Chicken & Chorizo Paella

Who doesn’t love a good Paella? With the warmer weather starting to show itself & memories of Spain I decided that last weekend would be a good time to make a big batch of paella with some inspiration & a recipe from the latest Gourmet Traveller Spanish Edition. I find that it’s a pretty simple dish to prepare, much easier than the time consuming risotto that requires constant stirring & ladling in of stock anyway. This recipe was a good one, feeding eight so I had to split it into 2 frypans as there was no way it would fit into my tiny paella dish. This of course means that I have some stashed away in the freezer for those nights I really don’t have time to cook, love cooking big like this which I find gets harder as summer comes along as most of the food I want to eat is simple & fresh, whereas food that is suitable to freeze, ie stews, heavy pasta dishes, etc is more stodgy winter food. So Paella fits both the freezer & summery bill – though it is still quite heavy the fact that it is Spanish means it definitely gets the thumbs up for warm nights. The overall result was delicious & cant wait to tuck in to the rest.

Paella

2 litres chicken stock
2 tspn saffron threads, toasted (no toasting from me)
2 tbsp olive oil
1.4kg chicken, cut into 8 pieces (or you could use thigh fillets as I did)
2 chorizo, cut into 2cm pieces
2 onions, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1 red capsicum, thinly sliced
6 vine ripened tomatoes, peeled, seeded & finely chopped (or you could just chop & skip the peeling & seeding as I did)
400g Calasparra rice (Arborio also works)
2 tspn Spanish smoked sweet paprika
1 tbsn rosemary leaves, coarsely chopped
300g podded green peas
300g baby green beans, trimmed

Combine chicken stock & saffron in a large saucepan & bring to the boil, then simmer over medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until saffron has infused & colored the stock.

Heat olive oil in a 38cm caldero (paella pan) or frying pan, add chicken & chorizo & cook, turning occasionally, over medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until golden, then remove from pan.

Add onion, garlic and capsicum & cook, stirring continuously, over medium heat for 5 minutes or until golden. Add tomato, cook for 3 minutes or until liquid evaporates, return chicken & chorizo to pan & pour over stock. Bring to the boil & cook for 10 minutes or until chicken is almost cooked through.

Add rice, paprika & rosemary, then season to taste with sea salt & freshly ground black pepper. Cook over medium heat, without stirring, for 5 minutes, then scatter with peas & beans & cook for another 15 minutes or until rice is tender & stock is absorbed. Stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Chicken Tagine with Green Olives & Preserved Lemon

Every week my mum comes over to my place for a day to spend time with Chloe & to help me out. To thank her for her help I cook up a big dinner for both my mum & my dad & I try to cook up dishes that they have never tried & would not try without my prodding. This week was the fancy sounding tagine which is really quite simple, I served it with couscous, another ingredient they have never tried. This recipe is from Gourmet Traveller & was a big hit, I loved it as I usually love all tagines & surprisingly my parents both loved it too, even the couscous which they thought they would hate. Next week polenta has been requested so I hope they love that just as much.

Chicken Tagine with Green Olives & Preserved Lemon

2 tablespoons Ghee
6 chicken marylands, thighs & drumsticks separated
2 large onions, coarsely grated
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
¼ teaspoon (firmly packed) saffron threads
1 teaspoon ground ginger
4 black peppercorns
½ teaspoon sweet paprika
1 stick of cinnamon
2 cups chicken stock
50gm preserved lemon (about 3 pieces), flesh discarded & rind thinly sliced
150g queen green olives (about 12) pitted
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped coriander
Couscous & crusty bread to serve

Heat ghee in a tagine or heavy based casserole, add chicken pieces & cook over high heat, turning, until golden. Then add onion, garlic & spices, and cook over medium heat, stirring to coat chicken pieces for 3 minutes or until fragrant. Add stock & 1 ½ cups water, turning chicken pieces once during cooking, for 40 minutes or until chicken is tender & meat almost falling off the bone.

Using a slotted spoon, transfer chicken to an oven tray & discard cinnamon. Bring sauce to a boil, and simmer for 12 minutes or until reduced by a quarter. Return chicken to pan, add preserved lemon, olives & herbs, and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes or until chicken is heated through, then season to taste with sea salt & freshly ground black pepper. Serve with couscous & crusty flat bread.

Passionfruit Yo-Yo’s with White Chocolate Ganache

Here is a delicious recipe for Yo-Yo’s from a recent Gourmet Traveller, I think it was thier passionfruit special. Passionfruits are going for $1.50 a pop now so I used the tin of passionfruit pulp in syrup you can but from the supermarket instead, seemed to do the job without a problem & much less fiddly then pulping & processing too.

Passionfruit Yo-Yo’s with White Chocolate Ganache

Makes about 24 biscuits

180gm butter, softened
90g pure icing sugar
80ml (1/3 cup) passionfruit juice
225g (1 ½ cups) plain flour
100g (2/3 cup) cornflour

Ganache
90ml pouring cream
45ml passionfruit juice
2 pieces of lemon rind, removed with a peeler
180g white chocolate, finely chopped

For Ganache, combine, cream, juice & rind in a saucepan and bring just to the boil over medium-high heat. Place chocolate in a bowl, strain over hot cream mixture, whisk until smooth & refrigerate for 4 hours or until thick.

Beat butter & sugar in an electric mixer until light & fluffy, add juice & combine. Add flours & mix until just combined, then turn onto a floured surface, form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap & refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 180c. Roll out pastry to 8mm thick & using a 3cm diameter cutter, cut rounds from pastry & place on baking paper lined oven trays. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until just golden, cool on trays for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Spread half the biscuits with a teaspoon of Ganache, sandwich with remaining biscuits & stand until set. Uniced yo-yo’s will keep for up to 1 week in an airtight container.

Note: To make your own passionfruit juice, blend passionfruit pulp in a food processor to crack seeds, then strain through a fine sieve. 12 passionfruits yield about 1 cup of juice.

Rustic Olive Bread

Flicking through the latest Gourmet Traveller which I rec’d last night in the mail I noticed this recipe for Rustic Olive Bread & thought it would be great to give it a go. I haven’t baked much bread & love olive bread so thought it was about time I tried to make my own & it should go well with the risotto I’m making for Michael’s mum & sister Julie for dinner tonight.

The recipe is adapted from Stephanie Alexanders in the Cooks Companion so I grabbed that off the shelf & compared the differences. The ingredients are exactly the same & only the method is slightly different. Stephanie’s says to knead the dough on an oiled workbench & the magazine’s says floured. I ended up going with floured as the mixture was quite sticky & felt it needed the extra though as I said I really don’t have much experience so could be wrong. Apart from that Stephanie suggests different shapes you can bake it in, loaf or focaccia.

For the olives I used 2/3 kalamata from a jar that I bought at the supermarket & then when they ran out for the last third I used delicious herb & garlic kalamata olives by Nicolas of Dimboola, I picked these up at the Vic produce market last weekend.

I also kneaded by hand rather than using my electric mixer.

The end result was delicious & will definitely be playing with more bread again soon

Rustic Olive Bread

600gm unbleached ‘00’ (strong) flour
1 tablespoon instant dried yeast
150gm pitted black olives (such as Kalamata) roughly chopped
2 teaspoons finely chopped rosemary
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Sift flour, yeast & salt into a large bowl, stir through olives & rosemary, make a well in the centre & add combined oil & 300ml warm water. Stir to combine. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface & knead with oiled hands (or transfer to an electric mixer with bread hooks) for 15 minutes or until dough is smooth & elastic. Transfr to a lightly oiled bowl, turn to coat, cover with a clean tea towel and stand in a draught free palce for 15 minutes or until doubles in size.

Transfer dough to am oiled baking tray & flatten into a 2-3cm thick rectangle, scatter with sea salt flakes, drizzle with olive oil & rest for 30 minutes. Bake at 220c for 20 minutes or until brown & crisp.

Marks Restaurant - Lorne

We finally arrived & spent a gorgeous day in Lorne, the temp was about 30 degrees, we had a lovely long walk along the beach, a big swim for Michael, a half swim for me (I only went in to about my waist – the water was just a wee bit cold for me & I am a big wuss as everyone knows). We then had some relax time in our gorgeous Balinese style bungalow before heading out to dinner. I chose Marks on the main street, Mountjoy parade as had recently read good things about it in a gourmet traveller & also a food lovers guide to the Great Ocean Road. Luckily we booked in in the afternoon as we nearly didn’t get in, we did manage to nab a table at 8.30 though.

To start with I ordered the Tomato based local mussel & whiting soup, this was nice though I was expecting more of a tomato base with mussels in the shell & chunks of whiting with some bread to mop it all up. Was very surprised then when it came out as a puree, the flavours were all there & still nice though would much have preferred it to come out as imagined, you know what it is like when you picture something, if different it is usually a disappointment to some degree. I did however still get some delicious bread roll son the side to mop it all up as imagined. Michael ordered the Crispy local whitebait with saffron & chilly mayonnaise, as you can see form the photo the serving was huge, really nice flavours though could have been a bit more on the ‘crispy’ side. Our mains took quite a while to arrive, we even had to ask where they were at one stage, not a good sign especially as the steak I ordered was only supposed to be medium. Anyway the dishes finally arrived & my Chargrilled eye fillet steak was pretty good though on the more ‘well’ than ‘medium’ side of cooked. The fried polenta was excellent & have made a mental note to definitely learn how to cook this up myself soon, to finish it off the caramelised onion & red wine glaze was a perfect addition. On the side we had some steamed veges, serving was big & they came in the cutest little basket too. After the big night we were recovering from we skipped dessert, the long wait for the mains had put us to sleep so needed to get to bed in a hurry. All in all was a good meal in a lovely location.

Dish at Byron Bay Wednesday 16th November 2005

Wednesday night we tried out Dish, another find in the Gourmet traveller restaurant guide.

Again the decor was lovely & the food beautifully presented & tasty

To start with I had Pan seared King prwans with salt Cod brandade, Jerusalem arthichoke puree, oyster mushrooms & deep fried grated beetroot which added a nice touch of colour.

This was followed with a Baked potato gnocchi with chorizo, confit of garlic & onion, primavera sauce & shaved peccorino, lovely flavours though way too much chorizo for my liking. Michael polished off all of my leftovers so it wasnt a problem though unfortunately for him I had shed one of my long blonde hairs in the dish & Michael got it stuck in his mouth, the sight off him open mouthed in this fine place trying to extract the stray hair had me in stictches for a long time, always nice to have such an unprepared belly laugh. After finally freeing his mouth of my locks he still dug in & finished the rest!

For dessert I had a warm white chocolate fondant with blood orange & vanilla bean sacue & fresh watermelon, absolutley luscious. I washed this down with an affotnini for something different. This was a cocktail of honey vodka, vanilla vodka, espresso & a dash of cream, yum, yum, yum, I will have to try & recreate that one at home for sure

Again if you're ever in Byron - put this one on the list

Boomerang at Byron Bay Monday 12th November

Well I am lucky enough to say that i have just returned home from a glorious week in Byron Bay where Michael & I did a damn fine job of relaxing, lots of long walks on the beach, good food & afternoon naps!

We arrived last Saturday & Sam & Tracey, friends from Brisbane had come to down for the night so it was off to the pub for drinks & then Cocomangas for dancing the night away, good way to start the holiday. Aftr all op this of course we were in need of a huge greasy brekky so we headed down to The Beach Cafe overlooking the beach, brekky was lovely. I went for the big one of course & had a very generous dish of bacon, poached eggs, grilled tomatos & mushies, baked beans & a home made hash brown on sourdough toast, needles to say I didnt finish it all. Very yummy & the hash brown did it for me, I love these & its not often they come home made - definitely worth a visit if youre ever in Byron

Monday we headed out for dinner to Boomerang which I found listed in the Gourmet Traveller 2006 restaurant guide, lucky as its not on a main street & could have been easily missed! There was only one other couple in tonight so we had excellent service & Marc Romanella the chef & I believe owner was serving tonight which was excellent as he was very passonate about his food & wine. The decor & table settings were all beatiful too.

The menu was a bit different to the norm as you are asked to create your own degustation menu from a list of fantastic choices, choosing from as little as 2 to 5, we chose 3 as we were told the portions were only entree size to allow you to taste several. We also went for the matching wine option.

I started with the Crusted yellowfin tuna sashimi with an ume, fuji & chilli chutney. This looked too gorgeous to eat & was delicious, the fruity flavour of the chutney was a brilliant match for the tuna. As this was a sweet flavoured dish I had a Japanese plum wine which was really nice, I had not had one of these before so nice to try something new too.


Second was a Marinated Beef tenderloin with parsnip rosti & white asparagus in soy, ginger & red wine served with a Bendigo Shiraz, again sensational flavours & the beef was very tender


Lastly I had the Duck pudding with citrus confit in Grand Marnier & ginger. This sounded odd & when asked exactly what a duck 'pudding' was Marc explained that it was actually slow cooked lamb wrapped in fine pastry, was absolutely scrummy & served with a lovely 1998 merlot from Washington.

The servings were also quite generous & with the hot bread rolls & herb infused olive oil on the side we were quite full by this stage, though of course I couldnt pass up the opportunity to try out dessert at such a wonderful place so we shared a Blood Orange tart with Mango & tequila sorbet & fresh strawberries on the side, Luscious!

All in all, this place is not to be missed!