Red Wine Braised Veal & Honey Glazed Carrots

Twice cooked osso bucco, honey glazed baby carrots, parsley jelly and Pinot Noir jus, served with sweet carrot and ginger tea

1. Sear osso bucco (marrow removed) and caramelise diced carrot, celery and leek. Braise with beef stock, Pinot Noir (perfect for braising because of its deep and rich flavour), thyme and bay leaves for 3 hours on a medium simmer. The liquid should reduce by half. 

2. Pull veal off the bone, flake with a fork and combine with the raw marrow. Roll into a log with cling wrap and set in the fridge for a few hours (I was impatient so the log didn't hold too well, but it was still delicious). Fry the log in a pan with butter and olive oil until brown. Rest, slice and serve. Reduce braising liquid by half and add butter to make the jus.

3. Blanch a bunch of parsley leaves in salted water. Puree with a blender or whiz stick the parsley with about a quarter cup of the water. Push through a fine sieve and dissolve gelatine in the green liquid. Set in a shallow dish (I used a mini flan dish) lined with cling wrap. Cut into cubes.

4. Blanch baby carrots in water, sugar, star anise and cloves. Add ginger to the water and serve as a tea. Glaze carrots with a mixture of water, butter, honey and sugar. 

Saw a similar recipe on the food channel and loved that it used cheap and humble ingredients, treated with lots of love. I'm so glad it's getting cool enough to enjoy hearty, slow-braised meals. Not only does it warm up the house, it gives me an outlet for my OCD for hours at a time (is there anything more enjoyable than arranging small objects to make them pretty?). We enjoyed this with a great friend, a few glasses of wine (and when we ran out of red, we moved onto white) and a night of trashy movies.

Gnocchi with Creamy Pumpkin & Prosciutto Sauce

I remember when I was a teenager I made gnocchi from a packet and I found it revolting. I could have just accepted that I didn't like gnocchi and let it go, except it really bothered me that everyone raved about gnocchi. How could anyone like this? I thought. Was I missing something or was it the most overrated pasta? So I cooked it again and again hoping that I'd like it. I didn't and I gave up on it for years.

It wasn't until two years ago that I tried fresh gnocchi in a restaurant and it all made sense to me. It's not supposed to be tough, chewy and gluggy! It's meant to be soft and silky. Because there was such a big difference between bad gnocchi and good gnocchi, I figured that the recipe must be really difficult or the chef must have added some secret ingredient - otherwise, why didn't they have good gnocchi in packets? I was wrong again. Turns out, it's ridiculously simple to make but the key to really good gnocchi (other than a good potato-flour ratio) is freshness.

Click here for a simple baked potato gnocchi recipe. Baking the potato removes excess moisture and makes the gnocchi less gummy.

Keep in mind to use as little flour as possible. You only need enough to hold the gnocchi dough together (between 1 and 2 cups). Otherwise it won't be silky.

My batch stayed perfectly soft and silky in the fridge for two days.

For the sauce, you'll need:

300g butternut squash, diced into 1.5cm cubes
3 slices prosciutto (I used Serrano), plus more for garnish
Olive oil
25g unsalted butter
Salt, to taste
2 French shallots, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 sage leaves, finely chopped, plus more for garnish
Handful of parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon cream
Parmesan cheese

Blanch pumpkin cubes in simmering salted water for 2 minutes. Remove and place into a bowl of iced water.

Fry prosciutto in a bit of olive oil until fragrant and crispy. Remove and leave to rest.

Add half of the butter into the pan. Fry a few sage leaves in the butter until crispy. Remove and leave to rest.

Fry pumpkin in the same pan on as many sides you can be bothered until brown. Season with salt. Remove and leave to rest.

Add the rest of the butter and saute shallots, garlic and sage until the shallots are translucent.

Add pumpkin, prosciutto, parsley and cream. Remove from heat when combined.

Cook the gnocchi in rapidly boiling salted water. It's ready when it floats to the top of the water.

Place gnocchi and a little bit of pasta water into the sauce and stir together.

Garnish with a slice of prosciutto, more parsley, fried sage leaves and parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

The Curry Tiger

Every Tuesday, I have the pleasure of volunteering at a legal centre in Woolloomooloo, located fortuitously opposite the original Harry's Cafe de Wheels. All I have to do is sigh, "Pie," on a Tuesday and Dan will know what I'm talking about: chunky beef, spicy curry, pastry with a perfect balance of flaky and soggy, mash, peas and gravy. Thus is the Curry Tiger for $5.80. Genius.

I decided to make it at home with some personal touches: shredded slow-cooked beef, creamy curry, homemade pastry (the best!) and lots of creamy, buttery mash.

Pastry

250g plain flour
200g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
½-¾ cups iced water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar

Dice the butter and chill in the freezer for a few minutes.

Combine flour, salt, sugar and butter in a large bowl.

Cut the butter into the flour until you have pea-sized pieces of butter (these will melt in the oven and make the pastry light and flaky). You can use a food processor or a pastry cutter for this step. I have neither so I used a mezzaluna and it worked a treat.

Add the water little by little and mix in with a plastic pastry scraper. Stop when the dough just comes together.

Turn out onto a floured surface and split the mixture into two (one for the base, one for the lid). Mould each dough with your hands and knead two or three times so it all sticks together. Wrap with cling wrap and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

You can keep the dough for up to two days in the fridge, which is great because you can make the dough and the filling the night before.

Curry filling

500g osso bucco, washed, dried and salted generously
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 onion
5 cloves garlic, peeled
5cm parsley or coriander stalks, roughly chopped
Chilis, halved (add as many as you'd like)
1 litre water
400ml coconut milk
Curry powder (add to taste)
2 tablespoons plain flour

Heat oil in a deep pot over a medium-high heat.

Sear the meat and remove from pot.

Reduce heat to medium and saute the vegetables.

Add water, coconut milk and curry powder (the instructions on mine recommended 4 tablespoons to a litre of water). Bring to a boil.

Place meat into liquid and simmer gently for at least three hours.

Remove meat and shred with two forks.

Add flour to the liquid and stir in. Strain so you get a smooth sauce.

Place the meat and 500ml of the sauce in a container and chill in the fridge. If you're making the pie on the same day, wait until the filling is completely cool. Otherwise, you can fridge it for about three days.

Note: You'll have a lot of curry sauce leftover. It's infused with delicious marrow and beef fat which you can enjoy with rice or bread.

Making the pie

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Technically you don't need to line the pan because there's so much butter in the pastry, but I like to be safe. I lined a 20cm springform pan with butter then baking paper.

Roll out the first piece of dough on a floured surface until it's about half a centimetre thick. Gently line the pan with the pastry.

Fill the base with the curry filling.

Roll out the second piece of dough and cut out a circle about 3cm bigger than the pan.

Place the lid on the pie and trim the edges.

Fold down the edges and cut a few holes in the lid to let the steam escape.

Bake until golden brown (my incredibly slow oven took about 40 minutes).

Rest for at least 20 minutes before taking it out of the pan to avoid the pie collapsing.

Serve with mash, peas and gravy.

Enjoy!

DIY Barbeque

Lamb, lebanese eggplant, yoghurt and parsley

I am very into DIY lately. It started as a way of killing time while I was at home sick for a few days - I bought fabric and hand-sewed a dress. It was a great success, except for one little detail: I couldn't sit down in it. (Not a big deal, I've worn it to two parties, who needs to sit down anyway?) I have learnt my lesson though - don't make a short, tight-fitting dress with a non-stretchy fabric like silk.

I've since upgraded to my mum's old sewing machine and have made two more garments which I would proudly wear. I like to think I've mastered the skill of picking the right fabric for the desired style. So why not expand into bigger projects? Surely Dan and I could concoct an amateur DIY barbeque on our balcony. Guess what? It totally worked!

It's not difficult at all to make a small barbeque out of things you can find at home. We used:

Two bricks to prop it up...

A tray from our oven with a wire rack (incidentally, I also use this to cool baked goods on)...

Firelighters...

And firewood, chopped into small bits.

Place firewood and about four firelighters in the centre of the tray and carefully light. It will take a while for the firewood to set on fire, give it about 20 minutes. Spread the firewood out into an even layer.

You can cook with flames or wait until the flames go out and use the residual heat. We used the flames for a chargrilled taste.

Place the wire rack over the fire. You can prop it up with oven-proof dishes. We used two ramekins.

"Please, feed us..."

Meanwhile, prepare your food.

I tossed diced lamb and onion in a Masterfoods herb rub (it tastes good, shoot me) and olive oil and arranged them on wooden skewers (soaked in water for half an hour). I also cut some lebanese eggplants lengthways and rubbed the marinade on them.

Meat touching flame, caramelising, fat dripping off into the fire and cooking back into the meat...

It got dark pretty quickly so I had to take a crappy nighttime photo, but my god it tasted good. Slightly crunchy chargrilled crust, tender medium-rare meat inside, smokey-woody taste - need I say more? It was pure rustic heaven and a fucking delicious spread.

Of course, use your common sense and be very careful with fire. We brushed away anything flammable from the corner we put the barbeque in, brought out a jug of water with us and used oven mitts. You also need to think about the surfaces around the barbeque (i.e. I wouldn't do this on a wooden floor or next to a tree). Otherwise, happy barbequing!

Sticky Spicy Prawns

When you don't have a lot of time, you need to find creative ways to cut corners. For me, I slash my television time in half by recording shows and watching them in bulk with the handy technology of the fast forward button. For example, with Jamie Oliver's "30 Minute Meals", if I skip the ads and the last 2 minutes of his family eating, and watch the rest on x2, I can watch a whole episode in 5 minutes. Sometimes I slow it down to listen to his voice, but the thing that instantly makes me press play is when he's cooking prawns.

There's something beautiful in the way Jamie Oliver takes a few prawns, rubs herbs and spices on them and throws them under the grill. Not only does it save time, which is what I'm all about these days, it makes for the most tantalising snack or entree. The best part is, no peeling of the prawn! You can eat every part of the prawn - the head's the best part because you get the gooey brain liquids (mmmm).

I tweaked his recipe based on what I had at home, and even though in my head it tastes better with paprika, this is one tasty little crunchy-shelled delight: sticky and sweet with a kick of chili.

You'll need:
8 king green prawns, raw
Zest of one lemon
Juice of half a lemon
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon ginger, minced
½ tablespoon olive oil
½ tablespoon honey
½ tablespoon chili flakes
Handful of parsley, roughly chopped
1 spring onion, finely chopped

Preheat grill to 200°C.

Combine all of the ingredients in a baking pan. Whack it under the grill until the shells are orange and there's some browning happening on the heads and tails.

Garnish with fresh parsley.

Enjoy!

Quick Seafood Salad

A quick seafood salad after a late night at work. Calamari, Atlantic salmon and prawns marinated in olive oil, parsley, garlic and cracked pepper. Pan-fried on medium-high heat for 4 minutes. Served with green coral lettuce, watercress, bean sprouts, red onion (soaked in lime juice, à la Nigella) and pomegranate seeds, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.