Paper Chef #15, the cooking challenge invented by Owen at Tomatilla, celebrates Valentine Day with the four secret ingredients of beets, pears, lime and aphrodisiacs. For this month, hosts and judges MagicTofu and Fufu at Slurp and Burp offer several fun categories: Super Saver, Indiana Jones, Picasso and Home Cook.
There was no love lost when Noodle Cook's computer went down just before the clock struck 12 midnight at the start of the New Year. The digital camera responded simultaneously in sympathy, with the battery dying....
This Paper Chef entry is an artistic representation of forging a bond, removing the nitty gritty problems and tying a knot in a relationship with a new computer, a Mac Mini, an unwanted baby with umpteen teething problems.
So here is the creation which words do no justice:
Lime jelly and oyster avocado mousse fused together as united hearts, and garnished with onion hearts (flowering stalks with buds) twisted in a knot. A chilled appetizer or cheese course served with a beet root fruit sauce and an oyster flavoured cream.
This is a French style dish which utilises Chinese ingredients like dried oysters, onion hearts, and Chinese celery. Perhaps these Chinese characters (extracted from AltaVista Babel Fish translater) closely describe the message in the dish:
General instructions follow, but please read the tasting notes before trying out the recipe.
Australian Desert Lime Jelly
125 g Australian Desert Limes in syrup
1 teaspoon gelatine
Drain the limes and reserve the syrup. Slice the limes in half. Pick over to remove the gritty seeds. Place the cut halves, cut side down, into ramekins or muffin tins. A flexible silicon try makes unmoulding easier. Warm the reserved syrup (about 1/3 cup). Add the gelatine and stir until dissolved. Gently spoon a little of the gelatine mixture over the lime halves. Tap out the air bubbles. Chill for 15 minutes to ensure the limes stay at the bottom. Add the remaining gelatine mixture to cover the lime halves. Chill until set.
Note: Glaced Australian Desert Limes can be found in selected Dewsons Supermarket or online. These specialty sweetened limes give a fruity, lime and pear aroma.
Avocado Mousse
1 avocado pear, pureed
1 cup yoghurt, drained overnight
1 tablespoon chopped Chinese onion heart stalks
3 tablespoon chopped Chinese celery
2 tablespoon whipping cream
2 tablespoon oyster essence (see below)
2 teaspoon gelatine
Combine pureed avocado, yoghurt and cream. Squeeze the juice from the chopped onion heart stalks and Chinese celery. Save the pulp. Add the juice to the avocado mixture.
Make the oyster essence using the residual herbs following the instruction below.
Add the gelatine to the hot oyster essence and stir till dissolved. Combine the dissolved gelatine with the avocado mixture. Adjust seasoning. Pour over the desert lime jelly, tapping to remove air bubbles. Refrigerate overnight or until set.
Note: For this challenge, the avocado pear acts as a twist to the required pear. Willow (http://www.willow.com.au) supplies the heart-shaped silicon muffin tray.
Oyster Essence
8 dried Chinese oysters
1/2 cup fish aspic (homemade using fish bones, celery, onion, parsley, thyme, lemon myrtle)
Residual herbs from the avocado mousse
1 teaspoon ground lemon myrtle (or kaffir lime leaves)
Soak the oysters in cold water for 1 hour, or until softened. Drain and rinse well. Gently poach the oysters in the fish aspic for 1/2 hour until tender. Top up with water as needed. Add the residual herbs and simmer for 2 minutes. Reduce to 3-4 tablespoon. Add the lemon myrtle. Remove from heat and cool. Strain the liquid for use in the mousse and the oyster cream. Save the oysters for another dish such as pasta with a low fat yoghurt and avocado sauce.
Note: Dried Chinese oysters, the aphrodisiac ingredient for this challenge, makes a cheap alternative to freshly shucked oysters. The amazing dried oysters enlarge to about 5 cm after cooking unlike fresh oysters.
Beetroot Fruit Sauce
1 small beet root (60 g)
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
1 fresh aniseed myrtle leaf (or pinch of aniseed, crushed)
5 mountain pepper berries, crushed (or juniper berries)
1 tablespoon Australian Desert Lime syrup
1/2 cup water or fruit juice, such as pear
1-2 teaspoon white wine vinegar to taste
1-2 teaspoon baby food thickener, optional (Paper Chef #14)
Pulverise everything except the last 2 ingredients in a blender and let stand for at least 15 minutes. Strain through muslin or coffee filter. Adjust with white wine vinegar to taste. Thicken if desired. Chill until ready to serve.
Oyster Cream
1 teaspoon oyster essence
2 tablespoon whipping cream, whipped
Mix well and chill until needed.
Serving
To assemble the dish, carefully remove the mousse and jelly from the mould and place on a serving plate. Pour beet root fruit sauce around. Add drops of oyster cream and run a tooth pick through to create trails of hearts in the sauce. Garnish with knotted onion hearts.
The Taste Test
After many hours of hard work designing the dish, the time has come for tasting. The lime jelly, although a bit stiff, smells and tastes like a combination of pomela, grapefruit and pear. There is a slight bitterness with the sweet and sour taste. The oyster aroma, which is overpowering in the essence, tastes wonderfully subtle in the mousse and works really well with the Chinese celery and onion hearts. The beet root sauce with its earthy taste when freshly made up, mellows on chilling, taking on a fruity quality with a good balance of sweetness and sourness.
With the usual "wow" factor, Noodle Cook's plated up Picasso masterpiece attracted no shortage of guinea pig taster. It was love at first sight, until the first bite.
The first taster enjoyed the mousse and the sauce, but felt the lingering tingling after-taste of the glacé lime, which is a bit like the cooling effect of cumquat and licorice, not pleasant. The next taster launched into the dish expecting a sweet dessert only to be disappointed by the strong oyster flavour of the mousse, although the sauce was enjoyed thoroughly.
It was up to John the Secret Reviewer to deliver the coup de grâce. John thought the dish tasted "quite good" overall, with jelly, mousse and sauce tasting great on their own, without the need for adjustments. However the combined flavours of the whole dish proved too complex and the discordance was really apparent, even after the effort to unify the tastes with the citrus flavours of lime and lemon myrtle. The suggestion was to serve the mousse and the jelly separately.
Needless to say, unlike Indiana Jones' adventure movies on the big screen, Noodle Cook's Paper Chef #15 cooking adventure in the home kitchen stadium did not end romantically. The oysters, the chosen aphrodisiac, did not have any effect on the finally outcome.
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