Do you home deliver? Lessons from a professional kitchen

I’m escaping my own style with this post.  I’m also indirectly and unintentionally posting an anti-ode to the infinitely more accomplished stylings of A.A. Gill.  I’m going to write about food.  Straight up. Without the odd yet parallel tale of some current life event or recent happening.  I feel a little naked in this approach, but here we go with some naturalist musings.

For the past few months I have had the privilege and the sometimes pain of working…OK, be it for free, but labour none the less…in some great restaurant kitchens.  My approach to my stage (kitchen apprenticeship) pursuit was simple.  Where do I like to eat?  Where am I embarrassingly excited by the food? Where will a chef take another now chef into his kitchen knowing full well I was a lawyer in a past life?

As it turns out, the whole ex-lawyer branding proved less difficult than I imagined.  I met with congratulations, mockery, disbelief and only on odd occasion anger.  Unfortunately the consequences of a poorly managed divorce can scar a man for life…but the consequences of a well managed kitchen station and a little non-binding guidance on a debt recovery can heal all wounds.  Miss Devour & Co, Registered Office: Hot Starters.

Brett Graham, contempo casual at The Ledbury

Last November, through sheer luck, Executive Chef Brett Graham at The Ledbury plucked my application from email anonymity. Lesson One: Roe deer butchery. Working with Brett to reduce the bounty of his weekend shooting trip into priced portions for The Ledbury’s winter menu was fascinating.  He is so commercially astute in maximising value from his produce, which goes some way to explain the continued success of The Ledbury.  The Roe deer portions are seared and presented in a smoking glass dome of hay (Douglas Fir), which gives the flesh a smoky finish. The deer is served with the classic meaty accompaniments of beetroot and marrow, The Twist element being the malt shavings dusted on top.  

Candied walnuts in their sweet phase at The Ledbury

My most useful take home from The Ledbury: Candied walnuts.  After taking a 2/3 water to 1/3 sugar mix to a just-turning caramel, the walnuts are added to the pan and vigorously mixed.  The caramel immediately starts to crystallise, turning white around the walnuts. After cooling on a silicone or paper-lined tray you are left with a crisp dusted slightly sweet walnuts.  Chocolate or wintery desserts are an obvious home for these walnuts, but I also like them in salads or crushed over a mushroom risotto or pasta. 

Quay's butter-poached quail

Despite turning the seasons upside down, walnuts were there again when I worked at Quay in Sydney earlier this month.  Their butter-poached quail breast balances on a crisp fried quinoa and walnut crumble, pan-fried off in clarified butter before serving.  The silky quail is also served with truffle custard plopped onto a smooth walnut and chestnut puree and a ripe loose ‘pudding’ (crumbled pumpernickel, morel and foie gras all muddled together). Plating each of the elements (and the rest, Quay’s menu reads like a epic degree) with silver chopsticks was an exercise in high-speed microsurgery! 

Quay's salad of breakfast radish and blood sorrel

Quay’s dishes are certainly not easy additions to you home repertoire. Even if Peter Gilmore’s truly sexy recipe book, Quay, takes its place amongst your food porn collection, it’s unlikely you will construct the exquisite salad of breakfast radishes and blood sorrel as an impressive entrée at your next dinner party.  But the lesson to take away from the restaurant and the book is Peter’s fresh, clean and textural approach to food. He calls it nature-based cuisine. If your produce is good, and you treat it with love, you really don’t need to play around with it too much. When you're cooking think about how everything on your plate tastes, bites, feels in your mouth, smells and work with your ingredients to create depth, contrast and personality on the palette.

This approach doesn’t have to be complicated.  I’m loving mushrooms at the moment.  I often default to an easy mushroom pasta after work.  I’ll try and grab some different looking mushrooms at the market on the weekend.  Black Trumpettes look amazing on a plate, dramatic and smoky.  Their paler relative, the Chanterelle is softer, fruity and bit more homely.   Ceps have a great integrity and flavour and what I call ET Fingers (or everyone else calls Enoki) are a fragile contrast. 

In good quality olive oil I’ll sauté down a couple of finely sliced shallots and garlic, a little thyme, add the roughly chopped mushrooms and let them sweat out (start with the Ceps, they take a little longer).  You can reduce a dash of white wine or sherry in the mix, before adding a loose teaspoon of honey, a twist of cracked pepper, a quick glug of soy, and then some chopped parsley.  I have started using soy a lot more as a substitute for salt.  It adds an umami to the dish which is deeper and richer than salting.

To plate I’ll fold this duxelles (rich, chunky) through hot pappardelle (long, smooth) with peppery roquette (crisp, fresh) before crumbling over some Stilton (creamy, tangy) and crushing a few candied walnuts (crunchy).  A pinch of Maldon sea salt and a sling of olive oil never hurts.  This is an easy dish with classic flavour combinations but it’s consistent with Peter’s textural approach. Think about this next time you’re pulling something together for dinner. Add a snap to something slippery, a squish to something crunchy and each mouthful will have a lot more personality and we all know, personality goes a long way.

Elvis lives...in Sydney

I’ve recently extricated myself from a decision vortex usually populated by twenty-something former daddy’s girls, drunk late-night buck’s party participants and members of narcotic peddling ‘security’ specialists astride motorbikes. Why at the age of 30 I thought a tattoo clinging awkwardly to my hipbone was an intelligent decision, I can’t quite determine.  I have an odd and unexplained fear of butterflies which therefore eliminates about 50 percent of tattoo designs readily directed at female tatooees.  I loathe the tramp stamp, can’t read Asian characters (other than those required to order at my local Szechaun restaurant) and think branding myself property of my boyfriend is not one of the experiences I care to share with Johnny Depp. Wino Forever.

 Steaks, whisks, eggs, knives, forks and pork butchery diagrams - all suggestions avidly advanced by my friends.  I’m not sure what these proposals say about me but permanently inking myself with the butchered carcass of fellow mammals is not really what I was hoping for as a permanent memoir of the completion of my third decade.  If only I adored cute butterflies and fairies, tattoo regret would not have loomed until well after childbirth and the reappearance of my hip bones.

So no tattoo for me.  I went blonde instead.  Yes, yes, I hear you. And the word ‘crisis’ does mean something to me.  Crisis (n) a calamitous occurrence whereby the local fromagerie owner unexpectedly closes up shop early and one is forced to do without brie for close to 15 hours. Crisis.

Casually relaxing on Sydney's beaches

For now my ink-free, flaxon self is in full disguise amongst the tan, blonde and brauny inhabitants of Sydney, Australia.  Looking the way I do right now, they’ll never guess I’ve lived a life of back-alley coffee shops and basement restaurants in Melbourne.  My black and camel wardrobe is a bit of a giveaway…although I can always blame Paris for the costumes.

I’ve always been fiercely supportive of the Melbourne restaurant scene, often at the expense of Sydney’s offerings, but this trip, consider my words eaten.  There is a real buzz around the Harbour right now. Loosening of liquor licensing has really opened up the market and the streets around Darlinghurst and Surrey Hills are speckled with niche eateries, bars and sexy restaurants.  OK, it’s still Sydney and being hot and not looking like you eat at all still helps secure a table in front of the newest and coolest kitchens.  But trust me, disguises work!

The butchers counter at Porteno...table top dancing for carnivores

 Costumes and all we met outside Porteno in Surry Hills (358 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, 2010, Australia, +61 (2) 8399 1440) this week in hope of a rare table at Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz’s new Argentinean restaurant.  I knew it would be popular, their last venture Bodega is still credited as changing the pace of Sydney dining and tapas in particular.  But to see at least 50 people without reservations loitering in the street outside and calculating their sprint to the soon to be opened doors surprised and amused me.  It was 5.45 on a Thursday and we had already secured poll position with no exceptions for women, children or the elderly.

The Porteno crew

Once seated, I immediately regretted my decision not to tattoo myself.  The staff here explode from the rockabilly subculture with all the ink, Brylcreem and rolled up denim you can imagine.  They have an immediate capacity to make you feel so terminally uncool and yet so welcome at the same time.  This isn’t a theme, this is just a group of friends and family running a fiercely popular restaurant exactly how they want to.  Front of house manager, Sarah Doyle, partner to Elvis, platinum pin-up girl, and perfect vegetarian paradox to carnivorous menu, is immediately crush-worthy and expert at hosting the large dining room, smaller upstairs bar and waiting list as boisterous diners pack the restaurant each night.  My suggestion, go as a group as you can book for 6 people and more…and you can order for 6 people or more.  You will want everything on the menu.

The asador mid-roast...and always empty come second service!

 I was distracted for most of the ordering process.  Usually I am looking at other diners, judging the feel of the place, sneaking a look into the kitchen.  This time I was eye locked on the asador, a large campfire pit over which whole lambs and sucking pigs are iron strapped in some sort of flesh roasting sadomasochistic display.  Beyond food porn for the protein fetishists in the dining room.

The best way to eat beans

Oddly, or so I thought, we started with a vegetarian dish: barbequed eggplant, tahini, pearl barley and my current love of the moment, preserved lemon.  Surprisingly, the vegetarian offerings at Porteno are extensive and tasty (perhaps the result of Sarah Doyle herself being vegetarian).  The green beans, ricotta and oregano which side kicked our main dishes were equally as good as the silky and fresh eggplant starter and held their own in the crowd of alpha meats overwhelming our table. But before the alpha meats arrived, our grilled calamari was perfect, just opaque and visibly whipped by the charred hot parilla grills before being soothed on the plate by cool pickled green tomato and whipped all over again with strips of chilli.  

Blood sausage and capsicum...

 But what really has the Sydney-slickers queuing are the meaty offerings Elvis and the kitchen team bring to the menu. The blood sausage was ripe and drooling with richness, the sweetness of the roast capsicum smoothing over the bite of garlic. A truly dreamy mouthful, this sausage and a fatty shred of eight-hour wood-fired suckling pig complete with glass crisp crackling to finish for bite.  I am still in debate as to whether it was this pig or the wood-fired Suffolk lamb which ruled the roast.  I imagine the only way to ease such contention will be with further research.

Suffolk lamb...the skin was amazing!

 A little like the band performing after the Rolling Stones at a music festival, the desserts at Porteno are probably independently very talented, but I’d already left the building.  It’s just unlucky timing that my will to dine was, by this point, lulled into a state of post-hedonistic paralysis and sweet ambivalence.  Even the promise of dulce de leche in every possible contortion couldn’t arouse my interest.  My heart and stomach remained with the meat splayed burning asador…unsurprisingly the latest proposal for my now defunct advancement into the world of body art. I wonder if Porteno would like to take on my lower back as advertising space?

Burnt custard and dulche de leche...if only I had room!