Thursday, October 31, 2013

adelaide

We were in Adelaide, Australia this month visiting Ferguson Australia, a premium seafood processor, supplier and retailer.
Their specialty is Australian Rock Lobster and the season has just started.
We also visited the K1 Vineyard in the Adelaide Hills wine region of Mclaren Vale. Below are tastings of their Chardonnay 2012 and Rose 2013.
At the Central Market, we perused the stalls to see what was in season. There were beautiful bunches of butter, red and coral lettuce.
Really vibrant rainbow carrots.
And these not so fresh looking, thick skinned, but actually alright tasting Muscat-like grapes. They must have been leftover or rejects from a wine, table grape or raisin vineyard given how low they were priced.
To round off our trip, we had a lovely lunch experience at Celsius which was opened by a chef who once worked at the famed Noma in Copenhagen. The chef sources local ingredients, uses produce grown on the restaurant's own farm and serves it all with a modern twist. Our starter was a really fresh and pretty salad of Raki cured Kingfish, apple, cucumber and whey. We especially loved the edible floral additions.
For our mains, we decided to try kangaroo (when in Rome...) which was served slightly rare (as it is a very lean meat) and tasted very venison and caribou-like. The kangaroo was paired with turnips (served 3 ways; pickled, ribbon-ed and pureed) and onions (served 2 ways; red wine reduction and powdered form). It was all a delicious melody of complimentary and satisfying flavours.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

seafood of the season

We didn't know that when a case of lemons was ordered this month, we would end up with 96 of them. That's a lot of lemons. Well you know how the saying goes, "When life gives you lemons..."
But in our case rather than making lemonade, we decided to pair with some seafood of the season instead. First up are Alaskan King Crab Legs. They arrive fully cooked and frozen (done on the boat apparently like on Deadliest Catch), so all you have to do is thaw, blanch in hot water to rinse off the excess salt (from the seawater), and serve chilled or warmed via steaming, baking, or grilling. 

The season has just started for Barron Point Oysters too. They're a type of pacific oyster that hail from the pristine waters of Puget Sound in Washington State.
These type of oysters are fairly large and plump. They range in size from 3 to 3 1/2 inches.
Serve raw with a lemon vinaigrette or maybe try Sriracha or wasabi.

Escolar from Hawaii is also available in HK now. It's an oily, tender and meaty white fish that sometimes appears on restaurant menus as Butterfish. If you search for it on the Internet, you'll find many gastro-related warnings about consuming large quantities of this fish because of its oily content.
We've had it several times in the past with no issue, enjoying it especially at Roy's in San Francisco. It's a very flavourful and delicious fish that requires little dressing or saucing. Substitute it with Nobu's Black Cod with Miso recipe or have it simply steamed with ginger, green onions, and topped off with some low sodium soya sauce.
And we've posted about Langoustine or Scampi before, but we just had to write about it again because The Drawing Room served us a really delectable dish with it. The New Zealand langoustine came paired with Italian coco beans, Italian ovary egg mushrooms and Turkish figs. It was a lovely melody of flavours with the carmelized figs adding sweetness and a crunch of sugar, the buttery textured beans contributed the perfect amount of starch, and the mushrooms were a sponge of all combined juices.