admin - Craig Cooks

Roast Garlic & Cheese Tart

January 29, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

This is such an excellent dish. It’s not too different from making a quiche. What makes it special is the sweet-sour roasted garlic and whatever combination of cheese you choose. My recipe is adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipe in “Plenty“. I’ve added the greens (and changed the cheeses a little). Yotam is my ‘go to’ chef at the moment. Maggie Beer’s website is here. She is extraordinary and her website and cookbooks are excellent. Maggie was behind me on the queue for a flight once, and I wanted to turn around and say “your pastry recipe has changed my life” but that just sounded a bit, you know, fannish… Anyway, here’s the recipe.

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Plenty

January 28, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

“Plenty” is a brilliant vegetable cookbook from Yotam Ottolengi, owner of London’s Ottolengi restaurant and writer of some wonderful cookbooks with his head chef Sam Taimimi. Ottolenghi’s Middle Eastern cooking draws on Jewish and Arab influences as well as other African and Mediterranean cuisine with a modern twist….

Smoked Salmon and Fennel Pizza

January 26, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

Brush the pizza base with garlic oil.

[What is garlic oil? Well, you bake a whole head of garlic, unpeeled, in olive oil for 130-140C for about 30mins, and then put the garlic and the oil in a bottle in the fridge, and you have amazing garlic and oil for weeks.]

Next add halved, small bocconcini cheese to the pizza. Then halved, baked cherry tomatoes (I had red and yellow ones on this occasion, baked with salt, olive oil and basil – 150-160C for 30-45 mins, covered).

Next add slivers of pan fried baby fennel and crumbled feta cheese.

Cook the pizza, and afterwards add smoked salmon, more crumbled feta, parsley.

I added another drizzle sauce that I made up

1/2 capsicum, sliced and sautéed
a handful of sautéed, sliced leek (in this case, our first from our garden)
a handful of halved cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup of vermouth

Simmer sauce and reduce. Whizz the capsicum and leek-tomato mixture in a food processor along with 1 tbsp lemon juice and a couple of cloves of roasted garlic.

Top pizza with parsley leaves.

Just excellent.

BBQ Lamb Roast

January 26, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

I was given a ThermoWorks ChefAlarm as a late Christmas present. It’s designed for testing the temperature of meat as it cooks, particularly for a BBQ which is a temperamental beast. Recommended by Chris G. at Nibble Me This whose BBQ email I love. It’s a pretty impressive device – probe and connecting wire are seriously heat-resistant. The alarm device can be set for low and high temperature warnings and has a timer. Here’s my first attempt on our charcoal Weber BBQ. I cut the excess fat from the outside of the lamb leg, then marinated it overnight in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper and rosemary. That’s all.

To be honest, it was a little underdone inside. The ChefAlarm instructions suggest cooking the meat at 10C less than desired, assuming that it will rise as it rests afterward. Working out how much we wanted the meat cooked and what temperature for the setting… well, we’re working on that. I love charcoal BBQ. Loads more to come about my BBQ experiments.