17-May-20: Well we are allowed to socialise a little bit, with the virus being curbed and restrictions being eased. We are now allowed to have 5 people, plus ourselves at home… Woo hooo !!!! 🤩🥳🎉👯♂️
No sooner than that was announced, the Chief Taste Tester’s brother number #2 from Melbourne, invited themselves and the other brother to come down for a visit – which we did not mind one little bit.
We couldn’t have a sleep over yet, so opted for a Sunday lunch. There’s no pictures today as we did get a little bit excited and enjoyed maybe a little bit too much Prosecco and Sangiovese but had a great day. It was fantastic to catch up face to face…
The other girls provided starters and dessert but thought I’d share the in-between courses – as some were a great success and unfortunately, one a massive fail – so a little lesson learnt here for a not quite so happy soul food moment. But overall the day was a huge success and between food, wine and family, made overall for a joyous “Happy Soul Food” Sunday !
Mushroom Puffs – great with bubbles !
- This recipe makes 12 puffs
- You will need about 3-4 sheets of frozen puff pastry, a pastry cutter about 7-8cm in diameter or smaller and I use a round ravioli press cutter, about 7cm in diametre as well, to close and seal the little puff casings
- For the filling you will need:
- 3/4 of a punnet of button mushrooms, finely chopped
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- 2 teaspoons of fresh Thyme
- 3-4 Sage leaves, finely sliced
- Maggie Beer’s Pheasant Farm pate
- Heat up a frypan with a Tbs EVOO, saute the mushrooms and garlic over low-medium heat. It takes a little longer but makes sure the garlic doesn’t burn
- Add the herbs and season.
- You could also add just a dash of sherry if you fancy
- Cook until the liquid is basically gone and set aside
- Have the pate ready to go
- With the pastry cutter, cut 24 pastry circles
- On 12 of the circles, place about a 1/2 teaspoon of mushroom mix and about 1/2 teaspoon of pate.
- Place the other 12 circles on each of the filled ones and using the raviloi cutter, seal each of the pastry puffs
- Using a pastry brush and a little milk, brush each puff with milk
- Cook in a hot oven of about 200 for about 15minutes or until golden
- Let rest for a few minutes, so they wont burn your mouth and serve with a yummy bubbles
Smoked Salmon Salad
- 200-300g of hot smoked salmon fillet – I used a local producer – Bellarine Smokehouse Salmon. Use a slightly bigger one if you want to be more generous with the serve
- Flake the salmon fillet into a bowl
- Mix up a couple of tbs of kewpie mayo and about a tbs and half of sour cream together
- Add a tsp to start with of a good quality honey mustard
- Add about tbs of lemon juice, pinch of sea salt and pepper
- Add about 1 tbs of finely sliced green shallot or chives
- Mix together and then refine to your taste – maybe a bit more mustard, lemon or salt or even more mayo or sour cream. This is again, an adjsut to what pleases your palate, so expeirement with the flavours until you like it
- Once happy with the flavour, mix through the flaked salmon and set aside in the fridge until ready to serve
- For the salad, thinly slice or shave some fresh fennel, radish and segment an orange and cut the segments in half
- To segment an organge you need a really sharp knife, take the peel off and then slice in between the skin of each segement.
- Mix all together with a generous couple of handfuls of rocket
- Lightly dress the leaves with a vinaigrette made up of light olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Start with about 3/4 of the vinaigrette and see how you go…
- I make my own, starting with a 3:1 ratio of oil to vinegar – in this case you dont want too much so using dessertspoon measures – and then refining until you like the taste.
- Mix the flaked slamon mixutre through the leaves and arrange nicely on plates and serve.
- If you like, grill some sour dough bread on a griddle pan (to get the nice charry lines on it) and serve with it as well
This turned out a treat – I don’t normally like radishes but they looked so fresh and crunchy at the Farmgate I get a lot of my vegies at and thought I’d give them a try. They went really well 😊
T-Bone Steak
Ahhh yes, pulling out the Neil Perry Herbed T-Bone recipe again, from his Good Food cookbook. And here is where the epic fail came into play…😥
I got 6 beautiful T-Bone steaks from Benno’s and decided to pre-preapre them and keep them in the fridge, ready for main course.
I didn’t think I used too much olive oil but maybe I did, OR it was a case of the oil chilling too much in the fridge and then catching alight as it heated up. Either way, when we cooked them, they caught alight on the BBQ and bascially charred them.
So what should have been like the other two times I’ve done them in the last couple of months, lovely and medium rare with that charry taste of lemon and herbs, ended up being well done and not very pleasant – the poor old Head Steak Cooker was devastated (and so was I to be honest) !!!!
At least the spinach and spuds were great. Instead of fresh garlic for the wilted sauteed spinach, I got a smoked garlic butter from my Farmgate that added a nice tweak to it. The kipfler potatoes were similar to other recpies I’ve used here, such as for “Hmmm – steak again”
So the lesson learnt I think, is to do the “herbing” of the steaks just before cooking – haven’t tested it out yet, so will see if that avoids this happening again !