never ending cookbook

Faux eggs ‘Florentine’

Faux eggs florentine cropped
This is really just another take on the Eggs Benedict theme….poached eggs with hollandaise sauce, sitting on, this time, spinach. True ‘Eggs Florentine’, it is not, despite the fact that many breakfast-serving Brisbane restaurants are calling it that. I guess you can call anything sitting on spinach ‘florentine’! Nevertheless, the egg, spinach and hollandaise combination is quite delicious!

4 thick slices of sourdough bread
Olive oil
1 clove of garlic (optional)
Baby spinach leaves
8 poached eggs (these can be poached in advance and reheated, as they would be in a restaurant situation)
Hollandaise sauce (see Sauces)
Cayenne pepper
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chives, trimmed, but left long, to garnish

Brush both sides of the sourdough slices with a little olive oil and place under a hot grill for 1 – 2 minutes each side, until crisp and golden. Rub one side of each slice with the garlic clove.

Top each slice of sourdough with a generous quantity of baby spinach, top the spinach with 2 reheated and well-drained poached eggs. Spoon hollandaise sauce over the eggs.

Sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper, then season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Garnish with the chives and serve immediately.

Baked Ham with Guinness and Cardamon Glaze

Baked Ham with Cardamon and Guinness Glaze

Dad doesn’t really like baked ham; we have a leg of ham so rarely that he feels that it is unnecessary. But every time we’ve served this it has been a huge success. It is probably the most succulent way to cook a ham.

Smoked or cooked leg ham, usually about 10-12 kg.
1½ cups Guinness stout
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 tablespoons stout extra

Garnish:
Thin pineapple slices
Parsley, finely chopped

Firstly, remove the skin from the ham. This can be done the night before, in which case the ham should be re-covered with the skin, then wrapped in aluminium foil and refrigerated overnight.

To remove the skin, preheat the oven to 160C and heat the ham, in a large baking dish, for ½ hour. Remove from oven and carefully peel the skin from the ham, using a small knife to help you. Try not to tear the fat. Score the fat in a diamond pattern; cut the skin off the bone and wrap the bone in aluminium foil.

Preheat the oven to 160C.

Pour 1½ cups of Guinness over the ham and bake for1 ½ – 2 hours depending on the size of the ham. Remove from oven and score the fat, cutting in even diagonal lines both ways, so that you create even diamond shapes over the surface. Baste with pan juices.

Increase oven heat to 200C.

Mix together the sugar and spices and add just enough stout to form a thick paste. Spread the paste over the ham and bake in hot oven for a further 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and decorate with chopped parsley. Arrange pineapple rings on platter with the ham if desired.

Baked Ham with Guiness and cardamon glaze

Red duck curry made from barbeque duck

We usually make red curry of duck with the meat of a barbecued duck purchased from Chinatown after the duck has been relieved of its skin for duck pancakes. There is no reason why you should not use a duck you have cooked yourself, and there is no reason why the skin shouldn’t go into the curry! That said, the spices added to a Chinatown duck do give it an extra dimension – and of course it is so much easier!

This is a Thai curry and Thai curries don’t normally have vegetables in them. However somehow onion wedges seem to have crept into ours and they do give the curry a nice crunch.

For the sweet element, we use either lychees in syrup or John West mandarin segments in syrup. Both work well.

1 onion, peeled and cut into thin wedges
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 x 400ml can coconut cream
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
1½ tablespoons Thai red curry paste
Meat (and skin, optional) from 1 Chinese roast duck, cut into bite size pieces
1 tablespoon fish sauce (or to taste)
1 can lychees in syrup, or 1 can mandarins in syrup
A few kaffir lime leaves
1 tablespoon coriander, roots, stems and leaves finely chopped

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok and cook the onion wedges until transparent but still crunchy. Remove from wok and set aside. Tip excess oil from the wok.

Tip the coconut cream into the wok and cook until it cracks. (Cook until the oil separates from the cream.) Add the red curry paste and cook for about 1 minute, then gradually add the coconut milk. Bring slowly to the boil.

Drain the lychees or mandarins but don’t discard the liquid.

Add the reserved onion wedges, the duck meat, the lychees or mandarins (but not the syrup), the fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves and coriander.

Test for balance of flavours. If not salty enough, add more fish sauce. If not sweet enough, add a little of the syrup from the fruit.

Serve with jasmine rice.