Two Weeks of Food Madness (Bliss?)

Wellington on a plate has wrapped up, two weeks of food madness finished, and many a oyster eaten. There have been, apart from all the great restaurant deals, some great events, and it ended appropriately for some food bloggers, with a two day conference held mainly at Le Cordon Bleu. Thanks to all of the sponsors and organisers of the conference, check out the list of the great people who made everything possible. Can’t wait for next year. Once I’ve had a decent chance to sort out all the photos I took, I will probably do a gallery post about the conference.

Le Cordon Bleu— The New Zealand Chocolate Festival— T Leaf T—Archer McRae– Alessandra Zecchini– The Dumpling House–The Gourmet Gannet–Grow from Here–HarperCollins Publishers–The Kitchen-Maid—L’affaire Au Chocolat–Moon Over Martinborough–My Darling Lemon Thyme—Peoples Coffee–Positively Wellington Tourism–Six Barrel Soda Co.–Viviane Perényi–Yellow Brick Road—Wellington on A Plate–Boulcott St Bistro–Coco–Fork & Brewer—Foxglove–General Practitioner–Hummingbird—Maginnity’s—Monsoon Poon–The Tasting Room—Ti Kouka—Floriditas–Floyd’s–Liquid Winks–Moore Wilson–Pop Dining–Regal Salmon–Little Penang–Omega Seafood—Bongusto—St Clair—Man O War—Neudorf—100% Nutz–All Good Bananas–Aroha–The Collective Dairy–EcoStore—Equagold–Kokako–Little Bird–Love Plant Life–R Qute–Holy Moly Ice Cream—Mad Millie—Intercontinental–House of Sabra–Eat & Greet–So D’Lish

I entered a couple of recipes in Stuff’s My Dish competition, and both of them won their category. Entrée (for Arbitrageur): pork hock with pickled rhubarb & Bistro Classic (for Boulcott Street Bistro): pork cheek confit with fennel and apple sauce. They ended up on the menu of the respective restaurants for a week, which is pretty cool, and awesome seeing someone else interpret my recipe. Check out the recipes, pork cheek confit and pork hock cake.

Last but not least, as I mentioned in my previous post, I was one of the presenters for the City Market Visa Wellington on a Plate event, Pecha Kucha: Imbibe. Well the videos are now on YouTube, I can’t embed them, but you can see my presentation here, and the playlist for the others here.

Pork Cheek Confit

Let me start out with the obvious, this dish is made with a lot of fat, heaps of it, that doesn’t mean it will make it to the plate though, it is just a means to a delicious end. I feel I should point out I’m not using a fashionable fat here either, I’m not talking about confiting in olive oil or duck fat, no I’m using good old fashioned very tasty and awesome lard. Come on, I’m confiting pork here, what did you expect me to use? Lard isn’t that bad, it has a bad rap more from bad memories and the jazzercise health police, rather than facts. You think duck fat roasted potatoes are a health food? Well no... But duck fat is a popular fat, so thoughts of ill health effects slip greasily to the back of the mind, Butter is fat du jour, and Olive oil will cure what ails you.

The fact of it is lard has less saturated fat than butter (12%) and less than half the cholesterol, yes lard is higher in calories (about 15–20%) but butter is about 15–18% water. Look anyway, I’m not advocating cooking with it everyday, I’m just saying it’s not as evil as it has been made out to be. It doesn’t deserve that scowl and revolted “You cooked that in lard!?”.

Now with that mini rant over and done with, I’ll start with another warning, this dish takes a while, about 12 hours curing, 12 hours cooking time, 12 hours pressing, and hey only about 20 minutes of final cooking, so if you’re on to it, you could cure overnight, get it in the oven in the morning, press and cool it in the evening, and cook it for dinner the next night. Start on a Friday evening, and eat on Sunday evening.


First off the cure, weigh your piece of meat, and calculate 2%, that’s how much salt you need. Mix rock or kosher salt, with some thyme and szechuan pepper. Coat the pork in the salt mix and place in a container (or ziplock bag) in the fridge overnight.


Preheat your oven to 90ºC, no that’s not a misprint. Melt enough lard to completely submerge the pork cheek in the casserole/dutch oven you’ll be using. While the lard is slowly melting, take the pork out of the fridge and rinse all the salt off it. Pat the pork dry, and place it in the casserole dish, scatter in some spices (I used star anise and szechuan pepper). When the lard is completely liquid pour it gently over the pork, making sure it is fully submerged. Cover with tinfoil, you want to make as airtight seal as is possible, you don’t want any moisture to escape. Place it in the oven and forget about it for 12 hours.


Take two baking dishes (glass or ceramic is ideal), one needs to sit inside the other, Line the bigger of the two with some baking paper, and the bottom of the smaller one with cling film. Remove the dish from the oven, and take off the tin foil, check to see that the meat is indeed cooked and tender. You can now choose to be gung-ho about the whole process and carefully lift out the pork and place it in the larger baking dish, carefully placing the the smaller one on top, weigh it down with a few cans, and wrap the whole thing firmly with some cling film. Or, let it cool a while so the fat sets slightly and the meat is less fragile. Either way, once it’s wrapped, put it in the fridge for 12 hours to press.


Get the oven on and preheating to 200–220ºC. Remove the pork from the fridge and unwrap, remove the top dish with a little caution. Portion up the pork, and keep any offcuts (tasty cooks snack). When the oven is up to temperature, get a heavy based, ovenproof frying pan on to the heat, we want it to be scorching hot. Add a few drops of oil to the pan, place the pork skin side down in the pan, pressing down gently, cook for 1 minute then transfer to the oven for 15–20 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven (don’t forget the handles hot!), and place the pork on a wooden board skin side up, to rest. While the pork rests, steam up some greens, I had some bok choy tossed in soy sauce, fish sauce and sesame seeds.


Portioned.


Out of the oven.


Melt in the mouth crisp skin.


'Test' piece with scallion and plum sauce (plum juice, spices and xanthan).

Confit Garlic

I came across the recipe for confit garlic on the Modernist Cuisine blog the other day and I had to make it. It seemed like a great thing to have sitting ready in the fridge, and the idea of caramelised garlic goodness mashed on crusty toasted bread was too irresistible to pass up.

So on the way home I picked up an extra bottle of olive oil (the alternate suggestion of duck fat sounds pretty good too) and half a kilo of garlic.


Fill a Mason jar three quarters of the way up with garlic cloves, a sprig of rosemary and some thyme. Fill almost to the top with olive oil and screw on the lid, do a quarter turn to loosen it so steam can escape from the jar.

Place the jar on a trivet in a pressure cooker and pour enough water in to come 2 cm up the side of the jar. Cook for 2 hours on high pressure.


The cloves turn an amazing deep caramel brown and smell of deep slow roast garlic. I have a feeling this will be a staple in my fridge (they should last 2 months in the fridge).

Check out the Modernist Cuisine blog post for a heap of tips and information and more detailed recipe.


Modernist Cuisine - Pressure Cooker Safety : Garlic Confit from Modernist Cuisine on Vimeo.


I made up another batch of Garlic Confit and got a video of the jars just as I pulled them from the pressure cooker, the jars are sealed and still under pressure, the boiling stopped as soon as the lids were removed.

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.

Duck Confit - prep

Getting ready to cure the duck, salt, thyme, bay leaves and duck.


Grinding the bay leaves, the smell is amazing.


All the ingredients in a bag ready for a short stay of 24 hours in the fridge. It looks so green because what I thought was dried thyme was in fact a fine powdered freeze dried thyme.