With an upcoming 40th we thought it best to test a dessert pizza and whilst the oven was blazing lets make some others as well! An adventure with the girls to Mercato saw the purchasing of some tasty Barossa Fine Foods products and a housemade Propan Pancetta. A christmas gift of some Scamorza (smoked cow milk Mozzarella) from Harvey and David would well suit the chilli ingredients and fresh veggies from the garden would also make an appearance in this…
What a weekend! Cooking the 2nd pig of the year in the furnace of destiny was a long day with delicious results. Starting at 7:30am, the day began with a tidy-up, fire setting, chopping firewood and stocking the esky. Stage 2 involved making a spice rub, mop sauce and preparing the chickens ready to stuff inside said pig. With the fire lit at 11am, it would take 2 hrs to cool down ready for the animal, with the oven keeping…
The first night of many to come I’m sure. Tonight saw the inaugural Testing Tasty Tuesday, featuring 2 x dough types and many flavoured toppings. Dough 1: A traditional Vera Neapolitan Dough, made to the exacting standards of the AVPN Ingredients: 1000gr Molino Caputo Tipo 00 flour 650gr water (65% hydration) 20gr salt 6gr active dry yeast (6gr dry yeast with 3gr of Criscito Starter) Notes: 10 mins of kneading in Kitchenaid 4hr initial rise Dough punched, balled and placed in fridge for 3 day fermentation 1hr…
The long awaited Echunga camp-out had finally came around. After a previous Yabbie expedition to Alex’s dad’s 1000 acre property in February we thought we’d try our hand at Yabbie hunting once more. This time around the kids from Zynke Design, Hegs Pegs and Productive Garden Co joined us. It was a stunningly beautiful spring day. Sunny, green fields, cows, sheeps and plenty of dams to choose from. Our hopes were high, the dams were full and we prayed to the Cherax…
The outdoor entertaining / cooking / area is now waterproof. Thanks to Adam Riley (Riley Ceilings) we got the job done in under 2 hours. Fantastic work considering the massive weekend we’ve all had. Verandah has 2 clear sheets and the rest is zinc corrugated steel and serve us well over the coming years of using the new space. Luca even had a go at screwing down a sheet!
After some further research for recipes for the Pizza Oven I came across some techniques for cooking paella in a WFO (wood fired oven). Traditionally the Spanish use olive or orange tree prunings as the smoke from the wood imparts a special flavour onto the food. As I’m only 6 weeks from firing up our oven and spring has just begun I figured now would be the time to get some olive wood of my own. I started by looking…
