Macarons at Noisette

If you have the patience of a saint these macarons from Noisette, could be the best available retail in Melbourne.

You see, the problem is that a macaron needs time after being filled (I can't remember the time 'rule') but enough time for the filling to meet with the shell and they become one. The outer shell is the gentle crunch and then the base of the little disk is moistened by the filling, soft and a little texturally chewy, almost.

I've had some devastating good macarons at Laduree in Paris and also in Melbourne at the first food bloggers banquet, courtesy of Duncan. And these were fairly close, if only I could wait until the day after I brought them, as they were too 'fresh'.

A great little piece of Paris in Port Melbourne; well priced breads, great small petit four style sweets and fantastic macarons - for patient people only.

Chilli chocolate dipped cherries

I prefer to make small foodie gifts if I can, and came up with the idea for these as I stood in the chocolate aisle of my supermarket earlier in the week. I was about to grab the 70% cocoa Lindt when the chilli flavoured caught my eye... Umm an idea in the working.

A lap around the supermarket collecting random necessities, and I had justified the combination in my mind, yes cherries dipped in chilli chocolate should be very good.

And you know what, they were fabulous!

Chocolate and chilli is no revolutionary idea, both originally from South America, the flavours have a strangely alluring relationship together.

Chilli and fruit is another inspired combination. In South East Asia I love the little pounches of chilli/sugar/salt that comes with sliced seasonal fruit, the street food in Bangkok is the best in the world, and this is a definite highlight for me.

So thinking laterally, using chilli chocolate for my dipped cherries is not a crazy stretch of the palate, and this is coming from someone that would usually prefer the classic food combos over the fashionable.

Do you need a recipe?
No way... Just melt the chilli chocolate or infuse your own if you're feeling fancy (but getting the portions right scares me!), make sure your cherries are straight from the fridge, dip in the hot chocolate and lay out on baking paper lined trays.
Refridgerate until set and firm. Eat as soon as possible.

I placed mine into a vintage glass bowl and wrapped in pretty paper and ribbon and had an impressive Christmas inspired gift with a twist.

NB Would you believe that when we shared these after lunch, I had not disclosed the chilli flavour, yet the first taster blew the fun for everyone announcing - "wow that chilli chocolate is great"! Bloody ex-sommeliers and their freaky palates!

Merry Christmas everyone.

Laughing out loud

This article on the Guardians Word of Mouth blog about the changes to Cadbury's mixed chocolate box has had me laughing out loud.

And then I remembered my impassioned despair a few years ago, learning that Allens were no longer making Kool Chocs (yes the 'Fruits' use to have siblings).
I rarely eat lollies but Kool Chocs got me through Uni and were a nostaligic treat, yes I was as the Guardian article quotes, BITTERLY DISAPPOINTED (capitals are necessary for dramatic effect...).

Any favourites you've missed recently? Are you bitterly disappointed?

The worlds most decadent, fudgy chocolate mousse

The roles seem a little confused in the local blogging scene; Duncan is cooking and Jack is baking... well kind of.

This recipe is from the inspiring Culinaria series; European Specialties book.
I first made it a few years ago and have even shared the recipe with a close group of friends, but it comes with a condition, I have to know that they are fairly good cooks first. Why you ask? Well this mousse is really tricky, not just a little bit, but really tricky. I have stuffed it up many times and ended up with decadent chocolate truffles, instead of the worlds most decedent, fudgy mousse.

The trick is you need to follow the steps to a tee, in that order, no mucking about, and really trust me in that no chatting is also a requirement. PDC knows there must be absolute silence at the critical moment.

Now that you are adequately intimidated, I need to tell you why you should make this chocolate mousse, the title I have given it doesn't even tell you half of how amazing this mousse is.
You really must try it for yourself.



The Worlds Most Decadent, Fudgy Chocolate Mousse
I usually make half this recipe, as it is plenty of chocolate love to have in a two person house.
I use large eggs, and for a half portion 2 yolks and 3 whites works fine.
Make sure you allow at least an hour in the fridge for it to firm up before eating.

300g bitter chocolate - I get great results with Lindt 70%
4 egg yolks
130g sugar
50ml cream - I use the thick pure cream with a high fat content
250g egg white

Melt the chocolate gently in a bowl over simmering water or a double boiler
At the same time beat egg yolks until frothy, with 2 tbsp of the sugar
Stir in the cream
Sh!!...Now the critical stage...
Remove the melted chocolate from the heat and mix together with the egg yolk and sugar mix
Mix quickly to combine, it should be fairly soft, if not your chocolate was too cool and now you have a nice chocolate truffle mix... :)
If its all going to plan for you, then well done!
Beat the egg whites with the remaining sugar until stiff
Gently fold through the chocolate mix in batches, keeping as much air in the mix as possible
Pour into individual serving bowls or one larger bowl and chill

I love this mousse served with cassis macerated strawberries.
Buy the smallest ripest strawberries available, toss with a couple of teaspoons of pure icing sugar and a generous glug of cassis. Leave to seep for half an hour.

I hope you do try this mousse, it is an absolute hit whenever I serve it to friends. Being rich it's great as a small sweet taster after an extended meal.

Portuguese custard tarts in Macau

Foreign occupations of countries can only be good for one thing, the sharing of food cultures…
Having not been to Portugal these have to be the next best thing to eating them on the home soil, the best in Macau.
Soft custardy centre, delicately crispy pastry shell with a distinctive swirl on the bottom from the hundreds of layers of pastry folded onto itself.

Australia Day, some things never change

And others can surprise you...

Things that never change
-our sense of national righteousness about having a barbeque on Australia Day - or on the public holiday at least
-my relief that it didn't end up like the last - a fire engine squiring water up onto our third floor balcony to put out the barbeque and gas bottle on fire. We laugh now but are still a little (correction, a lot) paranoid with the barbie
-that if you offer a pavlova, you will not have left overs

Shhh, the resting pav...

All dressed up and ready to go

Things that surprise me

-we also served kangaroo fillet, marinated and seared on the barbeque, it went so fast I felt like a bad host for stashing a marinated fillet for later (thinking that the consensus would be 'no thanks').
I have been eating kangaroo meat for years, and apart from loving the gamey earthy flavour, its inexpensive, really good for you - high protein vs low fat, and sustainably produced in our environment.

So we ate from the coat of arms... but if only I had invited Anna from Morels and Musings with her emu dish from earlier in the month and we would have completed the pair!

Pavlova
A fun dessert in my house, were Kiwi and Aussie rivalry is already alive and well, we don't need to make it worse reminding them that it really is an Australian dessert.
In case you care... created in Perth by a German chef called Herbert Sachse at Hotel Espanade in 1935. He named it after Anna Pavlova the ballerina. The tricky part is that Herbert is like all good chefs, he reads lots of cook books and was 'inspired' from the equivalent to the Womens Weekly and used a recipe sent in by a kiwi reader. So yes a meringue, cream, fruit thing was made in NZ first but Australia owns the Pav (the kiwis can keep the lollie cake though... don't ask if you don't know!)

The even funnier thing is that PDC the kiwi of the house made this perfect pavlova, from an Aussie recipe -Thanks Stephanie.

Stephanie Alexanders Pavlova recipe
4 egg whites at room temperature
pinch of salt
250g castor sugar
2 teaspoons of cornflour
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
a few drops of pure vanilla (we didn't have any)

Preheat oven to 180C
Line a tray with baking paper
Beat egg whites and salt until 'satiny' (not sure what this means!) peaks form
Beat in sugar a third at a time until meringue is stiff and shiny
Sprinkle over cornflower, vinegar and vanilla and fold in
Mound onto paper lined tray about 20cm round with a smooth top and sides
Place in oven and immediately reduce the heat to 150C and cook for 1 1/4 hours (ours took a little longer until golden)
Turn off oven and leave pavlova in it to cool completely.

Stephanie flips her pav but ours was served crunchy side up with whipped cream (no sugar) and heaps of very sweet passionfruit - the especially purchased mango and peaches stayed on the shelf...

Hope yours is as successful as PDC's

Jack

Christmas with Jack

I had a quiet Christmas at home this year, PDC had been working like crazy, so I decided to prepare a modern Aussie style Christmas lunch for the two of us.

One of the difficult things about working out what to serve is that a lot of otherwise beautiful produce is usually so over demanded at this time of the year, that what is available is generally of poor quality. Take seafood for example, there are only so many fish/prawns/oysters etc to be caught and sold over that period so the chances of getting good produce over the other thousands at the market (no matter what you are prepared to pay) is slim, as the retailers will stretch themselves (and their prices - why were raspberries $6.50 a punnet last weekend, yet $4.00 the one prior, when the season is actually getting better?) to supply as much as they can sell.

Therefore my mission was to create a special, 'Christmas feeling' lunch without using the produce that everyone else wanted and would be easy to 'finish' on Christmas day and partially prepare the day before.

Therefore, the menu...

Entree
San Daniele prosciutto and seared scallops with saffron and manzanilla braised leek, peas and their tendrils

Main
Rare venison fillet and quince sauce with anchovy and asparagus stuffed zucchini flowers and taleggio polenta chips

Cheese
Chaource with pecans and bread to dip (actually on the menu but postponed until dinner...)

Dessert
Black cherry and almond clafoutis with eggnog crush

So the entree (scallops, fitted my requirements as some of the best ones comes frozen from Canada or Japan) - served on a glass plate that you can't see here!

The San Daniele ham is my new favourite thing, I can't believe I have been getting by eating the plastic Australian stuff for years. After eating in Spain earlier this year and my new palate for Spanish jamon, I can confidently tell you this is truly up there!
The entree was matched beautifully by PDC with a fancy white burgundy, 1996 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne.

You can tell its summer when the zucchini flowers are at the market.

I (or PDC actually) stuffed the flowers with a very quick combination of a finely sliced asparagus spear, a couple of chopped anchovies, a blob of goats curd, lemon and S+P. The flowers were panfried and then finished in the oven, the stuffing leaked a little when i turned them but still offered a powerful flavour punch that you could not miss.

Pre cooked and set buckwheat polenta, cut into 'chips' to be seasoned and panfried.


The cherries before the batter... (and during PDC's nap - hence time for a few extra photos)

They were large cherries, but not plum sized as they look here... And then...

Baked... yes trust me it tasted as delicious as it looks here (I was very proud!)

We ate this with what I ended up calling eggnog crush, essentially my recipe for eggnog that I froze some of this year, in the hope of turning into a rough ice cream, yet as I discovered my taste for booze in the eggnog also stops it freezing hard, so we ended up with s slushy consistency for the 'crush', but the flavour combination was outrageously good.
The incredibly interesting thing about the clafoutis was that if I had not cooked it myself, I would have argued about the fact that I could DEFINITELY tell that the cherries had been soaked in Amaretto. But since you can tell from the first photo there was no soaking just beautifully plump, fresh, fat cherries, the flavour had come from the seeds, the exact reason why they are traditionally left in this dish. I love it, and love the way the best understanding of something comes from doing it yourself.

I hope you also had a very merry christmas
Jack

Bone Marrow, St John

You never get offered bone marrow as a special at a restaurant. So someone like me feels an obligation to make the chefs night, by ordering the dish that they wished they could sell but doubt will. The thing is it is likely to be the dish of the night...

The dish was described as Bone marrow, St John. Implying a reference to a similar dish served at St John Bar and Restaurant in London and the chef/owner, Fergus Hendersons commitment to 'nose to tail' dining, using the whole animal.

The marrow was rich and messy to eat, I guess it's one of those dishes that you shouldn't order unless you are happy to 'get amongst it'. Essentially two large roasted bones with charred bread and and a parsley, red onion and caper salad. Very Henderson...

So what does one drink with bone marrow on toast?

PDC was insistent on me having a glass of oloroso sherry. A medium dry, aromatic sherry that has a nutty, oxidative quality about it. The flavours together were intense but fitting, the fat of the marrow balanced against the sweet, caramel viciousness of the sherry. Delicious.

So if I wasn't in London last week, where in Melbourne could I've eaten this?

As an additional hint, this clafoutis was from the same evening. Perfectly cooked, still soft in the middle and unfortunately the stones removed...unlike the one I ate in Lyon. This was one of the most delectably, simply fantastic desserts I've eaten in a Melbourne restaurant in ...ages.

So which restaurant was I at?
Jack

Some beautiful food photos from France and Spain

Hope you enjoy some of these beautiful food related photos from my recent trip.

Striped heirloom tomatoes from a Paris market.

I've titled this 'blushing salad', one of the 15 courses I ate at Mugaritz a few weeks ago. It was a pretty little herb and blossom salad on top of a emmentel cheese broth. As I gently moved the leaves to begin eating, the baby vegetables hiding underneath, namely the beetroot moved and tinted the broth this pretty colour. (All the Mugaritz experience to come)

These picture perfect ceps were just sitting on the bar in San Sebastian, Spain.

Fruit jellies in Lyon, France.

This one is for PDC, I think we took more photos of this hill than at the Louvre.

Some jamon with prices in Euros at the La Boqueria market, Barcelona.

Pimms in London...

Wild Strawberries at Cal Pep, Barcelona, just before they were put in the bottom of one of the 'foams'.

Perhaps not a beautiful photo, but a beautiful dish at Gandarias, San Sebastian, Spain. The leg of a suckling pig that was roasted until the skin was crispy and the flesh soft and falling from the bone. Simple delicious food.

Hope you enjoyed them.

Jack

Clafoutis as it should be

Just had to share this image of a market snack the other day, while we were in Lyon.

Clafoutis is a traditional 'pudding' for lack of a better term, it is served in a modern Australian sense with any type of fruit and a cake-style batter poured over the top and baked.

In the traditional sense, as pictured it is black cherries, stones in as they impart their own level of flavour intensity, and the batter is a very basic crepe or pancake batter.

The pictured clafoutis was amazingly texturual with the soft, seasonally beautiful black cherries, the firm yet slightly savoury batter and the seeds to be spat out as you go...

Jack

Fruit Jellies

Aren't these little fruit jellies the prettiest things. They are from a new city store David Medlow Chocolates at 26 Howey Place.
The bit I loved best was that they taste BETTER than they look. My favourite is the green apple, or was it the mandarin, actually perhaps it was the lychee...
Jack