Masterchef Australia Episode 5 - The Shannon Bennett Pressure Test

photo from Masterchef Australia

This is one of those episodes where they just have to follow the recipe and not create their own thing.   This was the first pressure test and it was an amazing one.   The six that did the best got their aprons  and those people being Andy, Julia, Kylie, Lydia, Ben and Beau.

Shannon Bennett of Vue de Monde in Melbourne gave them a reinterpretation of a peach melba to do.  I am might, and I stress might, try to make it myself, the recipe is on the Masterchef Australia website.

The cage is white chocolate and filled with a sphere of peach jelly and a white chocolate mousse.  The sphere is covered in a white chocolate and caramel wafer that had to carefully melted over the inner mousse/jelly sphere.

The pink you see in the picture are small blobs of the peach jelly.    The brown crumb is shortbread which I do not see in the recipe.

The cheftestants that did not get an apron were then weeded down from 27 to 12 that would get a chance to get one of the last six aprons.   The judges decided if people could cook again or not.   I would preferred for all of them to go out some sort of food related challenge and not how this way.

Golden Dragon in Cloverdale

We were on our way to the ferry and realized we were not going to make the 7 pm ferry which meant we had time to have a meal before we went on board.   We were nearing Cloverdale and pulled up Urbanspoon to see what was good and what was not.   We ended up choosing Dragon Village in the heart of Cloverdale.

The place is mainly a take out restaurant, they have put no money into the decor.  Based on the look of the interior and nothing else we would have walked but we trusted the good rating on Urbanspoon and stayed.   When I looked into the kitchen I could see where they put their money.  The kitchen is bigger and better set up than most mid sized Chinese restaurants kitchens I have seen.

Initially it was only going to be Sheila, Stephen. Max and myself, but Catherine, Ben and Daniel met up with us there so we were six and a half for dinner.

We ordered based on only three and half of us eating and ordered the dinner for three and added to that their ginger beef and dry garlic spareribs.   When we realized the others would be joining us I thought we would have to order more but that was not the case.   The five dishes were enough for all of us - do not forget that Ben and Daniel are teen aged boys/

The pork fried rice and chicken chow mein were huge plates of food, large enough we did not finish them.   They were well done for what they were.  The chow mein had more bean sprouts than I have normally seen.  The sweet and sour pork was well done but unremarkable.

The ginger fried beef smelt of ginger, I have rarely encountered that in your classic "Canadian and Chinese Cusine" restaurants.   It also tasted amazing.   The beef had an outer crunch but still retained a tender centre.   The sauce was thin and not gloopy.  It was also not very sweet at all and really more of a ponzu type of sauce.   I used some of the extra sauce on top of my rice instead of soy sauce.

The pork chop suey looked very good with nice thin but large slices of pork.  I did not get to try any of it but I was promised by the others it was good.

I devoured the dray garlic spareribs, they were some of the better ones I have had.  They seem to have cooked a bit differently that some ones I used to love at this restaurant in Vancouver, their colour was a darker brown than I remember.  I ate most of them.

The whole bill for the meal and six pops came to $60.20.   The prices are honestly too low for food this good.   We feed seven of us for this price.  Most of the dishes on the menu range from $7.20 to $8.90.

When we are passing through Cloverdale and have time I expect we will be stopping in again.

Yan's in Salmon Arm

I am mainly writing this review to remind myself not to eat here again.

The buffet looked tired.

It was hard to distinguish between the different dishes because the food was bland and almost all tasted the same.  Effectively most of it was a meat covered in a greasy sauce and all had the same texture.

The salt and pepper shrimp were very over cooked and almost too greasy to handle.  Peeling them sucked because of the oiliness of them.

I am trying to think of anything redeeming about the food and all I can say is that is not the worst Chinese buffet I have been too, that 'honour' belongs to a restaurant in my neighbourhood.

Just avoid this place and go to the Jade Buffet in Salmon Arm instead

Billy's in Princeton

We went to Western Half Yearly Meeting last weekend and decided to take an extra few days to visit some friends in the interior. The longer trip took us through Princeton, a very nice small interior town that is worth visiting if you get the chance. We were hitting town at lunch time and we had to go somewhere for the meal. The first place that came to mind was Billy's.

 The restaurant is nothing fancy, but for a roadside diner it is just about perfect.

It is located right at the bottom of the hill when you come into town from the west.   It has been there since the 1970s and sits on the site of the former Princeton Brewing Company which for many years used a cave to cool their beer.   There is still one back wall of the brewery left against the hillside.  

Many restaurants call themselves family friendly, but Billy's goes that extra mile.   This is not a few crappy crayons and some lame page to colour, they bring a whole box of toys.  One of the toys was a puzzle like thing and was interesting enough for our 14 year old to play around with it.

The food is diner food done well.   The hamburgers were on soft fresh buns, they had fresh non-iceberg lettuce on them.   The patties were hand formed and about as good as I can make at home.

The fries were hot and plentiful.   They may have been hand cut on site, but if they were not they have a high quality supplier.   The gravy I got with the fries was not some generic brown powder mixed with hot water.   I think it may actually have been made in house from real meat.

The coffee was decent and not the weak brown water that you get in so many interior BC diners.   My cup was being refilled about as fast as I could drink it.   In general the service was fast, attentive and friendly.

The price was about what one would expect for a diner.   The shakes looked expensive and was more than we wanted for lunch so we did not have any.  I could see a proper machine in the restaurant and I suspect they do those classic thick ones where you get the metal container it was made in along with the shake in your glass.

For burger and fries, they did as well as I could have done at home, certainly much better than I can do camping.  They lived up to everything I remembered of them from past trips through town.


 

A decent automated pancake machine

This is actually not a bad machine.
We ran across this machine in the breakfast room of the Holiday Inn Express in Salmon Arm. The pancakes are a bit thin, but they are hot and fresh, for a generally self serve hotel breakfast bar, this works well and is better than a lot of what was on offer.

Episode 4 - Masterchef Australia

I have to keep on this as Bernard would have us watching Masterchef all hours of the day if we could (we can't, for many reasons, but largely because we will soon be all caught up) and I will forget what I wanted to cook and or even what the choices were.

Episode 4 continued the whittling down to the top 24.  This year they have put 13 into the top without having eliminated anyone - keeping everyone in the mix - until now.  Matt Moran came and demonstrated how to fillet a salmon for everyone at which point the contestants needed to put on their big girl panties and decide if they wanted a 50/50 chance at an apron (into the top 24) by filleting and cooking salmon.  Of the lot 27 stepped forward and they drew knives for a position in the top 10.

I have to say several displayed a rather flawed decision making paradigm in my opinion.  They stepped forward having never filleted, and in some cases never cooked salmon.  This is a do or die scenario and they are spouting nonsense about being there to learn - they are going to get booted without ever having a master class to learn anything at.  This is when you try to work to your strengths so you can get to the learning.  I said big girl panties, not titanium balls people!

Now the family challenge portion - what to do with salmon?  Bernard has polluted my mind with his ideas as this is a dish he has made many times.  I have resisted just copying, mostly, but I would have done one thing the same, sou vide the salmon.  I would place some lemon zest and fennel fronds in the sou vide bag and infuse those flavour.  For sides I would do a fennel and apple salad with a light lemon dressing and thin sliced oven roasted potatoes.  I would roast the potatoes on a cooling rack dry them a bit and then ensure they had a bit of crispness to add a new element.  To finish I would make a lemon aioli that would be used to dip both the salmon and the potatoes.  I think it could have held up not to bad.

Masterchef Australia episode 3 - Mornington Peninsula

In this episode the top twelve cheftestants from the Mystery Box challenge from the day before had six hours to go down to the Mornington Peninsula, get their fresh ingredients, get back to the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, and cook their dish.  Six of them would get their aprons and be in the top 24.  By fresh ingredients, they meant it all, fruit, veg, meats and seafood.   This also means things like eggs, onions and garlic.

I will run through what the cheftestants did and then explain what I would have done.

Mastechef logo emulating the Royal Exhibition Buildings
main window

The parameters of the challenge are too wide for my liking, "cook what you like".   When you have too many options it is hard to be creative because the lack of adversity does not push you.   I could see that many of the cheftesants suffered from having too much latitude.   Interestingly the two that screwed up and did not get some of the things they needed - Audra did not get her eggs and Dalvinder did not get onions and garlic that were needed for her lamb curry.   Both of them had to improvise and both of them made dishes that were stellar.  They were the two that returned with the most time, just short of two hours to cook.

The six who got an apron:

Audra made a chocolate tart covered in a cherry port gelee and topped with the fresh raspberries.  Matt Preston said it was one of the best deserts ever in Masterchef.  Good enough that she got her apron before they finished all the tasting.

 Dalvinder made a cashew curry that really wowed George, a man that is a not a fan of curries.   I hate to say that too me it looked very dry.

Amina - Alexandrian style snapper, she comes from an Egyptian and Korean ancestry, a very interesting combination of cultures.

Andrew - mussels with fried herb calzone.   He got an apron, but left a beard on a mussel.

 Jules - Pork belly with a goat's cheese salad.   I am not sure what to make of this one because they spent so little time on it.

TK - Crispy pork belly with a sweet berry sauce.  As someone that like köttbullar with ligonberry sauce, meat and sweet is not so crazy to me.

Now the list of those that missed:

Lucy  - Pan fried trout with abalone and artichoke on the side.  She undercooked her trout, the rainbow trout she went to the trouble of catching herself.   It also is not a very complicated dish and then was not well executed.

Sam - Mussel Custard.   He may not have got an apron, but this is a very interesting idea and makes me want to try and make a seafood custard to see what you end up with.  His plate was overly busy

Wade - Seared snapper with broad beans  - a simple dish that did not stretch him.

Karen - a tasting plate of trout, it did not wow Gary.  I am not sure what the three forms of the trout were on the plate.

Yuki only made a grilled pork chop and some odd condiments to go with it.  Fuck, I could have made that in 15 minutes.  Seriously, grilling a pork chop is about all that was going on.

Philipo, he made a bad meringue - he started too late and could not achieve what he wanted.   With only 44 minutes he should have come up with something else.   You could see as George cut into it that it was bad.


So what would I have done? 

The seafood on offer was clearly very fresh, but it is not what I would have gone for. With cherries and raspberries in season they would have to be my focus. I love both fruits and would, if I could, eat them without end everyday.  As a teen I spent several summers picking cherries in the Okanagan.   It was long hard work, 12 hour days were normal, but one reason I liked picking cherries as a job was because I could eat cherries all day long.

I would like to play with the cherries and raspberries with some sort of interesting ways.   An intercate desert is what comes to mind, something channelling the spirit of Heston Blumenthal.  I am thinking setting the jiuce of each agar agar or some other gelling agent.   Solid enough that I would have something that work cut into cubes or in a thin sheet.

Bad haircut for Matt Preston 

I want to play with the temperatures and textures with the goal of a desert that looks like a work of art but is also very interesting to eat..

Elements that come to mind:

• A tuile bent into some interesting shape then wrapped in a sheet of set raspberry or cherry. 
• Pearls of set cherry juice set which would be put together to look like a raspberry
• Raspberry flash frozen in liquid nitro and made into a powder, I am thinking I would mix it with a praline crumb to form the base of the plate I was making.
• Cherry and raspberry sorbet as the centre of the plate.
• A shard of sugar glass flavoured with cherry.
• and finally a couple fresh cherries and raspberries

I have never tried anything like this, but in this challenge you would not be eliminated and therefore the risk or trying something out there is worth it.