Beef Roast with Black Pepper & Rosemary

Making a roast is more intuition than facts. It depends on your oven, your taste, if it cooks from frozen or fresh, etc. So please see this as only a guide. I cooked ours from frozen. And it was super soft, tasty, juicy and simply delicious!!

Preparation time: 5 min

Cooking time: +- 5 hours

Difficulty Level: Hard

Serves: 8

Ingredients:

800g Beef roast

2tbs olive oil

15-20 whole black pepper corns

1t rosemary

1/2t white pepper

Pinch salt

1/2t rosemary

1-2t Bisto

Method:

Place the roast in an oven proof dish with a tight fitting lid. Pour over the olive oil, pepper corns and rosemary. Add a little water to cover the bottom of the dish to about 1 cm deep. Bake in a 100°C oven for 2 hours.

After about 2 hours. Increase temperature to 150degrees C for another hour. 

After the hour at 150degrees C. 

 After the 3 hours, pour off the water. Add the white pepper, salt, rosemary and Bisto and mix well. Cook until it thickens. You can add more Bisto if you want it thicker.

Remove the cover off the dish and roast the beef in the oven at 180°C until it starts to darken. After about 10 minutes, remove and turn the roast over. Put back in the oven.

How long the roast must be in the oven, depends on how you like your beef. For rare, it is a much shorter time than for well done. The only way to tell without a thermometer, is to cut.

You can do a lot of reading on the web about how to make it perfect.

Serve with veggies and potato, or a salad and rice.

And enjoy!!

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch

Coconut-Honey Chicken

Sunday. Lunch. Need I say more?

Preparation time: 30min

Cooking time: 5 hours

Difficulty Level: Easy

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken

2tbs olive oil

2tbs coconut oil

2tbs honey

Salt & Pepper

Method:

Place the chicken in the slow cooker, add the oils and honey, cover and let it cook. 

Turn over every hour ...

...until it is completely done and you are actually unable to turn it over, because it falls off the bone. You can season with salt & pepper to taste, if you like, but it is not necessary.

Pour off the sauce into a saucepan. Add a teaspoon of bisto, beat well, heat up. Be careful not to reduce it too much. It just needs to thicken.

Dish up and enjoy with some Spinach & Feta Baked potatoes.

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch

Simple Chicken Potjie

Simple Chicken Potjie

We really love making potjie. It just tastes different to conventional oven cooking and braai. It’s kind of a combination between the two, I think. So, yesterday we made a whole chicken potjie, but apart from being super delicious, I have no clue what to call this. It uses very little ingredients, so that’s why I called it the Simple Chicken Potjie.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken

1 onion, chopped

1 punnet mushrooms, whole

50g butter

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup sweet chillie sauce

1tbs balsamic vinegar

2t coarse salt

Pepper to taste

250ml cream

4tbs marmalade/apricot jam (optional)

Method

Place the chicken in the pot. Add the olive oil, sweet chillie sauce, balsamic vinegar and butter. 

Place on coals and let it cook. You want it to caramalize a little, but you don’t want it to burn. Check every half hour or so and turn the chicken around. 

Once the chicken is a lovely brown, add the salt, cream, onion and mushrooms and let it cook to let the flavours develop. You can taste the sauce and depending on how you like it, you can add the jam to break some of the caramalization taste. You can see that our chicken may have been a little over-caramalized... Funny thing, though, the little extra browning added just enough of a zing to be delicious with the jam!!

When everything is cooked, remove from heat and serve on rice. 

And enjoy!! We sure did – it was simply gobbled up!

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch

Honey-Mustard Gammon

With Christmas around the corner, the question of what to eat has escalated from a daily routine question, to one of a national security crises!! With friends and families visiting, the catering party feels a lot of pressure to perform. Well, this past weekend was my turn. We had family over, and we were 10 adults and 9 kids. Quite a bunch to prepare meals for!! Luckily for me, I had my menu worked out months ago, and I had enough time to practice my meals.

My menu:
Starter:  Spinach Soup
Main Course:  Honey-Mustard Gammon
                        Basil Potatoes
                        Sweet Pumpkin
Dessert:   Christmas Cake with ice cream and Ginger cream sauce

And it was an absolute feast!! The Spinach Soup is already on the blog, and it is truly a winner. Completely different to what people normally expect from spinach. Even the people who don't like spinach, admitted that this was not bad at all!! This recipe is for the Gammon...

Ingredients

1x Gammon
50 - 100g butter
2tbs honey
3tbs hot english mustard
2t whole grain mustard

Method

Melt the butter. Add the honey and mustard and mix well. You can play with these ingredients to suit your taste, of course.

Place the gammon in your pot of choice - mine being a cast iron pot of course!!

Add a little water just covering the bottom of the pot. Brush the butter mixture over the gammon.

Close the lid and place in the oven at 140degrees C for a total of 5 hours.
After 1 hour: Brush with the butter mixture
After 2 hours: Turn the gammon over. Brush with the butter mixture.

After 3 hours: Brush with the butter mixture
After 4 hours: Pour the excess liquid off. Brush with the butter mixture. Remove the lid.
After another 30 minutes: Turn the gammon over. Brush with the butter mixture. Leave the lid off.

After another 30 minutes - Your gammon is ready!! If you want, you can grill it for about 10 minutes, to deepen the rich brown colour. Brush with butter mixture before you grill for extra flavour!

And enjoy!!

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch

Perfect Baked Tenderloin

I just love my Sunday Lunches.... It symbolizes opulence, abundance and joy. Family and love. Food has the ability to create ambiance, mood and to bring people together. That is why it is so important to eat together. Not in front of the tv, but at a table. You do food no justice in front of the tv - probably why so many instant meals exist today, all tasting exactly the same: like cardboard. You don't notice cardboard in front of the tv, You enjoy your food much more at a table. As well as the company... Families who eat together, stay together!!
So for yesterday, I decided to make something I never have before, but always wanted to: a whole fillet... or tenderloin, if you prefer. BUT... it has to be medium rare. I really get upset if it is cooked more than medium rare. So, it seems that the time spent baking it, depends on the temperature. At 200degrees C, you cook it 15-20min per 500g of meat for MEDIUM. I decided to go for 10-15min for medium RARE...

Ingredients

+- 1kg of whole fillet/tenderloin
1tbs italian herbs
1tbs sweet basil
1/2t ground black pepper
1tbs olive oil
1tbs soya sauce
50g butter

Method

Preheat the oven to 200degrees C. This is very important. Even for a thermofan - preheat the oven! The meat needs to be room temperature. Remove all extra sinews, if the butcher didn't already. 

Mix the herbs and pepper and olive oil and soya together and rub it over the meat, covering it well.

Melt the butter in a pan. It needs to be very hot. Quickly seal the meat on all sides in the butter. 

Place in a shallow oven dish. Place in the oven for 20-25min for medium rare. Remove from oven, and let the meat rest for minimum of 10minutes before cutting. Pour over the juices from the quick seal earlier.

After resting, cut it up and serve.

I served a garden salad, crumbed mushrooms and cheese and bacon sauce. It was truly a Sunday Feast!!

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch

Chicken in Sauce

Yesterday was chicken or fish night. And I chose chicken. It kind of developed as I made it, but the end result was absolutely divine.... My word, I couldn't stop eating... Perfect for a Sunday Lunch, as this is a slow meal. Mine baked for about 3 hours, I think. Enough time for all those delicious flavours to develop. 

Preparation Time: 5min

Cooking Time: 3-4 hours

Difficulty Level: Very easy

Serves: 6

Ingredients

6 pieces of chicken

3 twigs of fresh rosemary

1/2t fennel

pinch of freshly ground nutmeg

1 cube chicken stock

1 packet of mushroom soup

500ml boiling water

2tbs soya sauce

1tbs balsamic vinegar

Method

Place the chicken pieces in an oven-proof dish with a lid. 

Pour over the soya sauce and balsamic vinegar. Dissolve the chicken stock cube in the water, and add the mushroom soup. Whisk properly and pour over the chicken. Add the fennel, nutmeg and rosemary. 

Cover and bake at 140degrees C in the oven for about 3-4 hours. Before serving, remove the lid and put on grill for about 10min , just to get a little colour on the chicken. (We couldn't wait to eat, we completely forgot to take the picture!! 

Serve with brown rice and mixed veggies.

Enjoy! It's pure deliciousness on a plate...

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch

Stuffed Butter Chicken in the Pot

My 365 days of recipes starts today. And I do believe I have a very good start to this year of recipes!! Sunday is traditionally a day of feasting, drinking and enjoying the company of family. Our sundays are no different, and as far as we can, we enjoy cooking feasts on sundays. 

The feast for today is Stuffed Butter Chicken in the Pot. It is deliciously rich, and full of different flavours - you simply don't want to stop eating!! 

Ingredients

125g Mushrooms
1 onion
2 star anise
1tbs crushed garlic
some fresh herbs: thyme, parsley, sage, rosemary
300g margarine
1 lemon
7 pickled onions
1 cube chicken stock
500ml water
250g carrots
250g beans
500g sweet potato

Method

Finely chop together the mushrooms, onion, herbs (except rosemary). Add the star anise, garlic and rosemary.

Mix well. Stuff the whole chicken and tie the end so that the stuffing don't fall out.

Melt the 300g margarine in the pot. Add the chicken, lemon and 7 pickle onions. Cook in the margarine until the chicken browns.

Dissolve the chicken cube in the 500ml water. Add to the pot. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the vegetables, stir a little, cover and cook until everything is soft and well cooked.

And enjoy this fabulous feast!! If you want to, you can add some rice or potatoes, but this is enough for a family of 5. And believe it or not, actually a low carb - high fat - high protein meal. You will also notice that no spices, salt or pepper has been added to the recipe. Well, that is because it is not needed. You can add some, if you like, though. 

 Happy Cooking!!

Yours in oil and veggies

Risch