Rockpool 1989
Rockpool, a place I've wanted to visit since before Rockpool Bar and Grill, but never found the opportunity to until I decided to squeeze it into a two day Sydney visit. Their new place on Bridge St is super pretty and I love waiters that are suited up and are wearing lapel pins too!It's essentially a degustation plus up to three extra courses (2 savoury and 1 sweet) to finish up. Since everything on the menu looked tasty, I went for three courses. Having had no time (or computer) to blog for a good five or so weeks, there's not too much commentary except that there was a lot of deliciousness!
Prawn tempura with daikon, soy, shiso, prawn cream and dashi jelly
Who doesn't love fried stuff with a creamy sauce! This tasty morsel was a great way to start the night.
Chicken wing with egg batter and konbu butter
The wings were beautifully frenched - in fact, I'd never even thought about frenching chicken wings. I assume that the cooking process also shrinks it to the circle shapes so there's no wastage from the trimming process.
Pork belly with coriander, chilli and rice roll
These burgers were tiny! It was also interesting having a rice bun as it had a different texture from normal buns. Pretty tasty!
Chirashi zushi of tuna, kingfish, bonito and squid
The prettiest dish of Rockpool! I can never resist good raw fish and this was delicious.
Kangaroo Island scallop with drunken condiment and ginger vinaigrette
These scallops are beautiful, and even though I've had plenty in Adelaide, this was one unique in the fact that they left the frills on, since they're actually edible. Plus, I love these scallops because they have such gorgeous purple shells and are huge! This was super tasty and one of my favourites for the night.
King George Whiting with apple, artichoke and red date infusion
I admit that I'm now writing this far too late after my visit, so I don't actually remember too much of the details. It was interesting to have red date with fish but I think it worked. The fish was cooked superbly.
Mapo tofu with avocado, sea urchin and eight precious herbs
This was a bit of a theatric experience as a hot pot was actually brought out during the previous course and soy milk, a setting agent and chilli were combined and left to sit on heat. And voila, mapo tofu was ready when the bowl of herbs and sea urchin came out. It wasn't too chilli and I quite enjoyed it.
Sterling caviar with soft poached egg, crispy potato and allemande sauce
This was one of the options that I chose, mainly because I've always wanted super fancy caviar from one of the Rockpool chains. I wish I had more caviar!
Braised beef sukiyaki with winter melon, lettuce and tendon
This was a dish my brother chose, and we were both super excited when we saw that the tendon was rare - what better way to enjoy such wonderful beef!
Pigeon Zheng Shui Dan with prawn stuffed eggplant and strange flavour dressing
What else would I choose but my beloved all-purpose pigeon as my second main option! This was cooked so well and it was so tasty, albeit a tad too salty for my liking, and it felt like I had just eaten the happiest pigeon in the world it was that pretty, big and tender. I love pigeon!
Partridge with chestnut filled lotus root and bone marrow poached quince
This was my mum's choice, though I think my brother and I did recommend it because of the lotus root. Plus, having partridges and pheasants is a must! I'm all for game birds.
"Buddha jumps over the wall" pork shoulder, clams, guanciale and white cut chicken
My dad ordered this one once we understood the meaning of the title. In Chinese cuisine, this dish is made out of luxurious ingredients that are so delicious, that it essentially makes Buddha jump over a wall and he becomes un-vegetarian.
Moscato custard with rhubarb, apple and streusel
This was the pre-dessert, and I love custard. The ripple effect through the ice cream was also pretty neat, mainly because in a recent episode of Masterchef, one of the contestants had managed to turn their ice cream pink instead of rippley.
Vacherin of pandan custard with coconut parfait, jasmine sorbet and lime granita
This was my dessert choice, and just look at that thin meringue shell! How impressive! I absolutely love pandan, and together with the lime granita, it was an absolute winner for me.
Sweet potato braised in soy caramel with lemon curd, miso ice cream, sesame and candied shiso
This was my brother's dessert option - we were curious about it because it had sweet potato and a curious miso ice cream. The highlight of this memory though, is not the food but rather the extraordinary wait staff (and his cute Rockpool lapel pin), as we had forgotten what the crystallised petal was, and our waiter then brought our minds back to the beginning of the night and mentioned that we had started with this ingredient too - shiso!
Date tart - original since 1984
And last but not least, the petit fours: The Rockpool Date Tart. Impossible to take a non ugly picture of, but tasty!
This was a great experience, and even though I tend to be a little biased against Asian flavours outside of my home (because my parents cook the best chinese, of course), with wonderful waiters and delicious food. I do feel sad that I never got to visit their George Street residence, but their new home on Bridge Street is pretty awesome!
Reine's Serendipitous Springtime
This spring has been spent sneezing, spending, and cooking! I still absolutely adore central markets and the farmers markets, and now go to both, because it's fun and the produce is amazing.There is great joy in unplanned purchasing (of ingredients mind you, not impulse buying!), so I end up with goodies like heirloom carrots and blood oranges to play with.First up, to get the silliness out of the way, there are two neverfail ingredients that can help out in a pinch - the first, as you know, is bacon. The second, is tomato sauce. One day, I had no dinner prepared whatsoever, and managed to create a chicken, bacon, tomato pasta that was somewhat decent! >_> Free parsley also helps :)
For the real spring deal, I found bunches of amazing multicoloured heirloom carrots, so had to buy some to ensure I was getting enough beta-carotene (I don't like carrots, but I feed my body the nutrients it requires). It turned into a massive julienned carrot salad, which was awesome with fennel, asparagus, rocket, witlof, blood orange, corn, red onion. Plus it looked gorgeous!
Heirloom carrot, fennel, rocket, corn, blood orange salad
Real spring pasta involves fresh handmade beetroot pasta, with beef, pesto, and goat curd. The original version (that I didn't take a picture of) had parsley instead of zucchini.
Beetroot pasta with beef, zucchini, goat curd, rocket and pistachio pesto
With the abundance of blood oranges, I wanted to do something other than spam it in my salads. So I went from the idea of blood orange juice, to blood orange jellies! Done in a similar style to my Virtual Valentine, it has two layers, with macerations of goodness. I'm not sure whether I just used too much gelatin (the wobbliness was right), but it did have a weird aftertaste. The blood orange juice remained cold during this process; I dissolved the gelatin in boiling water, though for next time, I would make a separate batch of boiling juice to ensure I get the full flavour instead of having it diluted. There were suspended chopped strawberries and mint, and the garnish layer was suspended in place using "lemonade" jelly - lemon, water and sugar to taste.
Because of how pretty they are, here's a lot of pictures!
"Bespoke cocktail" - Blood orange jelly, strawberry, mint
I also ran into some mixed whole pepper in one of my nearby shops, so I had to play with them, even though I'm not a pepper fan. Whole white, whole black, and some funny looking long peppers. So I slow poached chicken breast in olive oil, fresh rosemary, lemon, sea salt and pepper. It smelled great and the flavour actually got into the chicken, which I was happy about. I used the end result in a salad as a great refreshing lunch.
Lemon, pepper, rosemary poached chicken and quinoa salad
I then replicated this dish with just salt and pepper roasted chicken which was just as tasty and so much more moist. I also used tomatoes instead of capsicum, and had plenty of asparagus because it's in season and super cheap!
Now onto planned pasta dishes. There was some fresh squid ink pasta, so I bought that and wanted to make a creamy seafood pasta. I wanted it to have great depth of flavour, so I decided to overload on absolutely everything and my ingredient list ended up being: onion, garlic, butter, white wine, corn water, whole peppers, dill, chives, parsley, celery, carrot, corn, fennel, prawns, cockles, mussels, salmon, lingfish, mullet, snapper bone, creme fraiche, parmesan. I separated the prawn heads from bodies, so that I could cook them for a long time. As a stroke of genius, I also popped the shellfish in when the base of my sauce was only half done, and fished out the meat (pun intended) as they opened (some of those cockles were very stubborn!) so that I could cook down the juices. I had to pick out my snapper bone, peel the prawns, and get rid of the large herbs, and when it was ready I put a whole tub of creme fraiche in and let it mix.
Oh it was gorgeous and super fishy, but that's what I wanted as I've never had a restaurant make one so fishily rich.
I also managed to obtain some white truffles as they've just gone on the market! They were so crazy expensive that I cried a little on the inside. The black truffles I bought were $3000/kg, but these white ones were... $7000/kg!!! That's more than double! So I went way over budget (not that I have a food budget) and bought some. And made eggs! Lots of eggs. Fried, scrambled, all the truffle!
The egg is a little whiter than normal as I used the whites of 2 eggs and the yolk of 1, as I originally wanted the 2nd yolk to sit "in" the bed of white scramble, but the toast I had didn't work for it... so I ended up exploding the yolk afterwards (lesson learned: don't let yolk sit in a bowl by itself for too long; it sticks then breaks upon trying to pick it up).
And of course, cheese and truffle! My makeshift cheese plate with 2 proper cheese plate cheeses, plus an olive stuffed buffalo mozzarella. Gruyere and some French washed rind cheese. I love washed rind cheeses! Is white truffle worth it? Yes, but only once per lifetime XD
And new season South Australian strawberries have just been harvested, so my crazy idea of juicing strawberries was put to the test! Turns out, strawberries really don't juice well. But I had to make handmade strawberry milkshake for the hot weather! Plus I kept the pulp for yoghurt and muesli!
Before: strawberry "nectar" and milk. After: After some yoghurt and stirring, voila!
And lastly, duck and carrots take 2. Roasted this time, in chicken fat (cause I was cooking my salt and pepper chicken just before), hence the carrots look blistered. I bought pre-marinated Mongolian duck, which was pretty tasty!
