Category: Uncategorized

Kitchen taken over by my children!

My kitchen is being taken over by my children! It started with a menu written by Ambrine a few weeks ago, then a tentative to make a chocolate dip Nutella like which saw the stock of chocolate seriously reduced (I wasn’t home), a tentative to make caramel in the micro-wave (with chocolate, I wasn’t home either), a double serie of strawberry & white chocolate cookies, because the first ones were eaten sooooo quickly.  This weekend, we were treated by a full breakfast with coddled eggs.  And now a massive bunch of chocolate hazelnut friands for a school assignment.

friands choco noisette

The latest item was not to be so significant until a few kids at school came together with the idea to bring in their goods to the class.  The assignment reads “Masterchef: your masterchef challenge…Bake some cookies for your family. Use photos or a drawing to show how you shared them equally.”  It seems like the brief has been adapted to fit the fun of sharing!

You are in for a treat, the strawberry and white chocolate cookies

So lets share today the strawberry and white chocolate cookies.  Children love them (tested for you on a few different families).  Personally, I really like them warm, when not completely cooled yet, simply because I am not a big fan of white chocolate.  Small warning, it is also quite sweet. What I really like is that the recipe shared the fats between cream cheese and butter, it brings in a really nice taste which works perfectly with strawberries and white chocolate.

cookies aux fraises et chocolat blanc

Recipe from the blog omgchocolatedesserts adapted for units and technical preferences (more practical, less washing up too!).

Ingredients
  • 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt (remove if using salted butter)
  • 1/4 cup  butter-softened
  • 120 g cream cheese
  • 3/4 cup caster sugar (1/2 cup is probably enough, I find them a bit sweet)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup chopped fresh strawberries
  • 2 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 150 g white chocolate-chopped
Method
  1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
  2. Pour fresh lemon juice over chopped strawberries, drain them after a few minutes. Chop in pieces as convenient (not less than one centimetre)
  3. Beat butter with sugar and cream cheese until it’s light and fluffy.  Cokies aux fraises et chocolat blanc
  4. Add egg and vanilla and mix well.
  5. Toss together 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, salt, chopped white chocolate, chopped stawberries and baking powder.
  6. Add flour mixture to the wet mixture and fold in gently.  Either use a large scoop or your hand.
  7. Drop heaping tablespoon of batter onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Make sure to leave a couple centimetres space in between.
  8. Set the cookies in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes before baking.
  9. You can choose to bake them for 13-15 minutes until the edges become golden brown, they will be very chewy and quite friable, I baked my second round with spots of golden brown over the top, it was a bit easier to handled and when cold they are more tasty (more cooked).
  10. Transfer the baking paper to the cooling rack (slide it).  Let the cookies cool a few minutes and them remove from the baking paper.

We all love them: the crepes

Yes, we do, we all love them! They are the crepes!

First, a little note on vocabulary.  We will agree here that crepes and pancakes are two very different things.  The first will refer to the very thin hot cake, originally from Brittany in western France. The second is the English thick version of the flat hot cake, generally served for breakfast.

Origin of the crepes

A quick look on various website will give you the history of crepes.  The word crêpe is French for pancake and is derived from the Latin crispus meaning “curled”.  Crêpes originated in Brittany (fr. Breton), in the northwest region of France, which lies between the English Channel to the north and the Bay of Biscay to the south.  Crêpes were originally called galettes, meaning flat cakes.

Around the 12th century buckwheat was introduced in Brittany from the east.  Buckwheat thrived on the desolate and rocky Breton moors and is called “sarrasin” or “blé noir” (black wheat) due to the dark specs that are often found in it.  Buckwheat is one of the plants of the polygonaceae family, which also includes rhubarb and sorrel.  It is high in fiber and is an excellent plant source of easily digestive protein and contains all eight essential amino acids.  Another benefit is that it is gluten free.

White flour crêpes appeared only at the turn of the 20th century when white wheat flour which formerly had been as expensive as sugar, honey or meat, became affordable.  White flour crêpes are as thin as buckwheat crêpes but softer as a result of the eggs, milk, and butter used to make them.

The above is from Monique’s Crepes.

Crepes nowadays

In France, crepes are generally made out of wheat flour.  In the southern part of Normandie and in Bretagne (Britany), buckweat is also used to make crepes, there are then called “galettes” and generally served with a savoury fill.  Note that buckwheat is gluten free.

Crepes recipes may vary between regions.  In the northern and eastern part of France, beer is often included in the batter, it does a great job at lightening the dough and makes very thin and delicious crepes.  Also, quite often, the dough does not have any sugar.

If you are making crepes (at home that is), you will need a crepe pan.  I have tried in other pans, I can tell you, it is not easy because of the high edges and because your pan must strictly be not sticky and not scratched.

Note that large non-stick (tefal or other) fry-pans are perfect to make galettes as you need them larger and the buckwheat galette is ticker making it easier to handle.

Filling for savoury crepes or galettes

Savoury

Galettes or savoury crepes are generally filled on demand.  The filling is placed on the galette when the galette is turned over while cooking, the filling ingredients are added and the four “corners” of the crepes pulled an folded towards the middle to contain the filling (you end up with a square shape).  The basic filling is a full egg, ham and cheese, but there are many variations.  Combinations of the following ingredients make a great galette:

  • eggs
  • tasty cheddar / gruyere type of cheese
  • ham
  • Mushrooms (often sliced and precooked)
  • Bacon dices or “lardons” as known in France, precooked
  • Cream
  • sliced cooked potatoes

You can also use blue cheese (I personally love it in savoury gallettes), green asparagus, smoke salmon, salmon, tomatoes,…the list is endless!

SWEET

Sweet crepes are delicious when they remain simple! The most simple fillings are:

  • white sugar with (optional) a dash of lemon juice (yum!)
  • soft brown sugar
  • jam
  • honey
  • lemon curd
  • chocolate / Nutella.

One crepe recipe which became quite famous is “Crepes Suzettes”, this requires a little more work.

Many of you would have seen crepes filled and then folded in two and then further folded to form a triangle.  This is not the case everywhere.  In my family, we rolled them, much more fun especially when you are a kid!

crepe pliage triangle   crepe roulee

And now the recipes

The recipe of the galette can be found HERE. This is my adopted recipe.

For the crepes, the recipe is quite different.  The recipe below calls for a resting time of 2 hours, if you don’t have that time in front of you, it will also work, the crepes will be thicker.  If you have no beer or prefer not to use beer, use water and milk.  Crepes are very forgiving in terms of ratios.  Careful not using only milk or your crepes will be brittle. If you increase the quantity of eggs, your crepes will be quite thick and filling.

Ingredients:

This will easily serve 4 people for dessert. Left overs can be covered and placed in the fridge.

  • 500 g of plain flour
  • 4 eggs (depending on size)
  • 1 beer (300 ml)
  • 1/2 cup oil (sunflower)
  • 1/2 L milk
  • water
Method:
  1. Place the flour in a large bowl, make a hole (we all it a well in French) in the middle and place in it, the eggs, oil, beer and milk.
  2. Mix with a whisk until smooth.  You may have a few small lumps, don’t worry to much at this stage.  The batter will be quite thick, you want to make it thinner by adding water, the consistency must be the one a drinking yogurt.

pate a crepe

  1. Let it rest for at least two hours.
  2. Get yourself ready to cook, things can go quickly, get organised, everything must be in close reach.

Cooking crepe

  1. To cook, use crepe pan (s).  Heat up the pan, when hot pour 2/3 of a ladle in the pan, by turning your wrist (while holding the pan), spread the batter over the bottom of the pan.  Pour out the excess if too really too much. Pop any bubbles if they form.
  2. Cook until the sides are brown AND the bottom is fully dry (no wet spots), turn over, cook for a bit less.  Transfer to a plate.

Now 3 MAJOR tips:

  • The first crepe if most of the time a write off (for the cook)
  • If you pan needs a bit of greasing, cut a potatoe and stick the section cut at the end of a fork.  Place the flat edge in oil then “paint” the bottom of the fry-pan.  This method will limit the amount of grease you use and avoid using multiple absorbent paper sheets. If you have a piece of lard, it works perfectly well too.

    crepe oil as necessary
    Tip – use a cut potato to grease your pan
  • The heat under the fry-pan will need adjusting, somewhere between low and high.  It will take a few crepes to get there.
manger des crepes
Yum yum crepe!

 

 

Keep your cooking stocks!

Keep your cooking stocks please!! Seriously, you would be loosing so much yummyness.  Their best use? A risotto for sure!

What stock? For example when you cook mussels, you will end up with a broth, won’t you?  Filter it and freeze it.  If you cook a casserole, you may end up with some quite tasty sauce.  Put it in the fridge, the next day remove the fat that has accumulated and is hard on the top part of the stock and freeze until you need it.  If you are more adventurous and cook ham hocks, you MUST keep the stock, trust me this will be amazing (I tried!).

There are plenty types of risottos, the basic tasks are the same: fry a bit your rice, add condiment, garlic, a glass of wine, then your stock and cook slowly.  Some chefs would tell you that risottos must be mixed regularly, other will say not to touch it, I think this comes from regional variations. Some risottos will come with tons of cheese (yum), some other have no cheese.  There are so many options!

How easy: VERY EASY!

For a basic recipe try this Jamie Oliver basic risotto .

When I started making risottos,Marcus Wareing I started with a cherry tomatoes and mozarella risotto from Marcus Wareing.

Vegetarian people as much as non-vegetarian, this is a must do, so good!  I made it so many times since, varying things along.

 

 

 

Now, what prompted me to write this post was one made this week using a mussel broth (moules marinieres) and placing a whole fish in it.  It took no time. Here you go!

Risotto truite arc en ciel

 

 

 

Chestnuts

 

Chestnut season is here!  Most of you are likely to have memories of hot chestnuts booked on a cold days in the ashes of the fireplace.  It brings you back to your childhood, doesn’t it?

Parisians may argue, you can get a cone of roasted warm chestnuts in winter at street corners for a couple Euros.  I remember that from my student years, although the currency was not yet the Euro!

Today, most of us don’t have a fireplace, but you can still eat those chestnuts! Use a sharp knife to incise slightly through the skin if the chestnut (this is to prevent them having a little tantrum while cooking). Be careful not to cut yourself.  Place the chestnuts on a baking sheet, little tin and in a hot oven for about 10 minutes.  Insert a pointy knife in one of them to check for doneness. Peel the exterior and interior skins and enjoy!

chesnuts ready to cook

What else can you use chestnuts for? Here are a few ideas:

  • Add on the sides of a lamb roast or roasted chicken.  You will need to incise them as explained above, parboil them for a couple minutes and peel them.  The boiling will help removing the skins.  Make sure there is some juice in your roasting pan or they will become dry.
  • Make chestnut puree (water based or milk based).  As above incise, boil a couple minutes then remove the skins.  Then cook in either water or a mix of water and milk on low heat until crumbly and coked through.  Puree.  Add sugar if you wish (it depends what you want to do with the puree).  Keep in the fridge or freezer.   There are a number of recipes with chestnut puree, here is mine for a chestnut pudding. It is light and very delicate, beautiful!

 

 

 

Tempting Sydney bakeries….

Am I the only one being tempted by a good bakery? I don’t think so. Here are a few words and recipes from a few tempting Sydney bakeries.

Today’s post is going to be challenging, first because of computer issues (mine is at the computer doctor) and also because I am missing a few photos because i could not complete a recipe… Not a complete disaster but well….I ran out of eggs ! I was making the first stage of a brioche dough which I will use to make small brioches for school (and me at work :-)) lunchboxes, when I realised the egg-situation.  I was short of one egg! How could that be possible?   There were two boxes of eggs in the fridge, but, as i found out, almost empty ones.  No blame there on households habits!  I should have known better, it is towards the end of the week.

I manage for my brioche dough, being one egg short but using some egg-wash from yesterday as a complement, however I did not get to prepare my gluten free raspberry chocolate fondant!  You will understand the link in a moment.

Some bakeries I like in Sydney…

What do I like in a bakery?  First I would have to like the products, maybe not all, but enough to come back (except if really outpriced!).  Second, it is about the people and how the bakery comes through on the social plan.

Do you know that on weekends, you can make great bakeries discoveries when you wonder to some markets like the Paddington market, the Orange Grove market, the Carriage Works market, Pyrmont market (which I have never been to) and so on.

There are quite a number of good bakeries these days: Iggys, Bourke St bakery, Brickfield, Labancz, Grumpy baker, Zumbo, Bondi Organic Republic (thought I have not been there for ages, this is their new name), and plenty more.   Let’s chat about Bourke St Bakery, Flour and Stone, and Brickfield Bakery.

Bourke St Bakery

Bourke St Bakery  opened quite a while ago, initially in Surry Hills, they quickly became a reference bakery.  The products are very good as you will first experience by the size of the queue, then directly trying not to buy too much!  There are now a number of other shops, often easier to get to.  Their bread is really good!

Bourke St Bakery
Bourke St Bakery, Surry Hills

Apart from their amazing bread, Bourke St bakery does a lot of small cakes and viennoiseries.  They have a book on pretty much most of their products called “The ultimate baking companion”. I borrowed the book recently at our local library and have been trying a few recipes.  I still have Bourke St bakery booknot returned the book, I would like to try some of the shortcrust pastries! I found that for a novice to bread making (I am not one of them) the bread recipes are a bit too technical or skipping a few explanation which would be very useful.   For the other recipes, the recipes are great, beware of the quantities, they are designed for large volumes! Also beware that they use fresh yeast and not dry yeast.  I did get caught on one recipe, I was furious with myself!

Tip: Rule of thumb: Dry yeast x 3 (in grams) = fresh yeast in grams

I tried a bread from that book, it was nice, oups, no photos.  Otherwise, from that book:

The Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins (CLICK CLICK FOR RECIPE). muffin They are truly delicious, I highly recommend you do them.  They please adults and children!

 

 

The chocolate prune brownie (CLICK CLICK !!!).  I love the use of the _MG_9117soaked prune in that brownie, but it is very strong in chocolate (too much) and way too sweet for me.  That said, I brought it to work, left it on the bench with a little note in the office shared kitchen and I could hear people coming back from the kitchen and their  comments of appreciation (most had not even read to the bottom of the very short note to check who baked them!).  Of course, there was no left overs.  I also recommend respecting the cooking time, if the top seem stable, the bottom may be too gooey, decrease the oven and keep baking! I had to put mine straight back in the oven (the photo was taken when i first got it out).

The croissants and pains au chocolat.  They were extra! Since we cannot homemade croissantseat 24 croissants and 24 pains au chocolat upfront, I froze the croissants and pains au chocolat just after making them (uncooked, before the last rising).  I take them out the evening before breakfast, egg-wash them and let them on the kitchen bench on the tray i will bake them in, i cover them with a large humidified plastic box and bake in the morning. In terms of aesthetics, it does the trick, but i find they do not taste as good as when not frozen. I am not placing the recipe here, if you want it, contact me.

The rest very soon! I need to do my raspberry chocolate cake before speaking of Flour and Stone and it is getting late for today.

 

 

 

 

My so called Portuguese custard tarts

These little custard tarts…

I have given this title “my so called Portuguese custard tarts” to today’s blog because I made my first batch of those tarts one afternoon a couple month ago with some left over puff pastry and left over crème patissiere which I was using for another dessert.  I did not want to throw away puff pastry trimmings, no no no!  I quickly got out of the drawer my muffin trays, chucked in the pieces of pastry roughly, I did not even bother soldering them together when sometimes 2 were necessary for one hol.  Then I grabbed the plastic container with left over crème patissiere from the fridge, filled the holes with that, egg washed/milk washed the edges and zoum! Direction, the oven.

Result: yum, yum yum!

Since, I made them again, they are truly so delicious!  I have perfected a bit my technique by adding rough raw sugar over the egg washed rim of the tartlets, it makes it a bit caramelized. My recipe is here. You can access it anytime from the main recipe menu of my blog.

Not just delicious, they are very easy and quick to make, once you have the crème patissiere ready and puff pastry ready.

Of course you could buy good quality puff pastry and good quality custard and make them in the moment, but sourcing these products in Australia will take you about as much time as doing it yourself! Do you know that supermarket puff pastry in Australia is not made out of butter but margarine? Well, check the back of the packet, basically, it is oil!   The alternative is to buy the “Careme” brand out of selected stores. In Europe, you probably do not have that problem, I remember reading in some cooking blogs that Picard has a good product (but frozen) and there is at least another brand which was well regarded.

Anyway, once you have tried, you will not go back to the oil based version.

When I learned they were so popular that some shops only make and sell those tartlets, I read a few recipes.  I had no idea they were a Portuguese specialty called “pasteis de nata”.  What I don’t do is roll the puff pastry in a roll, let it cool overnight and cut discs the next day which are then flattened and used as basis.  Check “Not quite Nigella“, she explains the concept very well.  This means that the layering of the of pastry is now perpendicular to the cut and the visual effect is nicer.

Making puff pastry

Making puff pastry is not that hard, best is to do a big batch and freeze in portions.  Look at the photo below, it is a cross section of a freshly made batch, you can see all of the folds!

IMG_2858

I find it fun.  Enclosing the butter is not hard and so far, for me, it has never burst out!  I am giving the recipe and plenty image on a separate page here. Well, if the link does not work immediately, be patient, I am being boosted out of this laptop (my work laptop) by a schedule software update, a countdown has started on my screen! My personal laptop suddenly stopped working yesterday, I can’t get it to start.  luckily we managed to access the hard drive and copy its content.

Coming up next week

A few bakery / cake shop discoveries in Sydney!! Plus some of their recipes tried for you (one is just cooling down on the kitchen bench).

Bourke St Bakery book
raspberry choc chip muffin, recipe from Bourke St Bakery book

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

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

 

 

Sourdough Bread Making Class

Last weekend, we were busy having a sourdough bread making class! I organised a cooking class, I had nine students all eager to make their sourdough loaf.  To ensure we were not spending the whole day at it, I  had prepared “ready to bake” loaves and some dough which had reached the shaping stage to be able to teach those later stages of the process which they eventually did at home later or the next day.

IMG_2412 IMG_2386 bread class group IMG_2417

It was a successful day.  Everybody got to do each phase of the process and go home with a loaf to bake and sometimes a baked loaf too, plus a sourdough starter in a jar.  Many thanks to my students for making this first class so easy (and for bringing a couple of nice bottles of wine).

Sourdough bread making is easier than it seems and the process is very forgiving.  If you need some advise, send me an email.  I have been doing my bread this way for 15 months now starting by doing my own culture.  I used a couple text book to get started and some You-tube video, especially for shaping, and this was it.  I am not saying that there was no disasters in the beginning (and still from time to times now when I push the boundaries), however generally it is bakery quality bread at home.

IMG_2433 IMG_2408