The first Uncorked food and wine evening will be held at The Store (North Adelaide) on Tuesday 18 October. The four course French style meal will be matched with wines from Barossa Valley label, Teusner Wines, and winemaker Kym Teusner will be at the meal. The menu has been put together by Teusner, working with The Store’s chef and sommelier, Fabien Streit and Kennedy Simpson. Tickets are $95 (payable on booking) and are available by contacting the restaurant on 08 8361 6999.
Author: Alex
Lime and Chilli Steak Fajitas
Randomly picked from an old cooking magazine this turned out to be the perfect mid week supper. At the same time, it’s so tasty I think we’ll definitely be dragging it out for summer BBQs.
This time it’s Australian Gourmet Traveller, December 2009 and the “Gourmet Fast” section provides our dinner. I skipped over the fried quails and headed to the lime and chilli steak fajitas. This meal is just ridiculously easy. It’s in three components, so you can mix and match and it’s structured perfectly so you can do it all with a minimum of fuss.
There’s also not a big list of hard to procure ingredients – everything you need you probably have in the fridge or can buy easily from your local shops.
The first part is the steak. The recipe used skirt, I used rump. Take your steak and squeeze over the juice of a couple of limes (I actually had half a lemon hanging around so I used that and one lime). Ensure you cover both sides and then leave to marinate while you put together the two salads. Turn the steak at least once while it’s marinating.
The salads are really two basic salsas: avocado and tomato.
For the avocado, peel and coarsely chop one avocado. Mix it with some lime juice, some finely chopped red chilli and some extra virgin olive oil.
For the tomato, coarsely chop a tomato and mix it with some chopped coriander, some lime juice and some extra virgin olive oil. Andy decided we definitely needed onion in our tomato salsa so I added about a quarter of a finely chopped onion.
Heat a griddle pan (or the BBQ) and cook the steak according to personal preference. When the steak is cooked allow it to rest for 10 minutes or so (pop it on a plate and cover it in tin foil) and then slice finely.
You’re all done! Assemble the fajitas by grabbing some tortillas and adding what you will. We included some jalapeños. Some finely sliced iceberg lettuce or a dab of sour cream would also work well.
My tip for this recipe: don’t be tempted to substitute lemon for ALL the lime juice. For the salads in particular you definitely need lime juice and you should ensure that you have at least some lime juice in the marinade.
Sapporo Beer Launch
Disclaimer: I was a guest at the launch party.
Last Thursday night, Coopers held the Adelaide launch of its new beer, Sapporo. Wait, nothing new about Sapporo, right? It’s a Japanese beer first brewed in 1876 so why the launch? Because Sapporo is now being brewed, under licence, right here in South Australia by Coopers.
To celebrate this, beer lovers from across Adelaide gathered at the Robin Hood in Norwood to sample the ‘new’ beer and snack on some very tasty Japanese inspired treats. The pub’s beer garden was decked out with a Sapporo theme, including a wall made up of Sapporo maneki neko (the Japanese beckoning cats). Unsurprisingly there was no shortage of Sapporo, but there were other drinks on offer – even to the extent of beer themed cocktails! The finger food was all Japanese – including huge newspaper cones of tempura, crab and noodle cakes and prawns served with a coconut rice.
Dr Tim Cooper welcomed us all and, in launching the beer, told us a little about how it all came about. If you’re keen on beer you’ll know that one of the most important factors in a beer’s taste is the water used in brewing it. This is one of the reasons that, very often, a beer brewed under licence doesn’t taste quite as good as the ‘real thing’. Dr Cooper said that a lot of research (and no doubt beer tasting!) had gone into ensuring that the locally brewed Sapporo tastes as good as the Japanese original. Mr Owata, from Sapporo Breweries, also spoke, encouraging us all to have a good time and “drink lots of Sapporo beer”.
And I’m sure with the hot Australian summer being just around the corner that won’t be a problem!