Prawns with charred kohlrabi, black onion seeds, corn saffron and pastis sauce with a touch of leek veloute

Onion seeds work well with prawns.  Charred kohlrabi is a revelation with prawns. This otherwise rather tasteless but lovely crunchy vegetable becomes beautifully sweet when charred.   Corn puree with saffron and a touch of pastis bring a bisque flavour to the dish and a little left over leek veloute….elegant and delicious. 

Prawns with leek veloute, leek ash emulsion, toasted nori and bonito flakes

What a gorgous little entrée.  Leek veloute with that sweet flavour leeks have, passsed so it was glorously smooth served with a leek ash emulsion flavoured with bonito and nori (my favourite additions to leek ash emulsion) served with toasted nori and bonito flakes.  The balance was sublime. 

Chestnuts

I have no experience of chestnuts.  They're a European product.  I know doodooo squat.  They sell them on the streets roasted in the winter in Europe.  There's the canned variety of water chestnuts in abundance in Asia.  But using chestnuts for actual cooking, nope, not familiar with that at all.

So I get these little things from Carrefour, I pureed them.  Yeah they're OK.  Earthy and rich but not my go to.  I decided to toast them until crisp.  I am talking the peeled recooked vac packed jobs and treated in this way they are nutty, sweet, dry and sort of a low oil version of a large macadamia.  Very very good.

Beef with extra crispy roasted chestnuts.  Yum.

Rump steak, my favourite as a child but not as I knew it!

Rump of beef with celeriac puree, roasted mushrooms, celeriac puree, dried celeriac, red wine reduction, corn puree.....gorgeous.

Beef carpaccio, egg yolk, dried olives, truffle oil and middle eastern spice

Tender beef, uunctuous egg yolk, dried olives for crunch and salt, middle eastern spice and a teeny weeny bit of truffle oil.  Divine.  Hands down.  Divine.  

Goan spiced marinated seafood with chilli coconut panna cotta and lentil salad

Goan dishes are usually fresh, punchy and designed to suit the southern Indian climate.  I love the sheer amount of flavour they have and there are 2 dishes in particular I love to make.  One is a recharde marinade with a spicy marinade and chilli coconut panna cotta dish from my Rasoi cookbook by Vineet Bhatia and the other is Goan spiced salmon with lentil salad from my Cinnamon Club cookbook by Vivek Singh.  So.....I decided to combine both.

Instead of making 2 separate marinades as per Vineet Bhatia I combined both.  So I combined the recharge marinade and the spicy marinade.  I've done this before with success but this time I also combined the marinade from the Vivek Singh recipe too.

I'm writing it down because it was without a doubt one of the most delicious Indian meals I've cooked.  It was an absolute knock out.  Here goes (and yes there's a LOT of ingredients):

Marinade:

1 tablespoon crushed dried Chilli

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 tsp coriander seeds

1cm piece of cinnamon stick

2 cloves

4 tablespoons coconut vinegar

3/4 tbsp gram flour roux

1 tbsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger

3/4 tbsp chopped green chilli

1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

1/2 tbsp lemon juice

2 dessertspoons tomato ketchup

salt

Blend together to form a paste.  Let this sit overnight in the fridge.

Dry roast the following spices:

4 cloves

1tsp coriander seeds

2 tsp black peppercorns

1 black cardamom pod

2 star anise

2 while dry red chillies

Once dry roasted, crush and add to the above marinade.  The whole thing can be done at once and sit in the fridge all mixed together.  

Lentil Salad:

30 gms white urad dahl

60 gms red lentils

Soak in water overnight in the fridge.  Rinse and drain.  Shake out excess water.

Add…

the zest and juice of one lime

salt

1 small ripe mango chopped 

approx 2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander.

heat 1tsp mustard seeds in  pan until they cackle.  Add a handful of fresh curry leaves to temper and then pour into the above lentil salad.

I also added some chopped kohlrabi for crunch.

Set aside in the fridge.

Chilli and coconut panna cotta:

80 mis coconut milk

1/4 stick of lemon grass chopped

4 kaffir lime leaves

1 sprig curry leaves

1 garlic clove crushed

1 tbsp chopped ginger

1 red chilli chopped or 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

1/2 gelatine leaf

salt.

Put all ingredients in a pan except gelatine.  Bring to the boil.  Blitz and then pass through a fine strainer.  Soak the gelatine leaf in cold water till soft.  Squeeze and add to the warm coconut milk mixture.  Pour into 2 little moulds and leave to set in the fridge.

To cook and serve:

So Finally, coat some seafood in the marinade mix (I used salmon and prawns).  Grill until cooked under a hot grill.  When using fish with skin coat the flesh side only and cook skin side up.  

Plate up the lentil salad, demould the little panda cotta, top the lentil salad with the cooked seafood.  Scatter with coriander and viola.  Bloody gorgeous!

Crisp skinned Norwegian trout, pernod and lemon grass sauce, black rick, squid ink and kohlrabi

I had no idea how these ingredients would come together but surely they would be OK(?).  

The black rice was cooked and then mixed with a little sachet (my last.  I need to buy more next time in Europe) of squid ink.  The kohlrabi was charred, creating a base for the rice to sit on.  Some of the rice I dried out a little in the oven so it was crispy chunks.  I used a little bonito flake for smokey umami on top of the trout.  The star of this dish was the sauce:

Pernod lemon grass sauce for fish and shellfish (2 serves) 

Use approx 80mls of pernod simmered down to a syrup.

Add around 100mls of chicken stock (I used smoked chicken stock) and a bruised lemon grass stalk.  Add some coriander root.  

Blitz to get the flavour out of the lemon grass and coriander and then strain through a fine strainer.  Add some cream fraish, season with lime juice and salt.  Blitz again if it's separated a little, it'll come back together.  Warm up to serve.

I can say without a shadow of doubt this for me was one of the most exquisite salmon or trout dishes I've eaten.  It just came together beautifully.  Every single component, from the charred kohlrabi to the black rice, the bonito and that HEAVENLY sauce.  A knockout of a dish and easy.  

I always leave salmon or trout uncovered in the fridge for a day before cooking it skin side down.  It's a guaranteed way of having crispy skin as it gives it time to dehydrate.  It also means there's hardly any smell when you cook it due to the dehydrated skin.  And I never turn my fish over.  I cook it on a medium heat and let it just sit until it's cooked appropriately.

Thai grilled prawns, hot sour prawn stock, sticky rice, mango, lime, coriander, toasted coconut and crispy prawn heads

This was a bit of a pain to prepare and cook.  But we did a lot of it together especially the final stage of getting everything assembled.  Not something I'd rush to do again for the hassle factor but delicious non the less.

I made a hot sour stock with prawn shells and a couple of the heads along with the usual suspects - tamarind, lime zest and juice, kaffir leaf, ginger, garlic, coriander roots, fish sauce etc to have with the dish served separately so we could either sip it or pour it on.  Yum.

I steamed sticky rice (I love Thai sticky rice, the flavour and texture are just divine in my opinion).

I shelled the prawns and kept most of the heads aside for crispy cooking.  Tossing them in flour, drizzling in oil and putting them in a hot oven till they were crunchy.  Yum.

I marinated the actual prawns with a red thai paste and we cooked them last minute.  Yum.

I made a mango, lime zest and juice, coriander and roasted chilli salsa as an accompaniment.  Yum.

I toasted some fresh grated coconut in a pan as another accompaniment.  Yum.

Served with extra lime wedges and coriander along with the aforementioned hot sour prawn broth.  A very decadent Thai dish of flavour and texture.  Yum.

The ultimate flat white

We've been into good coffee since it first hit Auckland back in the late 80s.  It started off for us at Millars, a cafe in the city where the guy (uh yeap, Millar) roasted his own beans, made great coffee and baked biscuits and cakes which were brought out fresh from the oven out the back sporadically during the day.  We migrated on to Kerouac founded by Chris Priestly in the early 90s and then followed him like drooling pups on to Atomic Cafe in Ponsonby Road.

It was a burgeoning scene and one that was to change the face of Auckland city - now packed full of incredible places to eat, drink and .... yes have that wonderful Kiwi creation - the flat white (no matter what the Aussies say, it all started in NZ).

Moving to HK in the later part of the 90s we had to give up on our daily coffee ritual and there was certainly no good coffee to be found there.  Then moving to Dubai, again there's no good coffee here either and by then being away from the good stuff for over 15 years we though stuff this.  Lets get a decent machine and do our own.

So we spent heaps on a Rocket.  We bought it online and had it delivered from Europe (and subsequently bought another one for our place in France, we love it too much).  It's an expensive habit this coffee stuff.

Andy went about perfecting the flat white and he did so very quickly I'm pleased to say.  But recently we've changed things slightly but using full fat milk.  I KNOW.  Anyone who knows me would find the idea of me drinking full fat milk bemusing.  However we started with the higher fat milk you get in France.  The coffee tasted so rich, so mouthfullingly delicious and so creamy.  Heaven.  Our coffee now was seriously in a league of it's own.  We started buying full fat milk here in Dubai too.  Yes, same result. Absolutely and utterly, addictively delicious.  We will never turn back.  No skinny flat whites for us thank you very much.  Give me the full fat delicious version please.

Andy's ultimate flat white

Our Rocket R58 dual boiler - we have one in France too.