Food Endeavours of the Blue Apocalypse

Home Made Sausages. Chicken, Apple and Chardonnay Sausages. Jerk Chicken Sausages.

2012-02-09T12:06:00.000+08:00

While it is easy to buy packs of sausages from the supermarket and get some pretty decent gourmet ones from your local butcher, nothing beats homemade sausages. The best thing being that you know exactly what is in them. Sausages are one of those types of food where all the leftover bits and pieces of meat get stuffed into them, it’s a scrapheap, so you never know what could be in your sausage. With homemade sausages, you choose what meat goes into it, and as long as you have the proper ratio of salt to meat and fat (generally sausage = 3 parts meat : 1 part fat and for every pound (0.453g) of meat and fat, use around 1 – 1 ½ teaspoon of salt), you can experiment with interesting flavour combinations, creating sausages that taste much better than the ones that you can buy.

Home made sausages are not hard to make but requires a bit of time to be set aside (2-3 hours) and if you are going to make them, I think that it’s only going to be worth it if you make a large quantity. Eat the sausages within a few days and any leftover sausages can be given to friends or frozen for several months.

Last weekend, my friend Rob invited me to one of his sausage making sessions. He has developed a love for making sausages and every few months he will make a huge batch (a few kilos) to eat and freeze.

I generally find the chicken sausages that you can buy to be pretty bland. We spent the afternoon making over 5kgs of chicken sausages. We made two types – a chicken, apple and chardonnay sausages, and jerk flavoured chicken sausages. Rob told me that chicken, apple and chardonnay sausages were his favourite. He has made them a few times before and he keeps going back to making them because they taste so good. I’ve only ever used dry white wines like sauvignon blanc in cooking but never chardonnay, and I have never cooked chicken and apple together before. It was an interesting combination that I would have never thought of putting together, I think that this is the best thing about making sausages at home, the possibilities are endless.

Making sausages requires a mix of meat and fat. Chicken sausages use a mix of thigh and breast meat, and the fat component comes from the skin. It’s very hard these days to buy chicken thigh and breast with skin on it. This means that the most economical way to make chicken sausages is to buy a whole chicken and debone it - remove the thighs and breasts for the sausage meat, reserve all the skin for the fat component of the sausage mixture, save the chicken wings to marinate for a tasty barbecue treat and the chicken bones/carcass can be frozen to make stock later on. It was great to be able to take a whole chicken, hack it apart and put every part of it to use. Nothing was wasted. This was also the first time that I have deboned a whole chicken (good thing that all the meat was going to be minced as I did a pretty hatchet job of it). We deboned eight whole chickens which provided around 4.35kg of meat and 950g of fat/skin. One of the advantages of making chicken sausages is that you know how the chicken has a kind of slimy feel to it, well it just slides through the mincer! Chicken is easier and quicker to move through the mincer than pork or beef.

(Sausage filler)

Rob has a special sausage filler that he bought when he was traveling around New York. You can source one online for around $200 on ebay. It is a worthwhile investment if you are keen on sausage making. Most meat mincers come with sausage making attachments these days but as the meat is being forced through a small chute and constantly being rotated around, this causes friction and results in a bit of heat being generated as you process everything through, it also ruins the texture of the sausage. When you are making sausages, you want to keep everything as cold as possible to inhibit the growth of bacteria. With the special sausage filler, you fill the large cylinder in the middle with the sausage mixture and slowly push it down, it’s a compression style pump so there is less heat transfer and more sausages can be made faster.

(Chicken, apple and chardonnay sausages twisted into different sized links so you can have little cocktail sized sausages as well as regular length ones)

Chicken, Apple and Chardonnay Sausages Recipe

(Adapted from Home Sausage Making)

The quantities of ingredients in the recipe was tripled to make approximately 2.7kg of sausages (using half of the chicken/fat mince that we prepared from 8 whole chickens).

Ingredients

For 2 pounds (~900g) of sausages

• 2 small sheep casings (You can buy sheep casings from the butchers which come packed in salt to preserves them)
• 2 pounds (~900g) boneless chicken thighs and breast with skin, roughly chopped (you can also use just thighs only)
• 2 teaspoons kosher or course salt
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped
• 2 tablespoons minced onion
• ¼ cup of chardonnay (Preferably one that you like to drink, a glass for the sausage mixture and a few glasses for yourself while you are making the sausages)

Method

Prepare casings

Soak the casings in water until they have softened and then run water through the casings to flush them and rinse out the salt (this also allows you to check if there are any holes in the casing). Take a casing and open up one end and fill the entire casing with water from the tap (using a small funnel to do this makes it easier), repeat this at least 3 times. Keep all the casings stored in a container of water with a little vinegar until you are ready to use them (the vinegar improves the texture and makes them more translucent).

Prepare sausage mixture

The sausage mixture is minced twice. Firstly, grind the chicken and skin through the fine disc of a meat mincer. In a large bowl, combine the minced chicken/fat, salt, ginger, pepper, apple, onion and chardonnay together, and mix well using your hands for a few minutes until thoroughly blended. Then grind the seasoned mixture through the fine disc of the meat mincer again.

Prepare sausage filler

Affix one end of a casing over the sausage stuffing attachment (long thin tube) of a sausage filler (or meat mincer if you don’t have a filler, another option is a small funnel that I saw in action during a Mondo cooking class on charcuterie). Slip on and push the entirety of the casing onto the length of the tube so that it forms an accordion-like pleat and tie a knot at the end of it. Keep a bowl of water next to the sausage filler so that you can dip your hands into it and keep the casing lubricated as you are stuffing the sausages. Add the sausage mixture into the body of the sausage filler.

Stuffing sausages

Push the sausage mixture through the sausage filler and stuff the mixture into the prepared casing. As the meat comes out of the tube, use the thumb and forefinger of your hand to regulate the flow of the mixture as it comes out into the casing to determine how tightly and evenly the sausage is packed. Let the sausage come out in one long coil. When the casing is filled, tie off the end in a knot. Repeat with another casing until all the sausage mixture is used up.

I found that filling the sausages can be quite tricky, as it’s important to get the right amount of filling in the casing. You want it to be tight so that you don’t get too many air bubbles inside the sausage, but not too tight as you need some leeway for twisting the long coil into individual little sausages, so that it doesn’t burst. It's a matter of trial and error, and getting a feel for the right texture. This was my first hands on experience of filling sausages hands on and I ended up with a few burst casings, and lots of unevenly twisted sausages so they didn't all look perfect but it didn’t matter too much as they were still edible :)

Making sausage links

Prick any air pockets and twist the sausage into desired link lengths. Using two hands, pinch off what will become two links and then spin the link that you have between your fingers away from you several times (make the links pretty tight, you want any air bubbles to force their way to the edge of the sausage). Repeat this process down the coil, but spin the next link towards you several times. Continue this way, alternating the direction that you twist so that the previous link does not unravel, until you get to the end of the coil. Note: if the casing is tight, make longer links to avoid increasing the pressure in the casing and causing a burst link.

(Jerk Chicken Sausages)

We also tried making some jerk style chicken sausages. ‘Jerk’ is a specialty from Jamaica in the Caribbean, it refers to the hot and spicy mix rubbed on meats before grilling.

Jerk Marinade Recipe

(Adapted from Caribbean Pot)

Two batches of this marinade mixture were made. One batch was used to marinate the 16 chicken wings leftover from deboning 8 chickens. The other batch was added to 2.7kgs of minced chicken meat/fat to make sausages.

Ingredients

• 2 spring onions, roughly chopped
• 5 sprigs of fresh thyme (about 1 tablespoon chopped)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 Habanero pepper (scotch bonnet or any that you like), roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 3 lbs chicken wings

Method

Combine all ingredients (except for the chicken) into a food processor and give it a few pulses until a smooth/runny consistency is achieved.

Wash chicken wings and pat dry with paper towels so the marinade can really stick onto the wings. Pour 1/3 of the marinade on the wings and using your hands, massage the wings with the jerk marinade. Allow this to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Cook the chicken wings by roasting it in an oven for around 40-60 minutes, turning once at 200C (400F) degrees or grilling them on a barbecue for 14-18 minutes, turning a few times until cooked through.

(Leftover jerk marinade can be stored in a plastic bowl in the fridge for at least a week or frozen for a couple months)

To make jerk chicken sausages - we incorporated one batch of this marinade to around 2.17kg of chicken mince and 457g of chicken skin/fat as well as 6 teaspoons of salt. Then stuff the mixture into casings (follow the method above).

All the sausages were refrigerated uncovered (to allow them to dry out a bit), overnight for the flavours to develop and to allow the shape of the sausage to set in the casing. It was hard to resist eating the sausages straight away but some things taste better the next day so it’s worth the wait. However, the barbecue was fired up to make some patties with the leftover sausage mixture and grill the jerk chicken wings which had been marinating while we were cranking out the sausages, so I got a taste of what I was in for the next day when the sausages would be at their optimum.

(Barbecued meat feast - patties made with leftover sausage mixture and jerk chicken wings)

(Sausage meat patties on the barbecue)

The chicken, apple and chardonnay patty was a pleasant surprise. I couldn’t believe how amazing this combination of flavours was. I also really enjoyed the jerk chicken wings, it was my first taste of Caribbean food and I loved the delicious array of flavours in the marinade and it had a nice hit of heat from the chillies.

(Jerk Chicken Wings - Before)

(Jerk Chicken Wings - After)

Having chicken wings that are grilled on the barbecue is always a treat, love the charred texture and how it adds a smoky aroma to the marinade.

Making home made sausages was a fun and rewarding experience. It’s like making your own bread or pasta, there is a certain feeling of satisfaction that you get from it. I recommend that everyone try making home made sausages one day, especially chicken, apple and chardonnay ones.

Soy Sauce Chow Mein (Stir Fried Egg Noodles)

2012-02-06T08:15:00.003+08:00

Whenever my family went out for dinner at Chinese restaurants, this was the first dish that my parents would order for us kids to eat in order to shut us up, while we waited for other relatives to arrive or as my dad took his time to carefully consider the menu items and ordered. Once we were seated, my dad would get the waiter to immediately bring out a plate of soy sauce chow mein, this is a Cantonese dish and literally translates into “soy sauce king chow mein”, as the soy sauce is the star of this dish. It was a bit of a pre-dinner snack, pre the entrees (although we generally didn’t order entrées). Us kids would have this dish all to ourselves and eat it all up as we waited for the main dishes of the meal to arrive.

Did anyone else have a similar experience to me as a child? Did your parents order you a dish at a restaurant as a snack at the start of a meal before the mains would come?

Soy sauce chow mein is a dish that is really quick and easy to fry up at home but worth ordering at a restaurant. Chow mein ordered from restaurants always taste better than home cooked versions because restaurants have huge stovetops that enable these noodles to be fried quickly over high intensity flames, and gives the noodles ‘wok hei’, which is the smoky aromatics imparted by a hot wok on food during stir frying.

The key to getting these noodles right is to undercook the noodles a little in the first step when you are reconstituting them in boiling water, so that the noodles maintain a firm texture (take into account that you will further cook them in the wok). Have all your prep ready and work quickly. A tip that I learnt from my dad for cooking noodles so that they don’t break is to use chopsticks to stir fry and toss everything around, it works everytime, guaranteed to minimise noodle breakage! I either have a pair of chopsticks in each hand and frantically toss everything together, or have a pair of chopsticks in one hand and a spatula in the other, and use both utensils to incorporate everything. The chopsticks also allow me to get between the layers of ingredients and noodles, and mix everything together well.

I like to cook soy sauce chow mein when I want something quick, simple and tasty for dinner.

Soy Sauce Chow Mein

Ingredients

For 2-3 serves
•    ~250g fresh thin egg noodles (you’ll find them in the refrigerated section of Asian supermarket)
•    5-6 dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced
•    bunch Chinese flat leaf garlic chives, cut into 4-5cm lengths
•    200-300g bean sprouts
•    salt
•    Shaoxing wine
•    roasted white sesame seeds

(Fresh Egg Noodles from my local Asian supermarket)

Soy Sauce Mixture

This quantity of soy sauce is more than enough to cook the above serving. I always mix a bit more sauce than I need, so that I have some leeway when cooking to adjust the taste. Leftover sauce can be used to cook more noodles (you may need to mix some more if you are cooking a large quantity of noodles) or refrigerate the mixture and use for a stir fry.

•    1 tablespoon light soy sauce
•    2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
•    1 tablespoon oyster sauce
•    1 teaspoon of sugar to taste
•    pinch of salt and ground white pepper to taste
•    ½ teaspoon sesame oil
•    4-5 tablespoons of water to taste

[Note: For this dish to be completely vegetarian, you can omit the oyster sauce]

Method

Add the fresh egg noodles to a pot of boiling water and simmer until just cooked (check the packet instructions, cooking time is usually 1-2 minutes). Drain noodles in a colander and run them under cold water to stop the cooking process. Drain the noodles thoroughly until dry.

Mix together sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Before cooking with the wok, dry fry a tablespoon of white sesame seeds to colour and bring out their aroma. Remove and set aside.

(Toasting sesames seeds in wok)

(Toasted sesame seeds)

Heat some oil in a wok, sauté garlic chives until fragrant, add in the bean sprouts, a pinch of salt and splash in some Shaoxing wine. Stir fry the garlic chives and bean sprouts together until the bean sprouts are cooked yet still crunchy (30-60 seconds). Remove and set aside in a colander to drain any water that leaches from the bean sprouts.

Heat some oil in a wok and sauté the shiitake mushrooms until browned. Then add in the egg noodles, toss and stir them around constantly to cook evenly (using chopsticks helps). Spoon in the soy sauce mixture, a tablespoon at a time, and stir well into the noodles, add as much soy sauce as desired (approx 5 tablespoons or more) and taste as you go (be quite liberal with the soy sauce as this is what makes these noodles taste good). Once you are satisfied with the flavour of the noodles, add in the garlic chives and beans sprouts to the wok and quickly toss altogether until combined.

Serve with roasted sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

Buddha’s Delight – Chinese New Years Day Dish

2012-01-23T15:45:00.002+08:00

It is a tradition for people to refrain from eating meat on New Years Day in line with Buddhist practice, as a form of self purification, to counteract the effects of excessive meat eating during the year. It is also considered fortuitous for garnering good karma by refraining from eating anything that has been killed on New Years Day.

Buddha’s Delight is a vegetarian dish that my family always has on the first day of the New Year. Most people have this dish as you can include a wide selection of dried and fresh ingredients which symbolize luck and success, and it’s very easy to cook (the preparation of ingredients takes a while as you have to soak all the dried ingredients first but the actual cooking time is quite short).

This is a dish were every household has their own way of cooking it. Whilst this is supposed to be a vegetarian dish, it is not uncommon for oyster sauce to be used as a seasoning. The way that my family cooks this dish is not completely vegetarian as it contains fish sauce and oyster sauce. These two ingredients are pretty much added to every stir fry that we cook. Oysters symbolize good fortune and luck, so it can add to the goodwill of the dish even if it is not vegetarian. To make this dish completely vegetarian, you can use vegetarian oyster sauce which is a concentrate of mushroom flavours, usually from oyster or shiitake mushrooms.

Buddha’s Delight can contain up to 20 ingredients with each ingredient providing a symbolic meaning due to the way it looks or is pronounced. For example - bamboo shoots = wealth and new beginnings, cabbage = prosperity, noodles = longevity, black moss = wealth, shiitake mushrooms = opportunity, dried bean curd = blessings to the house, fried bean curd = gold, snowpeas = unity, carrots = good luck. So the more ingredients you add, the more symbolic the dish can become. But it’s good to keep it simple and have just a few ingredients so that the dish will have texture and subtle, delicate flavours. Be aware that each ingredient adds a flavour to the dish and if you add too many, I think that it just clouds it. I apply my principle of not bastardising a stir fry here.

My family always cook a big batch of Buddha’s Delight, enough to feed the whole family, plus some leftovers. It’s great to have the next day as the flavours are more developed.

Buddha’s Delights

Serves - enough to for a family of 5 with some leftovers

Quantity - a wokful

Ingredients

•    1 Chinese cabbage, leaves washed and sliced into 5-6cm pieces
•    8 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes till reconstituted, stalks discarded and sliced (reserve the soaking water)
•    3-4 dried bean curd sticks, break into 3-4cm pieces and soak in water for 15-20 minutes till softened
•    box of fried bean curd/tofu (box had 6 pieces which I sliced into 6ths)
•    3 garlic cloves, sliced
•    3-4 slices of ginger
•    1 cup of bamboo shoots (I used canned bamboo shoots)
•    1 cup of baby corn, each corn sliced in half
•    ½ cup of dried black fungus (wood ear mushrooms), soaked in water for 10-15 minutes till reconstituted and sliced
•    handful of dried bean thread noodles, soaked in water for 20 minutes till softened, drain thoroughly
•    ¼ cup of dried black moss (fat choy), washed, soaked in water for 5-10 minutes till softened, drain thoroughly
•    Optional - handful of oyster mushrooms

Chinese cabbage

This is how you should slice the leaves of the Chinese cabbage.

Dried bean curd

Black moss aka fat choy

Seasonings
(I added in the seasonings as I was cooking and adjusted until I got the desired taste, measurements below are a guide)
•    2-3 tablespoons of fish sauce
•    3-4 tablespoons of oyster sauce
•    1-2 tablespoons of Shaoxing wine
•    1-2 teaspoons of light soy sauce
•    ½ teaspoons of sesame oil
•    pinch of sugar, salt and ground white pepper to taste

Method

Heat up a wok, add in some oil and fry the garlic and ginger first until fragrant then add in shiitake mushrooms and fry until slightly brown (1-2 minutes).

Stir frying shittake with garlic and ginger

Add in the black fungus, baby corn, bamboo shoots and oyster mushrooms and stir fry together (1-2 minutes), add in a little of the soaking water from the shiitake mushrooms if it gets too dry.

Adding black fungus, baby corn, bamboo shoots and oyster mushrooms - everything looks golden yellow. Yellow symbolises good luck in Chinese.

Then add in all the cabbage and fry all together. Add in the rest of the soaking water from the shiitake mushrooms. At this point you can cover the wok with a lid to help the cabbage soften and cook or just continue stir frying until the cabbage softens (5-10 minutes). Throughout the cooking process, you can add a little more water (½ - 1 cup) if necessary, but not too much as the cabbage will release water.

Adding Chinese cabbage - don't worry if it looks like it will overflow as the cabbage will shrink as it cooks.

Then add in seasonings of fish sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, salt and ground white pepper to taste.

Adding seasonings.

Add in the fried bean curd/tofu, stir everything together and simmer until tofu is heated through (5 minutes).

Add in the bean thread noodles and black moss, stir fry all together until the noodles cook through and soak up the sauce (2 minutes).

Optional - Thicken the sauce with some cornflour mixed with a little water, if necessary (ie: there is too much liquid). Generally you won’t need to thicken the sauce as the bean thread noodles will soak up the sauce.

Serve with steamed rice.

Related posts

Oreo Cookies

2012-01-23T08:39:00.007+08:00

The Sweet Adventures Blog Hop is the brainchild of Aussie bloggers Delicieux, The Hungry Australian, Dining With a Stud, The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader and 84th & 3rd. Every month there is a dessert theme for bloggers to participate in and this month is ‘Death by Chocolate’ hosted by The Hungry Australian.

To be honest, I generally bake relatively simple things. I think that one of the most satisfying things about baking is that you don’t have to outdo yourself to get a good outcome. A fancy chocolate dessert that has multiple layers and uses a number of different textures to construct it from a fine dining restaurant is always a real treat, but a good old fashioned brownie can also hit the spot. When chocolate came up as the Sweet Blog Hop Adventures theme for this month, the first couple of chocolate desserts that came across my mind and I’m sure crossed everyone’s mind were chocolate cake, cupcakes, brownies, mousse, pudding, slice... easy to make chocolate treats but deliciously satisfying, comforting foods.

Two weekends ago, The Kitchen Crusader and I made the trip down to Margaret River to visit our friend Nadia who works at Gabriel Chocolate. We stayed with Nadia and had access to her impressive selection of chocolate/dessert books.

Flicking through her books to get some ideas, there were a lot of fancy things that I could have made but when I saw the recipe for Almost Oreos, I was sold. Oreos are a cookie that I love eating, I have never made them before and the recipe for it in Green & Black’s Organic Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection looked really good and not too hard to bake so I wanted to try it. Oreos make a good after dinner treat and you can never seem to eat too many of them. So this is my blog post for the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop – "Death By Chocolate" this month.

Summer dessert – Vanilla ice cream with homemade Oreos crumbled over the top.

Homemade Oreos are great, everyone should try making them as it’s more chocolately and not as sweet, and instead of the sweet icing like cream filling, you get a lovely white ganache.

Oreos

(Recipe adapted from - Green & Black’s Organic Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection)

Makes about 20

Ingredients

For the cookie dough

•    140g plain flour
•    ½ teaspoon salt
•    1 tablespoon cocoa powder
•    75g caster sugar
•    25g icing sugar
•    25g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
•    100g butter, softened/room temperature
•    1 large egg yolk
•    ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
•    Optional - to give the Oreos an extra chocolate hit, I ground some cocoa nibs that I bought from Gabriel Chocolate with a mortar and pestle and added them into the mix.

Ground Cocoa Nibs

For the ganache filling
• 125g white chocolate, broken into pieces
• 40ml crème fraiche

Method

Sift together the flour, salt and cocoa powder in a bowl (add in ground cocoa nibs if using). Melt the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl of barely simmering water, making sure the bowl does not touch the water. Set aside to cool.

Using an electric beater, cream together the butter, caster sugar and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk, vanilla extract and melted chocolate. Beat well to incorporate all the ingredients. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add in the dry ingredients and mix on a slow speed until a dough forms.

Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and shape into a cylinder shape about 15cm long. Roll the cylinder on the work surface to even it out and then wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for at least 1.5 hours.

Tips: To get an even cylinder shape for the cookie dough - make sure that you twist the cling film tightly and take it out of the fridge at regular intervals (every half hour or so) and roll it on a table so that it doesn’t take on a flatten side where it has been resting.

When the dough has rested sufficiently (it should be quite hard), preheat oven to 180C and line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper.

Remove the dough from the fridge, unwrap it and place it on a board. Using a sharp knife, slice the cylinder into thin rounds (2.5mm). Place the rounds on the baking sheet and bake for 11 minutes. Once cooked, leave to cool on the sheets. You should get around 40 rounds from the dough.

I have a small oven which can only fit one baking tray at a time, so I sliced enough rounds of the dough to fill one tray and refrigerated the dough while I baked that tray. Then I would take out the dough and slice enough to fill another tray and bake. I refrigerated the dough between baking the trays so that the dough keeps its shape (ps. Perth it's quite hot at the moment, we have a week coming up of 37-40 degrees so if your kitchen isn’t as warm as mine it would not be necessary to refrigerate the dough all the time).

While the cookies are cooling, make the ganache filling. Melt the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl of barely simmering water. Take the bowl off the heat and leave to slightly cool for 2-3 minutes, then stir in and incorporate the crème fraiche. Allow to cool for around 15 minutes at room temperature.

Melting the white chocolate

Stirring in the crème fraiche into the melted white chocolate

Turn half the cookies upside down and put a teaspoon of ganache in the center of each. Top with the remaining cookies and press gently together so that the ganache spreads until you can see it around the sides. Put the assembled cookies on a tray and refrigerate for around 30 minutes to allow the ganache to set. Then store the Oreos in the fridge in a sealed container.

Lessons learned: You shouldn’t put the cookies on top of each other to set as the weight of the ones on top squash the bottom ones which can result in the ganache spilling out over the sides. …opps…

Gabriel Chocolate - Margaret River, Yallingup (single origin chocolate)

2012-01-20T12:16:00.002+08:00

The Margaret River Chocolate Company is one of the most visited sites in Margaret River, but if you want to know what chocolate should taste like, in its purest form, you must visit Gabriel Chocolate. Fellow Perth food blogger, The Kitchen Crusader, and I visited Gabriel Chocolate last weekend. The road trip to Margaret River was sparked by this month’s Sweet Adventures Blog Hop theme which is Death by Chocolate. Our friend Nadia works at Gabriel Chocolate and told us to come down and check out some single origin chocolate.

Gabriel Chocolate recently opened up in Margaret River on the corner of Caves road and Quininup road, Yallingup and offers single origin – bean to bar chocolate. Single origin chocolate is chocolate which has used cocoa beans to create it from a single source. This can be a single estate or plantation, but in most instances a single region. Cocoa beans, like coffee and wine, differs from region to region according to the environment it is grown in, where factors such as the soil, climate effects like the rainfall and humidity add characteristics to the cocoa beans resulting in chocolate that has a unique flavour profile.

That’s not to say that all single origin chocolate will be good, it depends on the chocolate maker and the integrity that they put into the process of sourcing and making the chocolate. Gabriel Chocolate is a small family fun business, Gabriel (the owner) and his wife have had a long term fascination with chocolate and Gabriel Chocolate has been 5 years in the making. They have traveled the world to source the best chocolate and they wanted to show people that there is so much more to chocolate than what people think by keeping it single origin. You get a really down to earth vibe about this place and a feeling that they are really serious about their chocolate, especially in the way that they have designed the place and display their chocolate, it’s all about the chocolate and showing off it’s unique characteristics.

On the wall near the entrance is a huge map of the world showing the wide variety of cocoa beans that can be found in the world with each colour representing the outside of the cocoa pods. I was amazed to learn that so many different kinds of cocoa beans existed. Gabriel Chocolate currently provides 6 different varieties but they are hoping to expand their selection down the track.

Tasting all the chocolate, takes your taste buds on a fascinating journey as you eat chocolate made from cocoa beans from all over the world. Some really interesting flavours will come through in the chocolate that you would have never imagined. It’s fun to evaluate and detect the subtle characteristics of each chocolate, the experience is a lot like tasting wine. There are little sample trays of chocolate and it’s best to get one of the staff to guide you through the tasting process, as they can provide some background on where the cocoa beans came from and start you with the known and familiar territory of milk and dark chocolate, and then bring out the more interesting tasting chocolates. You can also get a behind the scenes tour to see how the chocolate is made. I am a fan of dark chocolate and I generally get 70% as I find that anything above that can be a bit too bitter for me as a general eating chocolate. Gabriel offers Chuao (beans from Venezuela) with 80% cacao, although it has a high % of cacao it was not very bitter at all and very smooth tasting as a result of the high quality of the beans that are used to produce it. The Nacional (beans from Ecuador) tasted like a cherry ripe but there was no cherries added to the chocolate, this was just the natural taste that was coming through the cacao beans. The Sambirano (beans from Madagascar) had citrus notes in the chocolate. The most surprising was the Java (beans from Criollo) which had quite a long finish on the palate, and smoky flavours could be detected in the chocolate such as tobacco and spices like paprika.

The chocolate is made from scratch on site, where all the cocoa beans are hand sorted, roasted, winnowed, conched and tempered. The chocolate is made in small batches and each batch is limited to 250 bars. On the back of the block of chocolate, a description is provided, similar to what you would find on the label of a wine bottle, which details the characteristics of the chocolate. As single origin beans are used, every time a batch of chocolate is made, the resulting flavour differs from the previous batch. Just like how the flavour profile of wine varies from year to year, depending on the quality of the grapes harvested, a wine bottled in 2010 tastes different from wine bottled in 2011. It was amazing to taste all the different chocolates and pick out their individual nuances, and to know that each batch of chocolate will be an original experience.

All the different chocolates are presented on their own podium, they can be bought in simple square blocks, some have nuts and spices scattered over the top. You can also buy cocoa nibs and soap

Chocolate soap - cocoa butter is very good for your skin.

Gabriel Chocolate also has a café where you can order tea, coffee (they use 5 Senses) and hot chocolate. There is a small selection of baked chocolate goods made fresh everyday on site as well as ice cream.

Gabriel Chocolate has special hot chocolate making machines.

Look at all the lovely layers of the hot chocolate, it tastes as good as it looks.

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Don’t be fooled by the cakey appearance of this chocolate mousse cake, it’s texture is smooth, velvety and so soft that you feel as though you are just eating mousse.

Chocolate fudge with pistachios and cherries – a perfect combination!

As single origin chocolate is used in the baked goods, they all have a really refined taste. Nadia told us that Gabriel’s Rio Caribe (beans from Venezuela) 72% dark chocolate is the best chocolate to use in cooking.

Chocolate and Hazelnut Icecream

I was very impressed by the flavours of the ice cream at Gabriel’s. What I loved about it was that it was rich, creamy and full of flavour. It was very indulgent! I had the hazelnut caramel ice cream and The Kitchen Crusader had peanut butter chocolate. There were little chunks of caramel throughout my hazelnut caramel ice cream, and I had a taste of the peanut butter chocolate ice cream and found the peanut butter flavour in the ice cream very pure. We were told that they make all the flavourings in the ice cream from scratch on site (the peanut butter was made in a Thermomix).

Gabriel Chocolate has redefined what chocolate is to me, it was my first exposure to single origin chocolate. It made me appreciate the depth and complexity that can be found in the taste of chocolate. The flavour compounds found in dark chocolate actually exceeds those of red wine. Chocolate is one of the most complex compounds in the world with over 1,500 identified flavour components, while wine has around 500. I like the respect that Gabriel has given to chocolate by making it from scratch using single origin cocoa beans so that people can discover the array of complex flavours that chocolate offers. Unlike the general mass produced chocolate that you can buy, which is made from a blend of cocoa beans and generally over sweetened, contains flavourings and addictives, and when it comes to flavour - quantity, uniformity and consistency is valued over character, quality and diversity. As far as I am aware, Gabriel Chocolate is the only place in Western Australia at the moment that produces single origin chocolate. But it’s not just chocolate that tastes “different for different’s sake”, all the chocolate tastes amazing, you can tell that the best quality cocoa beans are used.

I highly recommend that people check out Gabriel Chocolate when they are down in Margaret River, everyone should have the single origin experience.

Gabriel Chocolate (www.gabrielchocolate.com.au) is open 7 days, 10am to 5pm.
Address: Corner of Caves Road and Quininup road, Yallingup.

Phone: (08) 9756 6689

Email: heaven@gabrielchocolate.com.au
You can also follow Gabriel Chocolate on twitter @GabrielChocMR

Chinese Walnut Cookies

2012-01-18T12:42:00.005+08:00

Chinese New Year this year falls on Monday, 23 January. Around Chinese New Year there are lots of gatherings, visits to friend and relatives to exchange wishes for the new year and eat! The Chinese love a bit of symbolism, so a lot of the things we eat during the new year have a special, generally auspicious meaning. You will find a lot of sweet treats offered during the new year as they symbolize a rich and sweet start to the new year.

So here is a sweet festive treat to welcome in the year of the Dragon in 2012 – Chinese Walnut Cookies.

Chinese walnut cookies are a popular treat and it’s something that I like to bake for Chinese New Year as walnuts symbolise happiness of the entire family. Walnuts are also considered a symbol of intellectuality as their shape resembles a brain. Walnuts are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are an essential nutrient for the human brain. Anyone who has grown up in an Asian family knows how much emphasis is placed on education and producing smart kids. So not only do you get a rich and aromatic cookie from the large amount of egg yolks and walnuts included in the cookie dough, you also score two symbolism brownie points.

Do you think walnuts look like brains?

Chinese Walnut Cookies

Ingredients

•    150g shortening (grated to make easier to cream)
•    50g butter
•    150g caster sugar
•    pinch of salt
•    4 egg yolks
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•    300g plain flour
•    ½ teaspoon baking soda
•    1 teaspoon baking powder
•    1 tablespoon cornflour
•    1 tablespoon milk powder
•    250g walnuts (lightly toasted in the oven for 7-10 minutes until aromatic – 200g crushed and 50g kept whole)
•    egg wash (1 egg yolk mixed with 1 teaspoon of water)

Tip: I grate vegetable shortening to make it easier to cream.

Method

Sift the flour with cornflour, milk powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together in a bowl.

Use an electric beater to cream shortening with butter and sugar until fluffy. Add in 4 eggs yolks and cream till smooth. Fold in sifted flour mixture, then add in 200g crushed walnuts and mix together well until it comes together and forms a dough.

Roll tablespoons of the dough into a ball and press lightly to form 1 ½ inch discs and place onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper (if the dough is too soft to roll into balls, chill in fridge for 10-15 minutes to make the dough easier to work with). Press into each cookie a piece of walnut. Brush some egg wash on top of each cookie.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for around 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with Brown Butter Sage Sauce and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

2012-01-16T12:24:00.003+08:00

A few weeks ago, my friend invited me over to her new place for dinner. She told me that she would be serving gnocchi. My initial thought was awesome, I love eating gnocchi. Then I thought, you crazy woman, how is she going to make gnocchi after work considering the amount of time it takes? She made spinach and ricotta gnocchi. I watched her prepare it, rolling and shaping the pieces of gnocchi, and it looked quite simple and didn’t take long at all. It was totally doable as an after work dinner.

So I tried making spinach and ricotta gnocchi at home, and I found it much easier to make then potato gnocchi. Making spinach and ricotta gnocchi is less time consuming as there isn’t as much prep required for the ingredients – there is no cooking, peeling and mashing of potatoes. There are many little aspects to consider when making potato gnocchi such as the variety of potato used which should be starchy and old so that it has a lower water content, and it’s important that the potatoes are not overcooked as it will absorb too much water and require more flour to make it stick together, resulting in a heavier outcome which goes against what a gnocchi should be. With spinach and ricotta gnocchi, you just have to mix all the ingredients until it comes together, unlike potato gnocchi, where you are required to gently knead until it forms a dough and stress about not overworking the dough.

I combined all the ingredients for the spinach and ricotta gnocchi dough and rolled out half of it to cook for dinner one night and refrigerated the leftovers to cook the next night (I put all the leftovers in a smaller bowl and covered the surface tightly with glad wrap, so that the glad wrap rests directly on the surface of the dough). So from my experience, if you want something that can be quickly prepared for dinner, it is ok to make the spinach and ricotta gnocchi dough before work in the morning (it doesn’t take too long to mix together the ingredients) or the night before. The dough can be refrigerated hours ahead until ready to cook.

Eating spinach and ricotta gnocchi is like eating spinach and ricotta filled ravioli but without the pasta around it. I love the depth of flavour that spinach and ricotta gnocchi have compared to potato ones and it is also lighter in texture.

I enjoy eating gnocchi that has been lightly pan fried so that the exterior is slightly crisp and golden brown, while the interior is light and fluffy. So I fried the gnocchi and served it with a simple, rich and savoury brown butter and sage sauce.

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with Brown Butter Sage Sauce and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
(References: Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Taste, and Australian Women’s Weekly)

Serves 4 as an entrée or 2 mains.

Ingredients

•    ~300g fresh spinach
•    500g fresh firm ricotta
•    80g parmesan
•    75g plain flour
•    2 egg yolks, lightly whisked
•    pinch of salt and pepper, gratings of fresh nutmeg
•    250g punnet of cherry tomatoes
•    3-4 tablespoons butter
•    8-10 fresh sage leaves
•    garnish with shredded fresh basil

Method

Preheat oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Place the cherry tomatoes on the tray and roast for around 20 minutes until they start to collapse.

Remove the excess moisture from the ricotta by putting the ricotta in a cheese cloth/muslin cloth and wringing out the liquid from it.

Prepare the spinach by discarding any wilted, bruised leaves and trimming away all the stems. Soak and drain the spinach in several changes of water to clean. Blanch the spinach in a pot of boiling salted water until it is tender (30-60 seconds) and refresh under cold running water. Drain the spinach and as soon as it is cool enough to handle, gently squeeze it to remove all the water out of the spinach. Coarsely chop the spinach and set aside.

Spinach

Ricotta

Place the spinach, ricotta, parmesan, flour, egg yolks and a pinch of salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste, and mix together until well combined.

Cover the bowl with glad wrap and refrigerate the mixture for 30-60 minutes.

Lightly flour work surface and divide the gnocchi dough into 4 portions. Roll each portion into a 2 cm log and using a lightly floured knife, cut the logs into 2-3 cm pieces and dust with flour (you can prepare the gnocchi pieces ahead of time, placed on a tray with greaseproof paper, cover with glad wrap and refrigerate until ready to cook).

Drop the gnocchi in a large pot of salted boiling water and cook for around 3-4 minutes or until it rises to the surface. Using a slotted spoon, remove the gnocchi and transfer onto a plate lined with paper towels.

Make brown butter and sage sauce – Add butter to a frying pan and turn on the heat to medium, melt the butter until it has browned slightly. Add in the sage leaves and cook until they are crisp (this will only take a few seconds). Add in gnocchi (a batch at a time so that the pan is not overcrowded) and cook for 2-3 minutes, turning until the outside is golden brown. Transfer the gnocchi onto a plate lined with paper towels.

To serve – Arrange pieces of gnocchi on a plate, spoon over some brown butter sauce and a few crisp sage leaves over the top. Add a few roasted cherry tomatoes to the plate and garnish with bits of shredded basil.

Blue Apocalypse Cake – My blog turns 2

2012-01-12T10:08:00.001+08:00

My blog is two years old now. I’ve had a really great year - hits to my blog have increased dramatically, my food blog was mentioned in the list of WA food and wine bloggers in the Eat Drink Perth 2011 program , I attended the second annual Australian Food and Drink Bloggers Conference in Sydney and I was on a judging panel for a banana bread competition at the Beaufort Street Festival.

(from Eat Drink Perth 2011 program)

You can see me stuffing my face with banana bread in this video of the Beaufort Street Festival at 1:41-1:46

I started this blog as a way to record and share the recipes that I cooked. This blog has become my own online cookbook. A lot of the posts are of recipes that I have learnt from my mum and dad. The more I cook, the more value I place in knowing how to cook the food that I grew up with because it’s an important part of who I am, and as I cook, I am learning more about my culture. I hope that when my younger brother and younger sister have grown up and move out of home, this blog will be a useful resource for them, and when I have children of my own one day and for future generations of my family, they will have a place to learn about and cook our family’s food.

Here are some of my favourite family recipes from my past year of blogging –

•    Vietnamese chicken salad
•    Hainanese chicken rice
•    Braised pork belly with diakon
•    Prawns and beans with shrimp sauce and lemon juice
•    Vietnamese braised pork belly and hard boiled eggs in coconut juice

I also love baking and the most successful things that I have baked over the past year are Momofuku’s Crack Pie and Rose Bakery’s Pistachio Cake. I also love this oat and cheesecake slice that I came up with.

My favourite eating experience last year was attending the Mundaring Truffle Festival for the first time and enjoying truffles in all its glory. After the truffle festival, I used the truffles that I bought to create some recipes including truffle congee, truffle scallops and truffle fries. My finest dining experience was the Marque degustation at Restaurant Amuse.

One of my most popular posts that I really enjoyed writing was my survey of the best banh mi in Perth. At the end of last year, my friends and I decided to get together for an almond croissant taste test and consumed 6 almond croissants one Saturday morning (such taste tests are not for the faint hearted).

Over the past year I have also met and become friends with a lot of Perth bloggers especially during the month of March when Eat Drink Perth was on. I met up with some food bloggers for the first time to take on the What the Pho? pho eating competition and I organised my first tweet up to get together some of Perth’s food blogging community for Amuse Project Mayhem.

One of my favourite posts was Kitchen Confidential – Being a chef, the daughter of a chef…waiting where I share a personal story of what it’s like to have a dad who is a chef.

I also traveled to South East Asia in September/October last year and I’m still working through my travel posts. So far I have written on Bangkok, Ayutthaya and Luang Prabang, I’ve still got some posts on Vietnam to go.

Now I begin my third year of blogging in 2012….the year of the Apocalypse (21.12.2012)…

So unless you have been living under a rock, I’m sure you have heard that this year is the end of the world as we know it. Many great prophets, religious scriptures, and scientific evidence point to a possible apocalyptic event happening this year.

Mayan Calendar

The main theory being that the Mayan calender ends on 21.12.2012, which marks the end of cycle of creation that has spanned over approximately 5,125 solar years.

The end of the Mayan calendar is also supposed to coincide with a galactic alignment, in which the Sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy for the first time in about 26,000 years. Some predict that this galactic alignment has the potential to create a shift in the Earth's poles and cause a series of disastrous environmental events.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that the Mayan calendar ends on the day the Earth is to be in exact alignment with the Sun and the center of the Milky Way galaxy?

Another theory is that an asteroid or another planet (Nibiru or Planet X) will collide with Earth.

Is this what Planet X looks like?

But don’t be too alarmed, remember the Y2K panic? Well that ended up being a whole lot of nothing! Who knows what will really happen on 21.12.2012? I guess we will just have to wait and see ….

…and maybe we can take some advice from Public Enemy “Don’t believe the hype”

My blog is called Blue Apocalypse, derived from the metal band Tool, (read the About Me section if you want to know more about how I came up with my name) and as a result I get a lot of apocalypse related keyword searches like what to eat in an apocalypse, apocalypse food, apocalypse cooking, apocalypse spice, apocalypse desserts etc. Unfortunately for people looking on my blog expecting some advice on what to eat in an apocalypse, I don’t have any. But this is about to change. I think that it will be a fun challenge to do some posts on the subject that people may mistake my blog to be about. So funnily enough, my chosen blog name which is completely unrelated to cooking and just a name that I used as an internet alias when I was younger has become an impetus for some new blog entries. As well as all the usual stuff that I like blogging about (recipes, reviews, travels, eating experiences etc.), I will be writing a series of apocalypse posts covering apocalypse related cooking/apocalypse inspired recipes. This will be an interesting project for me and I look forward to researching and learning more about the apocalypse and presenting to you my findings. I am also open to any suggestions, please comment below if you have any apocalypse food ideas or can recommend some apocalypse related reading material.

Here’s what I have so far.

Thanks to all the readers of my blog, my twitter followers @blueapocalypse and people who are fans of Food Endeavours of the Blue Apocalypse on Facebook. As time goes by I find myself putting more and more time into this blog, it’s nice to know that something that means a lot to me is also meaningful for other people :)

Now, let’s eat some cake.

I found this picture of me which I thought was fitting for this post as it looks like I am about 2 years old and eating cake. Well I think I am eating cake, this is debatable, I will accept any reasonable conspiracy theories as to what might be on the plate.

What would a Blue Apocalypse cake look like?

What about this?

Blue Apocalypse Cake

Ingredients

(The basis of this cake is a butterscotch almond cake from Taste, I adapted it for a 20cm round cake tin)

•    185g butter, softened
•    270g self raising flour
•    165g brown sugar
•    3 eggs
•    3 tablespoons honey
•    200ml milk
•    70g almond meal
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•    red and blue food colouring

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C. Line a 20cm round cake tin with greaseproof paper.

Place butter, flour, sugar, eggs, honey, milk and almond meal in a bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat on low for 1 minute or until just combined. Beat on high for 3 minutes or until mixture is pale and thick.

Then divide the cake batter among three separate bowls. Add a few drops of red food colouring into one bowl and blue food colouring into another bowl, mix until the colour is incorporated into the batter (add more food colouring is desired to get right shade of colour). Leave one bowl of batter plain.

Place alternate spoonfuls of the 3 mixtures into the prepared cake tin, tapping the base of the tin on a flat surface to settle the mixture. Use a chopstick (knife or fork) to gently swirl the batters together to create a marble effect (don’t overmix the batter). Tap the base of the pan on a flat surface to smooth the surface and eliminate any air bubbles before placing in the oven.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Stand cake in pan for 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

A cake needs icing to complete it so I made a really simple chocolate buttercream icing. Beat 55g of softened butter until light and creamy. Then add in a cup or more of sifted icing sugar, 2-3 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 1-2 tablespoons of milk and beat until fluffy and you get desired taste and consistency.

With the icing, I wanted to create the surface of a planet, so I used a small palette knife to whack the icing on and make some rough patterns.

Is my icing job convincing for Planet X or just a hatchet icing job?

Pieces of Blue Apocalypse

Enjoy :)

Vietnamese braised pork belly and hard boiled eggs in coconut juice (Thit Heo Kho Trung). Momofuku inspired steamed pork buns

2012-01-09T08:33:00.003+08:00

Thit Heo Kho Trung is one of my favourite home cooked dishes. What makes a dish a home cooked dish? When I eat out at Vietnamese restaurants with my parents, I would note that a lot of the dishes I love to eat and I always have at home are not on the menu. I ask my mum why [insert name of dish here] was not on the menu and she would tell me that everyone knows how to cook that dish at home, so it’s not something that people would order when they eat out. So this is how I define a home cooked dish – a dish that people often cook at home so you won’t find it in restaurants, otherwise restaurants would be competing with every mum’s recipe and you know who would win out of that right?

Thit Heo Kho Trung is one of those home cooked dishes that you will rarely find on restaurant menus but every Vietnamese family cooks it and would have their own recipe for it. I can see why Thit Heo Kho Trung would be a popular home cooked dish. My mum comes from a family of nine children and this would be a perfect one pot meat for such a big family – a large amount of pork and eggs are simmered in coconut juice, soy sauce and fish sauce, and served with bowls of rice. A really simple dish to cook that produces a delicious result with sweetness coming from the coconut juice, saltiness from the soy sauce and savouriness from the fish sauce.

When I cook a dish I am always intrigued by how other people cook it, and I will scan cookbooks and the internet for recipes to see how the way my mum cooks it compares with others. I’ve seen other ingredients added to this dish such as shallots and garlic, and other spices such as star anise or five spice. Some recipes do not use any soy sauce and only use fish sauce. Some recipes prepare a caramelized sauce made up of water and sugar first to cook the pork and eggs in. My mum’s recipe is relatively simple and uses few ingredients.

When I came across the Ravenous Couples recipe for Thi Heo Kho Trung, I saw that they had turned Thi Heo Kho Trung into a David Chang/Momofuku inspired steamed pork bun dish. It was one of those ‘damn, I wish I’d thought of that first’ moments. Encapsulating the pork inside steamed buns is a perfect way of eating this dish as the sweetness of the steamed buns complements the coconut enriched pork which has been cooked until it’s melt in your mouth tender, plus you have a tasty sticky sweet savoury sauce to go over the top of the pork, and you can add a slice of egg if desired. I haven’t eaten ‘the’ Momofuku steamed pork buns before which contains brined and roasted pork belly but I think that this could possible be better?!

Here’s my mum’s Vietnamese braised pork and eggs (Thit Heo Kho Trung) that I have turned into my own take on Momofuku inspired steamed pork buns.

I used a pressure cooker to cook the pork and included the process for cooking with a pressure cooker and a pot over the stove.

Ingredients

•    1 kg pork belly, chopped into 2-3cm cubes
•    ~ 3 cups of coconut juice (from 2 young coconuts)
•    5 small red chillies, deseeded
•    6 whole hard boiled eggs, shelled
•    fish sauce (2 ½ tablespoons)
•    light soy sauce (1 ½ tablespoons)
•    dark soy sauce (2 tablespoons)
•    salt to taste

To make Momofuku style buns – buy steamed buns from Asian supermarket, cucumber and coriander.

Young coconut

I do not shy away from the layers of fat in pork belly, fat is what makes food taste good!

Method

Par-boil the pork – put the pork pieces into a pot of boiling water and simmer for 1-2 minutes until partially cooked. Rinse pork under cold running water and drain well.

Add the coconut juice, chillies and 1 ½ tablespoon of fish sauce into a pot/pressure cooker and bring to a simmer. Then add in the pieces of pork.

(1) Bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat for around an hour, stirring occassionally or pressure cook for 10 minutes.

(2) Then add in 1 ½ tablespoons of light soy sauce, 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce and 1 tablespoon fish sauce. Simmer on low heat for another hour, stirring occassionally or pressure cook for 10 minutes.

(3) Test the flavour and adjust with fish sauce or sugar if required and add in a pinch of salt to balance. Add in the hard boiled eggs and simmer for another 30-45 minutes to flavour the eggs and for the sauce to reduce.

Note: I pressure cooked this dish for a total of 20 minutes, divided into two 10 minute periods. The last step of cooking does not require pressure cooking.

I bought premade steam buns from Emma’s Seafood Asian grocery on the corner of Newcastle and William street in Northbridge. You can make them from scratch using this recipe.

To make Momofuku inspired buns – Steam buns according to packet instructions. Add in pieces of pork (slice the pork in half if too thick), a slice of egg, spoon over the egg and pork some sauce and then top with thin julienned pieces of cucumber and coriander.

You can also just eat the pork and egg with steamed rice.

Slices of pork belly in bun

Add a slice of egg on top

Add the braising sauce over the top

Top with cucumber and coriander

Here are some of my other pork belly recipes:

Thai Eggplant, Prawn and Chicken Stir Fry

2012-01-06T12:06:00.005+08:00

Eating out always gives me inspiration to cook new dishes. When I eat a dish that I love, I always want to try replicating it at home and I have varying degrees of success.

My inspiration for cooking this dish was a spicy eggplant salad that I had in Bangkok at Chote Chitr. Chote Chitr was one of the recommended places in the Gourmet Travellers Bangkok dining, local style article. The spicy eggplant dish was a must-have and it did not disappoint. The grilled eggplant was smoky and delicious, and drenched in a sweet, sour and salty sauce.

Chote Chitr

Spicy eggplant dish at Chote Chitr

I google some recipes and consulted David Thompson’s Thai Food, and in the end I adapted Thompson’s grilled eggplant salad recipe using its seasoning and addition of ground dried shrimp on top. I also put my own twist on the dish and added in minced chicken and prawns. It became more of a stir fry than a salad, and it is worlds apart from the dish that I had at Chote Chitr but I was pretty happy with the outcome. I had created a dish that is packed with flavour and had a good balance of flavours that you would expect in a Thai dish of hot, salty and sour. I liked how the ground dried shrimp provided another dimension of flavour by injecting an extra hit of umami to the dish (this is a way of garnishing that I will note for future dishes).

When using eggplants for cooking, it is always recommended that you reduce some of its bitterness and also remove excess moisture. I have come across many different ways for preparing eggplants including soaking it in salted water, briefly microwaving before cooking or weighing down the eggplant with a heavy plate, but I simply sprinkled salt on the eggplants and let it sit for 30 minutes or more. Eggplants have a sponge-like flesh which soaks up everything, salting eggplants draws the moisture out and compacts it, which reduces the amount of oil absorbed during cooking and also improves its flavour. Contrary to popular belief, salting eggplants does not remove its bitterness, but helps to mask bitter tastes (reference – Harold McGee's Keys to Good Cooking).

Sliced salted eggplant

Salted eggplant

Leftover eggplant juices

I have learnt that eggplants are a vegetable which needs to be fully cooked through in order to develop a rich sweet flavour. I love when it gets to that meltingly soft stage, when it just collapses in your mouth as you eat it. When eggplants are undercooked, I find that it has a bitter taste and it is not as pleasant to eat.

Ingredients

•    4 small Japanese eggplants
•    8 prawns, shelled and deveined
•    1 chicken thigh, minced and marinated in a little salt, pepper, fish sauce and oyster sauce
•    2 cloves crush garlic
•    1-2 shallots, thinly sliced
•    4-5 small red chillies, sliced open and deseeded
•    pinch sugar
•    2 tablespoons lime juice
•    1 tablespoon fish sauce
•    1 teaspoon ground dried shrimp
•    handful of mint and coriander

Ground dried shimp

Method

Peel and slice up the eggplant into 3-4cm lengths and in quarters lengthwise, place into a large bowl. Sprinkle the eggplant with salt and let stand for 30 minutes or more, pat dry (you can rinse off any excess salt if you like).

Grill or pan fry the eggplant until charred and soft. Set aside.

Heat up a wok and fry the chicken with garlic until brown. Add in the shallots, chilli and prawns, and stir fry until the prawns are nearly cooked. Then add in the eggplants and fry everything together. Turn off the heat and add in a pinch of sugar, fish sauce and lime juice, toss everything together. Taste and adjust.

Arrange on a plate, garnish with mint and coriander, and sprinkle some ground dried shrimp over the top.

How to make a Swiss Roll

2012-01-04T13:08:00.000+08:00

Vanilla swiss roll filled with chocolate cream, covered with chocolate shavings

and lined with flaked almonds

Chocolate swiss roll filled with cream and covered with crushed roasted hazelnuts.

A swiss roll is a type of sponge cake roll. It is also called a roulade by the French and a jelly roll by Americans. A swiss roll is what the English call it and it looks like Australia has adopted the English way as I have always know this cake to be a called a swiss roll.

I ate a lot of supermarket bought swiss rolls as a kid, a slice of it was a lunch box staple for recess (morning tea), usually the ones filled with jam or the lamington roll with cream filling and covered with chocolate and coconut. I love the light, soft and fluffy texture of a sponge cake, and when it sandwiches a delicious filling in a pretty pinwheel design, it's a delight to eat. What was your lunch box staple for recess?

A slice of swiss roll

I have been trying to perfect baking a swiss roll and I have tried a few different sponge cake recipes to see which one would provide the best base. I found that the basic sponge cake recipe on the Master Chef website which was used in an elimination challenge in the third season worked best, but I altered the method after some experimentation. The changes to the method are that I folded the flours into the egg yolk mixture rather than at the end, after folding in the egg white mixture, in order to keep the batter light. I found that folding in the flours at the end after the egg whites knocked a lot of the air out of the batter. I also added in a little cream of tartar to the white eggs while I was beating it to stabilise the peaks. I didn’t add in any melted butter which was specified in the recipe as it was heavy and reduced the volume of the sponge, I had to fold quite a bit to ensure that the butter was incorporated into the batter. The butter is supposed to add to the taste but you fill a swiss roll with cream or jam so the butter isn’t really needed. The key to a sponge cake is to keep the batter as light and airy as possible, so as you mix in the different elements of the sponge, you don’t want to overfold or overbeat it.

My tried and tested recipe for swiss roll, adapted from MasterChef.

Ingredients
•    5 egg yolks
•    110g caster sugar
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•    3 egg whites
•    1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
•    Pinch of salt
•    40g plain flour, sifted
•    20g cornflour, sifted
•    300ml pouring/whipping cream for filling

Optional – 1 tablespoon matcha (green tea) powder or cocoa powder.

Method

Preheat oven to 160⁰C.

Line a swiss roll pan with greaseproof paper (the size of my swiss roll pan is 30cmx20cm).

In a large bowl, beat yolks for a few seconds until combined and then add in 50g of sugar a tablespoon at a time and continue beating until thick and pale about 5-7 minutes so that when you raise the beaters, the batter will fall back into the bowl in slow ribbons. Add in the vanilla extract at some point during the beating process but only when the egg yolk mixture has thickened a bit.

Sieve flours (plus matcha powder or cocoa powder if using) and salt into egg yolk mixture and gently fold to combine.

In a clean and dry bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining sugar and cream of tartar and beat until firm peaks form.

Gently mix a large spoonful of egg white mixture into the egg yolk/flour mixture, gently fold in remaining egg white mixture.

Pour mixture into prepared pan. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes or until light golden, the cake should feel slightly springy to touch (note: the sponge will look a bit bloated when it comes out but will level down).

Remove and set aside for 5 minutes to slightly cool. Then turn out the sponge onto a piece of greaseproof paper, peel off the lining paper. Put another piece of greaseproof paper on the other side and roll the sponge up and leave to cool completely. This helps to set the shape of the roll and also helps to prevent cracking. The sponge needs to be rolled while it is still warm and flexible.

As the sponge roll is cooling, beat the cream until it forms whipped cream. I am always fascinated at how cream turns into whipped cream.

Cream

Stage One - bubbles form

Stage Two - cream starts to thicken

Stage Three - cream thickens more

Stage Four - ripples form as the cream thickens

Whola - whipped cream!

When the sponge has cooled, carefully unroll it and gently remove the inside paper.

Spread the inside of the sponge with your choice of filling and roll it back up, slowly peeling off the outside paper. Place it seam side down on a plate.

Filling of cream mixed with chocolate shavings

The top of the swiss roll is likely to stick to the greaseproof paper (alternatively, you can roll the sponge in a clean tea towel to prevent peeling), and sometimes you may get cracks in the sponge cake but it’s not a problem because I never leave the swiss roll naked, I always decorate the outside - spread the outside with whipped cream and sprinkle on chocolate gratings or crushed nuts, or just dust with icing sugar.

Covering the outside of the swiss roll with cream so that I can cover its blemishes

Swiss roll with chocolate shavings and lined down the bottom with almond flakes.

The assembled swiss roll can be eaten straight away but it tastes better if you refrigerate the swiss roll for a few hours or overnight before eating it. Refrigerating sets the sponge and cream together, and it will also slice more neatly.

Pad Thai - key elements for making a successful Pad Thai

2011-12-30T10:51:00.003+08:00

Every country has a national dish that it’s famous for and is found everywhere. Pad Thai is a dish you will often see listed as the top Thai dish, sometimes it’s a toss up between Tom Yam soup and Pad Thai, but I think that Pad Thai is more representative of Thai cuisine as it’s the ultimate street food and you will often find food carts in Thailand cooking it fresh on the streets.

(Photo I took of a street cart selling Pad Thai in Bangkok)

When I traveled to Bangkok in September, I had Pad Thai almost every day. It was everywhere, so it was hard to avoid eating. I’ve always enjoyed eating Pad Thai and it’s a dish that I would often order at home in Perth, so while I was in Bangkok I was interested in trying Pad Thai as often as possible to see how it was cooked, and explore its taste and the ingredients used to cook it.

Ever since coming back from Bangkok I wanted to recreate the Pad Thai that I had there. I consulted my Thai bible aka David Thompson’s Thai Food and my favourite Thai food blogs Chez Pim and She Simmers.

From my research, I learnt that the three key elements for a successful Pad Thai are:

Premixing the sauce beforehand – A Pad Thai needs to be fried up quickly so there is little time for adding in and adjusting all the seasonings as you cook. Premix a batch of the sauce and spoon it in as you cook (any unused sauce keeps well in the fridge). When you taste the sauce it will appear quite pungent but keep in mind that once you use it to cook Pad Thai and add in all the other ingredients, the flavour will be diluted somewhat, so make sure that as you premix the sauce it maintains a robust flavour – it should mainly taste salty and sour with a slight sweetness.
Getting the texture of the noodles right – Pad Thai noodles should be soft but also a little chewy, and not overcooked, gummy or mushy. To get this texture, buy dried rice noodles and soak the noodles with room temperature water to soften, not boil. I have never thought of just soaking noodles before cooking, I have always boiled or blanched them. You need to undersoak the noodles a little as they will continue to soften as it cooks in the pan. The noodles should be pliable but still firm, check that it passes the swirl around the finger test.
Using a large frying pan instead of a wok – I always use a wok so I would have never thought of using a frying pan to cook Pad Thai until I read a detailed blog post from She Shimmers which recommends the use of a flat bottomed pan. The large surface area helps the sauce to absorb more and the excess moisture evaporates to allow more browning of the noodles. It also provides more space for stirring and frying to ensure that everything cooks evenly. I found Pad Thai easier to cook in a frying pan.

Swirl around the finger test for soaking dried rice noodles

Here’s my rendition of Pad Thai, I’m pretty happy with the result.

Ingredients

Pad Thai sauce (Adapted from David Thompson’s Thai Food - makes around ¾ cup and can be used to cook 2-3 serves of Pad Thai, increase quantities to make more sauce)

•    3 tablespoons palm sugar (I grated my palm sugar before adding it)
•    1 tablespoon white sugar
•    3 tablespoons prepared tamarind pulp
•    5 ½ tablespoons fish sauce
•    pinch of ground chilli powder

To prepare the tamarind pulp – buy a block of shelled and seeded tamarind, soak required amount in hot water for 10-15 minutes, mash up with a spoon and then strain.

Tamarind Block

Tamarind soaking in hot water

Mashed up tamarind

Strained tamarind pulp

For one serve of Pad Thai

•    Peanut oil
•    Handful/2 loosely packed cups of dried thin rice noodles (Banh Pho) which has been reconstituted
•    ¼ cup of minced chicken/chopped into small pieces (about ½ a chicken thigh)
•    5 prawns, shelled and deveined
•    pinch of ground chilli powder
•    Handful of Bean sprouts (plus extra for garnish)
•    Handful of Chinese flat leaf garlic chives, chopped into 2 inch lengths (plus extra for garnish)
•    ½ shallot, thinly sliced
•    1 clove crushed garlic
•    1 Egg
•    1-2 tablespoons crushed roasted peanuts
•    wedge of lime

Note: You can also add in some sliced firm tofu.

Chinese flat leaf garlic chives

Sliced shallots and minced garlic

This was the packet of dried rice noodles that I used, available from most Asian supermarkets. How did I know that it would be the right one to use? Well the back of the packet said that it was a product of Thailand and that was good enough for me.

Method

(Reference: David Thompson’s Thai Food, Chez Pim and She Simmers)

Soak the dried rice noodles in room temperature water for 30-45 minutes until it softens and is pliable. Drain well.

Prepare the sauce – simmer the palm sugar, white sugar, tamarind pulp and fish sauce for 1-2 minutes until dissolved. Taste and adjust the flavour balance until it suits you.

Note: It’s best to make one serving at a time!

Heat up frying pan and add in some peanut oil (add in more oil throughout the cooking process as necessary, ie: when things start to stick to the pan). Add in the minced chicken, fry until halfway done then add in 1-2 teaspoons of sauce to flavour the chicken.

Add in the rice noodles, 2-3 tablespoons of sauce and fry rigorously, stirring everything around (the amount of sauce added to the Pad Thai can be adjusted according to how strong a flavour you like). Add in some water, a tablespoon at a time, if the sauce evaporates too quickly and/or the noodles get dry and haven’t cooked through yet. Keep the noodles moving around constantly to keep from burning or forming a crust. Cook until the noodles are soft.

When the noodles are ready (pull out a strand to taste), push the noodles to one side of the pan and add in the prawns, shallots and garlic, and cook until the prawns are nearly done. Then add in the bean sprouts and garlic chives, and quickly toss everything together. Taste and check the seasoning, add more sauce if necessary and a pinch of chilli powder if more heat is desired. Create some space in the middle of the frying pan and crack in the egg, let it sit for 10-15 seconds and then fry everything together.

Serve the Pad Thai on a plate with crushed roasted peanuts, wedge of lime and some extra bean sprouts and garlic chives.

Wipe down the pan and then make another serve.

Squeezing lime over Pad Thai

Marque Degustation at Restaurant Amuse

2011-12-29T10:57:00.002+08:00

Mark Best’s restaurant in Sydney, Marque, was awarded 2012 Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year and he recently published a cookbook Marque: A culinary Journey. To launch the cookbook in Perth, Mark Best and his head chef Pasi Petamen came over and cooked a special degustation at Restaurant Amuse. The opportunity to eat dinner cooked by undoubtedly one of the best chefs in Australia and consume signature Marque dishes without having to travel to Sydney was too good to pass up.

On Thursday, 8 December I found myself at Restaurant Amuse for the third time this year with fellow dining partners in food crimes Linda, David and Chris to experience what would be the best meal that I have had this year.

Degustation means a careful, appreciative tasting of various foods. A degustation is much more than just tasting an array of small dishes served one after the other, together with matched wines, in the one sitting. A degustation is an experience and takes your pallet on a journey. At a degustation I am always introduced to interesting creations and new flavour combinations. The dishes served should have a natural progression and flow on from one another, building on different tastes. A degustation in a lot of ways is like a symphony, it needs to be well orchestrated, with every dish working together to create a beautiful harmony. The degustation provided by Mark Best was the finest symphony that I have experienced, everything was beautifully and tastefully executed.

The evening started with some hors d’oeuvres. First up was Beetroot Macaroon with Foie Gras. They looked like macarons, two little meringue like shells encompassing custard made of foie gras. We thought that there was a misspelling on the menu – shouldn’t it be called macaron not macaroon? In the book Marque: A culinary Journey, it states that the word macaroon is used to put the diner off guard. You think that you will be biting into a crisp meringue shell with a soft interior, but instead, when you put this little morsel into your mouth, the texture is so light that it’s what I imagine biting into a cloud would be like if it was edible. Next was Pacific Oyster with Grilled Sea Foam. You have to pop the oyster and foam into your mouth all at once for the marriage of texture and flavour to take full effect, and when you do, the feeling of the sea fills your senses.

Beetroot Macaroon with Foie Gras

Pacific Oyster with Grilled Sea Foam

Then discussions ensued over whether or not to take the matched wine option or to (be responsible because it’s a school night and work beckons the next day) order just a few glasses. Linda and I went with the matched wine option. I always go for the matched wine option with a degustation. I am not much of a wine connoisseur but I appreciate how wine complements and enhances the food you eat, and with a degustation, the wine matches have been even more carefully considered so that like the dishes served, the wines flow on from one another and don’t overwhelm the palate. The sommelier at Restaurant Amuse is Kim, I love her enthusiasm, the way she described each wine before she pours it into our glasses made me excited to try it. Each course was expertly and thoughtfully matched with a wine to fit in with the elements presented on Mark Best’s dishes.

The first course was Almond Jelly with Blue Swimmer Crab, Almond Gazpacho, Sweet Corn & Avruga paired with A. Christmann, 2009 Riesling, Pfalz Germany. We were presented with a plate that had a little snowy almond mountain, we dig into the mound to find the lovely meat of the blue swimmer crab with its natural sweetness lifted by the almond and sweet corn. For the second course, we were presented with Scallops with White Asparagus, Yoghurt Whey & Togarashi paired wth Prager, 2009 ‘Hinter Der Burg’ Federspiel Grüner Veltliner, Wachau Austria. The scallops were ceviche style with thinly julienned white asparagus to provide texture and the togarashi (Japanese spice mix) scattered on top provided little pops of flavour. I loved the interplay of flavours and textures in this dish.

Almond Jelly with Blue Swimmer Crab, Almond Gazpacho, Sweet Corn & Avruga

Scallops with White Asparagus, Yoghurt Whey & Togarashi

The third course of Dutch Cream Potato with Bone Marrow, Sea Urchin & Coffee paired with Josmeyer, 2008 ‘Le Fromenteau’ Pinot Gris, Alsace France was undisputedly the dish of the night for all. The Dutch potatoes were specially smuggled in for the occasion. It was an interesting but cohesive combination. The coffee being the most surprising element, which was lightly sprinkled over the top, it was like icing on a cake. One spoonful and everyone around the table released sounds of contentment. It was truly an exquisite dish. As everyone finished and little scrapings on the plate were left, we were left wanting to lick the plate clean in order to savour every last bit of the dish. Thankfully the bread came out at this point in time and we prevented the waitresses from collecting our plates so that we could use the bread to wipe up whatever was left.

Dutch Cream Potato with Bone Marrow, Sea Urchin & Coffee

The bread was accompanied with creamed butter and volcanic salt.

The fourth course was Bar Cod with Polenta, Buddha’s Hands, Witlof & Vadouvan paired with Man O’ War, 2009 ‘Valhalla’ Chardonnay, Waiheke Island New Zealand. I don't think that I have ever consumed fish that has been cooked so well, the bar cod was a delight to eat, I could have eaten it on it’s own with nothing else. The outside was lightly seared and the flesh was so soft that you could cut through it like butter. A teaspoon sized amount of polenta and buddha’s hand accompanied the fish on either side of the plate, providing contrasting flavours to go with the fish. This was the first time that I had eaten buddha’s hand which is a fruit that is fragrant with a citrusy taste. The fifth course was Glenloth Pigeon and Duck Liver with Green Strawberries, Beer & Fennel paired with Chimay, 2011, Baileux Belgium. This dish to me was about the pleasure of eating well cooked game meat. On one side you had pigeon and on the other side you had the duck liver, both cooked perfectly and served with some green strawberries which provided a pleasant tartness, accented with a spike of beer and fennel.

Bar Cod with Polenta, Buddha’s Hands, Witlof & Vadouvan

Glenloth Pigeon and Duck Liver with Green Strawberries, Beer & Fennel

The sixth course was Blackmore Grain Fed Wagyu with Beef Tendon, Wasabi & Fermented Vegetables paired with Le Fonti, 2006 Riserva Chianti Classico, Tuscany Italy. Compared to the other dishes we had consumed throughout the night, some felt that this dish didn’t have the wow factor that the other dishes did, but I liked the simplicity of this dish with its subtle flavours and vibrant colours. The beef was the star presented in its purest form teamed with delicately fermented vegetables where the wasabi felt almost not present.

Blackmore Grain Fed Wagyu with Beef Tendon, Wasabi & Fermented Vegetables

Next was the famous Marque egg dish. The Sauternes Custard. This has been served as a pre-dessert since Marque began. It’s a delicate and rich tasting custard. The final dessert dish was “Tomberries” with Chocolate Jelly & Crème Fraiche paired with ‘The Portberries’. The tomberries are baby tomatoes cooked in a strawberry syrup creating an art of deception as you try to figure out what you are eating. I liked how this dessert wasn’t overly sweet but still hit the sweet spot.

The Sauternes Custard

“Tomberries” with Chocolate Jelly & Crème Fraiche

The night ended with petit fours of Salted Caramel Chocolates, Lemon Drops & Bitter Bon Bons. I was very impressed with the bursts of flavour that came through the petit fours. One thing that I found throughout the night with every dish that I ate was that I could never fully predict what was ahead of me, the tastes I assumed that I would be confronted with was always taken to another level. The petit fours were no exception. I had the lemon drop first and it felt like I had bitten into an actual lemon as the sourness of the lemon came through prominently but the white chocolate coating was a saving grace tempering the acidity. My personal favourites were the bitter bon bons, they are like fruits jubes. I love fruit jubes and these were the best jubes that I have ever eaten in terms of taste and texture.

Petit Fours

In the middle of service, Mark gave a little speech and then he spent the rest of the night making the rounds to each table and having a chat with all the diners. Mark not only shows an appreciation of how to use ingredients and techniques to provide a mesmerising dining experience but also an appreciation of the consumers of it.

The service that the Restaurant Amuse staff provided throughout the night was impeccable. Having been to Amuse a few times, the staff remembered us and made us feel right at home. This was one of the most memorable dining experiences that I have had. This event also provided an opportunity for the Restaurant Amuse staff to work with Mark Best and Pasi Petamen, and for both sides to learn from each other and share knowledge. When Carolynne, manager of Restaurant Amuse, was asked how were the staff coping with having to learn to cook a whole new menu amongst running the usual Amuse degustation, Carolynne told us that this was like a holiday because it had been a lot of fun.

The collaborative effort of the chefs from Restaurant Amuse and Marque put on a really special event with amazing food. I hope that in the future there will be more events like this.

Almond Croissant Taste Test – Looking for the best Almond Croissant in Perth

2011-12-21T11:18:00.006+08:00

Mmmm (made after taking a bite of croissant), Mmm Mmmm (additional approval), Woah, heya (hello!), Hmmm (contemplative), uhuh (yes, interesting).

This is what an almond croissant taste test sounds like.

(Almond Croissant taste test set up)

An almond croissant taste test that involved 6 different bakeries and a total of 18 croissants (3 from each bakery), which were consumed by 5 almond croissant appreciators on a Saturday morning. Eating around 3 croissants each (half of each of the 6 croissants) on a Saturday morning is heavy going, especially a week before Christmas when one should be pacing food intake. We all loved almond croissants but yes, we did all feel just a little bit sick afterwards - it affected my ability to drive properly and others reported having a 4 hour nap afterwards. But some questions demand answers. We just wanted to find out where you can get the best almond croissants in Perth. So someone’s got to do it right?

We decided to take on the challenge – We were:

@KCrusader
@blueapocalypse
@maxpolitation
@jrrdrbb
@_TFid
plus @ohthesea who was not a fan of almond croissants but came along as the adjudicator (dividing up all the croissants for a blind tasting, recording all the scores and tallying up the results)

Originally we bought almond croissants from 5 bakeries – Le Galette de France (Nedlands), Barrett’s Bread (Nedlands), Choux Café (Swanbourne), Jean Pierre Sancho (CDB) and Brioche Bakery which is a stall at the Subiaco Farmer’s Market. Then a coffee expedition by @KCrusader to La Papillon Patisserie (Northbridge) during almond croissant tasting led to another addition to the tasting plate.

We sampled from 6 bakeries, just a small selection of what Perth has to offer compiled from previous experiences, things we had heard and recommendations. We narrowed down the bakeries to around the inner city area, to places that would be realistic for us to travel to for an almond croissant fix. I’m sure there are other bakeries that could have been in contention, notably Chez Jean Claude Patisserie (Subiaco) which @maxpolitation claims to have the best almond croissants in Perth but was not open on the weekend, @jrrdrbb had heard of a bakery in Dunsborough which is famous for its almond croissants (does anyone know the name of this bakery?) and Abhi’s Bread in Fremantle is supposed to be good as well as Tammy’s Bakery in Victoria Park. West End Deli (West Perth, Leederville) is my personal favourite for almond croissants but I recently found out that they were no longer making them.

(Paper bags filled with almond croissants in the back seat of my car)

I did the almond croissant bakery run on Saturday morning and 1.5 hours later I had 5 paper bags with 3 croissants each sitting in the backseat of my car. At 10am we all met up at Hyde Park for the almond croissant face off. Once we had settled down on our picnic rugs, we got down to the serious question of what criteria we would use for judging. The first criteria was easy, it had to be the filling – without the frangipane filling it would not be an almond croissant. Controversially, it’s the frangipane that makes some people have a distaste of almond croissants with the offence being almond essence. I like my frangipane to be made with real almonds, anything made with almond essence can also be a turn off for me. I am not a fan of almond essence. The second criteria had to be the croissant itself, in terms of the texture – crisp vs soft, how good were the buttery layers of puff pastry? A score of 5 for the filling, 5 for the texture and then something else. Another criteria was needed to allow a score for what made one almond croissant different from the rest. @KCrusader suggested that we look at its X Factor. The final criteria was a score out of 5 for the almond croissant’s X Factor which could be anything - ranging from it’s appearance/aesthetics, to the overall mouthfeel/taste, a feature that made the croissant different from the rest and should be allocated bonus points for. A score out of 15 would be given to each almond croissant by each judge, with a total score of 75 possible.

Please note: Out of the 6 bakeries we tasted, I had personally only eaten almond croissants previously at one of them – Choux Café. It was a blind taste test for everyone expect me as I knew which bakery the croissant came from as I did the almond croissant run in the morning.

Here are the results.

Sixth – Brioche Bakery

Coming in at 6th place was the Brioche stall from the Subiaco Farmers Market. Most thought that it was not bad as a sweetbread but just didn’t tick all the boxes of what we wanted in an almond croissant. The filling was minimal and a citrus (lemon) element in the flavour of the croissant was noted, which we all found a little unusual. The texture of the croissant was soft and not as crispy on the outside as others. It was an almost croissant, not quite an almond one but had potential.

(Brioche Bakery stall at Subiaco Farmers Market)

Fifth – Barrett’s Bread

The almond croissant from Barrett’s Bread certainly had an X Factor about it. One bite and we were all like “Hello!” I think this almond croissant taste test has suddenly become a party as the frangipane filling woke us up with an alcoholic shot. The frangipane filling was soaked in alcohol which we concluded to be brandy – it was a highlight for some but others thought that a little less brandy would be more ideal. The filling also resulted in a more soggier base than others but it contained almond flakes inside which was a nice touch, whereas the others generally had almond flakes scattered over the top. The taste of the croissant was good but the texture was soft and it was also the least appealing out of all the croissants to look at. Someone commented that it looked like a facehugger from the movie Aliens (note: this was a joke and not critical feedback!). The almond croissant from Barrett’s Bread was nicknamed boozey Barrett.

(Barrett's Bread, almond croissant)

Fourth – Le Papillon Patisserie

The almond croissant from Le Papillon was a late addition to the almond croissant taste test. It came after all the others had been sampled and @KCrusader went on a coffee run while the results were being tallied. Le Papillon had the advantage of being still warm from the oven which was rewarding to eat. It rated favourably on texture but the area it was marked down on was the filling, which comes down to a personal preference. The frangipane filling tasted like it had almond essence in it, similar to the flavour of marzipan. Some were fans of it and some weren’t.

(Le Papillon Patisserie, almond croissant)

Third – Jean Pierre Sancho

The almond croissant from Jean Pierre Sancho was very pleasant to eat, overall it was much lighter and not as sweet as the others. It was the croissant that people could eat more than one of. However, the frangipane was more like a thick glaze and we noted little black spots of vanilla bean in it, so it had a more vanilla flavour. The look and texture of the croissant was really good and put in competition with the texture of the croissant which took out first place, but after trying the croissant of the first place winner again (there was one half leftover which was divided between three people) and comparing it with the croissant of Jean Pierre Sancho, the first place winner one was still the favourite.

(Slicing up Jean Pierre Sancho, almond croissant)

(Jean Pierre Sancho, almond croissant)

Second – Choux Café

The almond croissant from Choux Café came a very close second, it was only 1.5 points away from taking the top spot. The exterior of the almond croissant worked to complement the interior, there was less disparity between the outside and inside of the croissant – it all became one. It had an X Factor that was different from the rest - some commented that it was like eating an almond cake or almond sandwich. The almond croissant from Choux was rich and decadent, a croissant that you would not be eating everyday but as a special treat now and then.

(Choux Cafe, almond croissant - don't be deceived by it's flattened look, it has been double baked between two trays and the result is delicious)

(Choux Cafe, almond croissant sliced open)

First – Le Galette de France

As the almond croissant from Le Galette de France was being carved up for tasting we all oohh and aahhed at the look of it. Le Galette de France won the X Factor for appearance. It was the best looking almond croissant of the day but it wasn’t just pretty on the outside, it was delicious on the inside. The frangipane filling was real smooth with a great flavour and a touch of alcohol (maybe rum?), but the alcohol was not too noticeable, it just lingered in the background to provide depth to the taste of the frangipane. The texture of the croissant was a standout too, with the outside baked till crispy and it had a lovely caramelized taste to it.

(Slicing up almond croissant from Le Galette de France)

(Le Galette de France, almond croissant)

Le Galette de France won as a holistic eating experience, it ticked all the boxes of the criteria we were judging on.

So there you go, Le Galette de France has the X Factor.

(Le Galette de France, Nedlands)

(Almond croissant taste test aftermath)

Would love to hear about others experiences of eating almond croissants and what people think is the best almond croissant in Perth. Are there any bakeries that we should have included in our almond croissant taste test?

Baklava with Pistachios, Walnuts and Honey Syrup

2011-12-20T08:02:00.001+08:00

There are certain classic sweets that are universally adored and I think baklava is one of them…well judging from the reactions that I get from people when I tell them I made baklava. But what’s not to like about baklava? Layers of buttered filo pastry, sandwiching a spiced nut mixed and bathed in an aromatic honey syrup – it's a crunchy, sweet and decadent, and also moreish, where one piece is never enough.

I find baklava one of the easiest sweets to make but it’s just a little labourous as you have to layer in sheets of filo pastry and brush some butter between each layer.

I recently made baklava for the first time and everyone who ate it told me it was the best baklava that they had ever eaten (this is not an exaggeration). I adapted a baklava recipe from the Gourmet Traveller. The GT recipe had 500g of filo pastry but when I went to the supermarket I found that the filo pastry came in 375g packets, so I amended the recipe by reducing everything by a third and also added in some other spices (cardamon and nutmeg) to the nut mix.

I find that baklava can be really sweet so when making the honey syrup, taste and balance out the sweetness with the acidity of lemon juice to your desired taste.

Enjoy!

Ingredients
•    150g pistachios
•    150g walnuts
•    50g caster sugar
•    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
•    ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
•    ¼ teaspoon ground cardamon
•    200g butter, coarsely chopped
•    375g filo pastry
Honey syrup
•    200g caster sugar
•    80g honey
•    1 lemon, grated rind and juice only (juice added to taste)
•    200ml water
•    ½ cinnamon quill
•    few drops rosewater and/or orange blossom water to taste

Optional: Extra chopped pistachios for sprinkling over the top of baklava.

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.

Spread the nuts on a baking tray and lightly toast in the oven for 5-8 minutes or until aromatic (toast the pistachios and walnuts on separate trays). Cool.

Combine the pistachios, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and caradmon in the bowl of a food processor and process a few times using the pulse button on the food processor. Then add the walnuts and continue pulsing until the nuts are coarsely chopped but not ground. (I processed the pistachios first for a bit before adding in the walnuts as the walnuts crumble more and I found that if I processed the pistachios and walnuts at the same time the walnuts became more ground before pistachios were fully chopped) Set aside the nut mixture.

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat, set aside and keep warm. Brush a 3cm-deep, 8x8inch square baking tray with butter. Cut filo sheets to fit tray snugly and cover with a damp tea towel (this prevents the sheets from drying out).

Layer one-third of the filo pastry in tray, brushing butter between each layer. Scatter evenly with half the nut mixture, then top with half the remaining pastry, brushing butter between each layer. Scatter over remaining nuts, top with remaining filo, brushing between each layer with butter. Lightly brush the top with remaining butter.

Refrigerate until firm (around 15 minutes so that it is easier to score), then cut through all pastry layers into 4cm diamonds with a sharp knife. Bake until golden and cooked through (45 minutes-1 hour). Cover loosely with foil partway through cooking if top browns too quickly.

While the baklava is baking, make the honey syrup - combine sugar, honey, lemon rind, cinnamon quill and 200ml water in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Reduce heat to low, simmer until infused (20 minutes). Remove from heat, strain through a fine sieve, stir through lemon juice and rosewater/orange blossom water to taste and set aside.

Cool baklava slightly (2-3 minutes), pour over syrup evenly, set aside at room temperature to cool completely (overnight if possible). Baklava will keep in tray, covered, for 3-4 days.

Optional: Sprinkle the top of the baklava with extra chopped pistachios.

[Update 31 January 2012 - Recipe featured on Yummly - Pistachio Recipes to Go Nuts For]

Banh Cuon with Prawns and Vegetables (Vietnamese Rice Rolls)

2011-12-16T07:50:00.000+08:00

Snapshot of Hoi An, Vietnam

Delicious Vietnam is a monthly food blogging event which was founded by Anh (A food lover’s journey) and Hong & Kim (Ravenous Couple) with the aim promoting and exploring the diversity of Vietnamese cuisine. I have been following this event for some time now and after two years Anh has decided that the next edition will be the last with entries to be submitted by 31 December 2011 (so if you would like to contribute, you still can!). I have always wanted to participate in Delicious Vietnam and I am a bit sad that it’s all coming to an end but happy that I can contribute to the last one. Join the Delicious Vietnam Facebook page to share delicious Vietnamese recipes, stories and restaurant reviews with others.

This is my entry to Delicious Vietnam December 2011.

When you dine at Vietnamese restaurants in Perth, you get a stock standard list of Vietnamese dishes, but in Vietnam a lot of dishes are exclusive to specific regions and some stalls specialize in selling just one dish. Ho Ani was my favourite place to eat when I traveled around Vietnam in October, with an abundance of restaurants and street food stalls selling a wide variety of delicious food, I would recommend it as the top food destination in Vietnam. The local delicacies specific to Hoi An are cao lau and white rose, these two dishes are not available anywhere else in Vietnam. The noodles in cau lau are made using water from the centuries-old Ban Le well in the Quang Nam Province in town, which give the noodles a unique taste and I loved their firm chewy texture (similar to Japanese udon). White rose is a shrimp dumpling made from translucent white dough bunched up to look like a rose and apparently it is only made by one family in Hoi An who supplies all the restaurants (the recipe is a family secret).

Cau lau noodles, bean sprouts, lettuce, herbs, thin slices of pork,

crackling squares with a bit of rich meat broth.

White rose - the most delicious dumpling that I ate in Vietnam.

Cau lau and white rose were a highlight of my eating endeavours in Hoi An (and all of Vietnam) but sadly I can never fully replicate these dishes at home. A dish that I ate in Hoi An which was revolutionary for me was banh cuon, as it changed the way that I thought this dish could be made.

(Eating Place 62, Hoi An. Note: Women in Vietnam wear their pyjamas out!)

Nicola and I met up with some friends from Perth in Hoi An who also happened to be there at the same time we were. They recommended we have dinner at an outdoor eating area – Bai Boi Dong Hiep, Eating Place 62 that they ate at the night before. Deciding what to eat can be a difficult task when there is so much on offer but when I saw banh cuon on the menu I knew what I wanted to order. I was interested in trying dishes that I could have back home in Perth to see what it was like in the country of origin. This was the first time that I had ordered banh cuon on our Vietnam trip. Banh cuon is one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes. It’s a thin crepe like rice roll, filled with a mixture of ground pork and minced wood ear mushrooms. It’s freshly made and should be eaten straight away. I love the lightness of the rice rolls and the delicious pork filling topped with herbs and nuoc cham. It looks simple but is packed with flavour. Banh cuon is traditionally cooked by steaming over a fabric covered pot of boiling water which produces a delicate and thin rice crepe.

[Here’s a video that I found on youtube of banh cuon being

made the traditional way – steamed on a pot]

Also check out a detailed banh cuon recipe and photos from The Ravenous Couple.

(Spotted - lady making banh cuon in Danang Supermarket)

Banh Cuon is something that my mum would often cook for lunch on a Sunday. However, she uses a non-stick frying pan to cook the banh cook instead of the traditional method as it’s easier. The rice rolls are not as light and delicate as the ones produced by steaming but the results are satisfactory.

When the plate of banh cuon that I had ordered at Eating Place 62 was placed in front of me I was a bit puzzled as it wasn’t what I expected. The banh cuon didn’t contain the usual ground pork, minced wood ear mushroom, and onions mixture. The banh cuon was filled with prawns and vegetables.

(Banh cuon dish from Eating Place 62, Hoi An)

I have never seen banh cuon served like this before, but it didn’t matter as it tasted delicious and I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of putting other fillings in banh cuon before. The filling of prawns and vegetables made the banh cuon a much lighter and refreshing dish. Vegetarians could adjust the filling for banh cuon with some grilled tofu and vegetables. Banh cuon is also enjoyed plain with no fillings and just topped with some fried shallots, herbs and served with nuoc cham.

Banh Cuon with Prawns and Vegetables

Ingredients

Rice roll batter
•    200g rice flour
•    100g tapioca starch
•    ½ teaspoon salt
•    800ml warm water
Filling
•    cooked prawns
•    bean sprouts
•    carrot, grated
•    chives, chopped into 2-3 inch lengths

Garnish with fried shallots, coriander and serve with nuoc cham (for a recipe for nuoc cham, see my Vietnamese chicken salad recipe)

(The rice flour and tapioca starch that I used)

Method

Put the rice flour, tapioca starch and salt together in a bowl, then slowly pour in the warm water and whisk together until smooth and well blended, it should have a watery consistency and resemble milk.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan and lightly grease the pan with vegetable oil. Spoon one ladle of batter into the pan – one hand is used to pour the mixture in fast, while the other hand is used to swirl/revolve the pan quickly to spread the batter around the pan evenly and coat the bottom. Cover the pan and let the batter sit undisturbed for around 30 seconds to cook through, it should become transparent. The batter is ready when the edges start to release (don’t worry if you see bubbles forming or little holes).

Scatter some prawns, bean sprouts, carrot and chives onto the batter and quickly roll the crepe into a log with a spatula while it is in the pan.

Slide the rolled banh cuon onto a plate, garnish with some fried onion, coriander and serve with nuoc cham.

Notes:
• You can remove the rice crepe from the pan onto an oiled plate and then add in the fillings and roll, but I find it quicker to just do it all at once in the pan.
• You need to work quickly and don’t overcook the batter as it should be smooth in texture and kind of resemble something that is steamed.

Related post
The other Vietnamese crepe – Banh Xeo.

Edamame, bacon and mint salad

2011-12-15T07:45:00.000+08:00

(Photo of edamame beans that I had at an izakaya in Japan last year)

Edamame beans are something that I always order when I go to a Japanese restaurant. It’s a tasty appetiser and a perfect accompaniment to beer. I enjoy squeezing the beans out of the pod to eat them.

I thought edamame beans only existed in Japanese restaurants, that the only way I could consume them was at a Japanese restaurant.

But then one day I found out that I can get them in frozen form and I could enjoy edamame beans in the comfort of my own home, whenever I wanted.

Here’s the story about how I discovered the existence of frozen edamame beans.

In October I went to ‘Cinema in a Cave’ at McNess Studios (an artist run studio and project space located in a repurposed building at 8 Pier Street in the city). Cinema in a Cave is a monthly microcinema, screening rare and underappreciated films from around the world organised by Kenta. This was the last Cinema in a Cave session for the year and the movie been shown was The Taste of Tea.

The Taste of Tea takes you on a journey into the lives of the Haruno family – a young girl that sees a giant double of herself everywhere, a teenage boy facing girl and puberty troubles, not your average housewife who works on animated film projects, hypnotist husband, an uncle who is a music producer and trying to find meaning in life, and kooky grandfather – yes, this film has it all! It’s a surreal, funny, imaginative and touching movie. I loved the way that it captured the eccentricities of human behavior.

Check out the trailor – doesn’t it make you smile?

So as it was the last Cinema in a Cave session for the year, Kenta had all these snacks leftover that he had bought in bulk for movie munchies. Kenta was going to Japan so he had to get rid of all these snacks and gave them away. A bag of frozen edamame beans was given to me and I was like OMG, these beans come frozen?! This was a life changing discovery. I wondered why I have never known this before…am I the only one that didn’t know that edamame beans were available frozen?

I recently used edamame beans to make a simple salad, just adding in whatever I had at hand and the result was pretty good.

This is what I did.

Cook frozen edamame beans according to packet instructions, then I shelled all the beans and put them in a bowl. When you eat edamame beans at Japanese restaurants, they come slightly salted. To add this element of saltiness to the now naked edamame beans, I fried little bits of chopped up bacon in a frying pan, then transferred the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the excess oil. I added the fried bacon to the edamame beans. For a bit of bite and sweetness to the salad, I finely chopped up some red onion and added them in. A salad would not be complete without some herbs so I added in little bits of shredded mint. To complete the salad, I drizzled over the top the finest extra virgin olive oil that I could find in my cupboard (3 Drops).

(Little fried bits of bacon)

Luang Prabang

2011-12-08T16:02:00.004+08:00

After spending much of our time recovering from food poisoning in Ayutthaya, we were really looking forward to the next destination on our trip – Luang Prabang. We had friends who had travelled to Luang Prabang about 4 years ago and we were promised some sort of untouched paradise, the least developed of all the South East Asia places you could visit.

But we were a little disappointed with our first impressions of Luang Prabang. It was very apparent that it was becoming a tourist city. There has been much development with guesthouses popping up everywhere, tourist agencies, shops selling local handicrafts at tourist prices, cafes and bars catered to Westerners (we even came across an Aussie sports bar which showed the footy finals!). At every corner there was a tuk tuk driver offering “waterfall…waterfall…I take you to waterfall?” The US dollar is commonly used in place of the local currency which is the Lao kip.

Luang Prabang Airport

This is what the current Luang Prabang airport looks like. It’s tiny! Their planes (Lao Airlines) are also small and their equivalent of a life jacket is your seat. But all this is about to change…our guesthouse owner told us that Luang Prabang was building a new airport and will soon be able to accept flights directly from Singapore (currently you can get to Luang Prabang via Thailand or Vietnam).

I still enjoyed my time in Luang Prabang but it took a little bit of time to accept the reality of the situation. Luang Prabang still has a certain charm to it - it’s a place where you can ride around freely on a bicycle on uncongested roads, you will see the local Lao kids running around and playing in the street, and nestled between the Mekong and Khan rivers, it is extremely picturesque.

Your firsts of anything is always a significant affair – your first day at school, first time you ride a bike, first date, first kiss, first time you get drunk, first time you win an award for anything. When you are travelling, you experience many firsts – your first tuk tuk ride, your first attempt to cross the road in unregulated traffic, your first squat toilet, your first go at haggling with a street vendor…I think that one of the most important firsts is your first meal at a place. Seems like a typical response coming from a food blogger right? But after arriving at your destination, all that travelling, walking, sweating, overcoming communication barriers, finding the right hotel, checking in etc. – you are going to be damn hungry and at a point where you are not too fussed about what you eat as you have days ahead to explore the food. But you know what they say about first impressions, so finding a relatively decent first meal is important and some sort of achievement.

As far as first meals go, the first thing that I ate at Luang Prabang was probably my favourite first meal. We walked along the main street to find somewhere, anywhere to eat and saw this little noodle place with people inside slurping away. I always find any kind of noodle soup a safe bet – a flavoursome stock with noodles and fresh herbs, there may be varying degrees in flavour but you can always trust that it will provide a comforting and hearty meal, especially around South East Asia where noodle soups are a staple.

This is feu, a Lao noodle soup dish which is similar to a Vietnamese pho

I can’t recall what this noodle place was called but it is located on Ban Pakham Sisavong road (a few stores down from Ancient Luang Prabang Hotel/Café)

In Luang Prabang we found it hard to find little local eateries that sold traditional Lao cuisine, the places that we ended up going to where tailored for Westerners but appeared to do a decent job of representing Lao cuisine.

One night we ate at Tamarind which is known as one of ‘the’ places to go to for an introduction to authentic Lao cuisine. It specialises in Lao tasting platters and also offers cooking classes. The menu contained a lot of explanatory information on Lao cuisine and as the waiters brought out each dish they would describe what it was and how to eat it.

We ordered the tasting plate, grilled pork, steamed fish and bamboo soup.

Tasting Plate

Grilled Pork

Bamboo soup

At Tamarind, it was the first time that I ate dinner with my hands. The staple food of Laos is sticky rice eaten by hand, you pick up a bit of rice from the bamboo basket and roll it into a ball, and use it to dip into the dishes of condiments and to pick up other ingredients on the table. Eating with your hands seems to be acceptable only if you are a child and have insufficient skills to manage cutlery but in Laos it’s proper dining etiquette. Eating with my hands did bring out the child in me though as I made a snowman with my food.

We checked out the Traditional Arts the Ethnology Centre, an independent non-profit museum. It’s a small space but great to visit if you want to get a feel for traditional Lao culture. It was very interesting to see all the traditional costumes and handicrafts of the different ethnic communities within Laos and learn about their lifestyles, especially the customs for courtship and marriage, where a woman’s weaving was a symbol of her marriage potential. We loved the museum shop which had a huge range of fair trade products and souvenirs hand made by different ethnic groups Lao.

Pom pom necklace that I bought from the

Traditional Arts the Ethnology Centre museum shop

Outside the Traditional Arts the Ethnology Centre was Le Patio Café which served cuisine from different Lao ethnic communities. I ordered a dish from the Hmong people – a pork belly and leafy green stew. Out in the rural areas, meat would be expensive and I thought that this dish exemplified how meat is used sparingly to make a hearty dish, where the amount of pork in the dish was minimal but had been cooked until it was fall apart tender and full of flavour with a large amount of mustard greens.

We visited the Ock Top Pop Living Craft Centre which is a traditional weaving centre and learnt about the process for creating silk and watched the women at their workstations hand weaving garments. It was an intricate and labour intensive process and we were told that one day’s work produced only 20cm of a scarf, so completing a whole scarf would take a few days.

Hanging silk

Woman weaving

At the Ock Top Pop Centre we had lunch at the on site Silk Road Café which served traditional Lao cuisine. I ordered a Lao style chicken salad and a traditional Lao sour fish soup.

The Silk Road Café is situated on the banks of the Mekong so you get

a lovely view while you eat.

One of my favourite cocktails to order while I was travelling around South East Asia was a mojito as the local mint used in this drink took it to another level. It was especially refreshing for the tropical weather we were travelling in. A great little bar to have a mojito in Luang Prabang is Icon Klub.

Wondering around town we spotted the local market were people buy all their groceries.

Here’s all the meat, packaged and ready to go.

The freshest fish you can get, it’s still alive.

The variety of the greens available was amazing.

A trip to Luang Prabang would not be complete without an elephant ride and a trip to the waterfalls. It was the first time that I rode on an elephant. You have the option of sitting in a seat on its back or riding the elephant’s neck. I needed a little convincing from Nicola but I finally made the move to sit on the elephant’s neck. On its neck, the hairs prick into you and with every step you can feel the muscles moving beneath you.

Riding an elephant at the Elephant Village Sanctuary.

Tad Sae Waterfall

Stay tuned….our travels proceed to Vietnam next and our first stop is Hanoi.

Related posts

Snickerdoodle Blondies - Picnic at Kings Park

2011-12-06T07:49:00.000+08:00

I can tell that summer has started in Perth with a flow of invites to picnics coming through to my inbox. Everyone wants to get out and catch up now that there is blissful sunshine, and for hayfever sufferers like me, I can finally enjoy being outside again. I like the casual nature of a picnic as a get together - bring a blanket, food, drinks and games, and then spend hours lazing about in the sun eating, drinking and talking. It’s the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

On the weekend I went to a picnic at Kings Park. There was a little rain on Sunday morning and also a risk of a thunderstorm forecast for the afternoon but that did not deter picnic plans. As the hostess put it – “once the baking had been done, it was too late to turn back”. Thankfully the weather held up and the sun came out to play, and we had some lovely picnic weather for the rest of the afternoon.

Kings Park overlooks the Swan River and is one of the largest inner

city parks in the world.

Game of croquet.

Picnics are a social affair and the food is there to just pick and graze on, so picnic food should be simple and not too fancy.

A winner was whoever did the pieces of watermelon, feta, mint and olive on a toothpick. It was a delicious and refreshing snack.

An idea I will steal for future picnics.

My contribution to the picnic was snickerdoodle blondies. Snickerdoodle blondies stem from snickerdoodles which are a classic American cookie, a bake sale staple. Snickerdoodles are basically sugar cookies that have been rolled in cinnamon sugar before baking. Snickerdoodle blondies turn the classic cookie into a batch of blondies. They are easy to make and uses ingredients that most people who are frequent bakers would already have in the pantry.

When I first baked snickerdoodle blondies I was surprised at how good they were, they tasted like oven baked doughnuts! - soft on the inside with a crunchy cinnamon-sugar topping. They are also wonderfully fragrant.

One thing that I find annoying when baking any sort of slice/brownie/blondie is that every recipe specifies the use of a different sized baking pan. I can’t be bothered or have the room for half a dozen different sized baking pans in my kitchen so I adapted the recipe to suit the size of the pan that I have. I use an 8x8inch (20cm) square baking pan for most things that I make. I’ve adapted the recipe to include more butter and also reduced the oven temperature to ensure a soft and dense texture.

Snickerdoodle Blondies

(adapted from the blog My Baking Addiction)

Ingredients

•    1 1/3 cup plain flour
•    1 teaspoon baking powder
•    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
•    1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg
•    ½ teaspoon salt
•    1 cup packed brown sugar
•    150g unsalted butter, softened
•    1 egg, room temperature
•    2 teaspoons vanilla extract
•    Topping - 1 tablespoon caster sugar, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and pinch nutmeg

Method

Preheat oven to 150C and line an 8x8inch baking pan with greaseproof paper.

Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a bowl and set aside.

In large bowl, beat together butter and brown sugar for 3-5 minutes. Add in the eggs, then the vanilla, and beat until smooth.

Stir in the flour mixture until well blended. Spread evenly in prepared pan (mixture will be quite sticky and like cookie batter, so it’s best to spread it out with a greased spatula or your hands).

Combine the caster sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a little bowl. Evenly sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over the top of the batter.

Bake at 150C for 25 minutes. Cool before cutting.

Vietnamese Chicken Salad

2011-11-28T09:49:00.000+08:00

A salad is one of those dishes that is quite flexible, and usually just a matter of putting together whatever you have at hand, but a Vietnamese chicken salad is not a salad where I can just chuck together whatever salad ingredients I have in my fridge. Whenever I plan on making this salad, the first thing that I need is Vietnamese mint (rau răm) also known as laksa leaves. The problem is that Vietnamese Mint is not always readily available but I won’t have any other herb in this salad – not spearmint (which is the mint that most people would be familiar with) or coriander. I must have Vietnamese mint because the smell and flavour of it completes the Vietnamese chicken salad for me. It is eternally tied to the memories of how I make and eat it.

(In the city, Vietnamese mint can usually be found the Lucky Supermarket on Brisbane street but on the weekend it was not available so I drove up to Mirrabooka to Hiep Hung Asian Grocery on Honeywell boulevard)

When I was young and went grocery shopping with my parents, I would help to pick out ingredients. Whenever I knew my mum going to make a Vietnamese chicken salad, I would run over to the fruit and vegetable section of the Asian supermarket and look for where all the fresh herbs were stored. Facing me would be rows and rows of green herbs. I didn’t know what their names were and could not tell a lot of them apart by sight, but I could identify what was what by smelling each one. I easily sniffed out the Vietnamese mint. I love the aroma of Vietnamese mint and the smell of it instantly makes me think of a Vietnamese chicken salad.

(Can you pick out which herb is Vietnamese mint?)

I have grown up eating Vietnamese food cooked by my parents. When I got older and started going out to eat with my friends, the weirdest thing for me was discovering that dishes that I knew and loved were being served to me differently. I have seen Vietnamese chicken salad appear in many forms but I am very wedded to the way my mum makes it. I find it hard to accept any other form as a Vietnamese chicken salad.

Not only does the salad require Vietnamese mint but the other secret to making it taste amazing is to lightly pickle the vegetables first.

So here's how I like my Vietnamese chicken salad and the way my mum taught me how to make it.

Ingredients

For the salad
•    500g of chicken (poached and shredded)
•    1/2 cabbage, finely shredded
•    1 carrot, thinly julienned into matchsticks
•    1 red onion, thinly sliced
•    white vinegar (for pickling the vegetables)
•    bunch of Vietnamese mint (rau răm), leaves picked off and sliced thinly
•    crushed roasted peanuts

(Vietnamese mint - rau răm)

For the dressing (nuoc cham)
•    2 tablespoons sugar
•    ½ cup water
•    ¼ cup rice vinegar
•    ¼ cup fish sauce
•    2 garlic cloves, crushed
•    1 red chilli, seeded and minced
•    2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Method

Combine the cabbage, carrot and onion together in a large bowl. Add 2-3 tablespoons of white vinegar over the top of the vegetables and thoroughly mix together. Leave for 10-15 minutes to lightly pickle. Gently squeeze out the excess water from the vegetables and leave in a colander to drain. The vegetables are now lightly picked, moist and would have shrunk in volume.

(Before pic - shredded cabbage, carrot and onion)

(After pic - pickled vegetables)

Put the pickled vegetables into a large bowl and add in the chicken and Vietnamese mint, and thoroughly combine.

(Shredded chicken)

(thinly sliced Vietnamese mint)

(All mix together)

To make the dressing – put the sugar, water, rice vinegar and fish sauce in a small saucepan and cook over a low heat, stirring until the sugar melts. Turn off the heat just before it reaches boiling point. Set aside to cool. Then add in the garlic, chilli and fresh lime juice.

Alternatively, instead of adding in the garlic/chilli I add in some pickled ground chilli

Serve the salad with the nuoc cham dressing and crushed peanuts on top.

Reflections on Eat Drink Blog 2011

2011-11-16T14:10:00.007+08:00

A few weeks ago I attended the second Australian Food and Drink Bloggers Conference in Sydney with fellow Perth bloggers Kitchen Crusader and Gastromony. The conference provided a mix of seminars, workshops and panel sessions on everything that you ever wanted to learn and know about food blogging. The conference was the result of the success of Eat Drink Blog 2010 held in Melbourne. A team of Sydney bloggers - Simon (The Heart of Food), Jen (Jenius), Reemski (I Am Obsessed With Food) and Trina (The Gourmet Forager) came together at the beginning of this year to see if they could get the conference running for a second year. Judging by the success of Eat Drink Blog 2011, with the number of attendees doubling, more sponsors on board and it was a trending topic on twitter, it looks like Eat Drink Blog will become an annual event.

Here are my reflections on the conference.

The seminars in the morning looked at the nuts and bolts of blogging - the law surrounding it, optimizing search results and writing. Food blogging is generally managed by common law and just plain common sense. In a nutshell – bloggers have the right to take photos in restaurants and copyright over their photos, and the written form of recipes can be protected but not the dish itself.

Check out Dominic Villa’s blog for a summary of his talk on law for food bloggers.

What was really interesting for me under the legal matters covered was the issue of defamation and the fact that a restaurant review can be liable for defamation. All bloggers have a responsibility to be careful about what they say - this even extends to comments made by others on their blog, twitter and retweets. As raised by someone later on in the day during the ethics session, peoples’ livelihoods are at stake and a lot of hard work goes into the running of a restaurant, a bad review can potentially have a negative impact on business. Whilst it is fair game to provide an honest account of a dining experience, it can be expressed in a number of ways and any critiques should be articulated in a constructive way and with civility.

…so what about A. A. Gills someone tweeted?

Surely if defamation law exists, Gill’s next gig would be to tell us how unpalatable prison food is. Gill’s is known for his satirical and critical restaurant reviews. Earlier this year, a chef in Glasbury attacked (pushed down the stairs!) one of his cooks after receiving criticism from Gill.

Reviews of restaurants are generally a statement of opinion which are difficult to prove true or false in court. But this does not mean that if a case was brought to court, it would not be a success (see cases of Blue Angel and Coco, and Stephen Estcourt's blog). To be on the safe side, bloggers should put a disclaimer on their website that clearly states that everything is their own opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt. It is only matter a time when a blogger will be brought to court, the only thing stopping this is that no one really cares enough and like Metallica suing Napster, it’s just not a cool thing to do.

A cool thing to do is thinking about search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is all about improving the rank of a website in search results. There are many things that bloggers can do to increase hits to their site, such as using popular search keywords; editing content to make sure that headings, titles and images are correctly tagged; and changes to the html, although changes to the source code may be above the technical knowhow of a lot of bloggers.

But the good thing is that there are many ways to skin a cat and there are lots of simple things bloggers can do like link love, basically, you want people to link to your blog and you should link back to other peoples blogs (attribution is important). More links will push your blog up the search engine result pages.

Here’s a link to Michael Gall’s presentation on SEO and if you are a wine lover check out he’s site Terroir.me which provides an interactive winery map which you can learn about various wine regions in Australia and use it to plan wine tours.

Valerie Khoos’s talk on writing was a highlight. She provided seven really practical tips which you can access from the Eat Drink Blog website. When I look through my blog entries, I can see that they have really developed over time. I started blogging as a way to document my cooking endeavours, so a lot of my earlier entries are short and straightforward, sometimes with just a picture, ingredient list and method. I realized that the more I blogged and the more blogs I read, I found out why I enjoy reading blogs and that I wanted to be a better blogger, which meant that I needed to work on being a better writer. I think that with digital photography, anyone can take a decent photo nowadays, so there are many food blogs out there which are all image with no substance. What I enjoy about food blogs is a good story, some context, an entry that is thoughtful and well written. I find words much more engaging then pictures. Writing is one area of my blog that I want to work on and Valerie’s presentation was really helpful. I know that her tips will always be in the back of my mind whenever I write for my blog now.

I found the food photography and food styling workshops especially helpful as I just bought a DSLR camera with the intention of taking my food photography to the next level. As I will be putting more effort into my writing now, I also want some better photos to go with my posts. Often, you can never fully capture what you see with your eyes on camera. I think the worst is scenery photos. When you go traveling, your photos of the amazing mountains, forests, rivers etc are always a minuscule representation of the real thing. I also find photos of people misleading, I always think that people look better in real life. But food however, I think that it’s an area where it is possible to really capture the essence of the subject – why else do we call it food porn and I have all these cookbooks that I never cook from but I own because the photography is amazing and it makes me drool. Quentin Jones, photographer for Sydney Morning Herald was very open in providing all the secrets to his food photography. It was interesting to see how composition and the angle that the object is shot at can make a big difference to the resulting photo and I learnt about the importance of the post-processing, where there are little things that you can do to make it look like you are a better photographer than what you really are. Peter Georgakopoulos, blogger of Souvlaki for the Soul showed us that photography should be fun and we need to find our own style. Peter has a great write up of his workshop on his blog.

The conference winded down in the afternoon with some panel sessions that provided a lot of food for thought.

Simone Marnie (ABC Sydney) provided his thoughts on the evolution of food culture in relation to food bloggers. There is an ongoing battle between the old and new media, so it was refreshing to hear someone talk honestly about how food bloggers fit into the scheme of things, and show an appreciation for the work that bloggers do. Simon told us that he often uses blogs to find out about places to eat rather than the traditional forms of food review media like the Good Food Guide. Food blogs provide a different perspective on things and is generally more of a review in nature rather than a critique, in this sense, blogs provide a description of a dining experience that allows readers to draw their own conclusions on whether or not they want to go.

I think that most people start a blog as a hobby, to share an interest with a community of like-minded people and have no intention of it being anything more but Jennifer Lam (Jenius), Jules Clancy (The Stone Soup) and Michael Shafran (Gosstronomy) showed us how they managed to monetise and turn blogging into a profession. There was a lot of entrepreneurship with Jules setting up virtual cooking classes and Jennifer creating guided culinary tours. Blogging can also provide a platform to showcase your wares which can lead to other opportunities as Michael revealed to us that he has scored his dream of landing a book deal. It was interesting to see how varied the blogs were and how each has gained success in different ways with a lot of hard work.

The issue of ethics in food blogging is always a big sticking point, especially nowadays with the increase in the use of blogs by companies as a promotional tool. This calls into question the objectiveness of blogs. Is money and ethics mutually exclusive? That in order to maintain integrity as a blogger, you shouldn’t be making money otherwise your position is compromised? That once a blogger starts accepting incentives/freebies to write blog posts, they are selling out? The conclusion that I got from Tammi (Tammi Tasting Terroir) and Zoe’s (Progressive Dinner Party) session was that everyone has a different idea of how they want things to be, and what is acceptable behaviour for one blogger may be different for another blogger. The ethics of blogging can be summed up as follows – ‘the ethics of your blog are an extension of yourself – your values, image and brand’. So if you do choose to accept freebies, it should be in line with who you are and what you are about. If you are up front about whatever you do and declare any conflicts of interests, people will judge accordingly and decide whether or not to continue reading.

Would I personally accept a freebie? Well I would judge it on a case by case basis, and if I did, it would be something that would be in line with my ideals.

Throughout the discussions, the word ‘brand’ was tossed around a lot in reference to blogging - food bloggers should be developing their brand, promoting their brand and be consistent with their brand. The reality is that if you are serious about food blogging, you have to have an identity and something that makes you distinct from other bloggers to attract more readers. In a sense, you are trying to create a brand for yourself. A brand that readers trust, know what to expect and keep coming back to.

Eat Drink Blog 2011 was a fantastic experience, it has made me think a lot about blogging in general and reevaluate why I blog and where I want to go with it. Meeting a whole bunch of food nerds was also great :)

Please note that I didn’t take many photos while I was at the conference as I was too engrossed in all the discussions and I was also too busy tweeting. Please go to the Eat Drink Blog website for links to other blog write ups on the conference and photos from the conference.

Here are some pics that I tweeted.

(Lamb Master Class with Noni Dyer)

(Lunch)

(Slow roasted beef tenderloin and wagyu flat iron steak - Dinner at Kingsleys)

Ayutthaya. Eating Street Food.

2011-11-03T09:12:00.006+08:00

While we were in Bangkok people warned us against going to Ayutthaya because it was flooding. We had already booked our accommodation so we rang the hotel the day before we had scheduled to go and checked on the situation. We were reassured that everything was ok so we took the train to Ayutthaya from Bangkok. We stayed in Ayutthaya for 3 nights, 2.5 days.

Ayutthaya is an island at the intersection of the Chao Phraya, Pa Sak, and Lopburi rivers. Ayutthaya is the ancient capital of Thailand and about an hour outside Bangkok. We were interested in Ayutthaya to visit its UNESCO world heritage listed temples and ruins, and we thought that it would be a nice respite after the craziness that is Bangkok.

When we arrived in Ayutthaya, we experienced our first tuk tuk ride from the train station to the hotel. The tuk tuks in Ayutthaya are larger than the ones in Bangkok and appear to be the transport of choice (we saw very few taxis around).

We ran out of time to visit a floating market while we were in Bangkok so the first thing that we wanted to do in Ayutthaya was check out a floating market. Floating markets are something that you want to see early in the morning, preferably before 9am. When we got into Ayutthaya it was after one in the afternoon and we were told that the only floating market available to us was the Klong Sa Bua Floating Market ‘nicknamed Disneyland’ aka it was made for tourists. We decided to check it out anyway. It was a fluffed up, family friendly affair but nonetheless we had a nice time walking around and taking a ride on the boat around the area. Then we enjoyed a delicious bowl of noodles from a boat vendor selling food.

Ayutthaya has two night markets. The smaller Hua Ro Night Market on U-Thong road and the bigger Bang Lan Night Market at the end of Bang Len road which is more livelier and the one that most the locals go to. Wondering around the night markets in Ayutthaya was amazing, the night markets here are all about the food, it was the first time that I felt like I was at a real street food market. It was bustling with activity, with the most food stalls I have ever seen in one place, it felt like everyone in Ayutthaya was at these markets buying dinner. Apparently it’s cheaper for Thais to eat out than cook at home and it was evident as all the food was provided in take away form, most were already portioned into take away containers or little bags ready to go. So on our first night in Ayutthaya, we ate like the locals did and bought street food from the night markets back to our hotel room.

(Stalls at the Bang Lan Night Market. I didn't take that many photos as I thought I would be back the next night...but I didn't come back...)

(fried coconut poffertjes-like treats)

We got dinner at the Bang Lan Night Market. I bought some grilled pork skewers, sticky rice and these coconut poffertjes-like treats. Nicola had an egg and vegetable omelette, and sticky rice mango. We also both had a bottle of fresh guava juice.

(My street food dinner costing a total of 45 baht ~ $1.50 AUS)

That night I had trouble sleeping, I was tossing and turning a lot, and my whole body was feeling not quite right but I didn’t know why. Later in the night, I was woken up by the sound of Nicola vomiting. I got up to see how she was and then I got that feeling, and the next moment my head was down the toilet….shit, it hit me that we both had food poisoning.

What caused the food poisoning?...well we suspected that it might have been the guava juice that we had which could have possibly been mixed with some local water. You are not supposed to drink the local water anywhere in South East Asia. Nicola’s food poisoning was worse than mine so we suspected that maybe the eggs in her omelette might not have been fresh…

In the morning, I thought that I was feeling better so I decided to go out and buy us some fruit and yogurt. Yogurt has active cultures and probiotics which are good for an upset stomach. I managed to make it down two flights of stairs before feeling faint and had to be helped back up to my room by the hotel staff and I vomited again. The combination of being sick and stepping out into the heat and humidity was not a good idea. We decided that it would be best if we just stayed in bed, in our air-conditioned room for the rest of the day, watching way too much MTV. Thankfully the hotel we were staying at really looked after us, giving us charcoal pills (a pill that we were told would get rid of the poison in our bodies) and an endless supply of electrolytes. They even brought us some toast with jam and fresh fruit up to our room. After a day in bed I was feeling a lot better and in the evening I went out and got us some dinner. I went to the hotel next door which had a restaurant and bought some vegetable soup and steamed rice.

(Simple and hearty food - perfect for recovering from food poisoning)

After a night of rest we had pretty much recovered from the food poisoning and we got out to do some sight seeing the next day. While we had been recovering from food poisoning, a lot more rain had fallen and when we traveled out on a tuk tuk to see some wats, we passed a lot of areas around the city that were beginning to become submerged in water. Our tuk tuk driver told us that his house had been flooded and even though he kept up a positive spirit and smiles as he drove and guided us around, I could see the sadness in his eyes and I couldn’t imagine what it must really feel like to go on day after day like this when you have lost your home.

(View of flooded streets from tuk tuk)

That night we also went on night tour of the some of Ayutthaya’s wats, seeing the wats at night is pretty cool because floodlights illuminate all the temples but be aware of the stray dogs around the place which seem to congregate together in packs around the wats and howl. We were not alone, at every stop there would always be a mini-van unloading a group of Japanese tourists to see the night sights.

Our time in Ayutthaya was brief, we went to the Disneyland of floating markets and saw a few wats, but most our time was spent in bed recovering from food poisoning.

When I got my shots six weeks before my holiday at the travel doctor, there was a big poster on the wall stating that 40-60% of travelers experience some form of food poisoning while traveling. I was quite sure at the time that I would not become a statistic but then I guess I couldn’t really say that I had experienced eating street food unless I got food poisoning…right?

Everyone warns you about eating street food but you can get food poisoning anywhere and I’ve heard more stories of food poisoning from hotel food and restaurants by friends who have traveled around South East Asia.

So here are some of my tips on how you can reduce the risk of street food poisoning.

Be careful in what you choose. I always bought street food that I had seen been cooked, not stuff that looked like it had been sitting out for a while. I generally went for all the deep fried/grilled options as I felt that all the heat would kill anything that could kill me.
Be a bit wary of freshly squeezed juice. There are always vendors around offering freshly squeezed juices but the fruit may not have been washed properly or the juice may be mixed with some local water.
There is a lack of refrigeration and stalls generally use ice to keep their meats/seafood cold. Best to stay away from stalls where it looks like self made ice is been used instead of factory made ice. You can usually tell if factory made ice is being used as it has holes, is cylinder in shape, like the bags of ice you can buy from the petrol station/stores in Australia. Factory made ice is generally safe.
Beware of eggs. What most people don’t realize is that egg quality deteriorates as much in a day at room temperature as in four days under refrigeration and salmonella bacteria multiply much faster at room temperature. I had known this for a while as I read it in Harold McGees book On Food and Cooking. Nicola had worse food poisoning than me and she had an egg omelette and I didn’t, we suspected that the culprit was the eggs.

But no matter how cautious I had been in eating street food, I still fell victim to it. The locals eat like this all the time and don’t get sick so the real problem wasn’t the street food per se but the fact that I had been brought up in a sterile society, I did no have built up inside me certain anti-bodies and a resistance to harmful bacteria.

The second rule of traveling in South East Asia is - “Eat like the locals do”

Eating street food is an essential experience when you are traveling as food is an important part of your cultural experiences of a country. It will also be some of the tastiest (and cheapest) food you ever will eat! I ate street food on numerous occasions throughout South East Asia and I only got unlucky once. Life is about taking risks, and the risks started long before I put the food in my mouth - it started when I wondered onto a street where I couldn’t communicate with the locals as I didn't speak their language, when most of my conversations started with me pointing to something and asking “what’s that?” and then “how much?”, when I saw food cooked and prepared on premises that are not as ideally clean as I would like them to be, when I knew that all the meat had probably been bought from the wet market where I had seen with my own eyes the conditions the meat was sold – on tables, uncovered, not refrigerated. I guess the good thing is that the meat would be fresh everyday but in the heat and humidity, you wonder how long it takes for a piece of beef to go from raw to rare and maybe a slight medium rare….

Eating street food is kind of like going to see a big Hollywood blockbuster – you have to in a way ‘suspend your disbelief’ – to accept the situation for what it is, no matter how far removed it may be from your own reality back home, and not think too much about it.

Life is about taking risks, and eating street food was a risk I was willing to take to eat like the locals do.

(Meat sold at the markets, captured in Vietnam)

When people are traveling, how comfortable are you with eating street food? Has anyone had any bad experiences?

Stay tuned, my next travel blog stop will be about Luang Prabang...

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Eating and Drinking around Bangkok