Quack Quack!

This just in: Duck fat makes anything and everything completely amazing! Or, to be more precise: amaaaaazing!

Eggplant and her Sweet Pea gave me their tried and true mushroom and leek risotto recipe almost a year ago and I have since made it about 20 times, often with slight variations.  A couple of nights ago I made it again to nothing less than the utter the triumph I have come to expect when following this recipe.  This time, I used duck fat along with the olive oil, and stock saved from the duck I roasted for my Urban Family Christmas in late December last year.  

Just smelling the stock took me back to that night – my first home roasted duck and a fantastically fun evening. Tasting the finished risotto led to eyes rolling back in head, swiftly followed by second servings.  The risotto is always delish but using homemade duck stock over carton chicken stock raises it to another level entirely.

Plenty More Where That Came From

I am not dishonest enough to plagiarise myself, but I am lazy enough to write one post only about a cookbook I love (Plenty by Yottam Ottolenghi).  Since I got to it first on my other blog, I have put the link up HERE


It really is a wonderful cookbook!

Edit: hopefully I have now fixed the link so that it, you know, actually LINKS!

Broad Bean and Fennel: A Love Story

Broad Bean came over to cook and eat with me last night and it was FUN!  I don't usually cook with someone, although I love to cook for people.  It probably ended up being a lot more relaxing because it was a shared effort, rather than a presentation that it going to be marked and measured.

Funnily enough, we used neither Fennel nor Broad Bean as ingredients for our meal (it felt a little too much like cannibalism) but there are so many other vegetables to choose from that we were in no way impaired by this restriction.  In the end, Broad Bean worked on the entrée and I took care of the main.

Both recipes came from my beloved Moro East cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark.  We started with fried spiced cauliflower served with a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon juice and ate it from a shared plate in the kitchen, with me jumping up now and again to stir….

… the “Courgettes and Almonds” which also contains yellow squash, tomatoes, garlic and shitloads of fresh basil (unlike the mint which the recipe actually suggests).  Because I was busy chatting and eating cauliflower, the C&A was a tad overcooked but still delicious.  We took bowls of this and some rice, along with our “Moppity” merlot, outside and ate in the garden.

Then, back upstairs we listened to Nina Simone and ate cake and drank almond tea and giggled quite a bit.

Almond Bar

A couple of nights ago I went to Almond Bar in Darlinghurst with CC (Cookies and Cream) for a special birthday dinner.  It was a night of delicious food, great service and lovely company in a cozy yet exotic, candlelit cubby house.  We'd been dying to try the place ever since stumbling upon it one evening and finding it promising-looking yet completely empty. We ducked down the road to buy some wine and returned to find the place fully booked for the night! This time we booked ahead and were able to be a part of the crowd taking up every single seat in the place.

Almond Bar is run by two sisters who cook mezze (share plates) based on their Syrian heritage.  After merely reading the menu, I understood why the place is always full; I wanted to try every single thing on it! An unexpected bonus was that all gluten free (and vego, I think) items were clearly marked.  I usually avoid gluten so it was great to be able to know easily and immediately what I could or couldn't eat.

Everything we ate was wonderful - labne, za'tar and babaganouj dips, fried potatoes in coriander and a lamb thing with pomegranates but I will probably chose entirely different stuff next time (and there WILL be a next time let me tell you!) because so many other things look fabulous.

We chose an amazing merlot from the wine list which tasted like mulberries and other yummy, wine-like flavours.  It was a round, juicy flavour with lots of berry notes and a hint of smokiness  (actually CC picked it so I'm not sure what it was called).  It went beautifully with everything.

And just to top off the amzingness of it all we also had dessert: rosewater-flavoured ice cream and pancakes with a cinnamon and almond filling and vanilla ice cream.  Heaven.

Qantas Flight QF490 To Sydney

My dinner on this flight home was one of the least enjoyable meals I have eaten for a long time.  Originally I was going to make the entire post consist only of the phrase "no comment" under the picture but then I remembered that I am a self-obsessed show-off who loves to rant and rave so I thought it would be better to discuss the pros and cons of "penne with peas, chicken and pumpkin" at greater length.  I'll do the pros first: 

1. The peas were actually moist and fresh tasting. 

2. It was warm enough to classify as "above tepid".

3. It was free.

Now on to the cons:

1. It tasted like airplane food.  That pretty much sums everything up. You only eat the meal because it is plonked in front of you at no charge and you are physically unable to leave the "restaurant" and find somewhere else to eat.  

I had some delicious snacks and meals while on holiday in Melbs, some of which were photographed and will be written up in the near future but I couldn't resist posting this immediately as a crazy contrast to Aubergine's amazing hatted experience!

Fennel Finally Writes A Post!

I actually wrote this post out a few hours ago only to have it disappear just as I tried to publish it.  Unfortunately, this version probably pales in comparison to my breath-stealing, knee-weakening, astoundingly amazing first draft so the world will never know what genius has been lost. Never mind.

I'm here to talk about fish, and my exciting double-meal-same-ingredient cooking experience. Cookies-and-Cream* and I decided to cook "a whole fish" (ie with the eyes and tail etc still attached) the other day.  While we were standing at the counter at our local fishmonger, we got chatting to a fellow customer who told us her favourite fish to cook was the rainbow trout we were in the process of purchasing. We asked for some tips on what to do with it and she told us not to go overboard with added flavours, and to "listen to the fish".

Back at home, the fish didn't seem in the mood for talking so we covered it in fresh parsley and dill, wrapped it in foil and popped it into the oven.  Meanwhile, I boiled some potatoes and covered them with butter and dill, and made the simplest, sexiest salad known to humankind: tomatoes, basil and bocconcini cheese.  The trout was delicious: a strongly flavoured creamy yet fresh flesh, kind of like the nautical equivalent of Swiss Brown mushrooms.

The next day I made a stock using the odds and sods of the fish, lots of fresh basil, parsley and dill, and all the slightly sad and wan looking vegetables left over from the week.  This happened to be: French shallot, fennel, and purple and orange carrots.  I just love making stock from scratch as it makes me feel like the craftiest, frugal-iest Earth Mother on the block.  Having never made fish stock before I was really pleased with how it turned out.  I now have 5 cups of lovely, purply, slightly sweet stock in the freezer waiting to be used at some point in the future.