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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 ‘Duck in for Christmas’
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Go to the recipe for salmon with puy lentils
If you’re good at chopping vegetables, this dish is a doddle. Even if you’re a little bit slower with the knife it’s still worth the effort. We find it an easy way to boost our fish intake, and it’s sophisticated enough to put on a dinner party menu.
Because salmon has quite a strong flavour, it’s good to have something a little bit hearty with it. The bed of puy lentils, diced vegetables and herbs does the job. Continue reading ‘Salmon on a bed of puy lentils’
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Go to the recipe for sausage rolls
This is my Uncle Kev’s sausage roll recipe, and it’s fantastic for parties. Or you can even make a double or triple batch before Christmas, Thanksgiving or local festive holiday and freeze them, then heat them up in the oven for a really quick finger-food for a big group of people. Continue reading ‘Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls’
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Go to the recipe for hot and fast roast chicken
People do fuss over a roast chicken, don’t they? Doing all sorts of things like draping bacon over the fleshiest bits to keep them moist, mucking around poking seasonings under the skin, stuffing all sorts of things inside them to add flavour, even insisting that you have to roast a chicken breast-down in the pan and then flip it over part way through cooking.
In our opinion, if you keep the cooking simple, getting a good result can be reduced to one decision: buying a decent chicken in the first place. There’s been a lot of publicity about chicken welfare lately, with the focus being on battery laying hens and intensively reared, fast-growing meat birds that can hardly stand up by themselves.
In our house we haven’t gone down the full free-range route, but have settled on buying slow-growing birds that are fed better food in more spacious barns endorsed by animal welfare authorities. In the UK the scheme is called RSPCA Freedom Foods and no doubt there are equivalents elsewhere in the world. Continue reading ‘Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast’
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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’
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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’
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Pork belly - it’s the cut of the moment, isn’t it? On the menu everywhere. Very now. And very cheap, if you buy it in the right places (look beyond the supermarkets, which have copped on to its foodie appeal and adjusted the price accordingly).
This is a recipe that we don’t do often enough. And it’s attributed to Chairman Mao himself, who always made sure he was eating well while starving the rest of the nation. Being left to starve and told to survive on revolutionary zeal alone was good enough for the masses, but let’s face it, you couldn’t lead them through the Great Leap Forward on an empty stomach! Continue reading ‘Braised pork belly like Mao used to make’
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While it’s nice to experiment in the kitchen and try exciting and slightly scary things like soufflé and partridge, it’s equally nice to build up a stock of really easy, favourite recipes that you can cook any day of the week. You know, the kind of recipes you don’t even a shopping list for, because the list of ingredients is in your head.
This fish pie recipe is like that for me. It’s fairly quick, easy, tasty and you can substitute different kinds of seafood or vegetables, depending on what you’ve got in the fridge or what’s available at the fishmonger (or, let’s face it, the supermarket). Continue reading ‘No-fuss fish pie’
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We reckon you can’t love Thai food without loving pad thai - the country’s national dish. Your average Thai cook can probably whip this up with a few swishes of the wok and flips of the, umm, wok flipper. But for us at home there are two pitfalls that are easy to, errm, fall into. As you’ll find out in this episode.
First thing is those rice noodles (and don’t ever get taken for a ride in a restaurant - unless these particular noodles are under your nose, you’re not eating pad thai). You usually buy the dried variety in a packet. They need to be soaked in warm water before going into the wok. But soaked for how long? You’ve just come to a trap for young players. Continue reading ‘Pad thai with two tries’
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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.
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Although we haven’t had a brilliant summer here in the UK, and it looks like what we did have is pretty much over for the year, we did manage to bid a sad farewell to the summer by taking a lovely walk in the Kent countryside.
I love the public footpaths here in the UK: there is a network crossing public and private property that anyone can walk along and enjoy what the countryside has to offer. We often take a day-trip down to Kent to wander across the rolling green dales, through the fields, woodlands and orchards, taking in the fresh air.
On this particular sunny Saturday our route took us through numerous apple orchards where crisp, pink apples shone on the trees and the hedges were thick with fat, juicy blackberries.
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Spaghetti bolognese - it’s an old standby, and as such has become one of the most used and abused recipes under creation. Outside of its hometown of Bologna in Italy, bolognese has become a catch-all name for any meat-and-tomato sauce quickly slapped together and served over pasta, which is almost invariably spaghetti.
But start investigating bolognese and you’ll find out some interesting things. In traditional Bolognese cooking, ragu alla bolognese is rarely served with spaghetti (usually it goes with tagliatelle); it contains very little tomato (eschewing the pound can or two of tommies that many people dump into the saucepan); there are no herbs in it (so rack off home with your shaker of dried oregano); and one of the key ingredients is time (not the herb - the stuff in your wristwatch).
Most surprisingly of all - to me, at least - the key to a lovely rich bolognese is a goodly portion of milk.
King of curry Atul Kochhar had his meen molee published in Observer Food Monthly a while back - and we had the chance to crash-test the recipe.
Meen molee is a coconut fish curry, with green chillies providing the kick. Lenny elected to fillet the fish herself, as a chance to show off her flash filleting knife. We kept the wreckage for our slow cooker dabbling and made a decent fish stock. Don’t feel that you’re punking out if you just buy ordinary fillets or get the fishmonger to do it. Continue reading ‘Good golly fish curry’
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I’m not much of a sweet tooth, and unlike Waz I’m not much of a coffee drinker. But when I do indulge in a proper espresso it’s always lovely to complement it with a sweet little morsel. Just like nata - or proper Portuguese custard tarts. These delicacies are made with a puff pastry base and a vanilla egg custard filling with a hint of orange zest.
They are by no means the only custard tart around. Waz and I are also huge fans of Chinese dan ta - those lovely little glossy-topped, flaky-based tarts you get when you have good yum cha (also known as dim sum). Continue reading ‘Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata)’
You can’t beat waking up to the smell of fresh-baked bread. But how to get it without the rising, the knocking down, the second rise, and then the EARLY rise on your own part to stick the dough in the oven?
Yes yes, I’ve heard of bread machines. They seem a great idea, but aren’t they a little soulless? Load everything in the evening and it’s done in the morning - the washing machine school of cookery. Surely the tactile experience - getting your hands messy - is part of the satisfying process of baking your own bread.
From what I’ve seen, people tend to buy bread machines as a fad item, then shelve them to gather dust or ship them off to the charity store within a few months. So I’m not sure they are worth the investment. Continue reading ‘Loaf to admit failure’
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’
I’m pretty anal (can I say that in the international blogosphere?) about my breakfast routine. Rarely do I break it. I have two staples that I alternate daily. The first: two slices of toast, one with grilled cheddar, the other with quality marmalade (or, occasionally, Vegemite, and, it almost goes without saying, butter). The second: porridge cooked with chopped apple, topped with banana, milk and honey (and, occasionally, summer fruits). No sugar. No salt. Always with a pot of weak black tea (Loose. Leaf. Only.), in a proper teacup, with a saucer and a tea strainer.
So when Waz decided to experiment with a slow cooker (crock pot to many of us, though that is really a brand name) that our mates Shaun and Jeanette gave us when they left London for Australia, I was very sceptical when he told me he wanted one of the experiments to feature my tried-and-tested porridge. Continue reading ‘Automatic for the porridge’
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Go to the recipe for baked treacle pudding
We’ve been cooking up a few videos for the Word of Mouth food blog, as we’ve mentioned before. Here’s another one, where we make a gorgeous and failsafe baked treacle pudding by Fergus Henderson of St John restaurant, London.
OK, straight away you North Americans are asking “What’s treacle?” Basically it’s a sugar syrup, lighter than molasses but heavier than golden syrup. These days you’re likely to find golden syrup used in its place, as with this recipe. I guess pancake syrup (not maple) as found in the US/Canada is fairly similar. Continue reading ‘Pudding it simply’
A few weeks ago, on a (typically) miserable London winter’s day, I was at home by myself and at a loss for what to have for lunch. The pantry (or store cupboard as the English call it) was pretty much bare and all I had in the fridge was a limp bit of broccoli, the dag end of some parmesan and a few dregs of cream which weren’t quite off.
I boiled up the broc in a bit of water to which I’d added some liquid stock, blitzed it in the blender and added salt, pepper, parmesan and cream for what was a surprisingly delicious repast. I couldn’t believe my luck – I’d stumbled upon the recipe for a yummy, warming lunch from a few ingredients that you might just have in your fridge. Continue reading ‘Brocolli soup with left-handedness’
Go to the recipe for tarragon chicken
Here’s an episode we prepared earlier. We’ve been doing a few shows for Word of Mouth (WOM), the blog of Observer Food Monthly magazine here in the UK. A lot of you probably didn’t know about these CTK specials, as they were posted only at WOM and didn’t go out in our feed.
It seemed a shame that some of you might miss out, especially the great number who subscribe to CTK via iTunes, so we’ve decided to repost them here for your enjoyment. Even if you’ve seen the episode before, you can now download it to your iPods, Apple TVs and what-not. Continue reading ‘Going, going, tarragon chicken’
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Lenny is a whiz with fried rice. Last time she made it I was well impressed, to the point that I would eat it over stuff from a Chinese restaurant any day.
And that’s saying something. I reckon it’s really hard to replicate the flavours of your better-than-average Chinese takeaway. Maybe it’s down to MSG, which in some Asian cultures is literally known as “taste” (oh, if only you could buy good taste in powdered form). We’ve got nothing against MSG, really - it’s either in the food we buy or it isn’t - but we don’t have it in our kitchen, and don’t have any idea how, or how much of it, to use. Continue reading ‘Rice to the occasion’
The leftover Christmas turkey was on its last legs, and sandwiches had long since lost their appeal … time for what Lenny calls a “flavour changer”.
Larb is a simple Laotian dish of spicy mince (usually pork or chicken) that is eaten with sticky rice, also known as glutinous rice. In Laos the rice comes in a little hopper-style basket made of bamboo and woven grass. The lime and chili flavours are heaven together, and ground rice powder adds a bit of crunch. Continue reading ‘We larb turkey’
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Preparing and gathering together the component parts of a trifle is only half the job - it is also necessary to give some thought to assembly.
Because even though trifle is ostensibly a slapdash co-mingling of separate (and according to Waz, perfectly edible separately) bits and bobs of sweetness, sharpness and creaminess, the presentation is all-important.
In fact, the appearance of trifle is probably the only thing I have liked about this traditional English pud in the past. Continue reading ‘Tickety-Boo Tipsy Trifle (part 2)’
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Remember Sponge Blob Square Pan? The absolute debacle where we tried to cook a sponge cake?
It was back in the very early days of Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve learnt a few things since then, but the idea of cooking a simple sponge still gives us the collywobbles.
But then Lenny went and decided she wanted to make a classic English trifle - and of course that involves a sponge cake sliced into fingers. This time we armed ourselves with Allegra McEvedy’s “Never Fail Victoria Sponge” recipe, as handed down by her mum and published at the Word of Mouth food blog of the Observer Food Monthly, where we do some cameo appearances. Continue reading ‘Trifle Part 1: The Spongeblob Redemption’
Here’s how it works. Lenny does the shopping, I do the cooking. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work - it depends on our work schedules, and I have to admit that Lenny probably does more than her fair share.
A couple of weeks ago she left me vague instructions for some sort of chicken dish. Well, she probably gave me quite good instructions, but I’m in the habit of fobbing her off with a “Yeah yeah yeah I’ll take care of it” and then instantly purging my memory.
So there I was with some chicken pieces and a vague recollection of rosemary, garlic and olive oil being mentioned. Continue reading ‘Whole lotta rosemary chicken’
I’m always on the lookout for really quick, nutritious dishes that can be knocked up in about 20 minutes after I get home from work. This “herby pasta” fits the bill.
If you have a few herbs in your garden, then you can probably make this without even having to make a trip to the shop. Your store cupboard, or “pantry” to Anglo-Australasians, will have just about everything else you need.
For this dish it’s important to use what I call “soft” or “wet” herbs. I don’t know if these are accepted cookery terms, but I include such herbs as basil, parsley, mint, coriander (cilantro), marjoram, tarragon and dill in this group. Continue reading ‘Pasta fire extinguisher’
There’s an old Buddhist saying that goes something like: “When two paths open up before you, make soufflé.”
There are two main paths to soufflé, and in accordance with the true version of that Buddhist proverb, we chose the difficult one. Continue reading ‘About the soufflé’
What a month it’s been. Moving to a new address on the other side of London, getting to grips with a new kitchen (while mourning the loss of the behemoth stove at our previous address), and on top of that, work work work!
THEN, just as we got this episode - where we make Hainanese chicken rice - shot and edited, Apple decided to bring out their new set-top box, Apple TV. It lets you watch podcasts like ours on your telly. Cool gadget, but it posed some issues, because to make the most of it we’ve had to step up the resolution of our videos.
But more on that later. We decided on something simple for the first show at our new place - Hainan chicken, or as some call it, Hainanese chicken rice. Like many Asian recipes it’s big on fresh ingredients prepared in a straightforward manner. Continue reading ‘One chicken, three ways’
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’
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 …’
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’
Well. To anyone who says I give Lenny too much hassle and back-talk in the kitchen, I say just watch this episode.
I reckon I’m pretty capable with dough and have a good feel for the right texture, moisture and density. So when we decided to make pretzels - the big soft chewy bready variety, not the nasty little crunchy bar snacks - I decided to take charge.
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I got hooked on these things in Canada where there was a chain in shopping malls that baked and sold them fresh. I always wonder about those instant-baked breads - do they use yeast, for example, or some sort of chemical for a quicker result? Anyway, they were still good enough to suck me in repeatedly. Continue reading ‘These pretzels are making us … feisty!’
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Go to the recipe for tarte tatin
A while back we had a giveaway for the Joy of Cooking cookbook’s latest edition. We were impressed by this American culinary tome - it really is quite an almanac, and we use it regularly. No surprise that when we decided to bake a tarte tatin it was right there in the index.
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Tarte tatin is traditionally made with apple but we have used pear once before, and Lenny reckons you could even do it with plums. Loads of butter and sugar are simmered into a buttery, sticky toffee-caramel sauce that fuses the slices of apple to a layer of puff pastry. It’s cooked upside down, first on a hob, then in the oven, and you invert it to serve. Continue reading ‘Joy of tarte tatin’
Wow! I was interviewed as an authority on food podcasting for the Guardian Unlimited newsdesk podcast this morning and can’t believe how nervous I was. I hope they managed to edit together something sensible from all my babble. You can find the interview about 16 min 40 sec into the bulletin.
Loads of stuff I forgot to mention - like how we’ve been in Time magazine, and how we’re cited in Stephanie Bryant’s new book Videoblogging for Dummies.
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Anyway. It’s been a while since we posted an episode - listen to the GU podcast and you’ll learn that it’s partly because our cooker/stove/oven was broken, and getting it replaced was a bit of a nightmare. Also we’ve been travelling again, and work life has been keeping us busy. But we’ve kicked back into gear and, to coincide with the Guardian interview, here’s an episode in which we make a simple teacake.
This video was previously posted incomplete, but it’s now the full episode, so if you saw “Part 1″ please watch again.
Now, about teacake. As the name suggests it’s the perfect accompaniment to a cup of your favourite leaf tea, and is as much a part of the Anglo-Australian baking repertoire as scones and sponge cake. Continue reading ‘Cinnamon teacake’
“Welsh rarebit” or “Welsh rabbit” was one of those dishes I’d always wondered about, along with “toad in the hole”, before moving to the UK.
Apparently its name is originally a bit of a slight on the Welsh - who were (many years ago, I’m sure) considered so inept they couldn’t catch a rabbit for dinner, so they had to settle for cheese on toast. In an early example of political correctness the name was adjusted to “rarebit”, supposedly taking a bit of the sting out of the insult.
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There’s more to good rarebit than just slices of cheddar plopped on bread and stuck under the grill (broiler, if you prefer). The recipes vary, but common elements seem to be a good cheddar, some Worcestershire sauce and either beer or milk. Continue reading ‘Pulling a rarebit out of the hat’
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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.
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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’
Sometimes you just need comfort food. I had never pictured that packet of peas in the freezer as anything other than a quick way of padding out the numbers in a meat-and-three-veg meal, or a source of temporary relief for a wrenched ankle.
Recently, though, Canadian friends and Crash Test Kitchen devotees Shel and Christie visited from Edmonton, the place where CTK had its beginnings. We got nattering about food (as we do) and Christie revealed one of her quick and easy comfort cravings: peas and feta.
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It doesn’t sound like it would set the world on fire, but seriously, it goes really well together. Lenny’s addition of crusty garlic toasts makes a meal of it. Continue reading ‘Easy peasy feta cheesy’
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.
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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’
In France, this ubiquitous soup is known simply as “gratinée” by virtue of the de rigueur melted Gruyère cheese on top.
Our travels through Quebec brought me into contact with the real thing (not a packet mix) for the first time, so of course we had to try and make it ourselves. Last episode we made beef stock as the base, and in this instalment we finish the process of creating French onion soup from scratch.
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It was a bit of a tearjerker for Lenny, who had to slice all the oignons because I was busy with bookkeeping. Continue reading ‘What’s French for onion soup?’
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We’ve set out to make authentic French onion soup, complete with crusty toasted bread and gruyere on top. And when you embark on such a mission, you simply must make the soup base - beef stock - from scratch.
This is one of those really rewarding kitchen marathons. The stock may take hours and hours to make, but most of that is simply the simmering process that seethes out the delicious juices from the beef bones and vegetables.
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And the preparation is enjoyably crude: vegetables roughly chopped, roasted with the bones, then tossed into a pot with water and a few simple spices. Continue reading ‘Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch’
If you’ve watched the last episode (this one includes a quick recap) you’ll know that we made banoffee (banoffi) pie after much pleading from our gastro-pal Chef Michelle and her hubby Phil.
Most of the work was done at our place, then we transported the components , including the fragile shortcrust base, across London to Michelle and Phil’s for completion and gustation.
Go to the recipe for banoffee pie
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The crust made it intact and the results were pretty good all round, making allowances for a little over-zealous whipping of the cream by Lenny. Continue reading ‘Banoffi or Banoffee? Vol. 2′
Banoffi or banoffee? The debate rages, and the inventors of this world-famous dessert, the Hungry Monk Cafe, arguably should get the last word - even though they would appear to be in the wrong, since the name stands for “banana and toffee/coffee”. Maybe the “i” is there to make it sound Italian.
Go to the recipe for banoffee pie
Our friend Chef Michelle and her man Phil had suggested we crash test this one at our house, under her supervision. But plans change, and we had to switch the dinner venue to their place at very short notice. That meant whipping up the base and filling at ours, then transporting the components across London and finishing the job at theirs.
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The easiest and perhaps most dangerous way to make the basic caramel filling needed for this dessert is to submerge a can or two of condensed milk in a pot of water and boil for hours and hours. There’s always the risk of the cans exploding if you let the water level drop. Continue reading ‘Coffee, Toffee, Banoffee Pie - Vol. 1′
My mum would often make rice pudding when I was a kid. Though I loved the pudding, I would scrape off the skin with my spoon and plop it on mum’s plate, who made an ostentatious show of eating it while I curled up my nose in distaste.
Lenny was making risotto a while back and couldn’t find arborio rice, so bought some “Italian pudding rice” instead at a corner store. I insisted, though, that it wouldn’t work, and went out an ultimately successful mission to find the right kind for risotto. That left us with this packet of pudding rice, which Lenny has finally put to use.
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In our modest cookery library she found a recipe for “nursery rice pudding” and went to work, also grilling some pineapple for a topping. Continue reading ‘Rice pudding with confusion of pineapple’
Don’t roast it – braise it! That’s Lenny’s new mantra after discovering the pleasurable results of cooking less-than-choice cuts very slowly in a tasty stock or sauce.
It’s not really stewing - you carve the cooked joint or piece of meat as you would a roast, rather than chopping it up beforehand.
This episode is also a lesson in the hidden perils of pyrex-style cookware. Well, if we’d just googled it beforehand, we would have known the risks of exposing it to a naked flame.
Lamb is available fairly cheaply where we live, so Lenny went on the hunt for value and got a boned-out shoulder for about six quid. She sent me hunting for “kitchen string” so she could roll it up, and I managed to scrounge a couple of metres from a butcher. I must say, she does a fine job of binding a very ordinary looking piece of meat into something that looks like “a bought one”. Continue reading ‘Triumph of the Lamb (and Disaster of the Dish)’
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I couldn’t help it. Lenny left those blocks of delicious dark chocolate sitting there in the cupboard for weeks and weeks. Late one night I just had to have a nibble.
In the end, having not quite enough 70% cocoa dark chocolate to make these molten-centred puddings wasn’t such a big problem. Hidden away in another corner of the cupboard was some plain old Cadbury’s glass-and-a-half, and it probably took the edge off the cheek-puckering bitterness of the hardcore Green & Black’s Organic.
Go to the recipe for heart-melting chocolate pudding
Lenny had been dying to cook this devilish delight after we had one at the rather posh St John restaurant in Clerkenwell, London. Continue reading ‘Heart-melting chocolate pudding’
Every Saturday I sit down to the task of writing out the weekly grocery shopping list. It starts off easily with the staples: bread, milk, fruit, white truffles …
But then comes the tricky part: what to eat for dinner for the next seven days. Sometimes inspiration hits and I easily come up with seven tasty, nutritionally balanced dishes with a combination of ingredients that’s both affordable and at least slightly adventurous. And that yields just the right amount of left-overs to pop into a plastic container for tomorrow’s lunch.
Other times I enter into a flight of fancy that Waz might have some ideas for the week’s dinners: “Waz, can you suggest something for dinner this week?” Typical reply: “Twice smoked duck’s liver on a bed of wilted sea kale with smoked maple dressing.” Or, alternatively: “Fish.”
Yeah, thanks Waz. Continue reading ‘Ready, steady, spaghetti: Puttanesca Pronto’
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 ‘Cracking creme brulee’
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All right you purists. I know what you’re going to say. “You can’t cook tandoori without a tandoor!”
Yes, well, who has a huge earthenware oven in their kitchen, I ask you? The closest most of can get to tandoori at home is applying the curry paste or powder to meat of some description and cooking the results over a grill.
This is another of our “lost” episodes. I had genuinely forgotten about it, and found the raw video while rabbiting through our archive for holiday footage. Continue reading ‘Tandoori flashback’
One of my pet hates is a cappuccino without good froth, especially one for which I’ve forked out my hard-earned readies.
After I dropped many a hint, Lenny gave me an espresso machine for Christmas. Determined not to replicate the work of dud baristas who have been fleecing me for donkeys’ years, I went to work quickly to perfect my frothing technique. Now Crash Test Kitchen is ready to go public with the cappuccino tips you’ll find in this episode.
Too many of the coffee chains get away with selling fraudulently priced beverages with coarsely bubbled, over-aerated scum on top that has absolutely no body to it. Carry a coffee like this across the room, or up the street to your job, and you’ll find the foam has burst its bubbles and collapsed into plain old milk again. Really, really bad foam will discombobulate under the weight of the mandatory chocolate powder or flakes alone. Continue reading ‘Froth my milk up’
The festive season has come and gone, and yes, I know, I know, we sidestepped the whole issue of a Christmas episode.
Things were pretty hectic in the Crash Test Kitchen. We had 15 unruly expats and Brits over for Christmas dinner and we cooked two turkeys and a pork roast at once in our huge oven, along with a mountain of vegetables. Our freezer is now full of delightful soups - pea and ham, turkey, leek and ginger - that will keep us fuelled up well into the New Year.
Our MiniDV camera decided to see in the New Year by giving up the ghost, leaving us with no way to shoot episodes. After much heavy contemplation of the expense, followed by some serious comparison shopping, we’ve bought a new unit. So Crash Test Kitchen is back in business.
Tajine, or our version of it, was one of our staples as we travelled across Canada in Gus the Bus last year. Continue reading ‘Tajine or not tajine?’
I have never found chocolate cake as good as my mum’s. Actually it’s my grandmother’s recipe, and a great one at that.
I didn’t know until I asked mum for the recipe that it’s a “boiled” cake. You don’t actually boil it to cook it - but you simmer some of the ingredients before making the final mix. Continue reading ‘Chocolate cake like mum makes’
Our household effects recently arrived from Canada and in one of the boxes was a DVD containing raw footage of a previously unseen CTK instalment, filmed back in Edmonton earlier this year.
I had gone shopping on my way home from work and grabbed a few random things in the supermarket, hoping that Lenny would be able to make sense of it all, culinary whiz that she is. But I’d forgotten she was off playing volleyball and I was to be left to my own devices in the kitchen.
Just what I was aiming for, I’m not sure, but it all ended pretty miserably, especially for the two pieces of cod that had the misfortune to be plucked from the supermarket chiller cabinet by my maladroit hands that evening. Continue reading ‘The lost cod episode’
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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’
Ah, London and its familiar smells. That tantalising, fatty waft of fish and chips. That grey electric dust that gets up your nose in the Tube.
But what we love best about London is the food culture. Fresh ingredients are plentiful in the fruit and veg stalls on the street, the multicultural stores, the market districts, and the new “gastro pub” movement is adding another dimension to the culinary scene.
After our transatlantic flight from Toronto we “dossed” with Lenny’s brother Cam for a few days while we found somewhere to live. We did our research and ended up moving into the first place we saw.
The good news is our new kitchen is EXCELLENT! Good lighting, plenty of bench space and, best of all, a gas stove. Continue reading ‘Here’s steak in your pie’
We saw a moose! Two or three, in fact, right here in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia. One with a great set of antlers that any hunter would have been delighted to bag. Luckily they’re protected in this park.
A few weeks into our road trip we developed a superb roast chicken recipe using a pistachio and plum stuffing of our own invention. When Lenny’s brother Cam flew in from London (UK) to join us for a few days, it seemed the perfect welcoming dinner.
Well, as you know, things don’t always turn out as planned on Crash Test Kitchen. Our portable barbecue ran out of gas, and that should have served as a warning. Continue reading ‘A chicken crashes and burns’
If Prince Edward Island is famous for one thing, it just might be lobster suppers. These seafood feasts typically start with courses of chowder and mussels. Then the diner is presented with a whole lobster to devour. This instalment begins with us doing just that to two unfortunate specimens.
Lenny loves mussels, so was inspired by the mussel course to attempt her own version of the dish for this episode. She adds a Thai twist with coconut milk, ginger and limes. But hang on, Jalapeno chilies? What the …? Well, authentic Thai-style ingredients aren’t always close at hand. Continue reading ‘Lobster and mussels, alive, alive-o’
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Mmm, lamb. We can’t get enough of it … after all, we come from the country that was built on the sheep’s back. No, we don’t mean the Shaky Isles (New Zealand), we mean the Wide Brown Land (Australia)!
After gobbling down some excellent lamb at Les Freres de la Cote restaurant in Quebec City, we couldn’t wait to do a “Canadian Safari” episode featuring this meat. But Canucks by and large don’t seem to “get” lamb, and there’s very little produced locally. So we resorted to some Kiwi lamb racks sourced at a supermarket on Prince Edward Island. Continue reading ‘Get some lamb in your pan’
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.
Excellent local ingredients also made this a perfect stopover for our next “Canadian Safari” episode of CTK. Continue reading ‘How To Eat An Island’
We never thought we’d draw culinary inspiration from a place called Vegreville. But that’s just what happened when we dropped into this prairie town on the first leg of our Crash Test Kitchen “Canadian Safari.”
Vegreville, like much of Alberta, has a substantial Ukrainian population, and the town’s giant “pysanka” (Easter egg) is apparently the world’s largest. No, we didn’t make Easter eggs - we whipped up a version of a staple item that you’d probably find among the leftovers in any Ukrainian refrigerator. Continue reading ‘We’re on a (cabbage) roll’
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.
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’
I was doing some web research after our sausage excursion to Calgary and was disturbed at the extent to which the corporate sausage machine has been keeping an eye on our snag tastes.
I’ll elaborate, but first a little on this episode of CTK. We prepare a simple dish that for want of a better name I call “sausagey pasta”. We hadn’t cooked it for a while, so our memories were a little fuzzy on the exact list of ingredients. A bit of Googling and some head-scratching, though, and we came up with a recipe.
But back to the sausage evil empire. This company called Devro has broken our habits down to pie charts and line graphs. Apparently 31% of us want our sausages straight, but 66% don’t care whether they’re straight or curved. Of more concern, 55% don’t know what’s on the outside of a sausage - natural casing made of gut, or that synthetic stuff we mentioned in the last post. Continue reading ‘Your sausage habits exposed’
So what do you want in a sausage? Are you content with a cellulose or collagen tube filled with anonymous, homogenous mystery-meat paste containing who knows what?
If you’re like us, you demand sausages filled with real ingredients that you can see, taste, feel and smell. Not to mention the texture — and when you bite through that natural sausage casing, a really good “snag” should hit you with a burst of flavour and aroma.
For a long time, our sausage benchmark was set by Tony’s Super Meats in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. I remember Tony entered the annual Sausage King contest for the first time a few years back and blitzed the competition with his continental creations. Continue reading ‘Blessed are the sausage makers’
There is a fair-sized community of expatriate Australians here in Edmonton. We Aussies seem to find our way to every corner of the world, no matter how cold and forbidding the place can be.
We met Shaun through the local Down Under Club and quickly became good mates. He’s a South Australian and we’re Queenslanders, so it’s been interesting to spend time together, picking up on the little differences in language and culture. Things you probably wouldn’t notice if you’d met back in Australia.
When our other SA mates Adam and Katrina get talking with Shaun, I sometimes get lost trying to follow the conversation. No problems for them following me and my slow Sunshine State drawl. Continue reading ‘A crow-eater gives us curry’
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”.
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’
Technically, Canada Day, July 1, celebrates the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation called Canada. This all took place in 1868. These days, it’s mostly a day for fireworks, lots of drinking and another excuse for a big family gathering.
It was great to spend Canada Day with the most Canadian of families out at the L’Hirondelle ancestral property in Sturgeon County. We even participated in a good-ol’ game of horseshoes, eh. I got a “ringer” and a “point” in one go, for a score of four points - very impressive for a first-time horseshoer. Unfortunately I and my teammate Scott were knocked out by veterans Terry and Sue. I was consoled, however, by the fact the “souffle” turned out a treat! Continue reading ‘Canada Day Souffle, Part 2′
It’s Canada Day! We’re Aussies, but we’re in Canada, so any excuse for a party. This afternoon we’re off to our mate Tom’s place for a real Canada Day bash with his family. Last night we were up late preparing French toast souffle as our contribution.
It’s a sinful amalgam of bread, creamed cheese, eggs, butter, maple syrup and a few other delicious elements. Extremely tasty, and not a true “souffle”, so you don’t have to tiptoe around the kitchen while it’s cooking. Being “French toast souffle” we feel it’s a nod to Canada’s Francophone influences, while the maple syrup makes it true-blue Canuck tucker. Sure to get the patriotic blood flowing, if all the wicked creaminess doesn’t give you a coronary. Continue reading ‘O Canada, we make souffle for thee’
We started out with the best intentions: whip up a layered sponge cake to celebrate our friend Paul’s 30th birthday.
He’s back in Australia, we’re here in Canada, but we’d just eat it on his behalf we reckoned.
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Well, that was the plan. You see, it seems there must be a secret to making sponge cake - and we’re not in on it. Continue reading ‘Sponge blob square pan’
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.
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!’
Rule number one of crepe making: there’s NO SHAME if the first one’s a failure. Rule number two: when the crepes hit the table, GET IN QUICK!
For years, I’d made my “pancakes” according to a simple recipe: one cup of flour, one egg, one cup of milk. Lenny and my friends thought they were pretty good. But I suspected the results were a bit heavy, a bit tough. Not what you could really call crepes.
Then, while we were in the UK, I grabbed one of Delia Smith’s recipe books off a friend’s shelf. Or maybe I saw her cook crepes on her TV show. Anyway, dear old Delia turned my world upside down. My basic ratio went out the window, butter was added, and the result was a much lighter, much more delicate pancake than I had ever produced - something that could truly be called a crepe. Continue reading ‘The great crepe debate’
Go to the recipe for chicken soup
When Lenny’s feeling a little bit under the weather she gets a craving for soup. Actually, pretty much ANY excuse to make this simple, hearty chicken soup will do. You just start with a whole chicken, remove the skin and simmer it with tasty vegetables until the flesh is tender and comes away easily from the bone (Lenny calls this the “fall-apartability” test.
Removing the skin as Lenny does in this video might a familiar process to people who’ve basted a “chook” by getting their hands under the skin to rub a mixture of butter, garlic, herbs and what-not on the flesh. Continue reading ‘Chicken soup from scratch’
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I could eat hummus (aka “hommus”) all day, as long as someone keeps putting this tasty chickpea and tahini paste in front of me. But I used to be indifferent to tabouli (aka “tabouleh”), having mostly experienced it as the padding between the meat and the wrapping in some pretty pedestrian donair kebabs.
Never liked parsley much as a kid as it was. But my tastes have mellowed; I now realise that parsley has its place, and that place is tabouli. Making it is a lot of fun and it’s easy. Ditto for the very tasty hummus (especially if you have a bigger blender than ours!). Continue reading ‘Excuse our pork’
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We’re always trying to eat more fruit, so we grab a hand of bananas pretty often. But at supermarkets here in Edmonton they’re always green, so they sit on your kitchen bench for a few days, taunting you and taking their sweet time to ripen.
Then, when they DO ripen, they seem to go “on the turn” (i.e. black and squishy) half a day later. Continue reading ‘When bananas turn BAD!’
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.
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’
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We started making our own pizza while we were living in an old house that had a wood-fired kitchen stove. It’s now one of our staples and we insist on always making the dough from scratch.
Actually, the dough part is really fun and satisfying, and pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Just be prepared for some scraping and sweeping when it comes time to clean the kitchen. The red wine that goes hand in hand with good pizza makes up for the hard labour. Continue reading ‘It’s pizza night’
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’
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We first had “fun rolls” (Vietnamese spring rolls) at The Vietnamese restaurant in Brisbane, where they bring the ingredients to your table and you make the tasty little parcels yourself - sharing a platter with your friends and inevitably getting a good giggle out of someone’s disastrous wrapping efforts. Continue reading ‘The fun rolls on!’
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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’
The supermarket was having a special on frozen jumbo prawns, de-veined and in a split shell. Standing there in the aisle, I had a vague recollection of a vermicelli noodle salad with a chili lime sauce.
We’d made it a few times, so I just grabbed the ingredients I could bring to mind, headed home and threw them at Lenny (who promptly threw them back at me).
This was actually the first cooking video we shot (you can tell by the amount of “Uhh, umm, aah” coming from my mouth - it seems Lenny is the natural presenter out of us two). Continue reading ‘Don’t come the raw prawn’
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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!’
Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast
No-fuss fish pie
Classic bolognese
Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata)
About the soufflé
One chicken, three ways
Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch
Heart-melting chocolate pudding
Cracking creme brulee
Froth my milk up
We larb turkey
Dave makes a cheesecake
We did it all for the gnocchi!
Good golly fish curry
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