nickrey

Off to the fish markets now. Back with pictures soon.

The interest waxes and wanes. If they do cook something, however, they have very good basic skills and a comfort with cooking that I suspect comes from watching me cook.

Hi Bruce, nice to see you dropping in. Lets' work through the recipes. I'm not good on specifying quantities as I do most things by eye, so you may have to improvise a bit. First, the soup. 2 cups chicken stock. 2 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced 2 tbsp sliced lemongrass around 15 straw mushrooms Bird's eye chillis to taste (I used two very hot ones), finely sliced 3 tbsp lime juice 4 tsp fish sauce 1 large piece fresh turmeric (put this between paper towels and smash it hard with the side of your knife to break it up) 2 shallots, cut lengthwise against the rings into thin slices 1 Coriander root and part of stem, chopped. 200g fish, cubed Palm sugar to taste Bring chicken stock to boil. Add all ingredients except the fish sauce, sugar, and lime juice. Simmer for a few minutes until fish is starting to look cooked. Add fish sauce, sugar, and lime juice. Taste and adjust each of these components until the broth is sweet/sour/salty/hot. To serve, top with coriander leaves. The duck salad. One duck breast Lime juice, Fish Sauce, Chopped Bird's eye Chilli, and Palm Sugar (for dressing in the ratio 3:2:2:1). Taste and adjust to your preference. 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 2 bunches mint, leaves picked off and washed. 2 shallots, cut lengthwise against the rings into thin slices 3 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced a 7 cm/3 inch piece of lemongrass, finely sliced 2 cm/1 inch piece of galangal. Peeled and finely sliced 1 lebanese cucumber, peeled and finely sliced (I use a vegetable peeler or mandoline to do this) Cherry tomatoes, halved, to serve. Pre-heat oven to 180C/350F Season the duck breast with salt and pepper, place in cold pan skin side down and turn heat to high. Let fat render for a while, turn and cook on other side for a few minutes. Place frypan (make sure it's heat proof) in oven until duck is cooked to your preference. Mix salad ingredients together in bowl. Place on serving tray. Finely slice duck and place on salad. Serve with dressing in separate jug so people can dress it themselves. Paneang Prawns Sufficient prawns for the number of people you are serving (we had four each). 3/4 cup coconut milk 3 tbsp Panaeng curry paste (I had home-made using David Thompson's recipe) 2 kaffir lime leaves cut into chiffonade handful of basil leaves, coarsely sliced. 2 tbsp unsalted cashew nuts, crushed in mortar and pestle tbsp fish sauce 8-10 lychees. Grill the prawns until just done. Heat the coconut milk until simmering, add curry paste and stir until well combined. Add all other ingredients except basil and heat through. Add basil leaves just before serving. Place prawns on serving plate, pour the sauce over. Garnish with additional basil leaves or other greens (I used coriander). Hope you enjoy them.

There's some serious eating there Chris. I hope you'll be reviewing the restaurants here as you go to them. Be interested in your views.

That may be a lunch thing or what you ordered. We were there the other night and none of the dishes could be called cool. Moreover, Brent Savage seems to deliberately add textural elements to the dishes so I'm not sure where the "silky smooth" comment comes from (in my experience, yours may have been completely different). Given the price for what you get, as you remarked, may I recommend a visit in the evening? It could move your opinion up a notch.

I'm not sure that you need to grow up around good food to "get it" but I don't think there is a good chef on earth who doesn't know how to eat, taste, and appreciate good food. What Ripert may be talking about is knowing and understanding a style of food as easily as you understand the language. This is useful but often leads to dogmatism and a lack of creativity.

I'm not sure it's one individual thing but rather the combination of a number of technically challenging processes that always gives me the most grief. Working in a home kitchen and making the things that are marked "don't try this at home" is always an indicator of challenge. The first dish I made out of Greg Doyle's Pier cookbook was a Blanquette of John Dory and Ginger with Crab Ravioli. The process involved making fish stock, a vegetable nage, a frothed ginger veloute, home made pasta for the crab ravioli, and then combining the lot into the final dish. Great if you've got a kitchen brigade; more difficult if you're doing it all yourself on a tight time frame.

As I said above, tonight's dinner takes us back to Thailand. These are the ingredients for tonight's dinner. More a stack than a mise en place but you get the idea. The first dish we had was a Phuket style fish soup with fresh turmeric, lemon grass, and kaffir lime leaves: Pla Tom Kha Mine. Unfortunately, try as I may, I couldn't entice the fish to float rather than sink so you'll have to imagine the goodness sitting further down the bowl. The second dish was a Spicy southern style grilled duck salad with aromatic Thai herbs: Laab Ped Yang. The final dish was Char grilled prawns in Paneang curry sauce with sweet basil, kaffir lime leaves, and lychees: Ghoong Yang Paneang. As it was getting late, we did not have the duck salad. This is going to be eaten for lunch tomorrow by my kids who are coming up from Canberra and will participate in tomorrow night's dinner.

Back off to Thailand tonight. Going to do Duck Laab, Phuket style fish soup, and Paneang Curry prawns. Tomorrow when I've got a bit more time will be more a trip around the world. Haven't finished planning menu yet and it does depend on what's fresh. Also, because of strong interest will go to fish markets early tomorrow to take photos.

The emphasis add to the above quote is mine. It means that while they didn't add any MSG to the chicken salt, MSG can naturally occur in some soy and wheat products during processing. So while they truthfully didn't add any MSG, MSG could still be present in the chicken salt. It's a quasi-CYA thing on their part. This makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

I haven't heard this. Perhaps one of our other Sydney eGulleters can help us out. This review suggests it may be Fishmongers that you are talking about. I'm not sure how they do their chips. Mine followed Heston Blumenthal's method.

I promised you more of a review of Bentley Restaurant and Bar than a snapshot fest, so here it is. Bentley is officially a restaurant and bar and it has the casual and laid back feeling one would expect in such a setting. The refurbishment, which was guided by award-winning Melbourne designer Pascale-Gomes McNabb, certainly sets the scene for the dining and wine experience that followed. From the time we arrived until we left, we felt looked after without the staff being obtrusive in any way. They greeted us in a professional and welcoming manner and this style extended throughout the whole meal. The tables are well spaced which gives a feeling of privacy in a public space. You can choose to interact with others or have a romantic dinner for two, which a number of people around us were doing. We did interact with nearby diners commenting mutually on the lovely food, but didn't interrupt the couples. As noted above I had the degustation menu while my wife chose an entree and main course combination. Rather than leave her sitting without anything while I went through my multiple course extravaganza, they were kind enough to provide her with an additional appetiser, which I also tried. This was the smoked eel parfait with white soy dressing and seaweed that features in their recently released cookbook. It's on my list of dishes to try making. The food is best described as multi-layered in its taste and texture profile. For example, we both had the ocean trout with ocean trout mousse and fennel pollen. in this dish, the mousse seemed to have a curry flavour that added an extra taste level into the dish without overwhelming it. The beetroot in the beetroot with horseradish and soy beans dish was loaded with flavour and I thought at first that it had been vacuum infused with extra beetroot juice. It turned out that it was created by combining a puree with a hydrocolloid to make a gel like texture. This was then formed into a sphere in plastic and cooked in a water bath. The product looked like a baby beetroot, had a very strong beetroot taste, but had a softer texture than you'd expect from this root vegetable. Texture contrast was provided by kale, which was pickled in salt and vinegar in an almost sauerkraut or Kim chee style. Additional flavours were provided by confit garlic that had become soft and sweet. Like all the dishes, the combination worked with the flavours resonating of each other to give a very satisfying whole. For those who have been asking about Australian ingredients, the pork belly course was served with an accompaniment of wattle seeds which provided both part of the taste profile as well as a texture contrast. Rather than being confronting as can be the case with chefs using modernist cuisine, Brent Savage has been very clever by presenting meals that are recognisable as more conventional cuisine while still making full use of modernist techniques to achieve his desired outcomes. We chatted afterwards and he commented that he has had some dishes that people did find confronting, such as sous vide cooked fish with a flaky texture but only lukewarm serving temperature. As has been commented on in the sous vide thread, this can be confronting even for our omnivorous eGulleters so I can see it being equally if not more so for general diners. The wine matches were superb and ranged from an organic Sake (made by a female artisan sake maker) that my wife had with her additional appetiser through German spaetlese Riesling to a very enjoyable Adelaide hills Shiraz. The wines matched the dishes superbly; for example, a quite acidic Spanish rose was served with the pork belly. This had the effect of cutting through the fat and richness of the dish. I had the optional cheese course which comprised creamed stilton served with spice bread and cumquat. The dish reminded me in mouth feel of muesli with yoghurt that I have eaten in the Greek isles. The mousse tasted subtly of Stilton rather than it dominating, which was ideal at this stage of the meal. The presentation was outstanding across the board; for example, the duck breast was served sliced as overlapping triangles. This was draped over the accompanying cuttlefish and mushroom. The effect was both visually appealing and easy to eat, unlike some of the complex towers that can be found in some high temples of modernist cuisine. The use of cuttlefish in this dish worked well, creating something like a "Dock and Loch" as opposed to a "Surf and Turf." In all, I'd recommend Brent Savage's cooking wholeheartedly. Although sometimes the label “molecular cook” or “modernist cook” can be a double edged sword, his very clever and artistic use of all cooking styles means that he is not a one-trick pony. The food is matched with equal passion by Nick Hildebrant's eclectic choices of beverages. The combination of the two with attentive but unobtrusive service made for a truly memorable experience. We will definitely return.

Dinner tonight was somewhat less elaborate. Because I was travelling, the prep time was negligible if we wanted to eat before 9pm. As I said above, we had triple cooked chips. The first boil led to the photo above. The second cook, which was deep frying at around 140C, is pictured below. This went into the fridge this morning awaiting my return this evening. The fish was flathead. I made up a beer/tempura batter with 1/2 cup Cooper's Sparkling Ale, 1/2 cup flour (about 7/8 plain flour and 1/8 cornflour) and a pinch of salt. Pour the chilled beer over the mixed flour, then stir with a chopstick. If there are flour lumps don't worry about it, they add character to the crust. Dredge the fish through the tempura batter and put it in the deep fryer. Do this by gradually dropping it in such that the batter seals as you do so. There are some great videos on youtube with sushi masters showing how they do it. The dinner is a bit bereft of colour because I forgot the fresh lemons (although we did have it with lemon juice from some particularly nice lemons, the juice from which I froze into ice cubes and store in the freezer). Of course, we had the dish with chicken salt. I should note that no chickens are harmed in the making of this salt, which has no added MSG (whatever that means). The ingredient list includes sea salt, rice flour, wheat glucose, soy, food acid, turmeric, herbs and spices, powdered garlic and onion, and soy powder. Not sure if it's a South Australian thing or whether it's more widespread.

Thanks, come visit!

Do you think your science background carries over into your approach to cooking or do you want to get away from it? I tend to the latter, but maybe that's why I'm a mediocre cook. Then again my Dad was a good but wild cook and a good scientist... Thanks for the great and inspiring blog. Judging by the number of scientists lurking on the sous vide thread, it seems that style of cooking must appeal to us. My training is in psychology so I'm interested in the perception of food as well as the mechanics in terms of producing it. I suppose it's a bit chicken or egg. Because we're scientifically inclined, some of the cooking approaches really appeal to us.

Thanks Kay I appreciate your comment.

I wish I had a better vocabulary in this regard, but I would say in a few words that he is the Julia Child of Thai cooking though with a very deep emphasis on authenticity- his first book is a true classic. http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Food-David-Thompson/dp/1580084621 he is a little more than julia childs..... he is the first chef to ever gain a michelin star for thai food. he is also recognised by the thai royal family as an official historian of 'royal thai food', and some would say that he has preserved this style of food from a slow extinction through publishing his book 'Thai Food'. he is gathering and documenting more information on Thai food as i write this plus he is an all out good bloke! Joel Way back in the early 90s he started Darley Street Thai, which you may have heard of.

The dish worked. If you think about it, it's almost a variant of surf and turf - perhaps dock and loch. Cuttlefish doesn't have a particularly seafood taste when fresh and if you look at the dish it is finely sliced, which means that it is tender but still has a little textural bite (think seaweed type texture).

It's Australia's National floral emblem and a native food. In taste it has coffee, chocolate, and hazelnut elements. Thanks, I never understood that Monty Python line until just now. "This here's the wattle, the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle, you can hold it in your hand. Amen!" Which is exactly what came to mind when Chris asked that question.

For those who want a bit more detail on Bentley restaurant, the earlier review was a bit light on as I wanted to get something up last night as I'm travelling today. Have done a more conventional review (on the plane) that I'll post tonight.

Thanks Frank. I doubt if it will need that level of precision but it's nice to know it can be done. Will keep it in mind if my deep fryer dies

I'll leave the description to well-known food critic Terry Durack who wrote about it this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It's Australia's National floral emblem and a native food. In taste it has coffee, chocolate, and hazelnut elements.

Today I'm interstate on business. Have bought some flathead to do in a beer batter. This will be served with triple-cooked chips. I'm using red rascal chips rather than my normal sebago. The supermarket labelled them as good chips for cooking. Hope they work. This is the first cook, which comprised boiling the cut chips until they were cooked. They spent last night in the refrigerator, uncovered. The second cook was in oil this morning at around 140C. No photo of that at the moment, something seems to happening with the upload process. More photos later tonight.

Aaargh, a PhD in science doesn't stop fat fingers on calculators from making errors. Calculators says... must be true... $5.50 per kilo equals $2.50 per pound (thanks C. Sapidus for spotting this). LOL. I was going to say you're a damn good cook, but a lousy mathematician. After the full wine package with the meal it possibly doesn't reflect normal functioning (I hope).