Regular readers would know that I’m a bit of a dessert freak when it comes to the kitchen. Dessert is my passion and I love coming up with new things which bring out the sweet tooth in all of us.

Some of you might also remember my brief foray into a commercial kitchen when I collaborated with three talented bloggers at the Merivale Food Bloggers Dinner last year. That brief stint gave me a new found appreciation and respect for chefs who pursue their passion day in and day out.(...)
Read the rest of Sydney Secret Dinners (278 words)

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I remember there was a time (first year uni) where I thought to myself that I’d never get married. The thought of commitment was hard to comprehend. I was enjoying my happy hours at the Glasshouse Bar at University of Technology Sydney too much, playing Counter Strike at the abundance of internet cafes in Chinatown and drinking copious amounts of Easy Way before lectures. Life was great, it was simple, fun and I even fit in a bit of study in between.

Things changed, overnight even. I became reacquainted with Linda during second year of Uni. At the time, we had actually known each other since high school through mutual friends. You could say a flame was rekindled, and it hasn’t gone out ever since (Yep, what a line, good enough for the Bold & The Beautiful).

Anyway, seven years later we are still going strong and I really can’t see myself with anyone else in the world. She is an amazing person and she keeps telling me that I’m lucky to have her. I’d argue against that but for the sake of world peace I just nod and agree and then mumble under my breath.

I decided to pop the question a few months ago and of course, she said yes. To celebrate, we wanted to do something a little bit different with our close friends. It would’ve been easy to host drinks at a bar or just have a barbeque at a park with everyone over. But Linda and I wanted to stretch ourselves and see if we could pull off an engagement party with a difference.  So, did we deliver? You tell us, check out Squishies’s fantastic pictures and let us know what you think.

Oh and before you read on, this is a massive post but I’m sure it’ll be worth it!

The Concept

“Good food, good people, good music – Howard & Linda 2011″

That’s all we wanted, but for a lot of people (90, give or take). We initially wanted to host a sit down dinner at warehouse but decided against it as it would mean we could only invite 40 odd people. Come on, I’ve got hundreds of Facebook friends so that was never going to work! The initial quote for a warehouse party also cost more per person, with what we reckon would’ve been inferior food and atmosphere. (...)
Read the rest of Howard and Linda’s Engagement Party (2,112 words)

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A couple of months ago, good friends Richard and Virginia asked if I could help prepare a dessert table for their wedding. They explained that with a Chinese banquet, which usually consists of 10 dishes, it is predicted that most of their guest may be too full to enjoy the wedding cake. To ensure that guests don’t miss out on desserts, they would like a variety of mini treats which guests can take home to enjoy at their own leisure. What a great idea.

As most of the readers know by now, I am by no means a professional cook. My cooking experiences are relegated to cooking for family and friends. The only time I have ever been in a commercial kitchen to cook for the mass was the Food Blogger’s Dinner at  Merivale, which I was lucky enough to achieve with the help of a couple of friends and a team of kitchen staffs.  Virginia tells me that I will need to bake enough to cater for 150 people!

Walnut brownies

Anyone that knows me well knows that I like to take on challenges, this case was no different. Both Virginia and Richard were kind enough to give me free reign of the menu, their only requests were Popcorn Macaron with Salted caramel filling, and Raspberry Friands. At the mere mention of friands, I felt as if I had hit my first roadblock, what is a friand? I have never eaten one, let alone baked one.  I was adamant not to let this little hiccup get in the way of the planning process. The show must go on. With this in mind and further consultation, I was able to gather a little more information about what flavours they liked and the colour theme of their wedding.

Strawberry & vanilla macarons

Chocolate and Raspberries were thrown around a lot during our brainstorming session, along with the knowing the theme of the wedding was white and pink, this made it easier for me to compile a list of treats for the dessert table.

• RaspberryFrainds
• Popcorn and Salted caramel Macaron
• Raspberry and Vanilla Macaron
• Walnut brownies
• cake pops
• cheesecake pop
• Lemon meringue tart
• Red velvet baby cupcakes.
• and strawberry marshmallows

Mudcake pops

I knew with such an elaborate compilation, there was absolutely no way that I would be able to do it on my own, so I enlisted the help of my baking buddy Dung. Together we divided the list in to two, one for her, the other for myself. I was given the task of baking the Friand, Macarons, Brownies and the tart.

Passionfruit meringue tarts

On the morning of the wedding day, the thought of the walnut brownies in which Dung had baked and cut on the previous night had plagued my mind. Unfortunately, being anal/picky/padantic, however you may like to call it, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the brownies. So with one hour to spare in the morning before the tea ceremony and church ceremony, I baked another batch of brownies. As if I needed to add more pressure on myself, however with it cut and packaged how I had envisioned, the stress was worth it.

Anyway, check out the rest of my creations below.

Cheesecake pops

Popcorn and salted caramel macarons

Raspberry friands

Marshmallows

A big thank you to Richard and Virginia for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of their wonderful wedding day. I had such an enjoyable experience baking alongside Dung for Richard and Virginia’s wedding, and to see the smile on their face more than made up for all the stress and anxiety that I was suffering from.

Red velvet cupcakes

I would definitely recommend anyone to involve more DIY components to their wedding, to me, it makes the day more personal and a tiny bit more special, and let’s not kid ourselves, NOBODY in their right mind would say no to desserts on a dessert table.

Oh and thanks to Howard for coming up with the terrible pun in the post title!

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The Vietnamese barbeque is usually one of my favorites with piping hot spring rolls and Vietnamese inspired marinated meats eaten with fresh herbs such as mint and basil wrapped in crisp lettuce and vermicelli noodles. However, on a muggy Saturday evening we decided to try something new and go for a Lao and Thai inspired feast.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I love living in South Western Sydney. Being so close to ethnic grocery and butcher hubs means I can have these sort of impromptu barbeque sessions. A quick visit to Cabramatta to do some shopping resulted in the following meal, a mashup of Laos and Thai food …. and the usual finger lickin good fried chicken sans duck fat.

Nhem Khao

This to me is hands down one of my favourite fried rice dishes. Its officially referred to as a salad, but its borderline fried rice if you ask me. You’d be hard pressed to find a dish which has so many textures and contrasting flavours, from the crisp rice balls to saltiness to sweetness to sourness, this dish has it all. If you’re interested, recipe can be found here.

nhem khao

Som Tam (Laos papaya salad)

A spicy and pungent salad made from fresh papaya. It hits all the tastes buds in one go; sweetness(palm sugar), sourness(lime juice), saltiness(fish sauce/shrimp paste). Its a great side dish to grilled meats. The version we made has all the above ingredients and also carrots, cherry tomatoes, crap loads of chili and then topped with fresh herbs.

pestal and mortar, essential requirement for a good salad!

Som Tam (Laos papaya salad)

Fried chicken

Ah fried chicken, I could live on this stuff if not for the health consequences associated with its consumption. Linda’s mum still won’t give us the full recipe to this dish, she claims that she ‘wings it’ with the recipe. I’m calling her a liar because it tastes just as good every single time! Its an awesome fried chicken, with succulent chicken flesh surrounded by a razor thin yet crisp skin. Chowing down a bucket of these with an ice cold beer would be my final meal.

Flank steak

I initially had trouble identifying this cut of meat, they simple called it beef belly at the Cabramatta butcher. Thanks to the power of Twitter, this cut is known as flank steak. Its a great cut for grilling with a good balance of meat and fat resulting in tender meat if cooked properly, medium rare is best.

We didn’t marinate this at all, just a couple pinches of salt before popping it into the barbeque. It was probably slightly overcooked but still pink enough in the middle to ensure it was still tender.

bbq grilled flank steak

Ox tongue

Another common Laos barbeque dish which I am seeing more and more on restaurant menus . Its an underrated piece of meat and if you can get over the fact that it is a piece of tongue, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most tender cuts of meat you can find at a great price. Cook it whole on the barbeque and only slice it thinly once it is all cooked.

ox tongue

And the rest …

The final damage was an array of mixed meats including beef skewers, nhem noung (not exactly Laos but you get it for free if you a lot of meat from the Butchers in Cabramatta), flank steak and ox tongue.

The grilled meats

And there you have it, a bit of a twist to the conventional barbeque but it was well worth the effort. If you want a bit of variety away from the obligatory steak, snags and salad there is a whole new world out there of variations to try.

The biggest takeaway out of this for me was that flank steak makes an awesome cut of meat for grilling. Its cheap and tastes awesome if you like a bit of fat on your meat.

Whats next?

An Argentinian themed barbeque is in the pipeline, stay tuned hermanos y hermanas.

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I recently resigned from my job after being in it for nearly four years. It was a tough decision for me to try something new as I was comfortable where I was and with what I was doing. I was also very happy with my team, I loved turning up to the office everyday knowing that I’d be working with a bunch of fun and intelligent people even if the work wasn’t that exciting at times. However, I’ve always had a burning desire to move into something which is a bit more ‘me’. Thankfully an opportunity came up when I was randomly searching for jobs and I couldn’t be happier with the new role I have scored. I’m going to miss my work mates but as they say, all good things come to an end.

Ribs, coleslaw, duck fat fried chips

Anyway, enough of my life story. The warmer weather and daylight savings has recently given us an incentive to have long lunches with our friends over. Linda’s mum reckons that Linda is over working herself by spending all of her day off on Sunday prepping food and having people over instead of relaxing (she works long hours). But little does she know that cooking and having people enjoying food is actually a relaxing activity.

After our last spring bbq which involved a spit roast and a whole pig, we decided to take it down a notch and satisfy our craving for ribs instead. I love the combination of smokey pork ribs with coleslaw and chips, something which use to be a regular meal of my uni friends at Tony Roma’s back in the good old days. We use to pay $40 a pop for ribs when it didn’t look like a hard meal to prepare at all. Linda and I did some research and thought it would be a good idea to give ribs brunch a go, and it worked out a lot cheaper as well if you have access to a good butcher and a charcoal bbq.

Tender, fall off the bone!

After hours of preparation (most of it just waiting) I must say that it was worth the effort. The result was tender fall off the bone meat from American style pork ribs, served with home-made coleslaw, duck fat fried chips, El Jannah garlic sauce and matched with one of my favourite beers, Coopers Original Pale Ale.

Ensuring the ribs were ‘fall off the bone’ involved a 2-step cooking process. Initially we had them in the oven for 120c for 4 hours, wrapped in foil. We then finished them off on a charcoal BBQ for about 10 minutes on each side, depending how hot your charcoals are.

Recipe: Charcoal BBQ Pork ribs

Serves 10 Adults

Ingredients

• 10 full rack pork ribs

The rub (adapted from BBQ with Bobby Flay)

• 2 Tbsp cumin
• 2 Tbsp paprika
• 2 Tbsp garlic powder
• 2 Tbsp onion powder
• 2 Tbsp chilli powder
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• 4 Tbsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp Cayenne Pepper
• 1 Tsp black pepper

The sauce (Adapted from BBQ with Bobby Flay)

• 2 tablespoons neutral-tasting oil, such as grapeseed or vegetable
• 6 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 slightly heaping tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• Pinch ground cloves
• 2 cups ketchup
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup dark molasses
• 1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons English-style dried mustard
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 bay leaf

The coleslaw (adapted from Gourmet Traveller)

Serves 10

Coleslaw

• 1 purple cabbage, 1 green cabbage
• 1 red onion
• 3 carrot
• 4 radish bulbs

Dressing

• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1 cup golden caster sugar
• 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 120 ml peanut oil
• 120 ml double cream
• 120 ml sour cream

Instructions for The Ribs

1. With the pork ribs, remove the membrane from the back of the ribs if your Butcher hasn’t already done it
2. Prepare the dry rub by combining all ingredients, you can store it in a container in case there is any left over
3. Rub the dry rub all over each rack of pork ribs and put them on a roasting rack covered in foil. Preferably, have them marinate in the fridge for 1 – 2 hours
4. Preheat the oven to 120c and remove the ribs from the fridge to bring them to room temperature
5. Put the ribs in the oven and ensure that they are completely covered in foil, this will trap in the moisture to ensure the ribs are nice and tender. Roast for 4 hours.
6. Prepare the sauce by combining all ingredients, can be stored in fridge for later
7. After 4 hours remove the ribs from the oven and remove the foil. Check that they are tender, they should be quite soft and the meat should tear away with ease
8. Heat up your charcoal bbq, if you don’t have one you can probably use your oven grill but the taste won’t be the same!
9. Brush the ribs with the sauce and bbq each side for about 10 minutes, this depends entirely on how hot your bbq is so please keep an eye on it.
10. Remove from the bbq and serve with extra sauce or Tobasco sauce. We served it with coleslaw using this recipe and home made duck fat fried chips.

Instructions for the Coleslaw

1. Combine cabbage, carrot and cucumber and 2 tbsp sea salt in a bowl. Stand for at least 30 minutes, or until wilted, then drain and squeeze excess liquid from vegetables.
2. For dressing, combine vinegar, sugar and ½ tsp sea salt in a saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat, then simmer, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes. Whisk in mustard and oil and pour warm dressing over vegetables and mix. Stand until cool, then stir in creams and season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Refrigerate until required

The ribs were a resounding success, I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to eat ribs at a restaurant for a while because home-made ribs are just as good, if not better especially with coleslaw and duck fat fried chips. The best way to eat these ribs is to grab a piece of foil and use it as your serving plate. If you have any left overs, you can just easily wrap it up and leave it for dinner.

Oh and of course, we had dessert!

Bill Granger's Pavlova w/ passionfruit curd, mango and macerated strawberries.

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The thought of the upcoming pig has me drooling, but I’ll admit it’s the memory of Linda’s Fried Chicken that has me impatient for Sunday to arrive. I thought I’d tasted the best of her Fried Chicken, but boy was I wrong.

Move over KFC, there’s a new competitor in town. D.F.C. Duck Fried Chicken. It’s a combination of 2 of my favourite things in the world, Chicken and rendered duck fat. Given that I’m also recovering from a hangover at the same time, it’s possibly the most appropriate thing possible for me to be eating!

Duck Fat Fried Chicken

(...)
Read the rest of A Spring BBQ, DFC and Spit Style (835 words)

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Naturally, F’s a drooling mess by the end of the episode and is insanely hungry for something (anything) as satisfying as what Adam’s just eaten.

In one of the episodes (episode 18 from season 1 to be exact), Adam visits Minneapolis in search of the birth place of the Juicy Lucy burger – the burger where the cheese is on the inside. There’s been of a bit of a debate on how to spell the burger’s name, one restaurant claims “if it’s spelled right, it’s done right!” and another: “if it’s spelled wrong, you’re at the right place!”.

Anyway, after watching the Minneapolis episode, F could not get the Juicy Lucy burger out of his mind. Not being able to travel to Minneapolis to try the burger, he did the next best thing: plot and plan on how to reconstruct it.

The Juicy Lucy Burger Experiment

© squishies for eatshowandtell, 2010. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beef, burger, favourites, pork

In a never before seen event, the chef at Bistro CBD has given us amateurs full access to their professional kitchen. Food bloggers are known to talk the talk, but can we walk the walk. Imagine 4 crazy food bloggers with the help of head chef Simun Dragicevich running amuck in the kitchen, whipping up a 5 set course meal fit enough to serve 70 people!

With our reputations on the line, the M4 spent the last couple of weeks pouring our blood sweat and tears in to coming up with different dishes . With enough failures to serve a whole country, I think we have finally found the perfect menu. Being a part of this event has given me a new perspective on what chefs do and how difficult it is to come up with a great dish, with that, I salute all Chefs and Pastry Chefs.

If you have nothing better to do on a Wednesday night, why not come down to Bistro CBD and see if we can walk the walk.

Food Bloggers

Linda (me) from eatshowandtell - www.eatshowandtell.com
Karen from Citrus and Candy – www.citrusandcandy.com
Fouad from The Food Blog – www.thefoodblog.com.au
Billy from A Table for Two – www.atablefortwo.com.au

Event: Food Blogger’s Dinner,  Merivale ‘A feast for the senses’ event

Contact: 9240 3000

When: Wednesday 28th July, 6:30pm

Where: Bistro CBD, 1/52 King Street Sydney

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The description of the cake is something I think the whole family will appreciate, so I decided to give the cake a go. However, to spice it up a bit, I added a middle layer of caramel mousse and fresh strawberries, topped with freshly whipped cream, caramel web, more fresh strawberries and torched meringue.

(...)
Read the rest of Strawberry Tres Leche cake (706 words)

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This post is for the meat eaters, Vegetarians you have been warned. Anyway, sometimes having a normal barbecue just isn’t enough. This weekend we decided to make things a bit more interesting by ordering a 12kg baby pig from our local butcher. It set us back roughly $200, which is pretty good value considering it costs about $30/kg if you buy it pre-roasted from the Chinese barbecue stores. Not only is it fun, but you save a lot of money by roasting it yourself.

I remember the first time we tried roasting a lamb or pig ourselves, we were quite intimidated. The fear of over cooking or a crappy tasting marinade can make or break a $200 piece of meat. When you have guests around looking forward to the main event, you wan’t to make sure that it tastes damn bloody good.

Cooking a suckling pig on the spit roast is not rocket science though. I’ll show you how easy it was to do. The hardest part is probably figuring out how you would marinade the pig since it is so big. We are fortunate enough to have access to a fridge cool room. Equally as important is making sure you buy a decent sized pig. I’ve been told that 12kg is a good weight, because anything weighing more may mean it is just full of fat rather than meat. For the spit, if you buy the pig from an Asian Butcher you can also hire the spit. It should be around $30-40 to hire it, if they are generous they might even let you borrow it for free.

The Marinade

We didn’t stick to a particular recipe, it was more a mash up of what we found in the pantry as well as some tips from Linda’s Mum. I don’t have exact portions on me, but we used a combination of the following :

• Hoisin sauce
• Black bean sauce
• Salt and pepper
• Chinese 5 spice powder

Only marinade the inside of the pig, not the outside. Rub the inside of the pig thoroughly. If possible, let it marinate over night, the longer the better. But if you don’t have a fridge big enough (99% of people) then marinating for an hour or two should be fine. This is very important, to not baste the outside of the skin with the marinade. It will probably make the skin chewy and not form any crackle at all.

The spit roaster and the heat source

If you don’t have a spit roaster, ask your butcher to see if you can borrow one. If you are in the market for your own, Kmart sell a Jackeroo one for $299 which I think is a bargain. It has a motor attached to it and holds upto 20kg. Our pig was 12kg and it could easily feed 10 people.

For the heat, we only used heat beads and pieces of bark from a tree outside Linda’s house. Next time, we might try using charcoal or apple wood to see what results we can come up with. To speed up the heat bead heating process, we put it over a gas stove until they turn bright red. We had the spit heating up about 40 minutes before cooking time. If you are using charcoal you will probably need to start it up a bit earlier.

Setting up the pig

I think the most important thing about this stage is making sure the pig is securely attached. The last thing you want the pig to not cook evenly or even fall into the coals because it wasn’t secure enough. Make sure the metal pole is put into the pig’s ass and mouth, it’s probably the best way to keep it from falling off the pole.

left to right : chicken wire, we cooked the dog later, salt on skin, slow roasting is the way to go

Contrary to what the picture above may suggest, no animals were harmed during the cooking process.

Try get your hands on some chicken wire, it will help tying up certain parts of the pig such as it’s legs.

And how long to cook it for ? This depends on your heat source, I’d say anywhere between 3 and 6 hours.

How to get the perfect crackling

First of all and I’ll mention this again, do not baste the skin. From past experience it make the skin chewy and gives you less of a chance to get perfect crackling. Instead, rub copious amounts of salt onto the skin just before the pig is fully cooked. The salt draws out moisture from the pig.

If possible, lower the pig so that they are closer to the coals. The fat from the pig will drip onto the coals and flames should start appearing. The flames will start to cook the skin even further and if you’ve done it right, the skin should start to crackle.

How did it turn out ?

Bloody fantastic. I can’t imagine a better way to cook suckling pig. The meat was very moist and juicy and the crackling was to die for. It’s a great feeling to cook this thing from scratch and even better when you have a few mates over with beers to chat all day with. I’d say it took about 3 hours to cook, but it didn’t cook all the way through. We had to cut it up into pieces and put them back onto the bbq for another 30 minutes. Some of the hard to read places of the pig would be impossible to cook evenly without cutting it up, unless you slow cook it for 5 or 6 hours which is something I might try next time.

Also, feel free to experiment with marinades. There is no right or wrong way to do it, but our one was a real crowd pleaser.

Poor Linda, she is not eating meat and had to miss out on this epic feast. As consolation, she had prawns, hah!

Suckling pig is also great in a bread roll. Along with the beautiful suckling pig, in the roll was pickled radish, sriracha chilli sauce, cucumber and hoisin sauce. If you have a better combination for a suckling pig roll let me know! We also served it Vietnamese wraps style with fresh Vietnamese herbs, rice noodles, cucumbers, pickled radish and shrimp paste sauce.

So there you have it, a trial and error guide on how to roast a suckling pig. You must give it a go especially with the cold weather coming up. The hot coals will keep you warm, and cook a bloody good suckling pig too.

© Howard for eatshowandtell, 2010. | Permalink | 47 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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So what exactly does “de-construct” mean? It may mean something else to another, but for us it’s when you take a dish, separate the main components of that dish, then plate them together in a way that is unrecognisable from it’s original form. It is only when eaten all together that the diner would (or should?) recognise the dish for what it is. The two examples that normally come to mind are 2 desserts (hehe, are you surprised?): Snickers 2009 from JAAN par André and Diner Style Cherry Ripe from Glebe Point Diner.

F's plating version

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Teresa is a very dear friend of ours, someone who we love and can always count on for a random comment which will crack us all up. She’s also a member of es&t, often looking for the next best Japanese restaurant in Sydney. Recently, she left the sunny shores of Sydney for a 12 month career break in New York City. We wish her all the best and we can’t wait for her to come back with Momofuku cookies and Hershey’s chocolate!

Mojito

(...)
Read the rest of Hotpot and a farewell to Teresa (488 words)

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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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Post tags: cake, fish, pork, salmon

We’d somehow managed to get the entire es&t team all together on the same day, and along with a few of Linda’s High School friends, we had a full house to feed. With the sun burning down on us we looked at the pile of meat we’d accumulated and somehow doubted we had enough food. We would soon learn that we were indeed wrong and had enough to feed not only us, but also Linda’s siblings!

Howie loves this silly hat of his, but it drove us nuts in the kitchen when it took up more room than he did!(...)
Read the rest of Spring BBQ, CookShow&Tell (662 words)

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Post tags: bbq, cookshowandtell, spring bbq

Since finally making succesful batches of macaron, I decided to test my luck to ensure that the results of my Daring Baker’s Challenge wasn’t a fluke. One saturday evening, I decided to put my macaron making skills to the test. With each perfect (in my opinion) looking macaron coming out of the oven, I got more confident and experimental, incorporating colours and substituting almond meal for sesame, green tea powder, cocoa powder and coconut. Before I knew it, my kitchen was covered with almond meal, powdered food colouring and sticky icing sugar. However the mess did yield 6 batches of macaron which I filled with vanilla buttercream.

Succesful batches of macaron

Recipe- Adapted from Tartelette’s (yields approximately 40 mini macarons)

• 110gm almond meal
• 200gm icing sugar
• 3 egg whites
• 30gm caster sugar

Method:

1. 3 days prior to baking the macaron, separate the white from the egg yolk. Allow it to age in the regrigerator by covering it with a cloth or paper towel. On the day of baking, remove from the fridge and allow egg white to reach room temperature before whisking.
2. Whisk egg whites till it reaches a soft peak, gradually incorporate the caster sugar while beating. Whisk till a stiff peak is achieved (about 3 minutes of medium speed).
3. Add 1/3 of the previously sifted almond meal and icing sugar into the egg white. With a spatula, mix the mixture, adding the remaining 2/3 of the mixture as you go. Continue mixing until the mixture is well incorporated and is of magma consistency.
4. Pipe the mixture onto baking paper, leaving a gap of 2.5cm between each circle. Allow the macaronage to sit for half an hour, this dries out the outer layer- thus when baked forms a crispy shell.
5. Pre-heat fan forced oven to 120 degrees celsius.
6. Upon lightly touching the top of the piped macronage, the mixture should not stick to your finger. Once this has been achieved, bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

For the black sesame and coconut shells, I susbtituted 55gms of almond meal for either ground lightly roasted sesame or coconut.

Howard’s attempt

Macaron with a bunion

Intrigued by my obsession, Howard decided to give macaron making a go for the first time. Pulling the tray out of the oven, we were in stitches with what he produced. With the help of Twitter, Helen aptly named it “Macaron with a bunion.”

Afetr all my trials and tribulations, my only advice would be to stick to the original recipe. A couple of lessons which I learned throughout my macaron making journey were:

• Pasteurised egg whites purchased in cartons from the supermarket cannot be beaten/whipped. I found this out after half an hour of beating.
• Making Italian meringue without a candy thermometer is plain asking for trouble.
• Squating with your nose stuck to the oven door during the baking process does not improve the outcome of your macaron.

Upon completion of my macaron exorcism, I’m left with 30 egg yolks in the freezer. Besides ice cream and creme brulee, what would you recommend I use the egg yolk for?

© Linda for eatshowandtell, 2009. | Permalink | 32 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Read the rest of Soup Series: Mushroom Broth with a Fresh Herb Cream Crust (508 words)

© Minh for eatshowandtell, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dinner, French, mushroom soup, recipe

To celebrate a good friend J’s birthday, Howard and I along with a group of friends got together to attempt a French Laundry themed dinner. The reason why we chose French Laundy is that J will be going to America next month, however due to time constraints she’s unable to visit Thomas Keller’s famed restaurant. Unfortunately we’re no where near Thomas Keller and his group of chefs caliber, however, we did have alot of fun trying to re-create some of his popular dishes.

I’ve had the French Laundry cook book for a while, but I found myself staring at the book more than cooking from it.  A lot of the recipes are quite difficult and require preperation a day or two ahead, or relying on one or more other recipes in the book. But in saying that, a lot of recipes are quite easy and you can tell from the flavours that Thomas Keller is truly an outstanding Chef. We selected a handful of recipes from the book for this dinner and they turned out pretty well.

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Read the rest of Cookshow&tell, J’s French Laundry (1,030 words)

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Post tags: French, french laundry

]]> http://www.eatshowandtell.com/2009/08/10/cookshowtell-js-french-laundry/feed/ 18 http://www.eatshowandtell.com/2009/08/03/aria-chocolate-tart-masterchef/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=aria-chocolate-tart-masterchef http://www.eatshowandtell.com/2009/08/03/aria-chocolate-tart-masterchef/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:04:44 +0000 linda http://www.eatshowandtell.com/?p=2840 A chocolate lovers’ dream

After a somewhat succesful outcome of my attempt at the Adriano Zumbo mousse cake, I thought it was fitting that I attempt Matt Moran’s chocolate tart which was the final hurdle in the pressure test challenge for the Masterchef finale. Looking at the recipe from the masterchef website, most of the ingredients I already had in the pantry or were left over ingredients from the Zumbo mousse cake. However, one item did flaw me. Jivar/Jivara chocolate, what the hell is that? Thanks to Citrus & Candy I soon found out that Jivara chocolate is a milk chocolate consisting of 40% cocoa with some malt, which when tasted, helped make the chocolate much more velvety than usual. I got mine from Simon Johnson at Alexandria, I was told by the staff that since Matt Moran’s appearance on Masterchef, almost all of their Jivara supply had been sold out.

Just like my Zumbo mousse cake post, I won’t post the entire recipe here because I followed it step by step. You can find the recipe on the Masterchef website at this link .

So, how does it compare ?

Matt Moran's version on Masterchef. Photo from www.masterchef.com.au

eatshowandtell version

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Read the rest of Aria Chocolate tart recipe, Masterchef (875 words)

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Post tags: masterchef

Once again, another month has come and gone. Every month the est crew` all get together and try cook up a different cuisine. For this month’s cook show & tell theme, we decided to go with Greek cuisine. I think the inspiration for the Greek theme stemed from George Comlombaris’s obsession passion for all things Greek, which was displayed prominantly on Masterchef. As usual, when a group of food lovers get together for a cook up, you’re bound to get too much food, endless photo taking opportunities, and a guaranteed late dinner. Atleast this time, we ate before 9pm.

When I think of Greek food I think of souvlaki and tzatziki. This shows my ignorance for the cuisine as well. I guess the good thing about these monthly cookups is the opportunity to do some research into more traditional dishes of a particular cuisine. But as it turns out, we still end up with souvlaki and tzatziki.

To start off the meal, Minh and F kindly prepared a couple of nibblies. Whilst preparing our entrees and mains, we nibbled on Tzatziki with sesame Lavosh and goats cheese rolled in ash with thyme, lemon oil and olives.

Our ‘cooking snacks’

Beers for the boys

Tzatziki with sesame lavosh

Recipe from : http://greekfood.about.com/od/appetizerssalads/r/tzatziki_sass.htm

Goat's cheese pre-rolled in ash with marinated olives

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Read the rest of cookshow&tell, Greek (835 words)

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It’s been a while since my last post and I couldn’t have picked a more difficult assignment to tackle.

For a food lover like myself, the introduction of Masterchef Australia on TV was the best thing since sliced bread. Never have I in the last couple of decades been so engrossed in a TV show that after watching the episode on TV, I would go back to the computer to re-watch it again.

Through the course of 3 months, we’ve all seen the trials and tribulations, not to mention blood, sweat and tears each of the contestants had to go through to get to the finals. I’m not going to lie, but Justine was my favourite. To see her come soo close to the end, but to be booted off because of one of Adriano Zumbo’s creation was very dissapointing. To challenge myself, and see the extent of the difficulty, I decided to take on Adriano Zumbo’s Chocolate Mousse cake. Now, I’ve tried a lot of Zumbo’s cakes before and the my conclusion is that the man is pretty much a genius. The thought of trying to make the cake was quite intimidating as a lot of ingredients and time is needed.

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Read the rest of Adriano Zumbo, Masterchef Chocolate Mousse Cake Recipe (1,287 words)

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Post tags: adriano zumbo, chocolate, masterchef, mousse cake, recipe