The very best gooey, fudge, mud chocolate brownies and recipe!

While busy exploring Twitter this week, I developed an instant obsession with photos of Quay’s 8 texture chocolate cake that adorned Reemski’s profile page (and check out her blog at http://www.tummyrumble.net/). The gooey, soft chocolate layers quickly prompted me to dig out my own chocolate brownie recipe that I had adapted from Nigel Slater’s “Very Good Chocolate Brownies” recipe. Here’s a teaser of the end result.

The ingredients required are:

300g brown caster sugar
250g softened butter
250g of the best chocolate you can get (darker is better and aim for ~70% cocoa solids)
3 large eggs plus the yolk of another egg
100g plain flour (Nigel uses 60g)
60g of good cocoa powder
1tspn baking powder
Optional: Pecan, macadamia or walnuts

The steps involved are simple:
1) Preheat the oven to 180C

2) Line a large baking tin (23cm) with baking paper

3) Cream the sugar and butter with a mixer until white and fluffy

4) Melt 200g of the chocolate and chop the remaining 50g into small pieces or “gravel” put this aside.

5) Lightly beat the egg mixture and introduce to the creamed sugar/butter slowly with the beater running slowly until combined.

6) Pour in the molten chocolate and fold with a spoon. Add in the chopped chocolate bits.

7) Sift in the dry ingredients and fold in with spoon gently as to not knock any air out.

Now pour it gently into the baking tin and bake for about 30-35mins. It is ready when you stick a fork in and it comes out a bit sticky but without any raw batter. It will be soft and solidifies a bit when it cools so don’t panick if they seem squishy.

I enjoy these best warm at the bottom of a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Yum!

What makes a perfect muffin?

What makes a good muffin? To me it needs to be warm, moist and wholesome. If you have tried a fresh baked muffin from Steel Espresso in the mornings you will know exactly what I mean! Not only do the staff get creative with the daily flavours but their muffins are consistently moist with a crisp “muffin-top” that makes a die-hard foodie like myself extremely jealous!

Well, that jealousy and my obsessive curiosity got the better of me and I attempted to re-create the perfect muffin at home (although it wasn’t perfect – more on this later).

The recipe I used is Kim’s Moist Muffins from Best Recipes (yes it was a risk).

Ingredients
220g self-raising flour (I don’t have scaled so used 1 7/8 cups)
½ cup veg oil
¾ cup milk
½ to ¾ cup caster sugar (depends on your flavour i.e. sweeter flavours will require less sugar)
1 egg lightly beaten
1 tspn vanilla extract
150g of flavour of choice. Common picks are blueberry, white choc & raspberry, choc chip, pinapple & passionfruit pulp or a carrot one which I made using grated carrot, 2tspn cinnamon, 2tspn nutmeg, sultanas, walnuts and shredded coconut.

Method
Preheat oven @ 180C
Mix the dry and wet ingredients in two separate bowls.
Add the wet ingredients into a well in the dry ingredients.
Add the flavours
Mix but don’t overmix! Mixing wet ingredients with flour causes the gluten strands to form and overmixing will give you a very tough muffin. Mix it in big whirls until the flour just disappears and don’t be scared of lumps.

Bake for 15-20mins until lightly browned

The result:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Well the photo certainly looks great but how did it taste? Unfortunately it wasn’t quite sweet enough (I used 2/3 cup – will go for the full ¾ cup next time) and texturally it didn’t live up to my Steel Espresso muffin benchmark (slightly drier and didn’t have that springy, fleshy cake like texture).

So it’s back to the drawing boards for me. If you have a great muffin recipe please, please share it with me!

Catalonia satisfies but lacks that something special

Tapas seems to be the new Thai in Sydney and we are not complaining! I can think of nothing more enjoyable than trying a variety of small plate “tempters” with a few friends and ploughing through a few bottles of Spanish wine (yes the Ramon Bilbao Crianza Tempranillo is fantastic!)

This is exactly what we did on Saturday night at Catalonia in Kirribilli (http://www.catalonia.com.au/). We were seated downstairs and it was oddly quiet for a Saturday night (a slight cause for concern but it was a very wet, stormy evening). We were far too adventurous to be limited by the set menu so we ordered the following from the selection of ~20 dishes on offer with my thoughts on each.

Zucchini flowers with goats cheese mousse and honey (Texturally satisfying and greeted with the strong yet not overpowering flavour of the goats cheese. The honey didn’t add much for me)

Patatas bravas (Essentially twice fried potatoes)

Chorizo with beans and saffron potato puree (were good but lacked the special kick that makes a dish truly memorable)

Crisp pork belly with lavender sauce, apples and swisschard (Surprisingly the pork belly was done extremely well. Not overly fatty not salty with a perfectly crisped skin. Thumbs up here)

Smoked duck, brussel sprouts, turnips and truffle sauce (I am a big fan of smoked anything however this duck would be more accurately described as cured as it didn’t retain much of the smokey flavour that I’ve come to love. All-in-all it was nice, with the soft textures of the duck working well with the crunch of brussel sprouts and turnips but I would of liked a bit more “smoke”)

Scallops with jerusalem artichoke, medjools date, spinach and curried ’amargo y dulce’ (The scallops were juicy, plump and sweet with a well developed crust – cooked exactly how I’d expect)

Prawns with ajo blanco, sobrassada and ‘rossejat’ catalan fried pasta (These prawns had great flavour and the fried pasta really leant an amazing crispy dimension to the overall dish. Another dish to get my thumbs up)

Pimentón braised lamb, panisse, parsley and olives (I can’t actually remember what this tasted like which is never a good sign.)

We ended the night with some hot churros served with melted chocolate and some coffee.

Overall we had an enjoyable evening at Catalonia however I cannot help but compare it to Bodega in Surry Hills (by far our favourite tapas restaurant in Sydney) and give Catalonia a score of 12/20.

Table for 20: a remarkable concept and source of inspiration

It all started with my girlfriend who overheard the complaint of one friend to another - A restaurant in Surry Hills, near impossible to get into. We were curious.

It is described as neighbourhood dining. A dinner shared amongst friends and strangers lucky enough to get a reservation (which is only available by SMS). The concept is unlike anything else we had encountered in Sydney and instantly conjured imagery of some kind of underground, urban “food club”.

You won’t find this restaurant in your Good Food Guide. In fact you will find very few references to it anywhere outside of its own blog http://www.tablefor20.blogspot.com/. The blog reads: “So here's the deal - We do a 3 course set menu every night, you can BYO or drink mine. The cost is $60 Wed, Thurs, Fri & Sat.”

Table for 20: Our experience.

After months of trying, we were fortunate enough to be given the seats of a last minute cancellation on Friday night. We arrived at about 7pm to allow us some time to have a drink at their bar Sticky and to suss out the wine options. The low-key entrance was via a quiet back alley in Surry Hills - in what felt like the loading entrance to a cool room. A piece of paper was stuck on the door “SMS the following password and wait patiently for entry. Password = Turtle”.

After walking up 3 flights of stairs we were pleasantly surprised by the bar. It was fairly busy and filled with the typical Surry Hills crowd. The wine list was exceptional having been split into Good, Better, Best wines to make selection easier. The barmen were knowledgeable and allowed us to taste a variety of wines before making our selection.

At 8pm we were seated at one of the 2 long tables that sat around 20 people each. With the gentle push from the restaurant staff neighbouring parties introduced themselves to get the conversations flowing. An introduction was then made by the host of Table for 20 “I wouldn’t expect a menu if I came to your house for dinner, so you will find no menu at mine.”

First course was handmade pappardelle pasta with shaved truffle and truffle oil. The aroma of the truffle oil created desire amongst those seated. The flavour was simple yet delicate and the slightly chewy texture of the homemade pappardelle was exquisitely perfect.

The main course was veal backstrap served with baked parsnips and potatoes. This dish again was quite simple and was reminiscent of something my grandmother would make. My only complaint would be that the veal while still pink was overcooked and dry to the taste.

The dessert that came out was simply superb. Caramel and pine nut torte served with homemade honey ice cream. The torte was similar in flavour to a traditional pecan pie (although with pine nuts) and the ice cream brought the perfect balance to the sweetness of the caramel.

All-in-all we had a fun. The food was decent (and for $60 great value), the concept was extremely fresh and fun and the overall social experience is something that I’d recommend.

We gave it a score of 14.5/20