Wednesday 22 December 2010

Dessert Or Interactive Drink?

I had to laugh when I was approached by a customer to do some special courses for their Christmas party. It had to do with the Local Law in particular -Drug Enforcement- Well I am up for a challenge every now and then, even it it does challenge some ethics or behaviour. Unfortunately we were really busy so I did not have time to take pics of all the meals (I will re-create them because they were fun to do and fun to watch the customers interact with the meals)

 
  
This Course was Crack, Ice, Lines, Injections, hmmm what was I thinking?. still fun, You inject the syringe into the glass, add some of the test tube contents, add the lab specimen from the pipette, the add some of the white ice and dark snuff Then the flavour of a midori illusion stir a little and voila drink and eat the remaining contents left on the plate. So is it a drink or interactive dessert? still a lot of fun- thanks for asking me.....
Interactive drink or interactive dessert

Monday 20 December 2010

"TURDUCKEN"

I was asked by a friend and the supplier of our garden herbs and products, to make a Turducken for their Christmas dinner. I thought that would be a great idea for dinners we like to do here. I know of a place not far from our restaurant which has free range ducks, turkeys, well most game birds anyway. After contacting them I found out what they feed the turkey, ducks and chickens. They are fed bush tomato, wheat grass, maize, carrots and all sorts of vegetables and some pellets.

Cool I thought to myself I am getting som inspiration here of what can pair well considering our christmas in Australia is over 35' c or 95 F, so the usual warming flavours are a little to heavy for the most part of Christmas. I decided to keep some indigenous flavours like Quangdong, Bush Tomato (akudujura) mountian pepper and murray river salt. To add to the interaction of customer and food I made like a feed bucket with red garnet olives maize croutons and a few other addictive flavours. The bucket is added with some lovely single malt whisky slightly warmed and flamed at the table. This toasts the items in the pale and gives them a new texture and flavour. To add to the toast scent I have also some Blue Gum Smoke Oil made into ta sand texture, some fresh shaved truffle and a pipette of truffle oil and duck fat render from the duck and turkey confit used for the stuffing. The customer can self baste the turducken at their own leisure. add some Jus strips, once the buring and smoking of the contents in the pale have extinguised, we simpley pour the contents onto the plate for the customer to enjoy
 and this is now my look on a TURDUCKEN

Monday 29 November 2010

Ceviche

After recieving fantastic king fish i thought with this hot weather coming on maybe we could serve ceviche. thinking i ould do a little better so I thought of adding the delights of some marinated octopuss, squid, caviar, and white anchovies. Making it a little extra exciting with foreging some fresh items from the garden and buggah the only thing missing is some finger lime oh well lets move forward I say.... this turned out excellent they love it.
KING FISH, caviar, lemon, thyme, octopuss, cucumber, toast

Friday 26 November 2010

Sustainable Garden

My first attempt from our Table of 8 must highlight the theme as being all sustainable if possible. Easily done .... I think..... at least this is from the garden. The Choko's are young and not developed and eating them from the vines were fresh and crisp and naturally sweet. this will be a great addition to my salad.

Using a variety of mushrooms, carrot, beetroot, chard, apsaragus, cucumber, garlic, choko, and our newly added product which i had not used before given to me by our vege supplier some samphire. so giving the balance i required for this dish here is and our aim was the start of the Fresh Tasting Scents of Autumn

SAMPHIRE, mushroom, carrot, choko, asparagus

Sustainable Produce


As a passionate chef, I often deliver great ideas on the plate. Recently My seafood supplier gave us some orange roughy. This is a delicate flesh and very popular here in Australia. However having a marine expert working here as a waitress she was highly distressed and stated They are on the protection list for extinction and should avoid using this species.

That was enough for me This will never happen again. My aim is to keep a sutainable produce for everything within my power to produce. So pictured is my Garden from Elandra in the Blue Mountains. They grow organic produce for our requirements in the restaurant. They are only 10minutes from us making a daily visit extremley viable.












I was asked to create a vegetarian 10 course dinner from the garden for our 'CHEFS Table of 8" Dinner

Wednesday 17 November 2010

Bomb Alaska

Australians have loved this dessert as long as I can remember well over some 4 decades at least..... Anyways I was thinking how can we improve on the traditional style and make it a little more exciting and give more flavour.

So using elderflower, blue berries, raspberries, strawberries, carrot sorbet, mango, cardamon, beetroot, and this is my first attempt and flambe'd at the table

Bomb Alaska sweet. I wonder how well this would present as a savoury style. Let's try this next....

Monday 25 October 2010

Why all the fuss about saltbush Lamb?

I was visited today by a supplier of saltbush lamb. He went through all the pros and cons of why it is so good.
Meat raised on saltbush combines a rare combination of low fat content, whilst producing a distinct, robust taste.


The meat has been shown to retain its marketable selling colour for longer and shelf life has seen to be slightly longer than meats not grazed in this manner.

The meat tends to present a nice minerally character without the fatty after taste on the palate. Saltbush meats have been found to have high levels of antioxidants. Combine this with low fat and cholesterol levels, and you have a meat for the 21st century.

"The saltbush plant is native to our land. The many species of this plant are drought resistant and are in plentiful supply on our station"

So he asked what can I do with these cutlets? well my first thought was it's cold tonight so lets make smoked lamb with Aussie green tea and lemon myrtle. Pair that with mushroom, pumpkin thyme and blood plum. The aroma from the smoking tea under the pale of blood plum vinaigrette and hot wooden log, simply take a skewer and dip it into the pale and as you go to eat the meal inhale the smokey scent of the skewer and fresh thyme.

Here is my SALTBUSH LAMB, mushroom, pumpkin thyme and blood plum


Saturday 23 October 2010

BBQ

Most Australians love their BBQ. This was an exciting day for us as an outside BBQ Function was meant to be held in an outside venue because it started to snow(unusual for Springwood NSW) we had to move it indoors and change our plan a little. The garden Shots were earlier that morning and it is great to be sustainable for your own events. Growing our own herbs vege's fruits etc.
Our Pics will be uploaded soon.....





Cardamon

I was enjoying the profiles that cardamon had to offer and thought another style of dessert would be nice. after a few atempts in the balance of flavours I finally found  the dish I prepared for our guests. Simple and full of flavour.
CARDAMON, chocolate, raspberry, ginger & almond

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Lobster by dayan

Working with Dayan has been a geat adventure. He has a keen sense of food pairing and balance. He has an impressive intrigue for new and exciting techniques with an unparalell thirst for learning. Dayan in moving to the UK to further his career and I wish you all the best. Think creativley and go get them..

D latest draft for an up and coming outside BBQ. lobster, white asparagus, roe, tomato, cauliflower

Gravlux

This was an old favourite where I learnt way back in 1990 Switzerland except a few modern techniques. Cured salmon, cucmber, citrus, dill, mascarpone. very light very easy to eat.


Monday 16 August 2010

Shisha in the restaurant

Recently we had our guest chef Carl Kenzler from Ritual Restaurant Nelson Bay with his team and cooked with us with a "From the Sea to The Mountains Journey" dinner. One of the best pallet cleansers so far was using the Shisha or Hookah as the delivery technique for the apple and mint pallet cleanser. The Shisha was apple smoke and apple juice as the liquid and everybody enjoyed it so i guess some child hood memories came to some or a bit of a rebelous excitement to others.

Sunday 15 August 2010

Beef Cheeks

In the depths of winter we tend to crave a little comfort. For me, the humble beef cheek needs to be on the list of things to eat before spring comes to town.


Cheeks denuded and marinated for 24 hrs in plenty of red wine, orange rind, thyme, coriander seeds, white peppercorns, fennel seeds and garlic. A grizzly sight.

Then once patted dry the cheeks got a full dose of Mallard reaction and a gentle braise in beef stock for many hours.


A big soft Beef Cheek on truffled mash with braised leeks, turned carrots, braised eschallots, cauliflower and broccoli florets all in a buttery nage. Yum. J

Thursday 5 August 2010

Strawberry fields forever

Today is a new day, and as we embark upon a journey towards the end of winter we are blessed by nature giving us next to perfect strawberries the flavour is full and rich, perfect ph and sugar levels, offer an explosion of juice into the mouth,
Now when I think strawberries I'm instantly drawn to the quintessential beatles song strawberry fields, now to recreate a strawberry field not the easiest thing so I begin to draw inspiration from a bit of a slacker in the restaurant world my mate Rene from Noma in Copenhagen, only owns the best restaurant in the world he plates a dish like this




-so with Rene and his dish in mind I embark upon my journey
Here are a few ways I tried plating "strawberry fields"









The next on our ever existing quest for culinary perfection is a chefs table comprising of 8 seats, in which we won't just take you through the steps of eating haute cuisine we will capture you and take you on an extravagent journey through food and where it comes from and how we treat it
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Wednesday 28 July 2010

Snow egg delight

During the finale of masterchef my mentor Peter gilmore featured with his signiture snow egg, a dish which I plated several hundred times often to much stress getting single drops on the side of the "o" glass resulting in having to meticulously cleaning or starting again. Still an immaculate and flawless dish to eat, I couldn't help but replicate given that a line of 100 was cued outside quay just 10 minutes after the screening, I added my own twist by making it a berry flavoured egg and a strawberry tuille to melt over the top,

Garnish I'm still attempting to come up with I can't completely plagerise
But here's the first attempt




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Tuesday 27 July 2010

Mise en place




-from the French expression meaning everything in it's place.
The degustation menu we have just completed was a very prep intensive process, lots of very intricate items from tobbiko to strawberry caviar, herbs from our garden and bubblegum tapioca,
The best way to produce high quality haute cuisine is to have everything in it's place







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Tuesday 20 July 2010

Textures of chocolate




After cruising through mutiple sources of my collected literature from magazines to the almost library of cook books I have a need to fill a void left by my fine dining upbringing, I look to my notes from quay a spread in gourmet travellor on Peter gilmores now 8 textured chocolate cake (btw a must for anyone to eat before you die), a spread in food and wine Asia about Albert adrias 12 textures of chocolate and alineas many breakdowns of the molecular integrity of chocolate
I look to the already known textures but staying away from the obvious gels and foams




The first is dark chocolate aero
Then milk chocolate fudge
Then white chocolate namelaka
Then caramelised white chocolate
Then chocolate paint
Then of course alineas malleable chocolate
Oh and of course tempered chocolate sheets
Just out of frame is a nitro poached chocolate ice cream(still not perfected)
A blog read today has inspires chocolate and gellan (I'll keep you posted)

I feel I'm still a mear shadow in my idles footsteps but I feel I'm on my way.
Let me know what you think


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Monday 12 July 2010

Declinaisions of chocolate





The journey begins on a very busy Saturday lunch when we decide hey let's bust up so caramelised white chocolate and go from there. Trying a few methods we found literally baking the chocolate roughly 120 celcius for 30 mins.
Blitz and away we go.

Then upon find some bananas in the freezer and the challenge of banana souffles being challenging due to the density.
Off I went again, a few yolks some cocoa and caramelised bananas and before anyone could say potty they were in the oven
Then it was time to assemble the garnish
I opted for a less traditional accompniment as many textures of chocolate as I can muster in the 10 minutes it takes the soufflé to bake
I find the caramelised white chocolate some macaroons which I pipe with chocolate mousse and some chocolate fudge which is ever so maluable and some callebeut temper sheets
Presentation although colours are very monochromatic tomorow with the veg delivery some baby mint cress and perhaps some banana pillows I think we are sitting on a winner