Toasted PB + Choco Banana Sandwich

 
The first thing that came to mind when I read that this months Sugar High Friday theme was "toasted" was well.. toast! Bypassing the idea of nuts and spices, there is nothing more quintessentially linked to toast than the humble slice of bread.

Bread is employed for many uses in the kitchen: crumbed as a filler for meatballs and turkey stuffing, fried to add layers of textural interest to pasta dishes and salads, rolled fresh around a hot grilled banger with bbq sauce and baked to create a quick and easy foundation for canapes. But nothing is simpler than the humble sandwich - two bits of bread slapped together with something slathered in-between.

In primary school my mother often packed me a sandwich for lunch. And being Asian, more often than not I would open my lunch box to find a fried egg sandwich of some description, accompanied by nearby screams of "Ewww! What's that smell?!". Needless to say that primary school was filled with embarrassing moments. She eventually stopped and the egg sandwich was replaced with horribly soggy bread holding together a combination of soft tomato, iceberg lettuce and a slice of plastic cheese. So it was quite a revelation in high school to discover that other not-so-disgusting things were available.

Peanut butter, chopped banana, marshmallow fluff and chocolate spread were my favourite sweet sandwich fillings so here I've combined the essence of all four items into a sweet, totally unbalanced and seriously unhealthy dessert: toasted peanut butter and choco banana sandwich with peanut butter marshmallow, chocolate + brown butter mousse and banana milkshake foam. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Toasted Peanut Butter Marshmallow

420 g castor sugar
20 g glucose
4 g salt
300 g water
7 gelatine leaves (gold strength)
2 (70 g) egg whites
140 g peanut butter

Combine sugar, glucose, salt and 200 g water in a small pot.
Bring syrup to 127ºC while whisking egg whites to stiff peaks in an electric stand mixer.
Bloom gelatine leaves in cold water until soft then dissolve in 100 g of boiling water.
Strain gelatine into sugar syrup then immediately begin pouring (slowly) into the egg whites, whisking continuously.
Continue whisking on medium setting until cool and thickened.
Mix a little into the peanut butter to lighten and then fold gently through the remaining marshmallow.
Pour into a greased and lined 6 x 10 x 1.5" brownie pan and leave at room temperature for an hour or two until set.
Cut marshmallow into desired shapes and toss lightly in cornflour.
Transfer to a plate and blowtorch one at a time.

Fried Peanuts

a small handful of peanuts
enough vegetable oil to cover
salt flakes

Heat oil in a deep saucepan over medium-high heat until 180ºC.
Drop in the peanuts and let them fry for a minute until just starting to colour (you'll need to take them out just before they're golden as the residual heat will continue cooking and colouring them as they cool).
Strain peanuts from the oil and spread them out onto a baking sheet lined with paper.
Sprinkle them generously with salt and shake them around to coat.
Cool at room temperature and store in an airtight container.


Croissant Wafer

You'll need to wrap a croissant tightly in clingfilm and place it in the freezer until firm to allow for easy slicing. Unwrap the croissant and slice it as thinly as possible. A long serrated bread knife is the best tool for the job. Place the slices straight onto a tray and pop it in the oven at 110ºC for 30 minutes or until it shatters loudly when broken.


Chocolate and Brown Butter Mousse

200 g milk chocolate, melted
200 g cold pouring cream
40 g brown butter, cooled to room temp

Combine ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and whisk until light and thickened.
Do not refrigerate as it will set.

Touring Sydney Markets with Alex Herbert

It's 6:30 in the morning and I'm sitting huddled outside in the blistering cold sucking the last of my cigarette down to a stump. The sun has yet to rise but even in the darkness, the streets are ablaze with activity. I'm at Sydney Markets (the largest of its kind in the Southern hemisphere) at the control centre to be exact and awaiting the arrival of my guide Chef Alex Herbert. I'm given a fleuro orange safety vest which I pull over my slightly tattered Agent 99 jacket. I'm still fidgeting with the velcro fasteners when she pushes through the door a few minutes later looking slightly flustered. A short introduction ensues and then we're off, weaving through a maze of parked cars, narrowly avoiding a large truck.

Shed D is the largest of the lot and is our first stop. Rows upon rows of styrofoam boxes, wire containers and cardboard cartons of all sizes confront us in this overwhelming space. Alex runs through the usual protocol for shopping here before rushing off and returning a few seconds later with a trolley which looks like the bare frame of an ancient carting mechanism. She points out the nuances and flavour profile of interesting ingredients as she leads us around inspecting the produce.

Boxes of frisee, green mangoes, punnets of micro herbs and fuzzy fresh almonds (which I loathe to say I've never even seen before let alone know how to use) go by before I've taken more than 20 paces from the entrance. Alex hauls a big cardboard box full of globe artichokes onto her trolley. Somehow one finds its way into the paper bag I'm carrying and then we're in bean city. Brightly painted borlotti beans are lined up to my right, and beyond, long broad bean pods the length of my forearm are arranged so neatly in a stack of cardboard boxes that seems to go on forever.

We sidle up to a truck full of herbs next. A few varieties of tarragon and coriander pass hands. Pineapple sage is here too! I'm quite excited about it since finding out that the beautiful red petals featured on Bentley Bar's tapas dish of foie gras parfait with puffed wheat, raisins and "fruit salad flowers" are actually from the pineapple sage plant. Although there are no flowers here, the smell of it is wonderful and very, very strong. I make the mistake of putting a few leaves into my mouth however and the heady pineapple-like aroma dissipates almost instantly, leaving me with the not quite so pleasant sensation of something that's decidedly hairy and bitter and fibrous.

Vegetables are to the left now. Here we have enormous zucchini too big to wrap my hand around, energetic red rhubarb stalks tied together in bunches, broccoli (a few look a little worse for wear and Alex reveals her secrets when it comes to choosing the most sprightly ones). I stop for a minute beside the largest crate I've ever seen, ogling at its contents. It's packed absolutely full of curly parsley and the amount is frightening! My eyes are wide and with heart still pounding, I scurry sheepishly back to the group where Alex is describing a delicious sounding method for cooking chicory and one of her favourite uses for celeriac root - celeriac salt, a recipe from Fergus Henderson.

Leaving Shed D, we enter one of the adjacent buildings Shed C ..or was it Shed B? Either way, it's much more intimate and enclosed than the main building with open stalls running along both sides. Boxes are still piled up on top of one another in unimaginable numbers but here, the produce is markedly different. Large red mangoes, plump figs from South Australia, my favourite Medjool dates, luminous black grapes and Corella pears, the first juicy peaches of the season, they can all be found here. ­

A little further along and we stop. We're presented with another room. It's much larger than the others. In fact it's probably more like a loading dock than an actual room and it seems totally bananas. Well not bananas. Potatoes! A little warm timber shack (for lack of a better word) sits in the very middle of this space with a woman inside manning the telephone. Beside it, an assortment of open bags and boxes are arranged on the floor with tidy symmetry and from them spill out every type and size of potato imaginable. There's just enough space for a forklift to squeeze through as all four walls have enormous crates absolutely loaded with bagged potatoes lined up against them.

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I snap as many shots as I can as Chef Alex searches high and low for a bag of humble Desiree potatoes - a versatile variety characterised by smooth pink skin and creamy yellow flesh. Alex explains that they're to be used for gnocchi at the restaurant, pointing out the importance of the potatoes being all of the same size or thereabouts. If some were small and others large, the former could become mushy and waterlogged by the time the latter cooked, which would not transpire to make a good dough. The excess moisture would effectively increase the amount of flour needed to counter the level of liquid and the resulting gnocchi would be chewy, gluggy and overworked.

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In the last shed we taste beautifully sweet green French and pale yellow butter beans and do a quick lap through the chilly storage room where large king browns, oysters and all sorts of other mushies are kept. The tour comes to an end at 9am and I settle down for a lazy coffee and nibbles at an Italian deli on the outskirts of the parking lot with Cassandra, a gorgeous young woman whom I've only just met this morning. A light breeze has begun to wind its way down between the stretched buildings but the sunshine is finally out, and the feeling, like having met someone who is as introverted yet equally excited by food as I am, is deliciously warming.

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SMH Grower's Market with Fergus Henderson

 
The notion of being fed by the famous British chef and author Fergus Henderson (most well-known for his very first book titled "Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking") led me to drag a friend out to the grower's market at Pyrmont wharf on Saturday morning at an ungodly hour. The sky was bleak, the grass was muddy and gusty winds turned the light smattering of rain into something akin to having frozen stinging nettles brushed across one's face. Naturally we made a beeline straight towards Toby's Estate for coffee before heading to the Sydney Morning Herald stall. With our tickets for 11:30am lunch secured, we squelched around on the patchy grass, looking for breakfast and hovering at each stall for just long enough to pique interest.

Local artisan and fresh farm produce are all the rage, with a few gluten-free options thrown in. Mangoes, artichokes, mushrooms, lettuce, new potatoes, mandarins, blood oranges and spring root vegetables including kohlrabi and radishes are things to look out for at the moment.

I spotted Alpine Berry again which seems to have been at every industry event I've been to this year. The lovely ladies at Darling Mills Farm were a pleasure to chat with as usual. I signed up for the hands-on guided tour and morning tea as part of SIFF 09 which will be held on Friday, 23rd Oct at the farm in Berrilee, right by Berowra Waters (more information can be found here). We eventually joined the queue at the charcuterie stall at the far end near the knife sharpening service for a spicy chorizo roll with chunky tomato and basil sauce and for myself, confused eggs with smoky bacon and homemade BBQ sauce. Ferrero Rondnoir were being handed out by the trayful by hot promo chicks. We picked up a few for snacking later (Rondnoir are made of creamy dark chocolate ganache enclosed in a thin, crispy wafer and covered in crunchy dark chocolate coated bits - not bad, but nothing beats the original).



Fergus Henderson was of course there, along with his wife, 12 well-known Sydney chefs and their minions - Jared Ingersoll, Kylie Kwong, Colin Fassnidge, and Justin North to name a few, led by the very humble Alex Herbert of Bird Cow Fish who together with Joanna Savill, schemed and plotted a way to getting Fergus and wife Margot to fly over for the event. Fortuitously, if you happened to miss out, there is another chance to join in for a little British-inspired nose to tail eating before the two fly home. Alex Herbert has devised a degustation menu featuring rare Wessex saddleback pigs from Mountain Creek Farm as a tribute to the man himself who will be present on the night as the guest of honour. You'll need to book and make haste. Dinner transpires on Tuesday night at 7pm.