The Amused Bouche

L'Abbat - an ode to offal

2009-04-30T12:07:00.023+10:00

For some, nothing was more pleasing than the thought of a meal celebrating the forgotten bits. For others, they worried they'd bitten off more than they could get down. From a menu of stretched chicken skin, 'cured' patiently with a hair dryer, to a fridge of unctuous left-overs this dinner was satisfying in more ways than one, but particularly for those that worried their food fears would be overwhelming: because they were most pleasantly surprised...

Murder in Sicily
Fresh tomato juice with lime, fresh bay leaves, Campari and vodka, finished with spiced dried blood and Tabasco Chipotle

Devilled Kidney à la Amber
Diced lamb’s kidney fried in seasoned butter and a splash of Worcestershire sauce, served on white egg
Terredora Coda de Volpi IGT 2007

A Bone to Pick
Roasted veal bones with a veal jus and Bombardier English stout reduction.
De Bortoli Yarra Valley Pinot Noir Rosé 2008

Cop an Earful
French-style crispy pig’s ear salad
Tyrell’s Lost Block Semillon 2007

Callos a la Madrilena
Slow-cooked tripe with chorizo and black pudding, finished over brazier
Huntington Estate Mudgee 'Home Bottling' Shiraz 2001 - From Magnum

The Suet Canal
Sussex Pond Pud of fresh beef suet and whole lemons and lime with fresh muscatels
Baileys of Glenrowan Founders Muscat
Sanchez Romate Pedro Ximénez ‘Cardenal Cisneros’ Sherry

Dem Bones
Pear marshmallows.
Espresso

Frankly an offal-related cocktail seemed one of the hardest to conceptualise, and short of coming up with some kind of vessel that may or may not have been an OH&S issue, there seemed few genuine solutions outside of twee ones. Blood is linked with spices in many traditional dishes, so using it as a seasoning seemed not a bad idea. Unable to source the dried blood powder used in Finnish cooking it was hit upon to dry a good quality morcilla sausage and make a spiced blood powder from that. Of course the vehicle would have to be tomato juice, and none better than the in-season hefty ox-heart tomato. Combined with a generous slug of vodka and a tiny bit of Campari the freeform cocktail took inspiration also from a nearby bay tree and flavoured the mix generously with that and fresh lime juice. Kinda Sicillian, very savoury, not really for the light-weight cocktail drinkers as there was more than a bit of metallic bitterness present.

A distant mother was the inspiration for the amuse bouche: and what better inspiration? Amber's tasty, tiny cubes of kidney in the trad devilled-style a-top a perfectly boiled egg was nothing to sniff at, and in fact, made several converts to kidney, which is no small feat as this is the organ that is so often worried about (oh but it's the ammonia... no, well, if it's fresh there should be no piss-take).

Entree took inspiration from the pieces we all tend to chuck away after gnawing: dem bones. Are we soft in this modern era that we don't take to a hefty bone with our jaw set, to crack in search of the nut-like goodness within? This was certainly a standout dish. The unctuousness of the bone marrow was only enhanced by a vegemite-like demi-glace. In haute praise, this dish was responsible for several cut tongues as our own, living tongues flicked into the bones to tease out the last fatty morsels as our rather less attractive chimp ancestors did a thousand years ago.

There ain't nothing cuter than pricked pigs ears in a meadow, but there ain't nothing more friggin' dangerous than deep-frying the buggers. Fergus Henderson notes in his wonderful book that they 'may spit a little'. Like hell. What he should have written is that you will need to affect the stance of a matador to survive. Your kitchen ceiling will not. This particular salad of perky pointers was inspired by the French (who do so appreciate the perky pointers of both the head and the toe), and as such was an absolutely refreshing collection of pert sorrel tips and other greens ripped from the garden bed outside, made bad with deep-fried goodness and a whisper of stinky raclette-like cheese.

The main was a work in progress over several days. One issue was finding fresh trip in this santised city where it's not always to hand. Of course, up in the mountains it was there alright but to get the full unctuousness of this dish it had to begin transformation well before the final touches.
This was a main of many offal. Or, at least two: tripe and blood sausage. It was also another dish this evening that was linked to blood, again because of tradition. This was a dish beloved of the cook, whose family had cooked for generations. This was bloodline.

Various fabulous, traditional ideas were floated for the dessert course. The chocolate and liver mille feuille will be parked for another time! In the end, however, it was obvious: suet. To be frank, I hadn't expected to be able to pick some up at the last minute in Katoomba, but I shouldn't have worried. I forget Katoomba has a large elderly, old-fashioned population, one, that like me mum, grew up on kidneys on toast and tripe with onions. So, armed with a package of fresh suet it was only down to 'what suet pudding to make'. The simplicity of the Sussex Pond pudding won me over. Make suet pastry, line, fill with A LOT of butter and brown suger, oh, and a couple of lemons. Boil for A LONG time. So a young assistant was enlisted to chop up the suet (she didn't even balk at that!) and away we went. Fresh, in season muscatels were the only garnish required, it was figured, because once turned out and the knife plunged in to the pud, it would spew forth copious lemony, sweet sauce. It was rich, oh yes, but a lovely reminder of simple, hearty desserts and the role they play in keeping warm!

Loved Up - The Lurve Dinner

2009-02-14T22:00:00.001+11:00

A dinner based on love, harmony, marriage on the plate... 14 February 2009. What else to eat on St Valentine's Day but food inspired by love - in all its many guises: innocent love, lust, romantic love, the love we have for certain foods and the love we have for good company and convivial eating.

This is the second dinner that hasn’t been based on a theme ingredient but rather on a feeling or concept – love. Love comes in different forms and can be expressed in different ways, lending itself to all sorts of different dishes. In the end we all chose dishes that we love, dishes that seduce or dishes that simply included a most harmonious marriage on the plate. There may not have been much cohesion between each course, but in the end, we loved it.

Menu
Cocktail: Eden

Cinnamon and nutmeg spiced vodka mixed with Maxwell Liqueur Mead, served rimmed with rose petal sugar and a blushing pear

Amuse Bouche: Foreplay

Foie gras, bacon and caramelised truffled apple on potato blini

Entree: Fair maiden's friend
Prosciutto-lipped figs with mint cream and herbe à la belle fille
Domaine de Rimauresq Cotes de Provence Blanc 2007
85 % Rolle, Ugni Blanc 15 % - Lovely vibrant fresh fruit aromas mixed with honeysuckle and a light grassiness. On the palate fresh again with sweet/herbal fruit. Quite delicious.

Soup: Mother's Big Bowl of Shut the F%#k Up
Fresh corn chowder
2006 Petaluma Viognier Adelaide Hills

Main: Duck & Pinot Noir - a marriage made in heaven
Domaine Harmand Geoffroy Mazis Chambertin Grand Cru 1999
Weingut J.B. Becker Rheingau Spätburgunder Wallufer Walkenburg 2002

Dessert: Coeur a la Creme
Chateau Coutet Barsac Grand Cru Sauternes 1971

Petits Fours
Turkish Passion, Sexual Chocolate, Strawberry bites, Salted Canadian Nuts

The cocktail was based on an ancient Roman recipe - an aphrodisiac recipe, in fact, sourced from the 1950s tongue-in-cheek collection 'Aphrodite in the kitchen'. Vodka had a few drops of potent oleoresins (cinnamon and nutmeg) added to it and was mixed with mead liqueur (honey of course being one of the first 'aphrodisiacs'). Dried rose petals crushed with sugar made for a subtly aromatic rim and the addition of the tiny cocktail pear inspired the name: Eden, because even though we think of that fell fruit to be an apple, it may well have been a pear, a pomegranate or an orange. Or a fig. Lending weight to the concept of innocence lost was the sheer potency of the cocktail. Perhaps that's what was really served in the garden of Eden: a bloody great big cocktail - now that makes more sense. Who can't be tempted after one of those?

The amuse bouche was born of a love of many things: bacon (in this case leatherwood honey-cured and smoked Boks bacon from Tasmania), potatoes in the form of a crunchy rosti blini, a touch of sweetness in truffled, caramelised apples and a love of decadence in a grilled melty piece of foie gras. It was truly meant to be a seductive mix of salty, sweet, rich and earthy flavours with a crisp textural base to really tease the tongue and the palate – foreplay in the true sense of the word. The inspiration came from the book Seduced by Bacon by US writer Joanna Pruess.

The potato rosti base was made by grating gorgeous Dutch cream potatoes that had come straight out of the ground the week before and to the table via the Bass Strait...another lovely piece of produce from our Tasmanian neighbours. Mixed with a little grated apple, onion, parsley and egg, they were shaped to the size of a cookie. What with their decaent topping, this amuse needed to be small - 2 bites at best. Gala apples were caramelised in balsamic, veal demi glace and white truffle honey from Italy and set aside to top the dish. The foie gras (not the fresh stuff unfortuntely, thanks to Australia's rather archaic importation laws) was from providore Simon Johnson. Once the rosti was grilled and crispy, it was topped with a lightly grilled peice of foie, a strip of crispy Boks bacon, a lick of the sweet apples and a drizzle of the truffled jus and sen straight to the table. Foreplay got everyone aroused for the entree...

Figs eternally crop up on aphrodisiac menus - and often with the soft, sweet and salty wrap of prosiutto. Texturally an entree of salad with the yielding qualities of ripe, plump figs, slippery rockmelon, smooth soft prosciutto and unctuous cream screams sex. Additionally the heady aromas of salt, musk and sweet ram that concept home. Perhaps artfully arranging the prosciutto 'lips' around a blooming open flower of fig may not have been necessary at all in encouraging lustful thoughts... in any case guests were handed around a finger bowl and cutlery was eschewed so that fingers pulled apart the salad to tip back into open mouths and fingers were sucked with pleasure. Mint and lemon infused whipped cream kept the salad from becoming too cloying and bitter, musky rue (herbe de la belle fille) garnished. Rue was used in the Middle Ages as an abortionist's herb - hence the name 'pretty woman's friend).

There's something very maternal about corn, especially when it's soup. Its very essence is giving, generous and nourishing. Despite the undeservedly bad rap corn has had of late, thanks to Pollan et al, the variety used for culinary purposes, sweet corn, has very little to do with No. 2 Field Corn other than sharing the same botanical name, Zea Mays. The beauty of sweet corn is its rawness. To grow it any other way than organic is completely missing the point, since the best way to eat it is raw, straight off the stalk and still warm from the sun.

If I stretch the truth I could say preparation for this started in October, in my vegetable patch. I planted three types of heirloom corn but, by the time this dinner rolled around they'd been consigned to the compost heap thanks to Sydney's on-again-off-again summer weather. So for this I used a beautiful locally grown varigated corn from Galuzzo's in Glebe. This became a thick, rich corn chowder with onions, garlic, arbol chilis and cream before being served in small bowls with a thin sliver of lardo tucked as'under, and a drizzle of EVO.

That shut everybody up.

--
Petits fours can be a confusing course, and since these had only been prepared once before we felt the need to raise the bar, so other more talented petits four chefs out there could wow us later. But what would eight stuffed-to-the-hilt diners want to eat, after seven sensual courses, and still feel inspired about love (unless that love is rolling around uncontrollably?).

So we thought about all the cliche love bites - chocolate dipped strawberries, cherry filled chocolates, champagne, caviar, figs, fish blah blah - and you know what lit up first in our minds? All these embodiments of love, as it were, were either feminine or about birth! Where was the manlove in this? Did that kind of love not count??

Love-related petits fours then, in a classic sense, serve the heterodoxy. It's all about man and woman, or women and ripeness. Or man and ... you get it. For that reason, at this table of enlightened minds in the heart of Sydney's gay ghetto, we decided on a flight of fancy - and a plate of bites which paid homage to both manlove and reproductive love.

Some of them were easy. Find me a gay man who doesn't love Turkish men and I'll show you a straight man trying to justify his Kylie collection. Combine passionfruit, which have been juicy and delicious this season with Turkish delight and you have a winner. The fact it was gelled in the microwave made it all the more gay in our books since that's the perfect place to reheat Lean Cuisine.

Originally, the Salted Canadian Nuts were meant to be toffee-dipped tomatoes. Love apple and all that, but updated to an Age of Aids edition where the apple now wears a toffee condom. Of course, they didn't work as a sweet course at all, so we substituted tiny, sweet senorita bananas for them and they worked a treat - and looked far more phallic to boot. Naturally, by the time the dinner came around our local fruitshop was out of stock. And so were all the fruitshops in a 10km radius. So this morphed into pecans, coated in toffee and dusted with smoked salt. We added a healthy dash of maple syrup to turn the pecans into Canadians, and immediately remembered one of our favourite things: salty Canadian nuts. Ah, memories.

No petit fours plate is complete without some sort of chocolate, but rather than some fancy filled chocolate, we opted for a simple truffle scented with kirsch. No real craziness here. I'm sure if there was some way we could have made these gay we would have, but was it worth messing with a classic? Methinks not.

And finally, we decided chocolate dipped strawberries would have to feature: they're the familiar touch stone you need to have at any love dinner to signal that this was a plate of petits fours, even if only one of them actually looked like a petit four. So we presented them high on a pedestal of spun isomalt, which holds its shape better than sugar and is more resistant to humidity. And we added a good sprinkle of pasilla chilli for that extra bite love can have. Then we dipped them twice, since you can never only go one round.

If that isn't the essence of manlove, I don't know what is.

Cristal Nacht - The Bubble Dinner

2008-12-13T15:22:00.001+11:00

For our fourth dinner, we elected to cook by concept rather than ingredient. A dinner based on bubbles in all their incarnations allowed our imaginations to run wild, from literal interpretations such as foam and Champagne to more conceptual ideas encompassing fish roe, tapioca, sago and air. For one member of the group, it meant an earnest flirtation with a spherification kit. We also welcomed three new members, serious gourmands all who took to the theme with gusto.

Cocktail - Festive jacuzzi

Fizzy red and green vodka martinis

Amuse Bouche - Pubbles

Pork casings bubbled and filled with a beer nut, oysters with Guinness granita and fizzy tomatoes

Black velvet shot + Domaine de la Taille aux Loups Montlouis Triple Zero Brut NV

Entree - Cured and popped

Cured trout with roe, egg and cucumber with citrus emulsion

Pizzini 'Brachetto' 2008

Soup - Pop Goes the Russian

Borscht with homemade sour cream and flying fish roe

Soda siphoned shot of vodka + Champagne Ayla Blanc de Blanc 1999

Main - Currying flavour

Snapper with green curry, pea eggplant and tapioca

Gunter Wittmann Westhofener Morstein Riesling Trocken Grosse Gewachse

Domaine Tempier Bandol 'Cuvee Classique' 2004

Dessert - Creaming Krakatoa

Sago pudding with palm caramel and pandan

Sanchez Romate Cream Iberia Jerez Reserva Especiale

After two rounds in the jacuzzi it was time to graze. The amuse bouche plate toyed with three amuse bouche (since all had worked out to some degree - much to the surprise of the cooks responsible). The 'pubble' itself was the original idea, inspired by sausages that snap and pop on the barbecue. Why not combine beernuts and snag skin? Blowing up sausage skins and inserting a beer nut into each 'pubble' proved time consuming, however, crisping the salted bubbles in the oven turned out to be fairly easy though the end product was fairly delicate and the twisted ends proved a little chewy. The oysters with stout was an obvious pairing with the granita made from letting the Guinness explode in the freezer - as beer is want to do - and create its own soft granita of foam. Finally, the fizzy tomatoes were perfect, tiny grape-like tomatoes tipped into a soda siphon, charged with two soda bulbs and left in the fridge overnight. This is a concept being used by probably too many chefs, particularly in the US, as though it's a novelty we can't see it being a technique that's really contributing to cuisine in the long run. Note that whatever is charged loses its fizz really quickly once the soda siphon is opened before serving.

What else to match to such an odd little tray other than a shot of something comforting: black velvet (half stout, half champagne). Of course, those that think it's a waste of champagne probably don't like stout. Those that like both think it's a sporting drink for all occasions, though wouldn't use their best bubbly for it (that is, their best stout or their best champas...).

When is a soup not a soup? When it's a jelly. December in Sydney just aint the kind of place or time for a hot soup as cooling down is the real issue. Borscht of course is often served cold, and versions, particularly in the Ukraine, can be specialised to the season with the addition of plenty of cucumber (sometimes replacing all the beetroot with cucumber and lemon). This version was a rich chicken bones and beetroot stock, reduced to a firm jellly. Such a concentrate could only be served as a small amount, with one third its volume again in sour cream. A spray of flying fish roe spawned over the top to provide crunch and even more umami. Of course, as they do in Russia, we would do, and serve borscht with a shot of vodka. One, however, fed through the soda siphon to create a little frission.

The main was inspired by a dish Sydney chef Neil Perry of Rockpool has on the menu that incorporates tapioca into a savoury curry. An ingredient more commonly seen in sweets, especially puddings and Asian desserts, tapioca isn't an ingredient one would immediately think lends itself to the heat of a curry and the texture of meat and vegetables. This tapioca novice was wary of cooking with it given its gloopy, starchy qualities. Indeed, the first batch had to be thrown out after being reduced to a rather unsightly glue-like mess. Luckily, the thinking behind the dish was to cook the tapioca early in the day, refresh the translucent pearls and keep them in the fridge to be added to the curry at the end of cooking and briefly warmed through. The second batch of tapioca was cooked for shorter period of time, rinsed under cold water and promptly refrigerated. The other 'bubble' element of the dish was little baby eggplant, whose pea-like shell crunches and pops under the tongue not unlike a bubble.

To begin, a light and delicate fish stock was made using the bones from the giant snapper to be cooked in the dish. The green curry paste was an amalgamation of David Thompson's recipe form Thai Food and Charmaine Solomon's Asian Encyclopedia. It was hand-pounded in a mortar and pestle for a good hour and included a heady mix of fiery green chillies, garlic, galangal, shrimp paste, lemon grass and a host of other ingredients. The end result was rich and complex without being too blow-your-head-off. It was briefly stir-fried before having the fish stock and Kara coconut cream added. The fish and baby eggplant was poached in the curry for a few minutes, the tapioca added and then onto the plate, topped with a crown of holy basil and crispy fried shallots. The taipoca fit perfectly with the fish; both exhibiting a soft texture that complemented the crunch of the eggplant.

A word on ham

2008-01-04T13:34:00.001+11:00

Ham was the word this Christmas.

Can I get an A-Ham???!

*boom tish*

Some Like It Hot - The Chilli Dinner

2007-12-01T23:59:00.002+11:00

Some in the dinner group faced this meal with trepidation. In Australia we have not had much access to the myriad of mild chillis that the Americas has. We're more familiar with the Hot and the Very Hot. Add to that the fact that chillis can be a bit of pot luck - some are excrutiatingly hot and some aren't, even though they look exactly the same.

This meal turned out to be the most individualised as each cook appeared to chose dishes close to their heart. Could it be that the threat of violence (chilli pain), caused us to subconsciously choose our personal comfort dishes?

Menu

Ultra Michelada
Extreme take on the 'Mexican Bloody Mary' combining chilli beer, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, lime and tequila, garnished with a pickled chilli and rimmed with sugar

Jerked and Pulled
Jerk pork, pulled and served on a betel leaf

Hot in the Sun
Pineapple, chilli and lime muddled with tequila and strained

A Mole of a Bird – 2006 Lost Valley Cortese
Roast quail with mole poblano sauce and black-eye bean, corn and tomato salsa

Some Like It Hot Soup – Tsing Tao beer
Northern Chinese-style hot and sour soup with dried Chinese mushrooms and pork balls

A Crab with Hot Buns – Disaster Bay Chilli Wine
Mud crab in Nonya-style fresh chilli and brown bean sauce with steamed buns

The hot and cold Dutch
Traditional Dutch potato and raw herring salad in cream and chilli dressing

Sticky Fingers Cake – Bison Grass Vodka
Orange, vodka and Kashmiri chilli syrup cake served with yoghurt

Hot Pops and Exotic Scotch
Mexican chilli lollipops and chilli chocolate shortbreads

The first cocktail of the evening (we are really starting to get hooked on our cocktails) was a happy marriage, even though it looked so so wrong on paper. Trust the Mexicans to come up with a version of the classic Bloody Mary that includes beer. Trust a German in our dinner party to decide it could do with a little more alcohol and add tequila. And add more chilli than completely necessary by making the beer be chilli beer. Chilli beer hurts. Effervescence only exacerbates the 'heat', or irritation, of chilli as both bubbles and chilli work through the transgeminal nerve (something in the mouth different to taste buds). We're not sure we'll be serving chilli beer at any barbecues this summer. However, adding Maggi Seasoning (another 'German' touch), tequila, worscestershire sauce and a few other flourishes actually improved the chilli beer and gave it body. We thought we could come at this cocktail 'the morning after' when a kick such as this could get you back on your feet.

The amuse bouche was a melt-in-the-mouth slow-cooked pork pull with seven kinds of chilli, many imported in hand luggage from the states, ~~probably not legally.~~

Australian Quarantine can be really cooperative when you arrive armed with a copy of the Quarantine Act and the relevant schedule as it pertains to capsaisin species. The chillis for this were sourced mostly along Mission Street in San Francisco following a recent work trip, and included ancho chillis, mulato, pasilla, New Mexico, California, tiny chiles de arbol and smoky chipotles of a quality and freshness never seen in Australia.

After briefly roasting the above chillis, they were soaked them in hot water and pureed them with tomatoes, garlic, onion and vinegar in the manner of a pozole rojo, before adding it to cubes of browned pork shoulder. The lot was then cooked in a sealed pot in the oven for three hours, resulting in a sticky, red, smoky stew which paired brilliantly with the betel leaf. Originally, the intention was to make chargrilled tamales - the smoky, sticky steamed-then-grilled corn parcels popular all over Mexico - but the lack of corn husks (plus my inability to make fresh ones using local corn) meant it had to be rethought at the last minute. Plus, the pozole had been made a couple of weeks earlier, with the addition of cassava chunks and hominy to the mix. Not that leaving these ingredients mattered the second time around - it still worked a treat.

This was paired with a cocktail of pineapple, chilli and tequila, using the soaking liquid from the chillis earlier for complexity. After muddling the pineapple with lime and a little fresh chilli, the chilli liquor and tequila was added before straining into a glass and garnishing with a chunk of grilled pineapple. Oy vey!

ENTREE GOES HERE

Traditionally from northern China, this hot sour soup bobbed with the additon of pork and dried Chinese mushroom dumplings. At once aromatic, appetite inducing and refreshing this proved the perfect interlude after the previous two, very rich, appetisers. Even the chilli disbelievers were beguiled - proving once again that a fine broth is medicine. Accompanied by the VB of China (Tsing Tao), we felt reinvigorated to carry on.

This is the first time seafood had featured in the dinner. The sweet white flesh of crab in particular is an excellent foil for murky nonya or Singapore chilli sauces. The nonya (or Peranakan) cooking style is particularly influenced by trade: it's crossroads cooking rooted in the communities of the descendants of early Chinese settlers to the Straits (including Malaysia and Java) who married indigeneous inhabitants. It's difficult to imagine the food of South East Asia without chillies now, however that was the case until Portuguese traders introduced them. Interestingly the term nonya or nyonya refers to the women of these communities - does this mean the cooking style is home-style?

This recipe was based on Cheong Lieu's and used small mudcrabs bought in Chinatown. The flesh was a little mushy by the time the crabs were cooked - suggesting the extremely muggy day had hastened deteriation during the drive home and then in the wait before hitting the wok. In any case the crabs were extremely sweet and the sauce a complex, finger-sucking affair at once salty, a little hot and a little bit funky. Steamed buns proved an excellent accompaniment for mopping up the sauce. The Disaster Bay Chilli Wine was a very sweet accompaniment that nonetheless had a deep scratch for the back of our throats - a sharp reminder that this was wine produced solely from chillis and to be sipped, not quaffed.

Herring is difficult to purchase fresh in Australia, however can be bought raw and frozen from the Dutch Shop in Smithfield. In this traditional Dutch salad the raw chopped herring was combined with potato, cream, gherkin, dill and fresh green, chopped chilli. Comfort food! The fresh, 'green' flavour of the chillies was not dissimilar to the gherkins and cut through the rich fish and cream exceptionally well. The non-Dutch made mental notes to remember this recipe for ho hum Sydney barbecues.

The most obvious combination for dessert would have been chilli and chocolate, proven partners in sweet (and in some cases, savoury, dishes) but we were determined to cook a chilli dessert that didn’t incorporate these flavours. We stumbled upon a Sybil Kapoor recipe for sticky orange chilli vodka cake; essentially an orange and almond cake with orange syrup. The syrup was to be infused with dried Kashmiri chillies, which have a relatively sweet heat and rate about a 7 out of 10 on the burn scale. In addition to the chilli flavour, lemon juice and zest as well as vodka were added to the syrup base of orange juice and sugar.

The cake, made from ground almonds, butter , sugar and flour also contained dessert wine for an interesting kick. It was moist with a relatively fine crumb when baked before being drenched in the syrup. The cake was served with a dollop of cooling yoghurt. Sweet, sticky, slightly sour and with a mild heat on the back of the palate, it was a very pleasant dessert indeed. A pity we had eaten so much already to only manage thin slices of cake!

Making pigs of ourselves - The Pork Dinner

2007-11-26T15:12:00.006+11:00

Saturday 25 August 2007

After the enormous fun we had pre, during and post our Garlic Dinner, it was with great anticipation that we designed the menu to celebrate that most wonderful of beasts - the pig. What other beast offers every single bit of itself up for so many dishes? The Chinese, apparently, eat every bit of the pig except the oink, and pigs, in turn will eat most things too. Including murder victims, so the legend goes. Stoppers were really getting pulled out when an unsuspecting Large Black was ordered to service the table through Highlands Heritage Pork and two kilos of back fat and one kilo of rind were ordered from Bangalow. Of course basing all the courses, including cocktail of course, around pork presented some challenges - not least giving the menu a little balance, because this meal really had 'heavy' potential.

Menu

Cocktail: Kir Royale
Served with salted pork crackling

Cocktail: Gingered Pig
Cocktail of calvados and Stone's Green Ginger Wine with ham gelee cubes and twirly 'tail' of caramelised, curled pork rind

Entree: Pork preserved three ways
Served with mostarda di frutta, cornichons and flatbread

Salad: Jàmon serrano, radicchio and goat’s curd salad
With vincotto

Soup: Pea and ham soup

Main: Loin of Large Black Pig
With caramelised belly, red cabbage and cauliflower puree

Dessert: Pig in the orchard

Lard pastry filled with spiced, buttered apple and topped with crushed cinnamon sugar crackling, served with vanilla ice cream and pork floss

Coffee

Digestifs

Vegetarians should look away now. Probably doctors too. The gusto (or gluttony) that was inspired by basing a dinner around pork was energetic, to say the least. Furniture was hired, rare breeds sourced, the best of the pantry considered. It was probably excessive to snack on pork crackling while sipping a welcome drink, considering the meal to come. Who can resist it though?

Not all our guests were immediately convinced upon learning what the cocktail would be. It was born from consulting with the sommelier at Marque restaurant and adding our own flourishes. Calvados, the French apple liquor, was obviously a natural pairing for pork and the addition of ginger wine gave the drink sweetness, depth and spicy warmth. Lurking in the bottom of the martini glasses were cubes of homemade ham jelly - savoury, a little salty and very slippery. For the garnish - or swizzle stick - Bangalow pork rind was cut into fine strips, caramelised in sugar syrup and twisted into a 'pig's tail' before drying to cracking crunchiness. It was certainly another powerful cocktail that no one really should have had two of, even though we all did. On top of the Kir Royales and copious amounts of salty, crisp Filipino chicaharones, you can get an idea of where this dinner was rapidly headed. It would have been caring and considerate to think about hiring a defiblerator at this point.

From here we moved to the table, and Blair's inaugural entry with pork preserved three ways. Of course, naming it this was all a ruse. The man had for weeks been intimidated by the culinary obsession on display by some members of this group, and had toyed with numerous pork products, including a modern twist on the classic pigs in a blanket (which this author enjoyed enormously). In the end, all it took was a careful visit to Norton Street Grocer - and a little imagination - to come up with a suitable entry. On the plate guests were presented with a pungent Gypsy ham, single smoked ham off the bone and (this is in dispute) serrano ham, all dressed up with Donna Hay's own flatbreads (from her July 2007 issue), tiny crisp cornichons and mostarda di frutta, or Italian mustard fruits. We paired the lot with a 2006 wild-yeast riesling from Eden Valley.

The salad was to offer at least a slight reprieve from the heavier elements of the meal while still revelling in and capturing at its heart the essence of pork. What better way to achieve this than with thin nutty, sweet slices of jamon? This Spanish ham was beginning to see more and more counter space at delicatessens and food halls across the country and rightly so. Having done the dash on prosciutto for such a long time, it was refreshing to see a cured pork product hit the shelves with such gusto.

Paired with bitter radicchio, tart, creamy goat's curd, sweet vincotto and toasted hazelnuts, the dish encapsulated a melange of salty, sweet, creamy, crunchy flavours and textures that offered a light break from the ensuing heartiness of the soup. In a way the salad was inspired by a traditional pairing of Italian prosciutto, say, with figs and blue cheese or melon.

The soup was as traditional as they come; peasant food at its best and most tastiest. Really, how can one go past the good old pea and ham as the evening's entry to the soup course? And it really was a simple affair that let the pig do the talking - a smoked ham hock from the Bavarian butcher in Sydney's Ermington, no less. It infused the soup of chicken stock, potato and peas with the most wonderful salty, smoky flavour. Surely a soup that will fix all that ails you and put us in good stead for the the remaining courses. Fortifying, to be sure.

The idea for main course came, I have to guiltily admit, from an episode of The F-Word where uberchef Gordon Ramsay cooks a pork belly twice after pressing it halfway. What begins as an inglamourous, flabby cut is transformed into a postage-stamp sized square of succulence, crispy and caramelised. Watching the show, you could almost taste how delicious it would be, and it was with this in mind that I arrived on the idea of pairing this super rich cut with something more redolent of spring, like a stuffed rolled loin of pork.

Amelia came up with the idea of pursuing a Large Black Pig for the main, and with this in mind I googled for a breeder, finding one first in Victoria's Yarra Valley and gradually deciding on Highlands Heritage Pork. It was delivered several days before dinner, after being slaughtered only four days before.

The belly was braised first on a bed of tart Granny Smiths, thyme and garlic with Bulmer's Irish cider, then weighed down with tins of goose fat overnight to press it into uniform slabs before being finished in the oven before serving, with a blowtorch applied to ensure each piece was crispy and unctious. The loin was wrapped around thyme, basil, parsley and garlic stems before being flashed in a hot oven and blowtorched once more, so it was pink yet completely crispy on serving. These were paired with a cauliflower cooked in milk then pureed, and red cabbage braised in cider vinegar and thin lardons of smoked spec - after all, there were no rules on packing the side dishes with pork as well! The wine chosen to match this was a funky 2004 Jindalee Reserve Pinot Noir, from the Yarra Valley.

Dessert proved to be a tickler, but one that was immensely satisfying in the conceptualisation. Bangalow pork belly fat was carefully rendered to make a beautiful, pure white lard, which in turn produced soft sweet pastry cases. What else but apple to fill? The piece de resistance however, was the 'crumble' top. Eschewing great personal danger (ever deep-fried pig skin?) the cook made crackling, and instead of rolling in salt, rolled in cinnamon sugar. The crackling was crumbled to give 'crumble' topping at the last minute before serving, and a side bowl of vanilla ice cream was garnished with Chinese pork floss, or 'rousong', bought from an Asian grocer. A successful amalgamation of the pig into sweets! But we knew that would be the case, as pork is a sweet meat and its lard an undervalued commodity!

We ended the night with coffees and more pinot; much groaning was heard around the table, on the couch and the deck, despite the brisk temperature outside. It wasn't long before a few snorts were heard - from overindulgence no less - and like the animal we'd consumed it wasn't long before all of us again began to resemble the feature ingredient. In the same way the garlic dinner seemingly turned all of us into walking talking bulbs of garlic (at least as far as we smelt), so the pork dinner had made swine of us all. Oh the shame, the tasty shame.

A fragrant memory - The Garlic Dinner

2007-07-11T12:56:00.002+10:00

Saturday 2nd June 2007

Pungent. Yes. If nothing else the First Dinner we held, show-casing garlic, proved beyond a doubt that food effects your body. Sometimes violently.
Tribute must be paid to the wonderful Max Lake for the idea of creating a dinner of garlic for every course. Eyebrows were raised almost collectively and we would like to honour the brave friends that embraced the concept with us because it proved that only our imaginations limit application, but that there are also rules...

Menu
Dirty Frenchman
cocktail of gin and vermouth, shaken over ice, poured into a chilled martini glass rimmed with crushed salt and deep-fried garlic, garnished with green olives stuffed with pickled garlic

Aioli garni with vegetables
House garlic and extra virgin olive oil mayonnaise served with boiled kipfler potatoes, radishes, fennel, boiled eggs and spring onions

Garlic custard with green sauce and parmesan tuille
Roasted garlic baked custards with parsley and anchovy sauce and parmesan biscuit

Roasted garlic, bread and almond soup
Spanish-style soup of soft roasted garlic thickened with sourdough breadcrumbs and ground almonds

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic
Traditional Provincal dish of whole chicken baked in a sealed dish with a few heads of garlic

Roasted garlic, honey and olive oil ice cream (two versions)
One version made with Russian garlic, slow braised then finely pureed and churned with a creme anglaise, another made with roasted whole garlic cloves churned with honey and olive oil

Garlic bomb
Final item on the menu was a whole clove each of raw Russian garlic

General consensus was that the '50s must have been a lot more debauched than the wholesome picture would suggest, as a traditionally poured martini, similar to this one, would have had some of the more slender women rolling drunk on only one. Now we know why Frankie was such a fan. The advantage of such a potent cocktail to kick things off, of course, is that it certainly fuels conversation between diners that may not know each other. Of course, many of the guests may know each other, but there should always be some invitees that are not familiar to everyone: this makes for much more interesting conversation at the dinner table than otherwise, and ensures diners don't fall into routine patterns of conversation such as many good and familar friends tend to do.

But back to the cocktail. Aside from its alcohol strength we'd suggest it was a success. The pickled garlic inside the green olives had been cooked down long enough to have lost its pungency to vinegar, sugar and salt, but provided unmistakable garlic flavour. The salt and fried garlic rim may or may not have made it more of a margarita, however it was actually delicious. We'd like to try it again with a fruit cocktail base, or even as the rim of a classic lime margarita. It's certainly more pleasant than a straight salt rim (which, incidently was most likely only contrived to obscure the 'orrible taste of cheap tequila).

Alors, le aioli. Such a simply perfect dish as this merely proves once again that simplicity can be sublime. Raw and cooked vegetables of the season, made pungent and creamy with garlic mayonnaise - what a wonderful sharing meal. Certainly the aioli was powerful enough with garlic to make us feel like we were diving in the deep end of the pool. There was really no going back now. We had been Garlicked. From memory, and to be honest, our memories are very vague as a result of the Dirty Frenchm(e)n, this was matched with a sauvignon-blanc.

Next, the custards. Now, this had been supposed to be a fairly original dish, however Stephanie Alexander has a recipe for garlic and goat's cheese custards (she also recommends making very little ones to serve with baked lamb), in her Cook's Companion. So poaching from Stephanie by adding cheese (however in this case the soft inner of a ripe brie), the custards for this dinner were born. It was felt that parsley, being a natural breath freshener, would work very well with the garlic, keeping the dish from becoming cloying, however for mid-notes the addition of anchovy to the sauce kept it savoury rather than too astringent. A simple peppered parmesan tuille was added at the last moment to lend crispy texture to the otherwise very smooth and silky custard. This was paired with a Milton-Thorne 2004 Riesling that worked well, we thought; a little austere, a little pebble-like, but this matched the earthiness of the parsley/anchovy sauce very well.

The soupe du jour, a roast garlic, almond and bread number, was an adaptation of the Spanish classic ajo blanco, which sports similar ingredients and is traditionally served cold and garnished with green grapes (a kind of white gazpacho, say). But given that we were in the throes of a chilly Sydney winter, it was decided a warm version would be attempted with some tweaking of the ingredients. Two heads of garlic were slowly roasted until sweet and jammy and added to a homemade chicken stock (with a ham bone thrown in for good measure), plenty of caramelised onion, some bacon and simmered before adding toasted ground almonds and chunks of sourdough bread. The bread gave the soup a wonderful thick consistency and the mixture was blended, though not to a point that it lost its texture. The resulting dish was rich and sweet, with lovely porky salty notes and a subtle, slightly perfumed garlic flavour. It was finished with parsley and matched with a zesty pinot gris.

There was little debate about what should constitute the main course: the French provincial dish of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. This particular version is based on Richard Olney’s recipe from Simple French Food and was absolutely remarkable in its simplicity. A jointed chicken went into the pot with little more than 4 heads of garlic, olive oil and a bouquet garni. The lid was sealed with dough around the edge of the casserole and baked in the oven for almost 2 hours. After ceremoniously cracking open the dough seal, the dish revealed itself to be wonderfully moist with plenty of juices in the pan despite no addition of stock or liquid whatsoever. The garlic was squeezed from its skins into the juices and then served with potatoes sautéed in walnut oil and garlic and a simple green salad. It was matched with a buttery Chardonnay.

Dessert was always going to be tricky. While garlic does become sweet, its pungency still doesn’t lend itself that well to dessert course. After extensive research, a garlic ice-cream was decided on, though none of the recipes found were particularly appealing nor did their ingredients seem to counter garlic’s pungency quite enough. So we started from scratch. What flavours compliment garlic and could counter its odour? We thought honey. We thought extra-virgin olive oil. And we thought vanilla. We also needed to get the garlic as sweet as could be by slow roasting. To a base recipe of olive oil ice-cream, we added three cloves of pureed slow-roasted garlic, half a cup thick, bushy Australian honey from Nelligen (Pooh’s Goo), a vanilla bean and cinnamon. We tested the ice-cream a week before the dinner. Initially it was beautiful; honey and vanilla notes with slight garlic undertones, though not too pungent by any means. However, by the night of the dinner, the garlic flavour had developed and was far more pungent. It was still countered quite well by the robust honey. Perhaps by the time we had consumed so much garlic, we didn’t notice it in the dessert quite so much. Probably a blessing. This was paired with a botrytis semillon.

Carlo: Not to be outdone, and feeling a tad naked arriving at a dinner this aspirational, I arrived at the idea of also making a garlic ice cream almost independently after a morning spent at the Orange Grove Organic Market. Here, at a stall with produce grown around Windsor, we found massive heads of Russian garlic which would become our centrepiece and, for three of them at least, another experiment in making ice cream.

At least this was the intention. Happily, it also included a visit to the Breville factory outlet for an ice cream maker (with needed assistance from their hunky Oz-like salesman) and so with three days to go, I decided to braise them slowly in honey, white wine and cinnamon. Once nearly translucent, and with the braising liquor threatening to become molasses, I pushed the lot through a tamis then added it to a creme anglais made on the rich side with eggs, fresh cream, cane sugar, vanilla bean and milk. We churned this for what seemed like forever - it refused to 'stick' - then, in frustration, left it to set overnight.

What a punch! I sampled a touch before going to the gym before this dinner (believe me, it was needed!) and the taste of garlic lingered with us until the afternoon. In fact, it was so pungent that it took a swirl of Pooh's Goo (kindly provided by Mel) before becoming palatable - and wwith that ripple its smoothness and richness further took flight. Not an ice cream I'll be making any time soon - but also not a recipe to discard, never to be made again.

By this stage of the evening the table's dish of huge, Russian (or Elephant) Garlic cloves proved irressistable. How else to finish the meal than by eating a whole clove (each the size of a crabapple) each? Suffice to say the pungency is unbelievable, to the degree that a few round the table gagged and went faint. It's also hot and gives a burning sensation to the mouth.

No vampires on our tails the next day... we proved the point that sulphur (of which there is plenty in raw garlic), is aromatic even after digestion. Apparently each and every one of us will pass wind on average 25 times a day, which is normal and largely unnoticed. We discovered, however, that sometimes it's noticed, in a big way...