Melton Mowbray Pie

The good thing about Melton Mowbray is not only that it sounds like a place in Leicestershire, it actually is a place in Leicestershire. It's also modifies the noun 'pie' to make a pie from said town that uses fresh rather than cured pork. The addition of eggs makes it a 'gala' pork pie and if the first thing you thought of was Dali's wife, you'll probably enjoy this.

Melton Mowbray pie has EU Protection of Desginated Orgin protection so this, technically, isn't that.

The model recipe I used is the V-Tol Veal Ham and Egg Pie Recipe, which was made by Gordon Bedson, who also designed aircraft and the Mackson. Anyone like to drive a car built by Nigella Lawson? Didn't think so.

The recipe isn't hard but it does require doing several different things correctly. They are - making a hot water paste, boiling some meat, boiling eggs and making a jelly. The V-tol recipe explains the technical details well.

As I was using fresh pork (a bit of fillet) rather than ham, to bump up the flavour I marinated it for a few hours in white wine and a mix of bay leaf, thyme, parsley, rosemary, juniper berries and peppercorns.

The pork went into a saucepan with the marinade and herbs along with a small rack of veal and a pig's trotter. It was then filled with water to cover and simmered for 30 minutes - skimming as necessary. I kept the veal bones and the pig's trotter in there to make a heartier stock and boost the natural gelatine and simmer for another 30 minutes before filtering in a seive with some paper towel in it and reducing to just two cups.

By this stage you should have a pile of cubed pork and veal. Allow it to cool.

Take the reduced stock and add a leaf of gelatine that you've dissolved in a little heted sherry and white wine (actually it might have been calvados and white wine but I can't remember).

Make the hot paste. It's actually very similar to a choux pastry but with lard instead of butter and no eggs in it. The boiling water/lard combo smells but kneading the warm fluid dough to smoothness is surprisingly relaxing. Roll out and line a greased springform pan with it - reserving some dough for the top of the pie.

Boil the eggs - 10 minutes in boiling salted water and cool them under cold running water to stop the cooking.

So... a covering layer of meat, then encirlce the eggs around the middle and fill with meat. Place pastry on top, seal the edges with a back of a spoon. Decorate suitably with the excess pastry and brush with an egg wash. It's important to make a couple of breathing holes. Put a foil trumpet in them to allow steam to escape while cooking. These holes become useful later.

Place it all in a 200C oven for 80 minutes - just keep an eye on it to make sure the pastry doesn't burn.

Now you just need to pour the stock into the pie via the breathing holes. It'll take a couple of goes as it settles. Leave the pie in the fridge to cool and then serve as part of a low maintenance all meat cold buffet as illustrated below.

Baked Beans at Rottnest

With issue 15 away, I just had a family weekend at Rottnest and I couldn't recommend it more.
It's a rocky outcrop 12 miles off the coast of Perth that's covered with scrub and salt lakes and tiny rat-like kangaroos that shit everywhere.
Accommodation is ex-prison, turn of the century worker's cottage, post-WWII migrant camp, or 1970's unit complex for upper level Soviet bureaucrats. The only vehicles are service vehicles, two police cars and buses. One of them is an aboriginal tour bus and I wonder if they're too polite to mention that under the ground is the bones of their incarcerated ancestors.
Other than that, it's great. Crunchy white beaches just across from the balcony and low 20C sunny winter days.
Friends are next door or just down the road. You can walk or cycle everywhere without having to dice with traffic.
It's village life without the not from round here are you villagers. Dinners are shared, kids play together, drinks start at noon, books are read and windows are looked out of.
What's it like? It's like the idealised caravan park of my youth without the caravan and without the roller rink.
There's a lot of guff about Rottnest being the holiday spot for the average West Australian. It's not. It's actually filled with AB demographic Western Suburbanites slumming it. But it does retain some magic and it's this – holiday spots are now places for resorts or holiday homes. Resorts always feel like someone else's place and holiday homes are now more like the home you have in the suburbs. Get in the car, go to the supermarket, get back in the car. I'm just wondering why they can't create communities like at Rottnest, on the mainland.

Enough of that, here are the baked beans I made.

Baked Beans

2 cups of dried haricot beans
1 stick of celery
1 onion
1 glass of red wine
1 large tin of chopped tomatoes
a handful of chopped speck/pancetta
3 sprigs of thyme

Soak the beans for 5+hours and then cook in lightly salted water for half a hour. Finely dice the onion and celery and chop your speck up into small pieces - about the size of your front tooth (adjust accordingly, if you're a sabre-toothed tiger for example, you may want it a bit smaller - or not. Ooh look out, here's one now
: =
no it's OK, it appears to be dead.)
In a cast iron casserole pot, sauté the bacon over a moderate heat until slightly golden. Then add the onion and sauté for a couple of minutes, then add the celery and sauté until soft. Add the beans and mix well. Add the glass of wine, bring it to the boil and stir for a minute or so and then add the tin of tomatoes and mix well.
Leave to simmer uncovered until reduced to a sticky consistency or put it in a 150C oven to a similar point.
Season and serve on thin slices of toasted white bread.

Tajine

You can stop blurry photos like the above with a tripod, which is a three-legged thing. It's interesting to note that there are few naturally occurring three-legged things.*

Tajines, and stop me if you've heard this before, refer to both the lidded slow cooking dish and the slow-cooked braise that's cooked in it. English is reluctant to accept such ambiguity and if you've ever almost eaten a toaster, you'll know why.

There are more than a few recipes for a tajine but I really like adding dried, or fresh, fruit such as chopped apricots, figs, sultanas and dates. I also like using lamb necks but shanks and diced mutton also works well. They all just melt together; you can't identify the apricots and if you cook it long enough, you'll just have to fish out a few bones.

It's not dissimilar to a curry. The basic process is sautee the onions in olive oil /stir/ add the spices /stir/ add the meat and seal, then whatever fruit and veg you're using /stir/ then the stock /stir/ and cook very slowly for a few hours with the lid on.

For spices I usually use a couple of tablespoons of ras al hanout and add a few strands saffron with the stock; meat - as mentioned; fruit - ditto; vegetables - usually diced sweet potato and then a tin of chopped tomatoes and soaked chickpeas but yes they're pulses; enough stock - not so much to cover as to keep it all moist when lidded.

The spices are really only so much riffage on cumin and if you grind it fresh, you'll not go wrong. Cinnamon quill? Why not.

You can add some chopped coriander at the end to lift it as well as some chopped and roasted almonds.

Another technique is to marinate the meat overnight in a combination of the spices, olive oil, a finely grated onion, and a bunch of chopped coriander and then add the lot to the pan. Seal the meat and then move to the adding the fruit and vegetables stage.

The complete dinner was home made olives, kofta and kangaroo kebabs cooked over charcoal, lots of lebanese bread, hommous, yoghurt, and the tajine with mograbieh and a beetroot salad. Tasty cheese platter and delicious homemade apple pie made an appearance. Myatt's Field do a very nice tempranillo and eating the meal took the good part of five hours. Hot topics were iPods and children.

*I'll acknowledge that ants have two sets of three legs.

Stuff about eel

Unagi looks like the hiragana character for 'U' in Japanese, making it a handy mnemonic. There's no equivalently useful food in English.
There's a special day reserved in Japan for eating stamina-giving eel, which I referred to as 'unagi day' but is in fact called doyo no ushinohi. If you wanted to make a joke, you could call it doyo no ushirohi, which is eel buttocks day, which is actually pretty funny. This site not only has much more information but also has an amazing number of tiny gif characters.
There's a handy hole punch like thing that you use to nail the eel's head on a board so you can fillet it.
In a three stage process the eel is grilled, steamed and grilled again.
This removes much of the eel fat, which instead drips down onto hot charcoal and is transformed into smells. Tasty ones.
Above is an unagi donburi (or unagi don (or unaju-). It's grilled eel with a sweet teriyaki style sauce on rice.
Japanese don't use teriyaki to anywhere near the extent that we've been led to believe they do.
The rice has been mixed with a kind of sushi vinegar, which was sugar, rice vinegar and dashi. It's also good plain.
The black things are soft konbu furikake.
I bought the eel ready-to-go at Seafresh in Innaloo.
Yes it is on the floor, but they're nice floorboards, no?

OBSERVATION Has this blog got skinnier or have screens become wider? Because there's like all this space on the sides.

The Gurniad gaurds the Gurdian

As the first forkful of scampi sidled gingerly into his mouth, my friend's head snapped still in surprise, then began to oscillate gently in ecstatic bemusement. "I can't believe it," he whispered. "I didn't give the place a chance. When the waitress said, 'Is there anywhere you'd like to sit?' I wanted to say Melbourne. Or Belmarsh. Anywhere but here. This is bizarre."

Firstly, forkfuls of scampi don't sidle any more than turds flush; angrily or no. Secondly, what's wrong with his friend's head? Thirdly, 'ecstatic bemusement'?; was 'hysterical contemplation' busy that week? Fourthly, friends don't let friends become esprit d'escalier proxies. Fifthly, an unexpectedly good restaurant is a 'nice surprise'. Bizarre is a Fortean stick mag for gothy youth.

It wanks on and on (with erratic repetitiveness) and the world of dining, and indeed the entire world, is a worse place for it. I'll now sigh in a disappointed fashion.

How to taste like Kylie Kwong

Congrats are due to Kylie Kwong who's to be wed to Julie Gibbs, if Zoe is correct (and I've no reason to think she isn't). In a burst of presentimentality on Monday, I made one of her rock lobster* dishes. It's classic Kwong and this is handy to know.

For example, when jamming, it's made significantly more productive when you have the convenience of going - "How about something that goes 'chug chug beedle dee'?" and then ... magic. This level of shorthand doesn't work for everyone so for blaggers, bludgers, cadgers and scrumpers there's always the 'how to sound like X' [where X='name of band' rather than X=X necessarily]. Early Beatles sound - G F C; Judas Priest sound - G D C; Indie Variant sound: Judas Priest + E minor; Black Sabbath sound - C D E G; and that's plenty for any promising young band.

As a helpful guide, here's how you taste like like Kylie Kwong

Take seafood
place in a plate with chinese rice wine, stock and ginger
SPECIAL INVISIBLE STEP steam
put seafood on a plate, drizzle cooking juices, add soy, sesame oil and sugar.
Pour a small amount of hot oil over the plate,
garnish with coriander leaves,
and serve.

Now off you go.
Next month: Heston Blumenthal - like Stereolab, but tasty.

*aka crayfish aka red beauties aka like pheasants in that someone drops you around a couple

Issue 13 of SPICE

Ooh issue 13 of SPICE - Western Australia's only non-lifestyle magazine. Cracking cover photo by Craig Kinder of Riki Kaspi of Blakes Cafe in Mt Lawley.

I'm still riding the roller coaster of emotions in making a mag from 'I don't think I can do this' to ' when will this issue ever be finished' to 'if I could just spend a few quiet days with my playstation and not think about it' before soaring to 'well that's a pretty cool issue but I wish I'd done a better job on the headlines'. Like most things worth doing, it's interminably frustrating but ultimately rewarding involving good people and a large amount of laughs.

This issue is filled with good but my particular fave is Vince's heartfelt terror of deep frying a whole turkey going horribly wrong and that we've hit the magical sweet spot between Gourmet Traveller and the Countryman. You can also play 'spot my daughter' - it's a bit trickier this time.

It'd be remiss of me not to suggest that a subscription would make an ace christmas present for the food lover(s) in your family and that this presents the opportunity to win a holiday for two in Mauritius, staying in the 5 star Constance Le Prince Maurice resort - wooh!

A sauce for pasta

what a salmon and cream pasta might look like were it a pig-shaped mosquito coil burner

Olive oil, thinly sliced clove of garlic, two slices of chopped smoked salmon, juice of half a lemon, splash of sherry, finely chopped rind of a lemon and a handful of fennel leaves, 200ml of cream, and pepper. In that order in about 30 second intervals in a frypan. Mix in with linguine with parmesan cheese. Ain't rocket science but you'll like it.

Oh and facking right-wing Labor hacks:

Before I forget

venison pate with sourdough baguette and olives

mashed potato and hazelnut pesto with black pig prosciutto, asparagus and broad beans

duck, forest mushroom and chinese greens risotto

2002 Peacetree Cabernet Sauvignon in a Bulgarian crystal decanter

tart fine aux pommes

local cheeses with oatcakes and fennel crackers

laphroaig quarter cask with ice



Further notes:
Duck, being fatty, doesn't really lend itself well to poaching but I thought I'd try and squeeze out a bit more stock for the risotto regardless. White wine, duck stock, peppercorns and thyme. Duck legs removed and then fried in leftover lard until crisp and then shredded. Using the soaking liquid for the mushrooms also provides additional stock.

Gabrielle Ferron's risotto packet recommends a no-stir 15 minute technique and I have to agree to the point where I'm convinced that the whole stirring thing is an artifact of Italian patriachy.

Just the shiny green inner pods of the broadbeans. Blanched and then reheated in olive oil with some of the prosciutto. I ended up paying $10 a kilo for them because I was chatting with the farmer and he forgot to give me my change and I was too polite to ask.