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House-made Gnocchi with duck sausage and field mushrooms

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Potato gnocchi Special

Duck sausage

4.5 kg Duck leg meat

2 kg Pork fat

80g salt

30g coarse black pepper

150g roast – confit garlic

350ml ice water

350 ml white wine

100 g chopped sage

Combine all ingredients except water and wine

– mince

– add water and wine, mix with a paddle until mixture appears sticky (approx 1 minute)

make sausages (45 minutes)

Gnocchi

Potato gnocchi

  • 500grms cooked potato (King Edward)
  • 125gms ‘OO’ flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 yolk
  • 1 tbsp Cecconi’s olive oil
  • 1 tbsp table salt
  • 50grms grated parmesan

METHOD

  • Bring lightly salted water to a gentle simmer and add 750grms of skin on King Edward potato.
  • Once well cooked, remove potatoes from heat and drain remaining water.
  • Remove the skin from the potatoes and pass through a potato Moulis whilst still hot. (this will leave you with approximately 500grms of usable potato)
  • Spread the potato out on wooden chopping board, cover with damp cloth and allow to cool for 70 minutes.
  • Place all other ingredients (no need to pre mix) over cool potato and gently work together to form dough.

(Do not overwork the dough or the gnocchi will become rubbery)

  • Roll dough into 1 thick sausage and cut into 10 workable pieces.
  • Lightly flour wooden board and roll each piece of dough into long, thin sausage 1-1.5cm in diameter.
  • Cut into 2cm length and transfer onto lightly floured tray ready to cook.
  • Place into lightly simmering water (not boiling).
  • Once all the gnocchi has floated to the surface, allow the gnocchi to cook for another 2 minutes before removing with a spider/slotted spoon.

Gnocchi sauce

Cook the sausage in a pan then slice.

Slice field mushrooms and precook with chicken stock butter and salt and pepper

to prepare the sauce in a pan chicken stock, 5 piece sausage, 6 slice mushrooms cook down add gnocchi to the water once they have risen take out and add to sauce.

salt and pepper to taste, add a blob of butter to thicken sauce, serve.

Pickles

tomato zucchini and onion pickle

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Green tomatoes with onion, garlic, mustard seeds, zucchini and cauliflower.

Green tomatoes with onion, garlic, mustard seeds, zucchini and cauliflower.

With an abundance of tomatoes and zucchini in the garden it’s time to preserve our vegetables and one way is to pickle.

1 1/2 cups white wine vinegar   ,1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup water

1 kg of vegetables tomatoes, cauliflower, zucchini, onion, garlic

Place the vinegar, sugar and water in a heavy pot, allow the sugar to dissolve.

Then add the garlic & onions for 2 minutes, Then add the cauliflower, zucchini and tomatoes and mustard seeds and salt for another 2 minutes.

Place in sterilized jars and store.

Perfect to serve with your antipasto, corned beef , or just as a starter.

Lentils

bio-dynamic brown rice and lentil curry

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Biodynamic rice and lentil curry_2394lentils _2491

Storage of  rice and pulses is important place bay leaves with the rice to stop weevils.

Buy bio-dynamic or organic where possible, grow your own always the best.

Le Puy-en-Velay but these are grown here in Australia and are sold as Puy Lentils.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup bio dynamic brown rice (pre cooked)
  • 3 cups Puy lentils washed and drained
  • 4 1/4 cups water
  • 8 cloves garlic, cleaned and crushed only use skin
  • 2 cinnamon stick
  • good piece of  fresh ginger peeled and grate
  • 4 tbls red curry powder (see recipe to make your own)
  • Salt and pepper
  • 4 onions, trimmed and sliced
  • 2 carrots, peeled and diced
  • ¼ celery, cleaned and diced
  • Zucchini cut large pieces
  • chicken stock or vegetable stock
  • butter

Method

  1. Cook your lentils in water until soft do not add salt at this stage.
  2. Cook brown rice in water with garlic and onion salt to ¾’s cooked.
  3. In a heavy pan add oil to fry onion, carrot, celery, garlic, cinnamon and ginger (I substitute oil for  water as a healthy choice) cook until soft.
  4. Add rice to vegetable mix and curry powder mix well
  5. Add chicken stock cook for 10 minutes
  6. Add lentils and zucchini cook another 10 mins
  7. Add butter  stir well

Some useful sites

Curry powder or pastes

http://www.spirithouse.com.au/

organic brown rice

http://www.farmhousedirect.com.au/

Vic market for organic and bio – dynamic foods

Vegetables

organic globe artichoke

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Organic Artichoke

Cynara cardunculusArtichoke2

Growing Globe Artichokes is easy from the sunflower family a most attractive plant. Artichokes possess good keeping qualities, frequently remaining quite fresh for two weeks. Encountering artichokes for the first time can be daunting. To prepare and cook them is easy. This is how:

Useful links

www.nutrition-and-you.com/artichoke.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artichokes_being_cooked.jpg

The plant can be sown by seed or division or root cuttings.

Young globe artichokes only need little trimming.

Preparation:-

  1. When cleaning the globe artichoke you will need a bowl of water with lemon, once cleaned drop into this liquid so they do not go black.
  2. The globe artichokes prepared by removing 5–10 mm off the tip of the artichoke.
  3. Pull off the smaller leaves at the base and leave 10mm of the stem and then peel the stem.
  4. Place in a large pot, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 by halved lemons, two bay leaves salt and pepper to taste,
  5. Cover with wine allow to cook for 25 to 45 minutes, adding water if necessary.

You can eat them alone tossed with EV olive oil salt and pepper to taste.

With risotto

Growing Globe Artichokes is easy from the sunflower family a most attractive plant. Artichokes possess good keeping qualities, frequently remaining quite fresh for two weeks. Encountering artichokes for the first time can be daunting. To prepare and cook them is easy. This is how to cook them:

Useful links

www.nutrition-and-you.com/artichoke.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artichokes_being_cooked.jpg

Cynara cardunculus

The plant can be sown by seed, division or root cuttings.

Young globe artichokes only need little trimming soft young leaves.

The artichoke is boiled or steamed.

Preparation:-

  1. When cleaning the globe artichoke you will need a bowl of water with lemon, once cleaned drop into this liquid so they do not go black.
  2. The globe artichokes prepared by removing 5–10 mm off the tip of the artichoke.
  3. Pull off the smaller leaves at the base and leave 10mm of the stem and then peel the stem.
  4. Place in a large pot, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 by halved lemons, two bay leaves salt and pepper to taste,
  5. Cover with wine allow to simmer until evaporated for 25 to 45 minutes.

You can eat them alone tossed with EV olive oil salt and pepper to taste.

With risotto,

2 cloves of garlic peeled and finely chopped

Cut the 8 small artichokes into 8 pieces

4 tbls Olive oil, salt and pepper to taste

1 litre of chicken stock, if you are vegetarian use vegetable stock or water,

Butter

One red onion, one carrot ¼ celery all finely chopped if you are not good at chopping use the food processor and pulse your items don’t let them go mushy.

300 gms Arborio rice

100ml Dry vermouth

200 gms Parmesan

  1. Prepare artichokes as above
  2. Heat the chicken stock
  3. Gently fry garlic, onion carrot and celery until soft (aprox 15 to 20 mins)
  4. Add rice off the heat until the rice is completed coated
  5. Return to the heat add 2 ladlefuls of hot stock or just enough to cover the rise, simmer and stirring until the rice has adsorbed nearly all the liquid.
  6. Add more stock as the before allow to absorb
  7. After 15 to 20 minutes, nearly all the stock has been absorbed, each grain should be coated and al dente.
  8. Add remaining butter in small pieces gently mix in vermouth, parmesan and artichokes, be careful not to over stir. You may need more juice add a little stock, depending how you like your rice wet or dry will depend on you.

Or Carciofi Ripieno (filled)

Filling of breadcrumbs*, parsley, garlic, anchovy and parmesan push this mix down between the leaves and into the heart. Cook then in a large pan stand them up side by side and use the method above. To eat them just pull the leaves off and eat the outer will remain.

*Make your own breadcrumbs using stale bread and in the food processor.

If you have an abundance of artichokes place in sterilized jars and under oil.

Artichokes are highly nutritious and are especially good for the liver, aiding detoxification and regeneration. They reduce blood sugar and cholesterol levels.