Slow Cooked Food | Finding Feasts

Bigos | Hunter’s Stew

Bigos or Hunter’s Stew… I am not afraid of letting the world know that I would love to go on one of those cooking shows and wow the judging panel with the national dish of Poland! What frightens the heck out of me is presenting this dish on a plate!I can see the comments now…”Bella you have created a warm and hearty stew, full of flavour and intensity, however what has really let you down is your presentation”.
The Italian’s have Pasta, the English have Fish & Chips (as I have just recently learned from Blondie!) the Hungarian’s have Goulash and the Poles have, Hunter’s Stew a.k.a Bigos.

Let’s face it, this isn’t the most appealing dish to photograph. I have countless hours this week surfing the net for presentation ideas to ensure that it does not look like slop on a plate, however where presentation fails somewhat, taste sensation sets in! And let me tell you that this dish will warm the heart on a cold winter’s day!

Bigos has been eaten by the Poles for many centuries, it is approximately 700 years old. When speaking to dad about its meaning he said the word bigos signified a combination or mixture of ingredients similar to a mess… success! I have created a mess.
As a child I have fond memories of family gatherings where bigos was one of the feature dishes. I would eagerly await for my bowl and dip mum’s rye bread into the rich and flavoursome sauce.

Whilst there are basic components like sauerkraut, onion, mushrooms and meat, there is no right way of making bigos and you will see that it varies from family to family. My mum’s bigos has evolved over the last 30 years from adding tomato paste to not adding it, from making it a runny stew to making it a dry stew and the changes go on.

When I got mum’s new recipe I thought to myself…I will just make enough for the blog / photos… mission impossible! The dish is best made to a large consistency, after all it taste so much better with time. Yes you can eat it within 3 hours of cooking it however the taste develops as it stands. I would normally give it 1-2 days, although it never lasts that long!

chochla-miesiaca-wiosna-400 — This recipe got Ladle of the month!!

My tips for making this dish:
1) use good quality sauerkraut and to me nothing beats Krakus Sauerkraut! I tried making my own a few months back – failed miserably but that is a story for another day!
2) don’t over liquid the cooking process. Remember that this is a dry stew so its not meant to be covered in water.
3) best eaten on the 2nd day!
4) eat it over rye or sourdough bread with a bottle of Zywiec!
Smacznego!

Smacznego! Bella

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Low & Slow Beef Ribs

Low & Slow Beef Ribs – Picture this… Thick pieces of beef cooked slowly and oh so low till it can no longer hold firm to it’s supporting centre, finally, succumbing to the heat and relinquishing it’s grip, falling languishingly off the bone…

Anyway, back to business. This weekend in Sydney is going to be cold and a bit rainy, finally! And of course I don’t have any warm jackets. I left my favourite one in New Zealand late last year, which I will be picking up later this year, and then left my new replacement one in Canberra a couple of weekends ago. Not impressed!

After hankering for something slow and luxurious for this weekends cold snap I decided to go with one of my most favourite cuts, and that is ribs. The beef ones especially as they have a good amount of meat surrounding the bone and just fall apart when eaten.

This weekend will be spent cooking and it only just occurred to me that although there really isn’t that much difference between an oven and a slow cooker, the number one biggest benefit for me is that the slow cooker frees up the oven. With my beef ribs slowly cooking in the cooker on my bench top, I will be able to have several different dishes going in and out of the oven throughout the day. Not at all possible if my ribs were occupying it for 7 hours or so.

This dish is best served the next day as quite a lot of fat comes out of the meat. The best way to get rid of it is to let the fat harden in the fridge and then just skim it off with a knife in one big chunk – that being said, it’s impossible not to eat it on the day it’s cooked after having the smell wafting through the house all day!

Happiness is a cold weekend… Blondie 🙂

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Bangers and Mash w/ Onion Gravy (aka Sausages and Mashed Potato)

Finding Feasts - Bangers and Mash — Click image for recipe

Bangers and Mash w/ Onion Gravy (aka Sausages and Mashed Potato)…This is a classic English meal and one that sits close to my heart. Anything resembling a sausage casserole on top of a soft, cloud-like pillow of mashed potato is my ultimate comfort food. If it’s on the menu at a restaurant I will order it over anything else that is there – I have passed up (maybe foolishly) some amazing meals just to try that particular restaurant’s Bangers and Mash.

There are only three elements to this dish – three perfect elements, and if one fails it will pull the other two down leaving you with nothing more than an English Private School canteen lunch (right up there with their Mushy Pea’s… Blah! That taste will forever be etched on my taste buds!)

To start with, you need to get the best sausages you know of. Here I have chosen the thick beef sausages from Hudson Meats. They are a ‘paddock to plate’ butcher and pride themselves on using regional farms to source their produce.

The potatoes for the mash should be the floury kind, such as a Coliban or King Edward but there are some fantastic multi purpose ones like Sebago, Pontiac or Desiree. My favourite would be the Royal Blue. It has purple skin and a yellow flesh and is great for mashing and baking.

Lastly is the brown onion gravy. A high quality beef stock is all important. You can buy it but if you are so inclined then make your own highly nutrient rich bone broth with high quality bones from animals that have lived the good life… Pasture fed from go to whoa is what you want. If you are going to the effort to make it then make it worth it.

Place the bones in a pot, top with cold water and leave to soak for about an hour with 1/4 cup of vinegar. This process is vital to drawing out the nutrients within the bones. Remove the bones, pat them dry and then brown them in a hot oven with some vegetables. Throw all the browned bones and vegetables into a pot with enough water to cover them (you can use the soaking liquid if you choose) and leave to simmer away for as long as 36-48 hours if you can.

Tip: The longer the bones are left to simmer the greater amount of nutrients you will draw out of them, but if you can’t wait that long for some stock then you can strain what you have and then top up with water again and begin the process over – easy! The bones will keep leaching their goodies – and a benefit is that the second stock will be less intense in flavour so you have two options for your cooking needs, just throw in a few browned chicken wings for the gelatin.

You can add herbs to the stock but I like to keep my stocks quite ‘nude’ so I can alter them as I need to.

To cook this dish I like to brown the sausages, then make the gravy. Place both in a baking dish and finish off the sausages cooking time in the oven, herein lies the ‘casserole’ style that I’m particularly fond of! I haven’t come across anyone else who does it this way, so let me know if it’s converted you?

Comfort food at it’s most sublime… Blondie

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Burmese Beef Cheek Curry by Chef Pete Evans

Finding Feasts - Burmese-Beef-Cheek-Curry — Click image for recipe

When Chef Pete Evans new cook book ‘Healthy Everyday’ landed on my lap a few weeks ago I was like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t wait to leave the office, get home and read it cover to cover. This book is fantastic and it’s no wonder that as of two weeks ago it was officially the No.1 book in Australia! There are 120 recipes and I will be test driving all of them!

With Imogen away at nan and pops house and a rainy weekend on the door step there was nothing else to do but get in the kitchen and cook up a storm!

Choosing my first recipe was dead easy! I picked up some beef cheeks from my local butcher the week before so Burmese beef cheek curry it was. The recipe is a small labour of love so I wouldn’t recommend attempting this on a week night after work. Whilst I was very tempted to take a short cut and pop the beef cheek curry into the pressure cooker I am proud to say that stuck to the recipe and 3 hours later I had gelatinous, melt in the mouth, slow cooked goodness that sent me to heaven and back! There is definitely something very satisfying about eating slow cooked food on a miserable autumn night and as hubby and I settled in to watch our Vikings marathon, the sweet smell of the Burmese beef cheek curry permeated throughout the house for the rest of the night.

Special message of thanks:

This post is dedicated to my good friends at Macmillan Publishers, in particular Siv Toigo who has been kind enough to feed my cook book collecting habit over the past year, and to my boss, Mario Isaias, who has been lugging the books back to our office on each occasion – thank you to the both of you!

Finding Feasts - Burmese-Beef-Cheek-Curry2

Happiness is…Healthy Every Day!

Finding Feasts - Burmese-Beef-Cheek-Curry

Ps…yup…that’s me…in bed with Peter Evans! LOL!

Bella 🙂

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Karjalan Paisti – Karelian Stew or Hotpot

Karjalan Paisti – Karelian Stew or Hotpot is another traditional dish from that well fought-over area of Finland, Karelia. This would definitely have been a meal that fed an army.

My grandpa fought in both the Winter War and and Continuation War, both devastating Finland. He died 10 years ago and after a tragedy in the family last year, nana pulled out his photo album. A large, well worn album documenting his and the Finnish army’s effort during those times…

Katriina Mueller — The Continuation War: Grandpa – 2nd from the left, back row

Grandpa 2nd from the left — The Winter War: Grandpa – 2nd from the left

The finns burned their bridges and land in an effort to stop Russia - this is one of nan's favourite photos. — The Finns burned their bridges and land in an effort to stop Russia – this is one of nana’s favourite photos.

It’s hearty, like any other stew and incredibly basic with it’s ingredients. This dish really does rely on the quality of the meats you choose to cook with as you can’t hide behind a series of spices, herbs or vegetables.

Blondie

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Pork meatballs w/ wild mushroom sauce

Finding Feasts - Pork Meatballs with Wild Mushroom Sauce — Click image for recipe

A few weeks ago Blondie and I teamed up with the awesome guys from Stockman’s Ridge wines for Orange’s annual Frost Fest festival. On the menu were their wines and our food inspired by this years mushroom picking season.

Blondie and I were very fortunate enough to get a private tour of the Stockman’s Ridge vineyard earlier on this year and what a beautiful vineyard it is! I highly recommend a visit to this beautiful part of the country.

Finding Feasts - Pork Meatballs with Wild Mushroom Sauce

When it comes to winter and food I am a sucker for anything that is hearty, saucy and cooked s-l-o-w-l-y so that the flavours can develop into a rich taste explosion with each mouthful I take.

I’ve grown up eating meatballs or as we call them in Poland, Klopsiki. My favourite ones are mum’s, of course! She makes them out of pork mince and no matter how hard I try, I can never recreate her yummy sauce but this time I have a secret weapon! FinSki’s wild mushroom powder.

So my dear reader…love meatballs? What’s your secret recipe addition to make these a hit!

Bella

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Wild Rabbit and Mushroom Pie

Wild Rabbit Mushroom Pie — Click image for recipe

Yes, another pie… but how good are they?! If every dish could be put into pie form then I would be a very happy person.

My first proper memory of rabbit was back in Finland where, when staying with family at their summer house, we had freshly caught rabbit for dinner. What made it memorable for me was that my piece still had the bullet in it. Kind of a thrill when you’re a kid

This Wild Rabbit and Mushroom Pie is an easy, slow cooked dish and made even easier by keeping the rabbit whole, which I prefer when doing rabbit as a shredded meat as you have less chance of getting splintered bone into the meat – Rabbit is notorious for it’s bones splintering into the tiniest of shards if not cut properly and cleanly. Just be mindful of the leg bones, best to wash the legs and make sure there are no loose splinters around there.

If you’ve never tried rabbit before I highly recommend you giving it a go. It’s a great tasting, very lean meat that works well braised… and makes a nice change from chicken.

Blondie

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