Sticky Feijoa

I honestly cannot ever remember eating Feijoa as a child, which is odd, because the fruit is South American, like my parents. Originally from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, it is now grown in other countries, mainly New Zealand and is available during autumn.
I only discovered this lovely fruit earlier this year. When I see a fruit (or any ingredient) that is unfamiliar, I cannot help but to buy. Sometimes I do so out of curiosity, other times from greed.
Feijoas have a wonderful scent: a mix of melon and fig. It is because of such a glorious fragrance that I bought half a kilos worth on the weekend. I was hoping to turn them into a refreshing sorbet. To my dismay, when I sliced one open, the sugary pulp of the fruits had turned an over ripe shade of brown. I wasn’t too excited about producing a fruity brown sorbet.
So what does one do with half a kilo of over ripe Feijoas?
Jam! Of course. Or in this case, conserve.
After doing a quick google search, I found an easy formula. The resultant preserve was a delectable golden nectar, studded throughout with tiny cubes of candied fruit. Like a jar full of gooey lollies. Here is the recipe-


Ingredients
500g Feijoas
300g caster sugar
300ml water
Juice from ½ lemon
1-2 tsp chopped lime zest

Method
Peel the Feijoas. Chop the fruit into little cubes (or however you wish) . Toss them with the lemon juice as you do so, to prevent discoloration. You should have 300g of fruit.
The classic formula for preserving fruit is equal amounts of fruit, water and sugar. Adjust quantities accordingly.
Place the acidulated fruit, water, sugar and lime zest into a saucepan.
Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
Boil hard for 10 minutes.
Watch the sugar does not turn to caramel, although a little caramelization is fine.
The resulting preserve will be golden like honey.
Pour into a sterilized jar and store in the fridge.
Makes about 200ml of sticky nectar.

Sugo di Salsiccie

If you read this blog often, you may have noticed that I have a fondness for foods that are a touch on the expensive side. In truth, the foods that I choose to write about are those that are out of the ordinary and also coincidently, just happen to be a bit dear. We are all accustomed to dishes with chicken and beef. Or potatoes and carrots. I just don’t see the point in writing about everyday food. Nor do I want to write of the common and mundane. How boring. The reason I write this blog is because I want to inspire others to eat more glamorously.
But in reality, if Mike and I ate pigeons and black truffles every night, I think our rent wouldn’t get paid. So yes, we do eat a lot of “normal” food too. And one of those economical ingredients I take advantage of is sausage. They are inexpensive and yummy and I buy several varieties from the butcher and freeze them to use later. However, there are times that it feels as though sausages are coming out of our nostrils from over consumption and too many dinners. As a result I am always trying to think up of fresh, new ways to serve and eat them.
One of my favorite ways to cook sausages is to remove the meat from the casing to turn them into a luscious sauce for homemade tagliatelle. For this dish I use spicy Italian style sausages, made from pork, chilies and small chunks of fat. I know a lot of people find the idea of fats in food repulsive, but I absolutely love it.
Fat is what gives food rich taste and full, rounded texture. Low fat food is devoid of both these qualities and that is why low fat food and diets are unsatisfying, and in the long term unsustainable. Please don’t get the wrong idea with this bold statement. Everything should be in moderation. I don’t mean one should go and gorge on a tub of margarine.
When I talk of fat, I mean natural and delicious ones. Like pure olive and nut oils. Unsalted cultured butter. And yes, that too includes duck fat and pork fat.
Not hideous and dangerous man made hydrogenated grease, which is what margarine is. I have never understood why in this day and age people eat such a vile concoction. These hard and saturated fats taste dreadful and are bad for ones health. I avoid them like the plague and they definitely have no place in my cooking.
Anyway, back to the sausages.
Buy sausages from a real butcher- not the supermarket. Ask the butcher what he puts into the sausages. The best sausages are those made from pure meat and fat with seasonings, spices and herbs. Try to stay away from sausage meat that is made into a fine paste from meat scraps with extenders and binders. The more unadulterated the mix, the better the sausages will taste.

Ingredients
1 large red onion, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 star anise
2- 3 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
350g spicy pork sausage meat (use an Italian style or Spanish chorizo)
150ml rose wine
400g tin Italian cherry tomatoes (pureed in a mouli)
250 ml very good homemade stock (stock cubes will be too salty with sausage meat)
1 tsp brown sugar
Plenty of freshly chopped parsley
Black and white pepper

Method
Place the onion, celery and star anise into a saucepan with the olive oil. Cook over a low heat for 30 minutes (or until the onion is reduced and caramelized).
Add the sausage meat. Turn the heat to high and cook to just remove the raw color from the meat. Do not brown, it makes the meat hard.
Deglaze with the wine and simmer for a moment.
Add the tomatoes, stock and sugar. If you don’t have homemade stock, just use water. Simmer for 1 hour.
Season the sauce with pepper and finish with lots of parsley. You probably will not need salt, but add it if you think it needs it.
This amount of sauce is perfect for 300g of fresh homemade tagliatelle.
Serve sprinkled with a hard but mild tasting ewes’ milk cheese. I particularly like this sauce with a Spanish Manchego. Try to avoid Grana or Parmaggiano. I don’t think they combine well with chili.
Enough for 3 serves.

Mussels - To Die For

I am currently reading a book I bought at a book sale recently. The book in question is to die for. Really. That is the books title: “To Die For” by Stephen Downes.
This cheerful guide contains all the gastronomic dishes which one should experience before one dies. I know the idea is a bit on the morose side, but the foods described are magnificent. Within, I have rediscovered dishes I haven’t thought about in years. Old classics like Sauce Esplagnole and Sauce Hollandaise. They remind me of when I started cooking- a brave young boy I was.
And so the inspiration for this dish comes from this book. There is nothing new here in this recipe, but Mike and I thought it was so lovely that it definitely should be included here on this blog.
Mussels are a gourmands equivalent of fast food. They are cheap. More precisely- $6 a kilo. That means $3 per serve. Mussels also take just a few minutes to cook, which makes you wonder- why bother with fast food? A pizza delivered to your door will take about 45 minutes. And it will cost you $20. I know there are moments when only a trashy pizza will do (mostly when I am feeling trashy) but I often forget how easy mussels are. So this recipe is for the folks, out in cyber land, that complain about not having enough time to cook. Do yourself a favour- buy some mussels!

Ingredients
1 kilo live mussels
1 or 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 fresh bay leaf
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
50 ml unwooded white wine
50- 100ml cream (35% milk fat)
Fresh black pepper

Method
Soak the mussels in a sink with water.
Rip away the beards and discard those mussels that do not close. Change the water and let them soak until you are ready to use. Remove to a bowl or colander, discarding the water.
You will need a large and wide saucepan with a lid. Place the garlic, oil and herbs in the pan, over a very low heat. Cook the garlic for about 1 minute. Do not allow the garlic to colour. Cook to remove the rawness of the garlic only.
Throw in the wine, followed by the mussels.
Place the lid on the pan and turn up the heat to the highest temperature.
Cook, shaking the pan until the mussels have opened. This will only take minutes.
Divide the mussels amongst 2 deep bowls.
Add the cream to the pan and reduce for a minute. Do not add salt, but add pepper to taste.
Pour over the mussels, sprinkle with extra parsley and serve immediately.
All you need with this is bread and a salad. And white wine, of course.

The Gourmand. An Interview by Ilva

One of my favourite bloggers, Ilva from Lucullian Delights, actually my favourite blogger, asked if anyone wanted to be interviewed. Not being the shy type, of course I responded. Ilva had sent me the questions that she wanted to ask of me, but due to my eyesight I had to wait to respond. But I have made up for the wait! I hope everyone finds this interview interesting, both the questions (thank you Ilva) and my responses. If you would like to be interviewed by me, please see the instructions at the end of this post.

So here we go.....!

Why did you choose to blog about food and not something else?

Well actually, it wasn’t my idea. It was Mike’s idea. I didn’t even know what a “blog” was. I was experiencing a dark moment (I guess we all do from time to time) and I was depressed and moping around the house, not doing much apart from bitching and complaining about everybody I knew. Despite the darkness, I was cooking beautiful food (as I always have) and Mike suggested I should write about it. I agreed because I really didn’t have anything better to do. My first post was very negative- I laugh reading it now! I was bitching and hissing (I have since removed it). But Mike is a very clever man and his idea worked. “Blogging” gave me something to do and with time I began to love it. Now I feel strangely out of touch with the world if I don’t write. The past few weeks have been a bit weird because of my lack of posts. It feels good to be back

I read an article about female and male cooking recently where the argument was that men and women cook different types of food and dishes. Do you think its true? If yes in which ways?

Ilva, you are a clever lady. How I love questions about gender stereotypes! (in my most sarcastic voice).
All the women I know who cook, do so because that is what is expected of them. My mother cooks because she is a mother. I know this sounds sexist, but that’s the way it is in my family, and most other families I know. She tends to favour braised foods. We ate a lot of tomato based stews when I was a child. She also cooked foods that kept my father happy, and she would often correct my cooking to suit by saying “your father doesn’t like it that way”! Her cooking is simple and convenient, I guess, because it had to be- I would imagine raising four monsters is a lot of work. My mother does not enjoy cooking, apparently. I am not surprised! Choosing to cook for recreation and cooking because you have to do so are two completely different things. As, for the women I know who do not have children, well it would be right to say that they HATE cooking, and don’t do it unless they are starving. So they cook very simplistic things like scrambled eggs or toasted bread. And they do it badly, without love or respect for food at all. It is very sad and breaks my heart.
The men I know who cook, are chefs or gay. Except for my father, who loves to cook “asado”, otherwise known as the famous Argentine BBQ with lots of huge slabs of beef on a big outdoor grill. Very, very butch indeed. And certainly much more masculine than the Australian BBQ with its tiny little sausages. But that is “the mans” job in his culture and so he is still acting within what is expected from a man. The women prepare the salads and condiments.
I have been reading a lot of books written by male Australian chefs, lately. Most do not have much to say that is interesting or personal about food. Its all me, me, me and how they do produce something. It is more about technique. They cook with their egos and this comes across in the style of cooking. They like to cook glitzy and complicated dishes with intensely flavoured sauces and condiments. Everything is foie gras, truffle and caviar. I guess that is what is required from their jobs- to create elaborate food and an experience that cannot be replicated at home. But, that is not to say they don’t have any passion for food. There is plenty of passion there. You need passion for food to be good at cooking.
On the other hand, female food writers tend to be a lot more personal when they write about food and their recipes are more comforting rather than impressive. They speak more of how food has affected them (children, religion, weight issues) and have a more intimate approach towards the subject. I like reading the work of Nigella Lawson for that very reason- there is so much love there. Although lately she seems to have turned into a “Stepford Robot” instead of a “Domestic Goddess” in her attempt to conquer America…
So to answer your question, if we are to compare “traditional” male and female roles, the answer is yes. Men and woman cook for different reasons. Men cook to satisfy their egos and woman cook to nurture. So naturally they will cook different foods. Even though I am a man, I am not very masculine (as you can see by my portrait) and so my cooking style falls somewhere between the male ego and my feminine nature. This is becoming complicated…

Are you happy about living in Australia?

This is not a very good question for me because Australia is the only country I know. And so I cannot compare to other countries.
But, yes I am very happy to be here. Sometimes I get a bit jealous of Europe and America because they seem to have more opportunities and generally more things. But then I think of the cost of living in those over populated countries and I realize that I am doing very well, right here in this small humble city called Melbourne.
I had a funny experience the other week. My grandparents have just returned from a holiday in South America and they brought back with them a cooking magazine from Argentina. I couldn’t believe what I saw in this magazine-the food was so dated! It is like Argentina has been stuck in the 1970s for the last 30 years. As a food lover it made me feel very grateful that I was raised in a country that is up to date with food trends.
However, how I would love to live in Italy or France! All that beautiful food! I think I would turn into a big round ball of pastry very quickly.

What is your idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon?

This is an easy question. I do the same thing every Saturday. Mike and I go to Prahran Food Market, here in Melbourne. We spend time buying lots of delicious foods and wine. I particularly love to buy game (rabbit, hare, pigeons, kangaroo) from one of the butchers. I usually blow the weekly budget, because I cannot say no when I see beautiful ingredients. Then Mike or I will cook dinner, we drink wine and wait for it- we watch The Iron Chef! Yes-you read right. I don’t know if you know this TV show in Italy. It is Japanese and it is so bad, that it is good. Very hysterical! We certainly do not take this show seriously!
I am just happy to be with Mike.

How did you meet Mike?

I met Mike at a gay nightclub here in Melbourne called “The Market”. Every gay man in Melbourne knows this nightclub. It was three years ago on New Years Eve or rather New Years Day, I should say. It wasn’t one of those moments where I thought “Oh my God! He is the one! “ Not at all. It was a slow courtship and the relationship took a few months to develop. After 6 months, I asked him to move into my apartment. We have been together since. To this day we have not had a fight. They say its healthy to fight with your lover- I don’t understand what is so healthy about yelling and saying horrible things to the person you love. Of course we disagree on things from time to time, but we talk about our problems and always treat each other with respect. I am looking forward to becoming an old Botoxed man with him!


DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW

1. Leave a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Beware, like Ilva, I'm not shy of asking personal questions! But ask nicely and I may change a question. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Coq Au (corked) Vin

We thought we were in trouble last night. The Gourmand was making a divinely fragrant Coq Au Vin and had just added our favourite red to the pan. And a glass for himself. Then disaster! The Gourmand took a sip of the wine and it was corked!!!!! With everything in the pan & cooking nicely there was no turning back. He gamely soldiered on thinking the worst and that the meal was ruined, but I’ll let him finish that story.

Now what to do with half a bottle of corked red?
Usual course of action is to return the bottle, pour it down the sink, or let it breath in the vain hope that it will go away & then use it for garden fertiliser.

I had come across a post in Tomato about corked wine and an unusual treatment to remove the taint. Lets just say that I was very skeptical about the method they described. With nothing to loose we thought we’d put on our Mythbusters caps and try it.

There were no flaming blowtorches, bullet proof glass screens, or exploding dummies involved. All that was required was a loose ball of Cling-wrap in a glass jug and the tainted wine poured over it. Then leave it. Weird? Simple? Yes to both. Did it work? YES! We left it over night occasionally swirling the wine around in the jug. Apparently the Cling-wrap causes a reaction where the tainted molecules are attracted to the cling wrap & you are left with untained wine (and a soggy ball of Cling-wrap). We compared the “treated” wine with the original glass and, much to our surprise, there was a noticeable improvement. No smell & hardly any tainted taste.

If it had been a full bottle we would have taken back for a replacement and saved ourselves the time, but as it was a half bottle, well, we’ve ended up with a passable wine for cooking or drinking if we were desperate. Still, it was a fun experiment that worked!

Doctor's Orders

The Gourmand is under Doctor's orders to rest his eyes. Which he has been doing, not staring at a computer screen, only at me....
But he does get his glasses this week & he will be back writing very shortly!

The Astigmatic Gourmand

This is going to be an interesting experience!
I am The Gourmand's partner and have (finally) been entrusted with writing on his blog, Eat Me!
The Gourmand has had his eyes checked & the prognosis is that he has astigmatism and needs glasses. Being who he is, he is now looking around for the ideal pair of glasses that will suit his style. And that could take some time. Until then, I guess you will have to put up with my unique and quirky writing style. I'm not one to play secretary and sit on The Gourmand's lap while he dictates a story, so I'll be doing my own thing and writing food related posts.

So what has The Gourmand been preparing since his last post?

Italian Sausages Braised with Bay Leaf, Red Wine and Yellow Peppers. This dish was served with soft White Polenta.

Pork Escalopes Marinated with Basil, Fennel Seeds, Garlic, Rosemary and Sage. These were seared and served with a Cream & White Wine sauce.

Quail Braised with Cardamom, Orange, Plums and Sherry.

Pears with Aromatic Spices and Honey.

Gemfish Baked in a Parcel with Lemon Zest, Porcini, Thyme and White Wine.

Organic Lamb Provencale with Potato and Pumpkin puree.