Cured Salmon, Blood Orange and Fennel Salad

Goddamn summer. When the temperature gets above 30 degrees or so, a lot of the things that I like to cook and eat stop being quite so attractive. No more long, slow braises, no more soft polenta spiked with handfuls of butter and Grana Padano.

The last few summers I've tried to force myself to try new things and be as excited about warm-weather cooking as I am about dishes that need to sit in the oven for four hours. That's a struggle.

The main problem? Salad is boring.

OK, so obviously salad can be just as inventive, exciting and memorable as any other kind of dish. It just usually isn't.

Cured fish has those intense, concentrated flavours, so it makes a completely non-boring base for a salad. The citrus in this salad also helps lighten things up and keep it refreshingly acidic.

It's extremely basic to prepare. Curing salmon or trout is all kinds of easy. Do it!

Cured Salmon, Blood Orange and Fennel Salad

Ingredients

500g salmon fillets (around two small fillets), pinbones removed

50g seat salt flakes

50g white sugar

One lemon, zest removed

One blood orange, zest removed

30ml gin or vodka or limoncello or something along those lines

Fennel bulb, with lots of herby fennel tops (you might need two bulbs worth of herby bits)

Method

1) Combine the salt, sugar, zest and a handful of herby fennel tops in a bowl.

2) Place your salmon fillets in a plastic or glass container (I use a square Pyrex baking dish) and cover all over with the salt-sugar mixture.

3) Wrap with plastic and weigh down. I loosely wrap the Pyrex bowl, then place a small plate on top and stick a couple of beers on top of that. Works for me. Soon your dry cure will turn to a liquid brine as it sucks the moisture out of the fish.

4) Leave your salmon in the fridge for about 36-48 hours, until it's reasonably firm and cured through. Every 12 hours or so, take it out of the fridge and flip the fillets, making sure they're covered in the brine.

5) Slice all the pith off your blood orange and cut it into thin wedges (supremes). Arrange on a plate.

6) Shave thin slices of your fennel bulb with a vege peeler or mandolin. Arrange on top of the blood orange and squeeze a little bit of lemon juice top stop them browning.

7) Top with slices of your salmon and some more fennel tops. Finish with a little drip of good olive oil.

I guess summer is not that bad.

Slow-braised octopus

When it's cooked well, octopus is meaty and savoury and briny. When it's cooked poorly, it's rubbery and fibrous and unappetising. 

I've stumbled across a technique for cooking octopus that results in perfectly tender tentacles with a lot of that deep-sea flavour. Result: this is going to be the summer of octopus. I got the technique from a column by Harold McGee, the author of the legendary On Food and Cooking. 

Basically this method just involves slowly cooking the octopus in its own delicious juices for 4 or 5 hours. Warning: your house will be filled with a strong octopus smell after the first hour or so of cooking. It's not unpleasant, but it is quite strong.

Slow-braised octopus, McGee style
Ingredients:
Whole adult octopus or octopuses.
 
Method:
1) Preheat your oven to 95c, and bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.

2) Cut the tentacles away from the body of the octopus. Discard the body. 

3) Once your water is at a rolling boil, blanch the tentacles for 30 seconds. Do this in a few batches, so that the temperature doesn't drop too much.

4) Remove the tentacles from the blanching water with a slotted spoon or a pasta spoon, and place in a pot with a tight-fitting lid that can go in the oven. I use an enameled cast iron casserole. Don't add anything else to the pot, not even salt (otherwise it will get too salty as the natural 'sauce' reduces).
 

5) Place your covered pot of blanched tentacles in the pre-heated oven and cook for 4-5 hours, until very tender. 
 

6) Allow the tentacles to cool in their liquid.  

That's it! You've now got beautifully tender, yet still meaty, octopus tentacles. You can just season these and serve them warm, or allow them to cool completely and serve them in a salad. McGee suggests straining and reducing the braising liquid and serving the tentacles with this natural sauce.
 
I like to allow them to cool, cut them into chunks and then dress them like a salad. You can then either serve the tentacle pieces as a salad, or as part of an antipasto platter, or thread them on the skewers and quickly barbeque them. The BBQ method is probably my favourite.
 
Barbequed octopus skewers 
Ingredients  
-Two octopuses, prepared as per the recipe above and allowed to cool to room temperature
-Juice of one lemon  
-Handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped  
-Good quality extra virgin olive oil
-One long red chilli, chopped (deseeded if you must)
-Red wine vinegar (optional)
-Sea salt
 
Method
1) Add the olive oil to the lemon juice, roughly 2 parts olive oil to one part lemon juice. Stir vigorously until emulsified. This is a bit more acidic than a standard vinaigrette, but the octopus benefits from aggressive seasoning. I like to add a dash of red wine vinegar too, but you don't have to.

2) Pour the vinaigrette over the octopus, adding the mint and chilli and a few generous pinches of sea salt.

3) Toss well, then taste to check your seasoning.

4) Thread onto skewers.

5) Heat on a hot BBQ or pan for about 30-60 seconds, just enough to slightly crisp the outside and warm the tentacle pieces through.

6) Pour over any left over dressing.

Like I said, this is going to be the summer of octopus.

West End Deli (Cafe - West Perth)

Beautiful West End Deli shot courtesy of Matt from Abstract Gourmet

The small spot on the corner of Carr and Strathcona Streets in West Perth (the Leederville side, not the CBD side) used to be a fairly dull lunch bar, which only opened a few hours a day and specialised in cheap, dreary pies and sandwiches for the office block around the corner. Cafe Saga, as it was known, eventually closed and the spot lay dormant for a few months until a sign proclaiming the arrival of the 'West End Deli' was affixed to the window.

The speculation began to mount: would it truly be a 'deli'? If so, would it be your run-of-the-mill cigarettes and Coffee Chill type establishment? Would it do breakfast? Lunch? Most importantly, would it be any good? This frenzy of speculation was, admittedly, mostly confined to my interior monologue, but it reached fever pitch nevertheless.

Soon, it opened with relatively little fanfare: a promising looking cafe with a few shelves of nice pantry supplies on sale, a bit of fresh produce and some house-made charcuterie. I was hopeful, but skeptical. Lincolns and Sayers had only recently opened and I thought it would be hoping for too much for another quality food-focused cafe to open within walking distance of home.

The West End Deli turned out to be my favourite cafe of them all. It has a small (some say too small) menu that constantly changes to reflect the seasons and, presumably, to keep the chefs and customers interested. The 'deli' aspect of things has been reduced over time, but the cafe just gets better. I love this place.

At the moment the menu is focused on nourishing, wintery dishes like a braised beef cheek with creamy semolina that is beautifully gelatinous and hearty (pictured below thanks to Matt from Abstract Gourmet and his superior photography skills).

Another great photo courtesy of Matt from Abstract Gourmet

The current menu also features a shellfish bisque that is crammed with mussels, creme fraiche, tobbiko (a small, bright orange flying fish roe) and chives, served with a generous portion of house-made bread.

Beautiful photo of West End Deli's shellfish bisque by Matt from Abstract Gourmet

The bisque is incredible: rich, deep, complex flavours with plenty of mussels. The tobbiko pops in your mouth and provides a nice saltiness. I'd been daydreaming about this dish since my first serving a few weeks ago, and tried it again yesterday. It was just as I remembered, and perfect for the rainy weather Perth has been enjoying for the last few weeks. Best of all, it's only $13!

Some other items are not so cheap, and a few friends find the breakfast selection in particular to be a bit thin. I can see their point, the menu could perhaps do with one or two additional breakfast dishes. Still, there's always something on the menu that I want to eat.

West End makes all their own bread, pastries and sausages. Their baguettes ($4.5) are worth going out of your way for, and they supply some other local businesses (like Distracted on Oxford St, and Cantina 663 in Mount Lawley). There are also apparently plans to start opening for dinner in a few months time, which makes me ridiculously excited.

The coffee is very good and, most important of all, it's consistently good. They also make their own citrus-infused chocolate for the hot chocolates.

As you might have gathered, I am a bit of a fan.

(Thanks again to Matt from Abstract Gourmet for the photos. He has more at his flickr. He saw this post with a single crappy iPhone picture I'd taken, and generously offered his West End photos for use here).

West End Deli

95 Carr St
West Perth WA 6005
9328 3605

Mussels!

Seafood is a definite weak spot in my cooking repertoire, basically because it's so goddamn expensive that I get a bit scared about stuffing it up, so I usually opt for something else.

Anyway, in the last year or two I've been trying to branch out a bit, cooking a lot of scallops, some fish, squid, prawns, etc. Today was the day to try mussels.

Mussels are only about $9 a kilo from Kailis; you need about half a kilo per person as the weight is mostly in the shells and you'll lose a few.

These were very simple: quickly stir fry some garlic, ginger, lemongrass, coriander stem and chillies. Add the mussels and a little bit of sesame oil, turn them over 'til they've opened. Add a tin of coconut milk and the juice of a couple of limes, bring to the boil, stir in some coriander and serve.

We sopped up the liquid with bread, which was a tad inappropriate. Probably should've steamed some jasmine rice. Also too many of these had to be thrown away due to not opening, so I probably didn't cook them for long enough before adding the coconut milk.

Still, a good first try!

(As an aside: I walked to Kailis from my work near City West... Why is Perth so hostile to pedestrians? There's basically nowhere you can cross Loftus St without feeling like you're imperiling your life.)

Beans on toast for dinner

Beans on toast for dinner! The rib eye "flintstone" steak I'd planned to cook for dinner was still frozen solid, so a plan B was needed.

I like to have cupboards well stocked with basic supplies like beans, tinned tomatoes, coconut milk, etc. This came in handy, as we didn't have a hell of a lot else.

I used the small amount of supermarket crab (note: pretty bland) and some cannelini and borlotti beans to make a nice version of beans on toast. The beans are canned; I know that is a bit slack, but this is not the sort of meal you plan 24 hours in advance, giving you time to soak dried beans.

I just sweated a couple of shallots and a clove of garlic in some olive oil with a few sprigs of thyme, added the beans and a good glug of water, reduced til thick and creamy. Stirred in some red wine vinegar, good olive oil and salt and pepper.

On top I put some cold crab into which I'd mixed half a deseeded red chilli, some parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice and salt. The whole thing was placed on top of some bread that I'd brushed with oil and baked at 150c for 10 or 15 minutes and then rubbed with garlic.

I was quite surprised by how well this came out, I was kind of expecting it to be lacking something or be just generally bland, but it all worked. Monday night experimentation!