Lex Culinaria

Lamb spareribs with rosemary bbq sauce

Sorry for the silent treatment. Our backyard was reduced to a mud pit at the end of last week. We had a bloke with a bobcat come by and regrade the entire back yard and pull up all the concrete pathway. Then we foolishly decided to spend an absolutely stupid amount of money on 1000 (well, 968 actually) paving stones so that we could have the priviledge of laying them by hand ourselves. So there's been a corresponding lack of cooking happening at our house. We've been reduced to eating takeaway for multiple meals. Luckily it's light out till past 10 pm now, so we can work even more!

Good thing I chucked some stuff in the slow cooker this weekend or else we really would have eaten nothing but takeaway.

This is a pretty easy dish to put together on days like these where you're too busy to pee let alone cook a proper meal. On really hot days, I even put my slow cooker outside. I feel a bit silly doing it, but it helps not to add even a tiny bit of extra warmth to the house.

Did I mention it's tasty too?

Serves 2 to 4 (depending on the amount of work you're doing and the size of the diners!).

• 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) lamb short ribs
• 1 onion, minced
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 Tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves
• 250 ml (1 cup) red wine
• 80 ml (1/3 cup) soy sauce
• 3 Tablespoons Worchestershire  sauce
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) brown sugar
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) white sugar
• 1 large (896 ml) tin crushed tomatoes
• 80 ml (1/3 cup) vinegar
• water to cover

How easy is this? Dump everything into a slow cooker and let cook for 5 hours. Remove ribs and set aside. Reduce sauce in a saute pan over med-high heat until thick and sticky. Brush sauce onto ribs and broil or grill to brown them. That's it.

Gotta get back to work.....

In case you were wondering what a mud pit looks like...

Savoury Stuffed French Toast

Cakes and I take our breakfasts pretty seriously. Every weekend we either go out for breakfast or cook something tasty ourselves. Because we cook probably 50 or 60 breakfasts a year, and are loathe to make the same thing over and over gain (though we sometimes do) we're always thinking about new and different breakfast recipes.

This yummy french toast is a great way to use some standard breakfast ingredients in a not-so-standard way. We stuffed our toast with a combination or medium cheddar (for optimum melty-ness) and grated asiago (for flavour), but there are unending cheese possibilities: Edam, Gouda, Havarti, provolone, piavo vecchia....You could also add in a few slices of crispy fried prosciutto or some spinach leaves. We would have if we'd had either on hand.

Savoury Stuffed French Toast

Serves 4

• 4 double-thick slices of bread
• enough sliced cheese to stuff your bread, plus any other filling stuff you want to add: ham, cooked bacon, spinach, mushrooms...
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• salt, pepper
• butter

Slice each double thick slice of bread through the middle, but not all the way through. leave the bottom crust (plus a few millimetres) as a hinge. Stuff cheese slices and whatever else you want in the middle. Beat eggs and milk together thoroughly with a bit of salt and pepper.

Melt butter in frying pan over medium high heat. Soak stuffed bread slices in egg mixture, turning to make sure both sides are well soaked.

Place each stuffed slice in the frying pan and fry for a few minutes, until browned on the bottom. Flip slices over carefully.  Turn heat down to medium-low (2 or 3 on my stove) and cover tightly with a lid. Allow to cook, covered for 3 or 4 more minutes, until you can see cheese melting out of the middle. Turn over, and replace the lid. Cook 2 minutes more to ensure that the egg is cooked through and the cheese is all melted.

Zucchini soup with sauteed leeks, duck confit and brouillade of duck egg

A few weeks ago, my friend Joan took me, as a birthday treat, to Indulgence Edmonton, a fantastic local food event meant to showcase local food producers and local chefs. For a cheap-as-chips $45, you get to sample small plates of all sorts of really great locally grown and locally prepared foods. You know the phrase, "we drank our faces off". Well, we didn't exactly drink our faces off. We ate our faces off.

One of the things that I really enjoyed was Patrick Turcot's Zucchini Soup. Luckily, Mr. Turcot, the executive chef at the Fairmont Hotel MacDonald, had a stash of printed recipes on hand and kindly obliged me by permitting me to reprint it on my web site.

This dish would make a stunning first course or lunch dish. The soup would also be great on its own. It's velvety smooth and thick enough to hold the scrambled duck eggs and confit on its surface, so quite substantial. The zucchini taste is lovely and mild. Also, it's not as difficult as it looks. The soup is a breeze to make and anyone can scramble an egg (use good free-range hens eggs if you can't find duck eggs) and fry some leeks. The only tricky part is the confit, but since I recently provided a recipe for "Cheater's Confit" you don't really have an excuse, do you?

I tweaked the recipe a tiny bit by using the bones and skin from the duck confit to make a small amount of duck broth, which I used to replace about half the chicken stock.

Zucchini Soup with sauteed leeks, duck confit and brouillade of duck egg
Makes 6 servings

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 small potato, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 large zucchini
• 500 ml (2 cups) chicken stock
• 125 ml (½ cup) white wine
• ½ cup duck confit
• 3 duck eggs
• ½ cup minced leek
• 2 teaspoons olive oil

Method
Melt the butter in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic, salt, and pepper and saute for 2 minutes, or until the onions are tender and lightly caramelized. While the onions are cooking, peel and slice the zucchini. Deglaze the onion mixture with the wine and then add the zucchini, potato and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer covered for 20 minutes, or until the zucchini is tender. Puree in batches in a food processor or blender until smooth. Return to the saucepan and simmer until the soup is thick and hot.

For the garnish, saute the leek in olive oil until tender then mix the leeks with the duck confit. Set the confit and leek mixture aside. Beat the duck eggs with a fork and cook to a soft scramble stage. Adjust the salt and pepper if needed and serve the soup hot with a garnish of duck confit and scrambled egg.

Recipe courtesy of Patrick Turcot Executive Chef, Fairmont Hotel Macdonald

Chocolate Pound Cake with Warm Rosemary Syrup

I have no idea why, but recently I've been thinking that dark chocolate and rosemary would taste very nice together. And do you know what? They do!

I originally was moving in the direction of a dark chocolate and rosemary ice cream, which I may still do, but I couldn 't find the ice cream maker anywhere, so that will have to wait. Given my great recent experience with pound cake, I thought I'd make a dark chocolate pound cake for the rosemary experiment.

Cakes loved it and so did I. I was very surprised that the rosemary taste which was quite strong, was so beautiful in a sweet syrup over the dark cake. This makes a lovely interesting cake for a very simple but unique desert.

For the cake

• 2 cups cake and pastry flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 375 ml (1.5 cups) water, boiling
• 250 grams bittersweet callebaut chocolate, broken into pieces
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Grease a large loaf pan and coat the greased surface with cocoa.

In a small bowl mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon.

In another small bowl, mix together water and chocolate. Stir gently every so often to melt the chocolate into the water.

Whip sugar, butter and vanilla extract in until creamy. Add eggs and continue to beat mixture on high speed until very light in colour, fluffy and all the sugar has dissolved. Turn speed of mixer down to low. Mix in 1/2 the flour mixture, followed by 1/2 of the chocolate mixture. Add the remaining flour mixture. Mix thoroughly. Add the last of the chocolate mixture.

Pour batter into loaf pan.

Bake at 325F for one hour or until a skewer or knife inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Cool cake in pan for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, slide a knife around the edge to loosen the cake and invert the pan over a wire rack to cool for a further hour.

Serve with warm rosemary syrup poured over the top. You can also top it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For the Syrup

• 1/4 cup fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• 500 ml (2 cups) water
• 1 cup sugar

Simmer the rosemary and ginger in the water over medium-low heat. It should be just barely simmering. Allow it to simmer for 20-25 minutes. Strain out the herbs and stir through the sugar. Allow the syrup to simmer over medium-low heat until reduced to about 350 ml (just less than 1 + 1/2 cups)

Place a slice of the pound cake on each plate.

Pour the warm syrup over the chocolate cake slices.

Cheater's Duck Confit

When the urge to make duck confit came upon me, the first thing I did was check what Larousse had to say on the matter. Well, okay, that's a lie. The first thing I did was bemoan the fact that, of all the urges I could possibly have, the urge to make duck confit was about the dumbest urge a person could have. Why can't I have normal urges like for a pint of Ben & Jerry's from the corner store? That'd be a hell of a lot less work.

Truthfully, it wasn't so much of an urge as it was a necessary evil. You see, I have in my possession a really great recipe that calls for duck confit, and which I intend to make tomorrow, so I needed to make the confit in advance, because, where the hell can you buy duck confit? Having read a heap of recipes, including that found in Larousse, I now know why. 1) it calls for ungodly amounts of fat; 2) the ungodly amount of fat for which it calls is duck fat. Where the hell do you find 4 cups of duck fat? This is where I decided to take matters into my very own hands and cheat at the game of confit. Because I reckon that most of the people who read Lex Culinaria (that's you!) would have about as much of an idea (and inclination) as I have as regards the procurement of 4 cups of duck fat. Which is to say, none.

Why should confit be kept for only those who have on hand 4 cups of duck fat? It should not, I say. Certainly not when lard can so easily be found on the shelves of your average grocery store.

So here we have it, Cheaters Confit.

Confit was originally used as a method of preservation. Goose or duck was simmered in its own fat and then sealed in a crock with enough fat to cover it completely. Kind of the same idea as the layer of melted butter on top of pate or the layer of paraffin over jams. Because the meat was soaked in salt and cooked in fat, it was pretty darn flavourful and very tender. So, keeping with the tradition of salting and cooking in fat, I've really adapted the recipe to use an alternate source of fat, and also to be done in the oven, although you could do yours on the stove top.

Cheaters Confit

(makes about 1.5 cups of shredded meat)

• 2 duck legs
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 1 Tablespoon fresh)
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
• 1 bay leaf, crushed
• 250ml (1 cup) melted lard (use the kind that's packaged for baking)
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) good quality canola oil

Combine the herbs and salt. Rub the salt mixture into the duck legs. Place the duck legs in a large Ziploc baggie, place in fridge and let marinate for 24 hours.

Remove duck from bag, rinse and pat dry.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Place duck in the bottom of a very small baking dish. The dish should be just big enough to hold the duck in a single layer, skin side up, covering the bottom completely. Cover with the lard and oil.  The fat should just cover the top. If it doesn't quite cover, pour in a bit more oil until it does. Put duck in oven and reduce the hwat to  200F. Bake, uncovered at 210F for 1 hour 45 minutes. Turn the oven off and let cool inside oven for a further 30 minutes.

Remove duck from oven. Pour off oil. Allow the meat to cool and then shred it. If you are going to keep the confit for a while, press the meat into a small glass or porcelain container and then cover with a layer of the melted fat. If you're going to use the meat straight away, don't bother with this step. In any event, keep the fat for roasting potatoes with!

Once you've made your confit ...what do you do with it? You could try:

Confit, pear and pecan salad

Duck confit Rilettes

Shredded confit duck and noodle salad

...or watch Lex Culinaria later in the week for a great recipe courtesy of Patrick Turcot, Executive Chef at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald.

Mr. Fitzroy has picked a winner!

...and it's Kat On Thyme. What other choice could he possibly make. I mean, her name is Kat.

He clearly has his mother's palate as well. The triple sec and vanilla brined pork sounds right up my ally. Congrats to Kat!

The Summer Barbque Challenge Round-up

We all know what a huge proponent I am of the importance of sharing great meals with friends and family. The sort of meal I enjoy sharing most often happens out of doors, on a sunny weekend afternoon and doesn’t generally involve heating up the kitchen or folding napkins into perfect thirds.

Though I’ve had both near and total disasters in the kitchen preparing for regular dinner parties, I’ve never had the experience with a BBQ. There’s something magical about the ease and joviality that go hand in hand with the BBQ. No one’s worrying about the right fork and it’s totally acceptable to be so enamoured of what you’re eating that you end up with sauce on your chin. I guess that’s why I love barbeques so much… they really are the essence of what a shared meal should be -  enjoyment of great food, and lively company (especially when there’s good beer and wine!) - without the fussiness and formality that sometimes comes packaged up with more formal meals.

My most vivid childhood memories of eating a complete meal (as opposed to a particular food item or the preparation of food) are of summer suppers eaten outside with my parents and sister on the patio of the house I grew up in. We had a patio table with an umbrella that had a very hip (for the late 70s) brown and blue stripe on it. That was at the time long before patio furniture became plastic. Our table was a shiny powder-coated white metal. The meals were never really fancy – salad from the garden, baked potatoes – maybe done in foil with sliced onions, butter and a touch of honey – and steaks from the barbeque. I loved those meals. Heat would kick me under the table, or torture me by obliquely revealing to my parents some secret I’d confided earlier and which I was mortified to hear her repeat. After supper, we’d get Popsicles from the freezer. Those meals were lively and happy and exciting in a way that meals eaten inside never quite were.

Maybe it’s because the winters here can seem so long, but I really feel like I have in the past been much more adventurous with my indoor cookery than the outdoor variety. I felt stuck in a BBQ rut really, serving the same old standbys time after time. I swore to myself that this year would be different – I’d cook outside more, and I’d cook better and more adventurous things. So I issued the Summer Barbeque Challenge. I thought it would be a great resource to have a little online cache of great outdoor recipes to inspire our shared backyard meals all summer. So here we are…

The Summer BBQ Challenge has certainly turned out to be an international event with recipes from all corners of the globe all of which are amazing alternatives to the same-old-same-old that happens all too often around my own barbeque. After some initial confusion over what in fact I meant by “barbeque” the entries rolled in. 

Stephanie, my favourite Happy Sorceress brings us a tasty looking Lamb & Persian Rice Kibbeh and in doing so has unwittingly created for the barbeque one of my favourite Middle Eastern Dishes. Funny, without her, I’d never have thought of doing kibbeh on the barbeque. Thanks Stephanie!

McAuliflower of Brownie Points brought a tasty treat for vegetarians and meat lovers alike! Her Teriayki Grilled Tempeh that looks amazing. She did hers in a grill pan, but I reckon it’s going to get a workout on my wood fire pit grill this summer. This is one recipe that's stood the test of time...McAuliflower's brought this with her from her college days!

Helen of Beyond Salmon brought us two fantastic entries. First she provided great instructions on how to properly grill fish. I for one, have never really attempted to grill fish before because I was always worried about temperature control and the possibility of the fish sticking to the grill or breaking up and disappearing into the flames! With Helen’s great step-by-step instructions, I think I can finally conquer my fear.

Helen also made a great salad, with grilled ingredients. I don’t have much to say about Helen’s Grilled Asparagus, Tomato and Feta Salad, because I’m too busy drooling. I love grilled asparagus. I love tomatoes. I love feta. Yum.

Sandra of Un Tocco Di Zenzaro gave us the only non-English entry. Sandra, who lives in Turin, Italy made some chicken skewers that sound wonderfully yummy, no matter what the language! Her chicken skewers recipe – done both in Spanish and in Italian, would make a great addition to any summer barbeque.

Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once is from my very favourite city in the whole wide, wide world: Melbourne. When we lived in Melbourne, Cakes and I would barbeque our supper at least 5 nights out of 7 over the summer. I can remember some Saturdays when we’d barbeque both our lunch and our supper!  Getting away from the focus on the meat is Haalo’s potato skewers recipe, which is a fab alternative to plain potatoes in foil. I could practically smell the garlic and roast potato smell looking at that photo!

Kat of Kat on Thyme made an extremely adventurous Triple Sec and Vanilla Brined Pork Tenderloin with a Rhubarb Fruit Compote spanning two posts. This is definitely on my to-try list as I’ve become a great fan of brining meat ever since reading Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. Plus, I’ve got some nice fresh rhubarb sitting on the counter……

Zorra of 1 x umruehren bitte also stepped away from the meats! The one Barbeque meal food that I almost always end up buying is the bread. That will probably change now that I’ve seen how soft and yummy looking Zorra’s home made pita bread looks. I can just imagine wrapping up a nice hot browned bit of lamb or sausage straight off the grill in one of those pitas.

Gabriella True of My Life as a Reluctant Housewife brings us the only desert entry with her amazing-looking grilled pineapple with caramel sauce. Yum. I really would like to experiment more with grilled sweet foods and this looks like a great place to start!

Craig’s & Lois Notes from the Cape sent in a fantastic recipe for melted camembert on a baguette. I can’t even bear to look at the picture because I am afraid the drool might short out my keyboard and then where would we be? No roundup. I think I’d probably be tempted to also grill the baguette too, but that’s just me and my new barbeque motto - no food should be left ungrilled! Seriously. Melted cheese? Too good.

Everyone need as good Barbeque sauce recipe or two in their repertoire. I’m glad I can add Dave’s world famous BBQ basting sauce from Robert at White Trash BBQ to mine. I find the selection of sauces at the store most perplexing. I get tired just contemplating reading the labels on 200 different sauce bottles to find one that I like. I’d much rather just make my own. I’m gonna put this one together with Helen’s fish-grilling instructions…

Intrepid Torontonian Ruth, of Once Upon a Feast, came up with a whole barbeque meal menu including grilled asparagus, cedar plank salmon, quinoa tabouleh, chickpea & couscous salad and blueberry mint granita. Wow. Now I have one whole barbeque party planned out and I’m not even tired! Those granitas sound great, and I’ve always wanted to do cedar planked salmon……

Kevin of Seriously Good is clearly making this his sausage year as well. In that vein he made us some super tasty looking Romanian sausage called Mititei, which I imagine is Romanian for “seriously good-looking sausages”. They’re user friendly too. You don’t need a sausage stuffer for these babies, as they are skinless.

My favourite Edmonton author/shopping enthusiast and all-round blog-girl, Jena of Naked Bootleg, added to the international flavour of the challenge by producing Korean barbequed chicken and beef with loads of garlic. She complements this with home made Sunomono, which is an absolute favourite of mine – I’ve never even though about making it myself before, but now that Jena’s brought this recipe to my attention, you can bet I will!

Blogless Erica sent us two really tasty entries from her online cookbook (why don’t I have one of these?). Her Sweet & Sour Broccoli Coleslaw looks like a great twist on an old barbeque favourite and the amazing sounding  Wheatberry & Roasted Beet Salad is right up my alley – I love roasted beets in a salad!

My favourite Southerner, William of Never Trust a Skinny Chef, throws it back in Rachel Ray’s face with a five-hour smoked chicken chilli. Could Rachel even stand to do a dish that took more than 30 mintues? We’re guessing not. After all, she’s probably too skinny to stand and cook for that long. She'd probably feel all faint and have to lie down. William smoked his own chicken folks. That’s dedication.

Robert from Al Forno wades into the backyard cooking fray with a great post on the history of barbeque sauces and the regional sauces of the American barbeque belt.  He serves up a great recipe for an old fashioned all-American barbeque technique that sounds amazing and which will certainly find a place in my repertoire.

And lastly, my own entry… Grilled Char Sui Beef Bundles

Fitzroy will be making his selection of the winner of the Summer BBQ Challenge later in the week when his mum manages to buy a new printer cartridge! Also, he's feeling a little out of sorts owing to the fact that he recently ate a bee. This necessitated a terrifying trip to the vet (actually, probably more terrifying for me and Cakes than for poor old Fitzy). I'd like to make sure he's in top form before setting him to such a difficult task!

Grilled Char Sui Beef Bundles

In order to get out of my barbeque rut, I decided to try grilling something I would normally cook using another method. This dish is actually something I've made before as an appetizer or finger food for cocktail parties - only I usually broil them in a pan in the oven. They do just as well on the barbeque though. You can change them up a little by using pork or lamb, or even chicken instead of beef, and by altering the fillings - you could use bean sprouts, slices of portobello, snow peas..... They're far easier to make than you'd think. The meat cooks quite quickly owing to the paper thin cut, while the vegetables cook just enough to remain crisp-tender.

Grilled Char Sui Beef Bundles

serves 4

• 5cm/2in fresh root ginger, peeled
• 1 large garlic clove, crushed
• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 6 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp palm sugar (or light brown sugar)
• 2 tsp five-spice powder
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
• 400 g very thinly sliced beef (or pork)
• 1 each of large red, yellow and orange capsicums (bell peppers), try to select peppers that are long as opposed to fat.
• 1 bundle green onions, the longest ones you can find.

Mix sauce ingredients. Marinate meat slices in sauce for 1 to 4 hours.
Cut capsicum into ½ centimetre thick spears the long way. Cut the curtved end from each spear. Set aside.

Cut white ends from green onions and blanch them in boiling water for about 1 minute, until they soften, but are not mushy.

Select a few spears of capsicum and line them up together on top of one slice of meat. Roll the meat up into a tight cigar around the capsicum. Tie the roll tightly shut using a piece of blanched green onion.

Brush with any left over marinade and grill.  The thin meat will cook quickly leaving the vegetables crisp tender.

Wild Earth Bakery and Coffee

(On 99 Street just down from the IGA)

It seemed like the "experienced baker wanted" sign hung in the window of the un-opened Wild Earth Bakery for ages. Apparently Norm Joly, Wild Earth's owner was waiting for the right baker. Seems he found what he was looking for.

Wild Earth opened last week and from all appearances on the Sunday morning Cakes and I visited, things were all running smoothly. The place was positively packed. As I've often said, Edmonton lacks enough good coffee/cafe type places where you can pop in on a weekend morning, read a paper, have a decent coffee and just chill. I'm glad to say that Wild Earth fits the bill perfectly. And I guess that shouldn't be a huge surprise, as Norm is not a stranger to the food business in Edmonton: he owns the IGA on 99th Street, just a few doors down from bakery.

Cakes and I both had a latte, which was good by Edmonton standards but not necessarily world standards. Maybe I'm just clinging too furiously to memories of coffes in Melbourne...where even cheap lattes from dodgy corner stores have a beautiful crema around the edge of the milk froth and a much deeper, richer taste...

But I digress.

Cakes and I had worked up quite an appetite as we'd gone for an hour-long stroll through Mill Creek Ravine. He ordered and devoured a feta & dill scone (which I sampled of course) and it was fan-bloody-tastic. I had an apple and cranberry muffin which was loaded with fruit, moist and not overly sweet, in a word - muffin perfection.

We also cleverly (or not so cleverly if you take into account the calories...) purchased a selection of the six other items pictured above for sampling at our leisure at home. I was astounded that the six items cost us only around $8. What a bargain!

My favourite of the six was definitely the raspberry danish. Not too sweet, beutifully creamy custard cream and the pastry was flaky but still very moist. Cakes favourite (surprise!) was the apple strudel which was incredibly apple-y and again not overly sweet.

We didn't really like the trail-mix cookie, which was quite cake-y and dry. I definitely prefer my cookies chewy and moist. The filling in the mixed berry tart was way too sweet for my liking - like jam with sugar added - it was, however, packed with intense berry flavour. Pastry was nice and moist but there was way too much of it. with the result that, it looked like a tartlet but tasted rather alot like a thick slab of pastry topped with a dollop of oversweet jam. I probably won't be buying that one again.

If there is a continuum at one end of which is a cupcake and at the other is a an oat bran muffin of the sort my mother used to make when she was dieting, I'd have to say The blueberry and lemon muffin is very, very close to the cupcake end - very close to a sweet white vanilla cake with some fruit in it. Which is great if you're a cupcake rather than muffin person, but I think I'd prefer my muffins to taste a bit less like dessert if I'm eating them for breakfast! I have to maintain at least some illusions for myself. I suspect that the apple cranberry muffin I loved and the blueberry/lemon one I didn't were probably made with the same batter. I just think the tart and plentiful fruit in the apple and cranberry one overcame the sweet cakey-batter better than did the blueberry and lemon.

The cheese stick was very cheesy, but perhaps a bit less than fresh as it was quite hard and tasteless. Probably wouldn't buy that again either.

All in all, not a bad showing for having been open only a handful of days. Drop in, say hi to Norm and grab a raspberry danish and a feta and dill scone and some coffee and just hang out for a while.

If first impressions are anything to go on, Norm and his "experienced baker" need to do a bit of corrective work oin some of the recipes, but if they do get it right, they'll be around for a while.

Smokey Barbeque Beans

I've always wanted to make my own baked beans. Ever since I was a kid and my mom brought home a copy of the "Cowboy's Cookbook" from her school library. It was written by a guy who went around interviewing little old men who used to be the chuckwagon cooks on the cattle drives in the wild west. That book, with its ugly yellow 1970's cover, did a great job of conjuring up images of smokey late-night campfires and pots of boiling coffee and beans. Here I am some 20 years later, finally making my own baked beans.

And just in time for the Summer Barbeque Challenge too. Lucky me.

These beans have a deep smokey sweet flavour that can only come with long (bloody long if you ask me!) cooking. They need a solid day to make. Don't worry about the beans going mushy, haricot beans simply don't do that very easily. After even 8 hours of solid simmering they are still perfectly shaped and a little al dente. If you really like your beans mushy, be prepared to cook them longer, or use smaller white beans such as great northern beans.

These were so yummy, this huge batch disappeared in a matter of minutes.

Lex's Smokey BBQ Beans

(serves a lot! close to 10 or 12 as a generous side dish)

• 700 grams (1.5 pounds) dried white haricot beans
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup italian parsley, finely chopped
• 1 small red capsicum (bell pepper), chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 x 796 ml (28 oz) can diced stewed tomatoes
• 1 x 156ml (5.5 oz) tin tomato paste
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 200 ml dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon dried hot chilli flakes
• 1 Tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons hot English mustard
• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 450-500 grams smoked duck or goose wings (I used goose)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups beef stock

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of cool water. Drain and rinse.

Chuck it all in a big ole pot (at least 8 litres/quarts!), bring it to the boil and let it simmer for 7 to 9 hours. Check on it periodically. If it looks like the liquid is getting thick, add an extra few cups of water. You'll probably have to do this a few times during the cooking process.

Towards the end, use tongs to fish out the smoked bird pieces. Strip the meat off the bones, dice the meat quite small and throw it back in the pot.