Wild Hare Braised In Beer

My life has kind of changed recently. My boyfriend finished his studies and got his first job in Outdoor Education. We had decided we'd move to wherever he found a suitable job. So now here we are living in a new town, Hanmer Springs. It's not too far from where we used to live in the South Island, four hours away, but our lifestyles have changed a lot. We're no longer living in the city, we're living amongst a forest camp nestled in an exotic forest. 

Even though I've been here a month, I still find it a novelty to have a forest on my doorstep. After work I can go out and pick wild blackberries and cherries,  go hunting, attempt one of the many mountain bike tracks, go mushroom spotting (not confident enough to pick them yet), or just generally commune with nature and say hi to my buddies the fantails. It's also been great getting to mix with all the travellers that move through the place. I've made crepes with a French woman and apple strudel with a German, I guess food is a universal language. It's also a universal currency too; I let a customer borrow my salt and pepper, and he paid me back in whitebait fritters. They were delicious.

Speaking of delicious, I guess I should get back to today's recipe. It features hare. Now I'd never eaten hare before, but I'd had rabbit and enjoyed it and expected it to taste the same. I was wrong. The hare had a more subtle taste, less gamey, and was much more tender. I'd now pick it over rabbit any day. I guess it's probably not something you'd come across very often (unless you hunt or know people who do), but it's great option if you're into eating bunnies. They are a pest after all!

Ingredients:

A few rashers of fatty bacon
1 hare, cleaned and jointed
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons flour
2 onions cut into wedges
Sprigs of fresh herbs
1 cup of beer
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Method:

Cut bacon into pieces, lay them in a roasting pan. Put it into an oven preheated to 200 Celsius. Cook until done, remove the bacon and set it aside. Leave the bacon fat in the roasting tray.

Season the hare with salt and pepper then toss in flour until coated. Place the hare in the roasting pan, coat the pieces in bacon fat. Add the onions and fresh herbs.

Place tray in oven and cook for 15 minutes, turning once or twice.

Mix beer, mustard and brown sugar and pour into the pan.

Lower heat to 180 Celsius, cook for another 30 minutes, baste frequently.

Serve as is, or you can make a gravy using the pan juices. To make gravy I just heat the pan juices in a saucepan. Then I mix a tablespoon of flour with a tablespoon of butter to form a paste, and drop in blobs of the paste to the saucepan, making sure to whisk thoroughly.

Serves 4

Lebkuchen - Spice Cake

 

 Apart from the plain enjoyment and need to eat, there are other reasons why I am a bit of a "foodie". I guess my interest stems from the fact that food is linked with culture.

I'm a curious type of person and love embracing the differences amongst people and I love learning about all the weird and wonderful things around the world. I always get a buzz from learning new things about food, in and out of the kitchen. Christmas is one of those times where I get a chance to hear more about, and experience, different family and cultural rituals.

In New Zealand there is no stereotypical Christmas meal, some people opt for 'traditional' roast dinners, while others opt for BBQ meals (after-all who wants to be stuck in a warm kitchen in the summer heat). Personally my family just has a whole bunch of things that we'll pick at throughout the day, pretty much the ultimate smorgasbord. However, there is one yearly staple;  my mum's Swiss-German baking. It's one tradition I would love to continue.

So I took the opportunity this year to 'steal' my mum's recipe for lebkuchen, which is a beautiful spice cake. There are many versions of this cake but I think my mum's recipe is quite unique as there is no butter or eggs in it, it's made with cream. It's an easy cake to make and it's especially great at xmas time because the yummy aroma of spices being released when the cake is cooking will fill the house with a delightful festive scent. Plus it's a decent sized cake, so there's plenty to go around. It's best served with a big dollop of cream (unsweetened) or a thick slice of unsalted butter.

Ingredients:

300ml cream (whipping cream)
5 tablespoons golden syrup
200g sugar
1/2 teaspoon clove powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons mixed spice
500g plain flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking soda
200ml milk (approx)


Method:

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius/350 Fahrenheit.

Beat the cream until thick, but not whipped. You want it to be the consistency of a thick pourable batter.

Stir in the golden syrup, sugar, and all the spices.

Now add the flour and stir again until all combined.

Heat 100ml of the milk until warm, stir the baking soda into the milk then add this to the cake mixture.

Fold in the milk, add another 100ml milk (does not have to be warm) until you get a thick batter. Add more milk if your batter is still too thick and stodgy.

Bake in a 28cm round cake tin for approx 50 minutes.

Since it's a decent sized batter you can also bake it in two medium-sized loaf tins ( 22 x 11 cm), just be aware that the cooking time will vary so just keep an eye on it.

Pistachio Ice Cream - The Real Deal

We've been having some lovely warm sunny days lately. Sure we still get the odd cold rainy day but it's definitely beginning to feel like a beautiful summer is just around the corner. I even have the beginnings of a jandal tan. For me even though I "slip, slop, slap" the tan I get from living in my jandals is inevitable (and welcome). It's a nice reminder that it's finally summer. So while my jandle-tan is still a work in progress I thought I should get to work on my ice cream making skills, because for me summer and ice cream go hand in hand (quite literally).

Ice cream is quite a fun thing to make from scratch, and easier than you might think. It's an especially good skill to have if you're a fan of natural ice creams. Pistachio is one of my favourite flavours of ice cream, but I've been totally put off buying it from commercial outlets because they're often full of artificial flavours (not to mention colours) and end up tasting like poo (not that I know what that tastes like). I just really hate that artificial pistachio flavour, it's so in-your-face and lacks all the subtlety and deliciousness of the real deal. Sure a homemade version may not look as pretty (I guess you could add a few drops of green food colouring if you like) but you'll be totally rewarded with a creamy ice cream that sings with the yummy perkiness of real pistachio. You don't even need an ice cream maker to get good results, this recipe works well when made by hand. Handy if you're gadget-less like me.

Ingredients:

125g shelled pistachios

150g caster sugar

350ml milk

150ml cream (just regular whipping cream)

5 egg yolks, lightly beaten

Method:

First you want to roast the pistachios, this will give them extra flavour. To do this, sprinkle the pistachios onto a roasting tray then roast them in a preheated oven (180 Celsius) for 5-10 minutes until just golden. Leave them to cool then blend them with the sugar in a food processor. You want the texture to be quite fine. You can even grind them by hand (this is what I do) in a pestle and mortar. I quite recommend grinding by hand because while you'll get the majority ground to a fine texture it's still nice to have a few bigger chunks in amongst the mix, rather than having a uniform fine grade. Anywayyy, after processing, transfer this mixture to a bowl.

Heat the milk and cream to boiling point in a saucepan, then pour over the ground pistachio mixture, stir and leave to cool. Cover then refrigerate overnight. This will let the flavour infuse.

The next day, heat up the pistachio cream to boiling point. Pour this over the egg yolks, mix then return to pan. Stir over a gentle heat until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. This means that when you dunk a spoon into your pan, pull it out and run your finger down the back of the spoon, if the mixture does not run and the little path you have drawn holds its shape then it's thick enough.

Next, chill the mixture. I like to do this by letting the pan sit in a bowl filled with ice, this cools it quickly before chilling it further in the fridge. Next, transfer the mixture to a suitable container for freezing and pop it in the freezer. It will take about 5-6 hours to freeze. I like to give it a good stir every hour or half hour until it's too hard to stir anymore. This helps beat air into the mixture, and improves the consistency.

Handmade ice cream tends to freezer harder, so soften the mixture at room temperature for about 10 minutes before serving.

Serves 4