Baked Sour Dough with Brie and Chive Butter, Green Tomato Chutney

Photo by Jun Pang

So, we have been through compound butters before.

If you can’t remember, a quick re-cap.  It is basically “flavoured” butter.  Simply put, you take softened butter, place it in a mixer and add flavourings such as nuts, herbs etc.  Depending on what you are going to use the butters for will depend on the ingredients you put into the butter for flavour.  For example, chopped herbs with lemon zest will go great with flavouring fish, a little bit of Jus (refined juices from a roast, most home cooks would call it “gravy”) and some type of fruit jelly with chopped herbs would go great with grilled beef and so on.

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Sauteed Mushrooms, Toasted Sour Dough, Poached Eggs and Hollandaise Sauce

I think that breakfast can be the most enjoyable meal of the day.

There is nothing better than waking up on an “early-ish” Sunday morning, going to the farmers market and shopping for fresh ingredients like fresh mushrooms, freshly baked bread, eggs fresh from the farm and herbs straight from the farm garden. It’s a peaceful start to a day, no rushing about and you can really enjoy these wonderful stress free moments and for me, to enjoy that part of the day is rare because it is usually the busiest time of my normal day. You can really let your mind wonder and relax.

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Vego Pasta with Broccolini & Goats Cheese

Pasta is one of those items you should always have in the pantry.  Instant pasta is so easy to cook and there are so many good quality “fresh” dried pastas in the market, you can really have a good choice between almost every type of pasta from your normal spaghetti right through to lasagne sheets.

There is another use for lasagne sheets other than in lasagne’s.  When I was a young apprentice, I remember how much it surprised me when I was shown another use for lasagne sheets.  The chef cooked a chef’s meal by simply heating a pan really hot, cooking lasagne sheets, ripping it into smaller strips and browning it in a pan until it’s slightly “crispy” then adding all the other ingredients through for flavour such as the shallots, garlic and chilli.  Simple dish, quick and using only the ingredients available in the kitchen.

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Vegetarian Green Curry

Photo by Jun Pang

Lets not forget about the vegos hey!!

it seems that there are more vegos out there in the world.  I don’t know why and hey, it’s not a bad way of eating, it’s just that the world doesn’t really accommodate for them as easily as we would expect.  I’m not a vego but I can sympathize for them though.  So many times I’ve been out at a restaurant and the choices for vegos are very limited.  I like to change that as much as I can in the restaurant, I mean why wouldn’t you do it, there’s so many fresh indgredients grown from the ground that it would be sacrilege not to use them.

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