Category Archives: Recipes – Polenta

FAGIANO ALLE CASTAGNE (Pheasant with chestnuts)

A friend presented us with two lovely pheasants, not the normal, much appreciated rabbit. Mrs BYF found a recipe for chestnut dumplings, and decided to make a stew and use some of the foraged chestnuts to compliment the dish 

RECIPE

2 pheasants – Plucked and cleaned. Keep the livers, hearts and giblets

150ml stock – Any kind will do but Mr BYF automatically makes stock out of the wings and backbone of any bird, so we used pheasant stock

150g butter

a few pinches of salt to taste 

Black pepper to taste

4 cloves of garlic crushed

100ml white wine.  I suppose you could use red or even Madeira. I used dry white because, again, the chestnuts are quite sweet.

Cut the pheasant in to serving portions. Season the meat, salting it well.  The seasoning should ideally happen a few hours before cooking. In a lidded pan that will take all the pieces of the birds in a single layer (use two pans if needed) brown the pieces.  Remove the pieces from the pan and keep them aside.  Sauté the garlic in butter until fragrant and brown. Add the livers, hearts and finely sliced giblets and sauté until brown, remove from pan and keep aside with the rest of the bird.  Turn the heat to high and deglaze the pan with the wine, boil for a few minutes. Return the pheasant to the pan and add the stock. Cover the pan and cook for 40 minutes, adding a bit of stock as needed. 

Heat the oven to 180 C 

Chestnut Dumplings

100g plain flour

50g butter 

Pinch of salt 

25g cooked and peeled chestnuts, mashed 

Whisk the flour and salt together to mix.  Rub the butter in to the flour until fine crumbs form. Rub the chestnuts into the crumbs and mix until combined. Roll small dumplings the size of a large walnut. Add more stock to the birds if the liquid has evaporated to make sauce. Put the dumplings on top of the meat, pushing  them under the sauce. Cover the pan tightly and cook for 30 min without lifting the lid. 

We served the pheasant with polenta

ENJOY and do not forget a good glass of homemade RED

PRIMO PIATTO

35492F00-6BDD-45AC-B95D-6BA46514696FWhile I was cooking the Secondo Piatto, which in this case was Lepre alla Cacciatora (Hunter’s style Hare), I became peckish and looked around what I could do for a Primo Piatto. I had a few Radish leaves and some Polenta from the day before.

Polenta

Ad a few spoons of good extra virgin olive oil to a cast iron pan and heat on medium to high. Cut the polenta  in slices of about 20 mm thick and fry until lightly brown, then flip them over and fry the other side.

Radish Leaves

This is the same recipe we use for spinaci, silverbeet, and many other leaves. Wash the leaves and shake dry. Ad a tablespoon of good extra virgin olive oil to a heavy cast iron pan, then ad the leaves, some chopped garlic and some chilli, if wanted. Fry until all is nice and soft.

The above was made within a few minutes and some black pepper and parmigiano cheese finished it well. It was beautiful and went down well with some home made red.

 

Low-Fat Fad Has Done Unfathomable Harm – Eat Healthy

Dreamtime

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/02/24/modern-diet.aspx

The Curse of the Cookbooks

2014-03-06 09.22.32

I had to photograph the result of a cooking discussion or, cooking bickering, if you must.

The great thing about being self sufficient and eating from the vegetable patch is the joy of harvesting something one grew oneself. It is organic and fresh even if, at time whatever is harvested is gnarled and puny it still tastes wonderful. The bad thing is that one is held hostage by the blackbird that eats all the seedlings the chickens overlooked when they were free ranging last time. The seasons and climate, especially here in Dunedin , dictate whether things grow or not and the person in control of the garden constantly suffers arched inquiries as to why in the world so much (or so little) of something was planted

Sometimes there is a glut of something and then the search for a great recipe, or, often many great recipes of one particular vegetable or fruit depending on the amount harvested. The frantic paging through the cookbooks begin, and since my 200 plus books are all about regional Italian cooking the search can not be narrowed down to, say, Indian or Chinese, and mutterings of  ‘ it was always in this book, where has it gone’ are commonplace. A lot of time is spent getting side tracked when I see something fondly remembered or something I always wanted to try. Once the recipe is selected sudden resistance from the household to the ingredients could flare up, prompting the beginning of a new search and the hauling out of more books!

MAKE GOOD POLENTA

2013-12-03 - Polenta

To make good Polenta is an art.

1 Cup Polenta Flour

3.5 Cups of warm tap water

1 Teaspoon salt

40 g Butter

60 g Grated Parmigiano Cheese (Optional)

Ad Water, Polenta Flour and Salt to a pot and heat mildly until boiling – stir continuously. Lower heat and continue to cook and stir frequently until Polenta is done (when it comes away from the side when stirring is normally an indication that it is cooked). Take off the heat and stir in the Butter and Parmigiano Cheese.

Serve!!

To stir a flat based pot must be done with an instrument with a straight flat side at the end. One cannot stir the bottom of a flat pot with a rounded spoon. The bottom of the pot is warmer than the rest and the starches gelatinise at the bottom first. If the bottom contents is not regularly loosened and mixed with the rest, it will burn and stick to the pot – that is why a porridge pot is always so difficult to clean. Making Polenta requires the pot base to be stirred / scraped and “cleaned” all the time.