FoodieChat

Celebrity Masterchef is on Wednesdays, Channel 10 at 7:30pm
Top Chef Las Vegas is on Mondays, Arena TV at 8:30pm. I can’t wait!!!!

Last year for my birthday I was given (upon request ) the Ripailles French cookbook. It’s more of an anthology, filled with beautiful recipes divided into chapters such as meat, eggs, sugar, and with every classic French dish that we Aussies would know, and more.  So I tested one of my favourites. I’m not sure if it’s French, but it was yum! The lemon meringue pie.  It said it would take 30 minutes prep, and 30 minutes cooking, and I took around 30 minutes more than that.  3 processes.  The first – the pie crust. It’s richer due to the addition of almond meal. I just ground my own in the food processor.  However, I found that it needed extra water and an extra egg yolk as my mix was too dry and crumbly to mix.  Key trick is to chill the pie crust in the freezer first, and prick it with a fork too.

At the time it was chilling, I made the lemon curd. It didn’t make any difference to substitute half the butter for margarine. but you do need the full 3 lemons. It seems like alot but it’s not.  I had to add over 4 times the amount of cornflour though, to thicken it to spreading consistency.

As I chilled the curd in the fridge and let the tart case cool, I whipped the egg whites. I used a round tip nozzle to pipe it onto the pie.

So here’s the final product out of the oven.

So it’s a bit uneven coloured because of my grill. I’m sure if I had a blowtorch though it would have been fine.

Next time I might add more butter into the pastry as it was a bit hard, but overall, quite okay for a first attempt.  but there’s hundreds more recipes to try as well from that book! It’s an essential for your technical cooking collection as well as just to turn through with a cup of chocolat chaud!

I’m intrigued – what is claypot rice?  Well I sort of knew, but how could you have a whole restaurant based solely around this one style of cooking?   Well, the queues outside the shop indicated that it is possible, and highly desirable!  First Taste is a chain of small family very casual restaurants that serves rice topped with all sorts of different meats and toppings that is baked in a claypot as its name implies. The rice forms a delicious crust on the pot, much in the same way that paella has one, and is brought to your table on your personal wooden board.  First Taste is also a specialist in soups.  For $4.50, try the wintermelon and pork soup to whet your appetite, as the rice takes 20 minutes to cook. 

Soups range up to $38 per serve that includes shark fins, fish maw and other specialties that may be new to the Australian palate.  But we’re here for the rice!  Delicious black pepper beef tenderloin rice is so tender, just the right amount of spice, and very saucy to mix through your rice.  At $7.50, you’d think yo ureally are eating in China!

Very popular is the chicken and mushroom rice ($7.80), it’s chicken thighs steamed with mushrooms and also chinese sausage.

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