Citrus Steamed Barramundi with Potatoes

A good dish, and a simple – with the one caveat that you really, REALLY must season the potatoes very well. They absorb a terrific amount and really need it.

Original recipe says foil parcel lined with greaseproof paper – I assume this is so that the potatoes won’t stick to the foil but really we found it was fine just with the foil. First, peel, slice and boil some potatoes so that they’re reasonably tender. Then prep and grease the foil the dish will be baking in. Layer the potatoes on the bottom (seasoning very well). Then lay your barramundi fillets (or whatever white fish you have to hand) on top, and put in some lemon balm, or mint, or even basil - or a combo – knock yourself out. Top with segmented (peeled) citrus slices – orange and lemon in this case I think. Finally, add your beans (we believe these just went on raw, and cooked very nicely in there). Wrap up nicely and cook in manner of your choice – oven or barbie.  Dish out at table. You can also do these in individual portions, of course. We went for family style.

Pork in white wine and milk

Now the pic for this one does NOT do it justice. This is an absolutely divine dish and we can’t wait to do it again. Thoroughly recommend.

Season your bit of pork (meant to be shoulder but I think we just had a portion of leg), brown it with some onions and garlic. Add some white wine, perhaps a bit of water. Then pressure cook until tender. Extract pork and chop up into bite-size pieces. Meanwhile add some milk to the sauce and reduce. Add some Worcester sauce and a bit of nam plah (hardly traditional Veneto ingredients but sure as hell worked wonders.) When reduced, return the pork to the pan.  We served it here with some salad with grapes (went very well with the pork) and some beans.

UPDATE: Porked this up (rather than beefed it up) with some carrots and aubergine, added vegeta and lots of fresh oregano, and after extracting post-cook, thickened the sauce with cornflour, and shredded rather than cubed the pork. Was pretty good with Gnocchi alla Romana and the green beans. Holy cow that photo looks frighteningly authentically Roman, but seriously, it's cool. 

Citrus Pork with Barbecued Fruit and Veg

I thought I was following a recipe here but can't find it at all - must have been drunk at the time. Turned out pretty darn good so here it is.

Get a hunk of pork (suspect ours was some part of leg from the huge bone in there but don't actually know) and pressure-cook it generously with a fair deal of orange juice, some wine, seasoning, thyme and bay, and zest and flesh of an orange and a lemon. While that's doing, put some peeled, cubed and seasoned bits of sweet potato on the barbie and start them off. Also, peel and segment some apples, toss in lime juice, skewer, and sprinkle with sugar. When the time is right, put these on the barie too.

When the pork is cooked very nicely, remove the meat and set aside. Strain the remaining sauce through a sieve and proceed to boil down like there's no tomorrow. While you're doing this, trim the cooked pork of any excess skin/fat and put it  on the barbie together with the other stuff to crisp up nicley. Meanwhile, put in a load of pak choi in to boil (it only takes a short while).

Serve drizzled in the reduced sauce - it's really tangy and tasty.

Divine Bonito with Chard Mountain and Citrus Salsa

Simply fantastic meal, can’t remember if we’ve ever had bonito before – lovely sort of cross between tuna and mackerel, gorgeous. All we did for this was:

Fillet your bonito, season, oil up the fish-sandwich barbie thing (see pic) and cover the flesh side with slices of lemon. Put on barbie.

Boil up copious quantities of chard, and dress with olive oil, lemon juice, seasoning. Actually though in retrospect we discovered that wasabi goes extraordinarily well with the earthy flavour of chard, and will endeavour to work this into our future dressings – in moderation of course so we don’t blow our heads off.

Make your salsa of diced grapefruit and ripe tomatoes.

Serve all in a fantastic and colourful pile of deliciousness. Don’t even think of putting any carb on here, it’s absolutely unnecessary. Really tasty stuff.

Panzanella (bread salad)

Lovely salad that we had with the octopus and rocket (below). I'd thoroughly recommend it when you want some greens but also want just that little bit of carb to kick things in, the bread is much more amenable to absorbing flavours and juices than, say, potatoes, and is lovely for an added texture as well. Very simple, just:

Get some nice tomatoes (as nice as you can get), and cut them up with some cucumber, tear in a good load of basil, dress (plain on salt-olive-oil-pepper-balsamic), then toss in nicely crisped croutons. Was meant to be sourdough in my recipe but I was too mean to shell out specially for it so we just toasted a Vietnamese Roll all cut into chunks - was divine. That's it. Don't be fooled by the simplicity, it's great - try it!

Rocketing Cephalopods (a.k.a. Octopus and Cuttlefish Salad)

Fantastic stuff, much recommended. We mixed the two different ones as they only had one octopus at the fish market when we went, but actually it’s a nice combo.

For the octopus –

Clean, segment more or less, and you’re meant to marinate in thyme, lemon juice oil and wine ... but we didn’t get round to it. I would recommend doing it though. We were short of time so we pressure cooked it. Stuck it in a broth of red wine, bit of oil, seasoning, thyme, lemon (well more or less like the marinade would have been) and cooked away for a good half hour of pressure so it’s all nice and tender. Then drain, and set aside.

For the cuttlefish –

Clean, and cut into long ‘worms’ sideways on – and marinade briefly in lemon juice, olive oil and seasoning. We just left it sitting while the octopus was busy in the pressure cooker.

Once you’ve got the cooked octopus and the marinated cuttlefish, grill them all on the barbie. (or flash fry, if you’re in colder climes).

Meanwhile, wash some rocket, and arrange on a plate. Also prepare a dressing, we went with:

Lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, a smidge of garlic paste, a bit of dill paste, a bit of chilli – anything to give a bit of zing and a bit of lift, choose as you please.

Serve the cephalopods dumped on top of the rocket and spoon on the dressing as you please yourselves individually. Gosh this was good, and went exceptionally well with Panzanella (which I shall endeavour to stay awake to type out too).

Lemon chicken

Lemon chicken

Pre-heat oven to 160 gas mark (very slow if elec.) Put chicken pieces (preferably thighs) several unpeeled cloves of garlic, fresh thyme, two lemons cut in eight pieces in roasting tin , sprinkle with oil and white wine and pepper; mix all together, make sure chicken pieces are skin side up, cover tightly with foil and roast for 2 hours. Remove foil and roast for 30-45 minutes longer at 200 temp. Turns out brown and almost caramelized. Scatter more fresh thyme on top. Delish and simple.