Any baking potato will do, these were russet burbanks. It’s difficult to give exact directions on how to go about it as there are a couple of variables - how hot the coals are and how far the potatoes are from them and how large they are. The cooking distance also influences the flavour; the closer the spuds, the more they char and get that baked-in-the-fire taste. These potatoes took about an hour and a half, but weren’t particularly close, though they finished up on the coals for the last ten minutes.

Here’s how to go about it. Tear a double thickness of aluminum foil, enough to comfortably wrap a single potato, allow one large potato per person. Place the potatoes no further than six inches from the coals and cook for about 30 minutes, then turn around to cook the other side. They are cooked when a wooden skewer passes easily through them. If you like a slightly charred flavour, put the foil packets directly on the coals for the last ten minutes.

There are other ways to get different flavours too. Pierce the potatoes all over with a knife and insert slivers of garlic, rosemary or anything else you like, even pieces of truffle, into the gashes. If bacon’s your thing, wrap streaky bacon around the spuds as well, all before wrapping with the foil. The bacon might be too charred to eat, depending on how closely to the coals you place the spuds, but its porky goodness will suffuse itself throughout.

Sour cream, butter, salt and fresh ground pepper are all good serving partners.

First, it’s important to understand a little about fats and oils too, which both belong to the same group of chemical compounds, the triglycerides and differ from each other, according to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking, only in their melting points – fats are solid at room temperature whilst oils are liquid, so in this article, fat refers to both fat and oil. He then goes on to say that fat’s fundamental purpose is simply to store energy and that it’s twice as efficient at storing it as carbohydrates, the other major source of energy for all living organisms.

Because fat is so efficient at storing energy, it has become the primary means by which all animals store energy for later use. If, for instance, humans were forced to switch to carbohydrate storage there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the average woman would put on extra 13kg in weight, to store exactly the same amount of energy as fat currently does. It should come as no surprise therefore, with something so good at storing energy as animal fat, that its chemical structure bears a strong resemblance to other simpler, concentrated hydrocarbons such as petroleum. One powers our cars, the other, our bodies.

Fat is also essential to our overall health, we couldn’t survive without it as certain fatty acids are part of the building blocks of our very cells and are also necessary for bodily function. Our bodies are unable to synthesize some of these fatty acids, which we must obtain from our diet.

So it would seem obvious as to why humans developed a taste for fat, it is the highest quality and most concentrated fuel available - eating it is the equivalent of siphoning someone else’s petrol tank. But it’s also more than that. Besides that we enjoy its interplay with other foods, because of the extremely high temperatures fats are capable of, it also allows us to cook food in a way that contributes to both taste and texture – think of a golden, crunchy, fried potato chip or a simple pan fried steak with a delectable brown crust.

Think you don’t like foods fried in animal fats? Think again. It was only a couple of years ago that McDonalds stopped frying their world famous fries in beef tallow after a public outcry. But they didn’t change frying fats until after they were able to replicate the taste of fries cooked in tallow, so popular these fries were.

Fat also has another characteristic; it carries flavour compounds which it helps coat the taste buds with. Think of how the taste of bacon tends to linger a while in the mouth, as the fat, which carries both the flavour of cured pork and smoke, helps to hold the flavour on your taste buds, allowing you to savour the bacon long after it has begun its journey to your stomach. Fat also carries the flavours of a salad dressing and holds them in place as it coats all the salad leaves and other ingredients.

But for all that, is fat really flavour in the way television cooks mean it? I’m not so sure. There is no doubt that many common fats and oils have a flavour all their own, such as beef, lamb and duck fat, as well as olive, walnut and hazelnut oils and there is no doubt they contribute to dishes to which they are added, but their taste is far from the primary flavour of a dish, with perhaps the only exception, some seed and nut oils that dominate the taste of milder salad leaves.

If fat were flavour, wouldn’t a chicken raised in a cage, with all its extra fat, taste better than a free-range bird with hardly any fat at all? It’s quite the opposite in fact. Glenloth, a Victorian supplier of free-range chicken, use exactly the same breed of birds as those raised in cages in battery farms, the only real differences between them is the type of feed used and access to open spaces, yet comparing their birds to battery farmed is like chalk and cheese. Glenloth birds have well developed meaty flesh with an almost gamey flavour; those from cages have flaccid flesh which barely contains any real chicken identity, the extra fat contributes nothing at all flavour wise.

That exercise adds flavour is easily demonstrated with beef. Eye fillet is regarded as the premium cut, due to its tenderness, yet compared to other cuts from harder working muscles, it lacks mightily for flavour - this particular muscle does little work. The important difference between muscles that do little and those which work much harder, is the amount of connective tissue present, there is far more in a working muscle, the collagen of which acts similarly to fat, in that it melts into the surrounding tissue when cooked. And perhaps this combination of fat, muscle and connective tissue has far more to with flavour than any one part alone.

So why do television presenters persist with the fat is flavour mantra? It comes down to mouth feel and texture. Fat lubricates meat for example, making it easier to chew as muscle fibres slip apart and also makes it seem juicy at the same time. Have you ever noticed how a lean cut of meat such as veal, seems to become dry after very little chewing and how we place a premium on well marbled steak, waygu being the supreme example? At the same time, fat is also carrying flavours to all parts of your mouth and helping to keep them there. It’s the reason why we like to butter our bread

It is this double whammy effect that fat gives to our food that makes it seem extra tasty. Fat is flavour? Not really, but food just wouldn’t be the same without it.

On a still and baking hot day, we ventured to the rolling hills of Jindivick, out Gippsland way for the 9th annual Hot Sauce & Fiery Foods Festival.  According to Haggis, the organizer, it’s the largest festival of its type in Australia.

There were plenty of stalls catering to those who have a passion for hot sauce and all other related products, from the meek and mild to incendiary hot.

There were plenty of buyers cramming to stock up on products that can otherwise be hard to get.

Last time I was at the festival, a mate asked me to get him the hottest sauce I could find; it was here at this stall that I found it. My tongue went intially cold, my mouth numb, sweat started to trickle down, then everything just exploded with chile heat. He asked me again this year, but I said there was NO WAY I was tasting sauces for him with names like death or mega.

This stall had my favourite hot sauces from the Byron Bay Chilli Company. They had red and green sauces, as well as an interesting coconut hot sauce. Their bean dip and corn chips are the best you will ever find.

Looks like someone got lost! But I can report, the asparagus was lovely and a bit of a reprieve after all the other tastings.

The crowd gathers for the chile eating contest.

Contestants at the ready with habenero chillies in hand, note the guy on the left with the green cap.

“Oh my God, what the hell was that?!!!” Needless to say, his first chile was his last.

The eventual winner, a laid back, laconic Aussie. He was actually trailing all day behind another, who was fairly racing through his chillies, but slow and steady wins the race.

So who you gonna call to put out all that heat?

A couple of happy faces in the chilli cook off competition.

Don’t say you weren’t warned!

It is a simple dish to prepare. In a thick piece of eye fillet steak, simply cut a pocket in the centre and stuff in as many seasoned oysters as you are able, two or three should suffice and if you wish to be careful, close the hole with a toothpick to retain the oysters inside, for as the meat cooks and seizes, there is a tendency for the oysters to be squeezed out. Then it’s just a matter of cooking to your preferred level of doneness.

That was the easy part, for when checking provenance of carpetbagger steak, there are in fact two peoples claiming the recipe, Australians and Americans. According to The Food Timeline, the first recipe for carpetbagger or carpet bag steak is attributed to Louis Diat in 1941, though Americans had been eating steaks topped with oysters since the 19th century. One problem for the American claim, is the term carpetbagger, means something else entirely, while in Australia it means only one thing, a steak stuffed with oysters. Tellingly, in an American publication, the Time-Life series, Foods Of The World, in the Pacific And Southeast Asian Cooking edition, carpetbagger steaks are attributed directly to Australia.

Though once very popular, in Australia at least, it seems to have all but disappeared. Indeed, I read one blog where it was said the dish doesn’t work very well and it’s hard not to agree; many recipes abound that add quite a few other things including wine, blue cheese and onions perhaps in attempt to better marry the protagonists. If I was to do it again, the oysters would be marinated with a few drops of Worcestershire sauce plus a little finely chopped parsley to tie the two ingredients together. Even looking at the photos, it seems as though the oysters are doing their level best to get out of the steak. Still, it was fun to do something that my parents probably ate a few times and it was great to cook something that speaks of my country.

There are some really amazing prizes, from all over the world, the complete list is here. In buying a ticket (or two), you are not only getting a chance to win something, you are actually putting food on someone’s table - that ought to be reason enough. To find out more about the actual event and who the regional coordinator is for your neck of the woods, look here.

Go on, buy tickets ’til it hurts. Someone will thank you - from the bottom of their belly.

Its been a personal favourite for 20 odd years and now and was originally made to serve at barbecues. This particular version contains half wild rice and half brown rice and was made for a party where my wife works. The last time she took this along, I had to print out some ten copies of the recipe.

I normally make the salad with just wild rice, the reason this one uses a mixture of brown and wild rice, was because last time around, we had nearly run out of wild rice, but the brown rice is also a great way to stretch out the more expensive wild rice. I think both versions have their charm, but prefer the pronounced nuttier flavour of pure wild rice, which to my mind, looks better too; the black, wild rice grains are striking, highlighted by the yellow of the corn and red and green of roasted capsicums.

Okay, I know that wild rice isn’t exactly Mexican, but all the other flavours are, you just have to imagine a trading route was established between north and south and that wild rice was traded for chillies - it’s what I would’ve done!

Goes well with all meats.MEXICAN RICE SALAD

• 1 cup wild rice*
• 1 green capsicum
• 1 red capsicum
• 2 cobs corn
• 1 or 2 bird’s eye chilies, finely chopped
• 1 or 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/2 bunch coriander, washed and chopped, leaves & stems
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• salt & pepper

Put the wild rice in a pot, cover with salted water and simmer for about 40 minutes or until tender. While the rice is cooking, char the skin of the two capsicums, place in a covered bowl for 10 minutes to loosen the skin, then peel and cut into small dice. Cook the corn cobs your favourite way, I simply place the unpeeled cobs in the microwave and blast them for about 5 minutes on full power. When cooked peel the husks, remove the silk and standing the cob on your cutting board, cut the kernels off. Whisk or shake the olive oil and red wine vinegar to emulsify. When the wild rice is cooked, drain and place in a bowl while still hot. Add the diced capsicum, corn kernels, coriander, garlic, chile and dressing, then season and thoroughly mix. Cool to room temperature and serve.

* half wild rice and half brown rice is also very good.

In fact, cooking a great potato dish probably gives me more of a thrill than simply inserting a piece of truffle into something, whereby the truffle is just doing its business, no real work required; the only thing as a cook you have to make sure of, is that you don’t muck it up, but making a potato sublime, well, that’s a whole other story, that’s cooking.

It’s my thing.

The other day, I was mucking about with racks of barbecue style pork ribs for dinner and was up to my armpits in salt, pepper and spices when D came to the kitchen and peremptorily said,

“You can do the vacuuming now.”

As in right now, right this second, with no regard for what I was currently doing. As if my chore didn’t actually count as housework or even existed. It was right at that moment that it hit me with crystal clear clarity. My wife doesn’t count my cooking as housework in the same way that she would assess her own cooking contribution, solely because she knows I love doing it. When D cooks, it’s housework, when I cook, it’s something else. It’s not like work for me in her mind, because I’m getting pleasure from it. Hence she is able to command me to do real housework at the drop of a hat.

Stuff that matters.

It’s almost as if vacuuming is the penance required in order for me to cook or barbecue, sort of like a rosary full of Our Fathers. I’m sure the Pope has something to answer for here. But just to show there are no hard feelings, I would invite him over and cook for him, perhaps a nice Devil’s food cake. So long as he vacuums. ]]> http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/11/19/penance/feed/ http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/10/25/rods-rub-sweet-mesquite/ http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/10/25/rods-rub-sweet-mesquite/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:00:14 +0000 Neil Murray Recipes Rubs Ingredients http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/10/25/rods-rub-sweet-mesquite/

A little while ago, I did a post on slavinks, which are basically sausage mince wrapped around with streaky bacon. Unfortunately at the time, there were no photos, but that’s no impasse to posting around these parts. Recently a jar of barbeque rub, Rod’s Rub, Sweet Mesquite, came my way to try out. After messing around with it for a while and using it as it is supposed to be, with terrific results, I thought “Hey, maybe this stuff can be turned inside out” which, of course, I did. So instead of just being a rub, it also has a place as an ingredient. It also gave me the chance to do a couple of overdue photos as well.

What struck me about about Rod’s Rub was the haunting, smoky notes of mesquite combined with just the right touch of honey sweetness. I’ll tell you more about using it as a rub in another post because I having a sneaking suspicion the Rod would be wanting me to do just that. But Rod, if you’re reading this, you’re going to like me, I promise! After the experimentation with grilling using this rub, there was something about the flavours that struck me - if it could taste so good rubbed on the outside, how would it work on the inside?

We all know that grilling alters the flavours of spices, but if the rub was used as a key ingredient, the pure flavours of spice could come through; it was then I thought about using it in slavinks. You can pretty much use any of your favourite sausage mince as the base, but my little jar of rub was whispering chicken mince to me.

CHICKEN SLAVINKS
(makes 6)

• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 5 cloves garlic, finely diced
• 100ml olive oil
• 750g chicken mince
• 1 tablespoon Rod’s Rub, Sweet Mesquite*
• 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
• salt & fresh ground pepper
• 12 rashers streaky bacon

In a frying pan, add the onion, garlic and olive oil and sweat until the onion is soft and translucent, leave to cool. Place the chicken mince in a bowl and add the cooled onion and garlic, Rod’s Rub, Sweet Mesquite, breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper. To help the chicken mince stay together and not crumble, work the mixture with your hands for about five minutes, this develops the collagen which sticks it together. Divide the chicken mince into six portions, then lay 2 pieces of bacon crosswise, put a patty of chicken mince in the middle and lay the bacon over to enclose the filling. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients. Grill or fry on a low heat, until the bacon is nicely browned and the chicken cooked through.

*If you don’t have Rod’s Rub, well what’s stopping you? Okay, maybe a snowstorm. You could substitute smoked paprika instead or a few drops of liquid smoke and regular paprika.

Streaky bacon crosswise, ready for filling

Finished slavink with the bacon ends tucked under

The picture that could get me excommunicated from Get Your Grill On, slavinks in the frying pan.

On the plate and very tasty they were.

What Hansa did was to move to another site to continue with smallgoods manufacturing and sold the butcher shop, which kept trading, but dropped some of the old product lines. One of the casualties of this was a hamburger like creation called slavinks, which we loved. I’ve tried to track down a recipe or some references to slavinks, but the only thing I can find seems to suggest they are Dutch, but no recipe.

The other day I was pondering how we might be able to get our hands on some more when I thought to contact Hansa and ask if they still supply these somewhere. The guy on the end of the phone laughed and said they were really easy to make and sure, they look simple, but the filling wasn’t plain ground beef, which I mentioned. It was then the secret of slavinks fell in my lap. He told me that the filling was their spicy bratwurst sausage mixture, which I knew where to get, simply wrapped around with two slices of kaiserfleisch.

Is it a bit sad that finding out information like this makes me really happy? Well, it did, and it’s going to make you happy too.

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be a spicy bratwurst mixture, good and all as it is. It can be any sausage mixture at all. What could be better than your your favourite sausage skinned and wrapped with two slices of bacon and guess what? It doesn’t have to be wrapped in bacon either, it could be a couple of slices of prosciutto, or to hell with the bank manager, a couple of slices of jamon Iberico wrapped around some spicy fresh chorizo. That would bring some class to your next barbeque.

Slavinks

For each one:
2 slices of kaiserfleisch, streaky bacon or prosciutto
1 fat spicy bratwurst or other sausage

Lay one slice of kaiserfleisch on a work surface and lay the other slice across it at 90 degrees, to form a cross. Skin the sausage and make the meat into a hamburger shape and lay in the centre of the kaiserfleisch. Fold the ends of the kaiserfleisch over to enclose the filling, then grill or fry until cooked. ]]> http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/09/10/slavinks/feed/ http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/07/20/bbq-man-style/ http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/07/20/bbq-man-style/#comments Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:00:53 +0000 Neil Murray Editorial http://getyourgrillon.net/2007/07/20/bbq-man-style/ The following was sent to me by my daughter, author unknown. Surely she doesn’t mean me? Or any of you?

It is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity, as it’s the only type of cooking a ‘real’ man will do, probably because there is an element of danger involved.

When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine…

(1) The woman buys the food.

(2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert.

(3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill - beer in hand.

Here comes the important part:

(4) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.

More routine….

(5) The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.

(6) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the situation.

Important again:

(7) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.

More routine….

(8) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.

(9) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

And most important of all:

(10) Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.

(11) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed “her night off.” And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there’s just no pleasing some women….