CUTTING THROUGH THE HYPE

Grange gets all the PR, but St. Henri is a corker

It was an anniversary, and I thought the 1986 St. Henri should be about ready to drink. The last bottle we drank about 7-8 years ago showed sublime fruit and balance but surprised us with its youth and vigour. This time, the wine had mellowed to an almost perfect degree showing sweet fruit, wonderful balance, great length and a soft elegant finish. Perfect with my partner’s duck and my lamb shanks.

 

Grange and St. Henri were created by two young Turk Penfold winemakers in the early fifties: Grange by Max Schubert and St. Henri by John Davoren. We know all about Grange and how Penfolds sent Max to Bordeaux after WWII, and how Max came back saying: their secret is maturing the red wine made mostly from Cabernet grapes in new small French oak barrels.

In those days, there wasn’t much Cabernet grown in Australia, so Max used shiraz from selected sources that included the Grange vineyard in Adelaide. French oak barrels were - and still are - hideously expensive, so Max bought the cheaper American oak. The rest, as they say, is history.

Nothing had prepared our leading wine men for the early Granges because new oak flavours were foreign to them. And it took Max a few years to work out that ripe South Australian Shiraz was much more muscular than Bordeaux Cabernet, and that American oak contributed a lot more oak flavour than the French timber because it is much more porous.

His masters told Max to stop making this wine that caused Penfolds so much bad PR in the fifties but Max persevered in secret. A few years later, our judges started to see how these wines developed and became fans. Today, Grange sells for hundreds of dollars a bottle when released.

St. Henri has a much less exciting history. John Davoren made the wine from shiraz and matured it in big old barrels as was the Aussie tradition then. He found a box of the quaint St. Henri Claret labels in an attic and decided to use it. Both wines were blends from sources that varied year on year and both wines sold for the same price until the early sixties (a bit over $2), then St. Henri dropped behind.

For many years it was the bargain in the Penfolds range as punters chased the other reds that were matured in oak – Bin 389, 28 and 128. I remember picking up a dozen 1967 St. Henri from Farmer Bros for about $11 a bottle in the early eighties, when the Grange of that vintage would’ve cost 10 times that or more. The 67 St. Henri was another elegant, well balanced wine that mellowed gracefully.

Today, St. Henri costs more than $100 a bottle on release, so it’s no longer a bargain by ant standards. So this 1986 may be the last bottle of St. Henri we’ve enjoyed, and it may be a good thing that it made such a wonderful impact. It was one of the best reds I’ve ever drunk, it was that good.

Beef Stroganoff – dead easy old favourite

 

This is a dead-easy and quick meal that tends to impress the pants off guests because it sounds and looks exotic. Once you’ve bought the ingredients, it takes about 5 minutes prep time and 10 -15 cooking time. It all happens in a frypan, and the result is traditionally served with rice or pasta. However, it’s perfectly fine to substitute beans and/or asparagus if you prefer high GI options.

 

This is for two, so just up the quantities for more people, but don’t try to make more than four people can eat at once.

 

500g rump steak or Scotch fillet

1 onion, thinly sliced

Clove of garlic, chopped fine

3 shallots, chopped course

1 1/2 tsp paprika (not too hot)

300g Swiss brown mushrooms (sliced)

olive oil or butter, as needed

200ml sour cream (light if preferred)

3 tsp red pesto or tomato paste

Half cup Bourbon or Whiskey or Brandy

Salt and pepper

Fresh parsley, chopped

 

Optional: fresh green peppercorns

 

You know how to cook the rice or pasta or beans – best to do that beforehand and warm up in the oven because, the first time you do this, it must have your full attention.

 

§    Fry the onions and garlic in olive oil or butter.

§    Cut the beef into strips about 2 inches long but not too thin.

§    Sprinkle paprika over the beef like flour and roll to cover.

§    Add beef to frypan, sear on fairly high heat, then turn to medium heat.

§    Add green peppercorns (optional)

§    Add sliced mushrooms, stir, add more oil or butter if necessary

§    Add red pesto/tomato paste

 

Timing is important here: onions first, steak 2-3 minutes later, mushrooms 5 mins after steak, add Bourbon 5 mins after that. You need a long match and take care because you want to burn the alcohol off (this is the part that truly impresses guests). When the flames go out, add the sour cream (a little at a time – don’t want the colour to go grey-brown), then the parsley, then stir and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook gently for another minute until everything hangs well together.

CASSOULET - food for cold weather

This is an Alsatian dish that will warm the cockles of your heart on a cold day. You can use pretty well any meat you like except beef. It's often duck in France, but you can use chicken and bacon (thick) or speck. Some recipes call for breadcrumbs sprinkled over the top, and some make this a very thick dish.

 

I prefer the lighter style rather than thick gravy so I avoid the breadcrumbs and too many beans and add more stock or wine.

You suit yourself. It's another dead-easy casserole. Here goes:

duck fat (or olive oil)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 coarsely chopped onions

2-3 chicken Marylands

 

1 or 2 coarse pork sausages
pieces of speck or bacon
Half tin of diced tomatoes

Cup chicken or vegetable stock
cup dry white wine
2-2 tbsp tomato paste

diced celery
diced carrots

1 leek, trimmed and sliced thick

half a tin of cannelini beans (or plain white tinned beans)

1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of thyme

rosemary
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 tbsp chopped parsley

 

1. Start frying the onions and garlic in a big pan, then add the chicken pieces lightly dusted in seasoned flour. Get everything browning lightly
2. Add sausages, speck/bacon, tomatoes, stock and wine and bring to simmer, then transfer to a casserole dish and slip in the oven on 175/375.
3. one hour later, pull casserole out to stir, then add the celery, carrot, leek and beans and herbs but not the parsley. Taste and add seasoning if needed. Add more wine if it’s too thick. Put back into oven for another hour.
4. Check, adjust and prinkle with chopped parsley, then put it back in the oven (turned off) to settle.
5. Serve with potatoes or rice

Spectacular Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

More than Dead-easy

 

Christmas is still ahead of us and we seem to have had a long, hot summer already. This is the time for cool salads and chilled white wine. The dressing makes this one a beauty, but don’t read further if you’re on low-fat everything. But you might want to ask yourself why all the people on low-fat food are overweight. I’m persuaded that cutting down on carbohydrates is more effective so I don’t worry about fat much.

 

Salad as a salad

We’ll cover several variations here, and the first one is a salad to accompany barbecued fish, chicken or meat. Vegetarians will find it good enough to eat on its own, though, and it’ll look a lot better than this one by the time we’re finished.

 

Here are the ingredients for our spectacular salad: 

Mignonette lettuce

Raddiccio

Rocket

Basil leaves

Baby spinach leaves

Asparagus tops, thin or sliced in half

Snow peas

Swiss brown mushrooms, thinly sliced

Grape tomatoes, whole or bigger ones chopped

Fennel bulb, cut into very fine strips

Rinse through in a colander, let drip-dry and transfer to a big salad dish. Then add:

Semi-sundried tomatoes

Pitted dark Olives

Fetta cut into smallish cubes

Anchovies (optional)

 

Now for the blue cheese/mayonnaise/yoghurt dressing. It’s a bit over the top, I admit, but it's a doddle to make and turns a simple salad into a serious dish. The yoghurt should be low-fat or light to balance the full-on mayo and cheese. ALL you need is:

Whole egg natural mayonnaise (like S&W)

Light natural plain yoghurt (smooth, low-fat)

Soft blue Castello cheese

 

The ratio is about 2 table spoons of mayo to 3/4 of yoghurt to 50g of Castello. You can adjust this to suit your taste, i.e. use more yoghurt if you want a lighter dressing. If you’re making a bigger salad, raise the numbers but maintain the ratio.

 

The only trick is to take as much mayo and Castello as you plan to use out of the fridge half an hour before, to let it come to room temperature, then they’re easier to mix. Use a fork and blend the two into with the yoghurt.

 

You can serve it as a separate dressing, a good idea if you have low-fat types coming for lunch, or you can mix it with the salad. What you want to make sure of is enough dressing to thinly coat the tuna and salad. Don’t overdo it – you can always add more.

 

Variation 1: add some protein

EGG SALAD - Add some boiled eggs to the salad, cut in half

TUNA SALAD - Put a tin of tuna of two on top of the salad, or mix it in

CICKEN SALAD - Add some fried chicken pieces or slices 

BEEF SALAD - Add some beef, sliced thin

 

Variation 2: change the flavour of the dressing

If you lean toward Italy, you can use green or red or pink Pesto instead of Castello. (The red and pink make it look like a prawn cocktail dressing). Or you can look to France and use a quality grain mustard – your choice.

 

Dead simple, isn’t it?

 

Dead Simple Paella

They tend to make it complicated but this is the lazy version

Paella is a Spanish dish that uses more or less whatever ingredients you have handy. There are seafood versions, chicken recipes with chorizo sausage and others with the kitchen sink thrown in. This is the seafood version but, if you want the chicken variant, just substitute chicken and chicken stock for the seafood and fish stock.

 

 
  

INGREDIENTS
6 tbsp olive oil
1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2/3 tin of diced tomatoes
1/4 tsp saffron (don’t worry if it’s too hard to find)
2 tsp sweet paprika

red capsicum, chopped
½ litre fish stock
green beans
rice – your choice of Calasparra, Arborio or Basmati

6 large prawns
some calamari cut into rings
some fish cut into large pieces (swordfish or tuna)
Optional: mussels, cleaned (I don’t like them but they add a look of authenticity)

I’d add a few slices of chorizo instead for better flavour
2 tbsp chopped parsley

salt and pepper

 

The Lazy Method

Fry the onion, garlic, capsicum and beans cut into 7/8 cm lengths in the olive oil in a large flat pan, then add paprika, fish stock and diced tomatoes. Stir gently, bring to the boil and add the rice, then simmer. From here it should take about 17 minutes for the rice to be cooked.

The rice will soak up a lot of the liquid. If you need to add more, use more stock or white wine. After the rice has cooked for about 10 minutes, add the seafood and the chorizo. Add more stock or white wine if more liquid is needed, plus the finely chopped parsely.

The trick is to end up with a dish that has very little liquid left but is not actually dry.

Add seasoning, let stand for a few minutes in hot pan and serve.

 

Australian Wine. The Jam is On

 

The way we were

Most people would argue that Australian wine has changed for the better over the last few decades. I’d argue that it’s changed for the worse, and that it’s changed beyond recognition. Did you know that Grange Hermitage, in the heydays of Max Schubert, never exceeded 13 degrees alcohol? Sure it was a big wine, but its substance owed nothing to excessive alcohol content.

Coonawarra is another yardstick. In the sixties, the reds of Brands and Redmans were high acid ‘claret styles’. The wine books of the time made the point that getting rapes fully ripe was a challenge, that vintage often ran into April with frost a frequent threat on the open flatland. Coonawarra reds only exceeded 12.5 degrees alcohol in very warm years.

In 1980, Lindemans made Coonawarra reds with overripe (stewed, jammy) overtones and, toward the end of that decade, Doug Bowen’s once well-balanced reds hit 14.5 and 15% alcohol. Most makers in the area followed suite and made ripe or overripe wines, fruit-driven wines that were no longer recognizable as Coonawarra reds. And it hasn’t changed, as the 2005 Brands Coonawarra red in front of me proves with 15%.

 

 South Australian Tourism Commission

 

What happened? Global warming? No, it doesn’t work that fast and this change began in the late seventies in line with the industry’s move to drip irrigation and machine harvesting. The new regime enforced major changes in vineyard and vines:

1. rows were planted further apart = more sun and faster ripening
2. trellising was changed to suit the harvesters = more sun exposure again
3. drip irrigation even in areas of sufficient rainfall = more fruit

Winemaking techniques also changed from yeast selection fermentation, to increase fruit intensity and flavour while reducing tannin and acid levels. These changes were made for marketing reasons.

 

The Blass Factor

Until the seventies, everyone accepted that our wine areas made recognisable wine styles from grape varieties selected long ago. Yes, Penfolds, Seppelts, Lindemans and Hardys had their house styles but their Hunters were Hunters and their Barossas were Barossas.

Along came Wolf Blass, a canny young German winemaker. He saw how our show system worked. The prestigious Melbourne show, for example, was held in winter in the freezing cold Exhibition Buildings. The only wines that won medals there were those big enough to leap out the glass in any weather. Big, ripe wines.

 

Wolf bought grapes from one of the hottest wine areas in all of Australia, Langhorne Creek, used new American oak barrels to add complexity and accelerate the aging process, and won 3 Jimmy Watson Trophies in a row. Jimmy Watson is one of the least significant trophies since it’s awarded to one-year old reds, but Wolf had the marketing nous to turn the JW into the most recognised wine trophy in Australia. Soon his wines were walking out of bottle shops.

 

The Industrial Revolution  

I don’t blame Wolf Blass. Many of the young Turks who followed him would’ve done the same thing. Some of them did and, like Brian McGuigan, became flying winemakers who leapt from vineyard to vineyard by helicopter at vintage time advising smaller wineries on how to treat their wine. It all ended up tasting the same, of course.

Other young Turks went to France, bought vineyards in the Languedoc and churned out Aussie-style ripe, fruit-driven wines. Others again offered their services to Eastern block countries that had opened up after the wall fell in 1989.

No, I blame our wine judges who should’ve said: ‘Don’t give us concoctions, make real wine instead. This is not the perfume business where we craft new fragrances every season to seduce the punters. Make wine that’s true to our principles and to its origin.’

And I blame all the winemakers and wine companies (now mostly owned by multinationals, breweries or electrical goods makers) who slavishly followed Blass instead of having the balls to stick to developing their own styles.

By the end of the nineteen-eighties, most wine companies in Australia were making overripe wines because they won more medals than wines that were true to their terroir or heritage, and were easier to sell to a public that didn’t appreciate the finer points of fine wine anyway. Give ‘em what they deserve, right?

 

The Old World and the new prophets

European countries saw similar changes. Rebel winemakers in Tuscany ignored the restrictions of their DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) and planted Cabernet and Merlot instead of Sangiovese. They used new small oak barrels and modern winemaking techniques, and these Super Tuscans as they became known were hard to tell apart from good Bordeaux. Just as you’d expect. 

The changes in France were less dramatic, and were driven by the influence of the prestige regions’ major markets. The USA held sway in the eighties and nineties and Robert Parker, a wine writer who’d assumed a colossal stature, could make or break a major chateau with a single review. His trips to Bordeaux were soon anticipated with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for invading armies.

 

Parker favoured huge reds, wines that were once described in Australia as ‘Steak and eggs in a bottle, followed by a big cigar.’ To us, that was a joke but Parker took it seriously. He’d come down under, taste some obscure red in McLaren Vale that was made from pressings, had hugely extracted jammy fruit and was viscous from more than 15% alcohol, and he would declare it a triumph of winemaking. Overnight, the wine would become impossible to obtain as internet bidders drove the price to heights that far exceeded the alcohol level. People who knew nothing about wine soon followed Parker like faithful Muslims follow the Qur’an – they’d only buy wines that he rated at better than 90 out of 100 points.

 

The winemaker as demigod

Overseas and at home, it was soon a case of wineries that were celebrated and wineries that were forgotten. Guns-for-hire winemakers were quick to see the opportunity and offer their services to the forgotten wineries, flying by helicopter from vineyard to vineyard, and flying by plane from continent to continent, adding their magic touch and fairy dust for a small ransom wherever they went.

Soon it was easier to pick the roving winemaker than the winery that grew the grapes at blind tastings, that’s how big the fingerprints were. The wine business had come to resemble Hollywood and its star system, from Michel Rolland in France to Brian Croser in Australia.

The best of them were and still are consulting to some 100 wineries at vintage time. It’s a kind of madness that is best understood by watching a documentary called Mondovino, which contrasts the old with the new in a very compelling way. In their defence, the flying winemakers would argue that they sorted out many problems that beset small and large wineries alike, for the greater good. Their opponents would argue that they made more and more wine taste the same.

 

Same Same

Can you pick up a glass of red, smell the pines of Coonawarra in it and detect the once unmistakably fine acid claret style in its taste? Not any more, you can’t. You even can’t tell a Coonawarra red from a Barossa red, not with 15% alcohol hanging over both. You can’t even tell Hunter reds anymore because they’re ripe and clean too. Hints of sweaty saddle, tar, leather? Not on your life.

Most of our wines are too ripe and too alcoholic, they’re blockbusters that aren’t enjoyable to drink with food. They’re not designed to, their designed to win medals by making judges’ eyeballs pop out of their sockets. They have enormous power but no glory, and no subtlety, elegance, finesse or balance. They have flavour in abundance, flavour that is jammy, huge and in-your-face.

 

On the whole, a great overripe sameness has covered our vast vinous landscape because most of our young Turk winemakers use the same grape varieties, grown and picked in much the same way, along with the same winemaking techniques and the same trick yeasts. And, surprise, surprise, they make similar wines.

 

In Vino Veritas

Not any more. The wine no longer tells a story about the place it came from, no longer prides itself on a unique gout de terroir as the French call it. Our wines no longer tell original stories but, like today’s online media, they regurgitate stories that we’re already familiar with.

Does it matter? It does if you like your stories fresh and interesting. It doesn’t if you’re happy to swallow the concoctions the mass merchandisers serve up for us. It matters if you care about a vineyard’s character, or the differences in wines from different places – the dusty, earthy taste of Rhone wines, the smelly slightly rotten noses of Burgundies and the tarry, leathery hints of old Italians, the hair-oil characters of old Alsatian Traminers and the buttered toast of old Australian Rieslings.

The most essential ingredient in wine is balance, the delicate thing that holds fruit, tannins, acidity, and alcohol together in perfect harmony. It’s the hardest thing to find in the new world, where winemakers keep discovering new tricks. I remember when Californian winemakers discovered new oak barrels in the late seventies, and all the wines for the next ten years were over-oaked. The same happened in Australia, first with oak, then with fruit ripeness and alcohol. The Californians learned their lessons, our winemakers haven’t. We’re stuck with the same tired formula.

 

Australia at the End of the Road

It sounds like a lie, given Australia’s astonishing export successes over the last 15 years, with exports rising from $260 million to $2,700 million dollars. Sadly, Aussie wine is no longer trendy over there, or competitive, and I suspect Jacobs Creek and Casella Wines’ Yellow Tail had a lot to do with that. Thanks to a helping hand from Robert Parker, Yellowtail swept the US market despite having no obvious merit.

Probably the worst thing about our situation is that our success has convinced every single one of us that we make the greatest wines on earth, when nothing could be further from the truth. This belief, now cast in the same concrete as our superiority in world cricket, makes it hard to refine and evolve our wines. Where do you go once you’ve achieved apparent perfection?

Once our wine styles were caricatures of European wines, when names like Chablis, Moselle and Claret adorned our cheap flagons. Now we’ve turned our wines into caricatures once more, this time resembling those muscle-bound young men in tiny swimsuits who strut along Bondi Beach to impress the young sheilas.

 

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More Reading

This article elaborates on the issues I’ve raised in much more detail

http://www.andrewjefford.com/node/702

More on our vinous woes

http://wineeconomist.com/2009/11/11/australia-at-the-tipping-point/

A link to someone having a go at Robert Parker

http://www.slate.com/id/2067055/

On star winemakers

http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=22800

 

Dead-Easy Osso Buco

 

This is a lazy, hearty casserole you can serve with rice or noodles or potatoes. My favourite is Basmati rice which I cook for 17-18 minutes (no more, no less) in water kept at a decent boil. Takes about 20 minutes preparation and a couple of hours to cook. Like all casseroles, it’s even better cooked a day ahead and warmed up.

 

Here’s what you need: 

 

Olive oil

2/3 brown onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped fine

2 carrots, chopped

2 celery sticks, chopped

 

8 (about 1.5kg) veal osso bucco

1/3 cup plain flour, for coating

Salt & freshly ground pepper

 

400g can diced tomatoes

Tomato paste

Cup of chicken stock

Cup white wine

 

Thyme

Rosemary

Bay leaves

Chopped fresh parsley  

 

 
Photo from http://www.cuisine.com.au

 

Variatiation

The original recipe uses veal shanks cut like steaks through the bone in the middle. You can use beef if you want a more robust flavour. Simply use beef stock instead of chicken stock. The rest stays more or less the same but you use red wine for white.   

 

What you do

Put some olive oil in a big frypan on medium to high heat, add the onions cut in half and the chopped up garlic. Stir frequently. While they’re browning, toss the flour on a big board or plate, add a generous amount of seasoning, mix in and then pat the osso buco into the flour on both sides shaking off the excess. Set aside on a plate.

 

Chop the carrots and celery into thick bits about inch long. Open the can of tomatoes and have the chicken stock and wine handy. By now the onions should be translucent so its time to add some olive oil, then the meat which just needs a few minutes on each side to make the flower coating stick.

 

Now add the tomatoes and tomato paste and stock and the wine. If your frypan isn’t big enough, transfer what’s in it to a casserole dish and then add the tomatoes and liquid and put the whole lot into the oven at about 375 degrees Celsius. Leave it cook for 45 minutes, then pull it out, stir it and add thyme and rosemary (a generous amount, fresh or dried).

 

If it needs more liquid, add more wine. Let it cook another hour or so, then add the chopped parsley, mix in, cook for a couple of minutes longer and then serve. It goes well with a Shiraz or big Côte-du-Rhône.

 

There you go! 

You'll Never Buy Another Pizza!

Not when you can make one THIS GOOD. Another dead simple recipe. It takes a bit of patience during assembly, that’s all.

Ingredients

  Turkish bread

  red pesto

  100g pepperoni

  anchovies – in oil

  250g roughly grated cheese – mix of cheddar and mozarella

 

  shallots - small diameter

  kalamata olives, pitted - handful

  semi-dried tomatoes - handful

  1-2 field mushrooms

 

  fresh basil, one bunch finely chopped

  oregano – dried

  parsley – dried

  salt - Dr Vogel salt or celery salt are best

  pepper – freshly ground

  chili flakes – if it's not hot enough, add some before you put the cheese on top

 

You need a big flat oven tray. Cut the Turkish bread in half so you end up with equal size top and bottom – be careful with this! Drizzle a little olive oil on the tray, and a little more on the bread slabs. Stick into the oven for no more than 5 minutes – we're only putting a surface crust on it.

 

Chop the shallots and basil finely, keep separate and put aside. Slice up the mushrooms and mix in olives and semi-dried tomatoes – we want the oil to rub off on the mushrooms. Put aside. Dry anchovies on a paper towel if you worry about too much oil.

 

Scrape one small jar of red pesto over the two Turkish bread halves, then cover with shallots and pepperoni. Cover the lot with the mushroom/olive/tomato mix - ensure even distribution - add the herbs and seasoning to taste and be generous with oregano and pepper. Distribute the chopped basil over the top and distribute the cheese evenly, filling the gaps.

 

Bake for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees – give or take 5 minutes depending on how efficient your oven is – best to check after 15mins. Serve with a salad of your choice.

A light red like Côte-du-Rhône or Beaujolais is a perfect companion

Dead-Easy Recipes for Lazy Cooks

If you ‘re looking for an easy way to cook mouth-watering meals, you’ve come to the right place. I love cooking but have no patience, and I’m bone lazy. That doesn’t mean I can’t cook, it means I cheat!

It all began at a dinner party, when my best mate and I made a bet with our women that we could cook just as well as they could. We worked our way through a cordon-bleu c ooking course, then a seafood and a pastry cooking course. The women were the winners in this deal, and I suspect they knew that from the beginning.

With Cordon-bleu, you create everything from scratch. You don’t buy pastry, you make it and bake it. For a dinner party, my best mate would make the fish stock from fish heads and carrots and celery and parsley and seasoning and boil the lot down very slowly all day long until there was almost nothing left. Then he’d start cooking.

That wasn’t for me. I’d buy my stock in packets and the marinara mix from the local shop, not from the fish markets. So I cheat, but who can tell the difference? My mate is a fabulous chef, and I love eating at his place, but let’s talk about how to cheat without anyone noticing.

DEAD-SIMPLE FISH STEW

The first time I had Bouillabaisse in a restaurant, it left me cold. Same thing the first time I cooked it. It looks so good, those muscle shells in that red-orange liquid.

 

(picture from http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/2775/seafood+bouillabaisse)

Looks are important in cooking but flavour more so. The original Bouillabaisse is actually a soup you eat with bread, which explains the lack of authority. Here’s how you turn into a stew that serves 3 - 4:

Solid ingredients

3/4 kilo of marinara mix – make sure it’s good quality and fresh

3 spring onions – use both the heads and the green bits chopped up

1 globe of fennel, cut into 8 wedges – fennel and seafood love each other

1 - 2 cloves garlic, chopped –suit yourself

1 – 2 zucchini, sliced – it’s more Mediterranean than carrots and celery

1 sweet chili pepper broad strips – the longish red kind

Liquid additions

2/3 tin of diced tomatoes

Medium packet of Campbell’s fish stock

Glass of white wine or two – yes, you can have one as well

Sacla capsicum/eggplant pasta sauce – the secret ingredient

Seasoning, herbs and spices

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

teaspoonful of dried fennel seeds
½ teaspoon of chilli flakes (Masterfoods)

Dried Dill

Fresh parsley, finely chopped

20 minute cooking:

1. Chop the onions, garlic, fennel and fry in olive oil in a big frypan or casserole dish. Add the zucchini and pepper once the onions are tamed (5-6 mins), and cook for a few more minutes. Don’t worry, time isn’t that critical here – just make sure you don’t burn anything, keep it just above medium heat, add oil when needed.

2. Turn the heat down to simmer, add tomatoes, fish stock and a little white wine (keep some for adding later to get the right amount of liquid). Add about half the little jar of past sauce. If you can’t get the capsicum/eggplant sauce, use standard green pesto (Not ideal but it’ll get you out of a jam). Easy on garlic and tomatoes – we don’t want either one to take over the dish!

3. You should be about 15 – 20 mins into it by the time you add the marinara mix, seasoning, herbs and spices. Hold the parsley – that goes in a couple of minutes from the end. We want that green colour to freshen up all that orange/red. Stir the marinara pieces into the mix and add more wine if needed. Suit yourself with the amount of liquid but it should not be too thick. Taste the stew.

4. If it doesn’t have enough flavour, add more seasoning (salt & pepper), maybe more chili but we only want a hint of heat. You can be more liberal adding pasta sauce – sometimes you need the whole jar. Then add the parsley when the fish is cooked (5 mins), stir it in but leave some on top for show.

There you go! It wasn’t hard, was it? less than half an hour. If you’ve ended up with too much liquid, don’t panic: take all the bits out with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl, Slowly reduce liquid on simmer and add solid bits back when you’re done.

What do you have with it?

Steamed beans or asparagus, if you fancy. I prefer Basmati rice or pasta. Basmati is a very fluffy rice if you cook it for 17 minutes on a fairly high boil, then give it a shot of cold water in a colander and drain it.

If you haven’t done much cooking, you can cook the rice first and just warm it up in a slow oven while you cook the stew.

There are more recipe sites on the web than I’ve had hot dinners. Here’s one site that’s different: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/08/coq-au-vin/

I suspect Ree Drummond is more marketing guru than country girl but who cares? She’s a great photographer as well so her recipes are step by step, picture by clear picture tutorials ideal for folks learning to cook.