eG Foodblog: Prawncrackers (2010) - Cooking with Panda!

[C. sapidus]

I moved house last year Bruce, my last kitchen was really tiny but it was good for developing a really tidy organised cooking style. My current kitchen is twice the size so feels luxurious to me but probably still small compared to your massive US houses:

I like your kitchen set-up, very efficient. Our kitchen is probably pretty similar in size, but we don’t have the stereotypical "massive US house" (nor do many in the US, in my experience ).

There's only one way to sharpen quality steel and that's with waterstones:

I had a hunch that you would be a waterstone guy. I like the repeatability of the Edge-Pro system myself, but either gets the job done. Thanks for the reminder that my knives are due for a sharpening.

You made two of my all-time favorites in one meal, so bravo! If I had the opportunity to try your twice-cooked pork, I might have a third all-time favorite. Beautiful pics of delectable food, as always.

[Prawncrackers]

Yay the ImageGullet uploader is back up and running now, thanks Erin and Chris for fixing it. For posterity here are last nights pics:

Edited November 14, 2010 by Prawncrackers (log)

[Prawncrackers]

Incredible meal, Prawn! I really enjoy Cradle of Flavour rendang. Need to get it going again now that the snow has arrived.

The ong choi looks so good. How do you cook yours? Mine always ends up with the leaves too soft.

One restaurant called them "empty heart" greens!

Surely rendang is good all year round?! I cut my ung choi in half and cook the stems first otherwise the leaves will disintegrate by the time the stems are done. They are quite a new vegetable for me, I like the crunchy freshness of them,

[kayb]

Prawn, thanks so much for a marvelous week of food! It was a true pleasure reading your blog!

[Kim Shook]

Well, I live in the US, but your kitchen looks much larger than mine! I am serious envious of your gorgeous hob! That entire meal looks delicious, but the twice cooked pork was my favorite. Mr. Kim and I are very similar to you and your wife – I am extremely sensitive to hot foods and he loves them! I am familiar with your culinary contortions to please everyone!

[Prawncrackers]

Prawn, thanks so much for a marvelous week of food! It was a true pleasure reading your blog!

Hey I'm not done yet, one final push today before the panda can put it's paws up!

One of my local food heroes is Fenky Janes Caribbean Bakery. They call themselves a bakery on their business cards but really they only do one thing - curry patties. I thought I liked Jamaican curry patties until a friend of a friend brought some of these to a bbq party this summer, they are another level of deliciousness. Usually the pastry for patties is a yellowed chalky crumbly affair that isn't very good and takes away from the filling. But these have proper light flaky pastry and are the perfect savoury package. So i've been a regular pilgrim to their place in Hockley. I buy them by the dozen from a rather unpromising hatch in an industrial unit. They a have all kinds of fillings, my favourites are the Ackee Saltfish and Original Mutton. Today as a lunchtime snack, i had a mutton one:

[Dejah]

Found the answer to the ong choi question I posed. I was too busy looking at the images on Flicker before.

Have 2 bunches of ong choi in the fridge, so I will try yet again.

[Prawncrackers]

Ok, last meal of my eG Foodblog week.

One of the most memorable dishes of the year was salmon scotch quail eggs. We had it at Paul Ainsworth's No6 restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall. So i had a go at recreating today, i was going to do it on Thursday but I'm glad I saved it for today. It's quite fiddly and you just never know how it's going to turn out, especially with the added pressure of cooking something for the first time for a dinner party.

Eight quail eggs were cooked for two minutes to ensure a runny yolk. Only six of them survived peeling intact. I hand chopped 250g of fresh salmon and seasoned with dill, parsley, salt and white pepper I wasn't really sure how many eggs that would make and in the end it was five. Now I've done it you don't have to guess. The balls were floured, egged and breadcrumbed. Luckily i had some old brown sourdough which was perfect, as everyone knows you must eat salmon with brown bread. They were quickly deep-fried and served on top of sliced cucumber and a curried mayo. The results were pretty reminiscent of what we ate on holiday and my wife declared it a success. This is a good example of modern British cooking:

The wild duck i bought yesterday was prepared so that the crown could be roasted on it's own. The legs and the rest of the carcass was used to make a curried stock with fried onions, garlic, ginger, tomato, garam masala, cassia bark, cardamom, coriander, cumin, turmeric, chilli & salt. The stock was strained and then used to make a Cashew & Saffron gravy (inspired by local restaurant Lasan). Toasted cashew, fried onion, saffron, and yoghurt are blitzed together till smooth and added to the stock and cooked out for 15 mins. The duck crown was seasoned with a little garam masala, coriander, cinnamon & salt and started in a frying pan with some butter before roasting in the oven for 15 mins. After a good rest it was served up with some pilau rice (with peas), and the cashew saffron gravy. The meat was nice evenly pink and tasted really good, nicely complimented by the creamy korma like sauce. Only one piece of shot found too, wild duck is so delicious it's a wonder why more people don't eat it. It's cheap (£3) and quick to cook:

To finish, a real treat - something baked by my wife! Yes she was allowed in the kitchen today to bake Aunt Amélie Smooth Chocolate Cake recipe she found. It was so rich, a real chocoholic's delight, it needed the ice-cream to balance:

Edited to add:

Apologies guys, my finger slipped and I posted without writing anything at first!

Edited November 14, 2010 by Prawncrackers (log)

[Peter the eater]

A salmon quail Scotch egg? Even if I'm amiss . . . why didn't I think of that? Gorgeous photos, all of them. Thanks.

[prasantrin]

Mmmmm...deluxe scotch eggs. What kind of crumbs did you use, and what kind of minced meat? Was it pork or something else?

ETA: I just read Peter's comment--salmon? Really? Sounds delicious!

Edited November 14, 2010 by prasantrin (log)

[heidih]

Is that a mustard sauce with the Scotch eggs? Beautiful!

The duck looks rich and intense. I want that pot of bones you were cooking up for broth to make a duck noodle soup. Please describe the finished duck dish:)

On the quail eggs- I meant to ask if you ever have trouble peeling them? I only tried fresh ones once and the hard shell perplexed me at the peeling stage and I ended up with pock marked whites.

[ScottyBoy]

Those Scotch eggs are awesome, great work!

[Shelby]

Everything you did has me drooling. Especially liked the razor clams and pasta. I'd give my left arm for some of that right now.

Me thinks you should keep going for another week.

[Prawncrackers]

I definitely couldn't keep this up for another week not least because my wife wouldn't want to go through all those dishes and pans again. Not to make this sound like an acceptance speech but special thanks to her for making this week possible!

It's been great fun blogging this last week, hope you've all enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed putting it all together. I've never done anything like it before so all your positive comments have made it all worthwhile. Has it been a typical food week for me? No, I've condensed about three weeks of cooking into one. But hey, I've been on the forum for years now so I feel I owe you guys a decent first blog. My typical week would not usually see me cooking huge meals on a Wednesday and Thursday. Thursdays in fact I usually go round to my mothers for a family meal. I would tend to eat out or get a take-out once or twice so at the most I would cook 4 or 5 meals a week, ranging from throwing some pasta together to experimenting with new dishes like today. Next week would have been totally different, I've got three restaurants booked as it's my birthday!

What didn't I get to do this week that I wanted to do? Well, i did cancel an order at the last minute for a 5kg Salmon on Thursday, but butchering a big salmon on top of everything would have been too much - so no gravlax even though I'd bought the dill already! It would have been nice to have done some Charcuterie but I only just got half a pig last month. I suppose I could do that next time, if you'll have me back.

Edited November 15, 2010 by Prawncrackers (log)

[kayb]

OK, these salmon Scotch eggs are calling to me. I've never worked with quail eggs. When you boil for 2 minutes....do you start them in cold water and bring to a boil, or immerse them in the water for two minutes after it comes to a boil? And do you immediately drain and go to cold water with them after that two minutes? It would seem to me that with the small size of quail eggs, timing on the boil would be quite critical.

[Pam R]

Thursdays in fact I usually go round to my mothers for a family meal.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this week. Thanks for condensing so much into your week, your cooking and photography were wonderful -- but, if you do another week at some point, I'd love to see what your mother does for for a family meal.

[robirdstx]

"the twice cooked pork, which is actually cooked three times."

Loved every bit of your blog but this was my favorite. I'm going to have to give it a try. Thank you for a wonderful week.

[Pierogi]

As others have said, Prawnie, a FANTASTIC blog. I have loved the peek into your cooking style, and your environs. Thanks for sharing with us ! And yes, those Scotch salmon eggs look to absolutely freakin' die for. Slurrrrrrp.....

Thanks again for sharing.

[prasantrin]

I'd like to add my thanks, too. It's been a great week with you!

A bit of a funny story, when the picture of Nickloman came up, I only saw the picture and hadn't read the text, so I thought, "Wait a minute! I thought Prawncrackers was Chinese!" Then I realized the picture wasn't of you.

[nickrey]

Thanks for the blog Prawncrackers. Visually stunning and outstanding cooking as usual. Something to aspire to.

[david goodfellow]

Congratulations and happy birthday Prawncrackers, its been an enjoyable read, and you have put Birmingham on the map.

Good to see a photo of egulleters, Nickloman and Hannah, too.

It will be nice to have someone else cook for you this week, after all your hard work.

I'm looking forward to your restaurant reviews. I understand L'enclume is one, hope you take plenty of photos.

[Simon_S]

Prawncrackers, that was a "cracking" week's blogging. Like everyone else, I loved all the photos, and you've kept me salivating for the week. Bravo!

[CDRFloppingham]

You rocked it Prawn.

Thanks for a great foodblog.

[Prawncrackers]

Ok, this blog is going to be locked tomorrow lunchtime (US time) so if you have anymore questions about it please fire away, i'm happy to answer as many as i can.

Kayb, the quail eggs were lowered into boiling water and cooked for exactly two minutes then cooled immediately. If i had to be critical about that dish then I'd have liked to deep-fried the scotch eggs a little shorter so that the salmon was still rare. But i was conscious that i bought some very orinary supermarket salmon so cooked it a little over deliberately, if i had bought that whole salmon on Thursday then i would have done it that way.

Technically I think the best executed meal was Wednesday's Cantonese affair but that is because that is the most practised one. There were little mistakes in Thursday's and i cooked way too much veg that night too. I like to be critical of myself as I believe it's the only way to improve.

[ambra]

fantastic. Thank you. I didn't post many comments, but I still followed and wished to be at your table sharing those dishes!