Spoil-her Series: Simple recipes for men.

Under 5 ingredients, Under 20 bucks. Maximum brownie points.

Ingredients:

• 1 dozen fresh unshucked oysters (Normally around $1 each)
• Lemon
• Tomato juice / Clamato
• Various condiments to your liking

Directions:

Rinse oysters to remove debris from outside shells

Place oysters in freezer for an hour

Using an oyster knife or screw driver, insert the tip into a small crack or weak point, usually at the base of the oyster shell, and slowly pry open.

Cut off the connecting muscle from the shell and the oyster, on both the top and the bottom

Reserve the oyster brine as it contains good flavours.

Get creative with your condiments! I recommend Yuzu, Mirin, Soy, Worcestershire, Cocktail sauce, hot sauce, Horseradish, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

For the bloody mary oyster shots – combine Clamato (50% full), pinch of horseradish, a few drops Worcestershire sauce, a few drops of hot sauce, lemon juice, and then topped with cold vodka.

End

Spoil-her Series: Simple recipes for men.
Under 5 ingredients, Under 20 bucks. Maximum brownie points.

Ingredients
2 x  Beef Fillet Mignon, Center-Cut (1.5″ – 2″ thick)
6 oz Portobello Mushroom Caps, Packaged
Bottle of red wine
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Start the steaks at room temperature by leaving them out 2 hours before cooking.

Using an oven safe pan or griddle (do not use anything with a rubber handle!), place inside hot oven at 500F to for pre-heating. Around 30 minutes should get it nice and hot.

Roughly chop mushrooms, and open your bottle of wine.

When pan is hot enough, using oven mitts (please be careful), place the pan on your stove top and place the steaks on your pan. The pan is so hot at this point, you won’t need to turn the stove on.

Sear steaks, one minute each side. While they’re searing, turn the oven off.

Place the entire pan (both steaks seared on both sides) into the oven for an additional 4 minutes.

Take the pan out, and remove the steaks from the hot pan. Salt them to taste. Rest them on a plate elsewhere, covered.

Using the remaining beef fat on the pan, place it on the stove on medium heat and cook the mushrooms. You can add olive oil to this if it gets a bit dry.

Sautee the mushrooms until they’re soft and glossy, season with salt and pepper.

Serve the mushrooms with your steak, with any leftover pan juices.
This is the most perfect, tender steak you’ll ever make!

To ring in the new year, our friends at Sauza® Tequila has created some simple margarita recipes that are not only delicious but, most importantly, guilt-free.

Toast to the new year and new you these lower-calorie Sauza margaritas!

The Slender Sauzarita
Ingredients—serves 8:
10 oz. Sauza® Silver Tequila
3 oz. Fresh Orange Juice
3 oz. Fresh Lime Juice
3 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
6 oz. Agave Nectar
Lime Wheel for garnish

Directions:
Combine ingredients in a pitcher with ice. Mix well. Pour into chilled martini glass and garnish with a lime wheel.

The Skinny-Sour Sauzarita
Ingredients—Serves 7:
8 oz. Sauza® Silver Tequila
4 oz. Cruzan Guava
8 oz. Fresh Lemon Sour
8 oz. Diet Lemon-Lime Soda
Lime squeezed for garnish

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a pitcher with ice. Mix well. Pour into glass and garnish with a lime.

*Low calorie as compared to the traditional versions of similar cocktails. The lower calories are obtained through mixing with a no calorie or low calorie mixer. “Low calorie” or “Skinny” claims do not suggest that the consumption of a low calorie alcoholic beverage has any health benefit or is part of a healthy calorie reduction program.

With sage and garlic herb butter, lemon and dutch cream potato

Fresh egg linguini, lobster, johnny love bite tomatoes, basil (in 20 minutes!)

Boil a large pot of salted water.
In a separate pan, brown sliced garlic, diced eshallots, and add cubed tomatoes. Add a splash of dry white wine and reduce.
Add some tomato paste and some dried chilli flakes to give it some color.
Stir in lobster meat and add butter and heat for a minute.
Cook pasta to slightly before al dente, drain, and add into sauce.
Serve immediately with finely chopped basil.

There’s always that dilemma where you have all these lobster shells leftover – and what better way to use them than a classic lobster bisque?

Lobster Bisque

Place lobster shells on an oven tray and roast until shells begin to brown, about 8 minutes. With olive oil in saucepan brown chopped onions and 2 cloves garlic. I like to stuff the lobster head with 2 inch pieces of peeled carrots, and add in a few stalks of celery. Add 2 cups of fish stock and 1 cup chicken stock. Bring to the boil, and then simmer under low heat for 3-4 hours, covered.

Strain soup through sieve set over large saucepan, pressing firmly on solids. Whisk tomato paste into soup. Simmer until soup is reduced to 3 cups, about 15 minutes. I normally prepare this the night before. The rangehood in my apartment isn’t exactly powerful, so the entire floor of the building smelled like lobster bisque. Sorry neighbours!

When you are ready, add half a cup of cream (or more, if you prefer) to soup and simmer 5 minutes. Dissolve cornstarch in 1 tablespoon water. Add to soup and boil until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Mix lobster meat into soup and stir to heat through. Season with black pepper and salt and ladle soup into bowls.

Lobster bisque really reminds me of the small Hong Kong styled diners I used to go to with my family, served next to those super soft brioche buns with a yolk and butter glaze… so while on my trip down memory lane, it brought me to the next dish:

Tacky Hong Kong Style Lobster salad
(so bad that it’s GOOD)
This one is easy. Chop up lobster meat, and drain a can of ‘fruit salad’. Add chopped celery and chopped green apple for a bit of crunch.
Mix with a lot of egg mayonaise. Mmm.

That’s how I used four of those lobsters. I think I just ate the fifth one on the couch with some cocktail sauce, and I’m not ashamed to admit it!

I got the liberty to work from my own home since I would rather not show my puffy face post widom teeth extraction, so I can have the stove happening while I tap away on my computer. Here are my two recipes for the one chicken to prepare on two different days:

Baked Chicken Legs

I detached the legs (thigh and drumstick) and left it in a marinade for 6+ hours. Be creative! I added:
Honey
Lo Sui sauce
Sesame Oil
Pinch of Chinese 5 spice powder
Pinch of Japanese 7 spice (spicy powder)
Dried rosemary
Salt and pepper

Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for half a day… or overnight.

Place the chicken legs in a baking tray. I like to fold a shallow “bowl” with baking paper so that all the juices are caught and the surface is non-stick (unlike foil). Plus it makes washing up minimal! Scatter sliced onions around the chicken legs, pour a small amount of chicken broth on top along with a dash of white wine, and add remaining marinade leftover in the bowl into the baking tray. Sprinkle some dried oregano on top and bake for 45 mins on 190°C or until chicken is golden brown and its juices run clear.

There shouldn’t be a need for basting, as there are enough juices in your baking “tray” to keep it moist. The onions should be nicely caramelized. I like to brush the chicken skin with a layer of honey when it’s finished, and put it back under the grill for an extra five minutes, just to get the extra gloss.

It’s perfect, and it’s so simple.

With the rest of the chicken, add to a soup pot, and chop up any vegetables you like. I used:
2 carrots
1 zucchinni
1 brown onion
half a can of diced tomatos
3 sticks of celery
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 tiny clove, pushed inside chicken flesh

Cover all ingredients with half chicken broth, half water

Bring to a slow gentle boil, and simmer on low heat for 4-5 hours. It’s very hard to get this wrong. The reason why I cut my vegetables into such big pieces was so that it would be easily to remove after cooking, if you are looking to make a clear chicken & vegetable broth. Take chicken out of soup when done, and shred chicken meat into the strained broth.

If you chicken is slow cooked with cold water to begin with, the meat should be moist and smooth, not dry and stringy.

Enjoy the cooler seasons

Here is a simple, filling soup you can prepare in under 45 minutes. Hey, if I can cook this while I’m tripping out on extremely strong painkillers (and doubled the dosage for added excitement) you can do this with your eyes closed! This is for you, Deb

All you need is:
2 leeks (only use the light green and white parts, discard the green leaves)
5 washed potatos
1 brown onion
2 slices of prosciutto / parma ham, bacon or pancetta, diced
1 litre of chicken broth
half a cup of cooking cream

Using a mandolin, slice leeks and potatos thinly, and finely dice the brown onion.

In the soup pot, add two tablespoons of butter and cook the onions and leeks until it’s softened and lightly browned. Add diced prosciutto or bacon – you may add more olive oil as well. The prosciutto really gives it extra flavour and smokiness, but if you are vegetarian you can easily leave this out.

Add the sliced potato in the pot and stir for another three minutes

Add chicken broth, just enough to cover the potatos. If the soup becomes too thick you can always add more broth later.

Simmer on medium heat for 15 – 20 minutes. The thinner you sliced your potatoes, the quicker it takes for them to cook. When the potatos become soft, you can start squishing them into smaller pieces with your wooden spoon.

Using a hand blender, blend soup on low heat until smooth. I would normally prefer it slightly lumpy to give it more texture, but I can’t chew!

You can see that the soup has become a lot thicker than before. You can stir in extra broth if you wish, and simmer for another ten minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally.

Add half a cup of cooking cream and slowly stir in before serving

and voila, a quick and easy soup – not to mention all the ingredients cost under ten dollars. Hello financial crisis!

I improvised on the recipe, and it turns out I used waaay too little sugar. I have a bad habit of making all my recipes low cal. What’s the fun in that?

Filling: Using a mortar and pestle, grind seasame seeds to a powder. Add sugar (add a lot more than I did!) and continue grinding. Then I added sesame powder – at this point you can add a little water to make the filling ‘pastey’.

The perfect glutinous rice flour to water ratio is around 3 cups rice flour to 1.5 (and a little bit more) water. I boiled my water with a few pieces of chinese rock sugar to sweeten it first. (you can also add food colouring as well, if you want, say, pink tang yuens) Pour the hot water into the flour and start stirring until it starts to stick together loosely. At this point, dust your hands with flour and start kneading. Knead for about 5 mins – continually dusting with flour. Glutinous rice flour is very sticky to work with. Pack it into a large ball and leave for 20 minutes under a damp tea towel.

Pinch a small ball of dough, roll between your palms to form a ball and flatten it into a disk around .8cm thick. Poke the centre slightly with your index finger, and spoon your sesame filling in the middle. Pinch the dough back together evenly with the filling in the middle, and re-roll into a ball between your palms.

Now repeat it a gazillion times – if you have a large family to feed. Store each finished tangyuen under a damp tea towel so it doesn’t dry up. You have to work very quickly as the dough will not be smooth as soon as it starts to dry.

Boil half a pot of water, add glutinous rice wine and rock sugar to taste, and add your tongyuen. It will all sink to the bottom at first, but as soon as they float up to the top, it is ready to serve!

The result? The tangyuen was amazing – but the filling could be sweeter! We forgot to take photos… so here is one I found which is very similar:

You can be creative with your fillings – red bean, green tea, choc peanut, cherry blossom?
Instead of serving them in a sweet soup, you can also roll them in seasame powder to make mochi.

CIRA (The Council Of Italian Restaurants In Australia) was started by 12 Italian-Australian restaurateurs for cultural and educational purposes, to promote the values of Italian food in Australia. Fortunately for us, CIRA has a cooking school with the best Italian chefs offering courses to the general public and specialized courses for students and the industry.

Massimo (ex Buon Ricordo, and about to open Uccello at Ivy) gave a very personal cooking course at the kitchen of Casa Barilla, next to a long communal dining table. The format was perfect – we learn one course, we sit down and enjoy it with wine, and then we move onto the next. One of the founding members Armando Percuoco (Buon Ricordo) was also there to offer his advice on truly authentic Italian cooking.

Fettuccine with prosciutto, pomodorini and pecorino

There is a common misconception that pasta can be cooked as soon as the water starts to boil. The water has to be violently boiling – and you can heavily salt it, not just a pinch, but enough so you can actually taste the salt in the water. Drain the pasta about a minute or two less than the packet instructions (if you taste it, it’s still slightly raw in the middle) because when you pour it back into the pan with sauce, it will keep cooking. Save a cup of the pasta water (as it is “starchier” than normal water) for the sauce later if it becomes too dry. But in Rome, the sauce can never be watery, it has to stick to the pasta and be as dry as possible.

Scottadito d’abbacchio alla Romana (Scottadito means ‘by the finger’; d’abbacchio is young lamb – lamb chops you can eat with your fingers)

True Italian cooking only requires you to slightly crush garlic bulbs with your palms. Brown them in olive oil until they’re almost burnt (dark brown) and remove them from the oil. There is no need to chop it up as the flavour in the oil is enough. Garlic that is cooked through also makes the food taste less heavy, compared to say, French food. The same goes for the Rosemary – put the entire sprig in the pan, cook, and then remove. Keep the pan at high heat at all times so the lamb doesn’t end up broiled.

When the lamb chops are ready, the remaining fat can be made into a beautiful creamy sauce (without the help of cream or butter) by reducing with some anchovies, wine and vinegar.

La Ricotta

Ricotta cheese – made into a pattie, dusted with flour, covered in egg wash and deep fried in Strutto/sugna (pure pig’s fat) until golden brown. Dusted with cinnamon and sugar, cholesterol never tasted so good. Served warm.

This is truly sinful - but it tastes somewhat light.

If anyone is interested in the recipes I can scan them (with my notes included) for you to download.

Much love x

Cooking Directions