This week is the story of a random discovery around fennel. A fennel is a great looking vegetable but apart from that quite puzzling ! I have always used it a little here and there in salad or as crudity.
I bought a batch of small fennels recently, obviously having no idea what to do with them, but they were saying “put me in your basket, please, please !”. So I did. And I did not give them another though until I realised it was about time to do something with them or I would just end up putting them in my compost bin. Which I hate doing.
So what did I have at hand?
Four beautiful small fennels
A batch of freshly made puff pastry (I wanted to do an apple tarte or tarte fine, I have run out of apples and still not tarte! )
A nice piece of fresh soft goat cheese.
An opened bottle of riesling.
No backup plan
And if you know about Scotland Island, you will know that popping up to the shop because you are missing an ingredient is not an option! I am taking that opportunity to provide you with a little slide show of this great place. 🙂
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Caramelised fennel and goat cheese tartlets
This is about something warm, yet light and fresh for autumn.
The concept:
The fennels are halved and placed in a thick bottom frypan with a generous amount of salted butter and allowed to slowly cook, covered. After 10 minutes, I added one glass of white wine, a good pinch of rock salt and further cooked for up to minutes. It should be almost cooked through, still a little firm on top. A caramelisation is made at the end by adding a splash of balsamic vinegar to the frypan and reducing it. When ready, all you have to do is place some goat cheese on a square of puff pastry, then one fennel on each tartlet, fresh herbs, red pepercorns and a dash of runny honey. use melted butter to brush the exposed pastry. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Serve with a garden salad. It was delicious! Quite melty wth this light sweetness and still the freshness of the fennel with the tasty butter puff pastry.
1 block of puff pastry – butter prefered, to roll 25×25 cm , about 3 mm thick
2 small fennels, top trimmed
50 g salted butter
One glass dry white wine
Fresh herbs and red pepper corns
Honey
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Method:
Cut the fennels in two. Heat up a thick bottom frypan, melt the butter and allow to slowly cook, covered.
After 10 minutes, add one glass of white wine, a good pinch of rock salt and further cooked for up to minutes. It should be almost cooked through, still a little firm on top. A caramelisation is made at the end by adding a splash of balsamic vinegar to the frypan and reducing it.
Place some goat cheese on a square of puff pastry, then one fennel on each tartlet, fresh herbs, red pepercorns and a dash of runny honey. Use some melted butter to brush the exposed pastry. Bake for 15-20 minutes.
This chocolate version of the galette des rois works a wonder. Kids and adults love it and it is so easy to make. Seriously! (as my 7 y. o says all the time).
The principle is the same than the traditional creme frangipane one: 2 layers of puff pastry with an almond base cream filling (creme frangipane) in the midle and a little “feve” (a piece of ceramic about 1 cm long) hidden in the filling.
I know, it looks I bought it at the bakery! No, I needed somewhere to store it safely and had some spare boxes.
Serves 8
Ingredients:
400 g of puff pastry (better if butter puff pastry, in Australia, Careme provides a ready-made one and can be found in deli shops, if you want a recipe, here is my puff pastry recipe, I make it all the time now!
100 g of caster sugar
150 g of good quality dark cooking chocolate
1 egg
100 g of almond meal
25 g of butter, melted
2 tablespoon of milk
1 egg yolk
1 feve (if you don’t have any, use a large ceramic button or a shell)
Method:
For the filling: melt the chocolate with 2 tablespoon of milk. Once melted, add the egg, sugar, almond meal and melted butter. Mix well.
Preheat the oven to 170ºC
In a small bowl, mix the egg yolk with 2 tablespoon of milk or water to make an eggwash, you will use it to assemble the galette and brush it before baking.
Divide the pastry in the pieces and using a rolling pin and a little flour, prepare two disks of 25 cm diameter.
Cover a baking sheet with baking paper and place the first disk on it. Pour the filling and spread evenly leaving a 1.5 cm border all around. Place the feve in the garnish but not right in the middle (or you will for sure cut right through it when serving)
Using a small sharp knife, score the exposed pastry and brush with eggwash. Place the second disk over the top. With your thumb press the two disks edges together regularly moving your thumb around the edges. Use the sharp knife to score the top with lines making diamond shape or square shape patterns. Brush generously with eggwash and bake until golden brown for about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool down. It can be eaten slightly wam or at room temperature. Do not place in the fridge!
And by the way the one with the feve in its piece is the king/queen and has to choose a queen/king!
Making puff pastry can seem scary to some. Until I followed a weekend puff pastry-croissants and brioche class, I had never tried. In the end, it is quite simple, there are a few steps and since there is no yeast (not like croissant dough) you can make the ball on day 1 and finish the rest on day 2!
A bit of background on methods used…
Now, you may see different types of method for doing puff pastry and be tempted to the quick one “Blitz method”, this is fine for a number of use but you need to know it will produce an uneven pastry. The one I will document here is the “French method”. The differences come from the way the butter is inserted into the dough. There are three main methods :
(1) SCOTCH or BLITZ. (2) ENGLISH. (3) FRENCH. There are three different ways of adding the fat:
The quickest way is the Scotch or Blitz method. It is suitable for making pastry for pies, sausage rolls and pasties. Flour, salt, cold water and dough fat are mixed together in a mixing bowl. Walnut-sized lumps of fat are then added to the bowl and are mixed in a little, to ensure large lumps of fat are left whole in the dough. The fat is distributed throughout the dough in flat discs, rather than a continuous sheet as with the other methods. As a result this pastry does not always rise evenly and so is not suitable for products that must look exceptionally good.
In the English method the flour, salt, water and dough fat are mixed together. This dough is rolled into a long rectangular shape, three times as long as wide. Two-thirds of the dough is covered by dabs of butter. The third without butter is folded into the middle first then the other end is folded on top.
The French method – The main feature of the French method is that a square layer of fat is wrapped in the basic dough. This dough is made by rubbing about 10% of the soft fat into the flour, then adding cold water and mixing well to make a clear dough. After testing it is rolled into a square, making each side half the distance between opposite corners of the dough. The fat is placed in the centre of the doughs in the diagram below and the corners folded into the centre so they meet and cover the join. The paste is then folded again.
The three main types of puff pastry are FULL,THREE-QUARTER and HALF. The difference between them being the total fat content:
FULL puff contains flour and fat in equal ratio.
THREE-QUARTER puff contains 75% of fat to each pound of flour.
HALF contains 50% of the flour weight.
I will be giving you the half puff pastry, I find it buttery enough and good to work with.
Classic Puff Pastry (or half puff)
Ingredients:
300 g bakers bread flour
150 g water
30 g unsalted butter at room temperature
6 g of salt
3 g of lemon juice or white vinegar – used for colour development
3 g of malt, or honey – again used for colour development
250 g unsalted butter , chilled, for roll in.
It is important that you get the right flour. Sourcing bakers flour can be challenging. The supernmaket bakers flour often comes with additives, do not use those. Bulk health food / organic stores sell bakers flour, a few italian grocers also do (by 12.5 kg bag). In Sydney Southern Cross Supplies does wholesales (again by 12.5 kg bag).
Method:
If you have a Kitchen Aid or similar, it is time to get it out, use the dough hook. By hand works well too.
Put together all of the ingredients EXCEPT the roll-in butter. Make a very rough mix and leave aside for 20 min, it is the hydratation process which will help the ingredients to mix well in the next phase.
If using a Kitchen Aid, mix on low (number 2) for 4 minute – time it out! If doing it manually, mix the dough until you get a ball then place on the kitchen bench repetitively pushing the ball sideways away from you from left to right, bringing it back then pushing it sideways away from you from the right to the left. Do this until the structure becomes elastic enough to stretch when you pull on it. Don’t overdo it, we are not trying to reach the development that we would with a bread (i.e. not enough to stretch it so thinly you can see through).
Wrap the ball in cell wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
While it is refrigerating, prepare your butter. You will need to have a metal dough spatula or plastic one (I use either one or the other for that process). If you don’t have any, try using a large straight wooden spatula, it won’t be as easy but should work until you get one of the dough spatula, they are a couple dollars only at kitchen stores.
Square of butter
Using a large knife, a chopping board and baking paper, cut slices of butter about 0.5 cm to 1 cm thick and place them on the baking paper next to each other like if to make a square jigsawpuzzle shape.
Cover with another piece of baking paper.
With a rolling pin, hammer (bang!) one side of the butter, this is called the plastering.
Remove the baking paper and with the plastic dough spatula homogeneise the thickness and tidy the sides of the square. The butter you remove on a thicker part is used to fill in the thinner parts (i.e. q=the quantity of butter remains the same).
Put back the baking paper, flip over, do the same.
Give one more round of plastering: rolling pin bang! + Clean up the top and edges of the slab.
Note: steps 5 to 8 can be replaced by a slightly easier folding method: spread the dough in a long strip slightly wider than the width of your butter piece and twice the length. Place the butter in the lowe part of the rectangular and fold over the other part, gently squeeze the edges together.
5. Now, it is time to enclose the butter: Get you ball out of the fridge and place on a very lightly floured work bench. Cut from the top down, halfway along two lines as a cross.
6. Putting your hand in the middle of the cross, holding one corner at the time, pull the corner towards you and open the ball: half of the dough will be left where it was (the lower half of the ball you did not cut through), half comes to you, shape it in the form of a square. Repeat with the other 3 corners.
7. With the rolling pin, adding flour underneath the pastry to prevent from sticking, expend you central section as a square the size of your slab of butter, then lay each wing very thin until you reach a square the same size than the central square.
Tip: extend one wing first halfway, then get onto the second one and so on until you go around, on the second round extend to full size.
Tip: don’t forget to add a tiny bit of flour to prevent sticking
8. Place you butter in the middle of the shape, fold back each wing at the time making sure you enclose the butter completely each time (top and sides), press slightly on the edges. Wrap in cell wrap, put on a tray and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
The lamination is when you make the sheeting. Do a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 folds (or the fat will integrate the pastry dough and you will loose the sheeting) but no more than 2 folds at the time. Allow 20 minute rest minimum in the fridge (covered) between each set of folds.
9. Remove the pastry from the fridge, place on a lightly floured work bench. Here we will roll the pastry in ONE direction only. Roll away from you towards the back of the bench until 3 times its own length, about 1 cm thick.
Tip: you may need to turn your pastry 180 degrees around to roll each end the same way, this is fine.
10. taking the end further away from you, fold in one third removing all excess flour, then fold in a second time until you come back to your initial square shape.
11. Now turn the pastry 90 degrees to your left, to have it as if you were going to open a book. Again (this is the second fold) roll away from you until 3 times its own length, about 1 cm thick. Fold back in three. Place on a tray, cover with cell wrap, rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
12. Remove the pastry from the fridge, repeat steps 9 to 11.
13. As above. Now you have all of the folds done. Rest the dough 20 minutes at least before using it.
The puff pastry will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days and in the freezer for up to 3 month.
These little Portuguese custard tarts are light, perfect for entertaining, be careful, they fly away! To make them, just use your larger size muffin trays!
Another version of creme patissiere (used as much as the previous one, it is a matter of taste) contains cornflour (maizena). The method is exactly the same, using the cornflour instead of the flour. This recipe call for 40 g of butter to be added at the end outside of the fire, just before transferring to the container. It gives it a nice finish taste (richer). For this version, use 1/2 L of milk, 1/2 vanilla pod or good quality vanilla extract, 60 g corn flour, 100 g sugar, 100 g egg yolks, 40 g butter.
Method
For the crème patissière:
Bring to the boil the milk and vanilla
In the meanwhile, beat the egg white, sugar and flour together
Pour a little milk over the egg mix while continuously mixing, then slowly pour back all of that mix in the saucepan with the remaining milk still mixing and cook on a slow fire. the mix will thicken. Remove when it starts to boil.
Pour into a plastic container and cover with a plastic film directly on top of the custard to avoid the forming of a skin.
Cool quickly.
For the tartlets
Warm the oven up on 180°C
Roll the puff pastry to about 3 mm thick, you will need to use a little flour to prevent from sticking
Cut squares to fit into a hole of your muffin tray (no need to butter the tray, there is already plenty butter in the puff pastry! it will not stick.)
Place the squares at the bottom of the holes
Fill with crème patissiere almost to the top
Beat the egg in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of water (or about), use a brush to brush the edges of the pastry with the egg-wash (do not egg wash the crème patissiere)
Sprinkle a little coarse raw sugar over the egg wash
Place in the oven, cook until golden brown on the edges about 20 minutes
Remove from the oven, turn the muffin trays over a cooling rack, the tartlets will pop out, some may need a bit of help, let them cool down.
This red onion pissalardiere is a variation from the traditional pissalardiere. The pissalardiere is a classic dish from southern France. The pissalardiere is something between a pizza and an onion tart. It is normally made with brown onion, this recipe is a variation and uses red onions.
Ingredients
2 to 3 large red onions
1 capsicum
1 puff pastry or pate brisee
Anchovies
Black olives
Method
Pre-heat oven at 180°C
Onions: chopped the onions finely then slowly cooked them and reduced them. Seasoned and add a splash of balsamic vinegar.
Capsicum: cut in long stripes and let to reduce very slowly in a frypan with a lid and 1/3 cup of water and a little salt until cooked. Add a bit of water if necessary.
Make sure you keep a watch on the above, they could burn easily, stir from time to time.
Prepare your puff pastry in the tart tin.
Place the onions at the bottom, then the capsicum. You can add a bit of nutmeg at this stage. Add a few anchovies. I added grated Grana Panado (this is what I had in the fridge) and a few black olives.
Bake on 180°C (160°C if fan forced) until the pastry is cooked.
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
A range of small size viennoiseries on the day of the class
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.
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.
Early January (the 6th to be exact) is the celebration of the Epiphany. In the Christian tradition, the epiphany represent the visit of the three kings to baby Jesus and the presentation of gifts. In France, this is a very social occasion and celebrated by all with a spacial cake called “la Galette des Rois”.
The galette contains a small piece of ceramics, if you end up with it in your piece, you become the king or queen and get to wear a crown! Then you may choose a queen or king and even a buffoon. To avoid cheating when distributing cake slices, the younger person (often a child) gets under the table and cites peoples at random as someone serves the cake.
The cake is made of puff pastry and fragipane custard cream. In France, you will find many at bakeries and in supermarkets that week, but in Australia, this is much harder to find. Below is the recipe.
Ingredients
The filling cream consist of a small custard mixed with a small frangipane cream.
2 sheets of puff pastries. Mine came as frozen squares, but the cake is more often of round shape
1 ceramic piece (they come in all shapes) or a small coin (washed) or small shell (washed), this piece is called the “fève” in French.
frangipane cream: 125 g of almond meal, 100 g of softened butter, 80 g of caster sugar, 2 tablespoon of rum (optional)
Creme patissiere: 1 egg yolk, 1 tablespoon of cornflour, 1 tablespoon of caster sugar, 10 cl of milk, a few drops of good quality vanilla essence
1 egg yolk dissolved with 2 tablespoons of water to seal the cake and glaze
Preparation – 20 min
Method
Preheat oven at 180 ºC
For the creme patissiere, mix the egg yolk, corn flour, vanilla, sugar and milk together in a small saucepan. Heat up while mixing (with a whisk), as soon as the mix is about to boil remove from the heat and mix until thick and glossy. Add rum is desired. Cool down in a different recipient.
For the frangipane cream, work the butter until soft and smooth with a spatulla. If your butter is hard (was in the fridge), you may use the microwave on very low heat setting (max 30%) for 20 sec bursts until just soft. Add sugar and almond meal and mix well. Then mix with the creme patissiere and place in the fridge until needed for use.
On a baking tray, place a sheet of baking paper, place the first sheet of puff pastry on it. Using a pointy knife, score all around the edge first centimetre and brush with the egg yolk- water mix.
Add the frangipane custard that was in the fridge making sure not to cover the scored area. This is where you must put the ceramic piece. Now try not to put it where the knife will go through where cutting. For example, if cutting in triangular pieces, not in the middle; if cutting in squares (works only for the square shape cake and if you need to share it among quite a few people), try to place in a middle of a square.
Cover with the second sheet of puff pastry and seal by pinching the edges together.
Using your sharp knife, draw a floral pattern on top or even simpler geometric intersecting lines. Brush with the egg yolk and water mix. Put in the oven and bake until the top is well golden. Remove and transfer to a cooling rack, then on a serving dish.
