Meat Loving Quiche Man

I stumble across many wonderful (some weird) things on Twitter, the latest being the Sunday Bake Club.
 
While they began in January this year, I've only been following for about the last month.

The concept is fantastic -- on Sunday bake something to team with the week's theme. How simple could it get?
 
Each Sunday evening, my Twitter feed is filled with amazing looking baked goods and great conversation with some friendly mostly United Kingdom based bakers.
 
Check out their blog to see some of the past themes. We may need to ask if we can have a sister city program for Australia.
 
This week's theme is Bakes for the Boys, so being a boy I thought I was at least halfway there.

Thinking about this theme amongst debating the gender politics of a sausage roll I kept getting a repeated phrase in my head "feed the man meat".
 
I tried avoiding going down the stereotypical cave man road which ignores the metrosexual quiche men amongst us, but by combining the best of both worlds I created the Caveman's Quiche, Man! 
 

I couldn't resist prettying it up with a pancetta flower

 

Caveman's Quiche, Man!

 

Pastry

Ingredients

• 200g plain flour
• 100g unsalted butter
• 50ml water
• Pinch of sea salt

Method

• Finely cube the butter
• Add butter, flour, salt to the bowl of a food processor
• Process on high for about 20 seconds till it looks like breadcrumbs
• Add water and process for about 1 minute till it comes away from the sides and forms a ball
• Wrap in cling wrap and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes
• Grease 25.5cm x 6cm deep quiche/pie tin with removable base
• Flour work surface and roll pastry out to about 1/2cm thick
• Line the tin a bit higher than the sides to allow for shrinkage
• Blind bake for 10 at 180º C 
• Remove the beads/beans and bake a further 10 minutes
• Now it's ready for the filling
• Make the pancetta flowers while pastry is baking

Pancetta flower
6 slices of round hot pancetta
Method

• Place 4 slices pancetta flat on a greased tray
• With remaining 2 slices curl each tail around to look like a flower and place on top of the round end as per picture below
• Bake for 10 minutes at 180º C
• 1 flower is only there as a back up and can be a cook's treat

Filling

• 6 pork sausage
• 6 short cut rasher free range bacon
• 160g hot Calabrese salami
• 150g ham cubed
• 12 eggs
• 200ml sour cream
• 100g parmesan shredded plus 25g extra for topping
• 4 spring onions chopped
• 25g grated cheese

Method

• Pinch and twist the sausage in the skins then slide out to make little balls of sausage
• Roughly slice the bacon
• Roughly chop the salami into 1cm pieces
• Fry sausage balls on a medium heat for about 10 minutes
• Repeat with bacon and salami
• Cut the ham into 1 cm cubes (I asked for a 1cm thick slice at the deli)
• In a mixing bowl add the eggs, sour cream, parmesan and spring onions and combine
• I didn't add any salt as I thought there was already enough in the meat and cheese
• Fill the pastry case with the meats
• Fill with egg mixture
• Sprinkle with extra parmesan
• Bake at 160º C for about 1 hour (I checked every 20 minutes)
• Sprinkle on additional cheese and bake for an extra 5 minutes (I was thinking about a meat lovers pizza when I did this)
• Serve topped with pancetta flowers
• Note I treated today a bit like a Bake Off technical challenge where all the recipe was missing because I was making it up. Next time I would add about 2-3 tbsp. of flour to the meats so that it can soak up some of the juices without having to over bake the quiche  

Chow Down to Eurovision 2013 - Iceland

Hello, or as they say in Reykjavik Komið þið sæl og blessuð, and welcome to Iceland. Our dish of the day was going to be a pepper biscuit popular at Christmas in Iceland, but as you know the oven is another technical hitch. I have found a way better option though and it has the most awesome name, rúllupylsa. A rolled, stuffed, tied, boiled, pressed and sliced sandwich meat.

 The recipe is based on this video although I am grateful I don't have boxes of recently slaughtered lambs at my supermarket. This will definitely be a regular visitor to our table as it brings back all the memories of a Monday school lunch sandwich with last night's roast lamb.

In honour of the amount of rolling involved in the rúllupylsa our Eurovision bite has just as much rolling, well make that body rolling. Selma placed 2nd in 1999 which is the highest Iceland has ever come in a final. Yvonna won semi-final 1 in 2009 but also came in 2nd on the big night. My other favourite Icelandic entries would be Euroband (a Eurovision tribute band), the power house Hera Bjork, and the classic Paul Oscar all clad in PVC and bejewelled.

Weird trivia I almost won her dress on eBay years ago, I don't think it's my colour though.

Rúllupylsa-rolled sausage
Ingredients

• 2 lamb flaps or bellies
• 2 brown onions
• 1/2 bunch parsley
• 2-3 sprigs rosemary
• 1 thumb ginger
• 1/2 tsp. all spice
• 1 glove garlic
• 2 tbsp. salt (see note)
• Kitchen string
• Weights or pot of water to press sausage

Method

• Remove the ribs from the flaps
• Remove as much fat as you want remembering it wont render away when boiling and will be part of the finished sausage.
• Lay the 2 flaps on top of each other skin side out, you can square them up but I didn't bother.
• Chop the onion, parsley, rosemary and put in a bowl
• Grate the ginger and garlic into the bowl
• Add the salt and all spice and combine
• Spread the mixture over the top of the flaps
• Roll the flaps tightly to form the sausage
• Tie with kitchen string at about 1-1.5 cm intervals
• Boil in a large pot of water for 1.5-2 hours
• Remove the sausage from the water and place in a baking tray
• Press the sausage overnight or up to 24 hours in the fridge
• You can use anything to weight it down, weights, or a pot of water etc.
• Slice thinly remembering to remove the string
• Serve on toast with mustard, it is delicious
• Note: I had made some salsa verde salt for a dear friend's birthday, and used some leftover for this recipe which I think added to the flavour. The salt is processed in a spice grinder with fresh parsley, basil, coriander, mint, and then dried in the oven.
• The next time I make this I will try and remove as much fat as possible although the mustard does cut through the fat. I will also try making the filling in the food processer to achieve a smoother texture. I'll report back if it's not as good.

 Finally 50 shades of Grey came in handy!

 Malmö will see Eythor Ingi perform Ég Á Líf  will I have another Icelandic performer to add to my list of favourites?

Gangi þér vel!

Munching 9 to 5 - Carrot and cheese salad

No it's not a job as a taste tester, as awesomely appealing as that sounds.

The next offering in the War on Terrible Food aka BYO work lunch series.

This salad has had a couple of incarnations and can be used as an indicator of how our eating has changed over the years. When I was at school the major ingredient to this was a jar of mayonnaise, these days it gets a light dressing of olive oil and lemon juice.
If I'm honest the tasty model below only got a drizzle of olive oil, no lemon or salt and pepper, and it was just as yum.

Carrot and Cheese Grateness
Serves 1

Ingredients

• 2 medium carrots grated
• 50 grams grated cheese
• 1 fun size box (40g) sultanas
• black and white sesame seeds
• Olive oil
• juice of 1/2 small lemon

Method

• Add carrot, cheese, and sultanas to a bowl.
• Mix through a drizzle of oil and the lemon juice.
• Top with a sprinkle of seeds and run out the door to work.

Making it the night before will let the sultanas soak up the dressing and the carrots soften. You can also experiment with any seeds that take your fancy, lineseed, chia, pumpkin seeds.

It's a mystery

AB has been the inspiration for some of my best cooking triumphs, remember the meat lovers ice cream, well the chico ice cream was a success. No matter what is plated up there is always praise even though I may sit there and do my best Mary Berry or Manu Fieldel and over critic each element of the dish. "oh it's is verging on a soggy bottom" "mmm butter, but there needs to be more sauce" The only time I knew I had missed the mark and risked being eliminated is when I heard "it's a strong flavour". Really you couldn't buy support like that, although I will be in trouble for writing about it.
I will in the coming weeks bring myself to blog AB's favourite dish, Catfood, it will take some time. Till then he provided this mystery box challenge after I asked him to pick up some meat for dinner.
"what do you want?"
"i dunno surprise me"
"OK...I could make you do a masterchef mystery box?"
"bring it on!"

 

Pasta south of the border



serves 4-5 and on the table in 30 minutes
Ingredients as above

• 6 italian sausages
• 360g oyster blade steak
• 1 brown onion
• 1/4 of a pumpkin
• 200g green beans
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 1 bag pasta
• 1 red chilli*
• 250ml sour cream*
• olive oil*
• bottle of pasata*

*pantry item

Method

• Add boiling water from the kettle to a boiler with a good dash of salt
• Put steak and sausages into food processor and mince
• Dice onion and saute with olive oil in fry pan
• Add meat to onions
• Dice pumpkin and add to boiler
• Add pasta to pumpkin, try to cut pumpkin the same size as pasta or smaller.
• Add pasatato meat and season
• Cut green beans into 2cm pieces
• Drain red kidney beans
• Just before the pasta is cooked, add green and red beans to sauce.
• Drain pasta and pumpkin
• Stir through sour cream, save a bit to garnish
• Add pasta and sauce to boiler and mix through
• Serve with dollop of sourcream and sliced chilli

There seems to be way too many steps but it really is just chop, add, cook, eat. Can't wait for the next mystery box, although I know you are all still thinking AB's favourite dish is catfood.

A good helping

There are so many foodie movies, Julie and Julia, Big Night, Chocolat, this list goes on. Sometimes you can find a little surprise plate when you least expect it.
Recently I saw The Help, and not only did it leave me knowing that "I is good, I is kind, I is important" but also all I could think about was how tasty Minny's fried chicken and okra looked. I had to have it!
After I had satisfied that desire I found the need evolved into making some of Minny's pies, I did omit her special ingredient. If you haven't seen it i won't spoil it, you must see it, you will never think of pie the same way again.

 

Fried Chicken and Okra
This recipe is very flexible you can use any cut of chicken and mix the spices the way you like them. Normally I use garam marsala as my "KFC" type fried chicken but when I was making this I had run out, I know I was shocked too!
Into about a cup and half (don't measure it just guess) I added a Pandora's box of spices. No measuring just a bit of this and a touch of that, go wild!
These are what ended up in the flour:

• Chinese 5 spice
• Ground coriander
• Ground cinnamon
• Ras le hanout
• Paprika
• Salt
• Pepper
• All spice
• Ground Cumin
• Chilli
• Sesame seeds

The chicken pieces I marinated in soy sauce while I made the flour.

Heat a deep saucepan of which ever oil you prefer to fry in, I had canola.

Drain the chicken and then coat in the flour.
In the hot oil fry till just crispy and then finish cooking in a 180° oven for about 20mins or until chicken is cooked. This will help keep the chicken juicy without it drying out from the fast cooking in the oil.

For the Okra.
Simply cut the stalk end of the okra and and coat it in the flour.
Fry in the hot oil for about 3 mins till crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.

This recipe isn't really even a recipe more of just a method but it tastes soooooooo good. I'm sure it's not a patch on the real southern fried chicken but sometimes you do what ever you have too to satisfy a fried chicken need!