Recipes

Beef and Stout Pie

- Alex Prichard 1 Comment

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Friday was Pi Day. The humour in this is limited – if you write dates in the American format it was 3/14, and pi (the mathematical constant) approximates to 3.14 (if you’re dealing with 2 decimal places). The connection between all of this and pies is tenuous at best.

But we’ve also had a burst of relatively cool weather in Adelaide so for starters I’m more than happy to consider switching on things that generate substantial heat. And I’m also happy to consider eating pie. A hot, home made pie for dinner is definitely cold weather food.

I found this pie recipe on the MiNDFOOD website and tweaked it a little, not least of all because pies have pastry on both the bottom and the top!

Green peppercorns are a great ingredient to cook with: they add bursts of pepperiness along with a hint of sharpness. Just make sure you rinse them first (they will come in brine). You do need to factor in plenty of time for both cooking and cooling the pie filling. You can’t rush the beef being tender and, especially if you are doing a pie properly, you need the filling to be cool because if you hit the pastry with hot pie filling you’ll end up with the dreaded soggy bottom!

We used our piemaker for this and bought pastry (both shortcrust and puff – yes, sometimes dinner just has to happen!) so once the pie filling was complete the actual pie could be be assembled and on the table in about half an hour (20 minutes of that was cooking time). If I were serving this to others, I would bother to at least make my own shortcrust, use individual pie dishes and cook them in the oven. At least … that’s what I tell myself!

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Beef and Stout Pie

Beef and Stout Pie

Ingredients

  • ~ 800 g diced blade steak (or any other cut of beef which works for long slow cooks)
  • 2 onions, very roughly chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
  • 2 tbsp plain flour
  • 250 mL stout
  • 375 mL beef stock
  • a few sprigs of fresh thyme
  • 125 mL cream
  • 1 (generous) tbsp green peppercorns, drained and rinsed
  • pastry (for a piemaker)
  • 1 sheet of shortcrust pastry, defrosted
  • 1 sheet of puff pastry, defrosted

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 140°C (fan, or 160°C conv).
  2. Heat some olive oil in an ovenproof casserole dish and brown the beef in batches.
  3. Set the beef aside and turn down the heat. Add the onion and garlic and soften. Stir often.
  4. Return the beef to the pan and sprinkle over the flour, mixing well. Allow this to cook for a minute or two, before adding the stout, stock and thyme.
  5. Bring to the boil and then take off the heat and put, covered, in the preheated oven. Cook for about an hour and a half until the beef is meltingly tender.
  6. If the gravy is still a little thin, return to the stove and remove the lid - but keep a close eye on it and don't over thicken. It should be no more than the consistency of a thin cream.
  7. Allow to cool a little before adding the cream and pepper corns and set aside to cool fully. The cooling and the addition of the cream will thicken the gravy further.
  8. If using a pie maker, preheat and cut the base (shortcrust) pastry. Line the pie maker, fill (take care not to over fill!) and top with the puff pastry. Cook for the recommended time (in our case 20 minutes) and serve immediately.
https://eatingadelaide.com/beef-stout-pie/

Zucchini and Feta Fritters

- Alex Prichard 2 Comments

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Ages and ages ago (probably, almost literally, years ago) a friend told me that her son was an enthusiastic eater of zucchini and haloumi fritters. At the time I thought “oh, that sounds nice, I must make those” and then never got around to it.

We typically don’t eat a huge number of zucchini (I tend to call them courgettes): I love them but Andy is somewhat ho-hum about them. So when it comes to shopping, they always run a very poor second to broccoli (universally loved in our household).

However, recently we’ve had something of a glut of zucchini forced upon us. Mum grew them (in the right conditions they grow like weeds) and there were also a few in my Keane’s vege box.

So the time was well and truly nigh for breaking into zucchini fritter territory.

I had a quick google and cobbled together my own recipe based on what seemed to be very standard kind of territory. These were very quick to make – although you do need to allow a little time for grating and salting the zucchini. Herb-wise you can mess around – I used mint, but dill would definitely work just as well, and some recipes use just parsley. My advice would definitely be to use FRESH herbs rather than dried. And if you happen to have a lemon hanging around, grate the rind of half of it into your mixture.

As always, be generous with your seasoning. It is best to fry one off and adjust the seasoning before committing yourself to the whole batch!

Serve the fritters hot, with salads.

Andy and I loved these. And while these are perfect toddler food, our toddler was not bothered either way.

And if you don’t want to print, download a pdf of the recipe!

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Zucchini and Feta Fritters

Ingredients

  • 3 zucchini, coarsley grated
  • 4 spring onions, finely sliced
  • 100g Australian feta, finely chopped
  • ~ 1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tbsp verjuice (or lemon juice)
  • ~ 4 tbsp plain flour

Instructions

  1. Coarsely grate the zucchini and, in a large bowl, mix through a generous pinch of salt. Set aside at room temperature for approximately half an hour.
  2. Squeeze the moisture out of the zucchini - by hand is fine - and place it in a clean,dry bowl.
  3. Stir through the spring onions, feta and mint and then add the eggs one at a time. Mix through the verjuice and then stir in the flour, one tablespoon at a time.
  4. You may not need all the flour - you want to bring the mixture together but you don't want the mixture to become dry. The more flour you use the greater the risk you'll taste raw flour in the finished product. You're much better off to have a slightly too loose mixture - you can always add more flour once you've fried your test fritter!
  5. Season.
  6. Heat some olive oil in a non stick pan. Add the fritter mix to the hot pan by the tablespoon, taking a moment to spread each fritter out a little. In my 20cm pan, I was able to cook about 4 fritters at a time.
  7. Flip the fritters when the base in browned. They're easy to flip when they're ready. If the fritters have been spread out, they'll be ready when brown on both sides.
  8. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot.

https://eatingadelaide.com/zucchini-fetafritters/

Keane’s Organic Food and a Simple Zucchini Salad

- Alex Prichard 1 Comment

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Disclaimer: Keane’s supplied the fruit and vegetable box free of charge.

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by Keane’s Organic Food, who offered to send me a box full of organic fruit and vegetables. Compared with the UK a few years back, the availability of organic greens is pretty limited here in South Australia. The major supermarkets stock a small (but increasing) number of organic products, our small local supermarket stocks none. None of the local greengrocers (where we do buy most of our greens) focus on organic produce and we are just not the kind of family to manage regular outings to farmers markets bright and early on a Sunday morning. At least one of us is having a lie in! Make sure you have a look at this guide from utilitysavingexpert.com to learn better and mor efficient way of delivering goodies.

Keane’s Organic Food is a South Australian owned and operated business that started in Unley in 2008 and has since expanded (which forced a name change) to cover much of Adelaide’s metropolitan area. Keane’s delivers fruit and vege boxes as well as a range of ‘extras’ such as bread and eggs. The boxes are all $55 each (and you can order top ups of either fruit or vegetables for $15) and they come in a variety of configurations so if you only want vegetables and no fruit, that’s not a problem. You also don’t have to make an ongoing commitment – you just order what you want/need for that week.

I received the ‘mixed box’ – which is about 2/3 vegetables and 1/3 fruit. The first thing I liked about the box was how well packed it was. Nothing annoys me more than spending time picking the best fruit or vegetables in the supermarket and having the milk dumped on top of them at check out. My box contained a single (absolutely perfect) peach which was securely perched on top of everything else and came out of the box in a pristine state.

The quality of that peach was reflected by all the produce in box. Andy was very impressed by the young, tender bok choy (which also lasted extremely well in its stay fresh bag), the broccolini was beautiful, the avocado was spot on after only a day or so and the strawberries also received top marks.

Value for money wise I thought that box rated quite highly.  I easily spend $20 a week at the grocer’s for about half as much non organic produce and of course there is the convenience of having your shopping delivered to your home or work.  If, like us, you have a toddler that inhales grapes and rockmelon and one person who takes fruit to work every day you may need to tweak your order to include extra fruit or a more fruit heavy selection.

I also really liked the fact that nothing in the box came in gargantuan quantities. While it was a challenge for us to get through everything in a week (we failed) we are only a family of two and a half but there was such a broad selection of vegetables that most could be used fully in one meal. I thought this was great because it meant that you could plan out how you were going to use your box and, if you came across a vegetable you didn’t like, you didn’t have a mountain of it to get through. Critical in our household where only one of us likes mushrooms!

Added bonuses in the box were a fridge magnet illustrating the ways in which the fruit and vege could be used and a flyer with production details of the produce (including its certification programme and where it was grown). In my box, approximately half of the produce was South Australian.

I’ll wrap up with a very simple zucchini (courgette) salad based on a Jamie Oliver original. Not only did my vege box include zucchini but my mum’s garden is currently overgrown with them! I love this salad – I’d be quite happy to eat it on its own as dinner!

The quantities given will serve two as part of a selection of side dishes. And, as usual, there’s a pdf.

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Simple Zucchini Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 zucchini
  • ½ red chilli
  • small handful of chopped chives
  • 1 small clove of garlic, crushed
  • ¼ lemon
  • generous splash of olive oil

Instructions

  1. Finely slice the zucchini lengthwise. You can do this using a mandoline or a vegetable peeler.
  2. Place in a bowl and mix through the chilli, garlic and chives and finish with the lemon juice and olive oil.
  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Best if made a little ahead and served at room temperature.

https://eatingadelaide.com/keanes-organic-food-simple-zucchini-salad/