Malamay Restuarant Review, Barton

It has been a while since I've written anything on this blog and due to being quite lazy, I haven't exactly baked a lot either. That however hasn't stopped me from eating a lot so I thought I would try something different and review the things I eat as well as posting recipes!

Last week was my 3 and a half year anniversary with my partner and he took me to the new-ish Sichuan restaurant in the Burbury Hotel in Barton (nothing to do with the Burberry brand). This restaurant is a part of the Chairman Group who own several upper market restaurants in Canberra. You'll have to excuse the bad quality of the photos since all I had was my iPhone!

The interior of the restaurant was quite nice, donning the usual dimly lit ambience that upper market restaurants hold. It had a bit of a modern twist and for a while we almost felt that we were dining in Sydney. Unfortunately didn't get a photo!

Once we were seated we were told of two options, either the 5 course ($66.50) or 7 course ($88) degustation meals. Malamay do not have a al la carte menu and only the set two menus. I was a little disappointed to be told that the amount of food for the 5 and 7 course were exactly the same, the only difference was that you could sample more dishes. I don't particularly understand this concept as:

a) you are paying more for the 7 course meal so one would assume that you would get a little more (this may just be my notorious food greed taking over).

b) even if you like a particular dish, you can't order it again anyways since they only do the set menus.

So first course was scallops with tempura enoki mushrooms with mixed herbs.

The scallops were well seared and were quite juicy on the inside with a black bean paste on top. The enoki tempura was well seasoned and the slight saltiness went well with the seared scallops. However, as enoki mushrooms are quite light and thin, I couldn't particularly taste any mushroom flavour as it was overpowered by the batter. But in all fairness, the batter was still quite nice.

The second dish was three chilli relish prawns with hand made noodles.

This was a cold noodle dish with the just cooked topping of prawns. It was quite delicious and I wish that I could have had a whole bowl. It was probably my favourite out of the seven dishes that we were served. The prawns were not as firm and succulent as I would have liked but nonetheless the dish as a whole was very nice and had a slight bite to it.

Third was white fish with burnt green chilli and black bean raddish crumbs

This was quite a winter comfort dish and the combination of the salty raddish crumbs and warm broth and fish was well balanced. Fish was also cooked perfectly!

Fourth was a smoked spatchcock with salted fish fennel and apple salad. 

The salad of this dish was very tasty and the apple and fennel worked well together with the gamey spatchcock. The salted fish paste you can see in the middle of the plate tasted almost identical to the crumble on top of the fish in dish three.

Fifth was a wagyu beef cake with chilli fermented vegetable filling. 

This tasted almost like a big fried dumpling with pickled ginger and a blood orange jelly at the top which melted into a sauce. I wasn't the biggest fan of this dish and felt that the blood orange jelly/sauce was a little bitter for my tasting. However the casing of the meat was nice and crisp.

Sixth was a sous vide beef cheek with yellow wine and goji berries.

This dish came out served with rice and was the main dish of the whole course. The beef cheek was very tender and the broth went well with the rice.

Seventh was a chilli chocolate charcoal with yoghurt cream, pistachio and mandarin crumb.

This desert didn't quite do it for me. The chocolate charcoal was good but the amount of hotness was somewhat overbearing. The chilli slightly burnt the throat.


All in all the meal was pleasant and the wait staff were very nice and went into detail about each dish which was good. I feel that I enjoyed the dishes at the time but by the end I didnt feel completely satisfied and felt as though something was missing.

That is just my two cents. Did anyone else try the restaurant?
What did you guys think?

it has been too long...

It has been a long time since I even looked at this blog.
Admittedly, the only reason I even came onto it was to look at an old macaron picture that i had blogged about...

Don't get me wrong, although i have been extremely dormant on updating the blog, i have been super busy in the kitchen.

I have been working on a side project which requires me to perfect a few recipes.. one of which is the macaron. Which explains why I am up at 2:18am. Just took my 3rd batch of macarons out of the oven for the night. I am tired, have dry hands and mixture in my hair and STILL i am not satisfied.

I have read countless blogs on how to get the perfect macarons, and in the past week have tried baking almost 10 batches of macarons.

Still finding it hard to get it perfect. It seems the batch I made a year ago is better than the ones I am whipping up today... WHAT THE HELL?

The 2011 me has so much more knowledge on the techniques of baking macarons then 2010 me. Yet looking back at the pictures that i posted last year... they look way better...

Well i guess its back to the drawing board (or cooking board if you like). I probably won't be updating for a while until i have some postworthy pictures though!

strawberry, blueberry and kiwi with white tea jelly

It was my boyfriends birthday just yesterday, and i decided that i would take him on a picnic by the lake. I had a whole menu set out. Cold Chorizo and Balsamic Onion pasta, lemon meringue cupcakes, passionfruit melting moments, potato salad, sandwhiches and drumsticks. I just felt like I was missing some fruit. I found this great and SIMPLE recipe from the Tartelette blog and used different fruit because I didn't have any at home! This recipe makes 3 servings, in fancy glass cups!

Ingredients

2 teaspoons powdered gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
1 bag white tea or 1 tablespoon loose white tea leaves
1 cup boiling water
1 tablespoons sugar (more if you like a sweeter tea)
1 punnet of strawberries, cut into quarters
1 punnet of blue berries
3 kiwi fruits

In a small bowl, mix up the gelatin with cold water.

Get the cup of boiling water and disolve the sugar and plunge in the tea, leaving it as strong or weak as you would like. Add in the gelatin mix and stir until everything is dissolved and let it cool.

Cut up the fruit and place nicely in the cups. Pour the liquid mixture into the cups so that it just covers the fruit.

Refridgerate for 3 hours and eat!

*You can use any kind of tea that you like such as green tea, rose tea, chamomile tea!

Julia Child's Brioche - YUM YUM

Ok, so it has been quite a while since my brioche rant and my promise of getting my Julia Child brioche recipe posted! I finally uploaded the photos onto my computer and instead of doing my essay which is due in two days, I will post this blog :) Yay for procrastination!

It was quite a while since i made the brioche, but i must say, i was EXTREMELY happy with the result. The smell of buttery bread lingered in the house for several days!

I got this recipe from the book 'Baking with Julia' by Julia Child. Again, i could hear Meryl's Streep's Julia voice when i opened up this book to look at the recipe. This recipe is ALOT more time consuming than the other one posted, and has a lot more steps but it is definitely worth it. It is really fluffy and light, but crusty on the outside!

Ingredients:

The Sponge:

1/3 warm whole milk (none of this skim milk business!)
2 and 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 large egg
2 x 1 cup unbleached plain flour.


Combine the milk and yeast together and mix well. Once the yeast has disolved, combine the egg and 1 cup of flour. Do not use electric mixer, but use a spatular, or whisk to mix. Once that is done, cover the mixture with the remaining 1 cup of flour so that it is covered.

Leave the bowl uncovered and rest it for around 40 minutes. Somewhere that is preferably warm. Because i made this in winter, i took my bowl upstairs to my room where i had the heater on! Don't worry if the flour starts to crack, this means that the yeast is doing its job!


Now it is time to make the dough!
Ingredients

The Dough:

The Sponge mixture
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 large eggs (slightly beaten)
1 and 1/2 cups of unbleached plain flour
180 grams butter

Get the 'Sponge' mixture that you have just created and add the sugar, salt, eggs and 1 cup of flour. Use your electric mixer - with the dough hooks and mix at a low speed. Slowly start mixing in the 1/2 cup of extra flour in. Beat for about 20 minutes. At the end, your dough should be slapping the sides of your bowl and lifting from the sides. If not, just add a litle bit of more flour. The more you mix, the better!



Now, get the butter, and bash it up a little bit. Thats right, just mash it up with a fork, or rolling pin so that it is soft but still a little cold. Now start adding tablespoons of the butter into the dough graudally. The mixture will probably start coming apart. Do not worry! just keep mixing untill it starts slapping the sides again and wrapping around the dough hooks. If it is alittle too wet and is not pulling from the sides of the bowl, add a little bit more flour!

Now move your dough to a large buttered bowl and cover tightly with wrap. Let it rise at room temperature for 2 and 1/2 hours so that it is double its sized. Best to get the biggest bowl possible for this step!



As you can see here, my bowl was evidently not big enough!

After the 2 and half hours, deflate the dough, but using your fingers and lifting the bottom section of the dough and letting it fall back into the bowl. lift and release! Once the air seems to have been deflated, loosly cover up the bowl and stick it in the fridge overnight or for at least 5 hours.

Preheat the oven to 18o degrees .

Once it has been chilled, divide the dough into thirds and roll them up in a ball, and place them in the loaf tin! Over with buttered plastic wrap and rest for another 2 hours.

Brush some eggwash on top and stick it in the oven for 30 minutes, or untill the loaf is golden brown .

Now enjoy your delicious bread! Make french toast, or just warm with jam !

Brioche rant

Ok, So after I made the brioche yesterday, I was very pleased with myself. But I STILL didn't know what brioche was meant to taste like oh what its texture was like. All I knew was that my brioche looked like it did on the picture and that it was crumbly. Believe it or not, I hadn't tasted it as per usual.

Today, the boyfriend and I went for breakfast at a well known french bakery in Kingston. They have DELICIOUS breakfast and I was keen on finding out what brioche tasted like. So after I finished my breakky, I went to the display area and looked for tags with the word 'Brioche' on it.
There was nothing. So my voice full of uncertainly, I asked if they had brioche in which the snobby waitress pointed out to the stack of muffin blob like breads in front of me.

I bought one and was thoroughly confused. Wasn't Brioche meant to be a loaf? CONFUSION! I quickly tasted one and found that this brioche was quite different. It was airy and light and pulled apart well, it was almost like a croissant. Was mine like that? When I got home, I broke a piece of my own brioche and tasted it. My one had a similar taste and texture yet it was a lot more dense and crumbly.

This has made me more determined to get the same texture even if it is in the shape of a loaf!

I am currently waiting for my dough to rise (AGAIN). This time, following the recipe found in 'Baking with Julia Child' cooking book. It is quite different and uses different ingredients and methods. I also found out from the book that there brioche can be made into these blob muffin like shapes, but as i do not have the right molds, back to loaf shape it is.

I will have the pictures and recipe soon! Wish me luck!

Golden Brioche

I decided to bake brioche for my friend that bought me the cook books and inspired me again to get baking. As I was reading the recipe from the 'Baking with Julia' cook book, I could hear Meryl Streep's voice from the movie 'Julie and Julia'. It was quite funny.

The recipe called for a few ingredients that I did not have immediate access to and I had to bake these NOW. So i went to my favorite baking blog: Almost Bourdain. The brioche recipe seemed relatively easy and the pictures were BEAUTIFUL!

I didn't follow the recipe EXACTLY since I am known for my 'a little more for good measure' tactic. However, it is more or less the same. I loved how my brioche turned out, it looked almost as good as the one from the blog hence the millions of end product photos!

Ingredients:

2 x 1/3 milk
1 and 1/2 tsp of instant dry yeast
6 x small egg yolks (beaten)
3705g of flour + extra for work area
1/3 cup caster sugar +1tsp caster sugar + extra for sprinkling on top
150g butter (cold and mashed)
1 x small egg (beaten)
1 tsp kosher salt or natural salt


Method

• microwave 1/3 cup of milk till luke warm. Pour into medium sized bowl.

• Add in the yeast and 1tsp of caster sugar. This helps the yeast to grow. Stir until everything is dissolved and the liquid is not too lumpy!
  

• In another medium sized bowl, combine the egg yolks and milk together so that it is of smooth consistency
  

• Now get a large sized bowl, and mix in 1/3 cup of caster sugar, the flour and salt and combine well so that are no lumps. Create a hole in the middle and pour in the liquid from the milk and egg mixture and the yeast and milk mixture.
  

• Use a mixer with dough hooks and kneed the dough for approximately 10 minutes, until dough starts pulling away from the bowl's sides and clings onto the dough hooks.
  

• Slowly add in the mashed up butter and incorporate in well. Mix for another 10 minutes or until the dough starts pulling away from the sides again.
  

• Grab the dough, and place it in a lightly buttered bowl and wrap up and let it rest for 2 hours. The dough should double in size. It is good to have the bowl in a warm place which lets the yeast grow.

• After the two hours, get the dough and kneed it well, getting all the air out. Make sure you flour your bench so it does not stick too much.
  

• Put the dough into a bread loaf tin and shape accordingly. Now, turn on your oven to 180 degrees. Meanwhile, Let the dough in the bread loaf tin rest for another 2 hours, uncovered so that it rises again.
  

• Once the two hours has past (I know! there is A LOT of waiting!), brush the eggwash on the top, making sure that you do not put too much so that it drips down the side. Sprinkle some extra caster sugar on top and pop into the oven for around 30 minutes or so depending on how hot your oven is.
  

• Take the bread out of the tin, and place it in a pan and pop it into the oven again for another 20 minutes so that the sides get golden also.

• and now, let it cool on a cooling rack and ENJOY!
  

New Books!

So I have been quite dormant these days with my blog. Don't get me wrong, I have been baking a steady amount of goods but it seems that these days, I am getting ALOT of fails or just baking things that I have already blogged about.

The other day, I attempted macaroons again. I went out and bought a whole range of baking equipment and excitedly got busy. Unfortunately, the macaroons were a total fail. They were more meringues. I was hugely disappointed and didn't bake for a while.

Now a few days ago, I received a few cookbooks from my friend who owns a shop next to a book store! I was flicking through the Baking with Julia Childs cookbook when I discovered a recipe for Brioche.

Brioche, one of the things on my 'must bake' list! I immediately decided I needed to get back on the horse and the thing that would get me back on was BRIOCHE!

Glorious Brioche.... Brioche... which I had no idea what it was or what it was meant to taste like!