Hello Dear Readers, I’m back, and this time I hope to stay a while before disappearing into the fog of freelance. This post is a bit of a brag fest, but then, I think I deserve it.

Feast

Last month I managed to pull of a four course meal for ten people. This might not sound as much of a triumph to the well-practised dinner party host, but in my case this was the everest of meals. So I decided not to do it by halves, and started a day in advance with the preparations.

I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the new Ginger Pig branch that’s opened up in Victoria Park. What I was looking for in particular was an extremely good quality silverside beef, and a seasoned pork fat that I’d heard tales of from Meat Club. Alas I was not able to obtain the seasonsed pork fat, which sounds way less appetising than it is, as it would need a few weeks preparation time.

Fresh Pasta
vodkasauce.jpg
photos courtesy of Mr Zloty

The silverside went towards creating “Sushi Chianti,” a form of italian sushi, that is made with beef and eaten with chopsticks. The foolish of you may gag at the idea of raw beef, but trust me, it is close to heaven if you can get good quality meat. This particular recipe has the most amazing flavours in it, and is really fun to make as it involves alot of bashing. I used the recipe from good ole Jamie Oliver, which has orange zest and I used tarragon in it which makes for a very zesty licorichy combination. This was the menu for the evening:

Anti-pasti
Mushroom Arancini
Sushi Chianti
Maria’s home baked tomato bread (the best thanks Maria!!)
Beetroot Horseradish Dip
Dates wrapped in parmaham

Prima
Homemade pasta with vodka sauce and porchini mushrooms
Homemade past with arrabiata alla nuzzaci

Secondi
Cinnamon ‘burnt’ mushrooms
Poached tuna with cherry tomatoes and rosemary

Dessert
Strawberries tossed with vanilla sugar, mint and limoncello (unfortunately the limoncello was not our home-made as we’d ran out, and didn’t have access to 96% alcohol)
Homemade giant scones with cornish clotted cream and strawberries (I cannot take any credit for this last dish, as it was created by the lovely christi zloty, and was probably the best scones i’ve ever had made by an american)

All this was washed down with crates of primitivo and finished off with limoncello. Nico’s aunt Rita introduced me to sambuca in coffee a while ago, and it is really amazing. I don’t think anyone else shared my enthusiasm for licorichy coffee, but then all the more for me!

Recipe for chianti sushi

500g silverside or topside top quality beef
1 dried chilli
zest of 1 orange
handful of majoram / oregano / tarragon leaves
juice of 1 lemon
olive oil
sea salt & pepper

1. Remove all the sinews from the beef with a sharp knife then slice and finely chop the meat. Now comes the good part - get one of those wooden meat hammers, or anything that’s hard (I used a real hammer for this bit). Put a plastic bag or similar over your beef and wack the hooves out of it for a while until it looks like mince.

2. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper and chilli, and add half the orange zest and most of the herbs. Bash it up to get the flavours talking and chop it up for a few seconds, mixing it all up really nice like. I repeated this step several times, tasting it each time until it reached my level of satisfaction.

3. Serve the meat on a wooden platter, squeeze the lemon juice over it, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on the remaining orange zest and herbs. Serve with chopsticks. Oh yeah!