Recipe#3498

Title: Australian Menu

rec.food.recipes archive

Called my father-in-law (in Sydney) on Christmas Day and told him
 what we had had for dinner.  "That's very Australian!" he exclaimed.
 "That was the whole point," I replied.  :-)
 Anyhow, here's the menu with recipes and comments (all recipes were
 taken from the Australian cookbook Manda gave me):
 Prawn salad
 Standing rib roast
 Yorkshire pudding
 Roast potatoes and butternut squash
 Stir fried broccoli and snow peas
 Pavlova
 Prawn Salad
 1 kg (2 lb) medium king prawns, peeled with tails attached  (It doesn't
   say, but I assume the prawns are supposed to be already cooked)
 lemon dressing
 1 red banana capsicum (or 1/2 red capsicum) (a capsicum is a pepper)
 1 medium sized carrot
 2 sticks celery (choose tender sticks from near the centre)
 1 tub alfalfa  (looks like alfalfa sprouts in the picture)
 baby lettuce leaves, washed and crisped
 2 firm ripe avocados
 1 large mango or 1/2 pawpaw (papaya), peeled and cut into thick slices
 Parsley, chopped
 Place the peeled prawns in a powl and pour over the lemon dressing.  Cover 
 and refrigerate for 1 hour.
 Cut the capsicum, carot and celery into fine shreds, then place into a
 bowl of iced water.  Before serving, drain the vegetables and the prawns
 (but reserve dressing).  Peel and slice the avocado and arrange with the
 fruit, crispy vegetables and lettuce on a large platter or individual
 plates.  Drizzle over the lemon dressing and sprinkle with parsley.
 Accompany with wholegrain bread.
 Lemon Dressing
 1 lemon
 1 clove garlic
 1/2 teaspoon mixed French or German mustard
 3 tablespoons oil
 salt and freshly ground black pepper
 Remove a couple of paper then strips of lemon peel with a potato peeler
 or sharp knife.  Cut into fine strips.  Crush the garlic and put into a
 bowl, stir in the mustar, then add 1 tablespoon lemon juice and the oil.  
 Add a pinch of salt and pepper, mix well, and add the lemon peel.
 This salad was a lot of work and I was the only one who seemed to
 appreciate it.  Kids didn't like the lemon dressing so I had to pull
 out the bottled dressing from the fridge (sigh).
 For the roast, I roasted it at 500F for 15 minutes and then at 350F
 for another hour and a quarter (it was a 5 pound roast).  It came out
 rare which was fine with me since I like rare meat, but not fine for
 the rest of my family who likes their meat a little more done.
 Yorkshire pudding
 1 cup plain flour
 1/2 teaspoon salt
 2 eggs
 1/2 cup milk
 1/2 cup water
 4 tablespoons beef drippings
 Make a batter wiht the flour, salt, eggs and milk, beating well until
 smooth then beat in the water.  Refrigerate until ready to cook and
 beat again just before using.  Heat tin (it specified muffin tins but
 I used an 8-inch round pan) in a hot oven with 1 teaspoon drippings in
 each one.  When smoking hot, pour in the batter, fillign cups about
 2/3 full.  Return to a hot oven and bake for 20 minutes (don't peek),
 then reduce heat so they dn't burn and allow to dry out for an extra 
 10 minutes.  
 Now this was really good, but it fell scant minutes after I had taken
 it out of the oven.  Is there a way to prevent this, or do you just
 have to serve and eat it 3 seconds after it comes out of the oven?
 For the veggies, I just stir fried some snow peas and blanched broccoli
 with a little oyster sauce and sprinkled some pine nuts on top.
 Now Manda always told me how she couldn't fathom pumpkin pie (or other
 sweet squash dishes) as her idea of ideal squash is to cut it into 
 chunks and roast it in the oven.  I finally used her suggestion and 
 she's right -- roast squash is really good (but so is pumpkin pie!).  
 For the potatoes and squash, I cut them into chunks and parboiled for
 five minutes.  Then I put them in with the roast for about the last
 half hour.  After I took the roast out, I put them back in the oven
 and turned it up to 500F for at least half an hour, until they were
 nice and crisp on the bottom.  Manda was right -- these were really,
 really good.
 Now for the piece de resistance -- the pavlova.  My pav weeped but
 that didn't bother me.  However, it came out very soft -- too soft.
 I don't think I baked it long enough.  In fact, after I put the
 cream on top, it was hard to tell the cream from the pav.  The recipe
 claims it's not as sweet as some, but I thought it was cloyingly
 sweet.  I'm going to have to play around with this dish a lot, I 
 can tell.  I also used Cool Whip -- not as a convenience, but more
 to make it low-fat.  I also substituted kiwis for the passionfruit
 as hubby doesn't like passionfruit.
 Pavlova
 4 egg whites (should be as fresh as possible)
 good pinch of salt
 1 heaped cup castor sugar (superfine sugar)
 1 teaspoon white vinegar
 1 level tablespoon cornflour -- wheaten cornflour for preference
    (don't know what wheaten cornflour is -- cornflour is cornstarch)
 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
 300 ml (10 fluid oz) thickened cream, whipped
 4 bananas
 3 passionfruit
 1 punnet (1/2 pint) of strawberries
 Preheat oven to hot.  Cover a greased flat baking tray with gladbake (??)
 or a split open oven bag.  Grease well with butter, sprinkle with
 cornflour and tap off excess (the cornflour gives a nice dry surface 
 under the pavlova.
 Using a 18 cm (7 inch) cake tin as a guide, mark out a circle on the 
 tray with a skewer.
 Beat egg whites and salt until stiff.  Add sugar 1 heaped tablespoon 
 at a time until all sugar has been added.  When finished, the meringue
 should be thick and shiny.  Stir in vinegar, cornflour and vanilla,
 stir gently then pile onto prepared tray.  The mixture should stay 
 roughly in the marked circle, simply smooth over the top (It is important
 not to make the mistake of scooping out the centre).  The mixture should
 be about 6 cm (2 1/2 inches) high for a good marshmallow centre.  Drop
 oven temperature to very slow before placing the pavlova in the oven.
 Bake for 1 1/4 hours.  Remove from oven and cool for a few minutes,
 then turn upside down onto a flat serving plate.  Remove paper or 
 ovenwrap carefully.  The centre will sink slightly as the pavlova cools.
 When cold, fill with whipped cream and top with sliced bananas, passion
 fruit pulp and whole strawberries (but don't fill until right before
 you serve).