Cooking Barn

Caramelised White Chocolate

2011-11-22T22:42:00.001-08:00

I have a new favourite flavour. My previous favourite flavour was caramel. So it's no surprise that my new favourite flavour is caramelised white chocolate. It's something I've seen on Masterchef a couple of times, without really knowing what it was. So imagine my surprise when I looked up the recipe and it was just literally white chocolate which has been caramelised.

It is by no means a difficult process. It consists of only three components.

The pan
The first time I did it, I used a baking tray, but I've found it's better to use an oven-safe fry-pan as my baking tray had grooves which the chocolate got stuck in.

The oven
Turn your oven to the lowest temperature it can go. David Lebovitz's recipe asked 120C but mine doesn't go below 150C, so the exact temperature isn't important. However it is important know what temperature you're using because the higher the temperature, the shorter the cooking time at each stage.

The chocolate
This is, as expected, the most important part. The first time, I used Lindt 36% cocoa solids white chocolate. You need a high cocoa content (relative to white chocolate) for this to work. The second time I used a 29% Cadbury white chocolate, which worked absolutely fine. From the comments I've read, you don't want to be using anything below this percent as it doesn't work, exactly what goes wrong I'm not sure.

Cadbury "Real White Chocolate".

Finally the cooking. Put the chocolate into the pan, making sure it's in little pieces to aid the melting. I used an 150C oven so if your oven can go a bit lower, you can add a couple of minutes to each cooking period and it's fine. Like I said, it's a very easy process. Once the chocolate is in the oven, set the timer for 6 or 7 minutes. Once the time goes off, give the chocolate a stir, and then put it back in for another 6 or 7 minutes. And repeat. You'll find after the first period, the chocolate will have melted to a nice, smooth, sexy liquid. However after that, if you have your timing right, when you give it a mix it'll be more solid, almost like it has seized. That's ok though, it's what's meant to happen. In fact, you want it to seize. If it doesn't, it means it hasn't been heated long enough. By my reasoning, what happens is the chocolate melts, then seizes. It is when it seizes does the caramelisation process occur. However it can over caramelise very quickly which is why you need to continually pull it out and stir it, to prevent over-caramelising (read burning).

Stages of caramelisation

I could say how long it takes, but I didn't time it. Generally it's about an hour. But it's much easier to go by eye. The colour you're looking for is like peanut butter. That's the bare minimum. You can go further, to develop the caramel flavour more, however some of us find it tedious to set a timer for seven minutes and go to the oven to stir a pan around more than five or six times.

Once you've reached your stopping point, let it cool for a couple of minutes and it'll return to the smooth, runny melted chocolate texture which makes it easy to transfer to an air-tight jar. When it cools, it will set rock hard as it is still just chocolate. It will also look like it has split, with light streaks through it, however these go away upon re-heating.

Now what to do with it? Before you do anything, I suggest you taste it. If you're anything like me, two things will hit your mind. First: love. The taste is amazing. Usually I'm not a fan of white chocolate because I find all I taste is sweet, however this is completely different. I know it sounds stupid and completely obvious, but it tastes like caramel and white chocolate. The second thing you'll notice is how sweet it is. This means that anything you add it to, you will need to taste to make sure you don't overload with sugar. Typically recipes take this into account, however if you like adding things together willy-nilly (like me), you need to be careful.

So far I've used this to make a hot chocolate, which was divine. A 250g batch of white chocolate was enough for about a litre and a half of milk, more or less depending on your sweet tooth. I also just made an ice cream, again using a 250g batch for one litre of custard. To mix the chocolate in, all you need to do is reheat it till it runs and then mix it with the milk or cream. At the heart of it, it's still just chocolate. Just very, very delicious chocolate.

How far I've come

2011-11-18T21:21:00.001-08:00

I just ate a toasted sandwich made from homemade bread, cheese and an anchovy fillet. Although a simple snack, it made me realise just how far I've come in terms of cooking.

To begin with, it was a bread I had made using my new toy, a banneton and a lame. The banneton is the cane bread proofing bowl which gives the nice concentric circles on the crust, and the lame is just a razor blade on a plastic handle.

Artisan bakery!

Apart from the bread though, I do find myself using and eating a lot of new things that I possibly couldn't have imagined years ago. When ever I cook, there are always two things I have on hand. Firstly, my sea salt. Currently I'm using the pink Murray River salt but when this runs out I'm going to buy some Fleur de Sel because I'm a little bit fancy. The second is extra virgin olive oil. I've used a number of brands over the past two years, including the Coles available Moro (meh), Bertolli (too strong for me), Red Island (pretty good), and Cobram Estate. I've also used Maggie Beer's brand once and that was my favourite. Recently I have been using Cobram Estate after hearing about their world topping olive oil in 2011, however as expected, this winning crop isn't sold in the supermarkets. Hence when I stumbled upon bottles of the winning crop, I couldn't help but buy some, even though it was four times the cost of what I usually buy. And it is worth it. By far the best extra virgin olive oil I've ever used and it'll be a sad day when it runs out.

On top of these two staples, I've got some other less common ingredients floating around the kitchen.

Indonesian long pepper, bought this when I first went to Simon Johnson because I saw it on The Cook and the Chef;
Dried red chilis, got these after watching enough Asian episodes on Food Safari;
Anchovies, about time I tried these and they are starting to grow on me;
Juniper berries, another spice I bought after watching the Cook and the Chef;
Paella pan and rice, for paella obviously duh;
Parmesan, I only buy Australian parmesan because I like supporting Australian producers, however at some point I know I need to try Reggiano; and
Pickles, because I love pickles.

I sometimes sit and think of how much money I've sank into cooking, and I'm sure it is probably somewhere near $1000, but every dollar is totally worth it because I finally have something in my life which I can call a passion.

Chai Time!

2011-11-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

I had a friend's birthday a couple of weeks ago and since they requested not to receive presents, what else could I do but do a bit of baking for them? In the week or so leading up to it, my plans were massive. The creative juices were going into overdrive. This was mostly because it coincided with the ending stages of my thesis and I was looking for any distraction I could get. I wanted to do three things: eclairs, cream horns and a mille-fuille (think vanilla slice), all with a chai theme.

The first step was to get some chai. Thankfully being connected, I was able to score some from T2, just about as nice as a chai I can get without having to do any serious research, at a discounted price.

Cheap Chai!

Next step was to make the pasty cream. It's the same as any pastry cream, except I infused the tea into the milk while it was heating and let it steep for a bit along with a vanilla bean. Following that I blanched egg yolks (deliciously vibrant yellow free range, organic yolks) with sugar, added flour and cornflour, poured in the milk and then cooked it out for a bit. It's this cooking stage where I had been failing in all my previous attempts. With a regular custard, you cook it until it gets to a coating consistency. However for a pastry cream, with the addition of flour, it needs to be cooked to a real thick paste, essentially what you'd need for it to be able to be piped. It's almost as if you disregard overcooking it and go until it gets super thick, usually requires a boiling temperature for the flour to really kick in. The end result is a super thick, chai flavoured filling.

Transfer of flavour achieved.

So for my three pieces, I needed three types of pastry: choux, shortcrust and puff. The first two I made and the last was shop bought because only crazy people make their own puff (I now swear by the yellow box you buy at fancy supermarkets, I forget what it's called but it beats the pants of the Pampas crap in Coles/Woolies).


Pretty pattern AND non-stick.

Making choux pastry is a work out. You can do it with a machine but there's less washing up if you just do it by hand. Once again, it's a very simple process. Bring butter and water/milk (I used to use milk only but I think it's better to use at least 50:50 ratio, sometimes with more water than milk) to a boil and then quickly mix in all the flour. Return it back to the heat constantly mixing until it goes from a stodgy mess to a shiny yellow ball, a couple of minutes perhaps. After that, take it off, trasnfer to another bowl and give it another beat for a couple of minutes to knock out as much heat as possible. At this point you can give your arm a bit of a rest because following this step, you have to beat in the eggs one at a time. When you first add the egg in, it looks too wet but just keep working at it and it'll get incorporated into the dough. Once that's done, pipe it into 1.5x5cm logs on a lined baking tray, I used my sexy new silicon mat, and then bake to get pretty eclairs! I think my dough may have been a bit wet, as a result although the puffed up, they collapsed quickly.

Best eclairs I've ever made.

Shortcrust is even easier to make. Rub the flour, sugar and ice-cold butter together and then add ice cold water. Form a dough out of it, let it rest then roll it out to whatever you need. For a large quantity it might be worth using a food processor to mix the butter and flour but I only made a small portion so hands were fine, you just need to work quickly so the butter doesn't melt. The best/worst thing about this is your hands smell like butter for the next week. For the mille-fuille, I needed discs, but I didn't actually end up making them because I ran out of time, pastry cream and patience.

For the cream horns, I cut some strips of puff pastry out and wrapped them around my moulds. This is probably the simplest of the process. I saw a video saying to brush the strips with water before rolling them. I tried with egg wash and then rolled them but found it made the entire process to wet and sloppy, to the point where the pastry wasn't sticking to itself or the mould. So stopped brushing them and just saved the egg wash for when they went into the oven. I was really pleased with how they turned out. As you can see there's a clearly defined hole for the filling to go into. My only gripe is the moulds were so small, as a result the cream horns were bite sized. One thing I found I needed to do was create a seal at the pointy end so any filling wouldn't dribble out, I used caramel but chocolate would have sufficed.

Kind of look like sea shells, something I'll definitely take advantage of.

Once everything was made, it was just time to fill them. The pastry cream went into the eclairs, a chocolate topping on top and some gold leaf to class it up a bit. I mixed a bit of whipped cream into the remaining pastry cream *cough-to-pad-it-out-a-bit-cough*, filled the cream horns and then put them in the freezer to set. Once it was set, I dipped the exposed end in melted chocolate to form a bit of a seal. It all went into a box with tons of Persian fairy floss acting as packing material, and it was completed. In reality the pastry cream was a bit floury, chocolate topping was uneven (somehow I've lost the ability to melt chocolate), and the whole thing looked a mess.

Next time I'll either be posting about the dreaded macarons (are they even scary anymore? They've been conquered by so many already) or if I never get around to that, my seafood birthday bonanza.

Dumplings for a rainy day

2011-09-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

To me, one of the most fascinating things about cooking is different cuisines require different skillsets. It's near impossible to say which is the easiest or the most difficult. I often think Italian food is the least technically demanding, mainly because Italian food is generally rustic and homey. That being said, it's not easy making pasta, getting all the perfect little shapes, hundreds at a time. In terms of pure technique, I believe Chinese and Japanese chefs are in front (but not by much). Whether it be fine slicing with the giant meat cleaver, making onigiri and sushi in a blink of an eye or the intricate carvings of vegetables as decorations, I am constantly amazed by what these chefs can do.

Which brings me to today's dish, dumplings! I think I can wrap a decent gyoza. I learnt it about a year ago and for about a month my mum just kept on getting me to wrap them, either because she liked how they looked or she recognised this could be an important skill and wanted me to perfect it ASAP. Either way, I can churn out about 30 an hour, which isn't lightning fast but it's more than good enough for me.

Today's filling is a simple pork. Into 500g of pork mince went a couple teaspoons each of minced ginger and garlic (channel your inner Chinese chef and chop it as finely as is humanly possible, and then run the knife through it a few hundred times), and two or three tablespoons of finely chopped cabbage.

In went a pinch of couple tablespoons of light soy sauce, pinch of salt, good whack of freshly ground white pepper, and enough water to loosen the mixture so it's not too stodgy of a mess. Once again, channel the Chinese man inside of you and mix through with a pair of chopsticks. I'm not sure if this is important but I was always taught to mix meats like this in one direction only, so either clockwise or counter-clockwise. I'm sure it has something to do with how the proteins form but I don't know what effect it has on the end product. Once it's mixed through and the meat is starting to get a bit sticky (protein activation!), add about a teaspoon of sesame oil (the fragrant stuff), and a couple teaspoons of corn flour and mix through again.

Time to wrap! How can I explain how to wrap them? Youtube it yourself. The key is your only plait one side which creates the crescent shape. For the amount of mixture I made, you could easily wrap 60, 4-5cm long gyoza (I only stopped at 30ish because this whole thing was an exercise in using left over wrappers from my mum). They come in packs of 50 here so it works out really well.

If you're cooking them right away, what I like to do is get a cold pan and spray a bit of oil on it. Arrange them all nicely and then put it on a low heat and just leave it for about five minutes. Once they are a light golden on the bottom, pour in enough water just so the pan is covered, chuck a lid on and let it steam through. Once all the water is boiled away, let it go till the bottoms regain a bit of a crunch. Check the tops of the wrappers, where the folds are, are cooked (the texture should be something edible, use your common sense). If they are, flip the whole pan onto a plate, like a tart tartin, so the deep golden bottoms are on top.

However mine were not for eating right away, instead I chose to freeze them. Because I'm not sure how well they react to frying straight out of the freezer, I just steam them for 7-9 minutes over a very rapid boil and they should be good to go, minus the crisp bottom.

So are they dumplings or gyoza? Doesn't matter. Fun to make and good to eat.

Banh Mi!

2011-09-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

So this coming Satday I am holding a BBQ in the name of charity. To raise money for Blue September, I'm having a Banh Mi barbecue with all my friends. I have two main motives for doing this:

I've donated a moderate amount of money to friends this year doing various charity works and I feel it's my time to get mine. There's a bit of truth and a bit of joke in there. It really is what they've done this year that has inspired me to take on a task that should challenge me. I've supported friends running various distances for sick kids, doing the 40 hour famine or living below poverty. They sacrifice their time (and well being in some cases) to do something good for the world, while all I can do is throw money at them.
A culinary challenge. In the kitchen, there are two hurdles: producing good food, and producing LOTS of food. I've had a try at making good food (with various degrees of success), but now I wanted to try cooking for the masses. I had already decided in my mind I wanted to do a barbecue of sorts during the mid-sem break and chancing upon Blue September seemed like serendipity. I decided to step away from my usual route of cooking lots of different dishes in smaller quantities to just doing one or two things but lots of it. After watching The Great Food Truck Race, making Banh Mi was the obvious choice.
To pull chicks.

The charity itself doesn't hold a spot in my heart. We have a relationship out of convenience. That's not to say I turn my nose at their work. What they're doing will undoubtedly be for my benefit in the future. Even though none of my male relatives have been diagnosed with cancer, there's always a first. As bad as this sounds, I'm sure I will some of my acquitances (past, present or future) will be touched in some way and I want to get in their good books now.

Wishlist

2011-09-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

Following on from yesterday's list, time to make one about all the cool things I want to buy!

Bread proofing baskets! I'm pretty close to buying this, I just need a couple of weeks without too much expenditure and then I'm gonna buy buy buy!
Ice cream maker I might buy this. I might not. It will streamline and speed up the ice cream making process, but it's also very expensive. This might not be bought for a long time.
A Global bread knife, just because I already own a cook's knife and a filleting knife, and I need a bread knife and they're super sexy
Magimix Food Processor, because this thing is amazing. It can do everything except wash itself. Amazingly expensive though. Almost too expensive, but also totally worth it too.

Once again, that's all for now. Trust me when I say there's about a million other things I'd love to buy.

Culinary Bucket List

2011-09-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

Talking to a new friend who has seemingly travelled all over the world has prompted me to think about all the things that I'd like to do at some point in my life, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. And so we have my Culinary Bucket List, in no particular order:

Go to New York and eat at Sylvia's and Katz's
Visit Les Halles in Lyon and buy some foie gras

That's all I've got for now, but I'll surely add to it as I think of more things

Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart

2011-08-07T07:22:00.000-07:00

As I said in my last post, I wanted to give the chocolate salted caramel tart. The recipe Lily used was Vincent Gadan's from his masterclass on Masterchef so I figured that was the best starting point.

His pastry began with creaming butter and sugar together, then adding an egg and the flour/almond meal. His recipe also involved putting vanilla bean into the pastry but I figure that was a bit unnecessary, and expensive. It's a butter pastry and needs a good deal of refrigerating before you attempt to roll it out. Following the recipe, I was able to make about 350g worth of pastry and I split this into 3 to make 10cm tarts. I rolled out the pastry to about 3mm, blind baked the tarts at 160 degrees for 10 minutes with weight and another 15 without until the pastry was a light golden.

Cracking on with the caramel. Caramel is caramel. I didn't use to like caramel because all I had was the lollies which were rock hard to begin with, chewy as anything in them middle and then stuck in your teeth for the next hour. It was not a pleasant experience. However now, having made my own caramel and used it in various dishes, I have now come to love the flavour. Caramel ice cream is my favourite dessert right now and I'll put that recipe up as soon as I can. Anyway, after Lily's pale caramel I made an effort to make sure mine wasn't undercooked. As a result I burnt it, the first time I burnt caramel. The next one worked much better, good colour and consistency. I didn't salt it heavily enough so it was mostly just caramel. Once again, following the recipe (except for the amount of salt, I'd dramatically reduce that and season to taste), it was enough to fill each of my 3 tarts half way up perfectly.

The next layer was a chocolate ganache. Once again, no great deal of difficulty here. Equal parts chocolate and cream with a bit of butter for gloss and texture. Yet again perfect amount and here we have the finished product.

The pastry was a bit biscuity because I may have taken it a bit far. In the future I'll use Maggie Beer's sour cream pastry because it's easier to make and is much shorter. I'll make sure to taste the caramel to make sure it's salted enough. Apart from those two things, it's a simple and tasty dessert. A winner.

French Dinner

2011-08-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Had my French dinner last week and it was probably the most successful night I've ever had. All the dishes were actually cooked and looked as I had imagined and tasted just as good. Time management was still an issue but I'll get the hang of that eventually.

Entree was a caramelised onion puff pastry tart and a witlof and apple salad (pictured). Original plan was a witlof gratin but I couldn't buy enough for one per person so I figured I had to change. Caramelised onion is one of my favourite flavours and I never hesitate to involve it. Doing a puff pastry tart also gave me an opportunity to try out using some different puff pastry. Short story is Pampas puff (what you get from Coles) is rubbish compared to just about anything. I can't remember the exact brand name but it came in a yellow box. It puffed up brilliantly and tasted great too (but not too buttery which was also nice). Never having had witlof before, I was a little bit worried about the taste. It was bitter, as it should be. And not a little bitter, it was quite a strong taste, but not unpleasantly so. By itself it can get a bit too much to quickly, but paired with other ingredients and flavours it can be a hero. The sweetness and crispness of the apple went well with it in the salad, as well as the lemon and orange vinaigrette.

Main was sous-vide steak with roasted carrots (pictured) and pomme frites (or chips). For the steak I used a bolar roast. For sous-vide, I read you're able to use secondary cuts, or at least not primary, because the slow cooking results in a more tender product. I'm not sure if I found this. Cut into smaller pieces the steak was tender but large chunks were far from melting. Regardless, the flavour was great and getting to use the blowtorch was fun. Heston's triple cooked chips were a pain to make as I had to do them in batches but result was also very acceptable.

Rather than dealing with dessert myself, I let Lily do it. She made a salted caramel and chocolate tart. Sadly it didn't work out so well for her. The pastry was thick (once again), the caramel wasn't cooked far enough (inexperience) and too salty (recipe's fault), and her peanut nougatine was too thick and again caramel cooked enough.

Seeing her attempt made me want to dust off the pastry chef's hat and have a go. More on that next time though.

Sous-vide

2011-07-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

All the TV chefs love to sous-vide. What is sous-vide? It's an amazingly simple process and the science behind it just makes sense. Actually the science behind it excites me more than the cooking itself, but to keep this post from becoming an essay, I'll just tell you to go look it up on the internet. Heston Blumenthal's shiny, bald head explains super slow cooking, which this is, best.

The problem is how to get this at home without breaking into the chemistry lab at uni and stealing a water bath. Only after reading this amazing article on doing it at home, did I realise how easy it was. All you need is an eski... and hot water.

The towel around the side, and another one on top of the lid, supposedly help keep the heat in a bit more. A thermometer is always good so you know exactly what temperature you're at. Now I've got a bit of a cheap eski and I've found with water starting at 135F, it can go down to 128F after an hour. However most recipes require only a forty five minute cooking tops so it should be fine. You can top up with hot water if you ever need, as long as you don't overshoot the temperature by too much. In my house, the hot water tap can pour out 135F water so that's pretty convenient, but it's good to have a kettle going too.

So it was time to give it a run. As luck would have it, my mum brought home an entire salmon, sadly it was already filleted and everything so I didn't get a chance to test my filleting skills. After pinboning and skinning the fish (because I didn't want to fry and crisp it up after), I brined it for about 10 minutes in 10% solution (in hindsight, it needed a longer brine, up to an hour). Without something to vacuum pack things for me, I did the zip-lock bag technique which worked a treat.

It would have been cooked after about 20 minutes but I left it in there for over 80 just because the rest of the meal wasn't ready yet. As the water temperature never exceeded 135F, there was no worry about overcooking, truly the best thing about sous-vide. The result was a salmon which was uniform in colour, quite firm and easily handled, cooked medium-rare to medium but still very juicy and flaked beautifully. It was amazing to know that it had worked. I also pan fried some other pieces and although I managed to cook them perfectly too, that was down to dumb luck and "yeah that looks about right" thinking rather than precise timing. However a smaller piece was overcooked and this was something which would have been avoided using sous-vide.

So key points about sous-vide:

Measure the water temperature, know how quickly your eski loses temperature over time
Cracking open the eski mid-way through cooking causes a lot of heat loss and should be avoided unless you know for certain the temperature needs a top up
When preparing the meat, do not put butter (or any other fats/oils) into the bag with the meat and aromatics because the fat-soluble flavour molecules go into the butter/oil rather than the meat
Anything under 120F or 48C is a dangerous temperature to cook at because bacteria only gets killed at 130F/54C and above
It's easy, don't be afraid to achieve perfectly cooked, stress free meats

Heston's Trippple Cooked Chips

2011-07-23T05:46:00.002-07:00

With the (extremely hopeful) revival of this blog, I'll be looking to post more of my adventures in the kitchen along with poorly taken photos. Rather than serving as food porn, the photos are a visual aid more than anything, something to help you imagine what's happening.

Planning the menu for my French dinner wasn't a difficult task. Being able to outsource dessert to a friend means an entire third of the meal is taken off my shoulders and hopefully that energy can be put to relaxing and actually being a semi-decent host. This was not done without careful consideration though. Last time I let a friend take care of dessert, we ate caramel sauce from a can, a primary school crumble (can't remember of what) and some mini-chttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhocolate cake concoction. Admittedly this was well before any of us could cook particularly well, especially the poor girl in charge of dessert (since then she has blossomed into a cake maker and decorator of distinction). This time the lucky person has already made some decent desserts and I have absolute faith in her.

On the downside, it means it's one less dish I get to try making. However I still get to do two I've been itching to try for varying amounts of time. The entree is a Witlof Gratin, Gabriel Gate's recipe I saw a year or so ago, and main is Steak Frites. Although I'm cooking a traditional Steak Frites, the idea came from watching Masterchef and David Chang's Steak Frites with rice fries. Rather than creating a rice fries recipe (because Chang hasn't released his recipe), I've gone for Heston's Trip(pp)le Cooked Chips.

First stage is simple enough, peel potatoes and cut them into chip sized chips. The pressure point here is (as Masterchef so loves to call them) is to not cut them too thick. The main aim is to remove moisture from the surface and within the chip to achieve a crisp outside and fluffy inside respectively. The recipe also calls to try and extract as much starch as possible from the spuds, hence sitting them in water.

Next stage is relatively simple. Plunge them into (rolling) boiling salted water, turn the heat down to a simmer and cook for about 7-8 minutes till the chips are cooked through. Here the further the chips are cooked, the more they'll rough up around the edges and thus the more crispy bits you'll get on your chips. But at the same time the greater risk you run of them just falling apart. After pulling them out and draining them, they go straight into the fridge to cool down and dry off. I kept them in there for an hour and they firm up considerably and are easier to handle.

Then the second stage, the first fry. In 130 degree Celsius oil (I used rice bran but any neutral, high smoke point oil is good), the chips were fried for about 5 minutes until the outside "dried out" and began to have that slightly fried texture. Still not looking for any colour, but just to get the frying process started. After this, same process of draining then putting them in the fridge for another hour. At this point they can be kept for several hours before the final fry, to be done when you want to serve them.

And now the final fry. This time heat the oil up to 190 degrees and the chips go in until they become a light golden colour. This does not take long and requires you to keep a keen eye on them. I could have taken mine a bit further but since this was my first time chipping, I decided to play it safe. Pull them out, a quick drain, a healthy seasoning and they are good to go. Beware, they are piping hot though.

Verdict? By the end of the second stage, you can't help but wonder if it's worth the effort. Start to end takes 3 hours minimum, and all for what? Some chips? Well it is worth the effort. Even though I work in a fish and chip shop, I don't have a great eye for chips but these had a thin crisp layer on the outside and were fluffy inside. It was all you wanted from a chip. The two biggest pros of these chips are unrelated to taste. The first is that you can have them prepared up to the final fry and then it's just a minute in the hot oil and you've got your chips. It's fast and a great result. The second is because they are boiled and cooked through first, the deep frying is purely to crisp up the edges. Doing it in two stages greatly reduces the amount of time spent in oil meaning it absorbs a lot less and is (theoretically) healthier for you.

So is it worth the effort? You better believe it.

One One Five - Toosday Stir Fry

2009-12-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

Before we begin, a wrap up on Monday's lunch, the curry. It really was delicious, but at the same time I've still got so much further to go in curry making.

For Tuesday, I decided to go for an Asian stir fry style noodle dish. Ironically, Asian cuisine is possibly my weak point. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one is I haven't watched many Asian cooking shows, so I don't really know the proper technique and flavouring. Sure, I've seen lots of the TV chefs do some Asian food, but it's always with the European touch or using their methods. Also I don't spend a lot of time watching my mum cook. I love her to death but she does tend to over cook a lot of things.

So it was with a little apprehension that I took this dish on. Out of sheer laziness, I decided to make it real simple. I peeled and quartered half an onion and then separated it into its layers. I also thinly sliced half a carrot, sliced a couple of cloves of garlic and two chillis. In a wok, in went in a bit of vegetable oil and before it got hot, I threw in the garlic and chilli and let the flavours infuse into the oil. Once the garlic just started to colour, in went the onions and carrots and they were tossed until they started to colour. I decided to use the drumstick and wing meat with this dish. I took the drumstick meat off the bone and used the whole wings minus the tips (which can go into a stock) and they went in.

And this is where I got really lost, the seasoning. I've heard so much about the Four S's, sweet, sour, salty and spicy. I don't know if I should have but I did try to add a bit of each. Chilli already made up the spicy, I added oyster sauce for salt, some Chinese vinegar for sour and a bit of honey for sweetness.

It was all tossed about with some egg noodles and bean sprout and dish is done. If I'm completely honest, I was not looking forward to eating it and when the time came, I was amazingly underwhelmed.

So where did I go wrong? Everywhere. The seasoning mostly. I have to figure that out properly. Also some more vegetables could go in if I had them on hand, like beans, snow peas or broccoli. In short, fail.

One One Five - Mondy Curry

2009-12-13T01:53:00.000-08:00

For this week, I have set myself a challenge. One week. One chicken. Five lunches. Simple as that.

Elaborating slightly, I have decided to make all my lunches this week from single chicken, as well as any other veg I need. My aim is not to show five easy lunches that you can try as a money saver, it is more personal. I want to show myself that locked away somewhere in my head is five suitable recipes using the different cuts of a chicken.

Before I did any cooking, I stripped the meat from a single chook. I had done this many times before to a cooked chicken, but never before to a raw one. As expected, it was a little bit more difficult just because raw meat is harder to handle than cooked (also more slimy). After a bit of calculated hacking, I did manage to finish with two breasts, thigh fillets, drumsticks, wings and a nice carcass ready for making up stock. I was well happy with myself.

Monday's lunch will be a quick curry. I've wanted to make a real Indian curry for a long time, and that wait continues. What I made is something in the middle between an Indian and an Asian one. I also didn't really cook things quite in the correct order because I got a little bit impatient.

I started off by slowly frying three cloves of diced garlic and a couple of insanely hot birds eye chillis, also diced, in some vegetable oil. Just as the garlic starts to colour, I threw in a diced onion, carrot and potato (all roughly the same size) and sauteed them for a while to, as in Huey's words, get the cooking process started. As I start to get bored of wok tossing (maybe five or six minutes), I throw in a teaspoon each of ground cumin, pounded corriander seeds, garam marsala, tumeric powder and four thinly sliced lime leaves. I wanted to try to get a bit of a lemony/lime zing through the curry but it didn't work.

Anyway, I let the spices toast for a couple minutes then I added the two thigh fillets which where cut into two centimetre cubes. I kept it all moving until I saw the chicken had changed colour and then added a cup of water and a good amount of seasoning. The heat was turned on full whack until I got a really good boil happening, then I turned it down to a dull roar (the lowest setting), covered and buggered off.

Maybe ten or so minutes later, I took the lid off to boil away most of the water till I got a thick mess. By then everything was cooked, possibly over, and I added 50-100mL of thickened cream, and a squeeze of lemon. Curry done. Serve with rice, wedge of lemon and yummers to be expected.

Tasting it, I think I may have gone a bit heavy on one of the spices, cumin I think. Next time I'll brown off the chicken first, add the vegetables one at a time (onions, carrots then potatoes), add some other spices like cardomom, maybe cinnamon, a curry leaf, clove or star anise. Basically any spice I can think of and sounds Indian.

This is my equivalent of walking in long grass.

Mushroom Risotto

2009-12-01T04:40:00.001-08:00

I have seen people on the TV make risotto for years. It may have even be one of the first things I saw cooked on TV. And through all those years, not once did I try to cook it myself. That was until last weekend.

As far as dishes go, it's not that complicated. Just give the rice a quick fry off before slowly adding the stock to make a creamy, delicious mess. It's actually amazing how creamy it becomes once it is cooked, however it also makes it difficult to eat it in large amounts because it becomes so filling.

I decided to make a mushroom risotto with a homemade vegetable stock. The stock was slightly difficult because I didn't have that many different vegetables on hand. In the end, it was still a little bland so I added some chicken stock powder.

The stock:
For the stock, I finely diced three medium carrots and two medium onions. I sauteed them a decent amount of olive oil until they were just about tender. Then about a litre of boiling water was added along with three bay leaves, some peppercorns and a bunch of parsely stalks. It was brought to a rolling boil before it was turned down to the lowest flame possible, covered and let to simmer for at least 90 minutes. A good amount of salt was added to taste, along with a teaspoon of chicken powder. Celery, garlic, leeks and thyme could also have gone in, I just didn't think of it or didn't have them on hand.

The risotto:
Into oil and butter went seven button mushrooms, a medium onion and one and a half teaspoons of crushed garlic (a little bit of bacon could have also gone in for extra yumminess). These were sauteed for a couple of minutes to get the cooking process started. Then 500g of Arborio rice was put into the pan as well and it was all kept moving to coat the rice in the oil and let it absorb a little. Then a ladle of stock (a cup of dry white wine could be substituted for the first go) was added and it was stirred in quickly until it was absorbed into the rice. This was continued until almost all the stock was used and you get something that will ooze on a plate but is not runny or too thick. The best way to describe is it when you are stirring it in the pot, you should be able to draw a line down the middle and it should close in on itself in about 4-5 seconds. Start off slow adding a ladle at a time, but after you see it is getting creamier you can add a bit more. You should begin tasting when you think you are getting close, you are looking for the rice to be cooked but still have some bite.

Once I deemed it to be cooked, I mixed through some enoki mushrooms which had been cut into 1.5 inch pieces, just to warm through more than anything. To finish, season, mix through about a handful of parmesan and some chopped parsely.

I expect to make another one this weekend. I plan to definitely add some meat to it, maybe chicken or just bacon, use white wine at the start of the rice cooking and make a pea risotto rather than a mushroom one. It definitely sounds delicious.

BBQ - The menu

2009-10-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

I cooked my first barbecue the other day and I think it was a great success, you know, foodwise. I did the basics of any barbecue: sausages, burgers, potato salad and coleslaw.

Not much needs to be said about sausages. Except that they were half price, beef sausages that I simmerred in water for about 10-15 minutes to cook them before frying them.

Burgers were simple as well. A butt load of beef mince, a couple onions and some garlic. In terms of flavouring, I ground up some corriander seeds, thyme, sage, sald and pepper together. I can't say that I could taste all that herbage but I like to believe without it, the burgers would have been boring.

I have made potato salad so many times and each and every time I do something different. This time it was super simple partly because I got lazy and partly because I didn't want to spend so much time on it. This was done the night before for even more time saving-ness. It was just potatoes cubed and boiled, and then the dressing was maybe half cup mayo and half cup sour cream. Into it I threw in two boiled eggs, chopped and some good old fashioned seasoning. I also wanted the dressing to have a bit of a kick, so I decided to add some wasabi to it. As I was too lazy to make up the powder properly, I just added the powder straight into the dressing. I added a good couple of teaspoons but there wasn't much flavour, so I just gave up. And on the day, I didn't get to try any because I was too lazy to eat it before it had all gone.

I had never made coleslaw before but I knew it wasn't hard watching my mum do it. Just shred some cabbage and throw in a bottle of dressing. There was a bit too much cabbage so I had to add some mayo and sour cream. It was an ok coleslaw, however some of the larger pieces of cabbage were a little bitter.

And then my favourite. The chickens. There were four chickens marinated two different ways. One was spicy, with lots of chilli and lots of garlic. And the other was honey and soy. The spicy one was pretty straight forward. Four large chillis, a couple of heaped teaspoons of crushed garlic, juice and zest of a lemon and enough oil to turn it into a sexy marinade. The second one I wasn't as sure about. I used about half a cup of light soy and a good couple of tablespoons of honey. I didn't know if I should add some sourness so I decided to leave it out. I also wanted to put some ginger in to boost the asian flavour however ginger is expensive now and I kind of forgot.

Leaving them overnight (I should have turned them but forgot to), I roasted them in the morning so that come barbecue time, all I'd have to do is colour them up on the hot plate. It all worked very well, except the honey soy got a bit too much colour in the oven, most likely because of the honey. After their turn on the hot plate, I was really surprised that all the chickens came out perfectly cooked and super juicy. Somehow, I had managed to not over-cook them into dryness or under-cook them into... salmonella.

Then came dessert. I didn't know what to do for dessert because there aren't many dishes you can cook on a hot plate. I went for simplicity, fruit kebabs dusted in brown sugar. I used banana, pineapple and watermelon. Perhaps could have used some other fruits but once again, got lazy (this time in shopping). The role of the brown sugar is interesting. It could be argued that it's for some sexy caramelisation, but the natural sugars in the fruit do that anyway. So basically it's there for flavour, and you really could taste it. It also left this really really delicious looking caramel sauce on the hot plate, too bad we didn't get to eat it. But the kebabs were nice, pineapple cooks really nicely, the bananas went soft and fragrant and the watermelon's juiciness was to die for.

So all in all, a big fat smiley face.

Focaccia

2009-08-31T00:50:00.000-07:00

I've finally found the perfect lunch to have at uni. It's delicious, it's simple and easy to make, it doesn't require re-heating and most importantly, it's cheap.

I have tried so many things. I've done left overs and rice from the night before, various types of pasta with simple and elaborate sauces, sandwiches and even just snacking on lollies all day. They all had their pros and cons, some were delicious but troublesome, others were easy but a bit plain.

What I now deem to be the perfect lunch is focaccia. There's just so much to like about it. For one it's dead easy to make. It may take a little time to let it prove (twice) but it is well worth it. And it is almost like a blank slate for flavour. I think in the coming weeks, I'll have a good play around with whatever I put in there, as long as it has a meat and a vegetable component.

The one I made last night was a great way to start. I used a very simple focaccia recipe from taste.com.au. It was a recipe for absolute beginners but it still tasted delicious. I might buy some bread flour next week so I might be able to get a better crust around the outside, otherwise there's not much room for improvement. I played around with it and essentially made an Italian "toad in the hole".

Rosemary and mandarin focaccia with sausage
250g plain flour
1 teapsoon honey
Packet of instant yeast (7g)
80mL warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
100mL extra warm water
2 sausages (I used the Italian pork sausage variety from the supermarket)
4-5 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 HOT chilli, finely sliced
Couple of sprigs of rosemary
Zest of 1 mandarin (not necessary)

Put water, honey and yeast in a small bowl/cup. Cover and let stand for 10-15 minutes to let the yeast do its business. Place flour in a large bowl with a pinch of salt and make a well. Pour in the yeast mixture, olive oil and about a third of the warm water. Knead the mixture in the bowl until it forms a dough, adding more water as needed. Should not require more than 70-80mL. Turn it onto a well floured surface and knead it till it's smooth and elastic. Place in an oiled bowl, cover with wet towel and let it prove in a warm spot for at least an hour.

Once it has doubled in size, knock the air out and give it another quick knead. Transfer it to a well oiled baking tray and try to spread it out. Cover it and let it prove once more for half an hour, meanwhile preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

While it is proving the second time, simmer the sausages in water for 15 minutes, this is because there's a good chance they won't cook through in the oven. Give the rosemary a quick chop and then put it into the mortar and pestle with a pinch of salt and give it a quick pound/grind. Add the chilli, mandarin zest and garlic and grind it some more. Loosen the mixture with as much oil as you want, it shouldn't need more than 5 tablespoons.

When the sausages are done and the dough is done with its second proving, put the sausages on one half of the dough and put in whatever else you want. Spread half of the oil mixture on the dough and then fold it over. Give the edges a bit of a crimp to make sure it is well sealed, it doesn't really matter but it makes it look prettier. Pour the rest of the oil on top and sprinkle over another pinch of salt if you want. A little massage to make sure the flavours stick and it's your last chance to to play with the dough. Into the oven for 30-40 minutes until it's lovely and golden brown. Cooking time may change depending on how thick your focaccia is but as a rule of thumb, golden brown means delicious.

Macarons: Partial fail!

2009-08-17T05:03:00.000-07:00

A second attempt at macarons was a couple weeks in the making and this time it went much better.

I followed the same recipe except halved the quantities for the shells, but kept the same for the ganache filling, which would obviously cause some sort of disturbance. I didn't really do anything different this time. I still beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, added the dry ingredients and folded them through. Except this time I used a bit more force to knock more air out. I finished a much runnier mixture than last time, which made it slightly easier to pipe.

I made sure to pipe them with plenty of space in between so as they do not spread into each other, which I am glad to report they did not. They did still stick a little bit but it was only three or four that I couldn't get off the baking paper. Next time I'll definitely try the steam-lifting off technique, it seems interesting.

The shells weren't perfect. They didn't quite puff and they were very chewy, and they were very thin as well.

To sandwich them together I made a ganache spiked with a lot of passion fruit. I was talking to Jackie the other day and she mentioned something about how yummy passion fruit was so I had to give it a go. I didn't know if it was on sale, but it was a dollar each so it's pretty steep. What made me really happy was that in the ganache, it didn't smack you in the face, but it was more of a subtle twang. Some people tasted something extra, some didn't even notice, but they all went "Ooooohhhh" when I told them it was passion fruit.

To make up for the average shells, I was very generous with the filling so it was basically eating ganache with a little bit of biscuit on either side. I still believed it was delicious, the passion fruit made it, however I will give macarons another run tomorrow. Only this time I'll stay away from chocolate, instead it'll be plain shells filled with a mandarin butter cream. Wish me luck!

Turning macaroons into truffles

2009-08-04T04:29:00.000-07:00

Every since Masterchef did macaroons, Jackie has been interested in them. Then she found some really colourful pictures and that interest has blossomed into something so much more.

So it was with great anticipation that I attempted making a batch last night. Rather than going the insane Masterchef recipe which required an Italian meringue which needs sugar heated to exactly 121 degrees and drizzled into the egg whites while beating, or something similar, I did the recipe from my delicious chocolate book I got for my birthday.

The recipe first required me to sift a butt load of dry ingredients. Passing ground almonds and cocoa powder isn't an issue but icing sugar is an abolute bitch. Especially when the sugar has been around for a while and instead of soft easy to break clumps, it arranges itself into tiny pebbles of sugar so well structured you couldn't break them with a hammer. Twenty minutes of pain later, it was time to beat the egg whites.

As usual, it was soft peaks, add sugar then to firm peaks. I'm still not sure of what speed I should have the beater at. I can't remember whether it was important but I like to have it full blast just because it happens a lot quicker.

Then came the bit that took me a while to wrap my head around. I had to mix the dry ingredients into the egg whites, the first time I've done such a thing. At first, it collapsed massively and I began to get worried. You're meant to do a third at a time but I got lazy, so I did a third then the rest. The mixture was really thick and it held together quite strongly. I let it rest like the recipe said so but it was still not very easy to handle.

After five or ten minutes of wandering around, I began to pipe them onto sheets. I am still getting used to piping so they were definitely not regular in size, and they were all probably too big. This was confirmed when I wanged them into the oven and they all spread into each other. It was a bit disappointing to see that, but the worst was yet to come.

While these were in the oven, it was onto the ganache to sandwich the macaroons. It doesn't come much easier than boil cream and pour over chocolate then add butter bit by bit. Except the cream didn't melt all the chocolate so I had to put it back over a double boiler until it did. Let it stand to cool and then in the fridge till you get a sexy, thick ganache.

It was time to take the macaroons out of the oven and I was sad. Not only had they spread, they stuck to the sheet, badly. I had sprayed the tray with oil but it seems that wasn't enough. The ones I could get off were slightly crispy on top and really chewy inside, I'm not actually sure whether they were meant to be like that but I didn't really like it that much. It reminded me of the bits near the edges of a brownie.

So when it was clear that failed, I had to improvise. Throwing out two trays of "biscuits" would have been a crime punishable by death on my house so I tried to get creative. With the ganache cooling, I decided it would be best to turn it into truffles and coat them in ground up biscuits. First I scraped what I could off the sheets, whizzed them in the food processor, back in the oven to dry out a bit more and whizzed them again to get as fine a crumb as possible. There were still some big chunks but this was fine because it provided some texture, as all chefs would tell you.

In the end, it was a pretty good rescue. However next time I'd like to do it properly, and there will be a next time. Never before have I had such a spectacular failure and I will get these damn things right before I try something else.

Christmas in July: Debrief!

2009-08-02T03:14:00.000-07:00

So last Sunday was the big Christmas in July dinner Jackie and I have been planning for the past two or three weeks. In reality, I had been planning it and she had been giving it after thoughts, either way it all culminated into one evening of heaps of food.

On the menu was a big roast turkey accompanied by various vegetables. I put her in charge of dessert to a)involve her more and b)so that I wouldn't have to worry about it. In the end, it was a good decision because it was one massive thing off my shoulders and it didn't taste too bad.

Cooking the turkey was an interesting journey. Never having roasted a whole bird before, let alone a giant gobbling thing, I was a little apprehensive. My job was slightly easier by buying a buffet turkey, where they cut off about half the bird, leaving the breast and the drumsticks. The rest just disappears... Although it was easier in the sense that it was only half a turkey, it was much more difficult in the sense that I didn't have any recipes I could follow. In the end, it was left to ad lib-ing and common sense.

To begin with, I defrosted it for about 3 days in the fridge. Then when that was done, I salt and peppered the skin then rubbed butter everywhere. Preheated the oven to about 180 degrees. In the roasting tin, I covered the bottom with carrots, fennel, garlic and some onions to flavour the gravy. On top went the bird. Because it was cut in half, essentially, I couldn't stuff it so I just wanged some of the vegetables in the tray into the cavity. I don't remember exactly how long it was in the oven for. It started with foil covering for an hour. Then I saw the oven thermometre said it was only 140 degrees so I cranked the dial up to about 240 degrees. Back in it went without the foil for about 40 minutes, by then the skin had really coloured up so foil went back on and a final roasting of maybe another 40, basting each time I took it out of the oven with the pan juices.

Come time to carve, I had no idea whether it was properly cooked or not. I did the skewer-juices-run-clear test and it passed, but I still couldn't be sure. It was only when I started cutting into the breast meat to see a sea of white flesh was I happy. It may have been a little dry but considering it was my first, I'm not too displeased with that. The drumsticks were very tight though, so perhaps next time I'll actually cut them off and roast them for a bit longer, essentially turning it into a turkey crown roast. Not a bad idea.

While the turkey was resting, some pumpkin slices (butternut I believe) were put in the roasting tray on top of the vegetables and thrown back in the oven. Once again, I was winging it so I just kept them in there, turning occasionally, till they had coloured a little and shrivelled up a little too. When they were done, it was gravy time! Because there was so much crap in the pan already, I decided against using the flour method. Instead I just poured some stock in and let it bubble and cook for a bit before straining it into another pan and monté-ing some butter in, or at least that's what I was aiming for. Some chopped parsely through at the end and it was done.

I also had some Dutch carrots, basically long, thin, weedy little buggers. Originally I was going to cook them in some boiling water but decided to do the Jamie Oliver roasting in balsamic vinegar thing. It was a bit of meh. When they came out of the oven, good God they were ugly. They had shrivelled up a touch but more than that, they developed these tiny little bumps in places. I'll be honest, they looked diseased.

To bring this all together was the mash potatoes, or pomme puree as I'll call it to be a dick. Because I didn't have the time or hands to do it, I had to entrust it to anyone who had already arrived. In fact, I had a very small role in it apart from telling them what to do. Felita peeled the potatoes, then her, Tim and Chris passed them through a sieve. And they were also in charge of cooking it out and seasoning it. Just on the seasoning, I believe they over seasoned it. I should have added more milk to it to get a creamier consistency. But they also added too much salt and butter so that it was yellow in the end. Sure, that's how Gary made it on Masterchef but I like to taste potato, not butter. Also the arteries don't really appreciate it.

Next was dessert. Jackie made three things, individual chocolate mousse cakes, made with instant mousse, topped with a chocolate ganache, individual cheesecakes topped with a caramel sauce and apple crumble. Of the three, the cheesecake were head and shoulders above. As mentioned, it was instant mousse out of a packet, except she forgot to add gelatin so it was just mush. The base was a bit thick I believe, but the ganache was delish. The cheesecake was lovely, but perhaps a bit too firm. The caramel sauce was a bit too sweet for my liking. The apple crumble was just fail. It was tinned apples topped with a pretty terrible excuse for crumble. The only reason I ate it was because she bought custard as well and I love my custard.

Apart from the food though, it was an ok night. The six of us, down from the original 12, ate in a very intimate setting. Instead of using my house lights, we broke out the candles so we had a candle-lit dinner, with some soothing jazz music playing in the background (I cheated by playing one of the Jazz Chillout compliations). That was a surprisingly nice way to eat.

Good food, good company and good atmosphere. What more could you ask for.

Impromptu Apple Pie

2009-07-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

I called them impromptu apple pies because they were in no way planned at all. I had a bit of a rubbish day at uni, came home to an empty house and needed a bit of cheering up. I saw that the food processor was still out from Sunday night and the fridge has a butt load of butter, so I figured a pie of some sort was on the cards. Then I remembered about the apples my mum had bought for me but I never got around to eating.

The pastry I used was from the Masterchef Masterclass when George and Gary made the raspberry tart. That was about as far as me using recipes went. After making the pastry, not very well I might add, I got onto stewing the apples.

Usually you use Granny Smith apples because they have that sharp acidity that cuts through the rich pastry. However I only had golden delicious so I added a bit more lemon juice than was required. Although stewing is unnecessary, it was my first time making them and I only had small tart tins which would cook faster so I decided to give them a quick stew anyway. It was the bare minimum of flavours: apple, lemon, brown sugar and cinnamon. I added some water at the beginning but I quickly found that was a mistake once the apple start leeching out all its juices. I did stew them until they were well soft, because I didn't want a crunchy apple pie, soft and mushy is the way to go.

Rolling out the pastry took a bit of time but by the time they were in the oven, I had a great feeling of satisfaction. They did take a long time in the oven, over many stints. At one point, I had taken them out and eaten one only to be disappointed the pastry was still a little raw. About 20 minutes later I realised I never turned the oven off so I chucked them back in. I think total time in the oven was somewhere near 40 minutes at 200 degrees which surprised me a little. I think the basic "bake till golden" applies here, but probably an oven temperature of 180-195 is best to ensure it does cook properly.

In the end, I'm ok with my effort. It was spontaneous, it didn't taste crap and I got rid of some old ingredients. Good result.

Eclairs

2009-07-30T05:34:00.000-07:00

A couple a weeks ago I made some chocolate eclairs for Jackie's birthday. It was actually an interesting turn of events as originally, I wanted to make a little croquembouche for her because we had actually talked about it a long time ago. However she told me that she had received one from her boyfriend (but it was made by his dad who works at Brunetti's, so clearly I could not compete with that). I'll admit that it shook me a little to hear that because it kind of ruined my entire plan. In the long run, it turned out so much better for me.

Making the choux pastry isn't a difficult thing, but like almost everything else, it's doing it well which is difficult. I had tried only a couple times before I made Jackie's eclairs and although they weren't as perfect as I wanted, they turned out an acceptable level.

The choux pastry (or as I prefer to call it, Pate Choux) recipe that I follow is Chef Todd Mohr's. However I wasn't able to get them to puff quite as much as you see in the video. They did puff, but not so much as to look extremely sexy. I filled them a chocolate custard, topped them with a quick chocolate, butter icing and then just melting some chocolate with a little bit of oil for the writing.

After giving them to Jackie, I still didn't feel satisfied with them so I wanted to make some more but I didn't want to have to eat them. Then along came the bake sale. Golden Key were holding a bake sale and were looking for donations of food, and it just seemed unbelievably perfect.

I tried making the pate choux many times during that week, still not being able to get the perfect results. Each time I'd change what I did in the last failure, first was using milk instead of water. Then I tried cranking up the oven to 220 degrees but that was fruitless. Then I added more egg to get a runnier mixture than I had been making and it turned out that was where I was going wrong. Also using a machine to beat it instead of doing it by hand was very important too.

Although they still weren't perfect, they were much better. Instead of filling them with custard, I filled them with a vanilla cream like you're meant to. On top was a chocolate glaze and then I tried to do some writing in white chocolate but that became too difficult, so I just did squiggles after trying to write a few.

Filling them was another of the big problems. With Jackie's batch, I didn't have a proper piping bag so I cut them in half and then put the custard in. Although that method worked very well, it didn't feel very "cheffy". This time I had a piping bag, and had the common sense to stick a chopstick inside the eclair to hollow them out a bit, and they filled much better. I just assumed that the cream filling was able to go all the way through.

The major downside was that I didn't make enough pate choux to enable me to have a good taste of the finished product. I made 15 good eclairs and that was the minimum number I wanted to submit, so I just had to hope like heck they tasted good.

I don't know how much more I can improve on them, just a bit more practice with the pate choux and they'll get to a level resembling something wonderful.

Profiteroles with chocolate custard

2009-07-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

I find making desserts fun because it really does test technique and accuracy. It's like a chem prac at home, with delicious results.

Yesterday I finally tried to make some profiteroles. Reading and re-reading the recipe, it didn't seem that hard. And really, it wasn't.

One of my main gripes was making a custard from scratch. I had always wanted to just go and buy one, but I forgot to so I had to make one anyway. Once again, not that hard. Whisk some egg yolks, add some hot milk and then whisk some more.

The profiteroles themselves were also relatively easy. Melt butter and water together, add flour and cook it out. I knew this was an important stage because on MasterChef, Poh didn't cook her flour long enough which means the egg can't bind which gives you a too runny of a mixture that doesn't puff. So I made sure it was really cooked through before adding egg. Piping it onto the tray wasn't a problem either.

The biggest hurdle was filling them with the custard, and where I failed. At first I tried to do what I normally do to pipe, use a plastic sandwich bag but cut a corner out. However the bag wasn't stiff enough to be able to force the custard into the profiterole so that was a fail. Next I made a little piping bag out of baking paper, however that also failed because I think I put too much in the bag so it just burst out the top.

In the end, I just tried spooning them in but that didn't work either. So what I did was, and I am so very ashamed at this, sandwich them together with some custard, spoon some more over the top and then shame ate the whole lot. In my defence, it was only about 8 little profiterole sandwiches, not more than the size of a 20 cent coin. But still, it was a low moment.

What I couldn't help but notice was the taste of the profiterole. It was very eggy. I had never actually had one before but I'm sure they're not meant to be so eggy. And they weren't very sweet either, so I told myself to amp up the sugar next time, before I realised there was no sugar in them. So perhaps I'll have to look around for another recipe before I attempt the croquembouche on Sunday.

Nam Giao

2009-07-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of Sundays ago, I went along with my parents and some uncles and aunties to Springvale. We ate at this little Vietnamese restuarant that my uncle knew about. It's located just a street off the railway station and looks to be quite a little gem.

Vietnamese cuisine isn't my favourite but it is one I have plenty of exposure to. Of course there is the obvious pho and broken rice dishes, but past that, there is still plenty on offer. Rice paper rolls are definitely a favourite of mine. However whenever at a restaurant, I always order from the same section of the menu, the rice vermicilli section.

I have not ordered pho at a restaurant since my parents forced me to. So each time at a Viet restaurant, I go for the dry vermicillia noodles with fish sauce. I like to switch between chicken, pork and spring rolls, depending on whatever mood I'm in. On this occasion, I opted for pork, more specifically pork skewers.

NOw this little restaurant is apparently known for its Bún bò Huế, a spicy beef noodle soup, so everyone ordered it but my dad and me. For one of the few times in my life, my dish won.

To be honest, it's hard to screw up Viet food, especially my dish. All you have to do is cook the noodles, cook the pork and then throw on all the garnishes. And it was delicious. Each mouthful was a mixture of textures and flavours, maintaining you interest from first bite to last slurp. The silkiness from the noodles, the crunch of the peanuts and lettuce, the freshness of the mint and corriander, and the juiciness of the pork was all tied together by the subtly spicy and mellow sweetness and saltiness of the fish sauce.

I don't claim to have been to many Viet restaurants, but this is one of my favourites. There is only one I hate going to, Indochine in Box Hill, but mostly the rest are the same. This one just feels different. The decor was mostly wooden, it looked and felt so clean, and there so SO much room. None of this squeezing between tables to get to yours, only to set elbow to elbow with you fellow eaters. Here, the tables are all arranged around the walls which leaves ample space to get to your table and you don't have to worry about pulling your chair out too far or else you'll hit the person behind you.

So a good eat at a great price. All our dishes were a generous serving for only $8. The biggest downside is that it is in Springvale and chances are I'll never eat there again.

Nam Giao
4 Lightwood Road, Springvale
Price: Most rice and noodles dishes $8, some are $9

Claypot King

2009-07-07T20:00:00.001-07:00

After a wonderful win on Saturday, the team ventured once more to the city in search of food. The last time I went, we ate at that terrible "Italian" restaurant, so this time we went Asian. Deciding where to eat is always a very time consuming process so I did my best to hurry it along by agreeing with anything. After a lot of shouting, we made our way to Claypot King on Swanston.

It's a tiny little Chinese restaurant that specialises in claypot rice and sizzling noodle dishes, however they also serve a lot of other stuff. A group of 9 of us were seated at the back in a booth, so immediate points. The menus had a lot to choose from, definitely way too much to choose from. However you'd have to be slightly silly to go past what they claim they are kings at. Half of us ordered claypots and the other half ordered sizzling noodles.

Now I knew that although many restaurants serve claypots, very few of them cook them properly. A real claypot rice dish is cooked entirely in the claypot, so the flavours all develop with each other and around the bottom and the sides you get a beautiful, crunchy crust. However this takes time and some very large ovens (to put the claypots in), so many places take a short cut by cooking all the rice beforehand, putting it in the claypots and then just chucking those on the fire to get a little crust happening.

Unfortunately, this Claypot King was the latter. It was still a nice dish, I just want a geniune claypot for once. I ordered the beef in black pepper claypot, and it was intense. I never knew a black pepper sauce could be so spicy. It wasn't a chilli burn, it was as if all the taste buds had been wiped out and I couldn't feel a thing. Coupled with the actual heat of the rice, it made for a very intereseting experience. Although I couldn't taste that much, I really enjoyed eating it. There was a slight crust and I savoured every bit of it. The sizzling dishes were a sight to behold. When they were brought out, you could see the sauce bubbling and the sound was so enticing. I'm definitely getting one of them next time.

The restaurant had the typical Chinese restaurant feel to it, that is it was humming with activity. The service was very quick and reasonably good looking. The biggest flaw was when it came time to pay. For my claypot and an iced chocolate, I paid just under $15. That isn't a very large amount but for someone who doesn't earn any money but still eats out almost every week, it hurts. However I was well full and enjoyed it so you do get what you paid for. On the otherhand, some dishes were just outrageous. A friend ordered a plate of prawn wrapped in rice noodle rolls for $6! Three rolls! Six dollars! I've never paid for yum cha but that seems extreme to me. Drinks were also very expensive, my iced chocolate cost $3.80 while iced teas and coffees were $3.40 or thereabouts.

But every once in a while, spending a bit more for some good food is worth it. It was a good eat and a fantastic way to celebrate a win.

Claypot King
209 Swanston Street
Price: $9-10 for sizzling noodles, $10-11 for claypot rice, $3-4 for drinks. Desserts and smoothies $4-6. Also wide range of dumpling and yum cha dishes available

DC Noodle Shop

2009-07-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

My second restaurant review! And a happy one too.

The other night after futsal we went on the traditional food hunt and this time we found ourselves at David and Camy's Noodle House. It's a little Chinese restaurant in Box Hill (one in a million) that specialises in noodles and dumplings.

We had eight so we split into two booths. I love a booth seat, it absolutely beats the pants off the constricting regime of chairs. Our table of four actually ordered quite a lot because we were well starved, we got 3 plates of dumplings (two friend and one steamed), a bowl of seafood soup and some Shanghai mini-buns.

The dumplings were alright. The fried ones seemed deep fried which is different to what I was expecting, in my experience they are just pan fried so they crisp up on the bottom and then get a bit chewy. And even though they were deep fried, they weren't too oily like you get in normal fried dumplings. I talk so much about the outside because the inside wasn't that spectacular. We may have gotten bang for our buck in terms of quantity, but definitely not quality. The dumplings and buns were clearly from the freezer. The soup consisted of a fish broth with vegetables and pieces of seafood through it. It wasn't bad, the broth had a lot of flavour in it's nice to eat whole prawns and big chunks of fish.

The atmosphere was fantastic though. The restaurant is small and bordering on cramped which made the place look like a beehive, but all that did was increase its attractiveness. On a Wednesday night, the place was packed out. The only downside is that the further you get away from the main dining area and closer to the kitchen, you begin to get a little worried because from the outside, the kitchen looks like it wouldn't pass a health inspection., but isn't that typical of most small asian restaurants?

The service was a little lacking. With only two or three waiters to serve a full restaurant, the most face time we were given was a plonking down of the menus, a quick scribble of our order and the plonking down of plates, none of which was done with a smile. The good thing was the waiters were easily to get a hold of so we could add to our order without having to send a smoke signal.

When it came time to pay up, we were not disappointed. The four of us ran up a bill of $38, and the other table $40. We all ordered lots and ate a lot so it was a reasonable deal. Overall, thumbs up.

David and Camy's Noodle Shop
605 Station Street, Box Hill 3128
Price: Plate of dumplings with anywhere between eight and 15 dumplings ranges usually $7 or $8. I didn't look anywhere else, but reasonable prices all round.
Open: All week during reasonable hours

Crap Italian restaurant whose name escapes me

2009-06-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

I realised recently that I'm starting to become a food snob. I used to not mind eating at anywhere, thinking that all food was either tasty or just not to my liking. Things however are starting to change. As I learn more about food, I begin to realise what is good, and more importantly, what is bad.

The other week, I was at an Italian restaurant in the city with some friends from soccer, and it has to be one of the worst restaurants I've been to in recent memory. We all saw the signs, we were just hoping that we would be pleasantly surprised.

To start with, the restaurant was located ontop of a Thai restaurant, and may have even be run by the same people. It wasn't a bad place to sit in, we got a booth seat and it was reasonably quiet but relaxed too. There were also some asian girls on a table not far from us so that was a slight plus, but they weren't good enough to raise the standard of the recipe.

Ok getting sidetracked. When the food came, things didn't get a great deal better. I ordered a tortellini I think with chicken in a cream sauce. At first I was just happy to eat something because I was well starved. My tortellini was mostly tasteless and tasted a store bought. I still don't know what they were filled with. The chicken was cut up into tiny little cubes and even then they were dry. And the sauce was woeful, it just tasted like cream and a bit of cheese. It didn't stop there. Tom Wu's chicken parma was way overcooked to the point of being dry and stringy and the same went for Duc's chicken... something. Twang and Nelson's lasagne looked plain wrong. It was a reasonably sized square absolutely smothered in a bolognaise sauce, which confused me because it looked like the sauce wasn't from the lasagne, but just another pot. When you serve a lasagne, you want to be able to see the top and the slight browning of the white sauce. The bolognaise also smelled really tomato-y. It didn't look appetizing.

The best dish of the night seemed to be Jono La's pizza. It was a thin crust pizza that had a very appropriate amount of toppings on it. I don't know how it tasted but it certainly didn't look disappointing.

Sadly for them, the highlight was the waitress who served us. She was polite, friendly and generally a pleasure to be around. There was also a point where everyone on the table and her cracked up laughing, but that's too long (and not that interesting) of a story to go into.

Kiwi cookie

2009-06-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

My mum keeps buying me kiwi fruit so I keep trying to bake with it. Sure, it'd be easier just to eat the kiwi fruit but then it'd be over so quickly, and so much more boring. This way I get to have some fun with it.

This time I tried a kiwi fruit cookie, as opposed to the kiwi shortbread I tried early, it tasted quite nice. The kiwi flavour really came through and I was very happy.

The most disappointing thing was the cookie recipe I used. It makes a very cakey cookie, that is it's soft and quite light. Hopefully I can find one that makes a crunchier cookie that can hold its shape better.

Mash potato

2009-06-09T03:48:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite things from Western cuisine is mash potatoes. For me, the potatoes are always the most interesting part of a meal because they can be done in so many ways. Deep fried, shallow fried, baked, boiled or whatever (I believe there are also no more ways of cooking a potato)!

Mash is one of the simplest ways to eat potato, but also so yummy. A good mash is light, fluffy, smooth and delicious. In the early years, I'd try to make mash but I was not able to get any of those four. Just using the simple masher, large chunks of potato would be left. I was still pretty terrible at seasoning and it would remain bland. However now with some experience behind me, I believe I can make some kick-ass mash.

The method I use was learnt from watching the French cuisine episode of Food Safari. It was such an amazing recipe that I couldn't wait to use it, and when I did it turned out fabulous.

It is simple and complex at the same time. Basically what you do is boil some potatoes, and then pass them through a sieve instead of mashing. This produces a much finer mash which makes it so amazingly smooth. The finer the sieve, the smoother your mash. After going through the sieve, you return it to the pot and back on the heat. Just keep stirring pretty vigorously until you see steam come out, and then stir for a bit longer. Basically what you want is to evapourate the water off.

After you've had enough (or got tired), beat in some hot milk, almost on the point of boiling, and some cold butter. How much you put in is up to you, but you want a really light mixture. It's hard to say how much you need as it all depends on how much potato you have. But I think the more butter you put in, the less milk you need as they both attribute to creaminess, it's just that butter has a bit more flavour (and fat). All the beating incorporates air into the mash so you get that fluffiness. Then season to taste.

When you taste it, you'll be amazed at how different it is to just using a masher and chucking in some butter and milk. It is my favourite mash recipe and I shall use it to the day I die. It is a bit of extra effort with the sieve and a lot of beating but well worth it.

Raspberry slice: Fail

2009-06-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

I believe in the industry, they call that an epic fail.

The puff pastry was much too crispy/hard and the cream was probably not sweet enough. It was an absolute bitch to try and cut and it didn't even taste that nice.

So we'll chalk that down as a fail, with no second chance. But heck, we live to learn.

The first taste

2009-06-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love most about cooking is following a recipe. Generally I really like to follow instructions, however that doesn't necessarily mean I'm very good at it. I'll read and re-read the recipe until I almost know it off by heart. And then I think I do so I end up cooking without it, but I forget half the steps. So either I'm constantly referring back to the recipe or I end up winging it.

At the same time, there is no better feeling than imagining your own recipe and then seeing it work perfectly. Of course, unless you are some sort of culinary genius/beast, inventing your own recipe from scratch is nigh impossible. And for such a beginner cook like myself, the best plan of attack is to take an existing recipe and adapt it to your own needs and wants. Recently I've been trying to do exactly that.

The first thing I really tried was a kiwi fruit shortbread. In my mind, the dough would take up the vibrant green colour and also the distinctive twang we all know and love. In reality, the dough did not take up even the tiniest bit of green, and it was only a very subtle kiwi flavour at the end of the palate.

The main problem was how I actually introduced kiwi into the dough. I wasn't quite prepared to cut back on butter or egg to allow for more ekiwi, but at the same time I didn't want to the dough to get too wet. In the end the dough was very wet and I added at least another quarter cup of flour to balance it out.

The second thing I've tried to invent is some sort of slice. It's in the same vein as a vanilla slice, in that it is a filling sandwiched between sheets of puff pastry. The filling is just whipped cream and a raspberry coulis, it's not as strong in taste as I would have wanted but we'll just have to see how the final product is. Tonight will be the true test.