Home-made Sausages

I recently bought myself a Kenwood Mixer which was very exciting as I have never owned a mix-master. It came with a free mincer and sausage maker which was even more exciting! I love the idea of mincing my own meat and mixing my own ingredients to make my own sausages as you then know exactly what is in them.

The first thing I needed to do was research which "skins" to use. I decided to buy collagen casings as they require no soaking, salting, cleaning or refrigeration and have a good shelf life. I purchased mine online from http://www.bakeandbrew.com.au/category35_1.htm and have found them great. I must admit I'm not sure how I would have gone handling pig or sheep intestines! When using collagen casings it is important to make the sausages the day before you require them as then the meat has time to marinate with all the extra herbs and spices you have added and the skins have time to rehydrate.

The first sausages I made, Spicy Lamb Sausages, were from the Masterchef cookbook. Firstly I had to mince a boneless lamb shoulder. I trimmed a lot of the fat off before mincing however many people would say you should leave all the fat on for extra flavour.

I then dry fried some cumin seeds, cinnamon, cardamom, chilli flakes and paprika before grinding them into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. At this stage you were meant to add in copha, garlic and orange juice but I didn't use the copha as I really don't like the taste of it. Next I combined the mince, spice paste and fresh breadcrumbs and then filled the sausage casings.

The final step is to twist the sausages into whatever lengths you desire. There is obviously a trick to this step that I am yet to figure out as I keep untwisting the ones I had already done as I was twisting each new one!

I served these sausages with mashed pumkin and potato and steamed vegetables. They were quite spicy but very nice.

For the second lot of sausages I made I minced up some lovely fat free rump steak and bacon then added in a bought spice mixture I had in my cupboard, some fresh breadcrumbs and some grated cheddar cheese. These were also very tasty and I am looking forward to experimenting with other combinations in the future.

It is important that the sausages are put into a cold pan to cook as this helps stop them from bursting.

If you happen to have a sausage maker and have never used it I would encourage you to do so as it is quite fun!

Spiced Pork Belly with Pear Salad & Apple Sauce

This recipe is from the Masterchef magazine, Issue 4. The recipe is actually designed to be served as an entree and includes pan fried scallops but I wanted to modify it to serve as an amuse-bouche. To prepare the pork you marinate a boned piece of pork belly in a spice mix of ground star anise, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cinnamon, thyme leaves and a bay leaf. This spice mix is combined with crushed garlic and sea salt and rubbed over the pork belly. After 30 minutes you remove any excess salt and sit the pork into a casserole dish covered with vegetable oil or duck fat. The pork is covered with a cartouche or piece of paper sitting on the surface to stop evaporation and slow cooked in the oven for 3 hours. The pork is then removed from the oil and refrigerated until cool between two oven trays weighed down with weights (or canned food) to form a nice flat even shape. Before serving the pork is cut into thick strips and pan fried until golden brown and crisp. To serve you cut the pork into bite sized squares. My pork belly skin had been scored which made it a bit hard to cut into neat squares so next time I would cook it unscored.
The pear salad is simply finely cut pear and watercress sprigs dressed with lemon juice, dijon mustard and olive oil. The apple sauce is made by reducing apple cider, apple juice and a scraped vanilla bean and seeds over a low heat until syrupy (about 10 minutes). My children had drunk all my apple juice so I just added a little more apple cider! My sauce didn't seem to thicken as it should have but still had a nice flavour.
I served the squares of pork belly in chinese spoons on a bed of salad drizzled with a little apple sauce.
The pork was delicious, tender flavoursome meat and crisp skin, that worked really well with the salad and sauce. Pork belly is very rich due to the high fat content so this is not something you could eat a lot of, making it perfect for an amuse-bouche.
Rating 8-9 out of 10.

Amuse-Bouche

An amuse-bouche is a single bite of food designed to amuse the mouth and excite the taste buds before a meal begins. To serve an amuse-bouche before a meal is a very French tradition.

I recently bought a new cookbook, "Amuse-Bouche, little bits of delight before the meal begins" by Rick Tramonto and it is full of wonderful ideas, all designed to be served as an exciting start to a meal. Part of the fun in serving an amuse-bouche is finding creative ways to present them. You could serve anything as an amuse-bouche; a lovely spoonful of curry on a small mound of rice served on a chinese spoon, a single dumpling, a small cup of soup, a square of quiche, let your imagination run wild!
The picture at the top shows Rick Tramonto's Moroccan Lamb with Tabbouleh and Crispy Garlic. The tabbouleh is what I would call a fairly typical tabbouleh made from bulgur, lemon juice, flat leaf parsley, diced tomato and olive oil. Bulgur can be substituted with cracked wheat but as bulgur has already been steamed it requires a lot less cooking than the cracked wheat.
To make the lamb you slow cook lamb shanks or lamb shoulder in red wine, onions, carrots, celery and thyme. This amuse-bouche is served cold topped with crispy fried garlic slices. I expected more flavour in the lamb and think it could have done with some extra spices but overall this was a tasty spoonful with a nice mixture of textures.

I have been trying to find a soup that tastes great and looks like a cappuccino so trialled a couple. The first from Rick Tramonto's book is a very simple Roasted Garlic Soup with Lovage. I replaced the lovage with celery, which has a similar but milder flavour. To make this soup you half and roast a head of garlic sprinkled with olive oil and thyme leaves. You then cook some celery and onion, add the roasted garlic cloves, cream and water and cook for 30 minutes. Finally you puree the soup, season and serve sprinkled with lovage leaves. This soup was nice but I wouldn't rush to make it again.

The second soup I made was a simple cauliflower and bacon soup which can be found at http://aww.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=777145 This was a thicker soup, very easy to make and very tasty. You could serve it as either an amuse-bouche, an entree or a main course.

This Angel Hair and Artichoke Frittata is another of Rick Tramonto's recipes. Again very simple and tasty. To serve as an amuse-bouche cut into small wedges and serve on small plates or cut into larger wedges and serve with salad for a light meal.

Angel hair pasta is a long, very fine spaghetti available in most supermarkets. I could only get a packet of angel hair pasta cut into smaller pieces which was fine for this recipe. To make this frittata you cook the pasta then toss with quartered artichoke hearts in an oven proof fry pan. Add in beaten eggs, milk and baking powder and cook until the egss are set on the bottom. Transfer to the oven to finish cooking then serve sprinkled with fresh herbs, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (or parmesan) cheese and a dollop of creme fraiche. Enjoy!

These Chicken Dumplings with Chilli Glaze are a Donna Hay recipe which can be found at http://www.donnahay.com.au/recipes/104-chicken-dumplings-with-chilli-glaze/pf=1 The filling was a simple mix of water chestnuts, chicken mince, coriander, ginger and soy sauce. The chilli glaze was made by simmering chopped chillies, white vinegar and sugar until syrupy. I did forget about my glaze and overcooked it so it became very sticky! The dumplings were tasty and the chilli glaze added a nice flavour however they were a bit large and difficult to eat off a chinese spoon.

I am still searching for the perfect amuse-bouche to serve on a chinese spoon, so please let me know if you have any wonderful ideas!

Pot Roasted Beef with Gremolata & Lemon Semifreddo with Citrus Salad

This Pot Roasted Beef Recipe was a really simple way to cook a roast. You browned the roast (800g for 4 people) on all sides in a little olive oil in the casserole dish then removed it and added in 2 peeled and chopped parsnips, 2 peeled and chopped carrots, 6 whole garlic cloves, 1 chopped onion, 12 thyme sprigs, 1/2 cup red wine and 1 cup beef stock. Stir to combine then place beef on top, cover and cook in oven until tender. For the last 15 minutes you can remove the lid to brown the roast.

This recipe served the beef with gremolata which is a chopped herb condiment of garlic, parsley leaves and lemon zest. I found the garlic and lemon a bit overpowering but I don't love lemon or raw garlic! My husband tells me it was delicious. The vegetables were really nice.

Rating 7 out of 10.

This recipe featured on the Better Homes and Gardens Show and the video showing how to make it can be found at http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/better-homes-gardens/tv/watch/-/7833496/semifreddo-with-citrus-salad/

A semifreddo is simply a semi frozen dessert. This particular one was made by combining an Italian meringue mixture (made with boiling sugar syrup rather than granulated sugar; this makes the meringue more stable), thick plain yoghurt, lightly whipped cream, lemon juice and lemon rind. The mixture is frozen in a loaf tin and sliced to serve.

The citrus salad in the recipe is made from the segments of 2 limes, 2 lemons and 2 oranges and dressed with the rind from this fruit, the juice reserved from when the fruit is segmented, extra lemon juice, caster sugar, the seeds of one vanilla bean and some basil leaves which are simmered together for 2 minutes. I found the segments of lemon and lime too sour so tried making the salad again with 4 oranges which I found much nicer.

The dessert is served topped with Persian Fairy Floss or Pashmak. This fairy floss is made from sesame oil and sugar and you can buy various flavours from speciality shops. I used the vanilla flavour. It has a very different texture and flavour to the fairy floss you find at shows and fairs and looks great piled on top of this dessert. I love the feel of it as you pull it out of the packet...you have to try it to understand!

Rating 8 out of 10.

A Moroccan Feast

Our monthly cooking club get together was held last Friday. Our host this month had recently built a wonderful wood fired pizza oven and wanted to experiment with cooking some Moroccan tagines in it.

We were greeted with some lovely Palmiers to have with coffee. The following is a link to a recipe to make these simple but yummy pastry treats. The only ingredients you need are puff pastry and sugar so they are a great last minute recipe if you have unexpected guests. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Sweet-Palmiers-106763

As the oven needed to be lit early so it could heat and then the coals could be pushed to the back to reduce the temperature for the tagines we decided to have a pizza for lunch while it was still hot. Our host had some pizza dough already prepared so we just added a mixture of yummy toppings and popped it in the oven. It was cooked in no time at all and delicious.

Moroccan food has has been influenced by many cultures including Mediterranean and Arab and uses a wondeful selection of spices. The meal is traditionally eaten in communal style with several dishes being shared by all.
To serve with drinks our host made some lovely Moroccan Lamb Filo Pies which were really filo triangles filled with Moroccan Lamb Mince flavoured with Baharat Spice Mix, which is a mixed spice blend commonly used in Arabic cooking. They were served with a mint yoghurt dip. This recipe is in Allyson Gofton's cookbook Slow which is full of slow cooker recipes. These were extremely nice!

All of the recipes we used today were from the Tagine cookbook by Ghillie Basan except for the dessert. We did modify them a little as both the tagines suggested cooking the onions and meats before adding the other ingredients but as we wanted to prepare all the dishes ready to go in the oven a few hours later we decided to just combine all the ingredients uncooked and I really don't think this altered the flavours. For this cooking club we wanted to try quite a few dishes so we decided to prepare the food together through the day and share it with our families for dinner.

We made a Spicy Chicken Tagine with Apricots, Rosemary and Ginger and a Lamb Tagine with Dates, Almonds and Pistachios. Unfortunately the oven was a little hot and the tagines were a little overcooked which dried them out but the flavours were still lovely. The chicken tagine was cooked in a traditional tagine dish and did not overcook as much as the lamb which was cooked in a cast iron casserole dish which obviously retained more heat.

Our host also made a stuffed pumpkin which was inspired by the recipe for a Tagine of Butternut Squash, Shallots, Raisins and Almonds.

Basically the pumkin was stuffed with a mixture of shallots, garlic, raisins, almonds, harissa paste and honey. Before serving the pumpkin flesh was mixed through the stuffing. Harissa Paste is a chilli paste popular in North Africa.

We had a clay pot so decided to try some whole potatoes cooked with rosemary and salt. Clay pots are very simple to use. They require soaking in water to prevent them cracking and need to be put in a cold oven to heat up but give a nice flavour and added moisture to the food being cooked in them.

We also roasted a whole leg of lamb which was seasoned with garlic and rosemary. Not Moroccan but delicious and tender!

There were two Moroccan Salads which were both very colourful, fresh and tasty. The first was an Orange Salad with Red Onions and Black Olives which was dressed with olive oil, lime juice, roasted cumin seeds, paprika and coriander leaves.

The second was a Country Salad with Bell Peppers and Chillies which was a bit like a salsa of onions, capsicums, chillies, celery, garlic, mint and parsley dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Finally we made a dish of buttery couscous to complement the wonderful Moroccan Feast. All of the dishes worked so well together and were a wonderful mixture of textures and flavours. We certainly tested the pizza oven and I can see many wonderful dishes being prepared in it in the future.

To finish off the meal we had an Almond and Pistachio Kulfi with a Melon and Mint Salad with Orange Flower Water. Kulfi is an Indian ice cream however this ice cream was perfect for our Moroccan Feast as it had the commonly used ingredients of pistachio nuts, almonds and rosewater in it. We added some coconut for extra flavour and texture. The Kulfi was frozen in disposable plastic cups and was very easy to tip out. The salad was made with honeydew melon, mint, honey and orange flower water which we didn't have so we made an orange sugar syrup instead. This was a lovely dessert and a perfect way to finish our fabulous feast.

This was another very successful cooking club experimenting with wonderful flavours and new cooking techniques.

Fennel & Blood Orange Salad, Rhubarb and Strawberry Compote

My aim for this meal was to use predominantly seasonal produce. Blood oranges are smaller than regular oranges and have blood red coloured flesh which is softer in texture and less acidic than regular oranges. In Australia they are only in season for a short time in Spring. I found it interesting that the 3 blood oranges I bought all had totally different coloured flesh ranging from orange to very red. These oranges had quite a few seeds which made it difficult to slice them neatly and evenly and next time I would cut them into wedges to use in a salad.

This salad was simply made by layering sliced blood oranges, sliced fennel and black olives and dressing with olive oil. Fennel is at its best from July to September but can be found from March through to November. I didn't cut my fennel finely enough and it was a bit chunky which didn't look great and meant it was a bit overpowering.

I would rate this salad a 5 out of 10 however if you did get a small amount of the fennel, orange and olive on your fork at once the flavours did work well together. I served it with pan fried fish which made a nice, light, healthy dinner.

For dessert I made a Rhubarb and Strawberry Compote. A compote is simply a dessert of fruit cooked in a thick sugary syrup. Rhubarb is available all year round but at its best from May through to August. The leaves of the rhubarb should not be eaten. Rhubarb is quite bitter and does need quite a bit of added sugar. For this recipe the rhubarb was baked in the oven with orange juice and sugar until tender. The strawberries were cooked in a saucepan with sugar and orange rind (I did add a little water) until tender. Finally you crushed some of the strawberries and mixed in the rhubarb. I thought this was a good way to increase our fruit intake however the amount of sugar you needed to add probably outweighed the benefits! This compote was very yummy served with either natural yoghurt or ice-cream. The recipe can be found at http://frenchfood.about.com/od/dressingpreservessauces/r/strawrhubarbcomp.htm

Rating 8 out of 10.

Smoked Salmon Lasagne with Eggplant Caviar

This recipe is from Neil Perry's cookbook, Rockpool. It is a very simple lasagne of home made fresh egg pasta lasagne sheets and smoked salmon. To see how to make fresh egg pasta click on the fresh egg pasta "label" on the right. The pasta is cooked and cooled in iced water before being layered with the salmon in a plastic container lined with plastic wrap. It should be made at least an hour in advance so you can place a layer of cardboard on the top and a 1kg weight (or 3 cans in my case) and refrigerate for 1 hour.
The eggplant caviar is made by steaming peeled chunks of eggplant then squeezing them to remove the moisture. The eggplant is added to some diced onions and garlic which have been cooked in olive oil. Finally you add some blanched, peeled and diced tomatoes, lemon juice and tarragon. This "salad" is cooled before being served on top of the lasagne.
For this recipe you were meant to make some Red Pepper oil but I decided just to use some of the lovely flavoured oil from the chilli jam I made last week and this seemed to work well.
This was a nice light, tasty dish that we all enjoyed. It would be particularly nice in summer as it is a cold dish.
Rating 8 out of 10.

King Prawn Risotto with Chilli Jam

This recipe is from Neil Perry's cookbook Rockpool. It looked relatively simple...it is after all just a risotto and it would have been relatively simple too if I had already made the stock and chilli jam but as I hadn't it took me 5 hours from start to finish...luckily I started at 3pm!

The first step was to make a chicken stock to use in the prawn stock. For this you simply slow cook a corn fed chicken (whole chicken cut into pieces) in water for 3 hours then strain the stock well through a muslin cloth lined strainer.

I did remove the flesh from the chicken and will be having it in a chicken sandwich for lunch. Corn fed chickens have a definite yellow colour and the flesh is meant to be more flavoursome which is why I guess Neil chose it for the stock. I could only buy a frozen corn fed chicken so had to defrost it in cold water for 3 hours before I could even start cooking.

To make the chilli jam you dice some spanish onions, long red chillies, small Thai red chillies, ginger, garlic and capsicums.

 You add these ingredients to 6 cups of vegetable oil heated until smoking. Yes 6 cups!!! The oil overflowed everywhere when I added the vegetables so take care if making this chilli jam. You cook the vegetables until they start to turn golden then add in some cherry tomatoes and continue to cook until dark golden. The recipe makes mention that once they start to colour they will blacken quickly so I kept close watch. This process took at least an hour which seemed a very long time!

You then add in castor sugar and fish sauce and blend the jam. The end result is a lovely thick, rich jam. There was a lot of oil that rose to the surface after the jam settled but the recipe suggests you leave this as it will help preserve the jam in the fridge.

This recipe made a huge amount of jam which seemed a bit odd when the risotto recipe is only made to serve 4. Oh well, we will have yummy chilli jam in the fridge for the next month or so. I think I would try a different recipe for chilli jam next time that didn't use so much oil and there are plenty of them on the internet.

The next step was to make the prawn stock for the risotto. This is made by frying prawn heads and shells along with some diced carrot, onion and garlic for 10 minutes. Next you add wine and cook until it reduces, finally you add some diced tomatoes (blanched, peeled and seeded first) and the chicken stock made earlier. This stock is left to simmer for one hour before being strained.

Finally after all this preparation I was ready to make the risotto (and had sore feet from standing at the stove!). To make the risotto you crush some coriander roots with some sea salt and fry in a little olive oil with some diced onion and garlic. To this you add the Arborio rice (a short grained rice with a high starch content perfect for making risotto), stir until sticking then add some wine and reduce. Next you add in the prawn stock one ladle at a time, stirring and allowing the rice to absorb the moisture each time before adding more. Once the rice is soft but still firm to the bite you add in the remaining 2 ladles of stock, prawns (green prawns which have been pan fried in some olive oil), butter, grated parmesan, halved fresh baby corn (which has a crisp texture and subtle, sweet flavour and is delicious in stir fries), fresh peas (yes I shelled some fresh peas!) and fresh water chestnuts (I couldn't buy fresh ones so used canned, these are also delicious in stir fries and add great texture). Stir and allow to come to the boil then put the lid on, remove from the heat and sit for 4 minutes. Finally stir through some coriander leaves.

Serve the risotto in bowls topped with some of the tasty chilli jam.

This was a lovely meal however if I made it again I would prepare the stock and jam in advance so it wasn't such a long procedure!

Rating 8-9 out of 10.