Windows video (small)
mp4 video (small)
* Go to the recipe for Kung Pao Chicken
One of the dishes we returned to time and again when we were visiting our friend Cristy in Beijing a few years ago was the popular Gong Bao Ji Ding or Kung Pao Chicken (also called Kung Po or Gung Po chicken). Traditional Gong Bao Ji Ding is a spicy Sichuan dish, the westernised version of which is often very different from the authentic Sichuanese version. I’m sure there are many variations of the dish within China, as well. But it’s not usual to add other vegetables like onions, peppers (capsicum) or cashews (or even pineapple?!).
I like to call it Gong Bao Ji Ding, because it has such a lovely ring to it, and apologies to Mandarin speakers the world over for my terrible pronunciation. Perhaps, as I’m erring towards attempting to cook an authentic version of the dish, I should also be trying to pronounce it correctly. But the truth is, I simply don’t know how.
There are very few main ingredients in Gong Bao Ji Ding – just chicken, peanuts and spring onions (green onions), really. But, as with many east Asian dishes, the complexity is in the many flavourings. Continue reading ‘How to make Kung Pao Chicken’
Published on
November 26, 2010 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, English traditional, Favourites, Indian, Pasta, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
Windows video (small)
mp4 video (small)
Go to the recipe for Pasta with white truffle
Go to the recipe for Eggs in cocotte with white truffle
On “schoolnights”, when everything happens at helter-skelter pace, it’s always a rush to get home from work, throw a meal together and do the day’s housekeeping before crashing into bed. If I’m lucky Waz has been on an early shift and we can share the evening duties.
So on the weekends we really like to give a lot more time and attention to creating lovely meals that we can enjoy eating at a slower pace.
I thoroughly respect the ideology of the Slow Food Movement – begun in 1986 to celebrate and enjoy local and regional cuisines. So when time permits I love to create meals that embody the Slow Food philosophy of creating the simplest of dishes, with the highest quality ingredients.
Chef Michelle and I recently treated ourselves with a whirlwind weekend trip to the centre of the white truffle universe – the Alba truffle festival in Piemonte near Turin, Italy. We ate a fantastic truffle meal at a Slow Food restaurant with some luscious local Barolo wine. We couldn’t believe our luck the following day when, while roaming the Alba hills, we ran into a local truffle hunter who sold us some white truffles that his little dog had just dug out of the ground. Continue reading ‘How to cook with truffles’
Windows video (small)
mp4 video (small)
Go to the recipe for Christmas duck
Let’s talk turkey. Actually let’s talk about something else this Christmas. Let’s talk turkey alternatives.
This is a first for Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve never done a Christmas episode before. So we thought we’d focus on two of the basic elements you want on your table: crispy roast potatoes and a lovely bird.
But instead of turkey, we’ve chosen duck. Continue reading ‘How to roast a duck, the slow and tender way’
Windows video (small)
mp4 video (small)
Go to the recipe for crème caramel
If you want a dessert that combines simplicity and wow factor, this has got to be it – crème caramel or flan, either vanilla or au café (the latter, “with coffee”, tends to be preferred in France).
Sure you’ve got to make caramel and custard. But neither could be easier. While a careful eye is needed to get the caramel just right, if you cut and run a bit early it will probably just mean that it’s a lighter colour.
And the custard is not your fraught stove-hovering kind, where you’ve got to heat and whisk over the burner for ages while engaging in some minor bacteriological warfare until the consistency and temperature hit their alchemy point. Nope, as far as custard goes this is really a straightforward heat-and-mix job. Continue reading ‘Crème caramel: from one flan to another’
Windows video (small)
mp4 video (small)
Go to the recipe (duck breasts)
Go to the recipe (whole duck)
When I found whole duck on sale at our local supermarket, I got very excited. And I remembered that we had an episode up our sleeve not yet launched on the wider Crash Test Kitchen viewing public.
Friends and family were coming over for dinner this week and I had planned to do a simple roast chicken – but I had never cooked a whole duck before, and I want to have one next Christmas. So this would be the trial run.
It might be a tad retro, but duck a l’orange remains synonymous with birds that swim. A while back we did a show for the Word of Mouth blog that involved duck breasts and a recipe by Stefan Reynaud. Recipe-wise, what I’ll detail here is how we did the breasts-only version shown in the video, and how I handled the whole bird – a Gressingham duck in our case. Continue reading ‘Duck a l’orange’
Windows video
mp4 video
Autumn is game season, and in years past I’ve indulged in wild meaty delights such as pheasant and woodcock (I think it was). I’ve fantasised about getting out in the woods with my wellies and peacoat, dogs yapping along the muddy tracks while I take a few shots at the woodland foul as the beaters scare them out of the brush. But I never really thought it would happen.
And it didn’t, exactly. But this did: our friend Richard was lucky enough to be taken on a game shoot recently and, lucky for us, his kitchen was being refurbished at the time, so we ended up with two lovely, bright-eyed fresh partridges trussed up in a plastic bag to do with what we would.
Continue reading ‘Partridges with bread sauce’
Published on
April 21, 2008 in
Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Sauces, Soup and Video recipes.
Tags: chicken stock, cooking, crash test kitchen, crock pot, fish stock, food, lenny, recipe, slow cooker, waz.
Windows video
mp4 video
Making stock is easy enough – bones, vegetables, herbs, seasoning, then simmer simmer simmer. For a long, long time. And therein lies the problem – can you afford to be housebound for eight hours or so while you wait for all that boney, marrowy, veggie goodness to leach out?
We’ve heard some people talk about making stock in a pressure cooker. You can cut the cooking time down to an hour and a half, maybe less, which should fit in nicely with your TV watching. But do you have a pressure cooker? No, neither do we. But we do have a slow cooker, or crock pot, as featured in our last episode. In this latest instalment of our Adventures in Slow Cooking we find another way to put it to good use. Continue reading ‘Stock while-u-don’t-wait’
Windows video
QuickTime video
You’ve had eggs benedict – but what about eggs benedict on a fresh, home-made muffin with handcrafted hollandaise sauce? And what if your hollandaise “splits” in the middle of the cooking process? Can it be retrieved, or should you bin it and start again?
These and other questions answered in this marathon episode.
Strictly speaking, eggs benny is made with ham, but in our experience smoked salmon has become synonymous with the dish. Continue reading ‘Project Benedict’
Windows video
QuickTime video
Waz and I LOVE dumplings. Pretty much wherever we travel, we try to experience the local yum cha – or dim sum as it’s called throughout much of the world. So we often find ourselves traipsing through Chinatown in various far-flung cities sampling the lovely little morsels in their steaming wooden baskets that make up the dim sum experience.
London has a surprisingly small Chinatown, and, sad to say, we’ve had some very dodgy yum cha on Gerrard Street, which is this Chinatown’s main drag. I would say the variety and quality of dishes is better in such establishments as China House and King of Kings in Brisneyland (that’s Brisbane in Queensland for you non-locals). Even good old Edmonton in Canada had some very fine dim sum establishments. Continue reading ‘Your momo says …’
Windows video
QuickTime video
People of the Year! Yep, that’s us in Time magazine’s special issue, which awarded the Person of the Year title to “You”, meaning independent content creators like us who post video, audio, photos and what-not to the web.
It all started when Time contacted us a few weeks ago for an interview. They hinted that a photo might be needed, but when we left for our Christmas holidays in Australia and they had not been back in touch we assumed the photo call wasn’t going ahead. When we touched down in Brisbane we turned on our mobile phone and there was a frantic message from Time in Sydney saying “Where are you? We need a photo!” We arranged to meet the photographer, Paul Blackmore, on the Gold Coast and did one shoot in our friend Angie’s kitchen, and another around at her mum’s place. Continue reading ‘Perfect Steak … in Time for Christmas’
Windows video
QuickTime video
This episode our London-based mate Phil shows us how to make real French fries – so real, in fact, they’re actually Belgian. And his wife Michelle, a genuine chef, chips in (pun for Anglo-Anzac readers) with a tasty and simple egg mayonnaise, plus the mussels that go into a traditional Belgian “moules and frites” feast.
Phil and Michelle know their way around Belgium and its cuisine. Phil is a particular specialist at locating obscure monasteries that run breweries on the side, where the monks only sell their beer to people who show up at the door, and only in bulk.
GET CRASH TEST KITCHEN IN iTUNES.
The secret to the Belgian “frite”, Phil insists, is the twice-cooked sweating method. You give them a blast in the hot oil, let them sit for half an hour, then fry them again. Continue reading ‘Real Belgian fries, with mussels and mayo’
QuickTime video
It seems Lenny has a latent sweet tooth. In the past she was not really one for desserts, but more and more she’s turning out cakes and confections. This simple chocolate sauce based on just four ingredients has become one of her staples.
Our mate Chef Michelle gave us the recipe, handed down from her mum. You combine milk, sugar, cocoa and butter over heat, and whisk gently until it bubbles itself into a velvety and perilously rich topping. Tip it straight over ice cream and wolf down.
GET CRASH TEST KITCHEN IN iTUNES.
Crash Test Kitchen is all about improvisation, so we slapped together a cherry and brandy maceration to create what Michelle dubbed “black forest chocolate delight”. Actually, she came up with “black forest” bit and I embellished it. Continue reading ‘Revealing our (chocolate) sauce’
Published on
March 8, 2006 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Favourites, French traditional, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
We all want one of those chef’s blowtorches, don’t we? You know, the ones that you can use to blacken a capsicum (sorry, a pepper), blister a tomato … or make creme brulee!
I’ve had a serious addiction to this oh-so-unhealthy French dessert for years now – probably since I saw the movie Amelie, with that pixie-faced leading lady who rates “cracking creme brulee with a spoon” as one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Most restaurants have it on the menu, and I’ve eaten all sorts of variations – fruit flavoured and the like – in different parts of the world. Continue reading ‘How to make cracking creme brulee’
Rhubarb. To me it’s always been more a synonym for nonsense or babble, or a gap-filling nothing vegetable in the garden, than the deliciously tart and easily prepared treat it turns out to be.
We went to the Borough Markets with a chef friend on Saturday and no doubt the rhubarb we bought is a super-organic non-GM wind-powered dolphin-friendly variety.
You can spend hours at the Borough and we really should get some footage down there for a future episode. I’m sure I can overcome my fear of being clocked by a falling 25kg wheel of gourmet cheese. Continue reading ‘Rhubarb’s your uncle’
With epicurean delights like maple-smoked sturgeon and salmon, home-made apple cider and excellent local wines on offer, why wouldn’t a quartet of wandering gourmand-wannabes stop by Ile d’Orleans in Quebec?
After a week on the road we picked up our old friends Cristy and Robert (“Speedy” to his mates) in Ontario and whisked them away to the heady delights of French-speaking Canada – cosmopolitan Montreal first, then Quebec City with its old-world charms. Ile d’Orleans hides in the St Lawrence River not far from the capital and is a little rural haven with much to offer a travelling palate.
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO
Excellent local ingredients also made this a perfect stopover for our next “Canadian Safari” episode of CTK. Continue reading ‘How To Eat An Island’
Well, we’ve moved out of our apartment, left Edmonton, and now we’re “homeowners”. That “home” being Gus the Bus, our mobile Crash Test Kitchen, which we’re driving across Canada on the trip of a lifetime.
We had to move out of the flat a week before we left town (we decided to stay for the Edmonton Folk Festival) and our friends Ian, Jen and their little boy Noah kindly put us up in their basement. So as a thank-you I made them my famous crepes, and Lenny whipped up a delicious blueberry sauce.
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO
Len came up with a simple recipe on the spot, and you only have to watch Noah in the video to see how much he enjoyed it! Continue reading ‘Boy meets blueberry’
We’ve decided to reprise a couple of our classic episodes – mostly for our iTunes audience, and others who find it easier to view our new MPEG4/QuickTime formats.
Here’s the first episode we posted, known amongst our small but dedicated fan base as “the one with the orange”.
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO
What we put together here is home-made gnocchi with a very simple, classic pesto. Hope it gets your juices flowin’! Continue reading ‘We Did It All For The Gnocchi – Again’
When Cristy came to visit from Australia (via Ontario) she brought a packet of earthy, wholesome “wild rice” grown in Manitoba. Technically it isn’t rice at all, but the seed of some kind of water plant.
WATCH THE VIDEO
A pilaf seemed like the right thing to make, so we came up with this recipe using ingredients that were pretty much straight out of the earth: fresh asparagus, fried and chopped; crimini, or brown, mushrooms, quartered and browned; lovely vine-ripened tomatoes, roasted; shiitake mushrooms sliced and cooked in a soy-based sweet and sour jus; and roasted sweet potato, cubed. Continue reading ‘Earth to Pilaf! Earth to Pilaf!’
Our fondest memory of this dish is when we made it for our good friend Georgie’s “birthday week” party a couple of years ago. Much wine was drunk and much delicious, tender chicken saltimbocca was eaten.
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO
The chicken breasts are sliced in half (horizontally – ah, maybe you’d better watch the vid) and pummelled mercilessly, rendering them more tender than an ardent lover’s first kiss. (Too much attempted poeticism, Waz?) Continue reading ‘Beating the breast’
Published on
April 18, 2005 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
Our guest for this instalment of Crash Test Kitchen is our old mate Dave.
Now Dave is a bit of a dark horse, it seems, when it comes to matters of the kitchen. Just recently, after all our years of knowing the lad, he declared that he knew how to make a cheesecake.
And not just your fridge-set cheesecake, mind you – the full-blown baked variety. So Lenny and I found this recipe on the internet, supplied the ingredients and set Dave to work. Continue reading ‘Dave makes a cheesecake’
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (Windows Media, high quality, 6 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (1.6 MB)
Chicken breasts, simmered in soy and sake (thats “sak-eh”, i.e. rice wine). It’s a fast, flavoursome and DEAD SIMPLE dish we found in Donna Hay Modern Classics.
Now some people say a lot of Donna’s stuff is style over substance and her exquisitely photographed books are just an excuse for “food porn” (who says it? Okay, wesays it!). But this recipe is a gem. Just a handful of ingredients and none of them terribly esoteric (c’mon, star anise and sake aren’t THAT hard to find!). Continue reading ‘Soy for the “sake” of it’
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (Windows Media, high quality, 6.3 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (1.6 MB)
Welcome! We’re Len and Waz, a couple of foodies who are not afraid to try something new, different and potentially disastrous in our sparsely equipped kitchen.
What you’ll find here are clips of two normal people attempting new recipes we’ve never tested, as well as some of our old favourites that we’ve tweaked and refined. And it’s all for real. Things go wrong, stuff tastes like crap and, potentially, people get hurt. And we’re not afraid to show it! Continue reading ‘We did it all for the gnocchi!’
How to cook with truffles
Let the jelly roll: Swiss roll recipe from Waz’s Nana
How to roast a duck, the slow and tender way
Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast
No-fuss fish pie
Classic bolognese
Portuguese custard tarts recipe (pasteis de nata)
About the soufflé
One chicken, three ways
Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch
Banoffi or Banoffee? Vol. 2
Pulling a rarebit out of the hat
Soy for the “sake” of it
Boy meets blueberry
We did it all for the gnocchi!