Bill's Everyday Asian ~ Meatballs with a tamarind glaze

light flavoured oil, to brush and drizzle
600g beef mince
1 tablespoon finely shopped ginger
3 tablespoons coriander leaves
1 small red onion, grated
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 240 dedgrees celsius and brush a large roasting tray with oil. Put the mince, ginger, coriander, onion and soy sauce in a large bowl and season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Use your hands to mix the ingredients together until well combined, then roll heaped tablespoons of the mixture into balls. Put the meatballs in the prepared tray, drizzle over a litle extra oil and roast for 10 minutes.

Remove the tray from the oven, pour a third of the  glaze over the meatballs and return the tray to the over to roast for a further 5 minutes. Repeat this step and roast for a further 2 miutes. Repeat once more before serving with steamed rice and steamed Asian greens.

Serves 4-8


Tamarind glaze

2 tablespoons light flavoured oil
2 tablespoons tamarind paste
200 ml honey
4 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Place the oil, tamarind paste, honey, 3 tablespoons water, lime juice and soy sauce in a small saucepan over the medium heat. Bring to the boi and simmer for 4 minutes. Set aside.

An afterword:  One thing I cannot stand on food blogs is badly photographed food. And I'm here to tell you I'm no photographer. So... I'll let other people's work (legally of course) do the photographic talking. This gorgous pic was taken by Kevin Connors, and I thought it lent a nice 'feel' to the recipe.  I found it here.

Bill's Everyday Asian ~ Bill Granger

Billl’s Everyday Asian
Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780732291686

I’m not going to include the price, because wherever you are in the world, it could vary.

Now…
There’s a marked difference between the cook book that has grown out of a restaurant and the book which have the definite authorship of a person. This was thrown into sharp focus when I sat down with my cup of Japanese tea (well, it is an Asian cookbook) to thumb my way through Bill Granger’s latest offering. I read somewhere the other day that Bill is being touted as the new Jamie Oliver. Bill’s got a few years on Jamie, and has been around probably longer. And Bill is Bill, he’s a not new anybody. His food to date has been simple, achievable and bloody delicious. Let’s see what his foray into a book devoted to Asian food is going to be like, shall we? His scrambled egg recipe is sublime. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. Takes scrambled eggs to a whole new plain. And his coconut bread is iconic.

The first thing I notice in this book is Bill’s voice. It’s reassuring, interested and helpful. He’s starting to sound like my pin-up boy, Nigel Slater. Maybe it's because he's not a chef, he's a self taught cook. So he gets how we want to, and need to cook... every day.

Design: Very pretty styling. Swathes of Asian pastels, celadon, duck egg blue, pinks, red lacquer. Mikkel Vang’s photography is clean and zingy like the food.

Typeface: Clear, if not a point or two too small.

Bookmarks: None. It’s not a huge tome, so not really necessary.

Country of origin/Travelability: Australian, metric only. No alternative ingredient names given for US market. No special ingredients required. Just your basic Asian flavours. Get yourself a bottle of fish sauce, some ginger, coriander, soy sauce (both light & dark), lash out on a wok, and you’re good to go. I live in the country, but there’s not a basic ingredient I can’t find in my local supermarket. As Bill says, approach Asian food in the same way as Italian food. They’re similar. And we don’t think twice about cooking Italian these days.

Text: Delightful. Welcoming, encouraging, confidence inspiring, and downright chatty. Simple clear directions that won’t frighten a novice cook.

Yum factor: High.

Degree of difficulty: Low.

Recipe test:
Meatballs with tamarind glaze ~ easy, delicious, and the kiddies will like love ‘em. They’re a little bit sweet and sour. And the tamarind glaze lifts the slight bitterness of the bok choy. In fact, I’d make up the glaze just to have on bok choy instead of oyster sauce. And you could make the meatballs with pork, or even chicken. And if you’re in entertaining mode, make up two or three times the amount and serve them with drinks.

Banana batter cake with caramel sauce ~ Bill calls it an ‘Asian variation on sticky toffee pudding.’ Ooh, yeah. I have to say we had it with cream rather than coconut milk, but the coconut milk would make it ever so tropical. And a great recipe to tinker with… Palm sugar instead of brown, some pineapple on the top with the bananas. That sort of thing.

And in both of these recipes, you’re not going to kill it by substituting a little bit here or there. That’s the thing about Bill. He wants us to cook, not slavishly replicate. So I suppose he is a little like Jamie in that regard.

There’ll definitely be more recipe tests from this volume.

Index: Good.

What I learnt: Bill predicts Korean food will be ‘the next big thing’. I actually predict it will be Peruvian food. Want a wager, Bill?

Bloopers:
There’s no cutlet in the Japanese pork cutlet
There’s no soy in the Asparagus, chilli, garlic & soy,
And for crying out loud… There’s no salt in the Salt & pepper whiting. This recipe is also on the Lifestyle Food website, and still no one’s told us how much salt we need. Or am I missing something?

This is a welcome addition to Bill’s oeuvre. It’s a lively, joyful collection. I’m filing it under B for Bill, rather than the more anonymous A for Asian on my bookshelves. It’s that personable a book. A place to turn for bold Asian flavours that won’t send your carbon emissions skyrocketing trying to find ingredients.

Bring on Bill’s Tasty Weekends book please.

And just to get you started, although it’s not in this book, here’s the recipe for the aforementioned coconut bread:

Coconut Bread Recipe
Recipe from Sydney Food by Bill Granger
2 eggs
300ml of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
2 1/2 cups of plain flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 cup of caster sugar
150g of shredded coconut
75g of unsalted butter, melted
To serve: butter and icing sugar
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and flour a loaf tin.
2. Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl and add the cinnamon, sugar and coconut. Stir to combine and make a well in the centre.
3. Whisk the eggs, milk and vanilla together and pour into the flour mixture and mix until just combined before adding the melted butter. Stir until the mixture is smooth, being careful not to overmix.
4. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Leave in the pan to cool for 5 minutes before removing and placing onto a wire rack to cool.
And my word on it: It freezes beautifully. Slice and wrap in foil and pop her in the freezer, then toast or put in a café press thinking

Gingerboy

At a time when publishers of that marvellous item, the book, must be under considerable stress, some of us a dedicated to save it from extinction. I for one, have pledged that the cook book will not be an endangered thing in my time. I suspect I’m not alone in this, but justifying an addiction as principled action can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Recipes for just about anything you care to dream up are now readily available on that all pervasive internet thingie. But there are still some die-hard cook book fans out there, committed to the book in all its glory. I am an unashamed collector of said cook books; nothing gives me a greater thrill than an addition to the bookshelf. They don’t have to be pristine, brand new, virgin, latest releases. I love them all equally… Actually, that’s not true. I love to open a new cook book that no woman or man has gone before me, and splotched with their attempts of cooking past.

And I don’t just cook from them. Looking back over the collection, I can see a real development in Australian cuisine, together with the influences, fads and fluffiness of a given era.

Design: The cover is mysterious and features the neon sign at the front of the Melbourne restaurant of the same name. (I also adore a neon sign). You feel like you’re walking into one of those atmospheric hole in the wall eating establishments where a culinary adventure awaits.

So, ready to dive in:

Bookmarks: Three! Count them, three. As the bulk of the book is shared plates, you'll probably cook more than one dish for a meal. Smart.

Typeface: Hmm, the Contents page. Text running vertically rather than horizontally and from right to left. Why, one asks oneself? And the chapter divisions with the wiggly migraine inducing lines, might just give an epileptic an episode! And there's something about the dark tones that is just ever so slightly menacing. Not my cup of cha. But hey, it’s about the recipes and the text.

LAYOUT: The cocktails make an appearance at the front of the book. Yay! They’re usually buried at the back as an afterthought. And what delicious sounding cocktails they are: I Dream Of Lychee, Cucumber and Lemongrass Martini, and Ginger Girl. There’s 11 in all, and with the festive season almost upon us, I’m prepared to give every last single one of them a try, all in the name of research, you understand. They're all fresh, tropical and tangy, ideal for an Australasian Christmas.

The greater part of the recipes fit in the Shared Plates plates section and feature an abundance of seafood, but of course, beef and pork make an appearance, as does tofu. What sort of Asian influenced cook book would dare to exclude pork belly from its pages. Gingerboy’s take on that oft-abused Sweet and Sour pork sounds fab ~ Sweet and Sour Pork Belly with Cherry Tomatoes, Coriander and Peanut Salad.

WHAT I LEARNT: Prickly Ash is Sichuan peppercorns. Who knew? I discovered this in the Basics section. I’d seen it listed as an ingredient, and got a creeping ‘Oh, no! Where can I possibly get that?’ feeling . (I live in the country.) Also in the Basics are recipes for a Char Siu marinade, and Green Ginger Wine Dressing, which I can’t wait to try.

YUM FACTOR: Restaurant. High.

As the weather’s warming up, I was drawn to the parfaits in the dessert section. Mango, Chilli and Lime Parfait with Fried Sticky Rice and Blackberry Caramel. Yes, please. And the thing about this book is you don’t HAVE to make the Fried Sticky Rice and/or the Blackberry Caramel. The parfait alone would be just fine for dessert. But if you want to make an impression, by all means, hit ‘em with the frilly bits. And speaking of the Fried Sticky Rice Balls, you’ll find them in the Basics section, but for this recipe they’re finely ground and sprinkled over the parfait, kind of like a praline. Nice idea.


RECIPE TEST: I’m off to have a pre-dinner Ginger Girl cocktail now… Bye. I will post a follow up recipe test come the weekend when I can get to my regional town and get a few supplies. Perhaps a simple one to start, the Salt & Pepper Silken Tofu, and then when there's more time, something a little more complex.

While a lot of the recipes aren't at all difficult, there's something about the high end restaurant styling and photos that makes you think there might be. Compare it to Bill's Everyday Asian, and you'll see what I mean. For someone who's a fan of the gingerboy restaurant in Melbourne, I'm sure they'll love this book with a passion. So... note to self... go to Melbourne, eat at gingerboy, use book more often.

COMING UP: More on Asia with Bill Granger’s Bill’s Everyday Asian.