Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Gourmet Ice-Cream Company and The Dessert Room, Dunedin

When we were visiting Sister Cake in Dunedin we did squeeze in a couple of foodie activities - just after we arrived there I was reading Becs' post on Lovely Wee Days about her trip to Melbourne, and how she has a spreadsheet of foodie destinations, and had to giggle because when we go on holiday (and indeed for Wellington on a Plate) I do exactly the same. I didn't have a spreadsheet for Dunedin because food wasn't intended to be the focus - it was more about relaxing completely and spending time with family - but that is my usual modus operandi.

Even without a spreadsheet I had a mental list of must-visit places - you've already seen the Cookie Time Factory, Denheath and the chocolate shops we went to on the way, but these are some of the other eating highlights.



Near my sister's place is a lovely cake shop called The Dessert Room. I had done my Dunedin research and already had it on my list when a voucher for their cupcakes popped up on GrabOne, so I snapped one up and we paid them a visit the day after we arrived. The shop is well presented, if a bit sparse, but the cakes look amaaaaaazing (sadly I didn't get any photos in the store, but check out the website if you want to drool).


Our voucher secured us six cupcakes, which were presented very well (I love the window in the box!) and also pretty tasty - nice and moist, not at all dry as cupcakes can sometimes be, and the icing wasn't overpoweringly sweet. The flavours weren't too distinctive (the two chocolate-oriented ones were pretty similar) but they were a nice treat all the same. 


I had emailed Mark from the Gourmet Ice-Cream Company before we embarked on our trip, and he kindly agreed to meet me (he spotted my brandy snap ice-cream recipe write-up last year and wrote to me about it, which was cool, and while I think my recipe is pretty good so is their original - and buying some is definitely a quicker way to get your hands on it!). I had asked if we could see behind the scenes but he said he'd have to erase my memory if he was to allow that, and I like my memory. ;-) He did come and chat to us about their ice-cream, though, and told us all about a new product they're putting out, which I reckon is quite cool - Blis. It contains a probiotic ingredient, and the idea is that it helps balance the bacteria in the mouth and throat, which can help with various things, including helping with winter colds and the like. They're promoting it for rest homes and hospitals and I'm not sure if it's available generally but if you like the idea of medicinal ice-cream and you're in Dunedin you can get it from their store there. ;-)



The store is well worth a visit if you are in the area - the ice-cream is cheaper than in supermarkets and is available in bigger (and smaller) containers - so you can try lots of different flavours, or stock up on your favourites. 

Mark very generously gave us some of their ice-cream to try, including the Blis, which is a nice vanilla - not as rich as the other products but more of an everyday treat - it would be ideal with say, chocolate self-saucing pudding or apple crumble, where their other products are pretty much standalone desserts. I completely fell in love with the fig and honey, which I hadn't tried before - and re-met old friends in the brandy snap and Whittakers peanut slab flavours.


We also had takeaways from Paascha, a Turkish restaurant in central Dunedin, and thought they were excellent. I didn't take any photos, but the store hosted the most palatable looking doner kebab I've ever seen and our pita pockets were packed full of salad and well seasoned meat. I'd love to go back and dine there to try their full menu, but probably won't be back in Dunedin for a while so that might have to wait. Highly recommended, though!

Do you know Dunedin? Any foodie secrets I missed that I should make a priority for my next visit? How do you plan your foodie holidays? ;-)






The Dessert Room is located at 594 Hillside Road, Caversham, Dunedin, ph 03 456 3537, www.thedessertroom.co.nz


The Gourmet Ice-Cream Company is located at 10 Birch Street, Dunedin, ph 03 474 0773, www.gourmeticecream.co.nz
Paascha is located at 31 St Andrew Street, Dunedin, ph 04 477 7181, paascha.co.nz

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

(Almost) Boneless Roast Chicken with Apricot Walnut Stuffing

Now that Wellington on a Plate has wrapped up I think there's a rather large group of happy but slightly cuddlier-than-usual Wellington foodies who have sworn off unhealthy food for a bit. I definitely consider myself to be in this category - there's nothing like a spell of gruel to make you appreciate fine food again, it's not just my health which benefits from my restraint but also my tastebuds. ;-)

 

With all that in mind, today's recipe comes to you from the good old-fashioned family feed category - while you could coat your chicken in gravy and serve it with amazing glazed carrots and buttery brussel sprouts, I've chosen to just do the chicken and the stuffing and leave you to devise your own steamed veg combo to work away your sins (in case you haven't overindulged I'll come back to you later with a recipe for killer roast spuds - just give me a week or two to recover!).


Sister Cake was keen for me to help her debone a chicken when we were at her place in Dunedin - neither of us had ever done it before, but one of our aunts had suggested it to her as a good way of serving roast chook. My job, in this instance, ended up having more to do with entertaining my nephew while Sister Cake's hands were covered in raw poultry than actual assistance, but I managed to snap a few photos, and decided it was something worth mastering myself once we returned home.



Now that I have done it myself I'm not sure - on the one hand, I really loved having a boneless roast, and you really can fit an extraordinary amount of stuffing in (great if you prefer the stuffing, like me, or just want the roast to go further). On the other hand, it took quite a while - close to an hour - and while I'm sure I'd get a lot quicker after a couple of tries it's an extra time commitment. I guess it's something I'd make only for a special meal - it certainly wouldn't be the standard method for Sunday roast if that was a household fixture, but for Christmas dinner perhaps...


We found our technique on youtube - I love videos for this kind of thing, and though I've provided the photos I think watching a video helps with understanding. I'm not ready to star in my own chicken-deboning feature film, so you can click through to the video we watched here for a more in-depth look. ;-)


The basic technique is:
 - cut right through the skin and flesh all the way down the back of the bird
 - use your knife to separate the flesh from the bone, as close as you can to the bone, as far as you can around the body
 - use your knife to separate the flesh from the bone at the wing and leg, and then cut the tendons and work the joints until you can separate the joints. It's up to you whether you leave the wing and the drumsticks in the roast to cook but if you do you can still remove the upper leg/wing bones
 - continue to work around the bird until the meat can be removed from the frame
 - make your stuffing, plonk it in the middle, roll the roast around it, and tie at intervals with kitchen twine
 - roast as usual



The stuffing I made up based on what sounded yummy, and it worked a treat - apricot and chicken go together quite well (and I prefer this to the very saucy, sweet apricot chicken dish which haunted the 80s and 90s - do people still eat that? I'm sure it has the potential to be delicious but it seems to have fallen off the radar) and walnuts are excellent in stuffing. Feel free to tweak to your tastes - the formula I use for stuffing is something like breadcrumbs (I pulse frozen bread in the food processor until smallish) + herbs and spices to flavour (sage is classic) + onion + nuts and dried fruit if desired.



I pulsed first the bread and then everything else except the egg in my mini blitzer, then mixed it all together in a bowl. I made way too much stuffing for my normal-sized chicken, so the recipe below is adjusted to make a more sensible amount.


It's easier to tie the bird up if you have an extra set of hands, but it's still doable on your own - I'm all for making life easier where I can, though, so like to have Mr Cake lined up to help with awkward bits like this.
I did my roast in tinfoil because I didn't have a roasting bag, and I probably should have sprayed the foil with non-stick stuff and/or used it shiny side in, but apart from sticking to the skin a bit it worked a treat.


And how did it come out? Well, the chicken tasted like roast chicken (funny that) but was fantastically easy to serve - I'm all for slicing instead of carving. The stuffing was great, and will definitely be featuring again. I think I'll leave the butchery for a wee while, but it was a good experience, and a yummy meal, and I'm sure someday I will want a boneless roast enough to put in the time. Is this something you've tried and mastered? Or does it seem like more effort than it's worth?

In other news, today the tickets for the inaugural New Zealand Food Bloggers' Conference were released, and somehow I managed to be the first to snap one up (what can I say? I'm keen!). It sounds like an excellent day of food-centred fun, and I love to meet other bloggers because they don't think I'm weird for taking photos of everything I eat. ;-) If you, like me, have more photos of food than people you should join us!


Boneless Roast Chicken with Apricot Walnut Stuffing
Ingredients
1 medium chicken
3 slices of bread
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
70g walnuts
100g dried apricots
1 egg

Follow the instructions above to debone the chicken. Preheat oven to 180 C.

Pulse the bread, onion, garlic, walnuts and apricots in a food processor until finely chopped. Add egg and season with salt and pepper.

Place stuffing down the centre of the deboned chicken, then tie the chicken together to enclose the stuffing. Place in a roasting bag (or greased tinfoil) and in a roasting dish and roast for about two hours or until cooked. Slice to serve. Serves 6.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Royal Banquet, The White House

I've done quite a few things for Wellington on a Plate,and while I love all the Dine menus which make it so affordable to go to fancy-pants restaurants, my absolute favourite bit are the events - and as well as Blind Dining at Capitol, Mr Cake and I signed up (after a bit of bank account angst - it wasn't cheap!) for the Royal Banquet at The White House.



We didn't really know what to expect, other than fantastic food, but by the time we arrived after a very chilly, windy and wet walk around the bay just getting in the door was a relief! The red carpet was out to welcome us, along with a photographer, but we didn't linger to have our picture taken. We were guided up the stairs to the bar on the top level, where we were served champagne and canapes - smoked salmon on beetroot blini; crab salad, and mini asparagus and watercress tarts. They were all lovely but the crab salad was my pick - lovely and fresh with plenty of crab meat through it - very yummy.



After a few canapes we were asked to proceed down to the dining room, and truly, my photos do not do it justice but it was very grand (my photos don't really do anything here justice, but hopefully give a bit of an idea. The restaurant was quite dark and I prefer not to use flash if I can, but partway through decided it was required - however, because it's obtrusive I didn't want to take more than one photo of anything, so some are truly terrible!).


As well as a stunning array of cutlery and glassware, each person had a sealed page (real wax seals!) at their place and opening it revealed the menu for the night, along with an explanation of the royal association of each dish - the canapes, for example, were based on the canapes served at Will and Kate's wedding reception.


The first dish served at the table was Pheasant Consomme a la Royale, apparently served at a dinner hosted by King Leopold II and Queen Marie-Henriette in 1870 - I'm picking our version may have been modernised a bit, and it was absolutely stunning! The foam in the middle of the plate was topped with gold leaf (essential for that royal feeling?) and the rich aroma of the consomme reached us as soon as the wait staff walked into the room, so everyone watched it being poured with great enthusiasm - it smelt so amazingly good! The taste was amazing too, very deep and perfect to ward away snow chills. The darling little mushrooms and petals which were arranged in our bowls pre-pour were delicate in flavour and the consomme itself was definitely the star of the show - I must have a go at that sometime, it just seems so overwhelmingly difficult! (I have no idea whether it truly is very difficult or if Masterchef failures are distorting my judgement)


The second course was poached fish fillet (John Dory) with crayfish beurre blanc, which was a dish apparently served at Charles and Di's wedding. The crayfish beurre blanc was stunning (not that there was anything wrong with the fish but the sauce rather stole the limelight), and the seaweed powder around the plate I'm picking is a modern touch and likely wasn't a feature of the 1980 royal wedding. ;-)


My top pick of the night was this rather blurred dish - quail, liver foie gras, hazelnut butter and pumpkin puree. Very rich, but such flavours! The hazelnut butter had that perfect brown butter nuttiness melding in with the hazelnut nuttiness, and having a bit of crunch really elevated the dish. The quail was lovely and went oh-so-well with the foie gras. I tend towards keeping my food separate on the plate, and I know dishes like this are made to be combined and always try a forkful with a bit of everything, but in this case every forkful had to have a bit of quail, a bit of foie gras and some buttery nuts because the combination was sublime. Am I a bit ravey? Sorry... ;-)

Before the main appeared we had a palate cleanser of (I think) mandarin granita and mandarin foam - it was just the ticket after such a rich dish and could just about have served as dessert and been the end of the evening. Far from it, though!


The main (not that our bellies needed any more food!) was beef wellington, served with duchesse potatoes and beans. The plates were presented with just the beef wellington, and the vegetables served to us, which frankly I thought a bit too much bother, but it really didn't matter. I found both the potatoes and the beans reasonably unremarkable (though the beans were a welcome flash of green!), but perhaps being past my normal satiation point didn't help there. The beef wellington was excellent, though, with the meat very tender, nice and pink, and the rich mushroom/pastry/meat/bernaise combination hit all the right notes. Many of our fellow diners (Mr Cake included) thought this was the dish of the night, though I'm sticking by my quail.

I was seated to Mr Cake's right, and to the right of me was one of the evening's two hosts, Brandon Nash, of Dhall & Nash Fine Wines. This was great for us as Brandon had matched all the wines for the evening and clearly knows a thing or two about the stuff, so his commentary throughout on the pairings and flavours heightened our awareness of what we were drinking. Though I doubt I'll ever reach any sort of wine snob status it's nice to have a bit of an appreciation for the stuff, so it was a boon for me to be seated where we were!

The next course was the cheese course, and though I have a photo it's so terrible (and cheese really isn't that interesting to look at anyway) that I've left it out! However, and you won't hear these words from my lips often, I do believe the cheese beat dessert on this occasion. We were each served a slice of Windsor blue (which was already a favourite of mine) on an equally proportioned slice of quince paste, on an equally proportioned slice of gingerbread - cheese on toast? But it was so good - the spicy bread (which was more like biscotti in texture, so I suspect twice baked), the sweet paste, the rich cheese. It doesn't overtake the quail but probably somewhat easier to assemble at home, so it gets points for accessibility!


The grand finale was the snow egg, which I'd already heard some excited murmurings about in the foodie realm so was keen to try. The theme here was passionfruit, which is definitely pretty high up my dessert flavour rankings (nothing can beat chocolate, but chocolate might have been the straw to break the camel's back after this particular meal!) - such a zingy, fresh flavour. The snow egg itself is meringue, lightly poached so it's very foamy and light in texture. It was sitting on passionfruit fool and passionfruit granita, and all the elements were packed with intense passionfruit flavour. The dessert wine was the 2009 Johner Estate Noble Pinot Noir, which was very nice and my wine pick of the evening (though the unusual And Co. The Supernatural Sauvignon Blanc served with the fish was also notable).

Dessert was followed  up with petit fours and tea and coffee, but while we did nibble on the marshmallows and fudge presented to us we didn't stick around as it was past 11pm and a school night so we hit the road and waddled home. ;-) 

It was a fantastic night out, and though pricey I think worth it (though it will depend where your priorities lie!), and The White House created a wonderfully royal experience for us - we were thoroughly spoiled. I think I still need to work on my royal manners - I'm willing to bet that the likes of Princess Kate and her equally slender sister wouldn't eat everything served to them in an eight course meal - but then, it's safe to say I'll never be walking down the aisle of Westminster Abbey with the eyes of the world upon me, so I can savour every last bite!

Are you into events, or do you prefer to make the most of dining out on a more normal scale? 




The White House is located at 232 Oriental Parade, Wellington, ph 04 385 8555, www.whr.co.nz - and they have a degustation menu so though the table might not be quite so large you can still have the royal treatment.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Lunch with Chef Wan and the Malaysia Kitchen Night Market

Unbelievably Wellington on a Plate is drawing to a close for another year - though I'm sad it's almost finished my body is slightly relieved, as my food consumption has been a bit excessive over the last couple of weeks and I have that permanent sort of food baby feeling going on. However, it's not over till it's over, and the grand finale is the Malaysia Kitchen Night Market tomorrow.

Today I was fortunate enough to have lunch at Kayu Manis with a munch (that's the collective noun for a group of food bloggers, as defined by Jo from Wellingtonista) of lovely ladies and the great Chef Wan, to prepare my tastebuds for tomorrow and to further enhance my food baby.

Having Chef Wan at the table was not only highly entertaining (he talks a mile a minute) but very informative - he really is an ambassador for Malaysian food, and as we ate he told us about ingredients and variations on each of the dishes we were trying.


For example, as we ate the cucur udang (prawn fritters) he told us that these are an everyday snack in Malaysia, and are treated as breakfast or perhaps as a teatime snack. Fillings can be varied, and apparently when made for children for breakfast anchovy is often used instead of prawn - I can't help imagining the reaction I would have given my mother if she'd tried to substitute fish for my cornflakes when I was a kid! ;-)


If you're dining at Kayu Manis and get to sit downstairs you can watch the roti being made. When the chef started on this our food-obsessed table all got up and swarmed around to watch - it's an impressive process, with a great deal of skill (sadly the really impressive bits are performed too quickly for me to capture without huge amounts of blurring, so you'll have to go see for yourself), and the resulting roti are amazingly fluffy and very authentic according to Chef Wan (who would know!). 


While the bloggerati were busy snapping the roti action Chef Wan turned the tables on us and whipped out his camera - so I created an infinite loop by photographing him photographing me photographing him...


Once we were done snapping pictures of each other we returned to the table for the main part of our meal. The mains were all so very, very good - the fish sambal was full of huge pieces of crunchy fried fish and the sambal sauce was lovely, and the rendang (which I've had before) has a lovely rich flavour, though is a little dry for my liking. The star for me was the lamb kuzi - it's the unpretty dish in the middle above, but it well and truly made up for its looks with flavour. The sauce for this dish is made with raisins and milk or yoghurt, and the sauce was creamy and rich, with incredibly tender lamb - just fantastic!


In case you're wondering what a "munch" looks like, this is us, with Chef Wan hamming it up in our midst - such a friendly soul!

Chef Wan will be demonstrating at the night market tomorrow, and there'll be various stalls with food available for purchase. It's in Opera House Lane, so hopefully will be nicely sheltered from any crazy weather conditions Wellington chooses to throw at us, and sounds like a great afternoon/evening out - hopefully I might see you there!

What Wellington on a Plate events/restaurants have you been to? Are you using tomorrow as a final opportunity to squeeze some eating in?




The Malaysia Kitchen Night Market is tomorrow, Sunday 21st August, 4pm-7pm in Opera House Lane, Wellington. The event is free and food is available from $5. Mrs Cake dined at Kayu Manis as a guest of the Malaysia Kitchen programme.
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