Thursday 29 April 2010

Great day for it




Today towards the end of April drizzling into that cold drab part of the year, I happened upon a couple of portions of salmon and some old beetroot juice. After gaining some inspiration from my good mate Jamie Oliver who spent some time in Sweden, I decided that I needed to cure the salmon with the beetroot.
Equal parts sugar and salt a wee bit of dill and of course the beetroot juice.
6 hours later we are ready to play,
I made a sour cream, mustard, horseradish and dill, gel. A emulsion of butter and asparagus stock to cool my asparagus tips and bodies for garnish, some dill "devils forks" and I still wasn't content. The size was perfect for a glass to fit neatly over the top. We decided smoke but what would we smoke, vegetables and fruits were to fresh and moist. Loose leaf tea became an obvious solution, after burning a few differant varieties hula girl we knew was just perfect.
After a days work we have a solid base for a dish
D

Monday 26 April 2010

LN2

One of the newest acquisitions to the kitchen is a pressurized 50L vat of containing liquid nitrogen. We have had it filled a couple of times now, they come once a month or so and it's about a dollar a litre. It boils at 77 K or −196 °C. Brrr.

22 June 2005: World's fastest ice cream maker is polymer physicist Peter Barham from the University of Bristol, smashed his own world record by shaving two seconds off the time it took him to make a litre of ice cream, it only took him 18.78 seconds, though Barham says he can go faster.

I didn't think to time how long it tool to make my avocado icecream for the next upcoming tasting menu. But I did take a quick photo of the process.






Nitrogen was first liquefied at the Jagiellonian University on 15 April 1883 by Polish physicists, Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski. I bet they thought, I bet we could make some sweet as frozen deserts with this technology aye?
J

Sunday 18 April 2010

Hermit Crabs

After visiting my fish man and assisting him on his trawler I discovered a great site of Aussie Rock Lobsters all tagged and ready for the markets. Next to the crayfish were nice hermit crabs. I had asked him what do you do with those and he stated they are a bi-product from the crayfish traps. They are a pest they get into the traps and all the bait. I asked can I have some and here we tested the hermit crab. Discovering there is not much meat from them, about the size of a thumb per crab we cooked some on the BBQ and I must say WOW the best seafood ever!... it resembled the flavor of shrimps, crayfish and scallops combined. So after organizing several dozen crabs I will prepare some items for our next tasting menu.


Left is the actual meat from a large crab.

The right shows the skin taken from the flesh.

We panfried the flesh with butter and the results were amazinf with a bright red colour appearing and the taste is sensational. We fried the crab skin and this was a great result in an edible skin tasting of hermit crab. Now for the tasting menu.....

Before we finalise exactly how we want to serve these lovely tasting crabs we tried a few paired flavours to see the response from our customers in the restaurant.

Hermit crab, pernod, celriac, lobster brulee, black truffle, mussels, rice paper. We had a great response from the customers so now the design and layout using our latest toys.


The final take on our Hermit crab challenge. we dcided to keep the unique flavour the crabs had and make a pannacotta from the shells. Pairing the flavour with white asparagus, tomato, aniseed, roe, Native Australian finger lime and surprisingly dragon fruit.







Wednesday 7 April 2010

Black Forrest

Black Forest ham originated from this region, and so, by name and reputation at least, did the Black Forest Cake. It also is known as the "Black Forest Cherry Cake" and is made with chocolate cake, cream, sour cherries, and Kirsch




 
Chocolate

Drunken Cherrie spheres(kirsch)

gluhweine syrup

nitro chocolate rock & cherry rock

soil

sponge moss

micro mint

cherry cream


brad

Adrian sponge

I was watching an episode of 'No Reservations' where Antony Bordain was in Spain hanging around with Albert Adria eating tapas, going to a few awesome restaurants and playing in test kitchens. Albert spoke of and roughly demonstrated a sponge recipe where by it was dispenced via syphon and cooked via microwave.
Slightly aroused I found an exact recipe on the net and set about giving it a shot.

Adrià recipe:
(perhaps the original?)

Pistachio sponge cake
80g pistachio
80g sugar
20g all purpose flour
3 eggs

1/2 liter Issi siphon
2 N2O charges






40 seconds, microwave, full power.







And unmoulded







This gave me a rather cheeky idea, a sweet course to follow perhaps a venison dish paired with chocolate jus, garlic potato custard and drunk blueberrys. The waiter would clear the venison dish and replace with the sponge dish plated on a look alike plate. The waiter would state that the kitchen hand has just walked out so the chef insists you do your own cleaning up ...







Pistacio sponge
Milk bubbles
Chocolate streaks
Smashed blueberries
Limp cream

The customers would wipe up the sauces with their edible sponge and clean their plate up!

Foundation Day in Springwood

We got a few snapshots of some of the dinner the other week,




Sour cream spherification, smoked carrot paper, pink pepper and chive



Prawn ricepaper roll, cucumber gelee, coconut tapioca, pineapple, lemongrass air and micro basil



Eucalypt roasted baby beets, goats cheese, raddish, poached cellery, tomato air and balsamic reduction



Seared kangaroo, confit potato, beetroot, carrot air, mushroom jus , pumpkin damper and a green tea billy.



Avocado sorbet, cashew, cos and olive oil.



6#wagu sirloin, crisp potato marshmellow, BBQ powder, salt pepper, served with a bacon roll and house curned cultured butter


Heirloom tomato, fig pure, olive oil snow, akudra rock and safron pennys







Lick, suck, sip. - Hibiscus sour, vanilla creme fraiche and bubblegum tapioca cone, floral rose red tea and a candied honey swizzle.



Pucker up! Lemon curd filled nitro poached Lemonade orb upon lemon sherbet.




Nitro fried chocolate mousse, blue berrys 3 ways, hazelnut sand, malt icecream and encapsulated maple.



Chocolates for the road and a menu for the fridge


All feedback from the customers was really positive, being only our second degustation that only fills us with confidence. We can wait to iron out the kinks, get our flow right workshop some new ideas and basically be the best!

J