Paper Chef #23 Pistachio and Lime Gazpacho

Pistachio and lime gazpacho with cranberry and apple foam
0.5 cup green onions
3 tablespoon walnut oil
2 tablespoons shelled pistachio
2 tablespoons ground almonds
3 slices crustless white bread soaked in 0.5 cup water
0.5 cup water
1 tablespoon glaced Australian desert limes
1 tablespoon vermouth
1 tablespoon sparkling apple juice
0.5 teaspoon salt, to taste
ground white pepper, to taste
2 teaspoon lemon juice, to taste
apple and cranberry foam (see below)
flowering onion for garnish

Sweat the green onions in 2 teaspoon of oil until softened. Soak the pistachio to remove the skins. Combine all ingredients and blend until smooth. Chill. To serve, spoon cranberry and apple foam over the gazpacho and garnish with flowering onion stalk.

Cranberry and apple foam
0.5 cup vermouth
4 tablespoon dried cranberries
2 tablespoon sparkling apple juice
pinch of salt
pinch of cinnamon
1.5 teaspoon gelatine

Poach the cranberry in vermouth. Add the gelatine. Remove from heat. Puree. Cool. Add sparkling apple juice. Keep in the fridge until ready to use. To make the foam, use either a soda maker or whisk with egg beaters until foaming.

Related Articles:
Paper Chef #23 Celebration in the Heat
Paper Chef #23 Drunken Pickled Pork
Paper Chef #23 Cranberry Sorbet on Ice
Paper Chef #23 Pistachio and Lime Gazpacho
Paper Chef #23 Hangover Pickled Pork Ravioli
Paper Chef #23 Lemon Myrtle Scented Rice Pudding
Paper Chef #23 Spiced Apple and Cranberry Biscotti

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Paper Chef #23 Hangover Pickled Pork Ravioli

Hangover pickled pork ravioli with apple and chives balsamic dressing

1 cup drunken pickled pork, diced
1 cup jellied cranberry stock (from Drunken Pickled Pork)
24 Gow Gee wrappers (from oriental stores)
2 tablespoons chives, finely chopped
4 tablespoons sparkling apple juice
1 tablespoons walnut oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
flowering onion stalk for garnish
pork rind (from Drunken Pickled Pork)

Lay 12 gow gee wrappers on a flat surface. Place pork and jellied stock in the centre of each wrapper. Wet the edge of the each wrapper, cover with remaining wrappers and press to seal. Refrigerate until ready to use.

To make the dressing, pulverize the chives, apple juice, walnut oil and balsamic vinegar in a blender. Chill.

Carefully cook the ravioli for 3-4 minutes in boiling water. Drain and place in serving dishes. Drizzle dressing over. Garnish with flowering onion stalk and strips of pork rind (from Drunken Pickled Pork). If all goes well, the ravioli yields a lovely sauce.



Related Articles:
Paper Chef #23 Celebration in the Heat
Paper Chef #23 Drunken Pickled Pork
Paper Chef #23 Cranberry Sorbet on Ice
Paper Chef #23 Pistachio and Lime Gazpacho
Paper Chef #23 Hangover Pickled Pork Ravioli
Paper Chef #23 Lemon Myrtle Scented Rice Pudding
Paper Chef #23 Spiced Apple and Cranberry Biscotti

Read more...

Paper Chef #23 Cranberry Sorbet on Ice

Cranberry Sorbet on Ice

Cranberry puree (from Drunken Pickled Pork)
0.5 cup sparkling apple juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Sparkling apple granita (from Drunken Pickled Pork) or crushed ice for serving

Mix everything together except the crushed ice. Freeze in an ice cube tray. To make the sorbet, pulverize the frozen cubes in a blender. Return to the freezer until ready for serving. The sorbet can be moulded. To serve, arrange sorbet (scoops, quinelles or moulds) over the crushed ice.

Related Articles:
Paper Chef #23 Celebration in the Heat
Paper Chef #23 Drunken Pickled Pork
Paper Chef #23 Cranberry Sorbet on Ice
Paper Chef #23 Pistachio and Lime Gazpacho
Paper Chef #23 Hangover Pickled Pork Ravioli
Paper Chef #23 Lemon Myrtle Scented Rice Pudding
Paper Chef #23 Spiced Apple and Cranberry Biscotti

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Paper Chef #23 Drunken Pickled Pork

Drunken pickled pork
750 g pickled pork
350 g pork rind
1 cup dried cranberries
4 cups vermouth
2 teaspoon whole mountain pepperberries
4 bay leaves
2 star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon salt, optional
1 tablespoon sugar
1 onion, quartered

Soak the pickled pork in water for 30 minutes. Rinse thoroughly. Combine 3 of the 4 cups of vermouth and all the ingredients in a crock pot. Cook on high for 4 hours until the rind turns gelatinous.

Remove the pickled pork and put in an air tight container with the remaining cup of vermouth. Refrigerate for 2 days before use. Remove the pork from the vermouth marinade when serving.

Strain the cooking liquid. Discard the spent onion, bay leaves and star anise. Save the mountain pepperberries as garnishes if so wish. The rind may be cut into thin strips and eaten like cold jelly fish. The cranberries pulp goes into a sorbet for the next course.

Pour the strained cooking liquid into tall 3 glasses. Cool in the fridge overnight. Skim off the fat for future use in dishes asking for lard. Use the jellied stock as a jelly with the drunken pickled pork dish and in the following ravioli dish.

Sparkling apple granita
Put 2 cups of chilled sparkling apple juice in an ice-cream maker and churned according to manufacturer's instruction. The granita can be made 2-3 days in advance.

Salad
1 cup of jellied stock (from cooking the pickled pork)
4-8 baby cos leaves
2 tablespoon chilled poached dried cranberries
1 tablespoon salted nasturtium pods (homemade from wild plants)
1 tablespoon glaced Australian desert limes
mountain pepperberries for garnish (save from cooking the pork)

Melt 1 cup of the jellied stock in the microwave and pour into a shallow tray. Chill until ready for serving. Cut into cubes just before plating up. This jellied stock may be used warm and melted as a dressing.

To assemble the dish, line a stemmed glass with baby cos leaves. Put in some jelly, chilled poached cranberries, desert limes, mountain pepper berries and salted nasturtium pods. Add a few 0.5 cm slices of drunken pickled pork. Top with sparkling apple granita. Serve immediately.

Related articles:
Paper Chef #23 Celebration in the Heat
Paper Chef #23 Drunken Pickled Pork
Paper Chef #23 Cranberry Sorbet on Ice
Paper Chef #23 Pistachio and Lime Gazpacho
Paper Chef #23 Hangover Pickled Pork Ravioli
Paper Chef #23 Lemon Myrtle Scented Rice Pudding
Paper Chef #23 Spiced Apple and Cranberry Biscotti

Read more...

Paper Chef #23 Celebration in the Heat

PC Category Finalist: Haute

Paper Chef #23 is finally here! Owen at Tomatilla! has selected a celebration theme with some fantastic secret ingredients:
Ingredient 1: Vermouth
Ingredient 2: Cranberries
Ingredient 3: Sparkling drink (of any kind)
Ingredient 4: Something wild

Something wild? Bush foods, like desert limes, lemon myrtle and wattleseed fall into the wild category since they originally grew wild in the outback of Australia. Everything seems too easy, until Noodle Cook's creative mind went really wild. How about using cheap pickled pork to save some money for Christmas giving, such as for the Menu of Hope? Hang on, what is more frugal than pickled pork? Now this is getting really wild... it has to be pork rind!

During the recent trip to Shanghai, Noodle Cook failed to make it to the exclusive Whampoa Club to enjoy the "Modern Shanghai" gastronomic delights of Chef Jereme Leung as a result of crowd crush at the Jin Mao Tower. It was such a shame to travel all this way to the "Bund", only metres across the road... and to be dog sick. For this Paper Chef challenge, Noodle Cook experiments with ideas from Chef Jereme Leung, using pork rind for a good gelatine.

... after many thrills, spills and melt down behind the scene (when the air conditioner died), Noodle Cook presents .... the Cranberry Celebration Menu, a meal to beat the summer heat:

Drunken pickled pork with cranberry jelly and sparkling apple granita
This dish is modelled after Chef Jereme Leung's drunken chicken dish from Shanghai, where the chicken is simmered, and then marinated and chilled in rice wine before serving with rice wine granita. Click here for a version of Chef Jereme's drunken chicken. Go to recipe>>

Cranberry sorbet on ice
A palate cleanser derived from leftover cranberry pulp. Go to recipe>>

Pistachio and lime gazpacho with cranberry and apple foam
The perfect summer soup which uses stale white bread. The fruity foam adds a refreshing touch. Go to recipe>>

Hangover pickled pork ravioli with apple and chives balsamic dressing
Self-saucing ravioli made with jellied stock based on Shanghai's signature dish, "Xiao Long Bao", a dumpling with soup incorporated in minced meat filling. The ravioli makes use of leftovers the day after, hence the name. Go to recipe>>

Lemon Myrtle scented rice puddings with cranberry wine sauce, glaced desert limes, and sparkling apple granita
A smooth custard like dessert made with almond milk base and served with a beautiful fruity red sauce. Go to recipe>>

Spiced apple and cranberry biscotti with wattleseed latte
A coffee substitute with a mildly spiced dunking biscotti. Alas, there was no time left to complete this dish for Paper Chef #23. The idea was to use some of the flavoursome pork fat left over from the Drunken Pickled Pork. For now it's digitally borrowing from last year's Christmas biscotti! The biscotti was cooked the weekend after Paper Chef. Go to recipe>>

The Tasting
Other than the biscotti and latte, what did the dishes taste like? The "drunken" pickled pork, sorbet and the "hangover" ravioli tasted strongly Chinese, like plum sauce with five-spice, and not French. The apple-cranberry flavours combined well, although the cold dishes would not appeal to everyone. The gazpacho tasted wonderful on its own without the foam. The foam melted in the heat, ruining the presentation. The rice pudding worked really well as a hot or cold dessert. There was just a subtle hint of citrus. The texture was incredibly smooth.

Overall, the dishes went well despite the melt down. The preference is for sherry instead of vermouth even though the flavours turned out OK. Perhaps the jellied stock could be better utilized in an aspic jelly dish.

Note:
Every recipe in this challenge contains the required 4 ingredients: vermouth, dried cranberries and/or cranberry sauce, sparkling apple juice, and one or more "wild" ingredients from the list of pork rind, lemon myrtle, mountain pepperberries, desert limes, wattleseed, and salted garden grown nasturtium pods known also as "poor man's capers".

Related Articles:
Paper Chef #23 Celebration in the Heat
Paper Chef #23 Drunken Pickled Pork
Paper Chef #23 Cranberry Sorbet on Ice
Paper Chef #23 Pistachio and Lime Gazpacho
Paper Chef #23 Hangover Pickled Pork Ravioli
Paper Chef #23 Lemon Myrtle Scented Rice Pudding
Paper Chef #23 Spiced Apple and Cranberry Biscotti

Read more...

A Taste of the the Orient

Interesting as they may be, these ingredients make up the traditional Chinese medicine that Noodle Cook needs to take for the next 3 months. Preparation involves boiling the mixture in water into a black gooey mess, a two hour ritual performed to strict instructions. The medicine tastes horrible!

1 Dang Gui - Angelica sinesis
2 Huang Qin - Baikal Skullcap Root (Scutellaria baicalensis)
3 Bai Shao - white dahlia root or white peony
4 Huang Bai - also huang bo, amur cork-tree bark, phellodendron bark (Cortex Phellodendri)
5 Ju he/Gan Ju - Mandarin seeds (Citrus reticulata Blanco)
6 Dan Shen - Salvia root
7 Mu Li - oyster shell (also Duan Mu Li - Calcined oyster shell)
8 Huang Qi - Astragalus root (Radix astragali)
9 Shu di huang - prepared rehmannia/ Sheng di huang - raw rehmannia
10 Huang Lian - coptis rhizome (Coptis chinensis)
11 Li Zhi He - lychee seed (Semen Litchi Chinensis)



12 Xia Ku Cao - prunella vulgaris
13 Ye Ju Hua - chrysanthemum
14 Gan Cao - licorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis)

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Spice Magazine is Hot!

The latest Spice Magazine is out! This is beautifully put together, especially the section on exquisite West Australian tableware, just perfect as Christmas gifts. There are lots of stories on seafood, Western Australian produce, famous chefs and recipes. In this edition, Vince Garreffa (everybody's fav personality butcher) puts together the ultimate Christmas turkey stuffed with 4 other birds. There's a chance to win a quintet turkey by writing to Spice Magazine about a tragic Christmas meal. Get your copy from local newsagents or contact Anthony (the famous "man that cooks") for your taste of Western Australia.

Read more...

Japan and Lands of the Far East

Noodle Cook took off the chef's hat for a couple of weeks of holidays, touring and cruising on board the luxurious "Sapphire Princess", from Japan, to Russia, then South Korea and finally, China.

Life on board the ship was boring with limited internet access since John (the villain in this blog) kept watch to make sure Noodle Cook didn't blow the pennies on non-essentials like emails. At US$0.35 per minute, shipboard internet came at a king's ransom.

What was there left to do? Eat all day long, thanks to 24-hour "Anytime" dining! The ship's kitchens catered for two and a half thousand passengers of many cultural backgrounds.

Here are some show pieces from the ship's main kitchen:

Fruit carving....



Butter sculpture....



Icing craft....



Look at the attention to details! The cubs even have eye lashes.

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Paper Chef #22 Jetset Dish

It's here again, Paper Chef in its 22nd edition! Owen at Tomatilla has named this challege the Slow Edition: "I have been so slow getting to things ... participants can take it slow". There is about a week until NEXT Monday noon (October 16th) to battle for the Paper Chef crown! The secret ingredients list:

1. Barberries
2. Pumpkin
3. Spinach
4. Slow



There is no time for slow cooking, or to dash down to the Middle Eastern store for dried barberries since Noodle Cook has a plane to catch. It's a matter of ransacking the fridge and pantry.

Mildly tart oriental wolfberries seem a suitable substitute for the barberries. There's no spinach in the fridge, so it makes sense to use the left over bok choy before it goes to waste. Balsamic Vinegar of Modena qualifies as the slow ingredient since traditionally, balsamic vinegar takes 12 years to mature.

Non-traditional balsamic vinegar is a blend of red wine vinegar and the "must" (see below) from a traditional balsamic vinegar. It may be aged but most times it is not. In the absence of a certification stamp, the Balsamic vinegar is most likely 95% red wine vinegar with a splash of traditional and some caramel coloring. Here's bit of background on Balsamic vinegar:

From Italian Food. Accessed 9/10/2006.

"Balsamic vinegar can only be produced in the regions of Modena and Reggio in Italy. The first historial reference to balsamic vinegar dates back to 1046, when a bottle of balsamic vinegar was reportedly given to Emperor Enrico III of Franconia as a gift. In the Middle Ages, it was used as a disinfectant. It also had a reputation as a miracle cure, good for everything from sore throats to labor pains. Balsamic vinegar is an aged reduction of white sweet grapes (Trebbiano for red and Spergola for white sauvignon) that are boiled to a syrup. The grapes are cooked very slowly in copper cauldrons over an open flame until the water content is reduced by over 50%. The resulting "must" is placed into wooden barrels and an older balsamic vinegar is added to assist in the acetification. Each year the vinegar is transferred to different wood barrels so that the vinegar can obtain some of the flavors of the different woods. The only approved woods are oak, cherry, chestnut, mulberry, acacia, juniper, and ash."

After last month's disastrous giblet effort, Noodle Cook attempts a much simply dish:



Charred vegetables with balsamic butter sauce, served with lemon myrtle couscous

500g pumpkin
olive oil
2 bok choy plants
1 large red capsicum
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
1 cup couscous
1 cup water
1 lemon myrtle leaf (or substitute lemon zest)
2 tablespoon dried wolfberries, soaked
1 tablespoon quinoa, toasted (or pinenuts)

Par cook the pumpkin in the microwave for 5 minutes. Cool. Peel and remove seeds. Cut into cubes. Drizzle with olive oil and caramelize under a grill.

Char the capsicum under the grill. When cool, peel and slice into thin strips. Drizzle with olive oil. Caramelize in a heavy smoking pan.

Separate the bok choy into leaves. Sear in a very hot oiled pan.

To make the sauce, brown the butter. Remove from heat. Add the Balsamic vinegar. Toss the vegetables in the Balsamic butter.

Serve the charred vegetables over couscous cooked with the lemon myrtle leaf. Sprinkle over the wolfberries and toasted quinoa.



So, with a "burning" desire to succeed, Noodle Cook reaches the finishing line with a delicious dish, simple enough to cook in an open fire just like in the 18th century.

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Paper Chef #21 Results

Finally, the much awaited roundup, and the results! Amongst all the kitchen flames and drama, Judge Ilva suffered the sad loss of her dad.

Noodle Cook's entry went into recovery mode when the intended South African satays turned rubbery and ended up recylced as a rather sweet curry. The chicken giblets were just too hard! In hindsight, it would be easier cooking chicken with a lemon egg sauce and serving with lemon myrtle couscous, and a salad of roasted capsicum dressed with black bean in oil.

Ingredient nominations for the coming competition on Friday, 6 September can be made clicking here.

Read more...