Bak Kut Teh‏

A few weeks ago, I made an all too brief weekend trip to Singapore to visit my girlfriend – well, that was one of the reasons, others included eating my body weight in chilli crab and taking a break from work before my head exploded. Gladly, I returned head intact, and filled with some fantastic memories, many of which featured food. Singapore, you see, is home to an amazing and vibrant food culture, with hawker food centres literally everywhere, featuring cuisines that span the Asian continent.

Some of my food experiences, sadly, weren’t amazing (durian and century egg, I’m looking at you), though most were great and some, incredible. Popiah, Cereal prawns, Chilli crab, frog and Soursop juice were all phenomenal – so too was Bak Kut Teh, a chinese soup that consists of pork braised in a broth of various spices. Upon coming home I was determined to make this dish myself, and this is how it was done:

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp white peppercorns, crushed in mortar & pestle

1 tsp black peppercorns, crushed in m&p

1 tsp fennel seeds, dry roasted in a pan, crushed in m&p

1 head of garlic, roasted in oven, plus a few additional cloves to garnish the dish

2 star anise

1 stick cinnamon

Light soy sauce

200g chicken wing tips

1 brown onion, diced roughly

500g pork belly

To begin, sauté the chicken wing tips in some oil until they’re browned, then lower the heat and add the onion and cook until slightly caramelized. Add the pepper, the fennel seed, the star anise, the garlic and the cinnamon, a litre of water and a good splash of soy sauce. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer, add the pork and cook for 2-3 hours or until the pork is tender. Taste the stock, it should be quite peppery and garlicky, and add more soy sauce if you think it needs it. At this point I removed the pork and placed it in the fridge. After straining the stock, I poured it into a ceramic dish and allowed it to cool in the fridge. After a few hours, the stock will hopefully have cooled and set into a jelly, a result of the natural gelatin contained in the chicken and pork skin. At this point, cut it into cubes and freeze solid. Remove the frozen cubes and place them in a sieve over a bowl and allow to melt in the fridge. This is basically a clarifying method that will result in a perfectly clear consommé while retaining all of the flavour. Don’t ask me how it works though, as I have no idea whatsoever.

To complete, gently reheat the pork in some of the stock, then garnish with some cloves of garlic. Good times!

Chocolate, Caramel, Toffee

Personally, I’m not that much of a sweet tooth, though I do like making desserts because you can take your time with them and do several stages of a finished dessert in advance, and they often look good. Oh, and other people tend to like them a lot, particularly the girls in my office, and every so often I’ll bring in a dessert. This was one of them

Chocolate Cake base

I have to say I don’t have a preferred chocolate cake recipe. There’s a ton of them on the internet. Choose one, they’re all pretty good.

 Milk Chocolate Ganache

Ok, so here’s the thing- I don’t use quantitites for my ganaches, I usually just break some chocolate up in a bowl and then heat some cream in a saucepan, pouring in about as much as looks right into the bowl and whisking to a smooth consistency. That’s pretty much it. I realise how unhelpful that is, but then this blog is pretty much for my reference only. I’m not sure anyone actually reads it.

 Caramel Mousse

This one is slightly more involved – to make it, I made a caramel from sugar and water in a saucepan, to which I added some cream and stirred, while heating, until it was smooth. I then whipped some cream, waited until the caramel was cool, then folded it into the whipped cream. Oh, and I added a leaf of gold strength gelatin that I’d melted in a double boiler. After combining the cake base, ganache and caramel mousse layers, you just need to add the toffee top.

 Toffee Top

To make this I again made a caramel from sugar and water, then poured it over some peanuts on a sheet of silpat. Once cool (and remember to let it cool, I’ve burned my fingers on toffee more times than I care to admit), break into bits and blend to a powder in a food processor. Now take the praline powder and pour it into a sieve and shake it over a piece of baking paper with a circle out of it, over a sheet of silpat. Take the silpat and place it in a low oven until it melts. Remove and allow to cool.

Anyway, this dessert is really quite delicious. The caramel and chocolate work really well, as does the peanut toffee, which has just enough peanut flavour to complement the caramel and chocolate in a delicious-snickers kind of way, while offering a nice textural counterpoint.

A side dish

 

I want to start this post by saying that I have no idea how I came up with this dish, I think it’s due to my love of green beans and of experimenting with foods, and having some salmon in the fridge

MARINADE

-          2 big tbsp white miso

-          60 mls sake

-          60 mls mirin

-          1 ½ tsp sugar

-          2 salmon fillets, about 150g each

 Whisk the miso with the sugar, mirin, sake and sugar, then, in a small container, pour over the salmon, cover and leave overnight. The following day, remove the salmon, rinse under running water, pat dry, then bake in an 180 degree oven for 20 minutes. Note- this is longer than you’d typically cook salmon, but I think that for this recipe, a dryer texture is desirable. Once cooked, flake apart with your hands and set aside.

 SAUCE

-          200mls Chicken stock

-          100 mls shao xing wine

-          2 tbsp chilli bean paste

-          1 tbsp dried shrimp

-          ½ tsp shrimp paste

-          100 mls tamarind water (30g tamarind soaked in 100mls warm water, strained)

-          Splash of soy sauce

 Next, pulse the shrimp paste with the dried shrimp in a food processor for 30 seconds or so. Add to a saucepan along with the stock, the wine, the chilli bean paste and tamarind water and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until reduced by about half. Add a splash of soy sauce if needed.

 AND LASTLY..

 -          500g green beans

-          10 kaffir lime leaves, cut into chiffonade

-          Handful of unsalted peanuts, roughly crushed in a m&p

 Cook the beans in salted water, then immerse in a bowl of iced water. When ready to serve, toss the beans and salmon in the sauce, then garnish with crushed peanuts and lots of kaffir lime leaf.

 Ok, I love this dish. I think it’d work brilliantly as a side in a pan-asian menu.  Plus, variations are endless- ocean trout instead of salmon, snake beans instead of round beans… ok, so the variations clearly aren’t limitless, but this is a great dish.

Circassian Duck

 A while ago, I made circassian chicken, and absolutely loved it. It was unlike anything I’d ever tried before, and seemed to be one of those perfect, balanced dishes. Perfect though it was, however, winter is approaching, which is the time of year when I put duck in everything, and so I decided to remake this dish, with duck in place of chicken, and a few other tweaks, just because .

STOCK

 -          1 duck carcass

-          2 cinnamon quills

-          2 bay leaves

-          2 star anise

-          1 onion, cut into quarters

-          1 stick celery, cut into quarters

-          1 carrot, cut into quarters

-          5 cloves garlic, smooshed a bit

 Roast the duck carcass in the oven until browned, then add to a pot, along with the rest of the ingredients and enough water to cover. Simmer for a couple of hours, skimming occasionally, then strain. Leave in the fridge overnight, to allow easier clarification of the stock the following day.

 DUCK CONFIT

 -          2 duck legs

-          1 handful coarse sea salt

-          2 garlic cloves, sliced

-          ½ bunch tarragon leaves, chopped

-          1 tsp ground cinnamon

 Mix the salt with the garlic, tarragon and cinnamon, and scatter half of it onto on a plate. Lay the duck on top, skin side up, then scatter the rest of the salt on top. Cover with cling wrap and leave in the fridge overnight. To cook it, remove the duck and wipe off excess salt, then lay in an ovenproof container- personally I like to use a cake tin, which is about the right shape and size, and cover with duck fat. Add to an oven, preheated to about 120 degrees, and cook for about 2-3 hours, or until tender. Remove, pull the meat apart and set aside.

 And finally, the last few ingredients

 -          ½ tsp Ground cinnamon

-          ½  bunch Tarragon leaves, chopped – about 1 tbsp worth

-          2 tbsp plain yoghurt

-          ½ lemon

-          3 slices wholemeal bread, crusts removed

-          Seeds from ½ pomegranate

-          1 brown onion, diced

-          3 garlic cloves, slices

-          1 small red chilli, sliced

-          1 handful walnuts

-          1 tsp smoked paprika

-          1 tsp sweet paprika

-          Pinch of cayenne pepper

 Start by sautéing the chilli, onion and garlic in some oil and butter until soft, about 15 minutes. In a food processor, blitz the walnuts into a fine crumb, then add the chilli, onion and garlic and blend to a paste. Dunk the bread into the reserved stock, then remove, squeeze out a bit of excess liquid, and add to the food processor and blend to a mayo-like consistency, adding more stock if necessary. Spoon into a bowl and combine with the confit duck, then add the cinnamon, the yogurt, the paprika, cayenne and lemon juice and mix together.

 To finish, drizzle over a paprika oil, which is just smoked paprika mixed with some olive oil, and garnish with pomegranate seeds and tarragon leaves, and serve with a flatbread of some description. I made sesame seed parathas, they worked well.

 I really like this dish, it’s entirely different to the chicken version – not better necessarily, but it’s warmer, spicier and heartier than the duck version, and altogether just as delicious!

Blue Eye with Bisque

Masterchef  has started, wooooooooo!!! It’s welcome nourishment after having been forced to subsist on the meager gruel that is My Kitchen Rules, with its uninspired challenges, boring hosts, and reams of absurd, useless contestants. How any of them can stuff up a dish is beyond me, given their luxury of having weeks of menu planning, the advantage of using their own kitchen, and several hours to cook the actual food – oh, and there’s two of them doing it!

One decent-sounding dish to have come from the most recent series was a dish of coral trout with a shellfish bisque. This piqued my interest, as I love shellfish soups and sauces, and it’d been a while since I’d made a fish dish. So below is my recipe for a similar dish, not having looked at the original one at the MKR website.

BISQUE

-          Prawn heads and shells from 1kg green prawns

-          Shells, legs and claws from 2 green blue swimmer crabs

-          1 bulb fennel

-          1 carrot

-          1 brown onion

-          2 bay leaves

-          50 mls brandy

-          1 good pinch of saffron

-           2 stalks celery

-          4 cloves garlic

-          1 tin chopped tomatoes

-          2 litres chicken stock

First of all, I should note that you won’t need the prawns or crab meat in this dish, so set them aside for another dish. To begin, place the crab shells on a roasting tray and cook for about 15 minutes at 200 degrees until well roasted. Next, in a large saucepan, cook the onion, garlic, celery and fennel in some olive oil until softened, then add the prawn heads and cook until they’ve turned orange- the whole time making sure you squish down on them with a wooden spoon to release the juices from the heads. Yum!  Deglaze with the brandy and reduce slightly, then add the tomatoes, the stock, the bay leaves and saffron, and simmer on a low heat for 2-3 hours. Taste, and depending on how rich you want the bisque, reduce further if desired. Otherwise, using a stick blender, whizz it all up, then strain through a sieve. Done!

Next, you’ll need some chervil or tarragon leaves, whichever fish you decide to use, and some squid. Clean the squid, then score with a sharp knife, cut into strips and fry on a high heat for a minute or so, until they curl up. I decided to use blue eye, as I love the dense texture- it’s probably my favourite fish. You can cook it any way you like, I chose to pan fry it.

Then simply lay the fish on a plate or bowl, arrange some squid around it, and pour over some of the bisque. Garnish with the chervil or tarragon and you’re done.

N.B- in the absence of any starch or carbs, this is a pretty light dish. I think it’d make a great entrée; after making this dish I found myself still hungry and made a quick tomato, white wine and chilli linguine with the prawns and crab meat. I guess you could always serve the dish with a salad or some green vegetables tossed in butter and almonds and some potatoes. Then again, maybe I’m just a pig.

Buffalo Wings

Well, Autumn’s definitely started here, the wind has picked up, the weather has cooled down, and I’m in the mood for spice. Everybody loves fried chicken, it’s one of the inescapable facts of life, and although a lot of people can be a bit funny about deep frying, it’s really not particularly difficult or dangerous, and if you get the oil to the right temperature, it’s not all that unhealthy either. Don’t get me wrong, this is not health food, but it’s when the oil isn’t hot enough that the food absorbs it all like a sponge, resulting in disgusting, grease-soaked food that tastes and looks disgusting. Anyway, I like to use chicken wings for this recipe, because they’re pretty much all a uniform size and cook evenly. Plus they’re cheap.

-          1 kg chicken wings

-          600 mls buttermilk

-          1 kg plain flour

-          A few good pinches of salt and pepper (as well as garlic and onion powder, if you like)

-          2 Litres vegetable oil

 The first step is to separate each chicken wing into three parts, the two parts with meat on them and the wing tip. I’m sure there are names for the two parts of the wing that have meat, but if there is, I don’t know them. Anyway, keep the wing tips to make stock, they’re quite great. Next, line up three bowls, one with plain flour, the next with buttermilk, and the last with flour mixed with salt and pepper (and if you like, some garlic and onion powder. Personally, I don’t care for the stuff, but hey, I’m not judging!). Heat the oil to 180 degrees (easy if you have an induction cooktop, more difficult on a conventional stove, but it’s worth using a thermometer and getting it right), and, working in batches of 5-6 wing pieces at a time,  dredge wings in the first bowl, shaking off excess flour,  then dip into the buttermilk, and then into the last bowl, coating in flour. Drop carefully into the oil and leave until golden brown and crispy, which should take about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on absorbent paper while cooking subsequent batches.

Blue cheese sauce

 -          4 stalks of spring onion, sliced

-          100g blue cheese, broken into chunks

-          150 mls cream

-          Pinch of white pepper, ground in a mortar & pestle

 Heat the cream, add the cheese (I used st. agur, which is a relatively mild. Gorgonzola dolce would be a decent substitute, if that’s what you’re after) and stir to combine. Once the cheese has melted, add the pepper and spring onion and stir through. Pour into another container and leave to cool down in the fridge.

 Spicy Sauce

 -          1 can diced tomatoes

-          2 chipotle chillies

-          2 dried habanero chillies

-          2 small red chillies, sliced finely

-          1 brown onion, diced

-          3 cloves garlic, or more, if you like garlic, sliced

-          1 tsp cumin, toasted and pounded in a mortar & pestle

-          Small pinch of smoked paprika, maybe ½ tsp.

-          100 mls chicken stock

-          50g butter, cut into cubes

Begin, as with so, so many of my recipes, by sautéing the garlic and onion in some oil and a little bit of butter, on low heat, until soft, which should take no less than 15 minutes. Make sure you stir from time to time to prevent the onion and garlic from burning. Next, add the stock, the tomatoes, the chillies, the cumin and paprika and simmer on a low heat for half an hour or so. To finish, fish out the habanero and chipotle chillies and discard, add the butter and stir through, then blend. Taste, and add some salt and/or sugar if you think it needs it.

 

Finally, take the wings and stir through in the spicy sauce, then chuck on a plate and serve with some of the blue cheese sauce.  Absolutely delicious!

 

Sichuan Chicken

Wow, it feels like months since my last post- probably because it has been. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking- I have, I just haven’t been making a lot of old favourites recently and not necessarily anything new, or exciting, or worth posting up here. Anyway, one thing worth noting since my last post is that I have been on a trip to Hong Kong in order to visit one of my best friends, and of course, eat a lot of food.  And eat I did; I was determined not to turn my nose up at anything, no matter how bizarre- so I ate pigeon heads, fish maw, cow intestine soup, tripe served in any number of ways, century eggs, fish balls from the grimiest roadside vendor, chicken and goose feet, and many more.

I also ate at a couple of Michelin-starred restaurants, including one where the bill for my friend and I came to less than $20 AUD per person. Insanity. One of my favourite places, however, was a Sichuan restaurant which specialised in hotpots, where the night passed in a dizzying haze of beer, chillies and Sichuan peppercorns. Returning home, I knew I had to make a dish that paid homage to this experience.

CHICKEN OIL

-  4 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns

-  1 good handful dried chillies

-  200g chicken wing tips

-  100g bacon, diced

-  500 mls grapeseed oil

-  2 star anise

-  Pinch of msg – or salt, if you prefer

Start by frying the chicken wing tips and bacon in some of the oil. I tend to make spicy fried chicken wings fairly regularly, they being a bit of a favourite of myself and my flatmate, but always remove the wing tips, as they’re a bit pointless for eating, but great for stocks. Otherwise, you can just use the same amount of chicken wings.  Once browned, reduce the heat, add the rest of the oil and the dried chillies and star anise. In a dry pan, roast the peppercorns until fragrant, then add to the oil. Leave to infuse on a very low heat for a couple of hours, then strain through some muslin, add some msg to taste, and set aside.

CHICKEN

Cook the chicken breast sous vide, at 62 degrees for 70 mins, or if- like a normal person- you don’t happen to have a water bath or immersion circulator in the kitchen, you can just steam it gently. To serve, simply chuck the chicken in a bowl and generously pour the chicken oil over the chicken and garnish with some dried chillies, some extra Sichuan peppercorns and sliced spring onion.

I really like this dish- despite the amount of chillies and peppercorns in the oil, it’s very subtle, with the chillies only imparting a small amount of heat, while the peppercorns add a light citrusy note. Great stuff!