Intellectual Food

I don’t want to upset any foodie aficionados here, but I am a bit reluctant to jump on this molecular gastronomy bandwagon. You might think why the heck not? I jumped right on top of the cupcake craze and was suitably taken in by the no-knead bread fad and am completely convinced by wagyu. But somehow I am happy for this speeding bandwagon to zoom right past me. Perhaps it’s because I’m not convinced.

The idea of eating foam really doesn’t get my mouth salivating, and to be honest neither does the sound of bacon and egg ice cream or snail porridge; it actually gets my stomach churning. Call me boring but I would much rather stick to eating my bacon and eggs just how they were intended- crispy and sunny side up.

All this said, I am no authority on the subject of molecular gastronomy and to be honest I have never experienced the stuff. It all sounds too scientific for me. This is coming from the girl who tried every trick in the book to skip her chemistry class. Once you start talking about food in terms of molecules and enzymes, then my mind switches off and starts to play the La Cucaracha soundtrack. Call me artsy, call me fartsy, but scientific I am not.

Maybe I am just being too narrow-minded, ignorant even. How can I even say that I don’t like the stuff if I have never tried it? Well, true. I don’t want to oversimplify a complex subject without even having experienced it. So, I decided that before I make any conclusions about this scientific approach to food, I should at least give it a try and make a better judgement from there. You can’t say that I didn’t try.

This is where the event They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT) comes in. Created by Martin Lersch, the event aims to spark people’s imagination and creativity in the realm of molecular gastronomy. I caught the event on a good month as the theme was Strawberry and Coriander; two ingredients that on their own I love, although never would have thought would pair well. When I think of strawberries, I think of sweet desserts and when I think of coriander I think of savoury dishes. So how do the two amalgamate to create something palatable?

Since I was new to the whole unusual flavour combinations thing, I decided that creating my own recipe would be far beyond my capacity. So I decided to go with a recipe on Epicurious- an Avocado and Strawberry Salsa on Crispy Tortillas. It sounded good on paper. But I admit I was a little trepidatious. What if I ruin a perfectly good punnet of strawberries by adding some coriander to it? With the little faith I had in this branch of gastronomic science that I knew nothing about I started to chop the strawberries and the coriander and off they went into a bowl- together.

The outcome? Well I have to say, that I wasn’t completely repulsed as I thought I would be. Suffice to say I also wasn’t entirely persuaded by the combination. I could taste the strawberries with little hints of coriander here and there and combining the nutty flavour of the avocado somehow neutralised the flavours. The salsa is best eaten on the day you make it, I tried some the day after and the lime juice had practically pickled the strawberries that I was pretty much wincing through a whole mouthful.

I would say that if you did want to try the combination of strawberry and coriander but you’re a bit of a chicken, then this is a recipe you will be able to stomach. As for the whole molecular gastronomy business, after this trial, I am definitely not discounting the whole thing, although I am still not getting on the bandwagon. But in its pursuit for reaching the heights of taste and flavour and pushing the boundaries of common cookery, then I am all for that. You never know, I might be saying pass the foam very soon.

This month's TGRWT #3 was hosted by Bounteous Bites, check out the round up coming very soon. Meanwhile, here is the recipe.

Avocados with Strawberry Salsa on Crispy Tortillas
adapted from Epicurious.com
serves 4-6



FOR THE STRAWBERRY SALSA

2 fresh long red chillies, seeds removed and chopped into strips
1 cup strawberries, roughly chopped
¼ cup white onion, diced
¼ cup fresh coriander, chopped finely
juice of half a lime
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar (optional)

6 x 5-inch corn tortillas
oil for brushing
1 firm-ripe avocado

MAKING THE SALSA*
In a medium bowl, stir together all of the salsa ingredients.
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

*The salsa can be made hours in advance and kept in the fridge covered.

Preheat oven to 200°C.
Lightly brush the tortillas with oil on each side.
Place flat in a baking tray and bake for 6-8 minutes, until the tortillas are brown and crispy. You might want to rotate the tortillas halfway through to avoid them burning on one side.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool and crisp up further.
If needed, sprinkle the tortillas with salt.
Halve the avocado and remove seed.
Dice the avocado and scoop out using a spoon.

ASSEMBLY
Take a corn tortilla and place a mound of avocado in the centre, then top with a few spoonfuls of strawberry salsa.

When One Chip Is Too Many...

I hate farewells. A close friend of mine is leaving the country in less than a couple of weeks, pretty much for good. So I have been trying to spend all my spare time with her, thus I haven’t been baking or blogging. I refuse to count down the days left before she leaves, but as that date gets closer and her departure inevitable, it seems that the only sure thing to do is spend whatever precious moments we have left together.

So what we have been doing is gratuitously spending up all over Sydney, exposing her to everything the city has to offer before she leaves our fair shores. With full time work and tyring to fit in shopping sprees, outings and eating lots of foods it's a lot of hard work. It’s quite exhausting in fact, and not to mention the cost. But who can put a price on friendship?

Well to offset this current lifestyle of constant shopping and feasting- it sounds glamorous but really isn’t- especially when your wallet cannot support your habit, I needed to fill my diet with something other than coffee, gelato, chocolate and donuts, and Nutella donuts at that. Aside from eating food that I would consider “shopping fuel”, the worst kind, I haven’t really had the chance to eat something good, not just something delicious, but actually nutritious.

It’s not too long until my friend E leaves and I won't always have this constant excuse to live it up, but meanwhile I needed a healthy respite from my overindulgence. You don’t even want to know how many bowls chips (that's fries for the Americans) I have consumed this past week, and let’s not talk about the pastries we've gobbled up! I just know that the next Nutella donut I am eating will be going straight to my thighs.

So here is a fresh salad that I made as an equaliser for my nutrient deprived body. I am dubbing it the Farewell salad as it represents a few different farewells going on right now. First, it’s a farewell to summer. Officially summer has gone, but it still feels like she is lurking around the place as the heat and humidity haven’t really left us. And secondly, the salad is an early farewell, to all this eating out and bingeing, I really need to rein this in before I become Shamu.

When I get into this grind of eating badly, I start to hate healthy food. So I have to retrain my body to want to crave good foods. So here is a salad I made of roasted vegies. I couldn’t go without some sort of fat on the vegies, as you know, a junkaholic like me has to ease my way back into this healthy thing, so I opted for roasted vegies.

The salad is a combination of asparagus (blanched), roasted yellow squash, beetroot, cherry tomatoes and baby carrots, with a sprinkling of lightly toasted hazelnuts and a splash of homemade Hazelnut dressing. You can use the dressing for pretty much any combination of vegetables, so here is the recipe.

Hazelnut Vinaigrette

1 clove garlic, crushed
a pinch of salt
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp hazelnut oil
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Place ingredients in a small bowl and whisk until emulsified. Pour generously over salad.

A Vegetable Interlude

An occupational hazard that ensues from deciding to initiate and ultimately maintain a food blog, are the surplus calories that you consume as a result. I shudder to think how many calories I have consumed so far. And I shudder even more at the thought of the extra calories that I have not yet expended since the inception of this blog.

As that blogging is relatively passive act, and all you are excercising are your cerebral muscles and at best your jaw muscles; it has the potential to send you obese. Okay, maybe not this drastic, but it could go awry if no discipline is exercised on my part.

So here to counter the effects of premature aging from all the sugar and butter I have been having in the last two months is a quick and easy recipe for Broccoli Soup. It is no surprise, I obtained this recipe from Donna Hay’s cookbook, 10-Minute-Meals, as I am a big fan. I realise that having cream in the soup doesn’t make it low-fat, but this is where I draw the line. I personally do no think there is anything unhealthy about dairy products, cream included. I believe it is absolutely essential to a healthy diet. I have been eating and drinking all things dairy for as long as I can remember and this certainly has never contributed to any type of weight gain or unhealthiness. But this is just my personal opinion and it is best to leave it at that. Here is the recipe

Broccoli Soup
(serves 2)

2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 Sebago or any other starchy potatoes, peeled and diced
150g broccoli, cut into fairly large florets
2/3 cup single cream
sea salt and black pepper
100g broccoli, extra, chopped

Place the stock, potatoes and broccoli in a saucepan over high heat and cook covered, for 5 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. Puree the soup with a stick mixer or in a blender until smooth. Return to the saucepan and add the cream, salt and pepper and extra broccoli and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes or until the broccoli is tender. Ladle the soup into bowls and serve with crusty bread.