Boerewors, vuvusela’s & the art of the dive
Not a lot of sleep is happening at the Martin household lately, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the new Pamela Anderson alarm clock iphone app, it’s a pretty distant reality waking with a household of kids… ”Morning, (no sound of waves) Darl … Shit, no! You, you didn’t set the alarm clock, we’re late…get the kids up…Oi, wake up, genius, we are late!”
No, it’s more to do with the World Cup playing out at the worst possible time for getting a decent sleep, 9pm to 6:30am. Enjoying it, though. My son and I pretty well watch any sport, including, if pushed, lawn bowling, synchronised diving and parallel parking.
Real football, soccer, is such a skilled game of tactics, control and artistry. Watching the 32 sides from all over the globe really does show you why it’s called the world game – how else would countries like the Ivory Coast face up against Korea DPR? Love the crazy South African atmosphere, too – the colours and of course the vuvuzela, which rivals the bagpipe as the most grating sound around.
Yep, it’s a skilled game all right and never fails to amuse with the amazing diving performances to force a penalty. It’s a bit like a school playground scene.
“He hurt me, he pushed me!”
“Kaka, did you push Kader?”
“I didn’t touch him – he pushed me first.”
“Kaka you go to your seat and think about what you’ve done.”
”But I didn’t touch him!”
I feel for New Zealand, to play so well and get close to beating Italy, and then to be foiled as we were four years ago. Remember, you don’t touch an Italian soccer player anywhere near a net – they fall like nine pins. I’d hate to see one of these players on a rugby pitch, there’d surely be tears.
When Daniele De Rossi fell so dramatically without actually any All White making contact, Even my 10 year old said, “Dude, man up!”
Anyway, we’re looking at South Africa and overdue to cook something in theme. I used to live next to a crazy houseful of South Africans in London years ago and couldn’t get over the cooking smell of spice and beef that permeated the Islington bedsit. They were cooking the famous boerewors sausage, a rustic country sausage that has the distinct mosquito coil look.
We’re packed to the brim with beef at the moment. It was my friend Jeff’s birthday recently and he wanted a full leg to slow cook for 10 hours for the event, so the rest of the 12-month-old Angus arrived in various vessels, including a 25 litre bucket of mince. Nice, not really the thing you can face in the morning, but it needs to be sorted quickly as you can imagine. So the plan is to make a range of sausages with it.
It really is easy, but you’ll need a strong mincer with sausage attachment, preferably powered by electricity rather than arm. Next, something to put the mince in. I found some pork casings in the romantically named Butts and Brew (near Supabarn in Kaleen), where you can pick up everything for home industry – from a brewery or winery to a distillery, although possibly not a meth lab.
Pork casings aren’t as pleasant to work with as they sound. You get a brick of salted pig intestine and have to wade through this mass of innards to find the end so you can start you sausage-making career.
Soak the casings in water to eliminate the salt, then thread one on to the sausage spear.
Now to the filling. For one good-size boerie to feed a small clan, simply mix all the ingredients except the liquids together. Allow to mature for one to four hours, then add the wine and vinegar. Mix thoroughly again – a very important part of sausage making is getting the mixture right.
Feed the mix into the sausage machine. No twisting needed – you just want one metre-long snag arranged on a plate in the concentric circular pattern.
Barbecue over a gentle heat until cooked and serve with maize porridge, fat cakes and a bottle of South African pinotage.
Boerewors sausage
700g coarsely ground beef
300g fatty neck pork, ground
2 teaspoon salt flakes
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp crushed coriander seed, lightly roasted
pinch of ground clove and nutmeg
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp deeply coloured red wine
sausage casings as needed
Canberra Times, July 7, 2010
Olives, Drain-O & Italy bow out
Everyone has a never-fail recipe for preserving olives. But each year I have another crack at it and always end up with olives that are either far too salty or bitter as a French football fan after being trounced by Mexico. Have any of those high-end players actually played together before?
So I’ll burden you with one more and promise never to return here – mainly because this recipe, which must be as ancient as olives themselves, worked so well for me that I’d never try any other long, laborious process again. It was dead easy, a bit messy and quick.
The main ingredient besides the olives themselves is salt – and your choice here will affect the result. The stronger the salt, the quicker it will work.
NaOH, sodium hydroxide as we call it, or Drain-O as you may, is a very efficient salt. It’s very alkaline and can cure olives in a matter of days. It also remove any vestiges of flavour and character. Iodised processed table salt is also cheap, effective and quickish.
Unless you’re going commercial and cheap, you might have to spend more time and money. You need to look at what salt you like using on your food. For me, sea salt flakes are less processed and still retain a certain sweetness, perfect for curing olives, and worth the extra cost.
Next,the olives themselves. For this drying process you will need big, fleshy and ripe black olives. I came across some late-season Queen of Spain, which are perfect, and this year was a good one too. The rain has produced larger-than-average olives, and it was a low-bearing year, since olives generally produce a big crop one year then a low crop the next. Less fruit generally means better quality, and also makes for better oil.
Sort the olives well, removing any bruised or split fruit. Wash and dry thoroughly. Using my bucket chemistry, you’ll need half the weight of the olives in salt, so I started with 12kg of fruit and 6kg of salt flakes.
Mix together in a big bucket. Slow down – this is a fruit and will bruise quite easily. Once you have a good even mixture, pour them into a muslin bag or some other food-friendly mesh, with the idea that the liquid extracted from the olives needs to be allowed to drain away. You also want the winter sun to penetrate to help the process along. I had a big stainless-steel sieve that was perfect. Hang it somewhere warm and dry, like under a verandah in the sun. Just tuck it to bed each night so the wintery dew doesn’t form on the surface. I brought mine inside each night.
Each day, shake the bag. You might want to put some sort of vessel underneath the experiment because it yields lots of black muck that stains like all get out. I had about a litre each day – you know that it’s working. This is all the bitterness that the salt extracts via osmosis. I think most recipes fail because the olives sit in this muck, and unless you change the salt solution each day, you’ll see that it’s not a good thing.
After two weeks of this daily ritual you can start tasting the olives. They will vary, but once you get three in a row being ready and palatable, you can go on to the next step, which is flavouring them and preserving.
Wash the salt off – not too diligently. Because you have used a good salt, it’s needed anyway. Dry them off again – a hairdryer works well here. Roll them in a small amount of good olive oil to just coat, and add any flavorings you like – dried chillies is all we used this year.
To preserve, fill sterilised jars, seal and heat in a hot oven for 10 minutes and cool completely. Store in the fridge or if you have a vacuum sealer, just pack them into serving sizes and seal under full vacuum. Since having access to one of these brilliant devices, my fridge looks like the that of a spaceship on the way to Pluto – everything snuggly packed into these uniform dense plastic bags.
Nice, these olives. I have to say, they’re the best I’ve made. They end up with this lovely sweetness about them. They’re firm, dense and pack some heat from the chilli. Just serve as is. They’re quite moreish and good beer food, or they make a great tapenade with the addition of a couple of good anchovies, capers and garlic, all ground together quite coarsely.
One fish that speaks olive is the scorpion fish or red rock cod – great big-headed things that turn up in mixed bins every now and then. I’d generally make them into a traditional southern French soup, laced with pastis and tomato. But they work well just pan-fried and served with a little tapenade on the side, some grilled, peeled and dressed capsicum.
Canberra Times June 30, 2010
God’s gift, alpacas and Bugiali
I have this hope that everyone around town who gets into food will today – and every year around this time – open their fridge and be greeted by the all-pervading aroma of truffle. Deep breath. It’s intoxicating, persistent, evocative. You can smell the sweet, earthy aroma and imagine the soil in a leafy oak forest on a cold, clear winter’s day being carefully scraped away.
Hold your nose close to the ground, the smell of gravelly soils gives way to
this intense mushroom, meaty, slight petroleum smell, there’s one here. Then the tuber is revealed. Careful excavation will remove the soil around it and then you just pick it up, a gift from the gods that looks to the untrained eye for all the world like a buried cow poo.
Like anyone who has some land and a passion for this kind of thing, I renew my plans this year to have my own truffiere for personal use. Sure, there’s a good market in selling these, but I really can’t imagine, having grown one, that you could part with it.
The ground is ready. I ejected stock and chipped out broadleaf weeds last year and applied the first application of lime. I think it’s ready for the trees, which are coming as we speak.
I’m happy now that I didn’t rush in a plant last year. There’s so much that is unknown about growing oaks or hazelnuts for truffles and there are also lots of commercial truffieres going in now with promises of wealth and prosperity that sounds vaguely familiar.
We are constantly bombarded with these investment schemes that are targeted at wrestling the profits and wealth from doctors, dentists and mining executives – well, at least until the government chose to fleece the squillions they make off our natural resources, I shed a tear.
Conflict diamonds, olives, alpacas and of course grapes are all recent, high-return, low-risk opportunities. I have never understood the alpaca – have you ever bought or been offered a jumper, or even a nice alpaca neck-chop curry at the local? But most are luxury goods that people with money to burn like to have around, so truffles are perfect. Nothing sums up you place in life like a bowl of truffles to throw at the staff.
What sort of tree to use? Hazelnuts will give you another crop (the nuts) and you’ll be able to tell the growers by their eye patches – these trees throw out suckers and water shoots around the base which require constant trimming or they’ll take out an eye. But oaks are the obvious choice. Look around the old suburbs and you’ll see dozens of species growing well in this high plateau.
You can quite simply pick up some acorns from a nice looking tree and if you can find a truffle that gone to spore, simply inoculate the germinating plant yourself, as described by Christophe Gregoire of Le Tres Bon out in Bungendore, a man who knows a bit about cooking these things too.
There’s obviously more too it, you won’t know if it worked unless you have a good microscope and a degree in microbiology to identify the spores germinating and the corresponding growth of the mycorrhizae, so you could end up with a forest of nice English oaks and die in a King Lear-like fit of torment not being able to find the truffles, blaming dogs, pigs and servants for not looking hard enough.
So it’s best to pay the money and have someone who knows their job do the inoculation. Then you get these young saplings to plant out. Compared with the other promised local money makers – grapes and olives – a truffiere offers a really pleasant harvesting environment. No mechanical harvesters or teams of unruly backpackers peeing all over the place. Just you and your dog on a walk with a little shovel to unearth these treasures. Yep, I’ve convinced myself again.
It’s also nice to see local chefs getting into some early-winter truffle action. There’s lots of degustations on offer at the moment, so choose your favourite chef and book in. It won’t be cheap – at $3000 a kilogram for top-grade tubers, its adds a hefty overhead to a pizza. After a few years of experimenting, I reckon you need 20g-30g a serve, depending on the depth of smell of the individual truffle, for the dish to give you your truffle moment. So that makes it … carry the 1 …at least $60 a serve just to cover the cost of buying it!
Generally, you’re not going to get this amount – so what you’re going to end up with is a dish enhanced by truffle but not reeking of it, which I think needs to happen to really get the juices running. It will test our local cooks to see how they express truffle in their menus. I know where I’m going.
This dish is based on a Giuliano Bugialli recipe I tried a few times a few years ago when there were no local truffles, so I used the bottled version, and the result was always disappointing. The truffles made no apparent difference to the dish other than adding a vague smell of mushrooms. Now, with a smelly fridge, I know this will work.
But there is some wet work required. First, a good chicken is hard to find. For this dish, you want a youngish free-range chook, about 1.2kg.
Legs up, like it’s doing backstroke, remove the wing tips and the first wing bone. Cut around the last joint and pry away any tendons. Do the same for the legs, with the idea that after the next step, you’re going to remove the skin in one piece – for which you’ll need to pull the leg out of the skin.
Reverse the chicken into freestyle position. Cut down the back bone and then with a sharp paring knife, cut the skin away from the flesh one section at a time, pulling the leg and wing sections out until you have the skin off in one piece.
It sounds hard but take your time and try not to break the skin. Lay the skin down, and trim it up into a rough oblong. Remove the chicken breasts from the carcass and reserve. Chop up the rest of the meat and the carcass and make into a stock with the wing tips. Reduce the stock down to half a cup of rich essence, cool.
In a food processor, add the breast meat, pork belly, salt and pepper and blend, adding enough cream to make a thick paste. Stir in the diced truffle. Lay the skin out and arrange slices of pancetta over it to cover. Arrange chicken mince along the middle. Roll one side of the skin and pancetta casing over the mince, and then the other to form a sausage about 40-50mm in diameter.
There are two ways of cooking this. I just took possession of a brilliant cryovacing machine, placed this sausage into a bag and then, under full vacuum, sealed it into a nice little pack which was cooked in a large pot of water at 65C for three hours and then chilled overnight.
Otherwise, wrap it tightly in foil and bake in a low oven 130C for one to two hours until it feels firm, then chill.
For the first method, unwrap the roll and panfry until the skin blisters somewhat. For both methods, serve at room temperature.
The sauce, salsa di tartufi, is the same as I used last year with quail. Finely grate the truffle into a bowl, season and pour over enough olive oil to cover. Marinate this for as long as you can. Rub the butter and flour together and then dissolve in the stock, add a little garlic. When quail are resting from their cooking endeavours, heat the truffled oil to sizzle, add the buttery stock and cook down over a low heat to a sauce.
Serve the terrine cold but the sauce hot. Don’t skimp on the truffle for both. Serve with nice bottle of grenache, a variety prominent in Chateauneuf du Pape, which is an appellation from a truffle growing area in southern France. You won’t find this grape grown locally, so try a sangiovese, pinot noir or tempranillo which are all truffle friendly wines.
Truffled chicken terrine with salsa di tartufo
1 chicken, 1.2kg
salt and pepper
100g pork belly, quite but not too lean
about 1/2 cup cream
10 slices pancetta stesso, that’s long slices, rather than round
50g truffle, diced
Salsa di tartufi
1 tbsp olive oil
30g truffle, shaved
1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp butter
1/4 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 cup stock, made from bone and bits of this chook
salt and pepper
Canberra Times, June 23, 2010
Keanu, Berkshire blacks & Fergus
Have you seen the movie, Julie & Julia? I guess I should, being into food and all, but I have this fear that it will do to the cooking genre what Keanu Reeves did for the wine industry in ‘A walk in the clouds’.I truly believe, and it’s a little weird and possibly unnecessary, that the global oversupply of grapes and wine is solely to do with this movie and more specifically his acting.
Anyhow, it’s a movie, I’m lead to believe, about a food blogger, Julie Powell, who cooks over a year the 500 odd recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the art of French cooking, there’s possibly some sub-plot that is resolved Hollywood style. Child is said to be the greatest influence on American cooking, not sure if she deserves or would want this mantle given the general state of American food.
For my mind Richard Olney’s simple French food is by a far more interesting and personal food than the more Classic French Haute cuisine of Child. He was possibly the first food columnists around and I’d still grab one of his books in preference to the encyclopedic Mastering the art.
So with this in mind I’m thinking of starting a similar project, something tricky, grab a well known cookbook, say Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail eating and work my way through that over a year, the finale my admittance to hospital. Not sure I’ll blog though, I missed the boat on this process, believing it to be just slightly more useful than Tweeting and Unicycle hockey.
Being committed to the task I’m in the market for a pig to raise from scratch, nothing like seeing a project all the way through. There are a few choices here. In pig breeding the exotically named ‘Large White’ is by far the most dominant with the Landrace up there as well. The common theme here is large carcasses and snowy white/pink skin. The pork equivalent of white trash. Just about every morsel of pig you’d eat would come from these breeds.
What I’m interested in is an heirloom breed, like tomatoes, these never look as good. Breeds like Berkshire and Wessex Saddleback’s are superior in taste but they just don’t grow these humongous hams for Christmas and, both being blackish, the general public might balk at getting a few pubesc hairs on their chops.
So I’ve found a supplier of a Berkshire and the project shall commence in 6 – 9 months when he or she is of size, I’ll keep you posted look to my blog http://Ihaventthef-ingingtimeforthis.com
Another decision is from which end to start, Henderson’s crispy pig tails is a cracker but we might head to the other end for a preview of what’s possibly to come.
This recipe comes from his second book ‘Beyond nose to tail’, which delves, thankfully, into some more pig cookery plus many other animals and vegetables cooked in a British fashion along with a cracker of a dessert and bread section from his most excellently named pastry chef, Justin Piers Gellatly.
Seeing as I have a head on hand so to speak, the pot roast half pigs head is my starting point. This head comes from a fairly young animal, a ‘Large white’ breed. The rest of the animal would have weighed about 40kg and was last seen spinning idly over embers next to a case of iced Cooper’s, the head saved and halved for my lonely, late night pursuits.
In a sturdy pot, sauté the onion and garlic in fat until soft, add pig cut side down, deglaze with brandy, ignite if you feel comfortable, add wine reduce by 1/3rd, add herbs and enough stock to not quite cover head. Fergus will suggest an alligator in a swamp look. Season, cover and very gently simmer for 3 hours. Baste as you go, uncover and remove ear treatment in last hour to crispen. Once the pig is tender, remove and stir in watercress, let it wilt some, add mustard and check seasoning.
Serve up as is with a robust white wine, something with extract and power, slightly rustic, this is not for a pretty boy modern Chardonnay. Spain’s Albarino, a Vermintino from Italy or a Rhone variety like Viognier or Marsanne.
Pot roast half pig’s head
Duck or goose fat (Yeh!)
8 Eshalots, chopped
8 Cloves garlic, chopped
½ cup brandy
½ bottle white wine
Half a pig’s head, shaved with ears covered tightly with foil
Chicken stock
Bundle of herbs: Thyme, parsley and rosemary
Dijon mustard
Big bunch watercress
Salt and pepper
Canberra Times, November 2009
Balls of steel, 150kg Spiderman & Madrid
Today we hit the road to Madrid, it’s a fairly long drive and still suffering the effects of a big meal at Can Roca I can’t say I’m looking forward to it but we have to charge on as they do here at 140km plus, luckily it’s all autopista so no turning and we should be in the capital, some 600km’s away, by dinner time.
As we approach the plateau that rises up to Madrid you start to see lots large metal bulls on the stark hills, they stand about 4 meters tall, in a fairly aggressive stance, hooves wide, head up, metal testicles prominent. I take it that these are all a significant sign to all the male Spaniards; stand tall, take no crap, balls of steel.
Our GPS, that the kids for reasons unknown have named Teri, has had a good day, no wrong turns (There haven’t been any turns) and no “Calculating route, when safe, do an authorized u-turn” which she says, in a fairly calm English voice, when remotely confused. I’ve tried to find a way of changing the voice, I’d act faster if she just said “Oi, chuck a youee”
I have to admit that having two female voices now telling me what to do and where to go is a tad disconcerting; who do I listen to, who’s more likely to get us lost and what sort of a man gets directions from two sheila’s anyway? I glance furtively at the next steel bull for inspiration and courage. It gets way more tense within Madrid, where we seem to be going round in circles, being told to turn backwards down the freeway. I think quietly to myself “Which one is going to be easier to throw out the window?” After all our insurance doesn’t cover the GPS, where as…
My thoughts are interrupted by us finally, after two hours it seems, finding the Plaza Mayor where we are spending the night in, as it turns out, in a lovely modern apartment which overlooks this huge square where victorious armies have gathered to celebrate another outpost cured of non-Christianity.
It’s an impressive square that seems to be filled with many B-grade street performers. The 150kg spiderman and 3 foot Darth Vader both, whilst being distinctly humorous, are neither really trying that hard for their cash.
It’s getting late, one of the problems of a short stay here is that it hard to realign with Spain’s eating habits, decent places to eat won’t open till 9.00pm. So the boys tend to just get fed before they fall asleep on our laps. Like everywhere you need to get away from the tourist area to really see Spain’s food, here we were directed to two short streets not too far away where locals eat. If you passed here earlier you’d think it was closed for the day, now, at 10pm it starting rev up and most places are full to over flowing, a terrific feeling of life permeates the streets, no problem getting a feed here.
The next morning, late, we come across another little market just outside the walls of Plaza mayor, this is more like a food court, to put it in terms we in Canberra can understand. But there’s no Ali Baba, no Macca’s, no Sizzle bento just full of real food that had me wandering around in a slight daze again. One place was selling just oysters, 6 different types, including these huge, Pacific like that sold for 3 euros each, and just next door, if you were wandering, is a bar, a Cava and Champagne bar, with a dozen bottles open for you to knock back with these lovely shells. My 6 year old found me in a state there and helped me back to the family “It’s OK dad, you’ll come back here one day” My biggest problem with this sort of travel is seeing how other live and wish somehow we were more like this with our food culture.
Obviously tapas feature in most bars, lunch and dinner, and for the most part they consist of a range of common dishes that you pick and choose from at the bar. Olives, calamares, tortilla, jamon, it’s everywhere, you end up dreaming of it. I found the best to be Jabuga made from very fat black pigs. It has this soft texture and the prominent fat dissolves on a warm tongue. Then there’s the croquetas, crispy little balls filled with creamy mash and, my favourite, salt cod: Bacalao.
So here’s my impression of how to make these
Soak the salt cod in water for 24 hours, changing the water three times, rinse and then cover with milk and cook, with thyme and bay leaves, very gently, don’t boil, for 12 minutes. Cool a little and then shred the flesh removing bones and skin. Use the same milk and poach the potatoes until soft, remove and mash with a little poaching stock, sieve to a smooth, thick mash. Melt butter and add flour stir and cook until you get a sandy roux. Add one cup of poaching milk, if it’s too salty shandy with fresh milk. Cook this on a low heat for 15 minutes, add more milk if it starts to get prematurely thick, in the end you should have half a cup of very thick béchamel. Mix everything together, add garlic and parsley along with capers and pepper. Once chilled, it should be very thick and you can roll heaped tablespoon into elongated balls, dust in breadcrumbs and fry in oil until crisp. Serve with lemon wedges and a nice dry Spanish white like the unpronounceable Xarel- lo, which is one of the main varieties in Cava.
Bacaloa croquetas
500g salt cod
2 cups milk
2 sprigs thyme plus one fresh bay leaf
500g potatoes, peeled and chopped
50g buter
50g flour,plain
Parsley, chopped fine
2 cloves garic, pureed
Pepper (no salt!)
Breadcrumbs, fresh or Panko
Olive oil for frying
January 2010
Truffles, clarines & frosty toes
As a precaution and litmus test of the temperature today, I’ve left the window wide open and my tootsies hanging out of the doona. It’s pre-dawn and judging by the colour of the toes, it’s cold. My eyes pop open. Yippee, a frost. I leap out of bed and check the weather station – minus 1.6C. Yep, it’s cold and will soon get even frostier as the cold air above is pulled down to ground level via inversion currents as the red sun rises over Rosehill.
I’m not normally this taken by morning temperatures. In fact, I live half the year in fear of frosts with acres of grapes, but today in early winter there’s nothing more important to the day’s activities than a season of deep, penetrating frosts. We’re off a-truffling down Braidwood way.
People that get into these subterranean orbs of joy don’t really know exactly why they produce this fruiting body. It’s linked to soil pH, friability, drainage and structure, and of course to the host plant whose root system these fungus cling to. But what is generally agreed upon is that you need a good series of deep frosts for the truffle to bloom and ripen at the right time to produce big, stinky black fruit.
This year, we’ve had a good amount of frosty mornings, and thus I am happy that today it’s a frosty brass-monkey morning that will evolve to a brilliant winter’s day for our hunt at the farm of Peter and Kate Marshall.
The trip out of Braidwood is a roundabout affair. This could be something to do with our hosts’ other business interests, which involve a couple of field cannons and factory full of military clothing. Being an avid reader of mystery novels, my senses are on high alert. Is there something else going on here? Will I finally get to have my Jason Bourne moment that I still believe my life is leading to?
Alas, no. Besides having to scratch our heads at why a group of tree fellers manages to get its truck so bogged in an area where a truck has no business being, the day unfolds without the need for me to revert to my alter ego and save the fair maiden from a devilish plot.
After a nice lunch and briefing, we head to the truffiere, a mixture of hazelnuts and oaks, all quite young, but already having proven themselves with a couple of neat orbs last year. The dog, Sal, doesn’t waste too much time and unearths a monster 365g black truffle in minutes. Being pretty well dumfounded that it was so easy, I reflect on my choice of dogs for my own much awaited truffle experiment. Will Pooka, a wide-eyed, can’t-focus bundle of hair, be able to so willingly and precisely find one of these in future years?
All Sal needs is a pat on the head and some attention, and in an hour she finds a crop with a potential street value of $2000! As opposed to the money sink our spoodle has become, requiring a weekly visit to the vet to remove half a cup of grass seeds from the ears and falling victim to the local animal coppers’ ongoing revenue raising round of Murrumbateman.
So at the end of a very nice day, a huge hunk of this first truffle sits before me back at home. What to do? The aroma has been tormenting me all the way back – even though it’s wrapped in a bag, the sweet, earthy, sulphidey aroma permeates the cruiser. The kids, when I pick them up, wonder what I’ve been up to.
While I’m thinking, I lightly toast some Silo bread, add lashings of butter and 30g of shaved truffle. This gives me a clue – keep it simple. This is really good toast and I wonder whether you can overdose on tuber melanosporum.
A while back, I was out at the refurbished Fyshwick markets. While I was snapping up a nice bit of cheese for the night at the Mart Deli, the owner, a Frenchman, gave me a nice bit of advice. The wooden box of Fromager des Clarines, a slightly ripe mountain cheese from Haute-Savoie, is perfect for heating up. So that night I warmed it on the barbecue with half a glass of white wine poured over it. The cheese expanded slightly as it warmed, and served with good bread it was a beautiful fondue of sorts with a slight mushroomy character already. At that point, I thought, if a truffle comes my way this year, and it has, I would re-create this fondue with thin shards of fresh truffle wedged into the cheese before heating.
So tonight, having no idea how much truffle to use, I aim at about 50g. On to the barbecue with a splash of marsanne, which I think is the perfect savoury cheese wine.
Simply served with a salad of super-fresh celery, crispy green apple and chopped hazelnuts, this is an early winter meal I can happily call brilliant. The aroma of truffle is intensified enough so as not to be intoxicating, the salad refreshes the palate, and all is well with the world.
Truffled Clarines fondue with apple and celery salad
1 box of fresh fromager des Clarines
50g shaved black truffle
2 stalks celery
half a granny smith apple
handful toasted hazelnuts
white wine
Canberra Times, June 16 2010
A new hope, being prepared & Chocolate
There have been rumours of its existence flitting around for a while now, like a distant hope. But can we truly believe it’s true, or is it just wishful, crazy thinking? But now, deep in the heart of Germany, paradoxically, scientific research has been unmasked and years of painstaking trials have us at the brink of possibly the most important discovery since Velcro.
Nobel prizes will be suggested, parades and at the very least these scientists, these men of vision, will never have to buy themselves a stein at the local bierhalle again. For they are finally unmasking the holy grail – well, at least that’s how Channel Nine’s Today show sees it: female Viagra. But it’s not all beer and skittles. Apparently, there are a few side effects – like drowsiness and headaches.
Hang on. Drowsiness and headaches? Maybe these scientists were flying too close to the flame, but it would seem that if you just cure these two afflictions, you wouldn’t need female Viagra in the first place.
One thing that is known for sure: guys and gals go about things in a different way.
Just look at the morning sluice – an observer from distant stars would think we were different species. One spends half an hour before the event setting out clothes, a trail of cosmetics, lotions and potions that are used in a clear and unfathomable order, and then as they emerge, all these fluffy towels set out in various positions for use, the entire process taking half the morning and having a carbon footprint the size of Western Australia.
On the other hand, in a last-minute frenzy “Oh heck, it’s that day again”, the male of the species ducks in for a quick scratch, having no cleansing products in sight, then wanders around dripping wet trying to find the towel and clothing for the day, which are in the same heap.
What we men need to do is convey a sense that we have gone to some trouble and thought, and nothing will show your tender, orderly side more than making the one you love a nice chocolate dessert. It’s well known that this bean can release a whole range of endorphin-fed emotions.
Back in the late 1980s in Melbourne, a well-known restaurateur, Greg Brown, turned away from his restaurant and went into baking: breads, pastries, cakes and desserts.
One dessert that has always stayed in my mind is his double-baked chocolate mousse cake. The base is like a mud cake and on top is a light mousse. It sits somewhere between a pie and a cake and has a pleasing mixture of the dense, rich and buttery with light-as-a-feather mousse. It’s not hard to make.
The main ingredient, chocolate, is the highlight, so look for a good producer at around 70 per cent cocoa for the dark chocolate. Start early as there is some setting time. This is a 2010 version and it’s a fragile thing, much like my topic today, use a hot knife to turn out and slice. If you want to raise your chances even more, serve with a luscious old muscat from Rutherglen.
Bitter chocolate mousse cake pie tart
For the base
100g dark chocolate 70% cocoa
100g Butter
4 eggs plus and extra 2 yolks
20g corn flour
20g plain flour
120g castor sugar
For bitter chocolate mousse
200g dark chocolate (a mixture of 70% and 85% cocoa if you can find it)
300ml double cream (45% fat, no thickening agent)
100ml milk
80g castor sugar
2 sheets of gelatin
For the base, have a 20cm spring-form tin, buttered and lined with silicon paper and buttered again, dust with sieved cocoa. Over hot water melt the chocolate and add butter, once melted stir and keep warmish. Beat the eggs until very creamy and foamy like you would a sponge batter, so over hot water to start with and then continue until its cold, set aside 10-15 minutes for this. Fold into this the sugar and flours, then fold this gently into chocolate/butter mixture. Turn out into the prepared tin and bake at 180C for about 15-20 minutes. The batter will set but still be slightly wobbly in centre. Leave in tin and cool completely.
For the filling, roughly chop chocolate and place in a heat proof bowl. Soak the gelatin in cold milk until soft, meanwhile bring the milk and cream to the boil, off heat stir in gelatin, squeezing out the milk first, stir gently until it dissolves. Pour this over chocolate, stirring to melt adding sugar. Strain this and let it cool to room temperature and whilst still liquid, pour over cooled base and chill in fridge for a few hours or overnight.
Canberra Times, June 9, 2010
The hunter within, Jicama & rooster beak’s
Some food for thought. In a recent survey by AusVeg, a vegetable industry body, on their website, stating that only 65% of households in NSW and ACT purchase vegetables regularly (www.ausveg.com.au)
Think about that, if this is correct, and because its a website it must be, 45% of the people living in our fair state/territory do not buy vegetables and presumably fruit each week. I do find this hard to believe yet strangely feel partly responsible. It might not seem on the surface that I go into bat for veggies enough, dwelling more on the possibilities of the hoofed and horned, winged and finned inhabitants.
Why is this so? To paraphrase my favourite television scientist, being a bloke I guess there’s this need to express the hunter within, afterall we have now been scientifically linked to Neanderthal man, if, dear reader, you believe that I’ve put my life slightly on the line to bring you yet another personal culinary victory then my job is done.
There are however a good list of vegetables that are manly, or at least more likely to get our attention if we are let loose in the supermarket. The same report states that men are more likely, 4 times more likely, to purchase chilies and other such seasonings that carry a certain amount of danger in their use, like they fight back.
Maybe this is why I currently have them all manner of these firey vegetables piled up around the house, drying on the front verandah in the crisp late autumn sun. These have all be grown out here but still there must be something to this report seeing as there does seem to be a lot of them, far more than just one man could use, from the long moderately hot cayenne, the plump jalapeño, little scorchers like Serrano and habanero, they’re everywhere even in the car so we need some recipes to use these icons of manliness.
Obviously Mexico is a good place to start, they sort of invented them and tend to use the entire repertoire in their various salsa, moles, soups and starters. So here’s a little recipe adapted from a pretty good cookbook on Mexican food: iViva la Revolucion! by Fiona Dunlop, more a gathering of well known modern Mexican chefs recipes and this dish is vegetarian to boot.
First make the sauce, peel and cut the segments of two oranges, adding any juice collected, then peel and finely slice the jicama, mix through the onion, lime juice, tomato and chili, taste and now add some salt to your liking.
For the filing heat a little oil in a large pan, lightly fry the onion, garlic and sliced green chili. To this mix in and cook the spinach for a minute or two, cover and let this continue to wilt. Off the heat stir in ricotta and coriander. Set over a bowl in a strainer and let any juice run off.
To serve: heat the tortilla’s in a dry pan or BBQ, add a few tablespoons of the mixture and roll up, continue until they are all done and serve with salsa which goes by the name ‘pico de gallo’ or roosters beak. Chill out with a pitcher of margarita.
Spinach and ricotta tacos
Olive oil
1 large brown onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 long green chili, seared in a dry pan first, then seeded and chopped
2 bunches of spinach, leaves only removed from stems
125g ricotta
1 bunch coriander, leaves chopped
Salt
Salsa
2 oranges
1 jicama, might also be called Cayote, or is that a dog?
2 limes, juiced
1 small red onion, diced
3 small red chilies, Serrano or ½ a habanero
3 tbsp olive oil
salt
Canberra Times June 6, 2010
Papaya, Thai food & one expensive belly
Here we are again, a new year, time to lay down the plans for 2010, and as usual I find myself back renewing my close to unused gym membership. The tanned gal seems amused that I have been a member for so long with seemingly no change in my physical appearance “Oh-kay, it’s your money, tubby”. I assert that it’s quite a difficult game, keeping even on par for my particular course in life.
Resolutions, I have many, most are conveniently carried over, un-fulfilled from previous years, like using the gym more. Reign in household spending, after yet another year of spending more than we make. Though this has been put somewhat into perspective after reading about the $32 million, bankrupt squillionaire Matthew Perrin’s wife, apparently spent just before the company collapsed. Now that’s a spending spree “I don’t know judge, what can I say, women?”
Adjusting the pork intake another, I know, I’m with you, how can you have too much of this, it’s like saying I’ll cut back on air this year so important to the diet is this mystical creature. However, it has to be said, my struggles with balance in the physical department can be attributed to this large section of my dietary pyramid, which tends to look more like a rhombus. I’m a pork fat skeptic much like Abbot is a climate skeptic, who are these scientists anyway and what possible use would an ETS be to both of us, hey Tony?
Eat more seafood, each week I visit my favourite fish monger at the Belconnen markets, I don’t even know the name only that it’s head and shoulders above anything else locally with the brilliant choice of un-processed foods of the sea. It all look real here, like it was recently was caught rather than being thawed out and not resembling an actual life form.
So with these thoughts in mind we’re eating a lot more seafood and I’m even resisting the temptation to cook in pork fat and/or add some crispy pig’s ear to the dish. Over Christmas we enjoyed many dishes but this salad and ocean trout combination summed up good healthy non-pork eating. Both are based on the Thai foods of David Thompson and Martin Boetz
Firstly the salad, another shop I head to often is The Hub for all things Asian, they have all those weird leafy things and, more often than not, green pawpaw. Peel this and finely grate the flesh, I use a little scraper that makes cute little spaghetti like curls. Mix with this half a bag of bean sprouts, removing the tread and seed first. Mix this with grated radish, eggplant and a ½ bunch of coriander and a few sprigs of mint, if you like peanuts, add some that have been freshly roasted.
For the sauce, grab your mortar and pestle, pound one fresh red chilli (or two), a couple cloves garlic with the sugar and salt, once pasty, add the soaked dried prawns, pound again. Now add and smash the snake bean and diced tomato. Stir in tamarind, lime juice and fish sauce, and then mix this through the salad.
Onto the fish, make the sauce first. In an un-oiled pan cook two shallots and two dried red chilies until charred and smoking slightly, peel the eschalots and deseed the chili, grind to a paste, stir in lime juice, palm sugar and fish sauce.
To cook the fish, heat a lightly oiled non-stick pan until it smoking hot, add fish flesh side down, cook for two minutes, turn over so skin side cooks, again two minutes should get you to medium rare. Remove from pan, gently peel off the skin and return it to the pan to crisp up, chop the fish into bite size pieces and shred the skin.
Toss through the herb mixture, drizzle with sauce and serve with dressed papaya salad. This is a perfect summer dish, tangy, with enough heat to require something grapey and cold. My new favourite wine is a Falanghina from the little known region on the Italian Adriatic coast, Molise. This variety has an amazing purity of flavour; mandarin, white nectarine with a smidgen of blossom and wash of sweetness. Di Majo Norante is the maker, get into it, demand it from you local grog shop or go somewhere else.
Green papaya salad
1 green papaya (pawpaw)
1 bag fresh bean sprouts, prepared as above
1-2 radish
2 Thai eggplant, sliced
1 bunch coriander, roughly chopped (use half for this, rest for fish) plus a handful mint, torn
Sauce
2 red chilli, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbl palm sugar
1 tspn salt
6 large dried prawns, soaked for 30 minutes
1 snake bean, optional
1 small tomato, seeded
30ml fish sauce
30ml tamarind water (soak 2 tbl tamarind in hot water, drain)
30ml lime juice
Seared ocean trout with roasted shallot dressing
2 Ocean trout tails (about 200g each)
Herb salad
1 green onion, chopped
½ bunch coriander
4 Kaffir lime leaves, sliced finely
10 Thai basil leaves, torn
Sauce
2 large eschalots
2 dried chilies
1 tbl palm sugar
50ml lime juice
30ml fish sauce
Hedgehogs, taxi drivers & razor clams
The first point of difference you note after arrival at El Prat airport in Spain and careering down the A7, is the taxi drivers. Back in London its all “Top of the mornin’ ta ya, guvna” Here it’s like your featuring in a Euro police drama, the leather jacketed drivers look the part, cool, laid back as they tear along at 140k’s and quickly eject us at Las Ramblas before they’re off on another mission.
This well know area connects the city with the Mediterranean foreshore here in Barcelona, or as they say it here, Barthelona. Along the long avenue are many street performers all attempting, with varying success, being a statue and many vendors selling all manner of wildlife. Chooks, ducks, rodents of all description – hedgehogs, now that’s weird, are they not protected and, more worrying, are they for sale as food or company – they even have budgies for sale, a long way from home as we are.
Las Ramblas’ real attraction is down the many small cobblestoned alleys that radiant the length of the street. These lanes are filled with some of the most interesting, none-mall, like shops and despite their narrowness you have to be on alert and ready to dash into a shop or doorway as another van comes screaming down with Antonio Banderas at the wheel. The lanes go on and on you can literally get lost in them and its here you need to look for food, not on Las Ramblas itself which will have a Indian out front trying to get you to come in for dinner or possibly a suit fitting.
Our first night we find a neat little place serving cheap regional food. Over rice, jamon and asparagus we enjoy a tasty bottle of verdejo, this is like sauvignon blanc only nice. Unlike most Spanish whites this has been barrel fermented so it has complex savory notes, very similar to Bordeaux whites.
Halfway along Las Ramblas is the mercat de la Boqueria, a stunning produce market, the like of I’ve not seen, quite compact but so full of great food. Again I have a little sniffle, why can I not live near something like this, all that’s needed is a Falcon stove and you’d not need to eat out again.
The fresh vegetable section is very colourful, everything is here including the seasonal broadbeans that each stall holder sits around shelling, wild mushrooms everywhere. The delis are overflowing with Jamon, as expected, but good ham, soft and fatty. You can also choose form half a dozen snails looking mostly like humbugs in a sweet shop. Game, poultry, seafood absolutely overflowing and stunning in their respective range and quality. A must if you’re travelling through, you can’t miss it, the first shop is piled high with the smiling faces of two dozen suckling pigs that are all gone but lunchtime.
We head to La Barcalonata for dinner next, this is the old fishing village not far from our apartment, grungier, little bars and restaurant greet you here, nothing fancy, the sort of place Jason Borne would have frequented in his endless search for self. We find a worthy destination, no tourist propaganda or sub-continental hawker, small and dark. Back at the markets one of the intriguing shellfish I noted was razor clams. Tubal, about 15cm long, weird they look more like hardware than food. Tonight a dozen of the delectable molluscs came grilled and flavored with oil, garlic and lemon. The calm opens under heat and reveals a long fleshy filling that resemble an alien, quite chewy but packed with flavour.
This is a terrific regional Catalan dish, simple and full throttle flavour, we helped its endeavours by washing it down with a bottle of the most excellent Zarate Albarino, lovely wine, carrying a lot of mineral characters similar to good Riesling.
This town really knows how to eat, my main problem is being extracted to places unknown, I could happily live a simple life here.
Maze, Calasparra and the Dragons
The local barter system here in Murrumbateman is alive and well, there’s something wholesome and right about trading food and services like this, not only do you get what is in season and local but you also get to meet a lot of interesting characters rather than a spotty 16 year old at the supermarket. Just about everyone I know out here grows or can do things that are can be traded.
Like this week, I rang the guy who’s sheep keep my paddocks in order “Oh, Hey, Laurie I need some lamb, the freezer is getting empty…and that plump cross bred that keeps eating my broccoli, he’ll do” or the 2009 olive oil is about to run out “Oh, Hey, Ernie, when’s this year oil going to be ready and have you got any more geese, ones that can’t fly?”
You get the picture, now I’ve got this hankering for some pumpkin and I know Jeff has a pile on his front doorstep “Oh, hey, Jeff, do you think the Dragons are going to choke again this year…. and Jamie Soward, what’s that all about?” Whilst he is off to let the dog pack out I’m charging down the driveway with Queensland Blue under the arm.
So I’ve a fridge full of pumpkin and still slightly out for breath from the flight, you don’t want Jeff to catch you. However, the pumpkin that I wanted to discuss isn’t really a pumpkin per se, the butternut squash.
These are distinguishable but their sweeter flavour that intensifies greatly with cooking, I happened upon a new release cookbook called Maze by Jason Atherton (Quadrile publishing) and dismissed it, mainly because of the link to Gordon Ramsey, I don’t mind him too much but it’s all a bit overdone, I think I saw a book the other day written by his dog and he has just opened a version of Maze in Victoria with James Packer, what an attractive couple they make. So it wasn’t till I had time to read through and noted that the style and recipes are more to do with Jason Atherton, a well talented British chef. The book focuses on a short list of ingredients that he is fond of and it’s pretty good, all these small degustation type arrangements that has made Maze famous.
This is inspired by his recipe for butternut risotto. Firstly we need to make the squash/pumpkin puree, cook large cubes of this in lots of butter over a low heat until its soft then puree, season, mash into this the feta, set aside. At this point the Maze recipe adds vanilla which I’d try but haven’t found a local grower.
Now the risotto base, a little while ago I was lucky enough to meet Alessandro Pavoni, then a Hyatt chef who came to town to cook for an event, by now he may have his own place in North Sydney, he demonstrated his art of cooking risotto which I have adopted now, the best rice is Acquerello, a carnaroli variety from Vercelli which is aged for up to 3 years before being packed, this changes the solubility of the starch thus making for a super creamy risotto, use any Italian rice but this is pretty good and worth the search.
Sauté the rice and onion over a low heat with the olive oil, once nicely aromatic add the wine, this should be hot already so as to not shock the rice granules, now add 3/4’s of the stock, add a spoonful of the puree, which introduces the flavours, lower the heat and leave alone just shaking the pan every now and then. Once this is absorbed add the rest of the stock and rather than stir, simply flip the rice like your panning for gold with the idea of having a loose look to the final product. Off the heat add the puree, extra butter and parmesan, on the plate, top with chopped toasted hazelnuts and another scrap of parmesan.
As usual I’ll always put some part of the pig into a dish, my only reservation being corn flakes, garnish with a few crispy prosciutto slices but not if you use vanilla.
This is an extremely beautiful dish, the glistening yellow rice, a nutty flavour running through; I’d almost go vegetarian if this was what could be accomplished daily.
Pumpkin and hazelnut risotto with Persian feta
½ butternut pumpkin, peeled and cubed (1 cup of puree required)
100g good butter, reserve half for finished dish
salt and pepper
½ cup Persian feta or creamy goats cheese
1 vanilla pod, optional
3 tbsp good olive oil
1 red onion, diced
1 cup good Carnaroli rice
2.5 cups stock, chicken or vegetable
¼ cup grated parmesan
15 hazelnut, toasted and peeled
4 slices of prosciutto, crispy fried, optional
Orthopeadic sandles, Antinori and almonds
I’d have a defined spring in my step if that was possible, it’s not every day you get an invite to taste some of Italy’s greatest wines, and, to boot, have Pat and the team at Italian and Sons kill a pig to celebrate the occasion.
Unfortunately I’m carrying a sporting injury, Rugby actually, foot to be specific, yep I know what you’re thinking, how does a bloke of his age and diet maintain the physique to play an elite sport like this? Well, read on.
Like most sportsman in thus impaired I have to head off to a specialised sports medico to get me back in shape for the next game. By all the ‘thank you notes’ and photos all over his wall, this guy does see the best, some Brumbies it seems, so he knows his way around a player, I know I’m in good hands. He sits in front of me after analyzing my ailment and I think I catch a slight smirk in his fairly serious demeanor. “So, let’s go over this again, you were chasing your opponent and managed to kick the back of his foot?” “Ahh, yep” “And you felt immediate pain?” “Sure, I haven’t been through child birth but I now know what it must be like”, “And” He continues, poker faced “you’re opponent was your 10 year old son??” “Well he’s almost 11, and he pays fullback for the Radford under 12’s”.
I’ve managed to break, it turns out, what must be the smallest bone in the body and my entire life has been turned around so today I’m putting this behind me and going to have a nice Italian lunch and hope no one sees my weird flipper like shoe that I have to wear for 3 weeks.
Jacopo Pandolfini is a pretty good looking and passionate young man, he has that swagger that only Italians have and is the regional export manager for Marchesi Antinori. I’ll leave it to greater minds to describe the wines he brought along for the lunch, my main comment would be that these Tuscan greats have a savoury quality we don’t really see in Aussie wines, you have to get a palate for them but once there they are incomparable and the greatest food wines around.
The long lunch that Italian and Sons delivered was impressive for its simplicity, each dish so well defined and beautiful. To finish off we had a real treat a glass of Antinori’s famous and rare Vin Santo, a super sweet, raisined wine aged for generations in tiny barrels, served only a very special occasions. Along with this a selection of Jacks, as we Aussies ended up calling him, family’s biscotti. This is the perfect food to go with a wine like this, the almond flavour common to both and, given the lead by our host, you just dunk the bikkies in the wine, like Tim Tams in milk only a bit more continental.
Biscotti are not hard to make, once you have a recipe, the quality of the base ingredients very important ie the nuts and chocolate. They require two cooking periods, one to set the dough and then the important low heat to dry out the biscotti. Buying good almonds sets the scene, bring a pot of water to the boil, add almonds cook briefly until the skins slip off with ease, do this in small batches so you don’t actually cook the almonds. Arrange on a buttered baking tray and roast in a hot oven until just starting to colour, cool. Blend 1/3rd of this to a meal-like finish, the rest just coarsely chop. Mix this with the flour and sugar and slowly add the well beaten eggs, form all this together and roll in chopped chocolate to evenly distribute.
Knead lightly until you have firm dough, break into four pieces, roll them out like long cigars, with a good space between each, each about 2 cm in diameter, brush with egg white and bake at 170C for twenty minutes, remove and let them cool slightly whilst the ovens temperature come sown to 130C. Slice the rolls on the 45 degree diagonal to make the familiar biscotti shape, lay flat on baking tray and return to oven to slowly dry out, might take a while, the biscotti should be firm but not brittle. Let them cool completely and store in air tight containers.
You might have trouble finding and possibly paying for good Vin Santo here, any dessert style wine will suffice, locally Jeir Creek’s Botrytis Semillon sets the standard in late harvest styles.
Almond and chocolate biscotti
110g un-blanched almonds
2 ½ cups self-raising flour
¾ cup castor sugar
3 eggs (save one white for wash)
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa) chopped
pinch salt
Stargazers, Curly and curry
I’m in this zone lately where I cannot get enough fish, bizarre I know yet I find myself wandering around the fishmonger more than ever. Maybe it because there has been so many interesting species of aquatic life around at this time of year in relation to their terrestrial cousins.
I’m in a little strife with the various local vegetarian groups so no live fish this week, what were we thinking? Exposing food as a previously live form and documenting the killing process is not everyone’s cup of tea but, unfortunately at some stage between paddock or pond the live organism does have to die if we are to eat them. Quickly on the chopping board or somewhat more drawn out gasping for air in a net with thousands of others, I know which way I’d prefer to go. Sure some people would rather we didn’t even eat meat but we do, is there an uprising when a lion brings down an antelope on the Serengeti? I mean what’s the difference, they eat meat we eat meat. I look forward to any comment.
So back to the fish market. One fish we don’t see often and then generally in the big buckets of mixed fish is the Monkfish. I love this fish, it’s got a texture more like crayfish, that waxy, firmness so it can handle more slow long cooking methods. If you’ve not seen them before, they are basically a mouth, heaps of teeth and not much else. I first heard of these down in Tasmania where there are called stargazers. Vicious buggers they can be, my man Curly, one of the very many odd job guys we had at the hotel, named thus because of his lack of hair was a navy diver and still did quite a bit locally, in particular finding abalone. He has the distinction of the only person I know that has pocked a 20 foot Great white shark in the eye to discourage it from basically eating him, so his no push over. Ask him about stargazers and his mood will noticeably darken and he’ll pull up his shirt to show you a scar about the size of a drinks coaster, apparently one of these fish took a bite out of him through a winter wetsuit.
So on this day, Fish Co down under, my favourite fish seller, has enough to put together a display of their gleaming fillets. So I’m in and now thinking of what to do with them. A good old Thai curry comes to mind so I head to The Hub to stock up on all the required herbs, spices and the like.
Making a red curry base is worth the effort, anything out of a jar will never truly show the exotic fragrance you get when making from scratch but it will take time. Have all the ingredients prepared and arranged in the same order listed. If you’re going to use a blender just whack it all in and blitz away, works fine though you do get a better result in the mortar and pestle. These are getting pretty big now, I saw one the other day that you could skateboard in. Add one ingredient at a time and grind it to a puree, adding a little salt and prepared spices as you go. Once the paste is ready it needs to be cooked a bit to release the aromas and flavours. I think there are only two different fats/oils to use for Thai curries. One, the natural coconut oil present and hidden within every can of coconut cream or porkfat, you chose neither are particularly good for you but gosh, darn don’t they taste good.
Heat the coconut cream over a super high heat, it will eventually split and release the high percentage of oil. If the liquid starts to burn add a little hot water and continue. Once you have a sizable puddle of fat, add the paste and cook at a high sizzle until its nice and fragrant this will take about 10 minutes but don’t leave it. Now add the fish sauce and palm sugar, the gravy will darken and start to brood much like a vegetarian at a kangaroo cull. Add the rest of the coconut cream/milk, add now you can start cooking the fish, slip the chunky pieces in along with any sundry vegetables at hand, snake beans work well, those little green eggplants too. Cook this until fish is tender over a very low heat, taste, it should be amply salty, spicy, sweet and now just needs some acid in the form of the prepared tamarind water, add enough to give the curry a tang. Serve with a good handful of chopped Thai basil, off to the side extra chopped fresh chili and peanuts.
All good, a lovely fish given an appropriate send off.
Stargazers curry.
4 plump fillets of monkfish, cut into large chunks. Soak in a bowl of salty water for an hour and rinsed.
One bundle of snakebeans, chopped into 1 inch lengths
8 Thai eggplants, quartered (just before use)
1 bunch Thai basil, lightly chopped
Fresh red chilli, roll chopped
handful of freshly toasted peanuts, chopped
¼ slab of tamarind, soaked in hot water for 1 hour, drained
One portion of red curry paste
50g palm sugar, chopped
3 tbsp fish sauce
500ml coconut cream, the thicker cream removed for cooking the paste, the balance reserved
Red curry paste
4 long dried red chilies (or more), seeded, and soaked in hot water for 1 hours, chopped
2 stalks of lemongrass, white part chopped
1 piece of galangal, about the size of a meateaters thumb, peeled and chopped
4-6 coriander roots
1 kaffir lime, zested (as in use the zest)
1 small chuck of shrimp paste, sealed in foil and toasted until fragrant
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 medium sized eshalots, chopped
1 tbsp spice mixture
1 tspn salt
Spice mixture
1 part cumin seed
2 parts coriander seed
½ part white pepper
Dry roast cumin and coriander until fragrant, grind all to a fine powder
Febfast, Thai salads and Dr Loosen
Can you hear that? No? Well it’s the sound of chest beating. I made it, well at least the lights at the end of the tunnel. 28 days without grog and I’m feeling fine, don’t let it get out but I’ve never felt so good plus I’ve made a lot of new friends.
“Bryneeee, It’s me…. Stewart…..Stewy…. we met at the Private Bin… yeh, years ago, remember… yeh, Stevie Wonder was in town…Legend! Well me and the guys are heading to a bash on the weekend, short story need a driver, heard you’re off the grog, bingo the call…..”
So yes you get to drive around a lot picking up slightly drunk folk. But it’s been for a good cause, the 7000 plus crowd who have joined Febfast this year have raised funds for a good cause, drug and alcohol awareness in young Aussies.
Easing back is the key, your body has pretty well purged itself of any artifact of alcohol and is probably enjoying the new conditions and won’t continue so having an awakening of a couple of dry martini’s and/or a jug of Coopers thrust its way. Never has the term enjoy wine in moderation been more apt, so I’m planning a nice chilled glass of Riesling, I have to admit that this is what I’ve craved the most, not a big Aussie Shiraz, certainly not NZ Sauv blanc, just a bright clear dewy glass filled with all those crisp lime flavours and need some food to go with it, a dish that will bring out the best in this wine.
Thai salads are made to measure for this variety, if there’s a dash of residual sugar in the wine all the better, you can imagine, go on close your eyes – a nice bowl filled with chilled cellophane noodle, there’s lots of finely chopped herbs and vegetables, sitting on top half a dozen plump, glistening seared scallops, the dish smells of lime and fresh herbs, the taste is slightly salty, sour with a hint of green chili, you bring the cool glass to your lips, breathing in those delicate floral and citrus aromas – maybe I’m over-thinking this but I’ve needed something to keep me going through this ordeal and here’s hoping this works.
Make the dressing first, grill or bake the shallot until singed and smokey, cool, peel and chop, heat a little peanut oil, add shallot and fry lightly, add sugar, caramelise, then fish sauce. When cool add lime juice.
Make the salad, soak the noodles in hot water for a hour or so until soft, drain and chill but keep nice and loose. Each vegetable needs to be very finely sliced, just the white tender part of the lemongrass (Use the rest for a nice tea)
When they are all ready mix through the noodles along with herbs and chili, then dress. Dissolve a tbsp of salt in a little water, soak the scallops in this for 10 minutes, drain and pat dry. In a heavy based pan, heat oil until smoking and very quickly cook the scallops for 1 minute on each side. Serve with a bowl of crunchy nuts and more chili. Now for the Riesling, there are plenty of locals of quality, yet I think this needs some sweetness so I’m grabbing a bottle of Dr Loosen’s Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese , a beautiful wine full a zippy mineral flavours, one of the purest wines I’ve seen.
Thai salad for Riesling
250g cellophane noodles
2 stalks lemongrass
5 large Kaffir lime leaves
2 snake beans
2 Thai eggplant
2-3 small fresh green chili. Seeded
half bunch coriander, chopped
3 mint leaves, chopped
3 eshallots, whole
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp palm sugar
Juice of 2 limes
10 peanuts, lightly toasted
6 freshly opened scallops per person, big plump ones
salt
Peanut oil
Paella, truck stops and rice
Bear with me a while more whilst I get these Spanish dishes of the chest, there’s nothing like visiting a place to get, like really get, their food culture. It puzzles me more and more why we ended up with the worst of American food ideology (noting here that America does do some great stuff like we do) which can be summed up as a burger in a mall and miss out on having the way we eat influenced by Spain and the like.
We pulled up late afternoon after a nice drive from Albarracin to Valencia, stopping just outside the city at a fuel stop to have late lunch. The dining room is filled with Hi-Vis jackets so I presume a lot of truck drivers and road workers, they could have been artists and poets but I have to propagate the stereotype.
We grab a table and are told, at least I think we are told, to help ourselves to the buffet. The food here is hearty, straight forward with the regulation jamon and tapas and few salads and then a bain marie filled with three varieties of paella, vegetarian, seafood and rabbit, a brooding stew of pig trotters plus a lot of sides and desserts.
Notice no burgers or chicken nuggets and even the soft drink the kids order comes in a 250ml bottle rather than a 3l bucket. We tuck in, a bottle of local wine is plonked down and that’s lunch and it cost just 10 euro each. I can see why there’s little road works or trucks in the late afternoon, they’re all sleeping off a nice lunch, there is something very elegant and timely about an alcohol fueled daily snooze.
Obviously heading to Valencia I am going to bring up paella which is the main regional dish. Rice is used throughout Spain under various names but we tend to plaster Spain with the dish which really only come from here.
It has to be said that this dish is done to death here in tourist areas, with most resembling the idea yet not giving the true dish. I was given a nice piece of advice from Chus Brion Romero, lovely name, a local sommelier, travelling with her partner in Oz. Always go a few streets back from the main tourist squares to see what the locals eat.
Like just down from busy Plaza de la Riena, on Carrer de la Mar sits La Riua, a small family owned restaurant that does real paella as well as a neat eel dish.
Reading more about the ubiquitous dish there are ingredients that should and should not be present, it’s ultimately a very simple dish where the quality of the rice sets the scene. The best is Bomba which sells in little heshian sacks and is available at good delis, or the more common Calasparra. Good olive oil is the base for cooking the dish, saffron or Lasan as they call it here is common but not critical, if using give it a long soak in water first to soften.
One important note on garnish, never mix the terrestrial with the aquatic. If its seafood just use that don’t be tempted to toss in some chicken. Also use pure water rather than stock, if you make it properly you make your own stock as you go. You need some acid to balance, generally either tomato or wine. And no capsicum or peas, think more along the lines of using beans, the type used here are Ferradura, a wide green bean but baby green and butter will do, all cooked beforehand not in the dish.
So here’s what we had based on this list. Start with a nice bunny, sorry to keep going on about rabbits, I do like them, use the legs, season with salt and chill for a few hours beforehand, this helps greatly with the browning process, also the legs and thighs off a nice chook, same process. Brown these in lots of oil, not too hot, until bronzed, remove. Add onions and smoked chorizo, cook down until soft, add garlic and herbs. Then a good cup of cooked tomato, the garden runeth over so I have heaps, cook these, halved, in the oven for four hours in oil, garlic and thyme beforehand. Cook the tomatoey mixture for 10 minutes to really build the flavour. Return rabbit and chicken, add 1.2l of water and saffron plus some salt, lower the heat and cook this slowly until meat is getting tender, about 20 minutes with the idea to have 1 litre of liquid left to finish the rice. This base can be made beforehand and reheated once you’re ready to serve. Bring to simmer add rice stir gently or swirl to pan for 10 minutes. Add vegetables just on the top so they reheat , finishing by simmering for another 10 minutes not disturbing the rice.
There ya go a good hearty lunch for a small family and you can go off to siesta knowing you’ve kept to the true ideals of paella.
Paella
Legs and thighs off one rabbit and one chicken
2 small red onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Some herbs: rosemary, oregano, basil
1 smoked chorizo, chopped
1 cup of cooked tomato, chopped
Pure water, from the sky if possible
6 threads of good saffron, soaked in warm water
500g Bomba or Calasparra rice
handful each of baby green bean, butter beans , each steamed until tender.
½ cup soaked and cooked white dried beans
Salt and pepper as needed
Rabbit, pork and though
This is a short yarn of two friends, they’re an unusual pair who complement each other in ways they could never foresee.
Firstly Mr. Pig, he’s a jolly soul, always happy to waddle around the paddock, digging up roots finding nuts and fruit to contently chomp on, his favourite is acorns. Oh how he loves them and he’s big, some would say quite portly but always happy in his skin, which turns out to be his downfall, so yes this tale doesn’t very well for Mr. Pig.
His best friend Rabbit is quite different, nervous always, has a complex that Mr. Farmer doesn’t really like him and tries endlessly to make him move on. He does like his home, not just because his best friend Pig is here more that he has many lady friends and subsequently a lot of family. Rabbit is very lean from all his nighttime romancin’ and this is kinda why he likes hanging around Mr. Pig, they do go together . Unfortunately for both of them Mr. Farmer knows this all too well, the lean, rangy characters of rabbit have an unusual affinity for the smarmy fat of pig and when cooked together in this rustic terrine taste fabulous with toast and gherkins.
If you can’t get wild rabbit and let’s face it with the various viruses that have been let loose into the rabbit population you don’t generally see many grown up rabbits so a farmed rabbit is the next best. Big, plump white rabbits that sell at the markets do lack some wild flavour but they make up for it in fleshy pins and belly. The one I bought the other day even had its liver nicely packaged in a plastic bag, it worried me at first thinking the bunny had previously had surgery.
Cut off the four legs, use the loin for something else, season liberally with salt and rub with thyme and garlic, leave this in the fridge for 24 hours. For the pig, you need two bits, firstly the belly, the skin that my mythical pig was so happy, is removed. Prepare the belly the same as rabbit. Now you need a heap of back fat, which isn’t, despite the pig having heaps of it, easy to find, you can use duck or goose fat but that complicates my story.
Save it up in the freezer whenever you can find it then render it yourself. The long cooking process here will render the fat itself. Use the ratio of 1 part meat to 1.25 parts fat. Pack the prepared meats and diced fat in a thick over proof pot with lid, mix everything together first, wedge in more garlic, juniper and thyme, a good grind of pepper, bring to a simmer, cover with a cup of hot water and parchment paper, cook in a low oven 140C for 6-8 hours or until the meat simply falls off the bones.
Place this, when cool to handle, over a sieve, collect and protect the extra fat for another day. Grab a few forks and shred each piece of meat, there should be enough salt but do make sure. Pack into little ramekins and spoon over enough collected fat to just cover. Chill to set, when you’re ready to eat, take out a few hours before hand so the fat can prepare itself, toast thick slices of good bread and serve with little cornichons and a glass of late harvest Riesling.
Potted rabbit and pork
1 rabbit, yielding about 500g meat
1 section of pork belly, roughly the same weight, thickly diced
1kg pork back fat
1 bunch thyme
Murray river pink salt, black pepper, 10 juniper berries
1 head garlic
Abstinence, Kate Moss and zucchini
Sober. A strange feeling really, having zero g/l ethyl alcohol in the system and for that matter minimal concentrations of caffeine. There’s a big hill to traverse before your body accepts this new reality; it struggles, torments and attempts to drag you back to the warm embrace of these legal drugs by giving you a piecing and persistent head ache all day.
But I’ve climbed and conquered my own personal Chomolungma (Everest to us westerners) and now a few weeks into this torment I’m feeling pretty good. You wake up, clarity, no sudden pangs of regret for over-imbibing the previous night and no desperate need for a double ristreto to get you into another day. Given there’s nothing fun to drink outside caffeine and alcohol, my intake of water has increased logarithmically. I’m so hydrated I’m leaving a snail trail.
So that’s the positives, but it’s not all beer and skittles, as the presently ironic saying goes. You lose the urge to go anywhere socially, my wife has taken to finding new drinking buddies where ever she can, and you end up losing weight. This may be seen as a positive, shedding a few kilos, but that was pretty expensive belly I had, you have no idea how much money and time I invested in my mid-life pud. How many pigs needlessly were slaughtered, grapes from Great sites and vintages unnecessarily harvested, workers from third world countries pointlessly exploited.
And it’s only been two weeks, imagine a lifestyle like this, is there something to Kate Moss’ much quoted line “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” You could live amongst others who share your pristine lifestyle maybe get into making your own furniture, get rid of any new technology, buy a horse…..as you can see there’s no end to living a life away from these temptations. Roll on March.
Meanwhile the garden has gone wild since I left. Sad really, I had it looking great, all manner of vegetables growing well, in a weed free, organic plot. I come back and the zucchinis have grown into these huge marrows that cavemen would have gone into battle with. The corn, so sweet and ready for harvest now horrible and starchy, luckily my tomatoes are just hitting there straps and the windowsill already is filled with many varieties. The chooks have been the winners, the marrow halved, they love picking out the seeds and piles of overripe corn has made them produce these huge, 85+g eggs, bright orange yolks so there ‘s a positive.
I have the zucchini back under control and they now produce armfuls of lovely little fruit and a florist worthy harvest of flowers, thus I spent the weekend cooking all manner of recipes using zucchini, their flowers, tomatoes and eggs. They do all seem to work together and scream out quiche.
A while ago, too long really, a friend used to cook this simple zucchini loaf, it seems a good way of using up excess fruit and dead easy to make. I consulted my new Stephanie Alexander book kitchen garden companion; she offers a good amount of gardening advice plus lots of new recipes. Here’s a modified version of her Zucchini slice recipe.
This is very adaptable, the main measurements you need to remember are: 500g grated zucchini:1 cup self-raising flour: 2 eggs. The rest depends on what you have in the fridge. So mix these together thoroughly and then add ingredients like: 1 cup ricotta, 1/3 cup parmesan, 50g chopped pancetta stresso , 2 cloves garlic minced, the rind off one lemon, any sundry zucchini flowers that haven’t dried up, lots of salt flakes and ground pepper. Tip this well mixed mass into an oiled square cake tin so it sits about 40mm thick, on top add thick sliced tomatoes that have been doused in olive oil, bake in a moderate oven until it rises up like Sagarmatha. Serve warm with homemade tomato sauce and good bread.
Eels, lethary and Eric
I’m just putting this out there, please don’t judge me or think that I’m in any way suggesting we break out the hand spear and head to lake burley griffin to catch this 70 year old eel that was recently found near scrivener dam however if you happen upon a nice plump eel you’ll need a good recipe to deal with it.
Actually more than a recipe you need to know what to do with this slimy, muddy writhing fish because these really need to be purchased alive from a good fishmonger, or, again not suggesting anything, catch your own, I know where one named Eric is.
Generally eels will feed from muddy banks in rivers and this muddy character is the first you’re going to won’t to remove if the experience is to end up pleasant. So, empty your bag of eels into a big tub filled with fresh water, rain water if possible. Change it every few hours and repeat for a day or two. If you buy them they have had this purging process completed already.
The worst thing to happen here is for the kids to form an attachment to the fish as they are want to do with such experiments and if they name them forget it, you’re not an eel consumer anymore, you’re an eel owner.
Once you feel they have expelled their mudiness, now you have to kill them, I’ve heard of people doing all sorts of things here: thrashing them against a brick wall, strangling them or even trying to drown them. As fun as this may sound there’s a much more humane way of dispatching fish like this or indeed any other live caught aqueous dwellers. Simply start adding ice to their now clean water, a little at a time with the idea of getting the temperature down to zero over a few hours.
The magnificent creature will eventually slow to the point of going into a comatose state. Carefully take him out and piece where his brain should be firmly with a metal skewer, then chop the head off. See dead easy and no bruising of the flesh. They won’t go easy even in this hyperthermic state, so hang onto them as they’ll writhe around for ages. Better yet get the fishmonger do it for you.
The third problem is cooking it, the skin can be hard to remove so salting in a brine for an hour can help or if you good with the knife the fillets can be whipped off and skinned in a blink of the eye. However I just filleted each eel, leaving the skin on which is a good source of fat as the grill.
Keeping things simple with my first experiment with these two live eels my editor happily brought out in the back of the Subaru, which turns out to be another way of pacifying them.
So I simply marinated them, after a quick dip in the brining bucket, in a mixture of soy, mirin and oyster sauce, a pinch of sugar, scrap of garlic and ginger. Mix them up and the long fillets are BBQ’d on a moderate heat, skin down. Cook for 10 minutes like this, brushing with excess marinade. Then flip over and cook for 5 minutes flesh down. Off the grill a squeeze of lime juice and we’re done. Couldn’t be simpler and the taste..excellent, oily, firm flesh a little like a big sardine, the skin comes away from the flesh if you judge the cooking well.
You’ll find lots of ways to cook these treats, they are worth the effort and predictably they are good for you, full of protein and vitamins in fact you can revive yourself, as the Japanese do, from lethargy or natsubate with a good old feed of eel.
Pig’s ears, bindies and salt
So I’m feeling a tad bored at the moment, looking around the usual food haunts doesn’t inspire me that much. Not helping is the fact that the oven is broken and we have had to eat solely what can be BBQ’d. Which is fine, really, it was the worst oven ever anyway and I’m still gunning for a new Falcon stove so it could all be fortuitous.
Even my overgrown, unkempt veggie patch is proving to be difficult to get to. Not sure if you’ve seen these little weeds that grow a deadly spiky seed casing. When I grew up and Mum used hassle us endlessly to wear shoes “cause you’ll get a bindie, don’t come crying to me if ya get a bindie” She’d yell as we disappeared each afternoon down to Ginninnderra creek, which was before the dam came along so invariably a torrent after each rain and far more potentially dangerous to us that bindies.
Back then they were at worst a nuisance and comparable to stepping on cotton wool to these new versions, the most painful thing you can stand on, called various names like three corner jacks or ominously, Puncture tyre.
The previous US administration under Dub-ya could have disposed of using unethical methods to extract a confession from suspected terrorists like waterboarding or the other one which I don’t get anyway, where they get stripped and paraded in front of women. If this happened to an Aussie he’d think firstly it was Friday night and secondly that he was drunk. No just bring them to my yard and having them walk to the garden will have them singing within three steps.
Even a tray of hairy pig’s ears only manages to get a brief flicker of interest, this butcher at Belconnen market has a corner where they put all the weird stuff and you can always count on finding something to surprise the kids with. Why just next to the ears which I am purchasing is another tray with pig’s arseholes on it, sure the tail and part of the backbone are attached but it looks like bums to me. I opt for the ears as I know a dead easy way to prepare these flappy bits.
The best thing you can do here is to firstly shave them, yes that makes them far more palatable, and then submerge into a brine mixture made up of 1 litre of water with 2 cups of salt, ½ cup sugar dissolved in it plus flavouring like thyme, bay and pepper. This amount neatly covers a kilo of ears, which, if this makes it easier to remember, will require 6-7 mature pigs to fulfill.
Leave them to cure for around a week and then remove, wash and soak in clean rain water for another day. Now they are ready to cook. I’ve had them many ways, you can just slice them now and deep fry so they end up all crispy but I’ve a recipe for pressed pigs ears, so you grab another part of the pig, the trotter, four of, plus a few aromatic veggies like leeks, carrots and celery. Place this is a slow cooking vessel, cover with water or stock, add herbs and spices as you feel fit to and cook the brew for about 5 hours on super low, just barely moving heat. Keep the ears submerged by weighing them down with something heavy. Once you can easily insert an earring in it, remove the ears, strain stock and reduce this slowly to about 200ml of super think jelly. Test the seasoning, here Fergus Henderson’s words need to be clarified, you need to oversalt it until you can really taste the seasoning.
Fill a terrine by folding the ears and pour over reduction. Now you need to find some method to press the ears firmly in the terrine for a day, then when you turn out the dish it will have this super springy look to it, the colour is deep amber with fold of tender yet crunchy ear preserved within and to serve cut thick slices onto a plate with plenty of French mustard, cornichons, sliced red onion and toast. So this has cheered me up slightly, at least until the fishmonger brings me the kilo of promised Monkfish livers.
Curling, cleaning and beetroot
See if you can follow this: the Swedish thrower has just set the stone in motion, the sweepers have a job ahead of them, it’s a tad full, he is possibly aiming a simple take out move of the carefully placed British guard, it turns out to be a hit and roll with the rock settling at the front of the house, but, in a strange twist that has me on the edge of my seat, it ends up leaving a biter. Whoa, the crowd goes quite, what will happen next….
It amusing the lengths you go to watch Olympic sports. I pretty sure I have not had the smallest inkling of a passing thought about curling since the last games, so for 206 weeks of my life I’ve been oblivious to this game and will not, in four days time, think of it until Russia in 2014. Yet here I am at 3.00am in the morning riveted to the flat screen.
It’s an elegant sport, a strange mixture of bowling, billiards and household chores, never fails to amuse, the outrageous outfits, the starry low slide as the thrower releases the rock, then the industrious activity as the sweepers guide it into the house, careering of the opponents perfectly placed rocks, they all appear weightless and incredibly thoughtful of this supremely strategic game.
I don the socks, grab the broom and practice on the red gum floors, does Australia have a team? I ask myself as dawn approaches, can’t be that difficult, I’m fair to middling at keeping the floor tidy despite my wife’s protests. If only she knew that if you link a chore to a sport us blokes would be brilliant around the house. That’s why we like jumping on the ride on and cutting wood, as well as getting close to machinery, which is never far from our minds, we get to imagine we’re on a race track or centre stage at the world log cutting championships. It is very hard to fantasies about Olympic glory whilst ironing or cleaning the loo. But I promise to be a terrific sweeper in my build up to Russia.
On that topic, yes I can link curling to food as deftly as I can to a chainsaw, we don’t tend to think of Russian food that much, seems the further you get from the warmer climates the more the food culture becomes vague and revolves around potatoes and in the case of the ex-USSR, beetroot. I’ve got a good amount of these bulbs growing, can’t find them as my veggie patch has become somewhat overgrown in my absence yet I know they’re there and I have a few plans for them.
Why just extracting the juice and drinking that has pretty amazing results for the body. Not only is it packed full of vitamin C, potassium, folic acid and many other vitamins and minerals which we all need, there’s also a few good oils, no cholesterol, and it has also been linked to boosting blood performance, fighting cancer and generally being good for our digestion. Sounds like we could all use more of this vegetable.
To cook I always prefer the roasting technique, wrap them up in foil with a little oil, bake until you can pierce the bulb with a skewer, cool a little and then pull the skin off. Great in salads or hot as a vegetable. If you want to get a little tricky, shred this finely and mix through chopped thyme leaves, a reasonable concentration of Persian feta, salt and pepper and a smattering of peeled and chopped walnuts. Peeling these is a bugger, blanch quickly in boiling water, and then pull the hot skins off, a necessary painful job, then chop coarsely. Mix all this together. Lay out some freshly made pasta, I won’t go into the recipe here, you know how to do it. Brush the pasta with beaten egg, spoon a little mixture into nicely spaced rows, lay the other sheet on top, press around each pillow to remove air and cut into ravioli, dust these in more flour and have a big pot of salted boiling water going full steam, toss in pasta remove when they float, deep breath ,meanwhile in a wide frypan melt the butter and cook till just turning brown, you need good timing skills here to have all this going on. Drain pasta well, and toss through butter quickly and thoroughly, then add parmesan, toss again and your ready. An oldie but a goodie and this will give me all the goodness to be ready for some intense sweeping in four years.
Hunting, Kidneys & pastry
The 25kg container sitting, ominously and slightly out of place, on my kitchen bench says “Proform Multi-use jointing compound” which means there are two possible explanations for this all purpose gypsum wallboard repair compound to be present in my food preparation area.
Firstly my wife has finally come to the conclusion that I will not get to the odd jobs on my long and ever growing list of repairs and maintenance, and has got a man in to fix the bathroom, a glance into this room doesn’t reveal a hairy bum bent over the bath repairing the cracks so it’s not this which is a good thing.
This need to fix things, or at least say we’ll fix them, is deep rooted into a blokes brain and psyche, having our partner bring another man in to do it is just wrong, a front to our manhood, what else do they need to ‘fix’ why they’re here?
Just behind this, I reflect, is our need to give directions, which seems to increase as we get older, whenever my father -in-law is in town I go to great lengths to not appear like I’m going anywhere lest he grab some paper and spend the next hour drawing a mud map of all the possible routes and wrong turns there may be for a 10 minute drive to the shops. He looks at the GPS on my iphone much the way a Diplodocus looked at an ape thinking “Na, this will never work”
Obviously our biggest and most deep seated manly desire is hunting, in evolutionary terms it’s been just a blink of the eye since we ceased spending most the time hunting down saber tooth tigers for the dinner plate and now have to find odd jobs to keep us busy. It might be the reason why, on hitting 50 years old, modern man needs stuff to justify his existence: convertibles, hogs and jetskis. If we were still able to head out regularly on a shooting trip we’d be all the more easily dealt with.
This brings us to the second reason why this jointing compound may be here, my mate Jeff has knocked over a beast and indeed he has, cows if fact, two to be precise. As you may know Jeff always brings me the left over bits from the slaughter, stuff that normally thrown over the fence to the dogs.
We have, as I dig into the only slightly food friendly glue container: tongues and tails, both straight into the brining bucket; four cheeks, trimmed and braised for a little casserole; a couple of sweetbreads, soaking now to go into a risotto; a couple of huge livers, not sure they seem immense and could feed a small tribe of 50 year old men.
And then, at the bottom of the, thankfully, clean container are a couple of beef kidneys, now where talking possibilities of a pie or pudding made around these vital organs that sadly the cows don’t need any more.
Down in Murrumbateman village, locals call it thus but it’s really a service station and pub, within the petrol station is the Murrumbateman butchery, a small family operation where the produce is always good, simple country cuts, don’t go looking for Wagyu here. They make the best pies around, either small handheld tradesmen lunches, all smeared with Big Red and the larger family pies filled with chicken or lamb, beef, both chunky and mince and, steak and kidney. If you’re travelling around I’d recommend you pop in and grab some of these, made daily and generally still warm they make an easy meal for the family if you don’t have the time or desire to make it from scratch.
We need to have a pastry discussion, just buy some puff pastry as a backup, but a handmade mealy pastry is far better for the task at hand. Sift 1 ½ cups of all purpose plain flour onto a board with a good pinch of salt flakes, into this mix in ½ cup of chilled diced beef lard, yep its keeps getting better. Now rub this together quickly and thoroughly with your fingers, it will resemble bread crumbs. Pile up again and add 3 tablespoons of icy water, Knead lightly and form a dough ball, chill before rolling out for the base. This pastry will absorb the gravy well. For the top we’ll use a buttery flakey pastry, similar quantities using a tad more good butter but you don’t rub the small pieces of butter just form a mass with water and then grab a small handful and smear it across the bench, this forms the layers that rise and make the pastry so crisp and delicious, continue until is all done and then roll up into a ball, chill etc. That’s the top, use your favourite steak and kidney recipe, fill and bake until golden brown.
Heston’s perfect chips
The making of the world’s best chip
You may have seen this tweet or google alert going round, a little while back there was an article in one of the British papers, The Times on Line, by Heston Blumenthal where he outlined the makings of the perfect chip and it’s been in the back of my mind to have a crack at it. Over the years I’ve tried various techniques that mostly revolve around cooking the spud twice and never really has the result turned out anything special so I wasn’t that hopeful but this guy really looks closely at techniques and if he says it is than you can bet that it will be, you’ll just need a chemistry lab handy.
Like most things it’s all about temperature and the all important timing. No creature knows timing quite like the little orb web spider, I was reading recently that the males of the species here gets two stabs, so to speak, at procreating, and if that wasn’t tough enough if he takes more than 10 seconds, his intended will eat him.
You can picture the dazed room during orb web spider sex education, the teacher: ”OK, are we all up to speed now, 10 seconds…” “No, there’s definitely no time to buy her dinner……” “No, none of that either, I can’t stress it more, you get ten seconds dudes, so think and act like Flynn”
For the task at hand you need to set aside the day, you won’t be cooking all day but it needs you absolute attention and enough time between each cooking period. Firstly choose your spud, you need a more floury variety rather than waxy, you also need them to be big too, huge in fact so you can craft a nice big chip. I just used the standard unscrubbed supermarket variety, if you’ve the time search out a more specialised spud but these worked just fine and you get 4 chips out of each.
Once they have been scrubbed of their earthy deposits, cut each potato along the length evenly into four quarters, square each off by cutting off the edges until you have four chips that are 1 to 1.5cm thick and square, the length doesn’t matter. So again choose you potatoes with this in mind, all about the same size.
Soak the chips in lots of clean water for at least 10 minutes, this removes any surface starch that can interfere with the browning process later on. Poach the chips in salty water until fully cooked, don’t let the water boil as the chip with break up, Heston makes the comment here that the rough edges produced during this cooking traps the fat during the final stage for extra crispiness.
Once done carful remove and lay on a tea towel to cool and dry, put in the fridge uncovered for several hours. This is another important point for producing a good crunchy skin, the chips will look a bit odd, and discoloured but don’t worry it’s all good.
Now choose you fat, groundnut oil is recommended but sunflower will do for both the cooking stages. Have an accurate thermometer handy, raise a good 2-3lt of il to 120C, which if you don’t have a handy thermometer will be below any sizzle, when you add the chips you shouldn’t see any commotion, just a very gentle movement of the cooking chips with small bubbles forming. Cook for 5-7 minutes until they start to gain a hard skin but no colour. Again remove carefully and repeat the drying process in the fridge.
The final stage is quick and easy, have the oil now at 160C, if you’re feeling adventurous you can use lard here for an exceptional chip but the vegetable oil works fine. Cook the chips in this hot oil for 8-10 minutes, they’ll crisp up really quickly and just keep going until they are nicely cooked all over, remove and drain. In a separate bowl have you rosemary salt ready and toss the chips thoroughly and serve Jenga style, all piled up neatly.
They really are a great chip, worth every minute, crunchy on the outside and very soft and creamy within, you’ll never go back to Macca’s once you’ve had these, a big thanks, once again, to the master Heston Blumenthal.
Hestons perfect chip
Potatoes
Oil
Salt
To serve Rosemary salt, grind 1 tbsp of rosemary leave with 2 tbsp of good salt flakes until fine.
Snails, El Toboso & morcilla
It’s as good a place as any to do the swap, why not exchange one brilliant book by Heston Blumenthal for 24 snails ready for the pot at the emergency department at Canberra Hospital, it’s a long story and I ended up travelling home with my escargatoire of gastropods in an Oak ice cream container, reflecting on the last time we tucked into a plate of this rather divisive food.
El Toboso is a little town in La Mancha Spain, very much on the Don Quixote route, just about every town will recount how this gallant mythical hero spent some time hanging out before charging off at windmills. It a pretty town, slightly more industrial that the hill towns. The day we visited it seemed on the surface a ghost town we couldn’t see anything open nor any locals. So we weaved the people mover through these pretty streets until we found ourselves confronted with a massive party in the form of a Spanish mardi gras.
The streets were lined with pretty well everyone in the town, the parade filled with guys in drag, or dressed in unlikely Indian costumes and what seemed like Kick ass-esque super heros. We parked and joined in, turned out to be the festival of Los Tobamobil, still we needed a feed and there wasn’t much choice, following the revelers didn’t seem to lead to a feast we could join in and thus we found a dark tavern open looking like an Iberian version of Mickey Rorke’s local in Barfly. The half dozen un-festive folk hardly looked up.
So behind the rather rustic bar was the ubiquitous Jamon display, three different types and then there was lots of tapas, including a bowl of snails, no form of refrigeration mind, so you can possibly pock holes in their HACCP strategy. These were quite small, humbug, colour, size and shaped, swimming in an oily puddle. I’m game and so is the bride, we grab a plate plus some olives and ham, a couple of beers and spent the next hour pulling the flavourful snails out of their shells with toothpicks whilst the kids scared away the locals.
So with my now 23 snails, one its seems has managed to pry of the ice cream container lid and escape into the dark recesses of the cruiser, I feel like making it Spanish in theme and I know I have some morcilla sausage at home, which turns out to be like Simon to Garfunkle, in that the snails lack both flavour and fat which the sausage has, along with calaspara rice and assorted veggies. These snails have been bred for eating and thus don’t need anything more than a couple of days on a diet to poo out their last meal and then into the pot, what am I thinking? Disregard that last statement, its best to not think about these things.
First blanch them in a large pot of boiling water, this dispatches them quickly and as humanely as I can think of outside a vet clinic. Quickly refresh under cold water and repeat with fresh boiling water. Now you cook them for 5 minutes in an acidic vegetable stock or court bouillon, chill again and now we can sauté the prepare snails in lots of good butter with a few halved garlic cloves, sizzle away for about 3-4 minutes, not too hot you don’t want them to shrivel up. Deglaze with wine and remove and sauté the blood sausage, this will release a good amount of fat. Remove and you can start building the paella. Sauté eschalots until soft, add rice and ¾ of the water and tomato puree with herbs, lower the heat and leave to reduce and evaporate for 15 minutes, any less and you’re cooking too fast. Add reserved snails, sausage and beans plus the rest of the water, a good teaspoon of salt, gentle swish this around until the liquid is used up and its all ready. Now to find that lost snail in the car, I can feel it eyes on me, revenge in its heart.
Snail and morcilla paella (an intimate tea for two)
24 snails, prepared as above
1 plump morcilla sausage, sliced thickly
I handful green beans, cooked till tender, sliced
2-4 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ cup fino sherry
½ cup tomato puree, or two chopped tomatoes
4 eschallots, peeled and sliced (or red onion)
Handful herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, you know the song.
1 cup Spanish rice, Calasparra used here
1.5 cups simmering water
500ml court bouillon
3 part water, 1 part wine, peppercorns, parsley stems, a carrot, scrap of onion.
Slow food, pho and ox tail
I’m still trying to work out when the dish you cook becomes a slow food, is there meter you can attach to say “OK, I think we’re there, yeeep, you are now a slow foodist” Is it as tangible as that or do you have to buy in on an entire lifestyle change: wear vests and sandals, stop shaving and compost stuff.
Not that I’m against all this but I don’t quite think it’s just about lowering the temperature of the oven, Ferran Adria cooks food slow but I don’t think he would quite fit the model.
Just yesterday I had a great bowl of Vietnamese noodles for lunch, Pho Bo, and don’t try to say it, our western mouths aren’t meant to pronounce these words properly, Furbo is the closest I can get it and I still get a puzzled look from the cook, looking around for the cat I’m commenting on, best to just point.
This is a supremely fulfilling dish and, due to the long process to make the soup base, I reckon it fits this week’s theme of slow food, you all know how to make casserole anyway. It’s a complex dish having many components and yet quite flexible, really just a simple street food. The main ingredients are lots of bits of a cow: gelatinous cuts like brisket and tendon; tender fillet and sirloin. A rich soup is made from bones and the braising meats, the dish is garnished with lots of fresh herbs and seasonings and then the rice noodles themselves.
The stock should really be made the day before, which gives ample time to set and the fat can be dealt with. The mixture of bones is fairly important with large chunks of marrow bone being the preferred choice of pho phanatics. Ox tail is also a good choice to augment the leg bones, plus these yield some excellent meat itself for the dish. For both, bring a large pot of water to the boil, add bones, bring back to simmer and then strain and start again with fresh water. This gets rid of some of the potential turbid molecules, its optional and you don’t lose out on flavour. Make sure the stock doesn’t boil, just simmers with very little movement, boiling emulsifies the stock and makes for troubled waters when skimming. Once the first lot of foam is carefully and completely skimmed you can add the vegetables. Mainly ginger and onion, both should be BBQ’d until toasty to give some colour to the broth, you can actually do the same with the bones but purists wouldn’t. So add these to the stock along with a little muslin bag of the spices and the beef tendon itself. Keep simmering this for 3 hours, don’t refresh with water if you can help it, the stock should get more and more intense as it cooks down, just make sure your vessel can keep the bones submerged.
About an ½ hour in, once the broth has settled, you can add your braising meat, the choice here for me is brisket, it’s the part of the cow that they sleep on, that lump you see on the chest and its full of jelly making protein, have your 1kg piece tied up nice and tight, drop in and keep submerged, when finished, tie above the stock with tendon and let it rest and drip away. Store both the strained stock and the meat overnight to chill.
Morning, now, you can de-grease the stock, but don’t be too vigilant here, remember fat adds flavour. The stock should be nice and clear without looking too much like a consommé. Bring back to a simmer whilst you get the pho ready, check the seasoning at this stage adding salt you find it lacking.
Have the fillet steak sliced very thin, half freezing to firm up helps. Un-tie and slice brisket and tendon too. Soak Rice noodles in hot water until soft, drain. Have all the herbs and chilies ready.
In a big serving noodle bowl add a good handful of prepared noodles, in one area add the brisket in another add tendon, dunk the sliced fillet into simmering stock just as you are serving, skim out quickly and add to bowl, on top is the place for the herbs and chilli. Bring stock to full boil and quickly pour over enough to cover all the garnish ingredients, top with bean shoots and serve with lime and extra chilli on the side.
The last hectic bit possibly negates this being a slow food, but the combination of the rich, sweetish salty broth with the jellied beef and tendon, spiked with the freshness of Vietnamese herbs and chilli all make for a sensation dish to savour as the weather cools. If it’s too much head to your local Vietnamese diner they will surely have it. If fact if you’re near The Hub in Belconnen you get a bowl free when you spend over $50 of groceries this month of May which is where this idea came from.
Pho Bo
Soup base
2 kg marrow bones, cut into 1 inch lengths
1kg ox tail, cut into segments
10 red shallots, or eshallots, peeled
100g piece of ginger
Spice mixture: 2 star anise, 10 cardamom seeds (1 or 2 pods), 2cm piece cinnamon, 2 cloves
100ml fish sauce
walnut size piece Yellow rock sugar, smashed
Meats
1kg Brisket
500g scotch fillet, in one piece
500g beef tendon
Garnish (To serve)
Rice noodles (Banh pho)
Chopped spring onions
Super fresh bean shoots
Vietnamese mint, coriander, Thai basil all roughly chopped
Fresh chilli
Limes
