The Legendary Lobster Roll

So unless you’ve been living under a food media-deprived rock since the beginning of the year (or you know, not in Melbourne) you will probably have heard of the Lobster Roll. It’s become legendary, winning dish of the year accolades all over the place and generally earning rave reviews from all and sundry.

Golden Fields, from whence it came, even sells them take-away now. I would hit that every day if it weren’t in St Kilda. I don’t do St Kilda. Though if any man were to convince me to change my mind, it could only be Andrew McConnell.

The Golden Fields Lobster Roll. Not my picture - I was too busy eating to take photos.

But as I am north of the river all the way, I just dream of the day I will again venture south and eat this heavenly sandwich. It really is heavenly. For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure – here’s a breakdown:

Based on a Maine, New England style lobster roll (thus the name despite the fact that it uses crayfish and not lobster) it’s a few slices of perfect crayfish sandwiched in a lightly grilled sweet, soft, Asian-style bun, with naught but some watercress and a squeeze of Kewpie mayonnaise for company. It’s simplicity and good sourcing at its best.

At the markets recently I spotted some rather nice looking fresh cray tails and since I have no plans to head to south side any time soon, I decided to treat myself for lunch. Buying a tail with no head meant I avoided the uncomfortable “how best to kill my crayfish” situation by letting someone else do the dispatching for me (though I’ve never cooked one that was not whole before – swings and roundabouts). For the record, I would usually pop it in the freezer or an ice bath until it’s asleep, then drive a knife into the brain, killing it instantly and theoretically painlessly, before cooking.

A nice piece of tail.

First, I lightly poached the crayfish tail in salted water and butter. Shellfish love butter. Really if you’re going to have a luxury ingredient, you may as well go full luxury. One crayfish tail was enough for two sandwiches, though two tails between three would have been the perfect, super indulgent amount. I pulled it out after about 10 minutes, peeled it and sliced it into neat rounds. It didn’t look like much meat to share between two, but once on the roll it yielded a surprising amount.

Next I made a quick mayonnaise with loads of lemon zest and juice to give it a nice zing, and finished it with chopped fennel tops, leftover from the baby fennel I shaved on a mandolin to mix with watercress, lemon, oil and plenty of cracked pepper.

Getting all still-lifey with my limited photography skills.

Finally I warmed some baguettes in the oven, and brushed the open faces with a little melted butter, because I can’t emphasise enough how much crayfish loves butter.

To assemble, I gave the cray meat a quick bath in melted butter before layering it on the bread and slathering with mayonnaise. I then topped it with the watercress and fennel salad and sat down with a glass of Ardeche Chardonnay to toast a completely indulgent lunch.

Not Golden Fields', but pretty darn delicious all the same.

Manfriend declared it the best crayfish roll he’s ever had. That being said he’s never been to Golden Fields, but I’ll take the compliments when I can get them.

The Ugliest Pie in the World

There is something so nostalgic about apple pie. When you smell that sweet pastry and those cinnamon-laced apples baking, it takes you right back to a childhood spent standing at the kitchen bench with a mother rubbing flour and butter with her fingers, explaining why you need cold hands, letting you use the rolling pin, peeling apples, baking the thing, pulling it out of the oven and serving it with lashings of vanilla ice-cream. I didn’t have that childhood; my mother, though a proficiently skilled pastry maker and the source of most of my baking knowledge and passion, did not make apple pie. Oh she made lemon tarts, and apple crumbles, and cakes of varying flavours, just not apple pie. We ate those frozen Nanna’s apple pies (my mother will cringe to know I’ve shared that). I won’t speak for the rest of my family, but at the time I adored those things. Somehow despite this lack of apple pie-filled childhood, I still get nostalgic for apple pie. And I was craving one.

Apples set for the pie-ing

Having no one to juice for knowledge and a good recipe, I decided to use the first recipe I found as a guide, making my own changes as I went along. Stephanie Alexander was a bust on the subject, but I did find a recipe by Ross Dobson in which cinnamon was prevalent and went with that instead. I very quickly realised I had no cinnamon in the house – a common problem when it’s your favourite sweet spice – and no flour either for that matter, and such was my pie craving that I made a trip to the grocer in naught but leggings as pants. Leggings are not pants!

Sufficiently stocked up with ingredients, I went ahead with the pie. And, as I was playing very fast and loose with the recipe, and may or may not have enjoyed a glass of Chianti during the making, the integrity of my pie descended rapidly. First off, I added too much water to the dough so it was a mite too sticky. And then I forgot about the apples so they cooked a little too long (curse you delicious, delicious Chianti). And then when it came to baking the thing, I was halfway through a movie, halfway through a second bottle, and just really needing some pie, so the assemblage was, shall we say, less than perfect.

"Less than perfect" - the understatement of the century

But despite all these things being against me, holy smokes this pie was delicious. Because of my aforementioned love of cinnamon, I bumped up the spices in the dough so it was almost like gingerbread in flavour. It didn’t have the texture of good pastry; it was almost biscuity. And the apples managed to hold a little bit of texture despite their overcooking. It’s an unusual type of pie – all the spices go into the pastry, and the apples are kept plain with just a little lemon and sugar for company, which means you get this moorishly spiced dough wrapped around tangy apple filling, drizzled with lashings of cream.

I know I seem to say this about every baked good I make, but it was like crack, addictive as all get out. I had a piece for desert every single night, which is unheard of for me. Nostalgia sated, I now know why my mother didn’t feed pies to her already chubby child. Smart woman.

Apple Gingerbread Pie

8 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced

2 tsp lemon juice

Zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp cinnamon

50 g caster sugar

250 g self-raising flour

190 g brown sugar

1 ½ tbsp cinnamon

1 tbsp ground ginger

125 g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1 free-range egg

Place apple slices in a saucepan with lemon juice, zest, caster sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon. Cover and cook over low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring often so they soften and cook evenly. Allow the apple slices to cool.

For the pastry, pulse the flour, brown sugar and remaining spices in a food processor. Add the butter several cubes at a time and pulse. Alternatively, you can use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Add the egg and 1-2 tbsp cold water and process until combined. The dough should be quite dry. At this point, don’t be fooled into thinking the dough looks too dry and add more water – this was my foolhardy error. Knead to form a ball. Wrap the pastry in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes, or until ready to assemble.

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Cut the dough in two (one piece slightly larger than the other). Roll the larger between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper and line the bottom and sides of a greased, loose bottomed 20cm x 4cm high fluted tart tin (or the closest baking dish you can find, if all your tart and cake tins have been procured by a restaurant, as mine have. One more step to making this thing look reeeally ugly). Spoon in the apples, roll the remaining pastry out and place on top. Seal and trim the edges, then use a small knife to make several slits in the top of the pie and to seal the edges and create some sort of design (haphazardly if again, you want to imitate my work of art). Put the pie in the oven and bake for 60 minutes or until the pastry is dark brown.

Remove and allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving with loads of fresh cream.

Meet John Dory

We are having a real John Dory moment at mi casa at the moment. It seems to be the ‘hot’ fish at so many restaurants and I can see why – it’s relatively cheap, it has an awesome texture, it’s not overused and it tastes gorgeous.

Dory really does look like this!

To tell you the truth, though I absolutely love to eat fish I very rarely order fish – it’s almost always disappointing. If I am served a perfect piece of fish, pan-fried perfectly, yes it tastes lovely, but it’s boring. I can cook a piece of fish perfectly. I can season it perfectly. I can source it perfectly. And I can slice a cheek of lemon perfectly. A fish fillet is ridiculously easy to cook, it’s just hard to make interesting.

John Dory has become the exception to this not particularly hard and fast rule. One dory dish in particular is making great strides to change my opinion of fish in restaurants – the dory at Carlton Wine Room. We recently visited for manfriend’s birthday – we were seated in the spectacular cellar, surrounded by wine and candles, and had a completely lovely evening. The highlight was without doubt the dory, served with hazelnut spatzle and saffron broth. It is insane. I will order that dish every time I go there for as long as it is on.

Just kidding, it's nowhere near that cute. And it's memory was fine.

So John Dory has swiftly become the fish of choice for our Tuesday night fish cookery sessions. Understandably, we eat a substantial amount of meat during the week so every Tuesday we go crazy with loads of vegetables and fish. So far the favourite home version has been somewhat inspired by CWR’s version (I dream about it).

A fish, a fish, a fish, a fishy ohhhh

First we made a simple fish stock from a snapper carcass we bought at the market. I really recommend that whenever you are spending some time in the kitchen, you pick up some bones and make some stock. This rather meaty carcass cost us less than a dollar and made enough for dinner with about a litre left over. We cooked it with just a little onion and garlic – I like to keep stocks simple, and build flavour for each dish.

I call this one "fennel in pan"

Next I braised some fennel. This is my favourite preparation for fennel as it really lets the aniseed flavour shine through. I fry slices in a little olive oil until golden, then add water (or in this case, beer) gradually and let it bubble away, then add a little more. Finish with some chopped garlic, a little more liquid, plenty of salt and pepper, let it bubble away then stir through all the chopped fronds.

Then to turn that stock into broth. I sautéed some of the tough outer layer of fennel with a little garlic and a tiny pinch of saffron (and I mean tiny, we ran out – I am terrible at checking the pantry before I shop). Then I added a splash of vermouth, let it bubble, then a good amount of the light fish stock. I let this simmer for a time to get the flavours going, seasoning well, then strained it. You could clarify it to get a gloriously clear, clean broth, but to be honest I don’t mind a little cloudiness; it’s all flavour. We boiled a couple of new potatoes in the broth, quickly pan-fried the dory with just some salt, pepper and butter, and served.

Dinner!

Since I am a firm believer in always eating greens, I also cooked some rainbow chard in oil and lemon and sautéed some zucchini as a side.

Delicious, delicious chard

This was a pretty tremendous meal. Any suggestions how to cook my John Dory next week?

Domesticity, and the art of cooking risotto

As you can probably see by my last post, occasionally I get engulfed in a haze of domesticity. On my recent Tuesday, this was amplified times a million, after a dinner party was cancelled and manfriend and I decided to spend almost the entire day at home, doing homely things, and just generally enjoying being mildly normal for once. This entailed not only cleaning the house, which is a considerable task, given its size and length of time since the last clean (considerable), but also wandering the markets slowly deciding what to eat slowly and with care and based on what looked good (whilst eating a borek, naturally), multiple coffees at the bar at Carlton Espresso (Tuesday ritual), and cooking all afternoon. Lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Long sentence, and a whole lot of italics there, but it’s how I feel man, it’s how I feeel.

Back to what looked good at the markets. Bunnies. Cute as anything and cheap too – $10 for one plump farmed bunny. Gorgeous. As I mentioned last post we have a truffle at home, and we’ve been storing it in a jar with eggs and rice to infuse them. So naturally we wanted to use the truffle before it loses it’s pungency, and why not the rice too? So risotto it was.

Also, the incredibly awesome smoked salmon from Pavilion – another Tuesday ritual – blood oranges for cake, rhubarb for breakfast, Cotes du Rhone from King and Godfrey, baguette from La Parisiennes Pates, and buffalo mozzarella from La Latteria (which deserves a post all to itself).

Got home, cracked some beers (Zweic, from the local grocery store, because we have a fridge full of beer but a dearth of easy drinkers), and had a platter of smoked salmon with capers, shallots and lemon, baguette, mozzarella and watercress salad. A veritable pantheon of culinary treats (I watch Iron Chef America too many nights, and it’s starting to show).

Then, while Chris helpfully started scraping candle wax off the dining room table, I simultaneously baked a cake and started on dinner. The cake was blood orange and almond syrup cake, it was ridiculously delicious, and the recipe is below. It’s too good not to make. But dinner was a little more work. So I’m going to split this into two posts, to scintillate and keep you glued to the screen. Or simply to stop you from getting bored.

 

Blood Orange Syrup Cake 

2 blood oranges

3 free range eggs

1 cup caster sugar

3 cups almond meal

1 tsp baking powder

2 blood oranges

¾ cup caster sugar

Pre-heat oven to 170°C.

Place two blood oranges in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil over medium heat and leave to cook for 15 minutes. Drain, then cover again with cold water and boil for a further 15 minutes. (This will take the bitterness from the orange pith). Refresh and allow to cool.

Roughly chop the oranges, removing any seeds. Place in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Mix together eggs and caster sugar until pale and creamy. Stir through the orange mixture, almond meal and baking powder. Pour into a 22 cm greased and lined cake tin and bake for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, zest and juice two more blood oranges and combine in a saucepan with caster sugar. Simmer until thick and syrupy. Add some water if too thick, or more sugar if you prefer it sweeter.

Once the cake is cooked, remove and cool for as long as you can stand to not eat it. Poke it all over with a skewer and our over the syrup, reserving a little to pour over individual pieces. Everyone always wants more syrup whether it’s needed or not.

Though I seem to say this about most of my baked goods, this cake is like crack. It disappeared quicker than I could have expected and I’ve already made a second one since.

PS Sorry the title of this post was misleading: all that “art” is coming next time.

Part Deux – Mr Ed edition

So there’re been quite a furore lately about the sale of horse meat in Australia. As it happens, the butcher who has been authorised to do so is a good friend of mine, so on a recent trip back to WA, we dropped in to see Vince Garreffa who kindly gifted us 2 kg of shoulder and 2 kg of mince.

I think the controversy around horse has been blown way out of proportion. That the butcher and restaurants selling it have been picketed seems ridiculous considering there is a long established industry of horse meat exportation in Australia. As long as the horses are slaughtered in as humane a fashion as possible, as with any animal, I see no problem. I believe most people’s repugnance comes from the perceived ‘cute’ factor of the animal, that we have a ‘bond’ with horses that we don’t have with cows or sheep or chickens. Try looking into a cow’s misty eyes and tell me you feel no bond. How about a baby chicken or a duckling? And what the hell do we think lamb is? It’s a lamb! It’s unbelievably adorable! But I suppose that’s hard to tell once it’s stamped and packaged on the shelves of the supermarket. That being said, I have no problem with those who avoid eating a product because of supposed mental hurdles, as long as they don’t attempt to hinder me, and those like me, who like to try new and interesting things. Besides, the more controversy over the product, the more popular it becomes – I believe it’s now completely sold out.

Anyway, rant over; we braised the shoulder in amber ale in the wood-fired oven for about six hours. We ate it for lunch the next day with roast cauliflower and quinoa salad, a few Dubbels and raging hangovers. And it was ridiculously tasty. To be honest I wasn’t expecting all that much, but it was incredibly delicious – a bit like venison, a bit like veal, and a lot like horse. The best part was of course all the horrific puns we were able to make, “I’m feeling a little horse”, “I’m champing at the bit to get into it”, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” and constant singing of the Mr Ed theme song were just the tip of the terrible, terrible iceberg.

So hungry I could eat a horse

The recipe for the horse shoulder can be found here.

But what to do with the horse mince? I don’t buy a lot of mince, preferring to make my own if the need arises, so I was at a little bit of a loose end as to what to do with it. After some discussion about “flavour profiles” and “fat content” we narrowed the choices down to ragu, burgers and sausages. Sausage demonstration now over, we were lunch-hungry and went with burgers.

I caramelised some sliced onions in butter and brown sugar, and fried off some chopped onion and garlic for the burger. The mince was combined with the fried onion and garlic, chopped parsley, a large dollop of German mustard, an egg, plenty of salt and pepper and, after finding the mixture far too wet, some dried breadcrumbs, before letting them sit in the fridge for about half an hour to get the “meat proteins” and “flavours” going. Usually I go by the rule of thumb to add some fat to the mince, as with any sausage type mixture, but we discovered last minute we had no pancetta, so none went in.

The best burgers, barn-none...

Cheap burger buns were lightly toasted, slathered with caramelised onions and more mustard while the burgers were cooked, covered with slices of smoked provolone (more on this soon), then topped with a little butter lettuce. A little lightly spiced relish would have lifted it into the stratosphere, but it was near perfect as is (and turns out it didn’t need that pancetta after all).

A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, "why the long face?" ... (I ran out of puns)

If you’re in Perth, I’d highly recommend a visit to Mondos to give horse a try, if for nothing else than a new experience. For the rest of the country – you’re missing out, suckers!