May the sauce be with you

Kids love tomato sauce, and I’ve got no real problem with having a bottle from the supermarket in the fridge. The trouble is that supermarket sauces do contain a ridiculous amount of sugar, often including high-fructose corn syrup, which has a very intense sweetness produced through an equally intense manufacturing process. Isn’t sugar sweet enough for crying out loud?

So, with my kids away, it’s time to experiment. The aim is to have ketchup perfection by the time Spring, and another barbecue season, rolls around.

This is the recipe I tried for my first batch. It produced about 4–5 cups of good, tasty ketchup. As you can see, the colour is reddish brown, which is fine for me, but my boys will be expecting that nuclear red of commercial sauces. My hot, sweet chilli sauce from a previous post - Missing, making, and bringing the bling - is a very bright red, so next time I think I’ll include a roasted and peeled red capsicum. I will also try adding a granny smith apple for a smoother consistency.

Once I get the regular ketchup sorted, then I’ll turn to a slightly spicy barbecue sauce for my 11-year-old who likes a little more punch!

For this recipe, I used my slow cooker. Once I’d completed the saucepan and frying pan mixes, I popped it into the ceramic slow cooker insert, and refrigerated, covered. Just before going to bed, I pulled it out and placed it into the cooker, set it on low, and away we go!

Recipe - Ketchup

For the small saucepan

• .5 cup cider vinegar
• .5 cup vegetable stock
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (I like Lea & Perrins)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• .25 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 clove

For the frying pan

• 2 cans tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 onion
• 2 clove garlic

Method

In a small saucepan, heat the saucepan mixture, bringing to a boil, and stirring to dissolve the sugar and evenly distribute spice and mustard. Once this is achieved, turn off the heat.

Heat pan on medium, add oil, coarsely chopped onion and chopped garlic. Sauté for 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and tomato paste, stirring. Raise heat to bring to boil, simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off heat.
Tip the frying pan mixture into your slow cooker. Pour the saucepan mixture through a strainer into the slow cooker also.

Cook on low for 8–9 hours.

(You can just as well simmer in a larger saucepan for about 3 hours)

Let the mixture cool a little, the put through a blender or smooth-up with a bar-mix.

Place into sterilised containers and refrigerate. What you don't bottle, you can freeze for several months.

There! Who says bachelors can't be saucy?

Bachelor stockings!

There is something about the very small effort over a very long time when making stock that just works!

With my under–9 football team’s game rained out (go the mighty Wanderers!) - and a rainy weekend ahead of me - I took the opportunity to go to my local butcher and spend a couple of bucks on bones. I already have three chickens worth of backs and wingtips in the freezer. So: Saturday is beef stock; Sunday is chicken stock.

For beef stock, the best bones to choose are marrow and chuck bones - the leg and the neck.

My meal plans for the beef stock I’m making today are: slow-cooked rendang danging (Indonesian beef curry), slow-cooked osso bucco with citrus and, for when my children come back from a holiday with their mother, spaghetti bolognese. I’ll have enough for another two meals at least, but don’t want to give myself a headache from thinking too far ahead!

For this recipe, which yields 2 litres of stock, you’ll need an 7 to 8 litre stockpot.

Recipe - brown beef stock

Ingredients

• 2 kilogram beef bones
• .25 cup olive oil
• 2 carrots
• 2 onions
• 2 stick celery
• 2 portabella mushrooms
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 4 litres water
• 5 black peppercorns (lightly crushed)
• 2 bay leafs
• 2 sprigs oregano

Method

1. Have your butcher cut the marrow and chuck bones into pieces. At home, remove any excess fat
2. Preheat oven 200°C (fan-forced) and place bones in a large baking tray, drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 15 minutes. Turn, then roast another 15 minutes
3. While the bones are browning, chop vegetables into chunky pieces
4. Heat for litres of water in a stock pot
5. When bones are done, remove them to the stock pot and add some water to the roasting pan to deglaze. Add bay leafs, oregano sprigs and pepper corns
6. Place chopped vegetables into the pan and return to oven. Cook for a further 15 minutes
7. Place vegetables into the stock pot and bring to boil for about 10 minutes. Reduce to simmer a slow boil - you need more of a boil than a simmer to make sure you extract all the marrow and other goodness from the bones
8. Over the next few hours, come back every 30 minutes or so to enjoy the aroma, and to skim the froth can scum that rises to the top. A slow boil for 4 hours is best, or a little higher for 2 is also ok.
9. When you’re ready, remove the big bits from the stock pot with tongs
10. Skim and strain through a muslin lined sieve into a clean container, before dividing, stir to get an even consistency at the end
11. Cool quickly by dividing stock into small containers - about 2 cups is good, and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
12. Remove layer of fat, under which you will have fantastic, jelly consistency, super-tasty beef stock!Reseal
13. Label and date stock and freeze for up to 3 months

Greek-to-Thai rebrand

On the weekend I popped over the river to Campsie and had my Chinese butcher butterfly a leg of lamb for yiros. But rather than go straight to a mini Greek feast (I didn’t have my kids last weekend), I turned my mind to what else I might do with marinated, medium rare, barbecued strips of lamb.

Re-enter the Bachelor Food principle of rebranding or, in this case, pre-branding!

In the recipe below, I pan fry a fillet of lamb. Last Sunday, I sliced from my freshly barbecued lamb prepared, the remainder of which was set aside for school and work lunches, and yiros dinners - including sliced onions, lemon juice and sumac - but that is another story.

For this recipe, strong, well-defined tastes are what you want. Use fresh herbs, not dried. For instance, I would normally use lemon grass, but had run out, so, instead of using dried lemon grass, I substituted chopped leaves from my lime tree.

Recipe: Thai lamb larb (warm lamb salad)

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as an entree

Ingredients

• 300g lamb backstrap fillet
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• .5 cup chopped roasted, unsalted peanuts
• 2 cups shredded baby cos lettuce leaves
• 1 lebanese cucumber roughly chopped
• 1 thinly sliced red onion
• 2 thinly sliced radish
• 1 carrot julienne
• 2 tablespoons chopped coriander leaves
• 375g rice noodles

Sauce

• .25 cups ground, dry fried rice
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil
• 3 tablespoon fish sauce
• Juice 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• Chopped fresh herbs, about a teaspoon each: Kaffir lime leaves, mint (or lemon grass, shallots, coriander - whatever is fresh!)
• 2 birds eye chilies, chopped

Method

Heat rice in a dry frying pan, and cook until golden brown. Remove from pan and crush with a mortar and pestle.

Combine lettuce, onion, radish and carrot.

Place peanut oil, fish sauce and lemon juice in a small saucepan and heat, but don’t boil. Add sugar, crushed rice and chopped herbs and chili.

Heat peanut oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat. Fry lamb fillet two minutes on each side, then let rest at room temperature for 10 minutes. Slice into thin strips. The strips should be browned and slightly crispy on the outside, and lovely and pink, but not bloody, in the middle.

Place the lamb strips into the sauce.

Boil water in a saucepan and add noodles. Rice noodles cook very quickly, about two minutes should do it. Strain.

Arrange on plates or bowls: first noodles, then salad vegetables, then lamb strips, then sauce, and last garnish with crushed peanuts and chopped coriander leaves.

Apple crumble beats the tummy rumble!

I’m not a big dessert person but, with my oldest son going into pre-teen appetite overdrive, it is time to call for reinforcements. Enter: Grandma’s apple crumble!

When my youngest was 1 1/2 and my oldest was 3 1/2, I started two wonderful years as primary carer.

One of the first things I did was sit down with my Mum and go through all the meals that I remembered and loved from my early childhood, and collect them. It’s amazing how many meals from the sixties include a can of soup as a key ingredient! Not this one though.

Apple crumble is healthy, quick to cook, and cheap: a great way to fill up a growing child, and a super breakfast too for the following morning.

Recipe: my Mum’s apple crumble

Ingredients

Filling

• 6 to 8 Granny Smith apples, depending on size
• .25 cup water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 lemon wedges
• 2 cloves

Crumble

• .5 cup wholemeal flour
• .5 cup rolled oats
• .25 cup brown sugar
• 80 grams butter
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

Preheat oven to 180˚

Filling

You can either slice the apples and cover with crumble and do the whole lot in the oven, or steam the apples separately, then cover with the crumble and just finish off in the oven to brown the topping. I prefer to steam the apples separately.

So …

Peel, core, and slice the apples. Place in saucepan with water, sugar, lemon wedges and cloves. Cover and bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and cook for 2–4 minutes.
Pour off excess water. Remove cloves and lemon. Cover apple filling and set aside.

Crumble

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. For the butter, I generally place it in a small dish on top of the lid of the apple saucepan so that it melts, but room-temperature butter is easily worked through the dry ingredients.

Once you have thoroughly worked through the butter and created a consistent mixture, you are ready for the next step.

Combining

Place the apple in a shallow baking dish, cover evenly with the crumble mixture, and place in oven for 10–20 minutes, or until the crumble is golden brown.

Serve with ice cream or custard.

Three pots

In praise of the three pot rule

In some ways this is even more important in a big kitchen where all that bench space can tempt you to reach for one pot after another the moment you feel the need. Yet, for the bachelor kitchen, the three pot rule is equally relevant.

In fact, the only rule more relevant is this one: “Everything in moderation (including moderation)”.

Now, where were we?

Figuring out how the family meal (even on the nights when it is a family of one) can be accomplished with three pots or less is a way of planning the meal project, getting it done with good care and little waste.

My favourite pot is a Le Creuset shallow casserole dish. One of the many things I like about it (apart from it being a gift from good friends) is that the lid handle allows the lid to sit stable and flat, making it the perfect place to rest browned meat or sautéed vegetables.

Like this.

Recipe: Braised steak with onions, mushrooms and red wine

Ingredients

• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons Lea and Perrins (or other Worcestershire sauce)
• 4 tabasco or birds eye chilies
• 1 double handful button mushrooms
• 1 double handful garden herbs (parsley, oregano, basil)
• 2 round steaks
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 tablespoon each: dried oregano, ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

• Place flour, dried oregano and pepper in a clean bag
• Halve the steaks and shake in the flour bag one at a time and set aside (like on the lid of your handy casserole dish!)
• Peel and slice onions into rings
• Clean mushrooms (I like to leave them whole for this dish, just trimming the stalks)
• Peel and slice garlic cloves, chop chilies
• Heat oil in a heavy based pan
• Brown steaks on each side, then set aside
• Add onion and drop heat to low. Sauté for a few minutes. Add garlic and sauté a few more minutes
• Turn up heat, then add wine and boil off the alcohol and deglaze the pan
• Add mushrooms and chilies and, once the liquid boils again, add stock, Worcestershire sauce and tomato paste, and again bring to boil. Return the steaks to the pan. Then, when the liquid boils one last time, drop to a very low simmer
• Cover and simmer for one to two hours
• 30 minutes before serving, toss in round beans and cover again
• 15 minutes before serving, toss in garden herbs and cover again

Serve with steamed rice (pot number two)

A two-pot screamer!

Is Yiros. Is Good!

I love a hamburger, I love a doner kebab. But nothing beats a yiros. And the fact that it’s so easy to make at home says it all. Simple ingredients, simply combined.

Pita bread is softer than lebanese bread, and much softer than lavash. This makes it perfect for warming on the grill without becoming brittle.

When ordering the lamb, I ask my butcher to debone and butterfly the leg. If done well, you get a single piece of lamb, one side with a layer of fat, one side lean, and of fairly even thickness. If that’s not what you get, find another butcher (or ask more explicitly next time, as I’ve often found that butchers and other artisans like being asked to show off their skills, rather than all day serving up standard cuts). Ask for the bones too, and place in your stock bag in your freezer.

But it's not so difficult, and kind of fun, to do it yourself, so I've included a youtube how-to video at the bottom of this post.

For a single meal for me and my boys (say 2 or 3 yiros each) this leaves enough tasty lamb for a couple lunches and another meal at least.

Recipe: Yiros

Ingredients

Lamb

• 1 leg of lamb, boned and butterflied
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 lemons, juiced

Yogurt sauce

• 1 cup Greek style yogurt
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 lemon juiced
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

Other accompaniments

• 3 tomatoes
• .5 iceberg lettuce
• 2 onions

Method

Lamb

Combine oil, lemon juice, crushed garlic and oregano.

Place lamb in a baking dish or similar, and rub marinade over the surface of the lamb, making sure the surface is well covered. Cover and refrigerate overnight or for 2 hours at least.

Yogurt sauce

The yogurt sauce can be done and kept overnight too, as the flavours develop over time.

Greek style yogurt is creamy and smooth. If using regular yogurt, it’s best to hang it overnight in cheese cloth. Even Greek yogurt can be strained in this way for an hour our two, which will give it more room to accommodate the lemon juice and retain its creamy consistency.

Crush garlic, and stir through yogurt with cumin.

Accompaniments

Finely slice tomatoes and lettuce Finely slice onions and soak in lemon juice

Pita bread

Heat your bbq plate (or frying pan) to medium heat. Brush pita bread with olive oil. Place oiled side onto cooking surface. When the underside is browned and ready, quickly bush the upside and flip. Do this one, two or three at a time depending on how big the cooking surface is, and keep warm.

Lamb continued

Bring BBQ grill to high heat and place lamb fat side down for five minutes. Turn and cook for another five. Drop heat to low for another five. Remove from heat and let rest, covered, for ten.

Assembly

Now it’s assembly time!

I like having squares of grease-proof paper (get it?) or white paper bags on hand, because the kids love it, and it feels normal.

Brush the pita bread with the garlic and yogurt sauce. Kids may prefer supermarket tomato or or bbq sauce, but if you add a little of the white stuff, they might not notice - and the journey has begun!

Slice the lamb into thin slices and add, along with sliced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and onions.

Roll ’em. Eat ’em. Is yiros. Is yum!

How to butterfly a leg of lamb

Israeli eggs

Shakshuka is the Israeli variant of a common Mid-Eastern/North African dish, popular as a breakfast, but versatile enough for any meal.

It is basically - eggs poached over a spicy tomato salsa. Simple and tasty, but with something extra that lifts it above the ordinary.

If you’re looking for a main meal version try, as I did, adding a bed of couscous, as well as crumbling in feta and adding sliced mushrooms. Sliced chorizo is nice to add also, but this plays merry hell with its Kosherness! Finely chopped red and yellow capsicum can also be added to the onion and garlic at the beginning. All good!

Recipe - Shakshuka

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 cups tomato salsa
• 2 tomatoes
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 cups couscous
• 2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Sprigs parsley or coriander to garnish

Method

• Chop garlic and onion and, in a heavy based frying pan, sauté in olive oil over medium heat
• Chop tomatoes
• Once the onion turns transparent and begins to brown, stir in cumin, cayenne and paprika
• Add chopped tomatoes, simmer for 5 minutes. Add tomato salsa and simmer for another 10. Add salt and pepper to taste
• Place couscous in a bowl. Boil the water, and pour over couscous. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes
• Break eggs, evenly spaced, onto the simmering tomato mixture in the pan. Once the eggs are poached the way you like it (you might want to pot them under the griller to finish them off), they are ready to serve
• Serve on a bed of couscous, garnish with parsley or coriander