Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Oktoberfest 2006

Well, this post is kind of belated but I actually had a little Oktoberfest celebration of my own before my trip to Bangkok and now since we're already in November, I thought it better not to procrastinate any further. I love Oktoberfest, ok, honestly, I love any festival or celebration that has a lot of food in it. It could be something like this:

D: Hey what are you guys celebrating?
Random: It's John Doe Day
D: Say what?
Random: You know, John Doe he...
D: Wait, is there food involved?
Random: Yeah, as a matter of fact..
D: Put on your party hats dudes!

Having your own little Oktoberfest is very simple, just serve some "fairly" authentic fare and wash it down with a good German bier. If it doesn't feel authentic enough, just drink enough bier and believe me, it will become authentic haha.

This is how I celebrated my Oktoberfest:

Ingredients:1. A variety of sausages. From bottom left corner in clockwise we have: Bratwurst, spicy German salami, cabanas, rolled knackerwurst, smoked chorizo. (It doesn't matter if they're not all German in origin as long as they taste good haha)

Method:

1. Slice them all up

2. Grill them till they're charred as desired

Hint:
1. Try to cut your sausages into even slices if you do not want some other pieces to overgrill and dry out
2. Chill your bier glasses so that they do not impart any heat to upset your the temperature of your bier

Serve sausages hot with some icy cold German bier.

D

4 comments:

Unclenabe said...

Wah.. Why must spell beer as bier(german)? lolz...

Looks awesome though, i would love to taste that bier!

Anonymous said...

Hello D...I was wondering if you knew any recipes to do with snowfish. :D

D said...

unclenabe: I actually haven't tried edinger before it was pretty damn good. Reminded me of DAB.

D said...

Anon: Hi there, snowfish is the name of the fish commonly used in Chinese wet markets or Chinese restaurants. Several fish are often passed off as snowfish, the most commonly being the black cod. On rarer occasions butterfish(sable fish) or the somewhat "endangered" patagonian toothfish are also passed off as snowfish

One thing in common about all these fish is that they are pretty large and as such are normally sold and served in cutlets. I believe yours are in cutlets as well?

It is a deep sea fish residing in colder waters at up to about 2000m in depth and as such has a very high content of omega fatty acids (good stuff for health) which also gives it an extremely flaky, soft and smooth texture.

A few popular ways of cooking snowfish include:

1. Steamed snowfish Cantonese style:
a. Very simple, just place it in the steamer and steam for about 15-20mins for an average sized cutlet
b. Whilst it's steaming, make the sauce in separate pan using a combination of stock, soy sauce, sesame oil and or shallot oil
c. Remove the fish and pour away the juice (yes that's how it tastes so good, most Chinese styles of steamed fish does not use the fish juices with the exception of the Teochew variety)
d. Pour on the sauce prepared in b. hot and serve immediately
e. Top with fried shallots, crispy fried garlic and spring onions
f. This works extremely well if the snowfish is very fresh and you can taste the natural flavor of the fish

2. Pan fried with butter:
a. More of a western style, there's a popular Japanese style which is similar but involves using miso paste instead. Do use a good quality miso which tends not to be too salty
b. Pat dry the cod with some paper towels. Coat with a very fine layer of plain flour
c. Heat a pan and melt in some butter
d. Sear the cutlet on one side, cook for about 40-60s if it's about 1-1.5cm thick, then flip and cook the other side. It's very much like steak i.e. flip it only once
e. Salt and pepper with a drizzle of fresh lemon juice to taste, normally if I use salted butter, I don't tend to add additional salt
f. If you are coating it with a fine miso paste then you may use unsalted butter of olive oil instead

Some chefs have advocated "seasoning" the cutlets for a few days before cooking them but from my experience this isn't so good because the fish tends to dessicate due to the salt and lose its natural juiciness

Hope this helps!

D