Yes I know what you’re thinking, burgers are fast food and what is he going there for? Well it’s simple really they taste great and are a load of fun. In some ways this is the problem with modern food, the fast food industry gets hold of a good idea and then cheapens it to the point of extinction. Where the reality is that, made well, burgers are really good for you, especially if you sneakily pack as much vegetable content into them as you can get away with. It’s all about knowing what’s in you’re food, especially the fun food.
As a chef I spend most of my time trying to dream up recipes using the most elaborate ingredients possible and then attempting to come up with new and innovative ways to cook and present them. This is all great fun and is a major part of cooking these days, but sometimes food just needs to be there for the family in a fun and nutritious way. Try to avoid the pre minced stuff on the supermarket shelves and instead go to a real butcher and ask them to mince some lean beef for you, this way you know you are getting good lean beef instead of any old rubbish packed with fat.
Easy Burgers
500g minced beef or lamb
2 onion, diced finely
3 clove garlic, chopped
Salt & pepper
Chopped fresh herbs or dried herbs
2 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten
Avocado oil
Optional additions:
2 red capsicum, diced finely
150g mushrooms, diced finely
1 courgette, grated
1 carrot, grated
1 teaspoon fresh Thyme, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Method
Mix all ingredients together well. Take large spoonfuls of mixture, shape into balls, place on a floured surface and flatten with your hand. Heat avocado oil in a frying pan and add 2 or 3 burgers at a time. Cook both sides until crisp and brown. Alternatively, the burgers can be cooked on a BBQ or finished off in the oven at 180°C.
Split the hamburger buns, place the burger inside with lettuce, tomato, avocado salsa (see below), cottage cheese and serve.
Avocado Salsa
2 ripe avocado, diced
2 de-seeded and finely chopped red chillies
2tsp chopped fresh coriander
4 tomatoes de-skinned, deseeded and diced
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
Pinch salt
Zest & juice 1 lime
Method
Place all ingredients in a bowl, mix well and leave at room temperature for at least 30 minutes to let the flavours develop.
Burger Buns
Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour
20g instant yeast
20g sugar
10g salt
60g unsalted butter
280ml warm water
Optional
2 egg white
4 teaspoons of sesame seeds
Method
Weigh out the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a large mixing bowl. (If your yeast needs activating in water, follow the instructions on the packet and subtract whatever water you need to use from the 280ml water listed above.) Mix them together so that they are evenly distributed.
Heat the butter (either in the microwave or in a pan) so that it has just melted, it should be just warm, not hot. Weigh the water into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients, pour in the melted butter and mix it all together (using your hands) to form a dough.
Tip the dough out on to a floured work surface and knead it until it has formed a smooth, elastic dough. It will be sticky at first but will become smooth as you knead it. Form the dough into a ball, lightly oil the inside of the mixing bowl and put the ball of dough back into the mixing bowl. Cover the bowl with a piece of cling-film/plastic-wrap, put the bowl somewhere warm and leave it to prove until it has doubled in size (it depends on how warm it is but this usually takes 1 – 2 hours).
When the dough has doubled in size, tip the dough out of the bowl, cut it into eight and shape each into a ball. Leave the balls of dough on the work-top, cover them with a piece of lightly oiled cling-film/plastic-wrap and leave them to prove for a second time until they have doubled in size.
When the balls of dough have doubled in size, put them onto a lightly oiled baking tray and gently press them down to form the burger bun shape. Optionally, brush the top of each disk of dough with some egg white and sprinkle each with ½ teaspoon of sesame seeds.
Heat the oven to 170°c.
Leave the buns to rise for the final time until they have puffed up (not necessarily doubled in size but close).
When they are cooked, take the burger buns out of the oven and leave them on the tray until they have cooled to room temperature (when they come out of the oven they will feel very firm but leaving them to cool on the tray greatly softens the crust).
When they are cooled, cook your burgers an
Just had a great weekend at the Home and Leisure expo in Tauranga. All a bit different for me as I was in costume as Captain Cook, basically story telling with food.
Almost 250 years ago the Admiralty was asked by the King to provide a ship and crew to transport the Royal society scientists to Tahiti to witness the passage of Venus through the Southern Hemisphere. As you can understand the idea of using a ship of the line with a seasoned crew during a time of war to go on a suicide mission to the dark side of the planet had little appeal, however how do you turn down the King? Simple answer you don’t. What you do is find a thoroughly expendable officer with no wartime credentials, give him a crew of misfits and a secondhand merchant ship.
Enter Lieutenant James Cook, The son of a farm laborer from the north east of England. A man truly suited to the role of expendable explorer. Having first gone to sea from the village of Staithes and then on to the collier ships in Whitby, he joined the Royal Navy in his late twenties as an ordinary Seaman where he proved to be a fast learner and an exquisite cartographer. Who better to send on a pointless diversion than an upstart who happens to draw pretty maps, if he doesn’t make it back who cares? and if he does at least they’ll have some new charts. Only problem is that he isn’t an officer, he’s a bosuns mate and cartographer, The solution is easy, make him a lieutenant and send him.
So starts the first of James Cook’s three voyages, a catalogue of failure and glory traveling hand in hand. His orders for the first voyage were to plot the passage of Venus from Tahiti and then, in his secret orders, to travel west and find the great southern continent. They later found that his calculations for the transit were inaccurate and he couldn’t find Terra Australis.
The now Captain Cook’s second voyage didn’t fare much better, sent back to find the great southern continent that he had obviously missed on his first voyage, all he managed to do was prove that it did not exist.
Finally to his third voyage. The Admiralty had been trying to find the Northwest Passage, a short cut to Asia, from the Atlantic, with no success and so decided to try from the Pacific. Who better to send than the same expendable officer who had been there twice before? Yet again all Captain Cook managed to do was prove that the passage did not exist, and then to cap it all off he failed to stay alive, dying on a beach in Hawaii beaten to death by the natives who only days earlier had lauded him as a god.
This however only tells half the story. Without doubt, Captain James Cook was one of the world’s most glorious explorers. During his three Pacific voyages his wooden ships circled the world, went further north and further south than any wooden sailing ship had ever been before, or since. Navigating the ice bound fringes of the Antarctic and arctic circles, where the sails froze solid and the rigging hung with icicles. They sailed in tropical seas where they survived hurricanes, lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions; edged around uncharted lands and islands always in danger of shipwreck; and in one harbour after another, found unknown people. For any time and in any culture these were remarkable voyages. Like the first men in space they were truly off the map surviving on their skills and wits.
Along the way he managed to create charts of such exquisite accuracy that some are still in use today. His voyages epitomize the European conquest of nature, fixing the location of coastlines by the use of instruments and mathematical calculation, classifying and collecting plants, animals, insects and people. In effect one man named, or more accurately renamed, one third of the globe.
As if this wasn’t enough, he was the first ships captain to beat the maritime scourge, scurvy. Before Cooks first voyage any ship at sea for more than six weeks would routinely lose a third of its crew to scurvy, in Cooks nearly three years off the map he didn’t lose one. Through his own diligence and dedication to the health and wellbeing of his crew he became the ultimate global hunter gatherer. At every opportunity he had to restock his supplies of food and water often with things never before seen by Europeans.
Historically Sunday would have been the working family’s only day off and probably the only meat day as well. Everyone was expected to attend church in the morning and so the slap up meal was both the best meal of the week and a reward for being so virtuous. In fact during the Middle Ages in England the Lord of the Manor would provide a roast Ox for his serfs, thus starting the tradition of the Sunday roast.
In the days before ovens in every home, the poorer families would have used the local bakery, popping their joints of meat in the big bread oven that was still cooling down from the early morning baking. They would pick up their perfectly roasted meat on their way home from church.
Roast Leg of Lamb
Serves 6 – 8
1 Leg of NZ Lamb
4 large cloves garlic, peeled and sliced into 3
75g tinned anchovies
1 bunch rosemary
75g softened butter
Juice of 1 lemon
Method
Stud the surface of the lamb with garlic, rosemary and half the anchovies. Beat the butter, lemon juice and remaining anchovy and spread over the skin. Place on a preheated hot barbeque for 5 minutes to sear, then turn down heat and cook with lid down for a further 50 minutes until core temperature reaches 62˚C (for medium rare.) Rest and serve
Panfried Snapper and Quinoa Salad with Roast Kumara
Serves 4
4 Snapper Fillets
1 red capsicum, chopped roughly
1 yellow capsicum, chopped roughly
1 red onion, sliced
2 Kumara rough chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 cup quinoa (pronounced ‘keenwa’)
Salt & pepper
1 cup spinach, chopped roughly
Vinaigrette dressing (see below)
Method
Roast chopped vegetables (except spinach), garlic and olive oil in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for 30 to 40 mins until golden brown. Meanwhile, wash quinoa with cold water in a sieve and squeeze dry in a clean tea towel. Place quinoa in a pan, place over a medium heat and fry until lightly toasted. Cover with boiling water or stock and simmer gently until all the liquid has been absorbed. Remove vegetables from oven and add to quinoa with spinach and seasoning. Add dressing and mix well. Place in a bowl with panfried Snapper on top and serve.
Vinaigrette
Makes 400ml
½ tablespoon smooth Dijon mustard
50ml red wine vinegar
50ml balsamic vinegar
100ml hazelnut oil
100ml avocado oil
100ml olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
6 turns white pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Method
Place all the ingredients into a blender and blitz for 60 seconds. Strain through a fine sieve.
Berry Tansy
I love the sense of history and tradition that goes with food – the small village of Egton Bridge, near where I grew up in North Yorkshire, still holds an annual Gooseberry Show which dates back to 1800! Tansies are a type of sweet omelette, originally named after the herb, tansy, which was used in this dish in the 15th century.
Serves 4
25g unsalted butter
200g berries,
Freshly grated zest of 1 orange
3 tbsp sugar
25g breadcrumbs
3 eggs, separated
40ml cream
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 tbsp apricot liqueur
- Melt the butter in a frying pan and when foaming add the berries and orange zest. Cook gently over a low heat until the fruit begins to soften (about 2 minutes) then add the sugar, mixing well, and cook until the sugar melts and the mixture becomes syrupy.
- Add just enough breadcrumbs to soak up the syrup and stir.
- Meanwhile add the egg whites to a clean bowl and whisk into soft peaks.
- In a separate bowl beat together the egg yolks, cream, nutmeg and liqueur. Slowly add the egg yolk mixture into the gooseberry mixture, stirring slowly.
- Fold-in the egg whites and continue cooking on very low heat until the mixture sets.
- If necessary, place the tansy under a low grill or use a blow torch to set the top.
- Dust with icing sugar, decorate with a few sprigs of mint and serve.
Yippee, Spring is here. Which means that the first of the fresh asparagus is starting to hit the shops. Don’t wait, eat as much as you can as the season is short.
Originating in the Eastern Mediterranean, with a distinctive earthy, leafy flavour, asparagus grows wild in some parts of Europe. Greeks and Romans used it as a medicine; it apparently cured bee stings, eases toothache and restores eyesight. Asparagus also has a reputation for being a ‘real stinker’ and a source of endless debate at dinner parties! In some countries people prefer to eat white asparagus which has been grown out of the sun, but Kiwis like it green and there is little, if any, white grown here although purple asparagus is becoming increasingly available.
The North Island’s temperate climate is ideal for the production of sweet tender asparagus spears, the alluvial strip between the Tararua Ranges and the Tasman Sea north of Wellington providing perfect growing conditions. There are over two hundred commercial growers in New Zealand, producing 5,000 tonnes of asparagus every year. Harvested August through to January, peaking in September, about one fifth supplies the local export and the rest is exported fresh (mainly to Japan) or processed into canned, bottled or frozen product.
Fresh asparagus should not be rubbery and should ‘squeak’ when the spears are rubbed together. Choose straight firm green stems with trimmed ends. Asparagus has a high water content and should be stored in a refrigerator, preferably with the ends wrapped in wet paper towels or in plastic bags to prevent dehydration.
Asparagus is an excellent source of antioxidants, especially phenols, carotenoids and vitamin C. One of the best natural sources of folate, asparagus is also a source of fibre and small amounts of many other vitamins and minerals. If the asparagus is thin and fresh it can be used raw in a salad, otherwise blanching it will produce the best results. Purple asparagus is often eaten raw as it is sweeter and more tender than green. Lemon juice will help retain the purple colour and it should be cooked quickly. For maximum flavour, asparagus should not be overcooked and should be tender but still slightly crisp. It can be steamed, stir-fried, microwaved or boiled. Asparagus is also great on the barbeque or served with a simple sauce or dressing. It can also be used in tarts, soups, salads and other dishes.
Chargrilled Asparagus with Easy Hollandaise
This is what the French do best; celebrate one perfect ingredient eaten at its prime and in season. Take a delicate flavour like asparagus and enhance it with the richness of the Hollandaise.
Serves 4 as an entrée or 6 as a vegetable
2 bunches of fresh asparagus
Easy Hollandaise – Makes 600ml
175g butter
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
4 tablespoons lemon juice
6 large egg yolks
A large pinch of salt
6 rounded tablespoons fresh chives, snipped
- Melt butter slowly in a small saucepan.
- Place wine vinegar and lemon juice in another pan and bring to the boil.
- Meanwhile chargrill or barbeque asparagus for 3 to 4 minutes. Set aside and keep warm.
- Blend egg yolks in a food processor or liquidiser, then – with the motor still running – gradually add the hot lemon and vinegar.
- When the butter reaches the boil, trickle this in very slowly, with motor still running until it is all added and the sauce is thickened.
- Stir in snipped chives.
- Serve immediately with asparagus. (Will also keep for up to 2 days if covered with glad wrap and refrigerated.)
This is time for happy wines, and the happiest of them all is the Pinot Gris. The Birdman at Bird Wines has sneakily managed to make one that is a beautiful peachy colour while still being dry, an incredibly difficult combination to achieve.
Sometimes I just get the coolest jobs! This was a day doing canapes for a corporate day on the Spirit of New Zealand.
Looking out of my office window today it’s obvious that spring is very much with us, there’s new growth all around and an air of optimism as the natural world throws off the cloak of winter and stretches. I love this time of year as we see all sorts of things making their annual appearance in our kitchens, for those of you that haven’t had any new season asparagus yet I urge you to grab some and marvel at the delicate flavour.
Seasons form the natural backdrop for eating. All of the World’s Healthiest Foods are seasonal. Imagine a vegetable garden in the dead of winter. Now imagine this same garden on a sunny, summer day. How different things are during these two seasons of the year! For ecologists, seasons are considered a source of natural diversity. Changes in growing conditions from spring to summer or autumn to winter are considered essential for balancing the earth’s resources and its life forms. But today it’s so easy for us to forget about seasons when we eat! Modern food processing and worldwide distribution of food make foods available year-round, and grocery stores shelves look much the same in December as they do in July.
Which brings me to this weeks recipe, the fields abound with young lamb and the shops will soon be pushing new season lamb for all they’re worth. This is a situation that I’ve always found a bit odd, after all new season lamb or milk lamb has almost no flavour. The poor little devils haven’t had the time to eat the multitude of grass varieties that will in the coming months give the distinctive flavour that makes lamb so wonderful. So does this mean that lamb is off the menu, well actually no but you need to think about where the flavour comes from, last years lambs have just become year olds or Hogget (why they couldn’t come up with a more appetitising name I don’t know) that wonderful transition between the soft and succulent lamb and the full flavoured but tough mutton.
So ask your butcher for some hogget and give this Moroccan classic a bash and remember sometimes it’s worth waiting for.
Tagine of Lamb with Apricots
Serves 6-8
The name “tagine” derives from the clay pot with conical lid in which stews are cooked slowly over a fire. In Morocco, a very sweet fruit tagine (Tagine barragog) is made, with lamb, prunes and honey. With this recipe, we prefer to use sharp, naturally dried or semi-dried apricots – if you can find them!
2 large onions, chopped
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp saffron
1 tsp ground cumin
A good pinch of chilli powder, to taste
1kg leg or shoulder of lamb, trimmed of some of the fat
2½cm fresh root ginger, cut into slices
3 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt & plenty of black pepper
500g dried apricots
Method
Using a tagine (or casserole dish if you don’t have a tagine), fry the onion gently in the oil until soft.
Stir in the spices – the cinnamon, saffron, cumin and chilli powder – and put in the meat Turn the pieces so that they are covered in the spice mixture. Add the ginger, garlic, salt and pepper and cover with about ½ litre water. Simmer, covered with lid, for 1½ hours, turning the meat over occasionally and adding water if necessary. (You can also put the tagine in your barbeque to simmer.)
Add the apricots and cook for 30 minutes more, adding water if necessary.
Couscous
Generally, the couscous you find in supermarkets is a quick-cook variety and you need to be careful not to over cook it and create a glutinous mess that will put the kids off it for life.
Here’s an easy, failsafe way to cook couscous.
- Place 2 cups of couscous in a heavy bowl.
- Boil 2 ½ cups of water and add to the couscous.
- Add ½ a teaspoon of salt.
- Stir with a fork.
- Cover and allow to sit for 5 minutes
- Uncover and fluff up with a fork – the grains of couscous will have absorbed the liquid without becoming mushy.
- Dot with butter and fluff again. Season and serve
Cooking Couscous – an Olive Oil Variation
To impart a richer, nuttier flavour to your couscous try the recipe below.
- In a saucepan, heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil.
- When the oil is hot add 2 cups of couscous and a good shake of salt.
- Cook for 2-3 mins until the couscous is golden, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
- Add 2 ½ cups of boiling water.
- Remove from the heat and cover.
- Let the couscous sit until all the water is absorbed and the grains are soft – about 5 mins.
- Loosen the couscous with a fork and serve.
- Dot with butter and fluff again. Season and serve
More Flavour
Alone, couscous can taste somewhat bland. While the main taste centre of your meal will be the meat or fish you serve with it, you can add more flavour to the couscous itself by substituting beef, chicken or vegetable stock for the boiling water in the recipes above.
The flavour of couscous can also be punched up by adding pine nuts, currents, oregano, thyme, basil or cinnamon before you add your boiling liquid.
Wine match
We are blessed in this glorious country to have some of the most wonderful Boutique wineries. For the wine connoisseur they are worth tracking down. This week I’ve just found Bijou Estate and their Pinot Noir is a cracker. So go on be adventurous and track them down.
I’ve been looking back over the last couple of years of columns and realise that I haven’t shared the best Brownie recipe in the world. This is one that we used to do at the deli all the time and is just perfect. The sweet richness of the chocolate brownies is counterbalanced by the sharpness of the raspberries.
You’ll notice that the recipe includes frozen raspberries instead of fresh, this is quite important as fresh raspberries would turn to liquid during cooking whereas frozen hold their shape and don’t sink.
There’s no real trick when making brownie, it is really just a chocolate cake that doesn’t have enough rising agent in it so collapses at the end of cooking to form that wonderful dense fudge-like consistency. You don’t need to worry about opening the oven as the collapse is the desired end result anyway, and you will know it is ready when it looks cooked but still has a little bit of movement in the middle when you shake the tray. Dust with a little bit of icing sugar and enjoy.
Chocolate & Raspberry Brownies
Makes 1 medium tray
200g plain flour
80g cocoa powder
300g unsalted butter, diced
300g dark chocolate, chopped
6 eggs
450g caster sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla essence
150g flaked almonds
150g frozen raspberries
Method
Melt the chocolate and butter over a pan of gently boiling water and allow to cool slightly. In a clean bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until thick and creamy, mix in the vanilla and chocolate mix until smooth. Fold in the sifted flour and cocoa, and then pour into a greased 20 x 30cm tray. Sprinkle with the raspberries and nuts evenly on top. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 170˚C for 25 minutes. When cool, cut into squares and serve dusted with icing sugar.
Brownies are a hard one to wine match as the chocolate tends to dominate, that said a Mills Reef Port certainly hits the mark.
Some nights it’s just got to be left overs, in this case left over from a catering job. I served these as a starter to clients but made a few extra just for us, that said they are really easy to make and go down really well when all of us get home late and just want food on the table as quickly as possible.
Rösti Fish Cakes with Champagne & Chive Sauce
Serves 8
450g prepared crabmeat or mixed white fish
300g firm waxy potatoes
1 tablespoon capers, chopped (optional)
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoon grated lime zest
4 spring onions, finely chopped
3 pinches cayenne pepper or ‘La Chinata’ Smoked Paprika
2 heaped tablespoons chopped parsley or coriander
Salt & pepper to season
1 egg, beaten
Salad greens to serve
Champagne & Chive Sauce:
3 shallots (or 1 medium onion), finely chopped
¼ leek, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
300ml champagne or white wine
300ml fish stock (or chicken stock)
3 tbsps fresh chives, chopped
300ml double cream
Lemon juice to taste
Seasoning
The day before:
Put the unpeeled potatoes in salted boiling water for exactly 10 minutes. Mix remaining ingredients in a bowl. When potatoes are cooked, drain. When cool enough to handle, peel off the skins and grate. Carefully combine both mixtures and portion. Place portions on a tray and chill for at least 2 hours to become firm.
Meanwhile prepare sauce: sweat shallots, leek and garlic in the olive oil. Add stock and champagne to the pan and reduce to quarter of original volume. In a second pan, reduce cream to half the original volume. Add stock mix to cream and hand whisk. Add lemon juice, chopped chives and seasoning to taste. When cool, put into a box and refrigerate.
Heat a frying pan until almost smoking and place fish cakes carefully into hot pan, working in four portion batches. Cook for 3 minutes each side; they should be golden brown but barely cooked in the middle. Lift out onto paper towels and squeeze a few drops of lemon juice on top. When cool, place in an airtight box and refrigerate.
On the night:
Reheat fish cakes in oven at 200°C for 5 – 10 minutes. Meanwhile, reheat sauce on a low heat in a saucepan. Place a small handful of salad greens in the centre of each plate, place hot fishcakes on top, spoon over sauce and serve immediately.
I keep banging on about food should be fun, and this roast beef is one of those where the use of spices takes the whole meal to a new level. Nobody ever guesses that the lovely crunchy crust is really curry powder and salt. Use the mild curry powder and either rock or flaky salt.
Choose your meat carefully, cheaper meat tends to carry more fat not just on the surface but also in amongst the muscle fibre. Try Cambrian Meats in Judea or Harmony Meats at the good food trading company.
Roast Beef
2.5 – 3kg Beef roast
1 tablespoon Curry powder
2 tablespoon salt
Fresh ground black pepper
2 Onions , roughly chopped
1 Leek, roughly chopped
2 Carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 sticks of Celery, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon Plain flour
1 cup red wine ( optional but really good)
! litre of stock or water
Method
Mix all the powders together and spread on the fat layer of the sirloin. (This will make it very crispy.) allow to sit at room temperature for at least 1 hour.
Put all the chopped veg in a high-sided roasting dish and sprinkle with the plain flour.
Place meat on top of the veg and flour and on the middle shelf of a preheated oven at 240˚C for 15 minutes per 450g plus 15 minutes extra, turning oven down to 190˚C after first 20 minutes.
Carefully lift the meat off the now caramelised veg, wrap the meat in foil and leave to one side to rest. Rest for at least 30 minutes before serving. While resting make the sauce by placing the roasting tray with the caramelised veg in over a high heat on the stove top. Get good and hot again and then deglaze with the red wine if using. Let this reduce by half, then add the stock or water making sure that you get all the lovely tasty bits off the bottom. Once boiling, sieve into a saucepan and keep warm
Top tip.
If you have a meat thermometer then these temps will guarantee doneness
Core temperature for RARE 50˚C
Core temperature for MEDIUM RARE 56˚C
Core temperature for MEDIUM 65˚C
Core temperature for WELL DONE 75˚C
Roast Vegetables
I large potato, large dice
1 kumara, large dice
¼ pumkin, large dice
1 red capsicum, chopped roughly
1 yellow capsicum, chopped roughly
1 red onion, sliced
1 courgette, sliced
1 small carrot, peeled and chopped roughly
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 cup spinach, chopped roughly
Vinaigrette dressing (see below)
Method
Roast chopped vegetables (except spinach), garlic and olive oil in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for 30 to 40 mins until golden brown. Remove vegetables from oven and add spinach and seasoning. Add dressing and mix well.
Vinaigrette
Makes 400ml
½ tablespoon smooth Dijon mustard
50ml red wine vinegar
50ml balsamic vinegar
100ml hazelnut oil
100ml avocado oil
100ml olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
6 turns white pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Method
Place all the ingredients into a blender and blitz for 60 seconds. Strain through a fine sieve.