Maris and Broad Bean Soup

We recently ate a lovely meal at Maris, with a friend who was out from London for his mother's funeral.   I do love this little intimate restaurant, with its marble topped tables,  fantastic sommellier, bread which comes complete with whipped French butter and something olivey, beautiful big glasses and a lovely buzzy busy feel.

I had a superb piece of grilled black Angus rib eye steak, perfectly cooked.  And for desert a banana meringue with soft ice cream and something passionfruity.  But the very best was the entree, a simple green vegetable soup. 

Since that time I have been searching to replicate the spring green freshness of this soup. I have tried soup with zucchini, broccoli, potato, all to no avail.   I hit pay dirt with this recipe,  which is simplicity itself.

Ingredients

A cup of podded broad beans

A cup of frozen or fresh peas

Half a cup (or maybe more) of thickened cream

Half a cup (or maybe less) of chicken stock

Method

Bring a large pot of water to the boil.  Add some sea salt, the broad beans and the peas (I put the peas in a sieve so you can retrieve them earlier if needs be).   Simmer until both are cooked.  Pod the broad beans and put all ingredients in a food processor.  Add as much cream or stock as is necessary to get a thick consistency. Reheat gently.

This soup is completely perfect for Spring.  Enjoy! 

 



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Restaurant Inspiration - Marque and salted chocolate caramels

We had an interesting dinner at Marque in Sydney in January.  I have had a number of meals there over the years, in various states: once when pregnant, once for our 10 year wedding anniversary and on other miscellaneous ocassions.

I have always loved chef Mark Best's food.   I have always disliked the verging on obsequious service.  And sometimes I wonder if perhaps the flavours are almost too refined.  For example - see below from the menu we ate in January 2010 - earl gray ash which came with the wagyu - maybe my palate is wrecked but the grey sprinkle which came with the beef was imperceptible, to me, at least.    

So you have a restaurant with wonderful and interesting local Sydney ingredients (scampi, white asparagus, crab, enoki), clever cooking techniques and combinations (fish floss, almond gazpacho, scampi anglaise) but to me, often the food is just too subtle.  Maybe my tastes now require something more robust, less elegant? Less Armani, more Vivienne Westwood. 

Having said that, the degustation is reasonable value and very thorough.   Each dish is jewellike and just the right size.    You leave feeling satiated and not overfed.  And you will always eat something you have never had before.  

At the end come salted caramel chocolates and bitter campari jellies:

                                           

I am not the only one who loves the combination of sweet and salty.   So do the Thais, with their fish sauce and palm sugar flavourings.  And so of course do many in the US (eg salted peanut butter cookies).  

I thought I might try these caramels myself.  There are a few recipes around for this type of caramel, mostly on US websites.  I used the one from Smitten Kitchen which is here.    This is much more like a fudge than a stand alone chocolate confection, but still has the critical combination of salt and caramel.

I am not really a candy cook.   This is a scary recipe because it required the use of a candy thermometer in boiling sugary water.  I always end up with burns when I do something like this.  Only little burns of course but I am always impatient to taste the toffee!  The one tip I read which seemed important was to use a very heavy bottomed dish so that the heat woudl spread evenly and slowly.  So I pulled a Le Creuset out of the cupboard.

There is a picture gap after this step (just imagine cooking the sugar and water intil it is a deep golden brown, adding the chocolate cream mixture and cooking for 15 minutes until 255 degrees).   I was too panicked to take photos.

Here is the caramel fudge in its tin.  

Sprinkled with Maldon salt. 

And ready for eating. 

Any downsides?  Just a little one.    I didn't cook the fudge for long enough and it never really set at room temperature.  It set in the fridge and then became runny quite quickly.  It didn't stop us eating them all but next time I will have to get that temperature just right.

(Image (2) from Eating WA)

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Salad Days at the Bouzy Rouge

What do you get when the interior designer whose very own dining room looks like this:

And whose hallway entrance looks like this:

And who designed my favourite bathroom ever in the history of the world:

turns his hand to restaurant decoration?

You get the Bouzy Rouge, in Richmond, a refurbished pub, owned by Jose and Sandra De Oleivera and decorated by Jean Pierre Heurteau, responsible for the above interiors.  You also get an interior which is over the top to say the least.

So, perhaps as expected there is a bit of road kill on the walls with chandeliers thrown in for good measure:

lots of animal print:

and these bejewelled crowns, which act as  bread baskets and make one feel rather Maid Marianesque:

I had a wonderful long lunch for a friend's birthday on a recent Sunday. It was a feast to break the famine I hadn't really had but I could pretend.

We were a table of 10, which was fun for us but not so fun for the waitstaff.  However we had charming, patient, non eye rolling service in a crowded environment.

To begin with we had lots of plates to share (including scallop ceviche with pistachio and blood orange and chilli salted calamari) and then I had roast suckling pig with cabbage and crackling and a beautiful sticky jus.   Also on offer and tasted by me were a baked wild rabbit casserole which retained lots of moistness.

A place with an ever present, hovering owner, poking around behind the bar, offering up freshly cooked cake to annoying people like me who were hanging around asking to split the bill because we had to leave first, is always a good sign.  I know restaurants hate splitting the bill but sometimes it has to be done and I really think, like duck, it is a good test of restaurant management and attitude. 

I would love to return for the salads, as part of my never ending quest for interesting salads.   I think I could live on salads with a bit of beef thrown in every few days.   And well balanced ones with the correct dressing and a bit of originality are hard to come by.

Here are three on offer:

• baby endive salad with figs, sugar peas, cranberries, walnuts, proscuitto and gorgonzola with balsamic and truffle oil dressing.
• beetroot, roast pumpkin and chick pea salad with cous cous, preserved lemon, Persian fetta and chard.
• salad of grilled asparagus, dehydrated olives, and green beans with a seared tuna steak and sauce gribiche.

A great place for a long lunch.   And probably dinner.  And also a drink. 



(Images: (1) and (2) House and Garden (3) Vogue Living Australia March\April 2006  (4) and (7)  Kit Haselden on Flickr (5) and (6) Bouzy Rouge)

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Restaurant Inspiration - Confit at Circa the Prince

Does the environment you eat in affect your experience?   I would like to think that I only care about the food and so am not unduly influenced by such things as my surroundings, so that I can enjoy good food on a grimy Bangkok street just as much as in an unadorned, cheaply decorated Fitzroy cafe. 

Last week at Circa the Prince,  I had one of the best meals of the last year in a setting which almost but not quite overwhelmed the food. 

Imagine this room:

To my right, a table of property developers in pressed jeans and blue striped shirts, their silver hair brushed back in in the style of a lion's mane.  To my left, a well known intellectual property lawyer dining with his wife.  Immediately next to us, a completely rotund couple from Holland who talk of food and recipes all night and proceed to order each item on the menu and share all the dishes (just in case you are in any doubt, that is quite a lot of food).   Over past the black tiled central column, a table of beautiful women including a Kim Raver clone sit with their large labelled leather handbags piled up next to them.   Past them, a table of mohawked and bepierced young men with a 6 foot tall boxum women in a Talitha Getty style silk turban with body image issues (I overheard her in the bathroom).   Further behind me sits Luke-who-used-to-work-in-our-local-wine-shop-and-is-now-a-sommelier, dining with two 23 year olds wearing short shorts on this cold Autumn evening.

The people are not the problem in this restaurant.  The acoustics are.   So full of people, sitting in a hard concrete room, eating to a background of loud house music, it is nigh on impossible to hear the person opposite.  I probably seem middle aged saying this, but restauranteurs - please - enough with the loud bass music.  It's not a nightclub.   

And it is a shame, that this newly renovated room, on which I am certain a large amount of money has been spent (it is essentially the old courtyard covered over), feels so temporary, so last minute, so cramped, so unsuited to the delicate, great value food which is being cooked by Matt Wilkinson.    The old restaurant, which faces the bump and grind of Fitzroy Street, is now used for functions. What a waste.  

The very best element of the room, visible above, is the vertical garden, housed in a square frame of boxes.   Oh, and those black lights.   And the upholstered chairs.  And the little tables work really well for closeness but not if you have long legs. 

I ate:

• kromeskies
• warm salad of partridge (confit breast and terrine) with rhubarb and heirloom vegetables.
• 150g Sher wagyu beef 
• gingerbread parfait with warm apple rice pudding. 

The kromeskies (pork shoulder shredded and deep fried based on a Russion recipe) were salty and moreish.  

The partridge salad was unpeakably divine.  Dotted with tiny peeled carrots, dressed with something piquant, the partridge (not easy to find in Australia) was full of flavour.  The whole dish sang. 

The beef deserves special mention.  It came with the following:  mustard, tomato relish, a lentil and green bean saute, a little copper pot of glistening smooth mashed potato and a perfectly dressed green salad.  All for $45.   Not cheap but good value when you need to order sides to make up a properl meal in so many restaurants. 

The wine service was slow but the sommelier did a great job of plying us with Barolo.  The wine list allows you to order different 'serving sizes' from 30 ml through to a normal 120 ml glass.   Just to be clear, 30 ml is two tablespoons, barely a gulp, and for some of the more expensive wines this size costs more than $15!   However, it is a chance to taste some amazing wine. 

In summary: go for the food, trust the sommelier, and pray that the owners re-think the renovation.  

The partridge salad inspired me to do a different kind of confit to my usual duck (great standby dinner party dish because it needs no attention. Also good for killing off unwanted dinner party guests with a nice overdose of cholesterol with the duck fat). 

I couldn't find partridge but I did find jumbo quail, which I jointed. 

Warning: photo of meat below.

Put the quail, one sliced garlic clove, a bay leaf and a sprig of rosemary into a small ovenproof dish which just fits the quail. Put enough duck fat to cover into the dish and bring to the boil on the stove top. Then cook in the oven for about an hour at 160 degrees. I find this works much better with leg joints than the breast which tends to dry out.  (I used both, and didn't end up eating the breast).

I served this with cubes of roasted beetroot, some greens and a vinaigrette.

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Restaurant Inspiration - Guillaume at Bennelong and Peach Sorbet

Summer is over and soon the leaves will start turning orange and dropping into my garden en masse.  To use up very ripe end of summer stonefruits, there is nothing better than a fruit sorbet. 

I started an intermittent series last year where I cook something I have eaten in a restaurant.  This was our dessert at Guillaume of Bennelong, where we ate in January.  It is described as strawberries and blackberries with lemon verbena cream, meringue and a trio of raspberries.   This strawberry sorbet was smooth and rich and delicious.

Guillaume is a rather fine dining restaurant located in this anonymous little structure on Sydney Harbour. 

See the little sails on the right - that is where the restaurant is located.   It shrieks Special Occasion (shudder).

However, I had a marvellous meal here, and it was a restaurant which disproved the oft quoted rule that the quality of the food in a restaurant is in inverse proportion to the view. 

The peaches this year have been nothing short of superb.  The orchards got rain and sun at just the right time and we have been feasting on peaches for months now. 

In honour of Guillaume Brahimi, here is a peach sorbet.

First step is to double check the recipe.  In my case this involves reassembling the cookbook from whence it came.  It really is time to bite the bullet and buy a new copy of this book.

Pile the peaches up attractively for a last shot:

Peel and remove pips.  It all looks a bit like a massacre at this stage. Avert your eyes if you need to.  But not whilst holding knife.

Put in food processor with about 100g of caster sugar (the actual recipe calls for 680g peaches and 100g sugar. I find about 6 peaches makes 680g.  You can adjust the proportion of suger down if you do not have enough peaches).

Add a little lemon juice after liquidising. 

Put into ice cream maker.  As an aside, can I just say how much I love this appliance. I am not an appliance person.  We do not have a microwave (yes I am the only person I have ever heard of with children and no microwave), we have no toasted sandwich maker, milkshake maker or popcorn maker (all of which incidentally populated my childhood kitchen in the 1970s so there is obviously something going on there).  

And if you look at the photo above you can see that I have a set of scales which date from 1947.    

But I do have a Girmi GranGelato maker and it is heavenly.   Simple to operate (it has an on/off switch and that is it) and easy to clean, it makes icecream and gelati in about 15 minutes. In my case I had to set it up in the hallway because Certain People were complaining about the churning noise.  But don't let that put you off buying one.  

Here it is once churned suitably.   My camera cannot really capture the pinky blush colour of this sorbet, with little flecks of red (where my peeling skills failed me). 

Divine.
Next up (when I find them), fig sorbet.

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Restaurant Inspiration - Da Noi and Sardinia

My parents travelled a lot during the 1970s when I was little. They would return with stories of magical places and (most importantly to me I have to confess) little gifts - a knitted poncho from Peru, a cotton Chinese doll from Hong Kong, a little English shop from London.
They even travelled to Libya once (on business but that's another story).

But to me the most exciting place they ever travelled to was to Sardinia to stay at the Cala Di Volpe (translates as Vixen Cove).

My geography lessons had taught me all about the Mediterranean Sea and its islands, and this hotel, sitting squat on the glittering harbour with its adobe style structures and jewell colours evoked pure 1970s disco fun to me and my fertile imagination.






To this day I still want to visit, and stay here in this room:



And eat at this little restaurant:


In Melbourne there is a Sardinian restaurant in South Yarra called Da Noi. My exhaustive 30 second Google search tells me that there are no other Sardinian restaurants in Australia.



There are many things to love about this restaurant:

1. The owner\chef's name (Pietro Porcu)

2. The lack of a menu (well there is a menu but rarely used. You largely just eat what is brought to you)

3. The lack of a website (anyone who sensibly flies in the face of technology should be applauded).

4. This business card (a tawny misty morning shot of three fabulous Italian boar shooters)




On a recent visit we ate pork cheek terrine, eggplant and tomato salad, marinated octopus, oysters, a salty caper, saffron, olive and white fish risotto and lamp shank with smoked potato mash.

Dessert was a tasting plate of mandarin pannacotta, a tiny square of tiramisu, honey and yougurt cake, some kind of fennelly icecream and little pink square of watermelon.

And I especially loved the cannellini mush we had as part of our appetisers.

This is very easy, and healthy (beans are healthy aren't they?).

Method

Drain and rinse a can of Italian cannellini beans.
PIck over and finely chop a sprig of rosemary
Finely chop a large clove of garlic.

Warm a good slosh of olive oil in a saucepan, add the garlic and once its scent rises add the beans and rosemary. Cook slowly for 10 - 20 minutes. Add more oil if needs be. Some of the beans will break down. They are ready when they become a bit creamy. Add lots of sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Perfect on toasted sourdough or just in greedy spoonfuls.
PS a less overtly lazy search has now revealed at least two other Sardinian restaurants - Cose in Brisbane and Pilu in Sydney. There may be many more, indeed.




(Images (1)-(4) Caladivolpe.com)

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Restaurant Inspiration - Mr Wolf and Tree Wallpaper

Today - Mr Wolf, a pizza restaurant in Inkerman Street St Kilda.

But so much more than just a pizza joint.

It welcomes children and casts no frowny looks towards crumbs on the ground. And believe me, with little children, that attitude is worth its weight. They (generally) play wonderful jazz. Their pizzas are interesting and yet sufficiently authentic that I can imagine picking up a square in the Piazza Navona. Their grissini is divine. As are the marinated olives. The windows look out onto the street where we can see a blur of grimy, stylish pedestrians (take your pick).

And look at this wallpaper. I know I know, tree wallpaper is ubiquitous. But Mr Wolf did it 8 years ago.



I love the feeling of sitting in a forest. And I have a thing for birch trees. Perhaps to Swedes they are not particularly interesting, but to me, they evoke Peter and the Wolf and goblins, and elves, and picnics and hiking in the gentle sunshine.


And how I would love to own this LP - narrated by Boris Karloff himself. I can feel the wolf sniffing behind me as I type.

Anyway, perhaps the birch tree wallpaper thing is no longer a trend but becoming a permanent classic. To demonstrate, a quick purview threw up these examples which are readily available:









And if these are not realistic enough for you, what about a photographic wall mural complete with dappled light and patches of tufted emerald grass?


I suppose the real question about this type of wallpaper is where would you use it? A bathroom? I have seen it in kitchens in the backsplash \ splashback. Or maybe in a dining room?
On to today's recipes:

Pizza Dough (this recipe is from one of Karen Martini's cookbooks. I know it is pretty much what they use as she owns the restaurant)

400 g plain flour
110 g fine semolina
2 tsp table salt
1.5 cups warm water (375 ml)
3 table spoons olive oil
2 teaspoons (ie 7 grams) dried yeast

Combine flour, salt and semolina in the bowl of an electric mixer with dough hook. Mix water oil an dyeast in small bowl and stir to dissolve. Pour water mixture into flour and mix at low speed untl combined then on high speed for10 minutes until dough is smooth and elsatic but wet and sticky. Place dough in oiled bowl cover with plastic wrap and rest in warm place for 20 minutes. (Makes 4 pizza bases). Make sure you roll roll very thin.




Toppings

(1) Eggplant

I just list the toppings here - you can combine in anyway but remember, do as the Romans do: not too much topping.
Roasted cubes of eggplant
Roasted garlic, mashed.
Basil, torn
Ricotta, in small chunks
Fior di latte, sliced thinly

(2) Cauliflower

I can't recall all the ingredients but it is incredible. There is roasted caulflower, parsley, sliced green chilli and slices of Italian pork sausage of some sort. This is on a cheesy base only (not tomato). Fantastic.



(Images (1) Mr Wolf (3) Cole & Son (4) Flockedwallpaper.co.uk(5) Graham & Brown (6) Wallpapermurals.co.uk (7) maraquita.com)

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