Category Archives: Recipes – All About – Tried and Tested

Cooking for Family and Friends

HARD TIMES !!

Lunch today

2015-03-06 - Chicken Feet Pot2015-03-06 - Chicken Feet

Dairy prices are down, venison keeps falling, electricity is up and the courier companies are screwing us left, right and center, so here at Back Yard Farmer we are not wasting anything.  We have worked out using almost everything from the garden and are now working on using every part of the back yard chickens, starting with what we always discarded, the feet. I have often eaten chicken feet, mostly in some Asian restaurant, and the very best I had was on a recent business trip to Qingdao, China (along with an assortment of scorpions, tasty bugs and larvae like things – the food of the future). Strange how Chinese food does not taste as good in restaurants outside China. The same goes for Italian food, I suppose, unless one cooks oneself, so, here is Mrs BYF’s version of chicken feet – delicious although the cook was a bit squeamish to start off with.

Zampe di Gallina 

Chicken Feet Arrabiata  (Arrabiata means angry – so this is quite hot)

4 chicken wings or any other part of the chicken that is not dry white meat, skin on

6 to 8 chicken feet, nails removed (I had to do that myself, Mrs BYF baulked)

1 piece of fresh ginger just bigger than a thumb finely chopped

4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

1 large red chilli or as much as you can take, finely chopped

1 litre of chicken stock

small handful of parsley and sage finely chopped

4 table spoons of olive oil

1 cup of wine, red or white

Pre heat the oven to 200 deg

Use a cast iron pot with a close fitting lid, big enough to take all the chicken. Heat a tablespoon of oil in the pot and brown the chicken pieces well on all sides. Remove and add the feet,  cook on medium high for a few minutes. Remove the feet. Add the rest of the olive oil to the pot and add the chilli and garlic. Cook until the  garlic is soft but not coloured. deglase the pot with the wine, cook until the wine bubbles.  Add the chicken, feet and all to the pot, and cover the chicken with the stock. Bring to the boil on the stove, cover the pot with the lid and place the pot in the oven. Cook for 3 hours, twenty minutes before serving, add the parsley and sage. Eat with polenta.

Do not forget to enjoy this dish with lots of red wine!  ENJOY!

 

Beetroot Tops Pie

2015-02-23 - Beetroot Top Pie 3

 

We have agreed the beetroot tops are more tasty than spinach so, today, Mrs BYF made a delicious pie out of the leaves and all the stems of the leaves. Even the thicker bits went in to the pan. The reds and greens of the leaves and stems were colourful and the slightly rough texture was very good. It was so good that I had to share the recipe.

PIE CRUST

This recipe works with sour cream or home made yoghurt, full cream, no light stuff. Greek style bought yogurt may work as well.

2 cups of self raising flour

1 cup butter cut in small cubes

salt

1/2 cup yogurt or sour cream

you can add a tablespoon of sugar if you are making a sweet pie

Whisk the dry ingredients in a bowl, add the butter and work the butter in until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the cream or yogurt and mix and knead util the dough comes together. Refrigerate until needed

BEETROOT TOPS FILLING

1 large bunch of tops, well washed and roughly chopped. Use the tasty stems as well but chop the thicker ones finer

2 tablespoons or more of olive oil

pinch of chili

pinch of pepper

1/2 cup ricotta or soft cream cheese

2 table spoons of parmigiano cheese or any cheese you have on hand

1 egg

METHOD

Use a lidded pan that can hold all the spinach and add the olive oil and chili. Turn the heat to med high and cook the chili for a few minutes before adding all the tops. Do not add any water, the water clinging to the leaves after washing will be enough. Cover the pan and cook until just softened. Do not  over cook. Cool the leaves a bit and mix in all the other ingredients well.  Line the pie dish with the pastry keeping some to make the lattice over the top. Fill the pastry case with the filling mix, decorate with strips over the top and bake for about 30 min at 200 degrees.

Do not forget the red wine. ENJOY!

 

 

 

Drunken Apricots

2015-01-26 - Dronk Appelkose

We had the good fortune to be invited to pick apricots near Dunback. The day was clear and sunny and this year the trees were laden with sweet, ripe, pink cheeked fruit. The orchard is organic and amazingly free of bugs, wasps, birds and the like and the taste of the fruit was the best we had ever eaten.

Sheep roam the orchard and once we had explained the difference between sheep poo (ok) and dog poo (not ok) to the city kids, everyone got stuck in, munching and chatting as they picked in the shade of the trees. The baby grazed on whatever fruit he found on the ground until he announced “I don’t NEED apricots!” . When I commented on the meagre contents on Mrs BYF’s bucket she claimed to have eaten at least one tree’s worth and that it should be factored in to her harvest.

We had a great day out in the peaceful countryside. We met lovely hospitable people, drank great coffee and beer, and came home happy and pleased with our haul.

Back in the kitchen, we made jam, dried some, froze some, preserved some, and, with the smallest fruit, bottled them in grappa. We will need some warmth when the Dunedin winter bites so hopefully we will be able to keep our hands off these bottles until then.

Artichokes (Carciofi alla Romana) and Foccacia light Dinner

2015-01-16 - Light Dinner

Not being very hungry tonight, I decided to pick a few artichokes and cook them the way the Romans do to enjoy with the foccacia I baked this morning.  A glass of my dry white wine complimented a simple and satisfying meal.

CARCHIOFI ALLA ROMANO ( adapted from one of the great Marcella Hazan’s recipes )

As many artichokes as you can fit snugly in your deep cast iron casserole or heavy bottomed pot. Keep about 50mm of stem attached to the artichoke because this is how the Romans serve them

1 lemon

2 or 3 cloves of garlic chopped fine. More if you like!

1 small handful of mint leaves chopped very fine

1 small handful of parsley chopped fine

salt

1/2 cup of oil

Prepare the artichokes by slicing about 25mm off the top of the artichoke getting rid of spikes and a lot of the inedible green parts of the leaves. Peel away the hard outer leaves of the artichoke until the white leaves have only a little green at the top. Peel the green outer layer off the stem. I use an apple corer to dig the choke out from the centre without damaging the base of the artichoke. As each artichoke is cleaned, drop it in a bowl full of cold water with the lemons squeezed in. Drop the halves of squeezed lemon in the water too. Mix the garlic, parseley, salt and mint in a bowl. Press most of it in to the cavities of the artichokes. Put the oil in the pot and place the artichokes stem side up in the pot. Rub the last bit of the garlic mix on the outsides of the artichokes. Add enough water to cover most of the artichokes, keeping the stems dry. Put the lid on tightly.  Cook on medium until tender when prodded with a knife. Serve with the sauce left in the pot poured over the artichokes. Eat the right away.  ENJOY and remember the wine!

 

Cardoon buds and yes, they should be eaten!

DSC03960DSC039522015-01-23 - Cardoon in Blompot2015-01-23 - Cardoon Flowers 2

 

Mrs BYF is fanatical about not wasting any food that the garden produces. Her attitude has resulted in many memorable dishes ranging from fantastic, better that any world class restaurant, etc. etc., to (seldom, I might add) never to be attempted again, EVER!

I was going to let the cardoon buds flower, because the bees love them, and ‘they’ say that only the stems should be eaten, but Mrs BYF commanded me to “bring them in!”.  After all the cardoons grow so well in Dunedin and my plants were well over 3 meters high with lots of flowers. They were all boiled in a big pot of water, with a squeeze of lemon and some salt, then peeled, chokes removed and the hearts put under oil.  The taste and texture of the hearts proved to be  sensational, perhaps a bit more starchy, at the same time almost creamy, than artichokes. We eat them as antipasto or on panini with  roast bell peppers (peperoni) and fried eggplant (melanzane). The real taste of Italy in Dunedin. Unbelievable !

Just to take the non wastage policy a bit further, Mrs BYF used the inedibles for  a lovely vegetable arrangement of rosemary, flowering cardoon and  fennel fronds. The cardoon flowers are beautiful and, surprisingly, sweet smelling.