Beating the chill with homemade baked beans

A delicious old favourite that comes from a pot and not just a can.

Warming, comforting and tasty homemade backed beans

While the northern hemisphere is enjoying their time in the sun, the southern hemisphere is suffering through the cold. Granted, I live in Brisbane, therefore our winter is really quite pathetic. If we have a day where the temperature is below 20 degrees, we think we're about to hit another ice age and hibernation is the only way we'll survive.

Although I do defend our winters by saying that our evenings can get rather chilly, thus making the mornings ridiculously unwelcoming; especially when you are living in an old wooden Queenslander cottage breathing steam from your mouth while you are still inside the house. Brrrrrr!

I can think of nothing better during these cold winter evenings than a glass of red wine - oh who am I kidding, I mean a bottle - and something comforting in my belly to warm me up while living in my ice box.

Nothing like a bottle of red to keep you warm during a
cold winter evening

Homemade Baked Beans
Adapted from Delicous. magazine, July 2012 edition

Ingredients
2 x 400g can cannellini beans
1 onion, olive oil
5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp thyme leaves
1 tbs wholegrain mustard
1 tbs brown sugar
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
1 tbs cumin powder
2 tsp coriander powder
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 tbs tomato paste
600ml vegetable (or chicken) stock
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Parsley, chopped, toast/bread and butter for serving

Method
Heat olive oil in a pan over a medium heat. Cook onion, garlic and thyme, stirring, for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add in spices (cumin and coriander), cook for 1 minute.

Onion, garlic, thyme, cumin and coriander cooking.
The smell is heavenly.

Drain beans and add to pan with mustard, sugar, worcestershire sauce, tomatoes, tomato paste, stock and a little salt and pepper.

Not terribly enticing at this stage but be patient, it is worth it.

Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, and cook for about 45 minutes or until most of the liquid has gone. Check the flavour and add more salt and pepper if needed.

I will include a note here for the carnivorous folk here, i.e. me, I also chop and add two Kransky sausages to the beans. What can I say, it's the German coming out in me.

This is what your beans will look like after about
45 minutes of cooking (with sausages for the non-vegetarians among us)

Prepare your fresh bread or get your toast toasting. Ensure you have your wine topped and get ready to tuck into the tastiest and most warming homemade baked beans recipe you will find. I think it's my beloved's new favourite meal, closely followed by chilli con carne.

Enjoy!

Tasty comfort food - chilli con carne

There were recipes everywhere. In the kitchen, in the dining room, in the study. They were in the shape of computer printouts, recipe postcards, ripped out of magazines, ripped out of newspapers. I was drowning in recipes. Recipes for chilli con carne.

My beloved loves chilli con carne, very closely followed by the joy of collecting chilli con carne recipes.

I had finally reached my limit of finding Nick's various hordes of chilli recipes and decided, unlike my beloved, to actually cook one. It was for our housewarming. It was winter. How warming can you get than a big bowl full of steaming hot chilli goodness? Obviously not much because my guests chowed in to the chilli before it had even finished cooking. That was 12 months ago.

Dear friends, I now share this yummy recipe of heart stopping tastiness so you too can indulge your inner Mexican when your fancy takes you.

There is nothing like a bowl of steaming hot chilli con carne
to keep you warm in winter, or to enjoy by the pool with a
margarita in summer. It just works all year round.

Chilli Con Carne
SRKitchen adaption from Gourmet Traveller

400g canned kidney beans

olive oil

1kg minced beef

2 chorizo, cut into 1cm cubes

1 onion, finely diced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1-2 fresh green jalapeños, thinly sliced (see note)

500 ml beef consommé (you can substitute for stock, but the consommé will add an extra richness)

400g canned tomatoes

50g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), coarsely chopped

¼ cup worcestershire sauce

½ cup red wine

2 tbsp dried oregano

1 cinnamon quill

1 tbsp coriander seeds, toasted and finely ground

3 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and finely ground

1 tsp cayenne pepper

To taste: ground chilli powder

To serve: corn chips, sour cream, coriander leaves and lime wedges    

*Note: Jalapeños are a small, hot green chilli (which I’m lucking enough to be growing in my garden). If unavailable, substitute with other hot chillies.

Chilli con carne ingredients

Heat a splash of olive oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over medium heat and cook mince, breaking up with the back of a spoon, for 5 minutes or until brown, transfer to a plate.

Add chorizo to saucepan and cook for 2 minutes or until starting to brown, using a slotted spoon transfer to a plate.

There should be enough oil in the saucepan to cook the onions, garlic and jalapeños for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the freshly ground coriander and cumin seeds, and cayenne pepper until fragrant.

Return meat to pan with stock, tomatoes, beans, chocolate, cinnamon quill, Worcestershire sauce, red wine and oregano, season to taste with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and ground chilli.

How your chilli will look once all ingredients have been added

Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally, or until sauce is thick. Adjust seasoning and chilli heat to taste.

How it should look before you are ready to serve

Scatter chilli con carne with coriander, and serve with corn chips, sour cream and lime wedges to the side.

Chilli con carne goodness.

Enjoy!

Family Fun - Duck Mole Poblano

It was close to midnight. My beloved and I were chatting away (okay, it was me chatting away). Suddenly, like a lightening bolt to a lightening rod, like a positive charge to a negative charge, like a bee to a flower, an idea plunged into my head and the family Easter feast was born.

Without consideration of the hour on my part, texts were sent to my family. With consideration of the hour from my beloved, emails were sent to his family: Family Easter Feast at The Self-Raising Kitchen on Easter Saturday. Bring a dish!

I love a feast.

Family Easter Feast Menu

entree

BBQ baby squid with a Greek salad

(prepared by my sister)

My sister's amazingly tender BBQ baby squid
with a side of Greek salad

main

slow roasted pork belly

roast tomato and bean salad

(prepared by my father)

duck mole poblano

radish salad

(prepared by me)

dessert

triple chocolate trifle

(prepared by my mother-in-law)

My father's most amazing and succulent
slow roasted pork belly

In this post I'm going to share the recipe of the dish I cooked: Duck Mole Poblano courtesy of the April edition of SBS Feast magazine. I chose this dish in honour of chocolate, it was Easter after all, and mole poblano is a Mexican dish that includes chocolate. How could I go past it?

There's a couple of items in this recipe you won't be able to buy at your local grocer. Let me introduce you to my favourite online spice store, Herbies.com.au. This place has everything you could hope to want when it comes to herbs and spices, including wonderful quality and fabulous turnaround times. I made my order late one Monday evening and I had my spices by Wednesday. It is too easy.

Mexican chocolate from the fabulous
herbies.com.au 

Duck Mole Poblano
by the SBS Feast magazine, April 2012 edition
Serves 4

Ingredients
6 dried pasilla chillies or dried ancho chillies, seeded, stems removed (you can buy these from Herbies. I used the ancho chillies (they come in 3 to a pack) as I was cooking for chilli novices and this is a really sweet chilli. In fact, once I had rehydrated the chillies they smelt like prunes to me.)
4 (about 800g) duck breasts, trimmed (this can be substituted with chicken)
1 tbs vegetable oil
500ml (2 cups) chicken stock
2 cloves
1 cinnamon quill
40g Mexican cooking chocolate, chopped
410g can whole tomatoes
chopped coriander leaves and lime wedges, to serve

Ingredients for almond paste
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 small corn tortilla
250ml (1 cup) chicken stock
35g (quarter cup) raisins
40g (quarter cup) blanched almonds, toasted (simply place in a non-stick pan over a low heat until fragrant and lightly brown)
2 tbs pumpkin seeds, toasted (as above)
2 tbs sesame seeds, toasted (as above)
1 tsp ground coriander
2 garlic cloves, quartered

I deseeded my chillies after soaking them,
which was a lot easier.

Method
Soak chillies in 500ml water for 20 mins to soften. Drain, reserving 250ml soaking liquid. Process chillies in a food processor, gradually adding reserved liquid, to form a smooth paste.

Ancho chilli paste

To make almond paste, heat oil in a frying pan over high heat. Add tortilla and cook for 1 minute each side or until lightly golden. Remove from pan and roughly chop, then process in food processor with the remaining ingredients until smooth.

Almond paste

Place duck breasts, skin-side down, in a large frying pan over medium heat. Cook for 8 minutes or until skin is golden. Turn and cook for a further 2 minutes or until lightly browned. Cut into 3 pieces on the diagonal, cover and set aside.

Golden skinned duck breasts

Heat oil in a heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. Add chilli paste and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until fragrant. Stir in the almond paste and cook for a further 3 minutes or until slightly reduced. Add chicken stock, cloves, cinnamon, chocolate and tomatoes. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat to low and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Add duck and cook for a further 10 minutes or until sauce has slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper, scatter with chopped coriander and serve with lime wedges.

Duck mole poblano
(food photography is a skill, a skill I still do not have)

Cooking with Goat - Goat Dopiaza (Goat Curry)

I love trying new things. I'm one of those people whose eyes light up when I look at a menu and see the name of something new and exotic that I, one, can't pronounce, and two, haven't tried before. I mean don't get me wrong, I have my old favs too. Ask my beloved, if I see calamari on the menu I find it very hard to go past it. BUT I do thoroughly enjoy breaking out of the daily grind by letting my taste buds do a little jig with new flavours.

So, when I was reading my copy of last month's SBS Feast magazine and they did a whole section on goat, once again my eyes lit up, my taste buds started to do their little jig, and my mind was made up - goat had to be cooked. Not sure how many of you have tried goat before, but I certainly hadn't.

To a good portion of the world's population, goat - or chevon as they call it in America - is not new and certainly not exotic. In fact, depending on where you get your facts from, some say it is the most widely consumed meat (New York Times and SBS Feast magazine), however I have not been able to substantiate this statement, as it looks like pork is the real winner (based on 2007 figures). But that's not what you're here for, is it!

Of course, I couldn't just cook a goat curry as I'd invited my brother and his partner (who normally live on the other side of Australia so it's always a bit of a treat having them join us for dinner), my sister and her husband and three children (one is only four months old so she doesn't eat much). However, plenty of food was required, so an Indian banquet was cooked...or at least my Austrayan version of one.

Indian banquet: Goat Dopiaza, Green Chicken Korma,
cabbage with spices and tomato, turmeric rice, cucumber raita,
pappadums (which we won't even mention the second degree
burns I got from making these) and my homemade pear chutney.

Goat Dopiaza
by SBS Feast Magazine

Goat Dopiaza
(meaning: onions twice)

This recipe is all about the onions. Feast magazine explains that piaza (or pyaaz) means onions and do means two, which explains the two different inclusions of onions in this recipe. I've also discovered from another great Indian cookbook that onions (as is pepper and garlic) helps with digestion and improves metabolism. Bring it on, I say.

Toasting cumin and coriander seeds,
chilli and turmeric powders.

Ingredients
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 cm piece ginger, finely grated
3 long green chillies, seeded, chopped
3 large brown onions, 1 chopped, 2 thinly sliced
60g ghee (clarified butter)
800g boneless goat leg meat, cut into 2 cm pieces (get your butcher to bone the leg)
4 cardamom pods, bruised (this simply means smash the pod until it opens slightly as you want the flavour of the seeds inside)
4 whole cloves
1 cinnamon quill
70g natural yoghurt
Coriander leaves to serve

Great colour on this piece of Goat
from Huaff's at Market Square, Sunnybank

Method
Toast cumin seeds, coriander seeds, chilli powder and turmeric in a small frying pan over low heat for 1 minute or until fragrant. (SRKitchen tip: Once cooled I put this through my spice grinder, but the recipe says you can put it straight in the food processor.) Process with garlic, ginger, chillies and chopped onion in a food processor to a coarse paste.

Heat 1 tbs ghee in a large saucepan over high heat. Cook goat in batches, stirring for 2 minutes or until browned. Remove with a slotted spoon (or tongs) and transfer to a bowl.

Cooking goat in ghee until browned

Return pan to high heat, then add 1 tbs ghee, spice paste, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon, then cook for 4 minutes or until mixture is dry. Gradually stir in yoghurt until combined, return goat to pan with 500 ml water and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for 1.5 hours or until goat is tender and cooking liquid is reduced by half. (SRKitchen tip: I cooked it for about 2.5 to 3 hours and it probably could have done with a little more)

spice paste, cardamom, cloves and
cinnamon cooked until dry

Heat remaining ghee in a frying pan over medium heat. Add sliced onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Stir into goat curry and season with salt. Scatter with coriander leaves and serve with rice.

-recipe end-

I loved this dish and I will certainly be making it again. The goat was lovely and tender - although I could have cooked it longer still. Using lamb as a substitute would work just as well. The dish certainly has a little kick to it, which got stronger over the next few days when I had leftovers, but it wasn't over powering so don't be scared to follow the ingredient amounts.

If you want to try cooking a curry from scratch this is perfect as I don't feel it is too daunting for the uninitiated.

Go on…try it…I dare you! Oh, and let me know if you do :-)

Christmas hampers - vanillekipferl and ras el hanout

I hope these last few days have been wonderful for you with plenty of decadent Christmas treats and cheer shared with family and loved ones. I have had an exceptional time preparing the house for the arrival of my (soon to be) in-laws, baking cookies and cupcakes, making spice mixers and pickled onions, and cooking meals to ensure it was a festive occasion. And boy are my feet tired! But, I've had a ball.

I was originally going to put a blog post about what was in my hampers before Christmas, but, between all of the above - and slotting in a little drinking and gossip time with loved ones - I completely ran out of time. However, I hope these will still give you some great gift ideas for other special events throughout the year.

Small gift boxes with cupcakes and
vanillekipferl (vanilla crescents)

Vanillekipferl (German for vanilla crescents)
This recipe was courtesy of a friend of mine, Sian.

My very own vanillekipferl cookies coated
with icing sugar and vanilla bean powder

Ingredients
150g unsalted butter
210g flour
80g ground hazelnuts or almonds (I used almonds)
80g icing sugar
1 egg
60g icing sugar and 3 tablespoons *vanilla sugar (or to taste) to coat the biscuits once cooked

*I bought vanilla bean powder from the cake decoration and baking section of a supermarket. You can also buy vanilla sugar from the spice/herbs section.

Method
Preheat oven to 160 degree celsius.

Sieve the flour into a heap on a pastry board or into a large bowl.

Cut the cold butter into small pieces and mix with the flour. Add icing sugar, ground almonds or hazelnuts and the egg.

Rinse hands with cold water and knead the mixture into a dough. Chill for half an hour in the fridge.

Form thumb think rolls from the dough, cut into 1cm wide pieces, roll and form crescents.

Bake in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until very light gold in colour.

Turn the crescents in a mixture of powdered sugar and vanilla sugar while still hot as it will help the sugar stick to the biscuit.

Inside the Christmas hampers:
vanillekipferl, spiced cookies, pickled
onions, ras el hanout and choc chip cookies

Ras el hanout
This is a wonderful recipe from a little taste of morocco. I love this spice mix because not only can it be used in tagine recipes, you can simply use it on its own sprinkled over chicken, lamb or fish with some olive oil before cooking the meat how you like - roasted, fried or barbecued. You can also buy this pre-mixed from some supermarkets and most delis.

Ingredients
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
2 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp ground cardamom
3 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tsp ground coriander
2 nutmegs, freshly grated (or 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg)

Method
Combine all spices together and store in a tightly sealed jar.

A Christmas hamper wrapped
and ready to go