Canberra’s cult recipes unveiled (including eightysix’s Banoffee Pie) – get your spatulas out people!
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On Friday we bought you the low-down on Canberra’s new food Bible, Chefs Eat Canberra, written by hospitality veteran Chris Hansen and due out in September.
Chris has written the ultimate Canberra food history book as well as turning the spotlight on to 30 of our top movers and shakers. As part of his deep-dive he has managed to prise some of the city’s cult recipes from their creators. And as part of our deep dive into the book, we managed to prise them out of Chris. You. Are. Welcome!
Chefs Eat Canberra is due out in September and available for pre-order at chefseatcanberra.com. But in the meantime, you can spend your week planning to recreate one of these three iconic dishes – eightysix’s Banoffee Pie, Bar Rochford’s Cos Salad and Rebel Rebel’s Prawns with Bay Leaf Butter.
eightysix’s Banoffee pie
Ingredients
4 tins sweetened condensed milk
500ml cream
500ml sour cream
1 banana
1 vanilla bean, scraped out
1 packet digestive biscuits
150g unsalted butter, melted
50g dark chocolate
a few pretzels
Method
Submerge the condensed milk (still in its can), in water in a large pot, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 hours. Once cooled, open the cans and remove the caramel, combining and stirring in a large bowl. Crush the digestive biscuits, either by hand using a wooden spoon, or in a food processor, until you get fine crumbs, tip into a bowl. Mix the crushed biscuits with the melted butter until fully combined. Mould the mixture into smaller tart tins or one large one, covering the tin, including the sides, with the biscuit in an even layer. Push down with the back of a spoon to smooth the surface and chill for 1 hour, or overnight. Spoon it over the bottom of the biscuit base. Spread it out evenly using the back of a spoon or palette knife. Gently push the chopped banana into the top of the caramel until the base is covered. Put in the fridge.
To serve
Whip the cream with the sour cream, until thick. Take the pie out of the fridge and spoon the whipped cream on top of the bananas. Grate the dark chocolate over the cream, add a few pretzels and serve.
Bar Rochford’s Cos Salad, Green Sauce, Dashi, Fines Herbes
Serves 4-6 (to share).
For the green sauce
1 bunch chervil
1 bunch dill
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch tarragon
250ml veg oil
40g lemon juice
1 pinch of sea salt flakes
30g white miso
90g dijon mustard
Roughly chop chervil, dill and parsley (a bit of stalk is okay), pick the tarragon (stalk is too thick) and place all herbs in food processor along with oil, lemon juice and salt and blitz on high until smooth. Add Dijon and miso and blitz again until emulsified (don’t blitz for too long either times, otherwise it will get too hot and split the sauce).
For the dashi dressing
100ml Dashi stock concentrate (if NA use good quality soy sauce)
100ml brown rice vinegar
100ml vegetable oil
100ml olive oil
Place all ingredients in a bowl and whisk together.
For the fines herbes
1 bunch chervil
1 bunch dill
1 bunch tarragon
1 bunch chives
Refresh chervil, dill and tarragon in some iced water and then spin through a salad spinner. Once spun, cut chives into batons and mix through herbs. Set herb aside until serving.
To serve
2 heads baby cos lettuce
sea salt flakes
Spoon green sauce onto large serving plate and spread over plate. Cut lettuce in half lengthways and place on plate on top of green sauce (cut side facing up). Pour dashi dressing over cos (ensure it gets right into all the leaves). Finally, garnish with sea salt flakes and fines herbes.
Rebel Rebel’s Grilled prawns with Bay Leaf Butter
Ingredients
10 large king prawns (we use U8 frozen prawns from the sunshine coast)
500g softened salted butter
heaps of fresh bay leaves
20 garlic cloves, minced (if you use garlic from a jar we can’t be friends)
1 lemon, peeled and segmented and chopped into coarse chunks
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped
sea salt
vegetable oil
black pepper
softened butter
For the bay leaf powder
This is the only item we prepare in a microwave at Rebel Rebel. The microwave retains the vibrant colour and flavour of the fresh bay leaves.
Lay the bay leaves in a single layer on a microwave safe plate or tray. Microwave on the lowest power setting for 12 minutes. Blitz the dried bay leaves in a spice grinder until super fine.
This recipe makes a lot of bay leaf powder but you’ll be surprised by how many things are improved by a little sprinkle of this magic powder and it stores indefinitely. For this recipe, you’ll only need 5 grams.
For the bay leaf butter
Whip the butter in a kitchen aid with the whisk attachment on high speed scraping down the side of the bowl periodically. Keep whipping until the butter is light and fluffy, about 6 minutes. Add the 5 grams of bay leaf powder and mix until throughly combined, your butter should be light, fluffy, smooth and a pale green colour.
Prepare the prawns
This is a fair bit of a process, but it’s worth it.
Start by carefully peeling the prawns but leaving the heads intact, then devein the prawns. The easiest way is to use a bamboo skewer to make an almost invisible incision half way down the back of the tail and manoeuvre your skewer beneath the vein and carefully lift it out of the cavity. Then take some kitchen scissors and make a small vertical incision between the legs on the underside of the prawn heads that you’ve left intact. This is the secret to extracting the best flavour from the prawn heads which is added to the prawn shells later on. Then skewer the prawns, you can skip this step but it stops the prawns from curling during the cooking process and assists the overall presentation. Starting from the tail of the prawn, insert a long bamboo skewer the full length of the prawn until it is secured in the head. You’re essentially threading the skewer through the cavity which you just removed the vein from.
For the burnt bay leaf butter
In a small pan or saucepan add the bay leaf butter whilst the pan is cold and then increase the heat to medium, add the minced garlic and stir frequently. Continue to cook until the butter turns a nutty brown colour and the garlic is caramelised. Be careful not to take the garlic too far as it develops a bitter taste when it burns. Add the chopped lemon segments and chopped parsley and season with sea salt and cracked pepper. Set aside whilst you cook the prawns.
Rebel Rebel’s Sean McConnell
To cook the prawns
Prepare a bbq grill until smoking hot. Lightly brush the prawns with a little vegetable oil and season with sea salt. Grill the prawns for about a minute each side over high heat. You want to get a quick char on them without cooking them through at this point. Line up the prawns on an oven tray with the incision you made between the legs facing downwards. The idea is that in this final cooking stage all of the roe and coral within the prawn heads can escape through the incision you made earlier. Turn the grill right down to low and return the tray of prawns to the bbq and lower the lid. You want to cook the prawn until they are just cooked, with a touch of translucency still visible. This should only take a couple of minutes. Remove the skewers from the prawns and arrange on a serving dish or platter. Scrape the tray of any coral or roe that has pooled underneath the prawns and add it directly to your caramelised garlic and bay leaf butter sauce. Dress the prawns with the sauce and sprinkle with a little extra bay powder and serve.
Photography by Ashley St George
