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Pan-fried Swordfish

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This a fabulous and relatively simple dish from Gary Mehigan. Gary and George’s Your Place or Mine is a really great cookbook. The recipes are tasty, a bit different (in a good way) and not too difficult. Some are super-easy. I highly recommend it. Yes I amended the recipe a bit…

Ingredients
100g dried figs
Olive oil
1 eschallot, sliced thinly
1 small clove garlic, sliced thinly
250ml dry white wine
60g green Sicilian olives
80g small caperberries (or capers)
1 cup flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
4 swordfish steaks
4 large potatoes, each cut into 6 pieces
2 slices of thick, day old bread, preferably sourdough, cubed
1 lemon, thinly sliced
Fig vino cotto

1. Cover the dried figs with boiling water for 10 mins. Drain, pat dry and quarter.

2. Cook eschallot and garlic in 1 tbsp olive oil on medium heat for 2 mins, stirring. Add wine and figs. Cook on high heat until 1/4 cup of liquid remains.

3. Remove from heat. Add olives, 2 tbsp olive oil and caperberries or capers. Allow to cool a little. Add salt, pepper and parsley.

4. Boil the potato pieces for about 7 minutes. Heat some olive oil in a pan and fry the potatoes, adding the bread pieces after 3 or 4 minutes.

5. Cook swordfish on highheat in some olive oil for 2-3 mins per side. They should be browned on the outside but medium rare inside.

6. Serve it all in a hot pan topped with lemon slices and drizzled with fig vino cotto (which I forgot to add).

This looks and tastes great. You really need Sicilian olives for this dish.

 

Roast Turmeric Butter Cauliflower

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The roast cauliflower part of this recipe comes from Duncan Welgemode’s Africola, a remarkable testament to the Adelaide restaurant of the same name. I’ve paired it with a lentil, tomato and roast capsicum curry topped with raisins and pine nuts, some home made hummus and flatbread.

The cauliflower is simmered for 10 minutes before being baked in a hot oven, with turmeric butter brushed on for the last bit of cooking. 100g butter and 50g ground turmeric.

I should mention that at Africola a lot of the cooking is done in an open fire oven, so the cauliflower has an amazing char to it.

The white sauce underneath is made from tahini, lemon juice and garlic.

But I want to make note of the fig and pistachio agrodolce on top of the cauliflower.

2 tbsp chopped dried or semi-dried figs – soak in 2 1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar for 15 mins

1tbsp olive oil
1 eschallot, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Cook onion and garlic gently in oil for 7-10 mins.

Add 400g tinned diced tomatoes and cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring.

Add the figs and vinegar along with 1/2 tsp brown sugar and 2 tbsp toasted pistachios. (I added a bit more brown sugar)

Season with salt and pepper.

Seven Spice Chicken with Flatbread

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Here’s my middle eastern chicken with flatbread. I’m on the hunt for good but simple flatbread recipes, and this recipe from Gourmet Traveller did the trick. I did however add twice as much water, and then had to add more flour and yoghurt to compensate! Nevertheless, I’m standing by the recipe!

The chicken recipe came from The Lebanese Kitchen by Salma Hage and is for Chicken Sharwama.

Cut chicken breast into strips and soak overnight in a mixture of 3 tbsp malt vinegar, juice of 1/2 lemon (maybe 2 tsp?) and 3 tbsp water.

The next day toss it in Lebanese seven spice seasoning, add some salt and pepper. You can buy the seasoning or make it yourself. Hage’s spice mix is as follows:

5 tbsp ground allspice
3 1/2 tbsp pepper
3 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
5 tbsp ground cloves
4tbsp ground nutmeg
4 tbsp ground fenugreek (coriander is an alternative)
4 tbsp ground ginger

The recipe says to bake the chicken strips at 200C for 30 minutes. I thought that this would dry them out and it did – I pulled them out of the oven early. Next time I’d just sear them in a pan.

The chicken is served on some baked veg with home-made baba ganoush and saffron-cumin rice cooked in chicken stock.

Pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, some chard from our garden, a slice of lemon and yoghurt. A great combination.

Chinese Braised Duck

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Last night I made a slight variation on this recipe from Taste. The sauce was good, and more importantly the duck cooking method worked really well.

The duck marylands were cooked in a pan, skin side down, on low heat for 15 mins, then skin side up for 5 mins.

Then they were covered in marinade (see below) and cooked, covered, in the oven at 180C for 45 mins.

Then the duck was taken out of the pan and put in a clean tray and cooked at 220C for 10 mins. While the skin did not crisp up, the duck itself was soft.

The recipe is for 4 marylands. I cooked two but made a full quantity of the marinade.

The marinade consists of the following:

3 garlic cloves, sliced
3 cm root ginger, julienned
2 star anise
1/2 cup Shaoxing rice wine
1 cup chicken stock
1/3 cup red wine
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar

Actually the sauce could do with a hit of chilli.

Saute the garlic and ginger in a pan, then add the other ingredients. Bring to the boil then simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the marinade to the duck in the cooking pan, but don’t fully submerge the skin. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of five spice powder onto the duck skin (or 1 tsp if 4 pieces of duck).

When the duck is in the over an 220C, strain the marinade, skim off the fat, and reduce on the stove for 10 mins. Add some of the sauce to the dish before serving.

The recipe included potato, but I substituted fennel, carrot and broccolini. Julienned spring onion and chilli on top.