Bacon Lollipops. Another item for the Halloween shopping list!
Tag: food
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Mmm. Grease.
Note to self: Buy or borrow a deep fryer in October. There are so many great food ideas for Halloween in here it isn’t even funny.
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Oxtail Stew
I had another good customer service experience tonight. I went over to the Broadway to get supplies for this beef stew, and I stopped in at the butcher for the meat. “Would that gravy beef be good for a stew?” I asked the guy at the counter. He nodded. I opened my mouth to tell him how much I wanted, when I was suddenly interrupted by another guy in the back. “Nah, you’ll want the oxtail!” he suggested. The what? Oxtail. He showed me a tray of it, which reminded me of shin beef (for making osso bucco). It didn’t take much convincing. It was cheap, and my helpful butcher friend gave me some tips on cooking it. (Just brown it and leave it on the bone while it cooks; add in a good glug of red wine; let it stew for a long time…) So tonight, I cooked oxtail stew for the first time. I cooked it on the stove (rather than putting it in the oven) for about two hours, and I substituted potatoes instead of rutabaga. It was GREAT. The meat went very tender, and the gelatine from the bones made for a lovely rich thick soup (without being overly fatty). Any ickiness I might have felt over eating, you know, SPINAL CORD pretty much disappeared when I had the bowl in front of me. I was gnawin’ those bones with my bare hands! (My sister will be retching at this point.) Thanks, Mr. Butcher Man! It was cheap, filling, and oh so tasty. Much recommended for the carnivorous folks…
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Starship Kimchi
“Starship Kimchi: A Bold Taste Goes Where It Has Never Gone Before.” The first Korean astronaut is getting ready to go up to the ISS, and he’ll be taking specially designed space kimchi with him.
“Ordinary kimchi is teeming with microbes, like lactic acid bacteria, which help fermentation. On Earth they are harmless, but scientists feared they could turn dangerous in space if cosmic rays and other radiation cause them to mutate.”
I, for one, welcome our new mutant space kimchi overlords.
(Link courtesy of the Snook, who got it from Toast.)
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Bacon Curls
Bacon curls – the perfect garnish for your Meat Cake!
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“Hot and Smoky” Baked Beans
I was chatting to the Snook over IM this afternoon about what we were going to have for supper when I suddenly got a massive craving for baked beans. And I don’t mean crappy beans out of a can — REAL baked beans. So I went looking for recipes. I settled for these Hot and Smoky Baked Beans, which seemed like a good compromise between my desire for mostly-homemade and my lack of thirteen hours to soak dried beans. I used Toohey’s Old for the “dark beer,” and I substituted treacle for the molasses (since we already had some in the cupboard). I don’t see Great Northern Beans here very often, so I went with the much more common cannellini beans instead. Other than that, my only substitution was in using dried chipotle powder instead of canned chilis. (Since Australia doesn’t have a big Hispanic population, stuff like that isn’t easy to find. We get our chipotle powder from Herbie’s.) The Snook was dismissive of my plan at first, as he’s not a huge fan of American-style baked beans. (He says they’re too sweet.) The smell of these won him over though, and he heartily approved of the nice smoky flavour from the chipotle. My only complaint was that I wanted the dish overall to be a bit thicker and stickier. Part of that might be because I only used five cans of beans instead of six (on the recommendation of some of the reviews). The next time I make them, I might use more beans and let ’em cook a lot longer. I think these would be great at your next big family dinner though! -
Allez cuisine!
This week was our highly-anticipated dinner with Iron Chefs Sakai and Chen at the Observatory Hotel here in Sydney. I was kicking myself the whole time that I’d forgotten to print out the photo of me and Snook dressed as Sakai and Kaga. (And of course, I couldn’t print it out at work because the site was down. *grumble*) But that niggling annoyance aside, I was excited and rarin’ to go. We met up with Toast and Shan and headed in. We had a small table for four in the back corner of the Globe Bar with a big TV screen right beside us (for watching all the kitchen action). Shan and I took photos of every course, but I’m not going to bother posting them because Not Quite Nigella has written it all up way better than I ever could. Seriously, if you want to see and read about what we ate, go over there. I will say that my favorites were definitely Chen’s mud crab soup and his signature mapo tofu, but that my least favorite was the soup that went with the mapo tofu. Afterwards, we all rushed out into the lobby for a chance to get autographs and photos.
Neither of them spoke English very well, so I chose my words carefully. “Chef Sakai, do you know ‘Halloween’?” I asked as I approached. “Halloween, yes!” he said cheerfully. “I WAS YOU!” I blurted out. “And him,” pointing at the Snook, “he was CHAIRMAN KAGA!” They laughed and laughed.
Final tally of weird/unfamiliar stuff that I ate that I never would’ve eaten five years ago: salmon mousse, braised carp, caviar, jellyfish, calamari, sea urchin roe, foie gras, kinugasa mushrooms, mud crab (with roe), lobster tail, and shark fin (we guessed there was some in the soup I didn’t care for). And while all that sounds really exotic, the dishes weren’t really “out there.” It’s not like I had a pile of any of those things; they were mostly used in tiny amounts as interesting flavours or textures. I had the definite impression that the Chefs were toning down the weirdness factor for Western palates. (Case in point: Sadly, no fish ice cream.)
Here’s an extremely blurry shot of the Snook and I enjoying our champagne cocktails at the start of the evening.
Halfway through the night, we played a game where everyone tried to guess where a mystery wine was from. The Snook made it the furthest out of the four of us. Here he is contemplating his next answer. (He didn’t win.)
The desserts really were something out of this world. Here’s the Snook checking out the pannacotta on top of the upturned martini glass. We were all a little unsure how to approach this. It was nummy though.
Everyone wants to know whether we got enough food for the money, and whether we were stuffed at the end of the night. Well, there was plenty of food. The portions were a good size (given that we had seven courses) and I’m not sure I could’ve eaten any more at the end of it. It just took so long! We were there a good five hours. Five hours of eating and drinking wine is actually pretty tiring. Here’s me and the Snook at the end of the night, just wanting to get our photo and go home to bed.
Here are our other two tablemates, Toast and Shan. Thumbs up all around!
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Butter shortage
Sydney is evidently suffering an acute butter shortage. EEEEK!
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Iron Chefs
The Snook and I have done some pretty crazy things in our time. We got married in Vegas with an Elvis impersonator. We’ve gone to grown-up Space Camp. We made a turducken. And yet somehow, I think this will be one of the best adventures yet: We’re going to dinner with two Iron Chefs. SERIOUSLY. In just over three weeks, we will sit down to a seven-course meal prepared by Iron Chefs Sakei and Chen. How INSANE is that? I cannot wait. I am primed and ready for anything. So bring on your fish ice cream, Sakei! Bring on your slabs of foie gras and piles of shaved truffle!
I know it’s extravagant. I don’t care. If you like food as much as we do, you’d do it too!
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Bibim Bap!
How to make bibim bap. Excellent. I’m hungry.
