Slowly does it

Well I haven’t really stepped back into the kitchen as yet, maybe still on holiday time, or just lacking a little enthusiasm. I dipped a toe with trying my hand at pulled noodles, which was a fortunate little spark of inspiration, and started a mini affair with all things noodle. So not so much a full on epic of a post that I sometimes rant on about something but a little tiny post of a rice noodle dish that I whipped up on a whim that went down a treat. It uses my now new favourite ingredient, black bean chilli sauce, fermented black beans in a fiery hot chilli oil.

Pork belly and roasted fennel noodles.
Pork Belly
2 Large fennel bulbs
1 Large onion
Black bean chilli sauce
Cooking rice wine

Garnish
Spring onions, sliced
Green chilli, sliced
Coriander
Sprouts, loving radish sprouts at the mo.

Slice the fennel in half and then into wedges, and slice the onion in half and into slices, toss through the black bean chilli sauce and cooking rice wine. Make a bed in a roasting pan with the coated vegetables and place a seasoned scored pork belly on top.

Place into a 220ºC preheated oven and then turn down to 160ºC, cook for about 3 hours. You will need to take it out of the oven now and then to toss around the fennel mix so it doesn’t burn.

Remove from the oven and tip the fennel mixture and cooking juices into a large bowl, cover and set aside, place the pork back in the roasting dish and crank the heat up in the oven, put it back in for about 10 minutes so the rind gets a chance to puff up.


While the pork is cooking, get some noodles onto the boil. Adjust the seasoning of the fennel mix, I ended up putting in a little fish sauce and rice vinegar to balance it.

Take the pork out of the oven and let it rest. When the noodles are cooked drain them and toss them in the fennel mix.

Take a portion of noodles, dripping with all the fennel cooking liquid, and make a bed in a bowl with them, make sure to get a decent portion of the beautiful caramelised fennel in there too. Slice up the pork and lay on top of the noodles, garnish to your hearts content and devour.

Cumin lamb with hand pulled noodles

Finally back from holiday, a week of sun and lounging next to a pool with a cocktail in hand, life was hard, however the cool Wellington weather snapped me back to reality as soon as I stepped out of the airport, gone was the hot 30ºC sunny weather. Unfortunately I didn’t come back with just photos and good memories of the much needed break, I was also covered in jellyfish stings which I sustained on the last day snorkelling through a rather dense patch of their larvae. So after a few days recuperating I set my mind to the next kitchen project. It came together serendipitously as much of my ideas do, I was at Yans supermarket stocking back up on the usual suspects, tapioca starch, fish sauce, rooster sauce and the like, and then killing a little time at the butchers next door waiting for the other half, when I spied a rather good looking, and dirt cheap, lamb fore-quarter. My mind shot back to my last trip to Auckland and Xi'an Food Bar with their amazing hand pulled noodles. I went into research mode, and hunted down methods and recipes, which are a bit lacking in detail online, so this is my version muddled together from many sources, one person's way to knead, someone else's resting times, and quantities fudged by me from what I could find. There are so many recipes just saying ‘enough’ water. How much is enough? Fundamentally it’s just flour and water so surely the ratio is important. I ended up deciding on 60% hydration (10 parts flour 6 parts water), when I first started out I thought it may be a bit dry but with the resting steps the flour hydrates and becomes soft, pliable, and incredibly stretchy with the kneading method.

Noodles (enough for 4 portions or 2 very very generous servings)
400 g Flour, high gluten such as bread flour
240 ml Water
5 g salt (dissolved in the water)

Tip the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour in the water and mix to form a ball of dough. Don’t worry about mixing it too much, it doesn’t need to be a smooth ball of dough. Cover with cling film and let it rest for 15 minutes.


Place the dough on a clean work surface and start to roll out into a log about 60cm in length, take one end and fold it in half to the other end, repeat the rolling and folding for about 15 minutes, giving it a chance to rest for a couple of minutes every five or so. The dough should be very smooth by now, if not keep kneading. Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover with cling film, let it rest at room temperature for a hour.

Take the dough and shape it into a rectangle about 10 cm wide and 3–4 cm thick, cut off a 1 cm slice, so you should have a rough rectangle of dough 10 cm long, 3 cm wide and 1 cm thick, coat the slice in a neutral oil, such as Canola or rice bran, lay the piece on a tray. Repeat until done. Cover the tray with cling film and place in the fridge for a hour.

Take the dough out of the fridge ten minutes or so before you want to cook, and have a large pot of salted water on the boil, you want to stretch the noodles and get them straight into the pot, this is best done one serving at a time, so don’t try and do the whole lot at once, four or five pieces is a pretty generous serving size.


Take a piece of dough and start to stretch it out holding one end in each hand and oscillating it up and down as you go, slapping it against the bench. Sounds a bit weird, but easy once you’ve got the hang of it. Lay the pulled noodle out on the bench and move on to the next. Once the serving of noodles have been pulled, gently roll a rolling pin over the noodles, don't really use any pressure just let the weight of the pin help even out the noodles.

Now for the fun bit, take one end of a noodle and tear it down the middle right to the other end, don’t tear it in two leave it as one long noodle, get them into the boiling water and cook for about 3 minutes, once they float to the surface they’re cooked.


Here’s a good video to show the method of stretching out the noodles, and hey it’s got Andrew Zimmern in it.

Cumin Lamb
1 fore-quarter of lamb or shoulder roast
Cumin
Chilli flakes
Garlic
Salt
Prickly ash (Szechuan pepper)
Rice bran oil
Black Bean Chilli sauce, literally chilli oil with fermented black beans in it.

I had a pretty awesome fore-quarter of lamb, I ended up removing the neck and fore shin for a later use, but a decent shoulder cut should do the job too.


In a blender combine 3 parts cumin, 1 part chilli, 1 part prickly ash, a good tablespoon of salt, 6 or 7 cloves of garlic, a good portion of a jar of the black bean chilli sauce (about a cup and a bit) and a little extra oil. Blitz until it forms a rough paste.


Make slashes in the fat on the flesh side of the meat and generously rub the paste all over the lamb. Wrap tightly in a few layers of cling wrap and leave it to rest overnight in the fridge.


Preheat the oven to 220ºC. While the oven is heating remove the lamb from the fridge and let it sit on the bench for about 30 minutes. Slice up a few onions and make a trivet in a roasting pan with the slices and some coriander, add a splash of cooking rice wine. Lay the lamb on top of the onions, cover tightly with tin foil and place in the heated oven, turn the temperature down to 150ºC and cook for 4 hours 30 minutes.


Getting it all together
Remove the lamb from the roasting dish, carefully, wrap it in tin foil and set aside to rest and also to cool down a little so it can be pulled apart a little easier. When it’s cool enough to handle remove all the bones and roughly shred with a fork. Cover and set aside.


Strain the cooking liquid into a pot with some chicken stock, a 50/50 mix of stock and cooking liquid is good, bring to a simmer and reduce a little, taste and season as you like, I added a little extra chilli. There will probably be quite a bit of fat in the sauce so you can skim it if you like, I skimmed quite a bit off and then tossed it through the shredded meat, a bit decadent.

Get a few containers of garnishes ready it will make plating up much easier, coriander leaves, sliced chilli, bean sprouts, lime, chilli oil, sliced spring onion.

Serving
Place a ladleful of the sauce into a large bowl along with a portion of lamb a few coriander leaves and chili slices. Get the noodles pulled and into the boiling water, when cooked pull out with tongs and toss in the bowl with the lamb, transfer it to a serving bowl and garnish with extra coriander, chilli, bean sprouts, spring onions and chilli oil, or whatever else you have. Get the next portion on the go.

Peas and Lettuce

Well a quick little post before I get on a plane and spend a week on an island lounging next to a pool with a book in one hand and a drink in the other.

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This is a great little side dish that’s packed full of flavour and a novel way of serving lettuce, or it can be made a bit more substantial and turned into a light meal with the addition of a poached egg (or 13 minute egg). There’s not a whole lot of prep that needs to be done, and it all should be easy to knock off while the egg gently cooks.

13 minute egg
1 Baby Cos, sliced crosswise into 1 cm strips
2 rashers of streaky bacon, diced
Handful of frozen peas
half a cup of chicken stock, use less if it’s already reduced
Mustard, a good spoonful
Shallot, very finely diced
Anchovies (to taste), minced


Sauté the onions and bacon in a little olive oil, try not to colour it too much, when cooked through add the anchovies and cook until amalgamated. Pour in the chicken stock and add the mustard, simmer until it has reduced by about half. Add the peas, and when almost cooked add the lettuce and simmer until it has become limp, take care not to overcook the lettuce. Season with salt and pepper and serve in a bowl with the egg placed in the centre. The runny yolk mingles with the stock and creates a lush sauce.

Cookies

This is pretty much my go to recipe for cookies, these are not ooey gooey chewy cookies, they have a good snap and are perfect for dunking. Rolled into a log and wrapped tightly it freezes extremely well, meaning you can slice off rounds (with a hot knife) and have fresh biscuits cooked in about 10 minutes, no need to cook up the whole batch at once. Rounds rolled very thin and baked nice and crisp also make a great ice cream sandwich.

100 g butter
200 g sugar
200 g flour
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking powder salt

Cream the butter and sugar until pale light a fluffy, beat in the egg. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and salt, and work into the batter, this is also the perfect time to add any extras such as chopped nuts or chocolate, try not to overwork the dough.


Tear off a large rectangle of cling film and place the dough in a rough log shape in the centre, use the cling film to tightly roll up into an uniform log, a second layer can help. Place either in the freezer for future use or in the fridge for at least half an hour before slicing and baking for about 10 minutes in a preheated 180ºC oven. Cool on a wire rack, well that is if you can wait for them to cool before devouring.


When making cookies for an ice cream sandwich I’ll take a ring mold and press ice cream into it on a sheet of baking paper, then transfer to the freezer. Then slice a round of the cookie dough off and roll out with a rolling pin so it’s a little larger than the ring mold and nice and thin. Cook it just as above, but keep an eye on it as it will cook a little quicker.

Caesar Salad

Whenever I make up a batch of 13 minute eggs I usually make a couple extra so they can sit in the fridge and be used over the next few days, it seems like a waste of effort to only make one or two when I need them, plus they make a great Caesar Salad dressing. Well my version of a Caesar dressing on my version of the Salad, an easy toss together lunch or light dinner and a great way to use up a glut of cos lettuce.

Dressing
1 very soft egg (13 minute egg)
1 tsp hot mustard
Juice of one lemon
rice bran oil, to start the emulsion
olive oil, to bulk out
salt
pepper
cayenne

Use a whisk to break up the egg, stir in the mustard, whilst whisking slowly, drip-by-drip, pour in the rice bran oil, once a stable emulsion has been formed switch to olive oil, I usually end up using about a fifty-fifty mix of oils, add the lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper to taste.

Salad
1 baby cos
Streaky bacon
croutons
red onion

Well it’s all prep and assembly really, firstly I like to cook the bacon, starting in a cold oven to help the fat render, cook it until it’s nice and crisp or as Agent Dale Cooper would say “Bacon, super-crispy. Almost burned. Cremated.”^[1] Remove the bacon from the oven and drain on paper towels.

Using the same tray, toss cubed bread in the hot bacon fat and put in the oven until the bread is golden and crunchy.

Thinly slice the red onion, much like anchovies you’re either a fan of raw onion or not, I love it.

Separate the lettuce leaves and thoroughly wash set aside to drain.

Building the Salad
Garlic confit (or slow roasted garlic)
Anchovies

If you’re making the salad for more than one, and perhaps not everyone appreciates anchovies for  just how awesome they are, this is a simple way to customise the dressing for each serving. So in a clean bowl put in some minced anchovies, to taste, along with a clove or two of some garlic confit, mashed, a large spoon or so of the dressing and mix through.

Build up the salad putting in enough leaves, bacon, croutons and onion to satisfy and gently toss through the dressing.

Spring onion Kimchi

Well I had plans to make another batch of kimchi, the last lot of the fiery fermented cabbage has all but disappeared from our fridge, but wanting to keep the peace and not wanting to devote as much of our tiny fridge space to three very large jars of cabbage, nor the week of wondrous aroma that fermenting cabbage and shrimp paste adds to the general smells of the house, I opted for a much smaller batch, a one litre jars worth, and instead of having spring onion as the background vegetable it would be replacing the cabbage entirely.

Spring onions, enough to tightly pack your chosen jar
½ cup garlic
Thumb of ginger
½ cup fish sauce
1 cup hot chilli flakes
½ cup glutinous rice flour (also called sweet rice flour)
3 cups water
¼ cup sugar
1 tbsp belacan (a shrimp paste)
3 g Bonito flakes (optional)


The night before, trim the spring onions so they are about a centimetre or two shorter than the height of the jar, reserve the green parts as they will be puréed later. Fill a large bowl with water and add enough salt to make a 5% brine (50 grams per litre), submerge the trimmed spring onions and weigh down with a plate or two, leave overnight.


The next day, pour the 3 cups of water, rice flour and sugar into a pot and bring to the boil, this will thicken up pretty quick, keep stirring until it forms a thick smooth paste. Tip out into a bowl and leave to cool.


While the the rice glop cools, in a blender combine the garlic, ginger, greens of spring onion, fish sauce, and belacan, whiz until it forms a smoothish purée. Mix into the now cool glop along with the bonito and chilli flakes.

Now is the time that if you don’t have some gloves you’ll wish you did, drain the spring onions and dump into the fiery red fishy gloppy paste and make sure they all get a good coating, transfer them to a sterile jar, then top up with the paste leaving a little head room in the jar but making sure that the spring onions are covered, place on the lid loosely and move to somewhere cool and dark for 3–6 days so the fermentation can begin. After about 6 days tighten the lid and transfer to the fridge.


I’m not sure exactly how long it will last in the fridge ‘until it’s gone’ is my best answer, and I do prefer it to age a little before I crack the jar and start eating, so up to you whether or not you plough into the fiery spring onions straight away or not.

Upside down apple cake

125 g Butter
125 g Sugar
1 Egg
1 tsp vanilla paste
1/2 tsp salt
50 g Cornflour
75 g Wheat flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1 Apple
Sugar and Butter to coat

• Preheat the oven to 170ºC.
• Grease a large ramekin with butter and sprinkle sugar on the base.
• Peel and slice the apple very thinly, I prefer to use a mandoline for this.
• Arrange the apple slices on the base of the ramekin.
• Cream the butter and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is pale yellow and fluffy. Beat in the egg along with the vanilla.
• Sieve in the salt, flours and baking powder, fold the dry mix in, take care not to overwork the batter.
• Spoon the mixture into the ramekin and try not to disturb the apple layer.
• Bake for 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
• Run a knife around the edge of the cake and turn out onto a plate. Enjoy with lashings of cream, whipped or not.

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.

Mac and Cheese Sliders

Mac and Cheese isn’t really considered healthy, and well it is pretty much starch with starch with cheese, so not really helping out with the 5+ a day vegetable intake that is recommended. So why not gild the lily and coat patties of Mac & Cheese in some tasty potato starch (instant mash potato), fry the little cheese pasta goodness and slide it into a soft bun with some hot sauce and lettuce. Why not indeed, a total carb overload, bread, pasta, flour based sauce, not at all bad for you, well not your taste buds anyway.

Macaroni
Cook to the packets instructions, I prefer the small elbow to the large. Take care not to overcook. Strain and dump into a large bowl. I think I used about 300 grams of pasta.

Streaky bacon
Slice up into little lardons and place in a hot oven until the fat has started to render out and crisp up around the edges, don’t make it too crispy otherwise you’ll have little bacon bullets in your pasta. Tip the bacon, fat and all, on top of the strained pasta and stir through.

Cheese Sauce
750 ml milk (whole milk please)
Parsley
Bay Leaf
Thyme
Peppercorns
Onion (peeled and quartered)

Place all of the ingredients in a pot and put over a low heat, allow it to gently simmer for ten minutes or so, be careful not to scald the milk. Strain into a jug for easy pouring.

Over a medium heat melt 3 tablespoons of butter and then stir in 3 heaped tablespoons of flour, stir until the flour has cooked through, make sure not to colour the roux too much. Pour in a portion of the milk and whisk until it has incorporated and begins to thicken, repeat until all of the milk is incorporated. Cook until thick, stirring often. If the white sauce is lumpy, don’t worry just keep stirring and cooking, the starch in the flour will eventually hydrate and the the sauce will become smooth.

Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in an egg, and two cups of cheese, I like to use a combination of strong flavourful cheese and good melting cheese.


Pour the cheese sauce into the bowl with the pasta and stir through making sure it is evenly coated, taste and season as needed.

Now you can spoon this into a baking dish, top with some crumbs and cook in a hot oven for about half an hour and you’ll have some tasty mac & cheese, or you could wait for it to cool and transfer it to some containers and place in the fridge. When the mix has set and is completely cold remove from the fridge and spoon into ring molds, pressing down with the back of a spoon to make little slider patties, carefully coat each patty in potato starch (instant potatoes).


Heat a good amount of oil in a heavy based frying pan and cook the patties until they are golden brown on each side, you could probably deep fry if you wish but I find shallow frying works perfectly well. Allow the patties to drain on some kitchen towels and serve in a slider bun with shredded iceberg lettuce and hot sauce.

Corn and chicken soup

Well I had caught this winters bug and found myself feeling rather sorry for myself and with a bit of time to kill, as well as some bugs, nothing does a better job than a hearty corn soup or a chicken soup. As I was not completely bed ridden, rather just inconvenienced to feel like a steam roller was trying to escape from my face, I mustered up as much energy as I could and put far too much effort into this chicken-corn soup, but it was worth it, the time taken to reduce the liquid down to a thick silky soup was well used to prepare a hot toddy or two to sooth my scratchy throat.


Measurements are volumetric for you today also, well in the two main ingredients anyway, one litre of stock, and one litre of corn kernels, the end result is about 700 ml of soup. It’s all rather simple to begin with, take a pot and add to it: two chicken thighs, a carrot, bunch of parsley, thyme, dried chilli, bay leaves, peppercorns, the green parts of spring onions and one litre of chicken stock. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer, cook until the chicken is cooked through and tender. Remove the thighs from the pot and move them to a bowl and cover with cling-film. Strain the liquid into a bowl and discard the solids, transfer the liquid back to the pot along with the corn kernels.


Frankly it’s winter and I used frozen corn, when the corn has warmed through use a stick blender to purée the mixture, pass through a fine sieve then the remaining solids through a fine mouli, the end result should be a smooth liquid free of kernel skins and a volume of about 1.5 litres, pour this back into the now clean pot and simmer until it has thickened and reduced, I ended up with 700 ml of soup at the right consistency. When the soup has thickened adjust the seasoning, shred the chicken thigh meat and add to the soup, bring it back to a simmer and serve with some spring onion garnish and a good drizzle of a quality chilli oil.