The Pickled Cumquat: January 2012

Last weekend I looked after my Nanna and Nannu, an occurrence that happens one weekend a month.

They arrived from Malta by ship in 1949 and raised their 6 children on what was then working farm.

Fast forward 60 plus years and they are both in their late 80’s, living on the same property. Nanna is turning 90 this year, and they will be celebrate 68 years of marriage this year.

I love exploring and remembered as a child playing with my cousins on the farm, with my camera in hand I set out on the farm to see what I could find in the way of fruit and vegetable plants.

This is how my afternoon panned out......

Cherry tomatoes, everywhere!

Lots of pumpkin varieties

Basil

Spinach and Sweet Potatoes

Prickly Pears

Parsely

Bananas

Macadamia Tree

Olive Tree

Dahlia

Nannu's Old Tractor

Bay Leaves

Rosemary

Pomegranate

Enjoy!

Mel xx

Last week I was lucky enough to participate in a cooking class with Tom Kime at his restaurant Fish & Co. in Annandale. It was a rainy Sunday and I could not have thought of anything better to do then cook and eat.

I meet 8 other fish enthusiasts, most of whom wanted to learn different ways of cooking fish. I was much like everyone else; I wanted to learn some new things that I could impress guests with!

We met Tom and he handed us all an apron and let us know what we would be doing during the three hours together, I was quite surprised when he started by saying we would all learn how to fillet a fish and we would also make 5 dishes being:

Grilled Mackerel, with horseradish, lemon and mustard

Spiced mackerel escabesh

Grilled marinated Pennang fish with chilli, garlic and ginger served with lemon grass and black pepper dressing.

Spice and sesame crusted tuna served with wok-fried asparagus and zucchini with mint topped with a warm Asian vinaigrette

South Vietnamese Fish Curry

With all that information I was very getting excited so we headed in to the kitchen to start!

We first watched Tom fillet a Mackerel, most of us had never filleted a fish before – what great environment to learn this in, and I could not believe how simple it was.

We split into three groups and had three people working at each station, everyone got a turn at doing each of the elements which I thought was great, we helped each other out and produced some really good looking and tasty dishes.

I started off by filleting the Mackerel here is my attempt!

We we shown in detail how to prepare all of the dishes.

After learning all the techniques, we made the first three dishes (see below), learnt about presentation and sat down and as group and enjoyed them with matching wines.

Spiced mackerel escabesh

Grilled marinated Pennang fish with chilli, garlic and ginger served with lemon grass and black pepper dressing.

Grilled Mackerel, with horseradish, lemon and mustard

After a nice break and eating what we had just created it was back to the kitchen to complete the last two dishes, here Tom showed us how to ask for tuna when going to a fish monger (always better to ask for a piece which they normally have out the back) and how to prepare tuna pieces with a simple salad and amazing vinaigrette.

Following this we learnt how to make an amazing South Vietnamese curry.

Once again we sat down and ate what we had created as a group.

South Vietnamese Fish Curry

Spice and sesame crusted tuna served with wok-fried asparagus and zucchini with mint topped with a warm Asian vinaigrette

I really enjoyed this three hour cooking class (that actually went for four hours), meeting great people and being able to cook in a real restaurant kitchen.

Tom was a great teacher and was full of facts about sustainable fishing. Going into this I was not fully aware of sustainable fishing, but I have come out with knowledge of how it all works.

I would highly recommend this class, all you do is turn up, and you walk away with, hands on experience, experimenting with flavours, a signed cook book written by Tom Kime and all the recipes in a booklet.