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Baked Spiced Cauliflower

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Here’s my first attempt at baking a whole cauliflower and it was amazing. I looked online at some spice rubs and then made up my own.

Rub the cauliflower with a mix of the following:

2 tsp turmeric,
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
black pepper
sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil (add a bit more if needed)

It needed some chilli powder, so add to your liking, but at least 1/2 tsp

Sauce was made from greek yoghurt, tahine, lemon juice and minced garlic. I just made up the proportions and it worked. Probably 1/4 cup tahine, 1 cup yoghurt, 1 tsp garlic, 1 tsp lemon juice, salt and pepper.

I served this with baked sweet potato wedges with cherry tomatoes and grapes (a really good combination so it turned out), and some coriander (yes, it was definitely the end of the bunch…)

Also

Baked beetroot from our garden

Couscous with barberries and orange blossom water

Eggplant and tomato tagine (recipe from the Moroccon Soup Bar cookbook)

Fig and pear and raisin jam which I adapted from a chutney recipe in Heston Blumenthal at Home.

It was a Wednesday night feast. When I go back to full-time work it will be a shock.

Sous Vide Moroccan Lamb

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I cooked a half leg of lamb for 15 hours overnight in the souse vide water bath. I use an Anova Precision Cooker stick and a Trespade Vacuum Sealer.

The cooking time came from Dale Prentice’s excellent book “At Home with Souse Vide” (stunning photos by my friend Mike Emmett and his friend Bec at RedFishBlueFish Photo.

Dale is the talent behind Sous Vide Australia. I also bought my smoking gun from them.

The recipe was as follows:

3 tbsp Moroccan spice powder. (For once I used some from a jar.)
1 x 5 cm knob of fresh ginger sliced thinly
3 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
1 long red mild chilli, sliced and de-seeded
1/3cup white wine
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tbsp fig jam
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp sea salt

In hindsight I wish I had added juice of 1/2 lemon. Next timeI would stud the meat with the garlic.

After cooking it overnight, I finished it off on the BabyQ gas Weber.

It tastes really good, although next time I’ll use a home-made spice mix to give it more kick.

I’m going to serve it cut up with warm pita bread and accompaniments.

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Making Roti Jala

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I’ve just made Roti Jala so I thought I’d post in more detail about this. This is a Malaysian lattice pancake that is used to soak up the sauce of a meal. Tonight we ate it with a Chicken Kapitan Curry and some stir-fried vegetables.

We first ate Roti Jala when we visited Malaysia in 2013. When I returned I was desperate to get a roti jala cup, and tried in a few directions, ending up with three! The metal one was brought back from Malaysia by my friend Titus on his first home visit there in years. If you can’t get a cup, the roti gurus just use one cone with a small hole in it! Or you could make holes in a tin can.

I have two quite different recipes for the batter. The first came on the packet of one of the pouring cups.

2 eggs
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 -1 tsp turmeric powder

Sift the flour, salt and turmeric powder together. Whisk the eggs, then gradually beat them into the flour. Slowly add the coconut milk, beating to get a smooth consistency.

Strain the mixture. Test it with the cup and add more water or flour until you get a smooth flow through the nozzles.

Recipe #2 has more eggs and less coconut and it is here. It comes from Ong Jin Teong’s “Penang Heritage Food.”

You can decide whether you like your roti with more coconut or egg.

You’ll see from the video below that it is easiest to keep something under the roti cup. The mixture will settle, so keep stirring it before you fill the cup each time, otherwise you will need to thin the batter with water towards the end.

Here’s a short video of me from the other night.

 

Making Roti Jala from Craig Mitchell on Vimeo.

I will confess that on this occasion I bought a jar of curry paste. It was a good decision as the curry was excellent and transported us back to Malaysia. It gave me a better idea of what to aim for when I make the curry from scratch in future.

Good luck hunting for a roti jala cup!

Orange, Beetroot and Fig Salad

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Here’s the first of the summer salads.

3 beetroots baked with olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar, sliced thinly
2 oranges, peeled and sliced
3 figs, each cut into 6 wedges
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and crushed
1 1/2 tsp sumac
1  1/2 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
Pomegranate seeds
Goats chevre
Chopped parsley and coriander
Pomegranate syrup (drizzled on top after the photo was taken)

It’s colourful and tastes fantastic. You could substitute good quality dates for the figs.