The Curry Tiger

Every Tuesday, I have the pleasure of volunteering at a legal centre in Woolloomooloo, located fortuitously opposite the original Harry's Cafe de Wheels. All I have to do is sigh, "Pie," on a Tuesday and Dan will know what I'm talking about: chunky beef, spicy curry, pastry with a perfect balance of flaky and soggy, mash, peas and gravy. Thus is the Curry Tiger for $5.80. Genius.

I decided to make it at home with some personal touches: shredded slow-cooked beef, creamy curry, homemade pastry (the best!) and lots of creamy, buttery mash.

Pastry

250g plain flour
200g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
½-¾ cups iced water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar

Dice the butter and chill in the freezer for a few minutes.

Combine flour, salt, sugar and butter in a large bowl.

Cut the butter into the flour until you have pea-sized pieces of butter (these will melt in the oven and make the pastry light and flaky). You can use a food processor or a pastry cutter for this step. I have neither so I used a mezzaluna and it worked a treat.

Add the water little by little and mix in with a plastic pastry scraper. Stop when the dough just comes together.

Turn out onto a floured surface and split the mixture into two (one for the base, one for the lid). Mould each dough with your hands and knead two or three times so it all sticks together. Wrap with cling wrap and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

You can keep the dough for up to two days in the fridge, which is great because you can make the dough and the filling the night before.

Curry filling

500g osso bucco, washed, dried and salted generously
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 onion
5 cloves garlic, peeled
5cm parsley or coriander stalks, roughly chopped
Chilis, halved (add as many as you'd like)
1 litre water
400ml coconut milk
Curry powder (add to taste)
2 tablespoons plain flour

Heat oil in a deep pot over a medium-high heat.

Sear the meat and remove from pot.

Reduce heat to medium and saute the vegetables.

Add water, coconut milk and curry powder (the instructions on mine recommended 4 tablespoons to a litre of water). Bring to a boil.

Place meat into liquid and simmer gently for at least three hours.

Remove meat and shred with two forks.

Add flour to the liquid and stir in. Strain so you get a smooth sauce.

Place the meat and 500ml of the sauce in a container and chill in the fridge. If you're making the pie on the same day, wait until the filling is completely cool. Otherwise, you can fridge it for about three days.

Note: You'll have a lot of curry sauce leftover. It's infused with delicious marrow and beef fat which you can enjoy with rice or bread.

Making the pie

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Technically you don't need to line the pan because there's so much butter in the pastry, but I like to be safe. I lined a 20cm springform pan with butter then baking paper.

Roll out the first piece of dough on a floured surface until it's about half a centimetre thick. Gently line the pan with the pastry.

Fill the base with the curry filling.

Roll out the second piece of dough and cut out a circle about 3cm bigger than the pan.

Place the lid on the pie and trim the edges.

Fold down the edges and cut a few holes in the lid to let the steam escape.

Bake until golden brown (my incredibly slow oven took about 40 minutes).

Rest for at least 20 minutes before taking it out of the pan to avoid the pie collapsing.

Serve with mash, peas and gravy.

Enjoy!

Osso Bucco Ragu

There’s much to love about osso bucco. For starters, it’s really fun to say. Secondly, it’s a cut of meat that’s high in collagen, which, when broken down by slow-cooking, becomes rich and gelatinous between the meat fibres so that the meat melts in your mouth. You can buy two pieces of osso bucco from a good quality butcher for less than $10 and this recipe makes 6 servings (that leaves you more money to spend at, say, Country Road). What you end up with is a rich tomato sauce that’s been infused with delicate and meaty veal and bone marrow.

For this recipe, I used a pre-made pasta sauce by Latina, which cuts down the prep time to about 10 minutes. The sauce isn’t the greatest on its own, but when it’s cooked down with meat and veges, it’s brilliant.

You’ll need:
2 portions of osso bucco
3 tablespoons canola oil (or any oil with a high burning point)
2 Spanish onions
6 carrots
¼ green cabbage
5 cloves garlic
500ml beef stock
1L pre-made pasta sauce
Thyme leaves from 2 sprigs
Basil to garnish
Pasta

Roughly chop onions, carrots, cabbage and garlic.

Wash meat and pat dry with paper towels. Season both sides with salt and pepper.

Heat a large pot on high heat. Add oil.

When hot, brown the meat (approx. 1 minute each side). Remove from heat and set aside.

Cook the veges in the same pot for about 10 minutes to release all the lovely juices.

Deglaze the pot with beef stock.

Add pasta sauce and thyme and bring to the boil.

Place the meat back in and turn the heat down to low. (I have a fidgety electric stove so I used a thermometer to keep track of the temperature. According to Heston, shin cuts are best cooked at at least 70°C in liquid, so I kept it at 75°C).

Leave for 4 hours.

Cook pasta according to packet instructions. Drain but keep some pasta water.

Remove meat and shred with a fork while hot.

Scoop out veges from the sauce. To thicken the sauce, stir in pasta water or flour.

Add the shredded meat back and basil leaves to the sauce.

Serve with hot pasta.

Enjoy!

Perfect Pan-Fried Steak & Potato Mash

The other night, I was in a Nigella mood: I wanted my food fast without the tediousness of cooking things the “proper way”. Only, I took short cuts that would offend chefs and quite frankly, I appalled myself.

You see, instead of thawing frozen meat, I just put it in a bowl and poured boiling water over it. To make it worse, it was steak. By the time it had defrosted through, the outside had started to cook. I was really irked out but I continued cooking it like normal. I wanted to cry, thinking that I’d ruined a perfectly good piece of meat.

That is, until I tasted it.

It was the juiciest, most tender and meatiest-tasting steak I’d ever cooked on the pan! I can’t explain it – all my culinary knowledge about meat points against boiling steak – but it was almost perfect. I do know that kosher meat is boiled to draw out blood and impurities and supposedly this leaves a more refined meat taste. Also, I guess gently cooking the outside of the steak means that it won’t seize up on contact with a hot pan. Either way, this is a fool-proof method for making an excellent steak at home (without a grill or woodfire oven).

So juicy...

Inspired by Heston Blumenthal’s way of cooking, I fiddled around a bit to find the best way to parboil steak before pan-frying. Took a while to fine-tune but I’m very happy with this recipe.

1 steak (make sure it’s a cut that’s suitable for grilling or pan-frying)
2 cloves garlic
Fresh rosemary
Fresh thyme
Olive oil

Put steak in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Slowly bring to 55°C and simmer at the same temperature for 15 minutes. (This is the temperature commonly used for a sous-vide and the idea is to make it hot enough to draw out the blood but not hot enough for the meat to tense up.)

Remove and rest until cool.

Dry well with paper towels, pressing on the steak to soak up excess blood.

Rub olive oil, 1 clove crushed garlic, salt and pepper on both sides.

Heat pan to a very high heat and cook steak for 3 minutes on each side.

Remove and place on a plate or chopping board and immediately dress with olive oil, crushed garlic and chopped rosemary and thyme.

Rest for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Of course, you must have steak with mash. I never really felt the urge to blog about mash until I saw Heston Blumenthal make the ultimate potato mash on “In Search of Perfection”. The recipe was so ingenious and well thought out that I must share.

1 kg potatoes
300g unsalted butter, cubed
Salt
Cream

Wash, peel and slice potatoes into even pieces (about 1 inch). Cover with cold water in a pot. Slowly bring to 70°C and simmer at the same temperature for 30 minutes. (This locks in the glutens so that the mash isn’t gluey.)

Drain and place potato slices in iced water.

Wash the pot, refill with water, add salt and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and add potatoes (and 3 cloves of garlic if you like garlic in your mash). Simmer until potatoes are tender.

Drain and place potatoes and garlic back in the pot. Shake the pot gently over a low heat to completely dry.

Push potatoes and garlic through a potato ricer into a bowl with butter.

Push through a drum sieve for a finer consistency (optional).

Put back into pot, adding salt and cream to taste. Whisk well over a low heat until light and fluffy.

Enjoy!

Longrain Restaurant & Bar, Surry Hills

85 Commonwealth St
Call 02 9280 2888 for lunch bookings only

Kids, remember that time when I went to this event called Taste of Sydney and I really wanted to try the yellow curry from the Longrain but was too full? Well, back in 2010 when your father and I and Uncle Tom were poor students, we decided to splurge on an expensive Thai meal in the trendy warehouse part of town. The maître d’ had told me on the phone that no bookings were taken for dinner, so we turned up a bit before dinnertime and had a drink in the bar.

Left to right: Pear and Cinnamon Sour ($16), Bloody Longrain ($16)

While the cocktails were delicious, there were a few let-downs from here on in. For a restaurant with a Chef's Hat, there was no mystique, no great attention to detail and most importantly, no pampering of the patrons. The staff were friendly enough but the way the restaurant was organised did nothing but make us feel unimportant. We had to get there early and line up (I hadn't done this since Ticketek wasn't online), we were seated on a long row of communal tables and we were served by a different waiter each time. I understand that this could be valued as unpretentious dining but it came at the expense of good service. At this point, we were willing to shrug this off because we were here for the food.

Clockwise: freshly shucked oysters with red chili, lime juice and deep fried eschalots ($4 each); red curry of organic grass-fed beef with green peppercorns and Thai basil ($41); eggnet with pork, prawn, peanuts, bean sprouts and sweet vinegar ($28.50); caramelised pork hock with five spice and chili vinegar ($29.50)

For the most part, I wasn't impressed with the food. The oysters were amazing, but the flavours in the eggnet salad were confused. The caramelised pork hock was meant to have a crispy outside but for me it was like eating extremely overdone pork. The red curry sauce was nice, but the way the beef was cooked did not do grass-fed beef justice.

Salad of crisp organic duck breast, sweet fish sauce, green mango and holy basil ($38?)

This was my favourite dish of the night. Unfortunately, this isn't what we ordered. I remember reading from the menu "salad of braised duck" and that's what I ordered. Braised duck isn't on the online menu, but a salad of crisp organic duck breast is, so I guess that's what we had because the duck wasn't braised. Only, we paid $44, not the $38 it says on the online menu?

It's a shame that Longrain didn't live up to my expectations, because I really wanted to love the place, but I think exceptionality and consistency are nothing short of requisites for restaurants of this price level. If this were an architecture and design blog, I would have plenty to rave about, so it wasn't a wasted evening at all. However, I can't help but think I'd find better at a Thai restaurant in the West for a fraction of the price.

So kids, I'm telling you this story because my very well-fed wallet and I can laugh about this now, and even though I didn't really notice back then, this was the beginning of my very own Chef's Hat adventure.

Beer & Beef Masterclass @ MUMU Grill

70-76 Alexander St, Crows Nest
Classes are run bi-monthly, check here for dates
Call 02 9460 6877 to book

They say good things come in threes. Well MUMU Grill has pared it down to two in a neat little package: for $85, chef and owner of MUMU Grill, Craig Macindoe, teaches you everything you need to know about beef and Dan the (self-proclaimed) Beer Snob gives you the low-down on boutique beers.

The beef

Craig starts off by telling us in the kitchen why he's so passionate about organic grass-fed beef: it tastes better, it contains fats that the human body needs (with its healthy omega 6-omega 3 ratio), it is better for the environment and it is chemical/preservative-free. Ageing (air-drying) beef for 6 weeks is all it needs for its flavour to intensify and become tender. For premium organic beef, Craig recommends Hudson Meats (Cammeray, Surry Hills and Lane Cove).

We're then run through the 'sweet cuts' of beef that make up the 20% of the cow we eat. These include the eye fillet, sirloin, scotch fillet, rump and t-bone. The thing that surprised me the most is they're so simple to cook! To season, sprinkle with rock salt (to bring out the flavour in the mouth) and pepper, and lightly coat with olive oil (less is more as too much oil builds a layer of char on the beef). To sear, cook the beef on one side for 2½ minutes, rotate 90° (so that you create a criss-cross pattern on the steak) and cook for another 2½ minutes, flip and repeat. Cook until desired doneness.

One recipe I was especially intrigued by was Craig's Tagliata t-bone: sear, slice into strips, drizzle with garlic and rosemary in olive oil and place in a woodfire oven for 10-15 minutes. The result is a juicy and garlicky, melt-in-your-mouth piece of beef. I'm definitely trying this at home in my conventional oven (set at a low heat, roughly 120°).

The beer

Before Saturday I was never big on drinking beer. I've tried very hard to like it (my friends call it an acquired taste, so if you can learn to like wine, why not beer?) - I've even gone to Lowenbrau and the Belgian Beer Cafe hoping that it'd change my life and I would have an in in the world of beer. But Dan the Beer Snobhas enlightened me. Turns out, mainstream beer is different to boutique beer.

Dan tells us the three tell tale signs of a good beer: colour, clarity and carbonation (the three C's). We tried five different beers, starting with the palest (Murray's Pilsner) to the darkest (Moo Brew Dark Ale). I've got to say, I am convinced. Beer snobbery is the way to go

All in all this was a fantastic class, geared towards cooks and drinkers of all levels. I've always loved MUMU Grill, Dan's family and I have been a few times now and the love only keeps growing. Next up is Duckfest!

Holy Basil, Canley Heights

233A Canley Vale Rd
Laos & Thai restaurant
02 9727 7585

I don't venture out West in Sydney too often, so when I planned a trip to an African grocery store in Fairfield, I was set on making the most of it. Tom Mai excitedly suggested a Thai place he loved: "Are you ready for the best Thai of your life?" Can't say I wasn't told. Holy Basil is caught between Vietnamese restaurants and fresh fruit markets on the quaint and bustling end of Canley Vale Rd. At first glance it is exotic chic, with just the right amount of kitsch to make it trendy, but relax a while at a table that looks out onto the street and chat to the friendly staff and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how laid-back the space is.

The menu is distinctly Lao with a Thai-fusion touch, using lots of spices, herbs and fruits to flavour the food: chilli, kaffir lime leaves, tamarind, sweet basil, papaya and currants to name a few. With so much to try, I easily resisted the urge to order a pad thai. No regrets either, because everything was delicious!

Sticky rice, $3; khao pad sapparot (Thai fried rice with fresh pineapple), $12.90

Nok tod (deep fried crispy marinated quail), $10.90

Traditional Laos pork sausages, $9.90

Gang dang (red curry) with beef, $10.90

On a Friday night this place fills up by seven, though it still retains its quiet and relaxed atmosphere. The prices are very reasonable, perfect for ordering many dishes and sharing it with friends. Enjoy your meal with a classic cocktail or fresh fruit juice (I recommend the jackfruit smoothie).