for a minute or so to be sufficient enough for me (though I am probably not as discerning as Tsuji-san.)


3. Put your rinsed and dried rice in a deep pot with a tight fitting lid. Your lid should not allow any steam to escape. Australian rice is quite dry and requires quite a lot of water to re-hydrate it to its tasty best, and so I find that 1 3/4 to 2 cups of water for each cup of rice is a good formula.

4. Boil the kettle. Measure your boiled water into your pan. Add your washed rice. Turn the heat up high and let the water come to a fast boil. A white starchy liquid will bubble from under the pot lid. When the starchy bubbles cease, reduce the heat to very low and cook it gently until all the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. It doesn't take long and I recommend having a peak after about 10 minutes of cooking, but you should use your judgment and your nose as to when you have your first peek. Do not peak too often as you will allow too much moisture to escape from the pot. To make sure all of the liquid has been absorbed, lift the pot from the burner and tilt it to the side to reveal whether there is any water hiding under the rice.

5. Once the water is all gone, turn off the heat and allow the rice to stand on the burner for 20 minutes before fluffing. As Tsuji states: "during this interval, the grains are allowed to "settle," and the cooking process is completed by the heat retained in the rice and the walls of the pot." Don't lift the lid. Just let it rest.



6. Once it has rested, "fluff" the rice by using a rice paddle (if you don't have one, a wooden spoon will have to do), and use a sideways, cutting motion to separate the rice grains from each other slightly. This way you will end up with lovely, light, textured rice rather than glugy, gluey rice. Keep the rice covered in the pot until time to serve.

*Note: I don't always get it perfect. Sometimes I get distracted and the rice gets a little burnt on the bottom. Don't panic if your rice gets roasted on the bottom. Just don't mix it in with the other rice. There are some recipes that call for the rice crust. I'll have to try them, but I only just read about them the other day...