Sonic Youth Tuna Tacos

From my archives, scans of some Sonic Youth photos I took when I saw them play live for the first time in 2004 at Metropolis Fremantle!Sonic Youth live 21.7.2004, Metropolis Fremantle

Kim and Thurston

I’m a huge Sonic Youth fan and tacos, who doesn't like tacos? 

When my friend Riche recently sent me a link he had come across of a tuna taco recipe that Sonic Youth shared in a 1996 “Eat This” column in Sassy magazine, I couldn't wait to make it.

It’s simple and Kim Gordon (bassit) lived on these tacos when she was a poor struggling art student in Los Angeles.

 Lee Ranaldo and Jim O'Rourke

Sonic Youth are know for using alternative tunings for their guitars as early on in their career they could only afford cheap guitars, and cheap guitars sound…cheap. But tune it differently or use objects like drum sticks and screwdrivers to alter its timbre (see Lee Ranaldo doing his thing in pic above!) and new unique sounds can be created. Sonic Youth are praised for having "redefined what rock guitar could do” and have had a pivotal influence on the alternative rock and indie rock movements with their music which I will attempt to describe as adventurous, unconventional and playful noise rock guitar explosions! 

The basis of a taco is cheap, but you can fill them with whatever you want. You can make them into something a little bit fancy - spending hours slow cooking pork, pickling and making various condiments, or just keep it low key and simple - leftover meat, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and top it with coriander/spring onion.

You don’t need expensive guitars to make amazing music and you don’t need expensive ingredients to make great tasting tacos.

Tacos have had a resurgence in recent years, I think this can be partly attributed to the rise of food trucks where tacos are commonly served as they are the perfect street, grab and go kind of food.

Many consider Sonic Youth to be ‘godfathers of alternative rock’ and the ‘godfather of food trucks’ is Roy Choi with his Kogi Korean BBQ taco trucks. Since making his debut in 2008, Roy Choi has kicked off a food truck revolution in Los Angeles which has spread to New York, Portland and other US cities. But a food truck is only as good as the food served, and the humble taco has been elevated to a cult status with Roy Choi’s tacos challenging the barriers of what a taco can be with its fusion of Korean and Mexican. 

Hey, I’ve even delved into a little Mexican and Vietnamese fusion myself by making Vietnamese tacos, because why not?

Sonic Youth, and Roy Choi’s tacos have had a huge impact on their respective industries. I love how in their own ways, they have set themselves apart by being different and pushing new boundaries, rising from the underground to achieve commercial success. 

I don’t eat a lot of tacos, maybe because I had written them off a bit, other things were getting more of my attention. But after making Sonic Youth’s tuna tacos I was reminded of how great tacos simply are and I need to eat more of them in my life and experiment with different fillings. Then I listened to some Sonic Youth and I remembered how amazing they were and I need to play them more often too….
 
Here’s Sonic Youth’s tuna taco recipe with a few slight adjustments, I couldn’t find watercress at the shops so I used snow pea sprouts instead. Also added a little salt and pepper to the filling. 

Ingredients
•    1 can of tuna in springwater (425g)
•    1 glob mayo
•    1 green onion, finely diced
•    1/2 lemon squeezed
•    1 or 2 small green chillies, finely chopped
•    salt and pepper
•    4 tortillas
•    butter
•    snow pea sprouts

 snow pea sprouts

Method
 
Mix tuna, mayo, lemon, onion and chillies in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Sprinkle water on tortilla, then heat one at a time on open low flame in a frying pan, 15 to 30 seconds on each side until warmed through and starts to colour. Remove the tortilla from the pan while it’s still soft and smear with butter. 

                                                      Tip: add lots of butter!
Put tuna mixture in the middle of the tortilla, top with snow pea sprouts.

                                                         Enjoy \m/

Check out my other music+food related posts

• Slow Braising Post Rock - Godspeed You! Black Emperor 
• Soul Music + Soul Food 

 Related Post

• 10 Albums that changed my life

Renkon Hasami Age - Deep Fried Lotus Root Sandwich aka Tempura Burger

I few weeks ago I cooked tempura for the first time as it formed an element of my music and food related post on Godspeed You! Black Emperor, connecting post rock to slow cooking.

I have battered and deep fried food before but never using the Japanese tempura method which has a signature light and crisp texture that covers food in a wispy lacy fashion.

Tempura Green Beans

When I posted a photo of my tempura lotus roots on my Facebook page, I received this comment –

“The absolute epic Japanese izakaya treat would be these as a triple decker sandwich for tofu and meat and then made into tempura – renkonhasamiage”. 

I had no idea what this was so I looked it up and discovered something more awesome than a cronut burger, ramen burger or any other fad burger on trend at the moment where anything (the more ridiculous the better) can comprise a bun for meat – ramen noodles, cronut, spaghetti...

Imagine a morsel of crunchy slices of lotus root sandwiching a delicious meat filling, wrapped in nori, battered and deep fried. This is a deep fried burger done right. Using a light tempura batter means that it doesn’t feel heavy or is as greasy as other fried foods.
 
And the best thing? Well unlike a normal burger which can be a challenge to eat as it’s a delicate balancing act trying to minimize the exit of fillings as you bite into it, everything in the tempura burger is compacted in. There is also no risk of dislocating your jaw, a challenge presented by most burgers when you try to fit the tower bun, meat, vegetables etc. into your mouth all at once. But its bite size makes it dangerous, as one is never enough and you can easily eat dozens of them.

Renkon Hasami Age – “renko” is lotus root, “hasami” means to put in between two things (like a hamburger!) and “age” refers to frying. I’m a huge fan of Japanese fried food especially Chicken Kaarage but Renkon Hasami Age has surpassed it as my new favourite fried food. I’ve never seen this on a menu in Perth but it can be easily made at home.

 Burgers. Chips. Soy Sauce for dipping.

How to make Tempura Burger!

Tempura Method

As I was researching how to make tempura, I found out what makes it different from all the rest. It’s a very light batter comprising of just flour, water and egg.  The batter needs to be cold for the signature light and crisp texture that covers food in a wispy lacy fashion, so I refrigerated the flour and used water with ice cubes in it. Throughout the deep-frying process, I would keep the batter cold by dropping in another ice cube, every now and then. The batter ingredients are mixed for only a few seconds using chopsticks to loosely fold it together (to avoid the activation of gluten which will make the mixture chewy and dough-like when fried) and it’s ok if there are lumps in the mixture. The batter also needs to be made fresh, just before frying as it shouldn’t stand too long. 

The general rule for tempura batter is that the water to flour ratio = 1:1

I followed Just One Cookbook’s tempura recipe which used 1 cup of cold plain all purpose flour and 1 cup of egg water (~1 cold egg + 210 ice water)

Pork Filling

•    200g pork mince
•    1 sprig spring onion, roughly chopped
•    1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
•    1 teaspoon cornflour
•    ½ tablespoon sake
•    ¾ teaspoon soy sauce
•    pinch of salt and pepper
 
Add all the ingredients into a food processor and process until it all sticks together and has developed some elasticity.

Plus, thin slices of shiitake mushrooms

Prawn Filling

•    200g prawns (this was about 12 whole prawns, shelled and deveined)
•    1 sprig spring onion, roughly chopped
•    ½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger
•    1 teaspoon cornflour
•    1 teaspoon sake
•    ½ teaspoon soy sauce
•    pinch of salt and pepper

Add all the ingredients into a food processor and process until it all sticks together and has developed some elasticity.

Plus – nori sheets cut into strips and lotus root. 

Wash, peel and thinly slice the lotus root – soak in a large bowl of water with a dash of vinegar (this prevents it from darkening).

Drain the lotus root slices and pat dry. Lightly dust one side of the lotus root slice with flour (to help the meat stick to its surface). Take a slice of lotus root (flour side up) and spread a small amount of the meat mixture on top and sandwich with another slice of lotus root (flour side down). For the pork filling, add thin slices of shitake mushrooms on top. Seal the filled lotus root with a nori strip, wrapping it around the tempura burger.

In a pot, heat up vegetable oil until it is between 160C-180C and deep fry the tempura burger for a few minutes until it is golden brown all over.

NB: Scoop out bits of leftover batter/crumbs from the oil between frying so that they don’t burn and leave a bad flavour in the oil.

I also made tempura green beens as chips to go with the tempura lotus root meat filled burgers.

Slow Braising Post Rock - Godspeed You! Black Emperor

I used to think that music needed to have lyrics in order for it to have meaning, but I developed an appreciation for instrumental music through listening to post rock and found that you don’t need words to express something. 

The emergence of post rock (gaining prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s) has been viewed as a reaction against rock music, particularly the mainstream's commercialisation and co-opting of alternative rock, where it had became formulaic and ceased to mean anything anymore. Post rock subverts and rejects typical rock conventions, breaking away from standard song formulas and the ‘macho’ aesthetic. It’s generally instrumental and has been described as music “using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords”. 

Texture, tone and atmosphere have more of a prominent role in post rock than hooks, verses and choruses. With the absence of vocals, the music itself becomes the primary focus and supplants lyrics in engaging listeners. When vocals are used in post rock, it’s an extension of the instrumentation, adding texture and melody to the overall song. Take a band like Sigor Ros for instance, where songs are sung in an ethereal falsetto, in an ‘invented language’ Vonlenska, also known as Hopelandic, which acts as another instrument to drive the sound of Sigor Ros. The musical qualities of the vocals are absorbed, not its meaning.

To me this is the beauty of post rock, where the interplay and dynamics between the instruments create a song that can bring up feelings, images and experiences that have the ability to transport you somewhere for the time you are listening to the song. There is something truly mesmerizing about music that leaves a mark on you without the use of words.

********

Slow braising is my favourite way of cooking meat. Nothing beats the taste and texture of meat that has been cooked for so long that it falls apart and literally melts in your mouth. Braising also brings out an incredible depth of flavour in the meat as overtime it is slowly infused with the flavours of all the other ingredients. 

In On Food and Cooking, McGee looks at how the quality of meat and our approach to cooking it has changed over the last few decades due to the mass industrialized production of meat, driven by efficiency and affordability. Meat has become immature in that it is grown and slaughtered in the shortest possible time. Movement is minimized, the muscles are not worked, resulting in more tender meat with flavour that is not as developed. The required cooking time for modern industrially produced meat is shorter and the packaged cuts you get at the supermarket are generally leaner and based on ease of preparation (ie: fast). 

Back in the day, animals led a full life - kept for work to plough the fields and as a mode of transport etc. and were slaughtered for food after they had outlived their usefulness. This meant that meat was mature, tough and strongly flavoured, and slow cooking was used to soften and tenderize tough cuts of meat. People used to spend hours cooking!
 
These days people are cooking less often as their lives are busier, the rise of two-income households can mean that neither partner has the time or energy to cook. There is a growing ‘cheaper, faster trend’ with a number of shortcuts, premade meals, packet seasonings to make meals easier and quicker to prepare. 30 minutes. 15 minute meals. 5 ingredients, 4 ingredients recipes. How much less time can do you want to spend in the kitchen? How minimal can your meal be? 

This is something that Michael Pollen explores in his recent book Cooked, where he believes that the art of cooking is being lost, and lack of time spent on cooking is also resulting in us loosing connections with our food and understanding of it, as well as the connections to the people that we share food with and our lives. One factor that he attributes this development to is the rise of convenience food in the growing post World War II industrial food system, where food corporations are increasingly promoting packaged food products as quick and easy food solutions to the domestic market, especially as housewives and women were moving into the workforce.

Cooking, if you want to do it justice, can be time consuming. An example that Pollan uses is onions, where he admits to never giving onions enough time. If you want to get beautifully caramelized onions, you need to be cooking, sweating them, stirring and waiting 40 minutes for it. Who has the time to wait more than 10 minutes for onions to cook? It’s easy to be impatient. But then Pollan lets himself ‘be’ in the kitchen, to be disconnected from his computer screens and take the time to connect with his senses and family while cooking. The more Pollan cooked, the more he changed his outlook to it. Cooking is time-consuming, it requires you attention and effort, it’s varied, challenging and highly rewarding.

In the sense that our food habits are infiltrated by commercial and corporate interests, as alternative rock music has; and we live in times where we are encouraged to do things fast and furious; slow cooking, like post rock, would be taking a step back from the state of things to slow down and spend a little more time to appreciate the wonders of cooking/music and how it all comes together, to allow yourself to be lost in the method/song compositions, the textures of the sounds/ingredients and surround your senses – smell, sight, sound…. they both provide a sensory assault that is long and drawn out.

When I think about post rock, I see many similarities with slow braising. 

To embrace post rock or slow braising you need time and patience. 

Slow braising is done by cooking tougher cuts of meat, partially covered with liquid, slowly for a long period of time at a low temperature. Overtime, the connective tissues and fibres of the meat break down so that it pulls apart easily and the collagen melts, turning into rich liquid gelatine, giving the meat flavour, making it tender and succulent. Similar to the composition of a post rock song, slow braising is about developing and layering flavours. Typically the meat is first seared at a high temperature to brown and caramelize it, causing the Maillard reaction. Then some or all of the following things can be added - various aromatics like onions, garlic, leeks, carrots and celery are sautéed, wine/liquid is added to deglaze the pan to get the tasty bits stuck on the bottom of the pan into the dish, other vegetables are added for flavour like tomatoes, then seasonings, herbs and spices, and water or broth is added to partially cover. The heat is reduced to a simmer for hours, allowing the meat to slowly braise and become tender, and for all the ingredients to slowly impart their unique flavours to the dish, adding layers of depth.
 
So you have to be patient when slow braising, you can’t hurry the process up, time is needed to develop flavours and make the meat tender. 

Just as you have to be patient when listening to post rock, as the songs are generally lengthy instrumental pieces that layers riffs and plays with dynamics to create soundscapes that tend to evolve to a crescendo or climax. You need to give yourself time to allow the song to build up in order to appreciate how the song intricately evolves and unfolds. Most people would be used to listening to songs that don’t go any longer than 3 minutes, I love songs that go for 10 minutes!

Post rock music takes time to grow on you and a slow braised dish grows better in flavour overtime :)

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Post rock music also has a cinematic quality, especially the work Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Their music is often described as a sad and beautiful soundtrack to urban decay. The compositions of their songs tell stories of destruction, plight, mourning and uprising with an underlying message of hope. The music is moving, it effectively evokes images, builds tensions and creates shifts in moods. Sometimes it feels like you have sat through a film and have been taken on a journey while listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The use of visuals with 4-projector 16mm projection of films and loops at their live shows further build upon their cinematic aesthetic. 

 Godspeed You! Black Emperor live at Sydney, Enmore 14 February 2013

For a lot post-rock bands, films are a source of inspiration for recording music and a driving factor in the way they approach working on a record. Many post rock bands like This Will Destroy You, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigor Ros have had their music featured on soundtracks or scored music for films.

I find post rock more of a soundtrack for cold winter nights and this kind of weather makes me want to braise… to set myself in a rhythm of chopping, dicing, searing, stirring, adding, seasoning and balancing, and then turn on my oven for hours. While the oven is slowing cooking my meat, breaking it down and developing layers of flavours, my kitchen is filled with warmth and I am wrapped up in lovely aromas that grows overtime as the meat reaches a state of forgivingness. 

I find it comforting listening to post rock and there is nothing more comforting than tucking into a slow braised dish on a cold winters night!

Here I present to you my post rock influenced slow braised dish inspired by the cover of Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Initially I thought about replicating the cover but ended up doing my own spin on it with elements that linked to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The dish contains the house carved out of a loaf of stale bread and then roasted in the oven at 75C until it dried out. A cauliflower and celeriac mash is rustically smeared on the plate and there is tempura oyster mushrooms and lotus roots. Tempura was included to pay homage to the fact that the band took its name Godspeed You! Black Emperor from the title of a 1976 Japanese black and white documentary which follows the exploits a Japanese biker gang, the Black Emperors ... lotus roots kind of look like motorcycle wheels right? ...

To finish the dish I sporadically scattered torn pieces of beef cheeks that I had slowly braised in my oven for 5 hours. Yes!

God Speed!
 
Braised Beef Cheeks

(Adapted from Movida and a braised wagyu beef cheeks recipe I learnt last year at the Mundaring Truffle Festival Masterclass from Guillaume Brahimi)

Ingredients

•    Olive oil
•    4 beef cheeks
•    1 leek
•    1 carrot
•    1 celery
•    2 shallots
•    3-4 garlic cloves
•    1 bay leaf
•    4-5 sprigs of fresh thyme
•    500ml red wine (I used Shiraz)
•    1 litre of beef stock
•    salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 160C.

Trim the beef cheeks and season with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a dutch pan and when it’s hot, add the beef cheeks and sear for a few minutes each side until it’s browned all over. Remove and set aside.

Heat up a little more olive oil and add carrot, garlic, leek, celery, shallots and sauté for 5 minutes until browned and caramelised. 

Add thyme, bay leaf, wine and simmer to deglaze and reduce the liquid by a third.
Return the beef cheeks to the dutch oven. Bring the beef stock to boil and pour over the beef.

Cover and cook in the oven for 4-5 hours until the beef cheeks are tender and pulls apart easily.

Tempura – refer to Just One Cookbook.

Related post - Soul Music = Soul Food

Stir Fried Thai Basil and Pork Mince with Fried Egg (Pork Pad Bai Horapha)

Egg. Check. Pork. Check. Some sort of cereal grain…Rice. Check.

I think this qualifies as a breakfast fry up!

Well an Asian breakfast fry up. Thai style. It’s basically a pork mince with Thai basil leaves stir fry on rice, with a fried egg on top.

It’s really easy to make. That fits the criteria for breakfast right?

And the aromatics from the Thai basil and heat from the chilli will definitely wake you up!

Perfect for a hangover. Another breakfast tick of approval.

Contains an egg with oozing yolk. Money shot!

Most importantly, it’s a delicious start to the day.

The rice thing might put some people off though. But not me. I love eating rice, it's my daily staple. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, all day, every day. I get referred to as the fan tung aka rice bucket in my family, a Cantonese saying for someone who eats a lot of rice. I prefer it over bread and enjoy rice dishes for breakfast more than anything else.

Pork Pad Bai Horapha

This is a common fast food dish in Thailand. It's really fast to make, so you will find it everywhere in Thailand where street stalls and restaurants can whip it up for you real quick. 

In Thailand it’s called pork pad ka-prao aka pork stir fry with holy basil, but holy basil can be hard to find outside of Thailand, so you can use the regular Thai basil but the dish will be called pork pad bai horapha aka pork stir fry with Thai basil. It’s same, same but different. Thai basil is more licorice-y while holy basil is spicier, peppery with a hint of citrus and mint. 

The defining characteristic of this dish is provided by the basil - holy basil and in a lot of the recipes that I’ve come across for it, it’s often called pork pad ka-prao as that’s what it’s commonly know as, even when Thai basil is used. So unless you are using holy basil and for most you might not have access to it, then you are naming it wrong! In the end it doesn’t make a difference as using either basil will give you a tasty result but it’s like white chocolate cannot really be called ‘chocolate’ because it does not contain any cocoa solids…and a burger without meat in it isn’t really a burger as burger is short for hamburger….

 Thai Basil

I love that this dish comes with a fried egg on top, sunny side up as some would say. This is the most common way of cooking eggs in my family. It’s really easy as all you need is a pan/wok of really hot oil, so hot that when you crack the egg in it sizzles and in a few moments the egg whites puff up and blister,  the edges turn crispy and form a brown frame while the yolk remains untouched and you get a creamy runny centre. 

I think fried eggs rule over poached and scrambled eggs, what do you think?

Stir Fried Thai Basil and Pork Mince with Fried Egg

(adapted from Gourmet Traveller and She Simmers)

Ingredients

•    Vegetable oil
•    ~400g pork mince
•    3 garlic cloves, minced
•    1 large shallot, thinly sliced (40g)
•    2 teaspoons sambal oelek (chilli paste)
•    100g snake beans, chopped into 1-2cm lengths
•    1 tablespoon fish sauce
•    1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
•    1 tablespoon dark sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
•    1 tablespoon oyster sauce
•    salt and pepper to taste
•    1 cup of Thai basil leaves

Method

Heat 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a wok, add pork mince and stir fry until it changes colour. Then add in the garlic, sambal oelek and fry together with the pork until it browns. 
Add in the sliced shallots, snake beans and stir fry until the shallots soften. 

Add in the fish sauce, dark soy sauce, kecap manis and oyster sauce, stir fry everything together for 2-3 minutes and season to taste with salt and pepper. 

Add in the Thai basil, turn off the heat and stir through until it wilts.

Serve over steamed rice and a fried egg on top.

Green Tea Almond Biscotti - Secret Cake Club Perth

 

I remember when the Secret Cake Club Perth was the Clandestine Cake Club Perth. Back then it was just a few food bloggers hanging out together sharing cake. With too many rules (ie: no cupcakes, muffins, brownies, pies or tarts) and some “words” from the founder of the Clandestine Cake Club in the UK after seeing a photo tweeted of an event we had in Perth, where small individual cakes were presented rather than a whole cake (ahem), a decision was made by Carolanne (Carolanne's Kitchen) and Jacqui (Pantry in Suburbia) who started the Clandestine Cake Club Perth to split from Clandestine and create a club where the size and form of your cake did not matter. 

So Mark II, the Secret Cake Club Perth was born where the basic rules of there being a theme and a secret location that isn’t revealed until a day or two before the event remains the same, but there are no rules on what you can bring. A new theme is announced every month and now the possibilities of what you can make are endless – savoury, sweet, baked, unbaked, whatever…it’s all good.

Overtime it has been amazing to see Secret Cake Club Perth grow with more people attending and now the location is moving out from people’s dining/lounge rooms to different cafes in Perth and the next one is at a bar! The last Secret Cake Club Perth in July was the largest so far with 27 cake clubbers in attendance but this will be surpassed by the next Secret Cake Club coming up on the 18th of August, which over 40 people have signed up for. Registrations filled up so quickly I even missed out! It can be easy to get complacent in Perth, I know my friends and I often joke about how you don’t have to get a ticket to a gig until the last minute because things in Perth don’t sell out, but lately I’ve noticed that times are changing and you definitely have to be quick off the mark!

It’s great that there are more cake clubbers now, it means more treats and more eaters every time. I remember the days when it was just 5 cake clubbers and we each bought a cake and each tried to eat the equivalent of a cake! Now with so much more choice, you strategically select which ones you will try on the day as there is only so much cake you can eat in the space of 2 hours and then fight over the leftovers to take home. 

Give me a bucket of chips, a bucket of chicken wings, anything savoury and I could eat the lot. Give me a plate of cake and I would struggle to get through it. Salt wins over sugar. Even though there are no rules on what you can bring to cake club now, baking sweets is always the majority, the savoury options are rare. 

I guess there is nothing quite like sharing cake, especially a freshly made one. And the process of making it….magic happens as butter, eggs and flour are transformed by heat into something that is really pleasing. Especially during winter, the oven is just calling out to be used for baking so that it not only keeps your kitchen warm but fills it up with sweet aromas.

Eating cake is also a happy experience, you can’t be sad if you are eating cake.

The theme for the July Secret Cake Club Perth was  ‘Cup ‘O Joe’ - so basically anything with coffee or tea, or anything that goes with a cuppa. So I decided to do both. I baked green tea almond biscotti. Biscotti are twiced baked biscuits, making them dry and crunchy, and perfect for dunking into coffee. With the addition of green tea matcha powder, it’s even better with health benefits and I love the flavour and colour matcha brings to goods. 

July Secret Cake Club Perth was held in the upstairs room of Studio Bomba.

My favourite treats from ‘Cup ‘O Joe’ Secret Cake Club Perth were Dervla’s Chocolate Marshallow Teacakes, which was like a wagon wheel but better. Dervla always brings treats to cake club that are next level. Can you believe that it was her first time ever tempering chocolate, check out the shine on the spheres!

Inside shot of Dervla's Chocolate Marshmallow Teacakes - like a Wagon Wheel

And these mocha scented cupcakes filled with a chocolate ganache and topped with a coffee flavoured Italian meringue buttercream were delicious and every element of this cupcake was faultless. So good that I made sure I reserved one in my container to take home.

Green Tea Almond Biscotti 

(Recipe adapted from biscotti recipes from Joy of Baking)

 Ingredients
 
•    150g blanched whole almonds
•    125g caster sugar
•    2 eggs
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•    1 teaspoon baking powder
•    ½ teaspoon salt
•    225g plain flour
•    2 tablespoons green tea matcha powder

Method

Preheat oven to 175C and roast the whole almonds for 8-10 minutes until lightly browned and fragrant. Let cool, coarsely chop and set aside.

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Shift together the dry ingredients in a bowl – flour, baking power, salt and green tea matcha powder.

Beat the sugar and eggs in a bowl for 5 minutes until it’s thick. Add the vanilla extract and beat to incorporate. Add in the flour mixture and stir with a spatula to combine, then fold in the chopped almonds.

On a lightly floured surface, turn out the dough and lightly knead until it is smooth. Divide the dough in half and roll to form a log and shaped using floured hands into a flat rectangle that is about 5-6cm in width and 1.5cm high.

Transfer the logs to the baking trays.

Bake at 175C for 20 minutes until light brown and firm to touch. Remove from the oven and let cool for 15 minutes. 

Transfer the logs to a cutting board and cut with a sharp knife into 1.5cm slices. Reduce the oven temperate to 150c, place the sliced biscotti onto the baking tray and bake for 7 minutes, take out and turn the slices over and bake for another 7 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool.

Baked Raspberry and Maltesers Cheesecake

Supermarkets are where I generally buy non-food items like cleaning products, toiletries and some non-perishable food items. It’s not a place that I buy fresh food from.
 
Over the weekend as my dad stocks up for the restaurant at the markets, he will put aside a few things for me in a box. I get fresh fruit and vegetables (mainly Asian vegetables like kai lan, choy sum or boy choy) every Monday when I go over to my parents for dinner. I buy most of my other food from Asian groceries, markets, butchers and bakeries.

So I don’t eat much supermarket food nowadays but as I was growing up, a lot of the mass produced supermarket products were my first introduction to many of the foods I now love and either make myself or have found other sources for a more quality product, especially baked goods. Supermarket lamingtons, chocolate mudcakes, swiss rolls, donuts, assorted danishes and Tip Top soft white bread without crusts were staples in my lunchbox for school. It was food that I would have to be on my best behaviour for to get my parents to pop them into the trolley as we did our weekly shop on the weekends. Food that was full of some magical combination of salt, sugar, fat and artificial flavourings that tempted and satisfied a little girl who didn’t know any better. Now I find all these products to be bland or just too sweet and one dimensional in flavour.

My first cheesecake was a Sara Lee cheesecake. Everyone’s grown up on Sara Lee cheesecakes right? 

I love eating cheesecake. It’s one of my favourite desserts but unless it’s a baked cheesecake I have no interest. I love the taste and texture of a baked cheesecake – it’s dense but velvety with a smooth and thick creamy consistency. A no bake cheesecake is easier to make as all you need to do is mix together all the ingredients with some gelatine for it to set but then in the end you might as well eat custard or mousse. It doesn’t feel like a real cheesecake to me. 

People can get a bit freaked out about baking a cheesecake because it’s harder to get a uniform density and texture, it has a tendency to crack and can end up a bit dry. But I don’t think it’s as hard as some people make it out to be and when you get it right, it’s a satisfying feeling. I’ve baked a lot of cheesecakes, refined my approach to it and I’m pretty confident that every time I bake a cheesecake, it will turn out fine. Even when I experiment a bit with the fillings.

Here’s what I have learnt about baking cheesecakes: 

• Bake it in a springform pan or a cake pan with a removal base (this is pretty self-explanatory, who doesn't have a cake pan with a removal base these days?)
• Don’t overbeat the mixture as it incorporates air into the batter which can cause the cheesecake to puff up and collapse, but if you underbeat it, it can lead to a lumpy texture and you want the mixture to have a smooth consistency. I beat everything at a low speed. I always make sure the cream cheese is really soft by leaving it to come to room temperature for a few hours or zapping it at a low temperature in the microwave for a 20-30 seconds until it can be easily beat and incorporated with other ingredients.
• You don’t need to bake cheesecakes in a water bath, this is a nightmare as everytime I’ve tried it, I’ve gotten leaks. I find that you get the same result by baking at a low temperature for a long period. I generally bake at 110-120C for about 1.5 hours. Then turn the oven off and leave the cheesecake inside the oven with the door slightly ajar to cool.
• Don’t worry if the cheesecake doesn’t look fully set after you take it out of the oven, it shouldn’t be. Cheesecakes are done with baking in the oven when the center of the cheesecake (about a 2-3 inch diameter) appears softly set and will wobbly slightly when you move it. Because of the high density of most cheesecakes, they will continue to bake after it is removed from the oven, the texture will smooth out and firm up as it cools and is chilled in the refrigerator.  

It’s winter now in Perth and the one thing I am missing when baking cheesecakes it summer fruits. 

Recently, my younger sister asked me to bake her a cheesecake for her birthday. She requested a mango cheesecake and I told her that I wouldn’t be able to get any mangoes as they were out of season, then she asked if she could have strawberries but it’s not strawberry season either so I offered her the next best thing which was frozen raspberries and to make it just a bit more special I added in my sister’s favourite chocolates – Maltesers. 

Baked Raspberry and Maltesers Cheesecake

(An original recipe by the Blue Apocalypse)

Ingredients

Base
•    80g butter, melted
•    100g plain sweet biscuit
•    60g Maltesers
Filling
•    500g cream cheese, softened (left out to come to room temperature or zap in microwave for a few seconds)
•    1 can (395g) sweetened condensed milk
•    200g thickened cream (35% fat variety)
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•    30g cornflour, sifted
•    4 eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
•    1 cup/150g of frozen raspberries, pureed
•    100g Maltesers, roughly chopped
extra Maltesers chopped up for decoration
 

Method
 
Preheat oven to ~120C.

Line a loose-bottomed 20x5cm cake tin with greaseproof paper.

In a processor, process the biscuits and maltesers together until the mixture resembles crumbs. Add melted butter and process a few times until just combined. Press the mix over the bottom of the cake tin to make a smooth, even layer (use the bottom of a glass to press).

Put the soft cream cheese in a large bowl and beat in the sweetened condensed milk, thickened cream, vanilla extract and cornflour. Then add in the eggs and beat together until blended, smooth and there are no lumps. 

Add in chopped Maltesers, and gently fold through. Then pour the mixture into the cake tin over the biscuit base. 

Drop the pureed raspberry by the spoonful on top. With a wooden skewer or toothpick, swirl the pureed raspberry into the cheesecake filling.

Bake the cheesecake for about 1 hour and 30-40 minutes until it is just set but if you shake the cake tin gently it should still wobble a little in the center. 

Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Remove from tin, decorate with additional chopped Maltesers on top and cut into wedges to serve.

Saffron Risotto with Prawns and Leftover Risotto Chips

One of the things that I love doing with leftover risotto is fry it. I always cook more risotto than I need so that I have some leftover the next day to make into fritters. But this time, instead of making fritters, I thought that it would be cool to try frying up some little batons of risotto. 

To get the risotto into the shape that I wanted, I left it refrigerated overnight flattened in a baking tin lined with glad wrap so that it would be easy to get out. As risotto cools, it will turn starchy and glutinous, become firm and stick together. 

The next day I sliced the risotto into 1.5cm x 5-6cm rectangles and pan-fried them in butter until they looked like pieces of thick chunky chips! The outside was crispy, while the inside was soft and creamy, resembling the risotto’s original state. 

Be careful with handling the pieces of risotto, because as you turn them over to fry evenly on all sides, some will crumble. To minimize crumbling risotto, I think that next time I need to compact the risotto more tightly together in the baking tin or add more parmesan cheese in the mix so that it will stick together better.
 

The risotto that I made was saffron risotto, I was aware that Risotto alla Milanese is a very traditional Italian risotto dish, often lauded as simply the best and I wanted to try cooking it to see what made it so special. 

I followed a recipe by Giorgio Locatelli from his Made in Italy: Food and Stories which is one of my favourite Italian cookbooks. Locatelli states in the headnote to the recipe that “I don’t know what it is about saffron and rice that make them work together but they are natural partners…”. I didn’t know what to expect as it’s a really simple recipe using just a few ingredients but I loved the combination of saffron and risotto, not only does the flavour of the saffron shine through but it gives the risotto a lovely golden yellow hue. 

To give the dish something a little bit extra so that the risotto wasn’t just naked and on it’s own, I added some poached prawns on top (I always have a stash of frozen prawns in my freezer) and garnished with parsley.

 Saffron!

Saffron Risotto with Prawns
(Adapted from Made in Italy: Food and Stories by Giorgio Locatelli)

Ingredients
•    ~2.5 litres of chicken stock
•    50g butter
•    1 onion, finely chopped
•    400g superfino carnaroli rice
•    125ml dry white wine
•    ~40-50 saffron threads
•    75g cold butter, diced into small cubes
•    100g parmesan, finely grated
•    Topped with poached prawns, parsley and grated parmesan
 
Method
Heat up the stock in a pot. 

 Poached prawns

Shell, deveined some prawns and chop into small pieces. Add the prawns to the boiling stock and poach, when they are cooked through, spoon out and set aside in a bowl.
Melt 50g of butter in a heavy-based pan and add the chopped onion. Cook gently until softened, but not yet coloured (5 minutes). 

Add the rice and stir to coat it in the butter and ‘toast’ the grains. Make sure they are all warm, then add the wine. Let it evaporate completely until the onion and rice are dry, then add the saffron. Start to add the stock, a ladleful or two at a time, stirring and scraping the rice in the pan as you do so. When each addition of stock has almost completely all evaporated, add the next ladleful. 

Carry on cooking for about 15-17 minutes, adding stock continuously and stirring frequently to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. After about 12-14 minutes, slow down the addition of the stock, so that the rice doesn’t become to wet and soupy, otherwise when you add the butter and parmesan at the end, it will become too soupy. The risotto is ready when it looks creamy and the grains are soft but still al dente. Turn down the heat and allow the risotto to rest for a minute. 

Use a wooden spoon to vigorously beat in the 75g of cold diced butter and then add the parmesan and beat in. Season to taste and serve with poached prawns scattered over the top and garnished with parsley and grated parmesan.