I love a road trip. Wind in your hair (or airconditioning in your hair), music strumming, a gorgeous destination and a boot packed with chilled nibbles for the route. It was this idea that inspired the latest The Perfect column in Sunday Life magazine. My New Zealand grandmother Marion used to pack homemade sausage rolls for my parents in their twenties as they headed off on some road trip to the South Island, or up to the Bay of Islands. My parents still remember these morsels, and I’ve always wanted to do them myself. Using shortcrust pastry instead of puff pastry is important – they hold together better, and taste so much better cold. The meat is chopped rather than minced, which I much prefer – there’s a real texture instead of the spongy sort. Soft chicken sandwiches, sliced almonds giving a pleasing crunch, are perfect palm-sized snacks for the road.
Preheat oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Combine meats in a bowl, add nutmeg, zest and thyme, season with pepper and mix well. Place pastry on a floured bench top, cut each sheet each in half. Divide and shape meat mixture into 4 sausages, each as long as a pastry sheet, then roll each in parsley. Place 1 sausage along the edge of a pastry sheet, brush pastry edges with water. Fold pastry over filling to form a long roll, open at the ends. Repeat. Cut each roll into three, place rolls on baking tray, brush with milk and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Bake for 25 minutes, until golden.
Chicken, almond and caper tramezzini
Soft Italian chicken sandwiches for the perfect pit stop.
Cover 1 x 320g chicken breast fillet with water in a saucepan, season with sea salt and peppercorns, simmer 10 minutes. Turn off heat and leave in water for 10 minutes, then remove and let cool. Use hands to finely shred chicken, then combine in bowl with 3 tbsp mayonnaise, 2 tbsp almond slivers, 2 tsp capers, rinsed, and ¼ cup chopped parsley. Season to taste. Pile mixture on 6 thick slices white bread, crusts removed, top with 6 slices. Cut into square quarters, wrap and pack.
Did you see The Perfect… column in Sunday Life magazine on the weekend? It was one of my favourites so far. Cooking for the in-laws can be fraught with too-much-effort and disappointment. Instead, showcase domestic know-how and culinary spark when the in-laws are in town. It’s about being relaxed and remarkable. How to impress with minimal fuss. I made this three times to test the recipe, and while it’s hard to keep thinking something is delicious even though you’ve eaten it for three meals in seven days, this one was. The pomegranates give a bursty tart crunch, and the spatchcock are not fiddly and are gorgeous wrapped in these spices. Just serve with couscous and a simple do-ahead eggplant salad.
Pomegranate roasted spatchcock
Tart and sweet roasted spatchcock, infused with Middle Eastern spices and scattered with jewel-like pomegranate seeds and almonds.
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra
1 garlic clove, sliced
4 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 spatchcock, butterflied
¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted
seeds from 1 pomegranate
To make marinade, place all ingredients except spatchcock, almonds and pomegranate in a bowl, mix well and season. Add spatchcock to marinade and turn to coat well. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 200C. Heat a little oil in a roasting pan over medium-high heat, add spatchcock (reserving marinade) skin-side down to lightly brown. Baste spatchcock with marinade and cook in oven skin-side up, until tender and juices run clear (15-20 minutes). Serve halved on a large platter, with cous cous if liked, sprinkled with almonds and pomegranate seeds. Serves 4-6.
Spiced eggplant salad
A do-ahead, fragrant and soft eggplant salad with punches of mint.
Heat ¼ cup olive oil in a large frying pan and fry 3 eggplant cut into 2cm thick slices in batches, until very soft and golden brown on both sides. Add more oil as needed. Drain on paper towel and season well, sprinkle with 1 tsp ground cumin. Arrange warm eggplant on serving plate, scattered with 1 large tomato, finely chopped, and 1 cup mint leaves. Drizzle with dressing made with 2 tbsp yoghurt, 1 tbsp tahini, juice of ½ lemon. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds if liked.
Photograph by Katie Quinn Davies.
{THE PLAYLIST}
The gritty blues of Ruth Brown in Miss Rhythm makes for a dreamy backdrop, to suit all tastes. How can you not love this?
Drink in one hand, crunchy spiced bite in the other, and a bunch of friends to clink glasses with. The perfect celebration drinks are intimate, elegant, and supremely fun. These recipes appeared in my Sunday Life column, The Perfect… Check out the next one on Sunday, or see it at Daily Life here.
Oyster po’boys
A New Orleans palm-sized sandwich, piled high with glorious fried oysters.
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup plain flour
2 tsp smoked paprika
½ cup panko crumbs
20 oysters, shucked
2 cups rice bran oil
4 small soft white rolls
1 baby cos lettuce
4 cherry tomatoes, halved
spiced mayonnaise (see below)
Whisk together egg and milk, season and set aside. Combine flour and paprika on one plate, panko crumbs on another. Dust oysters in flour mixture, then dip in egg mixture, then panko crumbs. Heat oil in deep heavy-based frypan. Use tongs to drop oysters, in batches of 5, into hot oil. Deep-fry oysters until golden, 30 seconds each batch. Be careful, oil may spit. Drain on absorbent paper. Fill rolls with lettuce leaves, tomato, mayonnaise and oysters. Add a few sprigs coriander if liked. Serve while oysters are still hot. Makes 4.
Chilli fried school prawns
Heads on or off, these fun crunchy are perfect with bubbles or beer.
Take the heads off 500g raw school prawns (optional). Dust prawns in seasoned tapioca flour. Heat half of 750ml rice bran oil in a wok or large, deep heavy-based frypan. Cook one-quarter of the prawns in very hot oil, until crispy and golden. Transfer to absorbent paper. Repeat with remaining prawns, adding more oil as needed. Season well with salt flakes and dried chilli flakes. To make spiced mayonnaise for dipping, combine ¼ cup Japanese mayonnaise with juice from ½ lime and ½ tsp smoked paprika.
Food photograph by Katie Quinn Davies.
PLAYLIST: Bright, happy, cheers-worthy tunes for celebration drinks with Awkward, an EP by San Cisco.
Home at seven, dinner at seven-thirty. But just because you don’t want to spend the night in the kitchen doesn’t mean you’re prepared to compromise on deliciousness. The do-ahead weeknight meal is about last-minute assembly and shunning the stress. These recipes were first published in my column for Sunday Life magazine, The Perfect… Look out for the page in the next issue on Sunday!
Korean Mexican beef tacos
Korean tacos are gaining cult following in LA, and we’re behind them. This is all about the marinating, which is totally simple to do the night before. I used beef fillet here, but try any lean beef for best results.
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp sesame oil
750g lean beef, thinly sliced
1 cup kimchi
1 cup strong cheddar, grated
½ bunch coriander, including stalks, chopped
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
12 mini tortillas, heated
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp mirin
1 lime, cut into wedges
½ cup Japanese mayonnaise
Whisk together soy sauce, sugar, garlic, sesame oil and mirin, add beef and mix to coat. Marinate in fridge at least 2 hours, up to 24 hours. Cook meat on high heat on barbecue or frypan in batches for 5-8 minutes. Do not overcrowd pan. Place remaining ingredients in dishes on table. Assemble tacos at table, adding a little of each element. Roll up and eat with hands. Serves 4-6.
Kimchi pickled cabbage
An essential salty fermented taco accompaniment. Made ahead a few days it’s great added to tacos or just served on the side of a Korean-spice spiked meal. As with any pickle, it gets more intense in flavour after a week or so.
Wash half a Chinese cabbage, trim and cut into about 4cm-sized pieces, then place in a large bowl. Add 2 ½ cups water and ½ cup salt, toss to combine and marinate for 4-5 hours or overnight, stirring occasionally. Drain salt water into a saucepan and bring to a boil, then cool completely. Mix wilted cabbage with 2 minced garlic cloves, 2 tbsp minced ginger, ½ tbsp hot chilli powder, 2 tsp fish sauce, a pinch chilli flakes, 2 tsp caster sugar and 1 tsp rice wine vinegar. Transfer to a 1 litre-capacity jar, cover with cooled cabbage water, seal jar and leave for 4 days and up to 6 months, until pickle has developed in flavour. Drain before serving.
TIP {do-ahead meals} Some foods actually benefit from being cooked in advance. Stews deepen in flavor, soups mellow, and a coffee-laced tiramisu is perfect dolloped into bowls a day late. Just set table, tweak meal, unwind.
PLAYLIST Joyous dinner tunes with Up from Below by Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros.
Photography by Vanessa Levis. Styling by Bhavani Konings.
A feast of colourful foil-wrapped eggs and golden bilbies were the chocolate prizes of excited garden hunts on the weekend. Now it’s the adult’s turn, try this chocolate tart with Italian coffee icecream. These two recipes were published in my new column in Sunday Life magazine on Sunday, did you catch it? This tart is totally simple to make, and the coffee icecream is a perfect pairing. The Perfect column in Sunday Life is all about situational perfect occasions. We match the perfect wine with the perfect meal and the perfect playlist for the perfect occasion. Check out the next column this weekend.
Chocolate tart
Why should kids have all the fun at Easter? Rich chocolate in a most decadent form, light and oozing on a biscuit pastry base.
450g sweet shortcrust pastry
150g dark chocolate
125g unsalted butter
5 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
½ cup plain flour, sifted
Blind bake shortcrust pastry in a 23cm diameter round tin according to packet instructions. Preheat oven to 180C. Combine chocolate and butter in a bowl over saucepan of simmering water, stir gently until melted. Set aside. Combine eggs and sugar in a bowl over saucepan of simmering water and whisk until thick, about 10 minutes. Ribbons should form when whisk is lifted. Whisk chocolate mixture into egg mixture, then whisk in flour. Pour mixture into tart case and bake for 15-20 minutes, until just set and still wobbly. Serve at room temperature with coffee ice cream. Serves 8-10.
Italian coffee ice cream
Spoonfuls of velvet melting coffee give an adult note to the indulgent feast.
Whisk 6 egg yolks and 3 cups cream in a heat-proof bowl. Add ¾ cup roasted coffee beans and place over saucepan of simmering water for 10 minutes, stirring until thick enough to coat back of a spoon. Remove from heat, add 1 cup caster sugar, stir until dissolved. Cover, refrigerate for 2-3 hours to infuse. Turn freezer to coldest setting. Use ice cream maker and follow instructions or strain custard into 10x20cm loaf tin, cover and partially freeze. Transfer to bowl, beat well, then return to loaf pan and freeze overnight.
THE PERFECT.. playlist: Ethereal and boppy in one, with a twinkling Australian accent, Holly Throsby’s record Team.
Finally, I hear you sigh, an explanation. Yep this is why I’ve been so hopeless at the blog. I’ve been working. It’s a funny thing this blogging thing. We start because we are dying so hardly to write about food and take pictures and visit excellent places and then say all there is to say about all the things we’ve done. And then somebody comes along and and asks you to write something for them. So you do. And then another person does. And next thing you know you’re not a blogger but a nine-to-fiver (as a term of phrase clearly, not actual hours). And you’ve neglected the very source of all the goodness, the work and the real-life pay: the blog. So that is where I am right now, and I’m completely thankful for everything.
One of the miraculous things that has happened work wise is my new column for Sunday Life (yay!), called The Perfect … Did you see it launch on the weekend? The column is situational, so The Perfect… Picnic and so on. Each week I’ll do two recipes to help inspire the perfect culinary scenario. So do get A Sunday Life on the weekend to see the next one. So far we’ve done The Perfect.. Picnic, and here are the recipes for those who missed it. May as well have a lovely day out on the sprawling lawn before summery months completely disappear. Hope you like!
Rustic onion tarts
A sweet and salty savoury tart that can be sliced to order after swims, casual cricket, hide and seek. “Beware of crumbs” warning doesn’t apply today.
166g ready-rolled puff pastry (1 sheet)
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra
5 large onions, finely sliced
2 sprigs thyme
2 garlic cloves, chopped
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
120g goat’s curd
1 handful basil leaves or baby herbs and flowers
Prepare pastry bases. Cut pastry sheet in half to create two rectangles. Use a knife to draw a line 1cm inside each base, without cutting through. Use a fork to prick inside each rectangle 8-10 times. Place bases on a greased baking tray.
To make caramelised onions, heat oil and cook onions in a medium saucepan over low heat for 40 minutes, stirring to prevent burning. Add more oil if needed. Add thyme and garlic, season, then cook for another 10-15 minutes. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 200C. Top bases with onions, leaving edges bare. Dot with cherry tomatoes. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden. Once cool, dollop with goats’ curd, then scatter with leaves or flowers. Serves 4-6
Berry trifle jars
Portable and completely pretty, little layered desserts in jars add another sweet note to the day.
In a food processor, roughly chop 1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts and 8 amaretti biscuits, then divide half the mixture between 4-6 small glass jars with lids.
In a bowl, mix together 250g mascarponecheese with 2 tbsp milk, ½ tbsp brown sugar and 1 tsp vanilla essence. Fold in 1 cup lightly crushed frozen blueberries or blackberries, divide between jars. Layer with remaining nut mixture. Top with fresh berries, place lids on and store in esky with iceblock and spoons.
Though this is such a simple dish, it has plenty of flavour. Try to use the sweet, juicy and plump South Australian mussels which need no scrubbing and preparing. This is a great dish for sharing, with a pan on the table, along with plenty of crusty bread for mopping up the sauce.
100g butter
125g speck bacon, diced
3 golden shallots, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
A few sprigs thyme, leaves picked
1 bay leaf
1kg black mussels, cleaned
200ml dry white wine
250ml PHILADELPHIA Cream for Cooking, a cream alternative
½ cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Crusty bread, for serving
Melt butter in a large saucepan on medium heat. Cook bacon, golden shallots, onion, garlic, thyme leaves and bay leaf for 5 minutes until just soft. Add mussels, stir to combine and increase heat to high. Add wine and cook, covered, for 3-5 minutes or until mussels start to open. Stir through PHILLY Cream for Cooking and bring to boil.
Remove from heat, stir through parsley and season to taste. Divide between 4 large bowls or serve straight from the pan and let everyone help themselves along with the crusty bread.
Tip: Don’t season until the very end – it’s unlikely you’ll need to add salt because of the high salt content in the mussels and the speck or bacon.
Another tip: Don’t throw away mussels that haven’t opened. It’s really a hug waste and they’re totally fine. Just add closed mussels back to the pot for one minute. If they still don’t open, pry them open with a knife. They are FINE. Mussels will smell absolutely awful if they’re off, and they very very rarely are. I only every discard mussels that are cracked open before cooking.
Is that the time? For heavens sake the weeks and days and, yes, months have flown by. Japan, the sprawling city of explorable gastronomic nooks, was of course amazing, and Christmas too. Oh dear. Back on track and planted at my desk, I’ll start posting on the various skiing, food and travelling adventures. Meanwhile, thank you so much to blogger extraordinaries Jeroxie and Simon Food Favourites and Noodlies and Food, Booze and Shoes for their time and energy last weekend while I rambled about various food tips and made us lunch. We went along to the new Concrete Blonde in Kings Cross, where my healthy lunch was totally upstaged by a whole roasting lamb on the spit, and chatted about food styling and photography. I made three simple dishes – a tuna nicoise crostini, a beetroot and broad bean salad and mussels in a cream and speck sauce – and then we shot them. Me being an ambassador for Philadelphia, the gist of the day was to include the Cream for Cooking and cream cheese products into the day. I mainly just loved hanging out with the bloggers, using the incredible kitchen at Concrete Blonde, and sharing cooking and photography tips between some very clever people.
Jeroxie took a little video of me picking through a bunch of beetroot in search of some decent soft little leaves to add to our salad.
And this is Noodlies’, or Thang Ngo’s, much longer video of me making the mussels. Thanks for posting you two! I realise now why you were holding your phones and cameras so still – those pesky video cameras! I hope it makes sense, and hope it didn’t feel quite so rambly on the day.
Meanwhile, I’ll post the recipe for the mussels here post haste!
This is my totally easy, throw it all together starter to have just after drinks and just before some more fussed over main. It’s half way between a ceviche and a tartare, partly cooked by a little lime juice but not overly soaked in it. Besides, when you have such a perfect slab of sashimi grade yellowfin tuna (from Martin’s Seafood in Balmain), it would be a waste to cook it and spin the whole lot in other flavours.
Here we have 450g yellowfin tuna, trimmed of skin and those bloody dark red patches that are not so silken. Chop into 5mm cubes, then add to that 2 finely chopped golden shallot, a pinch of dried chilli flakes, juice and grated zest of of 1 lime, and the finely chopped flesh of 1 roasted capsicum, which you can buy in little jars doused in olive oil (from Essential Ingredient), or just do yourself (hold with metal tongs over a flame until blistered and black all over, then shove it in a paper bag and seal for 5-10 minutes – peel when cool). Drizzle the lot with 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and cover and leave in the fridge for up to an hour. Toss through 1 avocado, cut into dice the same size as the tuna, then season to taste. I serve this dish in little shot glasses with tiny spoons for a crowd, but it’s also great pushed into small ramekins and turned out on individual plates for each guest, scattered with baby herbs and another drizzle of olive oil and lime juice.
The omelet is an oops-we’ve-run-out-of-everything lifesaver. If all you have are a few eggs sitting alone in the fridge, you have dinner, or breakfast. A traditional French omelet of two-to-three eggs per person should be beaten, cooked and served in 90 seconds, the experts say. In respect of this culinary folklore, have the filling completely ready before you cook the eggs. An omelette should be served baveuse, cooked by still soft, never well-done.
Ages 7-12: I heart eggs omelet
This is the height of culinary chic, seven-year-old Ava learns as she gently beats the eggs with a fork. This is the most essential basic skill for any budding chef and the cornerstone of French gastronomic tradition. If you can master the art of a perfect omelet, you can step proudly forward in any kitchen, knowing that you can create a masterpiece out of a few simple ingredients. “I don’t know about all that,” Ava says. “I just like eggs.”
Beat the eggs with a fork just enough to blend the yolks and whites. Season to taste. Meanwhile, blanch the asparagus in a saucepan of boiling, salted water for 3-5 minutes. Refresh under cold water, cut stems in half and set aside. Melt the butter in a medium-sized non-stick pan over a medium heat, tilting the pan to film the base and sides with butter. When the butter starts to colour, pour in the eggs. With a fork, pull the edges of the egg towards the centre as it thickens. Let the liquid part run into the vacant spaces. Quickly repeat so there is no more liquid, but the eggs are still soft. Scatter the cheese and asparagus over the eggs. Lift the handle of the pan so the omelette rolls over itself and on to a warmed plate, then serve immediately. Serves 2.
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 [...]
It was a perfect 22 degrees in Sydney and I couldn’t get a sesame chicken salad my mother used to make out of my mind. It’s a light Asian-style salad, all crunchy and tangy, with a creamy sesame dressing tying the crunch together with the soft poached chicken. The chicken is still warm when you [...]
This is my good-intentions, use-everything-up-in-the-fridge, vegetable salad. Just feel terrible terrible when I have gorgeous organic vegetables going all overdue in the crisper, so this morning I whipped out everything I could find, all wintery seasonal, and made this… There was enough for lunch, and I packed the rest away for lunch tomorrow. I had [...]
The Kitchen Inc. blog is written and edited by Kate Gibbs - a journalist, author and cook.
Food, travel, design >> How, when entwined together, these things inspire our daily culinary experience >> The Kitchen Inc. covers food, kitchen-based inspiration, and workable design as it impacts our dining, eating, cooking lives.
Kate Gibbs writes a weekly column for Sunday Life in The Sun Herald called The Perfect... She is a regular contributor to the SMH on food and travel. She writes food features for The Wall Street Journal.
Kate writes for The Foodies Guide to Sydney, The SMH Good Cafe Guide and SMH Everyday Eats. Kate has 11 years' journalism experience and has written for Russh, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Frankie and others. The interest in journalism began at London's The Evening Standard newspaper. Her first cookbook, The Thrifty Kitchen, was published by Penguin in 2009. Kate's grandmother Margaret Fulton is also in the food business.
In The Kitchen Inc, Kate writes restaurant, bar and cafe reviews, and shows the most interesting and inspiring places to eat and gastro-explore. Kate reviews new food-relevant design and books, she writes about new trends in cooking, how different ingredients are being used by our top chefs and cooks, and how to use these ideas at home.
