Just Add Duck Fat

Veal paprikash with spinach gnocchi

I’m colour blind. It’s true. A sin inherited from the mother, my fickle X-chromosome refuses to let me produce the cone photoreceptors to pick up green. Instead, that part of the visible spectrum is a smear between red and blue. So, probably, my green is your purple. Has that blown your mind?

This explains why, in a visual sense I’ve always been drawn to strong colour contrasts. I’ve literally had to teach myself a new code of colour matching to replace my instincts, so that my ties do not cause waves of sartorial offence when I walk in a room.

A paprikash is awash with smoked or sweet Hungarian paprika, and always comes out a vibrant red. Traditionally, it is paired with potato or an egg pasta/ dumpling hybrid called nokedli. But I wanted green, god dammit! Look at that contrast!

These gnocchi are a little revision on traditional potato gnocchi, rounded out with chopped spinach and a little ricotta. Now, unlike the severely prescribed proportions of pastry, savoury dishes are more forgiving. I have therefore given only approximate proportions for the gnocchi do. You need to judge by feel. In particular, the amount of flour you need is going to be proportionate to the water content of your potato mash. The more water you get out, the less gluey the dough. You want just enough flour to let you be able to knead the dough and work it without it breaking apart. Just a little bit of elasticity, in other words. If you put too much flour in, your little pillows will be quite dense.

The best part of making gnocchi is how the little fuckers float to the surface when they are ready. This is a fact.

Ingredients

Veal paprikash

• veal neck, diced
• brown onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• oil
• 1 red capsicum (bell pepper) diced
• veal stock
• a fuckload of paprika (around 3 Tsp for 500g meat)
• dash of cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper
• sour cream to finish

Spinach gnocchi

• 500g floury potato (eg: desiree), peeled
• about 100g plain flour
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp salt
• pinch of pepper
• 50g frozen spinach, chopped fine
• 100g ricotta

Instructions

1. First the paprikash. Season the meat. In a flat bottomed pan, brown the meat, in batches if necessary, in hot oil until browned. Not gray. Brown. Set aside.
2. Brown the onions and garlic in a deep pot with oil. Add the peppers, and cook until softened.
3. Add the meat, paprika and stock. Lightly season - this reduces considerably and you don’t want to oversalt. Add the cayenne.
4. Cook for 3-4 hours until the meat is very tender.
5. Remove from heat and stir in a tablespoon of sour cream. Adjust seasoning.
6. Now the gnocchi. Boil the potatoes in salted water. Mash, preferably using a potato flourer. Allow the stam to escape for a bit, to bring out some of the water. Season.
7. Work in half the flour. Add the egg and ricotta. Work the dough.
8. Flour a surface, then throw the dough on and add the rest of the flour, a bit at a time. Give the dough a good kneading. You want to aim for somewhere between the texture of mashed potato and proper bread dough. Once you’ve got it right, mix the chopped spinach in.
9. Break off little balls, and roll them out on a floured surface into long sausages. Use a fork or knife to cut the sausages into little pillows.
10. Boil water. Add the gnocchi. After a couple of minutes, give the bottom a scrape to make sure they are not sticking. When they float to the top, skim out and drain.
11. Serve paprikash on top of gnocchi. Garnish with another dab of sour cream.

Serve with a Chianti Classico

lelbondsai asked: Are you a yardie abroad? Because your curry goat hit pretty close to home! And going so far as to call it the national dish which it pretty much is!

No yardie roots - I’m a born and bred Aussie! Have a real passion for world cuisines and like to try my hand at everything. This was my first time cooking goat :)

I have been to Jamaica though, and sampled curry goat, jerk, saltfish, breadfruit, etc……so I had a bit of an advantage.

Seared scallops, corn and leek puree, pancetta

I have written before of my love of the scallop. No other type of seafood so perfectly finds a counterpoise of texture and flavour. Each salty-sweet pillow exactly the size of a single bite. The ocean is there, but it does not overwhelm the palate like the briney-creamy oyster can. Soft flesh resists the teeth slightly before yielding; not for the scallop the chew of calamari or mussels.

This sweetness, and delicacy of texture, throw up a few obvious choices to harmonise or contrast. Sweet vegetables work well, such as peas or beetroot. Cauliflower puree is a classic partner. Crunchy or firm savoury saltiness also sings out with a scallop if not overdone: hence the success of bacon, boudin noir, or even duck. For this dish I thought that the sweetness of corn might work. I prepared it with leek softened in butter to add some bite behind the sugar, and rounded the puree out with cream. Crunchy pancetta and spears of asparagus round out the textural contrast.

The key, by the way, to perfectly cooked scallops is to sear very quickly over a very high heat, so always use an oil with a very high smoking point such as peanut, grapeseed, ghee or, of course, duck fat.

Ingredients

• scallops, de-roed
• asparagus spears
• corn kernels, frozen
• leek, diced finely
• 1 garlic clove, diced finely
• butter
• cream
• chives, chopped
• pancetta, thinly sliced, oven-roasted until cripsy, then crumbled into porky salty shards
• salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Pan fry with butter the leek and garlic over medium high heat until well softened.
2. Add corn and fry for 3 minutes more.
3. Add cream, and cook another 3 minutes.
4. Puree. Adjust seasoning. You can add a little more cream at this point if too solid. If too liquid, return to pan and reduce down.
5. Blanch asparagus. Season.
6. Sear scallops over high heat. 90 sec on first side. 30 sec the second. Drain on paper to remove excess oil.
7. Plate scallops over dollops of corn puree. Asparagus between scallops. Garnish with pancetta and chives.

Enjoy with an Alsatian pinot gris.

davidtinter asked: Adam - do you plan to add the occasional JADF-esque post on your quest for the perfect whiskey? Yours was the most cleverly written and beautifully photographed epicurean blog I came across on this site. - David

Appreciate the compliment very much, David. It’s an odd experience writing for what is essentially an anonymous audience, isn’t it? Nice to get positive feedback.

I hope to ramp up posts in both blogs. Work and the world has gotten the better of me in recent months, and I have let things slip.

In the meantime, let me commend to you the Goldrush, if you can find a well made example. Rye, lemon, bitters and honey. I will post a review of one I had the pleasure of drinking at a friend’s bucks shortly.

Tajine de Moules

Apologies, food fetishists, for my prolonged absence from the blog. Life has a habit of getting in the way of even the most beloved of projects. I have not been cooking so much as I used to, nor have I been taking the effort to photograph and document the results. This recipe was cooked over two months ago, and has since languished on the hard drive. Time to get it out there!

I have written before about my great love for this humble bi-valve. Not only is it easy to cook, but the chewy, sweet-salty flesh of the mussel lends itself easily to the marriage of a multitude of flavours, from the Mediterranean to the Asian part of the palate palette. The  rich liquor that precipitates out of mussels as they cook fuses with the spices and herbs you have used, to leave a savoury, slightly briny sauce at the bottom of your pot. The best part of any bowl of mussels is soaking up these juices with some crusty bread.

This recipe marries the aromatics of Moroccan cuisine with the mussels. They taste better if you cook them in a tagine rather than a pot. I don’t know why. Eating while wearing a fez is strictly optional. 

I don’t, by the way, subscribe to the theory that mussels that haven’t opened during the cooking process are bad and shouldn’t be eaten. These are, in fact, the stronger more vigorous mussels that are trying hardest not to be eaten. Pry them open like a tricky pistachio, give them a quick sniff (believe me: if they’re off, you will know!!) and munch that sucker down.

Ingredients

• mussels, scrubbed and debearded (1kg feeds 2-3 people)
• eschallots, diced
• garlic, minced
• olive oil
• cherry tomatoes, halved
• Sicilian olives
• fresh coriander, chopped
• white wine, dry
• preserved lemons, chopped coarsely
• dash of paprika

Instructions

1. Sweat the onions and garlic in the bottom of a tagine (or a pot, if you must) with the oil until translucent.
2. Deglaze with a glug of white wine. Add the tomatoes and paprika.
3. Let the tomatoes soften for 5 minutes or so.
4. Add the preserved lemon and olives. Throw in the mussels. Put the lid on, and don’t remove for 5 min.
5. Check on your crustaceans. Steam should puff out of the tagine, and the mussels should be just open. Do not overcook or you risk chewy bi-valves.
6. Top with coriander, and serve up with bread.

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Twice-cooked veal tongue with port and black truffles

To many, eating tongue holds the same level of revulsion as such offal oddities as kidney, bone marrow and blood sausage. More fools them, I say, but at any rate, why the repulsion? Tongue is just a muscle, like any other ‘conventional’ meat cut. But it does work hard for the money, so you need to cook the bejesus out of it so it doesn’t end up with the texture of your old pair of Doc Marten’s from your days as an emo.

Poached and then braised like this, it ends up melt-in-the-mouth tender. It does, I admit, still have a strong rich flavour, and is best accompanied with something tangy, sweet or both. Hence, I think, the traditional kosher beef tongue slathered with mustard and sauerkraut.

Give it a go - you might just love it.

By the way, I’m not sure what the vegetable garnish is. Hosko calls it ‘Chicken weed’ and it grows out by the back shed. He feeds it to the chickens, but swears it is safe for human consumption. Slightly bitter and nutty, and actually not bad. Forage away.

Ingredients

• one veal tongue, unsalted
• 3L court-bouillon (a light vegetable stock made with carrot, onion and celery)
• 1 brown onion, diced
• 1 leek, diced
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 garlic cloves
• 100g butter
• 75mL port
• splash of balsamic vinegar
• black truffles (optional)

Instructions

1. Bring the court-bouillon to a light simmer with the bay leaves and garlic.
2. Turn the heat all the way down until the pot is just simmering. Add the tongue and a large pinch of salt.
3. Simmer for 45 min or so, until very tender.
4. Remove, wait to cool, and peel the membrane off the tongue. Slice thinly.
5. Saute onion and leek in the butter. Add the tongue, port and vinegar. Braise for 15-20 min over low heat. Adjust the sauce to taste - you can add more from the court-bouillon if it is too intense. Don’t overdo the vinegar.
6. Serve with the sauce, garnished with truffle and chicken weed.

Serve with a red burgundy.

Hosko’ s bouillabaisse

What makes for an authentic bouillabaisse? There are as many answers to this as there are Frenchmen in Marseille. It is said that you cannot make a proper bouillabaisse outside of the Mediterranean, and this perhaps has as much to do with differences in size limits between Australia and France, as differences in species. The fish I saw being cooked into bouillabaisse in Provence would have been thrown back into the ocean as too small. In France, the small fish are tossed into the stew pot head, guts and all, before being pulverised and strained. Graphic.

My readings tell me that a real bouillabaisse should at least contain the local Mediterranean fish rascasse, grondin and congre. I don’t know where to begin on Antipodean equivalents, but the key is to include the bones and head  of the fish to produce a rich and fishy stock. The other key ingredients to get the flavour right are saffron, tomato and aniseed (traditionally Pernod, but I prefer fresh fennel). After a long stew process with the base vegetables, the results are smashed to smithereens in a powerful blender making an apocalyptic noise and producing an unholy mess, as seen below:

This foul looking mess is strained through muslin (or brand new Chux) to produce beautiful red piscine soup. You then use this soup to poach the seafood and fish you want to serve with it. You can use literally anything - for this recipe we chose chunks of fresh snapper and a prawn mousse, but I would also use whole prawns, scallop, crab, mussels and any combination of fish. It is a spectacular showstopper of a stew, and makes a great main for summer.

The soup is traditionally eaten with crusty bread slathered in a spicy saffrony mayonnaise called rouille. Formidable.

Thanks for this recipe goes to my mate Hosko down in Kitchen Laboratory Austinmer, who ought to get most of the credit, even if I did have to fill in some of the blanks as he is yet to supply me with all of the ingredients and steps for the recipe. Surfie slacker.

Ingredients

Fish stew

• a few kg of whole fish (gutted) - for Australia I would go with salmon, perch and leatherjacket
• prawn heads (save the flesh for the prawn mousse)
• tinned tomatoes
• onion, diced
• garlic, minced
• carrot, diced
• celery, diced
• leek, chopped
• fennel, chopped
• olive oil
• tomato paste
• bay leaf
• fennel seeds, ground
• sprig parsley, chopped
• generous pinch of saffron
• zest of 1 orange
• a few liters of water or fish stock to cover
• cracked pepper and salt - do not overseason, as you can correct later

Prawn mousse

• prawn meat, decapitated, disembowelled and de-tailed
• 150mL cream
• 3-4 egg whites
• salt and pepper

Rouille

• 2 whole red capsicum, roasted, peeled and de-seeded
• 2 large potatoes, peeled and parboiled
• 2 egg yolks
• generous dollops of olive oil
• dash of cayenne pepper
• small pinch of saffron
• 6 garlic cloves, put in hot water, bring to the boil, drain, and repeat twice

Instructions

1. First the stew. Sweat the vegetables and garlic in the olive oil in a large pot until well softened.
2. Add the remaining ingredients, making sure there is enough liquid to cover.
3. Bring to a very gentle simmer for 6 hours or so.
4. In small batches, pulverise (bones and all) in a powerful blender. Drain through a colander lined with muslin into a pot. Give the draining a good 30 min or so to get all the goodness.
5. Bring the soup back to a gentle simmer, and correct seasoning.
6. The prawn mousse is made by blending the prawn and egg whites until it begins to solidify, and then season lightly and drizzle in a small amount of cream. Do not overblend. 
7. Hosko cooked his mousse in an oven with bain-marie at around 150C for about 8 min, but I think you might be better off poaching quenelles of the mousse in the soup along with the fish. Up to you.
8. Blend the rouille ingredients, leaving the olive oil to last and drizzling slowly in to form an emulsion. Adjust seasoning.
9. Poach the fish and prawn quenelles in the simmering soup, remove and set aside.
10. Serve each guest a bowl of soup with seafood placed back inside, with a side of crusty bread garnished with big dollops of rouille.

Fettucine with black truffle

Here begins a series of posts on recipes cooked and consumed down in Kitchen Laboratory, Austinmer with Hosko, who is an accomplished chef, forager, skin-diver and brewer, and is soon to embark on his new journey as a mushroom cultivator.

Hosko had somehow sourced three examples of Tuber melanosporum, or the prized black Perigord truffle, which is now being commercially cultivated in Tasmania. The smell of fresh truffle is utterly ineffable. It cannot be adequately described. It is musky and earthy, yet sweet. It is pungent and brutishly strong, and yet in the mouth becomes subtle, elegant and feminine. Like the fiendish durian fruit, the contribution to taste is far better than the aroma alone. My lesson on cooking with it this weekend, was the less you accomapny it with, the better. Let the truffle be the star.

The scent will permeate fats and starches, so a tip is to store the truffle in an airtight container with eggs, butter, pasta or rice for a week. These will soak up the smell and can then be cooked with. I found eggs to be particularly satisfactory in this regards. The smell of truffle will cross the eggshell and soak into the yolk.

This simple pasta dish utilises eggs that have been stored in this way, topped off with thin shavings of the tuber itself.

Ingredients

• fettucine
• ‘truffled’ eggs (allow 1 1/2 per person)
• Parmesan or pecorino cheese
• fresh truffle to shave (optional)
• salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta in hot water until al dente.
2. In the meantime, beat the eggs in a bowl.
3. Drain the pasta, then toss with the raw egg mix. Like a carbonara, the steaming hot pasta will cook the egg coating.
4. Cover with finely grated cheese and seasoning. Toss.
5. Finish with a few very thin shavings of truffle.

Definitely to be enjoyed with a fragrant pinot noir.

Goose roulade

This is not a bird I had tackled before, so of course it was the sort of challenge I had to set for myself when cooking lunch for 12 people. What could go wrong? Suffice to say, while deboning the bird at 8am with a slight hangover, I was having second thoughts. Goose, ain’t rank, but it is a little……gamy.

The issue with roasting a bird of large size is that it tends to cook unevenly, often leaving you with dry wingtip and breast meat to ensure the dark meat and stuffing is adequately cooked. This method is quite nifty: deboning and making a roulade of the goose ensures the bird cooks quite evenly. The skin comes out super crispy, with juicy flesh within.

Unless you fancy hacking your way through a goose carcass with a razor sharp deba and a head slowly shaking off Islay single malt, get your butcher to debone the bird for you.

I supply cooking instructions using an oven, although I instead went the sous vide route. Total cooking time will depend on the size of your bird. You will need a meat thermometer. 

(I cooked my 2.5kg (after deboning) bird sous vide for 2 hours at 80C, then deep-fried it, which was perfect. Another victory for boiling hot oil.) 

Ingredients

• 1 goose, deboned
• 2 Italian pork sausages, filling squeezed out
• prunes
• tinned chestnuts
• sage
• salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 190C.
2. Lay your bird on its back. 
3. Fill centre in a line with sausage meat, prunes, chestnuts and sage. Season.
4. Roll into a cylinder, and secure with twine.
5. Season outside.
6. Roast covered for 25 min/kg, basting occasionally, or until internal temperature is 60C.
7. Uncover, and turn up to 250C. Roast another 15 minutes, or until internal temperature is 70C.
8. Rest for 20 minutes.
9. Carve and serve.