For the Love of Steve!

I had the incredible opportunity yesterday of spending four deliciously exciting hours with a dedicated professional food stylist and photographer. He shook my hand with a firm and honest grip, introducing himself as Steve. With the last lunch patrons filtering out the door, we plated up dish after dish of perfection and beauty for this mysterious man. Creeping up behind him with the last dessert in hand, I peered over his shoulder at his laptop and wow was I in awe! Food is supposed to be one of the more difficult subjects to photograph (or so I read) and this guy! Everything looked so incredible on screen. I bet he could make a blowfish wearing a rubber ring look sexy!

And for the record, when my beloved Steve told me how awesome my parfait looked and my face happened to be a little red, I was NOT gushing! It just happened to be a fairly hot winter's day.

Moving on, for the lucky readers of Mike's Table this is the recipe for the coffee & turrón parfait. The dish which I can proudly say that I refined from a daggy pile of shit (no offence chef) to the beauty which you now behold. If you're wondering, as pictured, it's plated with an almond praline tuile, Pedro Ximènez caramel and iced chestnut sorbet (a recipe which I'm still perfecting). Also the turrón we use comes straight from Spain and it's called '1880 Turrón de Alicante'.

Coffee & Turrón Parfait

180 g castor sugar
50 ml water
150 g egg whites
260 g cream
50 ml espresso, room temp
300 g almond turrón, finely chopped

Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and simmer.
Beat egg whites to stiff peaks in an electric mixer.
Bring sugar syrup to 120ºC and slowly pour into egg whites with mixer still working.
Keep beating meringue until it cools (about 10 minutes).
Whisk cream in a large bowl until it forms medium peaks.
Combine cream with espresso and half meringue and whisk until incorporated.
Add turrón and remaining meringue and fold through with a large spatula.
Pour into a sprayed and lined tin and set in freezer overnight.

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A Titillating Trifle

Jeez it's hard to be original! I wonder how other bloggers who have decided to participate in the 'Culinarty round-up' event held by Lore are faring. What does it mean to be original anyway? Every recipe appears to be a derivative of a previous dish slash combination of flavours.

To create something unique I suppose the key is to make a break from traditional recipes, whether you're introducing a non-traditional method or integrating within it an unusual ingredient or two. Admittedly, I'm always fascinated by simple structural changes which can effectively manipulate a dish, taking it to a completely new level.

­Take ham and eggs for example. What comes to mind? Some of you will be reminiscing over your last big English breakfast platter for sure. But myself, after hearing stories about The Fat Duck and coming across recipes for things like candied bacon ice cream, I've been wanting to turn the humble ham and egg sandwich into a post gluttony sweetener of some kind. Perhaps a semi-savoury brown butter panna cotta with coddled quail eggs, layered between jamon crisps and a little pig-flavoured crushed toast sprinkled around the plate?

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Normally I'm fairly restricted to using only what we already have en place and all of the things that everybody else wants to bin. Unfortunately I don't really have the time nor the money to be experimenting with all the recipes I'd like to try either. Perhaps I'll still get my chance, although it most definitely won't be today. So for the moment, you'll have to put up with this trifle for dessert (pun intended) - a little jellied quince fanfare with crumbled savoiardi soaked in sherry spooned on top and finished with a flourish of burnt orange cream.

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Orange & Quince Trifles

1 recipe savoiardi biscuits
5 poached quinces
50 ml medium-dry sherry
gold gelatine sheets
castor sugar for
caramelising

Make savoiardi biscuits and poached quinces two days beforehand.

The night before, drain quinces and reserve cooking liquid.

Place serving glasses in the fridge until cold.

Add water to the cooking liquid if necessary to damper the sweetness if you find it too intense.

Set aside a cup of liquid and combine with sherry.

Bring the rest to the boil and remove from heat.

For every 500 g of this liquid add 3 bloomed gold gelatine sheets.

Allow liquid to cool to room temperature.

Slice quinces thinly and wet with jelly mix.

Remove glasses from the fridge and lay quince slices against the sides. The cold glass will cause the jelly to set and the slices will adhere within a few seconds.

Place all the glasses back into the fridge for a few minutes until set.

Pour the jelly mix into the glasses and refrigerate for 4 hours.

1000 pouring cream
2 cinnamon quills
2 oranges, zest
1 lemon, zest
1 gold gelatine leaf
125 g egg yolks
65 g castor sugar
3 g salt

For the orange cream, bring cream to a simmer with cinnamon.

Allow to infuse for 30 mins over a low heat with zests.

Bloom gelatine in cold water and add to cream. Stir to dissolve.

In a medium bowl, cream together the egg yolks, sugar and salt.

Temper eggs with cream, pour everything back into the pot.

Slowly bring to 84ºC over low heat, stirring continuously with a spatula.

Remove from heat and strain through a fine chinois.

Lay plastic wrap on top to prevent a skin from forming and refrigerate until set.

To assemble, roughly crumble the savoiardi biscuits into the sherry liquid and give it a good stir to coat. Don't let it sit in the liquid for more than a few seconds or they'll no doubt become disgustingly soggy.

Spoon a good amount of savoiardi over the quince jelly.

Place a big dollop of cold orange cream over the top.

Sprinkle a teaspoon of castor sugar over each and caramelise with a blow torch (carefully so not to crack the glass).

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I Give You The Finger

We exist in a society where we grow up, expecting to know exactly what we want and what we want to be. Sorry to break it to you kids but it's just not that simple. The qualities that we aspire to be are constantly morphing into and transpiring from our latest desires.

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I never thought that this is what life was meant to be. A series of hanging questions about fate, purpose, desire. Each phase of our lives becoming a single episode where our wants are projected so forcefully that we can barely imagine the future or remember the past. But nonetheless, we are trapped on the edge of our seats, wondering and waiting; desperate to know exactly what happens after the credits roll, when the curtain drops and there exists only a place which we cannot envision.

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This is what life is. A guessing game of educated ignorance and blind manipulation.

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I can picture myself frighteningly clearly 20 years down the track, still dazed and confused. I'll still be posting my wicked thoughts and wondering "what the heck am I supposed to do now?" and then I'll remember. Savoiardi - Italian lady fingers, one of the sweet and simple things in life that makes sense.

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Savoiardi

2 eggs
1 lemon, zest
3 g salt
100 g castor sugar
125 g olive oil
250 g SR flour

Cream eggs, zest, salt and sugar until very pale (about 5 minutes).

Drizzle in the olive oil slowly, you want to create an emulsion.

Add flour and mix until incorporated.

Spoon dollops onto a lined tray.

Bake in preheated oven at 200ºC for 20-25 mins or until golden.

Take Me Home

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I desperately want to get out of here. I feel so trapped in this isolated metropolis filled with dying trees. It is often mistaken as the nation's capital with its bustling central business district, downtown market places, abundance of entertainment centres, harbours and token bridges. I've lived here for my whole life, in this city, and I can feel what little fire and excitement I have left for this place slowly begin to extinguish.

I suppose I was bred to have itchy feet. We lived in 5 different apartment units and houses while I was growing up which led me to change schools 6 times up until the year I the started seventh grade. I was pretty good like that as a kid. I remember having to become really adaptable to all sorts of new places and people but in the end it was easy. I simply gave and parted with less of myself each time.

It hasn't even been a year to date since I returned from a 3 month-long expedition around central Spain. It worries me that I'm already becoming so.. so.. agitated and increasingly restless about everything I'm involved in.

Food is such a wonderful tool for escapism. A single spoonful or whiff even of seemingly incongruous matter can easily take us to a place we all like to think of as Hell. On the other hand, a well balanced combination of flavours, of rich scents and harmonious textures can just as easily reawaken us to an old place once forgotten in our olfactory memory and if we're lucky, to somewhere completely new.

­Personally, I like food that to me tastes like home (wherever that's supposed to be). Food that washes over me with a familiar sense of comfort and being with every mouthful. The taste of which doesn't find me wanting to be in any other place. So without further ado, I pass unto you a recipe for truffled vongole and bean stew, once entrusted to me and one which holds claim to having a customer embarrassingly close to licking the bowl.

­Truffled Vongole and Bean Stew

20 vongole clams
1 medium waxy potato
250 ml chicken stock
50 g unsalted butter
minuscule pinch of truffle salt
a few drops of white truffle oil
1 sprig fresh thyme
3/4 C cooked cannellini beans
1/2 C broad beans
a few slices of freshly shaved black truffle

Place vongole in a large bowl full of cold water with a handful of oats or flour to leech out any sand and grit. Rinse and refrigerate.
Dice the potato into 1cm cubes and simmer in salted water until cooked. Drain.
Blanch broad beans in salted water, refresh in ice water and peel.
In a small pot, bring chicken stock to the boil with butter, truffle salt, oil and thyme leaves.
Throw the clams in and boil.
Remove each clam to a small bowl as they open and keep aside.
Add the cannellini beans, potato and broad beans to the stock and simmer to reduce for a few minutes.
Taste for seasoning, throw the clams back in.
Toss and pour into a wide bowl with shaved truffle on top.
Best served with thick slices of bread.

The Hilarious Dish

It's been a few days down the track now and I'm feeling much better, albeit a teensy bit emotional.
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Okay, so I'm hiding under the covers of my nice and warm bed on a Friday night, half listening to David Letterman and Julianne Moore discussing pressed hams for some reason. How their conversation moved from fellatio to exposed underage buttocks I have no idea and even less so on why they began conversing so ardently about fellatio in the first place.
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Life is a complex thing. It's slightly absurd and chock-a-block full of hilarious contradictions which more often than not, don't seem so hilarious when they actually occur as to when we can look back on them with a little more humility and grace.

­Blueberries on the Ceiling is a new event by Food Nerd which requires us to humiliate ourselves further by exposing our most vulnerable moments in the kitchen to a mass of talented food writers who could very well make bad hair sound horrifically dangerous. If you think this sounds like fun, you'll be in stitches when you watch this hilarious sketch from MAD TV.
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Warning: I will be a qualified industry professional not too long from now so the following recount may be worrying.
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This story occurred about two years ago when I was working in one of Sydney's largest and most prestigious fine dining restaurants. All year round we'd be catering for rich gits' parties whether they were large, small, off premises, business canape functions or wedding receptions.
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We catered for the reopening of the Paspaley Pearl Gallery armed with a fire hose, we made an absolute fuckload of beignets and sushi for a $500/pp canape function at Guillaume at Bennelong and we held Gordon Ramsay's Sydney book launch. I once found myself wandering around a millionaire's house in Rose Bay for a $10,000 charity dinner provided by us for the hosts and 8 guests. On another occasion I remember dragging kitchen props to small church in Surry Hills which had been converted into a Gothic cathedral to do an eight course degustation for weirdly dressed people from Vogue. Once I even got to join my boss for a cooking class at Accoutrement despite that all I had to do was stand to the side pushing buttons, remember people's names for him and occasionally demonstrate super technical cookery skills like whisking.
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I can't for the life of me remember what we were doing exactly. I just remember the oysters. FIFTY FIVE FREAKIN PORTIONS OF OYSTERS. Okay you're right, it doesn't sound like much but bloody hell, with just two people it's difficult to get that many portions ready for the first course from the moment you hear "GO!". Each plate needs two identical mounds of wetted rock salt, then the beautifully shucked Sydney Rocks sit on top. Each individual oyster needs a teaspoon of dressing, a little cucumber, a little daikon, then a quick once-over before it leaves the kitchen.
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We hmm'ed and ahhh'ed in contemplation the day before and decided to pre-cut all the cucumber and daikon as we'd have to spend most of the next morning washing and shucking what would feel like a billion oysters. So, onward! First we peeled the cucumbers and daikons, then we sliced them before every single one was turned into perfect little brunoise. When we were finally done we threw it all into cryovac bags to keep it perfectly fresh for the next day.
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Uh oh you say. Uh oh indeed.

­The next morning found the two of us huddled in the cool room, turning the bags over in our hands and muttering swears at all our hard work which was by now totally translucent. Needless to say, we were running around like headless chooks for a while, both trying to juggle the day's prep work and to amend our teensy mistake.
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Bloody hilarious.

The Case of the Ugly Apple

The last few days have been a little harsh. I was out doing bad, bad things on Friday night and didn't stop until it was nearing sunrise. I'm still in recovery two days later. Night lights glare like blinding midday sun and the slightest of noises reverb in my ears like the sound of giant pounding feet.
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I'm finding it difficult to concentrate with my thoughts spinning off onto all sorts of completely irrelevant tangents. This must be akin to what a goldfish experiences every day of it's piteous life.
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On the upside, I was able to see some great friends and make a few more so it's not completely unjustifiable torture that I'm putting myself through. It's been a while since I've had this much irresponsible fun (not to that say I was irresponsible..) and right now I feel like total shit but goddamnit! Let's do it again!
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I'm going to say something very deep and meaningful here.

"Life is a lot like eating."

My experiences depend completely and utterly on the things which I choose to indulge in. I may be a total work-obsessed food nerd who refuses to go for drinks after shifts but let me just say this. Life is meant to be fun, isn't it?
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There are a great many varieties of fun and interesting food combinations when it comes to fruit. Take wild strawberry and cardamom for example, mixed with a little brown sugar and aged balsamic vinegar with a little extra virgin olive oil. The eucalypt-like aroma of the crushed cardamom seeds will lift the strawberry salad with renewed vitality. There's also the combination of raspberry and cumin. Try a few cooked raspberry seeds if you don't believe me and you'll know what I mean. They taste suspiciously similar and make a strangely good pair.

­One I work with on a regular basis at the moment is quince with white peppercorns. It's an orgasmic experience to eat thin slices of quince that have been poaching gently for hours in a sugary syrup laden with cinnamon, anise and peppercorns. You'll detect the gentle sweetness at first, then the natural tartness of the fruit will emerge as it melts over your tongue, and to finish, you'll relish the burst of pepper that takes over your senses.
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To make it worth your while, you'll want to use at least a kilo of quinces. Scrub them under running water to remove any furry pubescent bits. Have a bowl full of acidulated water ready to place your quinces in once you've peeled them to slow down their discolouration.
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Start by chopping off both ends of each quince and following the curves with a knife, peel away the skins from top to bottom, keeping the peels in a separate bowl as you go. Halve and quarter each one then deftly remove the core, keeping these also.
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Once all of the quinces are ready and waiting in acidulated water, make up enough sugar syrup to cover them using 2 parts sugar to 3 parts water. Together in a large pot, throw in a few cinnamon quills, a couple of whole star anise, a small handful of white peppercorns and a good pinch of cooking salt. Bring it to the boil with all of the quince trimmings. Pop a lid on it and let it simmer away for as long as humanly possible. 3 1/2 hours from the time it boils will give you a beautifully deep and richly spiced mahogany-coloured elixir. Remember to give it a stir every now and then and to top up the water level as it reduces.

Place the quartered quince pieces into a deep roasting tray and carefully strain your syrup over the top. Pick out all the spices you can save and add them to the tray. Gently squeeze any remaining liquid from the soft scraps but don't be too rough or you'll cloud the syrup with mushy pulp.

Lay a paper cartouche over the top and cover the whole thing with aluminium foil. Pop it in a preheated oven at 140ºC for approximately 3 hours.

­Now you can relax and pick at the intensely flavoured scraps of peel as you wait for what is yet to come.
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Test with a knife and when the largest pieces are cooked through, remove the tray from the oven, lose the foil and set it aside to cool down. When cool, slide it into the refrigerator, still steeped in the spicy syrup to permeate overnight.
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In the morning, when you wake up ravished and cannot refrain from a taste any longer, take a piece, slice it thinly and sprinkle a little coarsely ground white pepper over the top. Oh and afterwards, don't forget to leave me a message reminding me of just how much you love me.