Archive for category Food
Paris! Bavette (flank) steak
From the entrance to my apartment building. When I walked into my furnished apartment, it was apparent that my landlord had already been here earlier before meeting me at the bus stop. It was peaceful, away from the traffic and the room was beautifully furnished with a mix of Scandinavian furniture and older, classical styles. Two huge window/doors illuminated the room. There was classical music playing already. Ever seen the movie Before Sunset? The last scene came to my mind immediately.
Hello par-hee
Here is what I have observed in the last 2 days
- There is a boucherie (butcher) or 2 always close by. In Melbourne, most people would by their meat from the supermarket. Otherwise, butchers are concentrated in the markets and you can’t just walk to one in your neighbourhood.
- The number of pâtissieres is ridiculous. Quality vary, but generally good to very good compared to back home.
- There are very few public toilets to be found – on the streets, and because the lack of shopping malls compared to back home, there just aren’t easy to find. I wonder if I missed something as I can’t figure out where the thousands and thousands of locals and tourists go for a toilet break
- Not as much dog poo as I thought
- When dusk renders the sky a dim and dark blue, the white/cream buildings are really beautiful. Then I realize I am standing in a maze of narrow streets, filled with shops, restaurant and French people chattering away. Sweet. I am in Paris for the rest of this year.
The French also have a liking of the lesser-known steaks in Australia. Bavette (flank – lateral abdominal muscles), onglet (hanger – part of diaphragm closer to the spine) and skirt steak (part of diaphragm) are frequently seen. Not exactly cheap either at 15-30 Euros/kg compared to less than 10 AUD/kg for skirt steak in Australia (although skirt steak is the cheapest). These cuts have large and prominent muscles fibers running parallel in a flat, sheet-like muscle. Often cooked rare by searing on both sides and the cut into thin slices against the grain, these steaks are very flavourful. Overcooking will make it very tough and dry. I read that in South America, these steaks are also popular, grilled quickly on open fire.
Bavette
Wagyu beef cheeks – red wine Vs Asian-style
Beef cheeks have become noticeably popular over the last 5 years. Tender, melt-in-your-mouth, flavourful and not very fatty. The catch is the 3-4 hours of cooking required to breakdown the connective tissue into a gelatinous wonderland. I got these Wagyu cheeks from Sarde’s Meat at the Vic Market – trimmed, vacuum packed and certified according to Islamic Shariah – apparently ready for export mainly to the Middle East. While untrimmed, non-wagyu versions cost 1/3 of the price, more than half the weight is useless mouth-mucosa. I don’t think there is a big difference in flavour between Wagyu and non-Wagyu as there isn’t much intramuscular fat in either of them. The fine “marbling” on the cheek is made of connective tissue that, after cooking, eventually become very soft. Maybe there is more marbling on the Wagyu cheeks. I am pretty sure the cheek is the masseter muscle that works so hard to chew grass.
Trimmed Wagyu beef cheeks with intramuscular connective tissue running through it
I tried 2 ways of cooking and both are very delicious. The first one is a red-wine base. Start by browning 4 cheeks in a large, heavy-based pot. Then sweat finely diced onions (2), carrot (2), celery (2 sticks) and shallots (5) in the same pot. Return the cheeks in the pot and add a bottle of a medium/heavy body red like a cab-sav or a shiraz. After this, add small amounts of soy sauce (40ml), balsamic vinegar (40ml), 3 bay leaves and 3 table spoons of tomato paste. Oh, and 5-10 enthusiastic turns of the pepper grinder. Put the lid on, turn the heat right down and go read a book. Stir/turn the cheeks every 40 min and after about 3 hours test the cheeks out with a fork. If you want to serve it thickly sliced with some sides you should be able poke fork easily into the cheeks without it falling apart. Cook it more if you want to serve it with pasta and tear it apart with a fork. Remove the cheeks when you think it’s done and reduce the remaining liquid until the thickness of a sauce. You could remove the solid bits before reducing if you want a more consistent sauce but I like the residual vegetable bits in my meal.
Red wine version
Molten goodness
The second method was Asian style. I had some braising liquid in the freezer that I reserved after cooking pork neck. The liquid is made of the same ingredients below and is really a version of the Asian ‘master-stock’ that just gets re-used over and over again. Brown the cheeks like before but this time add reserved braising liquid instead of wine. If you don’t have this, then add some beef stock or water. Top up either liquid with soy sauce (100-150ml), good rice wine (100-150 ml), xiao-shing wine (50 ml) and a little balsamic vinegar or black Asian vinegar (30 ml) for acidity. Then add the aromatics: garlic (6-10), shallots (5), chili (to taste), ginger (thumb size), spring-onions (6-10) a few turns of the pepper grinder and 1-2 star anise if you like. Put the lid on and go read another book.
Importantly, the pot size should be such that minimal braising liquid/wine is required. I changed to a smaller pot to allow be to pack the cheeks together better. Less braising liquid maximized the flavour as the cheeks don’t loose as much flavour to the liquid. Ensure the cheeks are just covered.
Asian style. Frozen braising liquid (top-left)
I served the Asian style with rice. Take a ladle of the remaining liquid in the pot and add some finely chopped spring onion, garlic and ginger. Dip/drizzle on the sliced cheeks and hope someone washes the dishes. Honestly, I think the Asian-style taste better.
Molten meat on rice
Wagyu rump cap – best cut of beef
I’ll leave the debate to you. But this is my favorite. The rump cap of a nicely marbled wagyu beef, cut to about 1 cm thick, seasoned and seared on a hot pan/fire is the most wonderful piece of steak. The rump cap because it has more flavour than softer cuts like the rib-eye. Wagyu because the marbling helps to soften the meat and add flavour. A thin cut because it gives more surface area for the meat to brown than a thick cut, but still leaves the center pink. The final result is a medium marbled (4-6) beef that is not too oily, has bite, tender and flavourful. The most amazing thing is that wagyu rump cap is $30-32 per kilo – cheaper than super market fillet mignon, or rib-eye and on par with sirloin. It runs out quick at Sardes meat shop at the Vic Market. I asked the owners so often if they have the cut that they recognize me now.
My friend served it up with a light soy/citrus dressing. Gold.
Myrtleford Butter Club (cardiology appointment)
Posted by tzuyen in Food, Photography on April 17, 2011
This will be my downfall. A friend of mine gave me a stick of this from Leo’s Fine Food in Kew a few weeks ago. It’s so delicate, light and the taste more complex and will elevate warm bread into another level. Commercial butter in Australia contains about 16-18% water and the rest mainly fat. Cultured butter contains a variable water content. European butters typically less (14%) which is good for browning butter.
But the main difference is the flavour. Butter is traditionally made from the cream that settles on top of fresh milk. After a few days, naturally occurring bacteria in the milk and air slightly ferment the cream and turns it into crème fraiche. The flavour comes from the fermentation process, just like cheese. The crème fraiche is then churned to separate the butterfat from buttermilk (mainly water). Over-whip cream from the supermarket and the yellow-ish substance is essentially butter.
So really, they are about to start a Butter Club. The proverb on the packaging reads “Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past”. Hmmm.
Milk fed lamb with..
Garlic, sumac, cumin, lemon juice, lemon zest, rice wine rosemary, salt, pepper. And now shooting with 35mm f2.0.
On a Saturday like this
The flower shop at Victoria market from my phone camera
flower shop with glorious light
Vic Market is known for it’s size, useless junk and touristy crap, cheap produce and if you chose properly, some really good quality produce. In particular, Sardes meat shop just to the right of the entrance on the corner of Elizabeth and Victoria st have some amazing cuts of meat at very reasonable prices. When was the last time you saw 4 different cuts Wagu beef cut to order?
Sardes meat
Cha Shao Pork
Days off right before a string of night shift calls for some slow cooked food. The Japanese Cha Shao pork that is served with ramen adds so much flavour to the dish. There are hundreds of ways to make this dish. I just fiddled with the sauce to make it taste the way I liked. I also added a modern touch of solidifying the sauce with abit of agar agar which seems all the craze with the western chef with the wave of molecular gastronomy.
- Pork – Leg (is what I used, but any cut with skin/fat/tendons will do)
- Soy
- Dashi powder
- Mirin
- Sugar
- Garlic
- Spring onion
- Shao hsing wine – 1/2 cup
Pan fry the pork first to add a little colour. make up the sauce and top it up with water (about 1 part sauce to 5 parts water). make sure it taste right and not too salty. it should be a little salty, a little sweet and full of flavour. Play with it. Cook it in the sauce for about 1.5hrs. Turn off the heat and just leave it in there until it reaches room temperature. Put it in the fridge. Slice thinly (best straight out of fridge) to serve.
The jelly is made with the sauce as above, boiled with agar agar (1 part agar agar to 100 parts sauce) until it completely dissolves. Pour it into a plate and chill it in the fridge until it turns solid. slice to shape.
Smoke
A journalist in this month’s Gourmet Traveller already called spherication dead. But there is a little trend to smoke unfamiliar ingredients these days. Betroot, for example, appeard in Masterchef Australia and I swear I have seen it somewhere else before. Smoked butter, smoked duck and what else?
This is an easy way to impart an extra layer of flavour to food. Place the food you want to smoke on a large plate. Heat up a small stainles steel pot to very hot. Warm a small ramikin with hot water and wipe it dry. Place the ingredients you want to turn into smoke in the ramikin and place it all on the same plate our food it sitting. Pour 50ml of grape seed or peanut oil in the hot pan – it should smoke immediately. Pour the oil into the ramikin and then cover the whole plate with a large glass bowl turned up-side-down. Let it sit for a few minutes.
I tried using some chinese tea the other day. I think traditionally you can use fine wood chips made for smoking. Asian flavours also call in a mix of rice and tea leaf. You can play around with pepper, coriander seeds and pretty much everything else that can burn.
As much as I love baine marie
While the French have figured how to make souffles, the Chinese have been scrambling eggs the way I like. This is a major generalization without much basis. I am referring to cooking eggs in a bain marie. Beaten eggs are stirred and slowly cooked to make a very creamy scrambled egg. I like a little smoke in my oil and the eggs cooked so fast that nothing sticks in a stainless steel pan when finished. If you are quick enough the final product should still be soft, a little creamy and have no caramalized taste. This discussion really dosen’t have much to do with how the French and Chinese cook does it?
I roasted some tomatoes (they look beautiful). Made an onion, tomato and chilli relish for my heat loving friends. A smoked salmon wrapping with wilted spinach on the side for a manic addition.
Salmon with blow torch
I swear there is a 7th flavour. Ok, maybe our tongue can’t pick it up. But you know that gentle burnt flavour when you grill meat? Well try burning protein with a little soy, vinegar, rice wine, pepper and it takes on another level. It can’t be that good for me if it taste so good.