Sunday Roast the Australian Way

We went to Savenor's of a Saturday and what a wacky wacky place it is. It seems like your run-of-the-mill high end grocery store (chocolates clearly marked by percentage of cocoa, obscure mouldy cheeses, tea packed in highly-decorated tins) until you peer a little more closely at the tightly-wrapped packets of meat on the metal shelves of the fridge.

Wild boar.

Wild hog.

Gazelle.

Ostrich.

Bear.

Kangaroo.

Having had kangaroo before, it was the only one I was brave enough to try and cheap enough to ruin, if that happened. I went for a small joint / loin (?) of it, with the perceived notion that I know what it should be like after it is cooked.

I seared it, according to online advice, on both sides, before placing the pan in a hot oven. It cooks very fast and dries out if overcooked, but sadly my meat thermometer was not cooperating fully. Ergo, I cooked it a bit much, but with a rub of scallions, olive oil, and salt, all was forgiven.

We ate it as a traditional Sunday roast with trimmings (potatoes, salad, jus) and emerged with a decided twang in our speech.

Alla Vodka - A Story in Pictures

My friend Aimee first introduced me to the yumminess that is pasta alla vodka in college. Sophomore year in her dorm room with a few of her friends, scattered through the room perching on the desk, sitting on the bed. A good dorm memory.

Aimee, the sauce was delicious. I was wowed. And many years from trying my own version.

When I bought Nigella's Feast years later, I honed in on that recipe. I don't make it by the book anymore. But I did adopt her habit of adding the vodka to the cooked pasta instead of to the sauce.

I present a simple and delicious pasta sauce in step by step pictures, Pasta Alla Vodka:

1. Boil a lot of water in the kettle, some to pour into the sauce, and some to help skin fresh tomatoes.

Pour hot water over 2-4 tomatoes in a bowl, and cover, letting them steam and the skin soften.

In the meantime...

2. Slice an onion into thin ribbons (I absolutely love them like this. They seem to retain a sweetness and a slight crunch that I don't get when I dice them). Fry them in butter.

Until softened, five minutes.


2. Scoop the contents of a small can of tomato paste into the onions.


3. Add the hot water from the kettle.



Stir.


This is already a delicious sauce. But to make it truly sublime, peel the skin off the fresh tomatoes.


Chop them up, and throw them and all of their juices into the sauce.

Cook until they crumble.


Cook pasta until al dente, then toss with butter and vodka before serving with the sauce.


This is my fave picture of the bunch with the Smirnoff poised like a vodka cannon over my pot of pasta!

Nigella's Walnut Crescents

These look a bit wrecky, but you'd still eat them, right? I dredged them through powdered sugar before they had cooled because I was desperate to try them, and the result is that the heat from the cookies melted the fine granules of sugar. Ah well. Tragedy, right?

This is yet another recipe that forced me to use my food processor - and I'm delighted. Roast walnuts, pulverize them, mix them with butter and sugar, and bake. Any cookie that is mostly butter keeps incredibly well. The moisture and fat keeps them from going stale.

In the end, though, this batch tasted more like shortbread than like a nutty cookie, so next time, I will be sure to roast them longer to fully bring out the walnut flavor. Now that I know the formula for nutty cookies, the opportunities are endless...up next, perhaps I shall try hazelnut hearts. Dipped in chocolate. Hmmm.

Beans, Arugula, and Bulgur

Whenever I talk or write about bulgur wheat, I have the irresistible urge to shout, "Don't be so bulgur!" Count yourself lucky that I didn't title the post that. I had to get it out of my system, that's all.

Mark Bittman's original recipe calls for cannellini beans. We love cannellini, but as I rooted around the cupboard, I discovered these black beans in need of some loving. We substituted these in with terrific results. Beans, bulgur, arugula, and rosemary made for an incredibly hearty, almost meaty main dish with terrific vegan credentials. This is a good one for when your veggie friends come round. And when you fancy a meat-free meal.

Foam

Blue Goat Cheese

Oooh! An exciting local find. Hubbardston Blue Goat Cheese. From Savenors.

My Amazing Chocoholic Cookies

Recently, I felt inspired to whip up my own batch of ridiculously chocolatey cookies, starting from a purist's point of view with no nuts or any other non-chocolate embellishments. The first set were pretty good, very dark, very small, like something you would want perched on the saucer of your frothy cappuccino. But as I came to write about it, I found myself wanting to make them again (a difficult decision, as I'm sure you can imagine), to implement some thoughts I had had to perfect the texture, the sweetness, and the overall chocolatey-ness.

When these came out of the oven, I was over the moon. I bake a fair amount, but rarely does the entire sheet of cookies come out absolutely completely perfectly baked. And I was saying that before I had even tasted them.

And after a bite? The chocolate permeates the dough so that, when warm, these cookies are velvety and lush. When cooled, the outer dome of cooked sugar dough becomes lightly crusty.

If I do say so myself, these are absolutely gorgeous and a must-try if you are remotely as besotted with chocolate as I am (Diana, I'm looking at you).

Toujours Delish's Chocoholic Cookie Delights

3/4 + 1/8 cup flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1 stick butter

3/4 cup of sugars (mixture of granulated and brown) plus 2 tbsp large grain sugar and a drip of honey

3/4 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 cup / 6 oz chopped dark chocolate


Combine the dry goods. In a separate bowl, whip up the butter and sugar, then add the vanilla and egg, then the dry goods. Throw in the chopped chocolate and drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.


Refrigerate for ten minutes to firm up the dough. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for ten minutes. Beware that warm chocolate smells will waft throughout your entire house.