Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Okay, it’s Friday night and I’m getting ready to go out (again) so just a really quick post on a very light lunch from last week.

I went to the market and found a bunch of really nice looking baby silver beet, so I grabbed a bunch. I figured since I had the really good Pure Bread Bakery onion and cheese sourdough bread (i.e. a really good crusty bread), it didn’t really need much.

I used:

1. 1 bunch of baby silverbeet
2. 4 slices of crusty sourdough bread, toasted (I recommend best crusty bread you can get)
3. 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
4. 2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
5. 1 tsp of salt

Carefully wash the silverbeet and remove the tough parts of the stalk. You can either chop the silverbeet into smaller pieces or slice the stalks lengthwise so that they cook faster.

Bring a pot of water to boil, salt it and blanch the silver beets for 3 minutes (I used baby silver beets so yours may need more coaxing).

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a frying pan until warm and add the garlic. Fry the garlic gently on low heat until soft. Try not to let the garlic colour. Drain and squeeze out any excess water from your silver beets and add to the pan. Sautee gently for two more minutes or until the silver beets are soft. Serve on top on the crostini.

Just to prove to you how seriously behind in my blog posting I am, I would like to draw your attention to my Mother’s Day Roast Lamb post. Now you might also recall that Mother’s Day is actually in May here in Australia. Just before, I bought a whole leg of lamb (because the butcher wouldn’t sell me half) so I had the other half chucked into the freezer.

Less than a month later, I roasted the other half and turned it into this very blog post. Yay.

I got this idea from Tessa Kiros’ first book Falling Cloudberries, which is one of my favourite food books of all time. She had the idea to slow roast the lamb with lots and lots of lemon and oregano with potatoes and it sounded delicious so I gave it a go and it was a bit of a hit. Even the Kiwi visitors thought it was all right!

Lemon and Oregano Lamb:

1. Half a leg of leg
2. 1 tbsp of dried oregano
3. 2 lemons
4. 50 g. of butter
5. Salt and pepper to taste
6. Drizzles of olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220′c Stab the leg of lamb with a little knife. Season with plenty of salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Drizzle over some olive oil and massage the lamb with a bit of love. Sprinkle the oregano and squeeze the lemon juice all over the leg. Cut up the butter into little cubes and dot it on the lamb.

Place the lamb on a baking tray and pour a bit of water at the bottom of the making tray (about 1 cm). Bake for about 2.5 hours. Turn the heat down to 180′c after 15 minutes. Keep topping up water if necessary.

Garlic and Yoghurt Sauce

1. 1 cup of Greek style yoghurt
2. 1 small clove of garlic, crushed
3. generous pinch of salt
4. a drizzle of olive oil

Combine the garlic, yoghurt and salt togther. Drizzle with olive oil.

(Josh’s wrap, see how he lines everything up? Aww bless his cotton socks)

Salad

1. Cos lettuce (or any crunch lettuce)
2. Spanish onion
3. Cucumber
4. Flat-leaf parsley (important, don’t skip)
5. Tomato

To serve, warm up some pita bread in the oven (wrap in foil and then place in the oven with the lamb at the end for about 10 minutes). Place some salad and lamb on the pita bread and drizzle with garlic & yoghurt sauce. Dig in.

Not really here to tell you guys how to make toasted sarnie, mind. This is one of my ‘I’m too lazy to make anything proper’ lunch.

Bread is the corn sourdough from Pure Bread Bakery in Surrey Hills, which is really, really good.

Josh did up the chicken burger with the lot for dinner last night. I wasn’t really hungry because I ate half a can of pineapple-stuffed rambutans in syrup right before dinner. But it was really rather good that I actually ate a whole burger (which was BIG), went to bed and woke up in the morning still very full.

What you’ll need for a successful burger with lot, Joshua’s style:

1. 1/2 chicken breast (halved lengthwise), pan-fried until nice and browned
2. toasted burger bun (focaccia/turkish bread roll are much better though)
3. 1 big slice of Colby cheese
4. 2 thick slices of tomatoes
5. 2 tbsp sautéed mushrooms
6. 1 slice of canned pineapple
7. 2-3 slices of canned beetroots
8. Mixed leaf salad – rocket, various lettuce, rocket, raddichio
9. (optional) Pan-fried bacon slice
10. (optional) Fried egg

To me, the important things are the beetroot, pineapple, cheese and tomato. That’s it. Anything else is negotiable.

Because I’m a gravy girl and we have leftover gravy from the roast, I made mushroom gravy:

This is my burger (with gravy and braised bacon cabbage):

That was wayyyy too much food. I seriously still feel full after waking up in the morning.

Caution: Extremely messy to eat. Definitely not first date food.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned that I’m on a low protein diet due to a health condition so there’s not a lot of meat in my cooking.

Last time I talked about the char-grilled veggies which could be used in infinite number of dishes such as salads, pasta, sandwiches etc. I’m showing you my favourite toasted sandwich recipe.

We start with a loaf of foccacia or Turkish bread (or a part of a loaf if you have a big loaf!) and slice it in two halves. Spread a layer of coriander pesto I bought at a nice deli in Tanglin Mall. I’m sure it’s imported from Australia because it tastes just like the coriander pesto I used to buy in Melbourne. I’m not a big fan of jarred pesto from the supermarket. Pesto is basically an Italian creation – it’s a paste made from mashed Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan and olive oil. I’ve seen people getting creative and made pesto from rocket leaves, red capsicum but I can’t be sure if you’re allowed to call them pesto. I suppose the same way I wonder whether a pesto made from coriander leaves (also known as cilantro) is supposed to be called pesto. But I digress. Let’s just suffice to say that this variety of coriander pesto is my favourite.

So top the pesto-ed bread slice with layers of the grilled veggies – 2-3 slices of grilled capsicum, zucchini and egpplant each and scatter around the grilled mushrooms and semi-dried tomatoes (also bought from the same deli – another suspect ingredient of being an Australian thing but I can’t be sure). On the other slice, scatter some rocket leaves and shaved parmesan (the reason I use parmesan is because I don’t have anything else but the ideal choice of cheese would be ricotta but that’s a personal preference) and squish the two sides together and toast them in a hot toaster oven for about two minutes (this depends how hot your toaster oven is). If you have a sandwich presser, that will be so much better. If you just have a toaster, then just toast your bread first lah!

Serve with a side mixed salad and suddenly you have a cafe quality gourmet sandwich, dahhling!

Told you them grilled veggies are nice and easy and impressive.