Spanish Tapas Ole!

Every six or eight weeks, a group of our friends get together for a dinner.  I'd forgotten how the dinners got started, and our host Y reminded me that it started when we would come over to their house and cook dinner after their daughter and first child N was born - 10 years ago!!  My how time flies. 

Anyway, lately we've been theming the dinners against a cuisine.  Hosted by S & Y, they provide the house and some nibbles to start off, I provide the bulk of the main course with A & P if they are around, and T & M cook dessert.  

There was one dinner where we swapped it all around and I made dessert.  Baking is really not my thing but I do give it a go and do my best, and the Hubby is a much better baker than I am.  The dinner worked out well, but we all quickly reverted back to our old ways.  Yes, we are creatures of habit after all! And as S is vegetarian, it's always fun to come up with veggie dishes that don't feel like a big side dish or just a jazzed-up salad.

We decided this time we were going to go with Spanish tapas seeing that it was still summer, so here's some of the dishes we had, and all the fabulous photos were taken by Y - she's good with that camera!

 

 

Clockwise from the top right:

• baked eggs in braised chickpeas with tomato sauce
• albondigas - beef meatballs in spicy sauce
• chorizo with garlic and parsley
• stuffed eggplant

Wonder what the next dinner's theme will be?

 

Hungry Rachey on the Loose in Hong Kong - Part Two

So it's our second and last day in Hong Kong, which I'm sad about, but not too sad that I'm going to miss out on eating some seriously good food. 

As we were flying out to Sydney that evening, we thought it best to have a long and suitably lazy lunch at the Langham Place Mongkok's signature restaurant, Ming Court.  It was a bit of a bonus that it also happened to be one of Hong Kong's two Michelin-starred restaurants, so it was going to be our very first experience in a Michelin-rated eating establishment.

And it was a delight to learn half an hour before we went to lunch that we were upgraded to Business Class on our overnight Qantas flight to Sydney.  More on that later...

As we sat down, I looked around the restaurant and had this weird feeling I had seen it before, somewhere.  I wracked my brains, until I finally I realised where I had seen it - yup, this was the Chinese restaurant featured in last season's Masterchef when the finalists went to Hong Kong for their challenge.  Now contrary to what a lot of people think, I'm actually not a fan of Masterchef, at all.  I can appreciate how the show has changed the way people cook and think about food, but the commentary just irritates the hell out of me, and I find the contestants plain annoying.  It just so happened that I was watching this particular Masterchef episode set in Hong Kong, and found it more interesting that the others I had cursorily seen.  All I can say is thank God my well-meaning friends and family have stopped asking me when I was going to apply to go on Masterchef - once you're paid to cook, you're ineligible.  Whooopeee! 

Now where was I?  Ah yes, the food.  We decided to go with the special lunch menu which featured a neat 5-course meal designed to not be too filling, which was good as we planned to do the tram to the Peak and some last-minute sightseeing before heading to the airport.  We started off with a dim sim set featuring their famous har gao (shrimp dumpling).  This was the most refined yum cha we had ever had, and you could tell masters were at work on the food. 

We followed it with the silkiest chicken and sweet corn soup we ever had.  Again, a really refined version of what you would get in a suburban Chinese restaurant, with no gristly chicken bits and clumps of cornflour to ruin the delicate flavours.

My favourite dish in the course was next - beautifully stir-fried prawns and asparagus with a Szechuan style sauce.  The prawns were lusciously fat and juicy, and the asparagus crisp and bright, bright green.  The only downside was that the fried rice was served AFTER the prawns - it would have been so perfect to have had that rice immediately after each yummy mouthful of prawns and veggies.

Dessert was a not-very-attractive looking red bean "soup" - and no matter what I did, I just couldn't take an appetising enough photo of this dish.  But the taste was something else altogether - even though I wasn't a big sweet bean fan, this dish was a fitting way to end the meal.  The best way to describe it is a slightly watery "champorado" - a Filipino sticky rice and chocolate pudding-like concoction that my Filipino friends may well have fond childhood memories of, just like I do.

All up, our first Michelin-starred eating experience cost us a grand sum of...wait for it...AU$30 each.  Not bad really, considering that we easily get up to $50-$60 eating yum cha in Sydney. 

And what of our lovely upgrade to Business Class on the way home?  Well, suffice it to say that it was a very "Kath and Kim" moment, with the Hubby and I all goggle-eyed at being seated on the second level, in the very first row of seats behind the pilots.  Yes, pointy end of the plane indeed!  And they gave us the toiletries bag (his and hers), AND the Morissey all-cotton pyjamas. And the seats!  You could lie down, FLAT, and have a massage too!  Oh my... 

I just had to start off our flight with a couple of glasses of champagne - yes, the French stuff - followed by a sumptious Asian-style chicken dish courtesy of The Ponytailed One (a.k.a. Neil Perry) and a slice of wicked chocolate tart with a glass of Rutherglen muscat.  Oh, but all this only after we had selected our breakfast (creamy scrambled eggs, hash, fresh fruit and yonghurt), all individually prepared for all 24 of us in the special end of the plane by two very lovely flight attendants.  I would have taken photos, but it just would have been too, too gauche.  All I can say that it was a very fitting ending to a lovely gastronomic 48 hours in Hong Kong.  Noice!!!

Hungry Rachey on the Loose in Hong Kong - Part One

A long held dream of feasting my way in Hong Kong was realised when the Hubby and I spent a glorious couple of days last week. It was a stopover on the way home from Cebu City in the Philippines, and despite feeling unwell from a nasty cough and cold, I was determined to try out a few of the "foodie musts" as specified by a few blogs, Lonely Planet and a few wonderful friends.

Breakfast on our first morning was an interesting one. We decided to have a wander around the streets of Mongkok around our hotel (the Langham Place - highly recommended and with the best pool I've ever swum in) to search for where the locals eat breakfast.

We bravely ventured into a little noodle place that looked the deal - linoleum tables, plastic chairs, patrons noisily slurping from the bowls and chatting with friends or reading the paper. We were welcomed by the loveliest man who spoke minimal English but who still eagerly tried to describe what a local would have for breakfast.

We are happy to report that we thoroughly enjoyed our beef and noodle soup followed by eggs, a "breakfast sausage" and white bread with margarine and lashings of warm tea. I suppose that's the rough translation of the characters are in the menu below!

Beats Vegemite on toast...just!

Translation, anyone?

We also had a wander around the fresh markets near our hotel.  The rain didn't daunt us from having a browse among really beautiful fruit and veggies, and of course the more unusual ingredients that make up Cantonese cooking.  Suffice it to say the meat and fish were very fresh, and the chickens were a bit too fresh for my liking, what with clucking, feathers and all!  We also beheld a bit of a sight of a fish monger beating the crap out of a madly flopping fish on the floor - oops, sorry, I should have had a warning to animal lovers and vegetarians then.  Even I felt really sorry for the fishie.  Still, we must be respectful of how other cultures treat their food. 

Very fresh meat...

Even fresher chickens!

'

Beautiful dried meats...damn those quarantine laws!

For lunch we supped at two supposed institutions in Hong Kong. First we ate at the Luk Yu Teahouse on Stanley Street. In Lonely Planet's words, "Most of the staff have been here since the early Ming dynasty and are as grumpy and ill-tempered as the emperor desposed...but the dim sum is really quite delicious".

As recommended, we stuck with the classics like BBQ pork buns (cha siu bao) and prawn dumplings (har gao), and it was rather yummy. We didn't find the staff grumpy at all - I actually find staff in some Sydney Chinatown yum cha places worse - and it was helpful to have an English menu with prices.

We didn't want to get too stuffed, as I specially wanted to make room for "Hong Kong's best roast goose" as served in Yung Kee Restaurant just a stone throw's away from Luk Yu. According to Gourmet Traveller, this place serves on average 400 geese a day all of which they rear and roast themselves. The goose didn't disappoint, although I was expecting the skin to be a bit crispier. The yummy surprise was their house-made XO sauce - absolutely incredible and a perfect accompaniment to the simple stir-fried greens and rice that we had with the goose.

Yummy XO sauce!

We couldn't let go of our only full night in Hong Kong without more exploring, and after a bit of umming and ahhing we decided to brave the dai pai dongs (street food stalls) of the famous Temple Street market. The slight hesitation came from a news article we read that day about a number of acid attacks on Temple Street shoppers over the past few months, with acid apparently flung indiscriminately from the tops of the buildings along the street. We thought the chances of an attack on a not-so-busy Monday night would be slim, but nonetheless I cast a few nervous glances up at the buildings as we walked and I conscientiously tried to walk in the middle of the street to be a bit away from windows and rooftops.

In the end we were glad with our decision, as we had one of the nicest meals. The beef brisket curry was melt-in-the-mouth and bloody spicy, and the lemongrass and garlic chicken wings were delightfully crunchy and tender. The steamed greens weren't half bad either!

The one thing that kinda disappointed us was how hard it was to a bar or pub that we could have a drink in. Not that HK didn't have any bars or pubs, but they were few and far between in Kowloon and around where we were staying. We were pretty much stuck to either drinking (expensively) in the hotel, or buying a few beers and drinking in our room. We opted for the latter and enjoyed a few bevvies while surveying our 35th floor view.

Tomorrow would be another day, albeit a short one as we fly back to Sydney in the evening, but who would have thought we would have our first Michelin starred experience, and an airborne gastronomic experience! But I'll leave that for my next blog post - promise! :)

Frostfest in Orange

Pre-Note:

On the day that I finished this entry, our darling dog Georgie suddenly died on 8 August 2009. She was only 9 years old. It has taken me a while to come back to this blog, as it brought back memories of that wonderful and awful last holiday day in Orange.

This is for you, my baby.

After missing out on Orange Food Week in April, I was determined that we were not going to miss out on the inaugural winter food festival, Frostfest.

Orange is a foodie's dream region that's 3.5 hours drivewest of Sydney - a lovely drive across the Blue Mountains and rolling pastures and green, green hills. It's a region well known for its cool climate wines (we've tasted beautiful sauvignon blanc and pinot noir from both Bantry Grove and Printhie wines) and fabulous produce that includes apples, cherries and hazelnuts.

We've been staying in a wonderful place called Keronga Park managed by Annie and Jim Simpson, and we and our doggies love it so much we're planning to come back very soon and hope to have many more visits in the future. The fact that they have a wood fired oven on the property is a huge drawcard (and yes, I did go a bit crazy cooking in the thing), but it's also the fact that the cottage is comfy, cosy and gorgeous set among their hazelnut and cherry orchards. Annie and I stayed up late last night plotting a 100 Mile Feast fundraiser potentially in February next year, so watch this space for more information as the planning gets underway.

We've been in Orange for a week, and only this morning did we actually get some frost on the ground. Still no snow - well, it kinda snowed for 2 minutes yesterday afternoon amidst a winter downpour but the hubby says it doesn't count - but I haven't given up hope yet.

Quite a number of the stallholders at the North Sydney Produce Market come from Orange, and we'd been getting invitations to come and visit the source of all this good stuff.

We've been bowled over by the hospitality of Fred, Zanzie and of course Raewyn of Trunkey Creek Pork. Fred gave us a detailed tour of their processing plant where we got a real appreciation for all the hard work that goes into a such a high quality product. The massive smoker machine was a revelation (they use beech wood to get that great flavour - I would drool every time I sniffed my jumper afterwards), and the hubby and I couldn't believe how bloody expensive vacuum sealer machines were (had to keep the hubby's itching hand from trying out the machine). We also got to see how the world-famous Trunkey Creek sausages were made - Fred offered to let me have a go, but I was too chicken to try as I bet it wasn't as easy as it looked!

We saw Raewyn at the Orange Farmer's Market where she made sure we got to meet all the stallholders, and get to sample their incredible bacon and egg rolls. Of all the farmer's markets we've been to, this one felt the most local, where everyone knew everyone and bought each other's stuff. Our haul included beautiful veggies, local bread from Anna's Cuisina (we ate four loaves between the two of us in the past week!), salt-dried Manzanilla olives that amazingly don't taste briny and olive-y, and sylvanberry jam (similar to blackberry) which was fabulous on freshly baked scones.

We're off to Selkirk's* tonight for their 4-course Wagyu beef dinner with local Twin Oakes Wagyu beef and local wines to round out a fabulous food-focused week. I think I'll be crying tomorrow when we drive down the Mitchell Highway back to Sydney, but will comfort myself with the thought that we will back very soon!

*We never managed to get to Selkirks that night. And yes, we were crying on the way home, but for very different reasons, and one which we didn't think would happen so soon. I've now since heard unconfirmed reports that Selkirks is gone, so that's one famed regional restaurant we need to take off our to do list.

Menu for the Week - 23 to 29 March 2009

One of the reasons why I decided to start this blog was to keep track of the weekly dinner menus. It's been a bit of a ritual for the past few years - pretty much every Saturday morning, I lay out the latest editions of my food magazines and a selection of cookbooks, look at what's in season (or what I bought from the markets) and plan what we'll be cooking and eating over the next week. I then compile our shopping list - grocery separated from fruit and vegetables, with special sections for the butcher, bakery and deli when required.

I now have around 8 notebooks (handwritten) of weekly menus and most of our dinner/lunch party menus. People seem to find it strange that I do this, whereas I just cannot imagine NOT doing it. Imagine how long it would take to do the shopping! And I just couldn't bear the thought of visiting the shops *every* *day* to get what I need for that night's dinner. Ugh.

We aim to cook five to six times a week, with a day or two for either a take-away or eat out. Sure, there are weeks when I just can't be bothered and we end up taking away or eating out more times that we'd like, but most weeks I like to be good and use up what we've got in the fridge and pantry.

So I suppose one way to make sure I keep this blog regular is to put in our weekly menu. Yeah, some people might find this wanky or just plain weird, but what they hey - I'm really doing it for me, so there. :)

Here's what we're cooking this week:

• Pork cutlets (on bone) salt-rubbed with parsley, grape and chorizo salad with stir-fried snake beans and oyster sauce
• Fish fillets (lightly spiced) with almond basmati rice with cinnamon and green salad OR sauteed cavolo nero with pistachios
• Pecan crusted Scotch fillet steak with sauteeed nicola potatoes with garlic and mixed cherry tomato salad with purple basil mini cress
• Thai-style sweet pork with stir-fried sambal water spinach (kangkung) plus steamed long grain rice and extra Asian veggies
• Boiled lamb shanks with star anise broth with pearl barley or couscous salad
• Beetroot tagliatelle pasta with pork and fennel Italian style sausage, lemon and nutmeg with salatini salad and mixed cherry tomatoes

So 'til the next post, happy cooking and eating!

My Forays into Baking (or My Pecan Nut-Fest)

I'm really not that into baking. It's fiddly (all that measuring and weighing), it's messy (I can't believe I've used all those bowls and implements!) and I have had spectacular failures (the attempt and accompanying tantrum to make brazo de mercedes - a classic Filipino meringue and custard concoction - still gets talked about in my household).

However, for the past couple of weekends, I've been bitten by the baking bug and have produced three very different baked goods.

It started with the challenge to do an American-themed dessert for a get-together with friends last weekend. I normally cook the mains, but this time, someone (yes, I'm looking at you, Tim) decided it would be fun if we mixed it up a bit and everyone cooked what they normally didn't cook. So I got lumbered with dessert.

After a few weeks of agonising, looking through my back issues of Fine Cooking magazine and lots of Googling, I decided to go with pecan pie. It helped that one the recent episodes of SBS Food Safari had a video demonstration of a pecan pie recipe. What didn't help was the recipe text got the measurements of a couple of fundamental ingredients wrong - no way can y0u make a pastry with 10 grams of butter (it was 110 grams) and you'd end up seriously gluggy pie filling with one cup of corn flour (corn starch) which from the video looked like it was more like a tablespoon. Attempts of the Hubby to help by digging out Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food:Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking book and looking through Stephanie's Cook's Companion were appreciated but made me somewhat confused when I made my first pastry dough and got all the measurements wrong. It was so disgusting I couldn't bear to take a photo of it. I decided to trust my instincts this time and made a second dough which came out perfectly. I had buggered up shortcrust pasrty before so was very apprehensive, but breathed a sigh of relief when none of the thick pecan pie filling oozed out from the pastry. Success!

I was so buoyed by confidence that I decided to make double-chocolate brownies with pecans (I mistakenly ordered two kilos of the buggers so need to use up as much as I can!). I have made brownies before so was reasonably confident it would turn out o.k., and they did.

What wasn't o.k. was I left out the box of Dutch cocoa powder which still had around a tablespoon of powder left in it out of the kitchen bench, and we left the doggies the run of the house while we were out to dinner. Bloody Labradors! We got home to a demolished box and smears of cocoa all over the beige carpet (disturbingly looking like poo...) The Hubby was extremely upset with me, not because of the carpet but because of the possibly lethal ingestions of cocoa that the dogs may have had which of course leads to theobromine poisoning. Needless to say, the dogs are all right, although Georgie was mighty thirsty in the morning and was apparently a bit hyper in the park.

The baking bug bit again this weekend and I made a cranberry, zucchini and pecan bread to have for Sunday lunch. The photo in the March edition of delicious. magazine was so yummy looking that I had to make it. It took a lot longer to bake than the recipe said though (that darned skewer just didn't want to come out clean) - more like 1 hour 45 minutes than just an hour or so, but good things are worth waiting for. It was seriously yummy, with smearings of King Island triple cream cheese, slices of salami and ham and the leftover roast lamb we had last night with a green salad for lunch.

To bake or not to bake...I still have 1.5 kilos of pecan nuts to go so the baking forays may not be completely over yet!

The Half (House) Warming

So why a half-warming?

Because our fab friend Mike is half as old as he used to be when he first had his housewarming 15 years ago - that is, when he bought his house the first time around, then bought it again last year. Naturally, such a spesh occasion needs a spesh menu.

This was quite a fun challenge on a few fronts. It would be the second biggest group we would cook for (the biggest is 80 for my bro-in-law's 30th, which is also notable as we fed all of them on around $300. Apparently the guests still remember the oven baked beef ribs and the cheat's sushi with wasabi suprises - amazing really, considering the copious amounts of alcohol consumed that night!)

It was also the kind of party where the 35 or so people would drop in over the whole day, so we had to stagger out the food plus have a cold and hot selection for the canapes and possibly the lunch mains. Oh, and did I mention that today was one of the hottest days in Sydney, hitting the high 30s in the City and mid 40s in the west? Thank God for airconditioning! So we had to make sure the food was going to be hot and humid-friendly and still manage to be appetising.

A few lessons learned:

• The K.I.S.S. principle (keep it simple, stooopid!) applied more than ever. Take advantage of pre-made stuff - the rare roast beef on multigrain pepper crackers with beetroot and a tiny dollop of horseradish cream topped with a sprig of parsley was made completely with store-bought ingredients but looked and tasted fabulous.
  
• Big is beautiful - I was amazed how the 4-kilo ham cooked the way my Mom cooks it just disappeared, and the roasted whole sides of ocean trout with walnut and coriander salsa worked really, really well


• One (or two) unusual dishes adds a bit of "wow" factor, and gets people to try new tastes and textures - the ajo blanco in shot glasses did the trick


• A pail-ful of punch was essential on such a hot day
  
• Don't let a seeming failed dish get the better of you - the slightly fermented vodka-fed watermelon ended up in the punch, which was quite fabulous

So the next big one to cook for is a house and another two-thirds warming and an even number! Note: possibly only nerdy maths types will get this.