Food on Such geek. Wow.

Seltzer brewing

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +1300

I got into brewing seltzer during the spring of 2021, and these are my notes. They’re in descending order, so the most-recent are at the top. The notes got progressively less-detailed as time went by, so those looking to actually learn things (e.g. “How much yeast nutrient should I use in a seltzer that’s 100% dextrose”) should read the highlights and then read from bottom-up. :)

Highlights:

Kveik Voss is fast-fermenting and relatively transparent flavour. Excellent for seltzer
It does take a couple days post-fining for the yeast scent to diminish
Recycling yeast is tricky with seltzer due to all the fruit sediment
With only sugars and fruit flesh, yeast nutrient is essential - about 15 grams seems to do the trick
One kg of dextrose in 19 litres will raise the ABV by approximately 2.65%
Don’t boil the fruit or you’ll get pectin haze; raise it to about 75°C to sterilise it, though
Table sugar is a perfectly passable sugar; make invert sugar by boiling it with a little citric acid, 20-60 minutes
Citric acid is amazing

Fruit notes:

Mashing the fruit a little bit is a significant factor in releasing the fruit flavours
Lychee have quite a prominent character, good to pair with something that can compete
Mandarins will impart very little flavour unless you mash them really good pre-ferment
Jackfruit is almost undetectable, even with two cans; will try blending next time
Pineapple seems to digest(?) other fruits. The other fruit becomes quickly less-noticable while the pineapple becomes more prominent
Raspberries create a visually beautiful brew, as do plums
Passionfruit pulp is pretty disappointing; in brew #7 I used THREE cans, and it was nearly undetectable
Mango is pretty awful, really - lots of fruit mush, lots of haze, some weird aged-fruit flavour… avoid imho

Yeast Awakener

To reawaken the yeast from the fridge, I make a mix of:

A tablespoon of sugar (any variety, often dextrose)
10 grams chopped raisins OR 2tsp lemon juice
6 grams Marmite
Pinch of yeast nutrient

Once those are dissolved together, I pour in collected yeast from the previous batch.

Other thoughts:

2022-01-04 - my brews are still coming out very sweet - I’m yearning for something with a dryer character. Hard seltzer was featured in an exBEERiment on Brulosophy on the difference between dextrose and sucrose (it seems table sugar will be fine!), where Phil mentions using the W04 Paramount wine yeast(!), along with 32g of yeast nutrient(!!). Perhaps this will solve my sweet brews? Might also get my water acidity tested to make sure it’s at a good pH for the fermentation.
2022-01-21 - the increased yest nutrient is working out very well; much cleaner and dryer - 25g seems good. Ordered some Fermaid AT today as well to see if a slower release of yeast-available nitrogen (YAN) will support the yeast better

Recipes and notes

Brew #11, 2022-03-12 - brewing: Blueberry and Mandarin Seltzer - large edition

Recipe:

3kg invert table sugar
10g Citric acid
15g+15g Fermaid-AT
Kveik Voss
310g tinned mandarins
1275g tinned blueberries

Notes:

Decided it was high time to brew a larger batch - this is a 25 litre brew
The citric acid has been amazing - boosted the quantity in this one to compensate for the larger proportion of fruit
Dosed 15g of Fermaid-AT at inital brew; will dose another 15g at 3 days
Looking to try some amylase enzyme to see if I can really dry out the seltzer

Brew #10, 2022-02-20 - 2022-02-28: Blueberry and Mandarin Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg white table sugar (see notes)
5g Citric acid
10g+10g yeast nutrient (Fermaid-AT)
A fresh Kveik Voss
310g tinned mandarins
850g tinned blueberries

Notes:

My Fermaid-AT has arrived! It’s used at a rate up to 1g/l in low-YAN environments, so used 10g and will add another 10g in 2 days
Two batches of 10g FermaidAT was pretty good, the Kveik chews that stuff up super-quick, literally over 36 hours
I really liked this combination so revisiting the double-blueberry and mandarin with a couple tweaks
The invert sugar experiment seemed to be a success, so 2kg table sugar + 5g citric acid; boil for 20mins
Easily one of my favourites - possibly THE favourite - so far. 4/5, only minor improvements
Update, citric acid is amazing, absolutely brings the zing that I was craving. Still getting sweet brews but much more balanced now
Next brew will try 15g+10g nutrient

Brew #9, 2022-01-26 - 2022-02-01: Apple, Mango, and Guava Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg white table sugar (see notes)
4g Citric acid
23g yeast nutrient
My weird hybrid yeast now (see notes)
1kg diced apple
410g tinned guava
850g mango pulp

Notes:

I ran out of yeast nutrient so only 23g this time
Overshot water, but had lots more fruit than normal so this is a 24l batch
Decided to attempt invert sugar instead of dextrose! 2kg table sugar + 4g citric acid; boil for 20mins
The Kveik Voss + Mangrove Jack’s Seltzer yeast is doing the job very nicely
Initial flavour suggests this might be a goodie.
Final flavour - meh. 2/5, I wouldn’t brew this again. The citric acid seemed to be a good call though.

Brew #8, 2022-01-16 - 2022-01-21: Blueberry and Mandarin Seltzer

Recipe:

1.7kg Dextrose, 300g white sugar
Kveik Voss plus Mangrove Jacks’ Seltzer yeast
25g yeast nutrient
310g tinned mandarins
850g tinned blueberries

Notes:

Previous run went very well (much drier result), so bumped nutrient to 25g!
Recycled the Kveik Voss + MJ’s Seltzer yeast from last batch; seemed pretty okay
Result - an absolute banger! Really delicious; next time I’ll replace the mandarin with something more acidic though

Brew #7, 2022-01-05 - 2022-01-10: Pineapple Passion Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg Dextrose
Kveik Voss plus Mangrove Jacks’ Seltzer yeast
20g yeast nutrient
420g tinned crushed pineapple
510g tinned passionfruit pulp

Notes:

Increased yeast nutrient to 20g this time, will see if it makes a difference. (Update - huge difference!)
Probably made a mistake with my yeast. I’d started up some Mangrove Jacks’ seltzer yeast to try… but then remembered how slow it is, so I pitched some fresh Kviek on top of it. Eek… I expect the Seltzer yeast to create some off flavours at 36°
Also made a mistake with the yeast nutrient - I completely forgot it until the fermenter was already in the fridge! Boiled some up and added it in, hopefully it doesn’t really need much boiling.
Result - this one wasn’t a winner for me. It was dry like I wanted, but the passionfruit was a big disappointment

Brew #6, 2021-12-28 - 2022-01-02: Plum, Pineapple, and Mandarin Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg Dextrose
Kveik Voss yeast
14g yeast nutrient
850g tinned Black Doris plums
420g tinned crushed pineapple
310g tinned mandarins

Notes:

Thoroughly crushed the plums and mandarins with the back of a fork this time
Had real trouble reinvigorating the yeast from the previous brew; might need to order a spare yeast for backup
10% Brix at start; finished just under 8% Brix… if this refractometer is accurate, these are very low ABV
Result - this was absolutely one of my favourites. Great outcome!

Brew #5, 2021-12-21 - 2021-12-25: Pineapple and Double Raspberry Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg Dextrose
Kveik Voss yeast
16g yeast nutrient
850g tinned Raspberries
420g tinned crushed pineapple

Notes:

Visually beautiful, great nose, and quite refreshingly delightful to drink.
The acidity of the raspberry and pineapple combined made this taste much like a kombucha. Weird.
Failed to take any gravity readings.

Brew #4, 2021-12-12 - 2021-12-17: Black Doris Plum and Pineapple Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg Dextrose
Kveik Voss yeast
12g yeast nutrient
850g tinned Black Doris plums
850g tinned pineapple (half crushed; half chunks)

Notes:

Initial tasting is very much drier than the others - not sure if this was the acids in the pineapple cutting the sugar, or if the sugar syrup in the cans was way thinner? Either way, this may end up a low percentage.
Original brix reading looked to be about 7%, suggesting an expected ABV of only 3.6%
(later): turns out I have no idea how refractometers work. Never mind.
This recipe came out amazing, absolutely delicious. Started out with a fairly subtle plum flavour, with the pineapple just becoming perceptible at the end.
However, during the week the plum flavour diminished and the pineapple flourished. This continued to the point where it was actually really unbalanced; I suspect it was caused by enzymes in the pineapple… to combat this, next time I’ll use only one tin.

Brew #3, 2021-12-04 - 2021-12-10: Lychee and Jackfruit Seltzer

Recipe:

1.2kg Dextrose, plus other assorted sugars to 2kg (approx 5.3%)
Kveik Voss yeast
16g yeast nutrient
850g tinned jackfruit
560g tinned lychee

Notes:

Brewing out much quicker now with the increased nutrient
Lychee is very prominent in finished product. Not overwhelming but definitely star of the show
Jackfruit brings very little flavour. Next time I might blend it up but worried about post-brew yeast collection

Brew #3, 2021-11-26 - 2021-12-03: Double Raspberry and Mandarin Seltzer

Recipe:

2kg Dextrose (for approx 5.3%)
Kveik Voss yeast
16g yeast nutrient
820g tinned raspberries
310g tinned mandarins

Notes:

Doubled the raspberry; reduced the dextrose; tripled the yeast nutrient
Raspberry far more prominent and yum. Zero impact from mandarin
Yeast nutrient really helped. Still a bit sweet but far better; probably no need to change
Adding the dextrose, plus approximate sugar syrup and fruit sugars, suggests a 6% ABV

Brew #2, 2021-11-17 to 2021-11-24: Raspberry and Mandarin Seltzer

Recipe:

2.5kg Dextrose (for approx 6%)
Kveik Voss yeast
5g yeast nutrient
410g tinned raspberries
310g tinned mandarins

Method:

Filled keg to 12l line with tap water
2.5kg Dextrose + 6g nutrient into 3 litres of water. Heated to 80°C
Took off heat, added tin of raspberries and tin of mandarins, including syrup; mashed up a bit
Brought temp back up to 75°C, and poured it into 16 litres of room temp water
Pitched Kveik yeast at 29°C. Total 20 litres ish, fermenting at 32°C

Notes:

Brew finished on 2021-11-24, exactly a week later
Kveik ferments much quicker, and very clean; happy
Mandarin very subtle, raspberry present but light. Still delicious
Didn’t add enough yeast nutrient!! Extremely sweet, but yeast has gone mostly dormant
Forgot to account for sugars from fruits; happy the yeast went to sleep before I got rocket fuel

Brew #1, 2021-10-25 to 2021-11-12: Mangrove Jack’s Pineapple Sunset Hard Seltzer

Brewed as per instructions, but added 12g of Mangrove Jack’s Passionfruit Beer flavour boost. Fermented a little slow; took a bit over two weeks to finish

Tasting notes:

Came out with the same acrid/chemical flavour that many others complain about
Brewing process super simple, though. Think I can do this myself without a kit

Recipe: Bangin' Satay

Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +1200

Had a hankering for a Satay Chicken tonight and kinda whipped something up based on a couple different things. This is more of a saucy satay, not a dry skewer-type. This takes a bit of juggling; I had three elements on the stove, and a few stages. Worth it, tho.

I’ve broken this into stages: the sauce, the veggies, and the noodles. For the benefit of shopping lists (and Whisk!) I’ve provided an awful monolithic pile of ingredients up-front. Yay.

Ingredients

2 large chicken breasts
2 Tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp ground Cumin seeds
2 tsp ground Coriander seeds
2 tsp Paprika
2 tsp Turmeric
3 tsp Curry powder
3 small chillies
2 onions
5 cloves garlic
1 thumb ginger
2 bay leaves or kaffir lime leaves
2 shoots lemongrass
1 400g can coconut cream
0.5 cup Peanut butter
1 capsicum
1.5c mung bean sprouts (for optional veggie side)
2 spring onions or garlic shoots (for optional veggie side)
1 capsicum, any colour (for optional veggie side)
2 Tbsp dried shrimp (for optional veggie side)
2 Tbsp dried shallots (for optional veggie side)
2 Tbsp peanuts, roughly chopped (for optional veggie side)
Soy sauce
Sesame oil
Egg noodles
Cayenne pepper or other chilli, to taste
Lime juice, to taste
Salt, to taste
Sugar, to taste
MSG, to taste (substitute chicken stock if you want)
Chicken stock, to taste
Vegetable oil

Method

Slice your chicken into reasonably chompy pieces. Maybe 1cm thick, and small enough to fit in your mouth.
Put the chicken in a bowl, pour in the fish sauce. Give it a stir, and leave it to soak.
Dice the onion, and get it in the frypan over medium heat, with only just-enough oil.
While the onion cooks, prepare your spices in a small bowl: cumin, coriander, paprika, turmeric, curry powder.
The onion is still cooking, so chop up your garlic, ginger, and chillies. Give the lemongrass a good thump too.
Get a second frypan onto your hottest element, and get it very hot. Start browning your chicken. Do this in HOT but small batches so it doesn’t steam.
Take the onion out of the first fry pan, and add another good tablespoon of oil.
When the oil is hot, tip in your bowl of spices. These are already ground, so they’re gonna burn fast - keep them moving, try not to let them smoke.
As soon as the spices are fried off (30~45 seconds), quickly throw your onion back in. Give it a stir, then tip in the garlic, ginger, and chilli. Crank the heat up!
Add peanut butter, peanuts, bay leaves, lemongrass, and the juice of half a lime. When the peanut butter is melted, add coconut cream and stir.
Start adding your chicken to the sauce whenever it’s ready. After all the chicken is added, reduce heat to a simmer. Try to remember to stir it sometimes.
Time to give it a taste! It’ll be bland - this is tuning time. I added a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of MSG, a few grinds of salt, more lime juice, and a teaspoon of dry chicken stock.
Once you’ve struck the balance of sour/sweet/savoury/salty/spicy that you’re looking for, leave it simmer for another 20 minutes or so.
Prep some veggies for a side. I used mung beans, garlic shoots, and a capsicum. Chop these up.
In yEt AnOtHeR pOt, bring a bunch of water to a rolling boil (say 1.5 litres). Get your egg noodles in, and cook according to the packet (often 6mins).
Remember that frypan you fried the chicken in? Get that going again. When hot, throw in your side-veggies, along with some soy sauce and MSG.
Strain the water out of your egg noodles, and start them frying with some oil and soy sauce.
Toss the fried shrimp, fried shallots, and extra peanuts into your nearly-cooked side veggies. Give it a taste, add salt/lime juice/MSG to make it yummy.
QUICK, YOUR NOODLES ARE STICKING TO THE PAN! Turf those out into serving bowls. Spoon the tasty veggies onto half, and your chicken satay onto the other half.
Tell someone else they’re on kitchen cleanup duty, and sit down to enjoy!

The Actual Best Sous Vide Eggs... ™

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +1300

Inkbird were having a special in November, so I got a sous vide for Christmas! There are heaps of places with recipes for the best sous vide eggs, most notably the always-outstanding Serious Eats, but also an excellent write-up on Salt Pepper Skillet, and of course sous vide manufacturer Anova Culinary with a somewhat briefer post.

I submit to you that none of these are the best sous vide eggs. In my eyes, the best egg has a completely opaque white (not rubbery and not snot), with a semicooked gooey yolk like a cross between honey and custard. Like this one:

The closest recipe on the pages I cited is the 13.5 minute egg at 75°C. This is really close, but I found the yolk was a bit overcooked, and the white undercooked. Absolute conundrum.

My fix? A slightly hotter temperature, and take your eggs straight outta the fridge. I found 76°C (169°F) for the vaunted 13.5 minutes managed to get the outer white to a non-snot texture, while the pre-chilledness of the egg kept the yolk from overcooking.

Daaaaaal!

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +1300

I’ve loved daal (or dal or dahl or dhal etc) since my trip to India in 2019… Ugh, that seems so interminably long ago now, in the final weeks of the long decade of 2020. Anyway.

So there’s this recipe I’ve followed a handful of times. I like it, it’s similar to what I enjoyed while travelling through Jaipur, but it doesn’t really kick the same way that the food in India did, so I always find myself tweaking it. The base recipe came from https://thewanderlustkitchen.com/indian-red-lentil-dal/ … and then I looked up a specifically Rajasthani daal recipe and found this one which is super similar. The place I’ve settled is in the middle of the two.

Ingredients and Method, jumbled into one

Step One (the pot)

3/4 cup Red Lentils - rinsed
1/4 cup Green Lentils - rinsed
3 cups water (not boiling, just room temp)

After rinsing, put the lentils and water in a medium pot over medium heat. Let them simmer while you prep the rest.

Step Two (the fry pan)

1.5 tsp Cumin seeds
1 Cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp butter or ghee
1 Tbsp oil

Put these into a medium fry pan; don’t turn it on yet.

Step Three (the base spices)

6 cloves of garlic, chopped
1.5 Tbsp of ginger, I just used the crushed stuff
1 large onion, diced. Use different types of onion if you’re feeling ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: faaancy :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧
2 green chilies. Dump the seeds and chop them up.
If you don’t have chilies, drop in 2 Tbsp of Salsa Picante instead, for that capsicum-type flavour.

Prep the above, and put them all into a small bowl.

Step Four (get your heat on)

At this point, turn the frypan on to medium heat. Let the cumin and cinnamon sizzle in the oil for about a minute, until the scent starts to pop.

Just before it starts to smoke, throw in the contents of your small bowl from Step Three, give it a stir, and crank the heat up to eleven.

Step Five (getting serious now)

1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp paprika
2/3 tsp cardamom (either ground, or smash the seeds in a pestle)
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
2 bay leaves
1 tomato, diced
Spinach! I used about a cup worth of the frozen chopped stuff (defrosted first, of course)

Give your frypan a stir every couple of minutes. By the time you’ve finished chopping the tomato and getting the rest of this together, the onions should be transparent and the whole thing should be smelling amazing.

Add all these ingredients to the frypan and give it another stir. Stir up the lentils as well, they should have been simmering for a few minutes by now!

Step Six (tune those flavours)

This last part really comes down to personal tastes, but here’s my go:

1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Aromat or MSG
1 tsp Vegeta vegetable stock
1 tsp dried coriander
The juice of one lemon
1 cup of coconut cream, regular cream, or yoghurt

Once the lentils have thickened up, mix in all the above, and then stir in the now-cooked contents of your frypan. That’s it, your daal is assembled! Taste and tweak as desired, and then serve on rice.

Enjoy!

Ham and Pea Soup

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +1200

I’ve never made Ham and Pea soup before today. I remember my mum making it when I was younger, but it was never really my thing. But tonight just seemed the right combination of a rainy, chilly, wintery evening… and we had some leftover jalapeño cornbread!

Well, it was so good I completely forgot to even take photos. I did it all in our pressure cooker, so the meal was ready in about half an hour. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

Primary Aromatics

2 tablespoons butter
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, diced
1 shallot, diced (or just use a bigger onion)

Secondary Aromatics

2 carrots, chopped about 1cm square ish
2 celery sticks, chopped about 1cm square ish
2 bay leaves
decent pinch of dried parsley

Body

a bacon hock, circa 800g
500g bag of dried split peas
1/2c red lentils
2.5tsp Vegeta vegetable stock powder
about 6 cups boiling water

Method

Start by putting the peas in the pressure cooker pot, and soaking them in fairly hot water. Then start your prep.
Once the veggies are prepped, drain the peas and set them aside. Rinse the pot, and put it on the stovetop on high.
Add your primary aromatics and fry for 5 minutes, then add the secondary aromatics and fry another 10 minutes.
Remove from stovetop, and put the inner into the pressure cooker body.
Add the peas and lentils to the pot, sprinkle in the vegetable stock, and mix it all together.
Create a depression in the mix, and place the bacon hock in, so it’s as low in the pot as possible.
Fill with boiling water until covered, and try to stir it a bit without lifting the hock too much.
Put on lid, and pressure cook for 30 minutes.

That’s about it! After that it was just a matter of chopping the meat off the hock, stirring it in, and potentially adding a little more water.

It would have been far easier to use a boneless lump of ham instead of the boney bacon hock. If you do this, add some extra stock powder to compensate for the missing salt.

Credit: The recipe above is based on https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/219170/ham-and-split-pea-soup-recipe-a-great-soup/, with a good few tweaks of my own.

Delicious Cornbread

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +1200

I remember celebrating Christmas with family in New Mexico when I was a kid. I was fairly young, but I think it must have been at the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. One of the most delicious treats I recall from the Feast was real Mexican cornbread.

Now, every few years I’ll head into Gilmours and yoink a three-kilo bag of cornmeal. I don’t make this often, but we do all love it, and one batch usually makes enough for multiple households.

I always cook this in a cast-iron skillet, because it allows me to fry off the butter a bit first - this adds a nice roasty nutty flavour.

Ingredients

Delicious fat

120g (half a cup) of butter

Dry ingredients

1.5 cups cornmeal
1.5 cups other flour (mix & match anything to add up to 1.5c; just avoid self-raising)
2.5 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar

The ‘other flour’ component is super flexible - as long as it’s dry dust, it hardly seems to matter what you use. Rice flour could make this gluten free, or wholemeal to make it gut-friendly, or tapoica flour if you just … need to use up some random tapioca flour you bought over lockdown for some reason.

In fact, the cornbread in the oven right now has some psyllium husk, to try and keep the moisture locked in. (Update: the psyllium was awesome! Substituted 1Tbsp for random flour.)

Wet ingredients

3 eggs, room temperature
1.5 cups milk, room temperature

Method

You forgot to warm up your eggs and milk, so pop your milk into the microwave for a minute, and stick the eggs in a bowl of warm water.
Turn your oven to 180°C, then pop the butter in your skillet and get it melting over low heat.
Mix your dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. In different (larger) mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, folding gently. Now you can just dust the flour out of that bowl and put it away! (Life haxx)
Your butter should be a nice nutty brown by now; carefully pour it into your batter - keep just a tiny bit in the pan for non-stickness.
Give everything a gentle stir, and pour the batter into the skillet.
Into the oven it goes! Cook until a toothpick comes out clean, approx 20~30 minutes.

Jalapeño Update

Today I tried some jalapeño and cheese in the cornbread. It was easily the best cornbread I’ve made so far!

As above, except with the following modifications:

Increase salt to 2.5tsp
Reduce sugar to a half cup
2~2.5 cups of grated cheese
About 1/3 cup of chopped jalapeño

The cheese and jalapeño go into the batter after the butter is mixed in - just before you pour it into the skillet.

Today’s cheese was about 1.5 cups of grated Colby, and another half cup of grated parmesan to add a bit of sharpness. It wasn’t quite enough, so next time I’ll either increase the proprtion of parmesan to 2/3c, or use a slightly sharper base cheese.

Credit: The recipe above is almost entirely from https://cookieandkate.com/honey-butter-cornbread-recipe/, however I’ve made a few small tweaks.

I made Salmon Gravlax!

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +1200

I joined some friends last weekend for a belated World Whisky Day celebration. The entry fee was, of course, a bottle of whisky (this year the theme was different finishing casks)… but we also each bring some delicious morsel that piques our interest.

This year, as I was bringing Glenmorangie’s The Lasanta (aged in Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez sherry casks), I decided my amuse-bouche would be sherry-based.

My treat was dried prunes, soaked in a dry sherry, then sprinkled with a pinch of salt, and eaten with a tamari-roasted almond. They were quite delicious - you only want to soak them for 5 hours or so though, they do go mushy. The salt is critically important; I’m not sure about the tamari, plain almonds may have been just as good.

Anyway, although my treat was great, it paled in comparison to one of the other treats - an amazing fresh salmon gravlax. I’d never heard of gravlax before, but it’s actually just a method of curing salmon - sit it in a casing of sugar, salt, and dill for a couple days and it’s done! Of course, I had to try it.

The recipe below has a couple tweaks, and it’s taken almost entirely from https://www.recipetineats.com/cured-salmon-gravlax/.

Comments

For the salmon, skin on or off doesn’t matter. I did mine skin-on, and it’s a little annoying - next time I’ll take it off.
The larger the salt granules, the better. I used this Himalayan rock salt. Avoid iodised salt, apparently.
Prefer bigger sugar granules, too - probably not coffee crystals, but raw sugar worked really nicely. Avoid icing sugar or caster sugar.
Use peppercorns if you can; they’re fresher than pre-ground. If using pre-ground, add a bit extra. I used these ones.
Curing time is tricky. I did mine for 86 hours and it was definitely a hard-cure, but was still really good. I imagine the whisky weekend version had only been a 48-hour cure.

Ingredients

Salmon (de-boned)
Salt & Sugar (ratio below)
Pepper (about 2tsp per 500g salmon)
Dill (optional - about 25g per 500g salmon)
Coriander seeds (optional - about 2tsp per 500g salmon)
Grated lemon rind (optional - about a lemon’s worth per 500g salmon)

Method

Bruise your dill, crush your peppercorns, whack your coriander seeds, and grate your lemon rind
Mix your cure. I used a recipe of 4:1:1 (fish:sugar:salt), but next time I’m doing 5:1:1.
Once your cure is mixed, fold in your spices and aromatics.
Spread out half of your cure, lay the salmon on top, and then spread the rest of the cure on top.
Bag it up! I used a vacuum sealer, but a sandwich bag or some plastic wrap will do the trick.
Pop it in the fridge with a weight on it (people recommend a plate).
Flip it over every 12-24 hours. Be careful - a lot of liquid will come out during the curing process!
Once you’ve cured it for 24-72+ hours, pull it out and gently rinse off all the clumps of dill/pepper/salt etc.
Wrap it in a paper towel to dry it off, then leave it unwrapped in the fridge for a few hours to finish drying out.
Enjoy! Slice it with a nice sharp knife. I’m told it should be sliced “thin enough to read a newspaper through”.

Other thoughts

I’ve seen recipes that use aquavit… So next time I’m actually going to try a few tablespoons of gin!
The 4:1:1 ratio wasn’t bad - it’s just that I ended up pouring out lots of big chunks of salt, so I think it was unnecessary wastage.
I’ve didn’t try coriander in this batch, but I’m super-keen to try it in the next one. I’ve also seen recipes use juniper berries, which is what made me think of the gin.
What to eat with gravlax? We had it on a platter that also contained seed crackers, a couple cheeses, fruit paste, salami, capers, and pickled gherkins. The capers were great.

A pork rub for when you've run out of garlic

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +1200

I picked up a set of whole pork loins at Pak ’n Save the other day for like twelve bucks, and being on dinner duty tonight I thought it was time to fire up the smoker. But just last night we’d had a Chicken Tikka Masala which cleaned out our garlic stocks … what to do?

After a bit of dithering, I made a simple low-garlic rub and it turned out good enough that I’m documenting it here!

Outta Garlic Pork Rub

1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp Cajun seasoning mix (this had garlic in it)
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1/2 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tbsp chilli flakes
1/2 tbsp turmeric

I covered a plate in the rub, then on a different board I sprinkled rub all over the tops of the pork, placed them rub-side-down on the plate-o-rub, and covered the remaining surfaces. I still have probably 2 tbsp of rub left, so I must have used 7 tbsp in total.

Into the fridge for about two hours, and then onto the smoker! I did it over pecan wood until it reached about 60°C, and then boated it in a 50/50 mix of apple juice and ginger beer until it hit an internal temp of 71°C. Then I let it sit for about 30 minutes before we sat down to dinner!

Reflections:

I was in a rush this time - no low & slow here. I really want to try it again over much lower heat.
I think it was a bit overcooked… 71°C is a bit hot for pork. Next time I’ll pull it off at 65°C and let it sit for a bit longer.

Overall, it still got a great score from the rest of the fam (in fact, they’re the reason I’ve recorded this recipe here)!

Lockdown Chicken

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +1300

It’s the first weekend of New Zealand’s COVID-19 lockdown, and having already been working from home for a week I decided I’d get energetic in the kitchen.

Last night, with some guidance from my mate Nevyn, I put a couple chickens into a brine. I’ve brined before, but this one was super experimental for me, as usually my brines are just that one top result on AllRecipes.com, which is about as inspired as plain mayonnaise on pizza.

Well, holy shit I just finished dinner and it was good enough that it deserves a blog post. The flavour of the brine just showed through, the post-brine sauces were outstanding, and I did a pumpkin that I’ll mention below too!

The Brine

A brine is mostly there to ensure you get a super-soft and moist chicken at the end of the cook. For this purpose, only water and salt are really necessary. However you can also use the brining time to subtly introduce some flavours!

6 litres warm water
½ cup salt
⅓ cup sugar
4 star anise
2 cinnamon quills
12 allspice
10 cloves
About two tsp peppercorns
2 dried Kashmir(?) chillies

And, the méthode:

Mix your water, salt, and sugar until completely dissolved.
Put the spices into a pan on medium heat, and wiggle them around until the aroma really starts. Make sure you don’t singe them!
Add some of your brine to the pan and simmer the spices for five minutes or so, to get that fresh flavour out into the water.
Tip the whole lot back into your pot of brine, making sure you don’t leave any flavour behind. It’s ready!
Pop your chickens in, and leave them overnight. Weight them down with something if needed, and make sure you turn or mix them a couple times.

The Rub

One one of the chickens, I used Leena Spices’ exquisite Portuguese Spice Mix with heaps of crushed garlic and lemon juice. On the other chicken, I decided to make up my own. Here’s what I did:

1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1 Tbsp oil (adjust as desired for thickness)
pinch of cayenne pepper

Just add as much oil as you need to thin the mix out enough to spread on your chicken. Also, add enough cayenne pepper for it to actually be fairly hot; it will cool during cooking. I had mine “comfortably warm”, but after cooking it was entirely unnoticeable.

The Pumpkin

This was another spur-of-the-moment thing, but it was absolutely a star of the meal. Real basically:

Cut your pumpkin in half, along the latitude, to make a couple bowls. (e.g. not from stalk to base)
Scoop out the soft inside bits of the pumpkin and discard.
Take a knife and score the inside of the pumpkin bowls with cross-cuts, as deeply as you can manage.
With your finger, just rub about 2 teaspoons of honey around every exposed part of the pumpkin flesh.
Lay some strips of butter around the rim, with an extra pat of butter in the middle.
Into the smoker it goes! I think mine was in for about two hours today.

The honey and butter will melt and flow into the cross-cuts you made in the pumpkin, allowing the flavour to penetrate.

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The End

Here are the finishing photos! It was really a tremendous meal, and we’ve got enough left-over to make wraps for everyone tomorrow!

Eric's BBQ sauce

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +1300

Quite a long time ago, I posted my recipe for smokey BBQ-baked beans. It’s still one of the only recipes I’ve seen which starts with dry beans, and includes slow-cooking in a smoker. Most of the recipes I’ve found are either for oven baking, or start with a literal can of baked beans (wtf).

Well I’m making baked beans again for the first time in ages, and I’ve taken the time to write down my tweaks. This is primarily around my BBQ sauce, hence the title of this post!

Just a few general reminders about baked beans, and then we’ll get into it:

Soak your beans the night before
Make a barbecue sauce
Simmer your beans for a bit in a normal pot
Add your aromatics and BBQ sauce after the beans are simmering
Cook your beans for a few hours until noms

The BBQ Sauce recipe

OK here’s the sauce:

350ml tomato sauce / ketchup / catsup. I used Watties, which is a fairly sweet ketchup with quite low acid
200ml brown sugar - the darker the better. You could substitute in some molasses into white sugar if you need
100ml apple cider vinegar
80ml Worchestershire sauce

That’s your base sauce. Put them all together in a pot, and bring to a slow simmer while stirring until it’s all mixed and smooth.

At this point, you want to start tasting and tweaking it to your tastes. Work out your preferred balance between the zest of the apple cider vinegar, the sweetness of the sugar, and the meaty richness of the Worchestershire sauce.

Once you’ve got your balance nailed, expand into the flavours:

1Tbsp paprika
1Tbsp English mustard
3 drops liquid smoke
1tsp of adobo sauce, if you can find it
alternatively, some cayenne or chilli powder

Be careful about your mixing method - take a quarter cup or so of your simmering sauce out, put your tablespoon of paprika into that, mix it up, and then add it to your pot. Otherwise you’ll get chunks of powder that are a pain to mix in.

Adobo sauce is pretty … interesting. It turns out, if you have a tin of chipotle peppers, they’re almost certainly bathing in adobo sauce. It’s also pretty spicy, so you really don’t use much, but it adds a whole lot of flavour that is beyond just heat. A teaspoon should be a pretty good starting point though, and you can ramp up from there as needed - it does lose a lot of it’s heat while it simmers.

Tomato Soup

Mon, 07 May 2018 00:00:00 +1200

I came home tonight to discover my wife had made probably the most amazing tomato soup I’ve ever tasted. She performed this feat with about ten minutes of effort (plus about an hour of simmering), so I decided I needed to note it down.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp oil
1 medium onion, sliced
1/2 head of garlic, peeled and chopped
About 4 slices of bacon, diced
3 cans of chopped tomatoes
2 tsp of vegetable stock powder
2 tsp of sugar
1 cup of water
Cream
Parsley for garnish

Method

Get yourself a piping-hot frying pan
Add the oil and the onion; fry until transluscent
Add the garlic and the bacon; fry until bacon starts to brown
Add chopped tomatoes, veggie stock, and water; stir
Simmer for at least 45 minutes; preferrably longer
Serve with a dollop of cream, and garnish with parsley

That’s it! It’s hands-down delicious.

Smokey BBQ-Baked Beans

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +1300

We recently got a Fornetto Basso - it’s an 18" bullet smoker/barbecue, advertised with three tiers of deliciousness: two bbq racks, and a rail under the lid for hanging meats for smoking. It also has a large metal water bowl, which goes at the bottom. The water helps to keep the meat moist, and helps regulate the temperature.

However… The water bowl also turns out to be my new favourite bean-cooking vessel! It’s quite huge (probably about 8 litres) and of course it doesn’t consume any of the precious roasting real-estate. Even better, the juices from your cooking meat will drip into the beans, bringing a nice smokey meaty flavour! ❤️

So anyway, I whipped up a recipe last night, and my awesome wife ran the smoker today while I was at work. I came home to the best baked beans I’ve ever tasted.

The following recipe is plenty for a good 6 people, and should provide some leftovers as well. We used a mix of Apple wood and Cherry wood for smoke.

Ingredients

1 cup cooked bacon, chopped into about 2cm squares (optional)
6 cups mixed raw beans*, soaked in clean water overnight and drained
18 cups water
2 fairly large onions, diced large
3 capsicum (any colour), cut to about 2cm squares
2 Tbsp mustard
270ml of tomato sauce (I used Watties)
6 Tbsp dark brown sugar
8 Tbsp cider vinegar
4 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (possibly a bit less depending on taste)

* I used a mix of about 40% haricot beans, 10% black beans, 30% red kidney beans, and 20% giant lima beans. The black beans were pleasant surprises, but the lima weren’t particularly enlightening - get butter beans instead, if you can find them.

Mix all the ingredients together in your bowl (or a tray), pop it in the BBQ, and fire it up! The beans will absorb some of the water, and some of the water will evaporate to keep your meat hydrated. Your beans should be cooked by the time the sauce has thickened down - ours were ready in about 5 hours. Make sure you don’t cook them dry!

Enjoy!

Tuna Patties

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +1200

What do you do when it’s dinner time, and you haven’t got any ingredients ready for the meal?

What if (perhaps as a result of being an ultralight hiker), you also have a huge surplus 500g sachet of tuna?

Tonight these particular stars aligned, and I ended up making these amazing Tuna Patties: http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/15705/tuna-patties.aspx

I did tweak the recipe considerably, though:

Ingredients:

2-3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed for mashing
Optionally, swap one of the potatoes for a kumara or some pumpkin
500g tuna flakes
2 carrots, grated and excess juice dabbed out with a paper towel
A goodly handful of frozen chopped spinach
1 onion, cubed
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/8th tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp sage
1 tsp veggie stock powder
2 eggs
2 tbsp mustard

Method:

Boil the potatoes in salted water until cooked.
In another pan, fry the onions for 2 minutes, then add garlic.
Fry until the onions start to brown, then add herbs, spices, and stock powder.
Continue to fry for another minute, then remove from heat and let cool.
When the potatoes are cooked, tip out all the water, and allow remaning water to evaporate.
Mash the potatoes - they’ll seem unpleasantly dry, but that’s OK.
Mix the carrots, mashed potatoes, fried onion and garlic, all together in a bowl.
In another bowl, mix together the tuna, the eggs, and the mustard.
Now combine everything together, and give it a good mix.
Form the mixture into patties and fry in a lightly oiled pan.

In retrospect, this recipe seems really difficult, but it was actually quite straightforward, and it was totally delicious. Definitely good with a bit of mayo on the patties. Yummo!

Pan-fried Spicy Miso Chicken

Mon, 29 May 2017 00:00:00 +1200

Jeez I just discovered I’ve only posted a single recipe on this. Time to change that.

Chicken for dinner tonight. I was feeling a little adventurous, and definitely wanted some miso involved, but also felt like cayenne pepper and shallow-fried chicken strips. Here’s the result! This went really well on a base of bulgur wheat, and with a side of stir fried veggies.

Ingredients

Two chicken breasts, skinless
2 tsp miso paste
2/3 cup plain flour
2 tsp celery salt
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp chicken stock powder
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper

Method

Cut the chicken into strips, sized similarly to your two thumbs together.
Sift all the dry ingredients into a bowl, and stir or shake until mixed.
Taste your flour coating!! Make sure it’s delicious, and make sure it’s spicy enough.
Mix your miso paste with a little hot water until smooth. It should be quite thick, you don’t want it dripping off.
Coat all the chicken in the miso paste.
Roll the chicken strips in the flour until thoroughly coated.
Pan-fry in a very hot pan, for about 2 minutes per side.

Enjoy!

Alfredo Sauce

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +1300

I had the urge to make a homemade alfredo the other night. I found a recipe called “Better than Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce”, which is pretty descriptive, I guess. I made a couple tweaks here and there, though.

I usually stray wildly from recipies whenever I decide to follow one, but having not made an alfredo sauce before, I largely stuck to the guide. A couple changes I did make, though:

Instead of adding the garlic and cream together, I heated the butter and fried the garlic to bring out a bit more flavour
I also fried a goodly dose of smoked bacon along with the garlic. Bacon first, of course, so the garlic doesn’t burn
The recipe reckoned we should use two garlic cloves. Ha! Four, definitely.
I also added some chopped spring onion and a pinch of cayenne pepper

I’ve reproduced the origina recipe, along with my changes, here:

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 or 3 rashers of bacon, chopped into squares
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 chopped spring onion
2 cups cream
1⁄4 teaspoon freshly-ground pepper
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1⁄2 cup grated parmesan cheese
3⁄4 cup mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 supermarket tubes of fettucini pasta

Method

Melt butter in medium saucepan with olive oil over medium/low heat.
Fry the bacon until until browned.
Add the garlic, fry until the garlic starts to brown.
Add cream and spring onion; bring mixture to a simmer.
Stir often.
Add the Parmesan cheese and simmer sauce for 8-10 minutes or until sauce has thickened and is smooth.
When sauce has thickened add the Mozzarella cheese and stir until smooth. STIR FREQUENTLY.
Add the pepper and cayenne.
While the sauce cooks, boil noodles for 3-5 minutes.
Place pasta on serving plates and spoon sauce over pasta.

Bone app the teeth!

(Alright, most of the reason for this blog post is for me to practice my Markdown skills)