Steamed mince pork with eggs

This recipe is adapted from Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: recipes from Hunan province. Dunlop is a British food writer who's made her name by collecting and translating recipes from China, particularly Sichuan province, acting as a kind of cultural ambassador.

She's also the author of a really entertaining, funny memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, which follows her experiences as a exchange student in Chengdu, her impromptu enrolment in a local cooking school, and her subsequent adventures.

I saw her speaking once at the Sydney Food Festival in 2009, where she presented with and translated on behalf of husband-and-wife chefs Yu Bo and Dai Shuang of the unassumingly named but culinarily ambitious Yu's Family Kitchen in Chengdu, Sichuan. Some dishes in their demonstration:


16 dishes by Yu Bo and Dai Shuang, each illustrating a different flavour and technique.


Dai Shuang's hedgehogs. Tiny dough hedgies filled with red bean paste; their eyes are black sesame seeds. Each is hand made, with the 137 spikes of each hedgie individually snipped with a pair of embroidery scissors (and yes, she counted each spike in her demonstration!).


Yu Bo's playful 'calligraphy' set. The brush tips are pastry with a soft filling and the red wax is tomato paste. Dip the brush and eat!


And now to a much much humbler offering:



Steamed minced pork with eggs

4 medium or 10-12 small dried shittake mushrooms
A small piece of fresh ginger, unpeeled
300g minced pork
1 tsp sesame oil
200-250 ml or less of chicken stock
3 or 4 eggs
Salt and pepper
2 spring onions finely sliced

Soak the mushrooms in boiling water, leave for 30 minutes. Crush ginger with flat of a cleaver and place in a cup with a little cold water to cover.

Place the pork in a mixing bowl. Drain and finely chop the shittake (retaining mushroom water) and add to the pork. Add 3 tablespoons of the ginger soaking water, some of the ginger finely chopped, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Stir in the stock and mushroom water, a little at a time to allow meat to absorb, until you have a loose paste.

Pour the pork paste into a shallow bowl. Break the eggs over the pork (I did these whole, as suggested by Dunlop, but on consideration I would suggest beating them first). Place the bowl in a steamer and steam over high heat for 15 minutes until pork is cooked through.

Serve with scattering of spring onions.

Adapted from "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: recipes from Hunan province" by Fuschia Dunlop

With Nails by Richard E. Grant (TBR Challenge Book #8)

I think the first time I ever saw Grant on screen was during high school history class, in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1998). For a long time afterwards, my classmates would quote to one another:

"They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel!"

Anyway. Since then I've seen Grant many more times, on screen and off, including a live taping of ABC's First Tuesday Book Club; and presenting an anniversary screening of British cult classic Withnail & I (1987).

It's that movie, as the title of the book suggests, which kick-started Grant's tv and movie career. His role as the alcoholic, somewhat deranged and self-deluded 'resting' (unemployed) actor Withnail became his calling card to Hollywood.

This memoir spans more than half a decade in Hollywood. He describes his experiences taking good roles in bad movies (Warlock, Henry and June, LA Story), culminating in Hudson Hawk (1991), now infamous as one of the biggest, most hubristic and expensive flops of all time. For his part, Grant received a Razzie nomination! However, immediately after that trial by fire, the slate was balanced when he found himself working with three great auteurs: Altman, Coppola and Scorsese.

For Grant's eloquence and sense of humour alone, this book would be worth a read. As a movie fan however it's possibly even better - it's rare to see the workings behind the scenes of Hollywood from an actor's perspective described so frankly and honestly. He's not in the least shy about making his feelings heard about Bruce Willis (charming egomaniac), Joel Silver (pure egomaniac) or Madonna (narcissist) - it doesn't seem to have hurt his career either, with Madonna for one choosing to work with him again, on her directorial debut Filth & Wisdom (2008).

And he has good things to say too about movie sets that do work well, too, and about the different working methods of each director. Altman for instance keeps his sets easygoing and charming, inviting collaboration. Coppola is controlled chaos with a family emphasis; and Scorsese is focused and detail-oriented. He also offers tantalising glimpses of movies that could have been - Withnail was initially offered to Daniel Day-Lewis, for instance, while Grant himself was offered the Sheriff role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which eventually went to Alan Rickman in a movie-stealing role.

There are times when Grant's stories of Hollywood high life seem like a series of strategic namedrops – lunch with Steve Martin, dinner with Gary Oldman, not to mention hang-outs with Anthony Hopkins, Uma, Winona, Johnny, Madonna, Tom Waits, Hugh and Liz – but he's always undercutting that with his own sense of self-deprecation (convinced he'll be found out as a fraud, insecure as all actors are!) and his sharp observations on the excesses of Hollywood life - his descriptions of Sharon Stone's manipulations of shop assistants and Bruce Willis' ego on set are all priceless.

My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge

Nutella Whoopie Pies

To celebrate the return of Masterchef (which was about a month ago, so yes, I'm running well behind), my fellow devotees and I gathered for a ritualistic eating and watching session. Two years of this has taught us that we're addicts, and there's no point pretending otherwise.

(Have you noticed, by the by, how successfully Channel 10 has trained us in the binge-diet reality television cycle? A season of Masterchef follows The Biggest Loser, which in its turn followed Masterchef, which was preceded by The Biggest Loser, ad infinitum...)

My contribution was nutella whoopie pies. The whoopie pie seems to be a concept native to America. I know I'd never eaten one before making this recipe. They're much more cakelike than cookie, despite appearances, and they turned out much larger than I expected - just about the same size as a cupcake or a mid-ish muffin.



Nutella Whoopie Pies

2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup of Nutella
2/3 cup of sugar
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla essence (or hazelnut liqueur)
1/2 teapsoon salt

Preheat oven to 180 C.

In a large bowl, beat the nutella, butter, and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add cocoa, egg, salt, buttermilk, and essence/liqueur and mix well.

Add baking soda and flour. Mix well

Line baking sheets with paper and place 1.5 tablespoons of dough in rounds.

Bake for approximately 10-13 minutes, until cookies are set and the top appears slightly dry. Remove from oven and let cool completely.


Frosting: as it turns out, I used about half of the frosting, so you may want to reduce the quantities listed here.

2/3 cup Nutella
225 g cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons whipping cream
1 tablespoon coffee-infused vodka (or hazelnut liqueur or espresso coffee)
3 cups icing sugar

With a mixer, whip cream cheese, vodka, nutella, and whipping cream.

Slowly add sugar and beat for 2-3 minutes. Adjust consistency by adding up more powdered sugar, or more whipping cream.

When cookies have cooled, place up to 1 tablespoon frosting on the bottom of one cookie, and gently press another cookie on top of the frosting, creating a sandwich.


From Twisted Kitchen

Long weekend fooding

No better way to celebrate a 5-day long weekend then a barbecue, right? Even if it was pouring outside. I made a cake and some appetisers. Others supplied delicious salad, sausages, chicken wings, bread, cookies and more cake. It was delicious.



Figs with goats cheese and proscuitto
12 ripe figs
6 slices of proscuitto, each sliced in half lengthways
120g goats cheese (or more to taste)
Rosemary sprigs to season
Olive oil
Honey

Cut the figs in quarters but only halfway down, so the segments don't separate.

Spoon in 2-3 teaspoons of cheese in the centre of each.

Wrap each fig in proscuitto and use a toothpick to secure.

Drizzle in oil and season with salt and pepper. Top with a sprig of rosemary.

Bake or grill until the cheese is soft or until it smells tasty.

Remove the rosemary sprigs, drizzle with a little honey, remove toothpicks and serve.



My cake to right. At left is a glimpse of an extremely delicious lime meringue tart.

Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing
Cake
80g sultanas
4 tbsp water
280g plain flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
120ml olive oil
160g caster sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
2 freerange eggs, lightly beaten
3 cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut in 1cm dice (Pink Lady, Jonathan or Granny Smith will do - Bramley was the suggested variety, but I don't think we have these in Australia)
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 freerange egg whites

Icing
100g unsalted butter at room temperature
100g light muscavado sugar (I subbed in brown sugar)
85ml maple syrup
220g cream cheese at room temperature

Grease a 20cm springform cake tin and line with baking paper.

Place sultanas and water in a saucepan and simmer over a low heat until the water has been absorbed. Leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 170C. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and set aside.

Put oil and sugar into a large bowl. Slit the vanilla pod lengthways in half and, using a sharp knife, scrape the seeds into the bowl. Beat together using a whisk, then gradually add the eggs until smooth and thick.

Mix in the diced apples, sultanas and lemon zest. Then lightly fold in the dry ingredients.

Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl or in a stand mixer until at a soft meringue consistency. Fold into the batter, trying to lose as little air as possible.

Pour the batter into the tin and bake until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. The book suggested 90 minutes but mine took closer to 75 minutes so do watch out. The baked cake was golden brown on all surfaces.

Remove from oven and leave to cool in the tin. Once the cake is completely cold, remove it from the tin and slice horizontally with a serrated knife so you get two discs of roughly the same size. If it's very domed you may also want to slice some off the top.

For the icing, beat together the butter, sugar and maple syrup until light and airy; I used a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Then add the cream cheese, beating until smooth.

Using a palette knife or in my case a silicone spatula and a knife, spread a 0.5-1cm layer of icing over the bottom half of the cake. Carefully place the top half on top of that and then put the rest of the icing on top. Ottolenghi suggests using the palette knife to create waves or other patterns - for my own part, I was just glad to get it looking reasonably smooth and tidy!

From 'Ottolenghi: The Cookbook' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

TBR Challenge Books #6 and #7

Good As Gold by Joseph Heller (#6)
Heller's absurdist and blackly cynical sense of humour was perfectly showcased in Catch-22. Here, turning his attention to a Jewish professor with ambitions to work in the White House during the post-Nixon, post-Kissinger 70s, it's much less successful. In some technical senses it's as solid as Catch-22 and he's really great at tightly structuring scenes and dialogue for maximum effect. But the overall effect of the book is wearying and repetitive.

Heller's portrayal of Gold's dyfunctional family, tearing itself to pieces, is painful and unlikable rather than funny or relatable. He goes a little better in his depictions of Washington political life as a farcial scene dominated by double-think - but it's not like he's telling us anything new after the third or so scene of the kind. I forced myself to finish it but would have happily left off after about four chapters; by then, Heller has already said all he needs to say.

Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (#7)
The third collection of the serialised adventures in love and life for Mrs Madrigal's found family in San Francisco. By now we've hit the decadent 80s - Mary Ann's career is on the up, she and Brian are starting to think about settling down, while Michael's still playing the scene. This is the third in the series and Maupin has the formula down pat - the younger characters negotiating their way through the dating scene and professional life, with Mrs Madrigal presiding over it all with a loving eye. As always Maupin has funny, clever things to say about modern life, the gay scene and changes in society.

Though charming and funny to start, unfortunately Maupin's formula also contains some elements that are less than great and actually kind of bad. At about the halfway mark, the storylines all start descending into ridiculous soap opera melodramatics, complete with kidnappings, secret identities, a shooting, etc . None of these plot knots makes a lick of sense and all are much less interesting than the characters themselves. Another book that would have worked so much better if it had known when to stop.


My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge