Well the guest came to dinner

And I went off in the morning to my favourite butcher to buy two ducks.  He wasn't there.  So it was a fish barbeque.  (Trusty Sydney fish market).

The entree was not a salmon/salt/honey cure but a kingfish orange juice cure - a duplicate of Stefano.  Quite nice too it was.

I was also going to do a second course - the Carpacio.  Went the way of the butcher.

So in all braveness I decided to do mango soufle for desert.  What is more - I made it up as I went along.  Admittedly said Michelin chef gave me a few hints at the final stage - but everything was more or less done by the chef got there.

Here goes.

1).  Clean copper whisking bowl with lemon juice and salt.  Wash off salt, reclean with lemon juice.  Chef said it has to be sterile.  I am not to disagree.  NO FAT is the critical thing.  Should also clean the whisk but I did not.

2).  Separate out six eggs.  Leave the whites in mixing bowl.  Should be left for a few hours.

3).  Blend yolks with sugar.  Heat 300 mls of milk and 200 mls of cream to about 85c (trusty thermometer).  Mix about a quarter (slowly) with the yolks whisking as you go - part cooks the eggs.  Mix the lot back together and put on stove stirring with wooden spoon.  Something about coating - but all I wanted to do was get back to the trusty 85 centigrade.  Mix in vanilla as you go.  Let custard cool.

4).  Cut up about 1.5 mangos.  Put in small pot with sugar and slowly cook.  Do not let candy a much - just a touch will do.  Put in juice from a quarter of a lemon.  (The rest went with fish barbeque).  Blend.  As it cools at 50mls of cream.  

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Have guests to dinner.  Preheat the oven to 180 C.  No fan and USE AN OVEN THERMOMETER.  

5).  Whisk egg whites till fairly stiff.  The chef wanted me to do that by NOT beating but rather moving the whisk around in a very smooth manner.

6).  Fold in a third mango mix, then the rest, gently.

7).  Buttered ramkins (smally times 6) and the residual in a half litre ramkin.  Put the stuff in GENTLY.  No bubbles but no shaking.  Ramkins on tray.

25 minutes in the oven.  Let it brown on top (clear oven door) and then 5 minutes more.

Serve quickly with vanilla custard in jug.

Fabulous.

J

Guests for dinner

I am having a guest for dinner.  Won't say which restaurant the chef is from - but Michelin hat material.

Sort of puts the wood on me to cook well.

Now to be inventive.

Having loved Stefanos so much I thought I might try Italian.  But I want it to be 'first-time-I-have-cooked-this-warts-and-all".  Just pressure myself really - but last two times I have cooked for said-chef I cooked set pieces - and that is just not trying.

Course 1:  honey cured ocean trout.  A cup of honey, and about 50grams of salt.  Handful of ground coriander seeds and fresh coriander.  Mix the honey, salt and spices together.  Lather over a side of pin-boned ocean trout.  Leave in fridge for 24 hours.  Wash, slice finely.

Course2: beef carparcio and caper mayonaise.  Ok - I am cheating - pure Stefano.  Now the trick is usually to freeze the beef and use an industrial slicer.  Try to work out how to do this at home.  Will report back.  I think I sear the outside of the beef - or alternatively get the friendly butcher to do it for me.  Stefano suggest serving with witlof - which seems inventive for me (especially as it is not my idea...)

Course3: its summer here - duck breast with cherries.  Need to work out how to do the potatos.  Thinly sliced with lots of butter I guess... but still a need for perfection here.  Will buy two ducks and confit 4 legs for later.  And bones for stock...  

Course4: here I am getting ambitious - strawberry icecream and meringue- as per Seans Panaroma.  Fortunately the recipe is in Sean's book.  But I have never tried it - and nothing in that book is easy.

That looks like Saturday spoken for!

Now - suggestion - masterchef is doing an Australian show.  Should I try out?

J

Well the Turkey was a big old bird

12 months old to be precise - and purchased at my father in law's country golf club. (This is no country club though - a real golf club where the pressing management issue is how much irrigation water they are allocated and how much it costs. It costs $3000 to water the course!!!)

The guy killed the bird and turned up with it in his esky. It weighed in at 8.3kg or say 18lb in the old language. It fit in the oven at the old-folks home (just).

We never got anywhere near the stuffing - that presumed you could actually carve that far in and on Christmas day there was no need.

That said - brined turkey worked well. The bird was surprisingly two-tone - with very dark meat in the legs and white meat in the breasts.

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I tried curing some of the Murray River perch grandad caught using Stefano's orange juice and salt cure. It worked surprisingly well given you probably should cure oil fish and perch is not oily. Stefano swears by butter and sage (and perhaps a little of his salted lard).

Speaking of salted lard I had some and wrapped part of the bird in it. Worked well.

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Salad was a simple success - very finely chopped fennel dressed with orange juice, some orange segments, olive oil and salt.

Pudding finished a massive meal.



And a typical family christmas - with all those domestic dramas was had by all.


J

Turkey out of brine

I have brined chickens for years - but I have never brined a turkey despite all the American books saying that is how you should do it. The New York Times gives a brined turkey recipe every Thanksgiving. Here is one...

Anyway I have now taken the bird out of the brine. Its large - and free range - from some paddock around Mildura...

And I am expecting all sorts of problems stopping it browning too much. Stefano (bless him) has given me some cured lard (belly fat from some female pig) and I will slice it and run it over the bird. I might wrap the legs with foil...

Potatos, sweet potato, pumpkin. A few salads.

Funnily enough in a breadbasket the local shops are awful. Need to work out how I hook into the Italian growers next time I do Chrissy here.

Will let you know how it goes.

J

When you have been cooking all wrong...

There is a trend in cooking - I think driven by the extreme scientific types - about concentrating flavours.

When Thomas Keller makes a little soup (just a mouthful) from brocolli - the flavour of a whole bunch of brocoli is concentrated in that soup.

When Hestor Blumenthal makes his (fantastic) spagetti bolognaise he has a dozen tricks to make the meat taste meatier - and its all about trace ingredients such a a touch of thai fish sauce and star anise.

And I admit that I used the star anise pretty liberally for exactly that purpose.

So then I go to another style of restaurant. I am staying with my inlaws in Western Victoria so the wife and I went to Stefanos. This is one of the best restaurants I know anywhere in the world. It is better than any in Sydney (including Tets and my favourite Seans Panaroma). Its certainly better than any in Melbourne - and hey it stands up against St Johns in London too.

But Thomas Keller it is not.

The meal was one of delicate balance after delicate balance. The first dish was a cured kingfish.

But I was struggling to work out how it was cured. Everything I cure tastes pretty salty. This did not. But if it was citrus cured you could barely taste the lemon.

It turns out it was cured in the juice of five oranges and 30g of salt. Relatively little salt given the task - and oranges are so much gentler than lemons (though I am determined to try grapefruit).

It was served with capers - but very few. Sort of like the melodrama of putting saltanas in your saltana bran. You want a few - but no so much that there is no surprise when you get the sweetness of one. This was perfect.

There were a few cubes (2mm cubes that is) of beetroot - which struck me as very Australian - but I can't work out why they were there.

My wife - and this was a compliment - described this as so delicate it was almost flavourless. It set the tone for noting subtlety - and that was what was really special about Stefanos.

The next course was the most delicate beef carpacio I have ever had. Not rich - and with some home made mayonaise and a few other odds - truly scrumptious - but without being anything like as overwhelming as the Bourdain Steak tartar.

Then followed zuchini flowers stuffed with a light goats(?) cheese and fried. Nothing complicated - with some shaved ham of the most amazing but delicate flavour. The cheese and ham platter from heaven.

Then followed a hand made ravioli stuffed with quail and served in sage butter. Simple stuff - well executed (but I guess it is a pain to make). My wife who is allergic to wheat had one of the most original pastas I have ever tasted - a buffalo mozarella and caramelized onion sauce on a gluten free pasta. I think it was a one-off but if so Stefano is a genius.

Mains however were a disappointment. The lamb was good - the potatos were excellent - but it did not sing. I can cook better lamb - and so can Stefano. Last time we were here the mains were an italian style roast chicken. Good -but not as good as Seans.

Desert was simple - vanilla and orange panacotta (but he called it something other than panacotta). He must have used some very bitter oranges and they offset the sweetness of a very sugary sauce. Fabulous and delicate again.

What this taught me though is that there is a sterility in the modern flavour concentration methods of cooking - and that some things can be obtained through balance rather than brute force.

This is not a restaurant of the modern fashion. The Hestor Blumenthals of the world dominate the debate because they are so darn clever. But it is real food done with a flair you will find few places in the world.

I know the readership of my main blog (and hence this) is London and New York - but if anyone has influence this deserves a place in the top 50 restaurants in the world... and it should be so rated.



John Hempton

Sausages, salad and wine

It was a busy weekend with multiple trips to the beach,  a visit to Alice (more on that later) and my son revealing that he has always thought of me as a "fat mutant zombie bloodsucking freak".  So dinner on Sunday (often elaborate) was really simple.  

Just sausages from the organic butcher in Randwick, fine fresh white bread from a run-of-the-mill (non chain) bakery, a french salad of beans, tomato and fresh basil, some home made tomato chutneys and a very fine bottle of wine.

Here was the wine.

http://www.75cl.com/v15155.connetable-de-talbot-1994.htm

Or in Euro because I gather you can still buy it for a suitably modest amount:

http://www.wineandco.com/connetable-talbot-rouge-1994--second-vin-du-chateau-talbot-484-fr-eur-fr.html

And yes it did come from the cellar and I have stored it since original issue.

And the pleasure of it all showed nothing needs be too complicated to be delicious if the family is loving and your son will forgive you for being a mutant zombie.

And the good wine helped.

John Hempton

Well that was a disaster...

So I have been experimenting with pigs trotters.  Its the Fergus Henderson fan in me.  

But I have learnt a few lessons.

1).  When you boil up pigs trotters you need to strip the meat out whilst the pig trotter is warm.  Otherwise they become really difficult to handle.

2).  When you strip the meat and mix wiht the onion you better roll it into a sausage or put it in the terrine pretty quickly because as the fat congeals the meat will sort of stick together - and probably in an uncomfortable pattern.  

But even then I got to deal with a few issues.  Is there a difference between front-pigs feet (hands?) and rear feet with respect to the amount of meat?  Almost every trotter had nothing on it.  Just fat and gristle.  Yummy fat and gristle - but fat and gristle.  Is there any reader amongst my few who can answer that?  

And when I have finished with that I might explain the rest of the extent of the disaster.

John H