Dish 15: Crispy Skin Duck with Witlof

The dish

I have wanted to make this dish since I first got the book for several reasons. 

Firstly, because it is duck and I have never ever ever prepared anything with duck, although I have eaten it upon occasion and really like it.

 Secondly, because it has witlof. Now, for those of you who aren't Australian, witlof is known in most English-speaking countries as chicory or endive. But guess what? In my little country with its little but complicated language, witlof is known as... witlof. Can you even imagine how thrilled I am to see a word for a vegetable in this cookbook that I don't need to translate? For the record, "wit" means white and "lof" is another word for chicory (it also means praise in a completely different context).

I wandered off there, sorry. Finally, I have been wanting to make it, because it seems like a challenge. For once you can't just read the recipe and follow it from top to bottom. Instead, this dish is made up out of 4 different components, and you need to time them just right in order to serve your diners a warm meal.

The preparation

The four different components of this dish are:

1) Duck breasts

2) Witlof

3) Orange sauce

4) Roasted onions

In total this dish does not take a lot of prepping time at all, but you do need to make sure you time it well.

I started out by preparing my roasting tin (in my case: glass baking dish) with the onions and their seasoning. As they had to be in the oven for approximately 15 minutes, I needed to make sure they had been prepped and ready to hit the oven the moment time called for it.

Next were the duck breasts.  

Follow Andy's instructions when it comes to these. Score them properly and add the salt flakes. I found that since this was my second time ever scoring any kind of meat (the first time was the pork belly), I have yet to find out exactly how to score skin and get a perfect result. I can tell you, however, that I'm getting better at it already.

I cooked the duck in a pan until the skin was indeed golden and pretty crisp, then transferred it to the oven, together with my roasting tin with onions.The duck breasts only needed a short while, whereas the onions were allowed to stay in there for 15 minutes, so I set the timer for the duck.

I then started on the orange sauce. Thanks to a visit to the market I had all necessary spices (and even managed to get the allspice berries that I needed for the lamb curry - next time I'll be prepared!) for it. This sauce takes quite some timing, as you add its ingredients in three batches, each with a different amount of time that you allow it to simmer or infuse.

While the sauce was simmering away, I pulled the duck breasts from the oven and covered them with foil. 

I also put on a pan for the witlof, that my lovely best friend had already cut up for me before. Once again you will need a pan with a lid for this, and once again I had used the wrong pan, but this time I was aware of the leaking water/steam, so I could save it in time. Not that it needed saving this time!

I also added the final ingredient to the orange sauce, which, very surprisingly, were sliced oranges.

Approximately ten minutes later, all of my components were done, and I was ready to plate.

Before I move on the result, I would like to share the following with you. With this dish, the trickiest thing definitely lies in the planning of every component. This took the most time to figure out. In the end I managed a time schedule in my head not unlike any Christmas dinner I plan, when I only have one oven and approximately four dishes that require oven time.

In case you are bad at this, I'll narrow it down for you:

Prepare your onions first, so that the roasting tin is ready to go into the oven. Turn the oven on and let it preheat.

Prep your duck and bake it in your pan.

After the required cooking time for the duck, put both the pan with the duck and roasting tin with the onions in the oven. Set a timer to the duck time as indicated in the cookbook.

Start on your orange sauce, and after adding the second batch of ingredients to the pan, pull out the duck and cover it with foil.

Put a frying pan on and start on the witlof. 

Continue with the sauce while keeping an eye on your onions and witlof.

If you managed to do this, by the time the duck breasts have rested for 10 minutes, all other items should be ready as well. It's not hard, but if you start preparing this dish from the top (= the orange sauce), you might run into trouble. 

The result

What can I say? "Please sir, I want some more!"

This dish. Oh my. This sauce! As my best friend put it, "If I had a spoon, I would eat this as soup." The duck, the witlof, the onion, the orange and the sauce together, this was more than a match made in heaven. This was the perfect combination and one I am definitely going to make this again and again and again. I literally had to stop myself from running my finger through the bowl after finishing, just so I could lap up a little more of that sauce.

Andy, I take my hat off to you. Delicious.

And dear reader, if by now you still have not bought this cookbook, you are nuts. Get it here!

Next time

Next time it is Easter. This means that I am meeting my loveliest friends for an extravagant brunch. I will be providing Scones (p. 77), with cream and probably some lemon curd. Because why not? If we're having mimosas at 11 in the morning, we are having scones.

I might also attempt Ben's White Chocolate Mojito Cheesecake with Rhubarb (p. 202), but I can't make any promises.

But still, I really do hope to see you at our next elemental meal... :)

Dish 13: Indian Lamb Curry

The dish

Another curry! To be honest, I was looking forward to preparing this dish. Like its Mid-Week buddy, this dish takes at least an hour and a half before it's done, so I wouldn't prepare it as a last minute thing. If you have the time for it, though, do it. Now.

For me the hardest part about this dish were the ingredients. It requires ingredients such as allspice berries and cardamom pods. Over the past 12 dishes I have expanded my kitchen cabinet's spices section threefold, but these items were not there, nor were they to be found at the larger supermarkets. Next time I might go on a scavenger hunt for them, but this time I chose to use instructions on how to replace the particular flavours of these items with the spices that I did already have available to me.

The preparation

You chop up some of the ingredients, such as the lamb. Andy's recipe requires lamb shoulder, but our local butcher only had leg of lamb, so it had to do. 

And it did. I cubed it, seasoned it and browned it. Important to keep in mind is that you need to use a pan that has a lid! You don't need it just yet, but you will regret it if you use a pan without a lid.

After transferring the browned meat back into its bowl, you need to use the same pan to heat some of the spices, such as cloves and bay leaves, until they are fragrant.

You also use some of the other chopped ingredients, and put them in with your fragrant spices.

You add your tomato paste to this mixture once the onion is soft, and then also add the lamb and the stock. At this point you will need your lid, because this needs to simmer for one full hour.

I put all of this stuff in a nice deep pan for which I didn't have a lid. Instead I used a bigger lid that did cover the pan. Unfortunately most of the steam did manage to escape by dripping down to the edge of lid and seeping down.

This meant that after about 45 minutes, I had nearly burned my lamb. It started smelling overly fragrant (which I never trust), and when I checked on it, the lamb was about to blacken. Not even thinking twice I chucked in extra stock, and hoped for the best. 

Luckily, when I added my potatoes and coconut cream a little later, things seemed to be alright. I tasted it. No trace of a burnt flavour. I was a happy camper. At this point you will also have to put the (in my case absolutely useless) lid to the side.

Since you have added your potatoes by now, these are the ones that need to be cooked through, so if you are not sure that the 20 minutes the recipe requires are enough, just grab a fork and test the potatoes. If it's been 20 minutes and your potatoes are soft, you are ready to eat.

Don't forget to prepare your basmati rice in time! Top it all off with fresh coriander, and you're ready to dine. Don't forget to filter out the cloves, bay leaves and cinnamon stick!

The result

I love curries, so I was really glad that my lamb didn't burn or leave a burnt flavour.

This curry was absolutely delicious, although I probably do prefer the Mid-Week Beef Curry (p. 50) just slightly over this one, as that one packs a bit more of a punch in terms of flavour. However, if you're a big fan of lamb, this dish brings those particular lamb flavours to a new level. it had been a while since I had eaten lamb that I have enjoyed this much. True story.

Next time

Well, as I'm writing this it's Wednesday night, the 2nd of April, and it's my birthday. This means that this coming weekend, I will be celebrating with friends and family, and have not yet considered anything to make yet.

So, I will let it be a surprise or a last minute thing.

Also, I will vow not to leave the updates of this blog hanging. I will try to put up a new post every Monday night (since I usually cook things on Sunday). 

If you do not believe me, or know yourself to forget this, and you really want to know what else is in Andy Allen's cookbook, feel free to fill out your e-mail address and get notifications whenever I've updated! 

See you at our next elemental meal!

P.S. Don't forget to pay a visit to Judy's Books and Bakery!

P.P.S. Interested in purchasing Andy's cookbook? You can order it here.

Dish 7: Roast Beef with Winter Vegetables

The dish

I owe you two posts by now, so you'll get both of them quickly following one another. Although, if you read this later, you'd never know (schedule-manipulation ftw, muahaha!).

Anyway, I had already decided on this dish quite some time ago, so I was looking forward to preparing it. Also, I had expected most of this being sitting around while the oven does all the work, which always makes me tingle a little on the inside. 

The preparation

And sitting around I did. Not so much while the oven did it's work, but while the oil and thyme sprigs did their job. 

While the meat (which I didn't expect to be so expensive. Oh well, you live, you learn!) was marinating, I made a start on the vegetables.

This was the first time ever I have touched a parsnip, and it was the first time since forever that I touched a beetroot. 

I felt so healthy preparing all of the vegetables. This dish isn't complicated, unless you don't know how to use a small kitchen knife, in which case you're pretty much screwed.

I was, however, surprised when I didn't need to chuck the meat into the baking tin together with the vegetables, but that I was going to have to brown the meat in a frying pan. False advertising, I call that, because the pictures in the book all had the roast lying amidst the vegetables inside the baking tray. 

Luckily I got a great frying pan for Christmas 2012 that allows for time in the oven, so after I browned the meat I was able to put it - pan and all - into the oven, just above the vegetables in their baking tray. 

In the meantime I started on the dressing, because I had all the time in the world now.

Let me get one thing straight: I love horseradish. I love wasabi. Seriously, even the feeling of having your nose pinched shut just above the nostrils, bringing tears to your eyes? Yup. :)

I also put the plates in a bath of scalding hot water to heat them up a little.

Once the dressing was done, the meat had to come out of the oven to rest for about 15 minutes. I grabbed my oven mitt and pulled the frying pan out of the oven, transferred the beef onto a wooden cutting board and covered it with some foil.

And then, unexpectedly, I still managed to pull an Andy. Remember that pan-oven vs the hand situation? Yeah. Having safely pulled the pan out of the oven, it was in the way, so I figured I'd just clean up a little. Without the mitt, this time. Boy, did I feel stupid. Luckily, no severe harm done (and it only cost me about 10 minutes of cooling - which still left me 5 minutes).

Unfortunately, one of my dinner guests notified me about 7 minutes before it was done (and 2 minutes before she was due to arrive) that she was going to be around 10 minutes late. Needless to say, I was not amused, especially not because I did not want this expensive meat to be overdone. But what can you do? So I waited and prayed to the gods of meat. No, not really. Well, okay, maybe a little.

The result

This dish is pretty much what it says it is: roast beef with winter vegetables. And once finished, it can look like this:

Yes, I realise I should have put the two pieces of meat with the pink sides up as well, but oh well, I was hungry and the meat was pretty much cold by then.

I also served with a delicious Australian wine that my best friend bought just because of the label. 

Read it and weep, my darling readers. And be sure to buy it, because it was actually pretty tasty. (But what do I know? I've just finished being a student so I settle for most wines.)

Also, quick question: how do people let meat rest for so long without it going absolutely cold? Does one warm it up again right before serving? And if so, how? Oh the mysteries of life!

I figured out with this dish that horseradish can make up for a lot of things, but it cannot make up for parsnip. I am not a sweet vegetable eating girl, and although most of the vegetables were fine, I couldn't for the life of me finish the chunk of parsnip on my plate.

But no worries: there is so much food on your plate, that you definitely won't go hungry!

Next time

Technically next time has already been, but just so you know, the dish after this I made Mediterranean Chicken Skewers with Coriander Yoghurt. During the Olympic closing ceremony. Which I then ended up missing completely. :(

Still, see you at our (sort of) next elemental meal!

Dish 6: Simple Chicken Satay

The dish

I love satay. I also love that by writing satay the way you do you also pronounce it the way I was always taught by my Dutch-Indo grandmother. In Dutch the word is pronounced with the accent on the "tay" part of it, which has never ceased bothering me. Yeah, I know, right? 

But anyway, back to the recipe. I love chicken, I love spice, I love rice and I definitely love peanuts, so this dish really couldn't go wrong.

The preparation

The trickiest part about preparing this is getting rid of the bones in the chicken thighs. I have to admit, the first thigh I butchered, I seriously butchered. But by thigh four, the bone started to come away more or less clean. A moral victory, although I did curse a bit at our cookbook author for the duration of thighs one and two ("Why couldn't we just have used chicken breast fillets?"). But I suppose that this entire journey is also one that should teach me a thing or two about cooking, and I have learned now that after getting really angry, I don't care much about cutting through bone/joints, ripping off skin and generally getting my hands dirty. Will that also do the trick when I have to handle the too-many-legged dishes? I'm not so sure.

Once you've chopped up all the chicken, it's a matter of preparing the marinade and covering the chicken with it. Then you proceed to leave it standing for quite some time.

What I found very important to keep in mind is that reducing any kind of sauce simply takes a lot of time. If you follow this recipe step by step, you might start on this part a little late. However, since I've learned from my past mistakes, I got my peanut butter and stock bubbling away quite pleasantly while my chicken was still marinating.

You may worry that this dish doesn't have a lot of vegetables in it, but that's actually quite alright. It contains a lot of onion and also quite a fair bit of tomatoes.

The result

What can I say? This dish's title lives up to his name (which is awesome!). It is simple, it has chicken and it has satay. 

Oh, and if you are a fan of spicy, you will love it all the more. Eating this left a tingle on my lips. Next time I might even add another red chilli. Delish.

Unfortunately, due to the heavy load of onion, my onion-loathing best friend was not as impressed with this plate of food as she was with the Mid-Weekend Beef Curry, but she still finished her plate and didn't hurl. That's quite a victory, I should say!

Next time

As promised and already announced, next time (which will be Saturday) I will prepare the Roast Beef with Winter Vegetables (p. 52) for my friends, and if it is hard and if after that my friends say it's disgusting, I will whack them with the roasting tin I made it in. Even if it turns out that it is disgusting. Not that I expect it to be, mind. :)

See you at our next elemental meal!

Oh, but before I end this, let me just leave you with this:

That's right. We're ruling this joint! (For now.)

Dish 5: Mid-Week Beef Curry

The dish

What to say about this dish? I love curries, so I was excited this one out. Moreover, because I do have a full-time job, mid-week seems like a call from heaven. After all, a mid-week dinner is supposed to be fast, right?

Wrong! This dish takes about 2 (two) hours to prepare, so unless you are self-employed, currently between jobs or a stay-at-home parent, this is definitely not - and I do mean definitely not! - a dish that's suitable for your average rushed mid-week day.

Andy Allen, if ever you read this: mid-week should mean a preparation and cooking time of 20-30 minutes, not 120. (Yes, yes, I know I should have read through the recipe sooner...)

The preparation

This dish seems pretty straightforward. You take some spices and chuck them in a large pan (yay, I love chucking!), together with some meat and other ingredients such as finely chopped onion and red chillies. 

Unfortunately getting all of the correct spices turned out to be a little trickier than anticipated. You should know that I have a lovely best friend/flatmate who takes care of getting most groceries. She ended up visited approximately five different stores all over town to locate the final few ingredients. This means that in the end I did have to cheat a little, since I technically did not have all of the spices necessary.

Once you do have all ingredients, the dish is incredibly simple to prepare. You start out by chopping up a fair amount of beef, which can take up quite a bit of time if you want to make sure you have gotten rid of all of those sneaky tendons. However, once you've done that, the hardest part is over. Huzzah!

Then you proceed to dry-roast your spices. In my case, only one of three was available in seed-format, so I used the ground version of the other two. In comes one of the best things in the world: the mortar and pestle. I bought mine about half a year ago, but had yet to use it for the very first time. 

It was glorious, I can tell you! Even if I wasn't the one who thought up which spices had to be ground together, there is something about creating your own spice mix that makes you feel like a proper cook, instead of the usual easy grab a pre-fab concoction from the shop.

Once the meat is browned, you use the same pan to fry the other ingredients and spices before you put the meat back in there with some stock and lemon juice. And then the waiting game starts.

I did a workout while the curry was simmering away, which made my initial feeling of hunger fade, as it does when you wait long enough.

Approximately two hours and a pan of boiled basmati rice later (I don't even know how to steam rice), it was finally time to dine!

The result

Was it tasty? Hell yes. There was a slight error in judgement, which caused my final version of the dish to be a little more sour than intended, but it was delicious nevertheless. Change the name to a Mid-Weekend Beef Curry and I'm all for it! Oh, and guess what? My onion-loating best friend didn't even mind the onion so much. Score!

Next time

Although I was planning on making something out of Ben's section of the book, all the deep frying that was involved kind of put me off... for now. Instead I'll try my hand at what I grew up with as a proper Sunday dinner: Simple Chicken Satay (p. 31). And yes, I did check the preparation time beforehand. Also, it's called Simple, so if it ends up being difficult, I know where to find you! ;)

See you at our next elemental meal!

Dish 2, 3 and 4: The Crispiest Skin Pork Belly, Honeyed Carrots, Pomme Puree

The dish

Yesterday I prepared The Crispiest Skin Pork Belly (p. 92). I usually don't eat a lot of pork, because I don't like the taste of it very much, but I had never really had pork belly, so I was definitely keen to try this.

Other than pork I also prepared some Honeyed Carrots (p. 73) and Pomme Puree (p. 60), to accompany that slab of meat. I have prepared honeyed carrots before, but for those I took inspiration from Julie Goodwin's cookbook. I was curious to see how much these carrots would differ from that recipe. Naturally I have also prepared mashed potatoes before, but I have never actually pressed potatoes through a sieve, despite having seen it done on various cooking shows.

The preparation

A trip to the butcher's got me some nice pork belly, although I bought a little over half of what the recipe required, because I only prepared it for two people, whereas the recipe is for a company of four.

If you don't like handling meat or seeing that meat comes from "a real animal", keep in mind that carving the pork's skin may be a little daunting. In the broad daylight, seeing how much their skin and ours look alike, it really makes it sink in that this used to be a living animal.

Anyway, I carved the skin, which proved to be a little trickier than expected. I guess my chef's knife just isn't as sharp as I'd hoped, because it was quite hard to get through.

I figured that because the piece I bought was so much smaller than the one in the recipe, I would be fine putting it in the oven for a shorter period of time. However, because it was the first time ever I had made it, I wasn't sure what it was supposed to look like after the first scorching 30-40 minutes. Strangely enough, despite having salted both sides equally, only one side started to look like I know crackling to look like, whereas the other stayed white and dry. I still don't know what happened there.

Because it took the full 40 minutes for the better half to look crispy, by then I decided I would just follow the recipe as it was, overcooking the pork be damned. I'm fine with messing up a dish if it's the first time ever, so that I know what went wrong.

In the meantime I started on the pomme purée and the honeyed carrots. Luckily I had done both of these before, and since neither required the oven (whereas Julie Goodwin's honeyed carrots also spend some time in the oven), I could combine it perfectly.

First time ever I pressed boiled potatoes through a sieve with a tea towel. And yes, the purée was silky smooth and to my big surprise the pan I mixed the potatoes, milk and butter in stayed almost perfectly clean, and the purée began to look like a kind of dough. Perhaps it was a bit like gnocchi in that sense. Interesting.

Final result

Was the pork belly crispy? Definitely! You couldn't hear yourself think when chewing it, and I have proof in the form of a video which I may or may not post later.

The pomme puree was super smooth, and because I added extra butter, had a great flavour. All in all, however, I'm much more of a chunky mash eater, so although I know that I could make some of my friends really happy serving them this puree, I myself probably won't make it this way soon again.

As for the carrots, although I couldn't really mess up there, I do think I was a little overenthusiastic with the lemon juice. The carrots, although lovely, sweet and fresh, were a little on the sour side, thanks to this overdose of lemon juice. It did accompany the silky creamy puree and the fatty pork crackling perfectly, though!

If you do love pork, this dish is amazing. If, like me, you're not a big fan of the flavour of pork, I would give this dish a miss. Over all, for a cold and snowy day, such as the one we had yesterday (and today), why not prepare such a wintery meal?

Next time

Next time I will prepare an Andy Allen dish a little later than the weekend, because, as it goes, those days are already planned full. Instead I'm going to go for the Mid-Week Beef Curry (p. 51) on Tuesday or Wednesday. Perhaps it is a little easier than some of the other dishes, but I find that with limited time, one needs to make such choices.

You already know what I will prepare the week after that, and if the recipe is really simple, I will also attempt one of Kylie Millar's desserts. Which one, I don't know yet.

Stay tuned and see you at our next elemental meal!