Brent's: My First Degustation Experience

Wow I seem to be having a lot of firsts lately hehe! The other day my beautiful friend Joanna introduced me to the wonderful world of degustation! I've always been a bit hesitant in trying degustations because I thought I'd never be able to finish them or else I'd be super bloated! Surprisingly, I finished practically every delicious dish and didn't feel like I was in a food coma afterwards. We ate for 3.5 hours!!

 

We started off with two appetizers, the Amuse Bouche and Wild mushroom cappuccino with truffle oil and prosciutto crumbs. I absolutely loved the wild mushroom cappuccino, it's essentially a mushroom soup but it was so delicious and great on a cold night. I only wish it came in a bigger cup!

Then came the entrees, the Crumbed & fried goats cheese, beetroot & sorbet, candied pecan & charcoal lavosh and Red claw yabby, citrus cured salmon, cucumber, melon & mandarin jam. Both were delicious, the beetroot sorbet would help cut through the richness of the goats cheese. The yabby was a bit small but I guess that's all you can expect for an entree.

We had a bit of a refresher which was Chartreuse marshmallow, compressed apple, cucumber snow & milk wafer so it would cleanse the palette. Ok, I admit, I didn't like this, the flavours and textures were all just a bit weird for me but it was refreshing.

Mains were Crispy confit duck, butternut pumpkin, lemon curd & liquorice wafer and Slow cooked beef cheek, paris mash, sautéed mushroom, prosciutto & garlic croutons. I loved both of these but if I were to pick one, it'll have to be the duck. It was just so crispy and the lemon curd went perfectly with it. The beef cheeks were so soft that it would pretty much just melt apart, although the dish as a whole was a bit too salty, it would have been nice if there wasn't so much salt in the mash because the flavours of the beef were already quite strong.

 

We then had a Cheese course of the day which was then followed by dessert which was Coffee & fennel seed ice cream with chocolate mud cake and ganche. Unfortunately, the cheese of the day was blue cheese which neither of us are a big fan of. I had a few nibbles on the blue cheese and it wasn't too bad, not the worst of the blue cheeses I've tried. The dessert was was nice, the flavours of the ice cream were interesting, although I didn't like the ganche so much, it tasted like it was burnt.

The atmosphere inside Brent's was very relaxed but it still had the fine dining feel to it. It wasn't one of those places where you felt like you had to whisper to the person next to you and act extremely proper. The staff were all very friendly, polite and informative about the food which I think was great otherwise I wouldn't have a clue as to what I was eating. Brent's is another restaurant I would be happy to return to!

Overall, I enjoyed my first degustation experience and would definitely love to do it all again! So if you know of any good places to try, please leave a comment below.

Thank you!!

Joanne :)

Masterchef Challenge: Eight Textured Chocolate Cake

Hello Everyone!!

So I'm a big fan of Masterchef, also because I had a bit of a crush on Gary for a while hehe!

On this current season of Masterchef Australia, one of the Pressure Test Challenges was for the contestants to replicated Peter Gilmore's Eight Textured Chocolate Cake. My good friend Angel asked if I wanted to try making this dish with another friend, Jenny, so I thought why not!

We got a list of ingredients and equipment together and gave ourselves plenty of time to put this cake together. The contestants on the show were only given 3 hours. Between the 3 of us, we thought we'd try to aim for that time, but 4.5 hours later we finally finish assembling this cake! Boy was it a marathon!! I think I've had enough of melting chocolate over a double boiling for a while. You may notice that our cake is a normal cake size and not the cute little ones that it should normally be, we didn't have the correct size cutters so we did what we could.

Here's a picture of a lot of the processes we kept repeating...I think I got to around texture 4 and was hoping we had nearly finished, to only be told that we were only half way...nooooo!

This is us assembling the cake, first goes the cake base, then the mousse, dacquoise, ganche and milk chocolate praline.

Unfortunately, we had to leave out one of the textures, the chocolate caramel cream. As we were whipping the double cream into the mixture, it started to split. We decided it was better to leave it out. (I think that also happened to one of the contestants on the show, she still put it in but got eliminated) Instead we decided to use a bit more chocolate mousse and sprinkle it with some left over hazelnut and almond praline.

The final layer, the tempered chocolate goes on top, and here we are with our finished cake. Now for the final texture to be poured on top for the special effect!

Success!!

Would I call this cake a complete success? I wouldn't say it was completely, but it definitely tasted good! Would I try to make this dish again? No, I'd rather fly down to Sydney and eat it at Quay.

If I were to try this again, the equipment we'd definitely try to have next time would be a palette knife to ensure that the layers would be smoother and thinner. Also, tempering chocolate without a thermometer doesn't work (duh!) but hey we did what we could and it still looks pretty!

Very happy with our finished product!

We finish the night off with some much craved for savoury foods, also inspired by one of the latest episodes on Masterchef, some antipasto!

 Ahh if only Jamie Oliver could cook for me! But this was pretty delicious!!

Thank you Jenny for letting us borrow your beautiful home!! I hope we didn't make too much of a mess.

If you do want to attempt this recipe here's the link for it: http://www.masterchef.com.au/recipes/eighttexture-chocolate-cake.htm
Good luck and let me know how it goes! If you have tried it already, how did it turn out for you?

Joanne :)

My First Post

Hello everyone!!

Hmm what should I write for my first post? Well let me begin by saying thank you for coming here to visit me :) Also a big thank you to all my friends and family for being supportive of me with my new projects and most of all, thank you for putting up with me!!

So I've decided to start up a blog as well, along with my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/yenfaceitinerary.  As much as I loved going out and filming all my culinary adventures, sometimes I would forget my camera or just want to have a nice chilled out meal with my friends. However, I'd still like to share my experiences with you, so this is where I'll be posting about some of the other stuff I get up to. Don't worry I'll still be making my videos, they're so much fun to do!!! So please visit my channel when you get the chance to as well!! Also, please let me know of any other places I should try! There's so many amazing places out there that I'm yet to explore!!

Enjoy!!