kitchendecanted

Some eating experiences have to be written about no matter how busy work, no matter what is distracting you on tv and no matter how lazy you are.

                 

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Sashimi_at_Masuya_tagSydney_Re.zip (10002 KB)

So it’s been a quiet few weeks on Kitchen Decanted.   This was mainly due to assorted technical difficulties while visiting Europe and also a little bit of laziness on my part.  The reason that there was no blog build up to the trip is that it was a surprise for Weepix’s mum’s birthday. Her other half knew we were coming but our arrival was a complete surprise.

Who cares about technical difficulties though?  All the foodie pleasures of Tuscany, Barcelona, southern Spain and Edinburgh need to be reported.  So here we go.

Now that the trip is but a distant memory I can fill you folks in on the details.

First stop was a week in San Gimigiano, which is situated in the hills of Tuscany just outside Florence.  Following this we headed up to Milan (where a woman in her 60’s tried to seduce me) and we caught the night train to Barcelona.  We had a wee cabin with beds and a toilet and everything.  It was very James Bond……if James Bond travelled in cramped train cabins that have seen better days. We only had one day and night in Barcelona, but we crammed every spare second with food and wine.  From Barcelona it was quick hop down to Malaga and then a long drive up into the mountains north of Gibraltar where my folks run a guest house.  Despite a day in bed with a horrible cold we ate and drank to excess….chorizo, rioja, iberico jamon, manchego….it was a good few days

After a week at my folks place we headed off back home to Edinburgh to catch up with family and friends, before heading back to Sydney via London and Singapore.  It was a busy few weeks.

First stop in Italy after catching the train from Milan to Florence was the town of Poggi Bonsi on the way to San Gimigiano.  What’s the first thing you do when you get to Italy?  You have a pizza of course.  Not that pizza is very Tuscan, but we’d been travelling for about thirty four hours at this point and could not be trusted with cutlery.  And it was great!  A perfect thin base with a nice crunch was smothered with tasty tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella, anchovies and salami.  Throw in a carafe of perfectly lovely local wine for about €3 and I was starting to feel a little more human by the end of it.

As luck would have it there was a little food market right beside the restaurant and this was where we found our first truly Tuscan food offering:  truffles.  There was truffle butter, truffle sauce, truffle crostini topping, truffle salami and, of course, huge piles of actual truffles.  I’ve never had real truffle in an unadulterated form before so I wasn’t about to pass this up.  I bought two small black truffles each the size of a large marble for €10.  And this was mere hours after landing!  What a place.

Truffles are big business in Tuscany.  The best truffle locations are jealously (and I’m told violently) protected from other hunters and passed down through the generations.  The truffles in this region tend to be black and of two varieties; Black Perigord and Black Summer.  Most Italian white truffles are from Piedmont to the north and are much more expensive.  I didn’t know it at the time but I’d bought two Black Summer truffles, which have a subtler flavour and aroma.

I figured there was really only one way to eat your first ever truffles and that is to grate them fresh onto scrambled eggs.

The flavour of the summer truffles really was quite subtle and didn’t have much of the distinct truffliness I was after.  They were tasty, but I suspect I’m going to have to save up and get hold of some of those white ones at some point. 

           

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Truffles_In_Tuscany_tag_Holida.zip (9078 KB)

I worked in a burger restaurant located in a shopping centre food court when I was fifteen.  It was called Donny’s Diner and was kitted out like a 50’s American diner, complete with red faux leather booths and a jukebox at every table.  It had character.  Fake character for sure, but character none the less.  The food however was garbage.  I can say that unequivocally as it was me who cooked it.   I started out waiting tables, graduated to fries and buns and then, following the ‘chef’ (the owner’s grumpy brother) storming out in the middle of a busy Saturday shift, I got my hands on the grill……by which I mean big flat hot plate.

I flipped thousands of burgers that summer.  We did all the standard burger fare in addition to ‘glamorous’ burgers covered with chilli, Dianne sauce, peppercorn sauce.  I was also responsible for making these sauces, which I did without the first clue as to what was involved.  I shudder to think what we served up.

What has this got to do with the Grand Burger Showdown?  I’m glad you asked.  I suspect that the latest burger under the microscope was cooked by the same method I used to use at Donny’s Diner.  All the burgers at Donny’s were half cooked first thing in the morning, refrigerated and then finished off on the hot plate as the orders came in.  We got through several hundred burgers a day and this was seen as the most efficient way to manage the checks.  Now I don’t know for sure but I’d place a fairly sizable bet that my Pulse burger went through the same process. 

Pulse is a tiny little hole in the wall on Kent Street that has a huge turnover every lunch time.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place without a queue out into the street.  And the food is great!  They have a full burger range and some fantastic salads.  The Moroccan Salmon salad is one of my very favourite lunch time dishes and the organic chicken burger is huge and very tasty. 

For the burger challenge I picked one of the weekly specials – the Jalapeño Burger.  It clocked in at a hefty $11 and stacked up like this:

• Wholemeal bun
• The fairly small organic beef burger
• Jalapeños – and they had a kick!
• Caramelised onions
• Swiss cheese
• Gherkins
• Capsicum salsa
• Lettuce, tomato and aioli

First the good news:

The complete package is damn tasty.  The jalapenos have a real kick and the onions and capsicum salsa give it a great sweet and sour edge.   As I’ve said before I love wholemeal buns with burgers and this one is no exception.  The heat built as I ate but was never overwhelming.  All in all it would have been better without the actual burger.

The bad news was the burger itself.  For a start it was pretty small.  The taste wasn’t unpleasant as such but the burger was as dry as Oscar Wilde’s wit.  The texture was mealy and, when I took a bite, it didn’t come apart like a burger ought to.  It wasn’t good and it came with a texture and appearance I’m all too familiar with.  The burger did arrive in about six or seven minutes and I suppose that’s part of the price for fast food.  I’d just rather be given the option to wait a bit longer.

The overall flavour was miles better than the Big Mac, but then it should be at three times the price and the flavour was more to do with the accoutrements than the burger. 

It’s a damn shame because Pulse has always been better than this in the past.  If you’re in the neighbourhood then it’s well worth a visit to grab a s alad or a chicken burger, just maybe steer clear of the burgers during busy lunch periods.

Four down, one to go.

       

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The_Burger_Challange_-_Round_F.zip (4007 KB)

When Weepix and I decided that we were going to move to Australia our first choice of new home was Melbourne……stay with me Sydneysiders, for my story gets better.  Neither of us had ever been to Australia so we had no personal experience to draw upon.  When we consulted friends and various internet forums both cities got a great write up.  Both cities are often judged to be in the ‘Top Ten Cities’ in the world with regard quality of life.  Sydney is more beautiful people said.  Sydney has better weather said others.  You’ll get paid more in Sydney some suggested.  Melbourne has better food said most.

Melbourne it was then.

I’m not being flippant here.  Ultimately the decision to go for Melbourne over Sydney was made purely on the basis that we’d heard better things about the food in Melbourne.  Folk said that coffee was better, the café culture was more prominent and that Melburnians just simply cared more about their food.  When you’re making a blind move to the other side of the world you need to get your priorities straight.

As it turns out I was offered a job in Sydney and not Melbourne.  And you know, for a little while we were slightly disappointed by that.  Seems crazy, but we’d formed a bond with Melbourne based on restaurant reviews, foodie websites and reports of the Queen Victoria Market.  We hadn’t invested that time in Sydney.

Well we’re eighteen months in now and I’ve not been to Melbourne yet, but it would have to be truly sensational to trump the foodie experiences that Sydney has offered to date. 

The food here is cheap and of an extremely high standard.  The first time I bought a leg of lamb for $20 I nearly fainted.  It cost that in pounds back home (and it wasn’t as good).  We’ve gone from eating out maybe once a week at home to eating out two or three times a week here.  And why not when a good Thai meal in Sydney is about a third of the price we used to pay at home?  The range of cuisine is incredible; within five minutes walk of our apartment we’ve got Thai, Spanish, French, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, Greek, German, Japanese, Vietnamese, Modern Aussie, Mexican, Chinese, American…the list goes on.  With several of these cuisines, Japanese for example, we have a choice of five or six places within walking distance.  Good job too as we both love Japanese food and in Edinburgh it’s a) rare b) crap and c) expensive. 

(I feel bad reading this first bit back as I’m painting a pretty bleak picture of back home.  That’s not my intention as the standard of food in Edinburgh can be extremely high; it’s just that when it is the price tends to be too.  We don’t seem to have the knack of providing high quality food for a reasonable price in Scotland.  That’s sad as the produce available is fantastic.)

Anyway, I’m going to start writing a bit more about my food experiences in Sydney as there have been loads of recipes of late and not a lot else.  To kick us off I’m going to wax lyrical about Japanese food and particularly nabemono, which is better known as Japanese Hot Pot and is one of my favourite discoveries since moving to Sydney.  It comes in a few different varieties but the basic idea is a big pot of tasty stock to which you add veggies, tofu, noodles and meat. 

The other night we went to Dontack, a little place just up the road.  We ordered the sushi and sashimi platter ($19.50) and a Sukiyaki hot pot for two ($35). 

The sushi and sashimi are great as always.  The sashimi (salmon and kingfish) is fresh as can be and the sushi is delicate with a good proportion of fish to rice.  A bit of wasabi and soy and it’s all good.  This is the sort of sushi and sashimi that would have had me dancing with joy 18 months ago and now I just accept it as par for the course.  How quickly we adapt.

The nabemono is why we’re here though.  The sweet sukiyaki stock is a mix of soy sauce, sugar and mirin and comes with a huge platter of thinly sliced beef. The big cast iron stock pot arrives at the table already stuffed full of veggies, noodles, tofu and the stock and is sat on top of a little portable gas burner.  Now we have to sit and wait as the stock starts to bubble and the veggies cook down a little.  The smell is so incredible that the wait is a real challenge, but as the veggies are raw and the pot stuffed to bursting point waiting is the only option available.

After ten maddening minutes, when there is a little room, the first few slices of beef are tucked into the stock alongside the veg.  It doesn’t take long to cook and is soon fished out and dipped into a little bowl of raw egg before being eagerly scoffed.

This moment right here is what makes the wait worth it. 

The taste of the beef, sweet stock and raw egg is, and I pick my word carefully, sensational.  The egg is rich and buttery in direct contrast to the savoury beef and the delicious sweetness of the stock.  It’s a hell of a combination.  Dig into some noodles and veg and then it’s time for more beef.  At this point I realise we’re eating in almost total silence.  Not in an uncomfortable way, we’re just both completely absorbed in the ritual in front of us.  That’s a sure sign of good food.

It’s a wonderful way to eat and, when you’re not staring in silence into the depths of the stock pot, very social.  Despite the large amount of food we left feeling sated as opposed to stuffed and that has to be the best way to end a nice meal.

                   

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Japanese_Hotpot_at_Dontack_tag.zip (10205 KB)

If I’m being totally honest; this is the one I was looking forward too.  I was determined to still judge it on its merits, but how could a foodie not be excited by the prospect of a 600 day grain fed Wagyu beef burger?

Wagyu is not something you see much of in the UK, well, not outside London anyway.  I’ve been reliably informed that it’s starting to creep onto menus here and there, but it’s at UK prices plus a premium.  When I first arrived in Sydney I was stunned to find that you can buy it pretty much anywhere.  It’s available in every butcher I’ve been to and it features on at least eighty percent of the menus I get my hands on.

First time I tried it was at the Japanese place just up the road (another thing that is wonderful about Sydney is the sheer number of good Japanese restaurants.  Edinburgh has two).  I was expecting some tasty beef but not prepared for the taste sensation that ensued.

Wagyu is special.  Not special in that ‘foodie’ ‘oh it’s tastes of rainbows and honeysuckle pixies’ way, but really properly special.  It has a higher percentage of monounsaturated fats than normal beef and yet it manages to taste like it’s been dipped in butter.  It’s rich, velvety and smooth.

But does it make a good burger?

Yep.  Damn skippy it does.

It was a sunny afternoon so we, me and five hungry colleagues, phoned in an order for six Wagyu burgers.  Happily Plan B is just over the road and right next to a nice little garden, which is a bit of a rarity in the city centre.  It’s a perfect place for lunch on a sunny day.  The burgers are a bargain at $10 a pop. 

Twenty minutes after picking up the phone we went and collected our burgers and headed for a spot in the sun.

The burgers aren’t huge.  That’s a good thing.  They are a decent size and the burger is almost round, like a mini cricket ball.  It comes on a toasted brioche with a thin slice of cheddar, some lettuce, pickled beetroot, caramelised onions and a dollop of mayonnaise. 

The full recipe can be found here – make your own Wagyu Burgers.

The wagyu has great depth of flavour.  One of my colleagues, Tom, mentioned it had a bit of a clove flavour to it, which I agree with, but they are nowhere in the recipe.   The beetroot is quite subtle and the onion is sweet and adds a little sharp twang. The bun works really well, providing a bit of sweetness and yet it’s lighter than a normal bun and doesn’t overwhelm the wagyu.  Nothing could overwhelm the wagyu.  As I bite into it the fat runs down my chin.  I can’t help but grin.  It’s rich, filling and spicy. 

Even a strong black coffee back at the office doesn’t quite cut through the fat coating my mouth.

I asked the guys to rate the burgers out of ten taking only flavour into account as much as possible.

Dom – 9/10 – needs to be bigger! 

Tom 1 – 7/10 – Not bad, better than the last one.  Tastes a bit ‘clovey’ and could do with being bigger.

Simon – 7/10 – Tasty but not as good as the burgers at Silks.

Matt – 8/10 – Liked the sweet buns, but I suspect he just wanted to say ‘sweet buns’ a lot.  Wanted a sausage roll when we were done.  Fat git.

Tom 2 – 7/10 – Bun a bit soggy but otherwise not bad.  Could be bigger.

And what did I think?  Well it was better than the Big Mac!  Big surprise, eh? It really was though.  Admittedly it’s twice the price but it’s also easily  an<script type="> ced/langs/en.js?1254614361" type="text/javascript"> twice the burger.  It looks nice for one thing.  The ingredients are quality, which means they are starting from a position of strength straight away, but I think the real difference is that a bit of effort has been put into it.  The Big Mac was relatively inoffensive fuel; it’ll keep you alive....probably.  The wagyu burger was to be savoured (although not at the speed Dom ate his!).

Sorry if it’s a bit predictable but that’s the way it goes sometimes.  The wagyu burger is going to be tough to beat.

       

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The_Grand_Burger_Challange_-_R.zip (2015 KB)

Ok, so there is definitely a bit of a food snob in me.

It wasn’t an especially auspicious start though!  I was genuinely feeling a bit odd as I walked down towards the McDonalds near my flat.  This is a place I pass every morning and the smell of frying oil hits you like a shovel when you get within twenty metres.  This is not a smell I find especially pleasant, especially at 7.30am.  Regardless I soldier on, I’m not here for the smell; I’m here for the taste.

And so apparently are the pigeons.  It was like a Daphne du Maurier short story.  One member of staff was standing legs together, feet out in a v-shape, desperately trying to stop a very determined pigeon from running into the kitchen.  This bird just kept right there at his feet, darting back and forward trying to find a way through.  The guy was sweeping at it with his feet, strongly encouraging it back into the quad area, but the bird was having none of it.  Eventually it slipped past him and darted under one of the units.  They laughed.  I cried.

I asked for a Big Mac and a medium fries (the fries I recall being the main reason for actually going to McDonalds), and handed over $6.35.  So there is no denying that this is a cheap lunch, however this is Sydney, a city that excels in providing a good lunch for relatively little money.  For 35 cents less I could have bought three large sushi rolls with tempura prawns.  This would have to be a pretty good burger and fries to represent real value for money.

Carrying that McDonalds up the road I felt as if I was clutching a bag with ‘Big Frank’s Quality Second Hand Sex Aids’ emblazoned across the side (no offence Frank, it’s a fine shop you have).  That is food snobbery my friends. 

As Weepix sat on the couch looking at me with utter disgust I opened up the bag and retrieved my lunch. 

They say the first bite is with the eye.  Good job that’s not true because this burger looked like shit.  I know it’s a cliché, but if they could make them even vaguely resemble the photo on the sign that would help.  This looks like crap.

I’m not here for appearances though.  Snails look pretty grim and I love them. 

So here goes.  My first McDonalds burger in about 20 years…….

And it’s not that bad.  The first taste is the overwhelming flavour provided by the ‘special sauce’, it drowns everything else out.  Then you get pickle and burger bun.  The bun is almost as sweet as a brioche and kind of collapses into mush in your mouth.  Honestly I don’t really get much beef taste at all on the first bite.  Second bite is more of the same but I must have got more of the patties as there is a slight beefy flavour in there too.

As a bit of an experiment I break off a bit of bun with ‘special sauce’ on it and cover it with pickle.  When I eat this it’s almost exactly the same taste as the whole burger.  It would seem that the beef is almost superfluous when it comes to Big Macs.

The one thing I really struggle with is the ‘cheese’.  This stuff is absolutely revolting.  It tastes like warm dairylee.  I know that’s what I should have expected but I can’t handle it.  This is not cheese.

Just as an aside, the fries are also a surprise.  I remember them as crunchy golden sticks of salty goodness, and instead they are pale, limp sticks of salty crapness.  The only two things they have going for them are they are hot and salty.  So is salt on toast.  I’m very disappointed with the fries.

So the burger wasn’t that bad.  The ‘cheese’ was repellent and the beef wasn’t really present, but it didn’t taste revolting.  It wasn’t particularly great either and I am sitting here with a dull stomach ache about 20 minute minutes after my last bite.  I can also still taste and feel the grease from the chips in my mouth despite several glasses of water. 

The thing that really struck me is that it’s not really about food; it’s about acceptable fuel.  Buying it didn’t feel like ordering something to eat, it just felt like making a transaction.  One of the most seductive parts of dining out is the expectation having ordered and there was none here.  Obviously I didn’t expect there to be, this is a different type of dining experience, but it did make me wonder ‘what’s the point’.

What I eat is really important to me as it brings me enormous pleasure.  I’m planning lunch at breakfast and dinner at lunch.  I don’t view it as something to get over and done with as quickly as possible so I can get back to the ‘important stuff’.  Eating is the important stuff.

To be fair to McDonalds that is exactly how they advertise their food and I’ve probably been a bit unfair to them.  I struggle with the idea that people don’t care about what they eat.  I think most people find that with things they particularly care about.  I have judged people eating in McDonalds in the past as ‘food morons’ with not a single collective taste bud between them, when in fact they probably just don’t consider it to be that big a deal.  Fair enough say I.

So it was a cathartic experience all in all.  The Big Mac wasn’t very good all in all but the only thing that actually tasted bad was the cheese.  The rest of it was just a bit synthetic and the surprisingly un-beefy.  I won’t be picking up another one anytime soon but I also won’t be judging those that do……

…..not much anyway ;)

             

Click here to download:

The_Grand_Burger_Challange_-_R.zip (3216 KB)

It’s a grey day in Sydney folks.  A chilly twenty degrees (as a man born and bred in Edinburgh I never thought I’d make that statement), lots of low cloud and the threat of rain.  Perfect.

Perfect?  Let me clarify; I left the UK to get away from the endless grey, but there must be something genetic in me that requires it every so often.  Growing up in Scotland instilled in me an almost panic like response to sunshine ‘Quick!  Sun!  Let’s get out there and use it’.  I brought this to Sydney with me where the frequency of the sunshine means it’s hard to take it easy sometimes.  So a grey day is the perfect excuse to do nothing.  Kick back, watch a movie and, of course, plan an evening meal.

The greyness of the day naturally steers my thoughts toward something hearty and warming for dinner.  This is a bit of a novelty after a long summer of salads, seafood and simple light dishes. 

Deciding is half the fun of course, so the cook books come out and the browsing begins.  Nothing is catching my eye though; don’t fancy Indian, don’t want a roast, can’t be bothered with Bolognese (although it’s a close call). 

Then I remember a recipe for Harira Soup in an old edition of Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine and its case closed; a big steaming bowl of spiced lamb with pulses and vegetables, scooped up onto warm chunks of Afghan bread and eaten with generous dollops of tzatziki ticks all the boxes.

It’s one of those dishes that’s a pleasure to spend some time making.  Lots of chopping and measuring and then a satisfying process of combining ingredients as the smell of spices and lamb mingleA.

I’ve altered a few things in the recipe below and it’s a dish that is fairly robust to tinkering.  This makes enough for six hungry people.

The Means

For the soup:

• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 onions – finely chopped
• 2 celery stalks – de-stringed and finely chopped
• 2 carrots – peeled and finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic – can you guess?  That’s right, finely chopped
• 500g leg of lamb cut into 1-2cm chunks. 
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp ground turmeric
• 2 tsp sweet paprika
• 1 or 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp tomato paste
• 1 litre of chicken of veggie stock
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes or 4 or 5 chopped fresh tomatoes
• 1 tin of chickpeas
• 120g lentils – rinsed
• Flat leaf parsley, fresh coriander and a lemon to serve.

For the tzatziki:

• Natural yogurt
• A cucumber
• 1 clove of garlic
• Some salt flakes
• Optional lemon, dill, mint, parsley….anything else you think might work

It looks like a lot, but if you take out the spices it’s just a bit of lamb, some veggies and a tin of chick peas.  Recipes like this, and a dozen others I can think of off the top of my head, are one reason it’s worthwhile to invest in a decent spice cupboard.  Once you have the spices sorted the rest is easy.

The Method

• Heat the oil in a large pan.  Add the onions, celery and carrots and sauté for about 5 minutes until soft.
• Add the garlic and the lamb and sauté for a further 5 minutes until the lamb is browned.
• Add the cumin, turmeric, paprika, cinnamon, bay leaves and tomato paste and stir well, coating the lamb with the soice mixture.
• Add the stock, bring to the boil and then cover and simmer over a low heat.

Let it simmer for about an hour.  When the lamb is tender and cooked it’s done.

• Add the tomatoes, chickpeas and lentils and cook for a further 30 mins.  Add a bit mo re water if it’s getting too thick.

Add the seasoning when it’s done and serve it with chopped parsley and coriander and a lemon quarter.  It’s great with warm fat breads and cool, creamy tzatziki.

To make the tzatziki simply grate the garlic clove into the yogurt, add the chopped chunks of cucumber and some salt.  The other stuff is up to you. 

Wine:

We opened a 2007 House of Straw Shiraz from Piggs Peake in the Hunter Valley with this.  I have a soft spot for Piggs Peake as it was the first place that I ever got to do some barrel tasting.  Luckily they also make cracking wine. 

The House of Straw is a beautiful purple colour and has a nose of blackcurrant and brown sugar with a little bit of liquorice hiding at the back.  The blackcurrant follows through to the palate nicely and there is definitely a bit of stewed plum and rhubarb.  It’s a great bottle for $26.

                 

Click here to download:

Harira_Soup_tag_Recipe_Morocca.zip (5152 KB)

It’s strange that after years of complaining about the bleak, Scottish weather, now that we find ourselves in almost perpetual sunshine, it turns out that I miss the cold.  The clocks have gone back here in Sydney and, whereas back home this would mean markedly darker evenings and thoughts turning to casseroles, clementines and Christmas, on this side of the world it happens in April.  There’s no anticipation of the crunch of frost underfoot or the first flurry of snowflakes.  No digging out the winter woollies and adjusting the central heating timer.  It’s still warm enough to go to the beach but it might be a tad cold in the sea.  This Southern-Hemisphere living takes some getting used to…

To allay the sudden feelings of homesickness brought about by reading Nigel Slater’s excellent  ‘The Kitchen Diaries’, I decide to make a crumble.  The aroma of apples baking under a sweet blanket of sugar, butter and flour can do nothing but alleviate the symptoms and soothe the soul.

The last few times I have made crumble, the filling has been dense and sticky but a little lacking in juices for my liking.  This time I decide to mix in a large handful of the blueberries lying hitherto forgotten in the back of the freezer.  Their deep purple oozings mix rather prettily with the pale apple flesh. I am under strict instructions from Pete to make the crumble extra thick (it’s his favourite part), but you may feel you want more of a dusting than a drift.  Ordinarily I would serve this with a dollop of crème fraîche (a steal at only $15 a tub from David Jones food hall), but I settle for good vanilla ice-cream instead. 

5 Granny Smith apples (or any other apple you fancy)

Generous handful of berries, fresh or frozen (optional)

150g unsalted butter (cold)

1 tsp baking powder

170g plain flour

About 5 dessert spoons of caster sugar (if it’s vanilla sugar then all for the better)

1 dessert spoon brown or Demerara sugar for the top (optional)

Vanilla ice-cream or (wickedly) fresh whipped cream to serve

I peel, core and chop the apples before tossing them in a saucepan with about 40g of the butter, and sprinkle a generous 2 tablespoons of the caster sugar over the top.  I’m miffed that I no longer have a jar of vanilla sugar sitting on my counter; it’s so handy whenever vanilla essence is called for in a recipe.  Get one of those large glass jars with the rubber seal, fill it with caster sugar, fling in a slightly bruised vanilla pod or two and you’re away.  Just keep topping up the sugar as you use it – it only takes a couple of days to infuse.  Oh, and you’ll need to shake it from time to time.

Anyway, I cook down the apples in their buttery juices for about 7 minutes (I like them smooshy in crumble) and then fling in the blueberries and give a gentle stir until all is vibrant.  I tip this into an available deep pie dish and set about making the crumble.  The remaining butter is cubed and added to the flour and baking powder in a bowl and then rubbed lightly between thumb and forefingers to create ‘breadcrumbs’.  I vaguely recall doing this in a food processor and it working equally as well, but today it’s therapeutic to stand massaging the ingredients for a while.  Not to mention the fact that the food processor is still back in the UK.  Three scant tablespoons of caster sugar get mixed into the crumbs and then all gets scattered on top of the filling.  The brown sugar can be added to the top to give a final crust, but sometimes I find that it’s sweet enough already.  It’s all a matter of taste.  Bake in the oven at 190 C for about 35 minutes.  The result?  Comfort food extraordinaire! 

           

Click here to download:

Apple_Crumble_and_Thoughts_of_.zip (3494 KB)

*Trumpet fanfare*

That’s right folks; Round 1 of The Grand Burger Challenge is complete.

The first contender for the crown is my own homemade beef burger.  I decided to go with my own first as I was in a burgery kind of mood, had all the stuff sitting there ready to go and I love making them.  I like the tactile side of it, all the chopping and mixing and then shaping.  It’s fun.  The quality of the end result usually rises proportionally to how much effort you put into it and you can bung in pretty much whatever you fancy and see how it goes.

Obviously this time it was deadly serious though so I stuck with the following; 

The Burger Mix:

• Roughly 500g beef mince from the local butcher
• Onion – finely chopped
• Parsley – coarsely chopped
• Between ¼ and ½ a teaspoon of ground cumin and coriander
• A generous pinch of chilli flakes
• A couple of pinches of salt
• A few twists of black pepper

I quite often put a teaspoon of mustard and chopped gherkin into the mix, but I left it out this time.

No great shakes or tricks here, it’s just a case of getting the lot in a bowl, mixing it by hand and squashing it into patties about an inch think and the size of a coaster.

I fired up the barbecue (gas grill really) and left it to heat up to about 275°C, which is pretty much as hot as it gets, the idea being to try and sear the outside of the patty as quickly as possible to keep the inside all juicy.  The temperature drops pretty fast when you lift the lid so you gotta be quick!

While the barbecue/grill was heating up I prepped the buns.  Now I can see you shaking your head at the fact that I chose to use brown wholemeal buns and not traditional burger buns.  I like both, but I find the wholemeal buns add a nice malty flavour and really soak up the juice from the burgers, so I tend to prefer them. 

The bun base was spread with mayo and a few layers of lettuce (crunchy and floppy stuff) and some gherkins sliced length ways were added.  The top of the bun got a generous squirt of ketchup.

As soon as the barbecue was hot enough the burgers and some sliced onions went on the grill, the lid was shut and the fantastic smells started to build up.  I must have left them for about 3-4 minutes each side as they were pretty thick.  The smell really was incredible; a thick meaty aroma spiced with cumin and roasted onion. 

The smell is neither here nor there if the burger is useless though, right?  So how did they turn out?

First the good; I managed to get the seasoning really well balanced, better than I ever have before.  The cumin wasn’t overpowering and brought a real depth of flavour to the meat, and there was a very slight build of chilli as we ate.  The pickles were nice and tart and the onions sweet, sticky and slightly burnt.  The buns were indeed malty and held together well.  The burnt bits on the outside of the burger were glorious.

Unfortunately the burgers were slightly over done.  They were very slightly pink in the middle but I usually like my burgers medium and they definitely lost some of their juiciness.  It’s a damn shame, but these things happen.  The parsley didn’t really add much with all those other flavours around but it does look nice.

So overall it was a good burger experience but it didn’t change my life or anything.  I was secretly hoping for burger juice dripping off my chin and a ‘perfect hamburger’ moment, but it was not meant to be.

Not sure if it’ll be enough to win but it’s set a reasonably high bench mark.

         

Click here to download:

The_Grand_Burger_Challange_-_R.zip (2468 KB)

What a beautiful day it was today; blue sky, temperature in the high twenties and a nice breeze.  Perfect day for…..the beach?  Nope.  Perfect day for wandering about in Surry Hills and visiting various foodie outlets.

I was out last night at the free Bertie Blackman gig at the Wharf restaurant and may have had one or two more glasses of wine than was strictly necessary.  It was that sort of night.  Still, we were enjoying the Ben Glatzer Dolcetto and all good things come at a price.

So, when Weepix and I arrived in Surry Hills this morning I was in rather urgent need of coffee and baked goods.  To that end, the first place we stopped was Taste on Foveaux Street.

There was a host of pastries, bread and cakes on offer but I can rarely look past pain au chocolat in the mornings and the ones on offer here looked particularly good.  Complimented by a long black for me and a pot of peppermint tea for Weepix and we were in business.

The long back was grand but the pain au chocolat was a tad disappointing – it had a nice flaky crust and chocolate was good, but the inside was too dense.  Tear off a bit of the inside and squash it and you ended up with a little lump of white dough.  I guess they needed a little longer in the oven.

After an hour or so of wandering it was time for some proper lunch so we headed over to Bird Cow Fish.

The menu is cracking and I pretty much wanted everything on it, but the recently consumed pastries dictated restraint.  We ordered the prosciutto and salami plate with some mozzarella and grissini to share while we narrowed down the choice.  One of my favourite things in the world is wrapping big slices of prosciutto around grissini and chomping away.

Given that this sharing plate was huge we decided that a starter each would be sufficient for follow up and blow me if they weren’t enormous too!

I had the sauteed fresh pasta sheets with braised oxtail, roast pumpkin, currants & parmesan ($18.50) and S went for the gnocchi with sautéed prawn meat, burnt butter, verjuice, capers & crispy sage ($18.50).  Both dishes were fantastic. 

The braised oxtail was obscenely rich but incredibly good.  The earthy, autumnal flavour of the pumpkin combined with the sweet parmesan and the meltingly tender oxtail was sublime.

The glass of Gruner Veltliner I choose was completely mis-matched with my food but was suitably minerally and zesty and made me feel a little better (hair of the dog!).  S had a glass of the Castro Martin Albarino and a glass of the Torrontes.  The Torrontes was fantastic; a deep gold colour it looked like a sticky dessert wine and had a lot of honeyed fruit on the nose that followed through to the palate. 

Another long black was ordered and despite passing on dessert it arrived with a slice of Panforte on the side that I manfully tried my best to polish off.

A very nice lunch indeed and we will most definitely be returning for an evening meal and to take advantage of the cheese plates.  All this for bang on $100.  That’s about 45 quid.  Even after a year I’m still bemused by the high standard of food in Sydney for the price that you pay.

Next we headed across to the Bourke Street Bakery to pick up some bread for later in the day.

I’ve read about this place (and the Broadway shop) a fair bit (Not Quite Nigella and Grab Your Fork) but I haven’t ventured down before.  Glad I did today!  I’ve never seen a photograph of the Surry Hills store without a queue stretching out the door and today was no different.  The tables up the side of the bakery were packed with people enjoying the sun and some of the tasty treats from just inside…

We picked up….I’m almost embarrassed to say….a couple of pain au chocolat (well it had been a good couple of hours by this point), a croissant, a rhubarb and almond tart, a loaf of sourdough and a loaf of sourdough with fig and sour berry.  Got to make an effort with these things after all!

The breads are both fantastic; the fig and sour berry is stuffed full of fruit and is absolutely incredible with nice sharp cheddar and the sour dough is suitably tangy. 

Not tried the pain au chocolat yet (will update when I do) and the rhubarb and almond tart was consumed when I was asleep this afternoon, but I am assured that it was delicious (and am filing for divorce).

All in all a very pleasant way to spend a day.  Good food, good wine and several places on the list for next time.

             

Click here to download:

A_Day_in_Surry_Hills_tag_Resta.zip (3579 KB)