Again with the duck but hey, it’s my blog so here’s another duck recipe. Duck confit it one of those classic french dishes that’s rich as all get out and tasty as hell. It can get a little expensive in restaurants and markets but it’s relatively cheap to make at home costing not much more than the duck really but if you can stretch to a couple of tins of duck fat then it’ll be all the much better. Making the confit will take overnight so if you don’t have the time buy some confit duck legs but the flavour will be so much better if you made it yourself, of course. I’ve got a cheat way of making it too so you need less duck fat and the cleanup is straight forward.

The salad to go along side this is easy too and involves no more than whisking a dressing together and grating the beetroot on a mandolin.

Duck Confit with Crisp Beetroot Salad

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Tags:Duck, Beetroot, Ricotta, Cheese, Recipe, Slow Food

Sometimes when you look in the fridge and cupboards I have no idea what to make and other times a few things just stick in my mind somehow and out comes a tasty meal. The slice of orange added a nice subtle citrus note to the chicken and the honey balanced out the 5-spice powder. Best of all, it only took 5 minutes of work and 30 minutes in the oven.

Orange Stuffed Chicken Marylands with 5-Spiced Carrots and Beans

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Tags:5-Spice, Oranges, Chicken, Recipe, Quick, Baked

Have you ever had one of those moments when you’ve heard a new word two or three times in a week then find yourself using it? Somehow, the arse that hosts Ready Steady Cook taught me the word ‘paupiette’ which is a piece of meat with a pocket sliced into it and then stuffed prior to cooking. I’ve made similar things many times before but I never realised that was a word for it.

So when I had some bacon, camembert and a chicken breast handy a chicken paupiette was called forth.

Chicken Paupiette of Bacon and Camembert

Chicken stuffed with Bacon and Camembert - Serves 2
2 Chicken breasts
4 Rashers of bacon
250g of Camembert, sliced
Salad leaves to serve

Slice a pocket into the thickest parts of the chicken breasts trying to make each pocket as big as possible but not to cutting through to the other side. Lightly hammer out the chicken to as thin as possible without breaking apart the chicken.

Stuff the pocket with half of the cheese and a rasher of bacon then slowly pan fry until the chicken is cooked through and browned on the outside along side the two spare rashers of bacon.

Slice the chicken in half and lay over salad leaves with the extra pieces of bacon.

Tags:Cheese, Chicken, Recipe, Bacon, Frying, Camembert

I had to go back to Sydney early from my New Zealand trip so I can sit an exam and since I hadn’t had any luck finding the quite space I needed to read the text books I’d lugged around with me thus far I booked myself two days in Harbour View room at the Hilton Auckland (I got a good deal at wotif). The hotel itself is smaller than I thought and felt cramped every time I walked through the lobby but the rest of the hotel is quite spacious. The room I was in had a very large marble bathroom with separate bath and shower, the rest of the room contained a king size bed, 32” LCD TV and DVD player and a desk. Then there was the balcony - the same size as the room itself! The only complaint with it is that even though there are double sliding doors opening on to it, there was a concrete pillar in the middle of them making getting outside a little awkward and blocked the view from inside.

I hadn’t had breakfast that morning so once I settled into the room, opened all the draws and flicked all the light switches I had a look at the room service menu. There was all of the standard fare you get at the Hilton plus the specialised items from the hotels restaurant. I ordered the Nasi Goreng, just a light meal. Presented well, the rice moulded in a bowl and turned out into the plate with a fried egg across the top, tomato and cucumber slices fanned around the edge and individual bowls of chili paste, soy and dried fish so they could all be added to taste, a single large prawn cracker and three small chicken satay skewers to the side. Flavour wise it was more subtle than I’m used to, all of the flavours were balanced so it was a clearly deliberate choice and it certainly wasn’t bland per se but I could see a lot of people thinking it was.

The second night I stayed I went to White, the hotel’s restaurant with Italian chef Cristiano De Martin running the show. You can see his European training and years of dedicated practice in the way every dish was executed, starting with the produce then preparation and cooking then finally the presentation. De Martin’s dedication to his food extends to joint venture called Homegrown with NZ primary producers to source the best ingredients. I can’t see any losers here, especially as I get presented with my first course.

Starting off with Heart of the Desert saffron infused carrot soup with parsley foam it’s not surprising De Martin highlights one of his Homegrown partners in Heart of the Desert saffron. Who knew that NZ can grow it given 90% of the world production is from Iran? The soup itself was good blending the more complex earthier kiwi saffron standing up against fresh sweet carrots. The parsley foam was wispy and delicate adding a level of texture and evening out the parsley flavour so that no mouthful could ever be overpowed with a herb than can taste like grass if you get a mouthful of it unexpectedly.

Contrasting the soup’s delicate flavour profile is the Northland kingfish carpaccio, spiced shallots with citrus and sesame dressing and mini coriander leaves hitting you with an incredible burst starting out with the lime that is made palatable with the shallots, coriander and sesame on the finish. Without any one of these the dish wouldn’t balance but here all of the flavours are inline leaving you with the amazingly fresh kingfish carpaccio. The mouthfeel of the slightly oily kingfish sliced paper thin and served raw as it melds itself with the rest of the flavours creating one of those moments you sit up and pay attention to what you’re eating.

I love duck and I eat it quite often but until now I hadn’t actually had the chance to make or try tea smoked duck. I made tea smoked snapper a few weeks ago as a trial before I give it ago on duck. Now I’ve got a gold standard to aim for. A salad of tea smoked duck resting on crisp filo pastry, pistachio, celery and grapes with a blueberry and riesling verjus dressing was a familiar yet different taste. Smoking the duck adds a soft undertone to each bite that while you can tell it is there, at no point does it distract you from the duck itself or any other ingredient. Pistachio as a nut has an odd flavour that wouldn’t have worked if the duck wasn’t smoked. A lesser chef would have either used hazelnut that I think would have enhanced the smoke and overpowered the rest of the salad or blanched almods simply for texture. The filo pastry was disappointing, it seemed more like a layer of cardboard where I was expecting the salad to be perched on top of individual layers of delicate filo. Did you notice something missing in the picture? When I was served the dish I thought it was odd but there isn’t a black/purple drizzle across the top. I’m not sure how they did it, but blueberry skin wasn’t in the ingredient list for the dressing so it’s is perfectly clear. The two black half circles are grapes.

Scallops are tender pillows of shellfish that have a sweeter meat than crayfish. Their intense flavour, despite that they’re physically delicate, means they can carry other strong flavours and De Martin picked almost a surf and turf with Spirits Bay scallops seared with crispy pancetta, apple pureé and a snow pea salad with cabernet sauvignon vinegar glaze. Even before the plate lands you can smell the pancetta and the bacon instinct kicks in and your nose is in the air trying to breathe it all in. The pancetta releases so much of it’s flavour as it’s friend in the pan next to the scallops that they seem to soak it up like a sponge. The drizzle of glaze on the plate was incredibly intense and perfect for cutting through the pancetta’s fat so you can reclaim the scallop’s individuality.

The Assistant Manager (who did an amazing job all night) disagreed with the chef on his choice of wine for a number of dishes and I either saw her point or agreed completely. This time I only saw her point. She gave me some of the listed wine, a Cloudy Bay ‘08 Sauvignon Blanc, and the wine she thought was best, a Brancott ‘07 Sauvignon Blanc, both from the Malborough. I’m sorry to say I wouldn’t have said either were a perfect match but then I can’t say what would have been either. The Cloudy Bay was good at balancing the glaze and pancetta but destroyed the apple and scallop where as the Brancott was obliterated by the fat. Given the focus of this dish was scallops, not pancetta I’d have erred on the side of caution and taken the Bancott as the manager suggested.

A Kaffir Lime sorbet broke the meal. It tasted like the only possible way you could have that much lime flavour in a that glass was if someone froze and blended the lime itself. It had such a fresh taste to it, probably enhanced by the fact it was frozen, but it could have easily been the smell of a fresh picked lime. My guess is it was probably oil from the skin being sprayed in to and incorporated with the mix.






The headline of the show for an international hotel in NZ was of course the Hawke’s Bay lamb loin roasted with garden herbs, parsnip créme and crisps, manuka smoked olives, lemon and Te Arai Extra Virgin emulsion. The lamb was cooked a touch longer than I’d have liked but within tolerances for medium-rare so it did benefit from the olive oil and parsnip mash for moistness. That’s not to say it wasn’t full of flavour; I’d say the kiwi’s have made a good go at it. Infact given the better farming and grazing weather in NZ for the past few years, their lambs might just be better than the Australians. For now. Picking up some of the smoked olives with the lamb made for a nice way to extend the otherwise limited range of flavours on the plate, the parsnips and olive oil seemed to take on a new life. Half way through I’d ran out and wished there were more, olives, not parsnip.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the names of the two cheeses served on this course but they seemed along the lines of a mature cheddar and a firmer white mould cheese along the lines of a costello perhaps? As I was dining alone, I think I received a hastily cut down portion. There was just simply not enough cheese to try all of the condiments with at least one cheese, there weren’t even enough wafers. Still, it was nice for a course designed to transition your palette from red meat to dessert.




Of course, at the end of any meal you can’t go past dessert and what a dessert. The menu called for a chef’s selection and I don’t think there was anything left he hadn’t selected. When this course came up I was offered an extra glass of wine because there had been ‘an issue’ in the kitchen and I would have to wait an extra 10 minutes or so. What I think it was is that they couldn’t figure out how to present a dessert platter that’s designed for two people to a single person when most of the items are either slivers anyway or single units. Half a scoop of ice-cream anyone? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that if there were two people that I would have been disappointed with the portion size, there are four separate desserts for heavens sake but to cut them down further would have been unsightly. Which is why I got a dessert platter for two! It goes without saying that every single one of these desserts were delicious and flavour packed. No surprises in the taste, they were almost concentrated in their own flavour. So clockwise from the back we’ve got an apple galette topped with vanilla ice cream, vanilla panna-cotta with raspberry compote, lemon cheesecake, dark chocolate hazelnut torte with a scoop of hazelnut ice-cream.


I ordered an espresso to go with the petit four which was basically a sphere of pear and cream that finished the meal as I sat and waited for it to move itself below my centre of gravity and chatted to an Australian couple that also had the degustation whom asked me how I enjoyed it and gave them my Red Whisk business card so they can come and look at the pictures. My sincerest apologies have to go to them for the delay in posting this article.

All in all, I really quite enjoyed visiting (and not as their guest, this was fully funded by The Red Whisk). Next time I visit Auckland I’m going to have to stay at the Hilton again. As far as international standards go the Hilton here is above the average. Sure there are some things that could be done better but they’re probably not going to be picked up or worried over by your average consumer. As for the restaurant, the service of the assistant manager scored herself a very generous tip for her friendly yet professional service keeping the person dining alone who didn’t bring a book to read company, her generosity in pouring wine and offering not only and alternative to the listed wines, but both!



Hilton Auckland and White Restaurant
Princess Wharf. 147 Quay Street
Auckland. 1010
NEW ZEALAND

Tags:Degustation, Hilton, Auckland, New Zealand, Review, Restaurant, Wine, Fish, Soup, Scallops, Duck, Dessert

Isn’t it always the way, you’ve got a day off work but all you do is more work than you’d do at work?

0900 Breakfast with Puppet
1100 Orthopantograph (full mouth dental x-ray)
1200 Optometrists Appointment
1400 Meeting with new employer
1530 Pick up remaining belongings from existing employer
1600 Pick up washing from laundromat
1700 Hardware store - new light bulbs
1730 Clean kitchen
1900 Cook dinner
2000 Clean kitchen again
2030 Blog about dinner

So with that schedule, I wanted something quick and easy for dinner and with left over crispy skinned duck in the fridge and a packet of wild rice in the cupboard a jazzed up fried rice was great choice. Simple and easy and best of all, using those little bits of stuff you’ve got laying around.

Fried Wild Rice with Crispy Duck

Fried Wild Rice with Crispy Duck - Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side
2 eggs
2 cups of wild rice
2 cups of cooked duck, shredded
4 rashers of bacon, diced
½ cup frozen stir-fry veg (or peas, carrots, corn etc diced)
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
1 star anise (optional)

Whisk the eggs together and fry in a wok, swirling around to create a thin omelette. Turn the omelette out and dice.
Cook the rice and leave to cool.
Fry the spices, duck and bacon until the bacon is crispy, add the vegetables and fry until almost cooked and add the rice. Fry until the rice is loose and not clumping any more, add the egg and heat through. Serve.

Tags:Asian, Rice, Duck, Vegetables, Eggs

Ever since I first went to Billy Kwong’s a few years ago for a birthday dinner (thanks again Tony) I’ve been in love with Kylie’s crispy skinned duck in blood plum sauce and I’ve been trying to get around to making it for myself ever since and this weekend came the opportunity.

It was a bit of a nightmare getting to make this, I went to eight different places to find a whole duck and twice as many to find either blood plums or blood oranges. I ended up settling for standard oranges and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wondering if the dish would still retain it’s quintessential tastiness. Luck won with a not as sweet, but with a nice piquancy the original blood plums didn’t have.

Orange Crispy Skinned Duck

Crispy Skinned Orange Duck - Serves 2
1 whole duck, approx. 1.5kg
1 tablespoons of sichuan pepper
3 tablespoons of sea salt
¼ cup plain flour
vegetable oil for frying
1 cup of water
1 cup of white sugar
250 grams of oranges, juiced (or blood plums)
⅔ cups of fish sauce
6 whole star anise
2 cinnamon quills
⅓ cups of lime juice

Trim away the excess fat from the cavity of the duck. Grind the sichuan pepper and salt together and then rub all over the duck. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Boil some water in a wok or large saucepan and place a steamer basket over, the duck inside, cover and leave for an hour and a half. Take the now cooked duck out and leave it to cool.

Once the duck is cold enough to handle, slice it in half lengthwise, from neck to tail. Gently pry the carcass out, leaving the drumstick and wings intact. Cut each half into half again so you have a wing and a leg piece.

To make the sauce, mix the water, sugar, oranges together and bring to the boil in a saucepan, reduce the heat to a simmer and add the fish sauce, star anise, cinnamon and lime juice. Simmer while you fry the duck.

Heat the vegetable oil a wok or deep saucepan, cover the duck pieces with flour and deep fry each piece separately until the skin has gone a crisp golden colour. Drain the pieces after they’ve cooked on paper towel. When their all cooked, cut the duck down into bite-sized pieces, except for the bones.

Pile the duck on a serving platter and pour over enough sauce to coat the duck.

Eat it with your hands and have a bowl of rice on the side.

Tags:Duck, Oranges, Star Anise, Cinnamon, Asian, Frying

After going to Bills today I headed across the street to Hudson Meats for some inspriation for dinner and came out with a pair of duck marylands. I didn’t really have any idea what to do with them but I managed to throw something together with what was in the fridge. Next time, I’ll strain the berry sauce - the raspberry pips hurt.

Duck with Roast Fennel and Berry Sauce

Duck with Roast Fennel and Berry Sauce - Serves 2
2 duck marylands
2 sprigs of rosemary
1 tablespoon of salt
1 fennel bulb
1 zucchini
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Salt and Pepper
¼ cup of frozen berries

In a mortar and pestle grind the salt and rosemary until they’re mixed well. Coat the duck marylands well and leave to sit lightly covered with plastic wrap until it’s ready to cook.

Pre-heat the oven to 160ºC. Slice the zucchini in half and the fennel into 5mm slices. Drizzel with olive oil and season with salt and pepper and spread out on a roasting tray and roast in the oven until the fennel is soft.

After the fennel has been in the oven for about 30 minutes, add a little olive oil to a frying pan at medium heat. Add the duck skin side down and fry until golden, turn over and fry until the other side is golden. Finish the duck in the frying pan in the oven for 15 minutes.

Take the duck out of the oven and rest. While the duck is resting, add the berries to the frying pan and simmer until reduced. Strain out any pips. Put the veggies on the plate, then the duck and spoon over the berry sauce.

Tags:Duck, Fennel, Roast

Tonight I made Mel and I the Buttermilk Roast Chicken from Nigella Express. It's intriguing because I've never thought of marinading chicken in buttermilk or maple syrup. It makes sense though because the acidity in the buttermilk would work the same as any vinegar based marinade, breaking down the muscle fibers in the meat so it's more tender. Surprisingly, every ingredient in the marinade comes through in the end result; the chicken gets infused with a very subtle sourness from the buttermilk, a beautiful sweetness and flavour from the maple syrup that gets enhanced with the ground cumin, even more so is Nigella's recommendation to let the chicken start to scorch in the oven adding a soft smokiness. Of course, you could always just bbq the chicken to get the same effect.

I didn't measure anything tonight because I really couldn't be bothered but to be I think I'd need to add more cumin next time. Looking back, I think I played it safe with the cumin and added 1tsp instead of 2. It needs 2. I think a whole butterflied chicken in this marinade would be sensational, but as Nigella said, to make everything faster for her 'Express' book. As far as roasting the drumsticks go, I think I piled them too closely on the oven tray so they didn't get evenly browned, I should have turned them or out them on a rack to keep them out of the juice collecting in the tray.

Nigella meant for this to be eaten cold at a bbq, picnic or something like that and having them for lunch cold the next day was great, but hot for dinner, they were good too.

Buttermilk Roast Chicken - Serves 6
12 chicken drumsticks
500mL Buttermilk
60mL vegetable oil
2 cloves of garlic, bruised
1 tablespoon of Peppercorns, crushed
1 tablespoon of Maldon Sea Salt
1 teaspoons fresh ground cumin (her recipe says 1, I think it needs 2)
1 tablespoon of maple syrup

Pre-heat oven to 220°C. Put everything except the chicken into a large freezer bag and mix well. Add the chicken and roll around until it's all coated. Leave for at least 30 minutes or up to 2 hours (no more, or the acid in the buttermilk will deteriorate the meat too far).

Roast for at least 30 minutes until everything is cooked and the chicken skin is scorched and burnt in places.

Tags:Nigella, Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson, Chicken, Picnic, Buttermilk, Maple Syrup

I was reading the article in Good Living today about the new photography book by Melanie Dunea, "Last Supper" where she's taken pictures of some of the world's top chef's and what their last meal would be if they could choose anything in the world. The article is a great piece, and the book sounds extraordinary and damn I wish I could go to the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival dinner where some of the meals are prepared by their chefs!

Of course, all this got me thinking about food, or more precisely, got my thinking about food directed towards what I'd eat for my last supper. That and I already felt like death form having been drinking gin all night, the choice was easy. Good old fashioned comfort food. My last supper would have to be my favourite meal from childhood, my mother's chicken schnitzel either with Continental tomato pasta or mushroom gravy and mashed potatoes. No, definitely the mushroom gravy and mashed potatoes... I guess the reason I have such fond memories of it is because out of the standard meals my mother made, it was the nicenesst and least often burnt. Sure she made some other exceptional meals but they were usually the more complicated or time-consuming things that we'd only see on a special occasion.



She hit on a winner one day when she ran out of breadcumbs and made her own using the left over multi-grain bread, the nuttiness of the fried grains added a nice touch. I haven't had any bread in my house for a few weeks now, so I added some LSA to the breadcrumbs instead, and of course. Another option is adding Krummies, they're pre-crushed corn flakes, and everything knows that corn and chicken go well together.
The easiest, and cleanest way to pound out a chicken breast is between two sheets of plastic wrap. It helps keep the chicken intact too in case you get a little heavy handed with the meat mallet.

Tags:Chicken, Schnitzel, Mushroom

Tonight I made the roast chicken recipe from Stephanie Alexander's omnibus, The Cooks Companion. As with a lot of the recipes in her book, this is traditional and simple Australian food. There are a few others I prefer, but I thought I'd give this one a go. It is good, no doubt about it, it is what a roast chicken should be as your mother would have made it. The one I like most is a french version, heavy on the thyme, garlic, salt and pepper and with slices of lemon slipped under the skin which infuse the flesh with a great tang and is entirely edible after roasted. Tonight though I did cut the vegetables smaller than Stephanie would and they do look burnt but they are caramelized beautifully.



I'll be making a stock with the carcas and since I'm cooking for one, I'll use the rest of the bird through the week.


Stephanie Alexander's Roast Chicken
1 1.8kg chicken
1 lemon
3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper
rosemary
butter
roasting vegetables (carrot, leek, potato etc)
olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220ºC. Wash and dry chicken thruoroughly and rub salt inside the cavity. Insert half the lemon, garlic and herbs. Rub the body with oil and the remaining lemon salt, pepper and herbs. Cut the vebetables and coat lightly in oil and place in the bottom of the roasting tin.

Place the bird on the vegetables on it's side, roast for 20 minutes then turn back to the other side for another 20 minutes. Turn the bird again so the breast faces up and baste with pan juices. Roast for another 20 minutes.

Take the bird out of the roasting tin and allow to rest while preparing a green salad. Carve the bird as required and serve.

Tags:Chicken, Recipe, Stephanie Alexander

The cheese platter was washed down by another gin and tonic or three, and since I'd anticipated luxurious room service all day I skipped lunch and my stomach was rumbling. Browsing through the lengthy room service menu I finally settled on the "3 mini-burgers" and some buffalo wings.



The 3 mini burgers were the highlight, but nothing outstanding. It was a nice concept and worked well visually, the problem though was that other than the beef patty, lamb patty and chicken tenderloin on each burger, the rest were identical, a slice of tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise. They relied too heavily on the meat. When your concept is to have three individual burgers, you'd expect you'd do something so each one stood out individually? It would have been an easy fix, some caramelized onion on the beef, a dab or tzatziki instead of the mayo on the lamb, and perhaps some chili on the chicken?

As for the buffalo wings, they hardly rate a mention. They were warm and had a crispy skin with paprika and basic spices.

Breakfast the following morning was back in the club lounge and was equally disappointing as the canapes the night before. Just the stock standard sliced fruit, juices and cereals on the cold side of the buffet and on the warm there was just bacon, hash browns, sausages, scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes. Individually everything was nice enough, but it certainly didn't hold a torch to the Sofitel Melbourne's breakfast buffet, they even had pancakes!

Tags:Room Service, Hilton, Review, Burgers, Chicken, Wings, Travel

Over the last few years I’ve developed a fascination with duck, starting off with an introduction to Peking Duck by a good friend. We started on a quest to discover the best duck dish in Sydney. We’ve run through several restaurants in Chinatown and further a field, the now defunct XO on Crown Street, where the duck was tea-smoked. It was a wonderful taste and one I’d like to replicate in a future post once I get the equipment and time to be able to do it. Also on Crown Street, you can’t go past the Duck in Plum Sauce and Billy Kwong’s. I’ve gone back a couple of times now to try it again. I really should buy her book and make it myself.

I’ve since made a few duck dishes at home, including a pepper crusted duck breast with a fresh blueberry sauce with kipfler potatoes wich was wonderful, however the last attempt was duck confit. I’d never had it before, let alone made it. Wow. Sure it takes two days from start to finish but the results are amazing. Besides, it’s only an hour of actual work.

The walnut, pear and Gorgonzola salad I made with the confit was even better, possibly even a contender for the best duck dish in Sydney, if I do say so myself.

Tags:Cheese, Duck, Pear, Walnuts, Gorgonzola, Salad, Confit