A short while ago, I finally had April over for a long-awaited PORKDATE.  April loves crackling, and I never need any excuse to get roasting!

Pork shoulder

One of the side dishes was Chef Mathew Macartney's pickled kohlrabi, apple and cucumber, the recipe for which I got at his cooking class in March.  It's always good to have something refreshing and astringent against a fatty, juicy roast pork! We sliced the kohlrabi super-thinly, using this new Borner V-Slicer Multibox V5 that I received from Kitchenware Direct. I've got a few other things planned to make with this new gadget, so stay tuned!

As a nibble to go with drinks, I made some parmesan shortbreads, from the first Ottolenghi book.  These are quite like cheese stars or cheese straws, crunchy salty little bites.  I was a bit cautious and may have undercooked these slightly - you can definitely let them get a bit browner than ordinary sweet shortbread, so you get a definite crunch all the way through.

Ottolenghi Parmesan Shortbreads

And here's the full meal!!

Juicy, crackly pork...

...and a second picture of the pork, just because!

Red cabbage...

...handmade bread dumplings...

... and the tart, crunchy kohlrabi, apple and cucumber salad.  (Hint: it's even prettier if you use a red apple!)

And the table...

After quite a bit of rest, we were ready to tackle dessert.  Adrian's triple-chocolate custard tarts are insanely decadent and super yummy!  I think it takes him a good few hours to make them, most of which is spent slowly stirring the custard! He adds extra chunks of milk chocolate into the filling - so yum!  He also used Careme sweet shortcrust pastry, one of my favourites.

I actually made some walnut shortbreads as well, using some walnut meal that I'd been given at Wagner Bros' fine food store in the Goulburn River Valley, but they weren't great so I quietly "forgot" to serve them.  My created recipe didn't work brilliantly, with the shortbreads becoming quite hard and mealy, without any of that lovely walnut aroma.  Whilst the walnut meal is a great product - it smells amazing before baking! - I'm struggling to figure out what to do with it!  Any ideas?

Turkish Cherry Soda, Craft Athens Lager

St. Katherine's
26 Cotham Rd
Kew, VIC 3101
Ph: (03) 9207-7477
Website

When St. Katherine's opened in Kew, I was quite interested to visit, but there was a bit of negative buzz about it in my parents' circle of Kew locals regarding price and quality, and it fell off the list of restaurants that I wanted to try.  However, I was very impressed with my recent visit to Hellenic Republic, and seeing St. Katherine's delicious-looking $19.50 two-course 'Xpress' lunch on Joyce's blog, I thought it would be a good, low-risk way to try the restaurant.

The bar at St. Katherine's

I popped in with my parents on a weekday - it wasn't full but had a pleasant atmosphere.  I particularly liked the bright airy space (great for food photos), and the colourful tiles and old tomato tins on the tables (great for Instagram - don't forget to follow me, sarahcooksblog!)

Self-serve cutlery

As you can see in the photo at the top of this post, my dad had an Athens Lager, and I had a clear cherry soda.  I was actually hoping to get that Espa brand red cherry drink I enjoyed so much at Hellenic Republic, but the clear cherry flavoured Turkish soda was a refreshing substitute and thankfully didn't taste of artificial cherry or Dr Pepper!  (According to our friendly waiter, St Katherine's has all the flavours of the Espa soft drinks except for the sour cherry, so I'll have to trek out to Brunswick East when I want my fix. D'oh!)

The first course was a tasty selection of dips and other snacky bits and pieces.

First course

Clockwise from top left, we have: tamara; mahammura (roasted sweet pepper dip with walnuts and pomegranate molasses); crispy deep-fried school prawns; a lamb pide topped with minced lamb, tomato, garlic, parsley, Aleppo pepper and lemon; a bowl of grilled and popped corn with almonds, chives and red onions; and warm pieces of bread in a bag.

The lamb pide reminded me of my favourite item from A1 bakery, lamachun (lamb pizza), with its spicy and sour meat topping.  I also really liked the corn dish, enjoying the contrast between sweet juicy corn kernels and aerated, puffed corn.

For me, the highlight was definitely the school prawns, all salty and crispy.  I love that you can eat the whole prawn, shell and all!

The main course comprised three very "Sarah" dishes: grilled spiced salmon, slow-roasted chicken, and a rice pilaf with herbs, dried apricots, carrots and toasted pumpkin seeds.  (Y'all know I love dried fruit and rice!)


The salmon was a little salty for my taste, but it went well with the milder-tasting pilaf and chicken.  Both chicken and fish were cooked skillfully, remaining lovely and tender.

Despite being one of the smallest options on the menu, after the two-course 'Xpress' lunch, we were comfortably full and didn't feel like a full dessert.  You must get heaps of food if you go for the $40 lunch option!  However, we saw that coffees come with a little square of cake, and thought that would be a nice way to round off the meal.

We thought they were brownies, but they were actually little squares of very tasty, moist walnut cake.  Our waiter was super-nice and gave us a few extra pieces when we told him that it was going to be our dessert! Yay!

Greek coffee with walnut cake

Hehe... even more walnut cake squares... our waiter slipped these onto our table as we were leisurely chatting and enjoying our coffees.

When I cooked dinner for the lovely Kate and Rob, I wanted to make something comforting, something that would be a real treat for English expats who'd been living in Brunei!  And that's why I made a crackly roast rack of pork, followed by a gooey, luscious, sticky date pudding, served with thick double cream.

I based my recipe on Nigella's sticky toffee pudding from Nigella Bites, fiddling around with her ginormous quantities and changing the method a little to suit me.  The main difference though, was that I replaced Nigella's suggested dark muscovado sugar with gorgeous Colombian rapadura sugar, which Wendy from Fare Enough in Euroa had given me on my trip to the Goulburn Valley.


Melbourne hipsters and coffee aficionados will be well familiar with this sugar - all the third-wave coffee houses provide it - and I love its crumbly texture and its intense, almost licorice-like aroma.  Apparently it's high in dietary iron and other nutrients too.  Wendy told me that back in the days, the slaves on sugar plantations were actually healthier than their better-fed masters, simply because this sugar was a big part of their diet.  As if you needed another excuse!

The pudding is really very easy, needing no more than a light stir with a wooden spoon.  In fact, the most difficult part about making this pudding is chopping up the dates!

Flour, sugar, chopped dates

Being a self-saucing pudding, you blanket the batter in sugar, butter and recently-boiled water before baking.

Blanket of rapadura sugar and dots of butter

With boiled water poured over

I'm not quite sure why Nigella gets so excited about self-saucing puddings, and what a miracle they are, always adding "trust me" clauses to her recipes.  They really are a very easy, traditional pudding, and a staple of Aussie home economics classes!

And here is the finished product: Super yum!

Sticky date pudding

I think I may have cooked my pudding for slightly longer than I needed to; rather than having a layer of sauce beneath the sponge, the end result was a very moist, squidgy sponge with a crackly top.  Not that anyone was complaining!

Squidgy goodness

Apparently dairy products are very expensive in Brunei, so I made sure there was plenty of thick double cream to go around.  (Just quietly, it was actually an el-cheapo Farmdale brand double cream from Aldi, but I was really impressed with it!  It was all dollopy and creamy, without being unappetizingly solid and buttery like some other brands I've tried).

With double cream

As I'd never baked with it before, I wasn't exactly sure how the rapadura would affect the final product, but it worked so well - adding texture and complex flavours, not just sweetness.  Interestingly enough, despite there being quite a bit of sugar both in the batter and in the sauce, the final product wasn't overly sweet - rapadura seems to provide a much less cloying sweetness than ordinary white sugar.

With all those nutrients from the rapadura, I'm regarding this pudding as health food!  (That's my story and I'm sticking to it).

Rapadura Sugar Sticky Date Pudding
Based on Nigella's Easy Sticky Toffee Pudding, Nigella Bites

Ingredients
For the sponge:
50g rapadura sugar
90g self-raising flour
100g pitted dates, finely chopped
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
25g unsalted butter, melted

For the sauce:
100g rapadura sugar
25g unsalted butter, cut into little pieces
250ml recently boiled water from a kettle

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Place the 50g rapdura sugar, self-raising flour and dates in a bowl, stir together to combine and set aside.  Whisk together the milk, egg, vanilla extract and melted butter.  Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, and stir gently to combine.  Scrape the batter into a buttered 1-litre dish, and spread out evenly with a spatula.
Sprinkle over the 100g rapadura sugar and 25g unsalted butter.  Pour the boiled water over, and bake for 25 minutes, or until cooked to your liking.

Serves 4-6, depending on appetite

Sopes

I told you I wanted to try making sopes, and make them I did!  It's funny, it took my cousin Catherine and I two and a half years to organise our second Mexican feast, and then - bang! - we did number two and three in the space of two weeks!  Sopes are basically fat little corn cakes, that you can top with anything you like.  They're made with the same ingredients as tortillas, but without all that difficult rolling - they're so much easier to make, and in my opinion, just as tasty!


As you can see, the menu was pretty similar to last time, except that we had sopes instead of tortillas, added a vegetarian chilli con carne (or a chilli sin carne, to be more precise), and eschewed the luscious tres leches cake in favour of little shortbread biscuits.  (I don't think Mexican Wedding Cakes are actually Mexican; I just wanted something small and sweet to go with coffee!)  We also added slivers of green capsicum, sauteed until soft, to replicate cactus, and crumbled up some smooth feta to replicate queso fresco.  I'm told you can only get tinned cactus here, not fresh, and apparently it doesn't taste very good.

Another change I made was in the method for the carnitas.  Last time David Lebovitz' recipe resulted in slightly dry meat - my fault, not the recipe's - so this time I used his spice mix, but decided to go with a method with which I'm more familiar, and slow-roasted a small pork shoulder instead.  (Approx 1.25kg boneless weight). This also gave us the benefit of getting crackling!


Earlier that day, I rubbed the pork shoulder with a mixture of oil, cinnamon, chopped up ancho chillies, chilli powder, and cumin, and roasted it for 30 minutes at 230C, then for 3 hours at 150C.  This resulted in crisp crackling and tender meat!

For the sopes, I used this recipe, but as with any traditional recipe, I'm sure every cook does it their own way.  I mixed 3 cups of masa flour with 2 cups of water, a tablespoon of salt and a splash of vegetable oil, then kneaded it until smooth.

Then we broke off little pieces, rolled them into flat discs and pinched up the edges to form a border.  Catherine's Mexican sister-in-law also pinches the middle of her sopes to get a bit of texture, but I've seen recipes without this - so it's really up to you!  With slightly long nails, I found it difficult to pinch up the middle of the discs, so I pressed indents into them with my knuckle.  Easy!


Then it was just a matter of shallow-frying them for a couple of minutes on each side.  Done!  I found that they didn't need a huge amount of oil, and still managed to cook through quite quickly.  They were so easy to make, and somehow managed to be both dense and fluffy on the inside.

Now, here's the rest of the meal:

Crispy carnitas, crumbled feta, bacon crisps (from a packet), rice

Clockwise from front: Chipotle chicken, chilli sin carne, pico de gallo, sauteed green capsicum, shredded lettuce

Chilli sin carne

And here are the assembled sopes!  You can put anything you want on them; but I believe that it's traditional to have them with beans, cactus, and thin sour cream.  We weren't sure if we'd have enough sopes, so cooked up some rice as well, but these babies are super-filling and dense - two or three would make a substantial meal!

Baby sopes with chilli con carne, guac, pico de gallo, queso fresco, sour cream

Big sopes with pork, pico de gallo, guac, capsicum, queso fresco and sour cream

Tee-hee-hee, here's mine with a bite taken out of it!

Bistro Thierry
511 Malvern Rd
Toorak, VIC 3142
Ph: (03) 9824-0888
Website

As I mentioned in my last post, it was my birthday on Monday, and we celebrated with dinner at Bistro Thierry.  I'd never been before, but had driven past it dozens of times, and it came very highly recommended by a foodie ex-coworker of mine.  It's a small restaurant on a posh stretch of Malvern Road, and seems to be incredibly popular - despite it being a Monday night, it was packed!  The decor is OTT stereotypical "Parisian", in that romanticised, exaggerated way that us non-Parisians imagine Paris to be - I felt a bit like I was in an episode of 'Allo 'Allo.

"I will say this only once..."

The meal, and the evening in general, were actually very, very good, so I feel I may as well list the (two) negative aspects up front and get them out of the way:

First thing - soft drinks were ridiculously overpriced.  We ordered a $4 coke, which I felt was standard restaurant pricing... until it came out and I saw it was a tiny bottle, less than 200ml.  Almost half the size of a normal restaurant serve of soft drink!  Not cool!

Second thing - all the tables in the restaurant were placed very close together, which did go towards creating a convivial atmosphere, but wasn't particularly comfortable.  In fact, it was downright cramped! We had waiters bump into us a couple of times while we were trying to enjoy our meal, and also had to lean out of the way when the table next to us was being served, without so much as an "excuse me" from the waiters.  It also meant the restaurant was very noisy, so it was quite hard to have a conversation without yelling.  If, like me, you are bothered by noise in a restaurant, I'd ordinarily recommend visiting on a quieter night, but as I mentioned above, the place was full even on a Monday night!  I don't think they have "quiet" nights.  So, just give in and enjoy yourself!

Now, the food.  Good, crusty pieces of baguette were provided to nibble on.

Bread

My dad and I shared a half-bottle of wine.  I love it when half-bottles are available at restaurants - a whole bottle shared between two always seems quite excessive to me.

Chateau Mont-Redon Chateauneuf du Pape 2007 - $50 for 375ml

Soupe à l’oignon - French onion soup with gruyère crouton - $14.50 for a full serve

It was quite salty, but not too rich - a nice way to start the meal.

My dad couldn't go past the escargots, which came out attractively presented in a cute metal pan.  Although he enjoyed them, he did mention that they were a bit too buttery and rich, and thinks Philippe Mouchel's escargots are still the best.

Escargots à la Bourguignonne - Snails baked in their shells with garlic and parsley butter - $23.00

Mum's main of roast chicken was impressive, the white asparagus and micro herbs lifting what would otherwise have been a uniformly brown dish.

Poulet jaune rôti - Roast chicken with white asparagus - $39.50

Three of us ordered the steak frites, and I'm ecstatic to say that they all came out perfectly!  Sandra's was "very well done", Dad's was "rare", and mine had to be: "very, very rare please!".

Le Steak-Frites 250gm - Eye fillet steak served with fries and your choice of sauce - Pepper, Béarnaise or Red wine and shallot - $39.50

My "very, very rare" steak was done exactly the way I like it, with a charred, almost crispy exterior encasing the soft, gorgeous rare meat within.  I chose the classic Béarnaise sauce, which I love, but only added in tiny amounts.  Having made it myself a few times, I know just how much butter goes into it!

Below I have a picture of the contrast between well done and very rare - both perfectly done.

Rare vs well done

The past couple of years I've struggled to find a restaurant that will cook a steak how it's ordered and had almost given up hope.  (Apart from a pleasant surprise at Squire's Loft in the Docklands last year, to be perfectly honest!)

The first time I visited Bistro Guillaume in Crown in 2008 (back when it was where Spice Temple is now), they cooked my steak perfectly, but when we visited again after it had moved and re-opened in its current, more casual incarnation, they cooked my steak medium despite my being clear that I wanted it very rare.  (In fact, that visit to the new Bistro Guillaume was so underwhelming that I didn't even bother to blog about it).

Last year, that stalwart of Australian fine dining, The Lake House, undercooked Sandra's "very well done" steak, despite the fact that our waitress suggested a particular steak dish that would suit that type of cooking.  Even when we sent it back it still came out medium-rare.  Why... why!

So with all of that in mind, I was thrilled when our steaks at Bistro Thierry all came out perfectly without any fuss.  (I know, #firstworldproblems!)

More steak pictures!

Well-done steak

Well-done steaks make me cry inside, but Sandra likes them, and this one was cooked just as she requested - fantastic.

Mushroom sauce

The mushroom sauce that accompanied Sandra's steak was a world away from the bland, creamy button-mushroom sauces served in lesser steakhouses.  With a mixture of exotic mushrooms (including the enoki that you see above), it was a clear, intensely savoury sauce, almost tasting like a soy sauce.  I would say that it tasted "umami", but I loathe the overuse of that word!

To go with those big old steaks, we ordered some green beans.  Again, these were cooked the way I like them - softer than al dente - with lots of tasty garlic butter.

Haricots verts sautés - Sauteed beans with garlic and toasted almonds - $9.50

Ordinarily I would have skipped dessert, but it was my birthday after all!  We ordered a crème brûlée and a serve of profiteroles to share between the four of us.

Crème Brûlée - Vanilla scented custard with caramelised sugar - $14.50

Profiteroles, glace Vanille, sauce chocolat - Profiteroles served with vanilla bean ice cream and milk chocolate sauce - $15.00

What can I say about the desserts?  Just that they were classics, executed very well.  This appears to be the overriding theme of the restaurant.  Despite the minor quibbles that I mentioned, overall we loved Bistro Thierry and had a great evening there.  Any restaurant that can do steaks right gets a big tick in my book!  I look forward to going back one day.