Dinner Party Club Moroccan Menu

Entrée: Kebab Koutbane
This was a delicious dish – a traditional Moroccan entrée, with marinaded beef and beef suet cubes, seared on the barbeque.  The flavour was fantastic! 

Main: Chicken Tagine with Figs and Almonds

A lovely tagine, full of rich flavours and tender chicken legs.  Our consensus was that we couldn’t really taste the saffron in it – is the saffron worth it in such a richly flavoured dish?

Side: Couscous with Orange, Almonds and Cinnamon

A fresh tasting couscous, made with orange juice, that provided a lovely contrast to the richness of the tagine.

Salad: Roasted Capsicum with Feta, Capers and Preserved Lemon

This was a revelation!  The combination of sweet, salty and sour was so fresh alongside the tagine.

Bread: Khobz dyal Zraa

The bread had the typical denseness of Moroccan bread – fantastic for mopping up the tagine.

Dessert: Briwat Bi Loz (Brides’ Fingers)

Lovely mouthfuls of sweet nutty flavour, with each ingredient identifiable, yet providing a harmonious finale.  Buffalo yoghurt with vanilla paste was the perfect accompaniment.

The verdict

This was one of the most successful dinner parties we’ve had.  Every dish was great, the combinations worked well and we all ended the evening wanting to try the dishes again.

A Moroccan dessert

The theme for our dinner party club this month was Moroccan.  I duly perused my recipe books and the interweb for inspiration – the hosts were promising a tagine, which left a starter, accompaniments or dessert to choose.  After considerable deliberation I made my decision and sent my email:

We will provide Khobz dyal Zraa (bread) and couscous/veges to support the tagine. Was tempted by "brides’ fingers" for dessert, but the bread won!

Only to discover that we’d been beaten to the accompaniments.  So I had to revert to “brides’ fingers”.  I turned to Claudia Roden (Arabesque) for the recipe, and the recipe below is from her, with minor adaptations.  These are like a version of baklava in small packages – only I’d never used filo and definitely had no orange blossom water in my possession.  A trip to Moore Wilson's – Wellington’s foodie store that stocks genuine orange blossom water, along with almost everything else one might need – was scheduled.

Briwat Bi Loz (Brides’ Fingers)

Makes 32

1 cup runny honey – I used a mild flavoured honey

100 ml water
75 g unsalted butter
1 ½ cups nuts – almonds or pistachios
½ cup castor sugar
2 tablespoons orange blossom water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Filo pastry – I used 8 sheets of 40cm x 30cm filo, each sheet cut into four 10cm x 30cm strips.

First, get your filo ready according to the packet instructions – if fresh, it will need around 2 hours at room temperature before using.

Prepare the honey syrup by combining the honey and water and bringing to the boil.  Simmer for 1 minute.  Melt the butter.  Turn the oven on to 150 C.

I wanted to try both pistachio and almond versions, so I split the recipe in two – this was very easy.  Whizz the nuts in the food processor until they are a mixed consistency.  I wanted a noticeable texture in the finished product, so I didn’t whizz to a uniform powder.

Mix together the nuts, castor sugar, cinnamon and orange blossom water.  It should be a crumbly mixture that almost clumps together.

Cut the filo strips into rectangles that are 10cm wide by 30cm long, and stack into one pile.  Working fairly quickly, brush the top filo strip with melted butter, place a tablespoon of the nut mixture about 2-3cm above the end closest to you. 

Fold the bottom end of the filo over the nuts, and fold the long edges in by about 1cm, sealing the nuts in filo, then roll the package up the length of the filo. 

Place on a baking tray, seam down and cover with a damp tea towel while you do the rest.

It can be a bit fiddly to seal the nuts in, but the filo is fairly forgiving – the melted butter ensures that everything sticks together.  You could split the pile of filo in two and keep one pile under a damp tea towel to ensure that it doesn’t dry out – by the last 10 of my packages the edges of the filo had started to dry out and were prone to tearing as I separated them.

Once all the nut mixture has been used up, brush a little melted butter over the top of all the packages and pop into the oven at 150 C for 30 minutes.  They should be a pale golden colour when they are cooked – and the nut mixture will have caramelised into a delicious, aromatic and slightly chewy consistency.

Cool for 5 minutes, then dip each package in the syrup and place onto a serving platter.

Reheat in a warm oven for 10 minutes before serving, with more honey syrup poured over. 

We served accompanied with whipped cream and Clevedon Valley Buffalo yoghurt, both with Heilala Vanilla Paste added.  The yoghurt mix won the popular vote.  This is definitely a Dinner Party Club recipe that I will be making again – although I may make them in a bigger size to speed up the preparation a bit.

The Pegasus Bay Aria wine was a perfect match.

The dinner party club

The dinner party club was inspired by our good friends, the Urban Gardeners, who rallied together five couples and instructed us on a theme (Italian) for which we were to each provide one course.  Like a bookclub for couples, with delicious food and matching wines thrown in.

From Italian, we’ve covered Perfection in Small Parcels, Hunting and Gathering, Kiwi Cuisine, Mid-Winter Christmas, Recipes from Your Oldest Cookbook, Bon Appetite: Inspiration from Julia Child, Around the World, and Spanish, to name a few.  Creating a theme is part of the fun – as is responding with your chosen dish.

Over the years, we’ve found that the host selecting a theme, participants nominating courses/dishes and everyone providing wine, is a recipe for a successful evening.  However, it has also motivated us all to return to our shelves of cookbooks, try recipes that we’ve always wondered about, and explore cuisines that we haven’t ventured into before.

An unintended benefit has been that is requires significantly less effort than the dinner party hosted (prepared and cooked) by one couple – although we all have to be comfortable sharing our kitchens (and the resulting kitchen chaos).

The next theme is Morrocan – we will be making Briwat Bi Loz (Brides’ Fingers) for dessert [recipe here].  The wine we have selected to match the dessert is the Pegasus Bay 2008 Aria (late picked riesling).  The "luscious honey and beeswax complexities" and the "touch of spritzig" should nicely match the combination of nuts, cinnamon, orange blossom and honey in the dessert.

A wintery beef casserole

According to Miss Nine and Miss Seven, “stew” is disgusting and “casserole” is ok.  They usually ask me what sort of “chicken” is in the casserole to check whether it will be edible.  I’ve taken to calling everything with a sauce “stew” in an effort to overcome this weird food-word-phobia.

My current favourite stewing beef is cross cut blade steak – it’s cheap, it has lovely gelatinous connective tissues and it seems immune to drying out.  I’ve found it difficult to make a bad stew with cross cut blade steak.

I’ve tried a few different approaches to casseroles in the crockpot/slow cooker.  After some experimentation, I’m firmly in the browning first camp.  There is something about the process of tossing beef in seasoned flour and browning in small batches that creates colour, texture, and (more importantly) flavour that doesn’t just appear.  Throwing all the ingredients in the crockpot is fine when there is no time (I’ve done it plenty of times), but if there’s a spare 30 minutes, take the browning first option!

Family Beef Casserole Recipe

Makes enough for a family of four, and some leftovers.

400-500 g cross cut blade steak, diced into about 1 inch cubes

Seasoned flour – depending on the tastes of your diners, you could add 1 tbsp of spicy paprika or some chilli, or just salt and pepper, to about ½ C of plain flour
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, finely chopped (really, really finely chopped)
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped (ditto)
½ cup red wine
1 ½ cups beef stock
1 tin tomato passata (chopped and sieved tomatoes)
Herbs to taste (I usually use fresh thyme and marjoram, and a dried bay leaf)
1 tbsp red currant jelly
Salt & pepper

Toss the steak in the seasoned flour.  Brown, in batches, in a hot frypan, with a little oil.  The batches are important – you don’t want the cubes to be touching each other.  Too much meat in the pan at once, and the pan cools down, the meat sweats rather than browns, and you might as well not bother.  Fry until lightly browned and then transfer to your casserole dish or crockpot/slow cooker.  Add more oil between batches, so that the meat doesn’t burn or stick. 

Using the same pan, add some more oil, and gently fry the onions until they are soft and then add the carrot and celery.  I like the veges in my casserole to gently disappear into the gravy as they cook, so I chop them really, really small.  If I want to add visible veges I do so just before serving, so that they still have their shape and colour.

Add about ½ cup of red wine (or more, or less, or white wine) and bring to the boil.  Boil for about a minute and then add the beef stock and bring back to the boil.  Pour (carefully, it’s hot!) into the casserole dish, along with the tinned tomato, herbs, red currant jelly, salt and pepper.  I always use fruit jellies or pastes as secret ingredients to sweeten casseroles – quince or plum would also be fine.

Stir everything together.  Cook for 1 1/2 -2 hours at 160 C in the oven, or 6 hours in the crockpot/slow cooker.  The meat should be lovely and tender.  Taste the gravy and add your choice or combination of salt, pepper, some more red currant jelly, a dash of sweet chilli sauce, a squeeze of lemon – or whatever the gravy needs to taste great for you.

If you think the gravy is too runny, you have several options.  You could just put some bread on the table to swipe the plates clean with.  Alternatively, you could add 1 tbsp of cornflour dissolved in ¼ C of water, stir through and bring to the boil/cook until it has thickened up (if you don’t cook it properly, it will taste floury).  Or, if you had nothing better to do, you could scoop the meat out to a serving dish, sieve or mouli the gravy into a saucepan, add a splash of red wine and reduce it down to your desired consistency and pour over the meat.  Up to you.

Sorry, forgot to take a photo of the finished product.  It tasted great though!

The smell of home-made bread

There is something wonderful about the smell of bread baking.  For me, it brings back memories of winter on the farm, when we’d arrive in from working in the rain (or snow) to a kitchen fogged up with steam from a massive pot of soup and freshly made baps.  Over time, my parents progressed to a bread-maker, and still make all their own bread.  I love waking up to the smell of fresh bread whenever we stay with them.

I haven’t made bread for years, but I’m motivated by the knowledge that we’re planning a sailing holiday and we might have to make our own bread, so I’d better find a recipe that’s foolproof.  I opened up a selection of books, my old recipe folder and the wonders of the world wide web of recipes.  This is what I came up with:

Easy Bread Recipe

Makes 2 small loaves or 1 large loaf

5 cups white flour (but could easily be a mix of wholemeal or other grains)

2 tsp salt
425ml tepid water
1 tbsp granular yeast
1 tbsp honey

The water should be just on the warm side of tepid (tepid being the exact temperature at which you can’t feel the water when you put your finger into it).  Too cold, and the yeast won’t start doing its magic, too hot and the yeast is dead.  Dissolve the honey in the water, and add the yeast.  Leave for about 5 minutes – the yeast will start to froth.

In a large bowl (preferably crockery or glass rather than metal), combine the flour and salt* and add the water/yeast/honey.   Stir together and then use your hands to combine the last of the flour.  Depending on the day and the flour and how well you measured the water, it may combine perfectly or be too dry or too sticky – just add a small amount of flour or water to get it to combine so that you can tip it onto your floured bench in one blob.

Before you start kneading, rinse out your bowl and fill it to the brim with hot water – this will ensure that you have a lovely warm bowl to start the rising process.

Now knead away for around 8-10 minutes.  For the first few minutes, you may need to add more flour (or water) to reach a smooth consistency.  My kneading involves grabbing the far edge, pulling it towards me, folding it over the near edge and pushing down and away and then turning the dough a ¼ turn and repeating… After about five minutes I get the girls to have a turn.  When it’s ready, it should be smooth, not sticky, and have bubbles developing as you go.

Miss Seven's kneading:

Miss Nine's kneading:

Dry the bowl and brush with oil.  Take your dough, place it in the bowl and then turn it over, so that it is coated in oil.  This stops the dough from drying out or sticking too much to the bowl. 

Cover with cling film and a tea towel and place in a warm spot to rise until it has doubled in size (around 1 ½ to 2 hours). 

Knock the dough down with your hands, and gather into a ball and back onto the bench – you shouldn’t need any flour at this stage.  Knead for a couple of minutes.  Now you’re ready to form into shapes for cooking.

I wanted some that would pull apart for buttering and dipping into soup and some for slicing.  So a plait and a loaf were created, and popped into oiled dishes. 

Now’s when you need to remember to turn the oven on to about 220 C.  A light dusting of flour, then cover with a clean tea towel and leave in that warm place for another 30 minutes.  Then into the oven for 30 minutes.  In my oven, I put them one rack below middle (on bake and not fan bake), and turn them down to 180 C after 20 minutes (they were nicely golden by then).  After 30 minutes, take them out of the oven, turn them out of the pans and tap the bottom to check that they’re cooked (they should sound nicely hollow).  If you like crispy crust, pop them back in the oven, upside-down in the pans, to crust up.  If, like me, you prefer a softer crust, turn them onto a rack and cover with a tea towel.

I lasted about 5 minutes before I was ripping into the plait.  Delicious.

*Bread needs salt for flavour, but if you put salt and yeast in together, the salt will kill the yeast.  As long as the salt is stirred through the flour, your yeast will be safe.

Roasting a leg

If you ask me to cook for a family in winter, my first option is to head for the roasting trays – roast chicken, lamb, beef or pork – all easy to get right, and usually there’s something for everyone’s tastes.  And if not, there’s always delicious, crunchy, caramelised roast winter veges.  Hungry yet? 

A few years ago, I read somewhere about the delicious alchemy that occurs when anchovies get involved with roast lamb.  I wasn’t really sure if I liked anchovies and nor was I convinced that they should be encouraged to get into the same roasting dish with a leg of lamb.  However, curiosity got the better of me.  And I was really glad it did – now I know that anchovies and lamb are meant to be together, and I have added anchovies to my list of secret ingredients that can help to make food taste great. 

This recipe is one where I prefer to use a mortar and pestle to smash the garlic to a pulp and really pound together the ingredients for covering the lamb.  You could do it in a food processor with a small bowl, or get active with a sharp knife and dice the ingredients together til they form a pulp. 

Roast Leg of Lamb with Anchovies

To feed 6 hungry people

One full leg of lamb

6 cloves of garlic, peeled

6-8 anchovies, and some of the oil they came in

Around 1tbsp of lemon juice

8 sprigs thyme

Salt and pepper

1 onion, finely chopped

½ lemon, sliced

1 tbsp red current jelly 

Turn the oven on to 200 C. 

Pound the garlic, thyme, freshly ground pepper and some sea salt together until you have a fragrant paste, add the anchovies and pound until they are unrecognisable.  Moisten with some of the anchovy oil and then thin with some lemon juice, so that it has a spreadable consistency (you don’t want it so runny that it slides off). 

Place the chopped onion in a heap in the roasting dish, along with the sliced lemon and red current jelly, and nestle the lamb leg on top.  Use a sharp knife to poke small slits through the surface of the lamb, and then massage the garlic, thyme and anchovy paste over the surface of the lamb.  An alternative option is to poke deep slits in and fill each slit with the paste, but I like the flavour all over the surface of the lamb (if you love the taste, you could always do both!). 

Place the roasting dish in the middle of the oven.  After 10 minutes, turn it down to 180 C and add about 1 cup of water to the dish.  Cook for a total of 90-180 minutes, until medium rare (actual cooking time will vary according to the size of the leg).  I like to keep adding a bit of liquid in the base of the pan, to assist with making gravy later. 

Once cooked, and this is utterly essential, REST the lamb.  Resting allows the meat to relax and become fully tender after all that brutal oven heat.  I take it out of the roasting dish and onto a platter, loosely cover with tinfoil and a towel, and leave it for 20 minutes while I finish off the veges, make gravy (if I’m so inclined), and do the last minute kitchen jobs (like making sure my wine glass is filled up).  Lastly, when carving the lamb, cut each slice AT RIGHT ANGLES TO THE BONE – this has two benefits.  Firstly, you carve across the grain of the meat (which mainly runs parallel to the bone), which means that each slice is easier to cut up with your dinner knife.  Secondly, and most importantly, every slice has the delicious, yet almost indefinable, taste of the crust.

What a cooking frenzy looks like

In our house, the trigger for a cooking frenzy is usually the opportunity to cook for friends… but as I start thinking about what I might cook, other random ideas jump into my head.  So a couple of weekends ago, we had Mr Hunter-Fisherman and his son Mr Fiveandahalf coming for dinner (Mrs H-F and daughter were away).  A Sunday night roast was the plan.

Sunday morning was sunny, cold and relatively wind-free (in Wellington this is anything less than a screaming gale).  Bread, I thought, I need to make bread.  This is not an entirely random thought, as we’re planning a sailing holiday, and the logistics may include the need to make our own bread.  So the bread making was underway [recipe here].  While the bread was having its first rise, I took Miss Nine and Miss Seven for a quick jaunt up Mt Kaukau to stretch our legs and build up an appetite.

As they say, you can't beat Wellington on a good day...

Back home and the bread knocked back into shape and rising happily and the fridge revealed some crosscut blade steak which needed cooking.  Man Of The House (MOTH) and daughters were provided with some lunch.  One casserole underway [recipe here]. Pause for lunch and some fresh bread at 2.30pm (yes, a bit late, but that’s what happens in cooking frenzies).

The roast.  A lovely leg of lamb was on special, so roast lamb it is.  I introduce the lamb to its friends, garlic, thyme and anchovies [recipe here].  The MOTH prepares vegetables.  Dinner is cooked, wine poured, gravy made, we have a lovely evening and there is very little lamb left.  The MOTH cleans up a tower of roasting pans and the day is over.

A signature dish

You know you have a signature dish, when people track you down from the furthest reaches of the globe when they need a special recipe.  Here's what popped up on my facebook page a couple of weeks ago:

“Foodthattastesgreat”, be a darling and please pass on the finer details of your delicious apple crumble. Having a dinner party tomorrow, gonna be cold and wet so plan open fire, red wine, slow roasted pork belly with crackling followed by your apple crumble with icecream.  

Thanks 

Ben [Old friend and flatmate]

I love to share recipes, so it was no problem to oblige, and the recipe made its way from Wellington, New Zealand to Cape Town, South Africa though the wonders of the interweb.  I understand that there were no leftovers.

Apple crumble

The crumble mixture is enough for 2 crumbles.  8 apples will feed 4-6 people.  This recipe can expand/contract to feed a few or feed an army!

1 cup soft brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

1 cup self raising flour

125g butter

8 apples (plus anything else you like with them – rhubarb, berries, etc)

Whizz all ingredients except the apples together until they look like fine crumbs.

Peel, core and slice the apples, cook with enough water to cover bottom of saucepan and a good sprinkling of sugar. Put apples in baking dish (add blackberries etc if desired).

You can do all this the day before, or well before the guests arrive. The trick is to then heat the apples through in a 180 C oven for 10mins or so, then add a thick layer of crumble, and cook for another 10-20 mins, but keep an eye on it so the top doesn't burn.  The crumble will caramelise and is almost biscuit-like.

All that's left to do now, is add some ice-cream, cream or custard, and it's ready to eat.

Leftover crumble mixture freezes well – so pop it into a bag, and it’s ready to provide instant fruit crumble when you need it.

Starting out

I’ve never written a blog before.  A very good friend, who knows more than me about writing things down, told me just to get on with it, so here I am.  I’m going to be writing about my kind of cooking – cooking that’s fun to do, that can be done with friends, sometimes easy and sometimes more challenging.  Along the way, I’ll talk about tasting food, my secret ingredients, and how I learnt to do more than simply follow a recipe.  Bon appétit!