Lentil Burgers

1 cup organic mashed potato, cooled
1 can organic brown lentils, rinsed
4 organic spring onions thinly sliced
Handful of chopped organic parsley
1 organic free range egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs of choice.

* Can add 1 tbs curry paste or 2 tbs satay sauce

Description:
Place all ingredients in a bowl and combine.  Divide mixture into four patties.  Heat some olive oil or coconut oil in a pan.  Cook patties for 2-3 minutes or until golden and warmed through.
Alternatively place in oven and bake for 20 mins.

Serve with salad and or a bun/pitta bread
Optional extras
slice of cheese
organic relish
organic baby lettuce
organic avocado
organic alfalfa
organic tomato
organic cucumber
organic carrot

For more organic recipes check out the Organic Empire website.

Image accompanies the recipe on the Organic Empire website.

Olive Pasta Frittata

250g spaghetti
2 tablespoons Gwydir Grove Extra Virgin
Olive Oil
1 red onion halved and sliced
1 clove of garlic crushed
3/4 cup semi-dried tomatoes chopped roughly
3/4 cup Gwydir Grove Manzanillo or Kalmata
Olives pitted and quartered lengthways
100 g of fetta crumbled
1/4 basil shredded
1 cup finely grated parmesan
8 eggs

Cook the spagetti according to the instructions. Drain and rinse with cold water and set aside.In an oven proof frying pan, heat the oil and add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion softens.

In a bowl combine the remaining ingredients and mix well. Add to the onions and garlic and arrange the ingredients evenly in the pan. Whisk the eggs and pour evenly over the pasta mixture.Cook until the eggs set, then place the pan under a preheated grill and cook until golden.

Serve wedges of the frittata with a green salad dressed with Gwydir Grove Extra Virgin Olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

For more olive recipes check out those on the Gwydir Grove website

Image: "olives" by SchlonitMessica

Sicilian Style Broccolini Pasta

3/4 C currants
1/3 C verjuice
1/2 C flaked almonds
2 bunches broccolini, trimmed
250 g penne
1 T + olive oil
150 g ricotta
Handful + of chopped parsley
Shaved Parmigiana Reggiano
Salt and black pepper, to taste

Soak currants in verjuice for a couple of hours.

Dry fry or bake almonds. Cool and set aside.

Blanch broccolini in boiling salted. water for 1 minute. Refresh in cold water.

Cook pasta according to packet directions in broccolini water.

In a frypan add almonds, currants and some pasta liquid. Cook for 2 minutes on medium high, tossing. Add broccolini. Add in pasta and heat for 1 minute. Spoon in ricotta and parsley. Mix to distribute evenly.

Divide into bowls. Add shaved cheese, drizzle with olive oil and a generous dash of pepper.

You can listen to Pete Bufo talking us through the recipe here.

Image: "oh, the penne" by hash-slinger

One Last Pumpkin Recipe

Pumpkin, Chickpea and Other Bits Salad

2-3 C pumpkin, cut into bite sized pieces
2 T oil
2 C chickpeas, cooked and drained
1/2 - 1 C cashews or pinenuts, toasted
100 g feta
1 Spanish onion, thinkly sliced
1/4 bunch flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Couple of handfuls of English spinach leaves

Dressing
1/4 C honey
2 T balsamic vinegar
1 - 2 T orange or lemon juice
1 I extra virgin olive oil
Very finely diced chilli, to taste (optional)

Roast pumpkin in a moderate oven 180C in little olive oil until cooked. Cool

Combine pumpkin, chickpeas, cashews, onion and parsley in a large bowl. Mix to combine.

Combine dressing ingredients in a jug or bowl, mix & dress salad.

Place in a serving dish & crumble fetta over salad.

Note: as this is a salad, feel welcome to adjust anything to taste. I have also made it using sundried tomatoes, adding chargrilled eggplant and zucchini or even wrapping up the salad ingredients in a filo, baking and using the dressing as a sauce.

Image: "Little Pumpkin" by SpunkOnAStick

Pumpkin Damper

300 g pumpkin, cubed, steamed, cooled, mashed
1/4 C milk at room temperature
1 egg, whisked
3 C SR flour
2 T brown sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
80 g butter

Preheat oven to 200 C.

Combine the first three ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

In a separate bowl combine the flour, sugar and spices. Rub in butter. Mix in pumpkin mixture.

Knead 4 - 5 times, shape into a big round and place on a baking sheet. Score the top of the damper into eight sections. Bake in over for 25 - 30 minutes or until cooked.

Notes: you can always add more cinnamon and nutmeg if desired. Reduce the amount of sugar to create a more savory pumpkin damper.

Hear Leigh share the recipe here.

Image: "pumpkin patch" by shadowtree

Bits and Pieces

Pete and I started talking about his recipe and ended up discussing half a dozen things so I though it was important to put in some follow up information.

Snail forks: I got the snail fork half right (as you can see from the pic) but they don't have little hooks on the end.

Purging snails: another thing I (almost) got right - the most common way to purge snails is to allow them to fast for about 5 days. Some googling has told me that you can feed them cornmeal, oats or bran just before this time, but the most common method remains a fast.

River Cottage: home of all things wonderful - currently on ABC1 but check out their website for more info.

Cheesy Cauliflower: (as opposed to cauliflower cheese) I blogged about this when I first made it because it was so good and so easy but reproduce it here:


Dead easy and particularly delicious. For the cambembert: cut it into wedges, dip in flour, egg and breadcrumb and then deep fry until golden (but no so golden that the cheese has melted). For the sauce: cook cauliflower florets of 1 biggish cauliflower in milk with 1 bay leaf and 1 clove until the cauliflower is tender. Remove bay leaf and blend until smooth.

Dip cheese into sauce and grin madly :-) All up, from start to finish, about 15 - 18 minutes.

PS: The left over sauce made a scrummy topping for toast lol


Snail fork image: Hospitality Wholesale
Cheesy Caulifower image: Pearl Maya

BBCC Ultimate Pumpkin Soup

4 C cooked pureed pumpkin
1 tin coconut cream
1/3 bottle BBCC Fiery Coconut Chilli Sauce
4 shallots
1 T freshly grated ginger
1 C chopped red onion
1 T butter
1/4 C mild chili sauce (optional)
1 C water
2 cubes chicken or vegetable stock cubes, crumbled
1 C milk
Yogurt or Sour cream (to swirl)

Saute shallots, ginger and red onion gently in butter. Add water, stock cubes and milk and mix through. Add pumpkin, coconut cream and sauces. Heat through. Season to taste.

Serve with a swirl of yogurt or sour cream.

Recipe supplied by Byron Bay Chilli Company

Byron Bay Chilli Company

Surely one of the best chilli sauce makers in the world - with an almost complete set of international awards to prove it - Byron bay Chilli's are also home to salsa and corn chips. Drop by their website to check out your local suppliers, buy some delights online or check out a great range of recipes. And if you would like someone else to do the cooking, and you are in Byron Bay, swing by OzyMex - it is just by the main roundabout, you can't miss it!

For listeners closer to Bellingen, swing by and meet John and co, have a taste and a chat at the weekend's Sawtell Chilli Festival. And if you aren't a big chilli fan, drop by anyway as Sawtell's First Avenue explodes with food, entertainment and color.

Roast Tomato Pasta Bake

1 packet pasta, cooked according to directions on packet
800 g really ripe tomatoes
1 head garlic
1 onion, quartered
1 onion, diced
Oil or butter, for frying
400 g canned or cooked kidney beans
1 T tomato paste
About 1 T sugar (depending on the sweetness of the tomatoes)
Herbs of choice, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste


Cut the tomatoes in half horzontally and place in a baking dish making sure you salt the bottoms and the cut edge, with the quartered onion and garlic. Cook in a moderate over for about 30 minutes.Allow to cool and blend in a food processor until the desired consistency is achieved.

Meanwhile, fry off the diced onion in a little oil or butter until translucent - don't overcook. Add the drained kidney beans. Add the tomato paste and blended tomatoes. Add the sugar and season according to taste. Cook for about 20 minutes until well combined.

Image: Pasta by karma2014

Gozleme

Serves 6 or 7

Dough:
2 c plain flour
2 C wholemeal flour
1 1/2 C water
1/2 C olive oil

Filling
2 C silverbeat, chopped roughly
1/2 C parsley, chopped
1/2 C mint, chopped
200 g feta,crumbled
250 g ricotta,
1 C spring onions, thinly sliced
1/2 red onion, chopped
Pinch nutmeg
Pepper, to taste
Squeeze lime or lemon juice, to serve


Mix dough ingredients together and knead for 10 minutes. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Mix filling ingredients together.

Roll out dough to about 30 cm x 20 cm and 2 - 4 mm thick.

Leaving a margin around the edge, pour on filling to one half of the pastry.Fold over remaining pastry, seal the edges and fry in a cast iron skillet or on the barbecue until golden on one side. Flip and repeat. Squeeze over lemon or lime juice, cut into wedges and serve immediately with a meze plate, tabouli or salad.

Recipe from Pete Bufo

Image from foodie-central

Passionfruit and Chilli Martini

1 red chilli. chopped as fine as possible
Pulp from 2 passionfruit, strained
1 t honey or sugar syrup (optional if passionfruit aren't sweet enough)
15 ml vermouth
30 ml vodka

Chop chilli as fine as possible. Add to passionfruit pulp. Add to shaker.Add vermouth and vodka and shake thoroughly. Serve.

You can watch the Youtube video here.

Image: "passionate and passionfruit" by magic-mushrooms

Stove Top Pizza

The oven in the new house isn't working but I had a hankering for pizza so decided to experiment on making a stop top version. Now I confess I had thought pizza earlier in  the day and it proved a happy coincidence that there was basil in the fridge so the pesto had already been made (using peanuts just for a change).

Next step: caramelizing the onions (which we learnt how to do a few weeks ago with Pete Bufo). So I chopped up three onions and cooked them for nearly an hour in a little butter over very low heat. Just perfect!

Then it was time to make the dough (3/4 C warm water mixed with 1 t of sugar and 1 sachet yeast and then combined with 2 C flour and kneaded until smooth and pliable) and add the toppings - my homemade pesto, shredded cheese, my homemade caramlized onions and sliced mushrooms. More toppings that I would normally add but I was feeling a little wild and decadent.

I researched the process for cooking on a stove top (cover the pizza with a lid or tight fitting foil and cook on low for about 15 - 20 minutes to all the toppings to cook, the cheese to melt and the base to crust (but not burn). With instructions that easy, it was worth a try.

Results: 6.5/10. Things I would change next time: make a thin crust pizza - the dough around the edges wasn't fully cooked through - although it was towards the centre of the pie; use a heavy based pan rather than my cheapie frypan; use less toppings - the flavors were great and certainly went together but there was too many big flavors for me to fully appreciate each of them (next time I shall do a pizza bianca with the caramelized onion on one half and the pesto and mushrooms on the other half); and, use half as much cheese - I generally just use a sprinkle of parmesan and I put a bit too much on this one. Not that these were big faults as such, more like tweaks ..... and a reason to cook pizza this way another time :-)

Layered Tomato and Basil Salad

1 kg tomatoes
100 g pinenuts or macadamias, roasted
1 bunch basil
Lots of garlic, crushed or chopped very finely.
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
White balsamic vinegar

Slice tomatoes 1/4" thick and lay a third of them in a bowl. Salt. Sprinkle over a third of the pinenuts. Sprinkle over a third of the garlic. Season with pepper. Top with a third of the basil. Repeat until all of the ingredients have been used. At the end drizzle over olive oil and a splash of white balsamic vinegar. Do not stir. Refrigerate for about 2 hours. If you have time you can make the salad the night before.

Recipe by Pete Bufo

Image by Pearl

Lemonade Scones

4 C SR flour
2 small t baking powder
300 ml lemonade
300 ml cream

Preheat oven to 200C.

Sift flour and baking powder.

Add the lemonade to the cream.Add the lemonade mix to the flour. Mix with a knife until it is thick enough not to stick to your hands. Adjust the amount of flour or lemonade slighty if need be. Do not overwork the dough.

Pour onto floured board and pat out until a good 1" thick. Cut into rounds and place close together on a greased baking tray.

Bake at 200C for 15 minutes.

Recipe supplied by Pauline Browning.

Image: "Devonshire Tea ... Yum" by lynx 92003

Crispy Pork Belly with Caramel Vinegar

1.5 kg boned pork belly with skin
2 T sea salt
1 T olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
1/2 C firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 C red wine vinegar
1 cinnamon quill
1 C chicken stock
4 strips pared rind and juice 1 orange
1 long red chilli, seeds removed and very finely sliced

Score the pork skin in a criss-cross pattern with a sharp knife - or ask your butcher to do it for you. Rub salt into skin. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 220 C and drizzle a large roasting pan with oil. Wipe salt off the pork with appaer towel and dry well. Place pork in the pan, skin side down, drixxle with a little oil and season. Roast for 30 minutes, then reduce oven to 190 C and roast for another hour. Loosley cover with foil and roast for a further 30 minutes until pork is tender. Remove foil and carefully turn the meat, then return to oven for a further 20 minutes or until skin is crispy. Remove, cover loosley with foil and leave to rest for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the sugar, vinegar and spices in a small saucepan. Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then increase heat to medium-high and bring to the boil. Simmer over medium-low heat for 7 - 8 minutes until syrupy, then stir in stock and simmer for 5 minutes until slightly reduced. Add orange juice and rind then simmer for 15 minutes until thick and syrupy. Season to taste.

Slice the pork. Drizzle with some of the carmel vinegar and garnish with chilli.

Recipe from delicious. magazine - June 2008, page 88

Image from You Are What You Eat

San Choy Bau

1 T vegetable oil
200 g veal or lean beef mince
200 g pork mince
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 t finely grated fresh ginger
230g can water chestnuts, drained, finely chopped
4 spring onions (green onions), ends trimmed, finely chopped
2  T oyster sauce
2  T soy sauce
Juice of 1/2 lime
100 g bean sprouts
Pinch of salt
8 iceberg lettuce leaves, washed, dried

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the combined mince. Cook, stirring to break up any lumps, for 5 minutes or until browned. Add the garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until fragrant.

Add the water chestnuts and onions and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until combined. Stir in the sauces and lime juice and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until well combined and heated through. Remove from heat.

Add the bean sprouts and stir until just wilted.

Taste and season with salt, if necessary. Transfer to a serving bowl.

Place the lettuce leaves, cup-side up, on a serving platter and serve immediately with the mince mixture.

Image from eRecipeCards

Pete's Mediterranean Risoni Salad

2 medium eggplant, cut into 1 cm slices

1 packet of risoni

Fresh herbs of choice (say basil, thyme, oregano, parskley, tarragon), chopped

Kalamata olives

Red cabbage, thinly sliced

1 – 2 tomatoes, salted (see below)

Currants

1 T butter or oil

Fresh asparagus

Haloumi

Optional, diced fresh chilli, tabasco sauce or chilli flakes

Marinade:

Juice of two limes

Amount equal to the lime juice each of balsamic vinegar and olive oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed

Salt

Combine marinade ingredients and set aside.

Grill eggplant slices and add to marinade. Refrigerate for 4 – 5 hours.

Prepare risoni according to the directions on the packet. Once cooked, rinse in hot water and then in cold.

Mix the eggplant, risoni, herbs, olives, cabbage and tomato.

Into a moderately hot frypan melt the butter add the haloumi. Add the heavy ends of the asparagus and after a minute or two, the tops. Fry until done.

Serve the salad topped with the hot haloumi and asparagus.  Sprinkle with chilli, if using.

Recipe by Pete Bufo

Image: "aubergine" by aGONIA89

Lamb Shanks

3 T oil

4 lamb shanks
4 - 5 T plain flour
1 leek, halved and cut into 1cm pieces
2 stalks celery, roughly chopped
2 carrots, roughly chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
440 g canned tomates
8 - 10 garlic cloves still in paper
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
1 sprig of rosemary
1 t whole black peppercorns
1 C red wine
2 1/2 C vegetable or chicken stock
Salt and pepper, to taste

Pre-heat oven to 150C .

Heat oil in a fry pan over medium-high heat.

Toss shanks with flour to coat well; then shake off excess. Brown shanks, then remove from the frypan and rest in baking dish.Cook in batches if need be.

Add the leek, celery, carrot, onion, and garlic to the fry pan. Cook for about 5 minutes until softened, stirring as needed.

Season with the bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme and rosemary sprigs. Pour in tomatoes, wine and stock, increase heat to high, and bring to a simmer.

Season to taste and pour vegetables over lamb shanks.

Cover the baking dish tightly with foil, and place into oven. Bake until the meat is tender and falls off of the bone, 2 ½ to 3 hours.

Remove the bay leaf and herb stems before serving shanks with mashed potatoes or couscous, steamed beans and a sprinkle of parsley

You can also make this in a slow cooker - adjust cooking times as necessary.

Image from: La Tavola Marche

Bunya Nut Pesto

1 bunch basil
1 C bunya nuts
4 cloves garlic
1 C olive oil
1/2 C grated Paremesan (optional)
Salt and pepper
Lime juice, to taste

Boil nuts in salted water until the shells split. Carefully remove the skins with a sharp knife.Chop roughly

Roughly chop basil. Peel and roughly chop garlic.

Put all ingredients and pulse until the desired consistency is achieved.

Refrigerate for 2 hours.

Recipe supplied by Pete Bufo

Moroccan Tagine

2 t vegetable oil
4 forequarter lamb chops
2 C chopped onion
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 C carrots, sliced crosswise ½ cm thick
1 large green capsicum, cut into ½ cm strips
1 t ground cumin
½ t each: ground allspice, ground ginger, and turmeric
¼ t each: cinnamon, salt and cayenne pepper
1 C water
1 medium eggplant, peeled and cut into ¼ inch cubes
400 g can chopped tomatoes
400 g can chick peas, rinsed and drained

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Brown lamb chops. Remove and set aside. Add onion and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, 3 minutes. Add carrots, capsicum, spices and ½ C water. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes.

Add all remaining ingredients. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat, 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Stir several times during cooking. Serve over couscous or rice.