Pretending to be a chef: Truffle steak tartare
I promised myself last year that I wouldn't buy truffles again - they are so fragrant, but so expensive! And I can't afford to be poor right now. But trufflemania is on, and having watched Chef's Table, I couldn't resist buying some again. I had my eye on some Tasmanian winter truffles, but when I went and asked, they were all sold out! So I asked about the WA truffles they had and how they were different. The shop owner mentioned that this was the first time they stocked WA truffles because they were of a good quality for their price this year. He explained that previously, he didn't buy them because the supplier mixed all different regions into their stock, so it was impossible to tell where the truffles were from, and therefore the quality.He also mentioned that I had to use more than I would for a Tasmanian truffle, but it was also $1000/kg cheaper than a Tasmanian truffle. I love how truffles are described in thousands of dollars per kilo, it's hilarious! So, I was satisfied and more educated as a result of his explanation, and could comfortably buy these knowing they weren't as good as other truffles I bought, but that they were good for their value. And he got me (almost) whole ones from a jar full of truffles, and I could smell the aroma from the other side of the counter! It was so lovely!Very happy with my truffles and planning to add them to pasta, I figured it was also time to once again test my knife skills and make some steak tartare.
First of all, I had to confirm my condiments: pickled beetroot, cornichons, red onion, seeded mustard, chives. An egg on top was a must, and it would then be showered in truffle shavings. For the starch, I bought both potato and jerusalem artichoke, unsure of which I would use - it would come down to how they crisped up and I would choose the prettier one. Turns out it also has an impact on taste!
Step one, pickled beetroot puree. I had cut up beetroot and pickled them overnight in rice vinegar, sugar, salt and pickling spices. Then, I boiled them so that they could be mashed. To ensure that the flavour wasn't diluted, it was boiled in the same pickling mixture, but because I had extra beetroot pickling away, this was a fresh batch (otherwise the whole pot would have been red!)
This was the result of double fork action!
I added some of the pickle water to the mash, then ran the whole thing through a sieve. That way I got a coarse puree, but it would do.
Next up, onion versus knife. It's amazing just how much difference a sharp knife makes, cutting through this was very satisfying compared to my standard kitchen knives!
Sharper is definitely better. I wasn't super consistent, but they were pretty thin.
Purely by slicing, they became this small and this cute!
I elminated any large chunks by then chopping it further. I was very happy with this result!
I originally wanted the crisps to curl so that I could make a flower shape arrangement around my tartare, however most of my potato slices were still too thick for that. Also, I'm not that great at controlling the mini-grill I have and I didn't want to waste electricity on powering the oven for just a few crisps, so they went in as-is.
I managed to get four good pieces out of the lot! Some burned and others didn't crisp up in time (yes, I was impatient). The jerusalem artichokes went in a second batch, but I was already fed up with the time it was taking for them to dehydrate without burning! But this is how thin the perfect ones were. And they crunched, so I was pleased.
I bought some eye fillet beef and cured it quickly to "disinfect" it, before dicing it in the same way as the onions. I wanted mine to be relatively fine, as I was thinking back to my experience at Fix St James. I mixed a small amount of chives and onion through it just to give it flavour.
And the plate up! It didn't look at all like how I envisioned it, but I still liked the way it looked! This was also the perfect excuse for me to use my gold leaf as luxury overkill. It wasn't as difficult to handle as I thought, and I had actually pulled off a bit too much. The crisps held up very well, and I shouldn't have put the beef back into the fridge after shaping as it actually was too clumped together as a result - I would have liked it to have fallen apart a little better. The truffle didn't stand out until after I had eaten it all, but the fragrance was there at least. I also found that there was a slight imbalance towards vinegar, as the mustard I bought contained vinegar, the cornichons were in vinegar, then my beetroots were also vinegared. More onion would have helped, and more potato chips would have too.After the photoshoot I dumped all my extras/leftovers onto this, so I got to try the tartare with potato, and with jerusalem artichoke. The potato adds savouriness, while the artichoke adds sweetness and nuttiness. I personally liked the potato better, and so I wouldn't get the artichoke as a just in case next time.I'm glad to have made this dish, now I'm waiting out the 24 hours to make sure I didn't poison myself with this!"All that glitters is black"
Pretending to be a chef: Reserve banquet
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 sauceSushi rice seasoning: rice vinegar, mirin, salt, sugarDashi: kombu, timeTamagoyaki: egg, mirin, salt, dashiPandan infusion: pandan, water, timePandan coconut rice pudding: milk, cream, coconut milk, pandan infusionMatcha panna cotta: matcha, gelatin, milk, cream, sugarHoujicha panna cotta: houjicha tea, gelatin, milk, cream, sugarAzuki smash: azuki beans, time, dark agave syrup, saltGreen 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!
Cooofffeeeee?
Dear diary,Today was a good day. I got up early to make dashi broth so that I could get a pandan infusion going. Then I went to Bar 9 where Ian greeted me and gave me some guest coffee: Honduras Las Moras CoE#4 2014 roasted by Nozy Coffee and described how it was roasted a little darker but not charry. I liked it. I want to go to Japan again. I then chose Bolivia Estanislao Pununi because I really liked it when Artificer made it. Still as sweet and bright, I really like this Bolivian coffee.Then I shopped and came home, realised I had way too much watercress and snow pea tendrils because all I wanted was two "arching" tendrils with pretty leaves for the dish I was going to make.I marvelled at the 200g sashimi grade Port Lincoln blue fin tuna I bought for $79.99/kg and was very glad I chose that over the standard cuts of yellowfin tuna; there was a marbling to the flesh that made it taste great!I cut up a lot of fish and made dashimaki tamagoyaki for the first time. It was a bit too sweet and kept breaking up when I tried to roll it, but the texture was there even though it was a chaotic swirl rather than orderly swirl. It also offset the fish very nicely in the chirashi that I made.My knifework isn't great but I'll keep working on it.My food actually tasted as good as it looked today, which was better than last week where it tasted worse than it looked.I'm thinking about buying truffle next week for a beef tartare and call the dish "black gold" because I had this hilarious and useless idea to add gold leaf to a truffled beef tartare. I think it's too over the top, so I probably won't do it.Then I went to my favourite cafe where I was so tired from so much food making that I couldn't remember what I ordered. It was the house blend espresso. It explains why the Pedra Redonda tasted so different when I was given that after my first drink. I was surprised because I hadn't ordered it, but I was thankful and appreciative because I was thinking of a second coffee. Then I was asked how much coffee I can drink, to which I replied a lot even though I recently broke my coffee immunity. I do believe I actually still have most of that immunity.I was then given two more coffees; I was essentially cleaning up their batch brew at closing time. One was an Ethiopia Aramo from Monastery Coffee which reminded me of the "sunniest" Yirgacheffes I've had. It was bright and fresh and smelled great. The other was the Santa Isabel which did pale a little in comparison.I am also proud of the chicken livers on toast I made for dinner. They were a bit bleedy so I didn't eat it all, but the bits that I did eat were yummy.Now it's bed time. I have to make azuki bean smash tomorrow morning and buy milk to make a matcha panna cotta.
Pretending to be a chef: Jewelled Sea
Jewelled sea
Tea cured ocean trout, shaved scallop, jerusalem artichoke crips, horseradish creme fraiche, finger lime
After a lot of travel recently and eating a whole heap of good food, it's finally time to start cooking again. This time, with a proper knife. Being end of financial year specials, I managed to pick up a Global 20cm chef's knife for $95. It's light, grippy, sharp and sleek! I figured I'd actually learn how to use one of these before splurging on a patterned, real Japanese knife.
Ok, so I had actually found my ingredients, then formed a dish in my mind, then realised I needed a knife. What had I picked up? Scallops in shell and ocean trout. So I decided to collect some jerusalem artichoke, finger limes, horse radish and creme fraiche.
I've been tea curing fish for a couple of weeks now, so this was relatively easy - salt, sugar, earl grey tea leaves, lemon. I used to put way too much salt and left it for way too long so that it was always too salty, but now, with the addition of lemon, I'm able to cure small pieces in a couple of hours or less.
I had no idea how to use fresh horseradish and incorporate the flavour into creme fraiche. I decided to finely chop it and see if I could simply fold it into the cream. Also, I was being all "I think I know what this is" and picked up the horseradsih without confirming what it was, because sometimes I'm silly like that, so as soon as I got home and started prepping this, I sliced off a bit and licked it to confirm. Go me!
I was very lucky that the native Australia/game shop had finger limes! They came whole and frozen though, so thawing it was a bit of a pain. However, I was very pleased when I could squirt most of them out quite easily. And because the pulp bulbs are round, they do indeed look like caviar!
And here are the scallops. I thought they'd be more difficult to clean and prepare, but it was actually quite easy. They were incredibly sandy though! After a thorough wash, they were ready to slice.There are no more progress shots, instead, just the final product:
I actually really liked the presentation - so pretty, and inspired by Quay's raw marron dish that I had when I visited. The pink gems of finger lime were absolutely beautiful, and my jerusalem artichoke chips curled up quite nicely, and gave the dish a sweet nuttiness that worked well. The raw scallops also added sweetness, while the cured trout was the salt element. The horseradish creme fraiche was meant to mimic wasabi, and add tanginess and kick, but I got that horribly wrong. Turns out finely chopped horseradish doesn't actually mix properly, so there were bits in my cream. The balance also wasn't there; it had to be more burning and lighter. If I'd manage to whip it into airiness it probably would have worked. It also needed more sour, with the amount of finger lime I had placed, it wasn't enough.Overall was I pleased with my dish? Yes for presentation, no for flavour. I usually make food that tastes as good as it looks or better, and this wasn't one of them. I still have a lot to learn!