Jiro Dreams Of Sushi

Calling all sushi lovers!

Ever since seeing the trailer on iTunes trailers I've been hankering to see this film.  This quiet little film invites us into the world of Jiro Ono, who happens to be the world's oldest 3-starred Michelin chef.  He was also declared a living national treasure by the Japanese Government.

Jiro runs Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seater sushi restaurant that is inside the Ginza subway station.  At 85 years of age, he has been working at his sushi craft for most of his life.  He talks about his dedication to his craft and how it occupies most of his thoughts - he literally dreams of making sushi.

Chouquettes

This should have been my inaugural post considering my nom de plume, but I had some difficulty in finding a recipe to work for me - better late than never right?

I was introduced to these sweet treats by my husband who was living in Paris at the time. Chouquettes were his favourite morning coffee/afternoon snack and depending on the boulangerie, were usually really cheap (a couple of euros for a bag of roughly ten chouquettes or sometimes they are sold by weight).

Chouquettes are really just egg-y, light choux pastries, usually covered in perle sucre - really more-ish as the only sweet taste comes from the little crunchy bits of sugar on the outside.




Since coming home to Sydney, I haven't been able to find these delightful little pastries anywhere! So I had to work out a way to make them myself ... With the help of Google of course! :)

Mulled wine granita

One thing I'll miss from living in Europe, is the northern hemisphere Christmas. Wrapped up in your many layers, at Christmas markets outside, holding a steaming, cup of mulled wine .. Awesome! An experience I recommend to everyone!

Still, hardly an experience I can replicate here - Christmas here in Sydney is glorious and hot. We're outside, but holding onto an icy cold drink.

So how to somehow combine the two? Mulled wine granita!!

Crazy/Wacky/Dump Cake

This one's for the allergy crew!

Our family seems to suffer from lots of allergies .. Allergies to eggs and dairy being too common which is unfortunate, as it rules out quite a few sweet things and I am all for the sweet things! Sadly that means less cake for the afflicted - though not necessarily more cake for me.

Since sharing is caring, I went in search for a cake recipe that someone with these allergies could eat and came across the recipe below. Alternately called crazy/wacky/dump cake, this cake was thought to have been developed either around World War I or perhaps the Depression, when households were subject to rationing and ingredients such as eggs and dairy were rare. Not quite sure why the cake is crazy/wacky but dump cake kinda makes sense because mostly the recipes call for the dry ingredients to be 'dumped' and mixed in the tin the cake is supposed to be baked in.

There are lots of versions of this cake on the internet - some have the occasional egg or dairy - but the recipe listed below has neither.

Tag Team @ Taste of Sydney

Editors note: Before anyone gets over excited, this is not a blog of The Taste of Sydney 2: the Encore Event. Yes the Taste of Sydney was 3 weeks ago but it was so good we thought people would love to revisit the event that was so eloquently reviewed by many other bloggers. So enjoy this walk down memory lane and prepare to salivate again. Lobo.

Taste of Sydney 2010, Centennial Park

It's the first time Yaya's Yumyums is attending Taste of Sydney. To try and cover most of what the menu had to offer Lobo, Bisycl, La chouquette sucree and I formed an eating tag-team. With crowns (the events currency where $1 = 1 crown) in hand we were unleashed into the realm of Sydney's finest.

Team Shanks didn't start off too well. My inner city navigation skills are not as good as they used to be - man I'm so suburban these days!!

Plan B's Wagyu Beef Burger (12 crowns)

After a quick scout of all the stalls our first stop was to try Plan B's infamous wagyu burger. I had been warned that it cost $2 more than what it normally would in the cafe, but I just had to try it. The legends are true... the wagyu was super moist, juicy and bursting with flavour. The sauce and cheese blended well on the crispy bun. Of no fault of Plan B's I inhaled a rogue sesame seed off the bun choking and gasping for air for the next 2mins, knocking the rest of the bun out of the W's hands. I painfully resisted the 30 second rule, and left what I tried of the legendary burger as a blissful memory in my belly - mmmm!!

Slow Food - the campaign for Australian raw milk products

I moved to London for a few years and ended up eating way more cheese than I had thought possible. Having grown up with a mild lactose intolerance, I had mostly stayed away from all dairy products, and also in part because locally they just never interested me.

However, since sharing house with a Frenchman, who occasionally received care packages of French cheese, my exposure to cheese was greatly expanded and in a good way! I discovered that not all hard cheeses are made equal .. They don't all have to taste like Coon; my favourite being Beaufort ... Not an absolute favourite though since I also like Gruyere .. Like wine, the age of a cheese influences it's flavour; newer cheese being more mellow, older cheese being more flavoursome. I also learned that Brie and Camembert did not cover all types of soft cheese .. I even managed to find and eat Stinking Bishop cheese! (For those of you who are curious, it does stink - especially after your French flatmate decides to age it in a cupboard - but has a very delicate taste.)

So why the massive difference in cheese varieties? The answer lies in pasteurisation. Pasteurisation involves heating milk to a certain degree to eliminate all micro-organisms. This is to ensure that all milk and dairy products are safe for consumption.

In Australia it's mostly illegal to produce dairy products with unpasteurised milk. These rules are governed by a national body called Food Standards Australia New Zealand ("FSANZ") who is currently assessing the use of raw milk. FSANZ also govern the import of raw milk cheeses from overseas.

Slow Food Australia are trying to lobby for these rules to be loosened so that Australians can enjoy the benefits of being able to work with raw milk. I read about their campaign and signed their online petition, but have since been notified that the initial draft assessment issued by FSANZ seems to be in favour of further restricting the use of raw milk. To further their cause, they will need the support of many more people! So here is where you come in ...

You can read more about this campaign here.

You can sign an online petition here.

I am all for ensuring that products are made safe for consumption, but since there is a long tradition of unpasteurised cheeses overseas, surely we can be trusted to make our own judgements on what we choose to eat?

Sugar and spice and all things nice,
la chouquette sucrée

Mamak - for awesome roti!

This post has been a long time coming ... I first experienced Mamak with a good friend late October 2009 .. I had a great time and the roti (for which Mamak is famous) was awesome! Since much time has passed and suffering from a distinct lack of photos to go with this post, I decided I just had to go again!

This time I had Yaya and Bisycl in tow ... And we ordered up a storm!

First up, Roti canai; soft and chewy, it was light and perfectly accompanied by the sambal and curry dips.


Roti telur (roti with plain egg filling); denser than the plain roti, but lovely mouth-feel as the egg was cooked just right and not too tough.


Chicken murtabak (roti filled with chicken, cabbage, eggs and onions); again was cooked just right with the meat still tender.


Beef satay; a little bit disappointing as the meat was dry and kind of tough. It had good flavour though and the satay was not as nut heavy as Thai satay.


Kari sayur (vegetable curry); flavoursome and not too spicy.


Nasi goreng; rice was nice and al dente. It smelt great when they brought it out and it didn't disappoint the tastebuds either!


Rojak (Malaysian style salad) was a nice refreshing dish in our mains line up. The shredded yam bean and cucumber fresh and juicy, the prawn/coconut fritters adding crunch, the fried tofu adding something chewy and peanut sauce something sweet.


Once we'd chowed down all that we could, we packed up the leftovers to savour the next day moving straight onto dessert!

Cendol (pandan noodles in syrup and coconut milk over ice shavings) .. This was a bit disappointing. I have to admit I'd never had this before, but noodles were a bit mushy and bland. We also suspect it had been siting for a tad too long before they brought it to us, because instead of a flavoured mini-mountain of ice shavings it was a puddle of noodles/syrup/coconut milk, with some ice floating around in it.


Roti kaya (roti filled with pandan/coconut spread); arrived piping hot and super-sweet - the vanilla ice cream a perfect accompaniment.


If I were to be perfectly honest, as good as the other dishes were, they all came a distant second to the roti. Soft but chewy, savoury and sweet, what else can I say but YUM?

A word of warning, if you are more inclined toward instant gratification, do not plan on getting a meal at the peak service hours at Mamak. Mamak is notorious for its queues which sometimes go a good way down the street! Having said that, the queues do move due to quick turn-around on tables, and you're provided with plenty of entertainment, as the roti is made in the windows facing the street - mesmerising stuff!

Sugar and spice and all things nice,


la chouquette sucrée

Mamak
15 Goulburn Street
Haymarket Sydney 2000
Tel: +612 9211 1668

Open 7 days
Lunch: 11:30am to 2:30pm
Dinner: 5:30pm to 9:30pm
Supper: Open till 2am Friday & Saturday

Chiffon cake

Paper wrapped chiffon cakes ... The kind bought from Chinese bakeries .. Light, fluffy and egg-y, they are definitely a childhood favourite! It's been a long held ambition to learn how to make them myself.

After some research on various recipes, most of the Asian sourced recipes include an emulsifier common to households in Asia, but not readily available here. I'm not a fan of adding more chemicals than necessary to my food, and as it was so common in all these recipes, I thought my ambition to make my own paper chiffon cakes had come to end. Luckily, I am also obsessed with all sorts of French baked goodies and I came across a French food blogger who had a chiffon cake recipe that is free of unrecognisable ingredients - just what I was after!

Ingredients I used:

• 130g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 6 large barn laid eggs, separated (from a 700g carton of 12)
• a pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 11 tablespoons of granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Method:

• Line 12 waxed paper cups with baking paper (mine were 280ml cups).
  
• Preheat the oven to 170ºC.
• Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. (Cos I'm lazy, I didn't do as suggested and sift it 3 times and found it still turns out okay.)
  
• In a separate bowl whisk the egg yolks, salt, vanilla extract and 6 tablespoons of sugar until mixture is a pale yellow. Add in oil and water, whisking after each addition.
• Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk til blended.
  
• Using my bright-shiny-red Kitchenaid stand mixer (awesome x'mas present - thanks D!), I beat the egg whites til I got soft peaks, then gradually added 5 tablespoons of sugar until I got stiff peaks. To test whether your peaks are stiff, a fun test is to turn the mixing bowl upside down - if they don't move, your egg whites are stiff!
• Fold a third of the egg whites into the batter to lighten the batter, then fold in the rest of the egg whites.
• I lined my baking tray with some more baking paper, because previous experience taught me that sometimes the wax from the paper cups melts onto your baking tray and then you have to choose whether to scour your non-stick bakeware or not ... Hmm .. Prevention is always better than cure!
• Divide the batter evenly between the 12 cups and place on baking tray.
• Put in the oven to bake for 30 minutes. Try not to open the oven doors whilst baking, because like soufflés, your chiffon cakes can deflate if the oven suddenly cools down early on in the baking process.
• Once done take them out and turn the cakes on their heads! This is to minimise shrinkage as they cool down.
• When they're finally cool, they are ready to be enjoyed!

I've been experimenting with flavour - coffee being a family favorite! - and to do this to the recipe is relatively simple. I've substituted the 1/2 cup of water for 1/2 cup of Illy coffee espresso with some additional grounds to give it an extra kick. Green tea is another flavor I'd be keen to try and classic citrus flavors using zest and juice should work too.

As chiffon cake is relatively low-carb (roughly 2-3 cups of carbs yields roughly 12 cups of cake), low fat (no butter and you can choose a low cholesterol vegetable oil) and has no dairy in it (hence it's popularity in Asia), I think it's a healthier alternative to normal sponge cake. Not that I need another excuse to indulge .. :)

Sugar and spice and all things nice,
la chouquette sucrée