Focaccia x 2

More bread. I'm very hormonal about cooking, by which I don't mean that I want to cook myself a chocolate cake, but that I swing form wild optimism to crushing self doubt.
I'm currently convinced that baking bread is actually very easy and virtually foolproof, but I know myself well enough to realize that self confidence can and will be taken away randomly and quickly, so I just had to ride the wave!

Here's an example of what I am talking about - on the day we arrived back in London I dropped my bags in the doorway, strolled into the kitchen and mixed a batch of focaccia dough from Supper Club cookbook. I was in a great mood, all sunburn tingly and still slightly drunk from the plane. The recipe is for focaccia shots, so you are meant to divide the dough into little balls, but I didnt do this and instead made a couple of really big balls. Yes to big balls, this is what you get
Not really focaccia, the texture is moist and light but too soft to be what I consider to be focaccia. Having said this, it's delicious - the bottoms, which have been resting on an oiled tray in the oven are crispy and unctious and there is a light, fresh taste of olive oil throughout. Definitely getting copied into my little spiral bound recipe book.

Fast forward to the next day. I stumbled home from work, kicked my handbag under the table and crawled in to the kitchen to make Antonio Carluccio's focaccia from Complete Italian Food. The main difference with this recipe was that the dough was only given one rise. I don't know if that's because nobody bothered to test the recipe or if the resultant 'loaf' is really meant to be a hard, dense cracker, but it totally killed my buzz. No more bread making. Go away and leave me alone.

Bigoli All'Anatra

This book was another gift. I swear I must be the easiest person to buy for, I'd make the perfect wife for some curmudgeonly old misogynist. My dad once gave my mum a cheese grater for Christmas, where are all the real men?
Anyway, The Geometry of Pasta appeals to me as a cook and as a comic book fan. The graphic cross sections of pasta shapes are beautiful and fascinating, pasta is such a ubiquitous food that it's easy to overlook it's functionality. Incidentally, another recent pasta book, Pasta by Design reduces pasta to three basic origins of shape, cylinder, sphere and ribbon, each one is intended for a different kind of sauce. It's written by an architect and he maps the shapes using imaging software to produce the equation for the form, there is an interview with he author in New Scientist which can be read here, or I should say must be read, and then do this quiz!!!! (the maths nerd is the painfully unbearable subset of loser foodie nerd, I can't even...).
Anyway, the author is a big pasta fan and says he would like to see a book that deals with the seasoning as rigorously as he deals with shape, The Geometry of Pasta might be it.
I have a big crush on this book, Jacob Kenedy's tone is so warm and welcoming that I would probably read it for fun, he goes beyond the recipe and history and you can tell he loves his subject.
The recipe gives instructions for extruding the bigoli using a meat grinder, I loved that idea and just had to try it. I used sifted wholemeal flour for the dough - the grainy rough texture is meant to be especially good for picking up the rich duck sauce we're making.
For the sauce you boil an entire duck (I used 4 legs instead), skim the resultant stock, use the fat to cook off the vegetables for the sauce, shred the meat, use half of the stock in the sauce and the other half to cook the pasta in (you're also supposed to add the liver, heart and kidneys to the sauce but I didn't have them). I love the economy and self sufficiency of that, don't you?
Well all that self sufficiency results in the richest meal I've had in a while. Even in the depths of winter this seems like a bit too much. Kenedy makes a point of mentioning that this is a rough peasant meal. It's absolutely delicious, and after a long day in the fields it would be amazing, but I don't think I would ever be able to justify this again. Save me, diet!
If you love pasta but don't love the calories, put it near your face instead of in your face.

Clam pizza

Well well, how low can we go?
Horrible, plastic supermarket pizza. Don't judge!
Add some clams, king prawns, mascarpone, tomatoes, garlic and basil from the window sill. And suddenly something happens, you close your eyes and you're transported... almost to Pizza Express!!!
I kid! It's delicious.

Sardine and Tomato Risotto

We haven't had any fish for a while, and I was trying to prove some point to the boyfriend (honestly, we have so may fights every day I can't keep really keep track of everything) so I made Nigella's poached salmon again a few days ago. Last time I made it I had to throw the poaching liquid away because it was so oniony, but this time I used quite mild white onions - the fish didn't suffer and I recovered just over a pint of tasty tasty stock.
After all the bad things I said about Sophie Grigson I still find myself crawling back to this fish book, all the recipes I've tried so far work. Another thing I like is the very practical step of providing substitutes for different kinds of fish. Fish, after all, is a seasonal thing and so much depends on where you live or what DEFRA's got to say about it. So for example, this recipe is listed in the book as anchovy and tomato risotto, but anchovies are now on the endangered species list (according to the Marine Conservation Society) so even though I love them I'm trying not to eat them. The alternative listed in the book is sardines, and the other substitutions I'm making are tinned tomatoes for fresh, parsley parsley parsley for all the herbs listed in the recipe and fish stock for chicken stock (why chicken stock with sardines in the first place?).
Oh and clock the fancy vialone nano rice, at £5 a kilo it's the most expensive ingredient I'm using (and that's including the wine, ahem) and I'm lucky I saw some today in a deli near work otherwise I'd probably be using basmati rice... or alphabetti spaghetti or something!
Anyway, you just mill around the kitchen for half an hour or so, stirring and adding liquid. The sardines melt into the sauce and you add the tomatoes just before the end. Ta-da!
Result:
This is plate-lickingly good. There's no cheese in it, so you don't get that sightly rancid melted grease aftertaste. It's mildly salty, very savoury and the best bit is that there's lots of it!

Pizza, Jump-in-the-mouth

Veal!

But pizza first. I love pizza, but it's hard to get the exact taste and texture combination that everyone enjoys. Whenever I'm trying to order a pizza in some place there are always at least two or three that I want to try, so I have to persuade the boyfriend to order a different one than me so that I can have both. Every restaurant has a different crust too, from the Pizza Hut balls to the wall ten inch thick, to this place which makes them so thin that I think it barely constitutes as a pizza at all (but is bloody delicious). I've always been tempted by the moist looking crusts that I've seen on New York pizzas in films (the bit in Saturday Night Fever when John Travolta gets two slices of pizza for breakfast and eats them squashed together... mmmm), but haven't encountered anything similar here. Most pizzerias tend to make crusty crusts. So what's the problem? Make your own.
I'm trying to steer clear of recipes that involve yeast, because I'm a dirty stinking coward, and there are two that I've earmarked to attempt. First is the Perfect Pizza from Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Total Perfection, but I'm still waiting for the whip, chains and ball gag that are mandatory for attempting any of his recipes, to be delivered. And second is from Not Only Spaghetti! which is just so simple, it's almost ridiculous. I didn't really like to do this but I've copied out the 'recipe' if anyone wants to try.

Take about a pound, 1oz. baking powder, and water (or milk in some recipes), salt. In some cases sieved mashed potatoes may be added. Make a dough and leave it to rest for 3 hours, then knead it again and divide in sections which are then rolled out into rounds about 6 inches in diameter and about a quarter of an inch thick. Put these on a greased pan and cover with any combination of the following; peeled tomatoes, anchovies, sliced onions, mozzarella or gryuere cheese, chopped mushrooms, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic, black olives (stoned). The pan may be greased with lard. Cook in a very hot oven and serve immediately.

Doesn't get any more straightforward than that! One of the very first recipes I made for this blog are from this book, and at the time I lamented that proper measurements or temperatures weren't given. Now I'm like, whatevs, ain't nothing but a thang.
Here are the usual suspects
I made the dough, put it in a bowl to do whatever it was planning to do for 3 hours and started in on the appetizer - Jump In The Mouth.
When I told the boyfriend what I was making he lol'd and said he couldn't believe that the author or editor of the book would translate Saltimbocca so literally. Apparently it's a very popular dish in Italy and Spain of strips of veal wrapped in ham and fried with sage. So delicious that all you have do do i open your mouth and in they jump!
But first a word about veal. Veal is a by product of the milk industry therefore if you drink milk, eat cheese, and slather yourself in whipped cream, you have an obligation to eat veal. I really don't see the logic in consuming lamb instead of mutton (courgettes instead of marrows?) but not their bovine equivalent. Veal isn't cruel, not in Britain these days. Foie gras is cruel, oyogu hone is cruel, monkey brains is cruel! Plus veal tastes really good.
Off my soap box, I bought this piece of veal in Sainsbury's, it wasn't cheap, but the butcher behind the counter gave me a coupon for a £2 discount which made me really happy. Ever since I stumbled on this guy in America basically using coupons to get free food from his local supermarkets I've been fascinated with coupons. Supermarkets use so many incentives to attract your custom that if they're willing to just give things away, and you'll shop there anyway, you might as well take advantage of it.
Results:
Eeesh what a bloody mess this jump-in-the-mouth looks like. More like i-jumped-from-a-five-story-building-kids-don't-do-drugs. But it's absolutely delicious. The only changes I would make are obviously the presentation, and the overpowering scent of sage. It's a very medicinal flavour and next time I might just use a few sprigs to season the cooking butter, instead of attaching a leaf to each piece.
The pizza is a beaut. I didn't roll the dough out as thin as ought to have done but it was still cooked through yet chewy, not brittle like I had expected. I might play around with the toppings in the future but this is a good place to start.
Heston, I'll be with you in a few minutes, please assume the position.

Fresh Crab Canneloni

A new discount bookshop has opened near my office and naturally all the cookbooks on offer are great deals that I totally need.
The Vicar's Wife's Cookbook is one of those things that most home cooks aspire to produce. The legend goes that Elisa Beynon was shopping and saw an offer of a publishing deal in the supermarket magazine, she sent in a few recipes and won. The result is a collection of comprehensive family recipes, geared towards entertaining surprise visitors. Um, there's a section in the back that suggests waht to make for a funeral party. Thanks?
She's inspired by Nigella Lawson and it shows, except she's a lot warmer and less vulgar - good thing she's a vicar's wife, I guess. Its not aspirational, but peppered with personal anecdotes that make you feel like a creepy old man peeping in the curtains. Anyway, here we go
I couldn't face another murder scene so bought canned crab this time, for frugality Beynon suggests the option of substituting canned tuna or salmon, but that sounds rank. Oh, and I bought actual canneloni instead of getting lasagna sheets and rolling them up - whatever that means.
This is probably the most amount of ingredients I've assembled for one dish, but actually it's incredibly straightforward, sort of, if you like having lots of washing up to do, like 4 pans!
Result: Pretty good, everybody liked it, the crab flavour made it though the thick cheese sauce (which I made perfectly, by the way), and the overly sweet tomato sauce, there was no need for the sugar.
The book describes this as an alternative Sunday lunch, and it's just as much effort as making a roast, took two freaking hours! This isn't gourmet stuff, but I want to make almost every other recipe in this book.

Duck Prosciutto Update

Ok well yeah I know it's a Tuesday, but I still think I should make a point of telling you that instead of going out to have a crazy good time tonight (on a school night!) I dutifully went home to hang up the duck prosciutto. Square!
So this is what it looks like fresh out of the salt tomb:
To be honest I'm not convinced... The book says that they're meant to be firm but only the flesh side is, the fat is still pretty malleable. Apparently this method is as fool proof as it gets, well, let me just say, no offence, but those guys really didn't have any idea what kind of an extra fool they were dealing with. Sorry Ruhlman.
Oh an by the way, what's white pepper? I always thought it was one of those things at the back of your cupboard reserved for throwing in the eyes of burglars...
I tied the breasts up in the most Gwyneth-Paltrow/Sheakspear-In-Love way I could manage and hung them up in the spare room. Out of all the contestants, attic, space under the stairs, garage, the spare room finally won by sheer merit of being the most convenient for my layzeeass to access.
According to my bullshit-o-meter the temperature is perfect once I open the window, but the humidity is around 10% too low (I call it the bullshit-o-meter because I still don't completely trust a machine that only springs into action once you shake it. Snowglobe technology went out, man)
OK, those things look totally like Strange Fruit Hanging From The Poplar Trees, I gagged in my mouth a little when I was hanging them up. The big blue dish is full of the salt I used in the curing, dissolved in water, I read somewhere that this helps to increase humidity. The trick is to apparently keep adding salt until it won't dissolve anymore. If it's too dry, the outside dries and the inside rots. Who's hungry after that?

Bresaola and Duck Prosciutto

So just in case anyone was wondering, I'm not totally lazy, I haven't stopped cooking, and I haven't made anyone sick yet (although that may be about to change...)
I've imposed some rather strict rule for myself to follow, only to cook from books, and it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the wealth of culinary information available from other sources - namely, the internet. In the last week I made:

-The best carrot cake ever, ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Even my pathetic baking skills couldn't mess this up
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4425/carrot-cake

-Octopus terrine, so beautiful, delicious, and easy. Totally worth the £25 I paid for a giant octopus (even though the fishmonger tried to persuade me not to take it!)
http://www.cuisine.com.au/recipe/Octopus_terrine

-Hugh's curried goat, took all fricking day, but made me very popular
http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/curry_goat_p_1.html

-Madhur's mango curry, I hate mango(because it tastes like onions to me), but this was amazing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/mangocurry_5073.shtml

-I also tried and failed to make kale chips, nothing wrong with the recipe, but something wrong with my head for leaving them in the oven to burn while I watched Gilmore Girls (nothing wrong with my head for watching Gilmore Girls though)
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/vegetable/recipe-kale-chips-068449

Anyway, I'm back now, and I've decided that what I really need is a project, something challenging that will teach me a new skill and impress the pants off of everyone I know. And after I learn how to tap dance I'll tell you how I got on with the old bresaola and duck prosciutto (hahahahaha, you see, that was a joke. Whan someone makes a joke, you're supposed to laugh otherwise you just make yourself look bad, get it?)

I bought Ruhlman and Poleyn's Charcuterie because I saw it mentioned on a few blogs as the ultimate introduction to preserving meat. I always linger around the deli counters drooling over all the interesting continental produce and of course homemade is best! (this is where the making people sick part comes in)
Despite the big seemingly useless garden - apple tree, who needs you! - I am pretty far away from getting any kind of a smokehouse, which leaves me to play with all the air dried recipes in the book, most of which call for Curing Salt #2, commonly known as Pink Salt, saltpetre or sodium nitrate. This can be a carcinogen when heated so I'm not really into eating any of it, but it does prevent cured meat from developing botulism bacteria. After weighing up the risks of either cancer in twenty years or instant death, I finally decided not to add any to my meats, this is a personal choice that I discussed with my family, we believe that risk is so small as to be almost nonexistent, and I definitely won't be sharing any of the produce with anyone else. The majority of domestic botulism outbreaks are found in improperly canned food, not cured meat, anyway. However, don't take my advice under any circumstances, nobody's holding a gun to your head! (or you could always do the mouse neutralization test, good luck getting a petshop to sell you mouse though, sicko)
So, lets start with the bresaola. I forgot to put sugar in this picture, and almost forgot to put it in the cure. Bad, stupid girl, one day I'll learn how to read properly!
You blend all the herbs and spices, rub the meat all over, put it in a plastic food bag in the fridge and leave it for a week, then take it out, pour off the liquid that has collected, add more cure and leave in the fridge for another week. Then rince, dry and hang in a cool humid palce for 3 weeks.
As you can see I had a pretty small piece of beef. *SOMEBODY* bought the wrong cut and anfter all the fat and sinew was trimmed away there wasn't a lot left. There is a lot of confusing information floating around regarding the optimal cure ingredients (or marinade in some cases), the time it takes, and weight of the meat, but I'm pretty sure that this piece is a but too small. We'll see.
Also, I bought a stupid little gizmo to tell me the temperature and humidity of all the rooms in my house so that I can find the best place to hang this bad boy, and I'm frankly just too stupid to figure out how to work it, which is why I'm also making...

Duck Prosciutto!
This only takes 8 days to cure, so hopefully that will give me the chance to roadtest a couple of hanging spots before the beef comes out.
This recipe is a lot simpler, they boyfriend went to his local sexist, misogynistic butcher to get the duck breasts for me and I'm sure they shared some winks and sleazy grins, urgh. I far prefer the butcher near where I live, who looks at me like I'm crazy when I ask for gross disgusting bodyparts.
Check it out, that's a box and a half of salt covering the duck and it's still only half of the amount prescribed in the book. I didn't realise I was going to have to pawn my gold jewelry for salt money, sheesh!

Update on the duck tomorrow xoxo

Splendida Torta Maria

Dad and wifey are going on a trip for a week and a half!
I'm going to ignore the obvious feelings of inadequacy regarding the fact that it's pretty pathetic to still live at home deep into your mid-twenties and enjoy this for what it is - a chance to pretend that this is my house and I have my life together and best of all an uninterrupted Valentines Day weekend at the end!!! This is 'Thank You' cake.
I've cooked for the Silver Spoon once already (and amazing roast beef with chesnuts, mmmmm so good) but didn't feel like writing about it, so this is inauguration proper. I'm also quite tempted to write stuff in the margins a la Elizabeth David, and to try everything in the book a la Julie Powell.
Anyway, here's the stuff, I had to go to three different supermarkets to find blanched almonds. WTF? Unblanched almonds? - yes, plentiful; ground almonds? - of course, as many as you want; toasted, slivered almonds? - why wouldn't they be there! (how do you dig my funky grammar, by the way?) I finally found these pathetic little bags stuffed into a corner behind some dates.
The reason I chose this cake is because of the relatively short ingredients list and the fact that it doesn't have any flour (also, I'm determined to use up that bag of potato flour I bought for the kissel. One teaspoon at a time if need be). I'm not coeliac but I assume that this would make for a very light cake (light in texture, try not to look at the entire stick of butter going in).
So first thing first, the short list of ingredients is a joke. Even if you ignore the enormous quantities of everything, there's no getting away from how labor intensive the process it. The almonds are toasted in a frying pan, cooled, and chopped up. The food processor has packed up so I'm doing this, rather romantically, by had. Blah blah blah, long story short, it took a really long time. I could have just found toasted, chopped almonds in the shops, I guess, but there is no getting away from whipping all the eggs individually - the whites to soft peaks, and yolks with sugar. Eventually the butter gets incorporated into the yolks, bit by tiny, agonising bit. Then melted chocolate, nuts and egg whites are mixed in, and the bastard creation goes in the oven.
Result: Urgh, look at this thing. I dusted it with icing sugar but that only accentuated the cracks. Nevermind, right? The proof of the pudding is in the eating? This 'cake' is not a cake at all, it's a house brick. Marie Antoinette might have suggested it as a building material.
The ridiculous amount of sugar doesn't cut through the bitterness of the dark chocolate, it's somehow dense, heavy and very dry at the same time, the shards of almond lie in wait to stab you in the mouth. Not good. Some four letter words are going in the margins. Bad cake. But maybe that's just me, because the next day when I had come home from work, the whole thing had been eaten!

Bigne con Crema de Funghi and Coxinhas Encantadas

I'm using The Vegeterranean by husband and wife hoteliers Malu Simoes and Alberto Musacchio. I initaly gave this thing as a Christmas present and it's never been used bacause all the recipes are super fiddly. It's a nice big glossy book with dishes from their restaurant so it's as much about presentation as it is about the food. I've had a couple of comments from the nearest and dearest to the tune of 'all the dishes I've cooked so far are E-Z', so I've decided to try something more challenging and learn some new skills! Go skills!
Also we were having a barbeque this weekend, a total sausagefest, so I wanted to make some elaborate vegetarian side dishes.

So first dish is Bigne con Crema de Funghi, which translates from Italian as Mushroom Eclair (I guess). Here are the substitutions I've had to make for all the fancy ingredients, Manitoba flour became flour, but that's only the beginning! Parsley became basil, and Robiola turned into Keci Peyniri from the Turkish supermarket up the road. I'm sure I'm robbing myself of a unique taste experience, but that's a crime I will have to make my peace with later, right now I have half a kilo of mushrooms to chop up. It looks like a lot, but it boils down to not that much. Mustachioso magnanimously doesn't specify which fancy expensive mushrooms you are meant to forage for and use, so I've bought Flat Caps, Oysters and Shitake. That was obviously the wrong decision because instead of becoming 'golden brown' they've turned into pidgeon poop gray. Look at all that crap, I really couldn't find enough nice bits to fish out for garnish so I put everything in the blender.
The pastry is really easy to make, and I fashion a piping bag out of a food bag just like they showed us on Ready Steady Cook. And behold the inamorata!












They actually look quite revolting side by side :(




Result: Maybe all that was a bit too easy, you know what I mean? Because look how they turned out!
The puffs are a little anaemic looking and the mushroom paste doesn't gain anything cosmetically from being in the blender, but they taste really good. Although the goats cheese and basil were not the prescribed ingredients they taste really good with the mushrooms so I rather think they should have been. I used the exact quantites specified and the overall yield was 18 mis-shapen pastries but I only ended up using about half of the mushroom mix. I would probably make the choux again but most likely fill them with something like choklit!
But really, if I have learned anything it's that I need a proper camera instead of my crappy phone.

My other attempt to class up this hibachi was with Coxinhas Encantadas.These are really impressive looking and are on the cover so let that be the reason! But I think it's supposed to have chicken inside.
I didn't have any thyme but got some rosemary from the garden, I didn't make the Vegetable Stock as required and outlined on page 36, and what is the difference between Parmesan and Pecorino Romano? They taste the same, especially if you're only using 2 tablespoons, wrapping it in mashed potato and chucking it in the fryer.
OK, lets get going. I have never peeled an aubegine before, and what's the difference if you're putting it in the blender afterwards? You can't taste the rosemary anyway...
The dough is quite tasty, it would be a good thing to make out of leftover mash, but you know, with meat on the inside.
I'm a little bit nervous about the deep frying, I always worry that the pan will catch fire, tip over, splash me in the face, and explode.

Result: Well I dodged the deep fat fryer appocalypse bullet once again, but lets put it this way - this would be the most appropriate dish to make for my next S&M sex party because it's both humiliating and painful to do. It's clear now why the Coxinhas are in the shape of teardrops, it's to symbolise the frustration of the person stuck in the kitchen cooking them, it took me almost 5 hours to get 18 of the other ones and 11 of these. They look gorgeous and taste really nice, but why would you bother? I had 4 pans, countless plates and the blender to wash and it totally killed any buzz I got from eventually eating the now cold appetizers. I guess it's because I don't need to try to impress people with my cooking skills, on account of my winning personality! Duh.

Chicken a la Marengo

There is an absolute glut of Italian cook books out and about, ooh a bit of tomato,mozzarella and pasta and you have a light and nutritious lunch! Yum yum! Yeah and it's all along the same lines, which is when I saw " Not only spaghetti!" in a charity shop my first thought was 'No shit!'

It was written by 'a family cook in Italy' in 1980 so you know there's probably a Mafiosi connection! Exciting stuff.

The recipe is for a dish that was allegedly a favorite of Napoleon, he first 'visited' Italy a few days after his wedding to old Josephine, but you know, on his own.

I'm cooking at the boyfriend's this time as a kind of a romantic gesture. I explained to him that my old mate Bonaparte had pretty plain tastes and this isn’t going to be necessarily conducive to any particular amorous pursuits - more like a big bit of gristle. He was game and even volunteered to sponsor the purchase of the Madeira that his recipe requires. Supermarket own brand £2 sherry would have been just as good (probably), but now we're stuck with a nice bottle of Duke of Clarence Rich Madeira.

This thing is called Chicken a la Marengo and is truly fit for... an Emperor of the French. Seriously, this requires the use of three separate pans to prepare something that consists of 4 main ingredients. No thank you. I used dried mushrooms because i though they would have more of a concentrated flavour, instead of soaking and frying them I just soaked them and added them to the chicken later. There are no measurements in this recipe, it's probably meant for fairly experienced cooks who know exactly what measurement 'add dry white wine' refers to. I confess, I wasn't 100% sure and thus the resulting chicken bath.

I then took the chicken out to create the sauce (ignore the lumps of flour - all cats look the same in the dark) before combining all the ingredients for a final few minutes.

Result: I love Napoleon. Local boy done good, 'A throne is just a bench covered in velvet' and all that stuff... He famously had pretty basic, peasant tastes and maybe that's the reason this dish looks and tastes a bit like a plate of mud. I'm not sure what the Emperor would have as a side dish in Italy, but I've decided to serve it with Rigatoni. The chicken is pretty much fried chicken with an earthy, warm flavour of mushrooms and Madeira. It's thick because of the flour but still feels really light, I found it delicious. I would make it again maybe to use up the rest of the Madeira, however I would balk at using almost half a bottle of wine for cooking instead of drinking ;)