Surf and turf with hollandaise sauce

Posted by Gary

If you’re not interested in the preamble, here’s the recipe.

Sous vide porterhouse steak and king prawns with hollandaise sauce and peas

Hello Reader,

In last night’s post, I wrote that this weekend in Canberra is a long one because of Reconciliation Day on Monday.

Notwithstanding the public holiday, I’ll go into the office tomorrow because colleagues in the states and the Northern Territory are working. We need to get some work done. While working from home has become normative, coordinating multiple documents, and incorporating feedback from stakeholders is easier with two desktop monitors. Having leftover steak from tonight’s meal will make a wonderful lunch. I will nonetheless reflect on Reconciliation Day while I’m in the office.

Tonight, I’m cooking a steak and some prawns and serving them with hollandaise sauce. I’ve chosen a porterhouse steak and some king prawns.

Recipe

Ingredients

  • Porterhouse steak
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Garlic powder
  • Rice bran or peanut oil
  • King prawns
  • Butter
  • Eggs
  • Lemon
  • Sriracha sauce
  • Bird’s-eye chillies
  • Peas
  • Shallots
  • Fennel
  • Vegetable stock

Tools

  • Precision water heater and circulator1
  • Vacuum chamber2
  • Water bath
  • Cast iron frying pan
  • Stainless steel frying pan
  • Stick blender
  • Plastic cup
  • Microwave oven
  • Knives

Instructions

Steak

  1. Unwrap the steak and place it onto a cutting board or suitable work surface.
  2. Season the steak with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. I use iodised salt and freshly cracked black peppercorns.
  3. Put the steak in a vacuum bag. If you don’t have the tools to vacuum seal, use a sealable plastic bag and displace the air before sealing the bag.
  4. Heat the water in the water bath to 54 °C (129 °F). Suppose you don’t have a water heater and circulator. In that case, you can use a stockpot or other suitable vessel on a hob. With a thermometer, keep monitoring the temperature and keep it within a few degrees on either side for the entire cooking period.
  5. When the water reaches 54 °C, place the steak into the water bath and cook for 2 hours and 50 minutes.
  6. When the time is complete, turn off the water heater circulator and remove the steak from the water bath.
  7. Open the bag and if there are meat juices, pour them into a container.
  8. Remove the steak and dry it with a paper towel or clean dishcloth.
  9. Heat a cast-iron frying pan until it is searing hot.
  10. Add a little high smoking point neutral oil.
  11. Sear the steak to the desired amount.
  12. Allow the steak to rest under an aluminium tent.
  13. With a sharp slicing knife, slice the steak to the desired thickness. I like my steak strips to be thick, meaty, and juicy.

Prawns

  1. Peel the shells from the prawns and leave the tail shell in place.
  2. Some people like to remove the alimentary canal from the prawn. I’m not one of those people.
  3. Heat a stainless-steel frying pan. Use the Leidenfrost effect to determine when the frying pan is at the correct temperature.
  4. Add a small amount of neutral oil and spread it across the pan’s surface.
  5. Add some butter, and once the butter starts to foam, add in the prawns.
  6. Cook the prawns carefully to avoid overcooking.
  7. Place the cooked prawns on top of the steak and under the tent.

Hollandaise sauce

  1. Place three egg yolks into a cup.
  2. Whisk some Dijon mustard, lemon juice, and Sriracha sauce.
  3. Melt about 100 g of butter using microwave radiation.
  4. Use the stick blender to process the egg yolks and add the whisked mustard, juice, and hot sauce.
  5. Keep the blender on and slowly drip the melted butter into the cup and watch the sauce form.
  6. Transfer the sauce to a small glass pouring jug and keep it warm.

Vegetables

  1. Put some frozen peas into a heat-proof bowl.
  2. Add some diced shallots and fennel.
  3. Boil some vegetable stock and add the meat juices from the cooked steak.
  4. Cover with boiling meat-juice augmented vegetable stock.
  5. Strain when the peas are cooked. The shallots and fennel will retain flavour and crunch.

Plating up and serving

  1. Remove the aluminium tent covering the beef and prawns and transfer the meats to a warmed dinner plate.
  2. Spoon the peas onto the plate next to the meats.
  3. Spoon on the hollandaise sauce.
  4. Give thanks to the Lord
  5. Eat with a knife and fork. A steak knife isn’t necessary, but a well-weighted steak knife always feels nice in hand. As an alternative, you could put everything into a bowl and use a pair of chopsticks, given the steak has been sliced. You can “shovel” the peas into your mouth by raising the bowl to your gaping lips and sweeping the sauce-laden peas with the chopsticks.

Thoughts on the meal

When I got out of bed this morning and weighed myself, I had reached a new high for two years. You may ask why I prepare such a large meal if I want to get closer to 70 kg. I’m asking the same question. I have no answer! 🤨

The steak was beefy. The prawns were fleshy and firm. The tangy and buttery sauce accentuated the flavours of each meat element.

I did halve the steak, but I did eat all four prawns and all the peas. Sliced steak for lunch tomorrow will go down a treat.

Thoughts on blogging and work-life balance

Social media is a curious phenomenon. My engagement on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram waxes and wanes depending on how busy I am and other personal factors.

I went through and looked at how many bloggers I follow. There are some who I’ve been following since about 2010. My work and personal time are getting busier, and I’m happy about that. I’m going to spend less time on social media, and I’m going to cull the number of bloggers I follow.

I’m conscious of the privilege I have living alone and being comfortable financially. I admire and respect people who have far more hectic lives, are time-poor, and struggle financially. I blog for a hobby; I hope bloggers who derive an income from their writing continue to thrive. I will continue to support the professional bloggers whose writing and photography I enjoy.

Footnotes

  1. A precision water heater and circulator maintain the water in the water bath at a constant temperature.
  2. A vacuum chamber is used to vacuum seal food in plastic bags.
Porterhouse steak in wrapper
Porterhouse steak
Porterhouse steak with salt and pepper
Porterhouse steak with salt and pepper
Porterhouse steak with salt and pepper
Porterhouse steak vacuum wrapped
Sliced sous vide porterhouse steak
Sous vide porterhouse steak and king prawns with hollandaise sauce and peas
Sous vide porterhouse steak and king prawns with hollandaise sauce and peas
Sous vide porterhouse steak and king prawns with hollandaise sauce and peas

Chicken tray-bake

Posted by Gary

If you don’t like reading the silly story and want the recipe, it is here.

Hello Reader,

It’s a wet Saturday in Canberra. It’s a long weekend here because Monday is Reconciliation Day. In Canberra, Reconciliation Day is on the first Monday after the twenty-seventh day of May.

In 1993, a week of prayer by some religious groups focused on reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. Reconciliation Week begins each year on the 27th of May.

The rain and the colder weather make me think I want something warm, easy, and comforting. Lorraine, aka, Not Quite Nigella, posted a traybake early in the week. While I don’t plan to replicate her recipe, I thought I’d throw some things in a tray, bung it into the oven, and hope for the best. If you don’t know of Lorraine, check out her blog. In my opinion, Lorraine is the most consistent and best food blogger in Australia. She’s scaled back a little from posting every day to every week-day. In each post, Lorraine tells a little story related to the food she’s sharing. I find the stories about her partner and her immediate family fascinating and compelling. Lorraine is of East Asian heritage, and we have a common bond through that. I often find myself commenting on her posts. I wish her blog had a setting to know if she ever responds to comments because I don’t receive a notification.

I chose chicken wings for my tray-bake because I’m a lazy slob at heart, and I plan to sit in front of the TV on my worn couch and eat dinner with my hands to lick all the fatty juices from my fingers. I have this coffee table thing in front of my dilapidated couch, and it sits between me and the TV. My girlfriend mentioned a TV show she thought I might like. It’s called Made for Love. I thought I’d watch it while enjoying dinner. If you’re in Australia, you can watch it on Stan. No spoilers, suffice to say, my girlfriend has amazing taste in everything including TV. She’s amazing.

When I say I’m lazy, I mean I’m not the greatest fan of washing dishes. I do it and happily do it because it’s hygienic; however, if I can make a meal in one vessel and eat it from that vessel and not need any tools, I’m a happy yella fella.

Recipe

Ingredients

  • Chicken wings
  • MSG
  • Brown sugar
  • Salt
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Red wine
  • Capsicums
  • White onion
  • Red onion
  • Red Royale potato
  • Golden sweet potato
  • Kent pumpkin
  • Eggplant 🍆
  • Cream
  • Dijon mustard
  • Cheddar cheese
  • Monterey Jack cheese slices
  • Spring onion

Instructions

Chicken

  1. Remove the chicken wings from the plastic packaging. I usually wash out the plastic container, dry it, and then cut the plastic into smaller pieces and place it into a rubbish bin. I am lazy, so repeated trips to the rubbish bins outside the block of flats feel like a chore. I’d rather be warm in ugg boots and a flannelette shirt, more so in winter.
  2. Lay the chicken pieces over the bottom of the oven tray.
  3. Add brown sugar, MSG, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and red wine to a jar. Shake the bottle to mix everything. Of course, close the bottle with the lid first; otherwise, the mess will be horrendous with sugar and red wine. Mind you, licking the floor would be full of sweet, salty, umami flavours.
  4. Pour the liquid over the chicken pieces.
  5. The following steps are alternatives.
  6. You could cover the tray with some plastic wrap and refrigerate, or you can do as I did and put the chicken and liquid into plastic bags and seal them. I used two bags and will use one bag later in the week.1
  7. Allow the chicken to absorb the flavours from the liquid in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight.

Vegetables

  1. Cut all the vegetables into bite-size pieces. For me, that’s about the size of a squash ball. You may have a more petite mouth so basically, think of how many balls you can fit in your mouth and make the pieces the size you like.
  2. I like cutting vegetables. I like having a sharp knife in my hand. I like the feeling of the cold hard steel and the motion of the blade through the vegetables and enjoying the tactile pleasure. In medical school, tutors would ask about possible treatments. Rather than a physician-type answer, I answered surgically, “There’s nothing like the feel; the feel of cold hard surgical steel.” Some readers who know me know I’m a specialist microbiologist and might wonder why I don’t answer, “Antibiotics.” More often than not, I’d recommend managing any collection of pus with incision and drainage. It’s also fun to poke your finger in and have a good rummage around to get all the pus out. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time in medicine, surgery isn’t called for; but it’s what I think when it’s an option.
  3. Place the cut vegetables into a large bowl and then generously douse with a neutral oil. I know I’m not going to be using high heat for this meal, so it’s not about burning olive oil beyond its smoke point; it’s more about the wank of olive oil.
  4. With your hands, massage all the vegetables lightly with the oil.
  5. Mix some dried herbs and spices in a bowl and coat the vegetables. You can choose for yourself what you’d like to use. I’m not going to share what I used just in case I stumble across some phenomenal secret formula to a spectacular vegetable rub. 😳😆

Cooking the tray-bake

  1. Turn on the oven to moderate heat.
  2. Use a large baking tray so that all the items have a little room.
  3. Rub some oil over the inside surface of the tray.
  4. Spread the chicken and vegetables out on the tray.
  5. Put the tray into the oven.
  6. Cook until the tips, edges, and corners of the food has started to take on some colour. When this happens, pour a carton of cream into a bowl and add a few tablespoons of Dijon mustard. Whisk it gently, and then fold in some grated cheddar cheese and spring onion. I reckon leeks would have been good on thinking about this some more.
  7. Remove the tray from the oven and pour over the Dijon-flavoured cheese stiffened cream.
  8. Put the tray back into the oven and cook until the liquid has reduced and thickened.
  9. Pull the tray out and add a few slices of Monterrey Jack cheese on top, season with some freshly cracked black pepper, and return to the oven until the cheese slices melt.
  10. Remove the tray from the oven and allow it to rest until the food stops wobbling, and it feels a little more firm when you give the tray a little nudge.

Plating up

  1. On a large dinner plate, spoon out the contents of the tray.
  2. Allow the leftover food in the tray to cool a little more and then transfer it to a storage bag. If you’re like me, fill a vacuum bag, seal it, and refrigerate to enjoy this again later in the week. If you use a vacuum bag, you can freeze it and enjoy a freezer surprise meal some weeks or months into the future.2
  3. Set up your eating area with enough napkins and wet wipes. It may be best to lay an old towel over the coffee table, and if you’re like me, place a towel on the floor between the couch and coffee table.
  4. Turn on the TV.
  5. Put the plate of food on the dinner table.
  6. Grab a big glass of water.
  7. Wash your hands.
  8. Give thanks to the Lord.
  9. Enjoy the chicken and vegetables and finger-licking while watching TV.

Thoughts on the meal

For a one-pot meal, my dinner was pretty good. The chicken was moist and juicy, and the vegetables didn’t squeak on my teeth. The flavours were on point.

Adding a dinner roll and butter would have been suitable for sopping up the leftover juices in the tray rather than wiping my fingers through them and licking my fingers.

Your choice of TV viewing is up to you. Suppose this was happening on a Wednesday night in winter. In that case, I might watch the “greatest game of all” played by the best teams in the most magnificent sporting spectacle. If it was late in September on a Sunday night, I might watch the “greatest game of all” played by two teams which I may or may not care about, in the second-best sporting spectacle of all. The “greatest game of all” is rugby league football, for those who don’t know me. The best teams are the Queensland maroons (or cane toads) and the New South Wales blues (or cockroaches). State of Origin football is the greatest sporting spectacle of all time. The second best sporting spectacle of all time is the National Rugby League grand final played by the two teams which have won the most points during the season. These teams are not necessarily the best. The best teams are the ones I support, and they may not reach the grand final. 😆 If you’re interested, next year I’m switching allegiance from the Brisbane Broncos to the Dolphins.

Final thoughts

  1. Do you like eating and watching TV at the same time?
  2. Who is your favourite food blogger? If you answer Yummy Lummy, I’ll give you a hug.
  3. Do you like one-pot meals?

Footnotes

  1. You may notice in the photo that the bag is vacuum-sealed and contains the marinade; if you have a vacuum sealer, I’d be careful. Vacuum sealers are not great with liquid in the bags. You could use a zip bag and displace the air by putting the bagged food in water, gradually lowering and forcing the air out, and then zipping the bag shut. The alternative is to use a chamber sealer.
  2. The benefit of placing the leftovers into a vacuum bag is you can reheat the food in a water bath. It only takes between 30 and 45 minutes, and with little effort, you have a meal ready to eat after a busy day. I’ve been doing this during the week because work has been quite busy, and I’ve been spending about 11 hours in the office each day and coming home and working a few more hours each night.
Chicken wings sans marinade
Chicken wings with marinade
Chicken wings with marinade in a vacuum bag
Chicken and vegetables prior to the oven
Chicken traybake watching TV
Chicken traybake watching TV
Chicken traybake watching TV
Chicken traybake

Laksa flavoured cauliflower and gorgonzola soup

Posted by Gary

Hello Reader,

How are you? I hope you had a brilliant week. Life for me is going splendidly. I am loving life. I couldn’t be happier, personally. Professionally, it’s excellent and exciting. The last couple of days have been exceptional at work.

Want to avoid the silly sausage story? Here’s the recipe!

Democracy sausage (roll)

Democracy sausage (roll)! Spicy corned beef fried rice rolled in puff pastry.

Today we get an opportunity to exercise our right to a free and fair vote for members of the House of Representatives and jurisdictional senators in the Australian Senate.

It’s become a ‘thing’, almost a tradition, for voters to consume a democracy sausage while lined up waiting to vote or after they’ve done the deed.

In its most basic form, a democracy sausage is a snag1 cooked on an outdoor hotplate and served in a folded slice of the cheapest white bread. There is no butter, the fat from the sausage being sufficient to lubricate the snag and offer some moisture to the dry bread. Some people will provide tomato or barbecue sauce. I’ve seen some people combine both the tomato and barbecue sauces and have it with their sausage. I will not judge them.

Democracy sausage (roll)! Spicy corned beef fried rice rolled in puff pastry.

We now see all manner of diversity in terms of the sausage sandwiches. There are vegetarian and vegan sausages. The bread can be gluten-free or sourdough or multi-grain, or any other type of bread.

Apart from the sauce, extras often include cooked onions, and we get the debate of onions under or over the sausage2. Some people have kimchi, others sauerkraut, and others also have cheese.

My democracy sausage was a sausage roll because that’s how I roll 😉

Last night, I got home late and felt like making fried rice with tinned corned beef. I made it spicy with some Bird’s-eye chillies.

Corned beef fried rice
Corned beef fried rice

My democracy sausage (roll) is leftover spicy corned beef fried rice in puff pastry.

While I’m having a little fun here, I’m conscious that there are foreign governments that do not hold free and fair elections. I respect the right of a foreign government to conduct itself sovereignly. While not a fan of the United Nations nor any of its derivative organisations, I hope that humankind will enjoy total freedom and an abundance of life.

Democracy sausage (roll)! Spicy corned beef fried rice rolled in puff pastry.

Back to the soup!

Cauliflower

Ingredients

  • Cauliflower
  • Potato
  • White onion
  • Leek
  • Bacon
  • Laksa paste (a commercial paste because life is too short)
  • White peppercorns
  • Vegetable stock
  • White wine
  • Gorgonzola

Instructions

  1. Dissect a cauliflower into florets.
  2. Roughly slice a leek. You can be rough with this leek. In the end, it’s all blended.
  3. Dice an onion.
  4. Dice the spud.
  5. Dice the bacon.
  6. Pound the white peppercorns in a mortar with a heavy hard pestle. Please give it a good pounding because you don’t want a gritty result from your pounding.
  7. Crumble the gorgonzola.
  8. Heat a saucepan on a hob.
  9. Sauté the bacon to render some fat, and then add the onion and leek to get the aromas in the air, so your kitchen area is rich with fragrance. If you like, you could add garlic too.
  10. Add the cauliflower and potato to the cooked bacon, onion, and leek.
  11. Cover everything with wine and vegetable stock and add a tablespoon of the laksa paste.
  12. Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer until the potato and cauliflower are soft.
  13. Turn off the heat and process the soup with a stick blender until smooth.
  14. Turn the heat back on to low.
  15. Add in the crumbled gorgonzola cheese and season with the pepper to taste.
  16. Ladle the soup to a bowl.
  17. Place the rest in vacuum bags and, using a vacuum chamber sealing device, seal the bags and freeze for another day.
  18. Give thanks to the Lord.
  19. Enjoy the soup and ponder life and love and how everything seems to fit together. Each part complements the other elements in life.
Vacuum sealed cauliflower soup Laksa paste Gorgonzola cheese

Thoughts on the soup

I know cauliflower soup isn’t a favourite for one of my daughters. She dislikes it intensely. For me, though, it has flavour, and the cheese gives it a thickness almost like a sauce. It’s rich and flavourful.

Combining something distinctly Asian and European seems to be a thing with me. Laksa paste and gorgonzola cheese. Who knew?

Final thoughts

  1. Is combining laksa paste and gorgonzola cheese an abomination or brilliance on my part? I liked it. You might like it too. Please give it a go and let me know.
  2. Does cauliflower give you flatus? I reckon tonight, my freshly laundered sheets will take on a new aroma 😆
  3. How do you feel about the democracy sausage? If you’re not Australian, do you have any election traditions?
  4. A workmate who saw my sausage roll asked if it counts as a democracy sausage. What do you think?

Footnotes

  1. The snag is slang for sausage
  2. A local hardware chain, viz., Bunnings, created controversy when it directed all sausage sandwiches sold at its stores not to have onions over the sausage. The management deemed the risk of slipping on dropped onions to be a safety hazard. The direction is to tuck the onion under the meat sac.
Cauliflower
Cauliflower soup Laksa paste Gorgonzola cheese
Cauliflower soup Laksa paste Gorgonzola cheese

A weekend in Brisbane

Posted by Gary

Hello Reader,

I hope you are well. If you live in eastern Australia, I expect you’ve been experiencing a wet weekend. The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts this weekend in Southeast Queensland to be the wettest this year. I love La Niña, although I don’t love the destruction and mayhem caused by the floods. The last time it rained like this was about seven years ago. I was there for a special event, and it got washed out.

Smoked salmon on a poppyseed bagel. The final meal before leaving Canberra.

The last time I was in Brisbane was Christmas 2021, which is more than 12 months since the time before that in December 2020.

In 2019, I visited my parents and daughters six times. COVID-19 has made a significant difference. I telephone my parents every few days and Group FaceTime my daughters weekly to compensate.

I love living in the 21st century—better communications tools 😊 not to mention flushing toilets and heating.

When I landed in Brisbane, I went to the car rental place to pick up a car. I had asked for a small compact car and discovered a large Mazda BT-50 4✖️4 in the bay. I was taken with the luxury of wireless Apple CarPlay plus many other features.

Mazda BT-50 4X4. I’ve never driven one of these before.

When I got to my parent’s place on Friday night, I was in time to watch the footy with Dad. It was joyful to watch Brisbane defeat Manly convincingly. I also ate about ten of Mum’s jam drop biscuits.1

Travel Moka pot. ABC of travel. Always. Bring. Coffee.

Saturday breakfast

Café 63 at Westfield Chermside

Rather than buy some spinach leaves to cook a steamed egg and wilted spinach leaves2, I went out by myself and enjoyed breakfast at a local café near my parent’s place.

I had intended to eat some muesli and fruit. I saw liver and bacon and went with a plate of potato rösti, liver, bacon, onion rings, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, and barbecue sauce.

It was pretty filling. The liver would be gout inducing if I went overboard and ate a lot.

Café 63 Liver, bacon, potato rosti, onion rings, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, and barbecue sauce
Café 63 Liver, bacon, potato rosti, onion rings, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, and barbecue sauce

Saturday lunch

Aspley Oriental yum cha

We had planned to go to Sandgate for fish and chips. The driving rain, the need to bring Dad’s walking frame, and the general frailty of my parents meant it was easier to drive to the Aspley hypermarket. I could stop the car, engage the hazard lights, help my parents alight from the BT-50 with Dad’s walking frame and then find a car park.

It also meant Mum could indulge her passion for bargain shopping at Aldi. Mum rarely gets to an Aldi, and she prefers the cleaning products from there.

The lunch was okay. As far as yum cha goes, it has almost everything I would need. It had the waitstaff who seemed most interested in getting us in and out quickly, the deep-fried foods, the usual dumplings, and the egg tarts. What we didn’t get were my favourites, i.e., a turnip cake3 and rice flour noodles.

The shopping more than made up for the yum cha disappointment. Mum and Dad are hilarious. Dad goes off with his walking frame, confident he won’t fall. Mum likes to look around. Dad will be off in the distance, and Mum is looking at shoes she will never wear. We get into Aldi, and it’s on for young and old. Mum is piling the shopping trolley with cleaning products like no tomorrow. Then she changes her mind and puts things back after having misgivings. It made me laugh out loud.

Aspley Oriental Yum cha with Mum and Dad
Aspley Oriental Yum cha with Mum and Dad

Saturday dinner

Kinn and Derm, Takeaway dinner

Mum thought I might want to cook. I didn’t. After an afternoon of eating jam drop biscuits and drinking coffee and chatting, I didn’t want to cook. I wanted takeaway Thai food.

One of my daughters and a brother came along, and we all enjoyed chilli jam soft-shelled crab, red duck curry, crispy pork belly, chilli jam crispy pork, and crab fried rice. Mum cooked some noodles, and we were content.

After dinner, Mum surprised us with ice cream and jelly. The jelly had been “leftover” from when Mum had her last colonoscopy. She bought red instead of yellow and couldn’t use it, so we enjoyed it Saturday night.

The food from Kinn+Derm is always delicious, albeit expensive. It was worth seeing happy faces as we cleaned up our plates with yummy food.

Kinn+Derm Soft-shelled crab, crab fried rice, crispy pork, crispy pork belly, and red duck curry
Kinn+Derm Soft-shelled crab, crab fried rice, crispy pork, crispy pork belly, and red duck curry
Kinn+Derm Soft-shelled crab, crab fried rice, crispy pork, crispy pork belly, and red duck curry
Kinn+Derm Soft-shelled crab, crab fried rice, crispy pork, crispy pork belly, and red duck curry
Ice cream and jelly

Sunday breakfast

My Mistress café, Clayfield

I caught up with my eldest daughter and partner, plus my youngest daughter.

I am no longer an Açaí bowl virgin, although I’m sure I’ll become an Açaí bowl convert. I’m susceptible to “brain pain” with cold foods. The taste was okay. I’m grateful for the granola I also asked for with the Açaí bowl. The granola added a delightful crunch to the dish.

My Mistress Café Açai bowl with granola

Thoughts

It’s been a wonderful whirlwind weekend with my parents and two of my daughters. It was good to celebrate, to some extent, Mother’s Day and Dad’s birthday.

The weather was soaking wet, which meant warm and moist conditions and anyone who knows me knows how much I love everything warm and moist.

How was your weekend? Tell me what you did.

Footnotes

  1. Not Mum’s recipe.
  2. My usual breakfast.
  3. Usually not made with turnip. My maternal grandmother made the best turnip cake.

Pig trotters, vinegar, and ginger

Posted by Gary

Hello Reader,

One of my fondest childhood meals was braised pig trotters in vinegar with ginger. Mum made it once every year or so when I was a boy.

Pig trotters Choice pork
Pig trotters

It wasn’t until I was an adult that Mum explained the purpose of this dish. It was to nourish new mothers after their bodies were depleted of essential life force associated with gestation, confinement, and the postpartum demands of a newborn infant. I don’t know if there is any scientific evidence to support this. I don’t care. I like the taste of the dish. It has the sharpness of the vinegar, the sweetness of the sugar, and the refreshing heat of the ginger. It would make my mouth tingle and feel fresh.

I’d only had this dish made with white vinegar as a child and teenager. Up until my 30s, I had no idea that black vinegar was a thing. I recall going to Hong Kong for a work trip in the early 2000s. It was a one-night stay, and for lunch, we went to a local café, and I saw pig trotters in ginger and black vinegar on the menu. I wondered if it might be like the dish Mum made. It wasn’t like Mum’s at all. (In my humble opinion) black vinegar pig trotters aren’t as enjoyable as Mum’s. Since then, I’ve had pig trotters in ginger and vinegar in other restaurants, and they were all black vinegar dishes. They all had a hint of Mum’s dish but not the essential essence.

I was chatting with Mum during the week and asked if she could share her recipe with me.

“Gary, it’s been so long since I’ve made that dish. I never had a recipe; I just threw things into a pot. We never had fancy Chinese vinegar, so we’d substitute with whatever we had.”

Mum uses Johnnie Walker red and black label whisky for cooking because she doesn’t have Chinese cooking wine. Dad would get bottles of whiskey as gifts from patients every Christmas. My parents, like me, don’t drink alcohol; Mum would cook with it. Like the wine, rather than Chinese vinegar, Mum used cheap white vinegar.

It turns out it’s been close to 25 years since Mum has made this dish.

So, dear reader, this is an experiment; I will toss in a pressure cooker the things Mum can remember and see what happens.

Just a note for the fair dinkum East Asian food aficionados, I’m not adding the boiled eggs because it’s too much faffing about. All I care about is the meat and fat, and flavour. If I’d given birth and was breastfeeding, I still doubt I’d faff with the eggs.

Hairy pig trotters, vinegar, and ginger

Ingredients

  • Pig trotters (I bought mine from the local butcher)1
  • Pork belly (I bought two trotters, so I thought I’d add some pork belly because I wanted more meat. I think hocks would have been better.)
  • White or rice vinegar (not sure if rice vinegar would work)
  • Dry sherry2
  • Ginger (a big girthy rhizome3, long with good weight [technically, ginger isn’t a root, it’s a rhizome] Big girthy rhizome sounds better than a big girthy root too)
  • Sugar (white)
  • Salt (iodised)
  • Pepper (freshly pounded white and black peppercorns in a mortar with a pestle)
  • MSG (as much as you want)4
  • Cloves (a few)
  • Rice (I used jasmine rice because that’s all I had)
  • Bok choi (this is optional, but I know there will be readers who will tsk and wonder about my bowel health)
  • Spring onions (this as garnish)
Breville Fast Slow cooker
Breville Fast Slow cooker

Instructions

  1. Remove the bristles from the pig trotters. Unless you like the mouthfeel of some hairs as you mouth and suck on the skin and gelatinous fat off the pig’s trotter. It might be like mouthing and sucking someone’s toes. How do you feel about toe jam5? Do you like sucking toes? I could have used a disposable razor to shave off the hairs but I didn’t because I’m lazy and I don’t mind hairy.
  2. Peel a few thick girthy thumbs of ginger. I like a lot of ginger but use as much or as little as you like.
  3. Cut the ginger into bite-size pieces and give them a good whack with a Chinese cleaver to help release flavour.
  4. Add the trotters, vinegar, dry sherry, sugar, ginger, salt, MSG, cloves, and pepper into the cooking vessel of a pressure cooker. Mum didn’t give me weights and volumes, so I guessed based on intuition. If you really want to know, it was a couple of cups of vinegar, a cup of dry sherry, a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of MSG, maybe half a dozen or so cloves, and a tablespoon each of the white and black peppercorns.
  5. Cook for 40 minutes. Again, this duration is a guess based on feelings. The time starts when the pressure is reached not when you turn it on.
  6. Cook rice. Use a rice cooker if you have one, or microwave a packet and try to avoid criticism from purists.
  7. Allow the pressure cooker to equilibrate and leave it for at least 15 minutes. Taking the lid off a pressure prematurely can leave your meat dry. It’s like most things that happen prematurely, you want to give things time and do it slowly.6
  8. Gently remove the pig trotters and pork belly from the cooking vessel and pass the liquor through a sieve.
  9. Place the filtered liquor into a saucepan and reduce it to a slightly sticky syrup.
  10. Place the fluffy rice into a bowl and add the pork and reduced liquor into another bowl.
  11. As an option, if you like green things, you could steam some Chinese vegetables like Bok choi or something similar.
  12. Garnish the pig trotters with some spring onions. I also like garnishing with bird’s-eye chillies. While this dish doesn’t need the heat of the chilli, I like keeping my mucous membranes and nerve endings excited.
  13. Give thanks to the Lord.
  14. Eat with chopsticks and a spoon.

Thoughts

It turns out I did a thing! It tasted okay. It may not be authentic, but I’m happy. Now I need to practice this dish; perhaps Mum may like it.

To be fair, I think I may have used too much pepper and ginger. While not lingering, my mouth especially my lips were tingling like I’d had a mouthful of Sichuan pepper. The Bird’s-eye chillies which I used as garnish reinforced the heat on my lips and tongue.

Unlike most meals I write about, this one had a bit of thought behind it. I didn’t know if it would work. It could have been awful. I’m grateful it wasn’t.

The current outbreak of Japanese encephalitis which is affecting the Australian pork industry will likely cause the prices of pork to escalate. I’m savouring this dish as I plan to eat more chicken and vegetables.

In case anyone is concerned, while pigs are amplifying hosts of the Japanese encephalitis virus, JEV infection of pigs has no effect on the meat which is still safe for human consumption. Unfortunately, JEV infection of sows results in fetal death in utero and mummification of piglets. We really need to get on top of the outbreak to keep pigs healthy, farmers happy, and consumers satisfied.

Final thoughts

  1. Do you have a childhood dish you’re keen to make? What is it?
  2. Do you like pig trotters? How about pig hocks?
  3. Would you like a meal like this to replenish your vital essences if you’ve recently given birth?
  4. If you try making this, please leave a comment for me to read. Thank you.

Footnotes

  1. I bought the pig trotters from The Butcher Shop at Jamison Plaza
  2. Chinese cooking wine would also be okay
  3. An underground stem that has roots and shoots from its nodes
  4. King of flavour
  5. Toe jam refers to the crud which accumulates between toes. Washing your feet is essential.
  6. When I first read about the slow food movement, I thought it was a bit poncy, however, I’ve learnt how much better my cooking and eating enjoyment is when I take things slowly and move deliberately.
Pig trotters, vinegar, and ginger
Pig trotters
A pair of pig trotters and a piece of pork belly
Pressure cooker pig trotters and pork belly
Pig trotters, vinegar, and ginger
Hairy pig trotters, vinegar, and ginger