by Kate on December 2, 2011
Mochi sweets, those glutenous rice balls, are traditionally filled with sesame paste, cream or red bean paste. But the wagashi parlour and cafe, Higashiya, has overhauled the culinary tradition, filling the doughy balls with the likes of peach, edamame paste and blueberry. Rolled balls of gelatinous rice are gem-like sculptured pieces, pretty morsels of silk and goo.
There’s pumpkin and cheese, mashed chestnuts and brandy jelly, ginger, orange and chocolate, sweet potato and black sesame butter, macadamia and sweet potato, rum and fermented butter, cashews in mashed sweet potato.
The powder-coated or polished bites are served with the spirit Shochu instead of the traditional thick green tea. Though eating any any of the stores still feels like some ancient Japanese tea ceremony.
by Kate on September 28, 2011
An old recording of when Snoop Dog visited the Martha Stewart show, and they both made brownies. In an amusing turn, Snoop does a rap about making brownies, while Martha, hip hop as she is, joins in to the awkward rap.
Snoop: “Trying to make some brownies, but we’re missing the most important part of the brownies.”
Martha: “Which is, which is, which is …”
Snoop: “No sticks no seeds no stems.”
Martha: “You want green brownies.”
Snoop: “Yes.”
Martha: “He wants green brownies. Brownish green brownies.”
Snoop: “The greener the better!”
by Kate on January 26, 2011
You really need to have started these yesterday, so you can have them in all their glory on this momentous day. But I secretly didn’t and they worked out just fine, still soft and the chocolate icing firm enough to hold the coconut in place and avoid too chocolatey fingers. Is there anything more Australia Day than lamingtons? Ok yes there are snags and VB and pies, but for those the smell and idea is everything and the actual eating nothing at all. Really, we’ve come so far. Lamingtons, and maybe pavlova, are sustaining Australia Day stalwarts; happy and easy and a reminder of a time we used to take English things (like bake) and make them our own.
First you need to make a basic butter cake, and then cut the cake into lamington squares, leaving them like this for a day to prevent catastrophic crumbling when you ice them. To make the butter cake:
125g butter
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
2 cups SR flour
pinch of salt
1/2 cup milk
Preheat oven to 180C. Line the base of a 27cm x 18cm lamington tin with baking paper. Cream the butter and gradually beat in the sugar with the vanilla in an electric mixer, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift the flour and salt, then fold into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk, do not overwork the mixture. Spread the mixture evenly in the tin and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool on wire racks then cut into cubes or oblongs.
Chocolate icing
3 cups icing sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
4 tbsp boiling water
1 tsp butter, melted
vanilla essence
desiccated coconut, for dusting
Sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl, then add the boiling water, butter and a few drops of vanilla essence. Stir until smooth and shiny, adding another tablespoon of boiling water if needed. If the icing sets, stand the bowl in boiling water and stir. Dip the cake squares into the icing and immediately roll in desiccated coconut, to coat. Leave on a wire rack to set, at least 1 hour.
by Kate on November 30, 2010
Boys at elite English school Eton invented this dish. Apparently the top-hat wearing children smashed the school pudding of meringues, strawberries and cream to make this downright Eton mess. Let the juice of the crushed strawberries and raspberries dribble down the inside of glasses, and add less cream for a healthier version.
Ages 3-7: Downright Eton Mess
Three-year-old Lulu looks up at me as if I’ve done something incredibly naughty. With mouth open and eyes wide, humoured and worried at once, she says: “You broke them!” The second she cottons on to the fact we are allowed to destroy the perfect meringues we’d made, she’s all-hands-in embracing the task, only slightly withholding her obvious delight at the mess we were making. As luck would have it, this recipe combines two of Lulu’s favourite things, “raspberries” and “pavlova”. Close enough.
Whites from 3 large eggs
1 pinch cream of tartar
1 cup castor sugar
1 punnet fresh strawberries
1 cup frozen raspberries
250 ml cream, whipped
To make the meringues, preheat the oven to 120C and line two baking trays with baking paper. Using an electric mixer, or a whisk, beat the egg whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and beat on the highest speed, until stiff peaks are formed but still soft and a little wet. Gradually beat in two tablespoons of sugar and beat for two to three minutes, until very stiff. Fold in the remaining sugar using a metal spatula or spoon, until lightly mixed. Using two large spoons, dollop the mixture onto the trays to form meringue shapes, leaving a space of at least two centimetres between each. Bake for 1½ hours, then remove from oven and let cool. To make the Eton mess, place four meringues in a plastic bag and crush until broken into two-centimetre shapes. Combine half the strawberries and all the raspberries in a bowl and mash with a fork, until juicy and pulped, then add cream and broken meringues. Carefully spoon the mixture into six glasses, then top with remaining strawberries, sliced, and serve immediately. Serves 6
by Kate on November 23, 2010
If Sydney’s Japanese restaurants’ menus could be lined up in a row, we might be excused for thinking it is a case of the usual suspects. Salmon avocado rolls, crispy fried soft-shell crab rolls, beef teriyaki.. sigh. But a New York style Japanese fusion restaurant, Monkey Magic, is setting a new agenda. Suzuki jewfish with dashi and lemongrass consomme (below), a salted caramel semifreddo with pineapple chip … New head chef Shea Crawford (above, right) has joined the restaurant having worked at New York’s acclaimed Nice Matin and Oceana Restaurant, where he worked under the tutelage of Andy D’Amico.
Now as head chef at Monkey Magic, Shea has collaborated with Tsuboi and head sushi chef Michiaki Miyazaki to create a new menu flush with European influenced Japanese fusion fare. The so-named Crab Leaves is crab meat bedded on a betel leaf with a touch of ginger, chilli and lime, not a bad thing to go with a tall lemongrass julep (above), a gin and lemongrass cocktail. The slow cooked pork belly is braised and served with apple and ginger puree, salad of fennel, chinese cabbage, orange and chives ($27).
The usual suspects are still here, but the soft shell crab roll ($15) comes with flyingfish roe, tomato, mizuna, fried leek and spicy mayonnaise. And then it can be followed by the wonderfully unusual silken tofu cake (above), with white lemon sorbet and tuille ($13) or the sugar cinnamon beignet, which comes with a chai latte and sweet cream ($13).
Monkey Magic: 3&4, 410 Crown St. Surry Hills (02) 93584444
by Kate on November 3, 2010
Photography by Andrew B Myers. Love these “High West” pictures of dramatic landscapes and rugged jaws, perfectly suited to a day testing a pumpkin pie- inspired rice pudding, all very cinnamon spiced and cream laden, like one I had in New York this year. Will keep you posted.
by Kate on October 24, 2010
Adriano Zumbo, of course. Theses oatmeal and ylang ylang macarons are soft and chewy on the inside, and crispy on the outside, again, of course. But even more amazing were the rice pudding and the coconut and pineapple macarons, the first with that creamy pudding flavour folded into to the not-too-sugary macarons. Pretty clever mister Zumbo.
Pictures by Kate Gibbs, taken using tiltshift.
by Kate on September 21, 2010
A Sicilian will tell you cannoli has to be filled with sheep’s-milk ricotta and they must be eaten the day they are made. There may be chocolate-cream filled, custard loaded, coffee creme varieties sold in Australia but a real cannolo, Sicily’s most famous pastry, is something quite different.
In Sicily, crisp-fried pastry shells are filled with a not-too-sweet mixture of dense and creamy sheep’s-milk ricotta – either plain or laden with candied citrus, usually blood orange – a pinch of cinnamon, crushed pistachios, a few drops of orange blossom water and bittersweet chocolate chips.
Story published in The Sydney Morning Herald today.. by Kate Gibbs
pics.. not exactly cannoli but they’re sweet and Italian and still very delicious…
by Kate on August 30, 2010
The midnight feast. A childhood culinary romantic adventurism fuelled by fairytales and heros and Harry Potter. It’s children who dreamed up the idea of waking and sneaking and hushing and uncovering some extraordinary concoction of food and carbohydrate-laden treats in the middle of the night. And we adults should bring it back.
Ideally the midnight feast should be lit by the moon and a roaring fire, and there should be pyjamas and some clandestine setting. And icing sugar. And heart-shaped lobster sandwiches and white peach pulped and topped with champagne or soda water.
A new book, Midnight Feasts: An anthology of Late Night Munchies, includes recipes from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Rose Gray (of the River Cafe), and includes suggestions of tinned sardines in bed in the dark, and chorizo cooked in sherry.
The ideas may leave us a bit flat, but the very fact that there is a book, a recipe book, about midnight feasts is something to be rejoiced and cheered on. For me, a caramelised apple stack of pancakes would be perfect. Sure, a pink-iced donut in the middle of the night is not great for your health, but let’s all do it once and then have vegetables for a week to make up for it. Plus salads just don’t work for a midnight feast, they are much too serious.
I leave you with this paragraph taken from Nine Coaches Waiting, in which the governess heroine and her fiance sneak away from an Easter ball to a rendezvous. Together they share a midnight feast, which starts with lemonade and Champagne.
“Thin curls of brown-bread with cool, butter-dripping asparagus; scallop-shells filled with some delicious concoction of creamed crab; crisp pastries bulging with mushroom and chicken and lobster; petits fours bland with almonds, small glasses misty with frost and full of some creamy stuff tangy with strawberries and wine; peaches furry and glowing in a nest of glossy leaves; grapes frosted with sugar that sparkled in the firelight like a crust of diamonds … ”
pic from www.mrslilien.com
Don’t be fooled when you hear chef Adam Humphrey’s thick Yorkshire accent. He may sound like he knows only stews and pork pies, but the man is a genius.
Humphrey says Yorkshire pudding is too easy, so doesn’t bother putting it on his English-inspired menu at Arras. His creative menu includes fish and chips and mushy peas and rice pudding, but not like we’ve ever seen it. With partner Lovaine Allen (who earned her front-of-house stripes at France’s three-star Michel Bras in Laguiole and The Fat Duck in Berkshire before turning to pastry), Humphrey prefers to keep the English touches subtle. The menu errs on the french, but with Australian ingredients, French creativity, and a wonderful English sense of humour.
Dishes like ‘breakfast risotto’, an amuse bouche, are a nod to the full English breakfast, with a quail yolk, which has been cooked sous vide so is runny as it should be, homemade brown sauce and crispy paper-thin bacon included.
An entree, ‘the raw and the cooked’, is a glass plated pallet involving 40 different types of vegetables done in different ways. Pureed and pickled vegetables sit with micro herbs and tiny violet flowers, transparent thinly-sliced beetroot and radishes, curls of raw cucumber and in-season baby peas. (More on the food at Arras in an upcoming post…. )
And there is nothing stodgy about the location. Just a few doors down from Sydney Theatre, in the uber cool Walsh Bay (where Fratelli Fresh has just opened, and where Cate Blanchette spends a lot of time at work), Arras is warehouse-tastic, and the interior design of the restaurant reflects that industrial edge and history.
For dessert, the fun has really exploded in a sugar-coated crack of glorious colours, textures and light-as-air pots and creams. A popcorn souffle with its own little side bag of popcorn, and a funpark-inspired pink plate including rice pudding and whipped pink jelly, twirls of fluorescents, rhubarb slides and tiny cubes of jelly. There’s a Coulant au Chocolat, by Michel Bras (bottom left), a hot melty pudding with an outer cakey exterior and a separate runny middle sitting within (this is not your not-quite-done chocolate fondant). There is even a tube of chantilly cream served in the ‘adolescent breakfast’ that you can squirt on to your chocolate as if it will do your teeth some good after all that sugar.
Oh yes, and the petit four. There’s rum and raisin chocolate and little toffee lollypops and coconut ice. Humphrey makes eating out so much fun.
{photos by Kate Gibbs}
Restaurant Arras
24 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay NSW ; (02) 9252 6285
www.restaurant-arras.com.au
