Tag Archives: Sweet potatoes

My weekend in food and ‘health’

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This week at work has been fairly full on. I’ve come back from a week away in Washington and there is a lot on in the branch. We also had senate estimates this week which just adds to the longer hours. We were there to give evidence at 2250 AEDT on Wednesday night. We finished after 2300 AEDT.

The weekend has been a much sought after break. I’ve been looking forward to dinner with friends this weekend. We had dinner parties planned on both Friday and Saturday evenings. Catching up with friends is always so good. Coincidentally we were repeating a weekend from earlier in the year http://wp.me/p16Zhd-jV

On Friday evening the menu was prawns, roast beef and pavlova.

The prawns were as fresh as they could be. Only frozen once and cooked as soon as they were thawed. The main course had a number of highlights. Freshly baked bread being one thing but the star was a slow cooked standing rib roast. The prime rib was cooked for about twelve hours at 50 °C and then pan seared to give it a lovely crust. Dessert was an amazing pavlova. The picture of the pavlova speaks for itself. It was served with home made vanilla bean ice cream. It was so rich and creamy.

Fresh prawns with a seafood sauce.

Yep, it's a salad. The olives are local.

Creamy potato bake.

Fresh bread made on the day. With real butter, what can be better?

Standing rib roast. Doesn't it look amazing.

Plated up. This dinner was so well balanced.

A heart shaped pavlova. Lovely fresh fruits including blackberries picked locally.

Pavlova served with home made vanilla ice cream.

It was a great night finished with dark chocolate and more good conversation.

On Saturday night we caught up with friends for a shared dinner party. Regular readers will know that Bron has become a star with Yorkshire puddings and a request came for roast lamb and yorkies plus Bron’s sticky date pudding. The main course was all about the lamb shoulder. The lamb shoulders (about 10 kilograms of lamb) had been prepared by a butcher and split to ensure an even cooking. The lamb pieces were placed over cloves of garlic and rosemary stems. Over the lamb more garlic and rosemary were added. Aluminium foil covered the meat and then the roasting tray was placed in the oven at 230 °C for 30 minutes after which is was turned down low to between 150 and 170 ⁠°C for seven hours. The low slow cooking ensures a succulent product with meat that pulls away easily from the bones.The secret to this meal was putting the lamb in the barbecue for about half an hour. The result was a beautiful caramelisation of the meat leaving us with some crackling too. It was accompanied by smash potatoes and roasted carrot, sweet potato and parsnips.

After the main we had Bron’s sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce, custard and vanilla ice cream.

10 kilograms of lamb shoulder in three oven trays.

This is me sampling some of the lamb. Look at that growing mountain of meat.

Smash potatoes and roasted sweet potato and parsnip.

Can you believe how much meat we went through?

Bron made enough yorkies for everyone to have two or three.

Ready to serve.

My first helping of lamb and vegetables.

My second helping of lamb.

My first helping of Bron's sticky date oudding with butterscotch sauce, custard and vanilla ice cream.

My second helping of pudding.

After dinner we had to have fruit.

Terry's chocolate orange ball.

This morning I woke up feeling awful. I had a headache, muscle pain and some joint pain. Even though room temperature was about 22 °C, I was shivering. A hot shower and a cup of tea didn’t help so I spent most of today in bed drinking water every hour and passing really concentrated urine. From time to time I could feel myself being viræmic. I still have a pounding headache but felt like I need to blog so I can say I did something today.

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Succulent Slow-Roasted Pork Belly with Crispy Crackling

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Tonight Bron prepared Succulent Slow-Roasted Pork Belly with Crispy Crackling from www.allrecipes.com.au I think she has been thinking about this meal for some time and started telling me about it yesterday. Today while I was packing to go to Washington DC all I could think about was tonight’s dinner. I love pork and pork belly is close to the best part. It’s true I love the trotters, hock, bacon, ham, chops, roast shoulder, roast leg, pork sausages, pigs ears and just about all the other parts of a pig; the belly pork is always so tasty and the meat just falls apart and melts in your mouth.

Rested and getting to room temperature. The apples and the orange are important for the sauce.

I like how dedicated Bron was with the score lines.

Pork resting on apples and onions

Ready for the oven and four hours of slow roasting

Still not completely cooked, this is just an inspection

Cooked, resting and ready for carving or more accurately bluntly dissecting

The crackling was very crispy. The meat was easily pulled apart and a carving knife was hardly necessary.

Okay on the cutting board, now it's ready to cut

The crackling was so nicely done it just fell away from the flesh.

Plated up with the sauce, broccoli and sweet potatoes

The finished product looked and tasted magnificent. The sauce was sweet but too sweet.

For dessert Bron wanted to use a few pears that were getting a little too ripe. She chose a Jamie Oliver recipe, viz., baked pears with wine and a scrumptious walnut cream. It was delicious.

baked pears with wine walnut cream

Overall a culinary triumph in my humble opinion.

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