Gaucho’s Argentinian Restaurant, Gouger Street

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

20150820_183706Disclaimer: I was a guest at the dinner to launch the new menu

Like many people – I knew of Gaucho’s but had never actually been. I’m not entirely sure why – it has a solid and long lived reputation and I love steak. But the allure of the shiny and new always gets in the way, I guess.

So when I received an invitation to the new menu launch, I was there – like the proverbial rat up a pump.

The executive summary (TLDR) is that YOU SHOULD GO. If you haven’t been before – go.

If you haven’t been for a while – go. If you went last week – maybe give it a month or so before heading back.

As is probably quite evident, I go to a fair few blogger/media events and quite often how well they work depends a lot on the venue ‘getting it right’. This is rather broad (and vague and may be the subject of a future post) but on this occasion, Gaucho’s got everything bang on. I guess that’s 30 years of experience in the business for you.

Our group of around 20 (ish – I didn’t do an exact head count) was seated in Gaucho’s back room stretching across one wall. We had a short introduction before moving on to the serious business of both food and wine. Food wise we were treated to a spread of dishes that covered new and old on the menu.

Now – a word of warning. You may be aware that Argentina is a big beef producing (and eating) country. That would be correct and it is very fair to say that Gaucho’s menu reflects this. It is meat, meat and more meat. And then some fish and shellfish. If you’re a vegetarian be prepared for an extremely limited choice. As in – two dishes. 20150820_183407

We started with bread and olives. Gaucho’s olives are finished off in-house and marinated in chilli, paprika, lime and tequila. They are served warm. And they are delicious. You get the warmth and spiciness of the tequila softened by the richness of the olives. Good stuff.

Then the dishes really started coming. Picada con berenjenas en escabeche is a charcuterie platter, including ox tongue, prepared in house, along with pickled eggplant and pickles. I loved that this included the delicious house pressed ox tongue (in my opinion there is not enough offal on menus in Adelaide). We also had the empanadas (a vegetarian option is available) as well as the baked provolone cheese and some chorizo.

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Of course, being essentially a steak house the star of the meal was the bife de chorizo. From Riverine in NSW (hats off to Gaucho’s for including the provenance of so many of its meats) and aged for 42 days, this is described on the menu as a ‘New York strip steak’. You can see from the photo that it is a dead ringer for a sirloin (porterhouse) and when I had a google, it appears that New York strip and sirloin are indeed the same thing. It was beautifully cooked and served, as you can see, with just a wedge of lemon. As this is a mere (!) 450g you might find it a bit much to demolish on your own, but something I’d definitely recommend sharing. You can order additional sauces for your steak but it’s so good you don’t really need anything (except maybe a touch of the chimichurri that’s on the table …). 20150820_185834

We were also treated to Gaucho’s new paella. Gaucho’s is famous for its oysters and Beerenberg has now partnered with Gaucho’s so you can buy both the Diablo sauce (used for the signature ostras del diablo) and Chimichurri sauce in supermarkets around Adelaide. The paella came with plenty of oysters, squid and other seafood and did a fantastic job of showcasing that Gaucho’s does something other than a mean steak.

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It’s not surprising that all of this did a solid job of filling us up so we didn’t really need dessert. But after a little pause, out of the kitchen came churros to share. You can never go wrong with deep fried batter served with salted caramel sauce!

For me – the meats were the absolute stand out of this meal. I have recommended Gaucho’s several times since and I am planning to head back as soon as one particular friend visits from interstate. The food was great, the staff were efficient and friendly and the whole dinner just worked.

Gaucho’s might not be the newest, trendiest kid on the block but its years of experience really shows. A definite thumbs up!

Gaucho’s
91 Gouger Street
Adelaide SA 5000
phone: 08 8231 2299

Variety on King William Road Menu Launch

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

 

Disclaimer: I was a guest at the launch

20151001_124633Ichitaro Dining’s canapés

If you’ve been reading for a year or more, you’ll know that last year I attended the menu launch for the annual Variety on King William Road lunch, which is part of the Adelaide Fashion Festival. If you know me personally you’ll know I wasn’t invited on account of my sartorial awesomeness … I was fortunate enough to be invited again this year but unfortunately I’m not able to bring you a wrap up of the entire menu because real life (that is, work) got in the way of what should have been a smashing afternoon out. However, I was able to attend the very first part of the launch and, from what I saw, yet again, punters will be spoiled with a very impressive showing from the restaurants and providores of King William Road. Our experience started at Ichitaro Dining with a glass of bubbles and two of the canapés: a sushi style morsel including both quinoa and rice and some crispy chicken, marinated in yuzu and topped with an edamame based paste. Definitely keep your eyes out for this one!

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At Bottega Rotolo

We then headed down the road to Bottega Rotolo for more canapés. A leek and Gruyère quiche was pipped by the lovely crème fraîche tartelette, served with smoked salmon. As there were some left overs, I was not the only person sneaking in a second helping …

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Faraja’s stuffed chicken breast

Next door, Faraja was ready to serve us the first of the mains. A chicken breast, stuffed with spinach and hazelnuts topped with an orange hollandaise and served with asparagus and a potato galette. I’m not a huge fan of orange so the hollandaise didn’t really float my boat but the chicken was well cooked and the stuffing was great (it seems such like an obvious combination now I’ve eaten it).

Unfortunately, at this point I had to leave so I missed out on the other main course (a Spring lamb salad by Parisi’s) and dessert (a chocolate tart by By Blackbird and a lime custard by Mulot’s).

On Thursday we had amazing weather, unbelievable transport provided by Mercedes-Benz Adelaide and were joined by the face of Variety on King William, Katya Komarova. The actual lunch will be held on Friday 23 October and guests will dine on a closed off section of the road. Tickets are $140 a head and can be purchased at King William Road. Lunch kicks off at midday.

If you can’t make lunch, you will still be able to join in as the footpaths will be open as will all shops, restaurants and cafés.

Huge thanks to Little Lion PR for the invitation to the launch event – it’s always interesting to meet bloggers who write about things other than food and (in the case of fashion bloggers) check out what they are wearing!

Chocolate Chip Biscuits (or Cookies, if you must)

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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For some reason, we are not big chocolate chip biscuit makers in this household. This does not mean that we are not enthusiastic consumers of said comestible. I LOVE them and when the mid-morning or mid-afternoon hunger pangs hit at work I’ll often nip next door to the café and buy one.

I suspect the lack of home production stems more from the fact that we rarely have biscuits in the household full stop. However, last Friday afternoon Master 4 and I were off to a play date and I asked him what he wanted to take. Cue a search for a quick, simple chocolate chip biscuit recipe that wouldn’t require multiple trips to the shops.

Luckily (as always) UK’s Delicious came to the rescue with this recipe. For anyone cooking with a child, it’s easy (OK – we do have a stand mixer!) and they will love eating the mixture, shaping the biscuits and pressing in the chocolate chips. As you can see from the photo, four chocolate chips per biscuit is woefully inadequate!

These biscuits strike, for me at least, the right balance between crispy and chewy. I think that that’s down to the combination of caster and light brown sugars. Make sure you use a good quality vanilla essence as the flavour does really shine through (especially if you are mean on the choc chip count and also if the biscuits last a couple of days). If you’re going to beef up the chocolate content, then you could probably omit the vanilla altogether.

We’ve really enjoyed eating these and as they were super quick to do I’m sure they’ll be making more regular appearances in our kitchen.

Print
Chocolate Chip Biscuits

Ingredients

  • 100g unsalted butter, softened
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 100g light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or good quality extract, or omit altogether)
  • 165g plain flour
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp bicarb
  • chocolate chips - as many as you want!

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 150°C fan (170°C conv) and line two baking trays with baking paper.
  2. Cream the butter and sugars until pale. Add in the egg then the vanilla, flour, salt and bicarb. Mix until well combined and smooth.
  3. Take a tablespoon and form large walnut sized balls of biscuit mixture. Place them on the baking trays - well spaced as they spread a lot (they are easy to separate so don't be too worried about them joining up during baking) and press in choc chips. Four per biscuit looks like a lot when they're a ball but looks like nothing once they're cooked - so be generous rather than mean.
  4. Bake for 15 minutes - the biscuits will spread and start to pick up a hint of brown at the edges. Depending on your oven you may want to keep an eye on them from the 10-12 minute mark. In my oven - 15 minutes was perfect.
  5. The recipe will make between 16 and 20 biscuits. The biscuits do end up quite large but they are also quite flat so they are not like the biscuits you get in cafes that are often as big as your head.
  6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool ever so slightly before carefully moving on to racks to cool completely.
  7. Eat!
https://eatingadelaide.com/chocolate-chip-biscuits-cookies/