plum & vanilla jam

Ever since I made this luscious Cherry & Vanilla Jam, I realised vanilla is the most wonderful thing you can add to jam.

When I was presented with a basket of sticky, overripe Santa Rosa plums I decided the best thing to do with them was turn them into jam.

Blood plums would have made a much more dramatically coloured jam, however the tart red skin of the Santa Rosa added a pinkish hue to the flavoursome yellow flesh. And in the end I’d prefer it to taste delicious than look dramatic.

Spread thickly on toasted sour dough.

Plum & Vanilla Jam

Anna’s very own recipe. Makes around 5 x 300ml jars.

Ingredients:

1kg plums

1 vanilla pod

60ml (¼ cup) water

1kg sugar

50g (1 packet) jamsetta

Method:

1. Preheat oven to a moderately slow 150’C (300’F). Put a saucer in the freezer.

2. Wash plums. Cut into chunks and discard stones. Combine with water in a large saucepan.

3. Slice vanilla pod in half and scrape out seeds. Add seeds and pod to plums. Cook until fruit softens.

4. Meanwhile, warm sugar on a tray in the oven for around 5 minutes, being sure not to burn or dissolve it.

5. Add warm sugar and jamsetta to fruit purée, then heat and stir until sugar fully dissolves.

6. Bring to the boil for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring every now and then to prevent burning.

7. To test the set of the jam, remove the saucer from the freezer and teaspoon on a little jam. Wait 30 seconds then run your finger through. If it crinkles and leaves a path, then the jam is ready. Otherwise continue cooking.

8. Remove from heat and pour hot jam into sterilised jars. Seal immediately.

coeur à la crème

Coeur à la Crème reminds me of my mother, not because she made it often but because she never, ever made it.

It must have been the 80s, or even the 70s, when she bought the six little heart ramekins with drainage holes in the base. I remember being quite small when I asked her what these intriguing dishes were for.

“They’re for making coeur à la crème”, she answered matter-of-factly and pulled a French cookbook from the shelf, flicking to the photo.

Pretty white hearts of cream floated in a puddle of bright red fruit sauce and looked wonderful. I couldn’t wait to taste them.

But she never made them.

Years went by and, despite moving houses many times, she never made the dessert nor threw away or sold the ramekins. They sat at the back of cupboard, a quiet reminder of all the things you never get around to doing.

When my mother passed away, I inherited the ramekins. They have sat in my cupboard for ten years and I haven’t made coeur à la crème either. Jonas has begged me to get rid of them, but for some reason these little dishes hold a special place in my heart and I put them on my 2011 Food Challenge list.

So today, on the tenth anniversary of her death, I decided to finally cook and eat coeur à la crème.

Today is also my birthday, which makes it even sadder when I realise that I’ve lived one third of my life without her now. She never knew me as an adult, which I know was something she was so sad she would miss out on.

The raw pain of losing her is as intense now as it was ten years ago.

A friend of mine, Nicki, who lost her own mother before me, told me “It never stops hurting, you just get better at coping with the sadness.”

That’s the truth.

I thought today would be spent sobbing, but then something spooky and quite wonderful happened this morning to take away some of the loneliness.

Before my mother died she swore that if there was life after death, and if she was able to get word out, she’d try to make contact with me. We giggled about it, two atheists making plans like POWs escaping from a prison camp.

This morning Jonas and I woke to find a cold, grey winter day and no electricity for our heater, oven or fridge. There was a power outage.

I told Jonas that at 9:20am, the time I was born, the power would come back on, as a little 'happy birthday' from my mother. I turned on the powerless bedside lamp, and at 9:20am I thought of my mother and said aloud with sheer confidence, “Ok, it’s my birthday now. Turn on the lights Mummy.”

And with that, they flickered on.

As an atheist, I’m sure it’s coincidental but, as a daughter, I’d like to think it was my mother telling me she loved me.

~ ~ ~

This French dessert is usually made from fromage frais (fresh cheese) which is a creamy, soft curd cheese. I couldn’t find any fromage frais, or even quark, so I decided to use a combination of cream cheese and mascarpone.

It worked.

It was a wonderful way to celebrate my birthday, and my mother’s memory.

Coeur à la Crème

Based on a recipe by Australian Gourmet Traveller. Serves 6

Ingredients:
250g cream cheese
250g mascarpone
110g (½ cup) pure icing sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
200ml double cream
300g (2 punnets) raspberries
75g (⅓ cup) pure icing sugar
60ml (¼ cup) Cointreau

Method:

1. Start the day before by combining cream cheese, mascarpone, icing sugar and vanilla bean seeds in a food processor until smooth, scraping down sides.

2. Add cream and pulse until just combined. Cut six 20cm squares of muslin, rinse well and wring out.

3. Either line specialised coeur à la crème ramekins with muslin, wrap over the top and place on a plate so whey can drip through drainage holes. Refrigerate overnight.
or
Make free form by placing muslin on a work surface and divide cream mixture (about ½ cup each) between muslin squares. Bring corners of muslin together, twist tightly and tie securely with kitchen twine. Tie to hang on a rack and place a tray underneath to catch whey. Refrigerate overnight.

4. For raspberry coulis, process raspberries, icing sugar and Cointreau in a food processor until smooth, then push through a fine sieve, discarding seeds. Makes about 300ml.

5. Remove coeurs à la crème from muslin, invert onto coulis, carefully peel away muslin and serve.

Note: instead of mascarpone use fromage frais, quark, ricotta or cottage cheese.

apple, sage & garlic sauté

This sauté is the perfect side dishes to mains like pan-fried duck breast or pork chops.

It combines all the fresh flavours of apple and sage with the warmth needed for winter meals.

Tangy, tart and savoury, and takes around 5 minutes to cook.

Apple, Sage & Garlic Sauté

Anna’s very own recipe. Serves 2.

Ingredients:
1 green apple, peeled & cored
2 tablespoons baby sage leaves
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
Olive oil, for cooking

Method:

1. Slice apples into small wedges.

2. Heat olive oil in a frying pan, add sage and garlic slices and fry gently until fragrant.

3. Add apple pieces, tossing carefully to ensure sage and garlic do not burn.

4. Cook until apple is heated through but still crunchy and fresh.

5. Season with milled salt and pepper, serve warm.

smoky pulled pork

Pulled pork is just magical.

The juicy meat slow cooked for hours until it falls from the bone and then smothered in spicy, smoky sauce and piled high onto soft burger buns.

To. Die. For.

When Kitchenware Direct contacted me and offering to give me a slow cooker of my choice to review on this blog, their email couldn’t have come at a better time.

Jonas and I had been discussing the idea of getting a slow cooker just so we could make pulled pork sliders. We’d eaten them recently at Porteño and had not recovered from their marvellous flavour. We wanted to replicate the magic at home.

So here I was being offered a slow cooker and all I had to do was use it and tell you what I thought about it.

I love my life.

I selected the NewWave 5 in 1 MultiCooker because it’s not just a slow cooker but also a pressure cooker, rice cooker, steamer and soup maker. It’s Kitchenware Direct’s most popular model and after trawling through some online review sights it ranks right up there among the best of its type.

It arrived promptly in a well packaged box, safely cushioned in plastic air bags and styrofoam. When we took it out we cooed and sighed, stroking our shiny baby with all the love of proud new parents.

Once we were ready to use it, we got a bit scared that it might be broken, because the vacuum seal on the lid was wobbly freakishly and didn’t seem too stable, but then we realised we were complete idiots and that once you use the pressure cooking function the valve sucks into place perfectly.

Crisis averted.

We plonked the meat and sauce inside, hit the slow cooker and walked away for a few hours. At the end, we vamped up the intensity with a few minutes of pressure cooking and we were left will a sweet sauce and meat so tender it just peeled away from the bone.

The results were so good that even the highly critical Fabio let out an involuntary exclaim of satisfied praise.

This cooker is definitely easy to use (one couple cooking together, zero arguments) and even easier to clean (good work Jonas).

All the residual fear I had from my high school friend’s horrific pressure cooker accident was dispelled by the quick vacuum seal and the easy steam release valve. No explosions, good times.

My rule when accepting free gifts or meals is simple: if I don’t like it, I won’t write about it.

Well, I love my NewWave 5 in 1 MultiCooker and I’m not afraid to tell the world! Without the crew at Kitchenware Direct we might never have been introduced, and that would have been a tragedy.

Spicy Pulled Pork

Based on a recipe by Feast on the Cheap. Makes 10 buns.

Ingredients:
2kg pork shoulder, bone in
1 medium brown onion, diced
1 cup carrot, grated
4 garlic cloves, sliced
2 chipotle chillies in adobo sauce*
800g can crushed tomatoes
250ml (1 cup) passata (tomato sauce)
250ml (1 cup) ketchup
250ml (1 cup) BBQ sauce
125ml (½ cup) red wine
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon adobo sauce (from chipotle chillies)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons kosher salt
¾ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
Olive oil, for frying

To serve:
Hamburger buns
Aioli
Fresh coriander, chopped
Coleslaw

Method:

1. Trim the pork shoulder of skin and excess fat to prevent congealing in the slow cooker.

2. Over medium heat, sauté the onion, carrot, garlic and chipotle chillies in olive oil until the onion is translucent.

3. In a bowl, combine the sautéed vegetables, BBQ sauce, ketchup, crushed tomatoes, passata, adobo sauce, red wine, cider vinegar, dried oregano, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Stir well.

4. Back in the frying pan, sear the pork shoulder and brown on all sides.

5. In the slow cooker, pour a cup or so of sauce into the base to completely cover the bottom.

6. Put the pork shoulder inside the slow cooker and cover completely in sauce. Cover and cook at 100’C for 5 hours.

7. Switch to your pressure cooker setting and cook for another 20 minutes.

8. Remove the pork from the sauce, cool then shred with a fork. Set aside in a bowl, covered with plastic wrap to keep moist.

9. Pour the sauce into a pan and check seasoning. Adjust balance of sweet and sour according to your tastes, then reduce the sauce by simmering for 10 minutes over medium-low heat. Blend into a purée.

10. In a bowl, add enough sauce to pork to allow for a sticky but not soupy mix.

11. Serve on soft hamburger buns topped with aioli, coriander and sides of coleslaw and dill pickles.

Note: If you don’t have a slow and pressure cooker in one, buy one from Kitchenware Direct! Or you can cook it in a slow cooker for 6-7 hours or a large oven pot at 175’C for 4-7 hours, depending on your oven.

* In Australia, chipotle chillies in adobo sauce are sold in cans in Latin American sections of specialist supermarkets like Fiji Markets in Newtown, Sydney. You can buy them online at Fireworks Foods too. Otherwise substitute with Chipotle Tabasco.

This post has been featured on the wonderful slow cooking blog:

chinese cabbage & soba noodle salad

Chinese cabbage, also known as napa cabbage, is one of those vegetables that are seriously under-utilised.

I love the fresh, crunchy texture served shredded with tangy dressings and noodles, just like this dish I’m posting today.

Although you could serve this warm noodle salad on its own, we like to eat it with roasted or barbecued chicken that’s been drizzled with a little chilli oil.

I chose Japanese soba noodles, made from buckwheat flour, for this recipe as well as tangy Chinese black vinegar and sesame oil.

This is a great meal for when you’re short on time. It takes about 20 minutes to prepare, including chopping and cooking the noodles.

Chinese Cabbage & Soba Noodle Salad

Anna’s very own recipe. Serves 4.

Ingredients:
360g soba noodles, cooked as per packet instructions
1 Chinese cabbage, shredded finely
1 spring onion, white part only, finely minced
40ml (2 tablespoons) Chinese black vinegar
10ml (2 teaspoons) light soy sauce
20ml (1 tablespoon) sesame oil
60ml (3 tablespoons) vegetable oil
Salt and pepper

Method:
1. Whisk together the soy, vinegar, sesame oil and vegetable oil until well combined.

2. Stir through spring onion then season to taste.

3. Toss cabbage and noddles together while noodles and still warm.

4. Dress with vinegar and oil to taste.

This is my contribution to Presto Pasta Nights, hosted by Cassie at The Kitchen Alchemist. Be sure to visit her blog for the recap.

achiote & tequila cured beef w pozole rojo

Image supplied by Ellie

"Paddock to Plate" Beef Degustation

A few weeks ago I participated in a very exciting event organised by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and hosted by Warren Turnbull and his team at Assiette.

A lot of organisations are jumping on the social media band wagon, not understanding the differences between social media and traditional media.

You can’t just broadcast one-way to bloggers and expect them to pick up your content with interest. Blogging is about interacting with your readers and the world, not just a blathering monologue.

Sorry, was I blathering?

The point I’m trying to make here is that MLA created a social media event to draw food bloggers in a fundamental way: they made us the event. Clever.

So, eight bloggers were invited to learn more about beef with the help of a well-known Sydney-based chef, Warren Turnbull of District Dining and Assiette.

Each of us were allocated a cut of beef to create our own recipe and then Warren and his team would transform it into a restaurant dish for a special degustation dinner. Genius.

Beef producer, Alison McIntosh, handed over one of her prized Angus steers and Anthony Puharich, CEO of Vic’s Premium Quality Meat and owner of the fabulous butchery Victor Churchill, made the cuts and shipped them out.

I got given the beef knuckle. I had no idea how to cook a beef knuckle or even what it looked like! I thought it might be something I’d need to braise for hours. Nope!

Luckily Warren explained that a beef knuckle is a big slab of meat, often called a beef round, and is usually slow cooked as a roast.

One of the best parts of the challenge was talking through my ideas with Warren. It was fun to workshop recipes with a chef and even more rewarding to introduce him to some new ingredients (like hominy and achiote).

I think he was pretty excited about the opportunity to experiment too.

I steered him towards a pozole recipe, and he encouraged me to give curing a go. I think we were both happy with the results.

Here’s what I came up with.

Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle with Pozole Rojo

Anna's recipe. Serves 8-10.

Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle

Ingredients:
1.5kg beef knuckle eye, trimmed
330g (1½ cups) raw sugar
100g (1 cup) sea salt
190ml (¾ cup) tequila
1½ teaspoons achiote paste
4 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
½ teaspoon dried epazote (or dried oregano)

Extra for roasting:
1 teaspoon achiote paste
2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:
1. Grind the peppercorns and coriander seed with a mortar and pestle until coarsely crushed.

2. Add sugar and salt and grind a little. Add oregano.

3. Mix achiote paste with tequila to loosen it up, then add to sugar and salt. Mix until it has the texture of wet sand.

4. Lay a few layers of plastic wrap down, then coat all sides of the meat with a thick layer of the curing mix.

5. Wrap tightly then refrigerate for 24hrs (use a plate in case it leaks).

6. The next day, unwrap the meat and scrape off all the curing mixture. Wash and pat dry with kitchen paper. The meat will be darker and the exterior will have hardened a little.

7. Preheat the oven to 170’C (350’F).

8. Mix together the olive oil and extra achiote paste as well as you can. Rub the achiote oil mixture all over the meat.

9. Place on a roasting rack in a roasting tray. Set aside and allow the meat to come to room temperature.

10. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes for rare, but no more than 1 hour or until the centre reaches 50’C (120-125’F)

11. Remove roast and allow to sit for 20 minutes before cutting. Serve in thin slices.

Pozole Rojo (Red Hominy Soup)

Ingredients:
822g can pozole (hominy)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon achiote paste
2 onions, grated
12 garlic cloves, grated
2 chipotles chillies (in adobo sauce)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 litres beef consommé
Pinch of sugar
Salt, to taste

Garnish:
1 avocado, cubed
3 limes, juiced
½ iceberg lettuce, shredded
¼ cup fresh coriander, finely chopped
½ cup diced radish
½ cup crumbled queso freso (or tangy feta)
Thin slices of Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle (above)

Method:
1. In a medium saucepan, bring water to a boil. Add pozole and cook for 15 minutes. Drain.

2. Heat olive oil in heavy based saucepan.


3. Add achiote paste, onion and garlic. Mash paste throughout and fry until mixture becomes dry.

4. Add chipotles and fry a little.

5. Then add tomato paste and fry until thickened.

6. Next add beef consommé and sugar and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.

7. Add pozole and simmer a further 5 minutes.

8. Remove from heat and stir in lime juice to taste.

9. Ladle soup into bowls. Pass garnishes separately so people can add to taste.

~ ~ ~

So, how did it look when Warren and the team were done with it?

Much more beautiful of course! It’s actually amazing to see how much skill and artistic talent chefs bring to humble home cooking.

Warren said they stuck to the curing recipe pretty closely, but reduced the tequila. But the biggest difference was the addition of agar agar to the soup broth transforming a warm dish into a cold one served with a thick sauce rather than soup.

The Assiette team were quite nervous that I wouldn’t like it, or that the flavour of the soup wouldn’t be the same, but once you mixed all the ingredients together and started to eat it could have been the very same dish as mine.

It was quite an amazing experience and the best social media PR event I’ve been invited to take part in because we were truly included rather than just bystanders. Kudos to Haussmann Communications for coming up with it and bravo to MLA for having the sense to agree. Take note other PR agencies!

Image supplied by Ellie

The full list of dishes served on the night really showed the diverse ways beef can be cooked and eaten.
- Beef & Ale Pie
- Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle w Pozole Rojo
- Seared Sirloin, Buttered Roots, Horseradish & Wakame
- Thai Beef Salad w Mint, Peanuts & Chilli Dressing
- Beef Satay w Spicy Peanut Sauce, Rice Cake & Herb Salad
- Scotch Fillet w Moghrabiyeh
- Pulled Beef & Pine Mushroom Cannelloni
- Braised Beef in Coffee w Brandied Cumquats & Onion Milk
- Slow Braised Brisket w Cauliflower Cream & Pedro Ximenez Muscatels

If you want to see all the dishes of the night, check out these posts on my fellow blogger’s site:
Almost Bourdain
Aficionado
The Food Blog
The Gourmet Forager
Inside Cuisine
Taste
 

pear, almond & chocolate tart

Autumn means pears, and I love pears.

Juicy, sweet and versatile, pears are such a wonderful fruit to have around the house.

Recently I was given a box of luscious Red Sensation and Packham pears as part of a pear promotion: Rediscover the Pear. They were just wonderful.

I was thinking about the great chocolate and almond tarts my colleagues and I buy from Central Baking Depot and I decided the sturdy Packham pears would be perfect to help me recreate the tarts at home.

I used Carême Pastry frozen dark chocolate shortcrust for this Jamie Oliver recipe, which turned out to be mighty fine and certainly on par with the tarts I was dreaming about.

 

Pear, Almond & Chocolate Tart

Recipe by Jamie Oliver. Serves 6.

Ingredients:
Ready-made shortcrust pastry (I used 300g)
125g almond meal (ground almonds)
2 large free-range or organic eggs
125g butter, softened
95g caster sugar
185g dark chocolate, melted
3 pears, peeled, cored and quartered

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas 5.

2. Roll out the pastry until ½cm thick and use it to line a 24cm tart tin.

3. Leave in the freezer to rest for at least 20 minutes, or longer if you can.

4. Bake the pastry blind for around 10 minutes in the preheated oven, then remove, set aside, and reduce the oven temperature to 170°C/325°F/gas 3.

5. Mix your almonds, eggs, butter and sugar together and stir in the melted chocolate while it’s still warm.

6. Pour the mixture evenly into the pastry case and then press the pears into the chocolate and almond mixture.

7. Bake the tart for 45 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the chocolate and almond mixture is firm.

I served my tart with the most exquisite accompaniment of all time, David Lebovitz’s Pear Caramel Ice Cream form The Perfect Scoop.

wasted: a pop-up for neglected delights

Last night Jonas and I enjoyed the Wasted pop up dinner at Ten Buck Alley, celebrating the unloved bits of animal and vegetable often neglected from restaurant menus. It's a limited time event on Thursday 12th, Friday 13th and Saturday 14th May.

Despite it being Friday 13th, our hosts, British chef Douglas McMaster and self-confessed pop-up restaurant vigilante Kym Lenoble, put on a good show.

It sounds cliché, and Jonas will certainly roll his eyes at me, but it’s great to see chefs so excited and passionate.

I’m a big fan of these pop-up events because they give younger chefs and sommeliers a chance to be inventive and test their mettle.

We filed in, group by group, into the tiny café. It had been spruced up for our arrival with some quirky decorations and scenes from the 1995 post-apocalyptic film Waterworld projected onto the wall.

As Kym said, Waterworld is what we’ve got to look forward to if we don’t start eating and living more sustainably.

Seating was tight. Tables were flush against each other and elbows knocked. The small, backless stools were a touch uncomfortable for such a long meal, but the squashy set up meant I could lean on the person behind for support. Lucky for me that person turned out to be a blogger I already knew, Minh from Eat.Show.Tell.

Dragon Fruit Bellini

The night got rolling with a wonderful Dragon Fruit Bellini, the dragon fruit (pitaya) giving an elegant flavour to the sparkling wine, which became tinted a pretty pink from the fruit. Unfortunately there’s a certain sliminess to dragon fruit that floated to the surface of the bellini, forming a lipidic foam, but it was easily dispersed with a quick stir.

Visually it needs some finesse to avoid the foam, but I could easily steal this one for a dinner party.

Salt pork, pickled celeriac, celery leaves

Two amuse bouche kicked off the food.

First a spoon of salt pork, pickled celeriac and the fresh celery leaves. As a celery hater I was surprised to discover the celeriac root gave a fresh flavour when pickled and the leaves were very mild. The salt pork was delicious. A nice intro.

Chicken heart, dock weed, wheat

Next up was a tiny green jar with an equally tiny chicken heart, smothered in puréed dock weed and accompanied by some roasted wheat kernels. The dock weed’s acidity was a perfect match to the iron flavour of the heart. Another winner.

Anchovy chips, anchovy mayonnaise

While we waited for the team to prep our first course, they passed around ikan bilis (dried anchovies) and anchovy mayonnaise. It was like fishy chips and dip, enjoyed by many more people than I would have imagined given the strength of flavours. Tick!

Nettle soup, back fat, nasturtium

Our first course, a Nettle Soup, had a beautiful creamy texture and subtle verdant flavours that would have been lifted to dizzying heights with a little seasoning. As we discussed with our neighbours, including Daisy who blogs for London’s Evening Standard, so many young chefs are often afraid of salt.

Fortunately, tiny cubes of crackling-like back fat floated throughout providing mouthfuls of nutty pork flavour. The decorative nasturtium tasted like wild salad leaves.

It was a restorative course, served with an unwooded 2010 Printhie Chardonnay (Orange, NSW). Without the food it tasted a little unfinished, heavy on alcohol at the end, but after tasting the soup the wine balanced out perfectly.

Blood, brains, skin

The anxiously awaited Blood, Brains & Skin course was the most frightening dish for the majority of the crowd. Thickened blood sauce, flavoured with caraway seeds, was a bed for lamb brains fried in a mixture of breadcrumbs and pork crackling. It was all topped off with micro herbs and tart pickled apple.

Served on large square tiles, this was my favourite course of the night. It could easily have featured on any 3 hat/star restaurant menu.

The pickled apple gave fresh acidity, the brains were flavoursome and soft, but not limp, and the crackling added a wonderful crunchy texture contrast. The blood sauce was a rich punch to the softness of the other flavours, but many found its presence psychologically overwhelming.

Not me. I could have eaten another two plates of the stuff!

The brains were paired with the gutsy 2009 Devil's Ridge Block 22 Cabernet Sauvignon (Barossa Valley, SA). This wine was lovely. Low on tannins, and strong with cherry and anise. I’m going to keep a look out for this one in the stores.

Yabby, dill stem, wild rocket

Ironically, the yabby course was the most challenging for me, simply because it contained dill - my most hated of herbs.

The velvety texture of the yabby tartare was perfect, a sweet and striking contrast to the intense vegetal flavours of the wild rocket granita. In the dim light and intense green of the plate, the finger lime caviar disappeared visually, but the bursts of fresh acidity in the mouth proved they were there.

Again, a sprinkle of salt flakes would have lifted the flavours of the yabby and rocket dramatically, and perhaps curtailed the overpowering dill. The flavour from the stems is stronger and more anise than the commonly used tips and the stringy texture was also a turn off. Jonas and our neighbours had no such issues with the dill, adoring the fresh, clean flavours, but everyone agreed salt was needed.

I love that they served the yabby course on plastic black Frisbees. Afterwards we checked out the bottom and discovered they were promotional items from Espirit. Talk about recycling!

It worked well with the 2009 Brokenwood Semillon (Hunter Valley, NSW), matching the acidity of the finger lime.

Intercostal, potato skins, cauliflower root

Our last savoury course were beef intercostals, cooked into soft, gelatinous sweetness and accentuated by caramelised onions. They were served in crispy carved out potato skins and topped with cauliflower stems.

One of the groups sitting next to us were extra anxious as to what intercostals might be, but I assured them it was nothing dramatic: merely the muscle tissue between the ribs.

The matching wine was the 2008 Grant Burge Miamba Shiraz (Barossa Valley, SA) fruity and thick with chocolate, liquorice, plums and cherries.

Whey sorbet, feijoa, violet

The palate cleanser and first sweet course was a whey sorbet, sprinkled with crushed crystallised violets and chunks of fresh feijoa.

Jonas found the feijoa fruit overwhelming and pungent, whereas I enjoyed the sweet-sour tropical flavour, similar to a guava. The whey sorbet was quite sour, almost salty and entirely delightful.

This came with a delicate and sweet 2009 Batasiolo Moscato d'Asti (Piemonte, Italy).

Smoked wood custard, molasses, pomegranate

Our last course was a salute to the New Nordic food movement. A layer of molasses sauce was topped with natural yoghurt, a smoked custard mousse and splashes of reduced pomegranate juice. All decorated with glistening ruby pomegranate jewels and chewy crumbs from an ANZAC type biscuit.

The yoghurt counterbalanced the sweetness of the molasses while the earthy pomegranate mixed well with the smoky wooded custard. And who doesn’t like ANZAC biscuits? C’mon!

Twas wonderful.

This was paired with the Buller Tokay (Rutherglen, VIC), sticky and strong enough to match the smoked custard, but probably the weakest wine pairing of the evening.

We left the evening impressed with these young whippersnappers.

The food had focused on sustainable nose-to-tail or foraged ingredients and the wine matching was inspired with inexpensive options signing like a well practiced choir beside their partner course.

They'd managed to turn the ugly and the under-utilised into something wonderful.

Overall a thoroughly enjoyable evening, heralding many good things to come from Douglas McMaster and Kym Lenoble.

~ ~ ~

Anna & Jonas were NOT guests of the Wasted team and paid $123pp for 6 courses with matching wines.

braised purple heirloom carrots

These carrots were braised with white wine, garlic, thyme and chicken stock.

It was, simply put, quite delicious.

The gorgeous colour of the carrots added oompf to the visuals of meal and I’m sure there’s something marvelously healthy about all that purple pigment. Antioxidants or some such bafflegab.

Interestingly, the carrots leach their colour out so it looked like I'd used red wine. I didn't. Just plain old white wine. 

The flavours are intense of carrot, herbs and a touch of wine and as you can imagine this dish tasted beautiful alongside Grilled Goat Cutlets & Rhubarb Agrodolce Sauce.

Wine-Braised Purple Heirloom Carrots

Anna's very own recipe. Serves 4-6.

Ingredients:
700g heirloom carrots, sliced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, picked over
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 cup (250ml) white wine
¾ cup (190ml) chicken or vegetable stock
Freshly milled salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon butter (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180’C.

2. In an oven proof pot, heat the olive oil then add carrots, garlic and thyme.

3. Add salt and pepper to taste then stir, frying until garlic softens (around 5 minutes).

4. Add wine, then bring to a boil. Cook off alcohol for around 2 minutes.

5. Add stock, bring to a boil.

6. Cover pot, place in oven and braise until carrots have softened but still have some texture (around 10-20 minutes).

7. If you're not vegan, this is the point you add butter for a little extra richness. Stir to melt and combine. Serve dish hot.

Note: some people place a piece of baking paper on top of the carrots when they’re in the oven to retain moisture. I didn’t, but everyone’s ovens are different so use your judgement.



These beautiful heirloom carrots are my contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging, this week hosted by Astrid at Paulchen's Foodblog. Be sure to visit her blog for the round-up.

passionfruit ganache truffles

I’ve always wanted to make my own truffles, in fact it's a 2011 Food Challenge, and this little experiment yielded some tasty results.

I did it all wrong. I know that now.

Every step could have been, should have been easier. But it wasn’t.

It was trial and error in production, but the final truffles were quite amazing.

I love the contrast between the sweet and sour passionfruit and the bitter dark chocolate. One of my favourite dessert flavour combinations.

Passionfruit Chocolate Truffles

Anna’s very own recipe. Makes approximately 10-15.

Ingredients:
100g white chocolate
80ml cream
40ml passionfruit pulp, without seeds
100g dark chocolate

Method:
1. Blend passionfruit pulp in a food processor to break up seeds from juices.

2. Chop white chocolate finely and put in a bowl.

3. Over a low heat, bring cream and passionfruit pulp to a boil

4. Strain over white chocolate then mix until melted.

5. Refrigerate ganache overnight.

6. Using a melon baller and very wet hands, scoop out cold ganache and roll into balls. Do this quickly so the ganache has as little contact with your hands as possible. Keep dipping hands into water between each ball to prevent sticking. You may need to do in batches, returning ganache to fridge to firm up.

7. Put balls on grease-proof paper into the freezer for about an hour to firm up completely.

8. Melt the dark chocolate then allow it to cool for 5-10 minutes (depends how warm your kitchen is).

9. Roll the ganache balls in the dark chocolate then return to fridge to harden up. Make sure dark chocolate covers ganache completely or when it hardens and expands the ganache will squirt out (I learnt the hard way).

10. Remove from fridge just before eating.

If you want to read up on passionfruit recipes, here are some of my earlier passionfruit recipes for marshmallows or curd.