The girlfriend is a mad seafood fan but now that it’s dark at 6pm and the temperature drops as soon as the sun goes down the weather isn’t exactly conducive to sitting outside shelling prawns and barbequing fish.

This dish however is the perfect winter substitute. Fresh snapper fillets, prawns, slow braised fennel in a creamy sauce topped with crispy potato - real comfort food for any seafood lover.

Most fishmongers sell their snapper fillets with the skin still on. This is great if you’re cooking them on the BBQ because you get that awesome crispy outer layer but the skin doesn’t work in a pie.

Just ask your fishmonger to take the skin off for you – they are more than happy to do this and because they have all the ultra sharp flexible knives at hand it takes them seconds.

I tried de-skinning snapper at home myself once using my regular chefs knife and ended up with what would be more described as minced fish rather than a fillet.

Serves 2-3 people, but you can double it up if you like

What you’ll need

2. Melt the butter in another heavy based saucepan over a medium heat and add the golden shallots, fennel and garlic. Cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring until nice and tender.

3. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

4. Gradually add the warm stock mixture, stirring constantly until nice and smooth.

5. Add the lemon juice, season with salt and pepper and cook for 5 minutes until nice and thick.

6. Remove the saucepan from the heat, add the snapper and prawns and give it a good stir to combine.

7. Finley chop the reserved fennel fronds and add to the mixture with the dill and green shallots/scallions.

8. Pre heat your oven to 180C

9. Take a nice oven proof dish and rub some butter over it.

9. Place a layer of the sliced potatoes on the bottom of the dish in an overlapping format, then spoon in the filling. Place a second layer of potatoes on top.

10. Brush the top of the potatoes with some melted butter and pop in the oven 40 minutes until the potatoes and nice and golden.

11. Slice with a sharp knife and plate up with some steamed greens.

 

Okay so i'm not going to win any awards for my perfect half moon shaping skills but this still tasted sensational.

Before tackling this recipe I strongly recommend you read my previous post on perfecting the home made pizza dough. The dough recipe and process is absolutely vital to the end results and will give you those appetite educing scorch marks you can see on the photo above!

What you’ll need

This will give you enough to make 4 – 6 calzones depending on their size

2.       Soak your unglazed terracotta tile or pizza stone in cold water for at least 1 hour, then place on a high shelf in your oven and pre-heat to maximum temperature for at least 1 hour. Remember that the calzone will need more vertical clearence to get in and out of the oven than your pizza.

3.       Roll out your dough onto a piece of baking paper dusted with semolina. You will only be able to make 1 calzone at a time

4.       On 1 half of the dough lay down some tomato passata, then layer over slices of mozzarella cheese.

5.       For each calzone, place over 6 slices of salami and 6 slices of pepperoni. Sprinkle over a handful of chopped ham and a small handful of the sliced Spanish onion.

6.       Squeeze over a little lemon juice (makes all the difference) and add a pinch of dried oregano.

7.       Grate over some parmesan cheese, add some extra mozzarella if you like and then fold the calzone over and crimp up the edges by pulling the bottom layer up and folding it over the top layer. Make sure its sealed nice and tight so your fillings don't drip out everywhere.

8.       Using a pizza peel or the “baking tray slide method” drop your calzone in the oven on the tile and bake for approximately 10 minutes or until golden brown.

A lot of people get scared off at the thought of cooking a risotto, but it really isn’t all that difficult, just takes a little bit of practice.

Unfortunately when cooking a risotto there are no set quantities or ratios of water to rice or cooking times and temperatures. Different types of risotto rice from different parts of Italy all have different “absorption” rates, so the key to cracking the risotto code is to keep testing the rice as you cook until it tastes “al dente” just like pasta. You want it to be cooked but have just that little bit of bite to it.

You also have to keep stirring the rice constantly, so this is not the sort of dish to put on the stove and leave to simmer.

This is a fantastic seafood risotto recipe with a real tomato kick inspired by the dish I had at Ventunos earlier in the year.

The combination of a homemade seafood stock with some tomato passata yields great results.

Serves 2-3 people

Seafood

8 large uncooked green prawns. Heads removed, peeled, deveined and butterflied
2 balmain or morton bay bugs. Ask your fishmonger to cut them in half for you
1 small fish fillet (skinless and boneless) – I like to use a tiger flathead fillet or a small piece of barramundi.

800ml Water
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 celery stick, roughly chopped
½ bulb of fennel, fronds removed and roughly chopped
1 roma tomatoe, quartered
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon olive oil

butter
olive oil
½  onion, finley diced
1/4 bulb fennel, fronds removed and finely diced
1 garlic clove
1 celery stick
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
a small pinch chilli flakes
200g risotto rice such as aborio
2 tablespoons tomato paste
125ml white wine
200ml tomato passata / tomato puree
6 cherry truss tomatoes, roasted
pinch of saffron – soaked in 2 tablespoons of water
½ lemon
Basil Leaves

 

 

 

To make the Risotto

2.       Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil and a small knob of butter (about 15 grams) together over medium high heat in a large heavy based pan. Add prawns and sear each side; remove and set aside. Now add fish fillet and sear 30 seconds each side until just golden, but not cooked through. Remove and keep warm with prawns.

 

3.       Add onion, celery, fennel, fennel seeds, garlic, chilli and safron. Cook very slowly over a low heat for 15 minutes or just until onion has softened. Give it a good stir every couple of minutes.

 

4.       Add rice and stir to coat in the buttery juices. After a minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the tomato paste and stir to combine.

 

5.       Add wine and bring to a boil; simmer to reduce the wine by ¾. It will smell fantastic. Any harsh alcohol flavours will evaporate and leave the rice with a tasty essence.

 

6.       Once the wine has cooked into the rice, add the tomato passata. Turn down the heat and simmer, stirring constantly until most of the tomato juice has been absorbed by the rice.

 

7.       Now add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Keep the heat at a simmer so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside.

 

8.       Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and almost massaging the creamy starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take around 15 minutes.

 

9.       Taste the rice — is it cooked? Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. 
 

10.   Once you’re happy the rice is al dente, stir in the cherry tomatoes, prawns and bug meat. Flake fish coarsely and cook a further 5 minutes.

 

11.   If desired, a little bit of stock can be stirred through at the last minute to loosen the risotto a little more.

 

12.   Serve in big bowls, scatter with freshly torn basil leaves and a wedge of lemon.

A quick visit to the butchers at David Jones this week and I could not pass up these cracking milk fed veal cutlets. By first pan frying and then baking in the oven the meat was so tender and sweet it just melted off the bone.

1.       Pre heat your oven to 180C

2.       To make the dressing, grab a mortar and pestle and throw in the juice of 1 lemon, 1 tablespoon olive oil, the leaves from 1 sprig of fresh rosemary and a pinch of salt. Use the mortar to bash and swirl around the ingredients. You will notice the liquid will take on a light green colour, this is all the flavour from the rosemary leaves permeating through the lemon juice and olive oil. Let sit on the bench at room temperature until the veal is ready.

3.       Using some kitchen twine, tie some string around your veal cutlets (see picture) to help keep the shape.

4.       Rub the cutlets with some olive oil, and season each side with salt and pepper.

5.       Pan fry for a couple of minutes each side until they are nice and brown. You are just trying to colour them not cook them all the way through.

6.       When nice and brown, transfer to an oven proof dish and pop in the oven. 10 minutes for medium-rare, 15 minutes for medium depending on how big your cutlets are.

7.       Remove from the oven and cover with foil – leave rest for 10 minutes – this is a very crucial step.

8.       Take a clean fry pan or grill and place over a medium heat and line with olive oil. Place the capsicum skin side down and fry for a couple of minutes until charred. Turn over and drop in the zucchini. Cook both sides until light brown and remove to your plates.

9.       When your cutlets have finished resting, snip off the string with scissors and plate them up.

10.   Pour over any remaining resting juices and spoon over 1-2 dessert spoons of the lemon dressing.

Enjoy!

I love a good Bouillabaisse on a cold winters night. Originally from the port of Marseille in France it is traditionally made with a mixture of fresh seafood and shellfish, however that can get very expensive and very messy.

The other week I had a sensational Bouillabaisse from Mohr Fish in Surry Hills that was made with a combination of fresh fish fillets that I thought was so good I had a crack at making one myself …

Here is my recipe for an all fish fillet Bouillabaisse. This dish uses a combination of both oily fish and fleshy fish fillets to give you contrasting flavours and texture.

Serves 4 – 6 people

500g white fleshy fish fillets such as snapper or flathead (skinless)
500g oily fish fillets such as kingfish, snook or skate (try and find the kingfish its sensational!)
Olive oil
1 brown onion, finely diced
1 celery stick, diced
1 leek, white part only, trimmed, washed and thinly sliced
½ bulb of fennel – fronds removed (and reserved) - thinly sliced
1/2 tsp ground fennel seeds
3 garlic cloves, minced
4 x 400g tins chopped Italian tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp brown sugar
600ml good quality fish stock (not powedered)
2 generous pinches saffron soaked in 300ml hot water for at least 15 minutes
Crusty Bread to serve

1.       Chop your fish fillets up into a 2-3cm dice and in place the white fish fillets and oily fish fillets into separate mixing bowls.

2.       Drizzle each with a little bit of olive oil and add to each bowl ½ teaspoon minced garlic and 3 tablespoons of the saffron water. Mix to combine, cover and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour to marinate.

The fish fillets will soak up the saffron and garlic and take on a nice yellow colour.

 

3.       Place a large heavy based saucepan over a low heat and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil – enough to coat the bottom.

4.        Add the onion, celery, leek, fennel and fennel seeds and stir to coat in the oil. Cover with a lid and sweat off the vegetables over a low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring a couple of times. The idea here is to sweat out the vegetable juices, not to colour/fry them.

 

5.       When the vegetables are ready, remove the lid and turn up the heat to medium. Add the remaining garlic and fry for 3 minutes.

 

6.       Add the tomatoes, puree, bay leaf, sugar, fish stock and remaining saffron water. Add a couple of grinds of pepper and stir to combine.

 

7.       Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.

 

8.       You can make the base ahead of time and keep in the fridge if you like. When you are ready to serve bring the soup back up to a simmer.

 

9.       Add the oily fish fillets and simmer for 3 minutes, then add the white fish fillets and simmer for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and ladle into big bowls.

 

10.   Garnish with chopped fennel fronds and serve with crusty sourdough.

Friends of mine know that I am a lover of good pizza, and I mean really good pizza. There are some fantastic pizzerias out there in Sydney such as Franks, Napoli in Bocca and Ventunos to name just a few, but there are also some absolutely shocking incarnations of this wonderful dish.

For the past decade I have been on what some would call a quest, or perhaps more of an odyssey to replicate that awesome traditional Italian pizza taste at home.

Most recipes that you see on the internet or in books will call for you to dissolve yeast in luke warm water with some sugar, mix in the flour and let it rise for an hour or until “doubled in size”. This will give you a very average pizza (believe me, I have tried).

Most pizzerias run their ovens at between 450C and 550C so they can cook a thin based pizza in minutes. Most home ovens will struggle to get up to 250C.

To make a really top notch pizza at home you need to get the timing right between cooking the crust so it’s light and fluffy and melting the cheese without burning it. To do this we will make a very wet dough and give that dough time to ferment. The yeast will slowly react with the natural sugars in the flour and give you a light and naturally sweet crust.

It’s worth reading this entire post before you jump in the deep end as a little bit of planning is required.

I now share with you dear readers the culmination of my quest ...

The humble pizza is a simple rustic dish with very few ingredients and as such it is vitally important to use top quality produce.

It’s best to avoid the pre-mix already grated cheeses from the supermarket. They will all claim to be the “perfect pizza blend” but really aren’t that good at all.

For around the same price you can get nobs of very good quality mozzarella from your local deli or Harris Farm Markets.

Traditional Italian pizza is usually made with Buffalo Mozzarella, but you need a REALLY hot oven to cook this properly otherwise it just congeals into a globby mess. Cows milk mozzarella will work fine at home, just look for one that is whiteish/pale in colour, not glow in the dark yellow like the “Perfect Italiano” stuff :)

Also, thinly slice the mozzarella ball with a sharp knife or on a Chinese mandolin rather than grating it.

Yeast

A lot of recipes out there on the internet call for the use of filtered water. Feel free to try this if you like, but the quality of the tap water in Sydney is pretty good compared to a lot of other places in the world so I don’t tend to bother.

Diastatic Malt Powder

This can be a difficult ingredient to get your hands on as you won’t find it at your local supermarket but well worth trying to get some. Diastatic Malt Powder helps convert the starch found in flour into sugars which are eaten up by the yeast over the extended fermentation process. You only need a small amount but it makes a huge difference.

You can order it online here or try your local health food shop or even home brew shop (after all beer is just liquid bread!)

If you can’t find Diastatic Malt Poweder you can get small packets of “Bread Improver” from your supermarket – try this instead.

A lot of homewares stores sell overpriced “volcanic pizza stones” that are only about 5mm thick and cost upwards of $20. Your best bet is to go down to your local tile shop (Amber Tiles/CTM) and ask them for a couple of unglazed terracotta tiles. They will sell you some samples from out back for around $5 and they will be 2-3 times the thickness of a commercial pizza stone. The thicker stone will help retain more heat when placed in the oven and help give you better results.

Make sure you soak your tile in cold water for at least an hour before you place it in the oven, this will stop it from cracking.

Never clean it with detergents as the tile will absorb the soap and your pizza will end up tasting like Palmolive.

The worst thing you can do is to roll your dough out on wooden shopping boards as the wood absorbs moisture out of the dough and dries it out. Instead lightly dust your bench or counter top with flour and use it directly. If you have a marble chopping board then sensational!

Get a good set of digital scales for your kitchen so you can accurately measure your ingredients.

An enormous amount of engineering has gone into the pizza trays I see around the shops. You can even get ones with little holes cut in the base to allow the air to flow through with the promise of a crispier crust.

The reality is that they are a complete waste of time. You will get much better results cooking your pizza directly on a stone.

I’ve destroyed so many pizzas trying to get it from the counter and onto the stone. The best technique I have discovered is to actually place the dough base on a sheet of baking paper / grease proof paper and then put your toppings on.

To get your pizza in and out of the oven you can either

a)      Use a pizza peel to slide the paper in and out like a pro (you can pick them up from Homewares or Catering Supply companies for $20-$30 and if you’re going to make a lot of pizza at home it’s a worthwhile investment).

Or

b)      Take a large oven/baking tray and turn it upside down.

Place the baking paper on the top of the tray, roll out your dough and place on the paper to apply toppings.

 Practice makes perfect

The key thing to remember is that practice makes perfect. If this is your first time working with such a wet dough or making pizza at home don’t be disheartened if your pizza doesn’t come out looking perfectly rounded and amazing the first time. It has taken me many years of trial and error (and many shocking pizzas fed to the dog) to get to this stage.

 

Okay, so enough of me being all philosophical about this stuff, onto the details ...

This recipe for Pizza base makes for a very wet dough which helps give you that great soft chewy fluffy crust that we all desire instead of a dense brick that most other home recipes provide.

Because this is such a wet dough you don’t actually have to knead it like in traditional recipes, instead you let the yeast do all the work for you to produce a soft subtle finished product.

I use a combination of high protein bread flour with a little bit of wholemeal flour thrown in. Feel free to use all bread flour (just combine the weights) but I find the combination gives the crust a little more texture and has a bit of a “rustic” feel to it.

I also do not use any olive oil in my pizza dough as it is strictly forbidden by the “Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana” the governing body for certified pizza artisans :)

This recipe will give you about 6 pizzas, but I like to save at least 1 to mix in with my next batch of dough (see section at end on refreshing your dough).

Mix the flours, yeast, salt and diastatic malt powder in a large non-reactive mixing bowl and using a wooden spoon make a well in the centre.

Slowly pour in the water, make sure it’s not too hot or too cold as this can kill the yeast.

Spend a good couple of minutes stirring and mixing the dough to make sure all the ingredients are combined. It should look like a slushy mess :)

Loosely cover the bowl with cling wrap making sure there is a little bit of a gap to let the gases escape and leave it sit on the bench for 4-5 hours. During this time the dough will rise rapidly and then collapse in on itself. If you leave it out overnight or for longer than the 4-5 hours this will be okay.

Once the dough has collapsed, cover the bowl and place it in the fridge for a minimum of 24 hours up to a maximum of 2 weeks.

Over this time the dough will develop even more complex flavours. Yes the dough will keep for up to 2 weeks, covered in the fridge!

The morning you’re planning on making your pizzas, pull the dough out of the fridge and leave it on a counter top somewhere to take the chill off. The time the dough has spent fermenting will have changed it from being a sticky mess to being a subtle and elastic dough.

Soak your pizza stone or unglazed terracotta tile in cold water and leave for at least an hour.

Lightly dust your work surface with flour and using your hands slide the dough out of the bowl. RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO KNEAD THE DOUGH.

Gently work out into an even shape with your hands and divide into 6 using a dough cutter, knife or even scissors.

Alternatively, if you are only making 1 pizza you can cut knobs of dough off about the size of your first directly from the bowl.

Fold your dough into a tight ball by stretching it out between your hands, holding the tops with your thumbs and tucking the edges of the dough underneath itself with your fingers. Work the dough into a ball by repeating this action stretching the surface area out and turning the dough in a circular motion.

There is a good video (embedded below) from ExpertVillage.Com on Shaping a Boule (ball) of bread. It's meant for larger loves of bread but the technique can be easily applied here on a smaller scale. 

Place the dough balls on a floured work surface and cover with a clean tea towel to prevent it from going crusty. Leave it rest for about an hour.

During this time place your stone/tile on the top shelf of your oven and crank the temperature up to max. Let the oven and stone heat up for at least an hour.

Tear off a piece of baking paper about 30cm square (just bigger than your pizza or about the same size as your stone) and dust it with semolina.

Using the fingers of both hands gently press down on your dough ball and work it into a flat disc. Pick the edge of the disc up in both hands and rotate it between your hands like you would turn the steering wheel of a car (practice the motion and you’ll get what I mean). This will help stretch the dough out into a thin pizza shape.

It will take practice to get the right shape and desired thickness. If you leave the dough too thick you will end up with a deep pan style pizza as the crust will puff up in the oven. I take it down to about 3mm thick and find this gives me the best results.

If the dough springs back when you start to stretch it out, leave it rest for 5 minutes and then start again.

Don’t worry about trying to create a “lip” around the edge of your pizza as this will happen naturally. When you drop your pizza in the oven the dough will spring up, but the weight of the ingredients in the middle will help a natural lip to form.

When your happy with the rough shape of the pizza crust, place it on the baking paper and finish stretching it out with your hands ready to top.

I’m sure people could go on for hours about their favourite pizza toppings so I will leave this up to you. Personally I am a big fan of the traditional Margherita Pizza.

First spoon some of your tomato sauce over the base, then place on some thin slices of mozzarella and grate over a little parmesan cheese (helps give a little more flavour).

Add whatever other meats/vegetables you want being careful not to overload your pizza. Less is more – you want to be able to taste your pizza base and not just cop a mouth full of tandoori chicken (yes I have issues with “Gourmet” pizza that I’m working through separately).

Finally, drizzle a little bit of olive oil over the top and your ready to pop it in the oven (see note above about getting your pizza into the oven).

I find my pizzas cook perfectly in about 8 minutes. The dough is baked through but still fluffy and the cheese has melted.

I finish my pizza with some fresh basil leaves and wash it down with a good bottle of red and a garden salad.

The dough recipe above will keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. What I do is always keep a little bit of left over dough and “refresh” it by mixing it in with the new batch. This helps keep the flavour maturing.

When you’re ready to make a new batch, cut the left over dough into small chunks and mix it in with the flour, salt and yeast. Add the water and stir to mix.

I keep using the same bowel and have not had the need to clean it out in between batches.

You can use this same dough recipe to make all other sorts of breads, think outside the square beyond the humble pizza!

 

This is a fantastic Italian salad that was originally an invention of necessity rather than anything else as Italian cooks waste nothing and this was a way to utilise stale bread and vegetables from the garden.

Despite this less than glamorous history, it’s a great dish to serve as an entree or to even have as a meal on its own.

Serves 2 for an entree but feel free to double it up ...

1.       Pre heat your oven to 160C to bake the croutons.

2.       Put a heavy based fry pan on a medium heat. Peel/Devein and butterfly the prawns and cook in a little bit of olive oil for 2 minutes either side or until well coloured and cooked. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes.

 

3.       To make the croutons, cut the baguette slices in half and place on a baking try. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake in the oven until golden brown (about 8 minutes). If you’re using large slices of sourdough bread, remove the crusts and break the flesh into chunks and then bake.

4.       Peel a garlic clove, and using the end rub each of the croutons a couple of times to transfer the flavour. 

5.       Place the Prawns, tomatoes, croutons, parmesan and basil in a mixing bowl. Season with Salt & Pepper and drizzle over some good quality extra virgin olive oil. Toss to combine and serve on a nice platter.

The Innocent Bystander Shiraz Viogner comes from a large winery in Victorias Yarra Valley but for the price (around $15 a bottle) it’s actually a pretty respectable drop.

Sticking my nose in the glass I can pick up the faint smell of nutmeg. Would classify this on the lower end of the medium bodied spectrum with a little bit of a white pepper kick on the front palate.

99% Shiraz and 1% Viogner to round things out.

Perfect for that second bottle of the night after dinner and goes really well with a hard cheese (vintage cheddar) and crackers.

Somehow I managed to get roped into making a cake for the girlfriends birthday party next weekend.

To make the situation more complex, the audience is a mixture of normal people, glutards (they prefer to call themselves Gluten Free / Wheat Free) and vegetarians so that means the cake has to be devoid of flour and any trace of artificial colouring that may be derived from animals!

The real challenge with flourless cakes is to keep them light and fluffy, not dense and chewy like a mud cake or brownie. This recipe will give you a sensational fluffy flourless chocolate cake!

Its worth spending the extra couple of dollars to get good quality Lindt 70% Chocolate – makes a world of difference!

Depending on how big you slice your cake, you’ll get anywhere between 10 and 15 servings out of this recipe. There is also very little sugar in this cake, a total of 50g / 15 servings = 3.33g per serve.

What you’ll need

1.       Line your spring form cake tin with baking paper and preheat your oven to 150C.

2.       Fill a saucepan ¼ of the way up with water and put on a medium heat. You want the water to be warm, but not boiling. Place a steel mixing bowl over the saucepan (make sure the base of the bowl is not touching the water) and slowly melt in 360g of the chocolate in the bowl.

3.       When the chocolate has melted, fold in the softened butter.

4.       Beat the egg yolks with 30g sugar until pale and combine with the melted chocolate.

5.       Using a whisk or egg beater, beat the egg whites until they foam up. Add the 20g sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

6.       Take the chocolate bowl off the heat and beat in ¼ of the egg white mixture, then GENTLY fold the chocolate mixture back into the egg white bowl. Resist the temptation to beat or mix, you want to gently fold the mixture with a spatula so as not to beat out all the air bubbles. This is what will help the cake to rise and stay fluffy!

7.       Pour off ¼ of the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate. This will be your icing!

8.       Pour the remaining mixture into your cake in and bake for 40 mins.

9.       Remove from the oven and turn out directly onto a serving platter. Remove the spring form ring and base and allow to cool completely – about an hour.

10.   The cake will collapse as it cools, so don’t worry. A small crater should form in the middle – fill this with your remaining cake batter from the fridge.

11.   Grate over the remaining dark chocolate to garnish, slice and serve!

 

The Battle of Bosworth was fought in 1485 where the then King of England, Richard III was slain by Henry Tudor becoming the last king of England to die in battle and ending the War of the Roses.

The 2007 Battle of Bosworth Shiraz is a single vineyard 100% certified organic wine from McLaren Vale in SA.

Medium bodied wine with the smell of fresh liquorish this is a fantastic value for money wine at around $22 a bottle. I’ll certainly be going back to get another.

Far too often people get caught up in the process of drinking wine, commenting and critiquing every mouthful and taking themselves all too seriously while forgetting it’s there for fun and enjoyment. We call those people wine snobs.

It’s refreshing however to find a vineyard that is prepared to have a bit of fun without being tacky (think Yellow Tail).

The winemaker at Claymore Wines must have a bit of a thing for rock music with names such as The Nirvana Reserve Shiraz, Graceland Cab Sav, Joshua Tree Riesling and London Calling Merlot.

His 2005 Dark Side of the Moon Shiraz, despite having an odd name is a cracker of a drop. Dense Purple Colour, smells of sweet chocolate and an almost chewy texture on the tongue with big black fruits dominating.

Retails for around $20 and already has a couple of years bottle age on it to mellow it out.

Would go perfectly with some slow roasted lamb shanks braised in tomato, red wine and rosemary.

 

This is a fantastic mid-week dish inspired by the flavours of the Amalfi Coast in Italy with lots of lemon and basil.

It takes 5 mins to put together and then throw it in the oven. The whole lemon quarters break down in the heat and release all the juices that the chicken and vegies bake themselves in.

This recipe is for 2 people, but you can easily double or triple it as required.

• 3 – 4 chicken thighs, cut in half
• 3 medium sized desiree potatoes, unpeeled and cut into wedges
• 1 small Spanish onion, peeled and quartered
• 1 zucchini, thickly sliced
• 1 red capsicum, seeded and cut into strips
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
• ½ lemon, cut into wedges
• 6 cherry truss tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• Fresh basil leaves to garnish (optional)

1.       Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

2.       Combine the chicken, potato, lemon, zucchini, capsicum, garlic and olive oil in a large ceramic baking dish.

3.       Season with salt and pepper and stir around to coat everything in the oil.

4.       Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, giving it a good stir/mix a couple of times.

5.       Add the cherry tomatoes, stir and bake for a further 10 minutes until the tomatoes are well roasted and the potatoes tender. The chicken should be nice and brown by now.

6.       Drizzle with the red wine vinegar and garnish with some fresh torn basil leaves. Give it a good stir to combine.

7.       Spoon onto plates and ladle over the remaining sauce from the pan.

I’d serve this dish with a crisp white wine, perhaps a Clare Valley Riesling.

Just by taking a quick look at this website you can probably tell that I’m a big fan of my Aussie Reds and one of my all time favourite drops would have to be the Soul Growers Barossa Shiraz (2005) so you can imagine my delight when I stumbled upon the 2005 Soul Growers Shiraz Cabernet Blend last week.

This is a 50/50 blend of Shiraz and Cabernet grapes which is quite uncommon. The wine was very smooth and very dry, but unfortunately lacking in any real substance or taste.

Admittedly I did not decant this wine, but all in all it was a little bland for my palate and the $30 asking price ... I’ll stick to the straight Shiraz!

For $20 this wine is a cracker. Medium bodied Cab Sav from the Margaret River that is soft and smooth with a subtle hint of dark chocolate, but you can still taste the red earth charm from where the grapes have grown.

 

Great with a wood fired pepperoni pizza, or a big bowl of pasta (I'm thinking an Arrabiata sauce with bacon and chilli; something with a little bit of spice would really bring out the best in this wine!).