The markets yielded a very rare opportunity: Port Lincoln sashimi grade blue fin tuna. It was placed right next to the standard tuna I buy – a yellowfin tuna, and the blue fin was paler, indicating it was fattier. I decided I’d fork out the $80/kg and give it a go, since I had a knife that was keen to cut. There happened to be Port Lincoln sashimi grade kingfish too, so I had an idea forming. There wasn’t any black caviar, so instead of choosing red, I went for the Huon Reserve hand milked salmon caviar, just because I could. It resulted in a four course meal!

Curvature: blue fin tuna, kingfish, salmon caviar

Out came the knife, and ahead of me was 2.5 days worth of prep and “cooking” because I am disorganised and untrained. For all my dishes, I made the following elements:

Soy, ginger, garlic, mirin sauce

Sushi rice seasoning: rice vinegar, mirin, salt, sugar

Dashi: kombu, time

Tamagoyaki: egg, mirin, salt, dashi

Pandan infusion: pandan, water, time

Pandan coconut rice pudding: milk, cream, coconut milk, pandan infusion

Matcha panna cotta: matcha, gelatin, milk, cream, sugar

Houjicha panna cotta: houjicha tea, gelatin, milk, cream, sugar

Azuki smash: azuki beans, time, dark agave syrup, salt

Green tea jelly: Iron goddess of mercy/tie guan yin tea, gelatin, time

Coffin Bay oysters

Ok. So. First things first. Eating. I made this as my pre-cooking meal! Six all up, three for the photoshoot. I used some of the caviar, cut up some chives. Easy.

 

Look at the marbling on this tuna! A gorgeous glistening piece of fish waiting to be made into something beautiful.

My first attempt at tamagoyaki! It was rather difficult because even though I had high heat, my egg was still sticking and breaking up between layers, even though I was oiling the pan between each layer as well. Yes, I did taste the mixture when it was raw, and even though it was okay at the time, I found it a tad sweet once I was done making it. But I like it sweet, so it wasn’t an issue. Plus it offset the saltiness of the caviar very nicely!

Here are the rest of my ingredients patiently waiting to be arranged.

And here’s the plate up! Originally I envisioned this to be a gradient of dark to light fish as a line of cubes, on a rectangular plate. But I was sick of my rectangular plate, so I went for a round plate instead. As I was prepping looking top-down, the curve was about right, but horizontally, it was a disaster! So next time I’ll have to keep in mind what it looks like at plate-level too.

The leftovers then went into a chirashi! I had originally wanted to plate this up so that it was standing, so that the rice would also be visible, however I couldn’t get it to look good, so in a bowl it went! It was also my first time cooking rice to be rice (rather than rice pudding, which I’ve only cooked twice before) – it was a little undercooked (chalky!) but edible.

And now for dessert. I had no idea how to put the flavour of pandan leaf into rice pudding. Considering how disastrous my “horseradish creme fraiche” was, I wasn’t sure doing a similar thing was a good idea. But I went for it anyway. Finely chopped pandan, soaked overnight in water, then boiled for a while the next day. The aroma was amazing! And yes, the infusion did work. I could add the pandan water to anything I wanted after getting rid of the solids.

The azuki beans went for an overnight soak, before being boiled off. Salt and agave syrup was added to taste, then coarsely mashed.

I had no idea how much matcha powder to add, so I was doing it to taste and colour. I don’t actually like matcha but I knew that this dish needed the green colour. I batch made some panna cotta as this was a “dessert for breakfast” that had to last me five days and I didn’t have that much matcha, so I whipped up a massive batch of houjicha panna cotta instead. I had to let half the matcha panna cotta set before scooping in some azuki smash, before covering it all with more matcha mix. As you can see, this set a bit too far, but it still melded well enough that it came out in one piece.

I wanted an aromatic jelly, so I chose tie guan yin because it would stay relatively clear, yet smell wonderful. I actually wanted to make this with agar agar, but I really couldn’t be bothered as I would have to weigh that out and then boil it up. It was too much effort, so I stuck with gelatin. And this is the closest I’ll get to making a water mochi cake!

Zen Garden

And this was the end result. A super wobbly panna cotta lined with a cloud of pandan rice pudding. I underestimated the size of the glass I put the panna cotta in; I wanted it to me smaller so that it looked like it belonged on the wooden board. It was too large and hadn’t actually set properly, so cutting it resulted in a fantastic explosion.

And this is what it looked like on the inside:

Had it set more I would have gotten a clean cut for a photoshoot, but that’s essentially how it was all layered up and how I wanted it to look. That pandan coconut rice was unbelievably tasty and was my favourite component, followed by the azuki smash. I also liked my houjicha panna cotta much more than matcha panna cotta.

Overall I was so tired by the end of this that I felt like I hadn’t had a weekend. But I’m so glad I made it because I love proving to myself I can cook! I just take a long time doing it!