Venison kielbasa pizza, trout with lentils and hazelnuts, delicata squash and sage soup, roast carrots, cumin and coriander. Another food edition!
We’re seeing a trend emerging. With more great food and cooking behind the scenes than ever, this long-form blog should begin to catalogue it properly. Perhaps we’ll need to develop a separate mailer for all the exciting stuff across our desks—food for thought. The city is humming with AgFest and autumnal sunshine; the time is ripe for some great dinners. Hopefully, you’ll find something that catches your eye herein.
Venison kielbasa pizza
Really, the heading says it all for this paragraph. We made a brilliant pizza from Fork it Farm’s venison kielbasa, Oldway Farm bacon, green chillies, scamorza and olives. It was fantastic. If you’ve been a good kid, you’ve stored up some passata from summer’s tomato season. If (like a particular resident chef we know) you haven’t, no stress. A good-quality can of chopped tomatoes will do the jobby. Saute off some onion and garlic in olive oil, add tomato paste and passata and reduce to thicken. Pizza sauce. Done. Flour, water, yeast, salt, olive oil. Pizza dough. Done. We won’t go through the ins and outs of dressing a pizza; we know our food-mad audience is all over that. Suffice to say that the combo of toppings is a “Dilmah Moment” (do try it).
Brown trout with lentils and hazelnuts
This one was super special. You can substitute ocean trout, tuna, or a fleshy whitefish for this recipe. But as luck would have it, we came by a wild-caught brown trout—one of the very finest fish on this entire planet of Earth. Not only that, this one is entirely, 100%, thanks for coming, Harvest Market produce. Start by getting your lentils into a pot, with veg stock and a crushed clove of garlic. About 3:1 in favour of the stock. Boil until tender; as you do, the lentils will absorb, and the stock will reduce.
Score the trout’s skin with a sharp knife, then place it skin-side down in a hot skillet with a touch of vegetable oil. Cook until the skin is crispy and the flesh is just about cooked through. Flip, count to 60 and remove the fish to rest. While it’s resting, clean the spinach, remove any tough stems, and gently saute it in the skillet until wilted. Remove to paper towel to drain. Put about 100 grams of butter in a pan on high heat until it turns golden brown. Then, add chopped hazelnuts, chopped parsley, and the juice half a lemon. Onto a plate with the lentils, top with the spinach, top with the trout, and spoon over the hazelnut sauce. This is some restaurant-grade stuff right here.
Delicata squash and sage soup
Soup is comforting. Being newly minted recipients of some beautiful Delicata squash, soup was in order. The sweetness of roasted squash and the earthiness of fresh sage come together beautifully. Begin by halving and seeding the Delicata squash and covering them in chopped sage, then roasting them in the oven until tender. With the squash roasted, peel the skin, heat olive oil in a large pot, add diced onion and garlic and saute until very soft.
Add the squash, along with a generous pour of vegetable or chicken broth, to the pot and Let the mixture simmer gently. Even though the squash is already cooked, this simmering allows the flavours to come together a bit. Once the sage and the squash are very soft, everything is tender enough to yield to the gentle persuasion of a stab blender.
Finish the seasoning with some parmesan and white pepper before adding any salt. You want to strike the perfect balance of salt, umami, and the squash’s sweetness. Serve it up with, say, mascarpone, caramelised onions, crispy sage, or a rich melty cheese like a Tilsit or something. Autumnal perfection.
Roast carrots, cumin, coriander and lemon yoghurt
Roast carrots. These guys are going to make a suitable side dish for almost any meal. Simple yet vibrant flavours take centre stage. Don’t even peel them. Just clean up the tops and trim the green stem to about 1 cm in length. Get them onto a lined baking tray, drizz with olive oil and sprinkle with ground cumin, cumin seeds, salt and ground black pepper. Roast at 2-hundge for about 15. Carrots transform the heat of the oven. They develop a complex sweetness as they roast, and their natural colours deepen to richer hues. It’s visually pleasing already.
To complement the earthy sweetness of the carrots, a tangy and refreshing preserved lemon yogurt seemed to fit. Tough recipe: mix chopped preserved lemon with yogurt and some fresh lemon zest. Together, the sweet and rich roasted carrots and the preserved lemon yogurt offset one another. Spread the yogurt onto a plate, top with the roasted carrots, and top this with a whole fistful of chopped mint and coriander. Rich, creamy, zesty, toasty, spicy and herbaceous. All great things to have on a dinner table.
Surely, there has been something in and amongst there that’s whet the appetite. Great produce, great food, great time of the year. Happy days.
Thanks for reading! See you in the morning.