Monthly Archives: October 2011

When I was a girl I used to have a number of regular day-dreams.

One favourite involved me getting accidentally locked in a chocolate factory overnight. I used to spend hours thinking about sampling all the different kinds of chocolates rolling off the conveyor belts. Would I try a soft centre first? Or perhaps a caramel? What about a truffle or a chocolate frog? How many could I possibly eat before I was sick?

Roald Dahl’s wonderful book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, did nothing to quench my imagination. On the contrary, it encouraged me to dream of rivers of molten chocolate, trees made out of candy and bubblegum that turned your whole body blue.

So when I visited Haigh’s Chocolates earlier this week for a special behind the scenes look at the factory and an interview with Alister Haigh, I was nearly beside myself with excitement.

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My dad’s friend, Barry, is an amazing gardener, growing all kinds of vegetables, fruits and flowers. He is generous with his crop, too, always giving away bags of lemons, tomatoes and whatever else is in season.

The other day he gave us a bag of broad beans and a recipe.

I’ve played around with it a little bit, but it’s essentially the same.

So here it is: Barry’s broad beans with bacon and onion.

INGREDIENTS

600 grams broad beans, unshelled
1-2 rashers bacon, finely diced
1 onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
Few sprigs parsley, chopped
Generous splash vermouth or white wine
1/4 cup water
Salt & pepper to taste

METHOD

Shell broad beans.

Heat up a small frypan. Add olive oil and then fry onion on medium heat for a couple of minutes, stirring regularly. Add bacon and continue cooking until bacon starts to brown. Add broad beans and mix thoroughly.

Add wine, parsley and water. Put lid on saucepan and turn heat down to low. Leave to simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Just before twenty minutes, remove the lid and turn the heat back up to help reduce any excess liquid. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper and serve immediately. Do not season prior to this otherwise the salt will cause the beans to toughen.

Serves 2-4 as a side dish.

When we were recently in Malaysia we ate the most amazing sui gao (dumplings) at my Grandmother’s house, bought from the local hawker stall. So this is my attempt to recreate them back home in Australia.

This Chinese Dumpling Soup recipe is similar to my jiaozi recipe however the sui gao filling has the addition of Chinese mushrooms, carrots and water chestnuts. This gives the dumplings extra flavour and a satisfying crunchiness.

The dipping sauce is a gingery, vinegary sauce enlivened with chilli and spring onion. It can be either sprinkled over your bowl of dumplings or dabbed onto each individual dumpling as you eat them. Personally, I can’t get enough of it.

Sui Gao is Chinese comfort food and very, very moreish. Make more than you think you’ll ever need because people often request seconds. And sometimes thirds.

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Our good friends, Kerina and Ollie, have just become the proud parents of a beautiful little boy.

I’m thrilled for them. As new parents, they’ve embarked on an incredible journey, one that will bring them more joy and happiness than they could have ever imagined. Their hearts will expand, be made light again. They’ll learn to adjust their pace to a toddler’s ramble and to see the world through the eyes of a child once more – all enormous gifts.

It will also be challenging at times. They’ll be pushed beyond what they thought were their limits of endurance and patience. They’ll have to get by with less sleep and less money. The awesomeness of their new responsibility will sometimes feel overwhelming.

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Australia’s largest cheese festival, CheeseFest, took place last weekend at Rymill Park in Adelaide.

We arrived just after midday on Sunday and got stuck straight into the serious business of the day: sampling and learning about all the wonderful cheeses and dairy products on display from companies including Barossa Valley Cheese Company, B.-d. Farm Paris Creek, Island Pure, La Casa Del Formaggio, Milawa Cheese Company, Udder Delights, Warrnambool Cheese and Butter and Woodside Cheese Wrights.

I’m in fromage heaven.

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For those keen on good food and wine, the cunningly named Good Food & Wine Show on October 7-9 at the Wayville Showgrounds in Adelaide was a great day out.

You could sample food and wine from some of South Australia’s leading producers, watch cooking demonstrations, learn about cheese or chocolate, take part in a wine tasting, get up close and personal with a celebrity chef in the kitchen, buy products at special prices and then relax and recharge in the Coopers beer garden.

Final numbers are still coming in but it looks like the second Adelaide Good Food & Wine Show was attended by 12,000+ people over the three days, a strong increase from last year’s inaugural Show.

Rather than try to summarise the whole Show, which would be a very long post, I’ve decided to highlight some of the producers, products and chefs that caught my eye.

First up is Murray River Salt, renowned for its award-winning, naturally pink salt flakes. We got a sneak peak of their latest creation, Truffle Salt, which takes their regular pink salt and soups it up by impregnating it with the scent of truffles. The smell is completely intoxicating – I can imagine this would be incredible on scrambled eggs. Truffle Salt is still in the development stage but should be available to buy in the next few months.

Many Adelaideans know Enzos on Port Road, the fine Italian restaurant serving up wonderful pastas, risottos and steaks. However, Enzos is just about to launch an Enzos at Home line producing pasta and other dishes for you to heat up at home. We try the lasagne and the gluten-free muffins and both are extremely good – I can’t even tell that the muffin is gluten-free and I’ve eaten a lot of gluten-free food. I foresee a bright future ahead for Enzos at Home – pick up some yourself at 302 Port Road from tomorrow.

ChocoMe is a brand new company producing custom Belgian chocolate. Andrea Simko, a trained pastry chef who used to work for one of Hungary’s leading restaurants, first spotted ChocoMe’s products in Hungary a year ago. She loved the products so much that she contacted ChocoMe’s founder and an agreement was reached so that she could open ChocoMe in Adelaide under a franchise agreement. Chocolate can be bought in the ready-made flavours or you can design your own combination of dark, milk or white chocolate, sprinkled with all kinds of freeze-dried fruits, seeds, nuts, flowers, confectionary and spices. ChocoMe’s products will be available to buy from their website from next week and can also be found at Viva in North Adelaide and Burnside, the National Wine Centre, Mercato, Unley Gourmet, and Gourmet on Main.

Created by Vicki Mattchett, a Cordon Bleu trained chef based  at Middleton, South Australia, Mattchett’s is a boutique producer making a selection of chutneys, sauces, dukkahs, dressings and olive products. Matchett’s packaging is bright and cheerful but also serious and grown up. It’s a line with a lot of personality. I especially like the tagline on their Chilli Fire relish below: “very friggin’ hot.” Take a bow, Matchett’s.

Preshafruit make fresh juices and fruit coulis that have been pressurised cold (not heat pasteurised), which preserves flavour, texture, colour and smell. Their packaging is modern, slick and playful, with a different animal on each container. I also like the quasi DIY label gun font and design. Nice work, fellas. We try the grapefruit juice and it’s absolutely delicious. I’d definitely buy Preshafruit juices again.

Kyton’s Bakery is renowned for their award-winning lamingtons, which are hugely popular with fundraising groups. My beautiful niece gives them two thumbs up.

Hailing from Muswellbrook in NSW, Pukara Estate make excellent, award-winning olive oils, relishes, mayonaises and dukkahs. I don’t sample them myself but Mr Hungry Australian raves about their mayonaise.

Cocolat is an Adelaide success story. Established in 1992, the family owned company operates three busy stores – Rundle Street in the city, Adelaide Airport and Balhannah in the Adelaide Hills – serving up chocolate in just about every conceiveable form. Their Rocky Road is delicious. And just a little bit addictive.

Beach Organics, located near Middleton and Port Elliot in South Australia, produce a line of organic spices, oils, salts, and breads. It’s founder, Barry Beach, manages the strictly organic, 4-acre property using permaculture techniques and also runs cooking workshops and garden tours. After seeing their gorgeous products I’m planning a day trip there.

Popular Indian restaurant Dhaba at The Spice Kitchen in Leabrook produces a range of readymade spice mixes including Tandoori, Vindaloo and an Easy Best of the South mix. I’m going to a farewell there in a few weeks time so will post about my dining experience then.

Although I love an occasional glass of wine or bubbles, my Asian genes and inability to metabolise alcohol without becoming bright red and itchy (not a great look) means that I am rarely in the market for a good bottle of wine. So I merely stroll through the wine exhibitors, organised by growing region.

I also poke my head into the Reidal Wine Theatre, where keen wine lovers are being tutored through a tasting of some great Australian wines.

I then duck into the Fisher & Paykel Celebrity Theatre to find Matt Moran (MasterChef, Aria) wowing the crow with his knife work. His salmon looks simple but stunning – something you could easily try yourself at home. That, I guess, is the point of these cooking demonstrations: to encourage people to get into the kitchen and try cooking like a MasterChef at home.

Next up is Alastair McLeod (Queensland’s Bretts Wharf and Tank Restaurant), who does a great job whipping the crowd into a frenzy for the next presenter, Ainsley Harriot.

UK chef Harriot is the star import of the day, the granddaddy of them all. The original celebrity chef with the longest running cooking TV show in the world, he has sold over 4 million books worldwide. He also has some funky dance moves.

Ainsley is enormously popular with the crowd, who hang on his every suggestive word.

After Ainsley I’m in need of lunch. I head outside to the Cooper’s Beer Garden where folks are enjoying the beautiful weather and great music.

With so many exhibitors I wasn’t able to make it around to everyone so if you don’t see your favourite company or Chef here, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t like their work. So feel free to comment below on who I should have included here. I was reliably informed, for example, that Manu Feildel had women swooning in the aisles during his cooking demonstration. I can understand this: a man who can cook is very, very sexy.

The Good Food & Wine Show will take place again in Adelaide in October 2012.

Christina Soong-Kroeger attended the Adelaide Good Food & Wine Show as a guest of the show. 

Char Kway Teow (Fried Noodles) is one of the ultimate Malaysian hawker dishes.

When I was holidaying in Malaysia in August, I ate Char Kway Teow nearly every day, mostly for supper at 10pm. I’d wander out from wherever we were staying in search of food and within a few blocks, would usually find a hawker making this dish at a street stall. I’d take it back to our hotel room and Mr Hungry Australian and I would fall upon it as if we hadn’t eaten in days.

Now that I’m back in Adelaide the only place within walking distance where I could find a Char Kway Teow at 10pm at night would be my parent’s house. My Dad even cooks a Char Kway Teow that is pretty close to the real thing. The only problem is that while he cooks supper most nights there’s no guarantee that he’ll be making Char Kway Teow when I need my fix. He’s a little unreliable that way.

So I made him give me his recipe so that I could cook it myself when the next Char Kway Teow craving struck.

There are a couple of things you have to remember when making this dish. Firstly, you must have all the ingredients ready to go – you cannot start cooking this dish and then let it cook away while you frantically try to wash and chop up the next ingredient to go in. Disaster will ensue. Secondly, as with all stir fry cooking, speed is the key. You want everything in and out of the pan as quickly as possible otherwise the noodles will become gluggy and the whole dish will collapse. Do not overcook this dish. I repeat: do not overcook this dish.

Cook it right and you’ll be rewarded with a plate of noodles that will make you sigh with sheer gastronomic pleasure.

(Beady eyed readers may notice one irregularity in the photographs of the raw ingredients: I was out of fish cakes when I made this dish so substituted with fish balls. It worked out fine.)

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Preheat work and add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil. Add half the garlic and fry with the prawns, Chinese sausage and fishcake. Remove from wok and set aside.

Add another tablespoon of oil and throw in the rest of the garlic and rice noodles. Add soya sauces and stir until slightly burnt/brown.

Then add cooked prawns, Chinese sausage and fishcakes and mix to combine.

Throw in beansprouts and stir through.

Make a well at the bottom of the wok and add another teaspoon of oil. Crack the eggs directly into the well.

Use your spatula to break up the eggs/yolk, and add a dash of dark soy sauce and a shake of white pepper into the yolks.

Cover eggs with the noodles and let it cook for a minute.

Add sugar and then mix the cooked egg evenly through the noodles. Add a touch of Vietnamese chilli sauce if desired. Do not overcook. Serve immediately.

My daughter is starting school next week and I’m excited and a little melancholy.

On one hand, she is completely ready for school – she craves stimulation and learning and she’s happy because she has a bunch of pals from kindergarten starting with her. On the other hand, it’s a milestone for her, the first independent step in a journey that may one day take her far away from us.

So my daughter going to school represents a big change for us.

I’d deliberately kept one day free this week so that we could do something together just as a family. I asked Ms 5 Year Old what she wanted to do and she replied without hesitation: “go to Henley Beach and ride bikes and get baby cinos and ice creams.”

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Posting a recipe for guacamole seems odd in a way. It’s a bit like posting a recipe for making a ham and cheese toastie – it seems like such a simple thing to that no recipe is required.

However, I’ve found huge variation in the guacamole I’ve eaten, both in restaurants and private homes. Everyone has their own take on it, their own special ingredient. Some people like using a spritz of lime juice. Some detest onion. Some go overboard on the garlic while others completely omit it.

I’ve never eaten it in Mexico but in Australia the general consensus seems to be that guacamole has to include avocados, onions and either lemon or lime juice. Everything else is up to you.

This is how I make guacamole. The ‘kick’ in the title is the addition of sweet chilli sauce.

You can blame my dad for this – a mild chilli addiction is in my DNA.

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I have my Dad to thank for a lot of things.

For my love of reading. For forcing us to go with him to see Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, in which a much younger Alec Baldwin proves indisputably that brains are better than brawn. For taking me cockling every summer. For sending me a plane ticket so I could join the family for Christmas when I was working in London.

I also have my Dad to thank for my deep and sincere love for Malaysian hawker food. Malaysians are serious foodies, trading tips about where to get the best Hainanese Chicken Rice, Char Kway Teow or Curry Laksa with the same fervour that other people trade sporting news or celebrity gossip.

However, Malaysians don’t see their passion for good food as anything special. Why wouldn’t you drive the family all the way from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh (a 3+ hour drive) just because you were craving Ipoh Sah Hor Fun? That’s completely reasonable behaviour, isn’t it? Dad?

The Malaysian hawker dish, Har Mee (also known as Ha Mein, Ha Mee, or Har Mein) is one of my favourites. It’s just such a tasty, full-bodied, well-balanced dish. It’s not a dish to be merely shovelled down – Har Mee grabs your attention right away and keeps it there until the last drop of soup is gratefully slurped up. It’s that good.

Dad gave me his Har Mee recipe so I could include it in a cookbook I made for my brother’s wedding gift. I now pass it onto you with minor tweaks and adjustments.

If you cook only one new thing this year, please, I beg of you, make it this.

INGREDIENTS (serves 4)

16 large prawns, tails and head intact (approximately 500 grams)
750 grams pork bones (from Asian grocer/butcher)
3 spring onions finely sliced
4 tablespoons fried shallots + extra for garnish (bought in a plastic jar from Asian grocer)
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 pack hokkien mee (yellow egg noodles) and 1/4 pack rice vermicelli
1 pack bean sprouts
1 bunch green vegetable like gai lan or choy sum, torn into small pieces (from Asian grocer)
2 eggs, boiled, peeled and halved
White pepper
1 beef stock cube
Chilli sauce and fresh chilli for garnish (if desired)
XO sauce (from Asian grocer)

METHOD

Boil prawns in three cups of water until prawns are cooked. Remove prawns and peel, retaining cooking water. Stick prawn heads shells back into the cooking water, add pork bones and one more cup water and simmer on low heat for 40 minutes.

Remove pork bones and prawn shells from soup.

Discard shells and remove every morsel of meat from the pork bones and set aside.

To the soup, add 4 tablespoons fried shallots, 3 tablespoons light soy sauce, white pepper, a garlicy chilli sauce (to taste, if desired) and a stock cube and bring back to the boil. Then turn down to your lowest heat and let simmer.

Prepare noodles according to package .Add beansprouts and vegetables to the noodle cooking water for the last minute to blanch. Drain all and set aside.

To serve, place a portion of noodles and beansprouts in a bowl, and top with prawns, pork and vegetables. Ladle a generous amount of soup over the top and garnish with half an egg, extra shallots, fresh chilli (if desired) and XO sauce.*

*XO sauce is a sensational chilli sauce made from frying onions, garlic and chilli with dried shrimp and scallops.

We’ve been cooking a lot of stir fries lately – they’re easy and quick to prepare, you can use whatever you have in the fridge, you only need one cooking pan and dinner is on the table within minutes.

It’s convenience food but way better than anything you could heat up out of a box.

You could substitute the chicken with prawns, beef fillet, firm tofu cut into squares or fried tofu puffs.

INGREDIENTS

400 grams chicken thighs, trimmed, and cut into small pieces.
100 grams cauliflower, cut into florets
100 grams green beans, trimmed and cut into pieces
100 grams cabbage, shredded
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger (optional)
2 tablespoons light soy sauce, plus 3-4 tablespoons extra for serving
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
Few drops sesame oil (optional)
1 tablespoon corn flour
1 packet noodles suitable for stir frying e.g. hokkien or flat rice (kway teow) noodles, prepared as per packet instructions.
2 Birds Eyes chillis

METHOD

Marinate chicken in soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, black pepper and cornflour for at least half an hour or overnight in the fridge.

Make dipping sauce by chopping up chillis and adding to 3 tablespoons light soy sauce.

Heat up a wok or large fry pan. Add one tablespoon of vegetable oil and fry garlic, ginger and onion over low heat for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally.

Brown chicken, stirring occassionally, then add beans, cauliflower and cabbage. Stir to combine. Put lid on and turn down heat. Let cook for a couple of minutes.

Take lid off pan and set lid aside. Add noodles to pan, stirring vigorously to combine for a couple of minutes until the noodles are heated through and browning nicely.

Serve immediately with dipping sauce. I like adding the chillis directly to my plate as per the photos but you can just dash a few drops of the now hot soya sauce over your noodles for a less explosive experience.

This incredibly simple coconut pie is courtesy of my mother. She has been cooking it for years thanks to the Mitchell Park Primary School Parents’ Association 1992 Cookbook.

This is a very dense and moist pie that travels well. You can pack it in a lunch box or take it to a friend’s house without worrying that it’ll disintegrate en route.

Boasting a satisfyingly chewy crust, it’s sweet but not overly so, making it perfect for those odd types who say they don’t like sweet things. These people invariably ask for “just a taste” and then proceed to eat most of your serve.

Sound familiar, Mr Hungry Australian?

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My dad’s friend, Barry, gave us a bag of lemons today.

They say when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade.

So that’s exactly what we did.

INGREDIENTS

5 lemons, washed.
1.5 litres sparkling water
3-5 tablespoons sugar, mixed with 2 tablespoons hot water to make a sugar syrup

METHOD

Juice three lemons, and cut other two into thin slices.

Pour lemon juice, sparkling water and sugar syrup into a tall jug and mix well. Garnish with lemon slices.

One thing I love about Mr Hungry Australian is that he’s a great cook.

When we first started dating he was working as a consultant. So some days he’d be super-busy and other days I’d go over to his house to find he’d made oven baked lamb shanks with gremolata and mashed potatoes for a workday dinner. The way to my heart is definitely through my stomach so his talent and passion for cooking won him lots of points.

Mr Hungry Australian cooks so differently to me, too. I like the fact that he puts things together in ways that would never occur to me. Take his baby octopus with warm silverbeet and chickpea salad for instance.Or his brilliant Chinese sausage and spinach pizza.

He can also cook dishes that I have never learned to make, like fresh pasta. So nowadays we have a pasta routine: he makes the pasta and I cook the sauce, which is exactly what we’ve done for this recipe below.

As our five year old daughter would say: teamwork gets the job done.

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Australian MasterChef series 2 finalist, Alvin Quah – he of the funky white glasses and cropped ‘do – has been accused of plagiarising a recipe by Bee Yinn Low from Asian food blog, Rasa Malaysia, on his own blog, Cinnamon Pig.

Rasa Malaysia is the biggest independent Asian recipes site on the internet, receiving 2.5 million page views and 600,000+ visitors per month. Low’s first cookbook, Easy Chinese Recipes, has just been released worldwide and went to #1 on Amazon.com’s chinese cookbook category.

Quah’s recipe for Black Sesame Dumplings in Ginger Syrup, posted July 2011, bears a striking resemblance to Low’s Black Sesame Dumplings (Tang Yuan), posted April 5th, 2009.

Two hours ago, On Monday 3rd October at approximately 10am Adelaide time, Low tweeted this from her @rasamalaysia Twitter account:

@cinnamonalvin WOW u took my Black Sesame Dumplings recipe, copied it word-by-word w/ minor changes & made it on national TV with no credit?

Quah immediately tweeted back:

@rasamalaysia hey bee, is it a mistake? I promise it’s mine. No copying here. Mum use to make it for me.

Mmmmm. I breathe in deeply, inhaling the irresistible smell of bread baking and sugar caramellising. Does anything smell better than this?

I’m in the kitchen at Red Door Bakery in Croydon, watching owner & baker Gareth Grierson blowtorching crème brulee tarts. First, the tart is sprinkled with sugar, then Grierson leisurely torches it until the sugar blisters and caramelises. It’s a process that he repeats three times for each tart to ensure that the toffee layer is thick and crisp.

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If you were living in Australia in the 80s you probably would have seen this TV advertisement starring a then unknown Aussie actor.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt1YV9Bj72c]

Did you recognise her? Yes, that’s Australian actor Naomi Watts turning down a date with Tom Cruise in favour of her mum’s lamb roast. Tom Cruise was then fresh from the success of Top Gun and Cocktail and hotter than hot, but Naomi knew what was truly desirable and important.

I’m with Naomi on this. As a meat eater, a lamb roast is one of the ultimate feasts, reminding me of countless family dinners. Lamb roast is what I cook when we have people over and want to make a meal more of an occasion, or when I want to spoil my family.

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