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When my friend Val asked if we'd like to attend Kaffeehaus Vienna - a temporary cafe set up at the National Gallery of Victoria in conjunction with the Vienna Masterpieces exhibition - you better believe that my answer was a very enthusiastic "yes"!  Those of you who have been with me for a few years may remember my wonderful trip to Vienna in 2006: a heady 2-day cake and schnitzel-eating extravaganza!  (And, of course, my subsequent Austrian cooking and eating adventures!)

We arrived at the cafe on Sunday for a late-morning brunch, and were happy to see Almdudler sodas, and Pfanner ice-teas on offer.  I think it looks pretty good for a temporary set-up!

Feels a bit Alice-in-Wonderland, don't you think?

Cake selection, tea pots

The bakery has an old-school, country charm to it...

... and a wide range of cakes, breads and pastries.  They have a mixture of old-fashioned Australian-bakery staples (think: pies, pasties, cream-filled donuts, cream eclairs, Swiss rolls, vanilla slice), and German cakes, like Bienenstich and Streuselkuchen, or "German Fruit Cake", as they call it there.  The German fruit cake is sold by weight. Love it!

Clockwise from top left: Bienenstich; Scrolls and donuts; bread rolls; cheesy scrolls and twists

Our favourite discovery, however, was a simple one - the 1918 bread.
It's a plain white loaf, created especially for 1918 restaurant.  It has a crusty exterior, and super-fluffy white innards.  It got the tick of approval from German Sandra: finally, a loaf of bread in Australia that tastes like the bread back in Germany!  High praise indeed!  Is it bad that I'd consider flying back to the Barossa just for a loaf of this bread? Hehehe.

We then went out the back to meet baker Nipper Fechner and to see where the magic happens.

Nipper Fechner with a loaf of 1918 bread

I loved seeing all the massive mixers, the huge quantities of dough, and tray after tray of pasties and pies!

Clockwise from top left: Pasties, sausage rolls, pasties, pies & quiches

The famous oven!

Dough-rolling machine for making laminated doughs

Massive mixer

Brice the Mixer

Back: rough dough. Front: smooth dough.

Bread rolls, mini frankfurts

The Fechner Brothers

Burgers cooked in the wood-fired oven - yum!

My lunch! (Or part thereof).

And... chomp! Yum!

One of the owners of a local pizzeria brought a scrumptious sweet pizza to share: apples, crunchy brown sugar and little quenelles of sour cream. So delicious!

Just under a month ago, I was approached by Kitchenware Direct to see if I'd like to test out one of their slow cookers or pressure cookers.  Y'all know how obsessed I am with cookware, so of course my answer was yes!  After looking through all the slow cookers and pressure cookers on the website, I ended up choosing the New Wave 5-in-1 6L Multicooker, which has both slow and pressure cooking functions!

When I was a kid, my mum often used an old-school stove top pressure cooker - it rattled, it shook, and it spewed forth loud bursts of steam.  In short, I was terrified of it.  Many years later she upgraded to an electric pressure cooker, but we only used it a few times before it got relegated to the cupboard.  I guess at that point we just didn't cook enough stews to make it worthwhile.

So given my past experience with pressure cookers, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like the Multicooker and how often I've been using it!  One issue though: the accompanying instructions aren't very clear, so it took quite some time and effort for us so set it up and actually start cooking.  The first time I used it for pressure cooking, I was actually kinda winging it - but luckily it's pretty intuitive and has always worked just fine.  And as soon it was set up it, it's been all-systems-go: stews, braises, soups, risottos, and more.  I've found it so useful to make hearty dinners after work in a short time.  And some examples...


Shiraz Braised Beef

Tonight I made shiraz-braised beef, which only took 30 minutes on the pressure cooking function, plus about 10 minutes either side to brown the meat and veggies, and to thicken the sauce at the end.  Pretty good going for a dish that usually takes 3-4 hours!

The browning function heats up very quickly and evenly, and it's easy to get a nice crust on meat.  You can't adjust it though, so sometimes it can be too strong if you're, say, sautéing onions as the first step of a stew.  I'll often turn the heat off if it's getting too hot, and turn it back on again to keep the temperature under control.

While the stew was having its 30 minutes pressure-cooking, I whipped up some petits pois à la Francaise and some potato/celeriac mash.  Wonderfully comforting for such a cold and blustery day!


Pea and Ham Soup

The soup function is pretty much the same as the low-pressure function, and I've found it useful for making soups (duh) and stocks in a short amount of time.  For example, let's take a look at this split-pea and ham soup I made!

It took 25 minutes to go from this...

... to this!  A hearty, smooth soup.


7-Minute Mushroom Risotto

Perhaps the most exciting discovery we made was that you can make risotto in 7 minutes in the cooker!  There was a recipe for mushroom risotto in the instruction booklet, and I must admit I was curious, and more than a little skeptical about a pressure-cooked risotto.  You start as per a standard risotto: cooking onions in a little oil, adding the rice and some wine.  But rather than ladling in stock bit-by-bit, you tip it all in, with the mushrooms.

Mushrooms

Chuck it on the high-pressure function and cook for 7 minutes.  And then - ta-dah! - al dente grains of rice! Not gluggy, not mushy, no crusty baked on bits on the bottom of the pan!  And best of all: no stirring.  Love it!

We've been eating a lot of risotto since the cooker arrived.  I've done mushroom risotto twice already this month, and have also made cauliflower risotto using the same method.

I've been really happy with the cooker, and significantly, it's already become a regular part of my standard kitchen kit.  In my enthusiasm, I also picked up a cheap, old-fashioned "Pressure Cooker Recipes" cookbook, and am really looking forward to making more warming dishes for this wintry weather!

The pork chop and remoulade recipe come from the Jun/Jul 2011 issue of Donna Hay magazine; I made up the cabbage salad recipe (inspired by a wonderful salad I recently enjoyed at Centonove); the chips were oven chips; and the onion gravy is Nigella's recipe from How to Eat.

I picked up the ingredients on the way home from work, and got cooking!  Cooking relaxedly, it took about 2 hours from start to finish, but if I'd been more organised and hyper (Jamie Oliver 30-minute-meals style), I could have easily cut it down to less than an hour.  Still, it really helped that I did most of the chopping in the food processor!

I started by slicing and cooking down the onions for the gravy.

Onions for onion gravy

I have mentioned this before, but to make this gravy, you cook down the onions with some sugar and marsala very slowly until meltingly soft.  Once that's done, you add flour and beef stock, and simmer for about 20 minutes, before whizzing it in a processor until smooth.  (I often leave out that last step).

While that was simmering, I dealt with the celeriac.  It's such an ugly vegetable, hehe!

Aah... it's much more refined-looking once shredded into thin matchsticks.  I used half a pear and about a quarter of the celeriac.

Many remoulade recipes get you to make the mayonnaise from scratch; naturally Donna's recipe just says to use a good store-bought mayonnaise.  Perhaps I'll make mash or soup with the remainder of the celeriac.

And now, the chops.  There is chopped fresh sage in the crumb mixture, as well as a touch of garlic.

One trick to get them really crispy is to make sure the crumbed chops are very dry before frying them.  I usually let them dry out on a rack for about half an hour before frying, and once they're cooked I let them drain on a rack (rather than on kitchen paper, where the steam would make the crumbs soggy).

The salad was, again, a food processor job.  As I mentioned above, I created this recipe, based on the memory of the most delicious cabbage salad I had at Centonove.  This refreshing and tasty salad is a perfect accompaniment to fried food, wodged into a sandwich, or greedily eaten by itself!  I've popped the recipe at the bottom of this post, in case you want to make it.  (And indeed you should!).

The Ultimate Cabbage Salad

Chips, Onion Gravy

I also fried a few whole sage leaves for a pretty garnish and extra crunch - a tip I picked up from Gill Radford.  I am totally loving sage at the moment!

Sage-Crusted Pork Chop

50 g shaved Parmesan cheese


Method
Chop the cabbage and red onion as finely as possible, preferably using a mandolin or the slicing disc on a food processor.  Place the cabbage and red onion in a wide, shallow bowl.  Sprinkle over the oil and vinegar, season with salt and pepper, and toss through to coat.  Sprinkle over the capers, chives and Parmesan cheese, reserving some for garnish.  Toss through to distribute evenly.  Garnish with the remaining capers, chives and Parmesan flakes.


Serves 4 as an accompaniment.