Benjamin Crowfoot's Antipodean Adventures

My mission this week was to avoid spending a fortune on groceries and try and use whatever was in the fridge with one or two additions. I saw some nice stewing steak in the supermarket (only $4 for a giant piece!) and came up with this improvised chili con carne recipe, inspired by our friends Steve and Shelly.

———————————————————

700g stewing steak

1 green pepper, roughly chopped

2 hot chili peppers, sliced

2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped

6 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced

2 carrots, trimmed and sliced

1 bunch of fresh coriander, leaves removed and stalks finely chopped

ground cummin

ground coriander

ground cinnamon

smoked paprika

cayenne

ground black pepper

salt

white flour

balsamic vinegar

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

2 x 400g tins of kidney beans

————————————————————

• Set oven to 200°c fan.

• Dust the steak all over with flour, cummin, coriander and black pepper. Brown it off. (I did this on the barbecue)

• In a big oven proof pot fry all the veg in some olive oil, including the chopped coriander stalks.

• When the veg is nice and soft, add 1 heaped tsp of all the spices except the cayenne, which only needs a pinch. Stir into the veg for a few minutes until you smell beautiful things happening in the pot.

• Add the drained kidney beans and stir for a minute or two, then add in the tins of tomatoes and a couple of tablespoons of vinegar.

• Place the steak in the pot and cover it with the chili. Put a lid on the pot and place it in the oven. • I cooked the chili for about three hours. Every hour I checked that it wasn’t drying out and added water if it needed it.

• When it’s done the meat should be falling apart. Add in the coriander leaves and serve with rice and yoghurt. Absolutely yummy!

To keep the boredom at bay I’ve been cooking. After a reasonable, but failed attempt at making gluten-free banana pancakes (made with desiccated coconut and almond meal) I turned to good old reliable cajun cooking. The recipe I was following required ham hock, which for some reason I couldn’t find anywhere. So, through the mother of all inventions, I improvised and used smoked pork bones and pork belly instead. Here’s the recipe:

——————————————————

Soak 375g dried beans over night (I used mixed beans, but it’s supposed to be kidney beans… which, again, I couldn’t find!).

Pork belly- scored and rubbed all over with cayenne, oregano and cumin (this was actually a happy mistake as I thought I was using paprika instead of cayenne). I browned the meat off on the barbecue with hickory wood chips, giving it an extra smokey flavour.

Into a big pot add;

——————————————————

the soaked and rinsed beans

about 1 litre of water

1 onion roughly chopped

2 sticks of celery roughly chopped

1 whole bulb of garlic cut in half across its circumference 

1 Tbsp dried oregano

1 Tbsp smoked paprika

1/2 tsp cayenne (the happy mistake happened here too, so I put a bit more cayenne in than I intended to!)

4 sprigs of thyme

2 fresh bay leaves

smoked pork bones (about 4 or 5 pieces)

2 400g tin of diced tomatoes 

and the seared pork belly

———————————————————

Give everything a good mix and bring to the boil. After about five or ten minutes of it bubbling away fiercely, turn the heat right down and put the lid on. Leave to simmer for a couple of hours. I ended up putting my pot in the oven at 120°c and leaving it for another hour. When you think the beans are soft enough and you can pull the pork apart easily, take the belly out and remove the crackling fat (I attempted to crisp this up later on the barbecue to mixed results. Lovely smokey spicy flavour, but it was hard to get the fat to really crackle and not burn). Remove the bones and any twiggy bits of herbs. Take out some of the beans (about a third) and mash them up with vinegar (I used balsamic) and sea salt to taste. Mix these back in with the pulled pork. The halved garlic bulb can be taken out and either squeezed into the whole mix or individually onto peoples’ plates. I served it with lemon rice. Very tasty, smokey comfort food from the home of jazz and creole cooking. 

It’s amazing who you bump into at nursing homes. While visiting Zarief today we were chatting to a lovely lady called Narelle. Large turquoise glasses frame her lined eyes, setting off the shocking pink lipstick she wears on her lips and teeth. Married twice, a doctor and a pilot. Always loved American men- engaged to one before he was shot down during the war. Lived in the states with another Australian girl. This is where she befriended John F Kennedy. In fact he told her and her friend they were his new girlfriends. Anyway, Narelle decides she’d like to go to Alaska. So she and her friend travel up there and capture a polar bear. How did she do that you may ask? Well the bears just followed them around and they took them back with them. Well when J.F.K heard about this he thought it was marvelous and built an enclosure for the polar bears. In the same neighbourhood, Narelle and her friend were hobnobbing with Frank Sinatra (Ava Gardner was the only woman he loved apparently) and Donald Trump (who didn’t like Aussie girls but had an open house policy and a nice wig). Grace Kelly was lovely and, oh, that Marilyn Munroe! Anyway, wasn’t it dreadful what that horrible Lee Harvey Oswald did. J.F.K gave Narelle a little token to remember him by: a key ring from Dallas with the yellow rose of Texas symbol engraved on it. She carries it around with her in a little wash bag. Conspiracy theories anyone?