Three easy meals with leftover slow cooked meat! Yeah!
Ahead of a long day away from home, I sometimes use the convenience of the slow cooker to have dinner ready by the time we come home. Just practical, nothing fancy. Recently, I cooked a pork shoulder into pulled pork and we had quite a bit of leftovers. It can be quite difficult to find ideas to serve the leftovers pork differently. At other times, it may have been lamb or beef. Today, I am sharing three easy meals with leftover cooked meat.
Mushroom & pulled pork risotto.
This is great with any type of pork seasoning you may have used as you can use the risotto stock and type of cheese you use to balance the taste. Here I used the large king brown mushrooms; these mushrooms never made it to the quiche I had in mind at the back of my head when I bought them! Preparation and cooking time: 20-30 minutes or 30-40 if you take your time!
The good old shepherds’ pie (hachis Parmentier, in French).
What a crowd pleaser for all ages. Tasty meat with delicious mashed potatoes? You cannot go wrong. Here you can add tomato sauce, garlic and additional spices if required to balance the flavours or add some vegetables to make it a bit lighter and increase the volume of the lower part of the dish is this is necessary. There are hundreds of ways to go about it.
Preparation and cooking time – 40-50 minutes with a lot of hand free time between steps!
I love wraps filled with lamb, a bit of yogurt, some green leaves and fresh chilli! Preparation and cooking time is very low, you only need to reheat the meat throughout and prepare your green leaves, lets say 10-15 minutes maximum!
I can’t remember how it all started. I think I was browsing through some cookbooks . As it happens (a lot) I got interrupted after a few minutes and left the books on the coffee table. Fast forward a few hours, I can’t remember, my 8 y.o ., like a curious little possum, goes through the books and starts selecting pages. I am not even aware of that at the time. In the end, we got these chocolate crackle tops for lunch boxes and a beautiful chocolate cake for dessert. Yes, you guessed right, those cookbooks I was browsing were all chocolates books, this is how it ended up with chocolate!
Chocolate crackle tops
These chocolate crackle tops are quite interesting. By the way, the recipe is HERE. It is best not to use a strong chocolate (50% or so is fine) and to add, as per the recipe, a good cocoa. And yes, please make me a favour, use a good cocoa and even preferably a dutch cocoa! But if like me you only have 70% cocoa chocolate handy and couverture chocolate on top of that (that was for the first batch- we did two batches over the week), you need to adapt a little the recipe. I would recommend sticking to compound chocolate (i.e. your supermarket cooking chocolate) for this one.
We had a good time doing those, I think Ambrine has now mastered the centrifugal icing sugar coating force! Instead of pushing the ball in the icing sugar, we used a light plastic bowl with a handle which she could spin rapidly. It is a lot of fun to have several balls racing on the edges of the bowl (and not flying everywhere!).
Coating in icing sugar , ready, steady, roll!
And the chocolate cake?
mmmmm. I need to do it again! Just for the photo, of course! It is a recipe from Valli Little called the Yin Yang Chocolate cake. Coming soon…
This week is the story of a random discovery around fennel. A fennel is a great looking vegetable but apart from that quite puzzling ! I have always used it a little here and there in salad or as crudity.
I bought a batch of small fennels recently, obviously having no idea what to do with them, but they were saying “put me in your basket, please, please !”. So I did. And I did not give them another though until I realised it was about time to do something with them or I would just end up putting them in my compost bin. Which I hate doing.
So what did I have at hand?
Four beautiful small fennels
A batch of freshly made puff pastry (I wanted to do an apple tarte or tarte fine, I have run out of apples and still not tarte! )
A nice piece of fresh soft goat cheese.
An opened bottle of riesling.
No backup plan
And if you know about Scotland Island, you will know that popping up to the shop because you are missing an ingredient is not an option! I am taking that opportunity to provide you with a little slide show of this great place. 🙂
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Caramelised fennel and goat cheese tartlets
This is about something warm, yet light and fresh for autumn.
The concept:
The fennels are halved and placed in a thick bottom frypan with a generous amount of salted butter and allowed to slowly cook, covered. After 10 minutes, I added one glass of white wine, a good pinch of rock salt and further cooked for up to minutes. It should be almost cooked through, still a little firm on top. A caramelisation is made at the end by adding a splash of balsamic vinegar to the frypan and reducing it. When ready, all you have to do is place some goat cheese on a square of puff pastry, then one fennel on each tartlet, fresh herbs, red pepercorns and a dash of runny honey. use melted butter to brush the exposed pastry. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Serve with a garden salad. It was delicious! Quite melty wth this light sweetness and still the freshness of the fennel with the tasty butter puff pastry.
How to get that amazing pizza at home? The secrets of a good pizza are many but they are simple and accessible to anybody. I stumbled on them through trial and errors and input from different people, including my brother or a previous flatmate. Now I think we have nailed it! I say we, because my two daughters are now in charge of the topping and are getting pretty good at it.
We do pizzas regularly, maybe a few times per month. A pity I don’t take more photos or them, the ones last weekend were amazing! My children invariably ask for the Hawaiian pizza (ham, cheese, pineapple). Not my favourite! The “grown up” pizza is different depending what we have in the fridge: a salami pizza, a three cheese pizza, a vegetarian pizza and even a tahini based with spices mince pizza.
A variation of the traditional Hawaiian pizza, swapping ham for sausages
Here are my secrets, I expend on each further down:
The dough: keep it thin and simple
The order of the ingredient: cheese does not go on top but directly above the tomato sauce
The quality of the ingredients: good quality ingredients and please no tin food (exception of the pineapples pieces!), use fresh food!
Limit the amount of main ingredients: there should be up to 3 key ingredients above the cheese layer, no more. See the list below
The use of a hot oven and pizza tray or pizza stone: make sure your oven is super hot, same for the pizza tray. I use these large aluminium pizza tray (less than $10 each at hospitality stores, same as in pizza shops), they do a great job and are easy to handle. I prepare the pizza on baking paper which when ready I slide onto the hot tray.
Here we go in more details.
Secret No 1: the dough
Making your own dough at home is not hard nor does it require hard labour. Feel free to use a food mixer (dough hook) but if you are making just one pizza, your food mixer may be too big for the small amount of dough. For pizza, I don’t mind doing it by hand from the start.
Preparing the dough
A very large pizza (or 2 medium) will need 250 g plain flour (bakers flour if you have some), 150 g of warm water, 1/2 sachet of dry yeast (4 g), a good pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp of honey, a drop of olive oil.
Note here that honey and olive oil are not strictly necessary t the process. I find that the olive oil makes the process easier and smoother and gives the pizza base a little extra taste. The honey is not necessary to the rising of the dough, it does help accelerate it and more importantly for me, give a tiny sweet touch to the base.
It is important not to put the salt in direct contact with the yeast (it kills it).
Mix all together, if the dough is a little dry add additional water one spoon at the time (it can happen as some flours require more water). Once you have a ball, punch that ball on the counter back and forth. it is very easy if you alternate hands each time: push with the right hand to the back (and a bit left for ease), bring back, push with the left hand to the back (and right) and bring back. This move is effortless.
Last weekend, I had some friends of my young children wanting to help in the kitchen towards the end of their playdate, the 6 years old little girl did a great job while chatting away, just to show you how effortless it is.
After 5 minutes your dough will be quite soft and flexible. This is enough, let it to rest in a bowl covered with a cloth. If you don’t have much time, give it 1/2 h rest minimum, otherwise, wait until double, knock back gently, this is then ready to use.
A thin dough
Unless you train again and again to master extending the dough when suspended on the top of your fist, you need to find something that works for you. For me, I simply use a rolling pin with a little flour for dusting . I roll the dough quite thin over a baking paper. Make sure it does not stick to it, and rest for a few minutes while getting all the ingredients ready (or calling in the kids to do the topping). And don’t worry if the form tends to look like the map of Australia, even better!
Secret No 2: the order of the ingredients
The order should be:
Tomato sauce
Cheese
If I am using white mushrooms very thinly sliced, this is when I put them
Meat or vegetable
Additional item such as olives, capers, small quantities of blue or goat cheese
And finally some salt if necessary and a filet of olive oil
Secret No 3: the quality of the ingredients
If there is something I do not like it is to get tinned vegetables on my pizza, let it be artichokes, peppers or others, yuk! They taste of tin food, most of the time because they have not been rinsed.
For me, a pizza is a great opportunity to use these remaining mushrooms, or that lonely capsicum which otherwise may have to wait a little longer until I get an idea of finally chuck the all in a soup or casserole! Be creative! And if you are not the creative kind, don’t worry, planning for pizza in your shopping will at least mean no bad surprises!
Secret No 4: limit the amount and numbers of ingredients
Caution! You are not trying to replicate Mt Everest, nor are you trying to empty your fridge. If so, invite your friends and have a pizza party!
For me, a maximum of three core ingredients is like an unspoken practice. Then there are the small garnishes which can add a lot to a pizza. See the table below.
Base
Core ingredients
Additions
Tomato
red onions
fresh thyme, rosemary
salami, ham
little specks of goat cheese or blue cheese
pinapple
olives
mushrooms (white or the asian styles, which then go on top)
capers
capsicum cut in long strips
dash of olive oil
green asparagus
pressed garlic (small quantities here and there)
thinly sliced potatoes (the waxy style)
cherry tomatoes (cut in halves or full)
anchovies
fresh salmon, prawns, fish pieces, mussel and other seafood (all in raw form)
for a cheese pizza, the different cheese
bocconcini
Thinly sliced fresh tomatoes
Sour cream
Salmon (fresh), capers
olives, fresh dill (once cooked)
red onion cut in circles
Tahini
spiced mince (mix mince with 2 tbsp tomato paste and marocan spice mix)
pressed garlic
olives, rosemary, fresh herb (once cooked)
cherry tomatoes (cut in halves or full)
Asian mushrooms and asparagus. This one was a trial, it was actually quite beautiful!Hawaiian pizza
Secret No 5: the cooking of the pizza
Now, you need a super hot oven to start with and as importantly a hot base. Either you use a pizza stone or a pizza tray, up to you. The bricks of a wood fired pizza oven play a great role in getting that base cooked and crispy. If you base is too thick, you will most likely overcook the top. What temperature? I preheat my oven at 250 °C, and bring it down at 200 for the cooking.
Cooking time ? 10 minutes roughly. Just enough to prepare the side salad!
