Sushi course at Sydney Cooking School

Once of my Christmas presents was a Red Balloon Day Experience for a cooking course at Sydney Cooking School; a great choice of present for a sushi lover like me. Finally having a weekend free after an extremely fun and busy January, on Sunday I went to Neutral Bay (North of the harbour) to learn some more about sushi and get better at making it.

In the lesson we learned:

• Some of the history behind sushi
• Visual demonstration of how to fillet a fish, how to present cucumber in interesting ways and how to make teriyaki
• Practical demonstration making normal sushi rolls, inside-out rolls, hand-formed sushi (nigiri) and hand rolls

Since there are a huge number of intricacies associated with sushi, I won’t try and list them all, but here are a few interesting sushi facts (some of which I learnt yesterday):

• In Japan a sushi chef will commonly spend a number of years merely washing rice (at least this was the case when the sushi master instructing us learned)
• Pieces of sushi should be made such that they can be eaten in one mouthful (try telling that to chains like Itsu)
• In sushi bars in Japan, the etiquette is to eat a piece of hand-formed sushi within three seconds of it having been placed in front of you by a chef
• A single piece of hand-formed (nigiri) sushi with the most regarded piece of Toro (Bluefin tuna belly) can cost $100
• Sushi was first developed in south east Asia and raw fish would be preserved by coating it in fermented rice. When eaten, the rice would be thrown away. The Japanese modernised and sophisticated the process into what is now recognised as Japanese cuisine
• Hand rolls in the shape of a cone are an American invention, whereas hand rolls in Japan are similar, but are cylindrical, to maintain the correct balance of the ingredients along the roll

And importantly here’s some food porn:

Cooking Chiang Mai & Thai Food Facts

I’ve cooked a lot of Thai curries before, including making pastes, but was keen to learn more, get some ideas and of course, spend a day cooking. Something which one doesn’t get to do a hell of a lot while on the road.

The course I chose was one outside of Chiang Mai, on a small farm where they grow some of the ingredients you use in the recipes. After visiting a local market to learn about some of the main ingredients such as pastes and rice and the staple flavourings in Thai food (fish sauce et al) we were shown around the garden to see things like lemongrass, kaffir lime plants, chilli plants, basils and papaya growing.

We then got stuck into making a curry paste (I made green) and talked through the curry recipes, which we all did with no problems. I then made papaya salad, tom yam soup, pad Thai and banana in coconut milk. The course was made all the better by out highly enthusiastic chef. Joking and laughing the whole way through, everyone thought he made it a lot of fun.

Few things I learnt:
- orange chills are the hottest. Green ones are more bitter and the seeds aren’t fully grown and the flavour hasn’t developed, while red chills are less hot because they have sweeter flesh and the flavour has started to mellow.
- you can replace green papaya with carrot as it has the most similarities, texture and flavour wise
- of the chilli pastes, green is the hottest as it is freshest; red is milder as dried chillies are used; yellow is made with turmeric. Massuman has bay and clove in, which gives it the more mellow rounded flavour, while Penang paste has peanuts in.
- using coconut milk, one should use 60% cream with 40% water for curry; 50% cream for soup; and 100% for desserts
- fresh green coconuts are where we get coconut juice, but coconut cream is made from pressing the pulp of brown (older) coconuts
- there are two types of rice: sticky rice and everything else! Sticky rice starts off very white (is dryer and more starchy) and becomes translucent when cooked; jasmine & other long grain rices starts more translucent (not dry; contains more sugars) and is white when cooked. Also, when you think about it, if you ask for steamed rice, you get long grain, which is boiled in water, whereas sticky rice is actually steamed. Brown rice is a variety of long grain and simply has more fibre, so takes longer to cook.

Bangkok Woks Really Are Fearsome

In the world of scuba there’s a poorly conceived acronym [link] which is often recalled using the phrase ‘Bangkok Women Really Are Fellas’. I couldn’t help but find parallels between the deceptive appeal and gratuitous misrepresentation of it’s food and the lady boys for which Bangkok is supposedly famed.

I am delighted by some of the foods I see but baulk at others, finding the genuine article seems a challenge. Ghastly stretched chickens hanging in the warm afternoon; fish balls floating like tragic orbs of sickliness ready to spoil a good Tom Yam soup and sticky rubbery glutenous balls of god knows what on skewers. And all the while, amazing skill and food are hiding in plain sight.

Such was the form on my trips to Chinatown Bangkok, during which I managed to eat well, seemingly against all odds. With my post [link] about discovery in mind, I went in with low expectations and tried to find a place where the chef looks harassed and the locals look happy. Before long I was eating the most amazing seafood and seriously contemplating rounding up as many tourists as I could find to say ‘stop what you’re doing and come and eat this’.

First thing I saw was the fish, proudly laid out like a good fishmongers, with all the vegetative accoutrements lined up above. I could barely see the chef as he blurred between his five main pots – main wok, deep fry wok, clam boiling/sauce pot, stock pot, fish steaming pot and around ten flavour pots, which seemed to include tamarind, salt, palm sugar, rice wine, dark & light soy, sesame oil and chopped/dried chilli.

An order comes in. The lone chef adds a healthy portion of oil to the pan. A girl brings him a plate of seafood, including octopus, squid, clams and prawns which he does some minor prep with, scoring the squid, slicing the octopus. Clams go straight into the sauce pot, with half a ladle of stock, from the adjacent stock pot. To his main spoon he adds a sprinkling of four flavours, which hit the wok and are joined by the rest of the seafood. The heat get turned up and the noise is awesome. Another half a ladle goes into the wok this time, both deglazing and welding the flavours together. Fresh chilli and greens go in, followed by the clams and suddenly the whole thing lands on a plate. Without flinching or looking to admire his work, a ladle of stock goes into the pan with a roar, he scrapes the pan and then discards the waste water into a bucket. The next order is up.

This process takes 2 minutes 50 seconds, but feels like 30 seconds flat.

And I sit down.

I order (guess what) and sit where I can see him work. That performance wasn’t an anomaly, it’s continual. All with different dishes… surely everyone is getting different levels of the hand mixed flavours, but no, looking around they are all having a great meal. Mine is certainly as good as I though it would be.

Now bear in mind, this is a rickety street stall with an arrangement of raw food, a picnic table with little surface area, five pots sitting atop canisters of gas with direct burners, rough-looking red plastic furniture, poor street lighting, mopeds ambling past (it’s a side side street, else they’d be trying to set new records) and it’s a dim muggy evening in Bangkok. The chef’s mobile phone goes; I had thought he was listening to music. It’s an order that he shouts to one of the girls, without stopping as a massive plume of flames erupts out of his fearsome wok. He finishes another dish.

No, in fact it was music; as he finishes the dish, he pulls out his phone and changes the tune. With a nod he resumes the next dish, casually managing his stock pot and choosing when to add back into it from steamed dishes to keep regenerating it. And another dish.

Food alchemy.

Some interesting coffee facts

On Saturday I visited the Miele Experience Centre in Abingdon, which coincided nicely with a trip to Reading to see a friend. The purpose of the centre is to showcase the company’s products, which are mostly homecare products, but some are also sold into industry (dishwashers and suchlike). It serves to educate owners of Miele products how to get the most from them and show prospective customers what’s available. They also have other cooking masterclasses, of interest to people that would like to learn how to improve their cookery skills and for groups who are not confident in the kitchen.

I was interested to learn about some of the history of the company, since branding (especially cool and quality brands) was the topic of my dissertation. The heritage of the company goes back a long way; it being an innovator in a number of product areas since it was founded in 1899. Some of these, including an old pushbike, a moped and 1950s vacuum cleaner were hoisted in homage to its past in the stairwells. I was encouraged to learn that one of the statements Miele makes about its product testing process is that “Nothing is new; everything is used”. This means each and every product is tested, rather than just batch testing, where only two in each 100 products may be tested.

Even more enjoyable was learning more about food and meeting the other bloggers at the event. These included Susanna, a mummy blogger at A Moden Mother (who wrote about the experience here) and other foodies Bronwyn (Feast with Bron), Mimi (MeeMalee’s Kitchen), Carla (Can Be Bribed With Food), Jennifer (Chocolate Ecstasy) and Anne (Anne’s Kitchen).

We started off with a talk about coffee, which – following my Norwegian holiday – I was keen to expand my knowledge about. I learnt a few new things including:

• That coffee comes from two varieties of bean: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is considered better quality and is more consequently more expensive. Robusta, as you can guess from the name has a more robust flavour. Most varieties of coffee will have a mixture of each type of bean to balance smooth, strength and price (good blog about coffee and including a post on the two beans here)
• The high caffeine content of coffee comes from the length of exposure to the coffee grounds, so while one would imagine that an espresso might have the greater caffeine strength, it’s actually percolated or cafetiere coffee which is the ‘stronger’ hit. As an obvious result, finer coffee delivers more caffeine strength due to its greater surface area
• What surprised me slightly was discovering the rate at which coffee loses its freshness. I knew that the second you open coffee it degrades, but in a test, we smelt coffee that had been open an hour against just-popped sachets and the difference was significant

Once we had the talk on coffee, we did some cooking and my group, which included Susanna and Cherry from Miele’s agency, cooked an asparagus flan, a creamy mushroom penne and Malaysian tiger prawns. Other groups cooked things like chicken, kedgeree, stir-fry and roast beef, after which we all enjoyed the fruits of our labour in a buffet lunch. It was fascinating to use a steam oven for the first time and use a teppan grill to cook the prawns.

To round things off nicely, I also picked up one of those little anecdotal nuggets from a fellow blogger (ta, Bron) about the best way to peel ginger (using a spoon). I was great to chat with fellow enthusiasts and share recommendations – hopefully I’ll catch up with you all at future events ☺

Christmas lunch – all about timing

Hope you had a lovely Christmas and managed to enjoy cooking what can be a very stressful meal on Christmas day.

I survived because I had lots of help and was really just doing the execution rather than the full-on planning. The turkey and stuffing was prepared by Mum, while for the vegetarian meal, my sister did all the fiddly bits. Even despite that it was a bit of a manic stress getting everything coordinated to arrive at the right time.

For our meal there was two meals (meat; veg) being prepared for seven people, so there were a lot of ‘moving parts’. As cooking is often more about timing than  creativity or skill (assuming a basic level of skill) the only real challenge is being organised. I find the best way to organise myself for doing multiple dishes/components of a meal is by writing a timeline. Here’s how mine ran for Christmas day, for the meat course at least. The sister handled the veggie stuff, since there was delicate egg white-folding and other foppery to take care of.

• 10.30 Stuff turkey, open red wine and sit it on the side
• 11.00 Prepare potatos, sprouts and carrots, put in cold water on hob
• 11.20 Turkey in the oven, foil on
• 12.00  Prepare bites (salmon and cream cheese; and marinated roasted red peppers on goats cheese on bruschetta)
• 12.30 Serve bites with Champagne
• 12.45 Put vegetable (or whatever) oil on baking tray, stick in oven to heat up. Turn on potatos (on hob) and bring to the boil for 4-5 mins
• 13.00 Turkey foil off; put pigs-in-blankets in with turkey; drain potatos and put in the oven in the hot oil
• 13.30 Turkey out, foil on; turn and check potatos – oven up to 200 degrees, if needed
• 13.45 Carrots on; check potatos. If ready, turn off oven and put them in a serving bowl. Put back in the oven with the door adjar
• 13.50  Sprouts on
• 14.00 Carve turkey; check and drain veg and put on serving bowl
• 14.05 Serve up

Learning: What is Braising?

It’s been a while since my last post because things have been busy and I’ve not been cooking as much; I’ve even missed Saturday Kitchen for two weeks running…thank goodness for iPlayer .On the plus side, it does mean I’ve been more cooked-fo than have-been-cooking.

Last weekend I got some braising steak (or Chuck steak) from Smithfield and took it home to my parents and Mum turned it into a great bit of beef in beer, a Delia Smith classic.

One of my reasons for writing this blog was to learn more about cooking and do a bit of research on things to better understand how to improve my results, so when I write posts about things I’m learning from now on, I’m going to prefix them with ‘Learning:’ so I can search them. Maybe it’ll be useful for visitors too.

So, I didn’t really know what braising was, though I have sort-of done it before in various dishes. Indeed, I’ve done beef in beer before, but it’s never been as good as when good old Mum does it. So, why?

Wikipedia says braising is:

a combination cooking method using both moist and dry heat; typically the food is first seared at a high temperature and then finished in a covered pot with a variable amount of liquid, resulting in a particular flavour.

Let’s ignore the word particular… which isn’t particularly helpful, to be absolutely fair to the author. Ultimately the best way to describe the taste, is by pointing to the role fat plays in the taste of meat. A few examples (and I realise I’m stating the bleeding obvious): many people like rib-eye steak because of the marbly fat which makes the steak very sweet; and bacon relies heavily on the fat to deliver the flavour. By browning the meat and fat before cooking, the fat begins to impact the flavour of the meat and the browned-flavour of the meat too, obviously. I noticed this with lancashire hot-pot; unless you’re brave enough to really brown the meat mahogany, the flavour isn’t nearly as good.

So, the browning ‘sets the agenda’ for the deep flavour of the meat and the sauce, while the slow-cooking in some liquid makes the meat as soft and tender as mash. That’s why stews use more faty meats than other dishes.

By not covering the dish entirely, you can make some of the meat crisp and introduce a mix of textures, which adds to the dish. You can then serve the dish with al-dente veg to accentuate the crunch factor and make the dish a ‘whole’ one.

So that’s me making sense of braising; have I got that right, on-the-whole? Comments welcome.

Start by chopping an onion…

Watching a Gordon Ramsay chop an onion on his timesonline video podcast earlier today, it occurred to me that I do it completely arse about face. which is probably why they end up looking like a child has hacked at them. Despite being a ritualistic starting point for a vast amount of recipes, chopping onions irks some and is sometimes considered the most boring part of cooking.

So whether its to speed it up or simply do it better, it’s worth starting off on the right footing. If you just whip off both ends and halve it – as I do normally – it gets very difficult to keep it all together. Whereas, if you just take of the stem end, then halve and then peel it – leaving on the root end – then its easier to slice or dice it. Here’s a video demonstration of someone doing it right.