Butter Burgers

BBQ season well and truly on us it’s time to get the covers off, clean up the winters neglect and get grilling. I love getting a few burger patties on the grill, don’t have to worry about smoking the house out and you get a nice char only really achievable on a BBQ, even better if you have a charcoal grill. I like to keep the patties quite simple, salt, pepper and good beef, don’t knead it to much but gently shape it so it’s just holding together. To really gild the lily I’ve take to folding in grated frozen smoked butter, it adds a great flavour to the burger and of course makes it extra luxurious too.

Duck Confit

When life gives you the opportunity to buy 4 ducks legs for a completely crazy price of $10, those moments should be embraced, I was at, of all places, the local supermarket in Karori where I spied a pair of packets of a pair of duck legs heavily reduced by a third because the expiry date was looming. I swear they never sell at this supermarket and sit in the fridge until they are reduced. So they were swiftly procured with the aim to cure and confit. Small problem was the lack of duck fat, but no matter the legs got deposited in the freezer until I managed to pick some up, which I also managed to snap up cheaply at Moore Wilson’s bulk section, they sell duck fat frozen a lot cheaper than they do ‘fresh’.

I’ve previously posted about sous vide duck confit, but this time I wanted to do it traditionally and also give this lot a chance to age submerged and protected in its fat, so at the moment I have four portions in the fridge and an agonising wait for at least a month before I dig beneath the lush white fat and dig out a leg or two.


Duck confit is simple to prepare just a little planning and patience, but it’s all pretty much hands off work. You’ll need enough Kosher salt to coat the legs, I used about a cup, and a good bunch of thyme. In a bowl bash the thyme and salt together to release the aromatics, toss the legs in the salt and pat on the salt, then in a dish just large enough to fit the legs in a single layer make a bed with the thyme and enough salt to cover the bottom, lay the legs in the dish and pat on any remaining salt, make sure all the flesh is covered. Cover the dish in clingfilm and refrigerate for 24 hours.


Remove the duck from the salt, rinse and thoroughly pat dry with some paper towels or clean tea towel, place the legs in a ceramic or non-reactive metal oven dish just big enough to hold them. Scatter over a couple of bay leaves, peppercorns and peeled cloves of garlic. Heat enough fat to cover the duck in a pot to 100°C. Carefully pour the fat over the duck and place the lid on the dish, or cover in tinfoil. Put the dish in an oven preheated to 100°C and cook for 4 hours. You can tell it’s cooked when the flesh is pulling away from the bone.


Remove the dish from the oven and leave it somewhere until it’s cool enough to handle. Carefully remove the legs from the fat and place them into a sterile container. Ladle the fat through a sieve into a bowl, be careful not to disturb the layer of liquid on the bottom it will spoil the confit, it is confit jelly and is an amazing stock for sauces, pour enough fat over the duck to submerge it and then cover with some clingfilm and leave to until cool enough to transfer to the fridge, any left over fat can be frozen and reused for the next batch of confit or roasting potatoes, you should get a couple of confits out of it before it becomes too salty. Pour the jelly through a sieve into a container and refrigerate.

The confit should last six months in the fridge, and I’m planning on aging my batch for a month, but you could just refrigerate overnight and cook the next day. When ready to eat the lush legs remove the confit from the fridge a couple of hours before to let the fat soften, preheat the oven to 220°C, carefully dig the legs out and gently scrape off any excess fat, place skin side down on a very hot oven proof sauté pan and cook for 5 minutes, the skin must be crisp, place in the oven and cook for 5–10 minutes.

Mustard

Why have I not made my own mustard before? I have no idea. Well I’ve made up mustard from powder with a little water or wine, but not from the whole seeds, not properly. It’s dead simple too, it takes all of 10 minutes, well that and 48 hours of waiting and couple of weeks for it to age into something you actually want to eat, as it is rather bitter fresh.


Pour into a bowl half a cup of brown mustard seeds, used for the heat, and half a cup of yellow mustard seeds, add 1 cup of liquid, I used some leftover sparkling wine, 200 ml of white wine vinegar, add a dash of salt, cover with clingfilm and leave for 48 hours. After the long agonising wait pour the mixture into a blender, add some sugar now if you want, I prefer not to, and whizz up for about a minute, it won't form a smooth paste but rather semi whole grain. Transfer the mustard to a sterilised jar and keep in the fridge for a few months, leave it a week or two before you start eating it as the bitterness will dull as it ages. I also imagine you could can it if you wanted to keep it indefinitely, but I don’t know what the heating process would do to the flavour development.

Lamb heart with salsa verde

With offal becoming more mainstream I am beginning to see a wide range of some quality offerings up front and centre of all places at the supermarket. I was picking up a few things for dinner as the other half was out for the night when I spied some rather tasty looking lamb hearts, and a bargain too, knowing full well I’d be pushing water uphill if I ever tried to offer up some to her it seemed like providence, so they were grabbed up.


I decided to keep things reasonably simple, the heart is cleaned and broken down, arteries, valves  sinew and little blood clots removed. The pieces of meat set aside as I prepared a simple salsa verde, very finely diced parsley combined with garlic and white anchovy broken down to a paste with a back of a knife, lemon juice, salt, pepper and good quality olive oil. Let the salsa sit as long as you can, the more time you give it the better the flavour will be.


The heart meat was tossed to lightly coat in some oil, and then a little salt and pepper sprinkled over, then the pieces were cooked medium rare like a steak in a screaming hot pan for probably not even a minute a side, but depends on how big the piece is. As I was just serving myself, I was a bit little rustic on the presentation, a good schmear of salsa down on a board, and each piece of meat sliced to show of it’s juicy interior then arranged on the salsa verde, a little pile of salt and pepper to adjust the seasoning as you need it.

Savoury oats with braised fennel and chicken

Oats aren't just for breakfast. A savoury concoction can be made by easily substituting milk or water for chicken stock and maybe simmering with a little shallot and garlic. It takes a little to get your head around the fact that the silky lush and oh so meaty tasting concoction are oats, or perhaps it’s just me the has them relegated to the humble position of if cooked in liquid it’s porridge and should be sweet. Other grains such as rice don’t seem to have the problem, rice as a carb on a plate for dinner, or congee a savoury porridge, or as rice pudding a sticky sweet mess, so why not oats?

Savoury Oats
One cup of oats with a diced shallot and two cups of chicken stock are added to a pot over a low heat, stir occasionally to begin with and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring more frequently as the oats thicken. They’re cooked when thick creamy and soft but still with a bit of bite, not sludge. Stir through fennel fronds and a splash of good olive oil. Season with salt.


Fennel Braise
Cut whole fennel into wedges, finely slice an onion, dice a spicy chorizo and toss together in an oven dish, sprinkle over salt and add a generous splash of sweet vermouth, about quarter of cup, cover tightly with foil and bake at 150°C for about two–two and one half hours. The fennel should be meltingly tender but still holding its shape, not a mushy mess.

Chicken
Season and brown chicken thighs all over and add to the braising fennel dish for the last 30–40 minutes.


Sauce
Drain the braising liquid into a saucepan and bring to a very low simmer. Make a paste of one teaspoon arrowroot and two teaspoons of water. Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the paste. If it doesn't thicken straight away put it back on the heat and stir constantly, it will thicken quickly.

Asparagus with Egg and Soy Butter Sauce

Eggs are placed in 75ºC water for 13 minutes, then removed to an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Meanwhile asparagus is sliced in two, beans top and tailed and likewise cut into manageable portions and spinach sliced. A pot put on a low heat with a good portion of butter and generous pinch or three of pepper added, soy sauce is swirled into the melted butter. The eggs now move to 60ºC water to heat through for 10 minutes. The vegetables are sautéed in a little butter, and when cooked tossed with a little bit of the soy-butter. A nest of greens placed in the bowl, a warmed through egg cracked and slid out to nestle in place, a glaze of soy-butter spooned over and around and finished with a sprinkling of bonito flakes.

Hand pulled noodles

Pork sautéed with fermented black beans and spicy fermented cabbage on a bed of hand pulled noodles.

If my instagram feed and meals of late are anything to go by you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’ve gone a little bit noodle mad, and well I guess I have. But it’s probably more that I made a large batch of hand pulled noodle dough and it freezes and thaws well. So you’ll have to forgive what is almost a repost of a recipe, but this one has more pretty pictures!

Noodles (enough for 4 portions)
400 g Flour, high gluten such as bread flour
240 ml Water
6 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.

Tip: Now is the stage to freeze off portions if you wish to do so, lay the portioned noodles between sheets of baking paper and in an airtight container/bag/cling-film. Just take out of the freezer 20 minutes before you’re ready to pull and cook the noodles.


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, 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.

You can either cook the noodles as they are in salted boiling water, which I think is my preferred way or you can take one end of a noodle and tear it down the middle right to the other end, but don’t tear it in two leave it as one long noodle, cook in boiling salted water for about 3 minutes, once they float to the surface they’re done.


A must have condiment for any noodle dish, chilli oil. Pretty damn easy to make too, Chilli, oil, salt and xanthan gum (0.5%) blended together.

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.