Reine's Kitchen 2024

I think it's been a while since I've posted any cooking adventures, but this Christmas I had plenty of time to really treat myself to some fancy food!

Ok, this cake was not something I made haha. This is my second ever whole cake purchase for just myself, a pistachio trifle cake from Teeter Bakery and it was amazing! I was worried it'd be too big for one person to finish, but I managed it over 3 days, which was pretty good!

Christmas Eve spread included a trial of a caprese tower (which evolved to something way more epic on Christmas Day!), some sashimi, Big Don's Smoked Meats ham, berries and cherries galore, and a prawn salad - originally I wanted to make a prawn roll as well but I didn't manage to source brioche buns this time around and the salad was just as good!

Also these fruit mince pies from Miller and Baker were great too! Turns out I am having a lot of trouble with my Japan Zero teapot; I can't pour it cleanly if it's got anymore than about 30% liquid in it, for some reason with my tilt it keeps coming out of the lid rather than just the spout? And if I tilt it less, nothing comes out. Still a conundrum!

And here is the epic caprese tower! It was a post by Poly that inspired me to try it, and I loved how ridiculous it looked, especially on my obnoxious plate!

Luckily my senses returned and my remaining tomatoes and burrata were plated normally!

And then for New Year's Eve and New Years I made my best chirashi yet! This time I got some sashimi, whereas previously I'd used just smoked salmon and some prawns as the seafood. Also, the tamagoyaki this year was really good too! I paid attention and used a brand new stainless steel pan which actually helped the egg glide smoothly! Who needs a non-stick pan dedicated to eggs XD

Another fun experiment was to try and make einspanners while Giant Coffee was closed. I used whipping cream, and only lightly whipped it, but it still came out too heavy. I am wondering if it's meant to be like half cream half milk as the secret? Who knows, I don't really need to continue researching the topic of lightly whipped cream since I have a cafe that does it better already!

I also found some mugwort mochi powder at the Japanese shop so I tried my hand at tri-colour dango. The pink ones were made with a raspberry and strawberry syrup I'd prepared earlier. Turns out that dango requires a mix of rice flour and glutinous rice flour, but I only had the glutinous type, which actually still turned out good but I suspect that the mix makes the dango lighter; my ones were quite dense compared to how the green ones turned out since that was a pre-mix. I also need to reduce the wetness of the dough; the mugwort balls were the most deformed because they had the highest water content, even though I tried to fix it by adding a bit more glutinous rice flour, but I guess I didn't add enough. This might be something I'll try again, but not sure!

New year's chirashi which used up the last of my sashimi :D

And lol, I had bought some sashimi grade scampi so I did some dumb things and made an abomination hand roll, which tasted really good!

And a cheese plate for lols. King Island black label brie, King Island Roaring Forties blue, and a red cheddar I found. I was actually after reypanaer but the shops didn't have any of the super aged stuff. I decided for the cheddar instead since I hadn't had it before and to my (dumb) surprise, it wasn't the flavour profile I was after haha. It tasted like cheddar when I was hoping for caramel and crystals! It was still good though, so I can't fault the cheese, just my poor life choices. Oh also, the black stuff is Kangaroo Island dried sticky figs - they were so good I was temtped to go back and buy more, but they're an expensive luxury item so I guess I can only search for and buy them once a year.

Merry Christmas Happy New Year!!!

Reine's Xmas Cooking 2019

Yeah, posting this one year late! That's how busy I've been!

Reine's Xmas 2018 cooking

So I just looked back at my 2017 post, and it was so detailed! My 2018 post will have considerably less content, but I think that's because a lot of it is really the same food, just slightly different.I spent heavily on non-food activities in 2018 and I've got some very extravagant travel plans for 2019, so I tried to stick to a small, sensible budget of $200 on top of my normal weekly food spend. Me being me though, I ended up spending about $400... whooops!So where did all that money go?I only bought one marron this time, and named her Henrietta. I'd learned from my previous year that the pan grilled version tasted better than the soup version, so this time I went for the grilled method again! However, instead of the pan, I tried using the oven in an attempt to make the entire shell red, but it still didn't work - I had a half red, half black shell by the time the meat was cooked. I guess I really do need just a firepit in my dream kitchen!I actually got the idea of the witlof salad when I randomly stumbled across a site (maybe BBC Food? I can't remember) that had crab, roe and witlof canapes, so I decided to try my own!The garnish here was micro ice plant that I'd found at the shops. Pretty cute! I liked the presentation of this better than my previous year's attempt. The marron kind of reminded me a bit of Attica's marron presentation.Throughout 2018, I've had a fascination with insanely sharp knives that can slide across a tomato effortlessly. I really wanted to get my flatmate's Wusthof knife sharpened, but she's really not that great at taking care of kitchen stuff whereas I worship every tool, so instead, I decided to get my already sharp Global, sharpened a bit more. I think even the knife sharpener was a bit puzzled as to why I wanted it sharpened, but he did so regardless.This was an experiment from the night before my actual dish, to see how thin I could get the slices. These were squishy, overripe tomatoes, so I guess it was a good effort?YAY plates of sliced tomatoes! While it was easier to work with not overripe tomatoes, it was still a challenge because the waterier the tomato, the harder it was to keep the "insides" intact. But I love the colours and how they all overlap! It's like jewels!And the finished result, my perennial caprese salad! This time though, there wasn't any moneybag burrata at the shops, so I settled for fiore di burrata instead. I kinda miss the big ones because these little ones didn't ooze as much cream. I loved the presentation though, I feel that this one was a fun exercise considering the last two years have all been "normal" looking!There was no quail this year. Instead, there were some duck ballotines for sale, but when I asked how much they were, a 2kg duck-chicken-cranberry stuffing portion cost $110! That was a bit much for me, so I opted for just duck pieces instead. This was a fennel and garlic grilled duck breast with charred witlof and roast carrots. Yeah!! The duck was delicious, I actually surprised myself! I really loved my duck dishes this year!This was a fun one to make! I'd seen pictures of this being served at The Dolphin Hotel in Sydney, and I always wondered how much it would cost, because it looks simple. Avocados are now a running hipster joke about not being able to afford a house, so this dish was also humorous in that regard - pairing an "expensive" avocado with expensive Yarra Valley Caviar salmon roe! What you can't see here is that there's creme fraiche underneath the roe. I'd never read the restaurant's official description of their version, but I'd happened to see some Meander Valley creme fraiche at the shops, and bought it on impulse, and decided it'd go well in this dish.I wasn't wrong! This tasted way better than I thought it would! After adding some salt, olive oil, and a dash of lemon juice (I forgot to add pepper, whoops!), this dish became more than the parts. I think the creme fraiche has to be there, because it made it more than just roe and avocado. The tanginess that came from the cream was perfect for the roe!! It works WAY better than sour cream. It just... made the roe pop while the avocado flavour and texture were there and surprisingly, didn't add any heaviness to the dish! It was as if it made the avocado itself taste better too!What was just a "for fun" dish actually ended up being really impressive!I actually made a few more roe and avocado dishes, since I'd bought 100g of salmon roe and 100g of golden trout roe. I didn't realise how tedious it was to try and stay awake till midnight for New Year's, since I hadn't done that the last few years (or if I did, it didn't feel like that much of a struggle). Because I was feeling peckish, I sliced up some potato and made chips. I'd run out of creme fraiche, so I bought some cheap Woolworths sour cream (don't do this - it doesnt even come close to creme fraiche!), and added some golden trout roe, then overkilled it with gold foil! Always gotta send off the old year with excess :)Yay for knife skills!Isn't it so pretty?I also made some more sea salt and fennel crackers. These ones actually didn't turn out half as good as the last attempt at all! For some reason the fennel flavour wasn't as prominent. I'd also changed the recipe and the texture just wasn't right and it was too buttery. But that's learning for you; it makes me want to experiment more to find out how to consistently make these tasty!Garlic, honey and mustard duck maryland with porcini rice. The rice here is a couple of days old which is why it didn't stick together, but hey, it's not all just for photos - this is the reality of cooking for one. I plan out photogenic dishes when I can, but what people usually don't see is the "normal" stuff where leftovers are used. A good tip for this is saving the duck fat, because it makes the rice so tasty when it's all mixed in!!And final picture is how I usually prepare meals. Work meals are generally one pot wonders now (being time poor made me super efficient in 2018 and I bet it saved me money! I just can't see those savings cause I used them elsewhere!) and look like one big heap of stuff.I wonder what I'll do this year since I don't expect to have a lot of money left at the end...YAY EXCITING 2019 AHEAD

Yo, does Reine even cook anymore?

Why hello 2017, and yes, I certainly do! It's mainly one pot wonders since my time demands more compression than ever before.So since I have a bit of time to travel for ingredients, here's some Christmas and New Year fare. Tasmanian oysters, cooked Exmouth tiger prawns, salmon sashimi, Yarra Valley hand milked salon caviar. That caviar was expensive but so worth it! Not as expensive as blue scampi caviar though...Jamon, eggs and caviar on a toasted baguette. I had to use up all that caviar somehow, right? Eggs and caviar works, eggs and jamon works, so yeah, the whole thing works!Honey mustard roast duck with Reine's house salad v.D20.16: purple cauliflower, purple broccolini, radish, corn, rocket, carrots. Because there were no rainbow carrots or fennel anywhere.And some glorious caprese salad (with burrata, I love spoiling myself).YAY FOOD

(Early) Christmas Roast Duck

Several weeks I signed up to a local farmer's duck mailing list - they had plenty of chickens, but were waiting for the ducks to grow up and had limited supply, so they said I could put my email address down to express interest for a duck. I really had no plans to fork out $$$ for a lovingly hand raised duck, but it turns out their ducks were cheaper than their lovingly hand raised chickens! So I said yes to one when I found that my inbox contained this wonderful news, and picked one up - an added bonus being that this one still had its head attached, how cute! I just wish it also had its feet... oh well.I was a little disappointed that it came frozen instead of fresh, however, that turned out to be a good thing since I didn't plan to cook it till the week after. I had spent the next 5 days agonising on how to prepare this delicious being - halved, and cooked two ways? Lightly seasoned and just roasted? But then I remembered one of my favourite restaurant brands had a gorgeous roast duck dish - and I decided to take a chance and make my own version. For the first time in a long time, I've also managed to take progress pictures to be able to document this pretty feat of kitchening!It all started with a duck. A very happy duck!This guy was then salted and set aside for a few hours.I made a wild rice stuffing in the meantime (I had to use up my rice somehow) - a mixture of wild rice, brown long rice and red rice. Cooked the rice with some Italian herb mix first, let it cool, then chopped up some pancetta and cherries and mixed it all up. For some reason the flavour of the cherries got lost in this dish - I wanted it to add sourness and sweetness, but it didn't quite get there. I wouldn't have used more though, since I didn't want sweetness to overpower the mixture.Next up, honey mustard glaze! After consulting the good old internet, I decided to completely ignore most of what I found and made this up as I went. Honey, dijon mustard, wholegrain mustard and rendered bacon fat (yessss!) went into this.Once it was all ready, into the oven it went! I was also super forgetful and didn't end up buying kitchen twine, but managed to improvise leg-tying with some strips of foil.  For those who are also super attentive - yes, a duck neck doesn't bend like that. There's a toothpick holding its head into that position!I felt very lucky to have obtained a herb haul from the markets! Rosemary, sage, thyme. With flowers too! They smelled so good!The still happy duck :)And the plate up and photoshoot. I also baked some kipfler potatoes in the residual fat, but it turns out mixing in thin slices of pink beetroot wasn't a good idea as their colour got lost. Should roast them separately next time.And the angled shot!The end result? Was very happy with my efforts, though the oven wasn't very great at being consistent, so while the breast was cooked, the marylands weren't as done as I would have liked them to be. I calculated it at my chicken cooking times; 40mins per kilo, and then added time for the fact that this was quite dense and had stuffing in it (though the stuffing was already cooked, and I knew it wouldn't overcook, yay for wild rice). I did have a problem with the glaze and bird beak/wings starting to burn due to the uneven heating of the oven (I never exceeded 180 degrees), but due to my limited time, I couldn't roast this the way I had originally planned (3+ hours cook time at a lower temp).Nevertheless, it was tasty, the glaze was fantastic, and the stuffing tasted good too! Very happy with my efforts!DUCK DUCK GOOSE?!