Recipe: Salchicha criolla (Peruvian-style pork sausage)

The most influential chef in the history of Peruvian cuisine, Gastón Acurio, shares quick recipes via his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Granted, 99% of them have rice, pasta or potatoes as foundation ingredients, but once in a while something I’d actually eat pops up. A long time ago I copied his recipe for salchicha criolla, his take, I assume, on salchicha de Huacho (Huacho being a coastal town in Perú), a very popular and tasty flavourful sausage usually eaten with scrambled eggs at breakfast.

A brunch at Efendy a couple of years ago revealed the fact that sucuk, the spicy Turkish sausage, is a close relative to our salchicha de Huacho. But that wasn’t enough for me: I wanted to make my own. Attempt #1 at Gastón’s recipe had a tasty but extremely salty result. For attempt #2 I cut back the salt in half and the result was great. I cook a batch once in a while and freeze it in ready-to-reheat portions.

Salchicha criolla
Yield: Serves 6

Ingredients

Sausage:

• 1 kg pork mince
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ají panca* (Peruvian dried red chili) powder
• achiote** (optional) to taste

To serve (optional):

• eggs
• baked sweet potatoes

Directions

1. Mix all sausage ingredients and refrigerate for 2 hours.
2. Fry in a pan (no fat needed) until browned, if using eggs add them to the mix and scramble them.
3. Eat it Peruvian-style (in a sandwich) or my style (with baked sweet potatoes).

Notes:

*Ají panca can be found in its hot and mild varieties in Latin American/ethnic shops such as Tierras Latinas in Fairfield and Fiji Market in Newtown. You can substitute it with any other powdered chili (preferrably red, for aesthetics sake).

**Achiote is ground annato seeds. I haven’t found it in its powdered version in Sydney, but whole annato seeds can be bought from the same Latin American/ethnic shops mentioned before. Also, there are some achiote pastes availables that can be used if desired.

Review: Rice Paper

My sister’s birthday was 3 weeks ago. Man, I’ve gotta catch up with this blogging thing! Anyway, Gladys did a bit of research to choose where to have dinner that day, and the winner was Rice Paper.

The Vietnamese restaurant is no longer a novelty in King Street, and it seems to have survived the probation period. It lays in that sweet spot between the cheap and the fancy, although the service doesn’t always keep up to par with the decor.

We had already chosen our mains when I saw the coconut prawns in the entrés section of the menus. Tiger prawns battered with coconut flour and fried until golden.. sounded too good to miss. Gladys, Bonnie, Alvaro and I ordered a serving to share. The prawns were good, huge in size and tasty, although a little bit on the dry side.

Coconut Prawn ($10)

The birthday girl had studied the menu and decided what to order beforehand (yes, she’s like me in that sense). Her choice was the Vietnamese chicken curry, chicken marinated in special spices, lemongrass and cooked with coconut cream, sweet potato & carrot. It was one of my options as well. Unfortunately, the curry was very bland.

Vietnamese Chicken Curry ($19)

Alvaro and I shared our dishes as usual. Meal number one was the caramelized pork & egg in clay pot, slow cooked with coconut juice, special spices and served with Vietnamese pickles. Sounds great, no? And it was. The sweet sauce and the tender pork meat were very flavourful.

Caramelized Pork & Egg in Clay Pot ($20)

Dish number two was the deep-fried whole fish, served with green apple or mango and dressed with garlic and ginger sauce. The market price for the day was reasonable and the waiter assured me it was not battered in flour. When it arrived to the table, I realised it had a crust and was about to panic, but upon double-checking with the waiter he told me it was potato starch. The fish was great, crunchy, meaty, tasty, and big enough for our big appetites.

Deep-fried whole fish (MP – $40)

Bonnie ordered the seasonal vegetables stir-fried with king prawns in garlic & oyster sauce. She was happy with her dish, especially because of the amount of prawns in it.

Stir- fried Prawn w Vegetable ($21)

Because neither of us had rice, we thought we would need some kind of side. We ordered the seasonal steamed vegetables, served with garlic soy dipping sauce, which we didn’t really need given the generous size of our mains. We still ate them, of course.

Seasonal Steamed Vegetables ($13)

Other dishes ordered at the table where the cube beef steak (wok-fried marinated beef steak in garlic & pepper sauce) and stir-fried vegetables & tofu (vegetables & tofu stir-fried with garlic sauce).

Cube Beef Steak ($20)

Stir-fried Vegetable & Tofu ($13)

Gladys made a Paleo carrot cake iced with whipped coconut milk and topped with shredded coconut that was simply delicious. Dense, moist and with the perfect amount of sweetness.

Paleo carrot cake

Rice Paper
131 King St
Newtown NSW 2042
(02) 8065 7271
ricepaper131@gmail.com
www.rice-paper.com.au

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Review: Khan Baba

It’s been a while since I posted something on the blog. It feels like months, actually. My life has been a bit (more) hectic lately; I officially started uni on the 5th of March and went to a Buddhist course on the 7th, missing a whole week of classes. “Not a problem”, I thought, and I brough my netbook along to catch up with the material. In reality I spent more time cooking and waiting to serve food (I was in charge of feeding my Lama and his crew) than reading or listening to online lectures. Oh, well…

It feels about a month when I ate at Khan Baba, which is good in a sense. Wait and see. Alvaro and I went to try indoor climbing for the first time ever at St Peters. We decided to walk home the long way (via King Street) to grab some dinner. Choice #1 was Good Wok, but they were super busy making takeaway orders; they told us there would be a 30 to 40-minute wait.

A couple of new places had popped up since I last walked on that side on King Street: a crepe shop (not a possibility for us) and Khan Baba, described as Taka Tak BBQ & Shisha Cafe (whatever that means), and as the first Pakistani & Indian style cafe (not sure if the claim is true).

Alvaro hates everything Indian but this time he wasn’t very hungry so he didn’t complain too much. The place has an upper market takeaway kind of vibe, like a food court fast food joint. The staff is very attentive, which is always a big bonus in my book. We were immediately served bottled water.

Alvaro chose his “meal” straight away: a mango lassi, which he visibly enjoyed.

Mango lassi ($3.90)

I was intrigued by the names of some of the stuff in the menu but finding out about the ingredients discouraged me of ordering them. However, one of the dishes that sounded appetizing was gluten and dairy free: Nihari, which consisted in cooked for long hours to make an extremely tender morsels of meat, including the flavourful bone marrow & shank. I ordered one, plus something known, just in case: Lamb Seekh Kebab (their spelling, not mine), described as a special kebab cooked in Lahori style in clay oven, and a green salad. We were offered bread or rice, we declined. “Are you going to eat it with a spoon or what?”, the waiter asked. “Yep”. “Ok…”

The Nihari arrived in a pretty unsymmetrical bowl. I stirred it up with my spoon and noticed its thickness: it had flour in it. I tasted it, I think it had chickpea flour. I was about to complain when Alvaro reminded me I had asked for no gluten, not for no flour. My mistake. The flavour was good, although too hot for Alvaro. While we ate it from the bowl with our spoons the waitress approached us with horror in her face and informed us the meal is supposed to be eaten with naan bread. We know.

Nihari ($14.90)

The Lamb Seekh Kebab was a bit too dry for my taste and nothing special taste-wise.

Lamb Seekh Kebab ($11.90)

The green salad was good, with fresh lettuce and cucumber, complemented by slices of red onion that weren’t too strong.

Green salad ($3.90)

Overall I wouldn’t say it was a bad dinner, but I can’t say it was great either. Something in the meal made me extremely gassy, I don’t know if it was the chickpea flour or the raw onions or the combination of both. I think I don’t want to find out.

Khan Baba
453 King St, Newtown NSW 2042
(02) 8065 0712
newtown@khanbaba.com.au
www.khanbaba.com.au

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Recipe: Liver soup

I know… people are supposed to hate liver. But it’s good for you! Beef liver is high in vitamins A, D, E, K, B12 and folic acid, and minerals such as copper and iron, and it has a decent amount of vitamin C, too. No wonder in my nutrition class in cooking school the teacher told us about the exam on vitamins in food: “when in doubt, answer ‘liver’ and ‘egg yolk’”.

Of course there’s a difference both in taste and nutrition profile between the liver from an animal that has been raised in a feedlot and that of an animal that has been raised in a farm. When I asked Mr Farmer about the difference in taste between beef, lamb and pork liver he told me all of them are pretty mild-tasting provided that the animal was clean (all of his animals are, of course).

I’m one of those few people who actually like liver. My grandmother fed me some sort of blended soup with a strong offal taste (I think she mixed sweetbreads and liver) that I loved and still remember with nostalgia. One of my favourite dishes in my mum’s dinner repertoire was fried liver with sautéed onions & tomatoes and a splash of red wine vinegar, served with rice.

Since I moved in with Alvaro I’ve been eating a lot less liver, mainly because he doesn’t like it and I refuse to cook two different meals. I’ve cooked it a few times, he has eaten it mainly because he had no choice. I noticed he didn’t protest as much when the liver was finely chopped and mixed with something else (as in these crispy liver hash brown patties) so I started sneaking chopped liver in some of our breakfasts, too.

But there was still something missing in my life and it was that thick unappealing liquid that nurtured me in my early years. I proceeded to prepare a batch of soup with what I had on hand, and it turned out delicious, although I didn’t achieve the same taste profile. I’ll keep trying, I guess.

I cooked a batch of the soup and froze it in individual servings to have it in lazy nights when I don’t feel like cooking. Sometimes I top it with crispy bacon bits and/or a soft-boiled egg, and I usually throw in whatever veggies I have on hand.

Liver soup
Yield: Serves 3

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons ghee or butter
• 250 gr beef liver, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 50 gr mushrooms, sliced
• 4 small zucchini, sliced
• 2 cups beef stock
• dried oregano
• salt and pepper
• 150 gr bacon, chopped (optional)

Directions

1. Heat ghee in a pot, add liver and cook until browned.
2. Add onion, cook for a few minutes until it starts to soften.
3. Add mushrooms and zucchini, cook for a few minutes until tender.
4. Transfer to food processor or blender, add stock and blend.
5. Return soup to pot, season with oregano, salt and pepper, heat it until desired serving temperature.
6. If using bacon, fry it in a pan until crispy.
7. Serve soup with bacon on top (a la croutons).

The Salt Book

Pastry chef extraordinaire Mae had a bloggiversary book giveaway a while ago and I was lucky enough to win the prize. Unfortunately, the book never arrived to my house Mae kindly sent me another copy. Mae, you rock!

The book I won was The Salt Book: Your Guide To Salting Wisely And Well, With Recipes by Fritz Gubler and David Glynn. The book does not only contain heaps of information about the different kinds and uses of salt, but also recipes ranging from flavoured salts to cured meats to desserts! Great stuff.

The first recipe I chose to try was the Brined Trout. I didn’t use sugar in my brine, but a couple of tablespoons of honey instead. The trout fillets remained in the brine for 2 hours as directed.

Trout in brine

Then I grilled them and served them with a baby spinach, roast pumpkin & macadamia salad.

Brined trout

The result was good, but a bit too salty. I wonder if the fillets I bought were to small. No way to know, because the book didn’t specify size or weight. It doesn’t indicate number of servings, either. Apart from those two small glitches, I think The Salt Book is a great addition to my cookbook collection, and I can’t wait to try more recipes!

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.