Zumbo. Zumbo. Zumbo.

It’s a name that I kept hearing within food blogging circles. So much so that it makes me wonder what all the fuss is about. For those that have experienced Zumbo, there was nothing but fanboy/fangirl-like fanaticism. For those that had not, it was high on their list of things to experience. For me, I never got the whole Zumbophilia that had swept Twitter and the Sydney food blogs. Well, that is until recently.

“What the hell is this Zumbo that he keeps referring to”?

Surely, you jest… Read more »

This has to be one of the funniest food related videos I’ve seen in a long time. The Tabbouleh Song by comedian Remy Munasifi is so bad that it comes around full circle and becomes ultra awesome. Love it!

He’s also put together a few other food-related music videos (one even on hommus), which can be found either on his Youtube channel or on his website. Not all of them come around full circle like the Tabbouleh Song but if you have nothing better to do… :)

Anyhow, with that in mind, when I came across this Serious Eats article on kimchee, I’d initially approached it with a fair amount of skepticism.

The recipe for making this version of kimchee involves some ingredients that I would imagine most Koreans would scoff at. For one, Sriracha, a bottle preparation of Thai style chili sauce, is used as the source of the kimchee’s fire. I like Sriracha, I use Sriracha and I even occasionally buy Sriracha. However, to use it for kimchee? Nah, too left of field for my mind.

Then there is also the addition of applesauce. Now, it’s not unheard of for Korean recipes to include fruit pulp but I’ve yet to experience any kimchee worthy of mention that has.

Normally, I would have just dismissed this as an over Westernisation of the recipe to make it more accessible for the average home cook or, at best, the recipe of a Uni student trying to be too clever with their creative use of whatever was lying around to get their kimchee fix. However, the curious side of me wants to see how bad or, oddly enough, how good this version of kimchee can be. Was the single consulted Korean “expert’s” praise of it being “surprisingly tasting pretty good” one made with sincerity or out of politeness?

I’ll be looking to attempt this recipe soon to see whether it’s worthy of the claims made. I’ll also look to provide photos of each relevant stage of the process so you have a better understanding of how to attempt this as home, if that so happens to be your desire.

Watch this space :)

I came across this video on The Feedbag recently, a US site that touts itself as “A Gatronomic Gazzette” (relevant Feedbag artile here).

I found this to be an interesting insight into a chef (Marco Canora) who seems to care about the quality of the goods he serves over maximising the profit per plate. Also, I’ve never seem ramp until now and only heard about it recently. Looks interesting :)

Food bloggers love an excuse to meet up over food, and in this case we had two. Firstly, Billy had gotten his hands on a packet of Miracle Frooties, little tablets that have the property of suppressing sour tastes, rendering any sour food item into something that is seemingly sweet. Also, as chocolatesuze had yet to have any sort of housewarming party for her new pad, this also served as the occasion for an unofficial or pre-housewarming party. Wigs were an entry requirement, adding a further element of interest to the party.

The cast of the Miracle Frootie/pre-housewarming wig party consisted of Billy (A Table for Two), Karen (Citrus and Candy), Yas (Hungry Digital Elf), Richard (Here Comes the Food), Howard (eatshow&tell), Suze (chocolatesuze), Helen (grabyourfork), Shez (One Bite More) and myself.

The South Park inspired avatars (courtesy of SP Studio), though as cute as they may be, are only meant to be a representation of the food bloggers and their respective wigs. In real life, they looked more like this…

Well, sort of…

The packet of the Miracle Frooties. I won’t go into too much details here regarding these tablets, the fruit they’re derived from or the active ingredient. You can find out more by clicking on the hyperlinks.

One thing I will say though is that though the tablets seemingly make sour things taste sweet, what it doesn’t do is change the acidic property of sour foods. This can lead to issues such as mouth ulcers if too many acidic food items are consumed. With that in mind, we started off the party with lunch, to not only sate our hunger but also to act as a buffer for the acidic foods to come.

Helen’s tasty trio of sushi rolls which contained chicken teriyaki, seafood stick & an inside out roll with fish roe.

My contributions to lunch were crispy dumplings, two flavours – prawn ones on the left and scallop ones on the right. These are served with a hoisin based sweet and sour dipping sauce.

As to how you make these little goodies, along with their dipping sauce? Well, that’ll be the subject of another post :)

chocolatesuze’s mother’s amazing chicken curry. This was absolutely fabulous! Rich, flavourful with a wonderful kick to it. I don’t believe there was a single person that didn’t go for seconds of this.

I would so love to know how to make this dish! :)

Another superb dish from the kitchen of chocolatesuze’s mother. A pile of what I presumed to be char siu style Chinese barbecue ribs. Moist. Meaty. Marvelous. Moreish :)

Now, with all the talk of chocolatesuze’s mother, that doesn’t mean to say that chocolatesuze didn’t contribute anything herself. Take these wonderful, pan fried roti. Fluffy on the inside, a little crispy on the outside. You can see and taste all that care and attention that went into making these. A roti worthy of praise, and a perfect pairing for the curry, even if it did come from a packet.

Ok, so they were premade roti that were reheated. Still, they were the best reheated prepackaged roti that I’ve ever had :)

This pumpkin salad with pear, pine nuts, bocconcini and assorted salad greens was also a contribution from chocolatesuze. A nice salad with interesting contrasts in texture.

Shez’s lovely dish of lentil salad. A nice, light tasting dish.

With lunch out of the way, we move on to the main event.

For something that looks like it’d taste somewhat akin to a Vitamin C tablet, it tasted of nothing with somewhat of a chalky, powdery texture to it. It wasn’t all that fun or interesting sucking on the tablet, waiting for it to dissolve in the mouth as instructed on the packet. For me, it felt like a very long 5-10 mins.

Citric acid powder seemed to be arguably one of the best items to have, having the taste and mouth feel of sherbet. This was certainly a favourite of Yas’, as he went back for it multiple times like it was some sort of narcotic. From what I hear, he paid dearly for the experience.

The strawberries were also really nice, sweet and flavourful without any hint of sourness to it. Like some of the best ripe strawberries at the height of their season.

The fruits on the platter are (clockwise from the bottom left):

Ruby Grapefruit – A favourite of some, tasting sweet without any of the usual sour/bitter notes.
Kafir Lime – Generally people disliked the taste of it, likening it to soap.
Lemons – The rival to the citric acid with regards to popularity. Though it retained some degree of sourness, it had an apparent sweetness to it that made it taste more akin to lemonade than lemons.
Pomegranate – Tasted pretty much the same but without the sourness.

Based on research from the Internet, bitter notes were also meant to be affected somewhat by the active ingredient in the Miracle Frooties. This was true to some extent. Bitter melon (pictured) had a grassy vegetative sort of taste to it, which was not generally viewed as pleasant. Tonic water tasted somewhat soda water or a weak lemonade. The bitterness was still there but there was a delayed effect of its detection on the tongue.

Sour confections such as the Warheads, initially tasted sweet. However, once the citric acid coating wore off, there wasn’t much taste to them afterwards.

Other that the ones mentioned above, interesting flavours worth noting (at least for me) are:

Sheaf Stout beer – tasted like carbonated black coffee.
Vinegar – tasted of cheap vodka.
Fromage Blanc – a normally sublime creamy soft cheese didn’t taste of anything, giving it an overall sensation of eating softened chalk or plaster.
Sour cream – the sour edge was taken off it but nothing else changed. It ended up tasting just like cream.
Passionfruit – the most interesting of the tasting selection as there seemed to be a clear gender divide to its perceived taste. The women felt like it tasted like chocolate. The men, more of a syrupy, sweet taste but unlike chocolate.

The effect of the Miracle Frootie tablet wears off in around 30 mins, though some people had the effect going, at least in some form, for close to an hour. With the active ingredient and novelty of the experience wearing off, thoughts went to dessert, as well as the pre-housewarming gift from the group to our wonderfully hospitable hostess, chocolatesuze.

chocolatesuze and her collective pre-housewarming gift from all the attending food bloggers.

For the dessert course, we had about as many dishes as we had for our mains! There were plenty of great desserts to go around.

Above is my contribution of chocolate chantilly, an invention of the molecular gastronomist Hervé This (link to his blog, if you parle français). It is mousse-like in texture but since it’s made of only chocolate and water, the chocolate comes through with more richness and intensity. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get my hands on really good chocolate for this so I used whipped cream from a recently purchased cream whipper to complement the dessert (more on the cream later).

Once again, chocolate chantilly will be the subject of another blog post, though there a plenty of references around if you look for it.

Helen’s coca-cola cupcakes (recipe here). Moist, dense and really nice. Her addition of gummy coca-cola bottles and cola flavoured Wizz-Fizz sherbet to give the sensation of carbonation are a stroke of genius :)

chocolatesuze’s mother’s yummy and moist peach slice.

Pavlova roll with strawberry and passionfruit filling, courtesy of Yas. This pavlova doesn’t have the typical crunchy crust to it, something I’m not particularly fond of at any rate. Imagine making a pavlova with nothing but the light and fluffy marshmallow-like centre and this is your baby. Though it may seem quite large, it’s so light, I could probably go through half of this in one sitting.

A close up shot of the wonderful goodness of this pavlova :)

Here we have a limey tart :)

With all due respect to all other desserts present on the day (including my own), this was by far and away the best dessert of the day and, quite frankly, one of the better desserts I’ve ever had. Karen’s chocolate lime tart. The cakey chocolate casing pairs well with the sublime lime custard filling (pun intended :P). The brulee on the custard adds a nice caramel note to this dessert.

The chocolate lime tart once more *drool*

What Karen’s chocolate lime tart has in taste, Billy’s domo-kun cake has in appearance and creativity. It was almost a shame to have to eat it.

Almost.

As this was Billy’s wonderful creation, we all felt that he should be the one to carve it up. Understandably, there was a moment of hessitation when the cake was being cut for the first time.

It was a nice, dense chocolatey cake. A little on the dry side but nothing a glass of milk, tea or coffee couldn’t solve :)

This was the “more on the cream” I was referring to earier. A little whip dosed out from the cream whipper into Yas’ hand ends up moisterising his mo’ with a little assistance from Billy (top). Yas, a wonderfully generous fellow that he is, returns the favour giving Billy a budget facial – a partial mask that looks somewhat familiar…

As the afternoon rolls on to the evening, the party winds down as we start to gather our things and divide the surplus desserts between us (of which there is plenty!). We leave behind a fabulous hostess, a wonderful party, and new food experiences shared by old friends and new aquaintences alike.

What will be our next excuse to gather over food…? :)