Food

Experiments 003: Mulled Nectarines

| Khursten Santos

All the wines from Marks and Spencer

Guys, I confess… I’ve been drinking a bit. When you’re in a country like Australia where there’s lots of wine you just CANNOT take advantage of that. Right now, pantry staples include a bottle of white and a bottle of red. I’m still searching for a favorite red but so far, I simply the miss the ease of pulling out favorites from Marks and Spencer’s shelf. Back in Manila, I was pretty fine with a Rose wine. I think my friends R&R also made me taste some of their flavored prosecco too which was lovely. Anyway, in short, I’ve got wine and an excess thereof, as such, I’ve been experimenting a bit on what to do with wine.

I also tried reading a bit here. When I can. And while my interest in Game of Thrones  is mostly on John Snow, I’ve also been curious about its food. Apart from seeing or reading about mulled wine in George RR Martin’s Saga, this original English wine mix is actually a favourite in the land down under, Australia. In fact, the country has recreated the concoction with a unique Australian touch.

For wine enthusiasts who want to use a great quality red wine, here’s a useful tip from 40-year wine expert Chris Murphy who wrote on Marks and Spencer’s blog that, in finding the right red variant for your mulled wine, “you really need to taste the wine properly. This may sound simple, but there’s actually much more to tasting wine than simply drinking it.” Some of the best red wines which you may use are Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Merlot. For added flavor add mint leaves to give it a zesty flavour.

To give you a flavourful mulled wine with an Australian twist, a recipe from Food.com is provided below:

Roasted Nectarines With Mulled Wine Sauce

Ingredients:
· 1/2 cup of soft brown sugar
· 6 whole cloves
· 6 nectarines
· 3 cm piece orange zest
· 1 1/2 cups of red wine (Sauvignon, Zinfandel, or Merlot)
· 1 cinnamon stick
· 40 g butter
· 2 whole star anise

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven at 200C (180C).
2. In an ovenproof casserole dish, add the nectarines—make sure they fit snugly.
3. Evenly sprinkle the sugar and add butter. Pour in the wine, orange zest, and spices in the mix.
4. Cover dish with foil and roast nectarines for a half an hour, until the fruit is soft.
5. Allow the nectarines to cool in the syrup. You may refrigerate and serve it cold.
6. You may add mint leaves for a wild variety of flavors. Alternately, you may serve it with yoghurt, ice-cream or custard.

Guys, this was so good. So good in fact that I finished it all and forgot to take a picture. OTL. This happens. I just… I… I have no excuse at all. I’m thinking of alternatives to this like pineapple or maybe pears and peaches. This experiment MUST continue.

Dinner for transients: Leura Garage

| Khursten Santos

I’ve been avoiding restaurants in Australia because they are damn expensive. In Sydney, a restaurant can cost around $25-40 dollars on an average. Some even demand reservations. It’s crazy. Even New York is starting to look cheaper.

In Leura though, I had my worries that we would be out of a table for dinner because there was hardly any restaurant in the area. Fortunately, Leura Garage was open and they had a nice cozy space with awesome food at a reasonable cost. It’s actually a renovated garage opened up to curious transients like me. If there’s such a thing as clean grit, then I suppose this restaurant has it.

Parched from going around, my friends and I started with some drinks. I ordered a capirinha, a drink I had no idea how it tasted but the idea of cachaca, lime, and muscovado sugar delighted me immensely. I honestly haven’t tasted cachaca before but figured that what I don’t know won’t hurt me. And boy was it good. I could drink it everyday and never tire of it.

Choosing what to eat was a lot difficult because there were tons to order. We’d order everything but our stomachs had its limits. Considering our diets, we had an Ocean Board, a tray of seafood, then roasted heirloom vegetables, and some pork ribs. We thought it was a modest selection but wow… didn’t think we’d get a lovely treat for its price.

The Ocean Board arrives first and I started to hate the world. Just how can you eat  such a beautiful platter of food? Seafood fresh and glistening, wobbling slightly at the slight nudge, an unexpected tease that we couldn’t resist. To this day, I still suffer thinking how awesome that food. If I wasn’t hungry, I would have savoured her more. Maybe sang songs and poems. Danced a little. Maybe treasured those flavours a little more in my mouth.

But just when I was letting that oyster slide in my mouth, here comes the pork with the roasted vegetables. Well… that’s another thing. The thing with pork ribs is that you expect it to have particular flavours. It isn’t exactly a barbecued rib, but the braise had enough tartness and sweetness that pork just makes me sing with joy. It also had bacon flakes on top. Not the bacos kind but paperthin bacon flakes. Or chip in this side of the world. It was such a harmony of flavor that I regret forgetting the Ocean Board.

Dinner at Leura Garage was a good introduction to the awesome food found in Blue Mountain. Not that I managed to taste others during my trip, but it’s set such a high standard that I’ll probably be expecting nothing but the best from other restaurants in the area.

 

Crocodile Burger at The Rocks

| Khursten Santos

So my friend came over Sydney and we decided to hang around one afternoon around the harbour area.

By the time dinner came, it was hard for me to choose a restaurant because I realize that on Sundays, most restaurants close quite early in Sydney. So we chose a random restaurant at the Rocks which had the most Australian flavors I can imagine.

Now what makes Australian flavors? I have no bloody idea. Maybe it’s aboriginal food? It’s not like Master Chef has taught me to properly assess what makes Australian cuisine. If anything, it has shown me how diverse it has become. So to find an Australian restaurant was quite daunting.

As we sat down for dinner, we thought why not take something crazy, at least? That night, we thought it wouldn’t hurt to have a crocodile. They’re mean animals anyway. No one would cry if the world lost another croc. Maybe.

Anyway, we gave it a shot expecting a profound or new flavor or texture.

Instead, we got chicken. Croc tastes like chicken. Now I don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be but yeah… I guess we had higher expectations from a croc.

Experiments 002: Pork Roast

| Khursten Santos

I spend for pork roast. I love it and on difficult days, or at least once a month, I’d like to have a good pork roast.

Recently, I live in a place that hardly has a good raost around, not even Baliwag! Hence, this weekend I thought of giving myself a good roast for the weekend.

I’ve never made roast before and when I did, it often tasted bland. Maybe if I got myself into some online college classes to better my cooking skills, I might be able to make it taste better. But even Jamie Oliver’s videos were hardly helpful. Sorry Jamie O, your recipes look hopeful but it doesn’t seem to work with Philippine pork (or maybe I’m really just not doing things right).

But I saw this technique of Market Manila where he brined the pork first for flavor and slit it in the middle to put some stuffing in. Hence, with great courage, I went to my butcher and got me a good slab. Since I didn’t have a rotisserie, I figured that it’ll be all right if I just cook it in my oven.

Here’s where Jamie Oliver comes in. He does this roasting technique where he puts either onions or lemons under his meat to keep it from sticking and to making it really flavorful. I thought I’d do just that and as soon as I stuck it in the oven, I waited for magic to happen.

The result was… all right. I think I got too confident with the salt. It was a little salty at first but it got better much later. It was definitely flavorful and juicy. The skin still… needed some work. I couldn’t get the temperature right in my oven hence rather than being a smooth crackle… I got this oven popped skin. It was a little like chicharon but some parts were not worth eating.

The filling inside was simple yet glorious. It’s just a mix of kinchay (parsley), leeks, lemon, and garlic. It was a good flavor but I was aiming for a chimichurri-esque flavor. Next time, there will be peppercorns and chili. Also, next time, I will buy a smaller portion of pork. -A-) I cooked too big a slab that it was… yeah… too much. Overporked much.

Experiments: Wheat bread

| Khursten Santos

A friend has challenged that my knack for familiar things has made me “incapable of becoming a Junior Master Chef.”

While it was said in a joke, I said CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

So last weekend, I chocked up the courage to make my own bread. *w*) I made whole wheat bread with… a breadmaker. And while it’s not particularly exceptional, it’s still something done!

The result was… not good actually. It was too hard and quite salty. It turned out that the yeast was too old.

Next time… Put live yeast. T^T)b

Third time lucky with Ramen Bar

| Khursten Santos

It took a while for me to write this review because it was quite hard to assess my emotions with this restaurant. When it comes to talking about restaurants, I always have two reactions. First, the restaurant is great and this reaction is always something that’s clear to me after the first bite. Second, it’s horrible and it’s possibly something I’ll never recommend to friends or even spend some time writing about. Again, that’s a reaction garnered from the first bite.

Somewhere in the middle was this restaurant which everyone who had gone with me, and everyone who has blogged about it were singing praises for and for me… I just couldn’t seem to sing the same praises.

I’m not saying Ramen Bar is bad but if it claims to be an authentic Japanese ramen and put it against the best ramen in Japan, it’s not good enough to cause a Ramen boom.

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