Pork belly #1 of 2

Ooh... who wants crackling?

I love cooking roast pork for my friends.  It's easy (the butcher, and then the oven, do all the work), and everyone goes gaga for crackling.  So when we had 2 big parties for Christmas on the same day, I thought pork belly would be the perfect option.  (It's the ingredient of 2010, don't you know?)  It's also cheaper than my beloved pork shoulder, and easier to carve.

I was tossing up between 2 recipes - Donna Hay's sage-roasted pork belly (from her Seasons book), and Nigella's roast pork belly from Kitchen.  In the end, I chose Donna's recipe, with some slight adaptations, because the picture was amazing, and it produced a slab of crackly, piggy goodness, as opposed to the shredded pieces of pork from Nigella's recipe.  Another good thing about Donna's recipe was that it could be cooked the day before, with only a 30-minute quick blast in the oven to crisp it up before serving.  (Let's be clear, Donna's recipe didn't actually specify that - I just figured you'd be able to do it, similar to the poached-then-blasted method of Nigella's soft and crispy duck from How to Eat).

So, I bought 2 pork bellies, and got my butcher to score the rind.  The night before the party, I put them each in a tray with some unpeeled garlic cloves, and sprinkled sea salt liberally over the skin.  (Donna tells you to cook it skin-side down for the first part, but I couldn't see how that wouldn't give the crackling a sloppy kiss of death).

And into the oven they went, at 160C for 3 hours.  Whilst the oven was doing its thing, we, well, cleaned up the house and kept cooking and baking other things.  If you were making this in the normal run of things (i.e. not for an epic day of entertaining), you could sit and relax while it's cooking.


This is what they looked like after the 3 hours.  It's amazing how much it shrank.  I'm hoping that was fat melting off, and not just water!

So from there, I let them cool down and stashed them in the fridge, ready for the next day of parties.  For each party, I'd chuck a pork belly in the oven as people were arriving.  30 minutes at a hot-hot-hot temperature.  (Donna's recipe says 180C for 30 minutes, but again, I have no idea how the crackling would get crispy at such a low temperature.)  You're also supposed to add a bunch of sage to the pan for the final roast, but in the hustle-and-bustle of the day I completely forgot!  I might just have to make this again with the sage, just to compare the taste, you do understand.

Oooh...

Pork belly #2 of 2

Aaah...

It was so super-crispy!  Don't believe me? Check out this video we took!


More slicing...

If we hadn't have had guests, I would have totally had that slab all to myself!

And here it is, all chopped up siew yoke style so we could all have a piece.

Mmm.. I'm totally craving pork belly again!

I've had this post sitting in drafts for a while, (in fact all the dishes from our Christmas parties are ready to go!), and when I saw Nigella make it in an episode of Kitchen, I really thought it was time I actually blogged it.  You can find the recipe here, or if you just want to watch Nigella do it, some kind soul has uploaded the clip to YouTube.

I must admit, when I first saw the recipe for Venetian carrot cake in the A Dream of Hearth and Home chapter of Kitchen, I wasn't particularly keen to make it.  One reason for this is that it is proudly labelled as both gluten-free and dairy-free.  Not to be dismissive of those with food intolerances, which I know are difficult to manage, but I'm always a little wary when a recipe's major selling point is something other than its taste.  You know, we see packets and recipes all the time, earnestly labelled: "gluten free!", "low fat!", "only 4 ingredients!"

The story of the cake, however, was more intriguing.  Unlike the carrot cake that we know here in Australia, topped with thick cream cheese icing, this carrot cake is more of a thin Italian-style torta, originally made by Jewish people from the Venetian ghetto.  I had a friend coming to the Christmas party who happens to be Jewish, coeliac and lactose-intolerant.  There couldn't have been a more perfect opportunity to try this cake.

The cake is based on almond meal, an ingredient which I adore.  The fragrance of fresh almond meal is heavenly!

Grated carrots are the other main ingredient... grated by hand. Feel the power!

The grating is the most labour-intensive part of the process; everything else just needs a light stir.  The stirred mixture doesn't look too appealing but smells lovely, thanks to the almond meal and rum-soaked sultanas. (Nigella's mixture was a deep golden colour; perhaps due to the expensive imported Italian eggs she uses.  Mine were plain old supermarket free-range).

The mixture was also a bit loose for my liking; I think next time I may make it in a food processor to get a smoother texture.  (Obviously I'd stir the sultanas and grated carrot in afterwards!)

I baked the mixture in mini muffin tins, for ease of sharing (across two parties).  They took about half the time stated in the recipe.

Welcome to my semi-annual post on Christmas leftovers!  (Last year's post is here, and the last time before that was 2006!)  I think we did pretty well this year and didn't vastly overcater, but we still had some leftover ham, gravy, turkey, lobster and dumplings, as well as some other little bits and pieces.  With the leftover lobster, I ate it cold, with mayonnaise and hot chips - divine.  The other leftovers took a little more work, so I thought I would share some photos with y'all here.

In my opinion, the best thing to do with leftover bread dumplings is to slice them up and fry them.  We had them as a late brunch with scrambled eggs, some leftover gravy and red cabbage.

Fried dumplings

My dad was a bit more creative than me, and on the same day, whipped up a tasty pasta dish - spaghetti, chopped up ham, leftover petits pois and some eggplant pesto.

Dad's pasta

For something a little healthier, and because we were totally sick of big Aussie-style roasts, we made a simple turkey-noodle soup.  It included (bought) chicken stock, some chopped up carrots and celery, noodles, and leftover turkey meat.  I ate mine with loads of crunchy chiu chow chilli oil, fish sauce, raw onion slices and lemon juice - kind of a mix between pho, chicken-noodle soup and kway teow th'ng.  It was both comforting and restorative at the same time.



And finally, the dinner of which I am most proud - the ham and leek "welsh" pasties that you see at the top of the post.  These come from Nigella's Kitchen, and are a suggested way to use up leftover ham and leeks in white sauce.  (Page 373 in the UK edition, if you're interested in making them - and I certainly think you should be!)

I didn't have any leftover leeks in white sauce, but wanted to try these pasties so much that I made up the sauce from scratch, and stirred in some leftover ham cubes.

Leeks in white sauce

Ham cubes

Nigella suggests lard for the pastry, but I used copha instead.  This wasn't out of any health concerns, but more because I have no idea where to buy good baking lard, and I had some copha in the fridge anyway.  The pastry is a standard shortcrust, but with the addition of bicarb and baking powder.  I made it up in the blender, because copha, unlike butter, is super-difficult to rub into flour using your fingertips.

The pastry was lovely and pliable, and was incredibly easy to roll out, even though I didn't use Nigella's "freeze-the-fat-and-flour" trick.  I wonder if it's because of the raising agents, or because of the copha?

Even though the pastry was so easy to work with, I think I could have been much neater with cutting it up!  Check out my irregular pasties below, haha.  Lots of the filling leaked out during baking too, oops.

But, despite their 'rustic' appearance, these little pasties were absolutely delicious!  The pastry was very light and flaky, and the filling had that great flavour combo of onion and ham.  I think these babies would be worth making any time, even if you didn't have any leftovers and had to buy all the ingredients from scratch.

Phew, that was a lot of food!  I can't be the only one looking forward to some nice light salads in the new year, right guys?

I know there's been heaps of Christmas food blogging going around, but I'd also like share a couple of other Christmas posts I read that I really enjoyed this year from other blogs: Catty's Big Fat Finnish White Christmas (in London), and Su-Lin's amazing Catalan Christmas meals.  Fabulous celebrations girls, I'm so jealous!!

Roast Turkey

This year we did our Turkey dinner on Boxing Day, so that we could have the whole family together.  After previous turkey dinners, I think I've honed my family's perfect Christmas turkey dinner...

Turkey Feast

6.3 kg free-range Turkey

I don't stuff or brine the turkey, but just rub it generously in butter.  (Nigella recommends a maple-syrup basting to help it crisp up, but you don't need that if your turkey isn't damp from brining).  And as you can see from the top picture, the turkey was ridiculously crisp and golden.  Or as my niece described it: "covered in turkey crackling".  And I baste the turkey in beer while it's cooking.  (Apart from adding moisture, it helps make fabulous pan juices for gravy later!)

Buttering up the turkey

The bread dumplings are a Czech recipe, which made their way to Germany.  I've blogged them before, and love making them.

Making Dumplings

Uncooked dumplings

I'm still working on getting my dumplings smooth and pretty, but I'm sure with time and practice I'll get better. (They already look better than last year's attempt!)

Cooked dumplings

You can't have turkey without gravy, and I like a good onion gravy.  This time I sliced the onions very very fine, and cooked them for ages on a low heat, so that once they were combined with flour, marsala, stock and pan juices, they melted into the sauce and didn't need to be whizzed in a food processor.  Super delicious.

Onion Gravy

Then there was chestnut stuffing (cooked in a separate tray)...

Chestnut Stuffing

... red cabbage...

Red Cabbage

... and of course, my specialty, roast potatoes!

Roast Potatoes

All that was left was to carve the turkey...

Carving

... and crack open the champagne!

Dom Pérignon 1996

Thank-you to my cousin Barry for the delicious DP.

We had Christmas cake for dessert, and that was that.

Merry Christmas everybody! Hope you've all enjoyed the holidays!

Ta-dah!

As promised, here are the photos of my Christmas cake!  This is the first time I've actually done the whole marzipan and white icing thing - usually I just enjoy my fruit cakes plain.  But I've really, really wanted to try the proper white Christmas cake thing for ages, so I finally bit the bullet this year and did it!

Let's have a look at the steps I took.  (N.B. This is not intended to be a prescriptive how-to guide, just a record of how I did it).  I did a double layer of icing - one of marzipan, one of that rollable white icing.  I used the standard supermarket packets, but I guess if you were so inclined, you could go to a gourmet shop and get yourself an expensive brand.  If that makes you feel better.  But I don't think anyone actually eats the icing anyway - blergh - so I don't see the point.

Here's the cake... it's interesting that after a couple of weeks all wrapped it, the top got a bit smoother than when it was first baked.

I think you're meant to slice the top flat, but I didn't want to lose any cake, so I left it as it was.  (You'll see that the finished product at the top is a bit bumpy, but I didn't mind).  I filled in some of the holes with little balls of marzipan...


... rolled out the marzipan...


...and draped it (rather messily) over the cake.  I wonder if having a bumpy layer of marzipan defeats the purpose of having marzipan at all.  Oops.


I let it dry out overnight, and then draped a layer of the white icing over the top.  You're meant to dust the work surface with icing sugar, but I was doing it at my parents' house and they didn't have any, so I used castor sugar.  It actually gave the finished cake a sparkly, shiny effect, like snow!

And as I was only doing an 18cm cake, there was quite a bit of leftover icing...

Cutting out shapes

The only festive cookie-cutters that my mum has are a bell, a Christmas tree, and a mini gingerbread dude, so I used them, attaching the shapes to the side of the cake with a little water.


And that was it!  I let it dry out for a bit longer, and we had the cake for dessert at our family's Boxing Day turkey dinner.  (To be blogged soon!)  My niece said the cake looked cute, not like one of those "classy cakes" that you'd be afraid to slice into, hehe.

Here's what it looks like on the inside...


The cake was good, not great.  I found it very sweet, and slightly too fruity.  I prefer my Christmas cake to have a bit more crumb to it.  (I do realise this is in direct contrast to my comments on our Christmas pudding this year, which I thought was too cakey and not fruity enough!)  I guess I like my cakes and puddings to be true to their original nature.

Even though I can't say I'm a huge fan of Nigella's classic Christmas cake, I'm glad I tried it once.  Next year I am definitely going back to Nigel Slater's wonderful Christmas cake.

Mmm... waffles!

For our Christmas morning breakfast, I'd planned to make ricotta hotcakes.  I'd bought ricotta and berries in advance, but those plans were all thrown out the window when I unwrapped this gift...

Ooh.. shiny!

Ta-dah! My dad got me a new waffle iron!  We've had an old Breville one at my parents' house, but it's quite old, and only has small indentations, so the waffles it makes are quite thin, and are hard all the way through by the time they're crispy on the outside.  And I prefer them fluffy!  We had a great industrial waffle maker at this restaurant where I used to work (we made waffles to order for the arvo tea buffet), which was huge, had deep indentations and got super hot - perfect for fluffy waffles with crispy edges and heaps of room for the all-important syrup to pool!  But, it also weighed about a zillion kilos, so definitely not good for home use.  But now I have my own waffle iron!  It's a Cuisinart, that the lady at the shop recommended.  It has pretty big indentations, and makes 4 square waffles at a time.

My go-to waffle recipe is from the Roux Brothers (the one I use to make my beloved Taiyaki), but I didn't want my ricotta to go to waste, so I got a-Googling, and found this recipe for ricotta waffles, from the Cook Almost Anything blog.  The batter only took about 5 minutes to mix together - easy peasy.


When using a waffle iron, I always find it a bit tricky to get the right amount of batter.  The instruction book says "a scant 2 cups", but I was a bit afraid of leakage, so I went very scant.  The first batch of waffles looked like this... D'oh!


With this waffle iron, I think you also have to spread out the batter yourself, rather than letting the lid squish it to the edges.  It didn't seem to spread out very much.  Oh well, I guess I better practise making more waffles! Hehehe.

But anyhoo, once they were flipped over and showered with a snowy dusting of icing sugar they looked fine.  More than fine, in fact!


It only took 2 rounds to cook up all the batter - a lot faster than using my old, smaller iron.  This means faster waffle gratification!

Today's accompaniments were maple syrup, some fabulous raspberries, some blueberries (healthy healthy, right?) and the rest of the ricotta.

Yum yum

I quite liked the recipe, especially the chunky bits of ricotta that were inside the fluffy dough.