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!!!

Tora Sushi

Over the past few years, I've really only been visiting the same places over again. Same cafes, on rotation.

I decided it was high time I branch out and try a few new things, and so far, my food and coffee discoveries have been great!

Then I noticed Tora Sushi had opened, a place with signage I had noticed while visiting Abacus coffee, but not open yet, until I read about it again in the news a couple of weeks ago. I am fairly certain that this is the first omakase sushi restaurant in Perth (Nobu notwithstanding?), and it feels very much like the omakase boom vibe that Sydney has right now. Which actually made me a little nervous - is omakase so ubiquitous these days, is it even an "experience" to chase anymore?

The price point was also "low" at $150 per person for food. I think these days the cost of an omakase sits roughly at the $250 mark on the east coast for some really high quality and luxurious ingredients. I don't think $150 is bad, but I was curious about how the menu would be constructed based on the price. It was also supposedly booked out for 2 months straight, but in a moment of serendipity I managed to find an empty spot one day while randomly checking their website, so here we go!

I booked at 6PM timeslot, and still carrying some shame from being (unavoidably) late to my Minamishima booking all those years ago (because of a tram breakdown), I made an effort to be slightly early. If I remember correctly, at Minamishima, they track each diner separately so each person starts as soon as they arrive, but at Waku Ghin it may have been a synchronised start. Alas, one of the guests was running super late! The staff were pretty confident we would still be able to complete the meal even though we would be starting 15-20 minutes late.

Here's the first dish - Coffin Bay oyster with kombu and finger lime. During the introduction, the staff explained that for now, they were showcasing a wide range of dishes, and would fine tune them as the seasons changed. That was good, I like getting an idea of a restaurant's culinary range!

Hokkaido scallops with jerusalem artichoke chips! Ah I don't miss the days of attempting to make my own chips! I love the crispness of the chips against the softness of the scallops!

Yes, it's chawan mushi time! I love any restaurant that features a chawan mushi, and this one tasted great! Great texture too. I think it was a clam broth chawan mushi, but what was interesting about it was that inside was a piece of chicken. I was totally used to and expecting prawn, crab, or other type of seafood, so seeing the chicken was unexpected. It still tasted good, but I was starting to see where the $150 price tag comes from!

Before serving the sashimi course, the chef showed the tray of fresh fish fillets to everyone. I didn't take a photo of it and I wondered almost immediately if the chef was expecting me to take a picture, which may have been why he displayed it? I almost felt bad, but then the people next to me did take pictures. Sorry, it's just that I've taken so many photos of sushi and fish that I guess I wanted to try and not be too intrusive. I've even mostly streamlined my camera plus phone snaps to take as little time as possible.

Anyway, this was really yummy! Tuna, kingfish, and goldband snapper. I love white fish where I can actually feel the sinew (am I weird for that?), so the snapper was actually my favourite bit! I love that chew! I also ate the seaweed garnish because it's so hard to get that kind of seaweed!

Here's something interesting - the wasabi, I discovered, was not hot at all! I could pile it on and not get any kind of burn or nose fuzz. I didn't really think much of it, except that I did want some of that burn that never came.

Here we go with some nigiri! They space out the nigiri throughout the meal, which was quite interesting! The selection was small and simple, and definitely from local fish - again, reflective of the price point. Red emperor, and tuna.

The chef made a special mention that this tuna was aged for two days, which was interesting to note! It was definitely much more tender than the sashimi version.

Here I learned more about why the wasabi didn't pack the punch I expected! The nigiri was made without a dab of wasabi under the fish. Instead, the chef asked if I wanted wasabi on top of the fish. Turns out, he himself doesn't like the spiciness from wasabi so he checks in with everyone and adds accordingly!

Look at this cute little teapot! This was a lovely warming soup, and the format here actually resembles what I had at Komeyui! I really love soup "intermissions" though I guess these are actually so good that I shouldn't really call them intermissions. It was a bit awkward to dig out the food inside the teapot so I asked before I did it, but apparently that's the intention!

Wagyu nigiri time! This time with a yuzu kosho topping.

Yakimono time! This was actually unexpected for me - grilled rankin cod with maple miso. When I first saw it, I thought, it must be some kind of miso toothfish dish, cause that's what everyone does. The rankin cod comes in significantly cheaper, but I reckon it was a very good choice, I really enjoyed the texture of the cod, and the sweetness from the maple made it quite unique too! Now I want to try making my own maple miso foods!

Ah yes the big wagyu beef dish! I'm sorry - when I was eating this I was reminiscing about the steak I had at Chaco Bar instead of this. Komeyui's beef dish was also a standout that stopped me from fully appreciating this dish. Nothing on Tora, it's just, I've been extremely spoilt with beef. I was even giggling on the inside at myself because I was the only person who ate the beef first and then moved onto the lotus chips and salad - everyone else left the beef for last. Pyschologically, they valued the beef more so saved it, where as I ate it first? My own mind is fascinating.

The end of a meal usually ends with a tamogoyaki or a temaki, here it's temaki! A great combo of tuna, uni, and ikura!

And of course, dessert. This two toned matcha panna cotta was really cute! And I'm so glad they added mochi balls because I love mochi!

Overall this place satisfies my omakase cravings, so any time I want to eat Japanese art, I have a place now instead of always pining for my next Sydney trip and how to get into Sokyo. It's close, and it's relatively affordable. I am definitely keen to go back and see how the menu changes over the seasons!

Pretending to be a chef: Reserve banquet

The markets yielded a very rare opportunity: Port Lincoln sashimi grade blue fin tuna. It was placed right next to the standard tuna I buy - a yellowfin tuna, and the blue fin was paler, indicating it was fattier. I decided I'd fork out the $80/kg and give it a go, since I had a knife that was keen to cut. There happened to be Port Lincoln sashimi grade kingfish too, so I had an idea forming. There wasn't any black caviar, so instead of choosing red, I went for the Huon Reserve hand milked salmon caviar, just because I could. It resulted in a four course meal!

Curvature: blue fin tuna, kingfish, salmon caviar

Out came the knife, and ahead of me was 2.5 days worth of prep and "cooking" because I am disorganised and untrained. For all my dishes, I made the following elements:

Soy, ginger, garlic, mirin sauceSushi rice seasoning: rice vinegar, mirin, salt, sugarDashi: kombu, timeTamagoyaki: egg, mirin, salt, dashiPandan infusion: pandan, water, timePandan coconut rice pudding: milk, cream, coconut milk, pandan infusionMatcha panna cotta: matcha, gelatin, milk, cream, sugarHoujicha panna cotta: houjicha tea, gelatin, milk, cream, sugarAzuki smash: azuki beans, time, dark agave syrup, saltGreen tea jelly: Iron goddess of mercy/tie guan yin tea, gelatin, time

Coffin Bay oysters

Ok. So. First things first. Eating. I made this as my pre-cooking meal! Six all up, three for the photoshoot. I used some of the caviar, cut up some chives. Easy. Look at the marbling on this tuna! A gorgeous glistening piece of fish waiting to be made into something beautiful.My first attempt at tamagoyaki! It was rather difficult because even though I had high heat, my egg was still sticking and breaking up between layers, even though I was oiling the pan between each layer as well. Yes, I did taste the mixture when it was raw, and even though it was okay at the time, I found it a tad sweet once I was done making it. But I like it sweet, so it wasn't an issue. Plus it offset the saltiness of the caviar very nicely!Here are the rest of my ingredients patiently waiting to be arranged.And here's the plate up! Originally I envisioned this to be a gradient of dark to light fish as a line of cubes, on a rectangular plate. But I was sick of my rectangular plate, so I went for a round plate instead. As I was prepping looking top-down, the curve was about right, but horizontally, it was a disaster! So next time I'll have to keep in mind what it looks like at plate-level too.The leftovers then went into a chirashi! I had originally wanted to plate this up so that it was standing, so that the rice would also be visible, however I couldn't get it to look good, so in a bowl it went! It was also my first time cooking rice to be rice (rather than rice pudding, which I've only cooked twice before) - it was a little undercooked (chalky!) but edible.And now for dessert. I had no idea how to put the flavour of pandan leaf into rice pudding. Considering how disastrous my "horseradish creme fraiche" was, I wasn't sure doing a similar thing was a good idea. But I went for it anyway. Finely chopped pandan, soaked overnight in water, then boiled for a while the next day. The aroma was amazing! And yes, the infusion did work. I could add the pandan water to anything I wanted after getting rid of the solids.The azuki beans went for an overnight soak, before being boiled off. Salt and agave syrup was added to taste, then coarsely mashed.I had no idea how much matcha powder to add, so I was doing it to taste and colour. I don't actually like matcha but I knew that this dish needed the green colour. I batch made some panna cotta as this was a "dessert for breakfast" that had to last me five days and I didn't have that much matcha, so I whipped up a massive batch of houjicha panna cotta instead. I had to let half the matcha panna cotta set before scooping in some azuki smash, before covering it all with more matcha mix. As you can see, this set a bit too far, but it still melded well enough that it came out in one piece.I wanted an aromatic jelly, so I chose tie guan yin because it would stay relatively clear, yet smell wonderful. I actually wanted to make this with agar agar, but I really couldn't be bothered as I would have to weigh that out and then boil it up. It was too much effort, so I stuck with gelatin. And this is the closest I'll get to making a water mochi cake!

Zen Garden

And this was the end result. A super wobbly panna cotta lined with a cloud of pandan rice pudding. I underestimated the size of the glass I put the panna cotta in; I wanted it to me smaller so that it looked like it belonged on the wooden board. It was too large and hadn't actually set properly, so cutting it resulted in a fantastic explosion.

And this is what it looked like on the inside:

Had it set more I would have gotten a clean cut for a photoshoot, but that's essentially how it was all layered up and how I wanted it to look. That pandan coconut rice was unbelievably tasty and was my favourite component, followed by the azuki smash. I also liked my houjicha panna cotta much more than matcha panna cotta.

Overall I was so tired by the end of this that I felt like I hadn't had a weekend. But I'm so glad I made it because I love proving to myself I can cook! I just take a long time doing it!