Roasted duck breast with vegetables and port wine reduction

Well in a bit of a quandary tonight as to what to blog first my food or my photo’s, I have been so pleased with both results, but as always my stomach comes first so here is my food blog!

As I left work a little earlier than usual I had Jo pick me up in Lord Street, East Perth, as I had had a bit of a wander around with my camera, as soon as I was in the car I asked what she’d like for dinner, unbeknown to her I had a yearning for fish, she replied instantly with “how about a nice steak, haven’t had steak for a while”, so I relented and headed for Fresh Provisions in Mount Lawley.

Jo hadn’t been to Fresh Provisions before and was a little gob smacked at the range of fresh food available.
Whilst I was looking for the perfect piece of beef to cook for her dinner, I came across a couple of duck breasts and to my surprise when I said to Jo we could have something a little different, she was like "yeah great idea, let's do it".

So duck it was, now for something to go with it, and whilst perusing the veggie section, Jo turns and asks if I could do potatoes thinly sliced, too easy, I then found the cutest bunch of baby asparagus I have ever seen, a must have and so the only thing to get thereafter was a bunch of baby carrots to keep them company.

Now Jo, doesn’t as a rule have a lot of input into my cooking, but tonight she come up trumps a couple of times, and none more so than when I mentioned I need a sauce to tie everything together and within a couple of minutes she has suggested a port wine sauce, even produced a recipe, for which I did not have the ingredients, but it did give me the inspiration for the sauce we enjoyed with our meal, and it was kick arse!  I must admit, tonight I was the dish licker!!

Braised Rabbit with Speck and Mushrooms

Having been out of the kitchen for a few days I was keen to get in and do something today, sitting around doing nothing has been so boring, and I was feeling pretty good today, still a little stiff but the pain was bearable.  Now 4 hours later I am wondering if maybe I went a little too hard, the back has gone into a bit of a spasm and is very uncomfortable, hopefully a good night’s sleep will fix that and I will be right in the morning.

I started out slowly really, knocking together some individual servings of Panettone Pudding, very easy dessert to put together that always goes down well here, these little beauties are basically a classier version of bread and butter pudding, and they’re very tasty and very more-ish!

For the main course tonight I went with a Manu Feidel’s recipe for Braised Rabbit with Speck and Mushrooms, from his cook book “Manu’s French Kitchen”.  I love cooking and eating rabbit and this recipe had lots of interest in that there are several steps to go through, where you are building flavours all the way to the table and the flavours on the plate were fantastic.  My son Michael, has told me a couple of times of a rabbit stew he likes to cook, that actually fulfils two course’s of a meal, firstly a soup from the juices the rabbit is stewed in and then the main course being the rabbit and vegetables.  On tasting the sauce in this dish, I thought that had there been a little more of the juices you could do the same with this dish, the juice or sauce was so full of flavour, I will confess, I had to lift the plate to my lips after I had finished the meat and veg tonight the sauce was that good.

Manu’s serving suggestion for the meal was to do a creamy mash potato or polenta and whilst I was tempted to go with his suggestion, I decided to use up some of the vegetables that may have otherwise been wasted if they were not used soon, so we enjoyed out rabbit with roasted Kipfler potatoes, sweet potatoes and baby carrots and some steamed Brussels sprouts, the perfect meal for a cold winter’s night!

One aspect of tonight's dish I loved was when I had too add brandy to the pot and then ignite it, I think seeing a brandy flame in a pot fills any cooks heart with joy, I know it did mine!

And how's this for a gourmet lunch tomorrow?

Roasted venison served with herb and garlic infused potato au gratin

Something different tonight, thanks to my father in law coming home with packs of venison for dinner and it was very nice too, very easy to cook also, which is always a bonus!

To compliment the venison I prepared a potato bake consisting of both nadine and sweet potatoes, these were baked in a creamy sauce infused with thyme, rosemary, garlic and roasted pine nuts, and I also served the meal with green beans.

The meat was taken from the rump of the deer, and it was very lean and dark red in colour.  Before cooking I patted the meat dry with paper towel to remove any excess liquids.

The creamy sauce for potato bake takes about an hour to prepare, and then a couple of hours to bake the completed dish, though you can do this earlier, and then reheat as when you need it.  To make the sauce combine 2 cups of milk, a cup of cream, 6 garlic cloves (bruise them first), a sprig of rosemary and a couple of sprigs of thyme and a quarter cup of freshly roasted pine nuts in a saucepan. Cook over low heat for twenty minutes, and then set aside for 30 minutes to allow flavours to infuse.  The creamy sauce smells fantastic at this point, it had my mouth watering!  Whilst the flavours infuse, slice the potatoes thinly, use a mandolin if you have one, I don’t so I just sliced as evenly as I could.  I almost forgot, you must remove the solids from the sauce before using in the baking dish.

Prepare the baking dish by greasing it with butter, then layer with potatoes alternating with the nadines and sweet potato, adding a little of the cream sauce to each layer and seasoning as you go with salt and pepper. I used 4 large nadine potatoes and 1 large sweet potato, which gave my about three layers of each.  Cover the dish with foil and bake for 90 minutes in an oven preheated to 180C, then remove the foil and bake a further 30 minutes.

Once you have removed the foil from the potato dish, it is time to boil the water for your beans and heat you ovenproof pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and 50g of butter.  Once the butter begins to foam in the pan, add the meat cooking it 2 minutes each side, and only turn it once.  When the second side has been cooked place the pan into the oven and roast for 5 minutes, then remove from the oven, cover and rest for ten minutes.  Whilst the meat rests add the beans to the boiling water and remove the potato bake from the oven, allow to cool for a couple of minutes before plating up.

Slice the meat on the diagonal and place on a warm plate with the potato bake and beans, spoon a little of the buttery sauce over the top and sprinkle with a few pine nuts.

Bon appetite! 

coniglio in agrodolce

Had a great time cooking dinner tonight, not only for what was on the menu, but as I had my son Joel working alongside of me throughout and he did a great job, peeling and cutting up the veg and then later cooking the polenta, a tedious task at the best of times.

Dinner tonight came from an episode of Maeve O’Meara’s Italian Food Safari, which saw Guy Grossi out hunting wabbits with his chef Daniel Airo-Farula, I don’t have a big boom boom Beretta so I just made a trip down to the local IGA and picked a nice rabbit from there.

The only problem with taking a recipe from an episode of this show is you don’t get a recipe, so this is very much my version of the dish based on what I could learn from the episode, I wrote all the ingredients down and then improvised from there, forgot to put one ingredient in the shallots, which annoyed me no end but it turned out unreal all the same. The flavours in this dish were intense; the beautiful blend of fresh herbs gave it a lovely spiciness and the sweetness of the sultanas went so well with it. I served with polenta in which I had some butter and parmesan,  and a few slices of green olive ciabatta bread to soak up the juices. To say the dish was moorish, would be an understatement and after three servings I am not kidding and I am still enjoying the wonderful flavours swirling around on my palate some 30 minutes after dinner, who needs a recipe anyway? In case you do I have added my way to My Recipes.

I have the full DVD set of the Italian Food Safari, I watched every episode 4 times through now and I am a long way from sick of it yet! If you’d like to see how Daniel and Guy went about the job you can follow this link, enjoy http://www.sbs.com.au/podcasts/food/sbs-food/episode/86992/Coniglio-in-Agrodolce-Recipe-from-Italian-Food-Safari