Gochisousama

Boiled Chocolate Cake

2010-09-19T20:00:00.007+10:00

This recipe is my all time favourite, which is why it was one of the first to make it in the cookbook. My nan recently passed away and this cake was something that was always in her cake tin when we came to visit. This one or the sneaky beetroot chocolate cake, which is another story.

This is an amazingly moist cake and absolutely dead simple to make. I've noticed this year that I have not been so active here lately. It has been a big year personally, but it's time to recommit, if nothing more than to heed the last words my nan spoke to me - Enjoy your cooking!

Ingredients:
110 grams butter
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoon cocoa
1/2 teaspoon bi-carb soda
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
2 beaten eggs

Boil together the first 5 ingredients. When cool add to the flour and the eggs and mix well. Bake in a moderate oven for 40 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Hokkaido Cheesecake - Trial 1

2010-06-25T19:25:00.007+10:00

This was my favourite snack in Japan - a cheesecake in the bread section of the supermarket and not the fridge section as you might want/expect from a cheese product.

It is something you soon forget to think about as this is unlike any cheesecake you might have had before! It has this beautiful light texture that makes it pull apart like a sponge cake.

It's been 3 years since I've come back from Japan and I'm not sure if my recent return made me finally hunt down a recipe but I did manage to find one. It can go by the name of Cotton Soft or Souffle Cheesecake.

Ingredients:
140g caster sugar
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
50g butter
250g cream cheese
100 ml fresh milk
1 T lemon juice
60g cake flour /superfine flour
20g cornflour
1/4 tsp. salt

Melt the cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well.

Whisk egg whites until foamy and add cream of tartar and sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan or about 10 individual muffin cups, lined with paper

Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours or until set and golden brown at 160 degrees C .

It was a decent recipe with the texture being correct but I found it a bit too eggy in flavour. Will have to continue my search for the perfect recipe.......

Zumbo Inspired: Cherry & Vanilla Bavarois

2010-02-21T13:50:00.005+10:00

This recipe was what came out of my trip to Zumbo's in Sydney. There was no way I could straight out copy what I had seen there but I was really taken by the idea of the poprocks in the chocolate base. So I went with something a little easier with incorporating it into these custard puddings.

It's amazing to watch your friends' faces while they eat them and get the first hit of the poprocks. And it makes you quite the hit at dinner parties when you provide this as the dessert.

Base
250g white chocolate
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk
2 packets popping candy

Cherry Bavarois
1 1/2c cherry puree
15g gelatine
150ml double cream
2T icing sugar

Vanilla Bavarois
2 1/2c milk
8 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
vanilla pod
20g gelatine

For the base, melt the chocolate over a double boiler, add the sweetened condensed milk and work until smooth. Add the candy and spread onto a baking sheet, and put into the fridge until partially set. When it is at a consistency to cut and hold its shape, take it out of the fridge and cut out circles to the size of the base of your moulds. Then return to the fridge.

Vanilla Bavarois: Heat the milk with the vanilla pod, for best results cut the pod in half lengthwise first. Work together the eggs and sugar until smooth. Strain the milk, stir in the milk and eggs until well combined and then add the gelatine. Stir continuously over a gentle heat until the mixture coats the spoon ( it will make a clean line when you run your finger across the back of the spoon). Refrigerate until cold and beginning to thicken. Whip the cream, when it starts to thicken, add the sugar and continue until it holds a firm peak. Fold through the vanilla custard mixture. Refrigerate.

Cherry Bavarois: Add the gelatin to the fruit puree. Whip the cream, when it starts to thicken add the sugar and continue until it holds a firm peak. Fold through the puree mixture. Oil your molds and then fill halfway with puree mixture.

HINT: To get the timing right, make your fruit bavarois while the custard is cooling in the fridge. Put the fruit bavarois in the moulds and put in the fridge while you are mixing the custard with the cream. This way the fruit bavarois will be set enough to hold the custard mixture, creating a perfect layer. Place a chocolate base on top of each mould and then refrigerate overnight.

To plate up, run a knife around each mould and place a base on top of the mould and then turn out on a plate

Notes from Sydney - Zumbo's

2009-11-20T17:52:00.013+10:00

Patisserie and Chocolate Cafe
296 Darling Street / 308 Darling Street Blamain
Sydney
Website
Price: $8~
Verdict: Awesome, Amazing, Unbelievable....

Some people might think it's crazy to fly across country to eat pastries, luckily my friends are not those kind of people. I found some kindred spirits in my new coworkers this year, who all jumped at the chance to fly to Sydney in the guise (actual for one of us) of birthday celebrations to eat pastry at Adriano Zumbo's. He had featured heavily in Masterchef, putting up amazing concoctions as challenges.

So first day in Sydney, we trekked out to Blamain and all agreed that one of each of the range (9 in total) was the best compromise and then trekked back to the apartment to sit down and gorge in leisure. Since, the patisserie portion of the business is just a shop front and has no seating.

And gorge we did! Probably not the best idea at 3pm in the afternoon when we had plans to go to Billy Kwong's, another food institution, at 6pm (a story for another post). Between the 4 of us we managed to get through about half the pastries, which were all heavenly. I don't think I have ever consumed that much sugar in one sitting before, and it was not pretty! But oh so worth it!

The absolute winner for me was the Charlotte, the focal point of the picture above. Jam roulade, vanilla pink peppercorn bavaroise and raspberry jelly. This is where the genius starts, who thinks to put peppercorn in a dessert (or balsamic vinegar in a strawberry tart or celery jelly in a apple tartin). But it works so well. And these are the things he tells you about, there is also another level of ingredients that go into these creations that he lets you discover for yourself. Case in point, the Charlotte had a white chocolate base that contained pop rocks. So here you are savouring how well the spiceiness of the pepper is balanced with the vanilla and all of a sudden you have explosions going on in your mouth. Inspired! And I was and am (and have come up with my own Zumbo inspired recipe that will follow).

Sunday morning we had sufficiently come down from Saturday's sugar high to have breakfast at the Chocolate Cafe, Zumbo's sit-down establishment. Common sense prevailed, with a savoury breakfast and a shared breakfast dessert. Not only can this man do a good dessert but his breads, quiches and pies are of an equal standard. Chorizo and potato quiche - how go you go wrong with my two favourite ingredients - you just can't!

And then there were the chocolates which of course we all had to buy a sample to take away with us. Some people's lasted longer than others (some of mine actually made it back to Brisbane!). Again with amazing combinations of flavours that have to be seen, and tasted to be believed.

All I can say is that you must go if you are in Sydney.

Notes from Sydney - Billy Kwong

2009-11-20T17:50:00.006+10:00

Billy Kwong's Chinese Eating House
355 Crown St
Surrey Hills, Sydney
Mains: $27 - 50
Verdict: Worth the price tag.

Billy Kwong's is the restaurant of Kylie Kwong, a famous chef in Australia. Being outside of Australia for quite awhile i kind of missed her rise to popularity and to be honest Chinese food ( unless I'm actually in China) is not something I generally choose to go to a restaurant and eat. Lucky for me, the birthday girl, the one who organised the trip to Sydney did want to go because it was some seriously good food.

A table at this place is hard to get as it takes no reservations. So you either have to join the line before it opens at 6pm and hope you get a table in the small space or just try your luck at a later time. We went for the lining up at 5:30 which was an effort seeing that we had only finished eating pastry about an hour beforehand and had no real desire for dinner. That's not to say that we didn't end up feasting that night.

The wait staff were extremely helpful and alerted us to the fact that the mains can feed 2-3 people. So we went with the signature duck dish, a crispy skinned chicken and a pork belly dish with some greens and rice on the side (okay, maybe we didn't listen to the wait staff that closely). Kwong's is renowned for it's organic produce and it certainly shows through in the dishes. The flavours were amazing and fresh and rich. I (am) wasn't a big fan of the duck, although others in the party voted it the best. There was a certain spice in it that just did not agree with my olfactory senses (wet dog comes to mind). But the chicken - the best, most tender chicken I've ever had in my life. The pork belly was the let down of the meal, being slightly over cooked but the salad that went with it saved it.

We rolled out of that restaurant quite content! I'm quite undecided as to whether I would go back. The flavours were amazing, but the preparation seemed a little hit and miss which, at that price tag, is probably not what you want to gamble on.

Experimental Cheesecake 2.0

2009-09-29T17:20:00.007+10:00

My work recently sent me on a rather expensive development workshop which at the end of the 4 days I didn't get much more than the idea of this recipe. I'm not sure it says more about me or the quality of the workshop that at the networking dinner I was rendered thoroughly distracted from a lively conversation when I started in on the Bailey's mousse cheesecake put in front of me. Comments were even made to the level of concentration on my face as I tried to work out how they got the mousse so uniformly in the center of the single serve cheesecakes.

I'm really not sure how my work would feel about spending a couple of grand for me to come up with this recipe but I know my co-workers (test-bunnies) think it was worth every penny!

The first time I tried this I went for a straight replication - white chocolate cheesecake with chocolate mousse heart (sponge base). I couldn't find a recipe anywhere on the net, but I figured that it had to be a set cheesecake rather than baked and that they most likely froze the mousse before assembly. I used a mini muffin tray to freeze portions of the mousse and pudding cups that were slightly larger in diameter for the final assembly. I poured a small amount of cheesecake mix in each cup and put them in the fridge to set for 20 minutes. I then placed the mousse portions in the center of each cup and poured cheesecake mix to cover and fill the cup and then placed the sponge base on top.

They were pretty delicious but I felt I could do more with it and using the cups were a bit of a nightmare. So I fabricated some ring moulds out of egg rings, cardboard and foil. I had had a macadamia nut based cheesecake at a restaurant and had been looking at doing a version for a while in a pistachio form. I liked the idea of the subtly of the white cheesecake but wanted to really contrast the flavour of the third element so I went with the curd. This also worked because the texture and weight of the curd matched the cheesecake. The original concept was for cranberry curd but I couldn't find any so I went with lemon rather than not making it at all! It worked amazingly as the lemon really balanced out the sweetness of the chocolate.

Pistachio Crust White Chocolate Cheesecake with Lemon Curd Heart
Makes 8 (3in by 3in)
Base
600g pisatchios, blended to a course crumb
1/4 cup almond meal
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons golden syrup
Cheesecake
250g cream cheese
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
160g white chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup cream
2 1/2 teaspoons gelatin
basic curd recipe

For the base, mix all the ingredients together, and place a layer in each mould. Put in the refrigerator to set. Make a basic curd recipe, when cool put in individual moulds ( silicone ice cube tray) and freeze.

For the cheesecake, beat the cream cheese, icing sugar and milk. Dissolve the gelatin in 2 tablespoons of hot water and then stir into the cheese mixture. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler and add to cheese mixture. Beat the cream to a firm peak and then fold through the cheese and chocolate mixture.

To assemble, fill each mould with cheesecake mixture and press a curd shape into the center of each until it is flush with the top of the cheesecake. Set in the refrigerator overnight.

Braised Lamb Shank Ragu

2009-09-20T19:57:00.007+10:00

I had a lamb ragu pasta at an Italian restaurant earlier this year and was dissappointed by the ratio of ragu to pasta. It was a delicious meal but I wanted more of that sauce!

So I decided that I had to find a recipe of my own to make whenever I pleased and where I could serve myself however much I wanted.

This does turn out to be quite rich because of the marrow from the bones and could probably use a decent amount of salt (I'm always stingy on the salt).

Braised Lamb Shank Ragu
3 medium-sized lamb shanks
4 rashers of bacon, diced
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 cup white wine
3-4 sprigs rosemary
1 can diced tomatoes

In a large casserole dish (suitable for stove top and oven) heat some olive oil, brown the bacon. Remove the bacon. Brown off the lamb shanks and remove from the pan. Add the onions, garlic and rosemary and saute until soft. Add the wine and deglaze the pan. Return the shanks and bacon. Place in a medium oven with the lid on for 90 minutes.

Take the dish from the oven and remove the lamb shanks. Cut the meat from the bones and dice. Add the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Return to the oven for 1 hour.

Perfect with pasta or couscous. It also keeps well in the freezer.
Serves 4

Arancini

2009-09-09T19:17:00.005+10:00

Arancini or Italian rice Balls are something that a coworker, who also has an Italian background, said was her go-to recipe. I had never heard of them before and frankly, it was a concept I just couldn't get my head around after living in Japan for so long. These are balls of rice filled with meat sauce and boiled egg that, like Japanese rice balls, are also served cold. This is the bit I can't understand about either types - cold rice - meh. These however are delicious hot and cold.

My coworker was kind enough to share her family recipe in a 2 day joint cooking effort. The recipe was shared in a way that all treasured family recipes are - lacking in specifics!

The rice in some parts of the country is left over risotto but for true Sicilian arancini the rice does not contain any cheese to hold it together. Instead, cook the rice in stock with a little tomato paste until dry. The meat filling is a standard bolognase that must have peas and must be drier than what you would use for pasta. Boil some eggs and cut into small pieces. The coating is a mixture of breadcrumbs, grated parmesan and seasonings.

Wet your hands a little to stop the rice sticking and grab a small amount to form into a ball. Mold the rice to form a well in the center of the ball, put in some meat sauce and a piece of egg. Use both hands to form the rice into a ball to enclose the filling, making sure that the filling is not peeking through. This takes some practice to get right, you can patch it up with additional rice. Roll the ball in the breadcrumbs and place on a tray. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day deep fry the balls until they are a deep orange colour - they're not called "Arancini" for nothing! Eat hot or cold.

Pear Pie with Gruyere Crust

2009-08-10T19:59:00.007+10:00

I've been obsessed with cheese and fruit pies since seeing an apple pie with cheese on a menu at Johnny Rockets as a teenager. It was pretty disappointing to find that it was a piece of apple pie with a slice of cheese sitting on top. I've often thought it should have been apples with Camembert cheese melted through it. In all these years I have yet to investigate whether this is possible and I'm fighting the urge to google a recipe right now so I can finish this post.

This particular pie is inspired by/stolen from the tv show, Pushing Daisies, which is set in a pie shop. One of the characters grates Gruyere cheese on top of pie. This seemed much easier to conceptualise than my teenage merging of cheese and pie. The first attempt of this pie was to just grate the cheese on top but I decided to put the cheese through the pastry on the second run through.

Pastry:
2 cups plain flour
155g chilled butter
100g Gruyere cheese, finely grated
3 tablespoons caster sugar
iced water

Filling:
800g peeled, diced pears
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup caster sugar
30g butter
juice of one lemon

For the pastry, put the flour, butter, sugar and cheese in a food processor and blend to a fine crumb. Add the iced water until it pulls together to a dough. Turn out and knead lightly. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

For the filling, coat the pears with lemon juice after finishing peeling and cutting to prevent from going brown. Melt the butter and add the other ingredients, coat the pears with this mixture.

Roll out the pastry and cut out to fill the pie tin. Spoon the filling into the pie tin, do not include the excess butter or you in danger of having soggy pastry. Top the pie tin with pastry and seal the edges. Brush the pastry with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar. Cook in moderate oven, on the bottom shelf for 30 minutes or until the pastry goes golden.

Cookbook

2009-08-10T18:54:00.007+10:00

The cookbook is finally done and dusted. I have sent it off and for better or worse it is going to be printed. It was quite an experience and I don't think I realised what a job it would be when I first thought of it. The concept of this one was easy enough - put together some shared recipes for my sister's birthday. But such an idea really doesn't come together very well, especially when you find out you cook desserts more than anything else. It became hard to find other recipes to balance out the book.

The other thing was the challenge of food photography and finding out some of your dishes, however tasty they may be, really don't look that good. I have a new respect for the whole process that goes behind putting together the cookbooks that I love to flick through.

The book can be found here: Blurb Bookstore

Villa Maria, Camp Hill

2009-07-26T17:03:00.004+10:00

Villa Maria Mexican & Latin Cuisine
82 Bennetts Road, Camp Hill
PH: (07) 3398 1177
Mains:$20 - 30 range
Verdict: A godsend!

Some friends and I have been trying to do a monthly thing where we go try new restaurants, a chance to go the places we keep saying we want to try out. I can't tell you how happy I was to hear about Villa Maria. Mexican food being one of my all time favourite cuisines, I was devastated to learn that Brisbane only seemed to have Montezumas (tex-mex) type places.

The first time I dragged some people out there was a Sunday which is tapas night. While I was disappointed that I couldn't get a chicken enchilada with mole, I soon got over it because the tapas menu consisted of a lot of Peruvian dishes. I got to take a little trip down memory lane and a delicious meal to boot. But it did still leave me with wanting to come back to try the standard menu.

The menu does not disappoint, well it does a little, because it is so extensive and everything sounds fantastic, it's hard to choose. We started with the Queso Fundido, with its cheesy goodness and entertainment value of trying to get the cheese out of the pot. I followed this with the chicken enchiladas with mole poblano (pictured above). My standard order whenever I get in a real Mexican restaurant. This was also delicious but I have a feeling that it came out of a jar. Considering the 20 odd ingredients and 4 day prep time I don't begrudge them that at all.

Some other highlights (from my friends) were the drinks which included rockmelon juice and stawberry smoothies. The Lomo Saltado looked delicious but I forgot to check with my friend on how it tasted.

I am going to keep coming back to this place so that I can make my way through the menu and then maybe start over again! And throw in a few Sunday nights to get some tasty tapas in as well.

Bretts Wharf Restaurant

2009-07-12T17:26:00.003+10:00

Bretts Wharf Restaurant
449 Kingsford Smith Drive, Hamilton
PH: 0738681717
Mains: $26-$50
Website
Verdict: Go!

I was lucky enough to get taken to a surprise lunch today. It probably was a good thing that it was a surprise as I probably would have said no when presented with the option of going to such an expensive place for lunch. ( I guess my friend just knows me a little too well.)

But I have to say that the food was quite amazing and well worth the expense and the indifferent service staff. This venue is quite the place in Brisbane for it's location - nothing like being right on the river on a sunny Brisbane day and for the chef - Alastair McLeod, a man who has worked in many Michelin restaurants in Europe.

I chose the grilled moreton bay bug, tiger prawn and calamari kerala curry. Bugs are really one of the best seafoods you can have and I will always choose them over lobster any day. This was just a beautiful dish, the calamari was so tender it made you realise that not many people really know how to cook it. The curry was so perfectly balanced and so full of flavour and heat that just sneaks up on you rather than overpowering on the first taste. I've been known to make a curry in my time but this made me realised that I have a lot to learn about valuing technique and patience to be able to produce a dish like this.

My friend's dish of "Irish Stew" was also on a level of it's own even if it did have the rather pretentious addition of a potato foam. The lamb was twice cooked and was so tender that it fell apart once sliced into.

The only drawback was the rather lackluster service and the timing. It was not a particularly busy day in the restaurant yet we waited ages to order and even longer to get our food. Maybe they thought we were not going to spend enough money to bother with. Or maybe it was the type of place where the wait staff try not to be obtrusive. But I don't think that's any excuse for me having an empty drinking glass while 3 wait staff stand around looking over the restaurant.....

Tim Tam Glory

2009-07-12T17:09:00.004+10:00

This dessert tasted everything like I remember the previous dessert tasting like . Which makes it an even scarier memory from my childhood because this was one boozy dessert! ( Fitted in extremely well at what ended up being a very the boozy dinner party).

The concept and method behind this recipe is similar to the previous one. Although this is using Tim Tams (the greatest offering Australia has made to the world) which means that they need to be broken up to let the coffee and alcohol make its way in. I guess you could use any chocolate covered biscuits but they would be no comparison to Tim Tams.

A big thank you to Shannon and her cousin in Canada!

Chocolate Ripple Log

2009-07-05T16:23:00.006+10:00

I was talking to a coworker the other day about her cousin's recipe for something called Tim Tam Glory which brought up memories of this dessert here. This is something my mother would make that I had totally forgotten about. What I do remember about it was that it was soaked in rum. And it wasn't until I was recounting the story of this dessert to another coworker I realised how wrong this was. Her first comment was "and your mother served this to you as kids?!". The weirdest thing is that my mother hates alcohol...

It seems that this "recipe" is an Australian thing, although Google tells me that this is what Americans will call an ice box cake.

I think what makes this one Australian is that it uses a particular Arnott's biscuit: the Chocolate Ripple. It really is different from any other chocolate biscuit and they were a little hard to find.

This one didn't end up tasting anything like my mum's. I wasn't as liberal with the rum because in the end I had to by Bunderberg Rum rather than dark rum as I wasn't going to buy a full bottle of rum. Stupid me, should have just bought a full bottle of whiskey (which would work just as well) which I will drink than a half bottle of Bundy which is now going sit in the back of the cupboard. I just don't think straight when I have a recipe burning a hole in my brain and a weekend ahead of me.

Chocolate Ripple Log
1 pkt Choc Ripple biscuits
300ml cream
1 tsp icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
black coffee, rum (or other alcohol: 1 tablespoon will give it a kick)
shaved chocolate

Whip the cream, sugar and vanilla until a firm peak forms. Mix the alcohol and coffee together. Place a line of cream on the serving plate (helps to stand the biscuits upright). Brush the biscuit with the coffee mixture and smear with cream and stand on the plate. Repeat, forming a log. Cover the whole thing in cream and put in the fridge overnight. Overnight is best to let the coffee seep in and biscuits go cake-like. Top with chocolate before serving and cut on an angle to produce the best effect.
Tip: dunking the biscuits in the coffee might seem a better idea than brushing, it's not!

Can't wait til next Friday when I find out exactly what the Tim Tam Glory dessert is.

Cookbooks from the 70s

2009-07-03T20:59:00.006+10:00

A new member of my team at work firmly cemented his place when he started to bring in cookbooks to share at lunch time. (Our never ending conversations about Masterchef probably clued him in.) The beauty is these are no ordinary cookbooks. These are books produced in the 70s by the various fruit boards of this great state of ours. These are treasures to be found in second hand stores, or as these ones were, the big Lifeline book sale. Where limbs are lost in the grab for the best bargains and $5 can apparently get you a sack full of books that you will never get around to reading.

The first one, whose title escapes me, was dedicated to pineapple and was mildly interesting. Who knew pineapples were so versatile! What makes these books so great is what passed as food photography in the 70s. The pineapple one had an interesting arrangement of pineapple rings with sausages. However, it was the next book "Be Bold with Bananas" that tipped the scales towards pure (disturbing) gold. Behold what food photographers thought represented great arrangement back in the day.

Mexican Chocolate Brownies

2009-06-19T20:13:00.005+10:00

My new favourite ingredient is Mexican chocolate. I've been keeping a stock of it for about a year in the vain hope that one day I will just stop talking about it and cook chicken mole poblano.

In the meantime, I started to use it in a chocolate cake recipe which is a rather dense cake but delicious all the same. Last week, with a newly fixed oven and a new tradition of welcoming a new team member with cake and coffee, I just HAD to do some baking.

Baking for work is getting harder and harder to do with more and more people being gluten intolerant (or picking up esoteric Daoist diets that eliminate the "5 evil grains"). Luckily, I had lots of chickpea flour left over from a Indian dinner party but what to bake that wouldn't taste like a gluten free (evil-grain free) cake. In the end, I decided to merge the mexican chocolate cake recipe with a brownie recipe seeing that brownies really don't have much flour in the recipe to begin with.

Mexican Chocolate Brownies
Melted butter or margarine, for greasing
125g butter, chopped
200g (1 cup, firmly packed) soft brown sugar
125g mexican chocolate, chopped
3 eggs
50g (1/3 cup) plain flour
35g (1/3 cup) almond meal
1/4 tsp baking powder

(Mexican chocolate can be substituted for plain chocolate and 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Substitute flour with chickpea flour or gluten-free equivalent. Measurements remain the same in substitution)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease an 18 x 28cm cake tin with the melted butter or margarine and line the base of the pan with non-stick baking paper.
2. Place butter, brown sugar and chocolate in a large saucepan and stir over medium heat until well combined
3. Remove from heat and beat in the eggs using a wooden spoon.
4. Sift together the flour, almond meal and baking powder into the chocolate mixture and stir until well combined.
5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until firm and until a few crumbs cling to a skewer when it's inserted into the centre.
6. Cool and dust with icing sugar.

I've never made brownies before but this recipe is a keeper!! These were delicious and didn't last long at all. And thank god I've found a shop in Brisbane that sells Mexican chocolate so I no longer need my friend in Chicago to trek through the snow to get me some!

Pintxo, New Farm

2009-06-12T19:29:00.005+10:00

Pintxo
561 Brunswick Street, New Farm
Ph: 07 3333 2231
Tapas : $3.50 - $5.00
Verdict: Worth another go
website

After a couple of false starts I finally got to go try the new tapas bar in New Farm. A friend came to me one day all excited with tales of a place with a tapas train. Yes, you heard right: a tapas train.

We usually spend lots of time at Ginga's sushi train and he, knowing my lack of love for sushi (yes, even after 6 years of living in Japan), thought I would appreciate a different choice in this delivery mode. Of course when you stop and think about it, tapas is a perfect pairing with a train restaurant.

FUN FACT: a sushi train restaurant is call GuruGuru Sushi or Kaiten sushi if you want to be proper about it. Personally, I like guruguru because it is the action of going round and round.

Everything on the menu sounded incredibly tasty and I wanted to try everything. However, and this is the drawback on this place, this can end to be a rather costly affair. And I did end up spending a lot more money than I usually do on dinner. So this is not a place you want to go to if you are really hungry.

There was some really tasty things on the menu. The scallop creviche was amazing and I don't even like scallops! The biggest complaint was the fact that the fried foods were sub par. It was pretty obvious that their fryers are not set to the right temperatures - oily and raw in the middle food.

But that said the non-fried items on the menu were delicious enough to warrant another chance for this place. It is a very new restaurant so maybe they will sort out the teething problems in the kitchen.

Cauliflower and Bacon Soup

2009-05-31T15:51:00.007+10:00

I was never a big fan of soups when I was younger. I could never make the connection between something that tasted savoury and the action of drinking. So I started out on soups with lots of texture to them like a minestrone.

I'm not really sure where I got this recipe from. I think I first cooked this while in Japan, feeling a bit homesick in the middle of winter, needing something that would stick to your ribs, unlike Japanese watery soups and hot pots. I've been working on the recipe for a while now and this is why it makes it into the cookbook. It really became something when I read about replacing potatoes for white beans in soups to make it a lower GI option.

Gusto da Gianni

2009-05-29T17:28:00.008+10:00

Gusto da Gianni
Hamilton, Portside
Ph: 07 3868 2011
Mains: $20-30
Verdict: Delicious home-cooked Italian
website

The Delicious magazine does dinners at reputable restaurants around Australia every month. Some friends organised for us to go to the one happening in Brisbane (which usually misses out). At first I was not going to go because of the price tag - $85, but at the last moment decided to go to fill the seats that were booked.

It was so worth it! The fact is that $85 for a 4 course meal with matching wines at a quality restaurant is actually a great deal. The menu was also full of things that I would eat (not always the case on set menus).

Menu
wine on arrival: Castello di Gabbiano Rose 2007

Starter
Antipasti of fried calamari & zucchini with mixed seafood salad
Castello di Gabbiano Pinot Grigio 2007

Entree
Handmade pasta with slow cooked veal ragu and mushrooms
Castello di Gabbiano Chianti 2007

Main
Braised beef with green peas, fresh tomato and polenta
Castello di Gabbiano Bellezza 2007

Dessert
Pineapple tart
Pellegrino Limoncello di Sicilia

I have not felt so stuffed by the end of a meal in the longest time! Unfortunately (or luckily) the starter dish was small as I would have been happy with just the calamari. The stand out dish was the braised beef, it was so tender. The only fault we could find is that it was served with a polenta mash. This, on top of the other dishes meant there was much of a difference in textures in the meal. Maybe grilling the polenta would have been a better match.

The wine also had stand outs: the pinot and the Bellezza were all the things that I love about whites and reds respectively. Being from South Australia means that I must be a wine snob that cannot drink anything that does not come from the Barossa or McLaren Vale. But i must go against my upbringing and say that I will be on the lookout for keeping a couple of bottles of these in my wine store.

Red Wine Risotto

2009-05-16T18:45:00.005+10:00

Red Wine Risotto with Grilled Eye Fillet

This is a meal that I had many years ago in a diner cafe on Rundle Street in Adelaide. I remember being amazed at this dish because red wine risotto seemed so unusual for me at that time. It's something I've always wanted to try myself but I don't often have the patience to do a risotto. Most of my cooking involves putting everything in a pot and walking away for a couple of hours!

My interest was piqued again when I found a recipe in last month's Delicious magazine that not only used red wine but it was one that you didn't have to stand over the pot stirring for 40 minutes. Apparently there is a type of rice ( vialone nano) that produces the same creamy result without stirring. So the idea of cooking a risotto obsessed me enough to not bother with trying to find this type of rice but to cook it the way all risottos should be - with patient stirring.

Take your favourite risotto recipe and substitute the white wine for red and the stock for beef. The result is a dish with big flavours and lots of noise and I can't imagine what else it could go with other than a big slab of steak.

Stuffed Peppers

2009-05-08T17:02:00.004+10:00

Another recipe down for the cookbook. I realised I'd better start cooking if I want to meet the September deadline for my sister's birthday!

This is a dish that we had growing up. It was my mother's second only concession to my Italian father. The other dish being spaghetti bolognse which we had many, many more times than this dish and frankly was just my Australian mother's idea of what Italians eat every day. I would imagine that she didn't make this second one as often because I'm sure everytime she made it Dad would have commented on how it didn't taste like his mother's.

That said, I don't remember my Grandmother ever cooking anything I would call Italian. She would only ever make fried chicken and chips when we were there. Although I have never tasted anything like her chips anywhere else, I suspect she only fried in olive oil. I have a feeling it would have been because we wouldn't have eaten anything else as kids. I do remember that dad would often have some bean and sausage dish from his mother that we would never go near. It's just one of those things you regret as an adult and realize that once your grandparents die you lost an great opportunity to learn.

So I've taken my mother's idea about stuffed peppers and I stepped it up a notch for this version and I think probably got it closer to what it really should be like. Even when I was done eating I couldn't stop commenting on how delicious it was. And anyone who knows me, knows that I'm the last one to compliment my own cooking!

Tandoori King, New Farm

2009-05-02T19:41:00.005+10:00

Tandoori King
148 - 152 Merthyr Rd, New Farm
Ph (07) 3358 3521
Mains: $15- 22
Verdict: Suitably Impressed

I have pretty high standards when it comes to Indian food. It would have to rate as one of my top favourite cuisines and I have yet to find a restaurant Brisbane that lives up to the standards that Jasmine in Adelaide set for me all those years ago. For a short time I thought that Punjabi Palace in West End was the one but the last time I went was extremely disappointing.

I've heard some bad things about this Tandoori King but it seems that it as changed hands recently and things are looking good. I was in the mood for something hot to burn out this feeling of a cold coming on so I went for the lamb with peppercorn sauce. Peppercorns are not something I really associate with an indian curry but it really worked well and was one of the hottest curries I've had in a while.

Everyone was also pleased with their meals and we left our plates clean. I won't say no if anyone suggests an outing to this restaurant again!

Tacos Rice

2009-04-12T18:46:00.009+10:00

This is one of the foods you find when you are travelling and your first thought is that is just wrong. Then you taste it and you wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. Tacos rice is one of the regional dishes of Okinawa in Japan. And one can assume that it comes from the big American presence that exists (and has so for some time) on the island. And yes, it is just the ingredients for tacos put on a bed of rice.

There is a lot to love about Okinawa, it is one of my favourite places. What's not to love, tropical setting with beautiful beaches, Japanese hospitality without the rigidity that exists on the mainland. I made two trips to Okinawa in the time I lived in Japan. The second one was made with my friend Michelle, and was one of the best holidays I've had. Nothing can really beat a road trip holiday. Even when you are the only one driving because someone else doesn't have their license!

We spent a whole night in Nago City trying to find a place that served taco rice, after we had already eaten a full dinner. We had to by pass one restaurant because Michelle refused to eat at a restaurant where a cat was sitting on the counter (with no people in sight ). I discounted the same restaurant because it seemed to sell cheap gold and perfume as it's main business. This story says everything about our personalities. In the end we found a restaurant that goes down in memory as one of the best places I've ever eaten. Not only did they do tacos rice and the tastiest home made tacos I've ever eaten but they also made a version of the rice with shredded rotisserie chicken (something of rariety in Japan). Best meal ever that we went back the next night as well...

Gaelic Fruit Loaf

2009-04-08T17:43:00.004+10:00

Low in Sugar. Gluten Friendly

My team was invited to another team's meeting today and we were asked to confirm numbers for catering purposes. Turns out "catering" was one of their members bringing stuff in. Since our team would have brought numbers into the 20s we felt guilty and decided that we should conribute. Me, not needing any other excuse for baking something, said I would contribute for us.

I already had all the ingredents from making a batch on the weekend trying to get rid of ingredents from ANOTHER recipe the other week. It's a vicious circle that (happily) never ends.

To accomodate all members of the team I substituted for Gluten Free flour and was quite happy with the results. The nature of the recipe (with the soaked fruit) meant the end result was quite moist. Some thing not usually associated with gluten free baked goods....

Gaelic Fruit Loaf
1 c tea
2 c mixed dried fruit
2 T jam (any jam seems to do)
1 egg
1 1/2 c self raising flour

Soak the fruit over night in the tea. Beat the egg until light and fluffy. Add the jam and egg to the fruit. Fold in the sifted flour. You can add a little water if the mix is too dry. Place in a greased loaf tin in a (preheated) 180 C oven for 45 minutes.

This recipe made in my collection from a high school cooking class back in the day (it was healthy week I believe..). I did a quick google search for the recipe and didn't hit any gaelic recipes however, the search did turn up some lovely examples of whiskey versions. Today I felt it was a litte NSFW but the next time I whip this up I'm going for it..............

Chipotle Experiment Part 2

2009-04-06T21:47:00.007+10:00

So here I was with a whole Sunday ahead of me and a large bowl of shredded cooked lamb to do something with......

On the same trip to Melbourne I had bought some real corn masa to make the tamales, however, Brisbane being what it is I had no idea where I could get corn husks or banana leaves to pull that one off. On the back of the masa package there was a recipe for Arepas, which google told me was some type of south american corn bread. Apparently you can stuff them with your heart's desire and deep fry them.

Which left me with a dilemma, the need for a deep fryer. This is something I've wanted to buy for a while, generally whenever I throw a party and find myself burning hands or wondering if the oil is hot enough. What a better way to ensure my safety (and that of my guests) than buying a electric deep fryer. So with the promise of stimulus package money coming my way I went and got me one!

The arepas were going to be a dodgy exercise to pull off so I hedged my bets with making some Empandas at the same time. No use letting all the lamb going to waste. So I used half the lamb to make a Picadillo from Rick Bayless' great mexican cookbook. For the arepa filling I mixed the lamb with coriander, red onion and crumbled feta.

As I suspected, my arepas were a fail. They just didn't puff up enough to make a space to fill. So in the end a just stacked them with filling in between, sandwich style. Delicious all the same but not what I had envisioned them to be.

The empandas on the other hand....yay!

Avocado Salad
avocado
cucumber
tomatos (cherry or seeded whole (chopped))
red onion
coriander
sweet chilli sauce
lime juice

This salad is great for spicy foods and what can really put it over the top in summer is to add mango.

Chipotle Experiment Part 1

2009-04-06T20:01:00.000+10:00

Last time I went to Melbourne, my friend was kind enough to take me to the latin section of town to a little supermarket that her Mexican friend recommended. The purpose was to buy the ingredients I would need to make a mole poblano and tamales. Recipes that I have spoken many times of tackling but can't seem to muster the confidence (or the three day prep time) to enact.

This same week, the same Mexican friend brought some meat with a Mexican marinade to a bbq that just blew me away. So this weekend still not ready to do the mole decided to work on the marinade using the canned chipotle peppers that I had bought in Melbourne. I wondered how the marinade would go with a lamb roast.

Marinade:
6 chipotle chillis with sauce
1 T crushed garlic
3/4 c orange juice
1/4 c lime juice
2 T cider vinegar
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp back pepper

Blend together in a food processor.

I decided to marinade the lamb leg for about 6 hours and then slow cooked it for about 2.5 hours.

The marinade while delicious did not work so well with the roast. The flavour did not really penetrate past the outer layer. So either this needs to be a day before kind of thing or it should be left for smaller cuts of meat on the bbq.

All I know is that I now have about a kilo of cooked lamb. What to do, what to do....

In the beginning...

2009-04-06T19:18:00.000+10:00

...there was always food.