Smoked Carrot and Ginger Soup

Best laid plans and all of that! Well I had the bright idea of smoked carrot and ginger soup, smoke some carrots cook them in the pressure cooker with a little baking soda so they would caramelise and add a bit of depth of flavour, chuck a bit of ginger in there too, purée that up and hey presto tasty soup. Well, I was quite wrong, putrid foul orangey brown gunk that offended just about every sense one has, binned. The house ended up smelling of this smoky concoction from hell for the best part of a day. Not to be put off by hell carrots I started again, with a little smoky cheat, Al Brown’s Whitestone smoked butter would add that much desired smoky flavour to the soup not the carrots.

1 Kg Carrots
25 g Smoked butter
Thumb of Ginger
25 g Unsalted butter
1 Red onion
Coriander, root and leaves.
1 Scant tablespoon Peanut butter
Peanuts, toasted and crushed
Chilli flakes
Chilli oil
1% Xanthan Gum (1% by weight of the finished product)

Peel and dice the carrots, peel the ginger and slice into large chunks, clean the coriander root, peel the onion and slice into quarters. Place into a pot and barely cover with water, add the unsalted butter, bring to a simmer over low heat and cook covered until the carrots are tender.


Strain the carrots (keeping the liquid), place the coriander root, onion and ginger root along with the cooking liquids into a pot and start slowly reducing the liquid.

Work the cooked carrots through a mouli and sieve, I did this a couple of times to get super smooth purée. Use some of the reduced cooking liquid to loosen the purée to the desired consistency.


Place the soup in a blender, add the smoked butter, peanut butter and chilli oil (to taste), start the blender, when a vortex forms sprinkle in the xanthan gum, let it run for about 30 seconds.

Pass the soup through a sieve into a pot, season with salt as needed, heat to desired temperature. Serve. Garnish with finely sliced coriander, roasted peanuts chilli flakes and chilli oil. I went a little further with it and made a crab meat salad, crab meat, sliced coriander leaf, toasted peanuts, chilli flakes and oil tossed together and placed in the centre of the bowl.

Mister rabbits last meal

Ambition and vision seemed to come into alignment, and as usual I probably went a little overboard on a dish for two, and maybe put in a few or more hours into it, just as well I like spending time in the kitchen I guess. I didn’t have a clear idea when I first saw Mr Rabbit inviting me to take him home from Moore Wilson as we madly dashed around the store on a rather freezing cold morning, rushing home to get a panel heater installed. Not so much a recipe as such, but more a list of what was what in roughly the order it happened.

Rabbit Broken down, loin removed, belly removed, legs removed and deboned.


Bones and scraps into a pan (pressure cooker) with baking soda, carrots, onion, caraway, juniper, peppercorns, thyme and parsley, 1 cup of water and 1 cup of dry suffolk cider, cooked on high pressure for 45 minutes, let to release pressure, strained without pressing the bones and vegetables.




Leg meat was cured in salt (2%), juniper and thyme overnight. Sous vide confit with duck fat for 4 hours at 70ºC. Roughly pulled apart and formed into a torchon, wrapped firmly in layers of cling film. Refrigerated overnight.


The leg “torchon” is sliced in half, and one half in half again, the intact half rolled in flour, egg yolk, panko crumbs, yolk and then finally crumbs again. Left in the fridge for at least half an hour.


Carrots peeled, sliced and cooked in enough water until tender, passed through a mouli, then a fine sieve, returned to pan and cooked with some butter until enough water has evaporated and a thick purée is left, seasoned.


Sauce, red onion, thyme, butter, cooked until the onion is tender and 1 cup of dry suffolk cider is added, reduced to 1 quarter, strained, 1 cup of rabbit stock added and reduced to 1 third of a cup, seasoned and enriched with a little butter to thicken and add shine.


Radish is sliced thinly then placed in an ice bath. Brussels sprouts broken down to individual leaves, blanched in boiling salted water then transferred to ice bath.


Leg quarters are seared on one side in butter and left to heat through. The crumbed half is fried in butter, spooning over the foaming butter to help create an even golden brown coating, drained on paper towels, and sliced in half on a bias just before serving.

Loin, pan seared and spoon with butter until medium.

Parsley and thyme picked over for garnish.

Plated with what one could call a skid mark of carrot purée, loin sliced in half, then the uncrumbed leg, crumbed leg, radish and sprout leaves arranges, and dressed with the rich sauce, and a scattering of herbs.

Red wine marinated roast beef salad

This is so simple to prepare, all it takes is a bit of patience or forethought, and a mandoline (or a sharp knife and steady hand). The earthy taste of the carrots pair nicely with the thin slices of medium rare beef, then little explosions of saltiness from the capers, finishing with fresh anise from fennel cleansing the palette ready for the next bite.


Marinate the beef in red wine and garlic for about 8 hours, or overnight, heck longer the better, but you probably wouldn't want to leave it much longer than 24 hours.


Preheat the oven to 200°C, and get a heavy based pan on the heat, preferably one which is oven proof. Pat the beef dry and season well with salt and pepper. Brown the beef on all sides in the pan with a little butter and oil, you want a good brown crust as it adds bundles of flavor to the beef. Once browned place it in the hot oven and cook until medium rare (internal temperature of 55°C).


Let the meat rest for as long as you can, preferably until it's room temperature.


While the beef is resting, slice some carrot on the thinnest setting of a mandoline, put aside some of the carrot slices to use raw, and in a bowl mix the remaining slices with a bit of vinegar, salt and sugar to make a quick pickle. Chop some parsley, and slice some fennel on the mandoline, again thinner the better. When the beef has finished resting, slice it thinly and lay it out on a plate. Garnish with the carrots, pickled carrots, fennel, capers, parsley, and drizzle over a simple vinaigrette (oil, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard, salt and pepper), finally sprinkle over some flaky or kosher salt.

Carrot Burrata

I've had a few things from Modernist Pantry sitting the back of the pantry for a while and haven't had much of a chance to experiment with them, until now. I came across a post on Ideas In Food, they had a fun take on Burrata, instead of mozzarella with a soft curd and cream centre, they made it from banana. I had to try it, well the method at least.


I was having another go at caramelised carrot soup, and the idea floated from the recesses of my mind to try the Burrata method with it. Now I'm no expert when it comes to using things such as agar agar and locust bean gum, so the measurements on here are derived from the percentages on Ideas in Food (which I figured out by weight at salt 0.3%, locust bean gum 0.04% and agar 0.35%).

Make the soup (recipe) but use the weights below, stop after you have puréed it and passed it through a sieve and don't add the peanut butter.

Soup ingredients:
500 grams Carrot
25 grams Olive Oil
200 grams Stock

Buratta ingredients:
2.4 grams Salt
0.27 grams Locust Bean Gum
2.7 grams Agar Agar


Weigh out the dry ingredients. Accurate digital scales are essential.


Pour the soup into a blender, turn it on, when a vortex has formed, sprinkle in the powders and let it run for 15 seconds so they disperse.


Pour out the soup in to a dish and let it cool on the bench. Once it has formed a solid gel, place one third of it in the fridge.


Blend one third of it to make a fluid gel, and chop last third to resemble curds. Combine in a bowl and season with some caraway seeds, mix together.

Take a square of plastic wrap and place 2 tablespoons of the mix in the centre, bring up the corners and twist (to create a ball) and secure with a length of kitchen string. Place the balls on a tray and put in the freezer for 3-4 hours.


Unwrap the frozen balls and place back in the freezer while the gel from the fridge melts over a low heat. Use a metal skewer or toothpick as I did to dip each of the balls in the melted gel (do two coats). Place the dipped balls on a tray in the fridge to defrost.


Dressed with a little extra olive oil, parsley, caraway and chilli.

Caramelised Carrot & Peanut soup

I've had this recipe on my mind ever since I heard about it, and got my hands on a pressure cooker (which is essential). The pressure cooker along with some baking soda (which increases the pH and in turn speeds up the Maillard reaction) enable the carrots to caramelise.

You can find the original recipe by Nathan Myhrvold at www.foodandwine.com, and in his book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (which would make an excellent Christmas pressie). I have altered it slightly, by using vegetable stock instead of carrot juice, olive oil in place of butter and a touch of peanut. So the original recipe is all about the carrot, my tweaks use it as a base flavour.


Peel and chop 500 grams of carrots place in a pressure cooker along with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. Cook on high pressure for 15 minutes. The strength of the caramel aroma is quite surprising.

Once the time is up release the pressure (if electric use the pressure release valve or traditional run it under cold water to lower the pressure). Pour in 500 ml of vegetable stock (make sure it's not too strong flavoured, as you don't want to muddy the flavour of carrot. Dilute it if you have to), add 1/2 teaspoon of salt (coarse/kosher) and purée with a dash more olive oil and a spoon of good peanut butter (by good I mean an ingredient list that has only peanuts and salt) don't overdo the peanut butter as it will over power the soup.

Once puréed pass it through a fine sieve, and then warm through before serving. Garnish with caraway seeds, flaked dried chilli, olive oil and natural yoghurt.

Nachos

Instead of chucking a whole lot of stuff in with the beef when making chilli for nachos, I prefer to have lots of accompaniments so you can choose with each bite what you want. Pictured above are corn chips with chilli beef, avocado (dressed with lemon and fresh coriander), confit of capsicum, pickled red and green jalapeno pepper and pickled carrot, oh and a bit of a sprinkle of cheese straight on the chilli beef.


Confit of capsicum
Blister and char a capsicum, you can do this either under a grill or over an open flame.


Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, leave for about 5 minutes and scrape of the charred skin.


Slice in to strips, arrange in a baking dish with some garlic, crushed coriander seeds and a bay leaf, pour in enough oil to cover and cook at 130ºC for about 40 minutes.


Quick pickled carrot
Either by hand or with a handy mandoline julienne a carrot.


I find a zip lock bag is best for a quick pickled as you can massage the ingredients together. Combine the carrot, thin slices of onion, grated garlic, vinegar, sugar and salt. Massage together and set aside.


Chili beef
I'm sure everyone has their own version of chilli so I wont bore you with a long recipe.

Very finely dice an onion and soften in a pan, add coriander, cumin, chilli, garlic, salt and pepper. Cook until fragrant, try not to colour the onion too much. Deglaze the pan with a little vinegar. Add minced beef and cook until brown, tip off any excess fat if you wish. Squirt in a bit of tomato paste and cook down. Pour in enough passata (or tomato purée) to cover and simmer until thick. Stir in some chopped coriander and parsley. Adjust seasoning.


Keep an eye out for La Morena products at your local shop, they're very good.