Author: Fabi

Making your own pâté is pretty simple

Making your own chicken liver pate is simple!

If you like pâté, you may want to make your own.  In Australia, finding good pâté is quite a mission, and when you find it, the cost is quite high. Making your own pâté is actually quite simple.  All you need apart from the ingredients is a food processor and a fry pan!  You will find chicken livers at any butcher’s.  It is worth going to a good butcher, chicken livers are cheap and at a good butcher you can be sure they will be very fresh and big. I also add pork mince to my pate to soften the taste. The rest of the ingredients can be sourced from any supermarket and you probably already have them at home .

The recipe I am giving here is the one for the pâté I make again and again, it is the chicken liver pâté.  I make it for picnics, for parties and for no special reasons.  I make a batch and freeze it, it keep really well in the freezer for two months, when you need it, just allow to thaw in the fridge for a day before use.

Last time I made it, the butcher only had duck livers left, the taste was different, delicious too! (it is always a good indicator when there are no left overs).

Chicken liver pate
Chicken liver pate

Other pâtés I sometimes make

I make other types of pates too, not as often, they are definitely for larger crowds than my little family circle and I do not have endless storage space either.  Mum used to make “country terrines” by batches of 20 or more jars, cook them in a steriliser and keep them in the cellar. We would have them for lunch as entrees or for picnics during summer.

Pork Rillettes

making your own pâté
Pork rillettes, a Rick Stein recipe

Rillettes are a type of pate, typically french.  Most people (and even my butcher) don’t know about them down here.  Pok rillettes are pork belly and pork shoulder cooked in stock for a long time and  mixed with pork fat.  The recipe I used is from Rick Stein and was published in Delicious magazine. Rillettes are also often found made with duck.

Ham Hock Terrines

Another nice onein the pate family are ham hock terrines.  Ham hock terrines contains blocks of meat and are essentially ham hocks that have been cooked for a long time in a stock and put together as a terrine with a binder.  There are different ways to combine the meat, I tried the following two terrines, unfortunately I did not take any photos:

  • Ham hock terrine with jellified cooking stock.  This is another recipe from the Delicious magazine. You can find it online.
  • Ham hock terrine with mustard.  This is an early Masterchef recipe.

Personally I prefer the second one,  one friend loved the first one and she was so over the moon with it, I ended up giving the whole left overs to her, she loved it!

Free range eggs now formally defined in Australia

Free range eggs have now a formal definition in Australia.  The controversy was not new, and a definition has been a long time coming. A number of brands claim to be “free range”, alas, for the poor customer, there was (until now) no way to know the veracity of the claim, especially when you pay a premium for “free range eggs”, for some brands, that premium can mean over $10 a dozen.

One of the not so free range eggs brands apparentlyOne of the not so free range eggs brands apparently

Of course, the hens are free range,…not the eggs!

The new definition of what free range eggs imply is well received by some, not so well by others. I am not going to go into the controversy of what should be done when breeding hens and which brands are better than others, it is a personal issue on what is acceptable to you.  I find that this definition is a starting point, for those who think it is not good enough, well, marketing and imagination can be used wisely.

How are free range eggs defined elsewhere?

Lets get into the new  definition of free range eggs and look over the oceans at what is done elsewhere.

In Australia, free range eggs must come from hens that have meaningful and regular access to an outdoor range, with a stocking density of up to 10,000 birds per hectare.  One hectare being 100 m x 100 m, this means 1 square metre per hen outside.  Interestingly, it seems the density indoors is unknown.

And in Europe? Europe has a European standard which defines the different categories of eggs.  A free range eggs requires:

  • compulsory continuous daytime access to open air runs, AND
  • the outdoor area is solely to be used for the hens, with limitations on dual use of the land, AND
  • a maximum density of 2,500 birds per hectare, in other words 4 square metres per hen (at all time, i.e. indoor and outdoor).

You got it,  free range eggs in Europe are definitely more free range than in Australia!

And in the US? In the US, there is no regulatory standard for eggs.  “Free range” is used when the hens are free to roam inside and have access to an outdoor area.

Using eggs everyday

These recipes are quite timely, I did not prepare them on purpose for this post, they are life example from this week in my family.

Blue cheese and asparagus quiche

I like a quiche from time to time, it is light to digest and comes under many sorts.  When I was a child I only liked the cheese quiche, I did not like at all the quiche Lorraine!  Now, things are different.  Quiche can incorporate vegetables, either in the main mix, for example grated zucchinis (finely grated) or grated carrots either on top where it can also serve as decoration.  Make it look like a landscape!  Try asian mushrooms on top, I really like the enoki mushrooms. Use a combination of them, it will be great, guaranteed!   This week, Ambrine was helping me make the quiche, I had green asparagus and the remaining of a large basket of cherry tomatoes from my mother in law’s garden in the NSW Southern Highlands. The recipe is here.

Before Baking:

quiche in the making

Just BAKED

cheese and asparagus quiche

 

To make the quiche process a bit more rapid ahead of the meal, you can make the quiche in stages and prepare the pastry earlier the same day or the day before. You can even blind bake it earlier.

I serve the with a green salad.  And dessert was a fruit salad.

Dinner on the table
Dinner on the table

Eggs for breakfast, today, using a microwave coddler

This is another child friendly recipe.  This is all about the fun of  little vessel called “coddlers” used to cook eggs.  Coddlers are, traditionally, English porcelain egg cups with a metal lead.  Very British! Egg coddlers have been used in England since the 1800s. The original name for an egg coddler was pipkin. My sister sent me a microwave version of them for a recent Christmas, what a great find! The advantage of the microwave version is the cooking time, it cooks in 30 seconds whereas the ceramics ones are cooked in a bain marie, this takes for ages!

Microwave Coddler
Microwave Coddler

All you need to do is:

  1. Crack open the egg and gently put in the coddler
  2. Add salt, a teaspoon of cream, pepper if you want.  You can add many more things like cheese, spices, …
  3. Close the lid
  4. Place in the microwave for 30 seconds (this will depend on your microwave and requires a bit of trial and error)
  5. That is it! Bip! Ready!
Cooking an egg in a coddler
Cooking an egg in a coddler
Egg cooked in a coddler
Egg cooked in a coddler

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Truffles

Happy Easter!  Do you need a little something to bring to an Easter party? Try these chocolate truffles, they are easy to make and very delicious!

All you need is a good quality chocolate, cream, butter and cocoa.

This recipe makes about 50 truffles.  We made some this week, I brought one box at work and my daughter one box at school for an Show and Tell on “How you celebrate Easter” (just good timing!), they are delicious.

Ingredients:
  • 330 g of dark chocolate 70% cocoa
  • 25 cl (250 ml) of cream
  • 50 g of good quality soft butter (real butter please, no substitute here)
  • Cocoa for rolling (I like using dutch cocoa)
Method
  1. Cut the chocolate in small pieces with a large knife, place in a bowl.
  2. Boil the cream in a saucepan
  3. Pour the cream on top of the chocolate, cover for one minute then mix well until all the chocolate is melted.
  4. Add the butter, mix well.  Place in a shallow container and refrigerate for 2 hours minimum until firm.
  5. When ready to shape the truffles, put a tablespoon of cocoa in a soup plate or large bottom bowl.  With a teaspoon, scoop out the equivalent of a macadamia nut (for those who don’t know macadamia, it is between a walnut and an hazelnut). Roll in your hands to form a ball, then place in the cocoa and move the bowl around or roll the truffles with your finger tips.
  6. Transfer to a serving plate or storage container.

This recipe of truffles does not have eggs, it will keep in the fridge for over a week.  You may find they disappear before!

Tip: If you are using couverture chocolate, you need to be a bit more careful when doing the ganache to prevent splitting when adding the butter. you may want to melt 2/3 of the chocolate first, then the next 1/3 to the mix.  If the ganache splits, warm it up slowly mixing until it comes back together.

20160305_130844

 

Birthday Cakes

This week we had two birthdays at home, this means two evenings with birthday cakes and one common party with two birthday cakes: a child one and an adult one!

I have always until now managed not to prepare my own birthday cake, but this year I did one of them (the one for the party).  I think I prefer the surprise of a cake I have not made.

Week days birthday cakes

The birthday cakes during the week were chosen for their low to average level of technical skills and  ease to make (i.e. not too much time), they were also chosen so that we did not have two heavy desserts one after the other one or not two chocolate cake one after the other one.  In the end, none of those two cakes were chocolate based, this is quite something for us!

chestnut cakeThis little cake is a treasure of my creation, I made it for the first time a couple years ago. It is a chestnut pudding  It is normally cooked in a closed pudding bowl in a bain marie.  The texture is very moist. The cake very light which is a surprise when you do not know it.  It was served with a strawberry coulis, a creme anglaise also works well.  In this version (photo), the tin was not completely close and the texture became gradual with a more caky structure at the top (here the bottom), that is exposed when baking.   It remained delicious!

Sticky Date PuddingThe second birthday cake needed a short preparation time (work day night).  You may have recognised it, it is a classic sticky date pudding. It was served with whipped cream, a child’s favorite!

Party Birthday Cakes

One birthday cake was for a seven years old with the request of being a puppy dog cake, the other was an adult one with a requirement to be made relatively rapidly to allow for the other party preparation.

Birthday cakes for children are always a challenge.  First there is the shape, then the question on how, technically, decorate it, and finally the taste and timing. I have created a page for kids birthday cakes if you want to come back to those later without having to find the post.

IMG_4397

The cake itself consists of a chocolate marble cake.  I used two different size bowls (straight sides in the upper part) and four single serve cake rims for the paws. This is a plain cake topped with white and brown icing.  The collar was made of marzipan (homemade in little quantity).  During the birthday party, a two year old child could resist no longer and grabbed one of the paws!

The other cake, mine, I made based on a recipe from Pierre Hermé from his book Le Larousse du Chocolat.   I was offered that book a few years ago by my siblings who thought that I could do with it and make some of the wonders in it.  I have done a few. This one is the Mozart.  I choose this one because of the mix of apple, cinnamon and chocolate and the fact that I had previously done it.  It is not a difficult cake.  The cake consists of three thin and very friable circles of sweet cinnamon shortcrust pastry with layers of chocolate mousse and cooked apples.  This is a great cake!

Mozart (recette de Pierre Herme)
Mozart (recette de Pierre Herme)

 Need some help with your birthday cakes?

Our next birthday at home is not before the end of the year, quite in a while, so if you need some help, I am happy to help in person in Sydney or over the net otherwise!

Tarts for every day

Tarts are a bit like salads, there can be one for every day.  Tarts can be a lunch main item or family diner main or a side.  Tarts are very versatile.  There are the “every day tarts” and the “special occasion tarts”.   They can be served simply in the tart dish or on a serving dish.

The pastry

The three main pastry types are:

  • The shortcrust pastry (pate brisée)
  • The sweet shortcrust pastry (pate sablée), and
  • The puff pastry (pate feuilletée)

From there, there are many variations especially when it gets to the sweet shortcrust pastry when used as a base for cakes.

The shortcrust pastry is by far the most commonly used.  Many people are surprised when they learn that it is used for savoury and sweet tarts.  It is much better homemade, and can be done in advance.  You can also make a larger quantity and keep in the fridge for a few days or freeze in portions of 150 to 200 grams.

Shortcrust pastry consists solely of flour, half the weight of the flour of butter and a bit of water, I will add the method later.

The shortcrust pastry is most commonly used for strawberry tarts, lemon tarts and chocolate tarts.  I use the same recipe to make shortbread biscuits for the kids.  I have never tried a bought version (yes, this means that it is that easy!).

The puff pastry requires a bit more time and technique but it is not hard and I find it quite fun to make.  I have now made it a few times.  I make a large batch, cut into portions and freeze. Depending on where you live, you may find some good ones at the supermarket, but watch out for the ingredients, it should contain butter and not margarine.

Savoury Tarts

The most known of the savoury tarts is the quiche.  A quiche is essentially based on eggs and cream.  If you add bacon dices (lardons), it is a quiche Lorraine.  The quiche Lorraine is a children favourite! The steamed broccolini on the photo was added after cooking purely for decoration!  I had served the quiche with a few bunches of steamed broccolini.  With the quiche, I love a cheese quiche and an Asian mushroom quiche: I love using Asian mushrooms and placing them as if doing a landscape on a large quiche, they also taste great!

Funki quiche…

I also love and often make the following:

  •  red-pepper (capsicum) tart.  It is quite light. Salty with the sweetness of the capsicum.
  • a spinach tart.  This is a perfect dinner dish.
  • an onion tart. Handy when you run out of fresh food, there are always a few onions around.
  • a “flamiche” or leek tart, really delicious, this is a specialty from Northern France.
  • a mustard and tomato tart
tarte aux poivrons rouges
Red capsicum tart

I use the puff pastry with onions or when doing a light tomato tart.  Puff pastry can also come handy if it comes already rolled or ready to roll (i.e. no need making a shortcrust pastry).

Sweet Tarts

Fruit tarts are often made using the shortcrust pastry, typically apple tarts and pear tarts for an everyday meal would be done so.  The elaborate version of apple tart / pear tart may use puff pastry or a sweet shortcrust pastry (or variation of).   The simple fruit tart is very easy: roll your pastry, place in the tart tin (no need to butter the tin by the way), cut your fruits in slices, place them in a round shape.  You can choose to just add a couple of nuts of butter and a bit of sugar or a small mix made of one egg, 1/2 cup of milk or cream and a bit of sugar.  For those fruits like pears that typically give away a lot of juice, you will need to add 1 big tablespoon of almond meal.  The almond meal will soak up the juice and prevent a soaked pastry at the bottom of the tart.

Fruit tarts are a great use of fruits which are very ripe or need to be used rapidly.  It is a double hit: you don’t throw away those fruits and your family gets desert!

IMG_4220

For a simple strawberry tart, prepare a sweet shortcrust pastry, place it in the tin by either rolling it or by pushing it into the tart tin with your fingers.  Make dots with a fork on the basis to prevent the formation of bubbles, cook until lightly golden.  Place strawberries on top and brush them with red currant or apricot jam warmed and slightly diluted with water. A more elaborate version would be to add a layer of creme patissière below the strawberries.  Pastry shops which may prepare the tart more in advance than you would at home, often add again another layer (sponge or almond-based) to soak up liquids and prevent the pastry to become soggy.

IMG_4213
Simple strawberry tart

Lemon tarts come in two kinds: the one where the lemon filling cooks into the tart and the ones where the lemon curd is made ahead.  For the one alike a quiche, I like Julie Goodwin’s lemon and lime tart recipe.

Pastry left over….

And if there are small pastry left over, you can:

Shortcrust pastry

  • Make one or several tartlets with fruits from the fruit basket or frozen berries.  Alternatively, you can put some jam in the tartlets.
  • Do an afternoon tea for the kids: place the scarp together, roll, place on baking paper, put a bit of brown sugar on top.  An option is to add a drizzle of thickened cream. Then bake on a tray.

Sweet shortcrust pastry

Make a ball, roll to 6 mm thick, use a shape or a kitchen glass to make biscuits, place on a baking sheet and bake.

Puff pastry

  • Place leftover puff pastry on a tray, pre-cut them in long strips and grate cheese on top, you can also add chilli, ground coriander or fresh herbs. It will make a good appetizer.
  • Another use for puff pastry leftover is to push them down a buttered muffin tin and fill with creme patissière (assuming you have some handy), egg-wash the sides, sprinkle a bit of sugar on top of the egg-wash and bake.
20160306_161301
Red current tartlet

 

 

 

 

Salads and Tarts, this week let’s speak about salads


Summer is lasting much longer than normally and this weather is perfect for small and large salads of many kinds for lunches or dinner and for savory and sweet tarts.  This week, I will focus more on the salads.  Why so? Simply because I need to think of taking more photos of my tarts, especially the savoury ones which do not have much “kitchen bench time” and disappear by the time of think of the photo.

In savoury salads, I like to think of two types:

  • the simple salad made of one element;
  • the “composed salad”, which in French refers to a salad made of an assortment of ingredients.  Those can be cold or cold and warm.

Sweet salads will be for another post.

Savoury simple salads

Guess what? Those I make all the time, yet I don’t have any photos of them! The lettuce salad is the most frequent one.  It is one of the first “recipe” I learnt as a child from maybe the age of 6-7, Mum may correct me in a comment if I am wrong! We were making the vinaigrette under instructions from Mum: ” a little mound of salt in the serving spoon, cover slightly with ground pepper, fill the spoon with homemade red wine vinegar, mix and pour at the bottom of the salad bowl, add 2-4 spoons of oil”.

The amount of oil depends on the type of lettuce, some require more than others.

And if you are wondering if the children like it, yes they love the salads! I have had some of my kid’s friends for meals, some of them have not had much exposure to salads before and are a bit sceptic, but often end up liking it a lot after a few trials.

The other classic “simple salad” which in summer are so good are the tomato salad and the carrot salad.  Both are nicer prepared a bit before the meal and the vinaigrette mixed through as this will release the flavours.  We used to fight to have the juice of the tomato salad when I grew up and this is starting in my own house too! The grated carrot salad is nice with some mustard added to the vinaigrette (the vinegar is then reduced).

IMG_8976

Composed savoury salads

The possibilities are endless.  I like to look at what I have in the fridge/freezer and fruit bowl, think of what herbs I have in the garden and get going.  There can be different elements requiring cooking independently, but generally nothing to technical.

My key rules are:

  1. Use ingredients which blend well together
  2. Adapt the seasoning to the ingredients
  3. Be creative!

Before you get going, you need to decide if the salad will be a side or entree of lower nutritious intake or the main part of a meal.  If it is to be the main dish of your meal, ensure you have included carbohydrate and/or proteins or you will be hungry again after an hour time!

Here below are a few ideas, follow (click click!) to get to the recipes (not available for all).

Green and more green: lettuce, flat beans, basil.

IMG_4140

Black lentils, calamari and radishes (also served with carrot salad)

IMG_8977

My friend Neil’s mixed salad:

Wao! This salad was awesome!  Now hold on, it contained:

  • lettuce
  • mint
  • chives
  • barbecued asparagus
  • orange quarters (skins removed)
  • cherry tomatoes
  • apple very thinly sliced
  • coriander
  • lime and lemon rind (look at the bottom of the page for the special equipment)

See, this is a great example that  you can be creative, but remember to stop!  There were many ingredients here, although not in big quantity each. The main ingredient was the lettuce.  The salad was a side to a Moroccan lamb pizza.  The seasoning was based on lime.

20160223_183732

Kipflers potatoes and fresh prawns warm salad

I have to do it again to have a photo.  This is a main obviously. Kipfler potatoes are those long potatoes, they are a bit more expensive as others but so perfect for salads.  Boil them in their skins in salted water, remove the skin and cut in slices.  The prawns are just cooked in salt water. The seasoning is a mayonnaise.

Roasted Potatoes, corn, beans, tomatoes salad

This is the perfect kids salad, all they love in one dish! Potatoes are steamed then sliced and grilled in oil&butter.  The corn is boiled, the beans parboiled. The seasoning is a small filet of olive oil.

IMG_1842

Wild rice, feta, roasted pumpkin salad

This wild rice, feta, roasted pumpkin salad is a killer! It is for a light meal.  The seasoning is a tahini, lemon, honey mix.  So good! You will find wild rice at the health food shops.  I went to a “bulk health food shop”recently to get some quinoa and ended up with a few more bags, including the one with wild rice.  The grain is so long! The consistency is a bit chewy  (or maybe it needed more cooking) and the taste not very strong.  It is a nice ingredient to use for a change.

Wild rice, pumpkin and feta salad

Special kitchen utensils

The first kitchen utensil is for slicing tomatoes, widely used in France, hard to find in Australia.

Tomato Slicer

The second one is to remove some citrus peel.

citrus peeler
Citrus Peeler

Milk

Milk is a weekly staple in my grocery basket.  To be honest, when I think milk, I think cow’s milk.  We also some soy milk in some drinks and as an emergency breakfast staple : mix soy milk and plain flour to a pancake consistency and this is it, you have a quite reasonable pancake mix much better than the powder stuff from the shops but, and this will be no surprise, not as soft and voluminous as a ricotta pancake.  For those, I recommend the Donna Hay recipe pancake recipe!

I have never tried goats milk as such, but I love it in goat cheese! Who wouldn’t? Same for sheep milk, my favourite is the old mountain cheese! I was given fresh camel milk while once working in the Sahara Desert.  It tastes very different to cows milk, feels very rich and  cures all tummy bug you may have (this is why the local driver in charge of bringing me to site got it – local medicine!).  It was a great experience.

Milk and derivatives

For cows milk, the list seem endless: butter, creams in different forms, yogurt, ricotta, mascarpone, cheese of many types…My cooking being essentially based on European cuisine, I use many of those products. In my fridge today, you would find some light cows milk, a 2 L bottle of full cream cows milk cream on top (so nice!), a number of butter blocks (I freeze them if too many), a tub of thickened cream, a small container of mascarpone and a number of cheeses: plenty to last at least the week.

The main dairy consumers are the children, especially with the butter.  A lot of it is used around breakfast, the rest goes in cooking.

Plant derived milk

Plant derived milk are only so called because of their colour.  Each come with its own usage and properties.   We use soy milk in drinks at times, I like to use soy milk mixed with my bisher muesli (1 cup cow’s milk, 1 cup natural yogurt and 2 cups rolled oats prepared the evening for the next morning and served with a drizzle of honey, a bit of soy milk and nuts and fruits if desired – serves 4).

I tried a recipe from George Calombaris with almond meal recently, an oat and cherry pudding desert likened to a french clafouti. It was not bad but I was not thrilled, it is very close to porridge and definitely not a clafouti.

oat, cherries and almond milk pudding

I am not going into the details of coconut milk here.  Have you had the fresh one when just prepared?

My weekend milk challenge

You will now wonder why I am speaking so much about milk.  Here is why.  I like to do my groceries at markets.  Living in Sydney, this means for us Paddy’s Market.  The food there is fresh, good market (at least half of the supermarket cost) and of good quality(we do not go just before 5pm on Sunday).  There is no “deli” section at the market, so on Friday, I quickly went to the local supermarket and bought my 2 bottles of 2 L of milk for the week and a few other items. Sunday at breakfast, I realised my two 2L  milk bottles were both with best used dates in 2-3 days time!  Milk turns to bad very quickly, I was not going to waste this nice milk (especially since I had bought a good brand).  What to do?

The first thoughts were creme caramel and a pile of crepes.  The story goes otherwise.  I decided to use 1 L doing some “confiture de lait” (milk jam).  It takes for ever but definitely tastes good.  One litre of milk only yields 2 small jars! In one of them, I added some cocoa (I have not yet done the labels).

confiture de lait
Confiture de lait (plain, right) and confiture de lait with chocolat (left)

Now that I have a KitchenAid (thank you Qantas frequent flyer points and store!), I can go for sponge cakes easily.  I tried a hazelnut and raspberry sponge cake, a recipe found in Gourmet Magazine.  Great cakes, perfect, same as on the magazine picture! But to have two cakes similar and cook them simultaneously (I did not want to do 2 batches to avoid loosing some of these bubbles), I used 2 tins (one silicone, one spring tin) of identical diameter.  It ended up in a quite tall cake to the delight of the children! They helped with the filling and the ganache process, somehow I lost them as soon as there was equipment they could remove the remaining chocolate off. 🙂

Raspberry and hazelnut cake
Raspberry and hazelnut cake, afternoon tea today

The story does not stop here. While I was doing the sponge cake, by mistake, I added with the eggs and sugar, the melted butter, before beating.  Silly thing to do! So, I transferred the eggs, sugar, butter mix in a bowl and started again for my sponge cake.  I was wondering what to do with that mix, and with the rest of my milk! I decided to add 1 L of milk and some vanilla seeds and make a custard, the proportions were perfect for this.  I had  8 eggs, 1 L milk, about 200 g of  sugar.  I was not so sure about the added butter.  As you may know, butter is added in some creme patissieres used for filling cakes and pastries, so it did not seem to far fetched, why not try?  Note that I did not add flour at this stage.  What came out was a thick custard.  Once cool down, I decided half will go in ice cream and half in a flan dessert (basically a baked custard).  It was more like one third/2 thirds.

For the flan, I soaked some raisins in chai tea and fruit spirit (plum brandy).  I then buttered and floured a tart tin, mixed the drained raisins with the remaining custard and 1 spoon of flour (2 would have been better) and poured the mix in the tart tin and baked until slightly golden (it could have been a bit more cooked, my husband was on oven duty and was afraid to overcook it).  It was delicious.  And the ice cream also tasted delicious!

flan
Flan patissier aux raisins

 

 

 

 

Busy in the kitchen

Today, and yesterday to some extent, has been a busy day in the kitchen. I don’t mind, I like it and the weekend is when I find the time to cook. 🙂  There has been the cooking of meals including desserts (of course) but also a few extras.  Here is the list if you want to check out some of the recipes I have added to this site:

  • A batch of puff pastry to cut in portions and freeze for later use.
  • Some raspberry jam.  So good on fresh bread! There are a few places where you can get frozen berries at a reasonable price, I made raspberry jam using 2 kg of fruits.My jam stores were running a bit low, a bit of apricot left, some strawberry jam, some red-current jam and  maybe some apple jelly. You will notice the labels, love them! That even deserves its own photo:
jam label
Fabienne’s homemade jam
  • 2 batches of bread.  If you were already reading this blog when I published the bread post, you will know that I make sourdough bread.  I prepare two breads at the time.  I baked a serie on Saturday morning, that was the delicious walnut, pepitas and cranberries one! I gave one away, which means we should be running out of bread tomorrow. So I have two breads freshly shaped doing their last rise in the fridge overnight.
  • A peach crostata.  I used a recipe found on the internet for the pastry, something was really wrong with that recipe (butter ratio about same as flour). I worked it out of course but I do not have the quantities, so will be doing more of those and posting something later.
  • A salmon tail bake
  • A pear and chocolate flan (or pudding if you are irresistibly English). By the way, did you notice?  The first pears of the new season have arrived.

The last two on this list were tonight’s diner, the fish was served with streamed broccoli and a side salad (lettuce).

The empty fridge challenge

As it happens sometimes, there are days when you open the fridge to realise that all is left is a couple of odd vegetables.  This is what I call an empty fridge challenge.  This week I had a couple red onions (actually in a bowl on the kitchen bench), a large capsicum and a few spring onions.   I also had some chicken breast filet and a couple carrots. The rest of the ingredients are from the pantry.

What came out is a pissalardiere and a lentils, carrots an chicken dish.

The pissalardiere

I made it in a long tart  tin.  The traditional recipe calls for brown onions, mine used red onions.

pissalardiere

 

The lentils, chicken and carrot dish

This is pretty simple, boiled black lentils until cooked (but not mushy) as you can see on the photo below.

IMG_3685

Then add sliced carrots and chicken which were cooked together.  The chicken was previously marinated with soy sauce and honey.  Add spring onion to garnish.

 

 

 

Noma film documentary

Thursday was the Australian release of the NOMA film documentary called  “NOMA, my perfect storm“.  I knew about the 10 weeks NOMA residency at Barangaroo (Sydney), it has been in the foodie sections of a number of papers and I had read about it.  For those who don’t know, NOMA is a Danish restaurant in Copenhagen, NOMA started in 2003 with René Redzepi.  René’s idea was trying to define the cooking of the Nordic European countries through Nordic produce. To achieve this goal, they had to dig deep into forgotten foods and foraging.  NOMA is now one of the World best restaurants.

I did not know about the documentary film, until the name came up on the screen, my husband somehow found out and bought the tickets. What a lovely surprise! The funny bit is that he didn’t know anything about what the film was about and had never heard of NOMA.

It is a beautifuly filmed documentary.  It is a great story, there are some stunning images of the food (of course) and also of the places where the ingredients come from and the people who know about all those little things.

I do like the concept of cooking with what comes from your area and what is seasonal.  My only concern would be not being able to cook with chocolate!

I guess I grew up with some of that,  my sister and I, would go and get the milk from a small dairy farm in my grandparents’ country village, we loved it. We were also asked to help picking red currents a few times over the summer, we would only be allowed to go and play if we each had collected a small bucket, I guess it was not as much fun as the dairy farm.   There were other berries, some nuts towards the end of summer and the start of autumn and the larger fruits.  Once we had picked two big buckets of blackberries and went climbing a few apple trees nearby.  When we came back, the cows had eaten from our buckets about half of our harvest! I generally liked doing those, they were associated with specific dishes, yum! Fast forward quite a few years, about 5-8 years ago if I am correct, in  Australia, there was a trend of foraging and return to bush-tucker, but it did not really last very long.  Maybe the NOMA experience will revive some of that.

It is too late to get a place for the Sydney’s NOMA, the waiting list is some 20,000 people long, no chance!  But watch the movie, this is a good story.

 

Children helpers

Recently, I have had a lot of requests from my daughters to help me in the kitchen.  This gave me the idea for today’s post.  I love involving children in the kitchen, it makes them aware of what they eat, as much in terms of ingredients than in balancing the different food groups.  Obviously it has to be fun, so we make it fun.

Today’s post is not going to be very long.  I am learning to set up categories, menus and lists so the “Recipes” page can be functional and it has eaten a lot of my “blog time”.  The concept is simple, the application not so and quite time consuming I find.

Tasks for little kitchen hands

Involving the children in the preparation of food is rather easy, all you need is a strong stool and a bit more time that allowed if you were on your own.  The level of the task depends on the child’s ability.  Just pointing out here the obvious: work around heat sources and knives should be carefully introduced to the children and delegated with consideration of risk, age and abilities.  If you are not sure how to go about it, here are some examples of what kids can do:

  • Mix (even if you have to mix it after to finish it off or give it a good whisk).   For the mixing, teach them to mix the flour by small circles going from the centre out, they are very proud when there are no lumps!
  • Measure fluids and solids using cups and metric systems.  It is a good counting exercise with the early school kids, especially if chocolate is involved.
  • Butter the tin, flour it (older child);
  • Prepare seasonings such as vinaigrette under direction for the quantity of salt and number of spoons of vinegar or oil;
  • Cut ends of long beans (teach them how to hold the knife safely, repeat/check understanding of the instructions frequently over time and supervise quite closely), peel corn husks;
  • Dough making: we make sourdhough bread at least twice a week, doughs can also be for pizzas;
  • Do one part of the coating process for fish-fingers or chicken nuggets;
  • Do the pizza topping;
  • Go and get kitchen herbs in the garden, or more depending on what you can grow.  At my parents’, my older daughter goes and get her serve of uncooked french beans which she prefers to cooked ones.
  • Press the button on the scale (to tare it) or food processors. My kids did not like the noise of some of the appliances at first but are now used to it.
  • Spread toppings;
  • and let’s not forget doing the dishes can also be fun! Prepare the mop!

Some of last week children’s cooking

Below are three examples of food prepared with the children recently.  They are all on the “very easy” scale. If you want to know more, send me a message.

Lemon Pudding

Those are a bit like the “flanby”caramel cream we find in France as individual desserts.  What is great about the Flanbies is that to serve it, you reverse it on a plate, then pull a small sticker off the bottom of the plastic container, the cream and liquid caramel come down at once.

Below is a bit similar, the bottom of the soft silicone cups are filled with 1 to 2 spoons of lemon curd, then the cake dough is placed on top and the whole is cooked as a steamed pudding.

IMG_2977IMG_2978IMG_2979

Pretty cool!

Homemade chicken nuggets

This was a request from the children.  I added some herbs to the flour mix.

IMG_2920

Short Crust Biscuits

All kids are likely to have done those at some stage.  It is fun all along: mixing, rolling, making the shapes, decorating and eating them! We have a range of shapes, this time the children opted for the flower ones.

IMG_1799

 

 

Brioche, puff pastry and viennoiseries

Brioche, puff pastry and viennoiseries

This weekend was my third and last session (unfortunately) of a baking class on brioche, puff pastry and viennoiseries I took out at  The Essential Ingredient.  The class was taught by Jessica Pedemont, pastry chef and chocolate master.  I was not going to write much about this, but my sister, who got forwarded the above photo of my brioche by my Mum, insisted on having the recipe. I may as well share it with you all.  The recipe is from the class I took, you can use it for many applications, one of my next use will certainly be small brioches parisiennes (the ones with the little head on top). If you want to put chocolate, it is better to used Nutella (as in the recipe) as the dark cooking chocolate tends to “burn” a bit.

Best if you have a stand mixer for those recipes, especially for the brioche as the dough will be very sticky and needs a fair bit of work.

Here are some photos of my puff pastry (at home) production and viennoiseries products (at the class).  I am yet to use some of my puff pastry for a millefeuille (vanilla slice), at the moment there is a batch of chocolate chip cookies (for lunch boxes treats) and a left over lemon tart to go through, plus some amazing strawberries from the market.

Puff pastry sheeting and rolls with cheese and tapenade – home

IMG_2859  20160130_082845

A range of small size viennoiseries on the day of the class

20160130_135824

Lemon and lime tart and choc chip cookies

The lemon tart is from Julie Goodwin, I like the mixed lime and lemon flavors in it. I served it with homemade vanilla ice cream.  For the tart process, it is a bit like a quiche, i.e. you do a “tarte aux cailloux” / “stone pie” as we call it in my family, which is a blind bake, then bake it with the filling.    There was not much left by the time I manage to secure a photo . Also, it is a bit darker on the edge than I would like (not burnt though) my mistake for leaving it a few minutes too many while blind-baking.  As opposed to the recipe instructions, I find that if you roll the pastry between 2 sheets of baking paper you can actually manage to put it in your tray at once.

Lemon tart

These cookies I am speaking about are a real treat, so good and so easy. I will type in the recipe as soon as I can. I am now at my daughter’s gym class and running out of battery.

IMG_2922