BRIGHTENING UP THE BASICS

It's one thing to be able to follow a recipe and turn out a decent dish, it's a very different proposition to be able to improvise as you go without the recipe book open in front of you.

Below you'll find some simple recipes, each of which can be altered - a little or a lot - by substituting a spice here or a flavour there.

Rather than simply follow these recipes, try experimenting with them - add your favourite flavours to the base recipes and see how satisfying the end result is when you know you've created something original rather than just followed someone's instructions.

MOROCCAN BEEF MEATBALLS

1kg beef mince

40ml moroccan spice

2 eggs

1 - 1 ½ cups breadcrumbs

2 spring onions, chopped finely

Handful coriander, chopped

½ tbsp garlic

1 tbsp sea salt

½ tbsp cbp

Mix everything together in a large bowl, adding enough of the breadcrumbs to achieve a stiff but not stodgy consistency. Form into 2 cm diameter balls, fry in a little oil until browned on the outside, then place on a baking tray in the oven at 180 degrees C until cooked through - 5 to 10 minutes.

Once you make this recipe work for you, have a play around with these variations -

Thai green curried chicken - Replace the beef with chicken mince (or puree chicken thighs with the egg whites), replace the Moroccan spice with 1 tbsp Thai green curry paste and ½ tbsp minced ginger

Lemon honey chicken - Swap the beef for chicken naturally, then replace the Moroccan spice with 1 tbsp lemon zest and 1 tbsp honey

Balinese lamb - instead of beef mince obviously you'll be using lamb mince. In place of the Moroccan spice, add a pinch of ground coriander and ½ tbsp of minced ginger. Drizzle in 2 tbsp of kecap manis (Sweet soy sauce) and 1 tbsp of light soy sauce

Kangaroo and macadamia - my favourite! Replace the beef with roo mince (readily available in most supermarkets nowadays), lose the Moroccan spice and add 100 ml crushed macadamia nuts, 1 tbsp kecap manis, and a teaspoon of ground native lemon myrtle spice. This is a little harder to find, so you can substitute with lemon pepper spice or lemon zest.

Chef Shane's Note - Bear in mind that a meatball flattened is pretty much a rissole, and a big rissole is a burger - so with one recipe your repertoire has increased by a dozen or more variations!

MASHED POTATOES

1 kg potatoes, peeled & diced

50g butter, diced

2 large pinches sea salt

1 pinch ground white pepper

More than cover the potatoes with water and boil for 20 minutes or so until they are soft through. Make sure the water doesn't evaporate below the top of the potatoes else some will be cooked and some not. Drain very well, then mash with a potato masher until all of the lumps have been squished away. You could try pressing the cooked potatoes through a mouli if you have one, or even through a fine colander to remove lumps. Add the butter & seasoning and you're ready to serve.

This recipe makes a very pleasant, though not particularly exciting, mashed potato. How do we turn it into something special? Read on.

Sweet potato, celeriac or taro mash - simply substitute one veg for another as you see fit - they all work to the same principle

Roquette & macadamia - puree or chop finely together one large handful roquette and ½ handful macadamia nuts and add to the cooked mash

Wasabi & ginger - add ½ tbsp wasabi and ½ tbsp minced ginger to the mash after cooking for a funky zing

Garlic & sage - add ½ tbsp minced garlic and 1 tbsp chopped sage to the cooked mash

Truffle oil & porcini mushroom - instead of butter, add a healthy drizzle of the truffle oil and some finely chopped cooked porcini mushrooms

Chef Shane's Note - In my travels I have seen and tasted mash made velvety smooth, mash with the occasional lump of potato which escaped the masher, mash made dead chunky, mash littered with remains of potato skin that the kitchen hand forgot (or couldn't be bothered) to peel, and just plain potatoes come to a crumbly end. Menus have extolled the virtues of "creamy mash potatoes", "spicy hashed potatoes", not to mention potatoes "crushed", "mushed", "bashed" and "squashed". At the end of the day you're the one eating it so you make it to your taste - skin on or off - and call it whatever makes you feel better!

CHICKEN SUN-DRIED TOMATO & MACADAMIA SAUSAGE ROLLS

  ½ kg chicken thigh or mince

1 egg whites

12 Macadamia nuts

100ml sun dried tomatoes

3 tbsp Spring onion, chopped

3 tbsp Basil, chopped

½ tbsp Lemon zest, grated

Pinch sea salt and ground black pepper

3 sheets puff pastry

1 egg yolk

Place everything apart from the pastry and the egg yolk into a blender and puree to a chunky paste. If it is very dry, add another egg white and blitz some more.

Lay the pastry on a flat surface and cut in half. Brush 1cm along the long end of each half with egg yolk. Lay a "sausage" shape of the chicken mix lengthwise along each piece of pastry, then roll up to a sausage roll shape. The egg yolk brushed edge of pastry should connect with the non brushed edge so it will help seal.

Chef Shane's Note - Roll these guys up loosely rather than too tight as the chicken will expand (swell up) during cooking. If the pastry is too tightly wrapped around the meat, it will crack or even tear from the pressure, leaving a bit of a disaster on your plate!

Place on a greased and floured baking tray, and cut halfway through the roll at regular intervals, depending on how long you want the end result to be. Bake at 180 degrees C for about ten to fifteen minutes or until golden brown and cooked through. Cool slightly, cut all the way through along the pre-cooking marks, and serve immediately with Voodoo Moon's STICKY MOOSE barbecue sauce and/or SEVEN GATES OF HELL red pepper chilli sauce.

A few variations you can experiment with include:

Pork, apple and sage - substitute pork for chicken, omit the sun dried tomatoes and macadamias for one grated apple, and replace the basil with fresh or dried sage

Teriyaki beef & cashew - substitute beef for chicken, omit the sun dried tomatoes, replace the macadamias with cashews, and add a drizzle of soy sauce and a tablespoon of mirin (sweet cooking wine)

Lamb & rosemary - you can work out how it goes by now!

LOW FAT AUBERGINE SCHNITZEL

Serves 4

1 large eggplant

½ jar Voodoo Moon's Crimson Dragon red pesto

50g vintage cheddar cheese, grated

One for the vegetarians - Cut four 1 ½ cm rounds from a large eggplant, and lightly fry in a little olive oil in a hot pan, until lightly coloured and just starting to soften.

Chef Shane's Note - Many people ask me if eggplant needs to be salted and left to sit for an hour or two, allowing the salt to draw out the moisture and bitterness from the vegetable before cooking. Once upon a time, not so long ago, we always treated eggplants this way but nowadays we don't. I'm not 100% sure if the bitterness has been bred out of local eggplants, or if our tastes have just expanded and matured enough to appreciate the way they always were, but I made this dish again last night using home-grown aubergine from Dad's garden and it contained no trace of bitterness what-so-ever.

Lay the rounds of aubergine in a greased baking tray, and spoon over the Crimson Dragon red pesto. Grate the cheese over the top and slide the tray into your oven, heated to 180 degrees C. Bake for ten minutes, or until the eggplant softens all the way through and the cheese melts and starts to brown. Serve with steamed vegetables and new potatoes.

To vary this dish, try layering some lightly fried mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, or steamed sliced zucchini over the top of the eggplant before spreading with the Crimson Dragon. Instead of Crimson Dragon red pesto, try a traditional basil pesto, or vary the sort of cheese you're using - parmesan works a treat, and blue cheese makes for an extremely rich and yummy dish.

Be excellent to each other

Shane Pinnegar

April 2006