A lamb dish, Aubergine Moussaka but a lamb dish by any other name

There are meat dishes, then there are lamb dishes.

Just to, with little class, define the ingredients: a lamb is < 12 months old, a hogget is > 12 months old but with no permanent front incisor and mutton is older than permanent tooth. You are what you eat.

Roaming in the wasteland that is the space between the coasts, there are islands of difference that don’t seem to belong. A southern indian restaurant in wisconsin that was an oasis of genius, a greek place seemingly lost but thriving in Johannesburg, a vegan sushi restaurant in Jogjakarta indonesia. Cooking is like that, the real diplomacy of nations.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• 2-3 medium eggplants/aubergines sliced into 5mm thick rounds. Dicsard the ends.
• 1.5 kg ground lamb
• 1 large sliced yellow onion
• 1 large tin of crushed tomatoes
• Cinnamon ½ tsp
• grated nutmeg ½- 1 tsp
• Oregano ½ tsp
• paprika / ras el hanout 1 – 2 tsp
• 4 tbsp flour
• 1-2 L milk
• 2-3 eggs
• Stock of choice

Method

• Preheat the oven to 195˚C
• lay the eggplant slices out on a non stick aluminium baking sheet
• paint both sides of the egg plant with olive oil.
• bake for 30-40 min until the aubergines is browned but not soft as an April afternoon. They should slide around the sheet.
• Take the aubergines out of the tray and cool them on the bench top.
• Fry the ground lamb in 3-4 tbsp olive oil until mostly browned
• Add the onion and gently fry until the onion is soft
• Add the chopped tomatoes and 1 cup stock
• Simmer for 20 min
• Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, paprika/ ras el hanout
• slowly simmer and stir until reduced to a thick sauce
• Add 1 glass red/white decent wine
• Cool the sauce
• Season
• Assembly:
• Add enough sauce to cover the bottom of a baking dish [20 x 20 cm] to a depth of 2 mm
• layer the aubergine across the dish bottom as a loose layer [spaces are fine]
• Add another layer of sauce
• add a layer of aubergine. There should be 1-2 cm space above the last layer
• repeat the assembly steps [last 5] until the sauce / eggplant/ FNW runs out.
• Simple White bechamel sauce :
• Melt 50 g of butter in 30 mL olive oil
• stir in 4 tbsp flour and whisk.
• pour in [hot] milk slowly while whisking with vigour/machismo.
• keep doing the above to give 1 to 2 L sauce
• break 2-3 eggs, whisk with a little of the bechamel and whsk into the sauce
• remove it from the heat
• Final assembly step:
• Pour the greek white sauce over the assembled aubergines
• leave 0.5 cm from the top
• Bake at 190˚C for 1 hour or until nicely browned
• let it rest for 10 min
• Serve as a stack with a green salad and whatever takes your fancy.

Green chili mason jars of picked and pickled chilis

Why did Chili evolve. Instead of poison, it gives up pain. It hardly matters. Green, red, orange chilis are on signposts along the road to hell, california.

Ingredients

• Mason jars
• more hot chilis than fit in the jars – we like green and superhot
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

Method

• Washout the mason jars and lids with boiling water. Dry
• mix sugar water salt and coriander in a pan and heat until the sugar dissolves and bring it to gentle boil.
• wash and chop the chilis into 1 to 2 mm slices. Dont deseed.
• stir the vinegar into the syrup
• mix the chilis with the hot syrup vinegar mix
• stir
• pour into mason jars while still hot
• seal and let cool.
• store in the cool and dark.
  

try it. You cant buy it.

There are films that are brilliant and there are films that transcend what we expect. Then there is “Gentleman Broncos.”

A film that is two films, a comedy and a drama with the weirdest science fiction alternative universe in the background that has “Surveillance Does.”

The normal story is that a science fiction writer, who has drained all of his creative juices , steals a story from a fan who comes to his writing workshop. The fan figures this out and they fight.

There are a lot of science fiction movies that are a little outside the range of normalcy, like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and then there is this.

Part of the story is the imagined world seen in this science fiction novel. And it really is a treat.

Gentleman Broncos

It is hearing this music on a corporate elevator but so much more:

American Mancakes

Pancakes superceded by the cultures that we have met and our Uncle Cyril, who lives on a small Asian island with his tortoise and the complete works of James Lee Burke.

These are a simple, great alternative to other ways to use the eggs before the Salmonella party date.

Recipe

• 1 cup self rising white flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 beaten eggs
• 3/4 cup water 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• ½ cup finely chopped white cabbage
• ½ cup finely chopped red pepper
• ½ cup finely chopped green pepper
• ½ cup chopped spring onions
• optional: ½ cup protein
• grind of black pepper
• drop of soy sauce

Method

1. mix the first four ingredients until smooth with a whisk – should be 2-3 mm thick on the back of a spoon
2. let it rest for an hour
3. add all the other ingredients , mixing it with a large spoon or spatula slowly
4. heat a flat fry pan to medium high, with a decent sprinkle of cooking oil
5. add 20 ml pancake mix to the pan
6. cook and press down a little, lift and flip until both sides are brown and it rises a little
7. serve with any sweet and sour, peanut sauce and a pile of chopped green chillies.

That’s one for the history books.

Celery cream soup isn’t a good enough name for it. let’s call it something better.. Californian Snow

This celery soup recipe cam out of one of the few times in a year when the weather was all prepared to actually drop snow on southern California. A new order.

Ingredients

• 1 onion,
• 4 potatoes
• One entire celery bunch of stalks Apium Graveolens Var. Dulce
• all the above chopped fine
• 3 tbsp flour
• olive oil
• bayleaf
• ½ tsp aniseed seeds
• 2-3 L veg stock
• low fat milk 1-1.5 cups
• 6 garlic cloves peeled

Method

• Heat the olive oil in a large Stock pot
• Add the onion, celery and potatoes and sweat gently in the oil for 10 to 15 minutes
  • Do not allow to burn
• Add the flour and mix rapidly avoid any burning
• Pour in the stock then mix well
• Add the bayleaf
• Add the MSG
• season 
• Bring to a boil and reduce the heat, 
  • stir from this point forward
• simmer for 30-60 min/until the vegetables are very soft
• Add the aniseed
• Simmer for 30 min then stop cooking
• Add the garlic in the soup
• Thin if needed with water
• Remove bayleaf
• Add garlic
• Blend [if that is to taste]
• Add 1 cup Milk and mix well/reblend
• season
• eat

Gravad Lax – drowned in vodka

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

ZEN SALMON.

I know, we all know that we should stop eating fish. Meat is murder, Fish is oceanocide.

Ingredients

1 (2-pound) salmon fillet, with skin

1/2 cup kosher salt

3 tablespoons sugar

½ cup vodka

2 tablespoons grated lemon zest

2 tablespoons grated lime zest

2 tablespoons grated orange zest

Recipe

• Wash the fillet of salmon under running water
• pat dry
• Mix the curing/pickling mix above as much as possible
• place the salmon in a ziplock bag and place skin/facedown in an oven dish
• pour the cure into the bag and seal it expelling all the air
• place a smaller dish on top and weigh down with 1-2 kG
• put it in the fridge for 24 h
• flip it over
• fridge for 24-48 h
• remove it from the bag, wash it and slice the meat off the skin [or ask and adult to do it]
• fillet into thin slices
• plate with lemon, black pepper and good white or rye bread and butter

not so Rammstein

Strawberry Mousse

Desserts seems to escape before me, easily forgotten or smoothed out of the menu by a decent soup and salad. Then I tried to build one out of simple ingredients that even I’d eat.

Recipe

• 2 cups Whipping cream
• 50g/1/3 cup castor sugar
• 400g fresh strawberries
• ½ cup granulated sugar

Method

1. Mix the cream with the caster sugar then whip it on medium speed until it forms stiff peaks
2. Blend the strawberries with the granulated sugar to form a paste- don’t add water
3. mix 1/3 of the strawberry mix with the whipped cream on slow
4. put the 2 mixes into the fridge
5. to serve, mix a couple of fingers of decent vodka into the strawberry paste
6. pour that mix to fill whisky glass half full
7. drop in a few spoonfuls of the mouse to float like islands
8. serve

Its awesome and fun like a norse morning, smooth as a Bourbon from the mountains.

American pancakes and Gentlemen Broncos

There are films that are brilliant and there are films that transcend what we expect. Then there is “Gentleman Broncos.”

A film that is two films, a comedy and a drama with the weirdest science fiction alternative universe in the background that has “Surveillance Does.”

The normal story is that a science fiction writer, who has drained all of his creative juices , steals a story from a fan who comes to his writing workshop. The fan figures this out and they fight.

There are a lot of science fiction movies that are a little outside the range of normalcy, like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and then there is this.

Part of the story is the imagined world seen in this science fiction novel. And it really is a treat.

Gentleman Broncos

It is hearing this music on a corporate elevator but so much more:

American Mancakes

Pancakes superceded by the cultures that we have met and our Uncle Cyril, who lives on a small Asian island with his tortoise and the complete works of James Lee Burke.

These are a simple, great alternative to other ways to use the eggs before the Salmonella party date.

Recipe

• 1 cup self rising white flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 beaten eggs
• 3/4 cup water 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• ½ cup finely chopped white cabbage
• ½ cup finely chopped red pepper
• ½ cup finely chopped green pepper
• ½ cup chopped spring onions
• optional: ½ cup protein 
• grind of black pepper
• drop of soy sauce

Method

1. mix the first four ingredients until smooth with a whisk – should be 2-3 mm thick on the back of a spoon
2. let it rest for an hour
3. add all the other ingredients , mixing it with a large spoon or spatula slowly
4. heat a flat fry pan to medium high, with a decent sprinkle of cooking oil
5. add 20 ml pancake mix to the pan 
6. cook and press down a little, lift and flip until both sides are brown and it rises a little
7. serve with any sweet and sour, peanut sauce and a pile of chopped green chillies.

That’s one for the history books.

Roast Cauliflower SMASH

what a life being a marketing guy in the 1970s…

Cauliflowers are awesome. They are related to mustard in the same way I’m related to Genghis Khan. At least according to DNA tests that also make: fundamentalist bearded dinosaurs, 1970’s hair salons and Lord Lucan relatives. Unlike commercial DNA tests, Cauliflowers pretty much rule.

Recipe

• A whole Cauliflower, stem and leaves removed chopped into florets
• Olive oil
• ½ cup of milk
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C
2. spread the Cauliflower over a baking sheet and sprinkle with olive oil and a pinch of salt
3. bake to slight browning- should be soft
4. Blend the cooked Cauliflower with enough milk to make a thick puree
5. season, with salt and pepper and a touch of soy sauce

Asssssparagus Soup

Asparagus has some funny names, like Sparrow grass. It is related to lilies onions and garlic there sits on its own separate family. It comes in green and white flavours, the white asparagus is rare outside Europe.

This is a simple spring soup recipe when asparagus is plentiful.

Recipe

• 1 kg of asparagus, washed after the bottom 2 cm has been removed
• Olive oil
• Spring onions one bunch
• Two small potatoes washed and chopped
• 4 cloves of crushed garlic
• 2 L of vegetable stock
• One large white onion
• 2 bunches of fresh parsley
• A fresh free range egg per person

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C
2. Spread the asparagus out on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil
3. Bake the asparagus for around 30 minutes until they slightly brown
4. Gently fry the chopped onion, spring onions and potato in 4 tablespoons of olive oil until softened
5. Add the vegetable stock and bring to a rolling boil
6. Drop in the asparagus from the oven and stir
7. Finely chop the parsley – add after 30 minutes when the asparagus is very soft
8. Adding a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of soy sauce
9. Adding a quarter teaspoon of white pepper and the crushed garlic
10. Allow the soup to cool
11. Blend very thoroughly until the parsley has been homogenised into green flecks
12. Season to taste and rewarm in small quantities
13. Poach an egg for each serving
14. Serve the soup with the egg floating in it

Jerusalem Fartichokes

Jerusalem artichokes are more related to the sunflower than they are to the artichoke. They are tubers but look a little like ginger or Galangal. They are ideal for baking and the recipe is simple. However, if you eat too many of them then the natural inulin acts like a very efficient laxative. Niagara Falls. Is it worth it. Well that’s entirely up to you.

Recipe

• 4 to 5 cups of washed dried Jerusalem artichokes
• Olive oil
• Coarse salt and pepper

Method

1. Scrape off any of the really hard Kallassy parts of the tumour
2. Heat the oven to 190 C
3. Scattered the tubers on a baking sheet and literally cover with Olive Oil
4. Scatter on a couple of pinches of salt
5. Mix

Bake until the tubers are soft with a crispy exterior – 30 to 45 min. Don’t let them get wrinkly.