… the leftovers. Apart from the first meal, there’s enough meat to make lots of individual pies. Then there’s stock from the bones to make lurid green watercress soup or spicy winter leek and potato soup.
Here’s Rodriguez, the Rhode Island red rooster, and his wives. Mabel (the one black hen), as ever aloof, still sleeps up in a tree rather than with everyone else in the chook house. These won’t be roast dinners any time soon.
The very popular fresh food garden half-day organic vegetable gardening courses will run this year on Saturday 3 and 31 October 2009.
Pies make a small amount of meat go a long way in a delicious and portable reincarnation. Short crust pastry is quick and easy to make yourself, but you could substitute boughten puff pastry if you prefer. You can use any left-over meat from a roast such as chicken, lamb or beef. These pies freeze well and reheat, once de-frosted, in about 15 minutes in a hot oven. Makes eight to ten pies, depending on size.
For the pastry:
170g butter, cut into cubes
350g plain flour
Three tablespoons cold water
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Sprinkle over three tablespoons of cold water. Cut through the mixture with a spatula to bring it together into an unsticky dough. If you can’t squeeze it together easily with your hands, add a little more water. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour.
For the filling:
About 300g cooked pheasant meat, bones removed, cut into small pieces
Large knob of butter
Half a cup of stock or left over gravy
1 teaspoon cornflour
eight button mushrooms, sliced
two medium onions, peeled and finely chopped
Melt the butter in a frying pan and saute the onions until softened and starting to brown over a medium heat. Add the mushrooms and continue cooking until golden at the edges. Add the meat to the pan. Mix the cornflour to a smooth cream with a tablespoon of cold milk or water. Mix into the stock and add to the pan, stirring until the sauce simmers and thickens. You want a thick sauce so you may need to adjust it with more liquid or a little more cornflour paste. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat.
Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Cut the pastry dough in half and leave the remainder wrapped in the fridge. Roll out the pastry using a little extra flour to prevent sticking. Grease nine or ten oven-proof ramekin dishes. Cut a lid, a base and a curved piece for the sides from the pastry sheet to fit the dish. Put the base in the ramekin and seal the sides to the base with a little water. Fill no more than two-thirds full with meat filling and then seal the lid with a little more water. Make a small hole in the top of each pie with the point of a knife to let the steam escape. Place on a baking sheet (in case they bubble over) and bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to rest for five minutes before removing them from their dishes.
If you don’t have suitable dishes or want a quicker alternative, you could make pasties by cutting 15cm circles of pastry and folding them over the filling, again sealing the edges of the semi circle with water. Place the pasties on a greased baking sheet and bake for about 25 minutes.
I don’t bother layering the filo pastry with melted butter – just paint some olive oil on the top with a pastry brush before baking. If you find your pastry has got too crumbly to make parcels (which can happen when you’ve defrosted it), you can make these in muffin tins – use the scraps to line the tin and top with a few more pieces of pastry.
Any greens work well in the filling. Perpetual spinach is my favourite. It’s silverbeet with a green rib and very easy to grow.
Makes about 30.
Ten sheets of filo pastry (about half a 375g packet). You can freeze the rest but it’s easier to work with if it hasn’t been frozen
250g silverbeet or spinach, finely shredded
75g cream cheese (full fat or the filling will be too runny)
100g feta cheese, cut into small dice
2 tablespoons pine nuts
Bunch of chives or a spring onion, finely chopped
1 large egg
Olive oil to baste.
Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Steam the greens until tender. Put it in a colander and press with a potato masher to remove as much moisture as you can. Toast the pine nuts on a baking tray for five minutes in the oven. Keep an eye on them and give them a shake to make sure they don’t burn. Mix the greens, cream cheese, feta, pine nuts, egg and onions or chives together well in a large bowl.
You need to work quickly to prevent the filo pastry from drying out. Seal up any pastry you’re not going to use in the packet. Take a single sheet of pastry, fold it in half (bring the shorter edges together). Cut three equal strips parallel with the fold – you’ll end up with three strips of double thickness pastry. Put a teaspoon of filling at one end of the strip. Fold the corner over the filling in a triangle then fold that triangle up the strip to make a triangular parcel. You can make bigger or smaller parcels but the trigonometry works well at this size.
Place on a greased baking tray. When you’ve used up the filling, brush all the triangles with oil. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Serve warm.
You may also want to try zucchini and feta pies along a similar theme.
Some rhubarb recipes use a pitifully small quantity of rhubarb. This gingerbread does justice to the fruity stem. A cake that would do well as a dessert served in squares with vanilla icecream, cream or custard. I divide the cake in two and freeze half as it’s too moist to keep well. The remaining half stays in squares in the fridge.
I’ve tried three alternative cocoa varieties after being disappointed by the offerings from both Cadbury and Nestle in the supermarket. Left to right:
Trade Aid Fair Trade (available from Trade Aid shops)
Blooker
Valrhona (available online from Sabato) – by far the best colour, taste and texture.
I discovered afterwards that ‘dutched’ cocoa has a different pH to other cocoa and consequently you need to adjust the raising agent in your cakes. Next on the list to try is Equagold (available online from Zealand Foods), although apparently Homebrand cocoa from Woolworths is very good for the price.
Now Cadbury is messing about with the formula for its chocolate to reduce costs and stealthily reducing the size of its blocks. You knew you should have been buying Whittaker’s instead. In a blind tasting of 70% cocoa solid chocolate by three experts (me and two friends), Whittaker’s came second in front of seven other chocolates, including premium and International brands. It was just beaten by another delectable Kiwi chocolate, Bennetts of Mangawhai.
I’m still picking crops from the garden despite not seeing the sun for what seems like weeks. Last week it was cavalo nero (black kale), florence fennel, parsley, red russian kale and leeks. I’m also picking celery by the stick – fresh every day for a salad rather than a whole head of celery turning brown in the salad drawer.
I prune my fruit trees in July in Wellington. I’m not an accomplished pruner but trial and error and reference to a good book have helped me avoid too many irrevocable mistakes. I like The A-Z Pruning Handbook for New Zealand because it has practical advice for pruning edible and ornamental trees and shrubs, including New Zealand natives.
A number of people recommended I watch ‘Gardening Power‘ which screened on TV on Sunday. I don’t have TV but even the highlights from the internet version give us more encouragement to get out into the garden growing food with our kids.
If you have horses, you may be familiar with Wellington Feed and Saddlery who will cater for all of your horse feed and other necessities – plus chook, dog and other stock feed. They do a regular free delivery to Ohariu Valley, Makara, Porirua, Tawa and Pauatahanui, Belmont and Horokiwi in the Wellington region. You can now order on line. If you’re one of the first 50 customers to order on-line you go in the draw to win a Euro Saddles bridle of your choice.
