More on the BBQ side - asparagus prosciutto and olive salsa

Fact:   Summer = barbeques + flies + long cool drinks. 
Fact:   Barbeques = meat overload
Fact:   Meat overload = opp(Sides + sides + sides)

Don't get me wrong, I love a summer BBQ.  But sometimes, you need something a bit different to counteract all that meatiness.  Like seafood, or some interesting side dishes to serve with your steak. And no, I don't mean boring salads.

Here are two sides that complement roast lamb particularly well.  The olive salsa is great on barbequed meat, like lamb.  The asparagus with prosciutto can be thrown on the barbeque to cook while the meat is resting.

Olive Salsa
makes about 1 cup

Ingredients
1 cup (120g) pitted green or black olives (or a combination of the two), finely diced
1 tblsp olive oil
1 tblsp mint, chopped
1 tblsp parsley, chopped
1 tblsp red onion, finely chopped
2 anchovies, chopped
1 tblsp minced garlic

Method
1.  To ensure that the olives and herbs are finely chopped, you can put them into a food processor and whizz for a couple of seconds
2.  Then combine all ingredients in a bowl and cover and refrigerate until needed.
3.  Serve on sliced barbequed lamb


Asparagus with prosciutto
serves 3-4

Ingredients
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed (ie. ends cut off and peeled if necessary)
4 slices prosciutto

Method
1.  Cut the prosciutto into 2 or 3 pieces, crosswise
2.  Wrap a piece of prosciutto around a stalk of asparagus
3.  Cook on a barbeque over medium heat for 5  minutes, until the prosciutto is crisp and the asparagus is cooked
4.  Can be served immediately or is great served cold the next day.

Thanks to Nathan for this recipe idea!

Wrap prosciutto pieces around asparagus stalks before barbequeing

Serve olive salsa on the barbequed lamb with the asparagus and prosciutto

Asian influence - Prawns with coconut rice and sago dessert

This is a quickly-prepared meal for when you don't much feel like cooking or sweating over a hot stove (er, when do I ever not feel like that? - rhetorical question).  It's prawns with coconut rice.

The prawns are bought from the supermarket or fish shop already peeled and cooked - large prawns are better in this dish.  The rice is cooked in coconut milk which imparts a wonderful flavour and moistness to the grains of basmati.  To cheat even further, I used a packet of pre-cooked basmati rice (the ones that you microwave, except I didn't microwave it).  The cooking time is reduced because of the pre-cooking, but the coconut milk still gets absorbed readily.

Prawns with Coconut Rice
serves 2

Ingredients
200ml light coconut milk
150ml water
200g basmati rice
1/2 tsp salt
1 lime, juiced
1 tblsp fish sauce
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp brown sugar
200g large cooked, peeled prawns
1 stalk celery, finely sliced
1 red chilli, finely sliced

Method
1.  Bring coconut milk and water to a simmer in a large saucepan.  Add rice and salt.  Cover and cook until the liquid is absorbed, about 15-20 mins.
2.  Make a sauce by mixing the lime juice, fish sauce, ginger and brown sugar.
3.  Spoon the rice into bowls, top with the prawns, celery and chilli and pour over the sauce.

The basmati rice can be the pre-cooked variety.  The sauce is a fragrant mixture that includes fish sauce and lime juice.

Pour over the sauce before serving.

Add a couple of lime wedges to squeeze over.

For dessert, I mixed the leftover coconut milk with a jar of sago dessert that I picked up from the Malayisa Festival a few months ago.  You just mix a 1/4 cup of coconut milk with the sago and chill in the refrigerator.  The sago dessert is extremely sweet - full of caramelised palm sugar - so the coconut milk is essential.

This dessert is a refreshing complement to the prawn and coconut rice.  It would also be good after a spicier meal, such as rendang or curry.

Reminder: Don't forget to enter the buysterlighting giveaway. There's an $80 voucher up for grabs!

Let there be light - and a Giveaway!

You might have noticed that I abhor dimly-lit restaurants, where you can’t see the fork in front of your open mouth, let alone the food lovingly prepared by the chef. Similarly, a gloomy kitchen or workspace is not conducive to decent food photography or study, either.

Well, someone is paying attention, namely Maree from BuysterLighting.com.au. For she has brought to attention a way to search for and purchase a range of lights to brighten the darkest of rooms and to enhance the dullest of complexions (okay, maybe the latter is stretching it a bit in my case…).
Here are some table lamps that caught my eye…

But why should this be of interest to you, the eager reader? Well, thanks to BuysterLighting, I have an $80 voucher to give away to one lucky winner.

What do you have to do? Just leave a comment on this post (as many as you like, limit of one per day). Winner will be selected randomly. Delivery of prize is within Australia only.  Small print conditions are below.

So, have a look at buysterlighting.com.au for some cool lighting to set the mood, and be in it to win it! Good luck!

Conditions for buysterlighting $80 voucher giveaway
1. Competition closes midnight 31st January 2010.
2. Entry is by comment on this post, limit of one comment per person per day. Comments will be moderated but not published, so don't be shy in entering as often as you like
3. If your entry does not contain your contact details (eg. via blog address), then please email me your details (with your first entry) to ooh-look@hotmail.com, so I can contact you if you win.
4.  Sorry, the prize can only be delivered to Australian addresses.

=========================================================

1 February 2010

We have a winner:  Congratulations to Andrea for your entry. You are the winner of the $80 prize from buysterlighting.com.au

And a big Thank You to everyone who entered.

Chicken with lemon - delicious in more ways than one

In my neverending quest to find uncomplicated, quick-to-make meals, I came across this recipe in delicious magazine.  It would not usually leap out, as it looks fairly nondescript, but it does contain lemon, butter, white wine and chicken, which is always a wonderful combination.

Chef Tobie Puttock describes how this dish was very popular when he was an apprentice at Caffe e Cucina in Melbourne, and how it can be made in one pan.  You're preaching to the converted, Tobie.  'Tagliata' means 'cut' in Italian, and the chicken is finely sliced to promote quick cooking.  The original recipe calls for chicken breast fillets to be used, but I used chicken thigh fillets instead, as the flavour and texture are much better and the meat does not dry out so easily should you leave it in the pan for too long.

Maltagliata di pollo con limone
(pan-fried chicken with lemon)
serves 2

Ingredients
1 lemon
2 tbs olive oil
20g unsalted butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup (35g) plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
400g chicken thigh fillets, cut into 5mm strips
100ml dry white wine
100ml chicken stock
1 tsp caster sugar
2 tsp roughly chopped marjoram or parsley
rocket salad, to serve

Method
1.  Cut thin strips of lemon rind using a zester, then peel the lemon and thinly slice the flesh. Set aside.
2.  Heat 1 tbs oil and 10g butter in a large non-stick frypan over medium heat.  Add onion and cook for 3-4 minutes, until softened.  Remove from pan and set aside.
3.  Add remaining oil and butter to the pan.  Toss the chicken in the flour to coar.  Shake off excess flour and add chicken to the pan.  Cook chicken in batches for 1 minute, until golden.
4.  Return onion and all the chicken to the pan.  Add the wine, then simmer for 1-2 minutes until almost evaporated.
5.  Add lemon zest, lemon slices, sugar and stock.  Bring to the boil, then simmer for 2-3 minutes until the liquid has reduced by half and the chicken is cooked.
6.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and stir through the herbs.  Serve with rocket salad.

Recipe adapted from delicious (Dec 2009/Jan 2010)

Chicken not shown (nothing attractive about raw chicken, I've found)

After adding and simmering the wine, stock and lemon, the sauce becomes thick and syrupy.  Sprinkle with herbs for flavour and colour.

This is a light, flavoursome dish...

...and very tempting to Tabitha cat when dining alfresco...

Happy New Year 2010

Talk about the year going past quickly, hasn't the decade overtaken it at lightning speed?  I remember like it was yesterday when we bunkered down to watch the new millenium unfold and to wait for chaos to explode as Y2K appeared before us.   More of a fizzle than a bang (the computer bugs, that is).

So here are some photos from this year's fireworks (the 9pm ones, it isn't midnight yet).  They were suitably spectacular, with some new quad-colour ball fireworks drawing lots of applause.

Happy New Year everyone, hoping that it's a wonderful year for us all.

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Update: The midnight fireworks! It's now officially 2010!

Don't know if it's a precursor of what's to come in 2010, but I was too lazy to walk the 10 minutes down to the end of the street to see the fireworks, so here are some photos taken from my upstairs window.

Looks kind of apocalyptic, no?

Afterwards, when I came downstairs, Tabitha cat was huddled under a chair, a little perturbed by all the booming... there, there, Tab, it's alright.

Salted Peanut Brittle - a touch of salty sweetness

After my relative success with a sugar thermometer (result: chewy salted caramels), I thought to myself, "You're on a roll, genius, bring on some more salty sweetness!".  So along comes this brilliant and easy-to-make salted peanut brittle.

This recipe combines the best of sweetness (ie. caramel) with the best of salty (ie. peanuts and salt flakes).  There is no more heavenly combination.

Salted Peanut Brittle
makes about 1kg of brittle

Ingredients
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup water
120g (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup liquid glucose or light corn syrup
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
340g (12 oz) roasted salted peanuts (or other nut, such as cashews, pecans, etc)
Sea salt flakes (eg. pink salt or fleur de sel), for sprinkling

Method
1. Line a rimmed baking sheet with baking paper.  The sheet size depends on how thickly you spread the brittle mixture. I used a 30cm x 20cm sheet for brittle about 1cm thick.
2. Have the nuts and baking soda measured out and at the ready.
3. Combine the sugar, water, butter and liquid glucose in a large saucepan.  Bring to the boil.  Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the caramel hits 149 deg C (300 deg F) on a sugar thermometer.  This will take about 10 minutes.
4.  Turn off the heat and carefully stir in the baking soda.
5.  Then stir in the nuts and immediately pour the brittle into the prepared baking sheet.  Make sure the baking sheet is on a heatproof surface, as it will get hot.  Smooth out the brittle with the back of a spoon into a thin, even layer.
6.  Sprinkle with salt flakes.
7.  Let the brittle cool completely (about 30 minutes).
8.  Break the brittle into large shards to serve.

Brittle can be stored in an airtight container (do not refrigerate) for up to 1 month.

Recipe adapted from foodandwine.com

Ingredients and implements: Note the large saucepan - the caramel mixture will bubble up, so you don't want it to boil over.

Apologies for the lack of photos of the making of - it was pretty difficult to balance a camera while watching the thermometer then mixing in the nuts before the mixture hardened (excuses, excuses..!)

Heat the caramel to 300 deg F - or 'hard crack' stage.  Sounds like something a sniffer dog would unearth.  By the way, 260 deg F is 'hard ball', which is what the magistrate plays when you are caught with 'hard crack'.
And I love pink salt.

To crack up the incredibly hard crack brittle, I turned the cooled brittle over and used a meat mallet and sharp (old) knife.
Hint: Rinse your large saucepan, stirring spoon and thermometer with boiling water before washing - the hot water will melt the hardened caramel, no problems.

Beautiful!

Season's Greetings!

Hi Everyone,

  Thanks for reading Ooh, Look over the past year.  Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season and look forward to seeing you all again in the new year.

Warm wishes from
Bel and Tab
xox