Shuttle Chef Chorizo and Potato soup.

We bought ourselves a Thermos Shuttle Chef.
Slow cooking done fast and slow...... no burning on the bottom, no fuss, bugger all power used. To cook in your thermal cooker you initally bring your stew/soup/sauce etc to the boil, ensure ALL ingredients have the heat right through (normally around 20-30 minutes) turn it off, put it into the shuttle chef and leave it alone for around 8 hours!

We made this soup recipe up after looking at what ingredients we had in the fridge that we knew would taste good combined. It is a thick and delightfully comforting feed.  It took 20 minutes to prepare, 30 minutes on the stove, then at 8:00am we put it away in the thermal cooker for dinner that night. Brought the heat back up and served with crusty bread.

Back on track (I think) Ribs.

BEEF RIBS .......

I am well aware that my profile states "Quick and easy" and I can tell you BEEF RIBS are not quick, but they are worth every minute of the time it takes to cook.

Pork Ribs are the quickest of the two and I have published the recipe for those. Now the Beef Ribs.


Ingredients
Beef Ribs and your favourite BBQ rib sauce and TIME!!!!!
When you go to the Butchers for your Beef Ribs try and get a rack trimmed right down to the the fatty membrane. There is enough fat in the meat to render without too much on top as well. This piece was beautiful


With the beef ribs there are a number of ways to reduce the cooking time. For me, when it comes to beef, no shortcuts !!! take the time.

I place them on a rack in the BBQ at 250*C for 10 minutes. Indirect heat, meaning not directly over the flame. I like to have a light alfoil tray under it to stop flame charring just in case. This seals the juices in and gets the heat you need into the meat.
Temperature down to 100*C -120*C and baste the ribs with your sauce. Make sure you have lots of it.
Every hour for the next 6 hours, open the lid and baste the cut with more of your sauce turning the meat as you do.
The meat will pull away from the bone and become tender . Once again finish on a high heat over direct flame to caramalise that sauce and get a little char on it.

It is a slow roasting process that suits this cut of meat perfectly.


All you need is time and lots of patience and your favourite BBQ Rib Sauce.

Delicious and tender 

Ribs !!!!

Ribs, much loved but always too hard to cook? Not so !

Best thing I can tell you is "Be prepared to take the TIME !"  Ribs are similar to all tough cuts, take the time and reap the rewards.

Pork Ribs first

I have tried home made rubs and have tried the special secret sauces on the web. I haven't tried a bad one to be honest but if you are looking for a guaranteed result from your first attempt, there are a lot of sauces and marinades out there on supermarket shelves that do a great job and you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Preparation, trim where possible remove the membrane from the back of the rib

Pork ribs need around 3-4 hours but can be rushed without too much danger. But lets not do that. Remember, when you get the pork ribs cooked through, you must finish off and caramalise that sauce and char those ribs up to make sure they look and taste  BBQ'd.

Dont skimp on your sauce. ! there I said it !! When the ribs arrive on the table lightly charred and sauce caramalised dripping from every bite, you will remember I said that.

So here we go.

1.  the first thing we do is get a double thickness of alfoil down and place the rack of pork ribs, bone side down. You need to wrap the ribs with these sheets of alfoil so give yourself some extra.
2. lather the ribs up with your selected sauce
3. Form a boat with  alfoil and add a 1/4 cup of Coke in the bottom, seal the boat up to make a package. (This will steam through and give a sweet addition to your sauce as well)
4. Place the package on the BBQ off the flame. (use indirect heat to start with, don't place them directly over the flame) Most BBQ's have a temp gauge so get the heat in the BBQ up to about 250*C  5. Cook off the flame for about 15 minutes to get the coke steaming and reduce the heat to about 100*C to 120*C.
6. Leave them to steam untouched for about 2.5 hours.
--------------------
7. After the time has ticked away, unpack the ribs (this gets a little messy) and put them on a rack that you can move around in your BBQ. Off the direct heat still, lather those ribs with your sauce and put them back in for another hour. Turning them each 20 minutes and basting them with more of your sticky rib sauce.
8. To tell when your ribs are ready, 2 things happen. The meat pulls away from the end of the bone slightly and a fork goes easily into the meat between the ribs.
9. When you are happy that they are tender enough and the punters are salivating, wick your BBQ up to 250*C again and when the grill is sizzling hot. one more baste with the sauce and place the ribs directly on the Grill over the flames. Give the sauce a little time to caramalise and char a little turn them once, take them off the Grill and serve.
-------------------

A bit of mucking around but worth every minute.

Ready for devouring. Always a hit.

Easy Damper

Smokeys recipe.

So easy ....

3 cups SR flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
White of an egg
375ml beer. (I used VB that Josh left in the fridge over Xmas. It's the only way I can get rid of it) 

Mix well with a wooden spoon. DO NOT KNEAD.  When mixed pour into a greased and floured loaf tin. Bake in a FF oven at 180* for 45 minutes.

Test with a skewer. If it comes out clean right to go. Leave it in longer if needed. 

Christmas lunch

Okay, before we start preparing Christmas lunch,  a Morris tradition........  a nip of Irish Whiskey before anything is done, and another whenever needed until the meal is served.......

                            The Menu

Apart from the rolled turkey as per previous blog, we also had some beautiful ham glazed, roast veggies, sweet potato in maple syrup and pork loin. 

The pork was easy, oil up, salt and roast on the med/hot BBQ (lid on) one and a half hours. You need to be very hot for the first 20 minutes to start that crackle up then back to medium for the remaining time until clear juice runs from a skewer pushed deep into the loin...... ...

The ham was delectable.... Double Smoked from the best butcher on the Downs (Downs Prime) as was the turkey and the pork, as well as the pork ribs and the rib fillet we had for the BBQ before xmas. 

Glazed Ham.......

Shave all the skin and most of the fat off and score a centimetre deep in large diagonal squares.

Next make the glaze..

       ... The juice from a tin of pineapple slices

       ... 1 cup honey

       ... half a cup of brown sugar

       ... small bottle of seeded mustard

       ... squirt of hot english mustard / or a teaspoon of mustard powder

       ... teaspoon of crushed garlic

put into a saucepan and reduce by 30-40%.

Low oven -- 120* for two and a half hours basted every 30 minutes. At two hours pin the pineapple slices on and increase the heat to 180* basting twice in the last half hour. Pin the cherries on last before serving.  Carve at the table.

                               The glaze before reduction

 

                    As the ham cooks it starts to open up at the score lines allowing for deeper basting

            You can always add to the oven while you are cooking, just extend your times.

                  The final product

The next delicacy was the Maple syrup sweet potatoes.  

peel and cut the sweet potatoes ... mix a half cup maple syrup, half a cup of brown sugar and half a cup of butter.  Heat this syrup mix until the butter keys and pour over the sweet potatoes in a tray cover them all and roast in a moderate oven until soft. The syrup will boil up and self baste the potatoes.

There are no photos of the potatoes finished, they went straight to the table and were never seen again............................

Slicing the Turkey and getting the ham (below) ready for the table. My son Josh and his lovely wife Emma, helping out.

We had 17 people for lunch, a little pork left, half the full leg of ham left, NO turkey, No sweet potatoes and very little else. It was a wonderful family Christmas .............

See you next year.

Rolled Turkey for Christmas

Years ago the offer of roast turkey for Xmas was rejected because it was said (and rightly so) that roast turkey can be dry and tasteless if done wrong, and yes there was every opportunity for us to do it wrong!
So we looked for an alternative, dragged our way through a few cookbooks and stole some ideas from this book and that book and came up with what is now a family favourite.

IMPORTANT NOTE !!!!!
It is a two person job and a very strong marriage is needed before you start this project. If you're  not married then you had better be bloody good friends. Nothing seems to go right and there are always issues with the filling, or the wrapping or the skin or or or.... but the end result is a delectable moist rolled roast with tons of flavour either hot served with gravy and roasted veggies or cold served with salad.

Before you start lets get what we are going to stuff this turkey with organised.
 Bread stuffing
 Camembert Cheese
 Bacon
 Pistachios
 Cranberry jelly

So lets start with the easy bit .....???............. de-bone your turkey without cutting the skin. This is a difficult job and takes some definite time. You need to remember that you are looking for a rectangle result so it is best to have the neck skin cut high on the bird and the cavity cut as small as possible. When de-boning the legs and wings, pull them inside out and trim the breast meat and thigh meat and redistribute across the bird so that you have an even level . Also as you see in this photo, the gap to the right needed to be sewn together so that we could roll it evenly. You can get your butcher to de-bone your bird for you if you wish, but you have to be content to work with what you are given, if you don't give the correct instructions you could end up with anything, so be careful.

Next normal stuffing  (breadcrumbs, onion, egg) with some herbs.

followed by bacon strips (rindless)

Pistachio nuts smashed but not decimated

add the cheese and the cranberry jelly

Then the divorce.........  I mean the rolling of a turkey that is overstuffed and doesn't want to go where, or do anything you want it to do........... there are many words said at this point, none of which can be added to my blog.

And with some amazing stitching (wife's a quilter... she was all over it), some strategic tying of ends and important bits and you have this...... no, it may not look all that pretty to an outside observer however considering what you have physically gone through, and the limits you have pushed your relationship to, this is a wonderful and beautiful result!!!!!

This needs to be wrapped in cling-wrap and left in the fridge overnight so that it settles.  It was probably as upset as we were with its antics over the past hour, so it did need to cool off. We went and had a glass of wine. Funnily enough we did two birds this year, the second one is always easier than the first and considering we only do this recipe once a year we did ok. Roasted in a moderate oven 170* for about one and three quarter hours and then let rest. This year we decided to have an assortment of both hot and cold over  Xmas  so this has been done and now has been placed away as cold meat for xmas brunch. Hot will be roasted pork loin and a glazed ham, and here's to the New Year diet!!!!!!

I will add a photo of it sliced so you can see the structure of the rolled fillings through the meat when we cut it on Xmas day.

Merry Xmas to the two of you who read my BLOG, I hope this recipe doesn't turn you off Rolled Turkey as it is a magnificent way to prepare a magnificent piece of poultry.


Bernie, Jenny and family.

Light Barra Curry

Well it's all here...... on the fridge

This is a light thai style curry. Smooth Salty Sweet and Sour all at once.  This is a beautiful blend of taste. 

The coconut milk and cream was full strength not light for good reason... taste ! 

Takes 20 minutes to put the paste and the broth together and once you have started the cooking process it is all over and done in 15 minutes.

Not in the recipe but we added prawns in the last five minutes for some extra taste and colour.

Very quick, very tasty and is now one of our favourite recipes...

Our official taste tester, Stephy, scribing the recipe on the beer fridge after dinner.

Another BBQ..... and a huge piece of meat.. Standing Rib Roast

Not much I can say but show you the photos. Just love my BBQ...

I have been asked temperatures and times etc.

The rib roast weighed 7.5 kilograms.
I used the Weber BBQ and preheated the BBQ to 250* celcius.

The meat MUST BE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE before you commence the roasting .

I used a pepper and light salt rub and placed in the hot BBQ on a rack in a large baking dish for 20 minutes at the 250* Celsius to seal the rib roast.
Turned the BBQ down to 170* Celsius and let roast for 2 hours 50 minutes. (it was 150 degrees internal temp at this point ((Medium Rare))). I did check each 20 minutes after the first two hours of cooking.
I then removed and covered with foil allowing the roast to rest for 20 minutes  (resting is imperative, it allows the meat to relax and become tender. The internal temperature will continue to rise about a further 10 degrees in the 20 minutes of resting, so make sure you factor this in your cooking process)
The end two pieces were medium to medium well. The rest was a beautiful medium and very tender.

20 minutes high oven temp. - 160 minutes medium oven temp. - 20 minutes resting. all up 3 hours and 20 minutes from BBQ to plate for 7.5 kilos. About 20 minutes roasting per kilo after the high temp sealing.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Frenched and coming back to room temperature.

( I get my meat from DOWNS PRIME here in Goondiwindi. They supply restaurants and hotels throughout the Darling Downs Sth QLD. Cannot recommend them highly enough. They are reasonably priced, not cheap! but when you are entertaining good friends and guests, cheap meat means tough and tasteless meat. Dont forget.... best friends can be your worst critics......... don't give them that opportunity, make the meal something to remember !!!!!)

 and the finished product

and they seem to be enjoying it.

BBQ Dinner

Well tonight is just a BBQ.

The menu is.
1.5 kilo Rib Roast
Mushrooms grilled with a bacon tomato and feta cheese filling
Corn on the cob grilled with butter salt and pepper
Grilled asparagus
Roasted knob of garlic.

Not much to tell, but a secret with the corn... strip back the husk but don't pull it from the ear of corn. Remove the silk,  cover the ear with butter and season with salt and pepper. Put the husk back over the ear of corn and tie off. Roast on the grill, turning regularly, for about 15 - 20 minutes. 

Ready to start.........

Looked great on the plate, but way too much. For photographic purposes only.... lol.

Korma Curry

Over the weekend I cooked the Korma again so that I could Blog it. You will notice in this one the colours are a lot darker than you would normally expect from a Korma with coconut milk, it is just that the guests asked for some heat, so some extra chilli powder and flakes as well as some extra spices were added to give that much needed heat but I tried to keep the taste of the Korma without the salty hit I tend to get from a Vindaloo or a hot Rogan Josh.
Another hint I was given by an Indian friend when I asked about cooking spices and I have found it THE MOST IMPORTANT hint of all. When you cook spices you cook them on a low heat until they are "Fragrant". Fragrant is when you are unable to discern individual components of the mix by smell during the cooking process and you are only able to smell the one fragrant spice aroma.  

The paste first; all done in a Mortar and Pestle
Paste
1 tsp Turmeric
10 cardamom pods (Take seeds out discard the shell)
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground Cinnamon
10 Black peppercorns
1tbs Ground paprika
1 1/2 tsp ground Cumin
2 tsp Ground Coriander
1 tsp dried Chilli flakes (optional)
2 cloves garlic
1tbs chopped fresh ginger
____________________________________________________

Ingredients.
2 Onions (sliced finely)
1 tbs Ghee
6 Boneless chicken thigh fillets cut into 4cm cubes
1 cup chicken stock
1 400ml tin of cooconut milk
____________________________________________________

Very easy to do and as it cooks you have a wonderful spicy aroma drifting through the home.

In a pot, cook the onions in the ghee until they are soft and translucent. Add the spice mix and cook slowly until fragrant. If this gets too dry when cooking add a little water to keep it moist but not wet.
When it smells right, add the chicken and stir to get the paste over all the pieces. Add the cup of chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Cook on a simmer for 5 minutes, stirring often to get all the chicken to turn and then add the tin of coconut milk.
Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer uncovered and let bubble away for an 90 minutes or even two hours if you have the time, the longer the better. The chicken thighs are a fatty cut and along with the coconut milk will leave an oily residue on top of the curry, you can spoon it away or stir it in before serving. (your choice)
Serve with rice.

Onions in ghee

My spice dish (wonderful aromas)

dry mix before adding to the mortar and pestle 

Paste stirred through chicken

Stock and coconut milk added

Simmering away

Hope you enjoy...........

This weeks recipe

This is a family recipe handed down from my sister-in-law's side. Very easy to make and delicious but it is not a recipe I recommend you make every week. Your doctor will have you "unsubscribing" from my blog and we can't have that now can we?

 Hope you enjoy. As usual when it comes to anything my family or I have going, there will be a catch somewhere and sometimes the recipes, to some degree, are open for interpretation. There are two instances in this recipe that you need to exercise some self management with. 

1. notice the brown sugar ("2 and a bit cups"............ )
2. and my favourite ( Cook in a 175 degree oven till cooked............... what can I say?) 

Sticky date cake and sauce

This makes 3 loaf tins

Soak (10 mins) 500gs of pitted dates in 600mls of boiling water that has 2 teaspoons of bi-carb soda and 120gs of butter.

All in a mixing bowl:

2 teaspoons of vanilla essence

5 large eggs

360g of SR flour

2 and a bit cups of brown sugar

250g of walnuts (chopped not crushed)

Add date mixture into the mixing bowl with the above – and using the electric mixer, mix for 5 mins

pour mixture evenly into 3 greased loaf tins.

Cook in 175 degree oven till cooked.

Sauce

300 mls of cream

100g of butter

300g of brown sugar – dark brown sugar is better if you have it.

2 teaspoons of vanilla essence

Bring to boil and then turn right down and simmer for 5 mins.

Serve warm with ice-cream.  

 Date Cake finished spongy and moist. 170* for 45 minutes

Sauce caramalised beautifully