Festive feasting
Hi again and welcome to 2010. This year, I’m looking at a things a bit different. Everything which looks like it is impossible, will be possible. Michael Jordan once said “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying “. This year, I’m going to try and achieve my goals even if it means a few hiccups along the way. I’m going to try get back into contact sport, it’s been 6 months since my knee reconstruction and I’m going to really figure out what I want to do with my career.
Anyway, these last few weeks have been quite taxing on the stomach. First there was Christmas, where we had a few great meals with some random food choices. We tend to shy away from the traditional Christmas lunch with turkey and hams, and go for a few other favourites such as crispy pork belly and oven baked whole salmon. We then had our New Years Eve bash, where we warmed up proceedings with a relaxing barbeque, albeit with special guest Mr Suckling Pig.
Christmas Dinner
Sydney rock oysters
To officially start of the festive season, we hit the fish markets for some our all time favourites, sydney rock oysters, whole slamon and salmon sashimi. When it comes to buying oysters, my all time favourite would be the sydney rock oysters. I know it’s much smaller than it’s pacific counterpart, but for me the flesh is much sweeter, and the brine slightly a little more saltier. With the oysters, we were quite divided on which accompaniment to serve it with, a couple prefer Tetsuya’s vinaigrette, while others prefer just a simple squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Oven baked whole salmon
Since I had to pick out the whole salmon on my own, I was instructed by Linda to look out for a couple of things to select a fresh fish. The three main things were the clairty fo the eyes, it shouldn’t be cloudy; secondly the vibrancy fo the gill, should be bright red, not dullish brown; finally the smell, it shouldn’t smell fishy. Are there any other tips to pick out a fresh fish. Since I was able to score such a fresh salmon, we simply stuffed the cavity with dill, parsley, leek, spring onion and plenty of lemon. For the 3.5kg, the salmon was baked for 45 minutes, and left standing for 15 minutes. Cooked to perfection, the slamon was served with home made tartare sauce. For the tartare sauce, we used store bought mayonnaise and added red onion, spring onion, gherkins, capers and some lemon juice.
left to right : star anise & other herbs, the pork belly brine, brining pork belly, roast veges.
One thing we absolutely love doing is experimenting to attain moist pork belly with crispy skin. Most of the times, you either get really moist flesh but chewy skin, or really crispy skin with dry flesh. This time, with ample reserach, Linda cooked the pork belly for 3 hours in a brine consisting of chicken stock, star anise, leek, onion, szechuan pepper, ginger, garlic, parsley, thyme and rosemary. To achieve a crispy skin, she made sure that the skin was not exposed to the brine.
Dodgy cooling technique
Once the pork was cooked till tender in the brine, it was removed and left for the skin to dry up even further. Due to time constraint, to speed up the process, the belly was fanned for about half an hour. With a couple of family members suffering hypertension, we tried to avoid adding salt onto the skin.
Prior to crisping up the skin, the belly was brushed with vinegar. To get the crackling all we did was pop the pork under a hot grill/broiler for a few minutes at high heat. The loud crackling sound was music to my ears, after about 15 minutres, we pulled out pieces of beautifully crackling pork belly. The result of the 4 hours is a tender and moist pork with delicious crackling, it was a big hit with all the family members.
New Years Eve 2009
New Years Eve 2009 involved avoiding the City for the first time in many years. As we get older, the thought of getting sweaty with copious amounts of people and battling for a way home in the wee hours of the morning is less appealing. Instead, we had a few friends over for a decent feed and a few drinks.
Hello little piggy
The special guest of the evening was a pre-ordered suckling pig from our local Chinese BBQ store. This little cost about $180 at $38/kg. When it was time to serve, we chopped it up into smaller pieces and heated it up on the charcoal BBQ to get the crackling crispy. The result is a tender and most pork with crackling which just snaps in your mouth. We served it peking duck style with pancakes, special peking duck sauce, cucumber and shallots.
marinated squid, corn and spanish chorizo
I love charcoal BBQs, they give a more intense flavour than a gas one. We have here some squid which Teresa marinated in various herbs lying in the fridge. On the right is some smoked chorizo which I got from DJ’s food hall, that was a hit as a beer snack.
left to right : grilled salmon heads, sashmi, mojitos, nem nuong
Salmon heads are one of the cheapest cuts of fish you can get, they are usually no more than $3.99/kg and still have a fair bit of meat left on them. We usually marinate it in soy sauce, mirin and bonito flakes and pop them under the grill or in the oven. As usual we have kingfish and salmon sashimi, it’s cheaper to buy from the fish markets and we’ve never had a bad experience with freshness this way.
Our guests Nogz and Shallots whip up a bucket of Mojitos which is serve yourself in the middle of the table.
We got a bit carried away with the food, there was more than we could stomach as usual but of course that means awesome left overs.
left to right : wine stash, chocolate mud cake, chocolate mud beer cake, pavlova
Dessert was an array of cake and dessert wine. Shirphine whipped up a chocolate mudcake and Judy made an amazing pavlova which had everyone wanting more. We also had mango pudding which you can see at the beginning of the post, I think our friend Gness may have found his own party trick with this dish. I also met up with lemonpi for a coffee and to give her some cookies from the Momofuku bakery in New York which my friend brought over. In exchange she gave us an amazing chocolate mudcake with a hint of beer in the chocolate ganache. We served it with french vanilla ice cream which hit the spot.
Despite spending the New Years Eve locally, it was one of the most enjoyable ones I’ve had in a while. All we had was good company, food and wine and a few mishaps with homemade fireworks but it was worth it. We tried to stay up all night but once we reached 5am we all gave in and hit the sack. Not a bad way to ease into 2010.
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By Howard
We started eatshowandtell in 2008, it was meant to be just a journal of where we ate. The first thing I usually do when I'm looking for a restaurant is check out eatability and the restaurant website. But what is usually missing is pictures of the food, how do I know I'm getting what I expect? This blog hopefully plugs that gap.
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This article was written on 02 Jan 2010, and is filed under cookshowandtell.
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Love your site. Isn’t food the greatest hobby! As a coffee nazi, any comments you may care to make every now and again about great coffee establishments you stumble across would be appreciated. And I mean real coffee, not skinny, not soy, not decaf not anything except proper coffee preferrably untainted by cow juice.
What a fantastic feast and beautifully captured! Nice work!
That suckling pig looks so delicious …. great feast!
fantastic feast you have there. i really like the way you’ve done the pork. i’m always wanting to be able to cook a perfect pork crackling. i more on the Pacific Oysters team these days and prefer the Coffin Bay or St Helen’s if they are in season. have a happy eating new year!
I love your crackling drying method! The chocolate beer cake sounds like a good exchange too.
Hats off to Linda for making that wonderful pork! I’d love to see more of her savoury dishes in 2010!
I have exactly the same thoughts about new years and the city – except I didn’t have Mr. Piggy
Yum, now that’s what I call a New Year feast! Looks like a crackling-fest. Haven’t heard of the vinegar method but it sounds good. And suckling piggie! I want!
yum yum yum! I love the look of the crackling on that pork belly! I’m going to try that vinegar thing next time.
omg, soooo jealous – looks amazing!!
ohh bro!!! Invite us next time
Looks like an awsome feast
What an awesome new year feast!! I am drooling over the pork and desserts
That is a lot of yummilicious food. I definitely have to be in Syd end of the year. Just remember to send moi the invite yah?