Peppered kangaroo fillet with white asparagus and raspberry vinegar

It sounds poncy and a bit like it should have "hand-shot wild kangaroo" in its description but whatever.

Kanga fillets from safeway, white asparagus, lemon-scented olive oil, bashed out peppercorns and raspberry vinegar.

Do I need to elaborate?

OK just a bit. Well here are the raw ingredients - asparagus (white and green), roo fillet, crushed peppercorns

And voila! The finished dish...

Mornington Peninsula... so good

I've been slack with the posting, but by the time I realised that my super reduced chicken stock would have been an awesome thing to record step by step - it was finished.

However, there is always the trusty old Mornington Peninsula trip to record - an orgy of wine buying and food eating over the cup day weekend!

S and I stayed at the Mornington on Tanti which I believe used to be a very dodgy TAB bar/pub.... but which has been renovated and while still containing a TAB bar, it was actually pretty nice (cheap, too, which was the main attraction!). Surprisingly enough, the pubgrub wasn't too bad.

L-R: S's sizzling barramundi, shared garlic bread, my chicken kiev

And the breakfast was even better, but I didn't take pictures of that. Disappointingly, the wine list was very short on MP wines, most of the available bottles coming from Yarra Valley or NZ (blergh).

We spent Monday night driving down there, had our lovely meal with a couple of bottles and then watched some television (Matt Preston... yum!) and generally had a girlie night.

The real fun was on Tuesday! First stop after breakfast: Foxey's Hangout, my favourite MP winery! The best sparkling white and pinot gris evah (well maybe not evah but definitely up there on my list, more for the whole experience than just the wines). Free coffee from one of the brother-owners, too (after we bought several hundred dollars worth of wine)

View of the vines at Foxey's

We did quite a few other wineries while we were down there and naturally the cheese shop - but the highlight, as always, was lunch at Pier 10. Not any kind of posh, high-end winery but really good value food and a lovely pinot grigio (and where S and I first learnt the difference between gris and grigio - even if the bloody yanks don't agree - hey, S?)

L-R: eye fillet with tomato onion relish and asparagus, confit duck legs and cheese platter

It was a great day and it felt like a whole weekend rather than just a minibreak! I wish I could afford to buy a house down there!

Girl crush

I'm in love with Judi Dench.

That is all.

Sutter Home White Zinfandel

The first thing to say about this wine is that it is pretty. So pretty. If it weren't wine, it would look perfect in a little girl's bedroom.

Like I said, it's pretty.

It also is very sweet - but surprisingly refreshing in its sweetness. It tastes of strawberries and cream and something else that goes with all roses, that I can't identify.

Of course I'm drinking it ironically, because otherwise I would be the ***wrong kind of white person***.

Thanks SH for bringing it back for me :)

PS the pictures are crap because I took them on my phone...

 

Weekend Herb Blogging - WHB #206

I have chosen carrots for this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Yasmeen from Healthnut and with them I'm making gajar halwa, or carrot pudding.

Normally Indian sweets are just... well, sweet. This is not exactly an exception but it has a lot of flavour, from the sweetness and the texture of the carrots, the spicy cardamom and the caramelised milky cream.

It's the only Indian sweet I have ever tried to make, and this was my third attempt. The recipe comes from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook.

It's not really complicated - fry off some coarsely grated carrots (about 500-600g) in some ghee until the liquid has evaporated, then quickly stir in milk powder, simple syrup and cream, and cook, stirring, until it forms a mass. Then just spread it in a tray and wait for it to solidify.

It ends up a bit like fudge - but a very lurid orange kind of fudge!

Ladbroke Grove Riesling 2005

I asked my friend LB, whose fam owns a bottleo, for some recs for a semisweet riesling (see my quest).

Her Mummy recommended two wines, the first of which is the Ladbroke Grove 2005 Riesling. I have to say, it's pretty delicious. Pretty spot on, too, in terms of sweetness - it's not lolly water sweet like some of the wines I've tried, and it's not flinty and minerally like the typical Riesling.

It's very nicely balanced - it's certainly not a Gewurztraminer, there's no classical floral bouquet - but it does have a pretty "Riesling" kinda nose... in a good way!

Me likey... I should note, since my friend procured this for me, I have no idea what it retails for. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's worth it.

Thanks LB and IK!

Patatas Bravas

Tonight I'm making patatas bravas with seared tuna. I don't know why (well, I do for the tuna, but not for the patatas) but I liked the name and there are quite a lot of recipes floating around. I was disappointed to find out how much work there is supposed to be (peeling, parboiling, roasting the potatoes, them making the sauce, blending it, reheating it and mixing with the potatoes) but I simplified my chosen recipe quite a bit and I'm sure it is completely unrecognisable to any self respecting Spanish gourmand.

I used a recipe from the Taste website, only I just roasted the potatoes for longer instead of parboiling them. I also didn't bother too much with the pureeing of the sauce... meh. Lumpy tomatoes, who cares? It's not a soup.

So essentially, you roast the potatoes until they're golden and crispy. In the meantime you make a simple tomato sauce with onion, garlic, chilli, smoked paprika, oregano, white wine (I was out of cooking wine so I used verjuice) and diced tomatoes. Then you mix it all up and I served it with seared tuna (coated in a random spice mixture I had floating around).

Yum!