Corinna's Recipes
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Try one of Corinna's delicious recipes. Whether you're looking for some comfort food or cooking for a dinner party, there's something here for every occasion ...
- Hundred Garlic Chicken
- Stifatho
- Stuffed Eggplants
- Smoked Fish Pie
- Microwave Jam
- Lemon and Lentil Soup
- Devil's Food Cake
HUNDRED GARLIC CHICKEN
Hundred garlic chicken is a marvellous dish provided the weather is really cold, so you may have to wait until next winter to make it, and you also need a terracotta dish called a chicken brick. I've made h-g chicken in an ordinary heavy-based enamel pot with a tight fitting lid and it's nice but not the amazing food it is if you do it in a brick. And once you make it you will want to make it again, so it's worth the investment. The Provencal lady who taught me how to make it had a dish which belong to her grandma and was so soaked in oil and herbs it was practically food in itself. I suspect that this dish is Ancient Roman in origin.
1 organic chicken
30-100 cloves of unpeeled garlic
handful of fresh parsley and basil
2 lemons
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
crushed pepper
white wine
1 cup plain flour
You need as organic a chicken as you can find and - if not a hundred - at least thirty cloves of unpeeled garlic. A good handful of fresh parsley and basil, two lemons, a cup of extra virgin olive oil, some crushed pepper and some white wine.
Soak the chicken brick over night in a sink full of water to saturate the terracotta. This means the chicken both roasts and steams. Take it out and leave it to drain an hour before you begin cooking. Pre heat your oven to moderate.
Make up a paste of one cup plain flour and enough water to make a stiff paste. Put the herbs in the chicken cavity and the chicken in the brick, pour over the oil and squeeze over the juice of the two lemons. Stuff them into the cavity as well. Then lay your garlic cloves all around the chicken. I now pour in a good slug of New Zealand sauv blanc - about a cup or so. Sprinkle the crushed pepper over and put on the lid. Then use the paste to seal the edges so that no steam can escape. Put the chicken brick in the oven and occupy the next two hours in drinking the rest of the wine with friends.
Two hours and not a sniff of scent, very worrying, just the off-smell of burning pastry. Take the brick out of the oven, poke the paste away with a knife, then gently lift the lid. The gush of steam is heavenly. Manoeuvre the rest of the pastry seal off and you will find that the chicken is so liquid that it will slide off a spoon and the garlics are perfect. Carve the chicken and distribute all the broth and garlics in soup plates.
You really only need crusty bread with this, and an undressed green salad. To eat the garlics, press lightly on one end. The garlic paste which shoots out should be slathered on bread. Gorgeous beyond belief, but really needs cold weather and unihibited people who do not mind eating with their fingers to enjoy it...
Dont try this for the first time for a dinner party. make it for yourself so you can work out how hot your oven is. If when you lift the seal it doesn't smell cooked, just put it back for fifteen minutes and test again. If it is overcooked, then your oven is hotter than it appears. But it is very hard to overcook this dish.
STIFATHO
1 kg beef - topside if you're feeling prosperous; but gravy beef will do
beautifully. Dice it into large bite-size pieces, discarding the uglier bits
of fat and gristle.
5tbsps olive oil
2 medium onions - chop fairly finely
2 cloves garlic - peel and squash under a spatula, then chop roughly.
1 cup pulped tomato
glassful of red wine
juice of a large lemon
a bay leaf, and cinnamon stick, and a few cloves
a fat pinch of sugar; 1/2 tsp salt.
Brown the beef chunks (no need to roll in flour first), and set aside. Cook the onions and garlic slowly in the same oil until onions are golden, verging on brown. Add tomato, wine, and lemon juice; stir together and bring to the boil. Put the meat back in, and add the seasonings. bring to simmering point, cover closely, and leave to cook for an hour or a bit more, until beef is tender. Will go beautifully if three-quarters cooked earlier in the day, then given another half hour just before you plan to serve.
Chunky bread or boiled waxy potatoes are the ideal accompaniment.
STUFFED EGGPLANTS
2 big eggplants
about a cup of pulped tomato
3 cloves garlic
fistful of pine-nuts (roughly crushed walnuts will do perfectly well if you
haven't got pine nuts)
about half a glass of red wine
Black pepper
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 large egg
about 2/3 cup of chopped parsley
4 generous slices of cheddar or kasseri or kashkaval, according to taste
Slit the eggplants in half lengthways with a sharp knife - each half should still have a bit of stalk end to be grabbed by. Scoop out the insides by slitting down close to the skin (avoid cutting through it), then when you've got the big central chunk out, trim the remaining bowl as thin as you easily can.
Chop the eggplant inside into quarter-inch pieces; put in a colander, toss through about a dessertspoonful of salt and leave to drain for about 20 minutes. Run under cold water to get rid of salt and bitter juices; squeeze lightly.
Put a few spoonfuls of olive oil into a saucepan or deep frying pan. When hot, throw in the garlic, and stir around for just a few seconds. Then add the eggplant and stir till coated in oil. Cook on medium heat for about five minutes, or until beginning to soften well. Then add wine, tomatoes and fresh-cracked black pepper; cook until eggplant is done through - you should have a fairly runny mixture. To this, add the pine- or walnuts; parsley and breadcrumbs. Cook for another couple of minutes, until the mixture starts to thicken. Take off the heat, and stir in the beaten egg. Spoon into the eggplant shells, then top each half with a slice of cheese. Bake in a moderate oven for about 25 minutes, until cheese is browning and bubbly.
Those of us under firm feline management know that some foods excite even civilized, respectable, gentlemanly cats into, for example, leaping up on kitchen benches and reminding us of certain subsections of the Law of the Jungle, particularly 14 A (a) which says that any smoked salmon in a kitchen belongs by right to the first person to lay a paw upon it. And, of course, this works, because after one has retrieved the packet from that space behind the fridge through heavy hand to paw combat and put iodine on the wounds, the salmon isnt fit for anything but cat food. Therefore, why not make a treat for the kitty and a treat for the human and obviate this nature red in tooth and claw striving? You can then eat amicably together as the Goddess intended.
SMOKED FISH PIE
2 fillets of smoked cod (about 500 grams, but this is a very flexible dish)
a cup of milk
a tablespoon of flour
a tablespoon of butter
2 cups of mashed potatoes
juice of two lemons
salt and pepper to taste
teaspoon of fresh or pinch of dried catnip
tablespoon of fresh parsley.
Cook the cod in the microwave in a small amount of water (it's already smoked, so two minutes ought to do it or follow the directions on the packet if it is frozen). The fish is cooked when it flakes easily and looks white all through. If it isnt cooked, put it back for 30 seconds at a time until it is.
Take two oven dishes, a small one and a human sized one. Into the small one put all the yummy red skin off the fish and a handful of flaked flesh (remove all bones and discard somewhere with a tightly fitting lid). Do not add salt or pepper or lemon juice to the small dish; add catnip. Season the big dish and add lemon juice. In a small saucepan, Melt the butter and rub in the flour. Add the milk slowly, whisking until it has no lumps. If you can't make white sauce, use one of those admirable packets. If you haven't tried it for awhile, have a go and whisk madly with a balloon whisk - it works for me. When the sauce doesn't taste floury any more, add the parsley, pour the sauce over both dishes, mix, and cap the large dish with mashed potato. Smoothe it over the surface, then rake it with a fork and glaze with milk.
Insert into a moderate oven and cook the large dish for half an hour. The small dish needs ten minutes. Take it out and allow it to cool quietly on the sink until you are serving the fish pie. You may then serve a smaller fish dish to the feline companion, who may then allow you to eat in peace. Or not, of course, You know how it is with cats.
For an easy and relatively reliable cat treat, chop the ends of your smoked salmon into a dish of that gourmet cat food. Or open a can of sardines. Catnip, a mint, is easy to grow in a hanging basket and most cats like it - though not all. However, I have had cats whose favourite treats were plain potato crisps, tomato paste, vegemite and the cooked pineapple off pizza. As proprietors, we just have to do the best we can.
MICROWAVE JAM
Making jam is fun but it takes ages, and requires minding. I recall the time when I got distracted while making plum jam and came back to find that I had invented a new confection, plum toffee. It tasted all right, but I had to borrow one of my father's chisels to get it out of the pot. And it wasn't precisely jam, at that.
So this shortcut is a really good way to make a small amount of jam from, as it might be, an expensive fruit like raspberry or cherries. These fruits have such a short season and they're so delicious that - why not? Can't hurt. And in a microwave, it if boils over, it isn't too hard to clean.
One point, however. Microwaves vary in their strength, if that is the word. Since this whole thing only takes about twenty minutes, stay around and poke and probe and test while it is cooking.
1 kilo cherries, stoned and rinsed
1 kilo white sugar
packet of pectin ( jamsetta). Yes, we are cheating. So what?
Pull off the cherry stems. Stone the cherries either by using a cherry stoner (you probably have one, right next to the melon baller in that drawer which always sticks) or by squashing them joyfully between finger and thumb, my preferred option. Put them in a microwave jug and cook for five minutes on HIGH. Taste. The fruit ought to be soft and cooked. Then add the sugar, stir, and cook it again for five minutes on high. It ought to taste like cherry jam. Be careful with this mix, it is as hot as lava.
Then add the jamsetta and microwave for five minutes or until it gels. Leave the mix in the oven and drop some jam on a cold plate. Leave it for a minute then push it or tilt it. It will wrinkle. Don't worry if it looks too liquid, it sets like ... well, jam.
You probably know the Sods Law of Laboratory Injury, Hot Glass Looks Just the Same as Cold Glass. It's true. What with the microwaves obliterating any greeblies, it is safe to let this cool a bit before you try and handle it, and ladle it into jars. Either seal with wax or those plastic things or pour a little brandy over the surface of the jam. That adds to the flavour and discourages mould. It is, however, unlikely that this jam will last to get mouldy. Your reward is to butter some toasted sourdough and eat it with hot jam. It tastes like ambrosia...
LEMON AND LENTIL SOUP
The admirable Mark Deasey’s lemon and lentil soup I have never tasted better.
2 cups brown lentils
olive oil
2 medium–large onions, peeled and chopped
bunch of silverbeet
juice of 2 large lemons
salt and whole black peppercorns
Soak the lentils overnight or, if time presses or you forgot, cover with cold water and bring to the boil, cover and turn off the heat and leave for an hour. Drain, cover to two centimetres with fresh water (this reduces the flatulence quotient), bring to the boil and simmer until tender (which won’t be long, don’t overcook them) — maybe five minutes. Keep tasting.
Cover the base of a heavy pot with olive oil. When hot, throw in the onions, stir, and leave to braise until they turn golden. While this is going on, wash the silverbeet well. Chop off the manky ends of the stems only, finely slice the rest and leave in a colander.
When the onions are ready, throw in the silverbeet, turn the heat to high and stir until the onions and silverbeet are mixed together. Cover closely, turn the heat down to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the stems are tender. Add the lentils and enough water (if needed) to come barely to the top of the mixture. Add the lemon juice and about 20 peppercorns, coarsely cracked (do this with a mortar and pestle. Taste the difference with freshly cracked pepper and henceforth your preground pepper will gather dust at the back of the shelf ). Add salt to taste and simmer the lot together for about 15 minutes. Serve with bread or cheese scones.
DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE
This was originally a red velvet cake, which explains why some recipes still have cochineal in them. I can see no point in this as the red colouring is entirely subsumed in the chocolate. The culinary opposite is Angel’s Food cake, now made with that abomination, white chocolate.
160 g butter
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
70 g cocoa (I use Cadbury’s baking cocoa)
3 tsp instant coffee
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup Kahlua or marsala
1/2 cup milk (or less, see how wet the batter is)
Filling
300 ml cream
Icing
80 g good dark chocolate
80 g butter
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees or moderate. Spray two 8-inch (20 cm) cake tins with oil.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in the beaten eggs
and beat again. Add the cocoa powder and coffee and keep
beating. Fold in the flour and the milk and marsala alternately,
and if the mixture is as stiff as dough add more milk until it
looks like — well, cake mix. Until it can be poured.
Pour into tins and bake for about 40 minutes, until a
skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
When the cakes are cool, join them with a thick layer of whipped cream. For the icing melt the butter and the chocolate in the microwave or over boiling water. It only takes a minute. Beat the mixture until it is smooth, then let it sit until it is cool enough to handle. Slather it over the cake. It will set.
Oddly enough, this cake keeps very well. The tricky bit is testing this, because it vanishes off the table really fast.
