Apple Crumble

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Apple Crumble & Custard

While Spring is technically just around the corner here in Adelaide it’s still really cold. After a pleasant couple of days early this week Thursday and Friday are still looking chilly so it’s not too late to think about making an apple crumble.

This is the easiest of desserts to make. For the two of us, and using a small pie dish, I peeled and quite coarsely sliced 2 Granny Smith apples – let’s say I cut them into eighths. I put them in a pan on low heat, with a splash of water, a scant tablespoon of caster sugar and half a cinnamon stick. I then walked away and ended up doing a pile of other things and when I remembered that I had apples on the stove they were almost at puree stage. Oops! Perhaps don’t cook yours quite so long. Really you just want to soften them a bit but have them retaining their shape.

I put my puree in the pie dish, no greasing required, and topped it with a layer of finely sliced Granny Smith (to ensure the finished product had some texture).

For the crumble I used 100g plain flour, 25g caster sugar and 50g of unsalted butter. You have no choice with crumble but to make it by hand as you do not want it too fine and you also don’t want it too homogenous: a few chunks here and there are a good thing. So work the crumble mixture by hand until the butter is mostly all incorporated – a few small bits here and there is fine. Overall, the mixture should resemble coarse sand.

Spread the crumble over the apples. Don’t press it down to form a hard crust (that’s called pastry and you’ve done it wrongly!). Bake in an oven preheated to 200°C (conv) for 40 minutes or until the crumble starts to turn golden.

Serve hot or warm, with cream, ice cream or custard.

How to Roast Beef

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Untitled

One of the great things about having a food blog is that, no matter where I am, I can find a previously visited restaurant’s name and address or make a favourite recipe. One thing I have not yet done though is record the temperatures to which I like my meat cooked.

This means that every time we get a piece of beef to roast I have to spend about half an hour googling for internal temperatures and fretting over whether I’ve chosen the right temperature. It’s time to fix that.

57°C.

So – there’s the raw data. But what’s the process?

Let’s assume you have a piece of fillet – which is what is featured in the photo above*. I use an oven safe stainless steel fry pan and melt some butter and light olive oil in it. I then take my piece of beef (preferably at room temperature), season it and sear it in the pan so that it is nicely browned all over. Whatever you do, don’t do too much searing – just enough to pick up some colour. You don’t want the meat to actually start cooking.

I’m very lucky in that I have a 20 year old oven with a built in meat probe. This is brilliant because you can set the oven at whatever temperature you wish (usually 180°C conv), plug the meat probe in (to both oven and meat), set the probe temperature (57°C) and walk away. When the meat hits the temperature the oven will beep and turn itself off. If you have a normal meat thermometer you’ll just need to keep on checking …

When the meat is done, remove it from the oven, put it on a plate and cover with tin foil, allowing it to rest for at least 15 minutes. This will give you time to finish off things like vegetables and gravy and get some plates warm. If you are making gravy, be sure to make it in the same pan the meat was cooked in AND to tip in any juices from the plate the meat has rested on.

As you can see from the photo, we like our meat rare. From what I’ve been able to find of Australian food safety guidelines, for a non rolled, non stuffed piece of meat like fillet, the only risk of contamination is the exterior of the meat, so as long as that’s well cooked (that’s the searing and sitting in a hot oven part) you are fine to cook the meat to any temperature you wish. American readers should note that the USDA recommends 145°F (about 63°C) as a minimum.

And obviously, you should always cook your meat to YOUR preference!

* Sorry for the poor quality of the photo but really, if you had a piece of meat like that in front of you would you be worrying about setting up a good shot?! Normal people want to crack on and EAT!

Harvest Box

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Harvest Box

Disclaimer: Harvest Box sent me one of their boxes to try out.  They are currently running a promotion of $1 for your first order, with every registration going into The Million Punnet Draw for $2000 worth of prizes.

I am quite a keen eater of nuts. I went through a stage a few years ago where I ate a lot of them (I was stressed, not eating much else and trying to pack as many nutrients in as possible). There have been times where I’ve even made my own cereal, mainly so I can put in the nuts and dried fruit that I like, and not have to eat the ones that market research dictates.

So when Harvest Box got in touch I was interested to see what would turn up. I hadn’t heard of the company before but they’ve actually been around for a couple of years. The idea is that you order Harvest Boxes to be delivered to work and that, instead of reaching for a chocolate bar and can of cola at 3pm (yes, I have indeed worked in a software engineering environment!), you’ll be able to snack on something healthy. You nominate which day or days you’d like delivery and you get a packet of four different nut mixes.

You don’t get to choose which mixes you receive – the whole idea is that you get a surprise. But so it’s a good surprise, you rate the mixes. If you really dislike a mix, you rate it a “no thanks” and you’ll never receive it again.

In my opinion, not only does this beat the hell out of the chocolate bar and fizzy drink option but it’s probably an improvement on the sometimes very sad excuses for fruit baskets that appear in corporate environments.

My box contained: Fruit and Nut (raisin, hazelnut and dark chocolate), The K2 (banana, pepita, dark chocolate, goji berry and sunflower seed – presumably named because after eating it you’ll be so full of antioxidants you’ll be able to climb said mountain), Big Kahuna (banana, pineapple and raisin) and Bear’s Picnic (maple cashews and roasted peanuts). The mixes, around 30-40 g per package, are individually wrapped (in fully recyclable packaging) so you’re not compelled to eat them all at once.

The Harvest Box website is really easy to navigate and there’s no complicated permutations of boxes/sizes/delivery methods to get your head around – it’s $7.95 per box and you can cancel or suspend your deliveries through the website.

For anyone trapped at a desk this is a great way to keep your snacking healthy!

I should also disclose that I’d eaten my Fruit & Nut before I started this blog post and I’m a good 80% of the way through The K2 as I finish up!  So the whole portion control thing may or may not work for you!