onion – Abstract Gourmet

Duck Sausage Curry

What do you do when you have a hankering for something different, as a curry, without breaking the bank ? You buy duck sausages ! (of course).

Last time I went to my local butchers (The excellent Meat the Butcher in Dog Swamp Shopping Centre), to find duck for my curry. The friendly chap on the other end of the meat cleaver suggested I try their duck sausages as an alternative. I decided against it at the time, as I wanted the gaminess that duck breast provides that time around… but then found myself strangely drawn back there the following week (I have a certain attraction to butchers, kitchen supply stores, and bottle shops, which I’m sure that puts me in a certain category I should be concerned about).

So I bought three lovely duck sausages at a pittance (compared to duck breast) and rushed away gleefully to find a recipe for them. But what do you know… in a first for food nerds the world over…the internet failed me… Searching for all manner of terms including “duck sausages” “duck curry sausages” “curry sausages” “+sausages +curry +duck -sweetandsour” etc provided nothing that I could easily steal and proudly claim for my own. So it was up to my wiley self to come up with something suitable.

My thinking cap firmly on, I raided the spice rack for every conceivable thing I could think of that might go well with duck sausages, and came up with this.

Duck Sausage Curry

3 Duck Sausages
6 baby potatoes halved
1 bulb baby fennel
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon chilli powder (less if you’re a weeny)
2 teaspoons fenugreek
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
handful of curry leaves
100 ml coconut cream

So basically I do my curries in a similar style most times, whether it be right or wrong. I started off by dry roasting the dry spices (fennel, coriander, and fenugreek) for about 30 seconds in a hot pan, then taking them out and putting them into my mortar and pestle to be ground finely.

Then add some butter/oil/ghee (whatever you like to cook with) to the pan and fry the chopped onions, fennel, and garlic at a relatively low heat until translucent and soft. At the same time (and this is probably cheating), I have the potatoes boiling in their own pot of water, so I don’t need them to cook in the curry itself, which saves a bit of time.

So once the onion mixture is nice and soft… add all the dry spices, the turmeric, chilli powder, and other stuff that was ground up, and coat the onion mixture with it nicely, so all the turmeric is absorbed into the mixture, and it colours it. Now add your duck sausages that have been sliced up into pieces (as chunky as you like them). Stir them all around and get them coated in the onions and spices too, and perhaps add a little water if the mixture is starting to stick to the pan and dry out.

Once the sausages are nicely coated and basically cooked, add the potatoes (which should be cooked but still firm), and the coconut cream and curry leaves, and then stir it all through so the sauce is nice and thick and the colour has absorbed all throught the coconut cream. Taste it and see if it needs anything else at this point, like more chilli or salt/pepper, and if not, turn the heat down, put a lit on the pan, and let the flavours absorb for a little while.

When you’re happy with how it’s looking, and all those wonderful flavours have pervaded every corner of your kitchen. Spoon it out over a pile of steaming hot rice, and dig it. One of the tastiness creations I’ve made in a long time.

And introduce yourself to your local butcher. You never know what great things they may have in the back of those fridges just waiting for you to discover them.

The Manwich

This one is gonna be a quicky because most blokes aren’t overly fussed on details. In short, here is my version of the kind of meal every self respecting Aussie guy should be able to create without looking like a complete pansy.

I made these the other night when some mates came around to play poker, drink whisky, and smoke cigars… Despite the fact that extensive effort actually went into preparing the food, we managed to have just the right balance of meat, alcohol, gambling, and smoke to make sure we stayed out of the “more than likely gay” category normally reserved for guys that can cook (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The Manwich

Steak – the thicker the better
Bread – the thicker the better
Bacon – the thicker and fattier the better (ok maybe not)
Eggs
Lebanese Cucumber
Cos Lettuce
Spiced fruit chutney (I used chilli chutney)
Japanese (kewpi) mayonnaise
cheeeeese (slices of Jarlsberg are nice, or whatever you got)
Onions

Instructions are for wimps of course, but I will humor those of you out there who need a little direction.

Take some nice thick slices of bread. I actually made these twice in a row, the first time around with lebanese bread rolls, and the second time with thick slices from a loaf of soft Italian bread. Whichever kind of bread you use, just made sure you don’t overdo the toasting. I put both into the oven for a little crisping and managed to leave the turkish bread in for too long, meaning the gambling took a back seat to some concentrated chewing to get through the outer shell.

The only other important thing is the steak. The steak must be cooked to perfection. It doesn’t matter so much which cut you use, but it has to be melt in your mouth soft and juicy. I used both a thick rump steak, and a porterhouse steak for my efforts, following my same steak cooking technique for both.

Season the steak well with sea salt (Maldon salt flakes) and cracked pepper, and a generous libation of extra virgin olive oil. Leave it to sit for a little while and then straight into a hot pan. Now is where you need to be careful and not just let it sit there frying itself to a sad dry crisp.

Using your fingers, give the steak a poke and see how much it bounces back to you. I’ve heard two tricks for measuring doneness. First one is to touch your thumb to your forefinger, second finger, and pinky finger, and then touch the palm of your hand next to your thumb. The feeling of your palm as you change fingers from forefinger to pinky, is roughly like the difference between rare and well done.

Gordon Ramsey does a similar test by touching your cheek, chin, and forehead with the tips of your fingers, and equates rare, medium rare, and well done to the softness and bounce of each of those… but if you’ve got a chubby face and/or no chin… you might be in trouble (ala me :|).

So… once your steak is cooked to your level of doneness (which is hopefully between rare and medium rare), take it out and put it on a plate to rest. Resting is absolutely crucial in making sure your steak is as juicy and tender as it can be. The meat needs time to relax and let the juices flow through it. If you cut it up straight away they are all going to drain away and you’ll be left with a dry taudry mess.

When the steak has rested for a good 10 minutes or so, slice it up into lovely pieces, and get the rest of your ingredients ready.

The bacon would best be grilled for crispiness, and the eggs fried however you like them. My trick is to just crack them into a non stick fry pan, add a few tablespoons of water, and put the lid on. Perfect fried eggs in no time at all.

The only other thing to do is caramelise the onions in a fry pan with a couple of tablespoons of raw sugar and a little butter or olive oil.

Cooking done, just assemble all the bits together. My layering went.

Bread (with chilli pickle spread)
Lettuce
Cucumber
Steak
Onions
Bacon
Cheese
Egg
Bread (with japanese mayonnaise)

Now the only challenge left is being manly enough to eat it with your hands without picking bits out… I call that decadence wrapped in bread.

Caramelized Onion stuffed Pork Burgers with Enoki & Sweet Potato Fries

I love burgers. To me they are the epitome of the self contained meal.. You’ve got your carbs, your protein, and your vegetables… animal, vegetable, and mineral all together in one nice little bundle.

This recipe was inspired by a great book i’m reading at the moment aptly titled Burgers, by Paul Gayler (actually, the link is to the US version of the book, the Australian version is basically the same with a different name). This one is my own creation though… so blame me and not him if it all goes horribly wrong.

Ingredients (I’m not good with quantities, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks):

Pork mince (500 gms or so)
1 red chilli
small bunch of coriander
1/2 tsp ground cimmanon
1 egg
good olive oil
couple of onions
2 Tblsp sugar
a few knobs of butter (yes knob is the correct term for a piece of butter)
sea salt
cracked pepper

baby spinach
enoki mushrooms
couple of big sweet potato’s
vegetable or sunflower oil for deep frying
flat bread for toasting
japanese mayonaisse

Directions:

Chop the chilli finely and roughly chop the coriander. Mix well through the pork and add the other ingredients. Cinnamon for a sweet taste, salt and pepper to season, egg to bind the mixture, olive oil because everything needs olive oil.

Now chop the onions finely and saute them in a little butter and olive oil. Slowly add a tablespoon or so of sugar to the onions, and perhaps a little white wine, so they soften up and caramelize nicely. Give them a while to cook so they are really soft and golden brown. These onions are a great garnish to lots of different meals, but we’re going to stuff them inside the burgers just for the hell of it.

So now get a ball of the pork mixture, flatten it out, and place a small pile of the onion mixture inside. Add another ball of pork to the top and seal it up into a nice burger looking shape. Good to go.

Heat a pan with a little oil and sear the burgers on each side until they’re just cooked through. At this point i transferred them to a
flat grilling tray to try and get those nice grill marks on them… but it was only mildly worthwhile.

Meanwhile heat your vegetable oil in a heavy pan… I’m not the greatest deep frier in the world, in fact it scares me everytime i have to do it, so by no means am i an expert. The trick for me is finding the right temperature. You want it cool enough so you don’t burn the sweet potato to a crisp on the outside and leave them hard in the middle, but no so cool that they go all soggy without crisping up.

So now peel and cut up the sweet potato into big chunky fries and rinse them under water to wash the starch off. Them
my best advice would be to keep an eye on them closely and fry them in small batches until they’re nice and golden on the outside and soft inside.

Once you’re burgers are done and fries close to finished you can start to assemble the burger. Toast or grill your flat bread and arrange a bed of spinach, then pile on top the burger, enoki mushrooms (Sharon’s all time favourite mushroom), and a little of the caramelized onion.

Season the sweet potato fries with salt and cracked pepper, and perhaps a little paprika, and serve next to your burger with some japanese mayonaisse as a dipping sauce.

There you go… a nice complicated way to make a simple burger :)