A Neb At Nut Roast II - Cheesy Nut Roast

My fellow Melburnian, Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe, is hosting an event called A Neb At Nut Roast.  Johanna has challenged us to make a nut roast and post about it by 5 May 2011. 

I personally had never made a nut roast before.  My sole experience and knowledge of nut roasts is the Christmas sequence in the film, About A Boy, where Toni Collette's slightly unhinged mother character serves a nut roast for Christmas dinner, as she and her son are vegetarian.

I chose to make Johanna's cheesy nut loaf, made of vegetables, nuts, cheese and rice, as I could not find a recipe for nut roast in my own recipe books, and this sounded like a nice introduction to nut roasts.  Here are a few of the ingredients:

The nut roast was easy to make - I recommend having a food processor to grind the nuts yourself, or else buy the nuts pre-ground.

I served my nut roast with steamed veges and tomato sauce - and it tasted pretty good, as well as looking very colourful, and was quite filling:

I see no reason why I wouldn't make nut roast again.  It seems like a fairly healthy alternative to meat, is easy to make, and there are lots of variations out there.

Thanmks to Johanna for hosting this event and for introducing me to something that I may not have otherwise been motivated to try.

FFwD - Bistrot Paul Bert Pepper Steak

This week's French Fridays with Dorie allowed me to indulge in one of my favourite meals - a good old fashioned steak.  The recipe is for Bistrot Paul Bert Pepper Steak, and is essentially a steak rubbed with freshly cracked black pepper and served with a cream sauce.  

I skimped on the sauce, so you can barely see it in my photo, but it was there.  I enjoyed this steak, even though I used the cut that I had in my freezer (rump) instead of the cut that Dorie stated.

I served my steak with curly tail fries and baked asparagus.  

This method of cooking steak is not unlike how I normally cook my steak, sans the sauce, so there were no surprises for me.

To see what everyone else thought of this week's dish, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.

Chocolate Fridge Cake for the Royal Wedding

Unless you have been living in total isolation from the media for the last six months, you will know that Prince William and Catherine Middleton will marry tomorrow in Westminster Abbey.  Ensconced as I am Down Under, I have not seen any of the Royal Wedding tat that is readily available in England, although I have a friend in London who is purchasing some and posting her finds on Facebook.

However, I could not avoid the coverage of the finer details of the Royal Wedding, including that in addition to the traditional wedding cake, Prince William is having a groom's cake in the form of a chocolate fridge cake.  He has commissioned McVities, makers of the key ingredient of rich tea biscuits, to make this cake (the other one is being made by Fiona Cairns), as it has fond childhood memories for him.

A chocolate fridge cake is roughly a concoction of chocolate, biscuits, nuts and fruit.  Depending on which recipe you use, it contains golden syrup or condensed milk, glace cherries or raisins or both, dark or milk chocolate or a mixture of both, and nuts - or not.  There are a trillion different recipes online, all claiming to be "the" recipe.  

I wanted to make a chocolate fridge cake as my tribute to William and Catherine, so I threw my hat into the ring with a recipe I found here in The Daily Mail. This one contains condensed milk and is non-specific about the type of chocolate.  I used Paradise Rich Tea Biscuits, the McVities version being frightfully expensive here and only available from The British Shop.  They are not the same as McVities because they contain currants, but I thought that this would boost the dried fruit content of the cake.  I also soaked my raisins for half an hour in a tablespoon of Cointreau to plump them up and add a tinge of orange flavour to the cake.  As I didn't have glace cherries, I left them out, and chose walnuts as the nuts for this cake.

A word of warning about this recipe - it did not set up particularly well, and the crisp layer of additional chocolate on top made the soft under-layer especially hard to cut.  I used dairy spread instead of butter (because the recipe indicated that margarine was OK) - perhaps this had something to do with it.  However, to be on the safe side, I recommend placing a layer of unbroken (preferably square or rectangular) biscuits in the bottom of the pan and layering the rest on top so that there is a solid base for your fridge cake.

I have tried a square of the not-quite-set cake, and can say with certainty that it tastes like you'd expect - very sweet, candy bar-like, slightly crunchy and very good in a childlike way.

I am not quite sure whether I will watch the wedding yet - I love a good frock, but I don't have to watch the whole wedding to see Catherine's dress. Will you be watching the wedding?

Dining at Ezard

I am very excited, because I am a member of the newly formed The Restaurant Club.  Once every one or two months, The Restaurant Club will meet at a different restaurant to enjoy some fine food, wine and conversation, with members of the Club to choose the venue alternately.

Our first event was at Ezard in Flinders Lane, Melbourne.  On Friday nights, you can get three courses for $95, and this was the option we chose, as many of us did not feel able to tackle the 8 course degustation menu ($120).

I arrived early, so while waiting in the lounge, I managed to down two glasses of the 2004 Winstead Blanc de Noirs - a very fine sparkling indeed.   Ezard is dimly lit, so at that stage, I could quite comfortably have curled up for a kip on the lounge.

When everyone arrived, we were seated at our table, and each given a slice of soft white bread to enjoy with the garlic and rosemary infused oil and these fine condiments:

From left to right, they are dashi salt (with seaweed and fish flakes); chilli palm sugar (it sounds weird, but this was my favourite - sweet then hot on the tongue and absolutely devine); and salt and Szechuan pepper.

We were then served an amuse bouche of a garlic prawn (forgive the terrible photo - the lighting was dim and I hadn't mastered my iPhone camera yet):

Next came entree.  I chose the five spiced bangalow sweet pork belly with celeriac and apple remoulade and mustard sauce:

OMG - this was devine, and perhaps my favourite dish of the night.  I was a bit worried about having pork belly for entree in case it was heavy and filling, but it barely touched the sides.  The gloriously cooked pork was thinly sliced so that it was as light as a feather on the stomach, and the combination of apple and mustard with the pork was a dream come true.

For main, I chose the pan fried john dory with cauliflower cream, roasted jerusalem artichokes, seared scallop, farmed osetra caviar and chive oil (also pictured at the top of this post):
 

The foam that you can see is the cauliflower cream, and the top photo more clearly shows the scallop and caviar (which were hiding under the garnish).  This dish did not strike such a strong chord with me -  I found the cauliflower cream too rich for my liking, and the dish did not sit as well with me as the pork.  Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for fish - next time, I would be keen to try the caramelised pork hock that one of my colleagues tried, as that looked magnificent.  (Of course, I then would not have pork belly for entree!)

Finally, out came the desserts - and as I exclaimed at the time, they were awesome!  My pick was the duo of pear and caramel parfait, passionfruit syrup and salted popcorn, topped with pashmak:
  

The icecream in the parfait was a little firm, but the overall taste combination was fabulous, and the addition of the salted popcorn was inspired.

A colleague was recommended the fromage frais cheesecake with a tuile, sago pearls and rhubarb sorbet, and topped with vermicelli:

The "frogs eggs" are the sago pearls, and I am told that this dessert was fantastic.

A number of Club members chose the honeycrunch icecream, toasted gingerbread and sugar swirl:

It looks pretty spectacular and won a unanimous tick of approval from those who chose it.

Our meal was accompanied by red wine (I didn't choose it so I don't know what it was).

The service was very efficient, knowledgeable and courteous, with one of the Club members taking quite a fancy to our waiter.

All in all, we had a fantastic evening that more that justified the price of the meal.  For a special occasion or whenever you feel like a splurge, Ezard is a fantastic venue to dine at.

Ezard

187 Flinders Lane

Melbourne, Victoria, 3000

Ph: +61 3 9639 6811



Daring Bakers - Maple Mousse in an Edible Container

One of the best things about blogging is learning from other bloggers what they like to eat and what is traditional fare for them.  For ages, I have read posts by Canadians about combining ultra sweet maple syrup with salty bacon, and intrigued, I have wanted to try it for myself for the longest time.

This month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz gave me the perfect opportunity to try maple syrup and bacon together.  She wanted to share with us the Canadian experience of a “Cabane à Sucre” (that is, a sugar shack pilgrimage), where people feast on eggs, ham, pea soup, pork rinds, beans, pancakes, bacon and pies drizzled with maple syrup and follow it up with maple syrup taffy for dessert.

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

 

For my edible containers, I tried to make the bacon cups, as well as making a regular tart shell using dough left over from another project:

 As you can see, my bacon cups, moulded around dariole moulds used for mini Christmas puddings, were an epic fail!  I think that bacon here is cut slightly differently than in the US and Canada, and is very irregular in shape, making it difficult to wrap tightly around a mould in a woven pattern.

However, necessity is the mother of invention, and I joined the two holey bacon cups into one: 

I think it looks kind of pretty, like a meaty rose, don't you think?

The bacon took forever to crisp up in the oven, not helped by my desperate addition of more bacon as they cooked to try and plug the holes as the bacon shrank.  However, I do like the idea of baking bacon, because all the fat cooks off, and you are not adding more fat like you do when you fry bacon.  So in my books, oven baked bacon = healthy bacon!

I don't have a photo of the mousse in the bacon cup, because the photo that I took was so bad that I deleted it, not knowing what it was when I went to write this post.  Only after scratching my head for a while wondering where the photo went did I realise that it was the unrecognisable horror that I had deleted.

My verdict on the maple mousse and bacon combination is this:  at first, the very salty bacon and very sweet mousse are superb together - I enjoyed the intensity of the flavour combination.  However, after a couple more bites, the whole thing became too overwhelming, and I couldn't go on.  This experience showed me that the bacon and maple combination has terrific potential - however, I would like to tone it down a few decibels, perhaps with a smaller portion size or playing with the bacon: mousse ratio.  I actually think mini muffin size bacon cups with a small splodge of mousse would be perfect (which is the opposite to Evelyne's findings).

For the tart, I just filled a 6 inch tart shell made using Dorie Greenspan's  sweet tart dough with as much mousse as it would hold, and cut up a piece of crispy oven baked bacon to decorate the tart. I didn't try the tart (I donated it to work), so I am not sure how this combination went down.

As I only made a half recipe of the mousse, I only need the two edible "cups" that I had.

Thanks to our host, Evelyne, for introducing me to a new flavour experinece, one that I am keen to experiment with in the future.  This month, the Daring Bakers (moi excepted) have been even more creative than usual because there is a competion, so do yourself a favour and check out the slideshow on 27 April (US time) on the website of all the different edible containers for the maple mousse.

TWD - Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies

This week for Tuesday with Dorie, I was pleased to see a recipe using cornmeal, which I bought for another Dorie challenge.  Valerie, of Une Gamine dans la Cuisine, chose Dorie's Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies.

These cookies were easy enough to put together, but I think I rolled mine a little too thinly, as in the oven, they all blended together into one super cookie.  I cut the super cookie while it was still pliable so that I ended up with individual cookies.

These cookies tasted good - they are shortbread after all - but would have been better if I had left the dough a little thicker.

Thanks to Valerie for hosting us this week - she will have the recipe, or buy the book, Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  To check out how other TWD members fared with these cookies, visit the TWD website at this week's LYL section.

Figolli for World Figolli Day

Figolli? Eh? This was my first thought when I received an invitation on Facebook from Nanette of Gourmet Worrier to participate in World Figolli Day. If, like me, you have never heard of figolli, they are traditional Maltese almond pastries cut into symbolic shapes and decorated with royal icing topped with an Easter egg.

In Nanette's words:



The idea behind World Figolli Day is that you turn off the television and get off the couch and head into the kitchen with your kids, nieces and nephews and have a bonding session with some dough and royal icing and hopefully pass on a few Maltese culinary traditions whilst your at it.



Once you've completed your creations remember to take a photo of them and then upload your images to the World Figolli Day flickr group.

I am up for a challenge, so I decided to make some egg shaped figolli using this recipe.

Making figolli is a multi-stage process, and I don't recommend doing it (like I did) starting at 7.30pm after a Pilates class while needing to pack to go away for 5 days and with a sink full of washing up.  That said, it is not difficult, just time consuming.

First, you make the pastry and chill it.  While the pastry is chilling, you make almond paste (handy for using in other recipes, and I had heaps left over).  You then roll out the dough to ~ 1/4 inch thick, and cut out an even numbers of matching shapes.  Place half of the shapes on a baking paper lined cookie tray, then spoon about a teaspoon or so of almond paste on top of each half and spread it over the cookie shape, nearly but not quite to the edge.  Next, using a pastry brush, brush around the edge of each shape (outside the almond paste) with water.  Finally, place the matching half of each shape on top of it, and seal the cookie by pressing around the edges so that the water glues the edges of the top and the bottom halves of the cookies together.  You then bake the cookies until golden brown: 

Allow the cookies to cool completely.

The next step is to decorate the cookies with royal icing.  I used this recipe.  Colour the icing however you like.  I tried to make duck egg blue, but the icing turned out a little darker than that.  Once you have iced the cookie, pop a foiled mini Easter egg in the middle of it before the icing dries so that it "sticks" to the cookie, and pipe on contrasting decorations if desired: 

Once the icing has set, eat and enjoy!

To check out all of the wonderfully creative figolli, visit the Flickr link referred to at the top of this post. Thanks to Nanette for introducing me to a new and definitely enjoyable Easter treat.

Happy Easter everyone!