Australian Chef Nicholas Philip has a wealth of experience gained at luxury resorts in the Asia-Pacific region, helming kitchens in Thailand, Singapore and Bali along with extensive training in leading European restaurants such as Michelin-starred The Clove Club and Ottolenghi’s NOPI in London and acclaimed Restaurant Taller in Copenhagen.
He was listed in Singapore’s The Peak Magazine list of Hot Young Chefs of 2017 and was also featured in the Bali Bible’s Top 10 Chefs of Bali. Chef Nic’s creative approach to food sees the use of seasonal and indigenous products, he has a passion for spices and builds dishes driven by produce and working with what’s surrounding. Chef Nic’s cuisine may be described as fun, yet complex with no smoke and mirrors yet bold and big flavours. Cooking with fire!
He is no stranger to the culinary seen in Bali having landed at Cocoon Beach Club back in 2011. You may have seen him running the kitchen brigade at Sundara within the prestigious Four Seasons resort on Jimbaran Bay or Hotel Indigo Seminyak Beach.
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While we foodies are waiting that things are getting back to normal, we have asked Chef Nic for his favourite creations. Be inspired and stay tuned for his next endeavour in Bali.
Mum's Spinach and Cheese Triangles - by Chef Nicholas Philip
Inspired by childhood palate memories, ‘Mums spinach and cheese triangles’ is a dish born from the many home dinners of spinach and
feta or spinach and ricotta filo pastries I used to eat as a kid. Dinners were simple and healthy, lots of leafy greens were grown in the family
veggie garden and there were chickens wandering around the house providing free-range hens eggs daily. We would make the spinach
filo’s using as much produce from the garden as we could, leaving only the goats or cows feta to be sourced from the local farmers market.
I wanted to recreate the dish using those key ingredients-greens, cheese and pastry but elevate it to the next level using different techniques and flavours.
I chose manouri cheese which is softer and creamier than its brother feta, it really whips well into fillings, I smoked it first over applewood
for about 12 minutes, the smokiness of cheese was aimed to bring out more flavour tones and nuances in the final filling. The smoked manouri is then whipped with a classic sauté mix of garlic, onions, leeks, spinach and kale, going back to mum’s spinach filo recipe here.
To finish the mixture is piped into brik pastry and garnished with a paste that’s made from preserved lemons, I would cure the lemons for about 50 days before they’re ready to clean and puree. The final dusting uses the tops from the leek that didn’t make it to the sauté mix, instead, they are simply burnt and ground into a dark and earthy leek ash powder.
Pit Roasted Lamb Shoulder - by Chef Nicholas Philip
Cooking with Fire! Pit Roasted Lamb shoulder, spiced molasses, gremolata.
There is nothing more satisfying than cooking pieces of meat overnight in wood-fired pit ovens, leaving your fate with fire, then coming
in the following morning, opening the oven and finding a fork-tender lamb shoulder that can be pulled apart over pita's, salads or served
to share on the table. This is a lamb shoulder that is pit-roasted overnight and slowly smoke-roasted over coffee wood and hot coals.
I change the marinades depending on the region where I am cooking, the process remains the same where the meat is brined for 14 hours, marinated for 14 hours and then pit-roasted overnight generally speaking can be 10 up until 13 hours depending on the oven and fire. The marinade for me is a crossroad of cuisines highlighting my passion for Asian spices & dried chill's and blending it with some intense flavours like pomegranate molasses and sumac, flavours find in Middle Eastern cuisine which is one of my favourite foods to eat.
This particular marinade is actually processed the same way you would a Nam Prik Pow or Thai Chilli Jam, in fact, the initial idea was born
of that Thai mother condiment where you rehydrate lots of dried red chilli, and dry roast it off in a wok with garlic, shallots, palm sugar, fish sauce, tamarind etc, a recipe I learnt in Chiang Mai. I substituted the fish sauce, palm sugar and tamarind for ingredients like orange juice, pomegranate molasses and sumac, then with the addition of other spices like caraway, cumin, coriander seeds etc the marinade forms an intense and balanced spiced molasses consistency and really penetrates through the meat.
Coconut Sago with White Chocolate & Mango Nitro Espuma - by Chef Nicholas Philip
My favourite dessert is the Coconut Sago, white chocolate & mango nitro espuma.
A dish that has evolved along with my career abroad, I have taken it with me from restaurant to restaurant. The inspiration came from my first experience eating Kolak in a small Balinese warung close to my house, I think it was my first year in Bali probably sometime in 2012,
I remember eating a bowl of Kolak it was icy and refreshing, sweetened with gula Jawa or local palm sugar, with coconut milk and pandan
leaf liquid that was full of many things I didn't know or had never tried back then, like tape (fermented cassava) jackfruit, mutiara (sago pearls) Ubi or local sweet potato, kolang kaling (palm fruit) and banana.
I thought what an interesting local dish to base a dessert from. The first version was sago pearls dressed in my own kolak sauce that had coconut milk, pandan leaf, ginger, palm sugar and vanilla bean infused into it. Stacked in a martini glass then topped with a white chocolate and coconut mousse, mango jelly, a biscuit crumble and finished with a granita that was made from young coconut water.
The dessert has evolved slightly now but sees the same kolak sauce dressed sago pearls, mango and jackfruit or other fruits of the season,
a crumble made from dehydrated white chocolate and then finished with white chocolate and coconut espuma that's frozen in nitrogen at the table and acts as the desserts final garnish.
Follow Chef Nicholas Philip on Instagram @nicholasdphilip
