the best beetroot salad

Chicken with beetroot salad and sundried tomato, basil and garlic sauce!

Another beautiful day in Manly! This summer has really been glorious - at least in Sydney where we haven't had too many stinking hot days! Tonight for dinner I made my special beetroot salad, which is so quick and easy to make and never fails. I served it with chicken cooked in vermouth and a yummy cold sauce with sour cream, sundried tomatoes, basil and garlic. The perfect dinner for a hot summer day.

As our new oven is not yet connected I had to cook the beetroot in a french oven. It worked surprisingly well! 

My beloved cast iron French oven. An amazing wedding gift!

Ingredients

Beetroot salad
3-4 fresh beetroots, cut in wedges
1 pack baby rocket and spinah mix
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 block of Danish feta
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
Balsamic vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Sundried tomato, basil and garlic sauce
200 ml sour cream
10 sundried tomato pieces, diced
A handful of basil leaves, roughly chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon paprika powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
Salt & Pepper

Chicken 
4 chicken fillets
100 ml Vermouth
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt
Pepper

Instructions

Beetroot Salad

1. Set oven on 200 degrees 
2. Cook the beetroot in oven for 30 minutes or until cooked through
3. Toast pine nuts in a pan for a couple of minutes until golden
4. Slice onion and cut fetta into small pieces
5. Place rocket, spinace, onion, beetroot on a large serving platter. Top with fetta and sprinkle pine nuts on top.

Sauce

1. Cut sundried tomatoes into small pieces, chop basil and grush garlic. Place in small mixing bowl
2. Add sour cream and mix well
3. Add paprika and chili powder. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside in fridge for 30 min before serving.

Chicken

1. Crush garlic. 
2. Heat oil in a cast iron French oven
3. Brown the chicken
4. Add the garlic and the vermouth
5. Cook for 5-10 min until cooked through and vermouth has evaporated (It cooks surprisingly fast in a french oven, so be careful not to overcook!).

Enjoy!

xxx

lemon & herb crumbed fish with tartare sauce

Today the temperature finally dropped and we even had some rain, which was extremely welcomed after the above 40 temperatures lately. So in other words it was a perfect day to stay inside and do some cleaning and organising. I also started prepping the walls in the office, so it will soon be ready for painting, wallpapering and bookshelf building :). Will give you a status report soon!

But for now let's focus on cooking. On Sundays, particularly rainy ones, I always crave comfort food. So for dinner tonight I decided on making lemon & herb crumbed fish with tartare sauce. This is a great dish as you can make the sauce well in advance which makes it quick and easy to put together the rest at dinner time.

I like to serve this dish with boiled potatoes and peas but the options are endless.

Ingredients

4 John Dory (or similar) fillets
2 eggs
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons plain flour
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped basil
1 tablespoon chopped oregano
Juice from half a lemon
Salt
Pepper
Butter for frying

Tartare Sauce
50 ml sour cream
100 ml whole egg mayonaise (I always use the Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise or make it myself. No Australian mayonaise it up to scratch!)
4 tablespoons gherkins, very finely diced
1 tablespoon capers, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon parsley, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon chives, chopped
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
Salt & Pepper

Instructions

Sauce:

1. Place sour cream and mayonnaise in a medium mixing bowl
2. Finely dice the gherkins and capers
3. Roughly chop the fresh herbs
4. Add all ingredients to the mayonnaise and sour creme mix and stir well
5. Season with salt and pepper

Fish

1. Combine breadcrumbs, herbs, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl
2. Keep the flour in a separate bowl
3. Whisk eggs lightly in a separate bowl
4. Toss fish in flour, shake away excess. Dip in egg mixture, then coat in crumb mixture. 
5. Heat butter in a medium hot frying pan. Cook fish for 2 minutes on each side or until cooked through. Squeeze lemon juice on fish while cooking.

Serve fish with tartare sauce, boiled potatoes and peas. I added some broccoli as well, as per Brett's request!

We finished off our Sunday night with a movie, a cup of Peppermint tea and (fake) after eight chocolates. You can't find the real thing here, strangely enough! 

xxx 

Biff à la Lindström

Biff à la Lindström served with fried egg, pickled cucumber, pickled beetroots, fried potatoes and dijon mustard.

The meatballs from the other night inspired me to make yet another Swedish classic - Biff à la Lindström. This dish has Russian flavours, as it was introduced in Sweden in 1862 by Henrik Lindström, a Swede born and raised in in St Petersburg.

The beef can be made either like a patty or like meatballs. I decided to make patties because this is how it is traditionally served and also because it is far quicker to make!

It is the combination of pickled beetroot, capers and anchovies that makes these patties really unique. They are served with a fried egg on top and with sides of small pieces of fried potatoes, Dijon mustard and pickled cucumber.

I takes a bit of time and preparation to make this dish, but trust me it's worth it. It is simply divine.

Ingredients

Patties
500 grams beef mince
100 gram pork mince
1 brown onion
2 tablespoons capers, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons pickled beetroot, finely diced
1-2 potato, boiled and finely diced/minced
1 tablespoon anchovies, finely diced
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
Salt and pepper

Sides:
4 eggs, fried, sunny side up
Potatoes, diced and fried
Pickled cucumber
Pickled beetroot
Dijon mustard

Instructions

1. Boil the potatoes
2. Finely diced the onion, anchovies, beetroot and potatoes. Roughly chop the capers.
3. Mix the mince well with all the ingredients and form 4 large patties. Fry them for 5 minutes on each side or until cooked through. 
4. Dice and fry the potatoes for 30 minutes until golden and cooked through.
5. Fry the eggs gently, sunny side up
6. Serve with fried eggs, potatos, pickled cucumber, pickled beetroot and dijon mustard.

xxx

The ultimate steak sandwich

Every now and then you just nail something. Today I nailed a steak sandwich. The steak was perfectly cooked, the onion was deliciously caramelised, the bread was soft and fresh and best of all - the homemade balsamic aioli.

I think this was originally a Bill Granger recipe, but I've added my own twist, of course :)

Today I also discovered how easy it is to make home made aioli and mayonnaise using our new mini food processor. I don't think I'll ever buy mayo again.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 very finely sliced onion
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Salt
Pepper
4 slices of porterhouse or sirloin steak
8 slices of fresh bread, ciabatta or something along those lines
A couple of handful of rocket, washed and dried
8 slices of cheese
Tomato relish
Balsamic aioli - see recipe below

Balsamic Aioli
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 garlic gloves
salt
pepper
1 cup oil - olive or canola

Instructions:

Steak Sandwich
1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat, add the onion and cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until golden.
2. Add vinegar, salt and pepper and cook for another 10 minutes until caramelised.
3. Remove onion from the pan and set aside.
4. Using the same pan, heat the remaining olive oil over high heat.
5. Add steak to the pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
6. Cook steak to your preference
7. Spread one piece of the bread with aioli and the other with tomato relish
8. Put the steak on the aioli, top with caramelised onion and cheese. Place rocket on top.
9. Top with a second slice of bread.

Balsamic Aioli
1. Place egg yolks, vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper in a mini food processor and whisk until combined.
2. Add the oil drop by drop, whisking constantly.
3. When the sauce starts to thicken, add the oil in a steady stream until the oil is fully incorporated.

Enjoy!

xxx

Bathroom Vanity

Shirin approves

A little while ago we finished renovating our ensuite, which completely changed our lives (our old bathroom was from the 40s). My favourite thing in our new bathroom is however not new at all.

At our local tip/recycle station they have a buy back centre where they sell old furniture that people have thrown out. So whenever we go up to the tip (which is fairly often) I love having a look there. Mostly it's just junk but sometimes you can find some real treasures.

My best find so far is an old chest of drawers that I bought for $5. Even Brett liked it, which is unusual. He usually just shakes his head at all the weird things I bring home for restoration. But he is usually happy when he sees the final result. I'm very thankful that he is so understanding and lets me do whatever I want :)

Anyway, after a bit of thinking, sanding, painting, swearing and sawing the chest of drawers eventually turned into our bathroom vanity. We LOVE it.

As I didn't have this blog when I restored the vanity I don't have any photos of the actual transformation. But what we did was simply to pull off the top and replace it with a ceasarstone bench top that we ordered from a local stone maker. I also sanded it back and painted it in a glossy antique white oil paint. As drawers aren't exactly ideal for a bathroom vanity given that they don't allow enough space for the drain, we also had to saw and rebuild the inside if the drawers a bit.

Finally we bought a counter top basin, a high tap and replaced the handles with cast iron knobs from Bunnings. All up we spent about $800. But it was worth every penny!

My next project will be built in bookshelves in the new office. Stay tuned.

xxx

soupe à l’oignon gratinée

Brett was called out on a standby this afternoon, which left me with very little enthusiasm for tonight's dinner as there's zero point spending ages cooking a delicious dinner when I'm home alone. But at the same time I didn't really feel like having toast either.. So I searched through the fridge for inspiration and found a big pack of brown onions that looked like they had to be eaten. Since I'm a caramelised onion fiend and since it is actually quite cool in our apartment today, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to make French onion soup. This also gave me an excuse to use my beloved cast iron Dutch oven!

When caramelising onion the trick is to slice the onion super thin to speed up the cooking process a little without having to add too much sugar and salt. I hate when restaurants (even good ones) do this! It still needs a fair bit of time to cook and the occasional stir, but it's quite low maintenance, which suited me perfectly tonight.

Ingredients:

4 large onions
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar

4 cups of beef stock
1/4 cup sherry
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram

8 slices of baguette, lightly toasted
1 cup grated Gruyere cheese

Instructions:

1. Slice onions very very finely.
2. Add butter to Dutch oven and melt. Add the onion, salt and sugar and cook over medium heat until the onions are soft and lightly golden (approximately 20 min).
3. Turn down the heat and continue caramelising for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. 
4. When the onions are sticky, shiny and golden brown - add the sherry and scrape off all the brown bits that are sticking to the bottom. Caramelise for another 10 minutes until the onions are dark brown.
5. Add the stock, herbs and sale and pepper to taste. Simmer for 10 - 15 minutes. 
6. Pour soup into individual ramekins. Place two slices of toasted bread into the soup and top with grated cheese.
7. Place ramekins on a baking tray and put in the oven straight under the grill and cook for 2-3 minutes until the cheese melts.  

Bon appetite!

off with its head!!

Our German friends sent us this brilliant egg guillotine for christmas. See how perfectly it cuts the top of the egg? Brett and I have had a long-standing argument over the best way to eat a boiled egg, but after 9 years the conflict has now finally come to an end. The egg guillotine wins. So thank you Serge and Nadine for this marriage saving gift!