Steamed buns - ah Momofuku

The Momofuku book has been a bit of a bible to us, it caught us on the start of our ramen obsession, which has lead us to visit nearly every restaurant in Melbourne that has ramen on offer.  Then it lead us directly to the cinema to watch the cheesy Brittany Murphy flick Ramen Girl.  What we've drawn from this sensory ramen overkill is that nothing beats David Chang's ramen recipe.  This however is a wildly under-researched statement to which I think only a couple of trips to Japan, and then New York will sort out.  Only then will it be fair to make our verdict on our best ramen.

Enough about the AMAZING ramen.  This post is about the steam buns we made.  Another of our regular recipes in the momofuku cookbook.

At their happiest - steaming away.

A little different from the filled steamed buns in that the dough is rolled flat and folded, a little duck fat is smeared in between, so when steamed it is easy to pull them apart to fill.

Filled with some slowed cooked pork belly, spring onions and hoisin sauce.












Ahh, just dreaming about the day we get to go to Momofuku in New York.  Even though they have just opened a restaurant in Sydney, it feels like cheating on the experience by visiting the distant cousin.  We would way rather save it up for the David Chang foursome in New York.


Verdict: Amazing, always good.  And such a versatile thing to mix and match the fillings.
Would we make this again?: Yes, all the time. And as it makes such a large batch its a good thing to freeze some down, just to re-steam at a moments notice.  If only we had more freezer room!

Pierre Herme "The Picasso of Pastry"

This is a new addition to our book shelf since the challenge has begun.  To say that it's made it to the bookshelf is a bit of a lie, it's still open on the table at the ready for us to flick through and drool over the marvelous creations.  You may remember that an all out ban on cook book purchases was placed on our household, but how could we resist when we heard Pierre Hermé was bringing out a new book? One pre-order and Pierre Hermé Pastries was at our doorstep a couple of weeks later - it's all too easy this day in age to be a cook book addict!

Needless to say, we want to cook A LOT from this book.  He takes classic recipes from around the globe, explains the history behind it then goes ahead and creates a new and glorious recipe inspired by the the first.  We found it hard to pick just one, but Brittney decided our first recipe would be the Apricot and Hand of Buddha Financier which was baked for a workmate (Alainnah) on her birthday.

There were a couple of deviations from the recipe
1. We couldn't locate any Hand of Buddha for its zest (this has now moved up the ranks on the list of trees we would like to buy for our garden). 
2. The search for apricots was fruitless (excuse the pun) so we substituted apricots for plums.

A baked financier made with burnt butter, plums, chopped almond and sugar syrup. The almonds caramelized the top and this was decorated with a caramel mascarpone cream and some toffee pieces - delish!

Verdict: Yum, the mascarpone caramel was amazing, well it was all good. It did have a bit of a slide around in the top box of the Vespa, so it didn't arrive to work like this, but it's all meant to be about the flavours, right?

Would we make this again?: Yes, before the mascarpone was added to the caramel it was mouth watering, add a couple of teaspoons of salt and we think we have found the perfect salted caramel, jar it up and maybe it may give Burch and Purchese Salted Caramel a run for it money. This is on the Easter's holiday to do list.

One of our kitchen bibles

I know we have a lot of cookbooks, and being truthful many don't get a look in, but this is one that is frequented often.

The cookbook is Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi. If I need to bake something, this will be one of the four books that I will flick through for its great Baking section.  Caroline has had the pleasure of making everything from the pastry section which is amazing.  I know it's easy to discard the salad section when the pastry is this tempting however, we can highly recommend this as well.

It seems like a bit of a cheat using this cookbook for our challenge as we've already made so many of the dishes.   A visit to London last year saw us visiting the Ottolenghi in Islington.  It was great to see in the flesh.  Giant counters full of tasty cakes and salads - a real feast for the eyes!  We have a bit of an inability to hold back, so we got an array of salads and sweets to try.  This bounty would have in essence feed us for 2 days, we instead choose to eat it in one sitting.  Later that evening we found ourselves wandering past Nopi. We were of course very satisfied from our lunch bonanza but eager to try the restaurant version of Ottolenghi.  We wander in.   Delicious.  Slow service - but we weren't in a rush (and who really cares when it's that mouth wateringly good?).

Anyway, back to the task at hand. We were invited around to our friends Myles and Amy's for dinner, and asked to bring a dessert.  First stop - our dessert list.  Apple and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Syrup Icing - BOOM!

The cake added the finishing touch to an array of seafood that was put on by our gracious hosts: Mussels in a creamy white wine sauce followed by  Ocean Trout on a salad of asparagus and smashed peas with some crispy prosciutto.


Verdict: Pretty, pretty good (to borrow the words of Larry David). The maple syrup frosting put us all in heaven. Everyone should have this cookbook on their bookshelf, even if it's a little more curated than ours.
Would we make this again?: Yes.  We even feel the need to have some maple syrup frosting pre-made at all times.. just in case.