Seafood BBQ class @ The Sydney Seafood School

Some of you know that my posts get published in the awesomely entertaining Inner West Live portal. IWL’s editor kindly gave Tina and myself the opportunity to attend (and blog about) seafood cooking classes generously provided by the Sydney Seafood School (SSS).

I contacted Roberta Muir from the SSS to book my class. Unfortunately the one I chose was not suitable for the gig, but after a few emails back and forth I was booked into the Seafood BBQ class on February 19. Roberta was super helpful and understanding about my food allergen concerns. Some days before the class I printed out my booking confirmation and realised it was made for 2 guests. I emailed Roberta to ask if it was a typo; it was but she gave me the thumbs up to attend with a guest (ie, Alvaro), which turned out to be the perfect way to celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary.

The school was established in 1989 and renovated in 2009. It was my first time there and I must say everything looked brand new. The class starts with a 2-hour demonstration in the fancy and well-equiped auditorium. Comfy lecture-type seats, top-quality kitchen equipment and four big TV screens make the whole experience a luxury.

Auditorium

Vincenza Scalone, our teacher for the day, is very passionate about fresh local seafood. During the class she didn’t only went through the recipes but also gave us valuable information on how to purchase fresh seafood, how to handle and store it when raw, how to properly cook it (not overcooking it), how (and why) to clean the BBQ, etc.

The first recipe Vincenza demonstrated was BBQ prawns with herb marinade. She showed us the easiest and most efficient way of cleaning prawns, and told us the many uses of chermoula, the herb marinade that was used for the recipe. Half of the marinade was reserved for dipping the prawns and/or spooning on bread.

Cleaning prawns

The second recipe was a Thai-style squid salad. Vincenza mentioned the types of squid that can be found in fish shops and showed us how to clean and prepare them. She told us that scoring the flesh not only tenderizes it, but also also allows the marinade to get in.

Cleaning squid

BBQing squid

The next recipe was blue mussels with garlic butter. I was very excited about this one as I love mussels but don’t get to eat them very often. Vincenza showed us how to clean them and told us that discarding the mussels that didn’t open in the cooking process was a thing of the past. Nowadays it’s ok to open them with a blunt knife and sniff them to check if they’re ok. This was by far the easiest recipe: cook mussels on the grill covered by a lid, melt butter & garlic in a small saucepan, serve in bowl with chopped chives.

It was not in the program, but Vincenza showed us how to produce the best, moistest barbecued whole fish, using the en papillote method.

Then she showed us how to butterfly a fish for the next recipe: BBQ garfish. The fish was crumbed in a flour + Parmesan mix, cooked in an electric grill, and served with a super simple rocket salad.

The final recipe was salmon with lime mayonnaise. We used sashimi-grade salmon, term that refers to the way the fish is harvested, which produces better quality meat. In the case of salmon, it’s fattier, and thus has a completely different texture and mouthfeel. The salmon was marinated in lime juice + zest, salt and pepper, and grilled skin side down first (with sea salt sprinkled on the skin to avoid it from sticking to to BBQ plate). The result was perfect salmon: beautiful crispy skin, perfectly seared on the outside and pink on the inside.

Finished dishes

Needless to say, the smell in the auditorium was phenomenal, but we had to ignore our hunger a bit longer: it was time for us to move to the kitchen to try and replicate what we had just seen. We split into groups, each one was assigned a cooking island geared up with everything we needed: from bowls and knifes to fridge and electric BBQ.

Herbs, sauces, water in fridge

Seafood in fridge

There’s a separate area with several gas BBQs lined up, with a cool seafood blackboard-type mural in the back. They must have a hell of an smoke extraction system in place, too.

BBQs

We were given initial instructions and started cooking. Vicenza and other staff members were available the whole time to answer questions and offer guidance. We managed to organise ourselves pretty well, despite the fact that we didn’t know each other (except for Alvaro and I, that is).

Prawns in the BBQ

Squid in the BBQ

Garfish in the BBQ

Salmon in the BBQ

One of the coolest things about the class was that, except for a few items like knifes and measuring cups, we didn’t have to do any washing. That saved us a lot of time, and we were able to finish up fairly quickly (great job, team!).

My team in action

We took our finished plates to the dining room, where each group was given a table and a bottle of Wild Oats 2010 Pinot Grigio to enjoy with lunch.

It’s difficult for me to rate the dishes. They were all very tasty, and I’m not saying it just because we cooked them, but because IMO the quality of ingredients and equipment does make a difference. If I had to choose, I’d say my favourite was the salmon, followed by the Thai-style squid salad (although it had sweet chilli sauce and palm sugar, so it’s not something I’d normally prepare at home).

Salmon with lime mayonnaise

Thai style squid salad

The mussels and prawns were great, too, as well as the garfish (we cooked ours just with salt and pepper, so I can’t comment on the “real” dish).

Blue mussels with garlic butter

BBQ prawns with herb marinade

BBQ garfish

It was a lovely lunch, followed by great coffee courtesy of Nespresso. Apart from the class notes and apron, we left with a classy SSS insulated bag for our future seafood purchases and tickets for the Taste Of Sydney festival (which I already posted to two lucky readers).

Seafood classes in the SSS are suitable for corporate functions (for staff and/or clients), team-building events, milestone celebrations, and in general as a fun thing to do with your partner, family, and/or friends. Oh, and they have gift certificates, too!

Sydney Seafood School
Sydney Fish Market
Locked Bag 247
Bank Street
Pyrmont NSW 2009
www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au/SeafoodSchool

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Taste Of Sydney 2012 giveaway winners

And the winners are… Jill and Enzo. I’ll send you guys an email to get your postal addresses, enjoy the feast!

Thanks to the rest of people who commented here and in Inner West Live!

Review: Tamana’s

Soon after moving to Sydney, Alvaro and I started to explore the dining scene in Newtown. We were overwhelmed by the variety of choice and did our best to try something new every time we ate out. I had stayed away from Indian food for several years after my traumatising experience but as the saying goes, times cures everything, and I was ready to eat it again. We went to Tamana’s, a takeaway/dine-in restaurant on King Street. If my taste memory was right, the food was very similar to what I had in India. Alvaro, on the other hand, wasn’t very pleased (he hates cumin and spicy food).

It took my a while to go back to Tamana’s, this time with my sister. I remembered the place when my friend Tricia sent me the link to ctrlalteat.org, a gluten-free online guide. Tamana’s menu clearly states gluten-free (including all curries) and dairy-free items. They also pride themselves on cooking all dishes in pure polyunsaturated vegetable oil (thanks for promoting inflammation in our bodies by feeding us oxidized PUFAs!), which of course is a good selling point for people who follow conventional wisdom. I guess you can’t expect everything to be perfect.

They do offer gluten-free naan. Gladys asked about the ingredients; it had rice flour, sugar and yoghurt. No, thanks.

All food is ready to go in a hot display, so eating in can be really fast.

There are several combo choices, which include two or more curries with rice or bread. We ordered a bowl of mango chicken curry (chicken pieces cooked in mango pulp, coconut cream and spices) and a bowl of lamb curry (diced lamb cooked with onions, tomato and spices), both with no rice. We also bought a couple of katchmumber, a chopped salad of tomato, onion and cucumber. Very refreshing.

Katchmumber ($2.70)

Both curries were delicious, the meats tender and not dry, the sauces mild in heat and full of flavour.

Mango Chicken curry ($9.90)

Lamb curry ($10.30)

We still had room for some more curry goodness. This time we chose the beef Vindaloo, described as a very hot beef curry with vinegar and Peri-Peri spices. It was good, but we preferred the other two curries. Unfortunately we didn’t any salad left to turn off the heat.

Beef Vindaloo curry ($9.90)

Tamana’s
196 King Street
Newtown NSW 2042
(02) 9519 2035
tamanas.com.au

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Review: Mamma Maria

A Russian walks into a restaurant. The waiter sees him, recognises him and looks worried. “We don’t have enough wine for you”, he says. This is the kind of impression you can make in restaurant staff if you consume enough wine in one sitting. That episode happened almost 10 months ago, two Russians were involved, and the waiter still remembers.

There must be some sort of Russian-Italian connection, I guess. The mafias? Maybe. The entrance to Mamma Maria certainly looks like taken from an old mafia-related film.

Entrance

Once inside the “vintage” vibe continues. I feel in the 80s again and while browsing the menu, which I guess is as old as the venue, judging by the prices written on labels that have been pasted on top of the original amounts, I thought it’d be better not to order raw oysters.

Dining room

The non-Paleo people ordered garlic bread and bruschetta to share. Several bottles of excellent Chianti were brought to the table.

Garlic bread, Chianti, bruschetta

The Russian birthday boy ordered garlic prawns in garlic sauce and mussels in tomato, cream, white wine and onion sauce to share. The prawns were tasty, very garlicky, and not overcooked. I decided to overlook the fact that they were swimming in seed oil and ate away. The mussels (somewhere else in the menu labelled as “muscles”) were good, too.

Garlic prawns ($16.90)

Mussels ($16.90)

We were a big bunch of people so I’m only going to talk about the dishes that I actually ate/tried. Alvaro and I shared the fillet Mignon (Scotch fillet wrapped in bacon) and the grilled trout. All mains come with your choice of chips or mash and steamed vegetables. We asked for no chips or mash, and got green beans and carrots. The people who ordered some kind of potato product got green beans only. I ordered the beef medium rare, it was medium, but tender enough. The bacon gave it extra flavour (honestly, what doesn’t taste better with bacon?) and the veggies were perfectly cooked (not mushy, not too raw).

Fillet Mignon

The trout, in my opinion, was the best looking dish of the night. The beautiful whole trout had been grilled to perfection: crispy skin, moist flesh. It didn’t need anything else than a squeeze of lemon.

Grilled trout

Bonnie ordered the veal lemon, which sadly wasn’t as good as our dishes. The veal fillet was thin and very tough, and both the menu and the waiter described it as “veal + lemon” only, but it came covered in a thick sauce. He said it was gluten-free, which may be true or not, but it still had some kind of flour in it. Not cool.

Veal lemon

Max had the chicken salmon, a fillet stuffed with pink salmon, leek, cooked tomato, cream, basil and garlic. It looked delicious.

Chicken salmon ($16.90)

Tatiana had the eggplant Sonia, peeled & crumbed eggplant, tomato, mushroom, capsicum & melted cheese. Gluten, nightshades and dairy in one dish… definitely something I wouldn’t order but I’m sure she enjoyed it.

Eggplant Sonia ($15.90 for the large size)

Considering we were having dinner at an Italian restaurant I was surprised by the fact that only two fettuccine and one gnocchi dishes were ordered. They looked good, and I didn’t hear any complains. This is where I started losing track of what was ordered, so the pictures won’t be accurately labelled, sorry! (the wine was good!) I’ll leave you with the photos and allow you to decide if the meals look appetizing or not.

Fettuccine alla panna ($14.90 for the large size)

Fettuccine #2 ($14.90 for the large size)

Gnocchi ($14.90 for the large size)

Chicken #1 ($16.90)

Chicken #2 ($16.90)

The birthday boy and his lady had matching desserts: chocolate and peach pancakes. A couple of people had the gelato covered in chocolate.

Chocolate pancake

Peach pancake

Gelato covered in chocolate

After finding out that we were celebrating a birthday, the waiter brought a round of complimentary port in shot glasses, my favourite kind of dessert.

Mamma Maria Upstairs
1/239 King Street
Newtown NSW 2042
(02) 9516 4428

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Taste Of Sydney 2012 giveaway

Attention foodies! I’m giving away 4 free tickets to the Taste Of Sydney 2012. From the website:

Australia’s definitive pop-up restaurant festival, Taste of Sydney, returns to the beautiful surrounds of Centennial Parklands from 8-11th March, 2012.

Over four days, visitors will once again be invited to create their dream degustation, dining from a bespoke tasting menu prepared by a selection of Sydney’s leading and hatted restaurants. Over 40 mouth-watering dishes will be on offer to tempt tastebuds, with award-winning wineries, artisan producers and boutique exhibitors all on hand for visitors to sip, sample and shop from.

An extensive programme of interactive features will also be unveiled in the coming weeks, with cooking schools, tasting masterclasses and chef demonstrations designed to educate and entertain in equal measure.

Each invitation is valid for one of the following sessions:

• Thursday 8th March (5:30pm – 10pm)
• Friday 9th March (12:00pm – 4pm)
• Friday 9th March (5:30pm – 10 pm)

To get one or two tickets, just leave a comment in this post saying which session you’d like to attend and if you would be going alone (hey, nothing wrong with that! I do it all the time!) or with a guest.

Entries close at midnight on Thursday 23. Winners will be announced on Friday 24.

Review: Dome @ The Arthouse Hotel

Dimmi works. Apart from being a reliable tool for booking restaurants online, they do give what they offer, i.e. vouchers for free meals once you’ve accumulated enough points.

The deal is that for every 8 bookings you do via Dimmi, they give you a $50 voucher to spend in one of several restaurants. There are some conditions, of course: you can’t use more than one voucher at once, if your bill is less than $50 you don’t get a refund, and vouchers can be used Sunday to Thursday only, with some special day exceptions (Valentine’s Day, for example).

One of the restaurants in the list is Mumu Grill, which would have been my first choice if it wasn’t that far away from my office. Thus, I picked option #2: Dome @ The Arthouse Hotel, based on their menu.

The restaurant is nice, the business/fancy kind of establishment typical of the CBD. It got its name from the beautiful dome in the ceiling.

There is art on the walls but we were more interested in the menu.

The waitress pulled the easel that holds the menu du jour blackboard. I had my heart set on the spicy steak tartare, which we ordered sans crostini. We also ordered the carpaccio of Hiramasa king fish served with rubi grapefruit and finger limes.

We figured out two entrées and a main would be enough for us. Choosing it took me a bit more time, I was torn between the fish and the duck, but Alvaro preferred the confit duck a l’orange, described as crispy duck and potato served with warm marmalade.

Both entrées arrived at the same time. We applied the “eat half and swap” approach. I started with the carpaccio, which was fresh and lovely but for me needed more zing. I guess I was expecting something closer to a tiradito. The serving was on the small side, which made me worry about the amount of food we had ordered.

Carpaccio of Hiramasa king fish ($17.00)

Next I tried the steak tartare. It had been a while since I had one, this one was very tasty, but a bit too spicy for Alvaro. I found the greenery in the entrées very pleasing, both to the eye and the palate.

Spicy steak tartare ($18.00)

The confit duck was the highlight of the meal. The bird itself was very flavourful and the sweet, sticky and citrusy marmalade made it even more addictive. The potato (it appeared to be baked and then fried) below the duck was delicious, too, I think thanks to the taste borrowed from the rest of the components of the dish.

Confit duck a l’orange ($32.00)

Dome @ The Arthouse Hotel
Level 1, 275 Pitt Street
Sydney NSW 2000
www.thearthousehotel.com.au

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Review: Dae Jang Kum

We had a flashback family moment last weekend. Gladys, Alvaro and I went to watch The Muppets. I won’t say who cried and who almost did. I’ll just say Animal rocks :)

We went for lunch after the movie (yes, we attended a morning show). Gladys had been craving Korean BBQ for a while so we walked around Chinatown looking for a suitable place. At that stage we were already hungry so any place would have qualified as suitable.

We arrived at Dae Jang Kum, which had decent internet reviews. We asked a few questions to the young waiter but between our not-native English and his very basic English he couldn’t understand us very well, so we just placed a safe order: pork belly ($16), boneless beef ribs fillet ($19) and duck ($18). Side dishes, as usual, were complimentary.

Side dishes & sauces

Side dishes

Raw beef ribs fillet & pork, side dishes

Raw pork & duck

It wasn’t the best Korean BBQ we’ve had so far, but it wasn’t the worst either. Some of the side dishes weren’t very tasty, my favourites besides the kimchi were the fermented cucumbers and turnip. Meats were average in quality; I found the beef ribs fillet and the duck more tasty than the pork. Must be that I’m getting used to the “clean” taste of organic/free range pork.

Pork

Boneless beef ribs fillet & duck

Dae Jang Kum
35 Goulburn St
Sydney NSW 2000
(02) 9211 0890
daejangkum.com.au

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Organic meats & gourmet ice pops at Eveleigh Farmers’ Market

I do most of my grocery shopping on Saturdays at the Eveleigh Farmers’ Market. Apart from a truckload of vegetables I get some meat when I haven’t planned a visit to Establishment 218 or I need something I can’t get there. There are several meat stalls at the market: the duck people, the poultry lady, the free-range pork guys, the Angus beef people, a couple of lamb stalls, etc., but more often than not I end up getting my protein supply at the Marion Plains Pastoral stall.

Marion Plains Pastoral product list and products

So what’s good about Marion Plains Pastoral? First of all, it’s certified organic, so at least you know their animals are raised within certain quality parameters. It’s a family ran business, and just by talking to Mr Farmer you can tell they take good care of their animals. This, of course, reflects in the flavour. I’ve tried different cuts and products of their beef, lamb and pork, and all have been great. Mr Farmer is also willing to help people make good choices, just tell him what are you planning to cook for dinner and he’ll point you in the right direction. You may also change your mind completely based on his suggestions!

Mr Farmer in action

The previous week I bought soup bones, plus three goat roasts (one big, two small). This time I only needed to stock on some portable food to bring to a Buddhist event where the food provided will be pretty much aligned with the SAD (Standard American Diet, or Standard Australian Diet… they contain basically the same crap). Keeping in mind that preparation is the key to success, I was planning to get several packages of beef jerky (which Mr Farmer prepares with just organic beef, salt and paprika) but sadly he had none. He told me he should have some in about a month, and offered an alternative: twiggy sticks. They’re prepared like a salami: fermented and dry-cured, and come in conveniently sized “sticks” in a vacuum-sealed bag. The ingredients list in the package says they contain sugar but Mr Farmer swore he doesn’t put any sugar in his dry-cured meats, only in the smoked ones. They are made from either beef or beef and pork; I bought a few packages of each, plus a package of his amazing pork sausages, which have nothing else than pork, salt and pepper.

Twiggy sticks and pork sausages

Mr Farmer’s son treated Rubi with some of their great dog treats.

Dog treats

On our way back home Alvaro stopped at Fresh Pops, a new stand that sells “natural gourmet” (that can mean anything, really) ice pops.

Fresh Pops

He got an apple, passionfruit & mango ice pop, the only flavour combo that didn’t have added sugar or dairy. I tried it and it was delicious, not very sweet and with a big chunk of real mango in the middle. I ended up eating half of his and buying another one to share, which I later regretted.

Apple, passionfruit & mango ice pops

Ice pop lovers who are not afraid of added sugar, dairy or big price tags ($4.50 each) are encouraged to try all the flavours and report back.

Fresh Pops flavours

Marion Plains Pastoral
www.organicgrower.com.au

Fresh Pops
www.freshpops.com.au

Raw sauerkraut

Fermented cabbage. Sounds gross until you try it, for example on a German sausage roll. Fermented foods are generally good for you, they contain a variety of bacteria that your gut needs to do its job properly. About 70% of your immune system is located in your gut, so you better look after it.

Sauerkraut is sold in supermarkets and health shops but sometimes has crap in it (sugar, vinegar) and almost always has been pasteurised, meaning the bacteria are not alive anymore. Your best bet is to make your own: it’s easy and cheap. I don’t know why it took me this long to get started.

There are a zillion recipes online, all of them are pretty much the same when it comes to the procedure, some of them include extra vegetables/spices you can add to your kraut. Here are a few good links:

• Balanced Bites recipe #1
• Balanced Bites recipe #2
• Mark’s Daily Apple recipe
• I Eat Mostly Meat recipe

I made my first batch of sauerkraut with a quarter of a large green cabbage, 1/2 tablespoon of sea salt and 1/2 tablespoon of caraway seeds. I sliced it thinly and “massaged” it with my hands as per the instructions until it released most of its water, then I placed it in a clean sterilised jar and put a less wide clean sterilized jar filled with water on top of the cabbage to keep it under the water. I finally covered it with a clean tea towel to keep the bugs away and left it on a table we rarely use.

The weather has been crazy these days (for a change…) so I guess the fermentation process hasn’t been as smooth as it should be. The cabbage volume keeps reducing as it ferments because it keeps releasing water. I’m not an expert in the matter, so I really don’t know when it’s ready to go but after eight days I reckoned it smelled great, so I discarded the top part (in the photo, where the colour changes) and tasted it.

We had some with our typical Saturday breakfast: bacon, eggs and avocado.

Other sources of fermented goodness are kimchi (which I like, although not as much as sauerkraut), kombucha (I haven’t tried it), and kefir (I’ve tried it and kinda liked it but dairy in general is not very good for me). That being said, people who suffer from migraines should avoid fermented foods (the already mentioned plus wine, beer, cheese, vinegar, etc) because they contain histamines. For them it’s better to take probiotic capsules.

Review: Scrambled

My sis and I had a hard time looking for a place to have lunch last Sunday. It doesn’t happen often, but we were faced with a lack of Paleo-friendly options wherever we stepped in. We finally ended up in Scrambled, a cafe on Enmore Road that is always packed, which is usually a sign of good food and/or service.

The menu is perfect for breakfast/brunch, with eggs cooked many ways, fruit/veggie drinks and burgers being the main focus. We ordered a salmon stack (smoked salmon, poached eggs, roquette & Spanish onions served on garlic Turkish toast with dill aioli) and country eggs (mushrooms & semi dried tomatoes folded through scrambled eggs served with bacon) to share, and asked for no toast. Unfortunately, our waitress (who was lovely, by the way) thought we only wanted the country eggs with no toast so our salmon stack arrived piled up on Turkish bread. We were offered the option of serving the stack on a different plate, which wouldn’t be a suitable option for a celiac, because the salmon would be already contaminated with gluten. Even worse, we were warned that everything in the kitchen was cross-contaminated because they use the same chopping boards and utensils for everything. They do offer gluten-free bread for an extra cost, which makes me think: why mislead customers by offering gluten-free bread if they don’t bother separating utensils in the kitchen?

Salmon stack ($14.90)

Country eggs ($14.00)

Rant aside, both the salmon stack and country eggs were tasty but nothing out of this world. With no huge slices of bread in our tummies we were still hungry so we ordered some green eggs (fresh pesto folded through scrambled eggs served with grilled tomatoes or smoked ham) and a couple of long blacks.

The green eggs were again good but not mind-blowing. Something in the meal didn’t sit very well in our stomachs, me thinks it was the pesto.

Green eggs ($13.00)

Scrambled
205 Enmore Road
Enmore NSW 2042
(02) 9519 5181

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