A few food-related links

The wonderful Shuna writes about the balance between Recipes and Intuition:

“I believe if one places the recipe before what one knows to be true, that’s where {some of the} trouble begins.
That’s when “Bad Things Happen.”"

http://eggbeater.typepad.com/shuna/2009/10/recipes-vs-intuition.html

Autumn recipes for crisps (= UK crumble)

Pear Crisp from The Pioneer Woman

Breakfast Granola Apple Crisp from Smitten Kitchen

(both are on the to-bake list)

A lovely banana bread recipe from Sophie Dahl in Waitrose Food Illustrated which I adapted slightly here.

Some lovely friends bought me a gift subscription from The Spicery for my birthday, and I’m already enjoying it so much that I’ve ordered a stack of extra things from them – including beautiful long Cinnamon quills and really fragrant garam masala. Check out the recipe kits.

Tomato sauce

I have a tub of this in my fridge at the moment

As far as I’m concerned, having tomato sauce on standby is a no-brainer. There are just so many favourite meals that need it somewhere: pasta sauce, chicken curry, beef stew, a vegetable bake – the list goes on. Shop-bought ones can be good – and essential to have in the cupboard for emergencies. Delia likes the Dress range, which I’ve tried and like a lot, but you can’t find them everywhere. My Other Half prefers Ragu original, for nostalgic reasons – I find it a bit salty, and usually dilute it with some passata from a jar.

But the revelation is that you can make your own tomato sauce, freeze it in pots, and then use it as you would a jarred one. And it’s easy and cheap, and only needs an approximate recipe.

This is an ideal task for when you’re at the stove anyway, as it mostly minds its own business, and needs hardly any preparation. This is adapted from Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with butter, so in addition to being easy, has impeccable Italian credentials.

Recipe: Tomato Sauce

So, large saucepan, preferably with a thick bottom to help stop the sauce from burning on the base of the pan.

Tip in 2 400g tins of peeled plum tomatoes and an entire 700 jar of passata. Break up the tomatoes with a spoon, or just do what I do, and squish them between your fingers as they come out of the can.

Add about 25g butter, a drizzle of olive oil, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar and one large or 2 small peeled onions, halved from top to bottom.

Turn on the heat, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat as low as it will go and leave to simmer for about 45 minutes until thick and reduced.

That’s it. Just discard the spent onion halves and spoon into pots or ziplock bags and freeze for up to 3 months. If you have a food mill or a food processor
, you can also put the sauce in there and chop the onion into the sauce – this will make it a bit thicker as well.

Adapting the sauce

• Add dried or fresh herbs – oregano, basil and parsley would all be good
• Use all butter or all olive oil (Marcella’s recipe is heavier on the butter)
• Up the quantities with more tomatoes
• Use all tinned tomatoes, rather than the passata

Using the sauce

• Just add to pasta
• Make pizza dough and spread on top before adding toppings
• Make curry: fry some onions and curry powder, add chicken and cook until brown, then add tomato sauce and stock and reduce. Stir in yoghurt at the end.
• Quick Parmigiana: layer with grilled vegetables and creme fraiche and top with parmesan; bake in the oven.

In search of a sparkling marmalade

Marmalade has been a bit of a problem area for me. I have made jars and jars of it over the years (many of which are still in the cupboard), but seldom made one I’ve really been satisfied with. I’ve made ones with more peel than jam, that are very hard to spread, and others that are more of a caramelised orange syrup – boiled so long and hard that the sugar caramelised, but it never really set.

The pectin you need to set the marmalade comes from the peel, pith, membranes and seeds. There is a very easy recipe that has you boil the oranges whole, to get all that pectin going, then cool and chop them up, before adding the sugar and boiling to set. However, including all of this makes for a very lumpy recipe, which is ultimately a bit unsatisfying to spread on your toast.

I searched around, and came across June Taylor, an englishwoman living in Berkeley, who makes much-loved preserves distributed in the Bay Area. These sounded like just the sort of thing to aspire to – clear, colourful marmalade, with the taste of the fruit.

Fortunately, June has been generous with her time on more than one occasion, and I found a few sources to help me. Most helpful of all was a video on Chow, which shows clearly all her techniques:

Video: June Taylor and her marmalade – Chow

The New York Times: Jelly’s Last Jam

The San Francisco Chronicle: Jars of marmalade dance in her head

I took my recipe from the last one, but halved it – because I really couldn’t see myself getting through 12lbs of marmalade. The big difference between June’s recipes and other marmalade recipes I have seen is that she segments all the fruit – removing the fruit flesh from the membranes and skin. Now, I’m not pretending this is going to be easy – it’s very time consuming to do – it probably took me 1.5 to 2 hours to prepare all the fruit for this. But I did end up with a beautiful orange jelly, that set just perfectly. So it may be worth it if that’s what you’re after.

Tangerine and Grapefruit Marmalade

• 1kg pink grapefruit
• 2 kg tangerines (I used a combination of tangerines, mandarins and a couple of oranges)
• 90 ml lemon juice (3 or 4 lemons-worth)
• 1 kg granulated sugar
• 600ml water

• Wash all the fruit – scrub the peel with soap.
• Take 4 of the nicest-looking, least-blemished tangerines. Top and tail the peel from them, and segment with the peel on, then slice into thin slices across the segment.
• Take the remaining fruit, top and tail them, and then cut off the peel in curve from the top to the bottom. Segmenting an orange is quite tricky to describe, so instead of trying, you’re best off with an instructional video or a series of photos.
• Place all the segments and juice into a large, wide pan, with the lemon juice and water.
• Place all the membranes and seeds into a square of muslin or a jelly bag, and tie it up with string. Use the string to suspend the bag into the pan in the juice.
• Put the pan onto the heat and bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.
• Lift the bag out onto a plate until cool enough to handle. Stir the sugar into the hot fruit to dissolve. When the bag has cooled, squeeze it over the pan to extract the pectin – a cloudy, smooth, thick substance. Massage and squeeze the bag for 5-10 minutes to extract as much as possible – this is what will make it set. Put a couple of saucers or small plates into the fridge.
• Bring the pan back to the boil and simmer for 30-45 minutes, testing for a set after 25 minutes. If you have a sugar thermometer, it should reach 106C/222F. Test for a set by dripping a little on a refrigerated plate, and put back into the fridge to chill. If you can mound it up so it looks like an egg yolk, or it gets a wrinkle on the surface when you push across it, it is ready.
• Use a ladle or a measuring jug to pour the hot marmalade into clean, hot, sterilised jars (sterilise by washing in very hot soapy water, or running through a dishwasher, then drying in an oven at 130C).

Basic Beef Stew

In the cold weather of February, a stew is the perfect antidote. But a stew is also a great answer to a week’s worth of cooking from a cheap cut of meat. A slowly braised pot of beef can be: stew with potatoes; then pie, with a pastry lid; and finally, the last morsels of meat, shredded, with the remaining gravy can dress pasta. And while I’m not often keen on eating the same thing night after night, you can coax such flavour from this, that I’m happy to return. And if it becomes too much, simply freeze it – and then re-heat when the weather gets colder again.

The basic elements of a stew are repeated in every recipe you come across. Understanding the components gives you licence to adapt and adjust as you go.

Meat – the substance of the stew, essential flavouring.
Plenty of fat gives flavour, and can be skimmed from the top by chilling the stew overnight before eating (which also helps the flavour). Collagen and fibres will melt, given long, slow cooking, into gelatin, which will thicken the gravy. Cuts with bones and fibres will need much longer cooking than, for example, cubed braising steak, but will give up much more in flavour and gelatin. In Waitrose today, I notice that they are now selling oxtail, ox cheeks, scrag end of lamb and other cheap cuts ideal for stewing.

Thickener – stock, flour.
Gelatin on it’s own is rarely enough (although a jellied stock will help too) to give a silky gravy. A little flour will provide you with enough thickening to allow the sauce to smoothly coat the meat.

Vegetables – more layers of flavour.
Traditionally: carrots, celery, onions – a balance of sweet and savoury flavours. Cut into small pieces if you just want the flavour. Leave in larger chunks to eat them with the stew. I sometimes chop extra, and freeze in little bags, in the ratio of 2 onion :  1 carrot :  1 celery. You can also use leeks, parsnips, celery leaves, swede.

Liquid – stock, wine, beer. Stock gives body and extra meaty flavour – but just use water rather than an oversalted stock. Beer is good, as is Guinness. Wine could be good, but go for something fruity rather than robust – too much tannin can skew the flavours.

Flavours - herbs.
Woody herbs (thyme, rosemary) do well with long cooking. Parsley, chives – do better sprinkled over at the end.
—–
I made this version a couple of weeks ago with braising steak from the butcher. I prefer to leave it to bubble in the oven, rather than on the stove, as it requires less attention, but either works.

Beef and Guinness Stew

Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Steak, Guinness and cheese pie with a puff pastry lid in ‘Jamie at Home‘
[This is a great book, with lots of little tips for growing veg - and I positively covet his pizza oven]

• 500g braising steak, in 2cm cubes

–> season with salt and pepper and set aside

• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 1 large onion
• 1 leek
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

–> chop all the vegetables into pieces.

Heat a large casserole.
Add olive oil, and fry the vegetables to soften them, giving them a little colour.
Start with the onions & leeks, then carrots and celery, finally garlic.
Remove the veg onto a plate.
Turn up the heat, and fry the beef in a couple of batches.
Leave alone to colour, turn over to brown the other side, then take out.

• 4 large mushrooms, sliced across

–> With the heat still high, fry the mushrooms until they release their liquid and colour a little.

• 2 tbsp flour

–> Pile the meat back in, and add the flour. Stir around to cook it for a minute or so.

• 1/2 bottle of Guinness

–> Stir in the Guinness, a little at a time, scraping the bottom to dissolve the flour and browned bits. Bring to a simmer.

• Thyme sprigs
• Parsley
• salt & pepper
• Rosemary, finely chopped

–> Add the herbs, and season.
–> Put on the lid, and simmer very slowly for 2-4 hours, checking periodically to see whether the meat is tender. Alternatively, put into an oven at 140C.

Stew is always better cooked, cooled, put into the fridge overnight, and then reheated the next day. If you want to make a pie, put the cold stew into a pie dish and cover with a sheet of shortcrust or puff pastry. Glaze with beaten egg or milk, and cut a couple of holes in the top before baking at 200C for 30-45 minutes.

Birthday cake

Chocolate - from iStockphoto

Birthday cakes need to be so many things: celebratory; they need to fulfill the wishes of the birthday boy or girl rather than the baker; and demonstrate an appropriate level of effort. It’s this last one that can give me trouble. While I love to make a cake, and will use any excuse to do so, it sometimes feels odd to create something really elaborate for a work colleague or boss. And besides, I don’t often have the time to go overboard. This is where the chocolate torte comes in.

Chocolate torte is one name for a soft chocolate cake made with ground almonds. Other names are Reine de Saba, or Queen of Sheba cake, or it can simply be referred to as a flourless chocolate cake.

To give some idea of the amount of variation possible, I compiled this table from books I own (oh stop: you didn’t already know I was a geek?):

Author	Nigella Lawson	Sybil Kapoor	Gordon Ramsay	Alice Medrich	Elizabeth David	Julia Child
Book	How to Eat	Taste	Just Desserts	Bittersweet	French Provincial Cooking	Mastering the Art of French Cookery
Recipe	Torta alla Gianduja	Catherine’s Chocolate Cake	Dark and Delicious Torte	Queen of Sheba	Reine de Saba	Reine de Saba
Butter	125g	60g	100g	140g	85g	110g
Chocolate	100g	1 cup	350g	170g	110g	110g
Eggs	6	3	4	4	3	3
Sugar	0	85g	200g	170g	85g	150g
Flour	0	2 tbsp	0	2 tbsp	0	50g
Ground nuts	100g	0	0	70g	85g	55g
Others	400g Nutella		Water, brandy, coffee	Brandy, almond essence	Brandy, coffee	Rum, coffee

As with so many of my chocolate experiments, it began with Alice Medrich’s ‘Bittersweet’. She devotes a chapter to a number of variations on this recipe, and reassures the reader that this is a recipe that will accommodate, even welcome changes. She provides us with that elusive license to create almost infinite experimental variations, and still produce an edible result. There can be few experienced home cooks who don’t read through a recipe and mentally edit it. However, we are often admonished that one really ought to follow a recipe to the letter the first time, so you can understand the starting point. While that remains good advice, the freedom to add your own stamp right away is a great inducement to try this recipe. So here at last is a recipe that you can rearrange and make your own, and still produce something that everyone will be happy to eat – and provides a suitable celebration cake at the same time.

Chocolate torte:

Prepare a 20cm/8 inch springform or loose-bottomed tin, by lining the base with baking parchment.

150g dark chocolate (I used 64% Valrhona Manjari)
150g butter

–> melt together, and stir until smooth

1 cup espresso (I used about 1/2 tbsp instant espresso powder in enough water to just dissolve it)

2 tbsp brandy

–> mix into melted chocolate, and set aside

100g ground almonds

45g flour

–> measure and mix together

4 large eggs

–> separate into yolks and whites. If you have a stand mixer, use that bowl for the whites.

110g sugar

–> combine with the yolks and beat until well blended (you can do this by hand, or briefly with a machine)

–> stir in the melted chocolate to combine.

–> separately, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks

50g sugar

–> whisk in 50g sugar to make a meringue, and continue whisking until you have stiff peaks.

–> Fold the whites into the chocolate mixture, by first adding one-quarter, and thoroughly beating it in, then folding in the remainder.

–> Bake for around 30 minutes at 190C/375F, or until a skewer inserted about 4cm from the edge comes out clean, but one inserted in the centre is still gooey.

Cookbook Library

I have a rather large cookbook collection (although I have certainly heard of larger ones, so I comfort myself with that). There are a whole stack of online library tools, aimed at cataloguing, lending to friends, social networking, etc. However, I really like Delicious Library, (mac only) which allows you to create an inventory of books just by scanning the barcodes with a webcam. And it pleased me again today, when I was able to publish my cookbook library almost instantly.

So, you can see my food library in all it’s glory here:

http://www.usingmainlyspoons.com/deliciouslibrary/

Let me know if you want to borrow something!

Hazelnut Brownies

Brownies are disproportionately easy, relative to the joy they bring. They feel much more special than an ordinary ‘traybake’ cake, but are as easy as a cake mix to put together. The basic principle is this: melt chocolate and/or cocoa with butter; beat in sugar and cold eggs; beat in flour, turn into pan; bake. That’s it – if you’ve got a microwave, you can do the whole lot in a single bowl.

I’ve been refining my brownie recipe over several years – it’s easy to do, because it’s such a forgiving recipe. Alice Medrich’s recipes in Bittersweet give almost every variation, dedicating a whole chapter to a nearly-forensic analysis of brownie baking. The version below is an amalgamation of her cocoa and chocolate brownie recipes, with some changes. I’ve also uprated the recipe from the usual 8 x 8 inch tin to a larger 12 x 9 tin: you can never have too many brownies.

Alice Medrich supplied many of the tricks here: it is her testing that indicates you should use cold eggs, and that the mixture should be beaten firmly after adding the flour; I am choosing not to re-invent the wheel. She also has a very useful trick of refrigerating brownie batter in the tin for up to 24 hours before baking. Not only does this make it possible to produce just-baked brownies within half an hour, but it makes the brownies even fudgier.

Frangelico is a pretty obscure liqueur, but I have to say, it makes all the difference to this recipe, giving a toasted, fragrant nut flavour to the whole thing. That said, the recipe makes perfectly good brownies if you don’t want to go to the bother of searching it out. You can also substitute the carefully toasted nuts with a packet of roasted (unsalted) mixed nuts from the supermarket.

Ingredients:
170g butter
55g cocoa
130g chocolate (combination of dark (70%) chocolate and milk chocolate)
40g chocolate & hazelnut spread (Nutella, Green& Blacks)

300g caster sugar
2 tbsp Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur) – or 1.5 tsp vanilla extract

3 cold eggs

105g flour
1/2 tsp salt
150g hazelnuts, toasted

Method:
Line a 12×8 inch tin with baking parchment or foil.

Melt the butter, cocoa, chocolates and chocolate spread together – use a microwave in short bursts or a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir together until smooth.

Stir in the sugar and Frangelico (if using) until thoroughly mixed.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Fold in the flour with the salt, then beat firmly until the mixture is glossy and pulls away from the side of the bowl a little (about 30 stiff beats). Mix in the nuts.

Scrape into the lined tin. Bake at 200C for 20-25 minutes or until the mixture just begins to pull away from the side of the pan. Wait until completely cold before slicing (if you have the patience…)

10 elements of basic kitchen knowledge – part 1

I came across this great interview today in which Hervé This describes his 10 elements of basic kitchen knowledge. I thought these were great, but I can see how someone reading this (or indeed This – pronounced Tees) for the first time might wonder what on earth this list had to do with everyday cooking. So I’ve set myself the task of trying to explain what *I* think is important about each of Hervé’s elements, perhaps adding some of my own along the way.

His list in full:

Hervé This’s 10 elements of basic kitchen knowledge

1. Salt dissolves in water.
2. Salt does not dissolve in oil.
3. Oil does not dissolve in water.
4. Water boils at 100 C (212 F).
5. Generally foods contain mostly water (or another fluid).
6. Foods without water or fluid are tough.
7. Some proteins (in eggs, meat, fish) coagulate.
8. Collagen dissolves in water at temperatures higher than 55 C (131 F).
9. Dishes are dispersed systems (combinations of gas, liquid or solid ingredients transformed by cooking).
10. Some chemical processes – such as the Maillard Reaction (browning or caramelizing) – generate new flavours.

And without further ado:

1. Salt dissolves in water

Salt is the essential cooking ingredient – if you doubt this, you need only to taste unsalted bread and then taste it again spread with salted butter. Or, if you need further convincing, try this wonderful book. Salt is essential for life – all our cells are bathed in something a lot like salt water – a relic from when our single-celled ancestors floated around in the seas. Salt is a fairly basic substance – NaCl: equal parts Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are pretty nasty on their own, but when together, make a stable, crystalline whole. The fact that salt dissolves in water is why you shouldn’t generally use expensive salts in
your pasta water – it’s all the same once it’s dissolved (except for those free-flowing salts that include extra things to stop them caking). If you’re going to add a nice textured salt for crunch, add it just before serving to ensure it doesn’t dissolve (or, as Hervé says, mix it with oil first).
When seasoning a salad dressing, add the salt to the vinegar (where it will dissolve) not the oil (where it won’t).

Ugly Baguettes

Ugly Baguettes

Originally uploaded by louise_marston

Aren’t these the ugliest baguettes you’ve ever seen? I think not careful enough punching down, and incomplete shaping are to blame. However, I’m hoping the big ugly bubbles on the surface are a promise of nice big irregular holes in the crumb. I’ll find out when we eat them next weekend (going into the freezer today).

Other things that came out of the Marston kitchen over the long Easter Weekend:
- Brasato (beef pot roast) from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook
- Fairy cakes with orange icing (How to be a Domestic Goddess)
- Banana splits with ice-cream and chocolate sauce (like on the Sainsburys ad)
- Camembert baked in the box
- Roast chicken, potatoes roasted in duck fat, spring cabbage
- Chocolate gingerbread from Nigella’s ‘Feast’
- Italian Spinach and Ham Tart from Jamie at Home (but without the ham… or the spinach..)
- Chocolate Granola from Orangette

Fast food: pizza

I am not a fan of Domino’s pizza (unlike my husband) and will go to some lengths to avoid it. So when I feel the urge for pizza at the end of a hot day, and have some energy in reserve, I go ahead and make  it at home. The only tiresome part about this is the production line nature of it – I tend to make small ones, which means a tantalising wait between mouthfuls as we wait for the next one to bake.

Tomato sauce:

• 1 can tinned tomatoes
• 1/2 jar passata
• 1 garlic clove, sliced
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 15g butter
• 1 tsp fresh thyme

This is loosely based on Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce recipe. Simply put everything in a saucepan together and simmer slowly for about 30 minutes. Make the dough first, and then pull this together while it rises.
Pizza dough

I have been using this recipe from a Guardian cutting for years. You can make it, put it into an oiled plastic bag in the fridge and just take portions out and bake pizzas all week long. Or you can take the leftover dough and shape it into rolls or foccacia and bake it as bread.

• 500g strong white bread flour
• 200 g/ml warm water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 packet (7g) instant yeast

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix until there is a single shaggy mass. If this doesn’t happen, add more water until it does – if it’s too sticky, add a little more flour. Knead for a few minutes until the surface of the dough becomes very smooth. (I use my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook for this – by hand is fine, or you can also use a food processor). Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise for about an hour (perhaps longer if it’s cold).

Divide the dough into anything between 4 and 8 pieces (depending on how large you like your pizza), and roll each piece into a little round ball. Set aside again, covered with a tea towel, for 15 or 20 minutes while you prepare the toppings (grate cheese, slice veg, etc.). Preheat the oven as high as you can get it, with a thick baking sheet in the bottom of the oven.

When you’re ready to go, remove one ball at a time, flour a worktop and roll out firmly with a rolling pin, picking the dough up and rotating it between rolls, to make sure it doesn’t stick. Try and get it as thin as you can. Spread with a spoonful of tomato sauce, your toppings and finish with salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.

Use a flat baking sheet (or anything else heatproof without a rim), sprinkled with a little polenta, to slide the pizza into the hot oven and onto the pre-heated baking sheet. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until it looks ready.

Repeat with each subsequent ball of dough until you’re so full you can’t move.