Author: Robert Beerworth

I love cooking, wine, travel, my three boys, and two girls, Avalon and my beautiful wife and best friend and cook, Nat...

Tagliatelle with shaved parsnip, pancetta and sage

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 4

This neat little pasta is one I found it in Karen Martini’s Cooking at Home. I think she is a really good home cook and everything I have cooked of hers has been a success.

I used fresh pasta and substituted the spicy pancetta (the recipe asked for) for the pancetta I could find at the supermarket.

Tuesday night sorted!

Ingredients

300gm tagliatelle (or fettuccini)
1 parsnip, peeled
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
8 – 12 slices of (spicy) pancetta (I cut the pancetta into large pieces, though that is not the recipe)
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
2 handfuls of sage leaves
1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes
100ml white wine
150ml pouring cream
50hm shaved parmesan
1 tbsp lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Cook the pasta, drain and set-aside; add a little olive oil and keep warm, ensuring it does not stick together.
  2. Use a vegetable peeler to cut the parsnips into fine shavings (discarding the fibrous centre).
  3. Heat half the oil in a heavy fry-pan over a medium-to-high heat, and cook the pancetta until browned and crispy.
  4. Add the garlic, sage, chilli and parsnip and remaining oil (if necessary) and cook until the parsnip is crisp.
  5. Pour in the wine and cook for 2 minutes and then add the cream.
  6. Add the pasta and toss.
  7. Add the parmesan and lemon juice, season and serve.

Pommes Dauphinoise (French Potatoes with Nutmeg and Gruyere)

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves 6 – 8

There are hundreds of interpretations of this dish.

This one is a Orlando Murrin recipe from Delicious magazine. Dauphinoise translates to a “style of cooking” and doesn’t necessarily reflect any one ingredient.

I love cooking rich, baked French potatoes – stock, onions, butter, cream, milk and cheese – and serving them with roasts and casseroles, and this recipe is certainly one of my favourites.

Life is short, eat potatoes.

Ingredients

1 large garlic clove
500ml milk (or half milk, half cream)
Good pinch of ground nutmeg
Pinch of cayenne
900g potatoes, sliced as thinly as possible (I used my brand new mandolin)
175g grated Cantal, Comte (Gruyere) or cheddar

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 180c.
  2. Cut the garlic in half and in a baking dish (2Lt approx), rub the exposed garlic all over. After a few minutes, butter the dish well.
  3. Crush the garlic and add all the ingredients (except the cheese) to a saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir continuously to prevent potatoes sticking, simmer for a minute or two until the liquid thickens perceptibly, and then remove from the heat.
  4. Stir in the cheese, reserving a handful.
  5. Pile into the baking dish pushing the potatoes into the liquid so that they do not stick out. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese.
  6. Bake for 45 – 60 minutes until the top is dark and golden and the potatoes tender.

 

Roast Fillet of Veal in Parmesean Crust

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Serves 4

This is a really special dish.

I found it in Delicious magazine; the recipe is by Orlando Murrin, a British cook and food writer who spent years in south-west France running a guest house and cooking.

I served the veal with Pommes Dauphinoise, and it was the wicked combination of the veal itself, the veal stock and wild mushrooms and the amazing baked potatoes that pushed the meal into the memory category. I just love veal, and the crust kept it moist and beautifully tender right through to serving.

At the time of cooking this, I had only very rarely cooked with veal stock and hours before starting, I ran into a culinary wall – I certainly hadn’t made my own veal stock, I couldn’t find any at the butchers I visited and all I had was Veal Glaze, a serious reduction of veal stock, with nothing of the consistency of the stock I needed.

My good friend and chef Benjamin came through and I provide the following advice, if only because the web is surprisingly murky on the ropic of veal glaze, and in fact several people said it was not possible to reverse the glaze into stock!

On the basis I needed 425ml stock, I made a cup (250ml) of half beef, half chicken stock and the rest, glaze; around half stock, half glaze. Ben was completely right; the glaze doesn’t overpower despite what you might think, and really just softens the beef stock.

I’ll probably make veal stock next time; everyone online raves about it, and apparently Thomas Keller (of The French Laundry restaurant fame) does an extraordinary interpretation worth every hour it takes.

Ingredients

For the veal

750g fillet of veal
1 egg, beaten
2 anchovy fillets, mashed
1 garlic clove, crushes
1 2/3 cups (120g) fine fresh breadcrumbs
1/3 cup (25g) grated parmesean

Wild Mushroom Sauce

175g mixed mushrooms (such as Swiss brown, chestnut and field) – I roughly chopped them
175g chilled, unsalted butter, chopped plus 20g to cook mushrooms
1 eschalot, finely chopped
100ml white wine
425ml veal stock

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 200c.
  2. The veal should be a tubular shape, and if necessary, pin flaps and so forth with skewers. Season well.
  3. Mix egg, anchovy and garlic and brush all over the veal.
  4. Mix crumbs and cheese and press over the veal to completely cover.
  5. Put on a rack in a roasting pan and allow to come to room temperature.
  6. Roast veal for 25 – 30 minutes, turning once until the meat is medium rare and the temperature taken in the thickest part is 52c.
  7. Rest for 10 – 15 minutes, loosely tented with foil; this will prevent the crumbs from softening.
  8. For the sauce, fry the mushrooms in a knob of butter over medium heat for 3-5 minutes until brown.
  9. Add eschalot and lightly brown for 1-2 minutes, then stir in the wine and stock. Bring to the boil then strain into a clean saucepan, reserving the mushrooms.
  10. Boil the stock for 18 – 20 minutes over medium-high heat to reduce to 150ml.
  11. When ready to serve, keep the sauce at a low simmer and gradually beat in the butter until thick and glossy. Add the mushrooms and heat through.
  12. Carve the veal into thin slices, then serve with the sauce.

Tartiflette (French Cheese and Potato Bake)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4 – 8 as a side

There is a time and a place for dishes like this.

Not every night and perhaps not even every Saturday, but if you are going to cook something as utterly incredible as Orlando Murrin’s Roast Fillet of Veal in Parmesean Crust, well there sir, you have the time and place for a dish like this.

I mean, you can always go for a 15km walk in the morning right?

(If you don’t have pancetta, keep looking. You can substitute but seriously…)

Ingredients

1kg potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
50g unsalted butter
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp chopped thyme
200g Speck or Pancetta
1/2 cup white wine
200ml thickened cream
250g raclette or reblochon cheese grated (substitute, gruyere)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 190c.
  2. Boil the potatoes for 3 or so minutes; they should be started to soften though not fully softened.
  3. Melt the butter over a medium-low heat in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until soft, stirring occasionally.
  4. Add the garlic, thyme and Speck (or pancetta) and cook, stirring for 5 minutes.
  5. Add the white wine, cream, most of the cheese and the potato and stir to combine. Season.
  6. Transfer the mixture to a large baking dish and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
  7. Cover with a sheet of baking paper (to prevent sticking) and then foil.
  8. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the baking paper/foil and continue cooking for another 20 minutes or until bubbling and golden.

Zuppa Di Pesce (Italian Seafood Stew)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4

Mama mia! Every time I have cooked this, it gets better and better. The flavours, the experience, the fun of eating anything that you get to mop up with crusty bread.

The recipe is from Armando Percuoco of Buon Ricordo Restaurant in Paddington, famous for his truffle egg pasta and long lunches.

I swear that if you cook this once, you will cook it again the next weekend, inviting friends around for it.

It looks the part, it tastes so goddam good and it’s fun to share with some salads, maybe some potatoes, some chargrilled asparagus with chilli and garlic and plenty of bread.

No excuses, cook it!

Ingredients

3 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
½ cup of olive oil
1 rock cod (250gm) (substitute with leatherjacket)
Blue eye (150gm piece)
Kingfish (150gm piece)
6 mussels (I used 10)
2 baby octopus
8 rings of calamari (obviously, more can be used and I would)
½ Blue Swimmer Crab
8 clams
1 cup of white wine (I used 1 ½ cups)
½ punnet cherry tomatoes (halved)
4 tablespoons chopped Roma tomatoes
1 bunch of Italian parsley, chopped
Sea salt and pepper
Grilled crusty bread to serve

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180.
  2. In a heavy saucepan or casserole, sauté the garlic in the olive oil until it is just about to go golden.
  3. Add the calamari (and octopus) and toss.
  4. Add the balance of the seafood, and the white wine.
  5. Cook until the white wine has effectively evaporated.
  6. Remove all the seafood except for the calamari (octopus) and add the tomatoes.
  7. Place in the oven for 10 minutes, stirring once.
  8. Add the rest of the seafood, and place in the oven for a further 10 minutes, again stirring once.
  9. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

The Tuscan Burger

.Reading time 2 minutes.

My last meal? A hamburger of course.

With this Tuscan Burger, read down the ingredients and you can almost taste the pesto with the chargrilled beef and melted bocconcini, the mayonaise and the chargrilled buns.

Hopefully this isn’t your last meal and as my mother is known to say, the recipe shouldn’t kill anyone. But if it does, not a bad way to go.

As always, go for the best, freshest piece of chuck steak you can and get your butcher to mince it on the coarsest cut.

Ingredients

600g freshly ground chuck steak
100g pancetta, rind removed, chopped
1/3 cup (90g) basil pesto
2 small red onions, thickly sliced
2 tbs olive oil
2 small vine-ripened tomatoes, thickly sliced
1/2 cup (150g) whole-egg mayonnaise
3-4 bocconcini, sliced
4 Italian bread rolls, split
50g baby rocket leaves

Method

  1. Place beef, pancetta and 2 tablespoons pesto in a processor. Season with salt and pepper. Pulse until just combined (do not overprocess). Form mixture into 4 patties and chill while you cook the vegetables.
  2. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
  3. Heat a chargrill pan or barbecue over medium heat. Toss onion in a little oil and grill for 1 minute each side or until just cooked. Place in the oven to keep warm.
  4. Brush tomatoes with a little oil and season, then grill for 1 minute each side. Place in the oven to keep warm.
  5. Brush both sides of patties with oil. Cook on chargrill for 2-3 minutes each side until cooked through. Chargrill the bread rolls.
  6. Mix remaining pesto with mayonnaise.
  7. Top patties with cheese and place in oven for 1 minute or until cheese melts.
  8. Spread bread-roll bases with some of the mayonnaise mixture. Top with rocket, patties, onion and tomato. Drizzle with remaining mayonnaise mixture and top with remaining bread-roll halves

Jamie Oliver’s Real Mushroom Soup

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 6 – 8

It is true – I think – that at its most basic, mushroom soup is mushroom soup. It’s tasty enough, it is nice warm or cold, it’s filling and it’s healthy.

This spin on mushroom soup by Jamie Oliver not only adds a bit of zing to the whole thing, it is one of those cannot-be-ignored opportunities to use truffle oil!

And it’s still healthy which is why I must have two gallons of it frozen and ready for dethaw on any given night where I am too tired to cook.

You should consider the same!

(Slight adaptation of the recipe where I increased mushrooms from 600gm to 1kg.)

Ingredients

1 small handful dried porcini (I also used some shiitake)
Extra virgin olive oil
1kg mixed fresh wild mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 litre chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon mascarpone cheese
1 lemon
Truffle oil (optional)
Sliced loaf of bread, brushed with olive oil and grilled

 

Method

  1. Place the porcini in a small dish, cover with boiling water and leave aside.
  2. Heat a heavy saucepan medium-hot and as Jamie Oliver famously puts it, ‘add a good couple of lugs’ of the olive oil and add your mushrooms. Stir for a minute or so and then add the garlic, onion, thyme and season. Meanwhile, chop half your porcini, reserving the liquid.
  3. After a minute or so of cooking, add the chopped and whole porcini and the reserved liquid. Continue cooking on a medium heat for 20 minutes or until most of the liquid has disappeared.
  4. Season again and add the stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
  5. Remove half of the soup and whiz in a blender until smooth. Reintroduce to the remaining soup together with the parsley, mascarpone and a final seasoning as needed.
  6. To serve, a small drizzle of truffle oil, maybe a squeeze of lemon, chopped parsley, perhaps a few reserved and cooked slices of mushroom, a crack of pepper and some oiled and grilled sliced bread.

Veal with Fennel Salt

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 2

I pulled this recipe from a Sunday paper.

Assuming you’re good with veal, this is a great number to whip up on a Sunday night.

I oven roasted some thinly sliced potatoes to go with it plus a glass of Pinot Gris.

Sunday papers are OK!

Ingredients

1 tbsp sea flakes
1 tbsp of fennel seeds
2 veal cutlets
Green leaves (rocket, spinach, lettuce)
1 Fennel
Squeeze of lemon
Olive Oil

Method

  1. Pound the salt and fennel seeds in a mortal and pestle.
  2. Brush the veal cutlets with olive oil and rub the salt mixture into the veal. Set aside for 15 minutes.
  3. Grill the veal for 3 – 4 minutes on each side over a medium-high heat until medium-rare.
  4. Thinly slice the fennel and combine with the green leaves. Just before serving, dress with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

Vietnamese Fish with aromatic sauce and noodles

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Serves 4

Let’s cut to the chase about this dish:

  1. It was titled ‘Cha Ca’ which means ‘Vietnamese Grilled Fish’. Which it isn’t. There is no grilling. Not sure how it gained that title. (The recipe is from Damien Beaumont; I found it in Delicious magazine).
  2. I cooked this after a long day out in the sun with the boys. It isn’t a quick Tuesday night number (unless you prepare it in advance) though it certainly works if you have two hours… and your boys can be trusted to get the sand out of their towels, run themselves a bath and pour you a glass of wine. Trust me; you really will deserve a wine it if you’re in the kitchen for two hours after a long day of bike riding, swimming and bush-walking!
  3. It is a wonderful dish. It isn’t light, though it isn’t heavy. It isn’t spicy though it is not without its quirks. It is very satisfying and given that you should be on your third glass of white by the time you serve, it is just what you need to nurse slight sunburn and exhaustion.
  4. The dill really surprised me in this dish. It is an excellent accompaniment and should not be skipped.
  5. As usual, I have slightly adapted the dish.


Ingredients

3 garlic cloves, chopped
5cm piece of fresh garlic, peeled and chopped
3 long chillies, chopped plus 1 thinly sliced chilli to serve
2 tbs fish sauce
2 tsp ground turmeric
1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 tbs sunflower oil
½ cup chopped dill. Plus sprigs to serve.
400ml coconut cream
500gm skinless firm white fish fillets cut into 3cm cubes. (I used Barramundi which was great)
Juice of 2 limes (I used about 1 ½ of lime juice, though it is not overpowering)
250g rice vermicelli noodles
Cup each of coriander and mint sprigs to serve
6 x sliced spring onions to serve
Half cup chopped peanuts to serve (I used cashews which were fine)

Method

  1. Combine the garlic, ginger, chilli, fish sauce, turmeric and half the onion in a small food processor. Add 2tbs of water and process to form a smooth paste. Set aside.
  2. Heat oil in a pan over medium-low heat.
  3. Cook remaining onion for 5 minutes, stirring, until soft a slightly golden.
  4. Add chopped dill and past, then simmer, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes.
  5. Add coconut cream and simmer for 20/25 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened and reduced by a third.
  6. Stand at room temperature for 1 hour to allow the flavour to develop. (Leave overnight if doing the day before.)
  7. Return the paste to a frying pan over low heat and cook, for 3 – 5 minutes, stirring until heated through.
  8. Add the fish, stir gently to coat, then cook for 5 – 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until fish is cooked through.
  9. Add the lime juice, combine and test for seasoning. (I added a pinch of salt.)
  10. Meanwhile, prepare the noodles.
  11. Serve the fish and sauce on the noodles (4 bowls). Garnish with the herbs (including the extra dill), extra chilli, peanuts and spring onion.
  12. Have that third glass of wine. You survived a whole day in the sun and you cooked this. Leave the washing up till later.

Dau Hu Rang Muoi (Salt and Pepper Tofu)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves 2 as a starter

I pulled this recipe from Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen (recipes also by Luke Nguyen and Mark Jensen).

Red Lantern is a Surry Hills Vietnamese restaurant, with almost a cult following; the food is modern and brilliantly executed, with great service and a dark, red atmosphere.

Indeed, my mother took me to a Fish Market Cooking School around 2003 held by Mark Jensen and we cooked a prawn dish that really marked a turning point in my passion for cooking. Subsequently, I’ve eaten at Red Lantern at least a dozen times since.

This dish is very satisfying, both from the perspective of cooking it, and eating it. Tofu is one of those ingredients you cook just not quite enough to be completely confident; and yet once you’ve finished deep frying it and the smell of the spring onions, chilli and garlic in the oil hits, you know you’re onto something fabulous.

This could be done as part of a Vietnamese feast or a starter as part of a dinner party, possibly served with other interesting starters. It really is a unique, sharp and tasty dish.

Ingredients

250g tofu pillows (Chinese-style pressed firm tofu)
Oil
2 spring onions (scallions), sliced
1 bird’s eye chilli, sliced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Salt and pepper seasoning mix (Combine 1 tbs salt, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp white pepper, 1 tsp ground ginger, ½ teaspoon five-spice)
Lemon

Method

  1. Cut the tofu into 4x2cm cubes and place on a cloth to dry; in a standard tofu pack, this makes 6.
  2. Put enough oil in a wok to deep-fry the tofu, and heat to 180c. This will cook a brown a bread cube in 15 seconds.
  3. Deep-fry the tofu for 5 minutes or until golden and very crispy. Remove from the wok and reserve the oil for later use.
  4. Add 2 teaspoons of the reserved oil to the wok and place over a high heat.
  5. Add the spring onions, chilli and garlic and stir-fry for 30 seconds ensuring the garlic doesn’t burn. Add the tofu and salt a pepper seasoning and toss.
  6. Serve with salt, pepper and sprinkle of lemon.