I feel a warning about my style of cooking is required before we just jump in with the recipe. You should know that I am not a cook who measures much when it comes to my favourite recipes – after a while you just know how much you like, particularly when it comes to spices and seasoning. I also grew up on a farm where we cooked in a woodfired oven which took a bipolar approach to temperature so I tend not to stick to temperatures too much and I’m hopeless at predicting how long something will take to cook. Mind you, I can usually smell when food is ready (particularly with baking) or I just see whether it looks cooked or a skewer comes out clean – you get the idea – cooking by instinct. So please do not read and attempt these unless you're kind of okay with a more fluid style of cooking.
I made these for dinner tonight - they're two of my fastest, most tasty recipes (not to mention cheap) and I thought I would share them with you. The first is ideal for a fast dinner on a week night. It is;
Easy Sang Choy Bow
Ingredients
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
500g Pork Mince (I like free range organic)
250g coleslaw salad mix
Teriyaki Sauce
1 teaspoon crushed garlic/1 crushed clove of garlic
Iceberg lettuce
Cracked pepper
Method
Throw some of the olive oil (a tablespoon? Two?) in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and add the garlic. Cook for about 30 seconds and then throw the pork mince on top. Cook until the meat has browned.
Your coleslaw mix should be of the finely chopped/shredded variety. If it’s not, give it a whiz in the food processor for a few seconds. Then stir it through the pork. Add some cracked pepper and a decent splash of teriyaki sauce until it tastes the way you want it to. Whack the pot down on your table, supply the washed iceberg leaves and let your family dig in!
For dessert;
Apple and Rhubarb Country-Style Pie
Ingredients
Filling
2-3 granny smith apples
Bunch of Rhubarb
Butter
Sugar
Pastry
500g plain flour
250g butter
250g caster sugar
2 eggs
The filling of any pie is basically the stewing of the fruit with sugar to taste. In this case my little pyrex dish holds two large grannies or three small ones plus a normal bunch of rhubarb which might weigh about 500g. Peel, core, divest of leaves/stumps and then chop your fruit up. I like to dice the apples finely and make the rhubarb a bit bigger.
Whack the butter in a saucepan and melt, add the fruit and cook over a medium heat until they soften and begin to mush. Add sugar to taste. In my case I added about 2/3 cup of white sugar which meant the pie filling was still a bit tart*. I like to cook until the fruit is totally soft and has all sort of mushed together. Mmm. If you feel it’s a bit liquid/runny add some arrowroot powder to thicken it**. Set aside to cool while you make your pastry.
Personally I’m not one for heaps of effort in the kitchen. So for the pastry there’s none of this “rub the butter between your fingers until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs”. Instead I dump the flour, sugar and butter into the food processor and give it a whiz until it’s all blended. Then I add the egg. I usually have to give it a cursory knead when I turn it out but for the most part the food processor does it for me.
You’ll only need about 2/3 of your pastry for the main pie depending on the size of the pie tin and your filling so consider putting the rest aside for a smaller pie later (alternatively double the fruit and use a bigger dish). Roll out your dough on a piece of baking paper until it’s about 3-4 millimetres thick and is big enough to extend about ten centimetres beyond the edge of your pie dish when you pop it face down on the pastry. Now slide your hand under the baking paper and flip the lot right side up. Smooth the pastry into the pie dish (no need to pre-grease the dish). Your pastry should still be sticking out past the edge of the dish by a good 5-7 centimetres. DON’T TRIM IT OFF UNLESS YOU WANT CITY-SLICKER-STYLE PIE.
Pour your filling in, spread it around, smooth it and then fold the extra pastry in towards the middle of the dish. This is why it’s a country-style pie…no faffing about with rolling out more pastry for a lid, just pull it up like a drawstring purse and it’s charming and quaint***.
Sprinkle the top with caster sugar or vanilla sugar to add to your charming/quaint effect. Now bake at about 180°C for around 15-20 minutes. If you pull your pie out now you’ll notice the sides are going nice and brown but (and you really need a glass/pyrex pie dish for this) looking at the bottom will show you that your pastry is basically uncooked mush. What you need is a pie shield – a metal rim that sits over your crust and reflects the heat allowing the bottom of the pie to cook while halting the baking on the sides. Haven’t got one of those? Easy – make one from a length of aluminium foil. Fold it in half with the shiny side facing out and wrap it around until the top and sides of your pie are covered.
Return your pie to the oven for another 20 minutes or so. Serve your pie with ice-cream, cream or custard. Om noms!
** It’s no good using cornflour/cornstarch to thicken a fruit filling because something about the citric acid in the fruit means the cornflour/starch won’t work as a thickener. Arrowroot, on the other hand, will thicken despite the citric acid and it gives your filling a lovely glossy sheen not usually seen outside food ads where the food has been primed with varnish for its Kodak moment.
*** County-style cooking is never ever meant to convey the speed/laziness factor required to assemble the dish. It’s all about being quaint and charming. It just happens to be fast because chances are if you’re baking in the country a cow is in your strawberry patch and you’ll need to go chase it. So you really don’t have time to press charming blackberry leaf pastry shapes into the dome of your carefully prepared pie of awesome.
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