Miss Mardi's Drunk on Beer Lamb...

Miss Mardi's Drunk on Beer Lamb.

Last weekend we hit up the amazing Festival of Lamb in Bendigo. We visited some of the restaurants involved last year but when I saw that they had a tent at the Sheep and Wool Show this year to showcase some cooking demonstrations, I was pretty excited.  One of the demonstrations that caught my eye was a leg of lamb, slow cooked in beer.  I love my slow cooker so this definitely spoke to me!  I gave it a go today but with my own twist, so here is my version inspired by the Festival of Lamb's Ale Lamb, called Miss Mardi's Drunk on Beer Lamb.

You will need for the slow cook:

• 2 stubbies of good quality boutique like beer.  For this recipe I used James Squire's Nine Tales Amber Ale which is lovely and caramel in colour.
• A leg of lamb, mine was a small leg, with the bone still in.
• A few large sprigs of rosemary.
• one brown onion, peeled and chopped in half.
• dash of olive oil
• salt and pepper.

The beer that went into the slow cooker!

In a pan on the stove, brown the leg of lamb a little in some olive oil.  You want to render off some of the fat. Once browned a little, pop into your slow cooker with the onion and pour in the 2 stubbies of beer, add your rosemary and seasonings.  Cook on a low to medium heat in your slow cooker for about 7 hours.  Don't be tempted to keep lifting the lid and looking!  Just let it do it's thing!  I did turn my lamb once about half way so it definitely got soaked in the beer.

This is the lamb and seasonings in my slow cooker, right at the start, awaiting to be cooked!

 

Once cooked, take the lamb out and cover with foil and allow to rest.  Strain the juice from the slow cooker, skimming any fat off and pop into a saucepan and reduce by a third to a half.  I kept the onion from the slow cooker and chopped to add to this reduced sauce.

Reduced sauce tips:

• allow to boil with out stirring to reduce quicker.
• I added about 30 mls of port for sweetness along with a tablespoon of brown sugar.
• thicken with a dash of gravox or cornflour - generally how you would normally thicken your gravy!

Once sauce has thickened and tastes to your liking, you can serve your Drunk on Beer Lamb!

I served ours on a bed of cous cous, with steamed greens and carefully tore the lamb into more manageable pieces and topped with the sauce.  Naturally you should enjoy it with a good quality  beer as well.

A really lovely recipe that you can play with in terms of additional spices and tastes, however for this recipe I wanted to keep true to the beer and allow it to do it's thing.  Trust me, it was super delicious!

A big shout out to the Festival of Lamb people!  The festival occurs in late July, every year.  Also, take time to visit the Bendigo Beer boys who inspired this wonderful marriage of lamb and beer.  They love their craft beers and are about inspiring and educating people about great beers.

Enjoy! 
Miss Mardi xxx

Yelping and eating hot dogs...

My Yelp name badge.

Last night we hit up the most awesome gallery Outre for one of Yelp Melbourne's events.  Even though the weather was pretty miserable in good old Melbourne town, the great art and other Yelpers made it a lovely evening.

My Sailor Jerry cup, in front of some gorgeous work at Outre Gallery.

Drinks for the night were from Sailor Jerry Rum.  We had some gorgeous Dark and Stormy cocktails (like a Moscow Mule but with rum!) that were in very cute Sailor Jerry cups.

Beef hotdog courtesy of Phat Brats.

We also were treated to some amazing little hotdogs by Phat Brats Hot Dogs.  Mark managed to eat about 4 of them but I was happy with my beef, cabbage and horseradish cream dog, super delicious!  I would suggest checking them out if you are in Melbourne, I think they also do a pretty impressive veggie dog for our non-meat eating friends.

I've been pretty active on Yelp, especially when I am in the USA and have found it incredibly useful over there to bookmark places that I want to check out and also read others reviews.  If you would like to see where I've been visiting and read my reviews you can find me at www.missmardi.yelp.com.au

Chocolate Chip Cookies...

Every now and then, I get a craving for a delicious, sweet and chocolatey choc chip cookie.  It has to be slightly chewy and with a good amount of chocolate chips in it.

Yesterday, I pulled out my Kitchenaid mixer in the morning and whipped up these cookies.  The recipe makes about 36 cookies, maybe a little less, depending on how big you make them.

You will need:

• 250g butter softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 & 1/4 cup plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarb soda
• 375g chocolate chips, your choice of dark or milk or a combo!

 How to!

1. preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius and prepare oven trays.
2. beat butter, vanilla and sugars with an electric mixer, you are wanting to cream them together.  When they get going, add the egg and mix until light and fluffy.  
3. Transfer sugar mixtures to a larger bowl and sift in the flour and bicarb soda.  Do this in 2 batches, working one cup in at a time with a wooden spoon.  The mixture will be quite stiff so you will be giving your arm a work out!
4. Add the choc chips and mix well.
5. Roll out tablespoons of the mixture into balls in your hand and place about 5cm apart on trays.  The cookies will spread!  Bake for about 15 minutes.
6. Carefully cool cookies on trays.  They will be golden around the edge and still a little soft in the middle.
7. Store in an airtight container, however, they won't last long!

Enjoy these cookies with coffee or just for a sweet treat.  You can play around with the type of chocolate chips or even add in some nuts, have fun with it!

Recipe Remix: Banana Bread...

I have been trying out switching ingredients in some of my favourite recipes, to incorporate some organic or healthier options. I got my hands on some organic coconut sugar recently and have been wanting to try it in some baking. It has a slightly caramel taste which I thought would be perfect for a banana bread!

 

About coconut sugar... The Glycemic Index of coconut sugar is 35 and is classified as a low glycemic index food. It is considered to be healthier than traditional white sugar and brown sugar. It can be used as a 1:1 sugar substitute for coffee, tea, baking, and cooking. Coconut sugar has a high mineral content, being a rich source of potassium, magnesium, zinc, and iron. In addition to this it contains Vitamin B1, B2, B3, and B6. When compared to brown sugar, coconut sugar has 36 times the iron, four times the magnesium, and over 10 times the amount of zinc.

So I remixed my original Banana and date loaf to the following!

You will need...

• 1 1/2 cups of self-raising flour 
• 1/2 cup of wholemeal plain flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon or nutmeg 
• 3/4 cup of coconut sugar 
• 1/4 cup of olive oil 
• 2 egg whites 
• 30 mls of water 1/2 cup of almond milk - normal milk if you prefer. 
• 1/2 cup of chopped pecan nuts 
• 1/2 cup of chopped dates 2 ripe bananas - up to 3 if they are small. 

This loaf is baked in a loaf pan which will need to be lined and greased. Oven should be preheated to 180 degrees Celsius.

In a mixing bowl, puree the bananas with a fork. Add the other wet ingredients and combine. Add flours, sugar, cinnamon and with a hand mixer on medium speed, combine the ingredients until well mixed. With a spatula, fold the nuts and dates in and pour the mixture into the loaf pan. Bake on 180 degrees Celsius for approximately 55 minutes. Test with a skewer in the middle, if it comes out clean - it's ready!

The taste was lovely and caramel like without the bread being too sweet.  I will definitely be continuing with this base recipe!  Go on, give coconut sugar a try!

Recipe Remix: Choc Chip Hedgehog...

I needed to make something quick and delicious for The Biggest Morning Tea to be held at my husbands work.  Yes, I did get a text message from Mark and I knew that he was hoping that I would offer to make something!  (good wife I am - he he!)  Anyway, as we have been super busy during the week I wanted to make something that was quick and no bake but that was full of chocolatey goodness!  This resulted in the Recipe Remix of the standard Hedgehog slice into a Choc Chip Hedgehog!

You can find the original recipe here, it's pretty simple and I was lucky that I had all the ingredients in my pantry.

The only remix for this recipe was to add a good sprinkle of chocolate chips over the top of the slice as soon as it has gone in the pan and quickly push them in with a spoon.  The result is extra chocolatey and a good crunch when you bite the slice!  I find that with this recipe, you can cut the slice into smaller squares as it's a little bit more 'rich' in flavour and texture.  A great little sweet treat with your coffee!

Enjoy!
Miss Mardi xxx

Like a Whiskey Stone...

Whiskey Stones

I'm an occassional whiskey drinker and when I do drink it, I like it straight up! If you have been reading along at home, you will know my love for a good vodka, again, straight up and chilled.

When I saw these Whiskey Stones in a little shop in San Francisco, my immediate thought was, "well I could use them for my vodka!"  The beauty of these 'stones' that you keep in the freezer, is that they don't dilute your spirits like an ice block would. Genius huh? They also look pretty darn cool in your glass as well.  The chill that they produce is a slow and subtle one.  After reading some research about why you would use a whiskey stone, many people have said that this slow 'chill' allows the spirit to be at a cool temperature but not a cold one, meaning that the oils in the spirit don't get too cold which can lead to a loss of taste and also a harshness in the spirit.  I mean, that makes sense to me.  When you are drinking very expensive and premium spirits that have been lovingly created, you don't want to go and shock it to death with ice!

Belvedere Intense with Whiskey Stone.

They come in two sizes, small and large.  I got the large ones. You just rinse them off after use, let them dry and I keep them in a lock seal bag in the freezer so they don't become contaminated with other smells or food.  I'm not sure if anyone in Australia is selling them but if you get a chance to try them - do!  I'm quite the fan!

A New Kind of Foodie Magazine...

cover of one of the issues - Bon Appetit.

I used to be a bit of a Food Magazine freak. I loved flicking through the magazines and drooling over the delicious looking items on display and then feeling inspired to create the array of sweets and savoury dishes. However, over the last few years I've kind of gone off them. I had either found that the recipes included were too simple to create or they included an ingredient list two pages long that I thought, "that's too hard or
too much effort to make".

Pretty photography...

Though I have found a new magazine that is inspirational, informative and generally just god damn beautiful! My friend in Boston, Anita put me onto it while we were visiting and I was so excited to discover that we could get a subscription via the Ipad (oh yeah, we now read our 'food mags' on the Ipad!) quite cheaply.  Now I can't wait for the little number to flash up on our magazine icon to say that there is the new edition of Bon Appetit Magazine, ready for us to read!

One of the things that I love with the Ipad version is the added videos and pop ups to obtain more information.  They also have the option to read the recipes in a black and white format that is purely text base, making things a little easier in the kitchen. Yep, that's just smart.

My kinda article - the Salumi Whisperer!

There is also the lack of 'hipster' in the Bon Appetit magazine.  I would describe it as New York Cool.  It knows it's cool but doesn't need to shove it down our throat.  I love that.

Definitely check out the Bon Appetit website and magazines if you get a chance. The photography is beautiful and the articles inspire greatly. I also love that it isn't purely USA focused, with some great articles about Europe and Asia.  I am now excited about 'foodie mags' again - thanks Bon Appetit!