Kangaroo Kale Rolls

by Linda on December 1, 2010

If you don’t have kale, I think the filling in this recipe will work just as well with cabbage if you  reduce the water and the cooking time a little.

But if you don’t have kale you’re missing out!  It’s a real super-food, with a big range of vitamins and minerals and some important anti-cancer phytochemicals.  And it’s also really delicious, especially cooked long and slow as in this recipe. I have so much cavolo nero kale in the garden at the moment, just half a dozen plants yielding more than we can eat or foist on visitors, but I keep expecting the white cabbage moths to arrive soon and end the bounty.  So I’m making the most of it.

Kangaroo is my red meat of choice, for a whole heap of reasons. – ethical, ecological, nutritional, and not least economic. This recipe made a big platter of rolls, enough for dinner and lunches, or a platter of party finger food.

The Recipe:

Cut the top two-thirds off  30 large cavolo nero kale leaves.

You will use six of the bottom thirds (where the central vein is thickest) to line your cooking pot.  Put the rest of the bottom thirds aside to use for another recipe (or, if you have garden bounty, feed them to the chooks who will think it is Christmas and give you super high vitamin A eggs in return).

Blanch the leaves in boiling water for a few minutes, just to soften them so that they roll easily.

While the kale is blanching, saute a large onion, finely diced, in olive oil.  Add 500 grams of kangaroo mince and brown.

Add:

  • a teaspoon of coriander powder
  • a teaspoon of cummin powder
  • half a teaspoon of cinnamon
  • 6 cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 2 good dessertspoons of pine nuts
  • 3 good dessertspoons of currants
  • half a cup of rice (we have a local grower growing biodynamic rain-fed rice)
  • half a cup of finely chopped mint and /or parsley

Saute for a few minutes until the rice goes white and opaque.

Lay a kale leaf, top side of the leaf up and vein side down, with the leaf tip towards you. Place a dessertspoon of the mince mix near the tip and roll, folding the edges over to make a nice tight roll.

Line the bottom of a heavy pot with the 6 blanched kale bottoms.  Arrange the filled rolls on top of them in layers.

Mix together and pour over:

  • 100 ml lemon juice (1 lemon)
  • 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
  • 3 cups of water
  • swig of olive oil
  • salt and pepper.

Put a lid on the pot and simmer on a very very low heat for about two hours.  Towards the end, watch that they don’t boil dry.

They’re good hot but even better cold.

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Albanian Style Snapper, Squid, and Spring Vegetable Soup

by Linda on November 18, 2010

We stopped in at a fish shop on the way home from visiting our daughter at the coast yesterday.  I had just bought a half kilo of squid, thinking calamari, when I noticed they had snapper frames at a ridiculously low price.

Snapper are listed as a sustainable catch, and I like the idea that, when you hunt an animal for food you really should eat all of it.  So I bought two head-and-backbone frames for next to nothing, and this is the result.  Of course then we had to invite people for dinner.  The recipe fed four of us, generously, served with crusty bread, and with the spring vegetables from the garden and the rich, smoky paprika flavoured fish stock it was very good.

The Recipe:

I don’t think my fish stock recipe is in the chef’s manual, but it works.  I just put the frames in my large pressure cooker, cover with water, and pressure cook over a very low flame for an hour.  Then I strain the stock, pressing down with a potato masher to get the last of the juice, and leaving the the heads and bones for the compost.

To 1 ½ litres fish stock (from 2 snapper frames), I added:

  • 2 onions, diced
  • 6 cloves of my new season fresh garlic roughly chopped
  • ½ cup shelled young broad beans
  • 5 stalks celery, diced
  • 1 jar of peeled tomatoes
  • 6 stalks of cavallo nero kale diced
  • 4 bay leaves
  • a heaped teaspoon of smoky paprika

I simmered this for 20 minutes or so, then added

  • 3 zucchini, diced
  • 6 small new season potatoes quartered
  • handful of dill, chopped
  • juice of half a lemon
  • salt and black pepper

I simmered this for another 10 minutes until the potato was tender, then added the half a kilogram of squid, cut into rings, brought it just up to the boil again, then turned it off.  By the time I had bowls organised, the squid was cooked.

Served with warm crusty bread.

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The First of the Season Broad Beans

by Linda on September 26, 2010

I’m right at the edge of the climate range for broad beans.  I have to plant them as soon as it gets cool enough, and hope that they are ready to harvest before spring really takes hold.  They’re not my favourite green vegetable – they take too much peeling to get to the double peeled green beans.  But these very young ones, sauteed with peas and kale, butter and lots of garlic make it them worth the growing.

There’s a knob of butter and just a couple of tablespoons of water in the bottom of the pot.  I shall put the lid on and cook, holding the lid on and shaking the pot frequently, for about 5 minutes until most of the liquid is evaporated and the beans are tender.  And serve with roasted organic free range chicken and winter vegetables.

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Greens as Themselves

September 9, 2010

Cooking vegetables in my mother’s generation meant boiling them until they gave up.  I am an eldest child, my partner is a youngest, so his mother was a generation older.  Her version of chokos was boiled until they liquified. No wonder  as kids we weren’t great fans of vegetables! It is amazing how much food [...]

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