On Going Overboard

I have something of a habit of going to extremes. Not always. I'm not obsessive. Rather, I'd call it “passing manic episodes.” Now and again an idea will strike me as particularly interesting or challenging and I dive in, as deep as I can. Typically this involves me learning a complicated process so that I might create something which I could easily purchase for a fraction of the price and no effort at all. For example: I've made paper out of native grasses, started fire with flint and steel, fermented my own sourdough starter using organic grapes, built a bicycle, dug up and potted with native clay, woven rope, brewed beer, made baskets from pine needles, sewed a tent, and made ham.

Wow. That list makes me sound like a filthy hippie. I assure you, I am not.

Most recently I tackled the king of all sandwiches, the BLT. You can read all about it in former posts ( parts 1, 2, & 3), but for those of you who would rather not, I'll summarize: I set out to make the best BLT I could, so I cured and smoked bacon, baked bread, made some mayo, and, together with a lovely tomato and some lettuce from the local fruit shop, in most ways succeeded.

A couple of months later, cookbook author and food writer Michael Ruhlman set a challenge on his blog: Make a BLT from scratch. Cure the pork, bake the bread, make the mayo, grow the tomatoes and lettuce. I jokingly accused him of stealing my idea, but as he is famous and I am not, it's easy for him to brush such accusations aside.

It did get me thinking. I happened to have accidental tomatoes growing on the balcony. Accidental because they came up in the pots after the summer harvest was removed. We let them grow just to see if they would make it through a Sydney winter. Lettuce was also no problem, as I received a lettuce box, complete with soil, as a Christmas gift and it was coming along nicely. That left only bread, mayo, and bacon.



Enter: mania. I'd take on Ruhlman's BLT project, but I wanted a challenge. Something I would have to work for. I was going to make everything I could from scratch. Everything. I figured you need salt for just about every step so, well, off to the sea I went for 25 litres of salt water, which, in case you are wondering, yielded one kilo of salt.



You can imagine where things went from there – sugar cane, mustard seeds, herbs for flavoring and wood for smoking gathered from parks, making cider vinegar from my homemade cider...





I couldn't do everything. Milling flour was out; I've no space for chickens; I can't press my own oil. Overall, I think I did pretty well. It was a lot of fun. Tasty too.

Here's a link to my entry in Ruhlman's competition. Hope you enjoy.

Let's Make A Deal!

I propose a cultural exchange. Oz, Amerka, let's trade. I've been here in Sydney for over a half a decade now, and I lived my first quarter century or so in the States, so I feel qualified to broker a deal. Let's list possible exports:

On offer from America:

• Franks Red Hot Sauce


• Sour Cherries (oh how I miss thee)


• Soft Pretzels


• Effective Internet Shopping


• In-N-Out Burger

From Australia:

• Socialized Health Care


• Gigantic Food Courts With Not One Fast Food Chain


• International Community's (relative) Good Will


• The Proper Dosage of Vegemite (You've had your fun, Aussies)


• Oporto (Portuguese inspired chicken burger fast food, Yay!)


• Tastier Beer

America, it's not looking good. As a gesture of good faith, I'm volunteering the Aussies one of your greatest untapped potential international offerings: cobbler.

Cobbler, also called "grunt," may well be the ultimate American dessert. It's a variation on an English lamb casserole where loosely packed biscuits or scones form a cobbled surface over the meat underneath. American ingenuity and perseverance transformed it into a sugar-filled delight, at, it should be noted, the expense of many an innocent fruit. Southerners in particular took a liking and artistic license and eventually gave the rest of the country the best-served-warm-dessert Americans call cobbler.

I grew up loving peach cobbler in particular. Not only a local potluck favorite, it was often the only highlight in a week's worth of school lunches (where highlights were nothing if not scarce). Later in life I became quite fond of blackberry cobbler, though only if I'd picked the berries from the banks of the irrigation ditch snaking through my Grandparents' property in Northern California.

When I moved Down Under, home-sickness prompted me to to recreate childhood foods. However, as I have mentioned in a previous post, berries here are listed on the national stock exchange somewhere above gold, and, as I have not mentioned before, peaches here are less than average.

Combining frugality with nostalgia and swirling in a generous dollop of my favorite dessert flavors, I pour into your cup (coffee cup in this case) caramel and apple cobbler.



I like baking cobbler in coffee cups. Cracking into a cobbler crust, pushing through the cakey topping, and diving into the buttery, slightly smoky, sweet, steaming apple filling is, well, a basic human right. It's in the Geneva Conventions. Go check. Besides, everyone likes getting a little dish all their own.

Caramelized Apple Cobbler

3 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, diced into 2cm chunks
100g sugar
50g butter, cold, cut into small cubes
pinch ground cloves

Preheat oven to 190ºC. In a small saucepan combine the sugar with a few tablespoons of water. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the sugar begins to caramelize (about 160ºC). Remove from heat and quickly whisk in the butter, a bit at a time. Add the cubed apples and stir, off the heat, for one minuet. Divide mixture into four coffee cups and top with dollops of the topping (below), making sure to leave a few little gaps so that the caramel can bubble through.

Bake on a tray (to catch any spillage) for 35-45 minuets. The cobbler is done when a toothpick inserted into the topping comes out clean. Let cool slightly before serving.

Topping

180g flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
115g butter, cold, cut into small cubes
185ml cream

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles rough breadcrumbs. Mix in enough of the cream to form a soft and sticky dough.

Also, there is no ice cream in either photo, but for the love of god people, use your common sense, and scoop some creamy vanilla on top. Do I have to hold your hands? Jesus. That's it, this brokering job sucks. I quit.

Breakfast of Champignons

Ok. I've had a bit of a dig at “breakfast” in the past. “Chef's don't eat blah blah,” and “can't face food before my first seven coffees,” and so on. I was harsh, made sweeping generalizations, issued dismissive statements, derided entire populations, ridiculed ways of life, and was, in general, nasty about eating before noon.

Every single thing I have said is indisputable fact.

However, I must admit: I've been shaken. To be honest, I love the foods we would generally call “breakfast foods” - bacon, toast, marmalade, eggs, home fries, hash browns, pancakes, waffles, sausages. In Australia add to the list sautéed mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, and, maybe, baked beans. What's not to like?

All joking and chefly machismo aside, I really have no appetite prior to lunch time. I thought, sadly, that all the above foods were therefore off limits to me, or that, at the very least, I would be subject to some kind of ambient scorn for eating eggs on toast at 1:00 p.m..

That was all before ouefs en meurette. It is a French country dish composed of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and toast and it is a capitol “M” Meal. The eggs are poached in red wine, served on toasted sourdough, and garnished with lardons, roasted pearl onions, and sautéed mushrooms. Over this is poured a rich veal and red wine sauce. The dish is finished with some crisp frisée leaves which technically (as far as chefs are concerned) qualifies this as a “salad.”

I challenge anyone to consume this before noon. Not only is it incredibly filling and ridiculously rich, if you begin preparing all the components any later than 10:00 a.m. (the time most of you internet hippies roll out of bed) you wont be eating till early afternoon.



Hurry up. Get to work.

I've taken a few liberties here. First, I use roast chicken stock instead of veal, I like the slightly lighter flavor. Second, I use super-rich duck eggs instead of chicken eggs. Duck eggs (below left) are larger and tastier than those of hens. Good thing, because you'll be pretty bloody hungry after all the work you are about to do. This serves two.



100 g spec
12 button mushrooms
6 eshallots
2 slices sourdough
250 ml red wine
2 duck eggs
1 sm bunch frisée

Prep all of the components and get the sauce started (below) before you begin cooking. Cut the spec into ½ cm thick slices and then into ½ cm strips so that you have little sticks of spec. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and use them in the sauce (below). Bring a small pot of water to the boil and blanch the peeled eshallots for 8-10 minuets, until they can easily be pierced with a knife; drain. Cut the crusts from the sourdough and discard. Pick the yellow inner leaves from the frisée and discard the outer bitter leaves. Keep the duck eggs in the refrigerator.

Put the spec in a small fry pan with a touch of oil and place over low heat, shaking the pan periodically. As the spec cooks, some of the fat will render out and the pieces will crisp up. Using a slotted spoon, remove the spec from the pan and drain on paper towels.

Increase the heat to medium and gently brown the eshallots in the spec fat. Remove from pan. Increase the heat again to medium high and sauté the mushrooms until they have a deep brown color. You will find that they absorb most of the fat.

Remove the pan from the heat and return the spec and eshallots to the pan with the mushrooms. Pour the strained Sauce Bordelaise over the top and keep warm.

Toast the sourdough and place in the bottom of two small bowls.

In a small pan bring the red wine to a simmer. Crack one of the duck eggs and slip it onto the wine from as close to the surface as you can manage. Cook for 3 minuets, making sure the wine just simmers, but does not come to a full boil. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain on paper towels and place on the toast in one bowl. Repeat with the second egg.

Garnish each bowl with half the mushroom mixture, pour any remaining sauce over and top with the picked frisée.

For the Sauce Bordelaise

50 ml port
50 ml red wine
100 ml reduced roast chicken or veal stock
1 eshallot, sliced
button mushroom stems
1 clove garlic, cracked
1 bay leaf
1 black peppercorn
1 sprig thyme

In a small saucepan or heavy bottomed pot gently brown the mushroom stems and sliced eshallot in a bit of oil. Add the garlic, pepper, and herbs, cook for 30 seconds, and then add the port and wine. Reduce the alcohol to a glaze and then pour in the stock. Reduce the heat and simmer until the sauce has reduced by at least half and is thick and rich. Strain, discarding solids.

A Crock of Bol

The problem with Spaghetti Bolognese, you see, it that it doesn't really exist. Not only that, but it seems that no one can agree on how exactly to make the nonexistent dish.

Let's deal with the first problem. Ragù alla bolognese as most of us outside Italy know it, is a fabricated dish. The real thing, officially (according to the Accademia Italiana della Cucina), is made of beef, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, red wine, beef stock, and pancetta. The slow-cooked sauce is almost exclusively served on tagliatelle. In contrast, most of us would expect minced meat in a tomato sauce on spaghetti. Complicating matters is the fact that even the residents of Bologna fail to reach any real consensus on the components of the dish, some adding pork, foul livers, mushrooms, milk, cream, butter, white wine, and even mortadella – Italian blood sausage. There is no “real” spaghetti bolognese.



The second problem, that of no one agreeing on how to make bolognese sauce, can be summed up thus: 88,000 google search results for “spaghetti bolognese recipe.” Nearly everyone I know has their own recipe, method, or idea of what the final product should be and I can't think of two that are exactly alike. Australians, great lovers of the diminutive, refer to it as “spag bol,” and according to everyone I've spoken to, no one makes the sauce quite like mum, whoever your mum may be.

I thought I'd add to the confusion by posting my ragù recipe.



1 kilo beef roast, cut into 2 cm cubes
1 litre of tomato pureé (see below)
2 carrots, peeled and then grated
2 onions, fine dice
2 garlic, fine dice
2 celery, fine dice
12 button mushrooms, fine dice
1 sprig thyme
3 bay leaves
pinch chili
¼ nutmeg, freshly ground, or 1/8 tsp
½ tsp cinnamon
250 ml beef stock
100 ml red wine
2 Tbsp cream

Place a heavy-bottomed sauce pan on medium-high heat. Salt and pepper the meat cubes and, using a little olive oil, brown the meat in small batches, removing it to a bowl as each batch is browned. Add a small amount more oil and cook the carrots, onions, garlic, celery, and mushrooms until they are soft, have a sweet aroma, and have just started to color. Add the herbs and spices and cook a minuet longer.

Pour in the red wine and the beef stock and return the meat to the pot, along with any juices that have accumulated in the bowl. Stir in the tomato pureé and the cream. Season lightly. Bring the sauce to a simmer and reduce to low heat.

Cook, partially covered, stirring frequently, for 2-3 hours (longer if needed), until the meat is soft and begins to fall apart. Using the back of a wooden spoon press the chunks of meat against the side of the pot until they are all shredded. The sauce should be thick and rich. Adjust seasoning and serve with shaved (not powdered for the love of god) parmesan.

Tomato Pureé

You can go about this in one of several ways. 1. Buy a jar of tomato pureé, often called passata. Just make sure that the ingredients are “tomato and salt” or you're buying sauce, not pureé. 2. Get a large can of peeled tomatoes and blend them. 3. Core, blanch, and peel about 10 large tomatoes and then blend them. Any of these work just fine.