Recipe: Low carb fudge

It must be said, this is a low carb recipe not a low calorie recipe. This is rich beyond rich and is definitely a 'treat' food, handle with care. 

Low Carb Fudge

1/3 cup Peanut Butter
125g Butter
1/4 cup Splenda
100 mls Whipping Cream
1 tbpsn Cocoa
1/3 cup Walnut pieces

Method

• Cut the butter into centimetre sized cubes and place in a saucepan with the peanut butter
• Heat on a low to moderate heat stirring regularly until you get a caramel coloured liquid emulsion of nut butter
• Add the Splenda and mix through thoroughly, heat until the mixture begins to bubble
• Add the Cocoa, 1 tablespoon should be more than enough if good quality Dutch process Cocoa is used. In the US I have discovered Guittard single origin Cocoa and recommend it highly. 
• Stir thoroughly to ensure even mix of the nut butter and cocoa, the mixture should have an even colour
• Add the cream while continuing to stir, this may cause the mixture to rise slightly so it is best to use a small saucepan or tall confectioner's pan
• Continue stirring rigorously, the mixture should thicken quickly due to the Cocoa and cream
• When the mixture has reached the consistency of gravy turn the heat off
• Take a small pan or tupperware container - I used a 10cm * 15cm container - and line with the walnut pieces
• Pour the hot fudge mixture over the nuts ensuring they are all covered
• Leave to rest until close to room temperature and then refrigerate until solid, preferably overnight
• Cut into cubes, this recipe should make around 20 pieces but err on the small side as this is very rich
• Serve with coffee but keep refrigerated until close to serving as the high fat content of this fudge will cause it to melt at warm temperatures
• Be calorie and carb smart, this is a little over 1g of carbs per piece and less net carbs since much of the carbohydrate is dietary fiber from the nuts but this is a whopping 100 calories a piece

Keto Friendly Recipes: Carb free "taco" salad

Looking for a quick and easy family meal? This takes less than 20 mins to prepare and contains only 2g of carbs.

Carb free "taco" salad

500g chicken breast

1/2 a head of romaine lettuce

1 medium Hass avocado

2 tbspn sour cream

1 tbspn hot sauce

3 tbpsn hot salsa

60g shredded cheese

oil for frying

Method

• Cut the chicken into strips then season lightly with salt
• Oil the pan and put onto a medium heat, when the oil is hot add the chicken strips
• Brown the chicken then add the hot sauce to the pan, I use Tapatio Hot Sauce for preference
• Stir fry the chicken until lightly coated in the hot sauce
• Peel the avocado and then cut into cubes
• Shred the lettuce into small strips suitable for fitting on a fork
• Toss the avocado, lettuce and sour cream in a bowl (Mayonnaise can be used to dress if preferred)
• Place the warm chicken on top of the lettuce mix
• Spoon on the salsa and then sprinkle with cheese
• Feeds 2 lightly or 1 substantially
• Fantastic the day after so great for school lunches or leftovers

Keto friendly recipe: Steak au Bleu

Rib eye and Blue

500g boneless rib eye

100g neufchatel cheese

100g soft blue cheese

1 handful of asparagus

butter

salt and pepper

Method

Steak is best cooked at room temperature where the muscle fibers relax slightly, this also minimises the 'shock' when the meat hits the hot pan. 

Here you can see I've bought a large boneless rib eye, cut fresh from an organic butcher. You should get the meat cut according to how well you like it done, I want mine slightly rare so this is about 2.5cm thick. When in doubt, ask your butcher.

Once at Room temperature season liberally with salt and pepper and place in your grill/pan.

Leave the steak on a medium heat, you want this hot enough to sear the surface but also slow enough to render the fat through the meat. 

Cook to your preferred taste, I prefer a Medium Rare steak with a crisp sear on it. If you work with a meat thermometre this is around 60C. Refer to the meat 'doneness' guide on Wikipedia.

Take the meat off the heat and rest for 5 minutes, use this time to cook the asparagus.

Put hot water with a little salt in a pan deep enough for the vegetables. Place the asparagus spears in the water as it is near boiling with a little salt. 

When the asparagus turns bright green like this it is ready, drain and place on the plate. 

This step can be done at any point but I like to do it when I buy the cheese. Blue cheese is delicious but often too strong in large amounts, to set this off I use neufchatel cheese - a rich cream cheese - to smooth out the flavour. 

Put the desired amount of cheeses in a bowl and let warm to room temperature for ease of mixing. Combine the cheeses and then spoon onto a sheet of plastic wrap. 

Roll into a sausage shape and place into the freezer. When you begin cooking the steak take this out of the freezer. 

Using a hot knife cut the cheese into rounds and place on the rested steak, cut a knob of butter and serve with the asparagus. 

Delicious, can you believe this is diet food?

Keto friendly recipe: Tuna ceviche

This is one of the easiest recipes in my repertoire - the secret here is to get the freshest Tuna you can and prepare this immediately before serving.

Tuna Ceviche

250g raw tuna
1/2 red onion
1/4 cup fresh coriander
1 avocado
2 lemons
1 lime
3 tbspns olive oil

Method

Cut the tuna steaks into pieces to marinade, I like to leave this enough to cut into sashimi style slices. 

Juice the lemons and the lime, add more if necessary ideally you want the juice to just cover the tuna in marinade

Cover and leave the tuna to marinade to your taste. If you like the tuna raw you should leave for 15 minutes or less, if you want the acid to cook through the meat you should leave for up to 4 hours or cut into smaller pieces.

When you take the fish out of the fridge it will have discoloured due to the cooking process, this is normal. 

Keep this in mind if serving to a dinner party since the fish can turn grey and unappealing if allowed to sit in the acid for too long. 

Dice the tuna into small cubes, I like to put some slices aside to have on their own.

Dice the vegetables and put in a mixing bowl.

Add the olive oil to the marinading mixture, making sure to remove any citrus seeds. Add to the ceviche mix to taste, about half the liquid should be enough. 

Garnish with one or two sprigs of the coriander, I like to serve it with slices of the marinated raw tuna like so.

Snapshot: Katana-ya, San Francisco

So the good thing about moving cities is a plethora of new restaurants to try out! Feeling a little down and homesick one day I treated myself to a "girly day" of movies, nail salons and what better comfort food but ramen?

A quick review of the local eateries online recommended Katana-ya and it turned out to be just around the corner from where I was staying. So I dashed out just as they were opening.

Any restaurant that has a line out the door waiting for it to open is usually worth a look, the fact that they were Japanese grandmas made it all the more promising. 

Like a real noodle bar in Japan the place is low on seats and high on shouts in Japanese, there's sushi and noodles and not a lot else on the menu. Mostly the place is packed with single eaters and couples wolfing down food. Like many popular ramen joints staying to talk is not encouraged. 

Mapo Tofu Ramen

I spotted a mapo tofu ramen on the menu and ordered it since it's not easy to find. The result? The noodles are not made fresh, but they're pretty good. Sadly there's no tonkotsu broths on the menu so I order this with a miso base. The meat and tofu are nice, and it looks as though they make their tofu on site. All in all it was pretty damn good, not up their with the best ramen I've ever had but definitely better than I was expecting to find in the US. I'll be going again. 

Katana Ya

Casual noodle dining

Very few seats, no reservations, expect to wait and eat fast

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Keto friendly recipes: Souvlaki with Tzatziki and Greek Salad

Tzatziki

1/2 a lebanese cucumber

1 clove of garlic

250g pot of plain yoghurt

• Tzatziki is best made the day before as the raw garlic needs time to mature in the yoghurt
• Dice the garlic as finely as you can, place in a bowl with the yoghurt and mix thoroughly
• Dice the cucumbers into small pieces and add to the yoghurt mix, stir thoroughly to coat
• Place in the fridge overnight, before the meal drain off any excess water that has come from the cucumbers and stir again
• Serve in a small bowl or on the side of your meal
• Many yoghurts in the US are non fat, I recommend Brown Cow Plain Creamtop yoghurt which is whole milk and free of Bovine growth hormone, it is also low lactose and I can digest this without lactase

Greek Salad

1 cup of green leaves

1/4 a lebanese cucumber

1/2 a red onion

8 grape tomatoes

10 kalamata olives

100g of herbed goats cheese

• Place the leaves on the base of your plate or bowl
• Cut the cucumber into rounds 
• Dice the onion and slice the tomatoes
• Drain pitted olives
• Place all the vegetables in your bowl 
• Crumble the cheese on top
• If desired dress with a balsamic/olive oil dressing

Souvlaki

500g leg of lamb
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
3 tbspns of extra virgin olive oil
Salt for seasoning

• Marinate the lamb as long as you can, either over night or from lunchtime for a dinner meal
• Dice the lamb into evenly sized bite sized morsels and place in a bowl
• Season liberally with salt, break the leaves off the rosemary and place in the bowl
• Drizzle the oil on the meat, no need to be precise with the amount just ensuring that the meat is well coated
• Mix through to ensure that the salt, herbs and oil are coated onto each piece
• Place the bowl in the fridge well covered to seal

• The oil may have turned cloudy or solidified due to the cooling, this is normal
• At the time you're ready to cook take the meat out of the fridge and thread the pieces onto skewers
• Leave the meat out to reach room temperature before cooking

• Souvlaki can be cooked in any means you choose, over a wood barbecue is best 
• In my case I'm frying because I've recently moved countries and have limited cooking equipment
• Place flat on one edge of the meat and turn the skewers every 2-3 minutes until the meat is cooked

• Once cooked be sure to leave the meat to rest before serving for around 5 mins
• If you're a bay area local I recommend organic lamb from the Haight St Market

• Whether you're low carb eating or not this is a delicious family meal just perfect on summer evenings. 
• This recipe will serve 2 heartily. 
• If you need your carbs back then serve with Pita and hummus for a delicious do it yourself wrap.

Comics for food lovers

It's Comic Con this weekend, so this is a great time to talk about comics for food lovers. First of all let's start with the fact that Anthony Bourdain food writer and television personality extraordinaire has released a graphic novel Get Jiro! G4 did a great interview with him about the book and how the project came into being.

Video Games - E3 2012

Of course Japan has a comic book for just about everything and as a food loving nation there are many options for great food oriented manga. Here are some of my favourites.


Yakitate!! Japan follows Azuma Kazuma a sort of 'bread genius' who's intent on finding a bread suitable for the Japanese palette and making Japan as famous for bread as France or Germany.

Azuma enters competitions looking to gain a job at the main branch of the Pantasia bread chain, a prestigious job with Iron Chef style battles. Along the way he makes some friends, invents amazing recipes and solves family problems for the Pantasia owners. Watch out for the recipe on how to make bread in a rice cooker.

Oishinbo is probably my favourite comic of all time. It follows Tozai Shimbun a food writer for a Japanese newspaper searching for the Ultimate Meal. The comic focusses on different types and regions of food in Japan, each episode talks about how to find the most amazing ingredients for a dish, or how to improve a dish that doesn't hit the mark. It goes into huge depth on how to prepare foods including filetting fish, polishing rice and how best to store live animals prior to cooking.

For the Japanese food lover this goes into extreme detail on regional specialties, seasonal foods and unusual delicacies in Japanese cuisine. My only sadness is that you can currently only buy 6 collected 'best of' books rather than the 120 or so books that were released in Japanese. There's also an anime TV series based on the manga. I cannot recommend this book enough.


If you're thinking that the title of Iron Wok Jan invokes thoughts of Iron Chef you'd be right, though the Japanese title is Tetsunobe no Jan I assume the translaters were trying to carry on the Iron Chef obsession in America.

The comic follows Akiyama Jan an arrogant young chef with an excellent command of the Chinese cuisine. He heads to Gonbanchou a family owned Chinese restaurant in Ginza to show off his skills. Rivalries and cooking competitions follow of course!




Gokudo Meshi is 'gangster food' a story of a group of gangsters and criminals put away in South Naniwa prison who are obsessed with food. Each year they battle it out for the prized parts of the new years meal by telling stories of the best food they ever ate. Like many great food manga sadly there is no English translation for sale in print however one can easily find copies on Scanlation sites, armed with an eBook reader this presents no problems for keeping up with your favourite food manga. Gokudo Meshi was turned into the live action Japanese movie Sukiyaki in 2011.


Hungry for more? Check out Wikipedia's list of Cooking Anime and Manga for more.

Keto friendly recipes: Caprese Salad

Over the last couple of years I've gained what could affectionately be called "happy relationship weight" along with the Google 15 (who brought some friends) and in an attempt to curb this I've been trying the low carb/Keto approach to weight loss.

It's early days yet but to be honest, it's working. I'm not hungry and I've lost more weight in a week than I did in a month of low calorie low fat dieting. As a foodie though there's no way that I can eat steak for dinner every night or replace bread with grated cauliflower and lettuce. So I thought I'd post some of the keto/Atkins friendly food I've been eating starting with a simple one.

Caprese Salad

1 handful of basil leaves
1/2 cup fresh mozzarella bocconcini
1/2 cup grape or baby tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil

Method

• Wash and tear up the basil leaves
• Cut the tomatos and the bocconcini
• Combine in a bowl and toss thoroughly
• Season to taste and drizzle with olive oil
• Less than 5g of carbohydrates

Review: Gordon Ramsay at The London, Los Angeles

As a foodie one can't help but be curious about the ventures of celebrity chefs and so it was that I found myself in Los Angeles and took a detour to the restaurant at The London whose executive chef is none other than Gordon Ramsay.

With a laundry list of food television shows and a history littered with Michelin stars one might expect a lot of things from a restaurant owned by such a man but I'll say that I was sorely disappointed with this venture and thinks Mister Ramsay is better suited to consulting on restaurants than designing them.

To be fair we found ourselves in Los Angeles during Restaurant week and so rather than the tasting menu we were hoping for we were instead treated to an economy 'taster' menu with very limited choices for each course.  The restaurant was accordingly packed to the gills with curious foodies and one very obvious table of wealthy regulars who were given the luxury of ordering off menu. I wonder that had we been able to order the normal menu at reflective prices we wouldn't have been so disappointed and the packed restaurant can't have helped the service. It's a shame because as someone who isn't afraid of a hefty dinner bill particularly when travelling I wonder that I wasn't left with a tainted image of the venue.

It must be said though at $44USD for 3 courses this was a real bargain for a food tourist on a limited budget and if your budget is more limited than my own this would make an excellent way to see champagne dining on a beer budget.

The hotel itself has been recently renovated and is very classy if you subscribe to the Trump ideal of white marble and shiney gold fittings as far as the eye can see.

To start with we were whistled away to a bar to wait for our seating and enjoyed a snack and a cocktail while boggling at the Size 0 starlet wannabes being bought $30 cocktails by men twice their age. For people watching there are few better places than posh restaurants in LA, though I pity the dates purchasing food for their darlings that I can only imagine they pushed around their plate to stay fitting in their dresses.

Charred octopus salad, pee wee potatoes, celery hearts and parmesan

Endive Salad with Candied Walnuts, Baked Goats Cheese

Very unfortunately for me there was a runaway insect in my greens, leaving me to worry heftily about the washing of the ingredients. To add insult to injury it took far too long to get the attention of a server to replace my dish and their attitude as they did was less than ideal. Perhaps diners use this as an excuse to have items taken off the bill but frankly I found this incident alone very jarring. To make matters worse they took some time to replace my dish forcing my partner to eat alone while we waited for another. Very disappointing.

Braised American Wagyu Beef Brisket, grain mustard, eggplant and mizuna

Points given for failing to use the American misnomer "Kobe beef" but otherwise a fairly standard beef dish and nothing exciting.

Roasted Organic Chicken Breast with Sweet Corn Succotash

This at least felt new and interesting to me because of the American splash of succotash, but I do feel let down when I am forced to order a chicken dish in a fine dining restaurant; but there were only 3 choices of mains and the other was a vegetarian risotto which appealed even less.

Valhrona Chocolate Fondant with Salted Caramel

Again this was a well executed dessert but hardly an inspired menu choice, I felt this could have been ordered in any quality restaurant the world over.

Lemon Raspberry Millefeuille

Now this was an item I could admire, smooth lemon custard and fresh ripe raspberries with the usual plate dotting that is all the rage at the moment. 

Coffee and Macarons at additional cost

The Macarons were okay, but I'll take a Zumbo Macaron over these items any day. Again I would have been happier with a higher cost and better service, these take aways were $14USD on top of my meal whereas diners at the likes of Craft are afforded free delights to take home. 

All in all I feel like eating at a Ramsay restaurant was a required part of my foodie career but I think I'll stick to watching him on television. 

Gordon Ramsay at The London, West Hollywood

http://www.thelondonwesthollywood.com

Formal dining

Book well in advance through Open Table 

Great for people watching

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The Equality Dinner at Quay Restaurant, Sydney

With marriage equality and Quay desserts hot on TV this evening it seems to be a fitting time to showcase The Equality Dinner that I attended at Quay Restaurant as part of the Sydney LGBT Mardi Gras festival. Gender and sexual equity is a huge part of my ethical landscape and as a member of my company's LGBT support group I was lucky enough to attend this Black Tie event complete with divine dishes and inspiring speakers. 

As well as an important event to discuss Marriage Equality in Australia it happened to be at the Iconic Quay Restaurant. For those not acquainted Quay is one of the most prestigious and well celebrated restaurants in Sydney. Currently home to Sydney's Chef of the Year Peter Gilmore, holder of 3 SMH Hats and recently celebrated in San Pellegrino's list of the 50 Best Restaurants in the world. Imagine my delight at a dinner at this notoriously difficult to book venue!

While we hear wonderful speeches by the likes of equality advocates Mia Freedman and Dr Kerryn Phelps we were served a series of dishes far elevated from the usual "chicken or beef" so lets take some time to review the deliciousness.

Sashimi of Hiramasa Kingfish, horseradish cream, smoked eel tapioca, horseradish cream, cherry bell radishes, nasturtiums.

Loin of Riverina Lamb with artichoke emulsion, fennel, leek, confit tomato and Arbequina olives.

Roasted Mulloway, stone ground semolina, heirloom carrots, buckwheat, farro and brown butter. 

Petit Fours 

White Nectarine Fool, Moscato d'Asti Grania and White Nectarine Ice Cream

Quay's Seven Texture Chocolate Cake

For those who are fans of foodie television you may recognise this dessert as the recent 'pressure test' menu item featured on the 2012 season of MasterChef Australia

For extra fun a number of charity auctions and raffles were held throughout the evening and as a ticket buyer I walked off with a number of beautiful Becker Minty luxury goods for my trouble.

Quay Restaurant

http://www.quay.com.au/

Formal dining

Expect to book several weeks in advance

Though this was an event ticket without menu prices please expect to pay $300+ per head for food and wine

Upper Level

Overseas Passenger Terminal

5 Hickson Road

The Rocks NSW 2000

Phone: +61 2 9251 5600 

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