STICKY BOURBON BBQ CHOPS

This recipe comes courtesy of the Australian Pork website www.pork.com.au


Ingredients:
4 pork forequarter chops
Salt and pepper

Sauce: 
1 cup barbeque sauce
1 cup brown sugar
2 tblsp tomato paste
½ cup water
2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced finely
100ml bourbon whiskey

Cooking Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 170°C.
2. Cut the pork forequarter chops in half and season with salt and pepper.
3. Combine the barbeque sauce, brown sugar, tomato paste, water and ginger in a saucepan and stir over a medium heat until the liquid boils. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes, before removing from the heat and cooling.
4. Barbeque or fry pork chops on a griddle pan for 4 minutes each side then place the chops into a greased baking dish.
5. Stir the bourbon into the prepared sauce and pour half the sauce over the pork chops. Bake the pork chops in a pre-heated oven at 170°C for 25 - 30 minutes turning and basting frequently.
6. Serve hot with extra sauce on the side.

Note: delicious served with potato salad and coleslaw.

KNIFE SHARPENING - SATURDAY 25TH MAY

KNIFE SHARPENING

Saturday 25th May

9am-12pm

$8 per knife

Troy from A Wicked Edge Sharpening will be here to sharpen your knives and give them new life. He does such a good job, we even get him to do all of our butchering knives.

DRY AGED BEEF

 

Dry aged beef is a term you might have heard more and more of in recent years. Put simply, it's a piece of meat hung in a strictly controlled environment and left to age for anything up to 80 days. Why would you do this? Well... it's all about the flavour. During the aging process, the meat's natural enzymes go to work breaking down certain structural muscle proteins and fat strands. Once this has happened, the beef then starts to dehydrate and this is what really intensifies the overall flavour of the beef. This dehydration element also effects the texture making it rich and dense.

The image above is a 36 day dry aged, 150 day grain fed, Angus Rib on the Bone. Billy took this home to try the first day we got some in and was just amazed by the intensity of flavour. Dry aged beef is something that Meat at Billy's is hoping to be able to offer more of in the future. Stay tuned!

Neil Perry, who is an expert on the subject (there are 15 tonnes of beef ageing in his three Bar & Grills at any one time) says, "the most important thing with good dry-aged beef is not to overcook it. The meat shouldn’t be cooked at more than medium-rare, and don’t rest it too long: there is little juice in the steak and it will dry out. So there you have it: a steak with amazing flavour and intensity and all it took was 80 days of patience. Oh, and did I say you need to start with amazing beef? So don’t try this at home, but go to butchers who age it for you".

Read more on the subect from Neil Perry here:
http://travelinsider.qantas.com.au/neil_perry_and_dry-aged_beef.htm

 

MOROCCAN SLOW COOKED LAMB

We use this Moroccan Tagine Intense Flavour Paste a lot in the shop. It's made right here in Brisbane by a lady named Suzanne Quintner, who has been making Moroccan marinades, pastes & preserved lemons since well before it was popular to do so (-:

This is what we use on our our insanely popular, Moroccan lamb shanks that come pre marinated. We also sell it instore so you can try using it to marinate different things at home. It's made from onion, tomato, preserved lemons, Moroccan spices, honey, Australian vinegar, garlic, ginger & rose water.

I often get asked if you need a tagine to cook with this paste. The answer is absolutely not. While a tagine pot/dish looks beautiful, it is simply not required to cook these types of meals. A heavy based pot, casserole dish or slow cooker works in pretty much the same way.

Try the tagine paste with anything slow cooked - beef cheeks, lamb shanks, oxtail or even poultry. Try brushing a little on some quails before grilling them.


MOROCCAN SLOW COOKED LAMB
Serves 4

*Pick and choose your own vegetables here, there's no rules. You can use normal potato, throw in some pitted green olives & dates, cherry tomatoes - whatever takes your fancy really.

750g 3cm diced lamb shoulder
Half a jar of Suzanne Quinter Moroccan Tagine Paste
half a sweet potato chopped
1 brown onion cut into large chunks
3 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
eggplant cut into large chunks
Cup of chicken stock or water
bunch of fresh coriander
natural yoghurt (I prefer Meredith sheep milk yoghurt)

OVEN METHOD
Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
Throw everything into heavy based casserole dish and cook for a couple of hours or until the lamb is soft and falls apart.

SLOW COOKER
Throw everything into the pot and turn it on. You might need a little more liquid for this method.

STOVE TOP
Throw everything into a casserole pot. Bring to a gentle simmer with the lid and leave for a couple of hours or until the lamb is soft and falls apart.

*Serve on rice, cous cous, quinoa or freekah topped with fresh coriander and a dollop of yoghurt on the side.

SLOW COOKED PORK BELLY IN MASTERSTOCK

This Masterstock from the Stock Merchant is a new favourite ingredient of mine. While it's probably simple enough to make yourself at home, in reality I usually just don't have the time.

Master Stock is traditionally used in Chinese cuisine to marinate, braise and poach meats including chicken, duck and pork. Well known chefs including Neil Perry and Kylie Kwong use Master Stock extensively in their cooking.

The Stock Merchant version is made by simmering their Free Range Chicken Stock with soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, a touch of sugar and eight different spices including star anise, mandarin peel, ginger, cassia bark and Sichuan pepper.

The result is an authentic and ready to use Master Stock, perfect for poultry, beef, pork or tofu.


SLOW COOKED PORK BELLY IN MASTERSTOCK
Serves 4

This recipe really is super easy to prepare and cook. 2.5 hours might sound like a long time but you'll be rewarded with a soft as marshmallow, rich flavoured pork dish that your dinner guests will just love! The greens make it healthy too. Obviously.

INGREDIENTS

1kg pork belly
500ml The Stock Merchant Free Range Masterstock
2 cups jasmine rice
2 bunches bok choy
2 finely chopped spring onions
diced fresh red chilli
handful of coriander leaves

METHOD

Preheat oven to 140 degrees

Place pork belly into a heavy based casserole dish. It needs to fit snuggly in the pot. Pour the masterstock in over the pork belly. It needs to cover the pork so add a little extra chicken stock or water so it is just submerged in liquid. Cook for 2.5 hours.

While pork is cooking, prepare the rice and vegetables.

Serve the pork and vegetables on the rice and garnish with spring onions, chilli & coriander.

BEEF CHEEKS - My favourite recipe from Movida

Have you ever cooked beef cheeks before? If you haven't you are missing out. It's another one of those cuts that requires a little bit of pre planning as you have to cook it, slow & low. It'll take a few hours cooked at a very low temperature and you'll be rewarded with a 'melts in your mouth' full flavoured cut of beef. You won't even need a knife!

I've cooked beef cheeks a few different ways over the years but I always come back to this recipe from the first Movida cookbook.

All of the ingredients are very easy to source except for the Pedro Ximenez sherry. For this you'll have to go to a decent bottle shop. The good ones will have a range of them differing in price. For this recipe, a cheaper one is absolutely fine. You're looking at around $27 for a 750ml bottle. Be sure not to use any other type of sherry, especially the dry ones. It has to be Pedro Ximenez to get the right results.

The left over sherry is lovely to sip on after a meal. Its sticky, sweet & raisiny in flavour and goes beautifully with dark chocolate. Or, pour a little over some good vanilla ice cream for an easy dessert.

Here's the link to the recipe.
http://movida.com.au/slowly-braised-beef-cheeks-in-pedro-ximenez-with-cauliflower-puree-carillera-de-buey/

How do you cook your beef cheeks?

FRESH THYME & VERJUICE ROAST CHICKEN WITH DUCK FAT POTATOES

Who doesn't love a good ol' roast chook? It's comfort food at its best. The beauty of it is that really, it's like a blank canvas. Chicken loves being cooked with a multitude of different flavours so you can use almost any fresh herb to change it up a little and make it different each time if you want to.

This will be the first of many roast chook recipes we'll post because there are so many different ways to do it. This method is fairly fool proof and of course the exact cooking times will also differ depending on the exact size of your bird and also your oven.

How will you know if it's cooked? My mum taught me to pierce the skin down near the thigh joint and if the juices run clear, then it's cooked. Be sure to catch all of the juices though.

Another fool proof way is to invest in a thermometer. The $10-$20 is a clever investment in my opinion. It takes all of the guess work out and you'll never ruin a fantastice piece of meat again. This way you won't lose any of the juices either. Measure the temperature of the thigh, close to the bone. There are differing opinions on this (just google and you'll see what I mean) but you want it to be at around 72-75 degrees according to health regulations. Maggie Beer, bless her, likes her chook cooked to no more than 68 degrees. Heston Blumenthal reckons 60 degrees is enough! See what I mean... It's confusing.

INGREDIENTS

1 x Dakota Vale Farm free range chook* (approx 1.6-2kg)
verjuice
duck fat
olive oil
fresh thyme
4 large potatoes
bunch of asparagus
8 Swiss Brown mushrooms

For the gravy
 20ml dry white wine
 250ml chicken stock
 1 tsp Dijon mustard (optional)
 1 sprig of thyme

Method:

Remove chicken from fridge 30 mins before cooking. Preheat oven to 220 degrees. 
Peel, cut into required size and par boil potatoes (half cook). Drain and leave to dry. 

Place chicken in a roasting pan place a few sprigs of thyme into the cavity and then drizzle a little olive oil & verjuice, salt & pepper in there as well. Place a few sprigs of thyme between the leg & wing bones. Rub the outside of chicken with olive oil then drizzle verjuice all over the bird & season with salt & pepper.  Place chicken in the oven and reduce heat to 180 degrees. Cook for 1 hour & 20 mins. Remove from oven, cover loosely with foil and let rest for 15 mins before serving.

The potatoes require approx 1 hour cooking time. Heat 2 tbsp duck fat in a roasting tray. Coat potatoes in heated duck fat, season liberally with salt & pepper and roast until golden & crunchy, turning once or twice during cooking.

Grill asparagus on a medium heat with olive oil & a dash of verjuice. Sautée mushrooms in olive oil with some fresh thyme, salt & pepper.

If making the gravy...
Remove chicken from roasting pan to rest. Place pan on a medium-high heat. Add the white wine and stir, gently scraping the crunchy bits off the bottom of the pan (this is called deglazing). Add the chicken stock & some chopped thyme leaves and cook until liquid reduces to a sauce. Before serving, stir in the mustard if you're using it and warm through. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.