A cheeky little number

This blog comes to you courtesy of the tectonic plates that pass beneath Cook Strait, between the North and South Islands of New Zealand.  They’ve been releasing a bit of friction via earthquakes, or “shakes”, as we refer to them, in an attempt to minimise their potential for ripping apart lives and buildings.  The 6.5 magnitude shake yesterday means that we can’t return to work until buildings have been checked and cleared.  Happily, the damage appears to be largely cosmetic, so we have not needed to spend the day cleaning up, but can approach the “to do” list…

A couple of weeks’ ago, I went to the friendly neighbourhood butcher, intending to buy some oxtail.  We were heading to Tora on the Wairarapa Coast with a couple of other families, and Friday night dinner was our responsibility.  But, there was only one oxtail available – not nearly enough for the hungry crew – so I found myself at home with beef cheeks.

Now if you find yourself in possession of beef cheeks, you’ll see immediately that they are layered with the toughest, most fibrous, white connective tissues you have ever seen.  Ignore these.  Really.  Just pretend you never saw them.  But remember that you’ll be cooking them for around 5 hours, so plan ahead!

Beef cheeks braised in red wine

Makes enough to feed 6-8

2kg beef cheeks, chopped in large chunks – depending on how they arrive, this may be in half or in quarters, but no smaller than the palm of your hand

Marinade

6-8 cloves garlic
2 tbsp juniper berries
Sea salt
Pepper
Fresh bay leaves (4-5)
Fresh rosemary, leaves stripped from the stalks
Olive oil
Red wine
Rind of 2 oranges, peeled with no white pith

In a mortar and pestle, pound together the garlic, juniper berries, salt and pepper.  Add the bay leaves and rosemary and give them a few thumps to bruise them and release their aroma.  Add about ½ cup of red wine, the juice of one of the oranges and a few good glugs of olive oil (¼  cup?).  Add the beef cheeks and leave to marinade for a day or two in the fridge.

For cooking

Olive oil
2 large onions, finely chopped
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
2 large carrots, finely chopped
A bottle of red wine (you may not need all of it!)
1 litre beef stock
Juice of 1-2 oranges
Redcurrent/quince jelly
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 150 C.

Drain the beef (keeping the marinade, herbs and peel).  Brown in batches in oil and transfer to a large casserole dish.  Deglaze the pan with about ½ a bottle of red wine, scraping up any browned pieces of beef and bubble vigorously for 5 minutes.  Pour over the beef.

In a clean pan, add more olive oil and soften the onion.  Add the carrots and celery and gently cook until softened, then add about 2 C of beef stock, the orange juice, the reserved marinade and 2 tbsp of fruit jelly.  Pour over the beef.  Pop into the oven and cook for 3 hours (this is not the total cooking time, but you can safely ignore them for 3 hours).

At this stage, you can take them out and freeze them, or leave them in the fridge if you are preparing them a few days in advance.  If you do this, let them come up to room temperature, then cook in the oven for 30 mins, until they are nicely warmed.

Check the beef cheeks, give them a good stir and add more wine and stock, in roughly equal quantities, so that the juices just cover the beef.  The beef will still be quite tough at this stage.  Cook for another hour, then check again, taste the juices and adjust for seasonings.  Add more stock and/or wine if necessary.  After another hour check again – when ready, the beef will be meltingly tender – it will sit happily while vegetables are prepared.

I have to confess that I completely forgot to photograph the finished product, these photos are of my mother's version of beef cheeks provided midway through the series of shakes that we've been having - slightly different recipe, but just as melt-in-the-mouth good!

 

Tax avoidance

So this is what tax avoidance looks like in our house…

Just so that the Inland Revenue Department doesn’t have cause for concern, this is only avoidance of the task of actually doing the tax return, not avoiding the tax in a criminal kind of a way!

Actually, this post could also be titled “Antiquing” because that’s what happened on Friday – Mrs Urban Gardener and I took to the road and headed to some of those small towns with junk shops that have a whole lot of junk and a small supply of treasure.  A previous trip ended up with a coach horn being one of my finds… seen here with a couple of other acquisitions. 

The coach horn is perfect for calling the children home when they are rampaging through the neighbourhood (they will probably grow to hate this).

But, I digress.  On Friday, I found the perfect gem iron.

For those of you who haven’t met a gem iron, the perfect gem iron is a heavy cast iron mould for making ginger gems in.  Ginger gems seem to be a particularly New Zealand treat… so I lined up a selection of recipes and made several batches (while avoiding doing the filing that needs to be completed before I can get started on the aforementioned tax).  Consumer opinion agreed that Ellen’s Gems won – Ellen was the female half of the married couple who worked on my parents’ farm when I was growing up, so here is her recipe.

Ellen’s Ginger Gems

Makes about 12 (the number of gems in a gem iron)

1 C flour

1 tsp ginger
½ tsp mixed spice
20g butter
½ C golden syrup
¼ C sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp baking soda
½ C milk
Crystallised ginger, finely sliced (optional)

Heat the oven to 200 C and put the gem iron in to heat up (this is essential).

Sift together the flour, ginger and mixed spice.  Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.  Melt together the butter and golden syrup and add the sugar.

Pour the syrup mix into the dry ingredients, give a stir, add the lightly beaten egg, give another stir, and add the milk.  Mix to combine (it may be a little lumpy).

Grease the hot gem iron with butter (I use a pastry brush for this), and fill the gem irons to around 2/3 full (the mix will start to caramelise around the edges).  You can gently place some finely sliced crystallised ginger on top for extra ginger-ness.  Then into the oven for 10 minutes.  Turn out and eat while still warm.  Then do your tax.

Delicious delicious onions

How on earth did we end up nearly at the end of May??!  The combination of my first ever half marathon (yes, completed and all in one piece, happy with my time too, thankyouverymuch), my first embroidery project and a rather massive deadline in the day job have all conspired against leisurely time at the keyboard.  I have been cooking though – it has just been the everyday food that the family loves rather than experiments in great food for the blog.

BUT… I did chance upon the secret that I never knew for creating genuinely magnificently delicious onions.  I’m not sure where (misplaced my brain as well as those early weeks in May and all of April), but I’m sure it’s not copyrighted – it’s so damn simple – and I never knew it!

I’ve always caramelised onions with a mix of salt and sugar added, and some wine and much tending to avoid catching and burning (and probably cooking far too fast).  This is infinitely better, but does require a large, heavy bottomed saucepan and a little bit of forward planning.

Caramelised onion

Serves however many you need it for – if you are making Pissaladière, you’d aim for 6-8 onions for 8 people, if you are adding it to a pie of other ingredients or having as part of pick’n’mix pasta, then 1-3 onions might do you

Onions – red or white

For each onion*:

• 1 tbsp olive oil (but if you’ve got more than 3, I’d cut it back to ½ tbsp. each, and if you’ve got more than 8, just make sure the base of the pan is well covered… it’s not a science!)
• 1 tbsp hot water
• Salt

*So 3 onions would require 3 tbsp olive oil and 3 tbsp hot water, etc.

Heat the oil, add the onion, a good pinch or two of salt and the water.  The salt seems to be necessary for really bringing out the sweetness of the onions. Cover with a tight fitting lid and turn to the lowest setting.  Cook for an hour, stir occasionally to check they are not catching and that everything is cooking nicely (especially if you’re doing lots).  If all the water has disappeared, add some more – just remember that you’ll want to keep cooking the onions until they are meltingly soft, sweet and delicious, and all the liquid has disappeared.

Taste them and adjust for your final recipe… a dash of sherry vinegar if you want some sharpness, some seedy mustard to go on a platter with hard cheeses and gherkins, some fish stock and capers to go with fish…

Seriously delicious.  Definitely food that tastes great!