Eggplant relish

This was the first time I've made this eggplant relish, but it's a winner and I'll do it again. It went so well with the lamb shanks I served it with. This is yet another way to enjoy this versatile fruit - although the young lady of the house, who refuses to eat eggplant, didn't think so.

I got the idea for roasting the eggplant whole from Simply love food. This is an excellent food blog, and the photography is fantastic. The recipe I looked at was for baba ganoush, but I didn't have any tahini. So I used what I had an made a relish instead.

This recipe is a bit 'rustic, as I mashed the eggplant by hand. If you wanted to have a smoother relish, you could use a hand blender to mix everything together.

What you'll need

1 medium eggplant.
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
2 tsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp vegetable oil

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Prick the eggplant with a fork all over. Place it into the oven on a tray and bake for approximately 1 hour, until the eggplant is collapsed, wrinkled and grey-looking.

Remove the eggplant from the oven, and set aside on a plate to cool.

Meanwhile, Heat a small frying pan over low heat. Add the oil, onions and garlic. Saute very slowly until the onion and garlic is soft. You don't want to have the onions or garlic brown so keep stirring.

Once the onions and garlic are soft,
remove from the heat and set aside.

Slice eggplant length ways down the middle. Scoop out the soft flesh
into a bowl. Mash the eggplant with a fork (or use a hand blender) until to achieves the consistency you want. I wanted mine chunky, so I didn't mash it much.

Add the other ingredients and mix well. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Set aside for the flavour to develop.

I served this with roasted lamb shanks and lemon potatoes. The lemony, smoky flavour of eggplant relish was a great contrast to the rich lamb and crunchy potatoes.

You could also use this relish spread on sandwiches with roasted chicken, at BBQs as a tasty sauce for grilled meats, or even as a dip for vegetables.

* I totally forgot to take any pictures of the relish once I'd make it (as I was too concerned with eating my lamb shanks) but you can see from the pictures above and below what it looked like.

Lamb shanks

Lamb is delicious. I'll have it grilled, roasted, stewed, braised or pan-fried please.

If you love lamb like I do, Austria is not the best place to live. Lamb is rather scare here, and is not sold in many places. The locals I've talked to say that lamb is too strongly-flavoured. If you do find lamb, it can be really expensive. Luckily for me, there is a growing Middle-eastern community her, and they do like lamb. In one market in the 18th district - 'Brunnenmarkt' - there is a lovely Turkish butcher. He calls me ANZAC and I go there to get my lamb. (He also sells great yoghurt and curry powder but that's another story.) 

This week I am not in Vienna, and the weather is rather cold for summer. Yesterday it hit a top of about 20 degrees, with rain and mist. 'Great lamb weather,' I thought. In the meantime I saw a Facebook post from my friend Leonie, who celebrated her birthday yesterday, and she cooked lamb shanks for her birthday dinner. I have not eaten lamb shanks for about a year, as it is very rare to find them here. But what wold you know, we went to the supermarket to find some lamb - any lamb - and there were two packets of beautiful shanks 'on special'! They came home with me and here's what we ate.

Braised lamb shanks in garlic, herbs and red wine, lemon and oregano potatoes, eggplant relish and salad. The meat of the lamb shanks was falling off the bone, the sauce was herby and rich, the potatoes were salty and lemony, and the eggplant relish was really good. It was worth the year's wait!

This is a dish that I start cooking in the early afternoon, at say 2pm to serve at 6pm or 7pm. It is not a dish you can cook in a hurry. Once the meat is cooked, you can keep it warm under some foil, and reheat when you serve it. This way, you are guaranteed that the meat will be perfectly-cooked and you have more time to do other things. It is great to cook this in winter as the oven helps to keep the house warm too!

Here for the recipes for the potatoes and eggplant relish.

What you'll need

* The two lamb shanks in the picture served two hungry children and me. I removed the meat from one shank for the children to make it easier to eat. Otherwise, this recipe will serve two adults with one shank each.

2 medium/large lamb shanks
1 medium onion, chopped into quarters
1 cup red wine
1 large clove garlic, chopped roughly
1 beef stock cube
2 cups water
1 tbs vegetable oil
2 tbs plain flour
1 tbs each fresh rosemary, oregano and thyme, roughly chopped.       If using dried herbs, use 1 tsp of each herb.
Salt and pepper

What to do

Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Heat a large ovenproof pan over medium heat. Add the oil to heat. Dust the shanks in the flour, shaking off the excess. Add the shanks and brown all over. This will take about 10 minutes. Add the herbs, onion and garlic to the pan, stirring for a few minutes to slightly brown the onion and garlic. Add the stock cube, crumbling it into the pan. Add the red wine and water and bring to a simmer.

  

Cover the pan with an ovenproof lid or with some foil and place into the oven. Cook for 90 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 150 degrees Celsius. Remove the foil from the pan, turn the shanks over and put back into the oven for another two hours, without a lid. The liquid in the pan will reduce to make a beautiful sauce or jus.

*If you don't have a pan that can go in the oven, use a frying pan to brown the meat and make the sauce, then transfer the meat and sauce into a baking dish covered with foil for the baking part of the recipe.

Check the lamb occasionally to make sure the sauce does not get too dry. If it does, add a little more red wine or water to the pan. You can use a spoon to pour a little of the sauce over the lamb when you check on it if you like. After cooking for three hours or more, the meat should very easily 'peel' from the bone.

To eat a properly-cooked lamb shank you shouldn't need a knife, your fork should be able to break the meat apart easily. Under-cooked shanks are really bad and rubbery, so if in doubt, cook for longer.

About 30 minutes before serving, remove the lamb from the oven. Place the lamb in a serving dish or clean ovenproof dish. Use a strainer to strain the herbs, garlic and onion out of the sauce. This will leave a wonderful smooth but flavoursome sauce. This sauce is not a gravy, it will be thinner than that but it is so yummy. If you'd like the sauce to be thicker you can place it in a pan over medium heat for five minutes to thicken a little more.

Pour the sauce back over the lamb and serve with potatoes, eggplant relish and whatever vegetables you'd like. This dish is my idea of perfect winter 'comfort food'.

Nachos

This week, we are having a 'kid's request' week in the kitchen.

We are away from home for a short holiday and it is school holidays so we are doing things a bit different this week.

When we've been to the supermarket this week, the kids have been able to choose what we are going to eat. This has been with a small amount of guidance from me, as my children would eat pasta every single night of the week otherwise. And as much as I like pasta, once a week is enough for me.

Today, the kid's choice was nachos. This is a great kids meal as you can fill it full of vegetables, and if you choose your ingredients carefully it is relatively healthy. You can also easily make this a vegetarian meal by leaving out the meat and substituting other vegetables.

What you'll need

*Serves 3 or 4 as a light meal.

400g beef mince
400g tomato pieces, tinned
400g kidney beans, tinned
1 packet Taco seasoning
1/2 cup water

1 ripe avocado, mashed
200ml sour cream or natural yoghurt
2 cups rocket or baby spinach
1 cup grated mozzarella or cheddar cheese
500 natural corn chips, salt-reduced if possible

What to do

Heat a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the mince and cook until brown. Add the taco seasoning to the pan, mix well through the mince. Add the tomatoes and kidney beans. Mix well. Add the water, stir, reduce heat to low, then simmer for 20 minutes. Season to taste if necessary. I think that the sauce needs to be a little wet, so that some juice soaks into the corn chips. If you're sauce is too dry, add a little more warm water. Remove from heat and set aside.

Scoop the avocado from the shell and mash in a bowl.

Assemble the nachos. Place the corm chips on a large platter. Spoon over as much or little of the meat sauce as you like, but spread it well over the corn chips. Sprinkle with cheese. At this stage you can put the nachos into the oven under a hot grill and melt the cheese slightly. I didn't add cheese this time as I wanted a less heavy dish, and also I completely forgot to add it, but the nachos were still really yummy.

Once cheese is melted, remove from oven, then spoon over avocado and sour cream/yoghurt.

Serve immediately with a cold beer if you're a grown-up or a cold water if you're little.

Fresh beetroot, goat's cheese, walnut and prosciutto salad

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be given some fresh beetroot from my cousin Melanie's garden. Danke  Melanie! It got me thinking about how I would eat it. 

I decided to simply simmer the beetroot until it was tender, and toss into a salad with rocket, walnuts, goat's cheese and some crispy prosciutto. This was so good; the tender beetroot with its sweetness and vibrant ruby colour, the soft and tart goat's cheese, crunchy walnuts and crispy prosciutto and rocket. This is texture heaven. If you can't get a hold of any fresh beetroot, you could substitute for tinned, whole baby beetroot.

*The ingredients picture below and the recipe includes avocado, which I had intended to put in my 
salad, but I completely forgot. 

Banana Tart Tatin

We are on holidays at a relative's house. It is rainy, cold (finally), and the family is needing nourishment for afternoon tea. What could be better than banana tart tatin, one of my all-time favourites. Soft gooey fruit, crisp pastry, hot, caramel sauce and ice-cream. This ticks all the boxes for me. 

This is an unusual afternoon tea for us, but it is school holidays and we needed a bit of a pick-me-up after watching a movie. 

Pancakes

My children and I like to have hot, fresh pancakes for morning or afternoon tea.  

My Mum, Aunties and Grandparents also cooked pancakes for me when I was little. It was so lovely to come home from school absolutely starving, as you always seem to be as a child, and find a fresh stack of pancakes with butter and jam ready to be eaten.

Pancakes are so quick to make and the children can help. You can add in any fruit you've got that needs eating also. Banana pancakes are beautiful, especially if the bananas are extra ripe and brown. Today I had a handful of cherries that I chopped up and used. Any berries go really well as cooking them makes them extra sweet. 

For me, there must be butter and jam, honey or golden syrup to serve with these. And you must serve them warm, straight from the pan.