eG Foodblog: rarerollingobject (2011) - Mealtimes at the University of

[Kim Shook]

So excited for this one, Kate! I've loved your food and writing and humor since you started posting here and I'm just thrilled that you are blogging! The pictures of the fish market are amazing! I'd probably never eat another piece of meat or chicken if I had access to that! Maybe weird of me to notice, with all of the other fantastic stuff but I love how your books are arranged by color!

[Darienne]

Great writing. Great photos. I loved the photo of the Lobster Bar...it looked like a jewellery (Canadian and Australian spelling? Canadian anyway) counter. And your fridge is a hoot.

And your partner is a living breathing angel. Mine waits in the car, listening to the radio mostly and making sure the dogs are OK. Can't complain. Coffee in bed every morning at 6:30 am makes up for a lot!

Good blog. Carry on...

[robirdstx]

And speaking of the bookshelves, I'll ignore the liquor for now, but are those two little egg coddlers on the right? And if so, do you use them? I've got several and rarely use them, but I do think they are adorable.

Really looking forward to your blog this week!

Edited July 24, 2011 by robirdstx (log)

[percyn]

YAHHH !! We hit the blogging jackpot with RRO / Kate!

That Uni with lardo looks fabulous. Can you get live sear urchin at the market?

The seafood looks so fresh and about half the cost of what it would be in the US. Is that price point typical or was it because it was a market specializing in seafood?

[Shelby]

Now I have seafood envy AGAIN. Sigh.

Oh, and am I the only one that adores how you arrange your cookbooks by COLOR!!!???

[gfweb]

I'm gone for 12 hours and look what I missed!

[Zeemanb]

This is going to be awesome....my brain stopped working at the sight of uni-on-toast. That is just shameless, and this is from a guy waiting for someone to invent biscuits and foie gras gravy, .

[John Michael]

Any chance we might get to see the final version of the beet-root cured salmon?very interesting combination, beets, salmon and vodka! You go girl!!!

[Boilerfood]

I too enjoyed the color coded books. I look forward to reading your blog!

[Genkinaonna]

Oh wow, that seafood! And those zucchini fritters look so delicious...I would have those for breakfast anytime!

[Peter the eater]

who in their right mind doesn't want to see more photos of seafood?!

Well put.

What a market! I'd get some baby abalone and razor clams to start. Can you find sea cukes there? BTW, ten out of ten for the uni on toast with lardo.

Seafood and extreme cheese, thank you.

[auds]

RRO aka Kate! Yay! I've been hoping you'd do a blog--your dinners always look so amazing. Looking forward to another great week. Food blogs are on fire lately.

[rarerollingobject]

Thanks for your kind words, everyone! I'm very excited to be blogging and just thrilled that you're taking an interest!

As for the colour coded books..there are two reasons for that. One is, as I mentioned, we have A LOT of books and apart from one shelf of queued newbies, have pretty much read all of them. I also have a pretty strong visual memory, so I realised one day that the majority of time I was looking for a book, I was first picturing it visually in my mind and then irritatedly scanning nine bookcases for books with that colour spine. It was a short jump to thinking that this is how I should organise my books in the first place, though it wouldn't work for everyone I realise. (It's actually been quite controversial among my friends, many of whom dismissed it as frippery and something the village idiot would dream up!).

As for the doing..chronic insomnia. I average about 3-4 hours a night, and when you're regularly awake at 4am looking for something to occupy yourself with, reorganising that many books seems like a worthwhile endeavour.

[rarerollingobject]

And speaking of the bookshelves, I'll ignore the liquor for now, but are those two little egg coddlers on the right? And if so, do you use them? I've got several and rarely use them, but I do think they are adorable.

Really looking forward to your blog this week!

Wow, very good eyes! They are indeed antique Royal Worcester egg coddlers! I do use them, but not hugely often..I like coddled eggs, but they are a pain to clean. One is holding paperclips right now, surely what egg coddlers aspire to for their retirement.

[rarerollingobject]

YAHHH !! We hit the blogging jackpot with RRO / Kate!

That Uni with lardo looks fabulous. Can you get live sear urchin at the market?

The seafood looks so fresh and about half the cost of what it would be in the US. Is that price point typical or was it because it was a market specializing in seafood?

I haven't seen live sea urchin at fish markets, but if you're really keen and don't mind a bit of potential pollution, you can actually find them on beaches around Sydney. In fact, I go swimming at one of Sydney's dozens of ocean pools and recently stepped on a sea urchin that had washed over the wall! Much swearing and muttering picking those spines out of my foot.

Photo credit: NSW Ocean Baths

As for the prices, they are per kilo, so halve them again for a per pound price I guess. I actually think the Fish Market's prices are a little higher than elsewhere, for the absolute quality. Mid week, I'll show you my 'normal' fish shop in Chinatown, which is cheaper again.

[rarerollingobject]

Any chance we might get to see the final version of the beet-root cured salmon?very interesting combination, beets, salmon and vodka! You go girl!!!

Yes indeed, in an hour or two from now, it'll be breakfast! I cure salmon a lot actually, I've posted this before, but other variations I've tried for the cure flavourings:

Chineseish - flavourings of sugar, salt, Sichuan pepper, a little five spice, shaohsing wine, scallions and ginger

Vietnameseish - sugar in the form of both sugar and caramel sauce, salt, fish sauce, cassia/cinnamon, star anise, black pepper and chilli. Added a splash of Vietnamese moonshine.

Thaiish - palm sugar, salt, lemongrass, galangal, red chilli, tamarind, crushed coriander roots and leaves, and garlic. Didn't use alcohol here and it was fine, slightly different texture.

Japaneseish - yuzu koushou, Okinawan black sugar, soy sauce and a mirin/sake combo

Frenchish - sugar, fleur de sel, herbes de Provence, lavendar petals, and some Pernod. I used fresh thyme too but it was too overpowering by the end of the cure so would omit that next time.

who in their right mind doesn't want to see more photos of seafood?!

Well put.

What a market! I'd get some baby abalone and razor clams to start. Can you find sea cukes there? BTW, ten out of ten for the uni on toast with lardo.

Seafood and extreme cheese, thank you.

You can get sea cucumbers from time to time, they're caught of Western Australia I think. I've seen them more regularly in Chinatown, and dried, of course.

That cheese is a thing of beauty. And the best part is, if around dessert time I distract my boyfriend with, say, an orange or nice juicy apple, I can get things like blue cheese all to myself..

[rarerollingobject]

I realised that I was totally remiss yesterday, as I forgot to show you the greengrocers we went to after the fish market!

I tend to shop most days for fresh food, as I need it(meat, fish, herbs), partly because that's what keeps me inspired to cook and partly because I just like to. Vegetables and fruit though I do a big weekly shop and replenish mid week as need be. I alternate weeks between the farmers' market (which I'll show you on Saturday) and my favourite grocer, Harris Farms at Broadway, for Sydney players.

This store is AMAZING. You wouldn't think it's much at first glance, but in addition to beautiful fruit and vegetables:

They also have a good range of meat, including free range pork, which I really appreciate. (Free range and organic is now common for chicken, but less so for pork, which is pretty industrially farmed too):

Lots of interesting smoked fish (tuna, kingfish, eel, trout):

Six different kinds of couscous!

Lots and lots of small-grower olive oils:

Edited July 24, 2011 by rarerollingobject (log)

[rarerollingobject]

Amazing range of vinegars, verjuices and vino cottos. Fig vino cotto, fig and raspberry vino cotto, smoked pineapple vinegar..all here.

Good antipasti and pickles:

Want goose fat? No problem:

Massive wall of cheese:

Big range of flavoured labneh (yoghurt cheese):

Goats' cheese section :

Yoghurts etc:

Savoury fruit pastes (quince etc, for cheese courses):

Do you need some stinky durian cordial? They have that:

Or elderflower cordial, or cherry juice?

Chunks of Callebaut dark, milk, hazelnut and white chocolate; check out the massive slabs at the bottom!

Deli meats, including Iberico ham:

Ice cream (elderflower! burnt fig and balsamic vinegar! lemon curd! such great flavours) and handmade ice cream sandwiches:

Xiaolongbao at the bottom, Taiwanese dumplings to the left and porcini mushrooms at the top:

Big range of edamame, lots of different kinds:

Buffalo dairy products - ricotta, butter, taleggio, gorgonzola, mozzarella:

Bread:

Five different kinds of horseradish!

Another gratuitous wall of cheese shot:

As you can tell, I'm in love with this store. They have EVERYTHING. If they sold toothpaste and detergent, I'd probably never set foot in a supermarket again.

[Darienne]

Absolutely mind blowing.

[rarerollingobject]

Absolutely mind blowing.

I think it's pretty amazing. And it's just a shop in the middle of a carpark in a suburban shopping centre..not exactly one of Sydney's 'celebrity' food destinations!

Harissa, goose confit, halvah, smoked pigs' trotters, preserved lemons, fair trade coffee, buffalo yoghurt, yuzu salt, Persian fairy floss, samphire, edible flowers, fresh borlotti beans, Epoisses cheese, palm sugar dumplings, mache, chioggia beets, fresh (green) almonds, tiny wild strawberries, pomelo, bottarga..these are just some of the finds I've had from that wonderful place.

(No, not affiliated..I wish I was!)

[Prawncrackers]

That Uni with lardo looks fabulous...

I want to second that, fab start to your blog!

[rarerollingobject]

OK, Monday morning. Blechh. Here's our weekday home coffee setup; a middling espresso machine (actually pretty good for its price), a grinder, and beans from Toby's.

I am REALLY glad for my coffee this morning; I mentioned my boyfriend is a Professor of Resource Economics. Well, it's customary for PhD students to give their professors gifts at the end of their thesis. Because many of Michael's students are farmers' kids, this has often meant thrilling windfalls of produce from their farms; a litre of new season's olive oil? Yes please! A kilo of rare hen of the woods mushrooms? Yippee! And one of the latest ones was 2kg of coffee beans from the first crop of one student's fledgling family coffee plantation. And the grinder. We'd been using a tiny one you can just see at the left, but this grinder is much better.

It was such a touching gift, but the coffee...wasn't good. I don't know if it was the beans or the roast, but knowing all the blood, sweat and tears his family had put into them, we couldn't bring ourselves to throw them away so have been suffering through 2kg of the worst coffee ever. I feel quite bad even saying that, but we drank it, dammit. We've only just finished it and I can't tell you how relieved I am..

So Michael makes me coffee while I'm in the shower, and serving it in these double walled insulated glasses means that I can dawdle as long as I want and the coffee doesn't get cold. It's pretty good, though he always makes it too milky and I've given up trying to steer him otherwise.

And the salmon! This is last night's beet-cured salmon, with the cure washed off.

Sliced thinly and served on a rye cracker smeared with avocado, black pepper and flaky salt, it's not a bad breakfast at all.

[percyn]

YAHHH !! We hit the blogging jackpot with RRO / Kate!

That Uni with lardo looks fabulous. Can you get live sear urchin at the market?

The seafood looks so fresh and about half the cost of what it would be in the US. Is that price point typical or was it because it was a market specializing in seafood?

I haven't seen live sea urchin at fish markets, but if you're really keen and don't mind a bit of potential pollution, you can actually find them on beaches around Sydney. In fact, I go swimming at one of Sydney's dozens of ocean pools and recently stepped on a sea urchin that had washed over the wall! Much swearing and muttering picking those spines out of my foot.

Ouch !!

As for the prices, they are per kilo, so halve them again for a per pound price I guess. I actually think the Fish Market's prices are a little higher than elsewhere, for the absolute quality. Mid week, I'll show you my 'normal' fish shop in Chinatown, which is cheaper again.

I already factored the weight and currency conversion into my mental equation. The prices per kilo were similar to the price per pound in the US.

It's been a while since I was in Australia and that seafood along with the ocean pool makes me want to make a trip there in Dec (cold here, warm there).

ETA: BEAUTIFUL beet cured salmon - the color looks almost like Tuna.

Edited July 24, 2011 by percyn (log)

[heidih]

The cured salmon is gorgeous and the other elements of the combination sound like a perfect little meal. How does the beetroot come through? Can you share the rub proportions to amount of fish? I have seen others here do cured salmon and this has tipped me over the edge into experimentation territory.

Balmain bugs prepared in garlic sauce were the highlight of my trip to Port Macquarie. Sea sweetness was a perfect description.

As everyone has noted, Harris Farms is a treasure

[rarerollingobject]

The cured salmon is gorgeous and the other elements of the combination sound like a perfect little meal. How does the beetroot come through? Can you share the rub proportions to amount of fish? I have seen others here do cured salmon and this has tipped me over the edge into experimentation territory.

Balmain bugs prepared in garlic sauce were the highlight of my trip to Port Macquarie. Sea sweetness was a perfect description.

As everyone has noted, Harris Farms is a treasure

It is gorgeous, I just love the colour of the ruby beetroot against the coral salmon..the beetroot just gives it a faintly nutty, sweet but also savoury flavour, nothing very strong at all but definitely interesting.

And it couldn't be easier, you should try it! The proportions I use are: for about 300g of salmon, mix 1 large or 2 small grated beetroots, 25g salt, 25g sugar, zest of 1 lemon and 1 tsp of white pepper, which I forgot this time around. One tablespoon of vodka is optional, it slightly changes the texture if you leave it out but still nice. You could also add chopped dill, or even a tsp or so of horseradish or hot mustard. I like a short cure, 12 hrs or so, because I don't want to change the texture of the fish too much but 24hrs will give you a firmer result.