Slice the eggplant in half and score it. The sauce is made up of miso, bonito soy, sake, mirin and sugar painted on top. Baked in the oven at 160 deg C for 40mins until it is nice and soft. Served with some scallions and a spoon with some rice.

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

My friend served it up with a light soy/citrus dressing. Gold.

Recently another battle broke out with some success with the duration down to 1 hour 30 min for a 1.5 kg Bird. There was an intermission (ie: parts of the bird not quite fully dead). The colour of the enemy was delightful though. I also prepared a liquid weapon of reduced, brown chicken stock loaded into a 20ml syringe and a 19 G needle. However the payload was too thick to pass through the needle and inject it into the enemy.

The Enemy

Ok, so I have had some trouble roasting a chicken but I never grew up with this stuff. I am looking for nothing less than a perfect bird (the bird itself important), breast is done but must not be dry while the rest of the bird is cooked (aiming for 68-70 degrees). The best roast chicken I have has so far is from PM24 by Philippe Mouchel. Soon I will amass another army and fight again. Curiously, I was reading the oven instructions on the numerous settings and realized that when cooking recipes tell you to pre-heat the oven, no one tells you what kind of heat source. I am assuming it’s either convection or fan-assisted/forces + convection.

Some videos and words of advice:  Thomas Keller of the French Laundry makes roasting chicken look as easy as me pouring cereal into a bowl. Nothing fancy, no butter/garlic/herb rub or stuffing. But I suspect he would have some excellent roasted vegetables and sauce to go with it. Heston Blumenthal takes complexity to a new level if you wanted to know the intricacies of roasting a bird and his opinion on perfecting it. Please, if anyone has tips and tricks, write it below.

Asparagus and Parmesan on rye bread

These purple chive flowers from our courtyard make beautiful and delicate garnishes while giving a light garlicky taste. I remember last year at the Royal Mail, Dunkeld, fresh sugar snap peas were simply piled on the plate along with compressed watermelon “sashimi” by the side. It was a highlight of the night. These fresh peas taste far better than frozen peas – well worth the time to shell them.

Sugar snap peas with chive flowers

soufflé with raspberry foam

So begins again with the joke “saw-fall”

An ever so light combination of egg whites and the setting agent of yolk and small amount of flour. Add some flavour like chocolate or pistachio or passion fruit or cheese or anything you want. But it’s difficult to make an airy-wonder, rise up clear of the ramekin and hold itself up modestly from the torture of gravity after it’s cooled. The air in the meringue expands with heat, pushing the mixture up. The heat also sets the protein of the egg yolk and stiffens the flour – producing a scaffold that holds the expanded air mass. By this analogy, soufflé are bound to collapse as it cools. The trapped air bubbles will decreased in volume as it cools, shrinking the souffé. But just how much can the cooked egg and flour mixture compensate and keep some of the volume? Who has a good explanation of what a soufflé does when it sits in the oven? And what settings on the oven should I have? Pure air convection or some above and below heating as well?

this one had a bit more lift!

Here is a second attempt at a pistachio soufflé. Still in trial and error phase. This time I grounded up the pistachio with the Barmix spice grinder. The pistachio meal was then added to the milk-sugar-vanilla mixture to infuse. After 8-10 min of gentle warming, the mixture was passed through a fine sieve to remove the gritty texture of the ground pistachio. A slightly thick, green milk speckled with vanilla remained in the pot.

milk, pistachio, sugar and vanilla

I made some raspberry foam to go with the soufflé – though a thick, cold coulis might have been better.

Boeuf Bourguignon with fettucini

What’s the best cut of meat to use?

Chunks of beef slowly cooked in red wine and lardons until it’s soft and the liquid is thick and dark – that’s the simple aim. But there are so many versions of this peasant-turned-classy dish that many of the finer points are just garnishes to the main meal. Here are a few variations.

A Table for Two: Recipe derived from Trish Deseine. Chuck/rump steak, marinated in wine. Bacon and mushrooms added. Anthony Bourdain on Techniques: Suggested the best cut is neck, next is shoulder (which is where chuck is derived from). Don’t worry about the marinating just get on with it! Julia Child’s version also forgoes the marinating. Guillaume Brahimi (check his Frenchy-ness at 1.48 min) has a version with a cut of Wagu beef. He doesn’t marinate the meat ( I hope the white streaks is connective tissue and not fat). To thicken the sauce, Guillaume added carrot purée.

When you think about it, boeuf Bourguignon is really the same as coq au vin – rooster cooked in wine and lardons.

After browsing through the web and attempting my own, here are some important points.

1. The cut of beef is important. Chuck and oyster blade  is good and easy to get (cooking time 3-4hrs). Ox cheek has much more connective tissue and gives a very tender texture in the end. Some butchers sell them, though they can take a bit more effort to cut up. The cooking time also increased to 4-5 hours for ox cheek.
2. Marinating probably doesn’t matter much since the beef is cooked for 3-4 hours in the same liquid. When kept overnight and re-heated, there is ample time for all the flavours to develop
3. If you marinate, patting the beef dry is paramount to the next point
4. Brown your meat! Brown your meat!
5. Coating the beef in a light coating of flour might help with browning/flavour, but it helps to thicken the sauce. I avoided this by point 7
6. Depending on how you want your carrots and small, whole onions/shallots in the end, add them 1-2 hours before you finish. Onions will start to break apart after 1 hr. Carrots just get softer.
7. Apart from the wine, most recipes call for beef/veal stock. supermarket stock is ok but never as good and homemade. I improvised with added 5-6 pieces of ox tail as it has ample gelatin in the connective tissue. The gelatin thickens up the sauce and give it a slick mouth feel (jus is really a concentrated version of stock containing gelatin from the meat). Ox tail also has some very tender meet on it. Just remove meet from the bone near the end of cooking time and return the meat back in the pot.
8. I like adding soy sauce instead of salt. More umami flavour. People wont recognize and ‘Asian’ flavours in the final product

brown the meat for the 4th time!

The version I made this time does not contain lardons (or bacon). I wanted something that tasted of pure beef and wine.

• Chuck steak, 0.8-1kg, cubed  into equal sizes, around 3cm size
• 6 pieces of ox tail. Small ones with less meat is fine. The connective tissue is the important component
• 1 large onion diced
• 1 bottle of red wine
• 1 celery stick or a few parsley stalks
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 3 carrots, cut into equal 3cm sized cubes/lengths
• soy sauce, 30 ml
• 1 stable spoon of tomato paste
• 12-15 shallots or small white onions
• 10-12 white mushrooms, sliced thick (3-4 slices per mushroom)
• Flat-leaf parsley

chuck steak, whole slice

1. Put a thick based pot on medium-high heat, add some olive oil/grape seed oil. Brown the ox tail and beef cubes in small batches to ensure the pan is always hot. Remove the meat and set aside
2. Sweat onions in the same pot, then return the meat into the pot
3. Add all the wine. If the meat is still not covered, add some water
4. Add a stick of celery, pepper, tomato paste, bay leaf, carrot and soy sauce
5. Place lid on and cook on low heat for 2 hour
6. Remove celery and bay leaf
7. Brown mushrooms in some butter or olive oil. Add some water to start with helps.
8. Add mushrooms, shallot/white onions into the pot
9. Cook lid off to reduce the liquid until the sauce can coat the back of a spoon or you feel like it will sit well on pasta. About 1 hour.
10. De-bone the ox tail, return the meat back in the pot
11. Cool the pot down, then in the fridge overnight
12. Skim the fat off the top
13. Re-heat, garnish with parsley and it’s ready!

developing a deep colour

Just added carrots and shallots, time to reduce with lid open

If you want to add lardons, have 150 gm slices into strips 1-2cm wide. Render the fat and lightly brown the smoky pork goodness just after browning the meat. Add the onions after the lardons are just lightly coloured.

Serve boeuf Bourguignon with fettucini or pappardelle or mashed potatoes. On a cold night like this, returning home to the smell of this concoction bubbling away is comforting. Note, best results if  you walk into a house with someone making the dish. You can bring the wine.

This is by far my favourite snack after a busy day before rest of the dinner is cooked. Japanese scallops keep well in the freezer and is always ready. I sometimes make it into nigiri or served whole. brushed with some Japanese soy/dashi reduction or just a bit of lemon and salt. Blow torched to add charred flavour. Ready for the next course.

Looks tender. I mean, fatty

Then I added it to a hot pan with garlic, soy, mirin, rice wine, pepper. The blow torch came not far behind.

Now all I need is a bib

But actually the beef came from here.

I only noticed this cut in the supermarket last month

Actually, I should say, the beef came from a cow.

Sardines with tomato purée and finger lime

The bursting power of these finger limes are incredible. A surprising texture and flavour blast. I pan fried some fresh sardines, placed it with a purée of tomato, paprika, balsamic vinegar and muscovado sugar. Topped with the green jewels from the finger lime I brought yesterday. I deliberately made the tomato a little sweeter to balance the citrus.

Cross section

I walked past the potato man shop at the Prahran and saw some finger limes. My friend has been talking about the caviar-like fruit vesicles and so has Cooking Issues in their citrus collection farm tour. The Finger lime is a native Australian plant that grows in the tropical parts of New South Wales and Queensland. It’s a fairly tall tree with many spikes and produces these gerkin-shaped fruits. Inside looks like the cross section of a chili to a certain extent. When squeezed, little round/tear drop vesicles are easily removed. The seeds can be separated easily when you add some water and float them away. Left behind, the size and shape of the vesicles resembles caviar and looks stunning. When they break, they make a popping noise and release a hit of grapefruit and lime flavours. The zest, although very thin smells like kieffer lime leaves.

The two fruits I got: a lime-green coloured one and a ripe Hass avocado coloured one has different coloured fruit vesicles. Have a look at here (The Australian Finger Lime Company) for a range of pretty colours. On my next post I will make something out of them.

The flavours and shape of the vesicles calls for some creativity in cocktails, drinks and garnishes. I don’t think chefs have paid much attention to it (at least in Melbourne and Sydney) until the last few years. I think you will see more of these in restaurant menus to come.

Separate the seeds out by floating them in water and pouring it away

Caviar!

So I am in Goondiwindi, Queensland, about 370km from Brisbane. It is a small town of {~10,000), small main street. Several people in the clinic have commented on how good the quality of the meat is, in particular the lamb. This is a piece I bought on the way back to Brisbane. It is a Boggabilla lamb leg roast from Goondiwindi, a family owned business.

There is all this talk about food miles, in order to be minimize the environmental impact, food should should travel the least distance between the production and the consumer. 370km isn’t too bad.

This was a very simple classic combination of rosemary, garlic, shallots, salt and olive oil. roasted at 180 deg to start with just to crisp up the skin then i turned it down to 160deg for ~2hrs then 120 for the last 1.5 hrs. It is then rested for about 20mins. The resting of the meat is absolutely critical as it creates the most tender meat and the juices remain within the meat.

6 people could not finish this.

Every now and then, you come across recipes that involves something not seen before.  This was from an article I came across earlier days on NY Times. It describes resting the dough for >24hrs rationale being allowing for the butter and flour to combine better. After several experimentations, it seems leaving the dough for 48hrs gives beautifully deep flavors that are just not seen on commercial cookies you can buy at shops.

I have made a few modifications to the original recipe. I use a combination of Muscovado and light brown sugar. The chocolate is 66% Callebaut. Yes. That is pink Murry River salt flakes on top.

The original recipe(modified by me) below – in case NY Times decides to take it off.

Adapted from Jacques Torres

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Broad beans

The Vic Mac’s Brewbar Nelson NZ

Tutto Bene Gelati Melbourne

GM tomato graffiti Melbourne

Takayama beef Japan

Or el Bulli approach takes it to a new level, with dishes inspired and looking like nature. Edible soil from chocolate or olives, flowers made from fruit and snow made from coconut flavoured ice. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Ben from Attica has a dish with edible soil too.

All that said, I have my own petty attempt. Just sticking to the mantra to cook each vegetables individually and letting the best of each vegetable shine. There are some baby carrots glazed, blanched sugar snap peas and onions picked in sherry vinegar and sugar. A poached egg and some pancetta for the creamy taste and salt.

For mains, It was osso buco. Brown each piece on a hot heavy pan and then with the juiced/oil from the meat, add 1 onion diced and a few sliced of bacon diced and cook until lightly caramalized. Deglaze with a cup of red wine ( I used a shiraz viognier), add 2 stickes of celery finely diced, a little balsamic vinegar and a table spoon of soy (yes for the umami) and a quater of a star anise. Pour enough water or veal stock to cover the meat completely, put the lid on and simmer slowly for 3 hours. Remove the meat and set aside with some cling wrap ove rit to keep it moist, strain the cooking liquid and discard all solids. Return liquid in pan and reduce until it starts to thicken a little. Taste it and add more vinegar or salt if needed. Add some shallots that hav ebeen halved and continue to reduced until it coats a spoon nicely. Finish the sauce with 1-2 table spoons of butter.

Serve!

Skewers of chicken may be just skewers, but one that has a sweet, savory and salty flavour balanced so well with the juicy meat, gently charred over a Japanese grill, the bite is heavenly. A cold malty beer or sake and a few good company then the evening is very complete

Wikipedia gives some info on the fuel for a Japanese grill:

Binch?-tan or white charcoal is a traditional charcoal of Japan. It dates to the Edo period, when during the era, a craftsman named Bitch?-ya Ch?zaemon began to produce it in Tanabe, Wakayama. The raw material is oak, specifically ubame oak, now the official tree of Wakayama Prefecture. Wakayama continues to be a major producer of high-quality charcoal, with the town of Minabe, Wakayama producing more binch?-tan than any other town in Japan. The fineness and high quality of binch?-tan are attributed to steaming at high temperatures. Although it is often thought that binch?-tan burns hot, it actually burns at a lower temperature than ordinary charcoal but for a longer period of time. It does not release smoke or other unpleasant flavors.

My current marinade consist of (in ratio)
- good, non bitter soy (10)
- mirin (5)
- minced garlic (5)
- small amount of black asian vinegar (3)
- shao-xing liquor (made from barley) or can use sake (3)
- sesame oil (2)
- black pepper (1)
- blow torch (30 seconds at the end of cooking). This last bit is the WOW bit

The photo has some finely sliced kaffir lime leaves for a bit of experimenting

If at home and just pan frying marianted chicken the most important touch is get a blow torch and just add a bit more colour on the chicken. It adds that smokey flavour I crave so much from the Japanese grill.

<Photo 1>

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.

Incredulous or not. I have never tried cooking these before. Broad beans have a rubbery layer surrounding each seed. Am I supposed to remove them? Certainly tasted more tender and looked more pleasing-green than not removed. The white base was a puree of parsnip and potato. A helping of good olive oil, lemon juice and some chive flowers from my home herb pots. Tasted alright, light. maybe as a starter. I know most of my friends would want some chilli sauce on this one.

My friend visited today for a coffee. We tried the Dead Man Espresso blend from 7 seeds. It’s full of fruity body. Flavours that bounce out through the milk. She’s got a Pansonic point and shoot – a very good one but. I was really amazed at what small cameras can do. Later tonight, confirmed by my brother who always have wanted a similar one for ‘backup’.

In Asia, there is a simple but tasty dish of tomato and scrambled eggs. It goes well with rice and takes only a few minutes to cook. But often the eggs are over cooked or the tomatoes are too chunky and not soft enough. I like my eggs creamy!

Reduced form tomato pieces in a bot with olive oil, stirring and pushing the juice out until it becomes a thick paste and not watery. This really concentrates the sweetnes and flavour of the tomatoes. Remove the tomato paste from the pan and in a hot, clean pot cook the scambled eggs rapidly over high heat. While the eggs are still setting, add the tomatoe paste and stirr slowly and carefully to get a ribbon effect. Next time it might be wise to remove the seeds from the tomatoes through a sieve. But the pieces of skin actually added a nice texture to the creamy eggs.

The final product called for around 2 tomatoes with 3 eggs per person.

Bon appétit! as Julia wound say

A little more fruit makes the tart look more ‘tart’ like. I am loving my little black pan more and more though I am going to branch out into desserts a bit more. And I finally used my iSi Cream Whipper for what it’s most commonly used for – cream!

Lunch today at Bistro Thierry was very old-school French. Snails in galic parsley butter, onion soup, rockling pan friend in butter and spinach, and a steak patty that was very well seasoned and cooked. Finished with tarte tatin and calvados ice cream. The waiters, the chefs were all speaking French. But as we finished our last bite, a chef bearing a heavy Aussie accent emerged.

I liked it. The deep purple walls and dark wooden furniture worked well with the decorations on the wall. There is a table on the left of the entrance squished between the bar and the window. That will be mu next seat

Looks like mushrooms everywhere in Europe. Golden Chantrelle are in every supermarket. I have tried fresh Morel mushrooms before but the flavors were somewhat lighter than I expected. This time i purchased some dried Morel.

Browned some Chantrelle and Morel mushroom in butter, pan fried chicken breasts, and deglazed with some white wine. Much more pronounced flavour than fresh Morels.

Much better value dinner after realizing takeaway Chinese stir-fry was equiv to $35 AUD, two spring rolls for $12 AUD.

“What are you making?”
“Taarht tartun”
“!?”
“Itzer upsidedownnn taarht”
“Mmm”

I really didn’t know that butter, sugar and pastry would taste so good. To this day, I havent ventured far into making desserts. Maybe it was the French accent.

For the past year I have heard from my foodie friends and also reviews rave about the pear tarte tatin at Bistro Vue. Actually, I had it a few years ago at Bistro Vue. I remeber it was delicous, filling but the caramelized pastry was a little stiff. This year I’ve been there twice. Devine moment when you chew into the pastry. Koko Black’s version is just not good enough.

Once you had THE version, it’s so hard to be pleased. So sad. Today me and my friend went to Maedaya – a yakitori and sake bar on Bridge Rd. It was good charred flavour but something was missing. Maybe that crispness. Maybe it was too sweet. The chicken skin was not crip enough. Maybe it was the thought that I had work soon. Maybe I was just not in Japan with the auditory sensoy input.

Can anyone tell me what do the Japanese restaurant staff scream when customers walk in?

I came home tonight, this cold, moist, damp night and attempted my first tarte tatin. I brought a iron skillet yesterday. A cheap but commercial one that is not cast iron but just as unbreakable. I seasoned it with oil and a lot of heat. Now its all black!

On a 21 cm pan:
- Pre-heat oven to 180 deg C
- Cut a circular piece of puff pastry by drawing the knife around the the upside down edge (largest circle). Place pastry in fridge to keep stiff.
- Peel and quater 2 Pink Lady apples.
- Melt 50 g of butter and 50 g of brown sugar in the pan under medium low heat and place apple pieces in.
- Shake and turn apples to coat with caramel. The liquid should be foaming gently.
- Take off heat, let it cool slightly. Arrange the applies pices neatly in a circular pattern or however rustic you want to look
- Place pastry on top and tuck edged around the inside of the pan
- Bake for 10 min, the reduce heat to 120 deg for another 5 min, or until pastry golden and cripy
- Shake pan to lossen the edges then flip it on the pan upside down!

I had some unsweetened vanilla cream to serve. I think a dark/red tea goes so well with dessert like this.

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.

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.

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.

I was walking out of the meat section with my $10/kg porterhouse from the Vic Market when that shop keeper called out to 3 girls behind me.

“Girls, you have come at the right time. $10/kg steaks.”
“We’re vegetarian”
“God help you”

There are some serious discounts on weekend afternoons.

I pan fried some flat-heads with a light dusting of flour before cooking. That is a watercress sauce thickend with a roux. A little sprinking of walnut and garlic.

There is a difference between cooking beef on a very hot pan and cooking strips of beef on a very hot metal wire/grill. The extra surface area for the fat and protein to sizzle produced so much more flavour. Forget a thick cut. Strips around 3-4 cm long and 1x1cm thick allows good burning flavour to mix with a little medium rare and juicy texture.

A little lighy soy gives the superb savory touch to the smokey and chared meat. Add a little yuzu to conter the fat. One go at the beef in Takayama and it’s all wired in my brain.

This 2 kg piece of beef brought by my brother was sensational in every sensory way. From a Korean market in Brisbane. A little more expensive than the fillet cut from supermarkets. But wow… I am already feeling hungry now. And it’s bed time!

Last week’s prawn soup was actually accompanied by a squid ink pasta (all colour, no taste). We made a potato garlic foam/sauce for the pasta, topped it with a few slices of karasumi (dried mullet roe), lemon juice and olive oil. The potato garlic foam contained a bit of cooked garlic and very lightly cooked garlic to give it a kick.

So says my friend from the other side of the world

I went back to Brisbane last weekend and the entree was a prawn soup.

8 large prawns peeled, shells and heads reserved
1 diced onion
2 lemon grass, bruised
5 kaffir lime leaves
1 lemon
200 ml cream

On a heavy based saucepan, cook the shells with 2 table spoons of a neutral oil like grape seed. Stir constantly to avoid burning. Deglaze with water (or vegetable stock) until the shells are covered. Add the lemon grass, onions and lime leaves. Simmer for another 20 minutes, occasionally stiring and bashing the prawn heads. Strain liquid and return to pot.

Heat up another pan and cook the prawns with a little oil and salt.

Gently boil the soup and add the cream then the juice of 1 lemon to taste. You can thicken the soup with a light roux if you want.

Serve in small ramikins with one prawn each. Garnich with a parsley leaf or very finely slices lime leaves.

The mixture is mashed potatoes with a little cream and milk to help it pass through a sieve. Return the mixture to a small pot and add some more cream. I havent really got a recipie with quantities worked out but the final warm mixture poured like the cream as it came out of the cold bottle.

I added a poached egg, olive oil and chives. A little lemon juice might have helped this dish.

Duck fat is my new butter.

Duck confit:
Duck legs (anything more than 6 is worth the effort)
2 sprigs of thyme, stem removed.
3-6 cloves of garlic, minced.
salt flakes and pepper
A can of duck fat, or more

Combine thyme, garlic, salt and pepper into a mix and rub onto the legs. Roughly 1 teasoon of salt for every 2 legs. The salt acts like a preservative and draws moisture out but you don’t want to eat salty legs after. Place in fridge for at least 12 hours.

Remove excess mix from legs with paper towel and pat dry. Melt the duck fat in a small, heavy based pot and place duck inside. Traditionally an casserole dish is used but as long as the fat covered the duck completely and you cook it at a low temperature(around 100 deg Celcius). It’s basically duck simmered in it’s own fat. Cook for 1-1.5 hours. The meat should be very tender and almost fall off bone. Cook without lid to ensure the moisture evaporates.

Let it cool. Place duck into a dry bowl (glass or cermic or stainless steel pot works best) and pour in the duck fat to cover the meat by at least 1-2 cm. Place in the fridge. I read that the duck can be preserved like this for at least a month. When you want to use it, gently heat the bowl to the fat melts and pull the leg you want. I think if you are making a batch and want to preserve it for a while, then a cooking stainless steel pot is better as you can re-heat easily.

Reserve the fat for the next round. Or I can eat it.
The salad has roasted potatoes, salad leaf mix, baby carrots (sauted in butter), parsley, chives, yogurt and balsamic vinegar.

That’s what I said to the puzzled Max Brenner waitress a few years ago. I have moved on a bit since then but I am still intrigued at what makes a perfect souffle. I have made it 4 times in my life with varying results. Once it was to sweet. Once too salty (smoked salmon), another time quite pleased with a green tea version. Last night I learnt to use a dry bowl with no gold fish swimming in the egg whites the hard way. I combined a jog to the nearest convenience store with cooking.

The twiced baked chocolate souffle at Cumulus Inc was just so good. And I tend not to order chocolate desserts at restaurants! The texture was simultaneously dense, bitey and light. The crust also caramalized with an extra bite. My mouth feels tingly now.

I really think there should be a supply of instant noodles for night staff in the hospital. Really, at 4 am I cannot imagine much more than a comforting bowl of warm salty noodles. And day time I just forget to buy them. Usually I just have the toast supplied there with a healthy lashing of peanut butter and the apple I bring.

Of course, I take a small jar (baby food jar) of freshly ground coffee and my filter drip coffee maker. I was living it up last 2 nights with Esmeralda coffee. For anyone who has or wants to try brewed coffee, the Esmeralda is a must if you havent already

Sauces by Michel Roux is one of my favorite cook books. Brilliant pictures (important to me), great instructions and tips and both simple and complex sauces are included.

Parsley coulis:
Blanch and refresh a fist-full of flat leaf parsley, stalks removed. Add it to a slowly simmering half a cup of cream + 1/4 cup of milk. Cook for 5 minutes, blend and pass through a fine sieve. Season and add a touch of lemon juice. Keep warm but do not boil again.

That is a bed of fennel cooked in the same pan as the salmon.

What the French know about stocks. Michael Booth, a travel writer and journalist decided that he had enough of writing about chefs, restaurants and food. He takes his wife and young kids to Paris and joins the famous cook school Le Cordon Bleu. There he learns the exciting, tedious and at times bizzare ways of French cooking. Surrounded by food loving students from all over the world (many from Japan) and the local culture, isn’t that the ultimate foodie’s dream? Read the book!

OK, I admit I am a bit biased towards that area of the world. I have my own dreams. But at least when I take a year off, I can combine a bit of hospital work in a less developed country for a few months and then join the cook school in Paris. How long for? Last time I checked the tuition fees, I almost clogged off my well-buttered arteries.

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“It is to the production of perfect stocks that the sauce cook should devote himself” – Auguste Escoffier

Tedious as they are, stocks are the fundementals of French cooking. But once you have tasted a velvety sauce burting with flavour and joyfully married to the main ingredient on the plate you know all that sweat was not wasted. You just wish someone could some to taste it rather than trying to explain it all over again with words.

Serves 2. Prep time 45 minutes. Clean up, none if you are cooking for a friend.

- 350g raw prawns, peeled, heads reserved
- 100g scallops
- 1 shallot, finely diced
- 1 carrot, half finely diced, the othe other half sliced into ribbons with a fuit peeler
- Half a baby fennel, thinly sliced, a few green fronds reserved
- A few parsley stalks, finely diced (Michael observes that chefs prize this often binned ingredient)
- 100 m of cream
- a table spoon of butter
- half a lime + a wedge

Heat a heavy based pan with some grape seed oil until hot. Add the prawn heads in and fry until the heads turn to bright orange and continue on low heat for 5 minutes. Don’t let it burn. Add the finely diced shallot, carrot and parsley stalks and fry for another few minutes. Add water (around 300 ml) until heads are just covered and simmer for 20 minutes, occasionally letting out some steam by bashing the heads with a wooden spoon. Strain the resulting liquid and discard the solids. Replace the liquid and gently reduce in a pan by a third.

While reducing, heat up a wide, non-stick pan with a little oil and cook the prawns and scallops quickly under high heat. They should sizzle and not boil. Once ready and coloured, add some finely ground pepper and take them off the pan and into a warm bowl. Re-heat the pan and cook the carrot and fennel ribbons until soft.

Add butter and cream into the stock and dissolve. Add the juice of half a lime and then suck the lime after you squeeze it. It taste good. You should not need any salt.

To serve: place most of the carrot and fennel on the bottom of the plate, add the seafood and top with remaining carrots and fennel. Pour the sauce around the side of the plate. Finish with a spinkle of fennel fronds and a wedge of lime.

Inspired to make a relish with rhubarb, a few weeks ago I brought a bunch at the Collingwood farmers market. It didn’t turn out that well. Too much acid even with lots of onions and a touch of sugar. I kept it in the freezer thinking that one day I’ll add it to something.

I had some delicious slow cooked beans at Auction Rooms. So there was an idea for the rhubarb. It didn’t take 9 hours or whatever they said on their menus but after 1.5 hours my pinto and cannellini beans were softened in a sauce of rhubarb, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf and honey.

A few nights after work I felt a craving for steak. The sub-prime sux so I went for kangaroo. Seared it with decent fire and then added the bean/rhubarb/onion stew to it and manged to serve the meat medium. Tasted good. Kangaroo is quite gamey and definitely needs a strong sauce to go with it. There is a side of cauliflower, soft goat cheese, olive oil, chives, salt.

Incidentaly, I was thinking about the 2 aussie chefs in Singapore who made a cocktail called F*** the subprime. Paired with foie gras, it’s $75. Interestingly, Der Raum bar in Mellbourne has a cocktail with the same name. It’s got nothing to do with foie gras though.

I want to go to Der Raum. With the awards they have collected, the drinks menu looks amazing. Anyone up for it?

Warm bread straight out of the oven + butter + hot tea = a lovely evening. I used the left-over pizza dough from last week kept in the freezer. Defrosted over night and then out in room temperature for 2 hours. I cheated a bit by putting it into a warm oven. My brother’s tip – once the dough is in the hot oven, flick some water on the crust frequently in the first few minutes and then every 5 minutes. Leave the last 10 minutes to brown/dry the crust. This leaves the crust a cripy and thin.

I think my basil outside is getting frost damage.

My oven ran a full marathon last weekend. For my birthday, I (and some helping hands) made pizza for everyone and I think the damage was around 14-15 pizzas (including 1 calzone and one accidental calzone). The plan was simple enough: one continuously running hot oven with lonely pizza stone.

3 base flavours + additions
Tomato, onion, bay leaf + (combinations of) tomato, brown mushroom, peppers, parma ham, bocconcini
Thick bechamel with onions + seafood mix
Tuna, peppers, parsley, tobasco sauce

It was fun. Thanks all for the drinks, presents, help and coming along.
And if anyone else has photos, let me know! I lost some from my camera! thanks.

I was thinking about the Pech Melba we had at Bistro Guillaume a while back. A simple combinaton of poached peach, praline, fresh berries and raspberry couilis. Simple, but the attention to detail was clear – the whole peach had it s skin removed without a single defect. Fine, it was dark and my eye sight are not great, but try peeling one yourself and you will know what I mean. I poached some myself in lemon, sugar, lemon thyme a couple of months ago and didn’t even both peeling the rest of the halves after my first attempt.

I managed to get 2 living plants of lemon thyme out of the packet from the supermarket.

So long summer.

Cooking some lamb racks on the pan and what better tool is there to sear the bone and all the bits in between.

After my night shift, caught up with friends from a cafe I used to work at and had breakfast and 2 coffees at the Auction Rooms. We then went to the the Collingwood Farmers Market and I brought a mix of ripe heirloom tomatoes. This is a salad with basil, lemon thyme, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Really, this is just a photography post than anything else. I like my scramled egg cooked under high heat and rapidly rather than the slow/creamy texture of the French method.

8 onions, red and brown, reduced to around 2 onions sized pile. Took arond 30 minutes heating time. Today I stirred it into my risotto and the result was layers of delicious flavours that you can’t see. Well worth the effort. The onions can be freezed in small batches.

I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow. It’s 8pm, I am hungry, and the best way to deal with the potatoes that are just about to sprout in my cupboard is to make gnocchi. And with sage thriving in the pot outside you can see where I am heading.

Peel 4 potatoes (ones with a looser/flourery flesh) and cut them in large pieces. Boil them until the edges of the potatoes are just starting to break apart (around 15 minutes). Drain potatos, return them on a medium heat and mash with a fork. The heat will dry out the mash a little so you will need to add less flour to make the dough come together

Transfer the mached potatoes into a large bowel and let it cool to a temperature your hands can work with. Start adding flour gradually and work it into the potato until the dough starts to form. With clean hands, you should be able to pick up a handful and roll it into shapes in your palm without it sticking to your hands or falling apart. For my 4 medium sized potatoes, about 150 g of flour.

Start rolling the dough, a handful at a time and make it into long cylinder, dusting the surface as you go. Cut the log into small sizes. Place the finished pieces into a tray with some flour so the gnocchi are all separated.

Bring a large pot of water to boil and also heat up pan. Cook the gnocchi in batching of around a dozen in the water. At the same time, add some butter into the pan. In about 3-4 minutes they shoud float. Give them another 30 seconds before lifting them out of the pot and drain. Place the cooked gnocchi into the pan and cook until most surfaces are golden. To cook the rest of the gnocchi, add more into the boiling water and take the ones in the pan out to rest.

Once you are happy with the amount of gnocchi cooked in water and pan, return the gnocchi in thepan and add a small hand full of torn sage and cook until the sage pieces are crispy. At this time the gnocchi should have started to turn a deeper colour. Add freshly ground pepper an flakes of sea salt. Mix well and serve. Eat and go to sleep.