Okonomiyaki

 

I've been holding off plagiarising this recipe from Eat Your Kimchi because I wanted to support the creators. Unfortunately it looks like their blog site's gone off the air some time since I last looked at it, so it's "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me!"

Basically okonomiyaki is a Japanese cabbage fritter. The EYK video covers the Osaka-style in that it has pork-belly strips on the A-side. I might as well add some of my own "as you like it" changes along the way to make it look like I didn't just copy the recipe outright.

La Viña Cheesecake

This delicious cheesecake recipe was shamelessly plagiarised from Mimo Food, who posted it with permission from La Viña restaurant in San Sebastián, Spain. I stole it so I could make the quantities less gargantuan (halve), Fix an error in the baking temperature (Celsius vs. Fahrenheit) and just ensure that I have somewhere to remember it (It's ungoogleable for me right now).The cake is eye-poppingly sweet and creamy and best served with touches of brown around the edges and "just warm" after baking.

Slow cooked lamb leg

Lamb legs are $8 a kilo at the big supermarkets right now, so I thought I'd celebrate by cooking a slow-roast half lamb leg.
The recipe's not exactly rocket science:
Roughly chop a carrot, an onion and a couple of celery sticks to make a trivet on the bottom of a slow-roaster. Chop-in a clove of garlic. rub salt and oil all-over a half lamb leg (Bonus points if you leave it this way in the fridge overnight for extra tenderising). Sit the lamb on top of the trivet and sprinkle some dried oregano and lemon zest over it (Or any herbs/spices you like... A bay leaf wouldn't go astray!). Dump a jar of passata over the top and put the lid on.
Set it going on low at breakfast time and by dinner time you'll have delicious, tender meat! I gave mine another 10 minutes in 200° C oven (Could have just been 5 minutes, really). Portion using a spoon and/or fork.
Adjust the seasoning in the remaining cooking liquor and vegetables and use this as a sauce (Pass it through a blender/stick-mixer if you prefer a less "rustic" sauce).

Photos on Google+

"Caribbean" chicken

This recipe isn't particularly authentic, but it could better be described as "Caribbean inspired chicken". Nevertheless it's a really tasty recipe and worth blogging about. I got it from an old friend years ago with typically imprecise measurements and times ("approx half a jar of chutney", "when the chicken is cooked", etc.) I've tried to tighten-up the measurements here for all those like me who get a bit nervy when they have to wing it.