Cordyceps, Guinea fowl & the road ahead
There comes a time in everyone life when you need to face reality, you might have resisted this for years, claiming that your too young, too carefree yet eventually you will look in the mirror and stare at the sad truth, cripes I have this desire to go to the home and leisure show.
Even as I write this, tears well, when did this happen, one minute you are cruising along not thinking at all about the path ahead, living in the moment oblivious that there’s an entire industry devoted to track that leads to the end of the road. To make it worse we head to EPIC in the same car that everyone else seems to be driving. It’s not ours, a temporary replacement for my wife’s car I recently cowed and she is still dealing with the pleasant people who look after the insurance. I imagine these individuals as being the human form of a vulture, they must sit by the phone, on a corpse of a recent claimant, planning how many excuses they can find to delay paying you one cent. So the car we have is a Toyota, Nissen or something like that, the model sounds like a female body part. It’s like you’re driving around in a car that’s a cross between an armchair and a coffin, all this polished wood work and everything is engineered; reversing camera, no key to loose, a GPS plus mirrors that move to where its thinks you should be looking, there’s possibly even a cigar cutter. Well they are popular, we parked in a row of them and headed to the leisure and pleasure show along streams of other boomers.
As confronting as the car was, it was nothing as to what we found inside. I had no idea that the entire retiring population is going to live in a mobile house and have a spa. These incredibly complex mobile homes, trailers and caravans are everywhere, wow, so this is the future, roaming around the country in some sort of Stephen King-esqu world trying to find the last powered site before night falls and the un-homed zombies come out of the bushes to prey on the tardy.
I guess your interest in this as a lifestyle choice is inversely proportional to the square of how long you have been trapped behind a slow moving retired couple who have their names scrolled across the back of the slow moving van and the rest of their lives to get there. Me, I descended into a deep, dark depression. Inside the pavilions – away from all the vans, tented trailers and these spas…what is it that makes sitting in a bath with thousands of discreetly directioned jets so desirable – we find another version of hell. People selling everything from the surprisingly numerous versions of mop and broom, pain relief, gutter guards, vegetable shredders, container sealers to retirement planning, community villages and prawn peelers.
I need to sit down, but not in a personal massage chair or swing that looks like it’s made for a huge parrot cage, put up my feet, but not with any sort of orthotic help, in the shade of anything other than a fruit salad tree. I don’t won’t this amount of planning for the little time we have left, it’s like everyone is either on the verge of retirement or making something to sell to them.
At my lowest point I ran into an old friend, he did some house remodeling for us years ago when the family was expanding and is now on the verge of, you guessed it, retirement but I knew the he would be doing something interesting, not traversing the Nullabor in a luxury mobile home, towing a spa. Peter has a love of the unusual and we got down talking about his trip of goats he is trying to unload onto unsuspecting folk, and special breeds of chicken, plus, what I’m trying to find to add to my new chook enclosure, guinea fowl.
It’s a personal thing, the type of chook house you build, some, like a Gen Y type I know of, looks it up on the internet, spends a lot of time planning the chicken version of the Taj Mahal and then subsequently looses interest, other’s look for devices that will make their chook yard complete. Like a solar powered door that comes from England and closes when the sun goes down, leaving the dumb ones out in the wilds of the night in a strange Darwinian chicken world. Me, I just converted the kids unused cubby into a pretty good chook house, they even have chairs to sit on, a desk if they need it. Surrounding this I’ve recreated the Howardian detention centre look, Tony Abbott would be proud, nothing comes in or out, we are all safe.
So Guinea fowl are an unusual bird, sort of look like a small turkey and they roost up trees but when you find them can make a particularly fine meal. The flavour is more like chicken than game, stronger though and they have an affinity with cabbage and pork fat. So, I cheered myself up a bit, maybe I’ll go into game bird rearing or even just set up a my own stall here next year. There’s a certain fungus that only grows on the Tibetan plateau, Ophiocordyceps sinensis or the caterpillar fungus. It colonises the larvae of a certain caterpillar, eventually springing out of its mummified head, like a scene from The Thing. Once harvested, dried, ground and mixed with deer penis, it makes a particularly strong libido increaser amongst other things, I reckon it’ll go like the clappers here.
Guinea fowl with braised cabbage, prune and bacon
1 guinea fowl, split down the back.
salt and pepper
½ small red cabbage, shredded.
8 small red shallots, peeled but left whole
4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2-3 thick slices good quality smoked bacon
500ml homemade chicken stock
Bundle of herbs: thyme, tarragon, parsley
10 prunes, with pits
In a pan large enough to hold all, fry off the bacon to release some fat, remove and in this rendered puddle of goodness gently fry the seasoned guinea fowl, skin side down, remove and cook the shallots, garlic and cabbage until they are tamed somewhat, tuck back into this the two meats along with the prunes and herbs, add enough stock to half cover the brew, not too liquid, cover with foil or lid and cook in a lowish oven, around 150C until the bird is cooked, around 45 minutes. A particularly fine meal served with steamed chats and something in pinot mold.
Ravensworth 2009 Shiraz Viognier wins 4 trophies
Good news from RNCAS Regional wine show
Our 2009 Shiraz picked up 4 trophies: Best shiraz, best canberra district shiraz, best red wine and wine of show. This follows a god showing at the 2011 Winewise SVA. Last 80 cases on sale now before we move onto the elegance of the 2010 shiraz viognier
WISS results – We won..best air dried class
No much to say here, first attempt at air drying a leg of pork pays dividends, have a
look at the WISS website to fully appreciate the effort of these guys.
Indecision, transformers & WISS
Increasingly I’m finding this time of year, on the very cusp of spring, strange, confronting and ever so slightly disorientating. I know this sounds weird, spring, as a youngun’ was always a time of joy, kicking the shoes off after school and heading to the creek, dam or other water feature. Now it’s full of dread as yet another year zooms past. What do you wear, eat, surely it’s not father’s day again? It’s like life is on speed, just tearing by, I’m not even confident enough to head out for the day without some warm outer shell and should I pack away the soup pot or bring out the salad bowl?
You feel the slight warmth in the air and look around to see all the winter’s jobs still wanting, a wheel off here, pile of rubbish there. You would have noted all the advertising running up to our day based solely around hardware shops and car accessories. Now I’m as intrigued at car parts and brushcutters as the next bloke and like many I stood in front of the Makita bus parked out front of Magnet mart just before dad’s day in thrilling embrace of both awe and amazement. This super sized, flash bus kitted out like a Republican presidential nominee hopeful was a true sight to behold. All these tools and machinery which for the world looked like a repair centre for the next Transformers movie, if fact the entire bus could well be the promo for the first movie of the second trilogy and in the split of an eye transform in a cybertronian and rage havoc on all the terrified and slightly jealous dad’s hanging around.
High on my list of potential gifts was a sleek looking bandsaw and mini-lathe, wow I haven’t seen any of these (or actually thought of needing them) since high school where we rampaged weekly through the woodwork class on these old machines without one thought of occupational health and safety or HACCP, which hadn’t been invented yet, making our rolling pins and warped magazine racks. If I could get my shed set up with this gear I could , well, cut stuff out, the wife would be in her own awe and amazement at my manliness but in truth, don’t tell anyone, what I really want is a new moulis de legumes to replace my 20 year old beaten up well used food mill.
Late winter, early spring is a rather dull time for fruit and vegetables, betwixt and between you could say, the exotics haven’t arrived yet and all you can really find in abundance is cabbage in all its forms; Kale; spinach; sprouts; cabbage itself; wombok what is that?; cavalo nero, no that’s still kale etc. They really don’t inspire a lot of thought when confronted with a huge display of them but seeing as the weather is on the change but still clinging to winter’s cold evenings an Italian bean soup is of the order.
For me it’s a cross between a stew and a soup, based around dried beans, this year’s olive oil which has just finished settling, maybe some home cured pork, (Actually to be exact Award winning home cured pork, aka Ravensworth country ham: top air dried class 2011 WISS http://wineindustrysmallgoodssmackdown.blogspot.com/) the trimmings or bone from this winter’s project, the last jar preserved tomato passato from the back of the cupboard, you know there’s one left and then whatever is available, a big mix of leafy late winter vegetables. It ends up being a huge pot but will last the week, getting better and thicker, well up to a point and then it will resemble my next project KimChee. You can set up the outdoor setting with a heater and herald in spring in all its glory.
Tuscan bean soup with kale
Olive oil
500g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight
200g piece of prosciutto, left whole
2 fresh bay leaves
1 bunch parsley, leaves and stems separated
2 red onions, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
1 tbsp dried hot chilli flakes (more or less)
1 cup white wine
6 cloves garlic, 3 crushed, 3 left whole
1 each bunch silver beet, cavalo nero, any other spinachy looking vegetable, stems separated from leaf
1/3 red cabbage, chopped
1 cup of chopped fresh beans (any will do)
700ml handmade tomato passato or two tins of diced Italian tomato
½ bunch basil, leaves only
Salt
Drain beans and rinse well, cast off any that are discoloured or weird looking, place in large pot with 4 liters of water plus prosciutto, bay, some parsley stems and 3 whole cloves of garlic, add a tbsp of salt. Bring to simmer, skim and cook for 1 – 1 ½ hours (Beans should be just getting soft not falling apart, cooking time will vary on age of beans) Remove the beans, reserve and cool, fishing out any flavourings and spent herbs as best you can.
In a big pan, heat the olive oil, more than a drizzle, like a couple of splashes, lots basically and sauté onion and celery until just starting to soften, add parsley leaf, chilli and chopped garlic, cook for a minute then add the silver beet stems plus any thick stems from the other leafy vegetables, cook until it just starts to gain colour, deglaze with white wine, reduce and add whatever tomato arrangement you chose, add a cup of the cooked beans.
Cook this down for about 15 minutes, until its nice and soft. Pass through a mouli back into the strained reserved bean cooking stock and bring back to the simmer, skim again if necessary, adding the rest of the cooked beans. Add red cabbage and chopped fresh beans along with the leafy bits you have left. Cook this for 10 minutes or until all the vegetables are nice and wilted and cooked through, season with more salt if needed.
To serve, toasted and garlic rubbed sour dough, more fresh olive oil, chopped basil leaves and a bottle of sangiovese, which is made for this sort of food. Want a good one, look for Greenstone sangiovese from Heathcote, a partnership between one of Italy’s greatest producers, Antinori, a UK importer and Mark Walpole, a Victorian viticultural hero. Shows how good this savoury variety can be when grown in the right location and with some serious dough behind it.
Four ways with blood orange, Convoy of discontent & mad as hell
I’m waking up this, bright sunny late winter’s morning thinking I should be full of some sort of rage, teaming with anger at someone and everything, a wild, unfocused seething at the system, a scene for the 70’s movie Network comes to mind.
‘I’m a human, God damn it! My life has value!’ So I want you to get up now go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!!’
It’s Monday 22nd August and if the threat has been realised there should be and stream of angry people charging down the nearby Barton highway, I want to say in the ‘caravan of courage’ but that something entirely different, the procession of discontent..no-confidence that’s it, the convoy of no confidence.
But first, continuing my probable misquote from Network “I’ve gotta get mean, I gotta dig deep” but now I’ve gotta take the dog for a walk. And here I find it hard to keep some sort of anger brewing. My dog, one of those poodle-cross things that the pet shops are full of, has this amazing coat of hair, can’t see his feet, eyes or mouth, just a mop of tangled ginger hair, so I took him off to Yass for his usual clipping. Well when I picked him up I was sure they gave me a different dog, because this, now female looking arrangement with fluffy tail and ears, eyebrows much like Sam the sheepdog, surely isn’t Pooka. In a word ridiculous so strolling down the lane it’s hard to keep the fires of uncontrolled rage that I’m meant to be feeling today burning, with this silly looking dog bounding around after rabbits.
I’m thinking that there’s more to this than people not wanting a tax on carbon, windmills and a national broadband network. Maybe, just maybe, the anger is to do with diet and, sit down, a detox might be cathartic, might heal the soul. I’m feeling that way myself, I was all set to charge into Canberra and rage against the machine when I thought hang on, I actually don’t feel strongly either way. Being not one iota a political animal having being blessed with parents who felt strongly about cancelling each other’s vote out, I have never once voted for the political party who gets in. I mean Mark Latham seemed reasonable?
So here’s my plan, cleanse the body and hopefully the mind but which detox diet will works it magic on my countenance? Googling away its easy to find heaps to choose from: Green smoothies diet, na sounds like wheatgrass and that bird has flown; fruit flush diet, seems reasonable until you see that you have to buy expensive protein drinks off an old weightlifter; the lemonade diet, well seems to work for the kids; the you are what you eat diet…don’t get it, that would make me a deer/duck/ham.
All looks like too much work so I’ll just make it up myself. Blood oranges are in season at the moment and it doesn’t take too much time to see that these are natures perfect fruit, not only super high in vitamin C and A, but loads of folic acid, calcium and packed with anthocyanins, natures own anti-oxidant. So here’s what I’m going to do, get a heap of them and see if it helps the demeanour, if so I’ll patent the idea and make a squillion like the buff weightlifters, if not excuse my behaviour at the next rage against the government.
Here are five things to do with blood oranges
1. Simply add them to the morning juice, mixed with normal oranges, carrots and a spike of ginger, you get the day going it the most positive way, love the colour here.
2. At the other end of the day that make a fantastic addition to a range of cocktails (Yes, it is an hypocrisy to detox with alcohol, but there you have it) It is the perfect companion to Campari; mix two part of good gin with 1 of Campari, a splash of vermouth (Kina Lillet if possible) over ice and rub the rim with the skin of the orange and top with 3 parts blood orange juice.
3. A simple salad, cut segments of blood orange and mix with baked baby beetroots, raw rhubarb, red onion and parsley, dress with good olive oil and serve with a dollop of crème fraiche on the side, see you probably feel better just thinking about that.
4. Another salad, a bit more work. Sicilian blood orange salad, this is where the oranges apparently come from, the slopes of Mt Edna, the volcanic air giving rise to the colour, use the very dark and bloody, sanguiniccio.
Sicilian blood orange salad
3-4 blood oranges, segments, use juice too
1 small red onion, finely sliced, soak in chilled water to tame
A pile of rocket as a bed
½ cup of Kalamata olives, pitted plus half a dozen sliced for garnish
Full flavoured olive oil
Handful of goats or sheeps milk feta, crumbled
6 dried figs, chopped
½ cup of day old bread, broken into rough shapes, cooked in olive oil until crispy
In a warm oven drizzle olives with oil, bake until dark, soft but not burned, puree with extra olive oil to a pouring look. Drizzle the puree onto a plate with an artistic flare, toss everything else together and pile up on top, more oil to dress, add crouton last.
5. Sashimi of king fish with blood orange and ginger vinaigrette
A lovely recipe from Tetsuya, one of the best ways of serving this fish fresh.
120g Kingfish, sliced thin, skin off
1 blood orange, segmented, pith free
A mixture of chopped chives, parsley, coriander, some mixed baby lettuce and finely sliced spring onion
Ginger vinaigrette (mix together just before serving)
1 drop of orange oil
1 drop of Banyuls vinegar, a light red wine vinegar will work
¼ tspn each of grated ginger and garlic
1 tspn salty soy
Salt and pepper
Arrange the fish and segments, dress and sprinkle with herb mixture. Done.
Steamed blue-eye with pickled vegetable noodles and ponzu
2 250g plump fillets of blue-eye, skin on (or use another big fish)
200g brine (35% salt)
Oils on hand: grapeseed and sesame
Vegetables: a mixture of cucumber, daikon, carrot and wombok (Asian cabbage)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt flakes
Steamed sushi rice
Garnish, toasted sesame seeds, chopped spring onions
Ponzu dressing
60ml light soy sauce
40ml citrus juice (see above)
5ml rice wine vinegar
10ml mirin
60ml dashi
Pinch of minced ginger
Mix together
First prepare the vegetables, cut them all into a long julienne, you can get little hand shredders that do this, use about the same quantities of each vegetable. In a bowl season with sugar and salt and leave for 20 minutes, drain off any collected brine. Steam the fish for 8-10 minutes over barely simmering water, once almost ready heat a pan with a splash of both oils until it just starts to smoke. On a plate, have the fish skin side up, scatter spring onions and pour over the sizzling oil, this sears in the flavour a slightly crispens the skin, serve on a bed of vegetables, rice and dressing on the side, sprinkle all with sesame seed and extra spring onion.
WISS, coppa & LET reunion
It’s almost one year now. Sad, really. November, in the year of our Lord, 2010, still goes down as one of those amazing times you have that define a period on your life. It was just a group of people getting together over some great wine, simple as that yet for the fact that it was an invitational event that only 12 people get to do each year and it was something like $100K worth of wine.
So when the word got out that we should get together for a reunion, relive the week, the amazing highlights, the silly comments and discuss that empty feeling you now get knowing that the 2011 applications are due and no matter what you’d do to get another seat at the tasting table, that we probably won’t ever have such a range again, well at least without having to pay for it.
A date and venue were selected, a private room at Circa in Melbourne’s St Kilda where they know all about fine wine being part of the Prince wine group. The challenge, attempt to put together a flight of wines worthy of such a celebration, the menu was planned a 5 course degustation.
You might remember the sequel to the remake of Ocean’s Eleven a few years ago? One of the opening scenes is the gathering of the just shy of a dozen criminals who pulled off the heist of a century, they all amber into the room – resplendent, elegant, mysterious – to plan the next seemingly impossible challenge. Well that was exactly how it felt walking into the restaurant the other night. Exactly, seeing as my sub-conscious vision of myself is always George Clooney anyway.
Well it was a terrific night, great wines going back 5 decades from the likes of: DRC, La Chapelle, Haut Brion, Bonneau du Martray, Muller-Catoir. The menu well tuned to the paired wine: warm miso glazed eel with an Arbois white and flinty Chenin; spanner crab cannelloni with three dry Riesling; Dory, mussel and clam risotto, urchin butter with white Burgundy; suckling pig (ssso good) with red Burgundy; veal loin with a neat handmade macaroni with an esoteric flight of Hermitage, Bordeaux and Peidmont.
Even ending up in a dark underground room filled with red smoke, highly repetitive dance music, bad dancers, contemplating celery flavour vodka whilst trying to hear a spoken work, could not dampen my mood.
One of the other scholars, Mike Bennie, or as I like to call him Brad Pitt on account of them being so alike, is one of the founders of WISS. What is WISS I hear you say, well, this acronym stands for Wine Industry Smallgoods Smackdown!
Most people who make wine also having a decent interest in food and it turns out that many have a crack at smallgoods when they can. A few reasons: one, well it goes with wine; two, a lot of winemakers are of European extraction and three, we get fairly quiet in winter.
As you possibly know, we do get into the curing mood each year, many a slaughtered pig and bucket of salt go into the annual salami making process and this year I’ve had an 8kg pork leg hanging on the back verandah, drying in the cool breeze. So when I heard about the competition that is judged in early September I just had to be involved with it. But what to cure? The prosciutto/ham/Jamon won’t be ready needing a full year to dry, sausage are but there are full-on profession salami makers in this industry so I settled on something that will be ready in the 12 week window we had and is a bit different.
If you run your hands down the back of a pig’s neck, don’t worry they sort of like it, but shouldn’t, you can feel two thick sections of meat just behind the where the skull ends, they are about 20cm long before they descent into the shoulder sections. That’s the cut I am talking about, capocollo or coppa both translate – Head-neck and nape – to this section. They make a nice little roast too being so well marbled.
The reason why I like this cut is that it has all the qualities of good prosciutto, soft, fatty, sort of dissolves in the mouth and you can cure it quickly, ours took about 6/7 weeks to cure and dry. So I’ll include a process of how it was made, say you wanted too to be a smallgoods producer but you can obviously just buy some readymade for this simple and fulfilling pasta dish but do go to an Italian butcher that makes it themselves like Eco-meats at Belconnen, tell them Bryan sent you.
Home-made coppa
1 x pig neck section (about 700-800g)
40g Murray river salt crystals
1 tbsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp coriander seeds, ground
½ tspn fennel seeds, ground
Pinch of mace
dried chilli to taste
Some rope
a 5kg weight
One salami net
Mix the salt and spices together and rub into the meat all over, place in a sealed container and cure for 14 days, turning every second day. Brush off any excess spice mixture, squeeze the salted meat into netting, it should be really tight. Tie both ends and then go outside, somewhere cold and hang the meat via a section of rope high enough so dogs won’t get interested. Now tie the weight to the bottom of the sausage so that this arrangement will stretch the meat as it dries. Cover with some muslin. Dry like this for 4 weeks, then take off the weight, the coppa is ready when it feel firm yet yielding.
Macaroni with coppa, sautéed kale and tuna
Good quality macaroni or penne
100g finely sliced coppa
2 bunches Tuscan black kale, chopped
1 tin Italian tomato, chopped
1 clove garlic
Olive oil
1 small tin of good tuna, with chilli if possible
Italian parsley, roughly chopped
salt and pepper
Cook the pasta as required. Ina small pot, heat some oil to sizzle, cook garlic until crisp, remove and discard, dump into the now garlicky oil, the tomatoes, cook down a little, set aside. In a non-stick pan, sauté coppa until just starting to crispen, remove and save, add kale and sauté until yielding, add back the coppa and tomato sauce, cook to combine, season and add cooked pasta and off the heat stir in tuna and parsley.
aR� yeX��X��ze:11.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,”sans-serif”‘>Steamed blue-eye with pickled vegetable noodles and ponzu
2 250g plump fillets of blue-eye, skin on (or use another big fish)
200g brine (35% salt)
Oils on hand: grapeseed and sesame
Vegetables: a mixture of cucumber, daikon, carrot and wombok (Asian cabbage)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt flakes
Steamed sushi rice
Garnish, toasted sesame seeds, chopped spring onions
Ponzu dressing
60ml light soy sauce
40ml citrus juice (see above)
5ml rice wine vinegar
10ml mirin
60ml dashi
Pinch of minced ginger
Mix together
First prepare the vegetables, cut them all into a long julienne, you can get little hand shredders that do this, use about the same quantities of each vegetable. In a bowl season with sugar and salt and leave for 20 minutes, drain off any collected brine. Steam the fish for 8-10 minutes over barely simmering water, once almost ready heat a pan with a splash of both oils until it just starts to smoke. On a plate, have the fish skin side up, scatter spring onions and pour over the sizzling oil, this sears in the flavour a slightly crispens the skin, serve on a bed of vegetables, rice and dressing on the side, sprinkle all with sesame seed and extra spring onion.
Men’s sheds, Ponzu & Big fish
Amazing how receptive the brain is first thing in the morning, fuzzy sure, but everything seems to sink in better at 5am. Those first waking minutes today, listening to the Saturday fishing program, Big fish, on ABC has me thinking about aquatic life, the sea and men’s business all day, to the point that I’ve just gotta have a nice fillet or cutlet for tea tonight and I have an uncanny need to build a dingy.
The show tends to be just a tad repetitive, each week they cross to the experts up and down the coast, who are no doubt catching ‘flatties’ in the bay or ‘kingies’ off the point, maybe, and I’m now making this up for effect, get into a school of ‘coddies’ off the shelf.
I love the show, the brusqueness of the fisherman “yeh, na….no worries….” they, who are surprisingly mostly males, have a laid back, cheerful, uncomplicated feel about them, not a care in the world even if the trouties aren’t biting. Surely this is an activity we are meant to be doing, not necessarily reefing half dead fish out of the sea, more doing an activity that is calming, serine, a way of quietly reflecting on life. I imagine that these type of people don’t need therapy, intervention or membership to a men’s shed.
I’m not trying to make a mockery of this new genre of things men need to do to get through the week, meet in a non threatening environment and build a park bench. I am lucky enough to have a job that is working, living the dream, in a huge shed each week making wine so maybe I can’t see the need, mind you I could use a hand tidying my own shed, is that the same thing?
Back to angling and my need for slab of fish for tea. Looking around at a few fish shops it’s hard to make the connection from a fine, line caught kingfish – that spent its last moments gracefully leaping out of the ocean in an age old contest between man and beast, granted the man is armed with a highly engineered rod and reel and the fish just has it wits – with what’s on offer. Looking at the trays and trays of uniform fillets that have no doubt come from farms and have recently thawed out, my morning yearning fads somewhat.
Not until I get to the Belconnen markets that I see fish that look like they should, ie whole. Not that farmed or frozen fish is solely a product of mall based fish mongers, I just know here that I will have more chance of finding something different or at least cut off the bone in front of me.
The fish that I crave the most, one that we used to have on our daily menu down in Tasmania is the so called blue-eyed cod. A more correct term would be blue-eye trevalla, I could be wrong here, I know, crazy talk, I’m never wrong, but this isn’t a cod at all, just a big, deep sea fish that can be mistaken for a cod. So let’s call this just blue-eye, great fish, probably farmed now, so they’ll never be as good as one that’s been pulled out of the cold sea where they grow so slowly but it’s probably more sustainable.
You’ve got to get there early enough before they cut them up, it’s seems common here to cut the upper part of the fish into cutlets, what you want is a nice plump pair of fillets from the thickest section of the fish, not the tail, tell them to leave the skin on too.
Once home you need to do two things, firstly pull out any bones and then give the fish a quick salting. It makes sense that they spend their lives in salt water so this would be an environment that has the flesh in a state of balance. On average sea water has 3.5g salt per 100ml, so make up a brine that reflects this with sea salt flakes and give the fish an hour or so. Have a bamboo steamer over simmering water ready and hot before you put the fish in to steam.
A word on the sauce here, ponzu is a Japanese citrus dipping sauce, if you can find yuzu, a citrus fruit that comes from China, Japan and Korea, much like lemon, grapefruit or even madarine, it’s quite tart and very high in vitamin C. Funnily enough at the winery we have this old citrus that grows beside the shed, looks like lime, only yellow skinned, I reckon this is yuzu and is probably the rootstock growing rather than the planned lime. It works anyway, use any of the mentioned citrus or a blend of all.
The other main ingredient in ponzu is dashi, this is a Japanese seasoning stock based on kelp (Kombu) and dried bonito (katsu bushi, also available as a ground preparation), both are available from Japanese grocers. Easy to make, for a cup, just soak a piece of kombu (5cm square) in a cup of water, bring to the point of simmering, turn off and add 2 tbsp bonito flakes or powder steep for 10 minutes. Strain and keep in the fridge.
This is a quick and fairly easy preparation, just some subtle Asian flavorings to help, I’d be looking at a bottle of Riesling seriously to go with all these flavours and tastes, maybe something with a bit of age, soft and gentle, which will balance the yang of the sauce’s umami seasoning.
Now, men, we are meeting at my Murrumbateman men’s shed next Thursday and first we are attacking the tool shed, a decent bench should set the scene, give me a holla once your done.
Steamed blue-eye with pickled vegetable noodles and ponzu
2 250g plump fillets of blue-eye, skin on (or use another big fish)
200g brine (35% salt)
Oils on hand: grapeseed and sesame
Vegetables: a mixture of cucumber, daikon, carrot and wombok (Asian cabbage)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt flakes
Steamed sushi rice
Garnish, toasted sesame seeds, chopped spring onions
Ponzu dressing
60ml light soy sauce
40ml citrus juice (see above)
5ml rice wine vinegar
10ml mirin
60ml dashi
Pinch of minced ginger
Mix together
First prepare the vegetables, cut them all into a long julienne, you can get little hand shredders that do this, use about the same quantities of each vegetable. In a bowl season with sugar and salt and leave for 20 minutes, drain off any collected brine. Steam the fish for 8-10 minutes over barely simmering water, once almost ready heat a pan with a splash of both oils until it just starts to smoke. On a plate, have the fish skin side up, scatter spring onions and pour over the sizzling oil, this sears in the flavour a slightly crispens the skin, serve on a bed of vegetables, rice and dressing on the side, sprinkle all with sesame seed and extra spring onion.
Chicken, egg & rice
Having been away from the stove for almost a month, it was a good feeling last weekend to firstly head to the regional markets for inspiration and then have a sport free weekend so plenty of time to plan and play around.
It’s been fun to eat out as much as we have but I really do miss cooking some simple dishes myself at home also my sour dough mother – who I was missing dearly, almost as much as my birth mother – was looking pretty shagged, black and watery, she certainly enjoyed a freshen up. If you find yourself in this situation, heading for holiday and can’t take it with you, noting that customs people don’t look favorably at a jar of off-smelling liquids, you’re going to need to refresh it. Just pour off all the more liquid, foul smelling stuff and weigh what’s left, add the same amount in equal quantities of flour and water, let it rest and grow for two days and repeat, once it looks normal again your back in business.
In this deep seated desire to have just some simple yet sustaining food I grabbed a healthy looking chook from Thirlmere and a few other sundry items to get us through the week. Back home I still have David Chang’s Momufuku book on the top of my teetering stack of new books. I’m finding it hard to get all the Japanese and Korean items for some of the dishes. Kombu for instance, is almost impossible. Kombu is a kelp which is one of the two ingredients in dashi and for some reason there is a shortage of this product, could be to do with the radiation issues in north Japan. Kelp is high is iodine and this can help, apparently, if you find your neighborhood reactor leaking into the water table.
Not having this rules out the main recipe for which I bought the book, ramen, so I’ve looked further into the book and found a dish that fits the bill as being simple and restorative. Really just chicken, egg and rice but requires a bit of prep and time so having this quiet weekend, just me and my youngest at home gives me plenty of time to arrange the dish for Sunday night when everyone returns.
What I like here is the process of preparing the chicken, brining and then cold smoking ahead of cooking it en confit. In any process where you are going to braise and or smoke meat like this, lightly salting it first allows the protein to absorb the liquids and flavours through the process. It doesn’t necessarily mean the dish is more salty, you just need to be careful of the seasoning at the end.
Generally all the smoked dishes you may come across are hot smoked, which means they are cooked. Cold smoking is a much more subtle method and you can do it fairly easily if you have a kettle type BBQ. Firstly the brining process, dissolve 200g of sugar and 140g salt in 2l of water, add to this the whole chicken and soak for 2-4 hours, no more. Then remove the chook and cut off leg and thigh in one piece plus the breast. Cut out the leg and thigh bones and use with carcass and wings for a stock for another use.
Place the four chicken pieces in a large bamboo steamer with plenty of room. Soak a few cups of suitable wood chips in water, you can buy these from BBQ places or be creative, I use apple wood chips.
Place an old pan in the oven with plenty of those hot rocks, cook until there are very hot, place this in the bottom of the kettle, drain the wood chips and put in another pan on the hot coals. The steamer of chicken goes above this and then seal the kettle up, if you can measure the temperature keep it below 45C, you might have to play around with the amount of rocks, just a small amount of smoke should come out of the vents when opened. Leave for 40 minutes.
This is obviously more complicated than you may want, so like Chang says, you can substitute some really smoky bacon and continue from this point.
Have the oven set at 80C, heat some extra light, poly-unsaturated vegetable oil…just messing with you, use duck, goose and /or pork fat. Heat it to 80C, place chicken in a baking tray that in can just fit in snuggly, pour over the fat to fully submerge chicken, adding bacon pieces if you wimped out on the smoking process,. Cover with foil and bake in oven, for 1 hour, remove and let chicken cool in the fat, overnight if possible.
A word on slow cooked eggs too, which you’re going to come across. These are definitely worth the process. Heat a large pot of water to 60C, add whole eggs and cook for 40-45 minutes keeping the water between 60-65C with ice or boiling water, the variable temperature and time is there depending on how well you judge it, longer if the temperature is closer to 60C etc. Once done chill in ice and then store in fridge for use.
Chicken, egg and rice by David Chang
Freshly cooked rice, about a cup per person
1 piece of smoked, or not, confit chicken per person, prepared as above
1 slow cooked egg per person, as above
6 slice of cucumber per person, about 3mm thick
1-2 tbsp salt and sugar in equal quantities
Chopped spring onion, use all the onion.
Pickle the cucumber first by sprinkling in the sugar salt mixture 30 minutes before use. Heat egg in hot tap water for 10 minutes, break into a small dish, the white should be opaque but not solid. Have a non-stick pan on the heat, drain the chicken of most of the fat and cook at a sizzle, skin side down until very crispy, turn over to finish, slice.
Place one cup of cooked rice in a warm bowl, make a divot in the top, slip the egg in here, arrange the sliced chicken on the side, the pickle on the other, sprinkle with spring onion and serve. You break the egg and mix into the rice. Just a lovely restorative, Sunday night dish that has its heart in simple Korean cooking.
Ducks guts, press & eggs
This just goes to show you should always take your time, not make decisions on the run and, above all, read the label. I need some brandy to flame my buttery pippins. There is none in the pantry so I fly down to the cellar at a brisk canter – well, not really a cellar, just a pile of boxes in the corner of the shed, which, by describing as my cellar, I aim to pass on an impression of order and planning. I rip open a box, ignoring the label “don’t rip open in haste”, and whip out a bottle that in the darkness resembles brandy. I make the 200m dash back to my cooking apples. All goes well and after 10 minutes getting my breath back, I look at the now ullaged bottle in my hand. You might recall that I’m not much of a hard man when drinking spirits is involved. I like the idea of scotch, brandy and other hard spirits, but just can’t stomach them. We use a pure spirit in the winery called SVR, or spiritus vinum rectificatum if my Latin is correct, which is 96 per cent rectified alcohol – you basically can’t get it any higher (unless of course you’re remotely Irish around St Pat’s day, boom, tish). This quite volatile alcohol is used to fortify sweet reds like muscat or the drink formerly known as tokay. You can get pot-stilled brandy spirit, too, used for vintage ports, which comes in a relatively low 75 per cent alcohol. We have to try this stuff before we use it to make sure it will tastes OK once it’s watered back to 18 per cent – always a fun time at the winery, but I really don’t find straight spirit remotely pleasant. When I look at the label of this bottle of cognac, I’m firstly trying to think where it came from. And then I notice words like “fine champagne”, “grande reserve” and more importantly “La Tour D’Argent”. This is the name of a really expensive Parisian restaurant. So I Google it – La+tour+D’Argent+cognac. £42,000 for a bottle of D’Argent cognac, the search reveals. What? Bugger, I thought that pie filling tasted good. But no, that was for a bottle of brandy sold at auction from the restaurant’s legendary cellar. I refine my search and discover I’ve opened a mere few hundred dollars worth of cognac to cook with. So yes, maybe make decisions slowly and in the light of day. During this search, I learn more about the restaurant, La Tour D’Argent, which has a signature dish called canard a la presse. Now this might not be so appealing. Basically, it’s a blood and guts sauce served with the roasted breast and thigh. It’s apparently quite a show. The head waiter, with Gallic fanfare, rips apart this roast bird in front of you, liquefies the flesh and squeezes the carcass in a press, then reduces this to a sauce. I always feel for vegetarians at this point. It’s the attitude, I will hunt you down, kill you, cook you and then rip apart your carcass. When nature bites back you can’t help feel we deserve it. When a duck hunter in Victoria, now the hunting season is open, shoots himself do the ducks all line up and laugh out loud? The problem is, they just taste so damn good, and I have some leftover duck from a nice roast the other night, plus a bag full of duck livers from the markets. I won’t attempt a duck press just yet – they look really expensive – but rummaging around in the shed, I reckon I could knock together something out of two sheets of marine ply and four G-clamps that might work. I will focus of the carcass and guts for this week’s cooking tip, so if this doesn’t turn you on, thanks for coming. The duck livers looks magnificent – big, dark, very fresh, and I have a cup of duck fat that was rendered off the roast, so I put two and two together, throw caution to the wind and think why not, cook the liver in the fat? Confit-like. I can’t think of any logical reason against this, so I salt the liver with thyme, pepper and crushed juniper overnight. The next day, I brush off the excess, then put each cleaned-up organ – cut out the sinew that connects the two halves – into little plastic cryovac bags, along with a good dollop of duck fat, and seal them under full pressure. If you don’t have one of these “food savers”, you’ll just need enough duck fat to cook the liver fully submerged – the temperature and times are the same. Have a big pot of water on the simmer at 65C. Try to keep the temperature constant by adding cold water and a flame tamer as needed. Submerge the packages and cook for 15 minutes. If you like, toss in two duck eggs and cook these at 65C for 35 minutes. Then, for both, chill quickly in iced water. That’s the basic background to dish. The livers are then seared in fat and then flamed in brandy, since I have an entire bottle to get through, and served with a wildish mushroom risotto and a parsley salad. Serve just the yolk of the duck egg on top, completing the total annihilation process: I will then cook your liver in the fat rendered and top it all with your progeny.
Confit duck liver with mushroom risotto, parsley salad and slow-cooked duck egg
3 large duck livers, prepared as above
2 duck eggs, optional
¼ cup really expensive cognac that you now have to drink
½ cup muscat
2 tbsp butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 baby leeks, white part poached until tender, sliced
1 cup mixed mushrooms – shitake, chestnut, enoki, shimji etc
1 cup carnaroli rice
¼ cup white wine, warm
3 cups stock, preferably made from this duck’s bones
½ cup grated parmigiano reggiano
1 tbsp good balsamic vinegar Salad
1 bunch parsley, leaves only, chopped fairly coarsely
2 tbsp capers
2 French shallots, sliced
1 lemon olive oil salt and pepper
Heat two cups of stock to simmer. Reduce the other cup to a thick glaze and reserve. Heat the butter and cook the leeks and mushrooms until slightly wilted. Add garlic and a little parsley. Remove and keep warm. Add rice plus some extra butter to the pan and cook over a low heat until it gains some colour. Add white wine and cook this until almost dry again. Add two-thirds of the stock, very gently simmer this – don’t stir just shake the pan every now and then. Heat a separate pan until almost smoking (you don’t need oil). Add prepared duck livers and sear quickly on each side. Pour in brandy, ignite, stir until flames subside – an adult should be present for this, I guess. Remove the livers and keep warm. Add the muscat to the brandy reduction, reduce this again and then add thickened stock. Check the seasoning, adjust as needed and cook this down to a very thick, shiny sauce, keep warm. Once the rice has absorbed the stock and the rest along with leeks and mushrooms, stir vigorously until rice is cooked but still crunchy. Remove from heat, add balsamic and parmesan, season and rest a bit. For the salad, chop capers and mix with shallot and parsley, dress lightly with lemon juice and oil, season. To plate up, brush the sauce on to the bottom of the plate, spoon rice into the centre, slice the liver in half and arrange on one side and the salad on the other. If you cooked the egg, chuck it on top, I guess. Done. The liver cooked thus has a foie-gras like texture, soft and buttery.
Pomology, bee keeping and James Bond
Noticed in a book shop the other day another of the books from the series “1001 things to do before you die” This one is on artwork and I think the forth, you may remember that I passed on my thoughts on the first, 1001 foods to try before you expire, something like that. And I thought at the time, this could be an ongoing series given our love of lists. Wine and songs followed closely so having missed the boat on being an entrepreneur in predicting the next in the series, to get ahead of the game, I’ll give you a few ideas as to what could be in the pipeline, so if it materialises, you’ve heard it here first.
It’s worthwhile being creative here, a book that would certainly interest me and still have some broad appeal could be ‘1001 things you can do with a 0.22 Hornet, a case of Scrumpy and three hours to spare” or possibly more relevant today, 1001 things you shouldn’t say to your spouse, if you don’t want to die.
We all have our own lists of things we want to do before we die – some of which seem to be retrospectively added, and when they happen you say to yourself, well, that was just fine, I wasn’t thinking this would occur but now it has, it can be scratched on to the bottom of my bucket list.
Serving a drink to a James Bond actor some years ago in a restaurant in Mayfair was in this category for me, and it was pretty cool. I was behind the counter at Langton’s Bar and Grill in 1986 and asked him if he wanted that shaken or stirred. It does lose some of its awesomeness when you fill in the detail. It was George Lazenby (Bond in 1969), so I could have served the drink in Queanbeyan, where he came from. rather than London. Also, it was a soft drink – he didn’t drink alcohol, so probably didn’t care what I did with it. And he wasn’t impressed by my repartee at all – he just glared at me. It’s written indelibly on my list, though.
There’s also the list of things you wouldn’t necessarily do again, given the chance. It’s easy to get this list up to 1001 – just this morning, I have added a few to the Things Not To Say To The Spouse list. You have to be careful not to rest on shear hope though.
I was watching the movie ‘Social Network’ and thought, wow that looked pretty easy, why didn’t I think of that? And then I remember, I don’t know anything about computers and I spent my youth drinking, eating and travelling. There’s still a few things on my 1001 list that I hope to achieve.
I’d like to cook for royalty – not necessarily to remain a subservient minion, I just think it would be cool to cook for someone that has a crown, sceptre and the ability to have you beheaded. Also on the shortlist are beekeeping and brewing. Like bread, wine and cheesemaking, with which I have had varying success, these two wish-list items get back to the basics in life, simple processes that humans have been doing for ages and are the basis for the self-sufficient off-the-grid living that I get closer to each year.
I touched on beekeeping last year after the brief excitement of finding someone local that could get me started. This didn’t materialse on account of said support team being off the grid and not knowing how to return a call, so it’s being shelved, but recently my interest has been reignited.
Out here at the winery we have an electrician that comes by every week, with little teardrops in his eye, as we try to draw more power out of the local network in our never-ending quest to control temperature more precisely in the winery. So we know each other well and David, as he is called, plonked a jar of honey on the lab bench the other day. It’s from his flock down Yass way, so we get into the conversation about how he goes about it.
Apparently, the bees are going wild this year with all the rain – and there’s more swarms than you can poke a stick at, if indeed you want to poke a stick at bees. He’s part of the local rescue squad and has been overrun with requests to remove hives from old ovens and other places the bees colonise. Interesting fact, they can travel 5km each day collecting their little parcels of sugar.
Think about that. I’m not sure about the carrying capacity of a bee, but I don’t think they carry little buckets, so they are traveling this distance and returning with what must be a drop of sap each time. Wow, that’s commitment. If you are interested, head to Canberra Institute of Technology, which offers beekeeping courses over four weekends, and at the end, you can have your own flock of minions.
The honey is quite amazing – not eucalyptus, but scented more like fruit trees, peach, quince and fig. It sort of reminds me of wine. But it’s the other artisan activity that I’m focused on this week. Brewing, not beer, since I don’t have an oversupply of barley. Apples. They’re everywhere. The big wet has shagged the pears, but the apples are bountiful, each tree over loaded with juicy, crisp fruit. You can only eat so many without needing stomach surgery and the type that I have aren’t the ones you’ll see stamped at the supermarket.
Cox’s orange pippin, snow apples and a weird one that tastes like a granny smith but has edges, and is slightly bitter and acidic. The trees mostly date back to early last century, so they are big and rangy, way before pink lady’s found their way to market.
These bitter sweet/sour characters are apparently exactly what you need for cidermaking, so this is what I’ve been concentrating on this week. It seems the most important thing I need is a pair of sturdy overalls, a beard and a squint. You also need to know a bit about extracting juice, brewing and maybe chemistry.
It very much like winemaking, so I have the basics, but getting juice out of an apple is much harder than out of a grape. The simple method, for small batches anyway, is to juice the apples, which removes the skin and seeds and centrifuges the juice a little.
I’ve gone through all the apples that I have access to and the pippin seems to be the best all-purpose cidermaking apple. I also have access to golden delicious – I just need to jump a fence and collect them under a cloak of darkness at night. These make great juice but are too sweet to use on their own. It’s all experimental that this stage, so I’ll keep you posted.
A hint here – if you use a juicer, don’t forget the pulp, in here is all the phenolics needed to add structure to the cider, so squeeze out as much juice from this portion and add the pulp back to the free-run juice and let it settle. You’ll get some browning, but don’t worry, it helps the final product, too, and once the preservative is added the colour will come back. Apples and oranges have opposite clarification traits. Apples start clear then go cloudy; oranges the reverse, I think. This is due to the type of pectin present. I’ll need to work out how to break this down to clarify my cider.
I’m getting ahead of myself, so will have a crack at cidermaking over the next month and report back but what else to do with all these apples? Everyone loves an apple pie, so here’s a simple filling using my precious cox’s pippins. You can certainly use golden delicious as well, but don’t use as much sugar. For the pastry, take your time and make you own puff pastry or shortcrust – it’s worth it, rather than heading for the supermarket freezer.
The apples are excellent this year, if you don’t grow your own, buy some locals or find a neighbour who has some and is a lousy shot.
Cox’s orange pippin pie filling
8 largish apples
4-6 tbsp vanilla sugar (see note)
4-6 tbsp butter, plus some more
¼ cup brandy
1 match, or lighter
some head space
Peel and core the apples. Cut into fairly thick slices so they take some cooking and flaming. Rinse the slices in water that’s had lemon juice added. Pat dry. In a fairly big pan, heat the butter. Once sizzling, add the apple slices and cook over a high heat until they get a slight scorched look. Add the sugar and cook down so that it starts to look like colour but not caramel. Add the brandy, strike the match and flame to the apples – caution obviously. Shake the pan until the flames die down. Reduce to a thickish sauce and off the heat stir in a good amount of butter. But don’t cook it all the way through if you’re using it as a filling for a pie. You can also eat this as is.
Note: You can buy vanilla sugar, or make it yourself. Simply keep the casings of used vanilla pods and store them, sealed, with caster sugar. They give the sugar a nice delicate character. Use in any dessert making.
Canberra times, March 23, 2011
Pheasants, markets & Charliesheenism
Just last weekend I finally got back to the regional food markets at Exhibition Park. A lull in Saturday-morning sport meant we could shoot off before the offspring woke up, thus dodging the usual weekend demands in our parenting guidelines. I haven’t been here for a while now, and how it’s changed. It’s more serious, organised and developed than the initial open shed. What’s next? Valet parking?
It’s a fairly well-known fact that these regional markets are attracting lots of attention, mainly due to the fact that some other markets, in Canberra anyway, have become more commercial and thus more supermarketesque. It was a sad day when I saw the first sticker on an apple at the Belconnen markets. And now I only go there for seafood, organic meats and flours, maybe a loaf of bread, if my own starter isn’t up for it. Otherwise, it’s all available at Supabarn, with easier parking.
I must also admit, with a great deal of pride and humility, that I feel partly, if not wholly, responsible for the Exhibition Park market’s inception and success. This might come as quite a surprise to the members of the Hall Rotary club, district 9710. If you were to Google my name, ignoring all the stuff about my race-calling days, and the reality-TV session for I did on ‘Trick my Truck’ in Joplin, Missouri, you won’t find this piece of information.
In fact, you won’t find anything about my groundwork getting the markets started – letters to government, proposals to Exhibition Park, canvassing the public. I have actually never even been a member of Rotary anywhere. But I did rock up, pockets full of change, to the meeting at which the Hall Rotarians voted to go ahead on the simple idea of this market a few years back. And I truly believe my brief but passionate talk on the local wine industry was the catalyst that sparked the energy that created the markets. An obvious success, with a market full of fantastic produce and overflowing with patrons eager for their connection with rural life.
I wander around totally absorbed in my narcissistic delusion – we call it Charliesheenism now. Sure, he’s deluded, but if you listen to what he says, he’s a new-age bard. Yes, he’s pretty baked and YouTube is his pen, but in 400 years, he will be remember for the way he summed up his own internet television broadcast: “Forget about last night, that was a train wreck, a shameful train wreck filled with blind cuddly puppies,” he says in Episode 2: Torpedoes of Truth (http://www.ustream.tv/charliesheen).
Where was I? That’s right, the markets. This has been my mantra for well on five years – buy local, know the providence of your food. Coles has helped with all its recent talk about not using beef raised on hormones, but why has it taken so long for this gem? All I can say about the beef my kids have grown up on is the only testosterone these cows get is when I walk outside each morning in all my manly glory. And yes, the cows might look small and kind of rangy, but they haven’t been pumped up on steroids, or whatever our supermarkets have been feeding us all these years until they saw market advantage in not doing it.
My task today is to get dinner. First, find the Thirlmere Poultry stand, newly arrived at EPIC. The only trouble is that it won’t take long for people to catch on and the stall will run out of organic birds, so make sure you get here after 8.30am, which leaves me an hour or so to get there first.
As I wander up today, the guy behind the counter pulls me aside and says, “How about a pheasant?” Yep, not even caring about the price, which turns out to be a bargain at about $15. And while you’re at it, says me, a bag of your finest ducks’ guts and a chook please.
Now I have the base for tea, I can fill in the detail. I was up late last night reading the Noma cookbook that I’ve had in the too-hard basket for a while now seeing as I still haven’t found the spleen of a musk ox or a moss that doesn’t make me ill.
But I have read into the very many recipes and found quite a few ideas for cooking – like the 35-minute poached egg. I did this as a trial. I sat over the pot for half an hour adding iced water every time the temperature went over 65C. Finally, I cooled the egg and cracked it open. Much anticipation, the chooks were all lined up at the window as they do. “What’s he up to now?” they say in the slight cockney accent I imagine they have. All the congealed white falls away to reveal a bright orange yolk – I hear applause outside – that is neither liquid nor solid, sort of plasma like. I had some spelt and rye bread ready to toast, butter, salt. Wow, it’s like crazy texture, sort of sticks to your mouth like peanut butter, amazing.
So I have all these half recipes running around my head. Once the pheasant is in my fetchingly jaguar toned push trolley – hey, no laughing - I just need to hunt for some more ingredients. Mushrooms, easy, you’ve seen the mushroom guy’s range. I pick a mixture of six varieties, heavy on the chestnuts. Pears, in season – you’ll need quite a ripe one. Leeks and other assorted stock vegetables and some late but fat asparagus.
I trundle off, stylishly as usual, with my prize find. It’s going to take a bit to pull all this together and it might not exactly work but, anyway, here’s what I do. It’s not like me to go all fancy on you but this pheasant deserves some attention. Do not freeze it.
Duo of pheasant – confit legs with wild mushroom ragout and panfried breasts with watercress sauce, served with grilled pears and leeks, asparagus tips
1 pheasant
duck fat
garlic
thyme
salt
pheasant jus made from bones (see below)
mushroom, chopped if needed
1/4 cup dry maderia
watercress sauce (see below)
one ripe pear, peeled, cored and quartered
1 small leek, white only, poached for a couple minutes
8-10 big asparagus tips
butter, lots of butter
Remove the legs and thighs from the pheasant in one piece. Remove breasts. Season all with salt, thyme leaves and garlic, chill until needed.
To cook the legs, brush off the seasoning and cook submerged in duck fat for 45 minutes at 65C. Set aside until needed.
Brush pears and leeks with butter and chargrill until caramelised. Heat a little butter in a pan and saute mushrooms a little. Deglaze and reduce with maderia. Add jus (see below) and cook down to a thickish sauce.
With a hand blender, blitz quarter of a cup of hot water with quarter of a cup of butter. Heat this to a simmer and cook the asparagus tips for two minutes. Remove and season.
Heat another pan, or indeed the same one cleaned. Add a tablespoon or so of duck fat and saute the breasts for a few minutes on each side. Wrap in foil and keep warm. Clean and fry legs until crispy.
Arrangement: One dollop of cress sauce with breast sliced and arranged on top,; mushrooms piled up on the other side of the plate, legs on top of this. Leeks and pears, brush with butter, and put on plate artfully and finally the asparagus. Done. Serve with a glass, or a bottle of Mapenrai pinot noir. This local pinot, made by my friend Brian Schmidt, is perfect for such a dish if you can find it.
Pheasant jus
pheasant bones, chopped
1 leek, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
garlic
thyme
bay leaves
black peppercorns
juniperberries
brandy
red wine
tomato paste
In a stock pot, saute the bones and veges until well browned. Deglaze with brandy and ignite. Cook down, add red wine and reduce a little, then add everything else and cover with water. Cook for 40 minutes, strain, and then cook down again to a thickish stock, season.
Noma’s watercress sauce
leaves from 1 bunch watercress (about 80g)
1 tbsp water
1/2 tspn Dijon mustard
80ml grapeseed oil
Blend the cress, water and mustard. Add the oil slowly to form an emulsion. Season.
Canberra Times, 16 March, 2011
Badly cut, Joe Dolce & opera
I have a little confession, an expose if you will. It’s nothing major – not a headline as stunning and full of question as the front page of the NT News recently (http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2011/02/12/best-man-left-bleeding-after-being-hit-in-head-by-flying-dildo/). I’ve been to some rowdy weddings, one that involved livestock, guns and curries, but this takes the cake.
No, my confession is a love of operatic music. This is not a recent, cripes-I’m-getting-old, what-the-hell-am-I-doing moment. It goes back a long way, to when I think I was the only apprentice mechanic working for the Department of Capital Territories (bus and heavy truck division) who spent all his spare money on opera and pianos. I know this statement of operatic love flies in the face of previous reminiscences over the likes of Barnsey and AC/DC – for which I still hold a candle, don’t you worry about that.
But I see opera (along with the life works of Joseph Dolce obviously) as the highest form of music, particularly Italian opera with all its guttural passion and chivalry.
Maybe it’s because for me, opera is cooking music, like Cold Chisel is for drinking and the vocal adrenaline of Joe Dolce for lurv-ing. You just need to be careful not to get these three genres mixed up, boy, that was an embarrassing weekend.
If you’re making pasta, which I do often, I always crank up the iPod and Bose sound dock and get Nessun Dorma belting out. Nothing like a victory speech to help toss the dough and flour around.
Back in the ‘90s, which I’m having trouble getting out of, there was a series of cooking and music sets. The first, Hot Food, Cool Jazz, from Simon Goh, Jill Dupleix and Terry Durack, set the scene with an array of dishes packing heat tempered with seductive mellow jazz tunes. The follow up was a book called Allegro al Dente, using the food of Rinaldo di Stasio paired with a terrific mix of arias, duets, ensembles from the likes of Freni, di Stephano and del Monaco. Legends. If you could see me, I’m holding up an iphone with an open zippo lighter app, legends.
This was out around the same time as the Three Tenors phenomenon, and for me is a purer version – recordings from real operas, rather than the stadium, amplified opera from Domingo, Carreras and Pavarotti. If you want convincing, listen to Mirella Freni sing the aria ‘Un bel di vedremo’ from Madam Butterfly. Wow, you get those chills right up the spine.
The recipes are all working examples from Rinaldo di Stasio (of Cafe di Stasio). It’s a good shortlist to work from. Here, I’ve taken the povere theme and mashed up a couple of recipes to create maltagliati con sugo di collo, ahh, di agnello (?) – excuse my strange Italian.
It’s basically a rough hand-rolled and torn pasta, very rustic, using breadcrumbs, and a rich sauce made from the chopped neck of a lamb, pancetta and vegetables. All old school, no fancy pasta machines or meat mincing devices. You just need a sturdy knife, a big rolling pin, some time and crank up the music.
Clearly Cavalleria Rusticana fits in with this dish, so full of it own rustic-ness, but I think we can do better. It’s a song we all know, starts off slow, very Italian, lots of rubato, speeds up, and then slows down. Is that a bouzouki in the background? Weird. Are you ready, OK, here we go, excuse my Italian, ‘Wazz a-matta u (hey) god-da-no respect…” See, there’s those chills again.
Badly cut pasta with lamb neck sauce
Sauce
1-2 lamb necks to yield 500g meat, fat removed (reserve bones for stock)
salt
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 small stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
handful parsley, leaves removed and chopped
2-3 sprigs rosemary, leaves removed and chopped finely
1 fresh bay leaf
100g pancetta, chopped
half cup rich red wine
1 cup rich lamb stock made from bones
2 tbsp tomato paste
1lt stock, peppercorns
olive oil
2 tbsp butter
Chop the meat from the neck into small prices not minced but small anyway, season, heat oil and brown meat well, remove and add chopped vegetables, herbs and pancetta, cook until soft, return meat and de glaze with wine, add tomato paste, spice and stock to cover, reduce heat and cook slowly until well cooked and thick, check seasoning, stir in butter just before serving, pour over cooked pasta, garnish with chopped parsley.
Rinaldo di Stasio’s maltagliata pasta
200g plain flour
150g breadcrumbs, wholemeal
4 eggs
salt and pepper
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
Mix ingredients to form a cohesive ball with minimal kneading. Chill.
Roll out as thin as possible with rolling pin and then cut into very rough shapes – be as creative here as possible.
Waiting…. cleaning… & 1/2 a tonne of tomato sauce
Not sure if this is just me or it’s a condition that comes with the territory as you age as a bloke but I’m becoming increasingly aware that may be totally gullible, like I believe stuff way after others would walk away and possibly augmenting this is an inability to read undertones in personal situations.
For example: Each morning I get up early, around 5:30, and make myself a cup of coffee – really enjoying the beans from Lonsdale street roasters, a relatively new business that knows what it’s about, great coffee – pull up a chair at the front window, that looks down the red granite drive, it’s not a rocking chair yet but I have a gentle rocking motion anyway “Maybe today…” I say to myself in a voice that doesn’t really sounds like mine “…the kitchen builder will turn up” It’s coming round, I think, to our first anniversary together. That’s for the ‘Ahhh, 2 weeks, 3 tops’ job we embarked on last year.
My wife, who has been quite vocal about my faith, has taken to using building terms as expletives. These mornings she just shakes her head at me, “plumbing electrician, read my lips, they’re not ever coming back”
It’s like when I turned up one day with a brightly coloured bag full of GP3 cleaning products that I just spent $150 on out in Fyshwich. “They’re these great cleaning products that will help you around the house, this one’s wax…” Did the temperature in here just drop 5C? My breath is condensing, I see dead people, well maybe just one, walking. Silence. “You won’t need to use as much water…..the guys were wearing racing gear like they were my pit crew….they cleaned parts of my car, let me show you how to use them…” I’ve no idea why I’m still talking in the continuing icy silence. “Tiler” is all that’s said as she walks away
I know what you’re thinking, you just don’t go there, publically, denigrating professions like builders, septic tank emptiers and doctors – “Sure I’ll be gentle Mr Martin” as he slips on the brickies gloves for the annual physical checkup – I’m sure there are great builders out there and if you know where he is……apologies, it’s just a being a bad experience but I just trusted him, took him for his word.
During the biennial project there have been some success stories, like the guy that fits the glass splash back, Italian of origin, makes grappa in his spare time or the stone bench fitters, incredibly efficient and organised. The flooring team, great job, likes our wine. There’s a thesis that I’m working on, people who enjoy good food can do anything and are more likely to finish it so this will be my first question in the unlikely event that we go through this again “So, what did ya have for dinner last night?
Outside there’s a slab of concrete, meant to be the foundation for a car port, now a basketball court. The concreter here did a great job, arrived lots of people and food, again a good sign. Each year we have a great flow of food and ideas from this Italian family. Even as I write this a goody bag arrives which signals the sad yet exciting end to a couple of cows, to wit one tail, 4 cheeks and two sweet breads.
If you were to go to the shed at Ernie’s house this time of year it’s humming along to the tune of tomato sauce making and as usual this isn’t done by halves, dozens of boxes of ripe tomatoes are ready for the sauce making project so I pass on the Belmonte sauce recipe, you may have to adapt the quantities to suit.
So I set my waiting chair ready for tomorrow under the continuing conviction that the van will turn up in the brisk later summer morning, while I’m waiting I might just fix up that smudge on the window that was missed.
Belmonte sugo di pomodoro
½ tonne ripe sauce tomatoes
5kg salt (to taste)
A couple dozen bunches of basil
Wash tomatoes and chop roughly, place in a couple of 44 gallon drums, heat through to release juice, season during this stage, drain light watery juice and pass pulp and seeds through a tomato mill and bottle in sterile jars, seal. Put the bottles back in the drums, making multiple layer. Bring to simmer and cook. How long? Well there’s a very defined and scientifically based gauge, you place on top of the layers of bottles one medium sized potato, when this is cooked they’re ready, turn off the gas and let them cool overnight in jars.
Hell’s kitchen, street food & duck congee
“Welcome to Hell’s kitchen, announced the Canberra Times on its front page on Saturday February 12. Wow, I thought, I bet every restaurant owner tonight is enjoying this front page, which is very visual, with rats, cockroaches and ants scurrying across the newsprint.
There must have been some nervous diners that night, trying to sneak a furtive peek behind the clean and orderly facade of clearly the restaurant in question. But of course the story about hygiene failures in some kitchens related to all food-service operations, right down, possibly, to the sausage sizzle out the front of the hardware or homeware store.
I’m feeling pretty cynical about this article. Clearly it wouldn’t be fun to be struck down with food poisoning, even more so if you’ve just spent $160 a head getting it. But there must be some hundreds of restaurants and food outlets in Canberra, and I’m pretty sure that if there was a significant food-poisoning event we’d rightly hear about it.
I’ve been eating out most of my life and only really thought I had food poisoning on one occasion that wasn’t associated with drinking lots at the same time – and as you know, I get into some weird food and situations.
The same day I read this story, I head to the Multicultural Festival where crowds descend on Garema Place to enjoy the vast array of ethnic foods. And it doesn’t stop me one bit from enjoying egg nets from Singapore, blood sausage for Poland, a beautiful and tasty date dessert from Yemen, even a green slushy and fairy floss from Bengal - I’m a bit dubious, too. It’s possible they come from this part of India but it does seem odd. There was a lot more food on offer too – I wish Canberra could be like this every day.
Some of these outlets may blur the edges of modern, Western food-preparation practices, but do we want our food filled with preservatives, packed into multiple layers of plastic, devoid of pathogen and flavour?
No, not me anyway. I got more of a shiver at a fete last year when I saw a huge, 10kg frozen block of sausages being defrosted on the barbecue when demand was higher than supply.
I’m reading this article tonight, having just unwrapped two Chinese roast ducks, bought from the very place named as a past offender, which continues to be one of my favourite Asian takeaways.
I remember when I first visited Singapore in the mid 1990s, the hawkers’ markets were such a revelation, so raw and fragrant. They’ve been cleaned up now, but I just loved the variety. One stall sold just one dish – duck porridge or congee. A bowl filled with soft, glassy-looking rice, dotted with dark, fatty duck deposits and topped with soy and spring onion. A simple street food, basically made from leftovers, that really captures the essence of this kind of eating.
So after the street market in the city, I get the urge to re-create the duck congee – hence the duo of Daffys from Dickson.
Tonight, we have the breast meat, warmed through with steamed rice and a snake-bean stirfry, no tricks. Tomorrow, the leftovers – bones, legs meat, skin and rice – all get bundled together for my duck porridge.
Given the lag time between writing this and publication, you might have read in the meantime a headline along the lines of, `Part-time food columnist and amateur hunter poisons himself, our city’s idiots revealed’. But even so, I’d rather feed the family true food than some antiseptic invention.
Some hints. Generally, you’ll cook the rice in the dish with the bones and meat. I used a pressure cooker and made the stock separately and have adapted the recipe to suit. If you haven’t got a pressure cooker, use a cup of uncooked rice to two litres of stock and cook over a very low heat.
Duck porridge
2 ducks (except breasts), meat ripped apart, skin shredded, bones, chopped and rinsed.
2 cups steamed rice, long-grain jasmine used (made from a cup of rice)
1-2 cups chicken stock
4 spring onions, 2 chopped, 2 whole
1 tsp ginger, minced, another 3 or 4 slices not minced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 tbsp soy sauce, salty
Make the stock first. Bring the bones covered with water to the boil. Remove from heat, strain and discard the cloudy stock. Rinse the bones and add to the pressure cooker. Three-quarters cover with chicken stock, whole spring onions and ginger. Seal the lid and cook at high pressure for 40 minutes. Don’t open the lid until the pressure decreases – if you open a pressure cooker straight away, not only will you get a face full of steam, but you’ll also boil the stock, patience.
Strain this and put the stock back in the pot. Stir in the rice, the proportion should be about two cups of cooked rice to a litre of stock. Add duck meat and skin, chopped spring onion, extra ginger, garlic and soy. Seal in cooker again and this time at low pressure, cook for 90 minutes, allow to cool before opening.
Serve with a drizzle of soy and the simple Southeast Asian salad that follows.
Achar
beans sprouts, topped and tailed
shredded vegetables – carrot, snowpeas, Chinese cabbage, spring onion
chopped peanuts and herbs, to top
vinaigrette to dress – olive oil, soy, balsamic and garlic
Ouzo, fishing & good times
I bet this guy walking up the driveway with my brother will launch into some story about food, he has that old school European, Mediterranean swagger about him, the shotgun slung over his shoulder only reinforces my thesis, I casually look for an escape route remembering a this particular scene from the Godfather.
He is out on the farm looking for hares, meaning he wants to shoot them and eat them and as he saunters up the granite, the thick Greek accent pours out and from his pocket appears an unassuming bottle of Grotsch swing top “you try this, ouzo, is good, expensive….careful!”
I whip the top off and draw in the fiery fumes, “you try!” Ahh maybe later I think, its 7am and a long day ahead cutting wood and hedging the vineyard. This stuff, much like grappa or jet fuel, can put you on your back with days lost. It’s probably sitting at 90% alcohol and would certainly make the Stihl chainsaw run like a dream. You need to have moved to this directly from breast milk to be able to handle it.
Alex, as he is called, grabs a bag of figs from the heavily laden tree on the way out. Again it impresses me no end how southern Europeans know food and would never pass an opportunity to gather some for the pot.
The said bottle of almost pure ethyl alcohol might come in handy as we are heading off to the south coast for a brotherly weekend fishing, four of us, our baby brother absconding as he’d rather look at his ink and biceps in the mirror at the gym than hang around his older and more comfortable-in-their-skins brothers.
Next youngest sibling has this coast house caught in a time warp from last century with hundreds of old records, some were possibly from my pre CD collection. I sold the lot to him for a 100 bucks, a jar of mousse and a Don Johnston jacket back on the 80′s in preference to this new technology which was sold primarily for the fact they doubled up as a drinks coaster. The likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rodriguez & Dylan blare from the speakers, the bookcase is filled with Ludlum and Wilbur Smith, there’s plenty of beers and little food as the beach rods are baited up and we head to the nearby shore.
I must have missed the meeting as I’m amazed at the kit these guys have, great big rods, buckets, tool kits that would suit a GP pit crew filled with all manner of lure, sinker and other stuff that is apparently required to catch fish. I can’t say I’m a keen fisherman, I forgot my little set of kids rods, which I’m glad of now as it would have been like bringing a butter knife to an axe wielding party. I think I’m the cook.
It’s my youngest son’s first real experience and being the thoughtful lateral thinker he is, he says to me after an unfruitful hour or so watching “Why don’t they just eat those little fish they keep throwing away?” commenting on the baitfish they are indeed tossing away with a repetitive fervor, there’s something out there at least.
Eventually the big beach rod goes wild, like it hooked onto an Collins class submarine only with more power, it’s a big one or something with a mean streak a mile wide because little bro is struggling as the beach comes to a standstill. You see guys fishing here all the time but I’ve always thought it a front for drinking. After a fight in which we win, notice how it’s now a struggle I’m involved in, out of the water comes this huge, Ohh at least 4 foot long I reckon, beautiful, grey, whitish fish that resembles tuna.
Turns out to be an Australian salmon. A seriously strong for it size fish, I reckon its about 3 foot long, 3-4kg, built for swimming fast. Everyone seems to know what to do; they quickly break its neck and bleed it. Apparently if this isn’t done quickly they are even more inedible.
I’ve seen these fish before, they are from the same type of fish as tuna and salmon, fast swimmers, with huge gills and a massive blood line running down their sides. The reason why they need to be bleed is this aerobic muscle common to all pelagic fish: this term might mean something to a scientist, basically it swims all the time rather than a bottom feeder or rock fish.
Years ago, Ray Smith, our handy man and professional fisherman down in Tasmania, used to show me how to remove the blood line as he called it, he would then eat it, like raw and I would then turn green. Amazing man really, could drink 30 cans of diet ale in one seating and walk, perform personal dentistry at the bar with a pair of long nose pliers.
Once this fish and its brother are back at the house, I went through the process of filleting them, the deep purple, liver coloured tissue makes up half the flesh on the, Oh, at least 2 foot long, fish, so there’s not that much.
They fit in with tuna, mullet, Atlantic salmon in many ways except they are entirely devoid of flavour and texture once cooked but they are all we have so I hit the shops with a list and a plan.
I’m thinking curry, make up for what it’s lacking. Another guy I used to stand next to in a kitchen was Venkatesh Ramachandran (Jewel of India) clearly of Indian origin, this extremely tall man has this natural flair with food, he quietly adds this and that and in no time a brilliant dish would appear from the heaven’s where his upper body exists. One dish I remember he showing me was the Southern Indian favourite, Meen Moilee. A coconut fish stew of sorts, simple, fragrant and made for a fish like Arripis.
Being down the south coast and thus as far from India and her ingredients as you can be, I had to adapt to local conditions, you however should be able to find all that is required. The best fish are firmer and juicer for this dish, Trevalla would be my ultimate choice or monk fish as a treat.
Our salmon is pleasant if not a tad mushy but I’m focused on all this old school music at my finger tips, I ignore the kids laughs as I try to explain that this is real music “What with all the crackles and skipping?” Yep, love this old music, might follow in the footsteps of Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy with her masters in Beatles music, maybe a post-doctoral certificate in Barnsy, the JD years. He’s a man that wouldn’t have been frightened of a wee 500mls of Greek rocket fuel, as we are.
Meen Moilee
1kg firm fish, skinned and cut into thick slices
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
Juice of one lime
salt and pepper
Gravy
2 tbsp clarified butter (ghee) or oil
2 brown onions, sliced
A thumb size piece of fresh, new season ginger, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, smashed
2-4 green fresh chilies, roughly chopped
Half a handful curry leaves
1 tspn mixed curry powder
2 ripe tomatoes, seeded and chopped
300ml coconut milk/cream, the top third thick cream reserve
salt
Garnish
Lime segments
Coriander leaf
Steamed rice
Marinate fish: dissolve turmeric in lime juice with salt, rub fish and leave for an hour or so.
No the gravy, heat butter or oil, when hot add onion, fry until softening then add ginger, garlic, chili and curry leaves, cook on high for a bit, should be getting some decent aromatics now, add curry powder. Bang, now it’s starting to build, mix in tomato and thinner portion of coconut milk, cook for a little bit and gently slip in the prepared fish. Lower heat and cook until fish just starts to firm up, add thick cream and season. Serve with condiments.
The perfect valentine’s gift, comfort & ribs
What do you give a gal who has everything? I reflect on possible Valentine’s gifts for my bride of almost 21 years. Na, I can’t really think of anything that would make her life more perfect than it already is.
For instance, a husband who, as the previous two decades have passed, is really comfortable in his skin, puts this comfort above everything else and has reduced his clothing needs to a pair of footy shorts and a singlet. No longer needing the expense of suits, shirts with sleeves, dancing shoes nor dacks that don’t come with a gusset. I can see why truck drivers are kings of their own domain. Yes, it’s true she really did win the partnership lottery.
Given that we got married so close to this day that celebrates the anniversary of the very many martyrs who share the unfortunate name Valentine, we tend to skip any niceties associated with it. But it’s still important to pull yourself off the couch, brush off the crumbs and think of something special around this time of year. Keep her keen.
No grog at the moment that’s normally an easy one. Grab a bottle of fizz, some chocolates and Bob’s your uncle. I’m into my third year of Febfast, so it takes the shine off something as shallow as this. So what can I do?
Nothing says I love you more than there being more of you to love so a decent dinner should work. I fall back to my favourite food group, which contains such sub-categories as bacon, sausage and ham. Pork, no less.
Recently, on our endless quest to attend live sporting events for our 11-year-old son, we were up in Sydney on the way to watch the Sydney Kings get flogged again at the King Dome, and popped into Kobe Jones on Kings Wharf for a meal. We hadn’t been here before but it came highly recommended, plus there isn’t much else around Darling Harbour. Nice food, Japanese for the masses served with all that added professionalism you get in the big smoke. One dish we all enjoyed was barbecue baby back pork ribs. They didn’t seem very Japanese, but our kids enjoyed it nonetheless so they’ve asked me to add it to the home dining repertoire that includes many comfort foods like breaded lamb cutlets, toad in the hole and spag bol.
So I hit the books. Most recipes use spare ribs (not sure why they are called this, what ribs are spare besides the one Adam used) which are fully fatted. These US style back ribs are cut from further along so you get a full rib with the meat in between – less fat, more bone and are a pretty nice communal meal.
Ginger is one of the main flavourings in this recipe, mainly because you get the new season knobs coming in now, despite all the rain up north where they come from. This is beautiful ginger, sweeter and more delicate than the robust aged, hard skinned ginger that packs more heat. So if you can find any (Belconnen Markets for me) use it for this dish plus adding it to orange and carrot juices.
Generally, you’ll be given a north American barbecue recipe, filled with brown sugar and caramelised. This is tempting, but the Asian versions are more elegant and preserve your health more to some degree. So get into them, a delicious summer meal. Just make sure you’re comfortable and have lots of napkins. If you were to drink, a nice cold bottle of riesling hits the spot, since this is the #summerofriesling on twitter.
Barbecue baby back ribs
4 racks back ribs
master stock (see below)
marinade (see below)
apple soy dipping sauce (see below)
Place the ribs in the simmering master stock and cook for two hours, cool in the stock. Place on a rack over a roasting tray and chill until needed, allowing them to dry off totally, discard any liquid and then paint them with the marinade, keeping any drips, two to four hours. Now simply barbecue over hot coals brushing them with the marinade until crisp and tender. Serve with rice, stirfried vegetables and apple soy dipping sauce.
Master stock
2 litres water
200ml soy sauce
300ml Chinese cooking wine
2 large knob gingers, smashed
100g yellow rock sugar
100g palm sugar
4 cloves garlic, smashed
spices – star anise, dried chili, cinnamon stick, Sichuan pepper, cumin, coriander seeds (as you see fit)
Bring to simmering point and cook for half an hour. Strain, ready for use.
Marinade
60ml soy sauce
30ml mirin
30ml oyster sauce
30ml honey
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp ginger, minced
1 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 tsp white pepper, ground
Apple soy dipping sauce
1 granny smith apple, grated plus any juice
1/2 recipe of marinade ingredients except honey
1/4 cup chopped spring onion
Suckling pig, Bloody Ponting & sour dough again
Diary entry, December 26th, 2010. Boxing day….Dear diary, what the duce is going on here? (I’ve self edited here but you get the idea) It’s Boxing day, a hallowed day, and like every red blooded Aussie I have a plan: arranged the day, turned off the phone, set the out of office email message to “Sorry I’m on holidays watching the Baggy greens reclaim the ashes, set the world right” the entire day devoted to watching test cricket live from the G, TV volume turned down so I can listen to the always amusing Kerry O’Keeffe, Paul Kelly music on standby for when they change. No cooking either as we have the mountain of leftovers.
All this and I’m not really that much of a fan, it’s just what you do, today, watch the cricket. It’s part of our makeup, in our genes, our structure, its summer, a screen door slamming, some sort of water fight going on outside, Christmas leftovers and watching a group of grown up men hit a red ball around a very green oval with a piece of willow.
And who could blame us for such confidence after the joy of Perth, if they hadn’t wiped the floor out west I would have found something better to do, anything, because this is torture. The woeful day unfolds, a day that has me resembling one of those science experiments where a can of cola flavoured refreshment is placed in a vacuum chamber and slowly crumples into itself to explain the absence of pressure, the inverse of what the selectors should be going through.
I reflect on our Christmas present to my mum, four good seats at the SCG, day four, in the decider. She would have opened them yesterday and thought why is her second borne son being so mean, what’s next tickets to the Australian open to watch someone we’ve never heard loose for some good reason day 1.
Mind, knowing mum she is possibly the only fan left who would look forward to this, sitting in the Victor Trumper stand surrounded by confident and most likely pink skinned poms as their team takes on the Aussie side, which after today might mean the Marist 1st Eleven.
By mid afternoon I can’t find any joy here, I drift back to the sanctuary of the kitchen vowing to never watch cricket again and look at what’s possible. Now you may know that I’ve become slightly obsessed with baking bread, you can check out my website, brilliantly named www.bryanmartin.com.au, for any updates to my quest and for the base recipe for what I’m about to launch into today.
In short the main change has been the adding of steam to the oven, I’ve found a little pressure vessel that would normally be used for spraying various chemicals onto plants, an organic atomizer I guess, made sure it was clean of any Glyphosate…just tricking I actually bought a new one. When the loaf goes in the oven (also lowered the temp to 210C) I spray a heap of atomized water onto the bread and the general vicinity, close the oven and maybe repeat halfway through so the loaf has a nice crusty exterior, otherwise as is.
I have to confess that my planned Anatidea Christmas dinner didn’t eventuate, the duck in question was 200km away and not likely to fly here. Seeing as the name of this column has been changed I owe it to you to know the providence of what comes across the chopping board each week and also I’m continuing my quest to lower carbon footprint. So I lost interest the 4 hour drive just before Chrissy up to Thirlmere and back, where they apparently grow good ducks, geese and quite possibly swans. Good news is that they are going to set up a stand in 2011 at the EPIC Farmers Market so I can then justify the travel.
My problem was thus, what to have for lunch at this late a date? After a conversation over the Hilux ute, couple of follow up calls, a local suckling pig stuck it hand up “Choose me!” Main problem was this: It’s still alive and apparently it wasn’t really suckling anymore, small though, about yeh long (Jeff holding his hands about 2 feet apart). No problem, my oven is big and I have a back up pit and rotisserie, let’s do it. Instead of the drive up to the highlands, on Christmas eve I just had to drive the 3K’s down the end of the street, chuck a right turn, second driveway, over the cattle grid, veer towards the sheds on left, honk the horn twice and someone will turn up.
It’s all very Wolf Creek as usual, my shopping trips, a couple of guys were hanging around, dogs everywhere, one capped chap split off – I’m sure he looked over his shoulder, checking if it was safe – and we entered an old shearing shed. In the corner next to the lathe, a coolroom (good sign, they have a HACCP policy) and after a brief struggle the pig in question was brought out (dressed, as in slaughtered and cleaned rather than in top hat and tails) and laid on the cleared bench for inspection. My first thought, if this is a ‘sort of’ sucking pig, I’m sort of a teenager. It is young about the size of a spring lamb, 12 kilos in its undies and socks, but suckling it aint. Looks good though, after a size conversation, we take to it with a tape measure and hack saw. If the police walked in at this point we might have had some important and pressing questions to answer.
I toss the slightly dismembered carcass into the back of the Crusier, and no I didn’t have my own HACCP guidelines, and on the quick trip back home I came up with a plan. No way I need all this pork cooked so I just prepared the loin for the festive lunch by pretty well boning it out (In the biblical sense), stuffing it and slow roasting.
And it was lovely, very tender, pale, being a true free ranger and not cooped up in a shed with 1000’s of his sisters and brother, there is a purity of the meat, doesn’t really smell porky as such so I’ve added this supplier to my iphone app, Eatlocalculator.
One shoulder was slow roasted as a backup, the usual process, lots of garlic, rosemary, a bottle of white wine poured over, salt and pepper. Covered and cooked at 150C for two hours, uncovered for another hour, cooled and chilled, any stock rendered, reduced, strained and saved.
Next day, boxing day, the skin is removed – don’t worry, I can hear your gasp, this is carefully reserved for adding to salads – and all the meat diced. Getting back to the bread, I have a sour dough brew going as per my previous recipe but the weights augmented to 300g mother, 600g water, 900g flour plus about 12g salt. It’s at the post first ferment stage and we continue with the narrative.
Cut the dough into two even sections and roll both out to a longish oval, flatten out with finger tips. On one, smear a good amount of tomato sauce, the a light sprinkle of cheese, next the cabbage jam and press as much pork as you can fit, leaving a good centimeter clear around the edge, some more cheese to finish and then carefully place other section of dough on top, pressing the edges together. Let this prove again until it rises up, poke a few holes into the meaty chamber and into a 210C oven for 40 minutes, using heaps of atomized water.
So what is it? I’m open for suggestion, Italians might call it a calzone, the British maybe a pork trencher, for me it tastes like something you’d see on a Yum Cha trolley, so maybe I’ll name it the Caucasian pork bun. Yummie it is, the soft bread envelops the rich filling and, as I return after a few hours to the telly and the autopsy of this disastrous day in Australian cricket, I think oh well, the day wasn’t completely wasted and, looking at my family tree, I think I’m at least ¼ English so will practice my chanting for Sydney next week. “And did those feet in ancient time….walk upon England’s mountains green…”
Roast shoulder of pork, in sour dough, with cabbage jam
1 small shoulder of pork
Handful rosemary tips
head of garlic, halved
1 bottle white wine
salt and pepper
Sour dough
Good quality pale mozzarella
Tomato sauce
2 tins good Italian peeled tomatoes
3tbsp olive oil
basil leaves, torn
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
Heat oil in pot, stir fry garlic until browned, discard. Add basil, cook briefly and then tomatoes. Cook this down to a chunky sauce.
Cabbage jam
½ small head of red cabbage, grated
1 small red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
oil
1 tspn honey
100ml stock (Use the wine reduction for roast)
Fry onion, garlic and cabbage until very soft, add honey cook until caramelised, add stock and reduce to syrupy mass.
Bring back the port pipe, Ahhh, the peat & oatmeal
I’ve always wanted to be a complete man, the whole package, sure there’s lots of holes in this objective, too many really, however there is a short list in my head of things that I think would go some way to achieving my goal. It’s not too farfetched or elaborate, not like I’m trying to climb a big hill, be 3 inches taller or put together a flashmob* at Belconnen Mall.
Although I must say it would be pretty cool to organise one, so here’s the instructions for Brymob #1:
“On the afternoon of Thursday 3rd Feb, call 1194 to synchronise your watch, be at the south side of the Merry-go-round in Civic at 12:45 pm look for a couple with lanyards around their neck sitting near the statue of a sheep, approach and say “Surely you jest”. You will be handed the rest of the instructions. Make sure you have the 2kg of brown sugar and the balloon full of glitter ready, at precisely 12:56, remove overcoat and run in direction of fountain, reciting the satanic verse and then follow my lead, I’ll be the one in the police uniform…….”
Yep, that would be a pretty cool but getting back to my vision resplendent. The complete man. I like those old movies from the forties and fifties, where everyone had the slightly drunk elegance about them and seemed to always have a cut-glass vessel filled with two fingers of whiskey. That’s what I’d like to achieve, be able to drink whiskey, straight up. I’ve tried it recently and kinda liked it. Back at Christmas we had a late night at my father in laws house up in the Blue Mountains, lovely place, decorated like it’s a second hand and/or olde wares shop. There’s all this fine china and crystal glassware from prior generations, a different glass for every spirit, they must have been legless 24/7 based on the amount and variety filling the cupboards here: old fashioned, highball, sherry, port – although they seemed to be missing my favourite drinkware, the port pipe, must have come later, something quite sophisticated about a drinking sweet red wine out of a tube – wine, champagne, brandy balloons. Then the drinks cabinet itself, like wow, I’m pretty involved with alcohol but this is impressing me no end.
At the back of the shelf, behind the vermouth that must have been opened pre-war, is a pristine bottle of Maker’s Mark Bourbon, so obviously late at night we cracked the wax with a plan and proceed to drink as much as we could whilst retaining enough colour to make it look like the original hue once we watered it back. Yep you’d think that in your early late forties you’d be over this teen stuff but obviously not.
So whiskey or whisky, the sweeter American version is quite easy to drink, too easy reflecting on the head after our Animal House recreation, but Scotch whisky is another beast altogether, fiery, malty, peaty – ahh, the peat, I recite inexplicably – this is much tougher to knock back and is one of those things I’d like to be able to do without gagging. So I end up with a bottle of Talisker that will take years to get through, so I do the obvious and cook with it. I can feel the collected gasp of 1000 Scots “ahh, why be you cooking with such a fine Islay malt?”
The answer is Cranachan, a lovely Scottish dessert that is dead easy to make when the raspberries are plentiful. Ultimately it’s just another way of consuming grog, you can picture the scene at inception, the befrocked highlander staggering around the castle, thinking OK all I have is whisky, honey and oatmeal, on its own its just breakfast so grab some wild berries from near the Loch, bung ‘em in, brilliant, dessert.
Cranakan (serves 4)
300g pure cream
200g clotted cream
200g frozen raspberries, thawed (or fresh if you have the cash)
1-2 tbsp icing sugar (depending on ripeness of berries
4 tbsp each: oatmeal, honey (Heather honey if you like) and whisky
100g plump fresh raspberries, best you can find.
In a dry frypan, carefully toast the oatmeal, once it burns, discard and start again, you now know what not to do, remove and cool, should be just coloured. Whip pure cream to soft peaks, puree and sieve frozen berries with sugar as needed. Mix into the whipped cream the oatmeal, honey and whisky. Put a heaped tablespoon of puree berries in the bottom of serving glass or bowl. Carefully mix the rest of the berries into the cream, creating a whirling pattern, don’t over mix. On top of puree add a good dollop of cream mixture, then clotted cream, about 4-5 whole berries, then repeat, dusting the top with some reserved oatmeal. Serve immediately, do not pre prepare this, other than toasting oatmeal and pureeing berries as it seems to separate.
*A flashmob is a group of people who assemble spontaneously in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act, then disperse quickly as if nothing happened.
