Caramelised Onion, Goats Cheese and Puff Pastry Bites

These little bites may not look all that appetizing in the picture, but my photography skills don't do them justice. They were a recipe (or assembly instructions) from an old Donna Hay Magazine.

All we needed to do was cut some bought puff pastry into little squares, top with some caramelised onion and some goat cheese and put them in the oven. Where I went wrong was that I mistakenly bought gluten free puff pastry and the gluten free puff pastry didn't react quite the same way as a pastry containing gluten. The bites were still very tasty, they just didn't photograph very well.

I made these with the intention of taking something savoury to work instead of my usual sweet fare, but they came out of the oven at dinnertime and I hadn't planned anything for dinner so they were sacrificed to a good cause.

Momofuku Fried Chicken with Octo Vin

So, if you search for "Momofuku Fried Chicken with Octo Vin" on Google, the first page directs you to eight different food blogs all with their own take on David Chang's recipe, which can be found here.

One of those front page food blogs is Ellie of Almost Bourdain. I've already told the story about how Ellie's post on the Momofuku Crack Pie was what started me on my Momofuku journey. I haven't specifically mentioned that it wasn't only Ellie's beautiful rendition of the crack pie that inspired me, but also the post on Ginger Scallion Noodles and some incredible photos of David's fried chicken with octo vin.

Although all of the blogs and the photos in the Momofuku cookbook look gorgeous and all the reviews are very positive, my paranoia about deep frying kept me from trying this recipe initially. The only problem was the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it.

I tried just making the Octo Vin first. Chang says it very good on grilled or fried meats and I was intrigued by that. A vinaigrette for meat? Chang also says that you should "work your knife skills" during preparation, aiming for small, even pieces of garlic and ginger. Well, as you can see in the pictures above, my knife skills kind of suck. I am going to attribute part of the blame to a knife in desperate need of sharpening though. Luckily, I didn't notice an acrid sting from my large chunks of garlic nor was there a too-spicy blast from the ginger, but there was a little bit a fibrous texture.

The vinaigrette was lovely and flavourful. I tried it over some Momofuku chicken confit, but I didn't think that the taste of the octo vin worked with the bacon-infused juicy chicken. I didn't have any other grilled or fried meat at that stage, so I popped the octo vin in the fridge.

Try as I might, I couldn't get the fried chicken out of my mind. Like many other bloggers, I love a piece of perfectly fried chicken. They are pretty rare. Too often they are soggy and greasy but occasionally there will be one and mmmm... I love chicken karaage for this reason. I've never had greasy or soggy chicken karaage. I've even made a tasty version myself, so it was only my fear of frying holding me back. In the end, curiosity won out.

Chang has very detailed instructions for his fried chicken. There are three stages. First you brine the chicken then you steam the chicken and then you fry the chicken. Between the steaming and the frying you rest the chicken and allow it to dry out completely.

I used two chicken legs which I deboned and then cut in half, since it was only going to be me trying it. This is what the chicken looked like after being brined, steamed, and refrigerated on a rack overnight.

Now for the scary frying part. Chang says to use a deep skillet so that the chicken can be submerged. I used a saucepan to try and strike a balance between not using too much oil and to give my oil plenty of bubbling room. I have a candy/frying thermometer which I had acquired since the last time I tried to fry something and I found that being able to see and control the heat of the oil increased my frying confidence.

Unfortunately, the combination of my poor knife skills and my poor photography skills do not do the finished product of fried chicken and octo vin justice. It's yum!!!! I ate the two chicken legs cooked in the Momofuku fashion and then dug around in the freezer looking for my stash of frozen grilled chicken which I use in salads for my lunch. The octo vin even tasted awesome on defrosted grilled chicken. I ate so much I started feeling ill, but it was so hard to stop!

The full recipe of both Octo Vin and the Momofuku Fried Chicken can be found here. If you're a fan of fried chicken, I urge you to try it yourself.

Momofuku Chicken Confit

In my last foray into cooking the Momofuku way, I wrote about Momofuku's chicken and egg. At the time, I wanted to cook the chicken as written but I didn't have anywhere near the amount of pork fat needed. Even at the end of my Momofuku weekend, I still didn't have enough fat so I succumbed to temptation and bought some duck fat so I could properly try the Momofuku Chicken Confit.

Firstly you debone some chicken legs and brine them in the Momofuku brine, which is a ratio of 1 cup sugar, 1 cup salt to 8 cups lukewarm water. Brine the chicken for between 1 to 8 hours. I think I left mine for two. Remove the chicken from the brine and put them into a small oven proof dish along with some rashers of bacon. Cover the chicken and bacon with some heated duck fat.


Chang says to cook this in a preheated 80 degree C oven for 50 minutes. There have been many bloggers who have attempted this before me and a few have commented that they felt this wasn't quite long enough. My oven is terrible, so I left mine for 1 hour 20 minutes and cooked it at 100 degrees C, the lowest it will go.

Once the cooking is done, you remove the pot from the oven and let it cool. The good part about this recipe is that once you've gotten to this stage you can put the whole pot (chicken and fat and all) in the fridge (covered) and it will keep for up to a week. This is what I did.


When you are ready to serve, Chang says to heat the dish in a low oven (90 degrees C) until the fat liquifies. I cooked mine at 120 degrees C and for a further 40 minutes. I think I may have cooked it for a little longer than necessary as I didn't realise until I took the chicken out that it was pink from the bacon. The chicken definitely wasn't overcooked, but I probably didn't need to wait that long.

So, then you remove the chicken from the fat and heat up a skillet over medium high heat and then add the chicken, skin side down, so that they get all brown and crispy. Chang says to weigh them down, so I covered them with a plate and put the dish of fat on top. Once they are brown, you can slice and serve.


D did not like the chicken cooked this way. He didn't like the flavour that the bacon imparted (although he didn't mind it when I roasted the chicken with bacon earlier) and he wouldn't eat it. I loved it, on the other hand. I was too lazy to make the rice and egg to go with it, so I ended up eating half of the batch (I only cooked two deboned legs) with some soy sauce and pickled cucumber.

Beans in the Pressure Cooker

I have a funny relationship with beans. I love SPC cans of baked beans but I have issues with the texture of other beans. I'm a very textural eater, sometimes I can even love the flavour of something but I can't get over the texture and won't eat it. Mushrooms are a classic example.

As I said, I love canned baked beans. One of my friends lives near a cafe where they make their own baked beans and she says that they are amazing. We've meant to go and try them ourselves but never seem to get there. I have never really thought about making my own baked beans until I read about Not Quite Nigella's Bean Cassoulet in the pressure cooker.

NQN tickled my fancy by describing her beans as rich as rich can be and saying that serving with bread was mandatory. Who could resist?

I was very excited as I gathered my ingredients together, but I came back down to Earth when I came across a problem. Everywhere I looked ham hocks or bacon hocks were incredibly expensive. Seriously expensive. Like $13 per kilo expensive, making each hock $11-12. I complained to my mother, who did not make things better when she told me that she had just purchased a bacon hock for $4. I did get quite pouty for a while there. I may have been able to understand if the hocks were particularly meaty, but these were not.

Anyway, after my tantrum I still wanted to make these beans. I shopped around and bought the cheapest I could find, a smoked bacon hock from Woolworths for $9 (to be fair, this one was small but quite meaty). To add insult to the injury, about two weeks later D found ham hocks at IGA for $6 per kg. Typical.

I chose to use canned beans, so when it came to cooking all I had to do was put all of the ingredients, sans beans, into the pressure cooker and turn it on. After a mere 45 minutes, you have this smoky rich bacon-y sauce. It smelled amazing and the meat that fell off the hock was so tender and tasty.


Unfortunately, although I loved the sauce and the bacon I couldn't get over the texture of the beans. I don't remember which beans I used - I think they were cannellini - but maybe my bean choice wasn't the best. NQN suggested adding a good quality sausage to the beans to make it more like a cassoulet, I might just make this again with sausages because the sauce is incredible.

If you don't have the same aversion to beany textures as I do, head on over to Not Quite Nigella and try her Kick Ass Beans yourself.

Osso Buco

I have always loved the idea of osso buco. It stood for everything I loved about slow food, tender flavourful meat and deep rich sauce. I hadn't tried to cook it myself as D doesn't like veal nor does he like meat on the bone but I had spent a fair amount of time trying to think of a way to change his mind.

My first taste of osso buco was at the 2009 Good Food and Wine Show at the Celebrity Chef Restaurant. It was a veal osso buco by Tobie Puttock and it was incredible. It only fueled my love for a dish I've only tasted once...

I finally tried to make it myself when my mother bought us our pressure cooker. The fates continued to align when I found beef osso buco in Coles. One hurdle down!

Earlier this year (may have been last year) Australian Good Taste magazine included a free mini magazine dedicated to all types of slow cooking. It's an awesome little book and covers slow cooking on the stove, in the oven or using a pressure cooker or slow cooker. They have also included a rundown on how eat method of cooking works, advantages and disadvantages and a fantastic little table on how to adapt recipes designed for other methods of slow cooking to the way you want to cook. I have no idea which edition the booklet came from, but the booklet has been within arms reach ever since I got my pressure cooker.

The recipe I used to make my first osso buco came from the mini magazine. There are two osso buco recipes included, one for the slow cooker and one for the oven. The one for the oven looks more authentic, using the holy trinity of onions, carrot and celery and no gremolata, but I decided to go with the slow cooker version. I used the handy table to make sure I could use a pressure cooker, but all that really needed to be changed was the cooking time.

It was really easy. This was a good thing because I was trying out the pressure cooker after work and I really wasn't in the right frame of mind for anything too complicated. I made the recipe pretty much as written, except I substituted beef osso buco instead of veal and I didn't have any lemon thyme so I used normal thyme and some lemon rind. I also halved the amount of meat, because there was only two of us eating.

I browned the meat in the pressure cooker after flouring, but after that I added all the ingredients, sealed it up and cooked for approximately 25 minutes. While the osso buco cooked, I made the gremolata and potatoes. Once the meat was cooked, I removed it from the pressure cooker and then reduced the sauce to give it a richer consistency.

I loved it. It was as good as the one from the Food and Wine Show, if I do say so myself. I did think that the beef osso bucco didn't have quite the flavour that veal would have had, but it was only a thought and didn't take anything away from the success of the recipe.

We've made this again using veal osso buco (shh, don't tell D) and it did have a subtle difference in flavour.

Veal Osso Buco with Gremolata
from Good Taste Slow Cooking p34

Note: I halved the amount of meat in this recipe but kept the volume of liquid the same as I was cooking in the pressure cooker.

50g (1/3 cup) plain flour
8 (1.5kg) veal osso buco shin slices
400g can diced tomatoes
250ml chicken stock
125ml white wine
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 dried bay leaves
6 sprigs fresh lemon thyme (I used regular thyme and a big peeling of lemon rind)

Gremolata

1/2 cup chopped fresh continental parsley
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind

Place the flour on a large plate. Add the veal and toss to coat. Shake off excess.

Heat pressure cooker (unsealed) over a high heat with a little bit of olive oil. Brown the veal on all sides, working in batches if necessary. Remove to a plate.

Add the onion, garlic, bay leaves and half of the thyme and and cook for about a minute until coloured, stirring to pick up any floury bits on the bottom of the pan.

Return the veal to the pot and add the tomato, stock, wine, lemon zest and remaining thyme. Seal the pressure cooker and bring up to pressure. Once it comes to pressure, cook for 25-30 minutes depending on the size of the veal.

Prepare the gremolata by combining the parsley, garlic and lemon rind in a bowl.

Once the meat has finished cooking, remove the pressure cooker from heat and allow it to depressurize. Remove the cooked veal to a plate.

Return the unsealed pressure cooker to the stove over a high heat and cook the sauce, stirring, until reduced by one-third to a half.

Serve with mashed potatoes and gremolata.

Shopping my feelings

I'm a terrible emotional shopper. When things in life become hard to deal with, if I'm upset or stressed or confused I like to spend money. It's very much the act of shopping that is cathartic, once the goods get home I am often happy to let them sit in their bag. It can be a problem because we don't have a lot of disposable income and I am a danger to everybody with a credit card. D has tried to curb my reckless spending by suggesting that I freeze my credit cards in a block of water so they aren't easily accessible and we have both agreed that I have a set amount of "pocket money" each week. Luckily, I'm just as happy shopping recklessly in the dollar-shops as I am in other places.

I am a massive fan of peanut butter and chocolate. I love the way the two work together. Reese's products are my dream candy bar. I had my first miniature peanut butter cup a little while ago and I was sold. As it happened, they weren't all that readily available back then so all I had were dreams. I tried to recreate them myself but still wished for a convenient way to get my peanut butter/chocolate fix.

How do these two things go together? Well, lately I've been seeing Reese's products everywhere. Whenever I find that I want to shop my feelings, I buy something peanut-buttery. I am doing quite well in my weight-loss journey and peanut butter doesn't fit really well within my diet plan, so they are just sitting in the cupboard. (Well, occasionally I will have 7 Reese's pieces as a treat. Why 7? I just like that number). I've amassed quite a collection.

How long do Reese's products keep, do you think?

Pulled Pork

I love slow food. I love stews and casseroles and curries and all those wonderful dishes that take the (often cheaper) cuts of meat and cooks them long and slow until they are falling-apart tender and full of flavour. We have a slow cooker that we use quite often, but both D and I are a little apprehensive about the safety of leaving it on while we are out. This is despite multiple uses with no issues while we are home, but hey, we're all a bit irrational at times.

My mother knew about our slow cooker adventures and our related issues and kindly surprised us with a present: a new pressure cooker. This way we can get the same slow cooker flavour and texture without the time, so we could even indulge on weeknights. It is a fabulous present and I couldn't wait to get cooking, except I have an irrational pressure cooker fear.

I have never had a pressure cooker before and we didn't have one (that I know of) while I was growing up either. I've read stories about pressure cookers exploding and that was enough to make me quite apprehensive about our new kitchen toy. The instructions were a little too brief for my liking too. When you're a bit nervous, you like having a tome of warnings to go through. Well, I do anyway. I like to know my risks. The little booklet was quite light on the warnings. It did recommend starting out with a pot of water first, to practice getting the cooker up to pressure and then cooling it down again.

I did this three times. I like to be thorough. There are photos. No, you can't see them.

Once I worked out the sound I was listening for and what to look for to show it was pressurised or not, I started to feel a lot more comfortable about the whole thing. Then I needed to decide what to cook in it.

I was surprised at the lack of pressure cooker recipes around the place. I mean, there are still lots and lots of recipes out there, but they aren't nearly as common as recipes for the slow cooker. In the end I decided to try the sole pressure cooker recipe in my delicious bookmarks, a Pulled Pork Sandwich from Not Quite Nigella.

I love the idea of meaty saucy sandwiches and this was the epitome of recipes. The sauce was a flavour-packed combination of oniona, garlic, ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar and seasonings. It smelled incredible. I love Worcestershire sauce. Any recipe containing Worcestershire is a win for me. I have not met one I didn't like.

I had some fun with the ketchup too. I did some research into the difference between what we call ketchup/tomato sauce and the American version. I am not a fan of tomato sauce generally, it's far too sweet for me. I discovered that the American version is less sweet and contains vinegar and a good substitute in Australia is Heinz Tomato Ketchup. We bought a bottle and I am definitely a ketchup convert. It's the way tomato sauce should taste!!

Our previous forays into the meaty sauce sandwich recipes have all been made with beef because D is not a pork fan. This was made during my Momofuku Cooking Weekend and the house was already full of pork so D kindly allowed me to try this recipe as written, using two pork tenderloins. I told him that if all goes well, the meat should be so saucy he won't be able to taste the fact the meat was pork.

Before the lid went on

NQN suggests cooking the pork for 55mins on setting 2. As I said before, my pressure cooker was a little light on the instructions, so I used my red valve. I understand that red means high. I think that this was a little bit long for the size of my tenderloins, the pork was a tiny bit overcooked. I'm much better at gauging the cooking time now and I would probably have stopped it at 45 minutes.

The pork was very easy to pull apart after cooking and I tossed the shredded pork in the pan drippings in lieu of BBQ sauce. It was very rich and delightfully saucy. It was even better on toast!

This recipe was a very successful debut for the pressure cooker. I've got lots of ideas for it now!

See this post on Not Quite Nigella for the recipe.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts and with Miso Butter, Bacon and Roasted Onions

I was one of those kids that hated brussels sprouts. There was nothing good about their flavour or texture. Ever since then, I have been suspicious of the little mini-cabbages, no matter how cool they look on their stalks. Many many blogs out there in the wide world of the internet have tried telling me that I just have not had sprouts properly prepared. Apparently, sprouts are great friends with bacon and adding bacon can do marvellous things.

While shopping the other day, I noticed that there were some bright green baby brussels sprouts. These tinier mini-er cabbages were not as intimidating as their larger counterparts and in a fit of courage, I bought some. I had a few ideas about what I was going to do with them, but in the end I went with something Momofuku inspired. You know, something different.

I prepared the sprouts as if I was going to make brussels sprouts, kimchi puree and bacon, cutting them in half through the core and then browing them on the stovetop and then finishing the cooking in the oven. I then switched gears and starting making corn, miso butter and bacon minus the corn. I figured that if there was ever a recipe that would change my opinion of brussels sprouts, this would be it.

I can't say that I am a brussels sprout convert, but I can definitely see their potential. I don't think I cooked the sprouts for long enough as they were still a bit hard.

Momofuku Steamed Pork Buns

The Momofuku pork bun was one of the first recipes that made me sit up and take notice of David Chang and Momofuku after I saw Chang make them on the Martha Stewart Show.

I hadn't rushed out to make the pork buns simply because the actual steamed bun recipe looked a little complicated and made quite a volume. Since I would be the only person eating these, not even the fact they could be frozen made the recipe more appealing. My freezer is tiny.

On one of our visits to Yuen's Market at Sunnybank, I found a packet of pre-prepared, ready to steam buns. They were quite a bit thicker than the buns Chang uses and the way the homemade buns are supposed to be, but convenience won out over authenticity and I bought them. I had already made the pork belly and it only needed to be finished off with a quick flash in a frying pan.

I've mentioned before that my bamboo steamer is very small. I hadn't realised just how small it was until I found out that two of the buns wouldn't fit inside at the same time without overlapping. I didn't think anything of the overlap because the picture in the book shows them overlapping in the steamer. Then I took them out of the steamer and realised the buns had stuck together. D'oh. I have to buy a bigger steamer.

Once the pork belly has been reheated and the buns had been steamed, all you need is some hoisin sauce, a few slices of pickled cucumber and some sliced spring onions and you are set.

I loved the idea of these buns. I love the pork belly, hoisin and pickled cucumber combination, but I think my laziness sabotaged me as the steamed bun was too big. The bun to filling ratio was too high and I'm not a real big fan of the soft doughyness of the steamed buns to start with. One day I will make the time to make the buns properly and try again. Until then, I'm tempted to just wrap the pork, hoisin, cucumbers and spring onion in peking duck pancakes.