Chicken (& Lamb Shanks) with 39 Garlics

We ate this a few nights ago, on a cool rainy evening, in an effort to use the beautiful purple striped garlic from early summer; this Italian hardneck variety doesn't seem to store for long, whereas the Australian white keeps well.

It's an adaption of an Ian Parmenter recipe from the mid 90's. He used red wine rather than oil for the base, and I prefer stock. Unsuprisingly he didn't use lamb shanks, but we had a few on hand and they were delicious; sticky, rich and sweet with garlic. I think it would be fine to substitute beef, lamb or pork for the meat.

~Chicken & Lamb Shanks with 39 Garlics~
1 medium onion, chopped roughly
slurp olive oil
2 lamb shanks
6 chicken legs
500ml chicken stock
39 unskinned cloves garlic
500ml chicken stock
rosemary and thyme sprigs
(6 juniper berries crushed - I left these out)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
100ml milk
2 tab cornflour

Heat the oil on low and cook the onion until golden and sweet. Remove from the pan and turn up the heat. Brown the lamb shanks and chicken legs all over and remove.

Use some stock to deglaze the pan and pour this into a crockpot or casserole dish. Place all of the ingredients (except the milk and flour) in the crockpot/casserole and cover.

Cook for 6-8 hours in the crockpot, or 1-2 hours at 140 degrees C in the oven (casserole) - or until the meat is tender and falls away from the bone.

Remove the meat and bones, and garlic, to a large serving bowl and keep warm. Strain the liquid and simmer this in a pan until it is reduced to half its volume. Squeeze the pulp from the garlic cloves into the reduced liquid. Mix the cornflour and milk until smooth, then thicken the reduction with this, and simmer for several minutes to cook the flour.

Pour the thickened reduced stock over the meat and serve with jacket potatoes and lots of crunchy steamed veges.

Zucchini baked with Fetta and herbs

This is an adaptation from Paul Gayler. We ate it a lot last summer, and have just begun to bring it to the table again with the glut of new season zucchini. He makes it with a yellow tomato sauce which I didn't care for, so we eat this on its own, as a side, or as a delicious leftover the next day.


~Zucchini baked with Fetta & Herbs~
8 small to medium zucchini about 2.5cm thick (or the equivalent - this is particulary good with golden button squash)
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 shallots, sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed with a little salt
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
100g crumbled fetta
2 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs
black pepper

If you wish to follow Paul Gayler using small baton-like zucchini, slice off their ends and remove the centres with an apple corer (easier than it sounds). Or if, like me, your zucchini have grown past baton size or are the round type, halve and scoop out the flesh. Either way, chop the scooped out flesh into a small dice.

Heat the olive oil in a pan, add shallots, garlic and zucchini flesh, then cook down until tender and a little reduced. Turn into a bowl and cool a little, then add the cheese, breadcrumbs, herbs and pepper and mix well. Extra herbs are always good.

Par cook the zucchini shells in the microwave if you wish (I do this as my oven is a dud and seems to burn without cooking). Stuff baton zucchini with your fingers and a teaspoon, or the large halved type by piling the filling high.

Paul then grills the oiled and stuffed batons under a hot grill, and this is quite delicious, but generally I bake them in a moderate oven for a while until they are nicely browned and smell good.

Jules' Chicken Soup

Jules' version of chicken soup, for me to remember :

Fry off minced garlic and ginger and onions in olive oil.

Add chicken stock** with some herbs - parsley, lemon thyme etc - and bring to a simmer.

Add pearl barley and puy lentils or French green lentils.

Add finecut carrot, celery, other root veg, potato. Simmer a while.

Add corn, beans, squash etc. Simmer a little more.

Add shredded spinach or silverbeet, and shredded roast chicken meat. Simmer another 10 min or until the barley and lentils are soft.

Serve. Great with a little sesame oil drizzled across the top. Or shredded hot salami crisped in the frypan.

** homemade chicken stock - cover roasted chicken bones, or bones from a home-roasted chook, with water and bring to a simmer. Simmer gently until any shreds of meat are falling off. Remove the bones and pick off any meat. Discard the bones & strain the stock. Finely shred the meat and return to the strained stock.

Silverbeet & Chickpeas with Chorizo

This is one of our regulars in the meal plan, adapted from a http://www.taste.com.au/ recipe; it's easy and delicious, and makes good use of that perennial garden green, silverbeet.

We ate steamed silverbeet regularly growing up, and I wasn't fond of it. This recipe, however, allows the silverbeet to become something else - the rich tomato, garlic and chorizo partner the earthiness of silverbeet well.

We use bacon instead of chorizo sometimes, and I like to finely chop the silverbeet stems and add them after the onion is cooked - they add a lovely crunchy texture, but you need to halve the amount of silverbeet if adding the stems. Spinach is interchangeable with silverbeet in this. We have also used our summer tomato reduction from the freezer - around the same quantity as a tin of tomatoes, but there's no need to reduce it any further. Thick, rich and sweet, with plenty of tomato skin and seeds for texture :)




~Silverbeet & Chickpeas with Chorizo~
2 chorizo sausages sliced (or 4 rashers bacon)
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tin tomatoes, crushed
1 tsp mixed dried herbs
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1/2 tsp sugar
about 6 stems of silverbeet, stalks removed and shredded (or 3 stems, leaves shredded and stems finely diced)

Heat a heavy based pan and fry off chorizo over low-med heat, until crispy. Remove and rest.

Add onion and cook till soft and golden, then add garlic and cook a bit longer. (At this point add silverbeet stalks if using, and cook a little longer.) Stir through paprika and allow to fry off until fragrant.

Add all ingredients except silverbeet leaves, and simmer until it thickens.

Add silverbeet and stir through until wilted, then add back in the chorizo or bacon. Serve with toasted pide or fresh crusty bread.

The boys both scored this 10!

White Bean Dip, Beetroot Dip

We made these over the weekend - delicious, easy, yum :)


~Rosemary, Lemon & White Bean Dip~
2 cups cooked cannellini beans (or similar)
2 cloves garlic, crushed with salt (or less if you prefer)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 teasp rosemary, finely chopped
grated zest of 2 lemons
salt & black pepper

You can use canned beans, but I prefer freshly cooked. Place beans in food processer with garlic and process till fine. Add olive oil while motor is running and keep going until it is smooth.

Stir in rosemary & lemon zest and season with salt and pepper to taste.

I can't remember where this recipe originated -it's very good ;)



~Roast Beetroot Dip~
600g raw beetroot, trimmed and washed
1 clove garlic, crushed with salt
2 tab tahini
6 tab extra virgin olive oil
2 tab fresh mint
2 des spoons red wine vinegar

This is from Moro East by Sam&Sam Clark - the only change was that I roasted the beetroot instead of boiling, because we had roast lamb a few nights ago and we have masses of beetroot in the garden, so it followed that roasting beetroot while the oven was on would be a good thing...

So - take the cooked and cooled beetroot and slip the skins off. Place in the food processer with garlic, tahini and oil and whizz until smooth.

Stir through mint and vinegar and season with salt and pepper.

Eat with bread or flatbread and enjoy the earthy richness. This would be delicious with freshly fried haloumi and lemon juice.

Ginger Garlic Red Lentil Soup

We tried this recipe recently onehttp://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/gingergarlicsoup/ for a Friday night quickie. I made a few minor changes, as per below :

~Ginger Garlic Red Lentil Soup~
2 cups red lentils
1.75 l vegetable stock
2 bay leaves
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed
5 cm piece of ginger, grated
2 carrots, grated
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1 medium sliced onion
1/2 cup sliced scallions, green tops as well
sploosh olive oil
2 tspn ground cumin
2 tspn ground coriander
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper

Wash the lentils, and add to vegetable stock, bay leaves, garlic and ginger in a large pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the carrots and tomatoes and simmer until the soup thickens to the consistency you like (mine was around 20 minutes).

Heat the olive oil in a frypan and sauté the onions and scallions until translucent. Add the spices and sauté a further minute. Remove the bay leaves from the soup and add the onion mixture with the lemon juice. Serve and add salt and pepper to taste.

Lovely and fragrant, super quick to prepare, nourishing, cheap, easy ingredients - but eating this reminded me that I'm not so keen on the texture of cooked red lentils. Somehow they seem a bit like cardboard-ish, and I forget that between times. Maybe that is the quality of the lentils or my ignorant cooking? I'd make this again though - the ginger/garlic was lovely on a winter night, and if you increased the heat it would be a very good soup for headcold days.

Beetroot & Haloumi salad w Walnut dressing

We had this again last night with a few variations - salted green olives instead of capers, and no haloumi. Still delicious :) And with the beetroot in our garden swelling larger and spinach threatening to shade out all else, it will be around a little more over the next few months.

So here it is again :

~Haloumi & Beetroot salad with Walnut dressing~
6 large beetroot, trimmed
500g haloumi, drained
2 tabs olive oil
100g baby spinach leaves, washed and dried

Walnut dressing
1/3 cup walnut halves
1/2 cup drained capers
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 garlic clove crushed
salt & black pepper

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Wrap beetroot in foil and place in roasting pan. Cook for an hour or until tender.

Place walnuts on baking tray and cook in oven about 10 minutes or until lightly toasted. Set aside to cool.Chop walnuts coarsely; place in a bowl with capers, garlic, oil and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. (I would leave out salt as it is quite salty already, and I left pepper out of the kids' portions as they don't like it).

Remove beetroot from the oven and cool for 10 minutes or until you can touch it. Use gloves if you don't want beetroot stain on your hands (I don't bother), and slip skins and stems off. Slice beetroot into thick slices.

Cut haloumi into slices - I like about 3/4cm, but whatever you prefer. Heat oil in non-stick pan to high heat. Cook haloumi in batches, until golden brown on each side. Cut into smaller fingers when they are cooked.We served this on a big platter and ate with out fingers - but you could serve individually. Lay spinach on plate first, then layer beetroot and haloumi and drizzle dressing over the top. Serve immediately.

Roast Leek, Garlic and Potato Soup

The plan was to make roast leek and celeraic soup, but somehow celeraic was unavailable in all the places I searched. Maybe because it's an autumn vegetable and even though our weather is decidedly autumn-like here on the mountain right now, it is in fact summer...

The leeks and garlic were roasted last night while the oven was on for roast lamb. I did a tray of roast pumpkin for the freezer as well - very handy to have in store and we are about to overflow with pumpkins from the garden.

So, this is what was mixed up and it's pretty good :

~Roast Leek, Garlic and Potato Soup~
3 leeks
1 head garlic
olive oil
1kg potatoes
7 cups stock - chicken/vegetable
1 cup cream
parmesan and black pepper to serve

Split white part of leeks lengthwise, wash if needed, then chop into 5cm lengths. Place in tray with unpeeled garlic bulb and drizzle with olive oil. Roast at 200 degrees until they are roasted looking. Leave the garlic in for longer if needed. It needs to be soft.

Place leeks and garlic pulp (squeeze out cloves) in a heavy based saucepan with stock and peeled, roughly chopped potatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer until the potatoes can be squashed easily with a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes. Whizz with a stick blender to puree, then stir through cream.

Serve with finely grated fresh parmesan and lots of black pepper.

Rocket Pesto

This recipe was adapted from one I found on google. There is a commercial dip of rocket/cashew nuts that I like, so I tried cashews but the walnuts were nuttier and more peppery so I'll stick to them in future.

Rocket Pesto
3 cups rocket
4 cloves garlic
1/3 cup walnuts, toasted
1/3 cup parmesan, grated
200 ml olive oil

Whiz the first 4 ingredients in the food processer, till chopped, then slowly pour in the olive oil.

Most of what I made was frozen, for using on pasta and as dip when summer is gone.

Basil Pesto

This recipe was given to me by a girl who had the most glorious wild tangly hair. She looked like Helen Bonham Carter. I've changed it over the years because I like less oil and garlic.

The basil bushes are enormous after a month of summer rain. So over the last few days I've made many batches of this and frozen most of it for later in the year. A lot has been frozen in icecube trays to use in cooking. The rest will defrost well for pasta, dips and winter breakfast on toast. I've made so much that I'm sick of the taste of it. Because you have to taste test each lot. With homemade bread of course.

Basil Pesto
100g basil leaves, picked
50g pinenuts, toasted
4 tab parmesan, grated
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
150 ml olive oil
juice of 2 small limes or one lemon

Place basil, pinenuts, parmesan and garlic in a food processor and process till mostly chopped. Pour the oil in with the motor running. Add the juice and process briefly to combine. Stir through salt and pepper if you like it.