Spring into summer

This week's tagine seemed more suited to a festive occasion but I needed to try it out before presenting it to guests.  This is described as a traditional Moorish duck tagine.  You will need one duck breast on the bone per person.  Using a mortar & pestle pound a knob of fresh ginger and 2 chopped garlic cloves to a paste.  Heat 2 tbsp olive oil with a knob of butter in your tagine.  Stir in the garlic paste & 2 cinnamon sticks.  When the mixture starts to colour add the duck breasts & brown the skin.  Stir in 2 tbsp honey and tuck a handful of stoned dates around the duck.  Add just enough water to cover the base of the tagine & come about 1/3 up the duck breasts.  Bring to the boil, cover, then transfer to the oven and cook at 180 for about 25 minutes.  Add 1 tbsp orange flower water, season & continue cooking until the duck is tender - 5 minutes or so.  Saute a handful of whole blanched almonds in a little butter & scatter over the duck to serve.  Serve with couscous flavoured with fresh herbs & lemon zest.  This will help to counter the richness of the duck.
Try a pinto bean chilli using early summer veg.  For 4, heat 1 tbsp oil & soften 3 finely chopped onions.  Add 2-3 fiery green chillies deseeded & finely chopped, 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic, 2 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp cayenne, 1/4 tsp allspice.  Cook for about a minute.  Add 2 diced courgettes & one diced red capsicum.  Coat in the spices then add 2 tbsp tomato puree, a tin of tomatoes, a tin of pinto beans, 100ml red wine & a handful each of fresh parsley & oregano, finely chopped.  Pour over 200ml water & simmer gently for half an hour until all the vegetables are tender & the dish is thick & saucy. We served ours with homemade guacamole, shredded cos lettuce, grated cheese, sour cream and some grilled flat breads. 
I had been given some walnuts so we tried a quinoa & walnut salad.  Make extra because the leftovers are good in lunches.  For 4, toast 2 tsp cumin seeds & 1 tsp fennel seeds, then crush in a mortar & pestle until you have a fine powder.  Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan & saute 1 finely chopped onion, 1 finely chopped fennel bulb,  2 finely chopped garlic cloves.  Add the ground spices & the zest of a lemon.  Cook the quinoa according to the instructions.  If you don't have quinoa you could substitute brown rice, bulgar wheat or that large Israeli couscous.  Drain & mix with the onion mixture then stir in the juice of a lemon & chopped herbs - parsley, chives, tarragon, toasted & chopped walnuts - about 75g.  Taste & add more oil & lemon juice if you think it needs it.
Still on the summer veg theme, we stir fried a bunch of greens and served with egg fried rice.  For two, cook 1/2 cup rice - we used brown jasmine - then set aside.  Prepare the vegetables before you start.  A courgette, halved lengthways & sliced thinly lengthwise,  spring onions sliced on the diagonal, a handful of greens such as spinach, rocket mizuna, a handful each snow peas, fresh podded  peas & broadbeans.  I blanched the podded beans & slipped them out of their skins.  Heat a wok or frying pan over a medium high heat & add 1 tbsp sunflower oil.  Add the snowpeas, then the courgettes, peas, onions & greens - one at a time cooking each one a minutes or so before adding the next.  When the greens have wilted down add a finely chopped piece of ginger, a crushed garlic clove & finely chopped green chilli.  Transfer to a hot serving dish & scatter with soy sauce & sesame oil plus a sprinkling of toasted sesame & shredded mint. 
Wipe out the wok & bring back to a medium heat.  Add 1 tbsp sunflower oil and when the oil is hot add the reserved rice & stir until all the grains are coated in the oil.  Make a bit of space in the pan & tip in a beaten egg mixed with a tsp soy sauce.  As the egg starts to cook move it around through the rice until it is cooked & distributed through the rice.  Serve the veg atop the rice & sprinkle with more soy sauce if you like.
This week I had my first go at cheese.  I started with cream cheese which was very simple & also turned out to be delicious.  I started with 2 litres of whole milk and let it sit 24 hours with the cheese culture & rennet.  I then drained it through muslin for a day, and stirred through dried herbs & cheese salt.  It was great on grilled sourdough, with boiled potatoes or on crackers.   Unfortunately I didn't have any smoked salmon.
We also made a batch of marmalade from the windfall grapefruit & lemons we had collected while in Auckland the previous week.  It came up such a beautiful golden colour. 

Around the World

This week was school holidays so Phoebe cooked a couple of nights. She made a great fettucine with ragu and later in the week Tex Mex chicken wraps. Always a great favourite at our table when the young people were younger. This was based on an Annabel Langbein recipe from Great Food, Busy Lives but in her latest edition she has tampered with it and we preferred the original. This is how I do it - feel free to correct me if it's not how you remember it. Brown thinly sliced chicken breast in batches and put aside. A note on quantities - I usually allow 120g meat per person, and adjust everything else in proportion. So I am giving quantities for about 500g. Soften a finely chopped onion in the pan with a squirt of tomato paste. Add chopped garlic (or grated for those of you who have a plate), & 1tbsp ground cumin. Mix in 1/4 cup sweet chilli sauce, 1 generous cup of tomato sauce (the one you made last week), a drained tin of kidney beans & return the chicken to the pan. Simmer 5 mins or so. Prepare your accompaniments & warm some corn tortillas according to the instructions on the packet. To serve lay a warmed tortilla on a plate, dollop on some of the chicken mixture - you don't want it too runny, aim for gloopy. Top with a selection of salad items such as shredded lettuce, grated carrot, finely sliced capsicum, then grate on a generous pile of cheese and a dollop of sour cream. To wrap, fold up from the bottom and then fold over from left & right. There was always a bit of a competition to eat the whole tortilla without dripping any sauce on the plate. To achieve this it was sometimes necessary to hold your own tortilla over someone else's plate and on one memorable occasion Harriet dripped in the dish of grated cheese. I believe she was disqualified by her siblings.

Still on the Mexican theme, we had my father's recipe for chilli on Friday. You can make a huge quantity & freeze the leftovers. This has a number of spices but is worth the effort.
In large heavy pot, soften 2 finely chopped onions & 4-5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped. Add 1 kg mince & brown. Then add all the spices:

1 tbsp [sic] chilli powder - adjust to taste, Dad liked his chilli hot

2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp cayenne

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/4 tsp coriander

1/4 tsp cardamom

stir and cook for 1 minute.
Then add:

400g tin chopped tomatoes or equivalent of tomato sauce

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tbsp treacle

2 cups beef stock

2 tbsp white vinegar

salt & pepper

and bring to the boil. Simmer slowly with lid off stirring occasionally for 1 1/2 hours until thick and soupy. Tip in 1-2 drained tins of kidney beans & squeeze in a little lemon juice at end to thicken. Serve on rice topped with grated cheese, and a dollop of sour cream. I like to add grated carrot too.

A couple of years ago I discovered some packaged spice mixes put out by a South African company called Nice 'n Spicy. It's basically cook by numbers & they are really interesting dishes - the original fusion cooking such as Nasi Goreng or Vindaloo. On Saturday I made Denningvleis which is a Cape Malay dish. These dishes are really easy to do & I would recommend if you don't keep a large range of spices in your cupboard, or you are going away for the weekend and don't want to take the contents of the spice cupboard. They are really delicious. This one may have been my favourite. We served with yellow rice, which I made by adding 1 tsp turmeric, a cinnamon stick & a bruised cardamom pod, and a selection of chutneys. I steamed carrots & broccoli from the garden in the top of the pot at the end.

And finally Ki Si Ming. Did you have this when you were growing up? Apparently you need to be my age to have heard of it. My mother used to make this on a Monday night and it was not my favourite. It really is very odd with its combination of both rice and noodles with mince. I haven't been able to discover its origins although I know who gave it to my mother. Apparently it occurs in many of those local ladies' group cook books from the 60's. But I am quite sure it has never been seen in China and it has been identified on a UK website as a dish from NZ. I'm intrigued by the addition of spaghetti and chips to the rice and noodles! I tried a modern take on the recipe sticking with the one pot method & this is what I came up with.

Saute 1 small onion and about 1 tsp grated ginger. Then brown 500g diced or coarsely ground pork. Add a good dollop of sweet chilli sauce and about 1/2 cup long grain rice with 2 sliced spring onions & 1/4 thinly sliced red capsicum. (I would have included finely sliced celery from the original if I had had it). Add 1 cup chicken stock, cover & simmer gently until rice is almost done. Then add about 1/3 of a small cabbage finely sliced in long shreds. Just sit on the top, season with salt & pepper and a few small knobs of butter dotted about. Cover again and simmer until the rice is cooked and the cabbage wilted how you like it. I like a bit of bite. Now this was nice - light, spicy and the kitchen didn't smell of cooked cabbage. And Phoebe approved. I am calling this Ki Si Ming for the 21st century. Let me know if you have any suggestions to improve. Or if you preferred the original....