More cakelets from our Christmas parties!  These maple apple cakelets, are adapted from a recipe in Donna Hay's Seasons book (like the pork belly).  I don't really like the whole Donna Hay concept, mainly because of her super-duper-über stylised pictures, and the tendency for her books to be unsubstantial.  But you know what, she has some really great recipes, and they are so reliable.  I think Seasons is actually a fantastic collection of recipes - the Autumn chapter is especially mouthwatering.

Not everyone likes fruity Christmas cakes or mince pies (why, oh why?), and I thought some cinnamon-spiced apple cakelets, with their white starry blobs of icing, would be a crowd-pleasing, yet suitably seasonal dessert for a Christmas party.

The original recipe is called "cinnamon sugar-coated maple apple cakes", and is in the Autumn - Sweet chapter, if you wanted to make them yourself.  Donna bakes hers in miniature bundt tins, and coats in a cinnamon-sugar mixture.  For my cakelets, I made them in mini muffin tins, and topped them with a mascarpone-calvados cream.  (Adapted, incidentally, from the mascarpone cream Nigella serves with her Venetian carrot cake).

Calvados (apple brandy) is undeniably expensive, and I wouldn't go out and buy it especially just for this cake.  But I happened to have a bottle knocking around and knew it would be perfect.  (The bottle was bought - OMG - almost exactly 5 years ago for my How to Eat project, and used in baked caramel apples, and stewed apples with cinnamon crème fraîche).

The cake is very easy to make - just a little light stirring and whisking.  In fact, the hardest thing to do is grate all the apples.



The 6 small apples stipulated in the recipe seemed like an awful lot, so I stopped grating when I got to 4 apples, as I was afraid the mixture would get soggy.  However, the dough was rather sturdy and expanded a lot in the oven, so I think it would have been fine to use all of the apples.

And here they are, all baked!  I can't remember exactly how many the recipe made, but it was a lot.  Dozens and dozens.  I baked all of these babies the night before, let them cool overnight, and iced them on the morning of the parties.

Baked

I am a pretty crap piper, but even I could manage single starry blobs of cream on each cakelet.  Well, I did need a little practice...

Mmm... cream

Who doesn't love scones?  I love eating them, and love making them, although my previous efforts haven't always been the prettiest.  When I make them, although they taste good, they tend to be flat or slopey, nothing like the gorgeous fluffy towering scones that Chef Markus serves at The Langham's High Tea.  (The Langham's scones are the best I've ever had!)

But if at first you don't succeed, try try again... with a new recipe.  The recipe I used was Nigella's buttermilk scones (from Kitchen), which is pretty similar to previous scone recipes in How to be a Domestic Goddess, made with a combo of butter and vegetable fat.  The occasion in question (not that you really need an occasion for scones!) was when our friends Hayden and Katie came over for an arvo catch up.

Even though I have issues getting my scones to look nice, I still love making them for when friends come over.  There are a few reasons for this - scones are cheap, quick to make, and I don't know a single person alive who can resist one.

To avoid making sad little flat discs, I kneaded the dough as little as possible, rolled it out thickly, and used a sharp metal cutter to cut them out.

Hehe, the scones look like they're in prison.

And here they are baked!  They did topple around a bit, even though I pressed the scone cutter straight up and down when cutting out the scones.  I actually think I didn't knead the dough enough - I just needed a little extra kneading to make the dough smoothly combined.

Baked!

Oh well, they still looked decent, and are definitely the best scones I've ever baked!  I'll definitely be using this recipe for scones from now on.

High

I wanted to serve the traditional accompaniment of clotted cream - although I must say I had some trouble finding a good clotted cream here.  I only know of 2 brands here available in supermarkets - Yea and Wattle Valley.  I did see a delicious-looking Tasmanian brand, Meander Valley, at a gourmet supermarket, but it was quite a bit more expensive than the other 2 brands, (approx $8) and I couldn't justify the cost without knowing how good it would be, and if my scones would be a success or not.  (Has anyone tried the Meander Valley?  What do you guys think?)  In the end, I got the Wattle Valley because it was the cheaper of the 2 supermarket brands.  I later learned that Yea and Wattle Valley creams are actually both made by Yea, just packaged differently. Heh, so it seems I made the right choice.

The point of clotted cream, apart from being incredibly rich, is that it is topped with a buttery yellow crust.  When I peeled off the foil lid, I was disappointed to see just a layer of thick white cream... until I looked at the foil lid. Ah! That's where the buttery crust was.

Mmm... fattening

We had the scones with some ruby red raspberry jam, from the Christmas Hills raspberry farm in Tasmania. Perfect!


Check out the fluff-tastic centre!


Fab scones. I love this recipe, and it will be my default scone recipe from now on! With all the trouble I had in the past with scones, why didn't I just turn to a Nigella recipe? Oh well, now I know!

EDIT: 31/01/2011 Hi y'all - today I received a personal email from the production director of Gram, and have added some new thoughts to the bottom of this post.

This week, the Twitterverse has been abuzz with comments about Gram magazine, a new free food-based street publication (like Beat).  The tweets that I read were mainly from disgruntled bloggers wondering if it was legal or ethical for a magazine to lift and extensively quote bloggers' content, with only an opt-out policy.  I'd never received any email from Gram magazine, and so naively thought my content hadn't been lifted.  But, today, out of curiosity, I had a look over at their website.  I was wrong.

To illustrate how crap this is, let me tell you a story.

My year 12 economics teacher, Mr. G, taught me a trick for writing uni essays, which he said would work for any type of long arts essay.  I never used it, so I don't know if it works in practice, but you could always give it a go.

1. You take the topic... (here's an example topic, from a cinema studies essay I wrote in 2004).

Kenneth MacKinnon argues that “it is the fervency of the belief in […] utopia, together with the poignancy of its unattainability, that resonates in the experience of the musical's devotees. How does Dancer in the Dark engage with this convention?

2. Then find as many articles as you can on the topic.  For the above example I'd obviously start with Kenneth MacKinnon's article, then anything on Dancer in the Dark, and "utopia" and "musicals" more generally.

3. Cut and paste quotes from all the articles you've found into a word document, arranging them in some sort of coherent fashion (making sure you attribute the quotes accurately), until you've reached your word count.

4. Print out and hand in.


But wait... how could that work? Isn't that just plain dodgy?  According to Mr. G, "they can't get you for plagiarism", and "if your quotes have answered the question, they have to pass you".  In other words, you might get a crap mark, but at least you'll pass and you won't have exerted any unnecessary effort.

And this is the dodgy and lazy approach that our friends over at Gram magazine have taken, swiping content from Melbourne bloggers, and lazily slapping them together to create a "magazine" (online and in print), to generate advertising revenue for themselves.  To show you how it works, here is how they used my content... (Please note that I am quoting them to illustrate a point, not to make up the content of my post, an important distinction.)

"Impressed by the selections offered at St Kilda’s Mockingbird, Sarah @ Sarah Cooks noted the cocktail list featured classics as well as “some signature cocktails”, like the lychee and passionfruit martini, the caramel, and “fabulous” espresso martini. Tasting plates are available. Sarah had the mozzarella and herb arancini, the beer-battered Moreton Bay bug tails with caper mayonnaise and the half-roasted chicken on truffled polenta, amongst other things…"

What terribly lazy writing!  They haven't added any new ideas to my post, just regurgitated what I wrote in August last year, in an attempt to pass it off as a genuine article.

Another Outspoken Female has written 2 excellent posts about Gram - the first one back in November when she got an introductory email from them, and one last week after she saw a paper copy and realised her posts were "quoted" in Gram.  I'd suggest reading her posts to get an overview of the whole situation.  In fact, that is what I had to do, as I have never been directly contacted by Gram, and I had no idea what they were about.

Let me re-iterate:

I have never been contacted by Gram.  They never asked permission, or even informed me that they would be using my content in their magazine.

According to the introductory email that AOF re-printed on her blog, (that I never received)...

featured bloggers will probably notice a marked increase in traffic to their sites, expanding the potential for those already advertising to capitalise on their work, and creating opportunities for those that yet don’t (through options like Google AdSense, Nuffnang and Foodbuzz).

Firstly, not every blogger cares about how many hits they get.  I blog because I enjoy it, because I love cooking, eating, taking pictures and writing.  I happily run Nuffnang ads on my blog, but they're not the main reason I blog.  Any small advertising revenue I get is just a bonus, not the be-all and end-all of blogging. I don't spend hours doing SEO, and I'm not going to be grateful that someone's lifted my content without my permission so that I can get a few extra hits.  And besides, I've only had one hit from Gram, which was actually me, trying to see if their links worked.  Big whoop.

Whatever your opinion on the commercialisation of blogs, and of sites like Foodbuzz and Urbanspoon, I'm sure we can all agree that bloggers should choose whether or not they want to join, and not automatically be included without being asked or informed.

editorial policy ensures any authors who choose not to be included, for whatever reason, are respected, and won’t be featured.

Clearly that respect wasn't extended to me.  I never even had a chance to opt out, as I never received an email from Gram informing me they'd be lifting my content.

At worst, it's plagiarism, and at best, it's very sloppy and unethical "journalism".  Tellingly, the only contact in the "Contact Us" section on the website states: "For sales and advertising, please contact our Production Director".

They call it "Melbourne Food Culture. Compiled."

I call it "Melbourne Food Bloggers' Content. Stolen."

********

31/01/2011 EDIT:  As I mentioned above, today I received a lengthy email from the production director of Gram, in response to this post.  She apologised for the oversight and explained what Gram is about.  I do believe she was being genuine, and appreciate the time and thought she put into her personalised response.  For what it's worth, I think Gram has some good ideas, but extremely poor execution, and a misunderstanding of how bloggers operate.  (If you've seen Ed's blog, you may have seen a copy of the group email she later sent out, or indeed, received the email yourself, which explains their aims).  I get the impression that Gram is based on the idea that food bloggers are a homogeneous group, rather than the varied individuals that we are.  I'm sure there are bloggers who'd love to get on board, others who would never consider it, and anything in between.  In fact, had I been contacted individually months ago and had the Gram agenda explained to me clearly, I may very well have chosen to get on board.  But now we'll never know.


Cheers for reading.  Soon Sarah Cooks will return to its usual programming...

Rolled Barossa Chook Breast with Black Pig Prosciutto / Hühnchen Rollbraten mit Schinken

I was very excited to hear about the Barossa's Table competition, running until the end of the month over at Barossa.com.  By submitting a post with a recipe or serving suggestion using an ingredient from the Barossa, plus a Barossa wine to match, you could win a week-long all expenses paid food and wine experience with some of the region's most famous chefs, winemakers and producers!  Pretty exciting stuff, right?  As soon as I read about it, I put my foodie thinking cap on and started planning my entry.

Here in Melbourne, we are pretty fortunate to have a number of specialist food stores, and even supermarkets, that stock Barossa produce.  As such, I think it would have been quite simple to buy a bunch of Barossa items, and just chuck them together in a slapdash meal.  And to be honest, if you did that, you'd probably still have something pretty good on your hands.  But I really wanted to make a meal that wasn't only delicious, but also reflected the Barossa's heritage.

So I did a little research, and I found out that the Barossa has a very strong German influence, thanks to German settlers who first arrived in 1840.  Not only does that mean they have German bakeries and restaurants there (yay!), but there is also a dialect of German called Barossadeutsch, which used to be common in South Australia.  How cool is that?!  As a student of the language, and lover of all types of German food, I found this extremely fascinating, and it doubled my desire to visit!

So it was a no-brainer to combine my competition entry with my love for German food!  After much deliberation, here is the meal I decided on... (with German translation below, just for fun).




Let's have a look at the different parts of the meal, one by one.

The main dish (which you can see in the top picture of this post), was Hühnchen Rollbraten mit Schinken.  Or less exotically, rolled roast chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto.

Both the chicken and prosciutto are Saskia Beer products.  The Barossa Chook is free range, has a completely vegetarian diet and are allowed to grow for double the industry standard, which means the chickens have softer meat, more flavour, and more resilient skin.  The butcher I visited only sells the Barossa Chooks whole, and I only needed the breasts for my recipe, so I got him to remove them, and chop up the rest of the chook.  I've popped the remainder in the freezer for future meals.  (I'm especially looking forward to making soup with the bones!)

Barossa Chook breasts, The Black Pig prosciutto

The Black Pig proscuitto is made from free range, heritage breed Berkshire pork.  It comes in wafer thin slices, and has a lovely ratio of fat-to-meat.  Hehe, it was hard not to eat it straight out of the packet!

Ooh... pretty.

To make my Rollbraten, I pounded the breasts flat (skin-side down), layered the proscuitto on top, rolled them up carefully and secured them with kitchen twine.  Then, I browned them a hot pan, and finished them off in a medium-hot oven to cook through.

Layering, rolling and frying the chicken

German-style fried potatoes, or Bratkartoffeln, are my favourite way of eating one of my favourite foods.  You fry up some onions and bacon (I used the remainder of the Black Pig proscuitto - couldn't let it go to waste!), then add slices of par-boiled potatoes, and keep frying and turning until the potatoes are cooked through and crisp on the outside.

Bratkartoffeln

I thought that glasierte Karotten (glazed carrots) would be a great accompaniment, being a light and sweet counterpoint to the salty proscuitto-filled chicken and potatoes.  I briefly boiled a bunch of baby carrots in water with a little sugar, vegetable stock and olive oil.  To serve, I drizzled over thyme leaves, extra virgin olive oil and some Maggie Beer vino cotto.  If you haven't tried it before, vino cotto is like a reduced, syrupy balsamic vinegar.  It really highlighted the carrots' natural sweetness.

Glasierte Karotten mit Vino Cotto

With the meal, we drank a Henschke 2007 Keyneton Euphonium, which comes from the Barossa township of Keyneton.  I'm not a huge wine buff, but I chose this one because I know the winery (some of my parents' friends, older and much more knowledgeable than I, are obsessed with the Henschke Hill of Grace).  The Keyneton Euphonium is a nice blend of four different grapes, which, according to the friendly staff at the bottle-shop, would be heavy enough to stand up to our meal, without overpowering the flavours.  I was also quite happy it came in a half-bottle - perfect for two!

Wine

And that, my friends, was the meal!


I must admit, I was so happy with it!  I'd never made Rollbraten before, and I was so relieved that it turned out well.  Even though I think I may have slightly overcooked the chicken, it was still moist, with crispy skin, and the most incredible, intensely chickeny flavour.  I'm really glad I entered this competition, as I wouldn't have tried the Barossa Chook otherwise.  And it's dee-licious!  I'd love to try a classic roast chicken next time.

I did make a dessert too, although it was a good few hours after that filling dinner before we sat down to eat it!  I made gooseberry streuselkuchen - Stachelbeeren Streuselkuchen for those of you who like a bit of alliteration - a sweet and spicy yeasted dough, topped with gooseberries and a crunchy almondy crumble.  According to Maggie Beer, streuselkuchen is a staple of Barossa bakeries (even more reason why I want to go!)


I used Nigella Lawson's kuchen recipe, replacing her suggested fruits with gooseberries, and served it with a lusciously creamy scoop of Maggie Beer's vanilla bean and elderflower ice-cream.  I don't ordinarily like floral flavours in food (rosewater, elderflower, violet etc.), but there is something so perfect about the combination of gooseberries and elderflower.   Leftover streuselkuchen made a wonderful breakfast the next morning.


********

If you'd like to enter too, have a look at the Barossa's Table competition website, for instructions and T&C's. Nuffnang is also running a parallel Barossa competition for its bloggers, with the chance to win a weekend trip to the famous region!  (Instructions and T&C's are here).

Pork belly #1 of 2

Ooh... who wants crackling?

I love cooking roast pork for my friends.  It's easy (the butcher, and then the oven, do all the work), and everyone goes gaga for crackling.  So when we had 2 big parties for Christmas on the same day, I thought pork belly would be the perfect option.  (It's the ingredient of 2010, don't you know?)  It's also cheaper than my beloved pork shoulder, and easier to carve.

I was tossing up between 2 recipes - Donna Hay's sage-roasted pork belly (from her Seasons book), and Nigella's roast pork belly from Kitchen.  In the end, I chose Donna's recipe, with some slight adaptations, because the picture was amazing, and it produced a slab of crackly, piggy goodness, as opposed to the shredded pieces of pork from Nigella's recipe.  Another good thing about Donna's recipe was that it could be cooked the day before, with only a 30-minute quick blast in the oven to crisp it up before serving.  (Let's be clear, Donna's recipe didn't actually specify that - I just figured you'd be able to do it, similar to the poached-then-blasted method of Nigella's soft and crispy duck from How to Eat).

So, I bought 2 pork bellies, and got my butcher to score the rind.  The night before the party, I put them each in a tray with some unpeeled garlic cloves, and sprinkled sea salt liberally over the skin.  (Donna tells you to cook it skin-side down for the first part, but I couldn't see how that wouldn't give the crackling a sloppy kiss of death).

And into the oven they went, at 160C for 3 hours.  Whilst the oven was doing its thing, we, well, cleaned up the house and kept cooking and baking other things.  If you were making this in the normal run of things (i.e. not for an epic day of entertaining), you could sit and relax while it's cooking.


This is what they looked like after the 3 hours.  It's amazing how much it shrank.  I'm hoping that was fat melting off, and not just water!

So from there, I let them cool down and stashed them in the fridge, ready for the next day of parties.  For each party, I'd chuck a pork belly in the oven as people were arriving.  30 minutes at a hot-hot-hot temperature.  (Donna's recipe says 180C for 30 minutes, but again, I have no idea how the crackling would get crispy at such a low temperature.)  You're also supposed to add a bunch of sage to the pan for the final roast, but in the hustle-and-bustle of the day I completely forgot!  I might just have to make this again with the sage, just to compare the taste, you do understand.

Oooh...

Pork belly #2 of 2

Aaah...

It was so super-crispy!  Don't believe me? Check out this video we took!


More slicing...

If we hadn't have had guests, I would have totally had that slab all to myself!

And here it is, all chopped up siew yoke style so we could all have a piece.

Mmm.. I'm totally craving pork belly again!

I've had this post sitting in drafts for a while, (in fact all the dishes from our Christmas parties are ready to go!), and when I saw Nigella make it in an episode of Kitchen, I really thought it was time I actually blogged it.  You can find the recipe here, or if you just want to watch Nigella do it, some kind soul has uploaded the clip to YouTube.

I must admit, when I first saw the recipe for Venetian carrot cake in the A Dream of Hearth and Home chapter of Kitchen, I wasn't particularly keen to make it.  One reason for this is that it is proudly labelled as both gluten-free and dairy-free.  Not to be dismissive of those with food intolerances, which I know are difficult to manage, but I'm always a little wary when a recipe's major selling point is something other than its taste.  You know, we see packets and recipes all the time, earnestly labelled: "gluten free!", "low fat!", "only 4 ingredients!"

The story of the cake, however, was more intriguing.  Unlike the carrot cake that we know here in Australia, topped with thick cream cheese icing, this carrot cake is more of a thin Italian-style torta, originally made by Jewish people from the Venetian ghetto.  I had a friend coming to the Christmas party who happens to be Jewish, coeliac and lactose-intolerant.  There couldn't have been a more perfect opportunity to try this cake.

The cake is based on almond meal, an ingredient which I adore.  The fragrance of fresh almond meal is heavenly!

Grated carrots are the other main ingredient... grated by hand. Feel the power!

The grating is the most labour-intensive part of the process; everything else just needs a light stir.  The stirred mixture doesn't look too appealing but smells lovely, thanks to the almond meal and rum-soaked sultanas. (Nigella's mixture was a deep golden colour; perhaps due to the expensive imported Italian eggs she uses.  Mine were plain old supermarket free-range).

The mixture was also a bit loose for my liking; I think next time I may make it in a food processor to get a smoother texture.  (Obviously I'd stir the sultanas and grated carrot in afterwards!)

I baked the mixture in mini muffin tins, for ease of sharing (across two parties).  They took about half the time stated in the recipe.