Roast Rack of Lamb with Mint Oil Sauce

Another simple dish to do! Lamb is not what i usually eat but this is what my hubby likes and i need to master the skills to do this!! After reading several books, i made up my mind to cook it this way!

Ingredients:

Scottish Lamb Rack (as Scottish lambs were fed with milk, grass and water only. So the meat is pretty tender!)

Rosemary - washed, dried and take out leaves.

Garlic - minced, just a little bit

Tomato and New Potato

Mint Leaves

Red Wine Vinegar

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Parprika, Salt and Pepper

How to Make:

1. Preheat oven to 200'C.

2. Wash and dry lamb rack. Score the lamb in a diagonal way (i.e. make a slight cut on the skin - dont cut too deep!). Marinate the lamb with parprika, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary and minced garlic all over, adding a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Set aside.

3. Boil water in a small pot and once boiled, put washed new potatoes in it for 5-6 min. Take out and drain and cut into half.

4. Tomato - wash, drain and cut into half (horizontally).

5. Heat up a frying pan, add olive oil and then sear the lamb rack until golden on all sides.

6. Place seared lamb rack on baking tray with the tomatoes and potatoes on the side. You can drizzle the oil remaining on the marinate plate to the baking tray and if not moist enough, drizzle a bit more olive oil on top of the lamb in the baking tray. Feel free to sprinkle a bit more parprika, salt, pepper and rosemary leaves on top. Roast for 25-30 minutes for medium and 40-45 minutes for almost well done. 

7. During roasting, you can prepare the fresh mint oil sauce - just wash and dry all mint leaves. Put the leaves in the blender, add some salt and sugar, then blend until smooth. Scrape them to a sauce bowl, add some red wine vinegar and a lot of extra virgin olive oil and mix well. Try the taste and adjust the seasoning to your likings.

8. Once you take out lamb from the oven, let it rest for 5 min with loose foil on top - so that it can retain some juice inside.

** it's important to note you will need to serve the lamb within 5-10 minutes after resting. Otherwise, the lamb will become overcooked during a long resting time.

Enjoy!
8. For

Aubergine and Mozzarella

* original recipe from Don Alfonso where the photo as shown below was layers of round shape aubergine and mozzarella with tomato sauce dripping over it. Unfortunately, mine was not a bit close! Sorry~

Ingredients:
Aubergine
Mozzarella cheese
fresh basil, finely chopped
tomato sauce
salt and pepper

How to make:
1. Preheat oven at 175'C.

2. Wash and dry aubergine and cut them into thin slices. If possible, buy bigger size aubergine with a neat shape so that you can cut out even round slices.

3. Fry aubgerines in hot olive oil and drain on kitchen towels.

4. Thinly slice mozzarella cheese - keep the round shape and size similar to (or just a little bit smaller than) the aubergine slices.

5. Prepare your own version of the tomato sauce (as Don Alfonso's book did not mention how to make this tomato sauce at all!). For me, I use 1 tin can of whole tomatoes from Italy and puree it in a blender, then cook in a small saucepan by adding a little bit of ketchup, salt and sugar.

6. Alternate two slices of aubergine with a slice of mozzarella, a pinch of chopped basil and a dollop of tomato suace. Continue layering for a few times.

7. Put them in a ceramic dish and bake in overn for approx 10 mins.

8. Once done, nap each dish with the warm tomato sauce, centre the aubergine tower and decorate with a fresh basil leaf.

This should be an impressive and tasty starters or side dish which is easy to do and not costy at all. However, the one that i did (as seen in the top photo) was not acutally what i intended as i was not able to buy aubergines which i could cut out a few even round slices! and the mozzarella i got was only those "ball-shaped' ones and it's impossible to have even round slices from them too. As such, my aubgerine tower cannot stand up on their own without the toothpick in the centre. And with the toothpick in the centre, i can no longer decorate it with the basil leaf. Try for yourself. It's fun!
Enjoy~

Porcini and Mushroom Risotto

Ingredients: (serves about 4 paxs)

30g (or simply half a bowl) dried porcini mushrooms
1 onion - minced
2 garlic cloves - pressed
1 tbsp olive oil
80g butter
1.2 L chicken stock **
350g risotto rice (preferrably Carnaroli and you are able to get Aged Risotto, even better!)
100ml dry white wine
50g freshly grated Parmesan cheese
250g fresh mushrooms of your choice
salt and pepper

** For Vegetarian version, replace with vegetable stock

How to make:

1. Rinse dried porcini mushrooms, then soak them in a bowl of hot water for at least 20 min until soft.

2. Drain the porcini mushrooms using a fine seive (so that the gritty part of the mushroom water is filtered out) and save the mushroom water for later use.

3. Squeeze water out of the softened porcini mushrooms and finely chopped them.

4. Bowl the chicken stock + the mushroom water in a pot, then turn down the heat to simmering point.

5. Heat olive oil and 50g of butter in another frying pan and stir fried the minced onion and pressed garlic until soft. Then add the finely chopped porcini mushrooms, then add the rice.

6. Stir fried all ingredients until the rice are all covered with the oil and butter and starting to turn a little translucent.

7. Pour in the white wine and let it evaporate for a while (it will happen fairly quickly).

8. Add the simmering chicken stock - ladle by ladle into the rice and stir until the rice has absorbed it. At this point, yo should turn down heat for the frying pan cooking the rice to medium fire, otherwise, the chicken stock you add to the rice will be gone very quickly.

9. Continue to add the stock ladle by ladle and don't drown the rice, and keep stirring all the time until the rice becomes plump and al dente! In my experience, this process takes approx 20 min! So, be patient!

10. Once the rice becomes al dente, add the remaining 30g butter and the freshly grated Parmesan cheese and season with salt and pepper. Then switch off heat and cover the pan the let the rice rests for 5 min.

11. In the meantime, stir fried the fresh mushrooms in either olive oil (which is healthier) or butter (which is more tasty and fragrant) which are already cleaned and chopped to the shape and size you desired in a separate pan.

12. Add the mushrooms to the top of the rice and serve!

* have the Parmesan cheese ready at the table so that whoever wants a more cheesy taste, they can just grate some more on top of the rice!

Enjoy this with a glass of chilled white wine and no more worries about the trouble of the day! hahaha!

Roast Prime Rib

Ingredients:

Rib eye (best quality one being the PRIME Black Angus from US. If prefer with ribs, i personally prefer the one from Canada instead of Australia. US beef with ribs are still restricted to be imported to HK) - ask butcher to tie it up with strings for you for roasting purpose

garlic, rosemary, thyme, black pepper, olive oil

How to make:

1. The night before your dinner, marinate the beef. First, wash and wipe dry the beef.

2. Then mix together a bowl of minced garlic, minced rosemary and thyme (fresh or dried ones are both ok), black pepper and olive oil -> so that it becomes paste-like. NO SALT at this moment.

                                                                                                                          3. Rub the above paste to the beef and massage the beef for a while before tidying it up like a paste on top.

4. Cover with foil and put to fridge overnite.

5. On the day of cooking, 1 hr before cooking, take out beef from fridge and stand at room temperature. At the same time preheat over at 230C.

6. After 1 hr, season with beef with sea salt and black pepper again. Place beef to oven at 230'C for 20 to 30 min, then turn down to 180'c and roughly another 1.5hr to 2 hr (depending how big your beef is) until a thermometer inserted into centre of meat registers approx 44'C (which is rare to medium rare).

7. Take out from over and stand at room temperature for another 10-15min - the beef will continue to cook by itself and the centre can then reach medium rare status while the sides will be pretty cooked.

* The really cook chef will then deglaze roasting pan and make gravy with red wine. But this sounds pretty difficult for me. So i prefer to order the gravy from Pen Hotel in advance! All u need to do is to boil the whole vacuum pack of gravy, then pour to gravy boat and serve with the beef!! sorry for this shortcut.

* Best served with mash potato and cream corn!

Enjoy!! 



Braised Hamachi

Ingredients:

Chilled Hamachi (order this from sushi shop/counter and request for the head + belly and you'll have freshly arrived Hamachi from Japan)
Daikon
Taro (optional)
Pumpkin (optional)
Burdock (optional)
Ginger slices

Braising Suace:
Water - 300ml
Cooking Sake - 1.5 tbsp
Mirin - 1.5 tbsp
Soy Sauce- 4.5 tbsp
sugar - 4.5 tbsp (can reduce if you prefer less sweet)

How to make:
1. If you are using head, you can ask fishmonger or sushi chef to cut the head into pieces.

2. Wash and wipe dry fish and cook in boiling water for a few minutes, drain.

3. Put ginger slices on bottom of a cooking pot and then braising sauce and bring to boil.

3. Add the sliced daikon, taro, pumpkin and fish pieces into pot, once boiled, turn to medium heat and cook with aluminium foil covering the top for 10 to 15 minutes (depending how much fish you can cooking)

ready to serve & enjoy with a bowl of japanese rice!!

* you can add a few drops of dary soy sauce to add color
* if you prefer your vegetables to be softer, you can cook them a bit first before adding to the fish pot. But bear in mind, japanese pumpkin takes a short time to cook and become soft easily.
* ginger slices are essential to remove the bad odour of the fish, so dont forget!

** this is actually a very good and healthy recipe, especially if you can cut down the sugar a bit as there's no oil in cooking at all and you can eating fish and vegetables at the same time. :)