Me and my BBQ

I love my BBQ. It is so simple to make dinner and there is very little cleaning up. Growing up in an arabic family with a mother who was scared of gas (?!) we only ever had charcoal bbq's which are so so nice as the meat gets that charcoal wood taste, but is more of a hassle to use and so we didnt have bbqs as often as I would have liked!

The first night we got our BBQ, I BBQ's some king prawns and made them into a thai-style salad as inspired by Jack from the blog 'eating with jack', and also made a bbqed whole barramundi stuffed with ginger, garlic, chilli, lemongrass and lemon. Such a simple dinner and so so good. Fresh flavours, a good mix of salt, sweet, spice and sour, and did I mention minimal cleaning up?

The next day I marinaded some lamb backstraps overnight in olive oil, garlic, lemon, cumin, corriander, a squiz of tomato sauce and some lemon myrtle for that Aussie touch. I served it with a couscous salad, and some BBQ'd eggplant, fennel and corn. To top it off I made a yoghurt dip with mint, cucumber and garlic. Very similar to the BBQ's of my childhood, though a lot simpler...

What I like about this new BBQ is that I have somehow roped Nathan into being the cooker of meat, so all I do is marinade the meat, make a quick salad, and then sit on our new deck chairs and wait for dinner!

Winter Stew

This post is a few weeks too late. Two weekends ago it was cold and rainy and all I felt like was a warming winter stew. This weekend reached 33C and all I wanted to eat was salad! Anyway I want to post the blog anway as I really do enjoy lamb shanks and that was probably the last time I will for the year...

Lamb Shanks

The recipe is simple. Preheat oven to 200C. Dust four lamb shanks in flour and brown on all sides in a frying pan or the casserole dish to be used in the oven. Remove shanks and in the same pot fry up some diced onion, carrot, celery and garlic until soft. Add half a bottle of red, a bay leaf, some fresh thyme and parsley. Return the shanks, add some stock, season, bring to a simmer and then transfer, covered to an oven. Bake for 30 min at 200C then reduce the heat to 160C. bake for another 90 min, turning the shanks once.

The first night I served this with mashed potatoes, buttery peas and silverbeet braised in lemon. The next day was a school night and I heated the leftovers and served with brown rice. Next time I make this dish I might spend the extra 4 dollars and get the shanks pre-trimmed of fat, as this can be quite a fatty dish otherwise. Still, in a cold night, nothing beats a bit of fat!