Totally Obsessed With Food

Fairtrade coffee (a system intended to pay coffee farmers a fairer price for their product) always seemed a bit suspicious to me, largely because I know as someone who tries to eat (and drink) ethically, that pictures of happy coffee farmers wearing knitted clothing are probably more marchitecture than grounded in fact.  I also know that deliberately screwing with an economy by applying price floors, even with the best intentions, rarely comes out with good results.  Market manipulation is simply not that well understood a science.

Because things like this concern me, I did the research.  Turns out it’s correct, Oxfam’s nonsense does more harm than good (what a surprise).  I’d like to share why.

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I know, I know, it’s been ages.  I’m fixing it.  I’ve pared back some commitments that had been sucking up my time recently and I’m putting aside some more time for things I love.  Food is one of the main things I love

Tonight’s dinner.  Tacos.  One of the most simple things around that you can pick up from the local store, but there are some neat tricks for fillings for them and I have two favourites I’d like to share.

First one is really simple.  For two people, get half a large onion and slice it into rings.  Pan fry it in olive oil until it starts to caramelise, then carefully sprinkle it with smoked paprika power.  Taste it to make sure it’s not too hot, smoked paprika is fickle and you can add more but not take it out.

The second trick stuffing I have for tacos is roasted garlic and lemon myrtle guacamole.  It sounds a lot more complicated than it is, and if you don’t know how to roast garlic it’s something that you’ll really enjoy – roasting it really changes (and in some ways softens) the flavours.  I will eat roasted garlic on toast.

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Bolognese is a meat sauce, and it’s (believe it or not) registered with the traditional recipe decreed by the delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucinato have no other ingredients than beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, red wine, and milk or cream.

There’s fewer fights on just about every recipe composition, if you question how people can/can’t make stroganof with/without paprika, start a conversation about what is allowed to go in bolognese.  The only thing people agree on is if cold weather calls for comfort food, this is the sort of food that is equivalent to a 12 hour sleep in a good hotel bed.

I do the following, it counts as an official bolognese sauce, and I’d be curious to see what others do.
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Soufflés have a reputation for being difficult that they don’t deserve.  It’s literally a 20 minute endeavour to get a soufflé on the table as I learned recently at a dessert cooking course my sister booked me into as a Christmas present.

The course was magnificent, I spent the afternoon poaching strawberries in dessert wine and doing flambé with gin and blueberries.  The most important useful bit of the course was absolutely where we practised soufflés, they are versatile, easy and the results you get are incredible.

You should totally try this at home.

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My wife particularly likes salmon and tuna, the “oily” fishes as it were.  I’ve struggled to find something to do with them that I’d like as well, something different to the tuna pasta dish she does because I don’t particularly like fish with pasta.

The BBC came to the rescue – after visiting the BBC Good Food website, clicking “seasonal” and sitting there for a few seconds wondering why I was being confronted with salads and the like, realising it was because it’s summer in the UK and I’m a moron, and then doing a dig for wintery fish dishes, I came up with the goods.

The image to the right is my take on the dish the BBC had; kipfler potatoes rubbed in lemon myrtle olive oil and roasted for 25 minutes at 220, then add 8 trimmed and halved asparagus spears and roast for 15 more minutes, then add a punnet of cherry tomatoes and the two largish salmon steaks and roast for another 10 minutes.  The salmon is seasoned with a little salt, a little native pepper, and a pinch of native lime.  Delicious and quick meal for two.

Beef bourguignon is one of those recipes which I think a lot of people are frightened of.  It’s really not that difficult to cook, but it is time consuming – and if your fear comes from how it’s probably not the closest thing to tofu or salad then you potentially have some cause for concern.

I cooked this on the weekend, and used several tablespoons of duck fat to brown the meat as well as an entire bottle of rather good wine (if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it) with a giant pile of mushrooms and shallots to come up with a delicious dinner.

The only thing I regret is the portions, putting all this together and baking it for three hours I didn’t realise how much it would reduce (particularly mushrooms which are famous for shrinking when cooking).  It was two (very generous) serves, no more left for a second night.

The recipe is here, I thoroughly recommend it.

Last night I went to Tetsuya’s with friends, the 16th best restaurant in the world last year and considered either the best or the second best in Australia (battling Quay for the title  each year).  It was an absolutely phenomenal experience, thirteen courses of incredible Japanese, French and modern Australian style delicacies.

We met first at Orbit for cocktails, the revolving bar at Summit restaurant in the CBD.  After a manhattan we went for a walk down to the Spanish quarter on the south end of Sydney’s Kent St. and were seated in one of the several dining rooms the restaurant offers.  A vodka martini was required to keep the appetite stoked, and  a choice of italian white bread rolls or sourdough, and dishes of truffled butter with reggiano.

The first dish was bought out, the start of a slow onslaught of delicious.

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It’s not from rec.cooking, but this last weekend I made Chicken Vindaloo for the second time from a recipe I found on newsgroups.  It’s delicious, and newsgroups are a great source of cooking advice if you dig in because the sense of community is very strong.  If the primary focus of a technology medium isn’t advertising, you can expect a better functional result, newsgroups > taste.com.au.

Vindaloo isn’t meant to be obnoxiously hot, the Goan curry has more black curry seeds in it than cayenne pepper.  I prefer naan bread or some other source of carbs than rice, so I ate it with “Not Just Naan” from the supermarket (despite the name, the packet did in fact contain just naan).  Give the recipe a go, it’s a bit fiddly to begin with, but delicious.
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Thai food is such a contemporary staple that it’s almost just “Aussie take away”.  Pad thai, pad khee mao and green curry chicken are meals that Sydneysiders eat if they can’t be bothered cooking tonight, delivered on a motorbike from the place that you probably could’ve walked to.

Longrain in Sydney’s “no bookings please, we’re edgy” restaurant district, smashes that mould.  In the six or so times I’ve eaten there the experience has been fantastic.  Delicious, contemporary Thai food served to your table which is one of only a handful in the giant converted warehouse –  fifteen of the twenty people you are sitting with are unknown to you but you get to perv on their food.

Last night I went for Sunday dinner with my wife and three friends, we had an outstanding time (I finally remembered to order the pictured egg net).

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Recently I’ve been cooking a few dishes from recipe sources that are outside of the norm.  A couple of years of Taste.com.au, a collection of Australian recipe books, Australian magazines etc. have led me to search wider and start cooking from some U.S. sources.  This presents some challenges.  The first is obviously that the measurements are imperial, ounces of this and a pound of that in my head get multiplied by 30g and half-a-kilo in my head.  But what sees me reaching for Wikipedia is the ingredient names for things that are specific to the US, things we have different names for.

I thought I’d share my table with you.  This table has names of common ingredients in the US that have different names in the rest of the English speaking world.  I don’t really know why I keep it because once I figure out that ground beef is not an earthbound variant of air beef but means mince, I rarely forget it.  Either way it’s a useful tool, bookmark this page because I’ll update this.

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