Kangaroo Moussaka

The grocer had a special on aubergines (not very seasonal but at a dollar each, grown in Australia, how can one resist?) and I really wanted to make moussaka. Unfortunately, the only thing less seasonal than aubergines at the moment is lamb! Neither the butcher nor the supermarket had any lamb mince, nor were willing to make any. So I thought -- why not try a kangaroo moussaka? The meat has a similar gaminess, and it's a more environmentally-friendly option in this country.  It's also a healthier option as it's generally leaner than lamb.If you're making this outside Australia, of course feel free to use lamb mince, or a mixture of beef and pork if you prefer.

One thing that's a little off-putting about the kangaroo mince is that it doesn't smell nearly as good early on in the cooking, but after 45 minutes of simmering, it suddenly disintegrates and becomes just as if not more tasty than lamb. So stick with it, it'll work out in the end!

I started with this recipe and modified it to suit my own tastes. I really prefer having potatoes separate to the moussaka, for contrast -- baked or mashed, either way. If you need to feed more than six people, but don't want to / can't buy fractionally more kangaroo mince (it comes in 1kg packs in my supermarket), feel free to bulk out the moussaka with a couple of grated carrots, or a cup of cooked lentils.

Ingredients

• 1 large or two small brown onion, finely chopped
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped or crushed
• 1kg kangaroo mince
• 2 carrots, cleaned and grated or a cup of cooked lentils (optional -- use if you need to feed more people)
• 1 stick celery, finely diced
• 1 tsp ground cinammon
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• a tin of chopped tomatoes
• 3 large eggplants (aubergines)
• olive oil
• 1 small handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 120g butter
• 1 cup plain flour
• 4 cups warm milk
• 1 bay leaf
• ground or freshly grated nutmeg

Method

Heat a little olive oil in a non stick pan and gently saute the onion until starting to soften. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant. Add the mince, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Cook the mince until it loses all its water and begins to brown. Add the diced celery. If using, add the carrot or lentils. Add the cinammon, bay leaf, herbs and wine; stir and deglaze the pan, then add the tin of tomato and simmer for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, grill or barbeque the eggplants, brushed with olive oil, until soft and golden on both sides. Also, make a bechamel sauce: melt the butter in a pyrex bowl, in the microwave, then stir in the flour. Gradually whisk in the milk, drop in the bay leaf and nutmeg, then microwave for five minutes, stirring every minute. The sauce should thicken.

Set the oven temperature to 180C. In a large rectangular dish, alternate layers of eggplant and mince until the dish is nearly full. Check the bechamel and taste for seasoning. Spoon over the top and smooth it over with a spatula. The layer should be quite thick. Bake for 25-45 minutes or until it’s all golden and bubbly. Serve with mashed or baked potato, and steamed vegetables or Greek salad.

Yorkshire Puddings

I love Yorkshire puddings. When I was a child we always looked forward to when my mum would make them. We'd beg and beg for more of them, even above and beyond roast potatoes! Pure carby goodness. It seems the tricks to getting a well-puffed pudding are to beat the batter well to get air into it, and to heat a generous amount of oil in tin (in the oven) before you pour the  batter in -- and always less than half of the height of the tin, or they won't have room to expand. I was surprised that the Joy of Cooking said to beat the batter, since I would normally worry about toughening the gluten, but it worked very well. And luckily, they were wrong about needing to leave it to stand for an hour. (I'm impatient like that!)

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water plus 1tbsp
• 2 eggs
• vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Combine the salt and flour, make a well in the centre and pour in the milk and water. Stir, then beat well until very combined. Add the two eggs and continue to beat until large bubbles rise to the surface. Pour a little vegetable oil into each tin of a muffin tray and place in the hot oven; there should be enough oil that the base of each tin is easily covered. After five minutes, remove the tin from the oven and pour the batter into each cup, to about 40% of the height of the tin. Return to the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until risen and golden.

Baked Greek-Style Beans (and some Dolma)

I had a strong craving for dolma after visiting a nice little Greek cafe for lunch while I was in Melbourne. I tried making my own, following a random recipe online. They had included the prep time, but cheekily didn't mention that they had their own 'dolma-making machine', where you simply lay the leaf out, put some stuffing in, and then push a lever to wrap it all up! It took nearly an hour to get good at doing it by hand, and I highly recommend you watch a Youtube video first :) They turned out ok, but the rice wasn't thoroughly cooked, so I will try again another time.

What was a success, was the massive tray of baked Greek beans. I was pretty lazy and used tins instead of boiling the beans from scratch, but it really didn't matter. They were gorgeous, a sweet and umame counterpoint to the lemony dolmas, and incredibly filling.

Ingredients:

• Two medium white onions or one large
• Two tins of chopped tomatoes
• 4-6 cloves of garlic
• a small tin or 4 tbsp tomato puree
• Three tins of butter beans
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• pinch of ground cinnamon
• a small handful of parsley

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Finely chop the onion and gently fry in olive oil until translucent - about 6-7 minutes. Crush in the garlic and fry for a further two minutes. Finely chop the parsley and add, along with all of the other ingredients; season well and stir to combine. Tip into a deep baking dish and bake for an hour; the sauce will thicken and the beans will absorb the flavours.

Bacon, Cheese and Apple Muffins (oh my!)

I received some lovely presents from my husband's brother and his wife: the sequel to one of my favourite cookbooks, The Kitchen Diaries, aptly titled The Kitchen Diaries II (: the Search for More Food?!), and some delightful silicone muffin cups and a matching tray. I put them both to the test with this simple recipe, about all I could manage while coming out the other side of the Great British Flu, a gift the entire Northern Hemisphere contributed to. They turned out really well, despite having to substitute plain old free-range bacon and Australian cheddar for the ridiculously artisanal ingredients used by Nige.

Ingredients:

• four rashers of back bacon
• a small apple
• 3 eggs
• 175ml yoghurt
• 100g cheddar cheese
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsbp sugar
• 275g plain flour

Pop the bacon on the barbie or under the grill until cooked but not too crispy, then snip into small pieces. Beat the eggs into the yoghurt, then grate 3/4 of the cheese into the mixture. Combine the baking powder, sugar and flour in a separate bowl. Peel and grate the apple last, so it has no time to go brown. Stir it, along with the bacon, into the yoghurt mixture. Fold the yoghurt mixture gently into the flour, stopping as soon as there is no more dry flour visible. Spoon into muffin cups (I used 12), and bake at 200 C for 20-25 minutes, until risen and golden. Nigel says to eat them on the same day, but I found the taste improved overnight, although the texture suffered a little.

Pasta with Meatballs

My last meal of Being Twenty-Nine Years Old: a big classic in our family, but we all have slightly different ways of making it. My mum drops pure-mince meatballs into the tomato sauce, letting them cook through as the sauce thickens on the stove; I use fried or baked meatballs containing bread (I love the crispy crust!). My sister likes to stir the spinach into the sauce and scatter feta over the top; I prefer it to combine cooked, wilted spinach with ricotta and leave little quinelles throughout the bake. However, I think we can all agree that penne is exactly the right pasta for this dish, and that it tastes even better the next day. Although maybe not in my case, what with my taste buds suddenly going over the hill...

Here's my version.

Ingredients

• 1kg of meatballs
• 500g tomato sauce (or double, if you like it very tomato-y)
• two large bunches of fresh spinach, wilted and chopped or 250g frozen chopped spinach, defrosted
• 250g of ricotta cheese
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 500g dried penne, cooked according to the packet instructions
• 100g Cheddar or Parmesan, grated

Combine the spinach, cheese, nutmeg and salt together in a bowl. Stir the pasta with the tomato sauce and meatballs and pour into a large baking dish. Using two large tablespoons, take scoops of the ricotta/spinach mixture and push little quinelles into the dish. Scatter over the grated cheese and bake for 25 minutes at 180 C, until golden brown on top and piping hot throughout.

Real Baked Beans

I remember my parents talking about how they used to bake their own beans back when they were at uni. For quite a few years I couldn't see why: baked beans are pretty cheap, right? And how good can your own be anyway?

Well, here, they're not so cheap - at least three times the price of the same beans in the UK, usually more. On the plus side, we live near a great combined market with huge sacks of the white haricot beans that one could bake into beans. Having seen those sacks every time I visit the market, and occasionally cringing as I open a tin of expensive baked beans, I eventually thought - let's do it. Let's bake some beans.

For such a classic British staple I turned to Delia, in her Frugal incarnation. I've simplified some of the steps, since her recipes always seem to involve way too much measuring and transferring from one pot to another. Oh and... because I didn't think 450g sounded like very many beans... I made a whole kilo. Which is an entire massive Le Creuset absolutely full of beans. Well, at least we're sorted for the week! They are also better than the tinned version, after all :)

Ingredients:

• 1 kg dried white haricot beans
• 3 litres water
• 3 tsp dijon mustard
• 4 tbsp molasses or treacle
• 4 tbsp dark brown sugar
• 4 tbsp (or a tiny tin) of tomato puree
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 onions
• 2 bay leaves
• 500g streaky belly of pork

Put the beans and water in a huge oven-proof pot and bring up to the boil, then turn off the heat and leave for an hour to soak. Reheat up to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally to make sure no beans are sticking.

Preheat the oven to 120 C. Finely slice the onion and add, along with the rest of the ingredients, to the beans, and stir to combine. Tuck the piece of pork into the beans, leaving only the rind exposed, which you can slash with a knife to crisp if you intend to eat it. Cover and bake for 6 hours, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing's sticking. The beans will absorb most of the liquid, but if they absorb all of it and start to go dry, feel free to top up with some extra water.

Baked Stuffed Cabbage Parcels

When I was in Cambridge last week, a friend gave me this copy of Delia's 'Frugal Food'. It's interesting enough, especially if you're short on 70s style things to do with lentils and cabbage. Since we'd bought an enormous Savoy for just a dollar, and I had the glorious freedom of an entire day with nothing to do but go for a long walk and cook, it seemed like a good time to figure out something fun and frugal to do. I settled on the 'baked stuffed cabbage parcels'. They really were rather good! Although I did bulk out and spice up the recipe a bit. The photo is taken before I pour over the requisite 400g tin of chopped tomatoes; personally I think it'd be nicer with the topping I describe below.

Ingredients:

• a large head of Savoy or green cabbage
• 75g white rice
• a large white onion
• 400g beef or lamb mince
• three cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• a large handful of parsley, well-washed and finely chopped
• a generous handful of sultanas
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• a 400g tin of white (haricot or borlotti) beans (chick peas might work too)
• a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp dried red chillis
• a slice or two of bread, or a handful of sunflower seeds

Get a really huge saucepan that you can put the whole cabbage head inside completely. Practice taking it out again with a couple of big spoons or some good strong tongs. When you're happy that you have a good saucepan and a way of getting a hot cabbage head back out again, fill it up with boiling water and submerge the cabbage, preferably stalk-side-up. (I don't know how Delia stops it flipping; mine always went straight over no matter what I did!) Bring back to a boil and simmer for 8 minutes, then remove and drain. (I used the water from this to cook the pasta for another meal, but maybe you could put your feet in it if you're having a particularly cold winter and don't want to let it go to waste? I've no idea.)

Once the cabbage is cool enough to handle, get a nice sharp knife and a big bowl, and work your way around the cabbage, cutting off the leaves as you go. Once the leaves go yellow, you can maybe get three or four, before they become too small to be useful for this recipe. At that stage the texture should be quite crisply blanched, so it would work well cooled and used later in a salad, or served warm straight away with some butter. But it's not useful for the rest of this recipe so find somewhere to put it.

Set the rice cooking in a 2:1 water:rice ratio over a gentle heat. Finely chop and fry the onion for a few minutes, then add the mince and crush in the garlic. Fry for a couple more minutes, then add the cinnamon, thyme, parsley, sultanas, beans, tomato puree, salt and cooked rice. Stir well to combine and turn off the heat.

Put a cabbage leaf on a board or plate so that it curves upward, and slice about three inches of the thick stem away; eat or discard. If you want to make finger-food-sized parcels, slice the entire stem away, and use half-leaves to wrap 3/4--1 1/2 tbsp of mixture; otherwise wrap up 1 1/2--3 tbsp mixture depending on the size of the leaf. You should overlap the leaves enough that the mixture isn't bursting out. Place in a large roasting dish with the foldy bits at the bottom.

Meanwhile, (perhaps your sous-chef can help), heat the tin of chopped tomatoes with the oregano and chilli. Puree with a hand-blender into a fine sauce. (A good passatta will do equally well here.) Pour the tomato sauce over the tray of parcels, making sure to coat all of the leaves (they will go black wherever not covered by tomatoes). Bake for an hour, until the leaves are very tender and the sauce has reduced to a fine covering. Blend the bread into fine breadcrumbs, toss with a little olive oil; cover the tomato sauce and bake for a further ten minutes until crisp. Alternatively, serve with some toasted sunflower seeds.

Baked Celery and Salmon

After a Zumba class I was absolutely ravenous. Thankfully my husband had been slaving away over a hot stove, so a mere hour after I arrived home (during which I whinged almost constantly), a warming, nourishing and comfortingly bland (in a good way) dish of Nigel Slater origin appeared. The trick with this is to make sure you get the salt and pepper just right, and don't eat or drink anything with strong flavours at the same time, as all the flavours are milky and gentle. It's like a healthy version of macaroni & cheese. As usual, quantities are for two people.

Ingredients:

• half a head of celery
• half a small onion
• a bay leaf
• 100 ml milk
• 25g butter
• 1 heaped tbsp flour
• a handful of Parmesan or other cheese (experiment!)
• a small bunch of parsley
• a handful of rough breadcrumbs

Snap the celery into ribs and wash the root ends thoroughly. Put them in a wide saucepan (cut in half if yours is not wide enough to take them horizontally) and pour over just enough water to barely cover them. Peel and thinly slice the onion and add, along with the bay leaf. Poach over a low heat, until the celery is tender.

Preheat the oven to 180  C. With a draining spoon, remove the celery, onion and bay leaf to a large, shallow baking dish. Use 100ml of the cooking water from the celery along with the butter, flour and milk to make a white sauce, then add half of the Parmesan, and all of the parsley and stir. (Nigel talks about cooking this for a long time before adding the parsley, but I NEVER have time for that sort of faffing. It's a white sauce! Get over it!)

Pour the sauce over the celery and top with breadcrumbs and the rest of the cheese. Bake for forty minutes or so, until the topping is crisp. Rest for a few minutes before serving. You'd have time at this stage to quickly sear a couple of salmon steaks on each side - yum.

Roasted Baby Courgettes with Cous-Cous and Apricot Topping

Another recipe inspired by Nigel Slater's Tender, but one that I think needs some modification to be perfect. He bakes the courgettes for only 25 minutes, but I found that was not nearly long enough, and more like 55 minutes was needed if baking from raw. I also found that the topping was nice but a certain piquancy was missing. These problems can be easily remedied by adapting a method I usually use for Provençal tomatoes: frying them in a very hot pan for 5 minutes and then drenching in balsamic vinegar before baking in the oven with the topping. I have yet to try it on this recipe but I'll suggest it here as I think it would be an improvement.

Ingredients:

• 8-10 baby courgettes, washed and halved lengthwise
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 100g cous-cous
• half a white onion
• one slice of bread
• a small bunch of parsley
• a handful of dried apricots
• a handful of pistachio kernels, unsalted
• 200g natural yoghurt
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Fry the baby courgettes in olive oil, first round-side down, then cut-side down, for 1-2 minutes (depending on thickness) each side, using a griddle (nice char marks) or frying-pan (more even cooking). When golden and seared, place in them in a baking dish, cut side up.

Meanwhile, prepare the cous-cous according to its packet instructions: I cover in boiling water in a 2:1 ratio, add a bit of butter and some vegetable stock powder, stir once then cover with a plate for 10 minutes. Finely chop the onion and gently fry in olive oil for 3-4 minutes. Whiz the bread and parsley in a blender to make breadcrumbs. Roughly chop the apricots and pistachios, then combine with the cooked cous-cous and breadcrumbs, and onions. Season well and scatter over the singed courgettes, cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes.

Combine the yoghurt, white wine vinegar and olive oil, and serve the courgettes with this dressing to spoon over. (We had a little prosciutto on the side for protein.)

One-layer Moussaka

Here's a yummy classic that I've been iterating for a few years, and now I finally feel like I know how to cook it quickly, easily, without using huge amounts of oil, and getting the flavours exactly right. I think back in the day I probably started with Delia's recipe and have been modifying since. My latest take is to make it in a shallow dish, since:

1. Everyone loves the crispy lovely bits where the cheese melts and the aubergine skin crisps and YUM... so making it shallow means everyone gets more topping!
2. The movers broke my deep lasagne dish and I haven't bought a new one yet.

I made enough for eight people, but here's a recipe for just four, i.e. a single dish. Serve with rice or potatoes, and some steamed vegetables, a Greek salad, or just some fluffy lettuce leaves.

Ingredients:

• 500g lamb mince, or diced lamb if you prefer
• 1 white onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 2 tsp fresh thyme (or 1 of dried)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 large or 3 medium aubergines (eggplants)
• 100g sharp cheddar or parmesan
• 1 slice of bread
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 350 ml milk
• two bay leaves

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Finely chop the onion and fry with the lamb in an oven-proof casserole dish over a moderate heat, adding a bare smear of oil to get the meat started. After five minutes, crush in the garlic, stir and cook for a further minute. Add the tomatoes, cinnamon and thyme, and a little hot water if the mixture looks dry. Cook for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, and adding water if necessary to stop it sticking. Taste and season if necessary.

Meanwhile, top the aubergines and cut them into 1cm-thick lengthwise slices. Using a silicone or pastry brush, coat lightly with olive oil and stack in a baking tray at an angle, so that each has air around it. Roast for 35-40 minutes, until tender but not falling apart.

Separate the eggs, putting the whites in a large bowl for whisking. Stir together the flour and oil in a pyrex jug, then add the egg yolks. Carefully add the milk, a little at a time, and stirring thoroughly between each addition. Drop in the bay leaves and microwave for four minutes, stopping every minute to stir thoroughly. Continue until thickened.

Whisk the whites (I use an electric whisk!) and combine gently with the cooled lamb mixture. To assemble the moussaka, put the cooked lamb sauce on the bottom of the shallow baking dish. Then add the aubergine slices, slotting them together and overlapping if necessary, then pour over the white sauce. Grate the cheese and whizz the bread into breadcrumbs, and sprinkle them over the top.

Toad in the Hole

Here's an English classic I never got around to making while I lived there. Maybe because I wasn't doing enough exercise to justify the amount of dairy and animal fats in this. Not that I am now, but oh well! It tasted exactly as awesome as I hoped it would - soft, collapsing Yorkshire pud and crisp-skinned perfectly-cooked sausage. My only mistake was buying a slightly spicy sausage - this is very much a comfortingly bland sort of dish, so stick to classic mild flavourings. The inspiring recipe is pretty much straight from taste.com.au, except that their recipe serves four, whereas our exactly identical recipe serves two. What can I say, we were hungry! Also, our only accompaniment was a scoop of boiled broad beans and peas, dressed with lemon juice - the original was probably served with potatoes roasted in goose fat, or something equally... winter-warming.


Ingredients:

• vegetable oil
• 500g thick beef or pork sausages
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 tablespoon rosemary leaves, chopped

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place sausages in a 5cm deep, 25cm x 35cm (base) roasting pan, or even better, a Le Creuset baking dish. Fork a few times, and add a very little oil, turning to coat. Roast for 10 minutes, or less if your sausages are small, or until lightly browned. Flip them over for the next stage.

Meanwhile, sift flour and salt into a bowl. Whisk the eggs, milk and rosemary together in a jug. Add gradually to the flour mixture, combining with a fork or whisk to remove the lumps. Don't worry if there are a few smallish lumps left - you don't want to overbeat the flour and strengthen the gluten. Carefully pour the batter over sausages. Bake for 35 minutes or until puffed up and golden.

Baked Tomatoes with Breadcrumbs

Voted one of the best 10 recipes ever published in the Observer Food Monthly, I have to admit it's quite a handy fallback - particularly when it's spring and the tomatoes are good, but it's still a bit chilly outside and you want something warming. Very easy, and goes with anything. This serves two.

Ingredients:

• Three large, ripe tomatoes
• 1 slice of bread
• one small clove of garlic
• 4 anchovy fillets
• 1 tsp thyme
• olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Slice the tomatoes in half widthwise, and place each half face-up in a small baking dish. Blend up the bread to make medium-coarse breadcrumbs. Crush in a clove of garlic, and snip in the anchovy fillets. Add the thyme and a good glug (about 3 tbsp) of olive oil. Toss the breadcrumbs thoroughly so the oil and flavourings are well-distributed. Top the tomatoes with the breadcrumbs and bake for 40 minutes, until the topping is golden-brown.

The Perfect Baked Potato

I've been baking potatoes like this for years now; I'm not even sure where the original idea came from. The Guardian recently ran a piece where they tried various different cooking methods and compared the results; my method is apparently the same as the BBC's, so maybe that's where I read it first. It is as follows:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C;
2. Wash the potato if needed, then dry thoroughly;
3. De-eye;
4. Prick all over: I use one of those little sweetcorn holders but a fork will do;
5. Put 1/2 tsp of table or flaked salt in the palm of your non-writing hand;
6. Pour 1tsp of vegetable oil on top of the salt;
7. Roll the potato round and around through the oil and salt, using the tips of your writing hand;
8. Open the oven door, pop it on the top shelf without a tray;
9. Wash hands and come back in 1hr 15 minutes, by which point the potato will be crisp on the outside and meltingly fluffy on the inside.

I know the instructions are patronising; who could possibly forget to prick or de-eye the potato before covering it in oil, or get both hands covered in oil and finding it rather messy to open the oven door...? Well - me for starters :) I've recorded my mistakes so you don't have to repeat them!

Tonight for a topping, I flaked a large mackerel fillet into a bowl, added 1 tbsp of capers, a dollop of mayonnaise, 2 tbsp of shredded parsley, the juice of 1/3rd of a lemon, and a good grating of black pepper. I love the contrast between the cool topping and the steaming-hot potato. The above method makes a delicious crispy skin and on particularly decadent occasions, I save this until last and top with grated cheddar, making it a two-course meal!