Carrot Cake, Pheasant Pie and Avocado & Chocolate Mousse

We held our cooking club last week and trialled three recipes from the Masterchef Cookbook Volume Two. The first was the Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing. For those of you that watch Masterchef you may remember the contestants trying to guess all the ingredients in this cake. One of those ingredients was olives and I have to say I was a little disappointed that this version of the recipe did not include olives!

This cake was full of nuts and spices and made a lovely big cake full of flavour and very moist. The icing was delicious too. Unfortunately the recipe is not on the internet so you will have to buy the book!

Rating 8-9 out of 10.

Main course today was Maggie Beer's Pheasant Pie with Braised Radicchio which can be found at http://www.masterchef.com.au/pheasant-pie-with-radicchio-and-jus.htm
The pheasant was not cheap and I think we all decided the pie would have been just as nice with chicken. Have to say preparing a bird with a head in tact didn't excite me too much either. Sorry but I had to put the picture in to show how brave I was!

The first step was to remove the drumsticks (and head) from the bird and marinate the body and legs in a lovely fragrant mix of olive oil, orange juice and zest, thyme leaves, bay leaves and juniper berries.

I found the juniper berries at a health food shop. These berries are the primary flavouring in gin and have a strong flavour which works well with game meats.

The pheasant is roasted and then splashed with verjuice after removing from the oven. Maggie Beer produces this product which is made from the juice of unfermented grapes. It can be used in many ways to add a gentle acidic flavour where lemon juice or vinegar may be too strong.

The pastry was nice and light for this pie and made with butter, plain flour and sour cream. Some pastry tips from one of the girls in our group...keep it cold, if starts to get too warm put it back in the fridge as it gets too hard to work with, don't overwork it and don't stress over it!
The pie filling was made by cooking some portobello mushrooms (I actually bought swiss brown as I couldn't get portobellos) with butter, garlic, rosemary and salt. Once cooked you add flour, chicken stock and creme fraiche. To this mixture you add the chopped pheasant meat, chopped cooked orange zest, walnuts, lemon zest and oregano. Put the filling in the pie base, cover with pastry and cook until golden.

The pie is served with a raddichio braise made from chopped raddichio, currants, verjuice, bacon, rosemary, parsley and vino cotto. Raddichio is a red leafy vegetable that resembles lettuce but does not belong to the lettuce family. It has quite a peppery flavour. It can be used in salads and gives great colour but many people find it too peppery. The braise was delicious but the quantities only allowed for a very small spoonful per person which was a bit sad. I would double or triple the quantities if I made it again. Vino cotto is another of Maggie Beer's products made from the must of grapes and similar to an aged balsalmic vinegar or balsalmic reduction. Grape must is the juice made from crushing grapes.
I made one big mistake with this recipe..I didn't read it through before starting and when it came to making the jus realised I had not kept the pan juices from the pheasant so could not make the jus which was meant to be made by adding chicken stock and verjuice to the pan juices. This was a pity as I think the whole dish was let down by not having this sauce to moisten the pie and tie the whole dish together.
Overall we were disappointed with this pie. It had a lot of flavour but just wasn't as nice as we had hoped.
Rating 6 out of 10.

 For dessert we made Chocolate Avocado Mousse with Hibiscus and Raspberry Coulis. Again we were disappointed with this recipe. The flavour was unusual and the macadamia base really didn't add anything to the dish. I found you could still taste the avocado which just didn't seem right in a dessert. The raspberry coulis and hibiscus flwers were delicious though!
The hibiscus flowers, which are awesome in champagne too, were frozen up side down for half an hour so they would stand up on the mousse and look pretty. More information on this product can be found at http://www.wildhibiscus.com/ Yes, you can eat the flowers.
The macadamia base, which went into the base of the glasses, was made by combining macadamia nuts and agave nectar in the food processor.
The mousse was made from dark chocolate (70% cocoa) chopped into small pieces in a food processor and well processed avocado, coconut oil (which is meant to have many health benefits), agave nectar and cacao. Agave nectar can be bought at health food shops and is a natural sweetener made from the agave plant which is also used to make tequila. It is similar to honey in flavour. Cacao powder is raw chocolate and is full of anti-oxidants. The mousse is frozen for an hour before serving and should be served semi-frozen.

The coulis was made by blending some hibiscus flowers, frozen raspberries, agave nectar and water and then simmering for 30 minutes before straining and pouring over the mousse. I just wish this dessert had tasted as good as it looked as it was very pretty.

Rating 6 out of 10.

Overall the food today was not fantastic but we still had a fun day and certainly used some ingredients we have never used before which is what it is all about!