Tag Archives: Cooking

Fennel, orange and Spanish onion salad with goat milk fetta

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By Walter Trupp, chef

This wonderful salad goes well with seafood, fish and any meat.

For a different flavour hit, replace the fetta with a mild blue cheese or ricotta, while radicchio or witlof can be used instead of rocked.

Preperation time: 15 minutes

Servws 4 as an entree

Ingredients: 

3 oranges

1 large fennel bulb

1 red onion

15-20 black of green olives

10-15 mint leaves

2-3 handfuls rocket

juice of 1 lemon

8 tablespoon seed mustard

8 tablespoons olive oil

salt and paper

150 g goat milk fetta cheese

Method: 

Peel 2 oranges. Using a sharp knife, cut off the top and bottom of each fruit, then place flat side down onto a cutting board. Cut downwards, removing the peel in sections, ensuring that no pith remains.

Cut orange crossways into 4-6 thick slices and put to one side.

Pick green tops off fennel very thing and place into a bowl.

Slice onion in half, cut into 1-2 mm wedges and add to bowl.

Add olives, mint leaves and rocket to bowl.

Squeeze lemon and remaining orange, and place juice in a separate bowl.

Add mustard and olive oil to juice, disk and season with salt and pepper.

Add orange slices to the dressing and mix.

Break fetta into small pieces and add to fennel and mix.

Combine with orange mix, place onto a serving dish and garnish with fennel tops and pepper.

For more healthy salads recipes refer to our cookbook “Trupps’ Wholefood Kitchen” available in stores across Australia.

10 Steps to improve yourself as a cook

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By Walter Trupp, Chef

Train your Taste

One of the most important keys to being a successful cook is to understand and learn when something tastes right.

At the beginning of your journey with food and its preparation, almost everything new to you will taste amazing. Learning about food is easy, and the process can be sped up by paying attention to the food you consume every day and by asking as many questions as possible. Go out and try different types and styles of food at markets, food festivals, cooking schools, exhibitions and restaurants. Experiment at home via the Internet, books and magazines. Cooking at home, in my opinion, is the most exiting adventure; as your inner alchemist can explore countless new cooking methods and techniques, flavour combinations, textures and presentation styles.

During my career, I went through stages where I would favour particular ingredients or cooking techniques. Often with a single ingredient, I would try countless methods of preparation and cooking, as well as flavour combinations.

I naturally gained knowledge and confidence by exploring markets and talking to people in the food industry like producers, processors, farmers and importers. To this day I still explore, ask and (most importantly) listen when it comes to food. I also constantly train my taste memories through conscious tasting and chewing (almost similar to wine tasting), where I explore the differences between the elements in a dish and also ask myself questions such as:

Are the textures and flavours in harmony, or do they disturb one another?

Does the dish work as the perfect ‘all together’, or do the ingredients not marry with each other all that well?

Is there something missing, or is there too much of a certain ingredient that overpowers the other flavours?

Is the dish incomplete, half-finished or overworked?

And if you’re pairing wine or beer, does your choice compliment your dish in its textures and flavour?

Recipes

Before you try a new recipe, study and analyse it beforehand by visualising the cooking process in your mind.

Start with easy and simple methods and presentations using recipes from well-established cookbook authors, as they tend to be more accurate.

At first glance, most recipes appear quite simple, although in many cases it is the preparation and the cooking technique that makes them tricky.

The more recipes you study and practice, the more knowledge you will gain on different ways of approaching an ingredient or cuisine and be able to incorporate any changes to a recipe if you consider it more suitable. So after a while, you will be able to develop your own style and learn to follow your intuition.

Be hard on yourself and don’t fall for compliments from people you cook for, as you are the best person to judge the quality of your style and technique in the dishes you produce. Be in harmony with what you cook, as it is a reflection of your knowledge, experience, belief and talent.

Do not avoid procedures that you are afraid of or don’t appeal, as they might turn out to be a mayor key in achieving results, and may even become one of your favorites. Remember that the more you try, the more knowledge and confidence you will gain. Over time, your cooking will become more relaxed and be an accurate reflection of yourself, not to mention a great topic of conversation.

Speed

When cooking a dish, coordinate cooking times so that each element is perfect.

Consider that each ingredient has a perfect cooking point and avoid unnecessary techniques and preparations. On the other hand, follow all the necessary techniques and preparation methods you need to optimise your dish.

If you plan to serve an impressive menu where each dish consists of several elements, it pays to be well prepared. Choose dishes that you are confident with and that you can cook and plate quickly and at the same time. Never try new dishes on your guests, as a disaster is almost guaranteed.

Try to practice every day to improve your speed and technique and work as quickly as possible. Don’t just prepare food; keep your working environment clean and organised by washing your dirty dishes as you go. Plan at least one step ahead; as this will keep you out of trouble and train your skills in speed and organisation. Tools should be kept within a reachable distance. Nothing is worse than running around the kitchen looking for things, while in the meantime your fish, for example, overcooks.

When it finally comes to plating the food, avoid unnecessary presentations or garnishes and leave the dish natural. Learn to love and enjoy the plating process, where you face the final result of your work, as it is probably the most critical moment for a passionate cook.

Start cooking for small numbers of guests and increase slowly as your confidence grows. If you stress too much during the plating process (because of too many guests or overly complicated food), you will lose the enjoyment of it all.

Accept eventual mistakes and try to avoid them the next time. It is only through mistakes that you will learn, improve and understand the product and it’s characteristics better.

 

Equipment

Only purchase kitchen equipment that you really need. Your kitchenware should allow you to use modern and traditional preparation and cooking methods to achieve a satisfying end product.

When using appliances, first think if it is worthwhile to do so, as sometimes you might end up chopping something in a blender that you could have done by hand in the same amount of time. Not to mention that you end up spending more time cleaning and dismantling the food processor!

Realistically, you don’t need much electrical equipment. A pasta machine, mortar, and blender is more than enough, but great additions would be a juicer, grain mill and flaker and maybe an ice cream maker for frozen fruit purees.

Food processors for chopping herbs, vegetables or mincing meat and fish are not all that necessary at home. Your money is better invested in some good working tools like a wooden chopping board, glass or metal bowls and containers, some good knifes and most importantly, a good stove and oven. Avoid purchasing plastic utensils.

Produce

Study produce and use it seasonally. This gives you the best available quality at the cheapest price.

Low quality ingredients turn even the best chef into an average cook. On the other hand, good quality products can help the average cook produce fantastic dishes.

With dry goods, don’t only trust brand names. It pays to study quality regulations and labeling guidelines, so that you do not to end up with expensive products that aren’t exactly what they claim to be (some brands that produce balsamic vinegar, truffle oil etc are guilty of this).

For fresh produce, only trust yourself and do your own quality control check when purchasing. Ask plenty of questions and if you are satisfied with their answers and the quality of the ingredient, add this seller to your network of ‘trusted suppliers’. This network helps when you pre-order rare products, where an established relationship almost always guarantees quality.

Spend time speaking with a trusted seller and gain an understanding of their opinions or concerns about what they’re selling (or not selling!). He or she will often have a greater understanding of produce and their inherent characteristics, and this gives you a better idea of when and how to best use them. Keep in mind that this should not stop you from doing your own research about individual ingredients.

Maintain your own personal recipe book (which could one day be published) and take notes on everything from how a certain ingredient cooks, to combinations and seasonality. This is probably the most important tool of all.

Though it might sound like hard work, once you have your system up and running, you will know where to find quality produce with surprising ease. All you need to do from there is to add the ingredients together in the best way you know how.

Such an understanding from your side and from your supplier network will make cooking at home very easy and enjoyable indeed!

Kitchen fashions

Most food fashions come and go and every trend has to be considered very carefully. Some leave behind useful new developments which will have a long-term impact on our daily cooking, but it is often forgotten where they actually came from.

When it comes to following trends, try to stick to simplicity and be mindful of the authenticity of the produce.

Avoid adopting fashions at the expense of quality. Maintain and express the personality and seasonal identity of a product. Use contrast, textures, temperatures and flavours logically so that the natural qualities of the different elements work harmoniously and marry well with each other, not to mention with food’s partner, wine.

Don’t fall for current trends. I’m personally very skeptical about a few of them, such as the unnecessary plastic coating in the sous vide method, where you bombard your food with highly toxic plastic hormones*. Some molecular recipes use an enormous amount of food additives that often exceed the daily recommended intake of those ingredients by as much as several hundred times. Short-term adoptable trends are used for spectacular creations, but the originality of our food suffers.

Other current trends are concerned with the way a dish looks. The food plated appears impressive, until you find out that it has been cooked using very basic methods and the quality (especially temperature) suffers because of its difficult presentation.

On the other hand, cooking is a creative process. What is new today might be old tomorrow. You have to keep your mind open for new trends – study, explore and discuss them – as you might find some amazing new flavour combinations, techniques or ways of doing things. They certainly will expand your knowledge, so take the best out of each and use it if it suits you, but do not let yourself get carried away by them.

Do not get scared

Dicing, whipping, chopping, peeling… Most beginners get scared about the enormous amount of work and it might all seem to be too much in the early stages.

When you become more comfortable with cooking, things will start to become easier and it might turn into a form of relaxation. It is often regarded as a type of meditation that allows you to escape from your daily routine.

Of course there are many easy recipes such as risottos, salads and so on, but you do not want to cook them all the time.  When you start to experiment with the more complex recipes that demand more precise preparation, timing, confidence and the controlling of several factors, that’s where you might start to struggle. The key lies in avoiding as many mistakes as possible. You also need control of cooking times and be able to balance flavours.

In the beginning, the simplest jobs might take you hours. Start early, do not fear complex challenges, and give yourself enough time to try and discover new techniques. Through learning them, the more complex recipes will seem easier to follow and understand. By being well prepared you have nothing to fear. Try to do everything in a dish, even the complex jus’ and sauces (which you can freeze anyway). Do not compromise. It will make you feel so much happier and confident in the knowledge that “I can do this and I also know how to do it several different ways”.

Creativity

It is sometimes difficult to stick to a recipe. The availability of certain produce, seasonal problems and quality of what is on offer will often dictate this. You might just buy a perfect piece of fish, or find some ripe tomatoes and strong flavoured herbs and feel like making something out of that.

So you will have to improvise or ‘be creative’. Many recipes use ingredients that are often out of season and represent the author’s taste and style. Sometimes it is just impossible to find all ingredients for a certain recipe in top quality at the same time.

With a trained taste, good basic knowledge and confidence in your cooking abilities, you will be able to improvise, develop and slowly create your own style. That’s precisely how any creative and successful chef started his or her career.

To do so, you will need a good back up of different style cookbooks (for reference), a good understanding of different vegetables, spices, herbs, oils, vinegars, sugars and frozen stocks that you could add or change, improve and balance if needed.

Be cautious and grow slowly in those early stages, do not fall in love with your creative flights, the chance of being successful can be very close to fluke or disaster.

Confidence

To be a good cook you will need a healthy dose of self-confidence, but be careful not to overestimate your skill or close yourself off and repeat the same methods again and again.

Do not over-interpret compliments or ignore critical words. Try to be creative and perfect with every detail. Keep learning, improving and trying new ways of doing things. Repeat what you learn over and over, until they are a part of your cooking routine and menu combinations. Set yourself a target to optimise the quality of each element in a dish and menu.

Be self-critical and judge yourself harshly but honestly. Know your weaknesses as well as your strengths, and that way you will quickly become a better cook.

If you are not happy with certain things in a dish but only you know of or recognise these issues, don’t mention them, as it serves little purpose other than to draw attention to what would otherwise be a perfectly acceptable dish.

If something really did go wrong, just see it as a reflection of your current skill level and learn from it. Set yourself goals and slowly lift the bar higher and higher. Do not accept that you’ve reached your potential – just keep practising.

Costs

Sometimes cooking seems like skiing. You queue to get on the lift for a while, then it takes you up the slope (for quite a while) and all that time spent waiting is a fraction of what it takes when you finally descend. The time it takes you to prepare a menu, in comparison to how long it takes you to eat it, is mostly skewed towards the former.

Additionally, if good produce is used, cooking at home is not all that cost-effective. To prepare a menu with top quality produce, it might cost you the same as eating in a decent restaurant. Cooking is not a cheap hobby. Sometimes you might feel you just wasted a lot of money and time, or you might feel like you cooked for the wrong guests. When having these thoughts, simply think about the healthy food you ate, how much you learned and how much you improved.

Be a pioneer! Think of all those dishes that restaurants can’t provide because of time pressure and customer demand. Realise that cooking at home allows you to experiment with different (especially slow) cooking methods. Whole roasted poultry and large roasts, braising dishes that are cooked to perfection for hours and slow baking soufflés are just some of the things that you can do at home much easier than can be done in a restaurant environment.

At home, you can also match your food perfectly to wine. This allows you to enjoy rare and expensive wines which, when consumed in a restaurant, would cost you a fortune.

*Refer to Trupps’ Wholefood Kitchen for more information.

How to Make a Perfect Chicken Stock

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By Walter Trupp, Chef

Every time I look through a cookbook, I come across a slightly different recipe for chicken stock. With our Chef Essentials course coming up, I wanted to dedicate a bit of time on how to make the perfect chicken stock, as it will feature throughout the course. The reason why there are so many variations in chicken stock recipes is because they have different uses in later dishes.

I have come up with a real versatile chicken stock that can be used with any recipe.

I’ve experimented with several versions over the years and often I would incorporate new and unconventional techniques. My experimentations have led to some amazing findings and conclusions that may surprise you. The criteria I set for the ultimate chicken stock is that it must satisfy a delicate soup or sauce, a rustic risotto or bean stew, and of course it has to be suitable for just plain eating. Additionally, I wanted to stay away from the wastefulness of my fine dining past and not lose any part of the chicken, as using good ingredients costs money.

For the following recipe, I shopped all organic at the wonderful Prahran Market (which is the best food market in Melbourne and the reason why we opened our school next to it) and spent a total of $24.50 (spices not included). With leftovers, you will easily feed a family of four using the meat and possibly vegetables.

Back in the kitchen, this attempt at making a chicken stock was based on four previous trial runs. I was hoping that this would be the last, as we all had gotten a bit tired of boiled chicken and chicken stock!

Earlier attempts included a stock made of a whole chicken, one using chicken drumsticks, one with just bones and one with only wings. The wing version was very good, but it is often quite difficult to purchase only organic chicken wings. The most delicate stock used the whole chicken, so I wanted to give that another try, but it had to different – just a little bit more special.

With all the ingredients laid onto the kitchen table, I wrote out a list:

Note on chicken: The most important factor in this recipe is the quality of the chicken you use. Cheap, conventional chickens will give you an unbalanced and thin stock, which often tastes a bit soapy. You will find that cheap chickens create, what I like to call, ‘the protein problem’. This is where protein particles constantly release from the meat and often make stock cloudy and gritty tasting. Good quality chicken stock will show its real strength when it is ready cooked. When chilled, it will turn into a jelly.  Good quality organic chickens show balanced aromas with a clear and strong chicken flavour.

Ingredients List:

1.3-1.6kg of fresh organic chicken

The green of 1 medium-sized leek

2 sticks of celery (leaves* removed)

2 medium-sized carrots, cleaned but not peeled, cut into small cubes

3 small or 1 large onions, peeled

½ Tablespoon black peppercorns (you can use white** ones)

Few parsley stalks

2 garlic cloves, peeled (if they have a yellowish shoot, remove it)

6-7 medium-sized button mushrooms

5L cold water

10g fresh ginger ***sliced

*Celery is better without the leaves, as they tend to turn bitter if cooked for a few minutes. An alternative is to add them to the stock just a few minutes before you stop boiling it

** Black peppercorns are generally more aromatic due to being unpeeled, unlike their white counterparts, which tend to be hotter in flavour. Black peppercorns, in my opinion, give the stock a floral aroma.

*** Ginger needs to be fresh, which means it should have a softish skin, which is easily rubbed off. Older or golden coloured ginger is quite strong in flavour. Therefore, if that’s the one you have to use, just two to three thin slices will do.

 

Method:

First, de-bone the chicken (something you learn at Chef Essentials), remove the skin and cut it into strips. Cut all the meat into golf-ball sized cubes.

Chop the bones roughly. Something I didn’t do for this recipe was to wash the chicken or the chicken bones. Many chicken stocks call for you to wash the chicken. If you want to have a real crystal clear stock, you should actually wash the bones and skin (not the meat) and dry them in a strainer. I purposely did not wash any parts of the chicken, as I wanted to go for maximum flavour and minerals; washing would not help with either of these characteristics.

Next, I placed the bones, skin and meat into a really thick copper pot (3.5). I like to use copper as the heat is very even and they reduce stocks much quicker. They also use less energy. If you don’t have one, any thick stainless steel or cast iron pot will do.

I covered the chicken with water, turned the heat on and quickly brought it to the boil.

Just before the chicken starts to boil, you will find that the whole thing might just look like an inside of a dirty mop bucket, but don’t stress, this is just all the proteins releasing out of the bones. Once the water boils, the protein will curdle and form a greyish foam on the surface.

I skimmed the foam off the surface immediately and several times over. I had to be quick in this instance, because if left for too long, the foam would cook apart and the particles would boil back into the stock, turning it cloudy and bitter. I skimmed the surface for as long as it needed, but did not worry too much about a little of it sticking to the sides of the pot (also don’t be concerned by the foam sticking to the bottom of the pot). I did not throw the foam away (although it looks awful), as it contains a lot of good chicken fat which you could use for other cooking purposes. If you do this, let the foam stand for 1 hour as the fat separates itself onto the top before I skimming it off with a tablespoon.

Once the stock was boiling, I removed the first of the foam and turned the heat down so the stock just simmered.

After approximately 30 minutes, I removed the meat pieces by picking them very carefully out between the bones. I removed the meat, for no other reason than to not overcook and waste it (I actually turned it into a salad), but you could leave it in and cook it longer if you want to use it for a pie or something else where dry chicken is not a problem. If I were to cook the meat longer, not only would it be dryer, it would have made the stock stronger. But this would have failed one of my criteria – to not waste any part of the bird.

I simmered the remainder of the stock for a total time of 2 hours.

While simmering, I cleaned and cut all the vegetables. As you see in the photos, I cut them quite small (not the usual rough chop or whole vegetable versions – which I personally like). You will have also noticed that so far I made three fundamental changes to a classic chicken stock: the meat is in pieces, not adding the vegetables from the beginning, and finally the addition of mushrooms. Mushrooms are an interesting one as they are my answer to monosodium glutamate (MSG). Mushrooms are high in natural – and therefore healthy – glutamate, and a few of them adds a sweetness to the stock and really brings out the best in the other ingredients. Way back at my restaurant in Austria, I always added a few mushrooms to stocks and sauces, which is something I learned from one of my visits to Alain Chapel`s restaurant. He made a mushroom cappuccino from only mushrooms, water and cream (which was one of the best things I have ever tasted).

I added my vegetables later, because I found in one of my earlier attempts that adding the vegetables too early, the real vegetable flavours would weaken to be almost non-existent. The same goes for pepper. In these earlier attempts where I would add the vegetables early, the stock would taste best after approximately 30 minutes.

My conclusion was that vegetables, herbs and spices needed to be added during the last 30 minutes or so of cooking.  They also need to be chopped finely, in order to just cook through and release all their flavour and nutrients into the stock. So after I adding them, I increased the heat and brought the stock quickly back to the boil. I reduced the heat and simmered the stock for another 20 minutes. Then I turned off the heat and rested it for about 10 minutes. The purpose of the resting was to allow any floating protein particles to sink to the bottom.

Next, I strained the stock carefully through a very fine strainer. I used a ladle to transfer the stock from the pot and later I very carefully poured the stock directly from the pot, but I made sure that not too much movement was going on. When looking into the pot, I found that there were still a few particles floating around, and therefore I strained the stock through a muslin cloth or thin kitchen cloth. The stock I had now was not completely clear (which was due to not washing the bones), but it definitely had lots of flavour and minerals, which would have been lost with washing.

So it was time to taste the whole thing. I have to be honest, it tasted quite floral and fresh, which was due to way I used the vegetables. But it was still a bit reserved because there was not any salt in the stock. It would have been great for eating and Dorota thought it tasted great, so I kept half and I thought I would reduce the remaining half to see how it tasted when used for sauces and seasoning (more about that later).

Reducing a stock is a science of its own, and this is well explained in our Chef Essentials sauce session. With reducing liquids in cooking, I want to stress the most important rule: you have to reduce liquids very quickly, ideally using two or three pots. You need to create a large surface area in order for the water to evaporate quickly. Reducing lots of liquid in one single pot on a low heat just creates a boring and soapy end result.

Quick reducing preserves flavours and slow reducing destroys them.

After reducing the stock by approximately one third, it started to show its real strength. It began to taste very concentrated and I would say this is the very stock that can be applied universally to create elegant sauces, foams, stews and Asian stock-based dishes.

I wanted to go a step further and continued boiling the stock. I must admit that the fresh vegetable flavours started to disappear, but not at all in a bad way, as further reducing would still be suitable for a sauce or for seasoning purposes.

Here are my Reducing Results:

The original unreduced stock turned into a light jelly when chilled, which was nice to see as it showed I used a good chicken. From an eating point of view, it was perfect for a stock to drink and for use in cooking.

By reducing the stock very quickly and to 60% of its original volume, it turned into a firm but still soft jelly when chilled. It was a strong tasting chicken stock suitable for Asian style soups where pasta and vegetables are added (which would dilute the slightly stronger flavour).

Reducing the stock to 40%, turned it into quite a firm jelly* when chilled, and at that stage it was perfect for sauces and as a base of pureed soups, broths and stews.

Reducing the stock to 25%, I got a very firm jelly when the stock was chilled and I would say that this would be the ideal base for a sauce such as a veloute or a red wine glaze to round up a vinaigrette etc. Reduced stock like this is also the ideal seasoning tool for any food that misses depth, body, volume or that famous ‘something’. It can lift a soup, risotto or sauce to a different level. This version of stock I would usually use for freezing down, as it takes very little space in your freezer. What I do is pour it into the ice cube tray of my freezer. Once frozen, I place them into a tightly closed plastic bag. In our kitchen, those cubes are one of the best kept seasoning secrets, not to mention that they are very nutritious as they are packed with proteins and minerals.

Notes:

You can easily double or triple the recipe

You can pick the veggies out and use them for a soup a salad etc. they are still not overcooked and quite full of flavour.

When storing any of those stocks, I found they do very well for three days, after which the vegetable flavour seems to disappear. You can freeze them, but just make sure that the stock is well wrapped, as it acts like a sponge when it comes to absorbing freezer flavours.

If you are interested in learning more cooking techniques look up our Cooking Classes Calendar.