Cooking with fire
It was an “Agnes” day for me in the sunny Brisbane in Australia for one whole day. It was @reveling___ and @kiffandculture (book through these Instagram accounts) that arranged this special day for a lucky group of food lovers.
I’ve actually eaten in both Agnes Bakery and Agnes restaurant last year and loved them both.
We started the morning trying some pastries from the Agnes Bakery located in Fortitude Valley. I had the remarkable beef and mushroom pie last year and opted for a triple baked croissant this time because it sounded intriguing. I expected it to be crisp all the way to the inside and it was to a point but there was still that croissant chewiness inside and I loved this pastry.
The restaurant Agnes is built entirely around the concept of cooking on an open fire. The dark interior is kept minimal to highlight the heritage building it is housed in. The restaurant has three levels with the main dining room, a wine bar, and a terrace.
This special lunch we were about to have was prepared by Agnes head chef Ryan Carlson and he explained that the entire meal we were about to have was off the menu. He was still deciding what dishes will be included in the new menu.
It was nice to be back in this restaurant (this is my third time eating here) and this “Cooking with Fire” was divided into smoking, grilling, à la ficelle, and roasting.
Scorching means “to burn a surface slightly” and Ryan demonstrated this with his “oysters flambadou” and sardine toast, smoked tomato, capers. A flambadou is a cast iron cone-shaped metal container mounted on a long handle, used for basting and searing food over a fire by dripping hot fat onto it. This kitchen tool is heated over a fire or charcoal, then fat, tallow, or marrow (Ryan used beef fat) is added into the very hot cone, which melts and ignites, and the resulting flames and dripping fat are used to sear and baste the oysters. Ryan then adds seasoning before serving the oysters. He also had a unique way to “torch” the sardines on toast. He basically had a huge sieve basket with flaming hot coals inside. He got a blower and used the blower to let the heat from charcoals slightly sear the sardines under the sieve. This made the fish not receive direct flame from a torch but strong, even heat with that slight burnt charcoal taste.
Smoking dealt with the home-smoked butter Ryan smokes himself using different types of wood and served with potato sourdough from Agnes Bakery.
Grilling was never more interesting as Ryan grilled noodle-like strips of raw squid on a sieve basket and used this as a “pan” to grill over live charcoal. This grilled the squid with intense heat but the consistent moving of the squid in the sieve would not expose it to heat as much as a pan. This resulted in extremely soft and tender squid, almost like pasta in Ryan’s basket-grilled calamari, smoked uni (sea urchin) butter, cavolo nero (also known as Tuscan kale or black cabbage), burnt bay
Burnt leeks and spring onions, smoked almonds, za’atar
Then there was à la ficelle where Ryan made chicken à la ficelle (meaning “on a string”) served with roasted bullhorn peppers, anchovies, cime di rapa (the cruciferous vegetable also known popular in Italy as rapini or broccoli rabe in English), and koji curd (used by the Japanese to ferment). The roast chicken was grilled over charcoal but then left hanging on a string at the very top area of the grill, which would keep it out of direct flame but keep it warm and let it continue to cook to result in a soft and juicy chicken.
The meal ended with a roast fig clafoutis (a French dish of fruit arranged in a butter dish), which was a perfect sweet ending.
Agnes proprietor and Executive chef Ben Williamson of the Anyday group announced some of his new restaurant concepts to be opening in Brisbane very soon so I am looking forward to that! Thank you, Ryan and Ben, for this very memorable lunch experience! I hope I will see some of these dishes in the new menu of Agnes soon!
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