Main:  Classic Surf & Turf with Green Peppercorn Sauce
Australian Seafood Magazine from your fish monger

Dessert:  Fig, Goat’s Cheese & Honey Parcels
Greenfeast (spring/summer) by Nigel Slater

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.” – Julia Child

Hello everyone,

Don’t you just love this quote from Julia Child?  I know most of us have to diet at some stage or other in our lives, but gosh it’s boring.  I’m a great believer in all things in moderation.  Our once a week Wine Wednesday’s are not about dieting and as you would have gathered, often involve a lot of cream but we have the rest of the week to make up for it.

I was in the fish monger’s buying some flathead fillets and saw their little recipe magazine that is free on the counter.  It contains a number of lovely things to try but the surf and turf caught my eye.  Now, the reason I decided to do this is because my numbers this week were very low for one reason and another.  When you have a large group cooking steaks is too cumbersome so this was the perfect opportunity to try this.  The original recipe is for two people but I just doubled it.  I served it with a simple green salad (vinaigrette dressing) and string fries.  The dressing, I am pleased to say was made by one of my guests who is currently doing a cooking course and loving it.  I’m learning so much too from their experience even though it is a course for beginners it has offered so many valuable tips to me even though I’ve been cooking for over 40 years.  I have decided to do the intermediate course with him when he has finished the beginners so I will let you know how that goes.

Of course the MAV was happy this week because it was steak and the sauce was heavenly.  The one thing I would do though next time (and there will be a next time) is not use T-bones and just use a beautiful small eye fillet instead.  The sauce is rich and with the prawns as well the T-bones, although smallish, were just too much meat for me.  Have all your ingredients ready to go so that making the sauce is a simple process.

I used frozen string fries and they were just great.  This is an easy meal and yet very impressive when presented.  Definitely one you could pull off after a long day at work.  This main receive 10/10!!

I recently acquired yet another cook book because I re-subscribed to Delicious Magazine.  It was sent as a freebie and I got so stupidly excited. I really have to get out more.  So today’s dessert is from that.  I’m not familiar with Nigel Slater (is that terrible? I don’t know). Anyway, the recipes are very unusual and it’s always great to get out of our comfort zone.  Visually this dessert has everything going for it.  The flavours are a very unusual mix of sweet and savoury.  There is fig and goat’s cheese with honey and thyme leaves all wrapped in filo.

In the description it says that you could serve this after a meal OR for a light lunch perhaps with a salad of bitter leaves.  It was so interesting and was well received. 6/10.  However, here is what I am going to do – in the next couple of weeks I am going to use the same principal but use pear & mascarpone but keep the thyme and honey.  This will, I think, give a sweet dessert rather than a savoury/sweet one.  Look, it may flop but what the heck, it’s worth a try.  The little parcels are wrapped with just two layers of filo and I heated a pizza stone in the oven first and then placed the baking tray on top with the parcels so that the base of the pastry wasn’t soggy.  So standby for a slightly altered repeat of this next week.

So, until next week….

From my table to yours with love.x