Melbourne Recipe Club

Bulgogi – Korean Barbecue Beef (BBQ)

andrewescott — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:47:07 +0000

One of the entree dishes for the BBQ dinner was this delicious Korean Barbecue Beef, known as Bulgogi. This recipe is another one from Ben O’Donoghue’s book Ben’s Barbecue.

Ingredients

500g rump steak
3 tablespoons (60mL) brown sugar
125mL light soy sauce
4 cloves of garlic
salt
100mL mirin
2 tablespoons (40mL) sesame oil
1 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 bunch spring onions
sunflower or vegetable oil
1 medium carrot
leaves of 1/2 iceberg lettuce
mint leaves
~200g kimchi
other korean sauces that take your fancy

Method

Heat an oven to 200 degrees Celcius.
Trim the beef of fat and slice thinly. Chop the garlic cloves finely. Slice the spring onions finely.
Place sesame seeds on a tray and toast in the oven for about five minutes, until they colour. Then remove to cool.
Combine the sugar, soy sauce, garlic, salt, mirin, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and spring onions to make the marinade, and mix the beef slices through.
Leave in the fridge for at least 2 hours or overnight.
When it comes to cooking the beef, bring the beef mix to room temperature, then heat a BBQ hotplate to medium-hot.
Chop the carrot finely while waiting.
Oil the hotplate, and begin frying the meat. Once they’ve begun warming, then add the carrots, and fry everything together. It takes only a few minutes to cook so it’s tender.
Transfer bulgogi to serving dish and place on table together with lettuce leaves, kimchi, mint leaves, and any other tasty Korean sauces that take your fancy. Before eating, place everything on a lettuce leave and wrap into a delicious parcel.

Serves 6 as entree or 3 as mains.

Barbecued corn with bacon (BBQ)

andrewescott — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:39:29 +0000

This dish at the BBQ dinner is from Ben O’Donoghue’s book Ben’s Barbecue which is full of fantastic recipes.

The corn has a great “opening a present” effect at the table, and is served with chilli and lime butter.

Ingredients (corn)

8 corn cobs, with husks on
8 middle bacon rashes (needs to have the streaky bits)
Cooking twine

Ingredients (butter)

125g unsalted butter
1 red chilli
1 lime
salt

Method

Trim the rind from the bacon, and separate the streaky part of the bacon from the rest. Cut the streaky part in half – these are the parts used below.
Peel back the husks of each piece of corn to expose the kernels, but without detaching the husk. Although, it doesn’t matter if one or two pieces fall off, as long as there’s enough left to still cover the corn back up later. Pull off the fibres, place two pieces of bacon on either side of a piece of corn, and then re-cover the corn. Tie it up at the top securely with the twine.
Corn can be kept in the fridge for a few hours until needed. In the mean-time, make the butter.
Bring the butter to room-temperature.
Chop the chilli, grate the zest off the lime, and mix in with the butter and salt.
Heat the BBQ to medium heat. Arrange the corn cobs on the BBQ with the tied-up end to the end of the grill (this reduces the chance of it catching on fire).
Cook for 30 mins, continually turning and rotating the corn around to allow it to cook slowly and evenly.
Place the corns on a serving dish, and serve with the butter.

Serves 8.

BBQ

andrewescott — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:30:04 +0000

The theme for this month was Barbecue (aka BBQ) and everything had to be cooked on the barbie. Laura hosted, and provided the bbq on the 16th January. Laura, Andrew and Franca provided the dishes and drinks, and we dined outside in the warm summer air.

Entré

Franca made some excellent satay chicken skewers, and also two great cocktails – perfect for a barbecue.

In addition, Andrew provided some do-it-yourself Korean beef bulgogi.

Main

For mains, Laura cooked us finger-licking pork ribs, lamb koftas, and made an asian salad and an eggplant and haloumi salad.

Andrew also barbecued some bacon-wrapped corn on the cob to go with mains.

Dessert

To finish up, Franca impressed us with her dishes of fragrant polenta slices with grilled stone-fruit.

Christmas treats (again)

andrewescott — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:47:02 +0000

It worked so well last year that we decided to do it again. December’s theme was Christmas, and we skipped the meal and went straight for desserts and treats. Kerri hosted the feast on Monday 12th December 2011. Kerri, Pam and Laura provided the fabulous food and drinks:

Food

Laura made fruit cake slice and a strawberries and cream semi-freddo.

Drinks

Kerri made us a Blackberry Breeze and a 24 Carat Christmas (yes, that’s real gold leaf!).

Gyoza (Japanese)

andrewescott — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:21:57 +0000

This recipe is heavily based on one from the book Essentially Japanese Cooking & Cuisine by Hideo Dekura and was served at the Japanese dinner.

Ingredients (for dipping sauce)

75 mL light soy sauce
75 mL rice wine vinegar
small drizzle of sesame oil
small drizzle of chilli oil

Ingredients (for dumplings)

500g Chinese cabbage (less than half typical cabbage)
2 1/2 (12.5 mL) teaspoons salt
500g lean pork mince
2 1/2 tablespoons (37.5 mL) vegetable oil
2 tablespoons (30 mL) sesame oil
5 spring onions (scallions)
5 tablespoons (75 mL) sake
2 1/2 tablespoons light soy sauce
5 teaspoons (25 mL) caster sugar
5cm piece of fresh ginger
pepper
60 gow gee wrappers (they need to be round)
vegetable oil for frying
water for steaming

Method

Combine all ingredients for dipping sauce and set aside. The chilli oil is optional, depending on taste. Now to make the dumplings…
Finely chop the cabbage, place in a large bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Mix well and set aside for the cabbage to wilt a little.
In another bowl, combine the pork mince and the oils, mixing well.
Chop the spring onion stems finely, grate the ginger, and set both aside.
When the cabbage is wilted, place in a strainer and press to remove as much of the water as you can. If there is too much liquid in the mix, it will be a bit runny later.
Add the cabbage to the pork mince, and mix in with the spring onions, sake, soy sauce, sugar, half of the ginger, squeeze the juice in from the other half of the ginger (discarding the pulp), and pepper.
Make the individual gyoza dumplings by placing a wrapper in the palm of one hand, spooning in about a tablespoon of mixture into the middle, using a finger dipped in a glass of water to lightly wet half of the circumference of the wrapper, fold in half around the mixture, place onto a flat surface with the edge up, then pleat along the edge to seal. Or you can see some good instructions on another site. If you use too much mixture or too much water, it will be difficult to seal when you fold in half.
I kept my dumplings in the fridge over-night, but the wrappers went a little soft and sticky. I understand that they can be freezed well, though.
To cook, the dumplings need to be fried and then steamed. Traditionally this is done in the same frypan, but I almost blew up the kitchen doing it this way initially. A safer way (that also is a bit faster if you’re making a lot of gyoza, as in this case) is to use a frypan to fry and then transfer to a separate steamer (eg. a bamboo steamer sitting on a wok with about 1/2 cup of water boiling in it). When frying, use a small amount of oil and flip the dumplings once to ensure colour on two sides. Then the dumplings should be steamed for another minute or two until fully cooked.
Serve hot, as batches come out of the steamer, with the dipping sauce.

Serves 8 (making 60 dumplings).

Japanese

andrewescott — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:31:44 +0000

This month was dedicated to Japanese food, and on Monday 7th November, Andrew hosted the dinner.

Entré

Andrew cooked a huge batch of gyoza dumplings for entree.

Main

For main course, Jacinta served us teriyaki chicken and potato korokke.

Dessert

The final course was Franca’s trio of Japanese icecream – green tea, red bean and black sesame, plus a platter of sliced Fuji apple with rice wine syrup.

Semolina Dumplings in Chicken Broth (Forgotten Ingredient)

kerribatch — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 03:16:14 +0000

Comfort food at its best! Simple but tasty. Ideal for winter or for someone who’s feeling under the weather. Makes enough dumplings for between 8 and 12 soup servings, depending on how many dumplings you want in each serve. I served it with 4 dumplings each but 3 would have been fine, too. The dumpling recipe is a mixture of several I found on the internet.

Make the stock a day ahead (ideally – I made it on the day but only just got it finished in time). Start making the dumplings about 10 minutes before serving time.

Broth

Use a good chicken stock recipe to make at least 4 litres of stock. I used a variation of Poh’s recipe. I left out the mushrooms because I forgot to buy them, used a whole chicken plus 6 extra wings because I was too lazy to go to the butcher to get carcasses, forgot to put peppercorns in, and added rosemary to the herbs. I used a huge stock pot and probably had 6 litres of liquid before reducing it.

After removing as much of the fat from the surface as possible and straining the finished liquid through a very fine sieve or cloth (cheesecloth or several layers of muslin), return to stove and reduce by 1/3. Season to taste – I added quite a bit of salt to mine, even though I rarely use it, so make sure you taste it! For a really clear broth, you can clarify the stock (but this will add several hours of preparation time so I didn’t do this. I want to try it out sometime, though!)

Ingredients (for dumplings)

330ml milk
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup semolina
2 tbsp Parmesan cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 carrot, peeled, cut into short, fat matchsticks
1 parsnip, peeled, cut the same as the carrot
2 lemons, cut into wedges

Method

Bring the milk, butter, nutmeg and salt to boil over a moderate heat. Add the semolina and stir until the semolina forms a ball and starts to come away from the sides of the saucepan (almost immediately). Transfer to a bowl and add the parmesan, herbs and egg and stir firmly until the mixture is smooth. The lumps will smooth out with vigorous stirring.
While you return the broth to a simmer, make balls of dumpling mixture by rolling in your wet hands to about an inch in diameter. Place on non-stick paper and continue until all dumpling mixture has been used.
Carefully put dumplings into simmering broth, along with carrot and parsnip. Cover and allow to cook for approximately 4 to 5 minutes, or until the dumplings float. Turn off the heat and allow to stand for a few minutes, giving the dumplings time to swell a little more.
Serve with lemon wedges – these gave the broth a bit of extra zing which I thought was delicious.

Chocolate fridge cake (Forgotten Ingredient)

andrewescott — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:36:32 +0000

I had a jar of coconut oil left over from when I made Ice Magic last year for the Chocolate dinner. The Forgotten Ingredient dinner was a good chance to use it up.

This recipe is heavily based on this “Mock Chocolate Cheesecake” recipe by Kim. It is uncooked, vegan (dairy-free, egg-free), and gluten-free.

Ingredients (for crust)

1 cup (250mL) macadamias (~140g)
1 cup blanched, sliced or similar almonds
½ cup dates
¼ cup shredded coconut
1 tablespoon (15mL) cocoa powder

Ingredients (for filling)

3 cups unsalted, roasted cashews (~450g)
¾ cup orange juice
¾ cup honey
¼ cup golden syrup (that’s what I used, but you could probably use more honey)
¾ cup refined coconut oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¼ cup cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Method

Soak cashews in a bowl of water for 1hr, then drain.
Grease a 23cm diameter spring-form cake tin with coconut oil, and set aside.
Place all crust ingredients in a food processor, and process until crumbly.
Press crust firmly into the cake tin.
Place all filling ingredients in a food processor, good blender or in a jug using a hand blender, and blend until smooth. It’s okay if it still seems a bit gritty – this will sort itself out later.
Poor filling into tin, cover with an inverted plate and place in the fridge until ready to serve. It should take a couple of hours to set.
To serve, I grated chocolate over the top to hide water marks and served with raspberries and double cream. Although, it’s no longer vegan / dairy-free, it tasted good.

Serves ~12.

Forgotten Ingredient

andrewescott — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:35:13 +0000

The theme for this month was Forgotten Ingredient – dishes had to use an ingredient from the pantry that the cook had forgotten they had. Pam hosted this dinner on Monday 3rd October.

Entré

Kerri provided a very comforting entree in the form of semolina dumplings in chicken broth (semolina was the forgotten ingredient).

Main

For mains, Pam served up nigella seed moroccan chicken with moroccan carrots (nigella seeds were the forgotten ingredient).

Dessert

To finish up, Andrew delivered a chocolate fridge cake (coconut oil was the forgotten ingredient).

Blackberry and Lemon Trifle (Black)

kerribatch — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:01:43 +0000

At the Black dinner, the recipe I used for the blackberry trifle is here.

Extra info which would be useful if anyone tries to make this:

I used frozen blackberries & they seemed to work fine.
I used crème de mûre (blackberry liqueur) as I had made a large batch of this a couple of years ago & still had some left, but I imagine it would be very difficult to buy it locally.
Gelatin leaves turned out to be a HUGE research topic for me, as there was so much conflicting or misleading information on the internet. After it all, I’m PRETTY sure that, being British, this recipe is referring to gold strength gelatin leaves, as they seem to be the British standard. I used titanium strength gelatin leaves, which are stronger, so I used 1 ½ sheets for the jelly & 1 ½ sheets for the custard. (I got them from the gourmet food/cooking shop on Queen’s Pde, Clifton Hill)