Category Archives: Main Courses

Pulled pork burrito

February 18, 2014 7:43 am / Leave a Comment /

Pulled pork

I cooked this after returning from our trip to America last year and everyone raved about it.  Some people ‘wrapped’ it and some people were happy to eat it on the Red Mexican rice so it is a pretty flexible main course.  That’s the beauty of this type of Mexican food.  You can make it a casual buffet style meal or posh it up a bit and serve it on individual plates.  I will probably do a combination of both for this lunch.

The pork has a fabulous smokey flavour from the Chipotle Chillies in Adobo sauce which you can buy in a can from Fireworks.  You can’t substitute anything else but it’s worth it.  I have tried a couple of different brands but they were not the same.  One brand seemed to have more chilli and less sauce, the other is the opposite.  Obviously the one with more chilli is hotter but as the sauce is also hot it is difficult to give an accurate measurement in the recipe.

Nobody complained that it was really hot when I used the brand with more chillies.  I initially served just the meat thinking the sauce was too hot but they asked for more!  If you are not sure about what quantity to use then start with just a couple of the chillies with one tablespoon of the sauce and puree it before adding to the meat.  Remember, you can always add more later.

Great served with a fresh salsa and sour cream.  I am serving it with my Watermelon salad here and Forbidden red Mexican rice.

Make the day ahead if possible.

Ingredients:  Serves 8

2 tbs. olive oil
1.5 kg pork shoulder, unrolled with rind and fat removed.  Cut into about 3 large portions.
2 carrots, diced
2 onions, diced
4 clove garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
4 stalks of coriander including roots
2 tsp. cumin powder
2 tsp. smoked paprika
80-100g chipotle chillies in adobo sauce (or half a can, pureed.  See note above)
1  x 400g can diced tomatoes
1-2 cups chicken or beef stock to just cover

Method:

  1. Heat oil and brown meat in batches until coloured.  Remove from pan.
  2. Add diced vegetables, reduce heat and cook 5 minutes
  3. Add spices and cook another 5 minutes
  4. Then add all other ingredients and bring to boil
  5. Return meat into sauce and add stock to just cover.
  6. Cover with a cartouche (paper circle)
  7. Cook @ 130°C for 5 hours until meat falls apart
  8. Shred with a fork, reduce sauce a little if required and return meat to pan.
  9. Serve with fresh salsa, rice, warm tortilla and sour cream.

If you are cooking a larger quantity increase the dried spices to heaped teaspoons and tomatoes to two cans.  The rest of the quantities are perfect for up to 3kg pork.

Posted in: Gluten free, Main Courses, Mexican

Healthy brown fried rice

February 12, 2014 7:29 pm / 1 Comment /

Brown fried rice

Fried rice doesn’t have to be bad for you.  Not when you use brown rice and only a tiny amount of oil.

Try this healthy, steam oven version whereby you can cook all your extra ingredients whilst the rice is cooking.  If you have a steam oven that doesn’t allow for multi-level cooking then you can just throw everything in directly on top of the rice!  Sounds amazing but it won’t hurt.  This will just give the rice a little more flavour.

Try to think like this when using your steam oven.  For a start you don’t want to wash up heaps and heaps of dishes so try to minimise these by testing just how much you can pile into one steamer tray.

For example the rice takes 40 minutes so you have lots of time to add and remove different items.  For my fried rice tonight I am going to add corn on the cob, sliced beans & frozen peas – 5 minutes.  You could also try adding a chicken breast fillet to the rice (see timing here on Tips & Tricks but reduce the time a little as your cooking at 100°C).  Beans usually take only 2 minutes but it didn’t overcook them on this occasion.

Experiment – that is what cooking in a new appliance is all about 🙂

Ingredients:

1½ cups brown rice
1¾ cups water
pinch salt

1-2 corn on the cob, halved
4 spring onions, sliced diagonally
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 cloves crushed garlic
2 eggs beaten
Large handful of bean sprouts soaked in ice water
½ red capsicum, diced
Sliced cooked chicken, green prawns, bacon slices, chopped, ham, Char Siu pork chopped, Chinese sausage sliced, BBQ Chinese duck or roast pork, shredded
½ cup frozen peas
chopped coriander & chilli (optional)
splash of soy sauce to taste

Method:

  1. Wash rice and place into the solid steamer tray with the water and a pinch of salt.
  2. Set the timer for 40 minutes @ 100°C
  3. While this is cooking chop all your other vegetables
  4. Heat a large wok on high and add 1 teaspoon of peanut oil.  Pour in your 2 eggs that you have beaten and swirl around to make a thin, crisp omelette.  Turn to cook the other side then fold over and remove to cool.   Slice.
  5. When you have 5 minutes cooking time remaining on the timer, put in your vegetables or chicken as above.
  6. Remove everything from the steam oven and set aside to cool.
  7. Heat your wok again with a little more oil (just a teaspoon is plenty) and sauté  the white part of the spring onion with the ginger, garlic and capsicum until soft.  If you are using bacon or prawns add it here too.
  8. Add all your other ingredients and stir well.
  9. Season to taste with soy sauce and cover.  Lower the heat and cook 5 minutes to reheat all your ingredients and blend the flavours.

Pile into warm bowls and top with some coriander leaves to serve.  Delicious, a perfect way to use up that left over chicken, ham or whatever you have in the fridge.

Posted in: Gluten free, Healthy eating, Main Courses, Rice, Steam Oven

Vietnamese noodle salad with salmon

February 11, 2014 7:32 pm / 2 Comments /

Vietnamese salad

You don’t usually see a Vietnamese noodle salad with salmon so I thought I would give it a go and add a few other ingredients to make it more substantial.  After all, you can never have too many salmon recipes with a steam oven!

A perfect Summer salad, it would also be ideal served with marinated, grilled and sliced chicken or fresh prawns.

You can substitute the vegetables for whatever you have to hand.  Snow peas or sugar snap peas would be nice too.  If using snow peas that are large slice them in half on the diagonal so they are easier to eat.

Timing on the salmon is for ‘pink in the middle’ smaller fillets.  Adjust your cooking times to suit.  I use to recommend to cook whole fillets at 95°C and fillets to flake at 100°C.  I now think 95°C is enough for both.

Ingredients:  Serves 4-6

½ large packet rice noodles or 2 small packets thin ‘bean thread’ noodles
2-4 salmon fillets, skin removed
1 medium carrot, grated
handful green beans, halved
½ cup halved cherry tomatoes
¼ cup each chopped coriander & Vietnamese mint
1 cup bean shoots, soaked in ice water and drained
½ telegraph cucumber, seeds removed and sliced diagonally
¼ cup toasted peanuts, roughly chopped

Dressing:

2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tsp brown or palm sugar

Method:

  1. Cover the noodles in boiling water for 4-5 minutes.  Run a little cold water over the noodles and set aside to drain and cool.
  2. Sprinkle the salmon with salt and pepper and put into the perforated steamer tray with the beans on the side.
  3. Cook the salmon and beans @ 95ºC for 3 minutes.  Refresh beans in ice water and drain.  You may need longer for a large piece of salmon see comments above.
  4. Shake the dressing ingredients together in a jar.
  5. Plate up with the salad in the centre, small ‘nests’ of noodles on the side and the salmon flaked over the top.
  6. Sprinkle with toasted peanuts and extra coriander and drizzle the dressing over to taste.
Posted in: Fish, Gluten free, Main Courses, Salads, Steam Oven

Sous vide steak

February 4, 2014 8:04 pm / 8 Comments /

Sous vide steak

This is something I have been dying to try.  No, you don’t need to have a water bath or a Sous vide machine – you have a steam oven!

We have tried the slow cooked 60/60 eggs here which are magnificent and we have been eating and talking about trying a steak since eating two really good steaks last year.  The first one was a 12oz rib eye in a steak restaurant in Bellevue near Seattle, USA and the other was an eye fillet at a French restaurant in Surry Hills.  Both these steaks had been cooked with this method.  You can guess this.  The give away is they don’t ask you how you would like your steak cooked.  Don’t be alarmed, it is probably going to be the best steak you have ever eaten!

We had further inspiration from a fantastic book that I brought Simon for Christmas, Modernist Cuisine at home by Nathan Myhrvold with Maxime Bilet.  It is a huge book (probably the biggest cooking/reference book I have ever seen) which also comes with a great ‘kitchen manual’ with wipe-clean pages.  Sensible, I liked that.  This is the book for the closet scientist.  Every budding Heston Blumenthal must have a copy as you will be stunned by the level of detail, explanation and beautiful photography.  I loved the articles on the kitchen appliances, particularly the combi steam oven which they say “The combi oven is the most versatile kitchen tool we know.  It can do just about anything a conventional oven, convection oven, steamer or sous vide water bath can do: steaming, proofing, incubating, dehydrating and baking.”

The 400g aged rib eye steak I have purchased is already vac packed.  Perfect, I don’t even need to bag it.  If you do need to bag your meat then put each piece into individual snap-lock bags with a dash of olive oil and seal tightly so there isn’t any air in the bag.

SAM_0450

Put it onto a perforated steamer tray.  I have also added some halved potatoes to cook at the same time.  For this 400g steak I cooked it @ 56°C for 50 minutes for a medium rare steak.

In the book there are several ways to sear the meat after the slow cooking process.  I used the simplest method which is preheating a frypan with a touch of oil until smoking hot and searing the meat for one minute on each side.  Season before cooking with sea salt and ground black pepper.  You will notice that meat cooked like this doesn’t really need to rest after searing which is strange as we are so accustomed to resting so just five minutes or so seemed to be enough.

The result was the most tender, juicy and succulent medium rare steak.  Restaurant quality meat.  I wouldn’t be cooking steak in a traditional way for a large dinner party after trying this method.  Why don’t you try it too?

Note:  The potatoes needed to be quartered then another 10 minutes @ 100°C to cook.  I thought as much, root vegetables will not cook at a lower temperature.  Delicious made into a quick potato salad with a mixture of good quality mayonnaise, natural yoghurt, spring onions, parsley and chopped, grilled prosciutto.  Yum…..

 

 

 

Posted in: Combi Steamer, Dinner parties, Gluten free, Main Courses, Steam Oven

Spiced chicken

January 13, 2014 8:48 am / 4 Comments /

Spicy chicken

This is my lighter version of a recipe from Frank Camorra from the SMH last year that I thought would be a perfectly delicious thing to cook in the combi steamer.  You will get succulent, juicy chicken with a crispy skin as the steam and radiant heat will work together.  The automatic chicken program on the Miele is excellent but this time I have taken the back-bone out of the chicken and flattened it which will make it quicker to cook so use Combination mode for this one.

If you don’t have a Miele then some of the the other brands will also allow you to put in your time, temperature and moisture level.

Serve it with the Pearl Couscous with dried fig and coriander that I am also posting (and cooking in the steam oven).

Ingredients:

1 x 1.2kg Chicken
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 heaped teaspoons smoked paprika
2 heaped teaspoons ground cumin
2 heaped teaspoons ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
pinch salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp. chopped flat leaf parsley
1 lemon, rind & juice
Olive oil to moisten marinade to a paste

Method:

  1. Mix all ingredients except chicken in a freezer bag or flat dish.  You may add a little oil here if you wish.  I find it turns the spices into a paste with the lemon juice which is better than a dry spice rub.
  2. Add flattened chicken and rub the paste all over the bird.
  3. Marinate overnight
  4. Before cooking, remove from fridge and place into the solid steamer tray
  5. Let it sit to come to room temperature, just before cooking drizzle with about 1/4 cup of olive oil.  I tend not to add the extra oil if I added it to the marinade paste.
  6. Ensure that fan cover is in place on the back wall to protect the fan
  7. Cook @ Combination mode 180°C plus 30% moisture for 45 minutes.  If your chicken is larger you will need to increase this time up to 1 hour.  I have also cooked a 2kg chicken for 1 hour 15 minutes (turning it over for the last 20 minutes) and it was cooked perfectly.  For a larger chicken baste about half way through cooking.  Turning did moisten the breast too.
  8. Remove from the oven, baste with the juices and allow to rest for at least 5 minutes.
  9. Cut into portions to serve with a bowl of natural yoghurt that has a little garlic added.

You can see the chicken is perfectly cooked.  It was so juicy and tender!  If you are cooking for a longer time I would probably cover it with foil for the last 15 minutes.  The juices were delicious, remove the fat and serve with the chicken too.

 

 

 

Posted in: Chicken, Combi Steamer, Gluten free, Main Courses

Salmon & witlof salad

January 9, 2014 2:48 pm / 1 Comment /

Salmon and Witlof Salad with hard-boiled eggs

I love creating new salads, especially with a steam oven.  It is just so great to be able to cook everything together.  This entire dish was prepared in the time it took to cook the eggs.  Set your timer for the longest time and have the salmon ready on a piece of baking paper so you can open the steam oven and quickly pop it on the tray next to the eggs.  So easy, this is one of those dishes that you can use whatever ingredients you have to hand.

It actually keeps really well and was just as delicious the next day!

Ingredients:  Serves 4

2 small fillets of salmon, skinned
3 witlof, quartered
3-4 eggs
handful of fresh rocket
1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives, halved
2 tbsp. salted capers, rinsed
Optional – slices of char-grilled eggplant or marinated artichokes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Method:

  1. Prick the round end of the eggs with a pin. Cook eggs @ 95° for 8 minutes
  2. Add the salmon when 3 minutes are remaining on the timer (see above)
  3. Quarter the witlof and place onto a platter with the rocket, eggplant & olives
  4. Mix together the oil, vinegar, lemon juice and season with salt & pepper
  5. Peel and halve the eggs, flake the salmon, toss over capers and dressing.

Serve with crusty bread and a good glass of pinot:)

Posted in: Eggs, Gluten free, Main Courses, Salads, Steam Oven

Pomegranate duck breasts

December 25, 2013 4:10 pm / Leave a Comment /

Pomegranate duck breasts

I cooked this for the family for Christmas 2012 and it was a hit!  The pomegranate really cuts back the richness of the duck and it was fantastic with a good red.  This year I added fresh pomegranate seeds and it gave that great texture and ‘crunch’ as my brother said!

I served it on my soft polenta recipe here and our traditional ‘Christmas salad’.  It was a perfect Christmas lunch, elaborate and special without being too large a portion or too heavy.  The only problem with this dish is there aren’t any left overs!

Ingredients:  Serves 4

4 duck breasts, scored across the skin a few times
1tbsp sea salt
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp 5 spice mix
¼ tsp black pepper

Seeds from 1/2 fresh pomegranate to serve

Sauce:

1 cup orange juice
½ cup soft brown sugar
1tbsp honey
3 star anise
1tbsp pomegranate molasses

Method:

  1. For duck breasts – combine all the spices and seasoning and rub into breasts that have been scored through the skin across ways several times.  Set aside to reach room temperature.
  2. Mix all the sauce ingredients together except pomegranate molasses
  3. In a small saucepan cook for 10 minutes until reduced by half then add pomegranate molasses and set aside
  4. Put duck into a cold frypan on medium heat with skin side down.  This enables the fat to be rendered off.
  5. Turn after 5-10 minutes, the skin should be golden and crispy.
  6. Place in a 160ºC oven on Fan Forced for 8 minutes until still pink in the middle.  OR, combi oven on Combination mode 190°C + 30% moisture for 6 minutes.  Don’t overcook.
  7. Remove from oven and rest 10 minutes before slicing to serve.  You have to rest for this time otherwise it will be tough.
  8. Slice to serve and pour over sauce.
  9. Scatter with fresh pomegranate seeds to serve.

 

 

Posted in: Christmas cookery, Dinner parties, Gluten free, Main Courses

Asparagus wok-tossed with Asian mushrooms

October 30, 2013 10:41 am / Leave a Comment /

Wok tossed asparagus & mushrooms

This is Luke Nguyen’s recipe from his Indochine book which I brought Simon for Christmas some years ago.  There are so many fantastic recipes in this book that it’s going to take him forever to cook them all!  Yum, I am excited about that…. 🙂

He replaced the black fungus with Swiss brown mushrooms but apart from that there are no other changes.  The sauce is really well balanced and was delicious served with the Whole steamed snapper with ginger and spring onions here.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
200g asparagus cut into 4cm lengths
70g oyster mushrooms, sliced
70g Swiss brown mushrooms, sliced
70g enoki mushrooms, trimmed and separated
70g shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1½ tbsp. fish sauce
2 tsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
pinch salt and ground black pepper
1 bird’s eye chilli, sliced
1 tsp. toasted sesame seeds

Method:

  1. Heat a wok over medium heat.  Add the oil and fry the garlic for 1 minute until fragrant
  2. Add the asparagus and stir -fry for 2 minutes without burning the garlic
  3. Add all the mushrooms and stir-fry for 1 minute
  4. Now add the fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and 1 tablespoon of water
  5. Toss a further minute or until mushrooms are tender.  Taste then season with salt and pepper if required
  6. Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with chilli and sesame seeds.

Serve with steamed Jasmine rice as part of a shared meal.

Posted in: Main Courses, Vegetarian

Whole steamed ginger snapper

October 28, 2013 2:28 pm / Leave a Comment /

Steamed ginger snapper

I am extremely lucky as my partner, Simon is a fantastic cook!  He loves to get into the kitchen and create wonderful things, he particularly loves cooking Asian food.  Neil Perry is his favourite so this is the steam oven conversion of the whole fish recipe from his ‘Simply Asian’ book.  He reduced the oils a little from the original recipe.

My children (who also are mad about Asian food) enjoyed this with us on Saturday night.  He also cooked ‘Asparagus wok-tossed with Asian mushrooms’ from Luke Nguyen which you can find here.  Served with plain steamed rice it was easy to see why the steam oven has become such an important appliance in our home.

Simon cooked the rice for 10 minutes @ 100°C then it continued to cook it at the lower temperature with the fish for 15 minutes.  It was perfect and the whole meal was absolutely delicious!  Don’t be tempted to cook the fish at 100°C it is worth the effort to change the cooking temperatures which is how we got a perfectly cooked whole fish.

Ingredients:  Served 4 or 6 with another course.

1 x 1.2kg whole snapper cleaned and scaled
3-4 spring onions left whole
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp chicken stock
2 tbsp. light soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp. shao xing
1 tbsp. castor sugar
1 large knob of ginger, cut into very fine julienne
4 spring onions with some green left on, finely shredded
1½ tbsp. peanut oil
good handful of coriander leaves
few slices of red chilli for garnish

Method:

  1. Pat the fish dry with kitchen paper and put it on a chopping board
  2. With a sharp knife make three diagonal slits into the meatiest part of the fish, then repeat in the opposite direction to make a diamond pattern as this helps cook the fish more evenly.  Repeat on the other side of the fish.
  3. Put the whole spring onions on the bottom of the large stainless steel tray.
  4. Rub the fish well with salt and put on top of the spring onions
  5. Mix the stock, soy, sesame oil, shao xing and castor sugar and pour this over the fish, then top with the ginger
  6. Steam @ 90°C for 15 minutes.  Test, it should be pulling off the bones and the cuts in the skin will open up a little.
  7. Remove from the stainless steel tray 0nto a large serving platter and sprinkle with the spring onions, coriander and a little chilli
  8. Heat the peanut oil until it is smoking and douse the fish with the oil.  Be careful it will spit!

This size fish was a generous serving for 4 of us.  It would serve 6 with the addition of another course as part of a shared meal.

Posted in: Fish, Gluten free, Main Courses, Steam Oven

Spring vegetable risotto

October 23, 2013 7:02 pm / 2 Comments /

Spring vegetable risotto

I haven’t done a risotto for a while so this is a lovely Spring dish which I cooked in the LeCreuset Shallow Casserole without the lid.  I sautéed in it and then it fitted straight into my steam oven!  No other pan to wash up as it’s also a beautiful serving dish.  You can use the lid on serving to keep it warm (and it also looks great).

Just like asparagus means Spring to me, so does basil.  I have drizzled some fresh pesto over the top of the risotto and a few extra basil leaves to give it another level of flavour.  It works, the combination of the creamy rice, fresh vegetables and the hit of the pesto is delicious.

You can make some fresh pesto from the recipe here.  I had a little I reserved from the Buckwheat salad to use for this recipe but remember if you want to store pesto it must be stored in a jar with a layer of oil over the top.  You can also press a circle of baking paper or glad wrap directly onto the surface of the pesto which will help prevent discolouration.

Ingredients:  Serves 4-6

1 cup Arborio rice
2 cups chicken stock
1½ tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
100g Swiss brown mushrooms, sliced
1 bunch asparagus, cut into lengths
1 cup sugar snap peas
½ cup frozen peas
¼ cup sun-dried tomatoes, sliced
½ cup finely grated parmesan cheese
1 tbsp. fresh pesto mixed with 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
few fresh basil leaves

Method:

  1. Heat the olive oil in the LeCreuset shallow casserole, sauté onion & garlic on a low heat until soft
  2. Add mushrooms and sauté on a medium heat until it starts to colour.
  3. Stir through rice for 1 minute, add stock and cook @ 100°C for 15 minutes without the lid on the pan (see note below)
  4. Open steam oven and add all other ingredients except the parmesan, pesto and basil and cook a further 2 minutes
  5. Stir in parmesan and top with the pesto and basil leaves.

A one-pot Spring dish!

Recipe adapted from Miele

Taste your risotto after it’s been in for 15 minutes as cooking in a cast iron pan may alter your timing compared to other recipes that are cooked in the solid stainless steel tray.  It may need another 3-5 minutes before the vegetables are added depending on your taste.  I didn’t have any different cooking time but I think that was because the pan was hot off the stove.

 

 

 

Posted in: Gluten free, Main Courses, Rice, Steam Oven, Vegetarian