Braised mushrooms and lentils

Full of protein, rich with the goodness of garlic and red wine, and low in fat - this dish has it all, and is absolutely delicious to eat!

Braised mushrooms and lentils

Serves 6-8

olive oil for sauteing
400g mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 onions, finely sliced
2 cups of green/brown lentils
500 ml wine
500ml water
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Saute the garlic and onion until translucent. Add in the mushrooms and cook for 2-3 mins. Add lentils and stir through. Add in wine and enough water to cover. Simmer for 30-40 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Check occassionally to ensure that all the liquid does not evaporate - add extra water if needed.

Great as is, with a piece of crusty bread. Can also be served with potatoes or rice.

Beef with Port and Juniper

Beef with Port and Juniper

Ingredients

1 kg of casserole beef diced
2 tbs butter
2 cups of port
2 tbs flour
1 litre of stock
400g of mushrooms
2 cloves of garlic diced/minced
1 onion sliced into rings
1 tsp juniper berries

Method

Brown steak. Remove from pan.

Put port into another pan, bring to boil, and reduce until half the original liquid remains.

Melt the butter, add in the flour, and cook the roux until it is a light straw colour. Add in stock, juniper, onions, and garlic, and stir till boiling. Add in meat, mushrooms, and port. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour or until the meat is tender.

Serve with a green veg, and either pasta, rice, or potato. Yum!

Slippery Jack Mushrooms

We didn't find many good samples of Slippery Jack Mushrooms - apparently it has been too wet (not too surprising as we have had major flooding in the area in the last fortnight!!), and a lot of the few we did find were waterlogged. I did manage to find a few to try, however, and must say that they were delightful. They were very mushroomy ... funny that ... but very silk and smooth in texture. I cooked them simply with onions and olive oil with a little bit of butter at the end, and they really were delicious. I can just imagine them with a bit of cream, folded into some pasta - yum!

Saffron Milk Cup Mushrooms

I went mushrooming today in the Vulcan State Forest near Oberon, NSW. We came back with heaps of Saffron milk caps, which are pumpkin-orange and very pretty, and a few Slippery Jacks which have a sticky brown top and a spongy yellow underneath. I've never tasted Slippery Jacks, and was way too tired to actually try and cook them tonight - they are a little fiddly as you have to peel them and discard the stalks etc. So I cooked the saffron milk caps instead.

Fried Mushrooms

These were amazingly tasty! And such an autumnal colour!
I can see another foraging adventure in my future :)

3 onions
3 cloves garlic
1 nob butter melted in some olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
a whole heap of mushrooms

As you can tell this is a very imprecise recipe. Basically I heat up some olive oil, put some butter in that, then saute the onions and garlic until the onions are soft. Then I throw in chopped mushrooms and cook them until they are soft, seasoning near the end of cooking. Sometimes I may add  a little more butter depending on taste, sometimes not. It all just depends on the taste!


These mushies were just lovely. Lovely firm but yielding texture, with a lovely savouriness to them I find it hard to describe the varying tastes of mushrooms, but I have to say these really were delicious.

Kapuśniak a.k.a Cabbage Soup

This is a warming soup that my babcia would whip up every now and then. I haven't made it in years, but this autumn afternoon seemed to call out for it - and I had all the ingredients in the kitchen, which always helps! This soup always seemed to me to be the epitome of peasant food - hearty, filling, tasty - and cheap to make!  It has a whole sweet-sour-salty vibe going on that just elevates it from boring to sublime. Then again, I might just be a little bit biased!

Kapuśniak a.k.a Cabbage Soup

1/2 white cabbage
4-6 potatoes
2 onions
200g smoked pork (you can use bacon, leftover pork roast etc) ** Vegetarians - just omit this or replace with a smoked tofu :)
1 litre of chicken stock + 1 litre of water
1 cup of saurkraut (if you don't have any handy a tablespoon of white vinegar or the juice of 1 lemon can be substituted).

Saute the onion until translucent. Add in the pork and saute until any fat renders off. Add in the remaining ingedients, bring to boil, then simmer until the potatoes are cooked and the meat is falling apart.

Season to taste, then serve with crusty bread.


This recipe easily serves 8.

Smacznego!

Gulyás leves (Goulash Soup) - Authentic Hungarian Goulash!

Gulyás with crusty bread - a lovely warming meal.
This version was made with sweet paprika.

There are many different recipes for Goulash on the web - so what makes mine authentically Hungarian? Well, it comes from my father who is authentically Hungarian, of course!! This dish has a beautiful red colour to it, and a spiciness that contains no heat,  from the sweet paprika used to flavour it.   Real Hungarian goulash is a soup, not a stew. This same dish thickened into a stew is more rightly called a Pörkölt instead of a Gulyás.


What I am giving you here is the most basic recipe - to this people add all sorts of things - a spoon of tomato paste, carrots, caraway, and garlic, for example. Some cooks add potatoes, but others will tell you to never "spoil" the taste of goulash with potato. I say, do whatever rocks your boat! We never add potato, prefering the taste of the "unspoilt" soup lol! Green capsicums are usually used in this dish, but I used red as they were half the price of the green!

This dish is also brilliant to make in a slow cooker - just add in all the ingredients and off you go!

This was the gulyás I made last night, with smoked paprika.
Turned out to be quite yummy!!

Gulyás

1 kg beef (choose a casserole cut)
3 onions finely sliced
2 tbs sweet Hungarian paprika
2 green capsicums, chopped  
water


Saute the onions until translucent. 
Brown the beef in with the onions.
Add in the paprika and capsicums.
Pour in water to completely cover the contents of the pot, and a wee bit more.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer until the beef is tender.
 
Serve it with crusty bread or some noodles & enjoy!


Note: I've found that smoked paprika will do at a pinch too, when you find out at the last minute you're out of sweet on a rainy evening when you're in your jammies, and the meat has just been browned!!! Changes the flavour, obviously, but still is mighty tasty!