Monday, July 27, 2015

Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

Sometimes I get hit by a random food idea that I simply can’t shake. Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao was one of those. In my head, I could taste the combination. Beautiful fatty duck slices, sticky sweet jam, a spicy peanut sauce rounding it out. I wanted it so bad! Cooking complicated meals during the week is a bonus of being made redundant. Ordinarily, it’d be months before I had a spare weekend to cook something like this, but now I can (almost) any time! So on a Friday without plans, I decided to make dinner and the couch Date Night, by making something a little fancier than the norm. Right from the get-go you should know that this is a very involved meal, if you want to do things right and get the full richness of flavours in your jelly and the best fluffiness in homemade steam buns. Good things sometimes really do take time. It is worth it, I promise you that. BUT…if you are time poor, but still love the idea of these PB&J Duck Bao, I won’t complain too much if you simplify things..

So, onto my complicated, enhanced version. I always use the Momofuku Steam Buns recipe for making bao, but I find I always need at least ½ cup more flour than their recipe. But use their amount first, and add more if the dough is too sticky. In this instance, instead of rendered pork fat, I used rendered duck fat.

Given we aren’t in stone fruit season, I decided to make my plum jam with prunes, instead of fresh plums. Given how classic a combination duck and plums are, I didn’t want to deviate for my jam. I always have prunes in the house because I’m a bit of a nanna and love them on my porridge. Finish it off with a simple spicy peanut butter sauce and you have gold! I was going to make my own pickles to go with these, but time got away from me.

Serve with buns, pickle and parsley and coriander leaves and you have a perfectly balanced but rich PB&J Duck Bao.

Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

½ duck (if you are making a simpler version, 1 large duck breast, skin on)
1 red onion, peeled and roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp salt
2 litres water
1/2tsp freshly cracked black pepper

Prune and Onion Jelly

1 red onion, thinly sliced
½ tsp salt
2 cups red wine (such as Shiraz or Cab Sauv)
200g prunes, roughly chopped
1L duck stock (included in recipe)
½ cup brown sugar

Spicy Peanut Sauce

½ cup peanut butter
½ tbsp. freshly grated ginger
3 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp kecap manis
2 tbsp sriracha (or to taste)

Fillet the breast and thigh piece of the duck, keeping the skin intact. Cover and place in the fridge until later. Remove the fat and skin from the rest of the duck. In a frypan over medium heat, fry the excess skin and fat until the fat renders out. Drain from pan and allow to cool to room temperature. Start making the steam buns, if you are. Read the instructions fully, to understand how much rising time you’ll need all up.

Using a big sharp knife, carefully cut the duck bones up at the joints and fry them off in a stock pot until brown. Add 2 litres of water, the onion, bay leaf, garlic cloves, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour, skimming the foam off the top from time to time. Leave to cool half an hour, then pass through a sieve. You can remove and shred any meat from the duck pieces and reserve for another use – or just discard along with the vegetables and bones.

In a saucepan, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over a medium-low heat and cook the onion slices until translucent, around 5 minutes. Add the salt to allow them to sweat, and cook for a further 10 minutes. They should soften even more, but not colour. Add the prunes, duck stock and brown sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring well, then cover and reduce to a simmer, and leave to cook for around an hour and a half, or until reduced by half. Alternatively, skip the stock making step and use good chicken stock - or just use a good store-bought plum jam or plum sauce.

While this cooks, remove the duck from the fridge to take the chill off, and preheat the oven to 150C. Should take about half an hour.

When the oven is ready, heat a frypan to high. Season the duck on both sides with salt and pepper and place skin side down on the heat. Leave to cook for 5-6 minutes, until the skin is crispy and the fat has rendered. Flip over and cook a further 5 minutes. Spoon some prune jelly over the top of the duck breast and place in the oven to finish cooking for 15 minutes. Take the lid off the prune jelly and keep cooking to reduce to a sticky, jamlike consistency.

Meanwhile, start steaming your buns and make the peanut butter sauce. Add all of the spicy peanut butter sauce ingredients to a small saucepan and place over low heat, stir here and there until smooth and all of the ingredients are fully incorporated. Should be about 5 minutes. Take off the heat and set aside.

Remove the duck breast, cover with a piece of foil and rest for 5 minutes. Slice into thin strips and serve with the prune and onion jelly, peanut butter sauce, pickles, herbs and steam buns.



Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao
Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin

Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin

Winter is the weather for drinking ports and muscats and Pedro Ximenex. There’s nothing better than a small glass in front of the fireplace after a good meal. It’s also fabulous to cook with. This is a simple side dish that tastes so good on these cold nights. This is a fairly sweet side dish, the onions, pumpkin and muscat all combining to a sticky yumness. This pairs well with beef or lamb. It's also fabulous with some goat's cheese or gorgonzola dotted on top.

I’ve used Monte’s Fine Old Muscat from Cape Naturaliste – my favourite winery. Partly because I always have a bottle of it, because it’s fabulous. Partly because it is the perfect match. Sweet, without being too cloying, a tad gingerbready. Add a little onion and thyme and you're onto a winner.

Speaking of winning, this pumpkin was one that Lance grew for me! Getting fresh produce feels like such a prize!

Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin
Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin


Muscat Butternut Pumpkin

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 red onions, sliced into thin half moons
1 tsp salt
2 tsp thyme leaves
½ tsp fresh black pepper
½ cup muscat (such as Monte’s Fine Old Muscat)
1 small butternut pumpkin (around 750g), peeled, de-seeded and finely sliced into half moons
1 tbsp each pepitas and pine nuts for garnish

In a frypan over low heat, warm the olive oil and butter together until the butter has melted. Add the red onions and cook for 10 minutes, stirring here and there. Add the salt, thyme and pepper, mix through the onions well and cook a further 10 minutes, until the onions are golden.

Add the pumpkin slices and stir through well, coating them in the onion mixture. Pour the muscat over the top and cook for 20 minutes, or until the pumpkin has softened and the liquid has been absorbed.

Scatter with pepitas and pine nuts and serve.

Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin
Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin
Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne


When people ask us what our favourite restaurants in Melbourne were, Supernormal is one of the first places that spring to mind. We left quite a few restaurants in Melbourne promising ourselves we’d go back. But then we got super engaged in crossing the Top 100 restaurants off the list and we never did. Except for Supernormal. We hit it first off for lunch on the second day of our trip, and the first day staying in the city. It’s a relatively large restaurant on Flinders Lane, with a large glass window and a cheery cherry neon sign welcoming you. We were offered a seat at the bar, as the dining area was full. No worries. We soon learnt that being a couple in Melbourne means you eat at the bar, or wait a long time. But if you are normally against this sort of thing, at least do it at Supernormal. Trust me, they’re the best seats in the house. Especially if you sit on the kitchen side, rather than the bar side. We not only received the best service from the bar staff and wait staff, we also watched the chefs at work, and chatted to them about what they were doing, and the best dishes to order. It was so incredibly fun, and we left feeling part of the Supernormal family.

Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne


The only downside of watching the food being cooked is that you get food envy, even though what you are eating is amazing. Which, apart from feeling like family (a sentiment backed up by the warm greeting we received on our second visit), was probably a large part of why this was the only restaurant we revisited. We were stuffed full, but so entranced by some dishes being plated, we had to try them!

Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne

As with the majority of restaurants in Melbourne (and Perth!), the dish style here is share plates. A form of meal Lance and I revel in. We started with the sea urchin crackers, a special of the day. The look of the sea urchin was a little off-putting (I think the term ‘manky vagina’ might have come up), but the dish itself was anything but manky. Raw, thinly sliced sea urchin, on a housemade seaweed cracker with pickled onion. The ocean flavour of the urchin was strong, the texture slightly chewy, slightly silky. The seaweed cracker snapped, crackled and dissolved as you ate it, like a thin prawn cracker, and the pickled onion set everything off.
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne

The white cut chicken salad was ordered on a recommendation by Rob Broadfield at the reviewers lunch I attended, and it didn’t disappoint. The soba noodles, seaweed and spring onions the perfect base for the perfectly poached then chilled chicken and spicy sauce. The chicken was so tender and clean, not the slimy texture you can get with cold cooked chook.
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne

We then went the bao route. Given my love of duck, that was a given, so we grabbed a duck leg seeing as there was just the two of us, and the pork bao. The pork was braised, crumbed and fried, and served with a tamarind sauce. This sauce was spicy, rather than the sticky sweet style of tamarind sauce I’m more used to. The spice and tartness of the sauce balancing the fluffy white mantou bun and rich fried pork well. The duck came DIY style. A plate of buns, a plate with the duck and cucumber, and a couple of sauce dishes. At first glance, the duck leg looked dusted in cocoa, but it was a dark, thin crispy shell created from the deep frying. It cracked open satisfyingly to reveal moist flesh that fell easily off the bone. The plum sauce and vinaigrette complimented it perfectly.
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne

We wanted to keep eating at this point, but simply could not. So we ordered dessert. We shared the green tea and plum soft serve – playful in it’s colourful swirl, and texturally spot-on. The tart plum soft serve, compote and freeze dried pieces playing well against the grassy matcha. The peanut butter parfait was pure sweet heaven. A peanutty mousse on a macaron base with that wonderful chewiness macarons get. Salted caramel sauce, peanuts scattered about the place and a ball of chocolate ganache mousse finishing off the sweetness overload. Lance got this the second visit too.
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne
Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne

Our second visit was our last dinner in Melbourne and made the perfect finish to the trip. We ordered three dishes, only one of which is still on the menu a few months later – the New England Lobster rolls. These were sweet and delicate parcels of lobster in a soft buttery bun. And my dessert was the baked ginger pudding. Straight from the oven in a cast iron pan, this dense gingerbread style pudding was everything Christmas dreams are made of. Realistically, this was big enough to be a share pudding – but after two weeks of doing nothing but eating, I greedily fit in the whole thing! Lance was too busy eating a peanut butter parfait to care too much!

Definitely deserves it's spot on our top 3 "normal" restaurant list. (Vue de Monde is in a class of it's own!!)

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs'

Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce

Lance isn't the easiest person to convince to eat vegetarian. Even though unless it's smoked, roasted and/or pulled...generally the meat portion of the meal isn't even his favourite part. Somehow the IDEA of vegetarian can be offensive. So I've learnt to serve vegetarian meals without bothering to mention the lack of meat. I don't actively seek to eat vegetarian, as I'm a fairly committed omnivore myself, but given I was recently made redundant, I figure a cheaper dish by omitting meat here and there is probably not a bad idea. On top of that, I'd forgotten to get any meat out to defrost! That's my most frequent reason for vegetarianism - lack of planning!

These veggie meatballs are one of those dishes that Lance really loves, even though he'll complain if I'm telling him we're having a vegetarian night. I don't know if it's the meatiness of the mushrooms, or maybe it's the format of the "meatballs" - but this is a good dish to serve those meat-addicts in your life. The ginger and chili add a nice flavour kick to the mushrooms and lentils - which tend to need a helping hand in terms of flavour. Just don't call them "rissoles" or that opens up a whole new kettle of prejudices!

I kept a vague Asian theme to the sauce by pureeing some taro with coconut milk, avocado and ponzu sauce to make a creamy counterbalance to the spicy meatballs. If you can't find ponzu sauce, a tablespoon (or two) of the mushroom oyster sauce also works well. As does replacing half a cup of coconut milk with stock. In fact, you can add an extra cup or two of stock and turn the sauce into a soup!

You can also make these as a large pattie and turn them into veggie burgers. Also, any leftover balls make excellent tacos!
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce


Asian Vegie Meatballs

1 tin lentils, rinsed and drained
4 tbsps plus 1tbsps olive oil
1 red onion, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
1 red capsicum, finely diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 bunches coriander, roots/stems diced separately to leaves
1 thumb size piece ginger, peeled and finely grated
1 green chili, minced
1 red chili, half minced, half sliced into rings for garnish
4 tbsp mushroom oyster sauce (if you're not vegetarian, normal oyster sauce is fine)
250g Mushrooms, wiped clean and diced
2 eggs
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup finely chopped cashews



Heat 4 tbsps olive oil in a large pan to a medium heat and add the onions, carrots, capsicum, garlic, ginger and chilis. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring here and there until the vegetables soften. Add the mushrooms and coriander stems cook for a further 10 minutes, or until the mushrooms release their liquid and it is then reabsorbed. Stir through the oyster sauce and cook for 3 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and allow to come to room temperature.

When cooled, add the lentils to the vegetable mixture, then form a well in the centre of the bowl. Add the eggs, parmesan, breadcrumbs, cashews and coriander leaves and mix by hand until everything is evenly distributed. Place in the fridge for half an hour.


Preheat the oven to 175C


Rub the remaining olive oil over the base and walls of a baking dish. Leave the olive oil on your hands to help you with the rolling. Roll the now cold mixture into balls about the size of golf balls, or a little larger. Pack firmly so they hold their shape. Place the balls into the baking tray, packing so they're almost touching.


Pop in the oven for 30 minutes, or until firm and a bit crispy on top. Leave in the tray for 5 minutes to settle before removing, so they are less likely to fall apart. Serve with Taro Avocado sauce and rice.

Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce



Taro Avocado Sauce


1 baby taro root (around the size of a fist)
2 avocados
4 tbsp ponzu sauce
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
water for thinning if required
quarter cup coriander leaves, roughly chopped
salt + pepper

Wash the taro root, then steam for 45 minutes, or until fork tender. Allow to cool enough to touch, then peel.Cut into chunks.

Add the taro, coconut milk and avocado to your blender, and mix until smooth. Add water if required to get to your desired consistency. Add the ponzu sauce and coriander leaves, blend to mix. Taste for seasoning.

If it's cooled too much, pour into a little saucepan and gently reheat when ready to serve.

(Can also be thinned with stock to make a Taro Avocado Soup!)

Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce
Meatless Mondays - Asian Style Vegie 'Meatballs' with Taro Avocado Sauce

Monday, July 6, 2015

Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing

Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing

I feel so blessed to be food allergy free. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want. Makes eating out and just cooking in general so easy. I have quite a few family members and friends who aren’t so lucky. Whilst there is a variety of allergies I sometimes have to cater for, the most common one is gluten. Unfortunately for those friends, the gluten intolerance and allergy generates fairly full-on, sometimes hospital inducing reactions. It’s a little more serious for them than the discomfort that some gluten-avoiders get, so every single ingredient needs to be gluten free.

At a recent cousins catch-up Lance and I hosted, I needed to make a gluten-free cake. Now, because I am fine to eat everything, I don’t buy gluten-free flour, and I didn’t want to buy some especially for the occasion. Which led to a decision – make my own gluten-free flour out of things I do buy, like buckwheat flour, rice flour, chick pea flour, or go flourless? I decided to go flourless. This cake does call for gluten free baking powder, which I have as a default. You can leave it out altogether if you need it gluten free and don’t want to buy new baking powder. The cake is already a dense style, so it’s not especially missed, just make sure the whole thing is well beaten whilst mixing.

The pink grapefruit that we planted when we first moved in has had it’s first fruit-bearing season, and I wanted to make a citrusy cake to celebrate this fact. I love pink grapefruit so much! Tart and tangy and refreshing. So good! And seeing as our basil plant clearly hasn’t been informed that it’s actually winter now, and is still growing like crazy and given the success of a previous lime and basil cake (for a cousins catch-up on my side of the family), my flavour profile was decided. I didn’t have enough almonds to make an almond meal cake, so I adapted Nigella’s Lemon Polenta Cake, which uses a mixture of polenta and almonds, and is drizzled with a lemon syrup to make a wonderfully moist cake.

Just because I wanted to show off, I added a toasted meringue icing, also grapefruit and basil flavoured. The cake doesn’t really need the icing – but I figure, if you’re making a cake for an event, you might as well go all out, right? Go big, or go home!

Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing


Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue

Cake

200g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
6 large basil leaves
2 cups almond meal
¾ cup fine polenta (cornmeal)
3 eggs
Zest 1 pink grapefruit

Syrup

Juice of the pink grapefruit above
½ cup icing sugar
6 large basil leaves

Preheat oven to 180C. Spray the sides of a 23cm springform cake tin with cooking spray and line the base with baking paper. I like to allow a little overhang, then clip the base into the ring to secure it.

In a coffee/spice grinder, finely grind the basil leaves with half of the caster sugar. Add the basil sugar, remaining sugar and butter into the bowl of a standmixer and beat on high until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, combine the almond meal, polenta and baking powder. Turn the mixer down to low/medium and add 1 egg, then 1/3 of the dry mixture. Alternate the egg and dry mixture for the remaining 2 eggs and polenta. When this is fully combined, beat in the grapefruit zest.

Scrape the mixture into the cake tin, and bake for around 40 minutes. The top will be a little golden, and will be pulling away from the edges a little. Place the cake tin on a cooling rack. Don’t remove the cake yet.

Just before the cake is done baking, bring the icing sugar and grapefruit juice to the boil in a small saucepan, stirring until the sugar fully dissolves. Remove from the heat and add the basil leaves. Stir well, then set aside to infuse for 5 minutes. Remove the leaves

When the cake is out, prick all over the top gently with a cake tester (or thin toothpick). Pour the warm syrup over the cake. Leave it to soak in and cool in the tin.

Whilst the cake cools, make the meringue icing

Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing

Pink Grapefruit and Basil Toasted Meringue Icing

2 egg whites, at room temperature
½ cup caster sugar
Pinch cream of tartar
Juice of 1 grapefruit
Handful of basil leaves

Get ready by wetting a pastry brush and placing the eggwhites in a clean bowl of your standmixer, and attaching the whisk attachment. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of a pot large enough that the end will be submerged in the liquid, but not touching the bottom of the pan.

Place the grapefruit juice in a measuring cup and add water to make it up to 100mL. Add this, the sugar and the basil leaves to a medium pot and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Reduce the heat to medium and carefully remove the basil leaves.

Brush down sugar crystals with the wet brush. Continue heating the syrup until it reaches 115C, this will take around 10 minutes. Leave it on the heat, but start whisking the eggwhites with the cream of tartar until soft peaks form.

Keep an eye on the thermometer, and when it reaches 120C, take it off the heat, increase the speed of the mixer to high and slowly pour the syrup in a thin, steady stream down the side (avoid it touching the whisk). When all of the syrup is incorporated, lower the speed to medium and continue beating until it’s cooled to room temperature and the meringue is thick and glossy.

Spread the meringue over the cake with a spatula, deliberately creating peaks and swirls. Fire up your mini-blow torch and gently brown the edges of the meringue swirls, being careful not to let it burn.

Enjoy!

Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing
Entertaining without Gluten - Flourless Grapefruit and Basil Cake with Toasted Meringue Icing