Tag: summer

Homemade ice-cream. Yum!

I tried two ice-creams recently. The first one, a cookies and cream ice-cream was a request from the children, it is their current favourite.  The other one was trying to reproduce a Maggie Beer ice-cream, a salted caramel chocolate ice-cream.

Also, let me tell you about the 5 min cheat ice-cream we can all make at home at the last minute and which works a treat!

One tip upfront: make sure your ice cream mix is very cold before churning, this will result in a smoother ice cream and will then be more enjoyable.  I use an ice-cream machine to churn the ice-cream. I find this method much more reliable!

Cookies and cream ice-cream

This is my kids current favourite.  Adults also love it.  This ice-cream is so simple, it is just a matter of mixing cream, milk, vanilla and sugar and it is ready to be churned! The cookies pieces are added afterwards, between churning and freezing.  Try it, it is worth it! Recipe HERE.

Salted caramel chocolate ice cream

This requires a bit more steps than the above but remains simple to make.  I like mine quite strong in chocolate. In the recipe HERE, I point out to a few adaptations to tastes.  I love the result: a rich complex chocolate ice-cream.

You can use the custard base of this recipe for a “plain” chocolate ice cream (don’t forget to add the cream to the custard base).

The 5 minutes berries ice-cream

It is more a sorbet than an ice cream. I have not tried adding some cream, it would be interesting to try. You will need a 500 g bag of frozen berries: mixed or raspberries or strawberries or what may be in your freezer. You will also need some sugar cane syrup or some icing sugar. And a blender. In the blender place the frozen berries and start blending.  If using sugar cane syrup, add until the right texture is reached. If using icing sugar, place three tablespoons of sieved icing sugar with the fruits and blend, adding a little water at the time to help with the consistency (also check if you need to add more sugar).  The liquid volume will be somewhere between 1/2 cup and 1 cup and will depend on the berries.

Serve immediately or place in the freezer for a little time if making an hour ahead or so.

 

Salted caramel chocolate ice-cream

A salted caramel chocolate ice-cream is one of my favourite ice-creams! The ice-cream is based on a chocolate custard.  In itself, that base makes a wonderful chocolate ice-cream.  There would be different ways to introduce the salted caramel into the chocolate ice-cream. This version allows for a liquid caramel which can just be poured into the chocolate custard.

This salted caramel chocolate ice-cream is both strong in chocolate flavour and salted caramel flavour. If you are after a milder chocolate taste, omit the cocoa. If you are after a light salted caramel, only use one teaspoon of salt.

Ingredients:
  • 500 mL of full cream milk
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 100 g of sugar
  • 150 g of dark cooking chocolate (70%)
  • 1 tablespoon of dutch cocoa
  • 300 cl of cream
  • good quality vanilla extract

For the salted caramel:

  • 120 g of sugar
  • 50 g of butter and 2 tablespoons of cream (a splash of cream)
  • 2 level teaspoons of salt

Method:
To  make the salted caramel (read this whole section before you start)
  1. Place the sugar in a thick bottom saucepan and heat up. Have the butter and  cream handy near you.
  2. When the sugar starts to melt and brown, shake the pan to ensure all of the sugar melts homogeneously.  The more you cook a caramel the bitter and less sugary it becomes. Here we are after a golden brown colour, which comes rather quickly.
  3. As soon as you have reached the desired colour, add the butter and cream and mix with a whisk away from the fire. The caramel has now stabilised. If the butter is not fully melted you can place the saucepan a few seconds over the hot plate.
  4. Add the salt and mix well.
To make the chocolate custard, the body of the ice-cream
  1. Heat the milk, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla and sugar in a saucepan. Stir from time to time to ensure the chocolate doesn’t burn at the bottom and all ingredients are well dissolved.
  2. Place the egg yolks in a large bowl and give them a good mix.
  3. As soon as the milk mixture is about to boil, remove from the heat and pour a little of it over the eggs while mixing.  Then pour the rest, mix and return to the hot saucepan.  There may be enough heat in the pan for your custard to thicken and coat the back of a spoon straight away. If not, place on low heat and keep mixing slowly until the custard is done.  This is the trickiest part, do not overdo it or it will become grainy.
  4. Add the salted caramel and mix well.
  5. Place the custard in a container with a lid, allow to cool at room temperature for an hour, then in the fridge overnight. Note that if it tastes a little too salty or sweet: you still have the cream to add the next day.
Churning
  1. Before churning the next day, add in the cream.
  2. Place in the ice-cream machine and churn for about 45 minutes or until ready.
  3. Transfer to a box and freeze. You can choose to add some shaved chocolate to the ice cream at this stage.

Enjoy your salter caramel chocolate ice-cream!

Cookies and cream ice-cream

This is a very simple recipe for cookies and cream ice-cream.  Mix and freeze! It is very important all your ingredients be cold to start with if you want to churn it on the day. If you have time, mix the ingredients (see recipe) and churn it the next day. I didn’t invent this cookies and cream ice-cream recipe, it comes from “Chew Out Loud“, here adapted for metric measures.

Note that I use an ice cream machine for making my ice-cream.

Makes about a one litre container.

Ingredients
  • 250 ml (1 cup) whole milk
  • 150 g (3/4 cup) of caster sugar
  • 500 mL of thickened cream (2 cups)
  • 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1 cup coarsely chopped Oreos

Note: this is quite sweet, you can reduce the sugar to 100 or 120g if you prefer it a little less sweet (I wouldn’tgo lower)

Method:
  1. In a large bowl combine together with a whisk, the milk, the cream, the vanilla and the sugar. Mexi well. Check the vanilla level for taste, adding a little bit if desired.
  2. If you have been using cold dairy ingredients, you can churn it straight away, else, allow it to cool down overnight in the fridge and churn the following day.
  3. Once churned (use your machine instruction), roughly cut the Oreos into small pieces (5 mm to 1 cm) and while transferring to the ice-cream container, mix the Oreos through. Make sure to keep a few of the broken cookies for the top!

Churros, our newly adopted snack

Why suddenly churros?

Churros breadNbutterkids

A month ago I was there 20 minutes before dinner looking online for ideas of very quick desserts.  For a change I wanted to stir away from a chocolate cake, chocolate souffles and all other chocolate treats for that reason.

Maybe I had an overdose of chocolate, we had just been preparing our Easter chocolate eggs.  Making Easter eggs and a few bunnies has become a rite just before Easter. The children are the doers once the chocolate is tempered.  They love it. I do as well and I must say the chocolate eggs and bunnies are pretty good!

chocolate eggs

So what happened?

So I was looking through a collection of recipe from I can’t remember a French or Australian foodie magazine website.  I was probably looking at both.  Anyway, I happened to see a churros recipe.  That was it, I had everything available: flour, eggs, a little bit of sugar and some butter.

So here I am making my churros dough, then we are having our dinner with a break for the cooking.  The first batch is just out that some neighbours pop up.  Churros gone, I just had time to dust some icing sugar on them. The last batch was cleaned off very quick as well.

The batch of churros for the photos was done this weekend while doing a 1,000 pieces jigsaw puzzle of the map of Australia found at the local wharf (wharf treasures).

Churros breadNbutterkids

 

The recipe is HERE!

Churros breadNbutterkids Churros breadNbutterkids

What else?

I bought a block of fresh yeast when wandering in Haberfield, an inner west suburb of Sydney with a strong Italian tradition.  So I made quite a few  things.

sugar tarte

One family favourite is the Tarte au sucre, a northern France specialty.  It is very simple. I know I often says so. Trust me, this raised dough has nothing to scare you off: mix, let rise, spread, spread soft brown sugar and cream and bake! the recipe is HERE.

croissants

I hadn’t done any croissants for a while. I was not that happy with my lamination but they turned out better that I thought they would.  It is always fun to have the children rolling them. We also had a traveller staying with us who loved this type of activities and was happy to learn.

 

Two simple fish dishes for a light meal

Here are two simple fish dishes for light meals you can make at home very easily. And here the story goes…

Ben came home with some fish a couple of days ago, hooray!! I have been pushing off driving to the fish market to replenish our home stocks.  We do trips to the Sydney fish market every few weeks, but the idea of driving two hours (one each way, I reassure you) and missing out on a quiet day at home and a nice swim in the bay has deterred me to do the trip recently…

In the fish basket, I got some deep seabream fillets and some salmon fillets.  If you want to know more about the fish from our waters, the Sydney Fish Market has a published book which is quite good and a lot of information on species online.

The seabream is a very soft fillet and has a very delicate flesh.  The fillets are single serve most of the time.  The salmon is rather well-known, its cooking is more versatile.

Simple fish dish # 1 – Poached deep seabream with carrots

The idea of this dish is “keep it simple”! As I do not plan my meals, I had a look at what was in the fridge and those carrots were really tempting.  We had dutch baby carrots and your normal carrots.  The carrots are cooked slowly in a frypan with a little butter, a drop of water and a bit of salt (to taste) while the fish is poached separately in two centimetres of water with a little olive oil, rock salt and fennel seeds. We served it with a side salad (just lettuce and tomatoes with a balsamic vinaigrette.  The whole is ready is less than half an hour (including setting the table).

The details of the recipe can be found HERE.

fish meal

fish meal

 

Simple fish dish # 2 – Salmon with hot and cold  mix vegetables salad

This one was tonight’s dinner.  There were just three of us, so one piece of salmon was enough.  Again, here I am thinking of something light. To be honest I had no idea when opening the fridge door.  I look into the vegetables drawer and – as we all do – rediscover its content. I then pull out a little piece of red cabbage, one Brussel sprout, a sweet potato and a few more things like herbs and a piece of a pomegranate requesting to be finished soon.

There were two cooking stages, but this time all in the same roasting dish. First, the cauliflower and sweet potato first, then the fish and a little chickpeas. And finally herbs, a few crumbs of feta and some cherry tomatoes.  Over that, a dash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, a splash of lemon and dinner is ready. A table! To my surprise the children finished it all off.

The details of the recipe can be found HERE.

fish meal fish meal

Rhubarb Tarte

Rhubarb is a summer to autumn food.  The plant grows in temperate climate, it produces large green leaves on thick stems.  The parts used in the kitchen are the stalks.  Apparently, the leaves are toxic and are most often used for compost and in natural home made preparatation against some garden insect pests.

To prepare rhubarb, first cut off the leaves and discard and was the stalks.  Cut each end of the stalk. Pull on the sting that comes from the sides of the stalk if any and discard too.

For a rhubarb tart for about 8 people.

Ingredients:
  • 1 shortcrust pastry
  • 1 bunch of rhubarb stalks
  • 1 egg
  • 2/3 cup brown soft sugar
  • 1/2 cup of cream (if ou don’t have cream, you can use milk)

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 180 °C.
  2. Roll the shortcrust pastry and place in the tart tin.
  3. Cut the rhubarb stalks in sections 1/2 centimetre to a centimetre long and place on the pastry.
  4. Mix egg, cream  and sugar  and pour over the fruits.
  5. Bake until the crust is golden brown.

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My clafoutis story, with pits and stems!

Today is about my cherry clafoutis story. A few weeks ago, a friend asked me for a cherry clafoutis recipe. A clafoutis is a very simple dessert: a few fruits placed at the bottom of a dish on top of which you pour a simple batter.

I had not made a cherry clafoutis before, I guess the cherries somehow always appear to vanish too quickly from their bowl for that!  Find the guilty! I wish I had a cherry tree!

My cherry story

My grandmother in the Champagne area in France has this orchard that was quite magical for us kids.  Not only were there stories of old wells not to go near as we could fall into and disappear, but there were also a number of fruit trees, including quite a few cherry trees along a white earth garden alley leading to a small door in the property wall facing the village’s church.  Those cherry trees were loaded with fruits at the start of summer.  My Grandma used to make preserves and fill these tall glass jars.  I have a very clear picture of those glass jars being brought to the kitchen one at the time when required, but don’t ask where they were kept (I don’t know).

Bonne Maman (this is how we called my Grandma) used the cherries mostly in cherry tarts, they were so delicious and beautifully presented on a glazed terracotta platter.  Those tarts are associated with Dad’s loud comment (he still brings it up when we mention those cherry tarts) that the cherries still contained the pits (which obviously annoyed him)!

Now why have I told you my childhood cherries story you wonder? Simply because the cherry clafoutis comes with its controversy about keeping or removing the pits!

Pits or no Pits?

A little bit of research has taught me that the cherry clafoutis originates from an area called Limousin, in central France. There, the clafoutis must be served with full cherries.  This makes sense, think that the clafoutis was a simple countryside dish (Limousin is essentially a rural area), why bother removing the pits? What a loss of time, removing all those pits!

I can only agree. I started removing the pits for my first clafoutis and realised quickly it was taking ages.  I stopped at half and decided to make 2 clafoutis to try the differences, one with and one without pit!

Here is the outcome:

  • With pits, the dish is neat and the fruits retain their juice;
  • Without pits, the juice of the fruits can freely run out of the cherries, it gives a runny look to the clafoutis which can be quite satisfying but when eating a cherry, it will have lost a fair amount of its taste.

clafoutis

Tip: to remove the pits easily, make a small cross cut with a sharp knife on the bottom part of the cherry.  Then using a chop stick, push the pit out by inserting it through the top where the stem was attached.  It works also well without the incision, but it gets really messy if you misfire the pit!

I preferred the cherry with pit version.

Now, my version of the clafoutis

Yes, with pits and stems!!! So fun!

clafoutis with pits and stem clafoutis with pits and stem

 

 

clafoutis with pits and stemThe batter of the clafoutis is normally just eggs, milk, flour and sugar.  With the cherries I found that utterly boring! The recipe needed something to marry the cherries well with the rest of the dessert.  My version swaps some of the milk for greek yoghurt.  It was perfect. And since I was not removing the pits, I decided to leave the stems as well! Now if you do that, make sure your children don’t pull out all of the cherries before touching the cake bit.  It is quite fun I must say.

Click HERE for the recipe.

Other tips about clafoutis in general:

Tip: use a deep dish.  You need the batter to be poured 4 to 5 cm thick (or the clafoutis may be dry).

Tip:  The clafoutis rises during baking.   So have a couple of centimetres of free board (it deflates when taken out of the oven)

Tip: I more generally make apricot clafoutis.  That recipe includes almond meal to soak up some of the juice made by the fruits while cooking.  Another great clafoutis is mirabelle (a type of plum) clafoutis.

The clafoutis keeps well for a day or two.

clafoutis with pits and stem

Mustard, a summer pantry essential!

With the warmer days around the corner, the menu is also changing.  Mustard can be your ally here. I declare mustard a summer pantry esential! Let me give you a couple examples.

Mustard tomato tart

This tart is in essence, a shortcrust pastry, some mustard, cut tomatoes.  Depending on what you may have at hand in the kitchen or the garden, you can obtain various declinaison of it.  On its own, it is quite light. So, a side salad is required.

This recipe jumps back to mind from time to time, I am always pleased with the result!

If you are in a hurry, feel free to use ready-made pastry, puff pastry works well with it to.  Otherwise, make a shortcrust pastry, let it rest for half an hour at least, and you are good to go.

For the mustard I use the plain dijon mustard. Roll your pastry, spread the mustard on the base, place sliced tomatoes over.  The one I made recently has some grana padano cheese, enoki mushrooms, thyme and rosemary, salt, pepper, olive oil. That simple!

mustard tomato tart

 

 

 Mustard Chicken casserole

Another recipe highlighting mustard as a pantry essential is the mustard chicken casserole.

You may think a casserole is for the colder months.  This one works all year round really.  It can be done for a large number of people or just a small number.   It is simple to make. Serve with couscous semolina in summer or a little potatoe mash and green salad. Find the recipe HERE.

chicken mustard