Pico Picandine en Perigord

Tastes like France says Rog! Open the beautiful wooden box and you immediately know the two pretty goats on its cover have a treat in-store for you. Pico is a soft, white rind that has just a smattering of bloom – its surface rumpled like the sheets on a lazy Sunday morning.

The aroma has a whiff of orangey-tang to offset alovely warm milkyness.

Cut into this cheese and you know it’s going to be good. The thin rind gives way to a translucent outer that cloaks a chalky centre.

Bite into Picandine’s unctuous outer and you’ll find a resistance at that chalky centre.

But for all that tangy whiff, this is a smooth, edible cheese. It envelopes your mouth on a lovely silky cream. A soft, silky goat with a nice sharp tang after taste to remind you there’s a kick in that she-goat. Like the bite at the back of your throat when you’ve had a piece of white chocolate too many!

 

Bean and ham soup – a cheap and delicious work lunch

Bean soup – doesn’t sound that exiting I know. But this is one of those recipes that magically takes prosaic ingredients and turns them sublime.

Now I don’t mean this is the soup to serve at a sophisticated dinner party. This is hearty food that is good for the soul, and gentle on the wallet. February has been a frugal month and going into March, I’m still saving saving money by taking lunches to work. This soup has been a great choice this week. And like most soups it just got better and better as the week wore on.

Ham and bean soup - care of Nigel Slate's Appetite

The recipe is care of Nigel Slater’s Appetite. I used the end of a prosciutto that we’d picked up from Mediterranean Food Warehouse in Newtown for about $5. It gave the soup a lovely rich base note and kept my hunger pangs away right into the afternoon!

Enough for 6

200g dried beans – borlotti, cannellini or chick peas – I used mixted beans
1-2 carrots depending on size
1-2 celery sticks
1 good size leek
3 gloves garlic – or more if you like
parsley – a small bunch
bacon or ham – either a small unsmoked ham hock or the end of a Parma ham

Soak the beans overnight in water. The next day, drain them and tip them into a large, deep pan. Cover with water, and if you want add a few drops of olive oil and a bay leaf. Boil them hard for 10 minutes then turn them down and simmer until the beans are tender but far from squashy. The time will vary depending on the types of beans but plan for 25-40 minutes for beans and an hour for chick peas.

While the beans are cooking you can dice the carrot, cut the celery quite finely and slice the leek in the thick coins. Don’t use the thick dark green bits. Peel and chop the garlic and roughly chop the parsley.

Drain the beans, put them in a little oil in a deep pan with the vegetables and half the parsley. Add the ham in one peice and enough water to cover it. Bring it to the boil then turn the heat down so that it is gently bubbling round the ham. Cook for at least an hour and a half or more.

Nigel Slater reckons you get the best results by letting the soup cook really slowly, “blipping and glupping rather than bubbling, for two hours or more”.

Check for seasoning, adding salt, pepper and the rest of the parsley. The end result will be beans that are soft and velvety and a liquor that is velvety and flavourful.

 

Mussel feed – finger licking great

This summer I have remembered the simple pleasure of the mussel feed. It is all that celebrity chefs rave about – great ingredients cooked simply, washed down with a great white and excellent company.

Green-lipped mussels, boiled new potatoes,  a simple watercress salad  and crusty bread – perfect.

I love watercress, its peppery sharpness contrasts well with the rich-juicyness of mussels and the waxy-buttery potatoes. Just by itself, watercress is perfect, no need to dress and its crazy tendrils are at home in this eat-with-your-fingers kind of dinner.

I love the purity too of a white table cloth. What better to wipe those buttery, mussel-liquored fingers on? Washing it the next day in all its wine-stained-finger-licking glory reminds me of previous night’s great feed.

My mussel feed

Dig in - fingers and all!

Green lipped mussels – 8-10 per person
White wine – no need to raid the cellar, a bottle but you may not need it all
Garlic 3-5 cloves finely chopped but not done in a garlic press
Salt – a generous teaspoon or so
Pepper
Parsley (optional to throw in at the end)

First clean up the mussels. You don’t need to go too crazy, but I do like to rip out the beard. Or at least try, as once they sense this is what you doing, they really close up. So one shot for glory as they say! Hold the mussel firmly in one hand, feel around for the hairy bit,  down by the join, then rip it up the length of the shell and hope you get it out.

Alternatively, miss this step out entirely, and like the Hairy Mussel Co, enjoy the mussel au natural!

Put all the cleaned mussels in a large stock pot. You don’t want to overcrowd them or there’ll be no room for them to open and you risk over cooking them. Throw in the garlic, salt and pepper and pour in the wine. I aim to fill the pot only about a third full with liquid. Cover the pot, turn up the heat and keep an eye on them. Depending on the pot, stove and numbers of mussels they could be cooked in as little as 5-10 minutes.

Mussels don’t take long to cook 5-10 minutes. They are done when most of them have opened. Be careful not to over cook. I give them a stir with a big spoon or ladle during the process.

Then pile them onto a platter and serve with buttery boiled new potatoes, a salad of watercress and crusty bread. Remember to give your guests ample napkins, or like me they’ll be forced to use the table cloth!

 

Whitestone Duntroon – cheese review

OK I admit – today I went in search of the new glamour kid of Kiwi cheese Pukeatua Peak’s Maungatautari goats cheese. It won Artisan Cheese Award at the Cuisine NZ Champions of Cheese Awards. But alas too artisan, too soon for Moore Wilsons!

But I had goats cheese on my mind by then and so I chose Whitestone Duntroon instead.

Whitestone's Duntroon Goats cheese

Duntroon is a hardish, creamy white cheese in a black wax rind.

I loved the slightly crumbly texture and its lemony sweet flavour. Less old socks, more biscuity pastry smell, I agree with the Cheese Shop, it is indeed edible! Though it is unmistakeably a goats cheese, it does have an almost cheddary type quality, perhaps a combination of a grainness on the tongue and its gentle tangy finish.

This would be fantastic in a fennel salad and is great as an aperitif with an olive and a minerally, oily Riesling or Gewurtz.

 

Rum and raisin biscuits

Rum and Raisin biscuit

One of the best things about getting back from holidays is being back in my kitchen. I’ve just been on a 10 day sojourn in the South Island and, sad to say I missed cooking! Not that I didn’t have fantastic food down south – I did – I’ll write more on that later.

So now I am home again, I’ve spent a great day in the kitchen cooking food that will last the week. This included a coleslaw, a Provencal daube or stew, Pea and Ham soup and these delicious biscuits. If we don’t eat them all tonight then they should provide some lovely treats for the week.

Homemade biscuits are a rare and special treat for the time-poor. These rum and raisin biscuits will fill your home with that delicious – out of the oven smell – yet they are simple and quick to make! And even better, because they are made in a single pot there is little to clean up.

The only bad thing – is that they really are so good, its hard not to eat the lot in one sitting! Vive la glutton!

125g butter
125g sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tbsp rum (or 1 tsp rum essence and 1 tbsp water)
1 cup raisins
1 1/2 flour
1tsp baking powder

Heat the oven to 170 C. Grease a baking tray with butter or line it with baking paper.

Heat butter, sugar, golden syrup and milk in a pot until the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat and add the rum and raisins and stir. Then mix in the flour and baking powder.

Put dessertspoons of the mixture on the tray and bake at 170 C for 10-12 minutes.

Then try resiting! These biscuits epitomise moreish!

 

Cheese scones – Ministry of Food style.

Scones are the ultimate fast food. You just mix them together and put into the oven. And as the weather gets colder, the more I hanked after a hot, buttery scone. This is the best, and the easiest cheese scone recipe I know.

The recipe comes from a cafe in Wellington – Ministry of Food. It’s close to our Parliament buildings and I got addicted to these scones when I was working near by. Thanks to Cuisine for publishing it.

Though this is a quick and easy recipe there is a trick to a great scone. So here are here are my tips, collected from my mum and many friends over the years.

Tips for scones

1 Heat the oven – it must be hot
2. Preheat the tray – put it in when you turn the oven on.
3. Add all the milk at once – it should be a wet rather than a try mixture
4. Mix quickly by making slicing actions with a knife, just enough to bind together. Don’t over mix.
5. Touch as little as possible and get it into the oven asap after mixing the milk in.

Cheese Scones

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch cayenne pepper (optional)
2 cups grated tasty cheese
1 cup full-cream milk

Preheat oven to 220º C. Put tray in to heat.
Sift flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and cayenne pepper into a bowl. Mix in cheese. Make a well in the centre.

Check you have a clear bench with flour on it, the oven is fully heated. You want the scones to go into the oven as soon as possible.

Add the milk, mix quickly with a knife. Turn out onto a floured bench and quickly shape into a 3 cm thick rectangle. Cut into 8 and put onto your floured, hot tray. Bake for 15-20 minutes. You’ll smell them as they get ready.

Delicious! If you don’t eat them all they freeze well. To reheat put them into an oven for about 5 minutes.

 

Brown Rice, Hazelnut and Herb Salad

What do brown rice and cardboard have in common? A lot, or so I thought until I tried this rice salad. I’m now a brown rice convert.

Nutty and full of body, the brown rice in this salad is a flavourful star-ingredient rather than just the bland, chorus-line filler of most rice salads.

It’s a bit of a fiddly recipe with several steps, but you can make the dressing, cook the rice, and roast and chop up the hazelnuts ahead of time. This just leaves chopping up the herbs and throwing it together at the last moment. It’s a spectacular addition to a barbecue, and teamed up with some nice sausages, a plain green salad and some good bread makes a stylish dinner.

This is the kind of recipe which justifies subscribing to Cuisine magazine – it really is the best foodie mag I have ever read. I repeat it here so I make sure I don’t lose it – ever! I reckon the key to this recipe it the proportions and technique. I suspect I will improvise over time – trying more Italian, Indian or Moroccan flavours rather than the Thai/ Asian of this recipe. I haven’t yet as I am still enamored with the recipe just as it is.

Brown Rice, Hazelnut and Herb Salad with Lime Dressing

1 cup brown rice
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1 cup hazelnuts
4 spring onions, finely sliced
1 cup fresh mint leaves
1 cup Thai basil (I just use ordinary basil)
1 cup coriander
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Lime Dressing
1 tablespoon palm sugar, chopped
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Japanese or golden soy sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 kaffir lime leaves, central stem removed and finely shredded (I just zest the limes and use this instead)

Make the dressing first

Heat the palm sugar and vinegar in saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Cool and add the rest of the ingredients.

Cook the rice. I boil the brown rice in ample water for 25 minutes then drain. Let it cool 5 minutes. Put into the service bowl, add the dressing and let cool.

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Bake the hazelnuts on a tray for 12 minutes, stirring once. Place the hazelnuts in a clean tea towel and rub them to loosen the skins, blow away the loosened skins. I find I need to give some an extra hand. You won’t get them all, but try to remove as much as possible. Coarsely chop.

Just before serving, toss the rice, hazelnuts, spring oinions, mint, basil, coriander and sesame oil together.

Serves 4-6.

 

Coleslaw that keeps for ages

This coleslaw is great to have in the fridge and keeps for ages. It was gifted to me by my great friend Carey. I love going to Carey’s, you never leave hungry! She always manages to pull a little something out of the fridge for visitors.

Carey often has this salad in a container in the fridge. It gets nicer over time so it’s an easy midweek vegie. I make it in weekend and eat it throughout the week.

It doesn’t have any mayonaisse in it, so if you want a change, or there is someone who refers fuller fat coleslaw, I just add it into the portion. I never seem to have celery seeds, but have used celery salt instead, about 2-3 teaspoons and leave out the ordinary salt.

Carey’s coleslaw

Dressing

1/4 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon tumeric

1 teaspoon celery seeds

Boil together and cool. Pour over cabbage, oinion and carrot.

 

Pork and fennel sausage spaghetti

I love Italian pork and fennel sausages. Long and skinny – they are deliciously tasty. There’s two places locally making these delicious of sausages – Island Bay Butcher and the Mediterranean Food Warehouse. You want to cater at least 3 each of these tasty little morsels – cause I tell you they are gorgeous.

But the other day I only had four and wanted to feed four people. I remembered a recipe my mate Kate learnt off the grandfather at the Med food warehouse. It’s quick to put together and makes them go a bit further. Plus it’s classy enough to serve for a casual dinner or a week night tea.

If you can’t get these sausages you could use plain pork sausages and add a few fennel or caraway seeds. I used flat leaf parsley but you could use rocket or baby spinach.

4 – 6 pork and fennel sausages

3 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

1/2 cup of white wine

Spagetti for 4

lemon – zest* and juice

Olive oil

Parmesan – grate a handful

A handful of flat leaf parsley – destemmed (or rocket or baby spinach)

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Put a pot of water for the spagetti on to boil.

Heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a fry pan. Slice open the end of the sausages and squeeze out the filling into the hot oil. Make little blobs about the size of the end of your finger. Don’t worry about getting them perfect – rough ones are fine.

While they’re cooking put the spagetti on.

Once the sausage is nicely browned put it into a serving bowl. Put the greens on top. When the spagetti is cooked reserve about a cup of the water, drain and add to the serving bowl. The spagetti will help wilt the greens.

Pour off some of the fat left in the pan and gently fry your garlic. Don’t brown it – just cook it through. Add the white wine and cook it off. Add about half cup of the pasta water and cook down, it’ll help thicken the sauce a bit.

Pour the sauce over the spagetti, greens and sausage add the lemon zest, juice and then the parmesan and toss. Check the seasoning and serve.

*Zesting the lemon

In recipes like this I don’t use a grater to zest.Cut the lemon in half and with it cut side down, hold the knife close to the skin and gently slice off pieces of the zest. You only want the yellow stuff, avoid the white pith. Once you peeled off most of the zest, chop into into small strips.