Pork chops with a bourbon and Cajun spice coating

Ingredients:

4 pork chops
2 tsp white pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon, ground
a little bourbon

Ensure all spices are very finely ground. Combine in a cup or other small vessel. Add just enough bourbon to form a thick paste. Rub this into the pork. Set aside for a hour. Barbecue or broil until cooked through.

Goat kebabs with a spiced sour cream dipping sauce

Here's another recipe for goat kebabs. Again, to get the necessary boneless meat it's best to ask the butcher to bone out a whole leg and dice the remaining meat. Retain the bone for stock.

Ingredients:

200 g boneless goat meat, cut into a 1.5 cm dice
150 g sour cream
2 small chillies
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 onion, cut into quarters with slices separated
a handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
2-3 tablespoons of fresh coriander (a mix of leaves and stems)
1 tbs whole cumin seeds, lightly roasted
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
olive oil

Thread the goat, tomato and onion onto metal skewers (if you only have bamboo ones, you'll need to soak them in water prior to use to prevent burning). Season with freshly ground pepper, sea salt and olive oil. Refrigerate for a hour.

Pre-heat the broiler or barbecue to medium low. Cook the goat kebabs for 20-25 minutes or until cooked through, basting occasionally with a little oil.

Meanwhile, prepare the dipping sauce by blitzing the coriander, chilli, cumin and garlic in a food processor. Whisk in to sour cream. Season to taste with salt and black pepper.

Goat kebabs with a sherry and paprika marinade

These are very simple kebabs. You could jazz them up with some fresh herbs, garlic, chilli powder or about anything else. Me, I couldn't really be bothered. I had some sherry I wanted to use up and wanted to do something dramatically different to the other lot of goat kebabs I'm doing today. You can barbecue them, broil them or even roast them. Either way, be careful not to overcook them. Goat meat is quite lean. It won't withstand as much punishment as, say, lamb. And yes, you can make these with lamb if you're unable to source goat. Could use mutton too, I suppose.

To get boneless goat me, I bought a whole goat leg. I asked the butcher to bone it out and cut it into a 1.5 cm dice.

Ingredients:

200 g boneless goat meat, cut into a 1.5 cm dice
125 mL dry sherry (no need to measure it, just eyeball it)
1/2 onion, cut into quarters with slices separated
a handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 tbs sweet paprika
a generous slash of sherry vinegar
a splash of olive oil
a freshly ground black pepper
sea salt

Thread the meat, tomato and onion onto skewers. If you're using bamboo skewers, you'll have to soak them in water prior to use to prevent burning. Me, I make things easier by using metal skewers. I picked up some nice, long ones for a couple of dollars at the local discount shop. Once the kebabs are prepared, sit them in an oven tray (you can use any tray, really, but I used an oven tray as it was just the right size). Season with black pepper and paprika, then add the sherry, sherry vinegar and olive oil. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours at least. Open the cling film every so often to spoon the liquid ingredients over the meat. Just before cooking, sprinkle generously with sea salt.

Cook on or under a medium-low heat for 20-25 minutes, turning and basting frequently with the marinade.

Barbecue chicken burgers

I didn't barbecue these burgers, so perhaps they shouldn't be really be called 'barbecue' anything. No, it was a bit too hot for me to be up for wandering down to the local park to gather the necessary wood. In an attempt to give them a barbecue flavour, though, I added a few drips of liquid smoke, a product my house mate picked up from USAFoods, to both the sauce and the burger patties during cooking. It's nowhere near as good as the real deal, of course, but when one is lazy one can't be fussy. Too, the secret behind making burger patties that don't fall apart in the pan or on the barbecue is to form the patties the night before and refrigerate them and then to cook them gently. There's absolutely no need to add egg, onion or bread crumbs to a burger patty.

Ingredients:

500 g chicken mince
4 burger buns, opened and lightly toasted under the broiler or on the grill
4 slices pineapple (well-drained if from a can)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tomato, sliced and seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, sliced
a handful of rocket leaves, washed and drained
1/4 cup tomato ketchup
a shot of whisk(e)y
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp smoked paprika, plus extra to season
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
hot sauce of your choice (I recommend a chipotle sauce, for its smoky flavour)
oil

A few hours, but preferably a day, before cooking the burgers, add a few drops of hot sauce, a pinch of paprika and a generous dose of freshly ground black pepper to the mince. Form the mince into patties. Don't make them too thin--if you're even close to McDonald's-style patties, you've overdone it. A good patty is just about 2 centimetres thick. Place the patties on a plate. Use the back of a teaspoon or the tip of your thumb to make a shallow indentation in the centre of each patty. Cover and refrigerate.

A half hour before cooking, take the patties out of the fridge and let them come up to room temperature. It's always important to do this when cooking meat, no matter your plans for it--roasting, barbecuing, frying, steaming--as it'll make for more even and marginally quicker cooking.

To make the sauce, fry the onions in a little oil for five minutes. Add the garlic. Fry until the onions are nicely caramelised, then add the shot of whisk(e)y. Once reduced, add the tomato ketchup, Dijon mustard, paprika and apple cider vinegar. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cook for ten minutes over a low heat.

Fry the chicken patties in a little oil. Keep the heat low. Don't move them more than necessary. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper as they cook. When cooked, add the patties to the lightly toasted buns with the rocket leaves, pineapple, tomato and sauce.

Grilled rabbit with a 'Thai' marinade

Barbecued rabbit is one of my favourite, favourite, favourite things. Cooking rabbit over coals, that's really the best way to prepare it so far as I'm concerned. Put aside any prejudice you may have against eating bunny and give it a go some time.

This recipe was inspired by a recipe in the Jamie Oliver cookbook, Jamie's Italy. He barbecues rabbit with a marinade that includes, among other things, honey. It was okay, but I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as the marinade I came up with when first barbecuing rabbit for the kids at Saturday school. My students have since tried both marinades and agree that mine is better. Could just be that we all dig the coriander. This is definitely a recipe that you should experiment with. Probably, with not too much work, you can come up with a marinade that's better than mine. I reckon some sort of jerk seasoning, like the one I used with the pork, could be great.

1 rabbit, chopped up into serving pieces (don't be too fussy about how you cut it up--we're cooking over a fire, here, not in a laboratory)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled
4 limes or kaffir limes, juiced with a little zest retained to go into the marinade
3-4 sprigs coriander
2 small red chillies
small lump of ginger
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs freshly ground Sichuan peppercorns, plus a little extra
1 tbs freshly ground coriander
1 tbs sea salt, plus a little extra
1-2 tsp Thai fish sauce, depending on taste
steamed rice, to serve

Combine the oil, garlic, lime juice, lime zest, fresh coriander, chillies, ginger, brown sugar, Sichuan pepper, ground coriander, sea salt and fish sauce in a food processor. Blitz until you end up with a paste. Place the rabbit pieces in a non-metallic bowl and pour the marinade over them. Marinate for a few hours, at least. Ideally overnight.

Remove rabbit from fridge. Start a coal fire. You can do this on a gas barbecue--I have a couple of times--but really, it's so much better when cooked slowly over smouldering coals. Let the fire burn down. Ensure the grill bars are clean. Remove the rabbit pieces from the marinade and give them a generous sprinkle of both sea salt and freshly ground Sichuan pepper. Place the thickest parts of the rabbit, such as the rear legs, on the fire first, as these will take the longest to cook. As cooking over a coal fire is an inexact science, the cooking time could be anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes for the thickest pieces. Don't be tempted to cook this over a high heat. Be patient. Be sure to turn the rabbit pieces regularly, basting with the excess marinade as you do.

Warm venison salad with a sweet and spicy rice wine vinegar dressing

Yeah, bit of a venison them going here. This is a great way to use up small off cuts if you've purchased a large venison. Too, if you've roasted some venison and have leftovers, you could just heat it under the broiler and use that.

Ingredients:
one or two small venison rump steaks, removed from the fridge a hour before cooking or some left over cooked venison
mixed lettuce leaves and/or rocket leaves, washed
red onion, sliced
capsicum, siced
carrot, julienned (i.e. cut into matchsticks)
tomato, cut into wedges
rice wine vinegar
small, fresh chilli, sliced
couple garlic cloves, crushed
a little brown sugar

In a cup or other small vessel, combine the rice wine vinegar with the chilli, garlic and brown sugar. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours to let flavours develop.

Season the venison steaks with sea salt and black pepper. Fry over a medium heat for maybe three minutes a side. Season wiht a little extra salt and pepper. Rest for five minutes.

Meanwhile, place the salad ingredients in a bowl. Toss to combine.

Slice the venison finely and mix through the salad. Pour rice wine vinegar over the salad.

Venison rump steaks, marinated in red wine and garlic

Venison is one of my favourite meats. It should be one of your favourites, too, given how lean and flavoursome it is. Of course, it's not cheap. Unless you're loaded or you and a friend go out to blow Bambi's mum's brains out on a regular basis, venison is an expensive, once-in-a-blue-moon treat. Me, I found a place that sells it at a reasonable price. A Vietnamese butcher in Springvale that sells venison rump for about $25 a kilogram. Used to be $20, but they've gone up. Still, if there's only one of two of you, that's pretty good. You'll get a couple of meals for two, right there.

Anyway, the venison rump--roughly one kilogram in size--is sold frozen at this shop, so I have to thaw it a couple of days in advance. Once it's thawed, I slice it into steaks about 1.5 centimetres thick. As for the red wine, I mention a bottle. You don't need that much for the venison, of course. Drink some. Seeing as you're drinking some, you won't buy nasty wine. That old rule about never cooking with wine you wouldn't drink is a good one. In this dish, you can really taste the flavour of the wine. Too, as for what kind of wine, that's really up to you. Me, I use a nice merlot.

Ingredients:

thawed venison rump steaks (one per person)
bottle of red wine
two or three crushed cloves of garlic
pinch of sea salt
pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Place the steaks in a bowl with the garlic cloves. Cover with red wine. Cover. Refrigerate for a half-day. If you marinate this for too long, you'll kill the flavour of the venison. Remove from refrigerator a hour or so before cooking. Take steaks from bowl. Season with a little sea salt and black pepper. Pre-heat fry pan or grill pan over a medium heat for maybe 3 minutes on each side. Alternatively, cook over a coal fire.

Pork belly with an oriental marinade

I love, love, love pork belly. It's fatty, it's cheap, it's really lovely sliced up and cooked over a coal fire. My favourite cut of the pig, easy.

1 kilogram slab pork belly
stick of lemongrass
two or three spring onions
a small lump of ginger
three or four garlic cloves, peeled
rice wine (I used some cheap Korean sake I had kicking around, but the stuff that's sold specially for cooking would work equally well)
a few springs of fresh coriander (cilantro)
ground Sichuan pepper, to taste
ground coriander seeds, to taste
sea salt, to taste

Throw all the dry ingredients into a food processor and blitz. Gradually add the rice wine until you form a paste. Set aside to let the flavours develop. Use a paring knife to make shallow incisions all over the pork belly before cutting it into small strips. Rub the marinade into the pork belly, cover with cling film and keep in the refrigerator until a hour before cooking.

Cook under the broiler or over a coal fire. Cook over a medium and even heat until done.

Tips and ideas:

Try adding some citrus--perhaps kaffir lime--to the marinade. Use both the zest and the juice.