Scrambling Eggs

Is it just me or does everyone have friends who don’t eat certain things because of allergies, intolerances, principles or just squeamishness (my sister in law will eat meat but can’t face a bone on her plate).

It means that every time I have people over for dinner I seem to be faced with a long list of ingredients I can’t use which, on the one hand, can be a good test of my culinary skills (the inverse of MasterChef’s mystery box challenge), but on the other hand can be highly annoying because it often means I can’t cook dishes I want to try and food I like to eat.

I’ve learned that its easiest to avoid certain guest combinations eg- I don’t invite the lactose intolerant friend with the friend who is allergic to nuts as it makes desert a bit tricky and I don’t ask vegetarian friends at the same time as my celiac friend as a few non-meat staples have wheat in them.

On Friday night I invited some friends for dinner and only had to contend with no wheat and no fish: a walk in the park. I wanted to try a recipe for a slow cooked Spanish lamb stew and I could do a flourless cake for desert and grilled haloumi for starters.

At the last minute I invited a couple I didn’t know very well who were friends of one of the other guests. I was speaking to the mutual friend on Friday afternoon and when I told her what I was cooking she said, ‘Oh I think Nat’s vegetarian’. Ok, no lamb for Nat, but she could eat everything else. My friend then called back to tell me that she’d just checked with Nat and she’s actually a vegan.

Nat’s plate was now looking pretty bare but it was too late to change the menu. Instead, I did some last minute shopping and was a bit vague when she asked about one or two ingredients. That fantastic flavour in the pilaf that you were trying to put your finger on Nat? Well, it was butter. Lots of lovely nutty browned butter. Does that make me a bad person?

Below are pictures are of the leftovers I ate the next night. Although I don’t have a photograph, I promise I made Nat a very tasty baked Portobello mushroom using no meat or dairy products whatsoever.

I did feel slightly less guilty about my butter deception after reading Jay Rayner’s article “Eats leaves and shoots ... himself" in the Observer’s Food Monthly yesterday. He says he doesn’t believe you can be genuinely happy and vegan - “…the two are mutually exclusive”. So really I was just trying to spread some happiness.

Pyrenees Lamb with white wine and paprika sauce (serves 8-10)
from the MoVida Cookbook - one of my favourite restaurants in Melbourne


Ingredients

2.5 kg lamb shoulder - ask the butcher to cut into chunky pieces. (You could also use shank, or forequarter chops)
2 tablespoons thyme leaves
150ml olive oil
6 cloves garlic chopped
3 brown onions finely diced
6 bay leaves
7 red capsicums, seed, membrane removed and finely chopped
8 large tomatoes. peeled, seeded and roughly chopped

To make the sauce, heat ¼ cup olive oil in large heavy based saucepan over medium heat and sauté garlic, bay leaves and onion until soft. Reduce heat to low. Add capsicums, cover and cook stirring occasionally for 30 minute or until well softened. Add tomatoes, cover and cook 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add white wine, and cook 10 minutes. Add 5 and a half cups of hot water and increase heat to high. Once the water is boiling add the paprika, reduce water to low and continue cooking the sauce gently for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Trim lamb of any excess fat and put in a roasting tin. Pour in the sauce to just cover the top of the meat (you will have left over sauce). Cook in the oven for about 2½ hours until meat comes easily off bone. As the lamb cooks, some of the sauce will evaporate, allowing the top of the meat to brown.

Eggplant (Aubergine), tomato and herb salad (serves 10)

Ingredients

4 large eggplants sliced into 1 cm rounds
6 tomatoes chopped into 2cm cubes
1 red onion, halved then finely sliced
small bunch flat leaf parsley roughly chopped
small bunch mint roughly chopped
juice of a I/2 lemon
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sumac

To make the dressing put oil, lemon juice, pinch of sea salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper in a jar and shake.

Preheat oven to 220 degrees. Brush both sides of eggplant with olive oil and season with sat and pepper. Roast for 20-30 minutes until golden brown (even better if you can grill them on a barbeque). Allow to cool to room temperature. Gently mix with other ingredients and arrange on a platter. Pour over the dressing and then sprinkle with the sumac.

Pilaf with asparagus (serves 10)

Ingredients

500g basmati rice soaked in water for an hour or 2 (the longer you soak the less cooking time required)
75g unsalted butter
2 brown onions finely sliced
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
2 bunches asparagus, cut off tips and cut stems cut into 1cm rounds
700ml hot vegetable stock

Heat butter in a medium saucepan with the cinnamon and allspice until it foams. Add onion and a pinch of salt and cook over medium heat for 20-25 minutes until the onion is soft and caramelised. Drain rice and add to pan. Stir to coat in butter. Add the asparagus and stock. Cover with a circle of grease proof paper and place lid on saucepan. Bring to boil and then reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Orange and pine nut cake (serves 8-10)
from Tamasin Day Lewis’s cookbook All you can eat: 1000 Recipes

I’ve mentioned before how my parents hated food wastage. Sunday night presented a prime opportunity for all of the week’s leftovers to be transformed into a cohesive meal that was called dinner. As you can imagine this clearing out the fridge approach to cooking had mixed results, but on the whole, positive. Leftover meat became a curry, any combination of cooked vegetables was smothered in white sauce or breadcrumbs and baked, and there were endless variations on risottos and pasta sauces.

I’ve developed my own version of the Sunday night leftover dinner, discovering that there aren’t that many dishes that can’t somehow be turned into a base for baked eggs.

Baked eggs are almost obligatory on breakfast menus in Melbourne cafes. I remember Birdman Eating on Gertrude St in Fitzroy had four ‘baked eggs of the day’ which were always really interesting and unusual combinations of ingredients like chilli jam and green beans or braised fennel and trout. Now I think I may have stumbled upon the secret to their popularity - baked eggs are a great way to use up leftovers.

Here are some of my experiments

First life: Mint and pea crostini

2 cups of frozen peas
salt
clove of garlic
squeeze of lemon juice
handful of roughly chopped mint
couple of generous glugs of extra virgin olive oil
couple of tablespoons of finely grated parmesan plus shavings for ganish

Cook peas in boiling salted water for 2 minutes – drain, run cold water over the peas, and drain well. In a (largish) mortar and pestle, pound garlic to a paste with a good pinch of sea salt. Add the peas, lemon juice, mint, and mix to a coarse paste in the mortar and pestle. Add the olive oil as you go to loosen the mixture until it looks like it can be spread on crostini (bread toasted and rubbed with cut garlic). Season with salt and pepper and top crostini with pea spread and shaved parmesan.

Roasted butternut squash with thyme and garlic

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cut squash into wedges, toss with olive oil, whole cloves of garlic, salt and pepper and sprigs of thyme and roast until tender: around 30-40 minutes.

Caramelised onions

Heat 2 tbls olive oil and 1 tbls butter in frying pan. Add 2 peeled and sliced onions and cook over gentle heat until they are soft- 10- 15 minutes. Add 1 tbls brown sugar and heat until the sugar melts and caramelises. Add 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar and stir together.

Second life:
Minted peas and broccolini baked eggs
Roasted butternut squash and caramelised onion baked eggs

Preheat the oven to 220°C (430°F). Grease a small dish/ramequin, lay the leftovers at the bottom.

Make a little hole and break an egg into it. Drizzle with olive oil. You can also add 1 tablespoon of crème fraiche or yoghurt before you add the egg (as I have done here) which is the way the French do egg croquette.

Put the dish in a baking tray and pour hot water in the dish to about half the height of the dish. Put in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how runny you like your eggs.


First life: Chickpea, eggplant and chorizo stew

1 medium eggplant salted for 20 minutes, drained and cut into 1 cm dice
1 red onion roughly chopped
about 50 g chorizo cut into 1cm dice
clove of garlic finely chopped
2 tomatoes peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 can chickpeas
½ cup chicken stock
good dash of white wine
handful spinach
Greek yoghurt to serve

Cook the eggplant in some oil and remove from pan. Cook chorizo and diced red onion in the pan over medium heat until onion is soft (no need to add oil as the chorizo will release its fat as it cooks). Add garlic and cooked eggplant to pan- stir for a minute. Add tomatoes and drained chickpeas and stir to combine flavours. Add a dash of white wine, stock and let stew simmer for 10- 15 minutes. Before serving, toss through a handful of baby spinach until it wilts. Serve with a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

Second life: Chickpea, eggplant and chorizo baked eggs with greek yoghurt

Cook leftovers in a dish with the egg following the sam recipe as above. Before serving, drizzle the baked egg with greek yoghurt.