Chocolate Caramel Slice, Picnic Cottage Loaf, Twice Bake Cheese Souffle, Warm Pear Tart

We had our third cooking club get together last Friday and I would have to say it was a very successful day. The two dishes chosen to challenge us were both from the Masterchef Australia Cook Book; Manu Feidel's Twice-Baked Cheese Souffle and Matt Moran and Andrew Honeysett's Warm Pear Tart. Both these recipes had different components to them which worked well when there were 5 of us cooking.

I had made a Chocolate Caramel Slice to have with coffee while we read through the recipes. An "oldie but a goodie"! This particular recipe I found in the new Womens Weekly, Eating Together (Bringing the Family Back to the Table) cookbook. It had dark chocolate on top which made it quite rich.

I also made a Picnic Cottage Loaf from the same book as I wasn't sure the Cheese Souffle would be filling enough for lunch on its own (as it turned out, it probably would have been). To make these very pretty loaves you hollow out a cob loaf and fill with it with various antipasto layers; in this case, roasted capsicum, zucchini and eggplant, roast beef, caramelised onions, rocket pesto, rocket leaves, ricotta and goats cheese. You layer the ingredients, pressing in firmly, replace the cob loaf "lid", wrap in glad wrap, tie with kitchen string and refrigerate. You could use any number of ingredients to make this loaf which is perfect for a picnic.

The cheese souffles were made with Gruyere Cheese, a semi firm Swiss cheese with quite a distinctive flavour.They were further flavoured with eschalots (French shallots), thyme and freshly grated nutmeg. Once you have made the souffle mixture you bake the souffles in a water bath and then fully cool them in the refrigerator. When cold they are turned out of their moulds, topped with grated Gruyere cheese and baked until golden. We could have cooked ours a little longer to give them a bit more colour.

They are served with a rich cheese sauce made from milk and Gruyere cheese and a salad of roasted hazelnuts, dijon mustard, white wine vinegar and micro herbs, which are the baby leaves of regular herbs. I managed to find baby flat- leaf parsley and red mustard.

If I made this recipe again I would just use regular herbs and possibly some rocket leaves. I don't feel we had enough salad leaves which meant this dish did not present as well as it could have and extra salad would also have balanced the rich souffle and cheese sauce. We should also have halved the roasted hazelnuts both for presentation and so you could have a smaller piece with each mouthful.The souffle was nice and light and overall the dish was very delicious. You could easily serve this dish at a dinner party. You could prepare most of it in advance and then just bake the souffles for a second time, heat the cheese sauce and dress the salad before serving.

We rated this dish an 8 out of 10.
You can find this recipe at http://www.masterchef.com.au/twice-baked-cheese-souffle.htm

The Warm Pear Tart suggested using Beurre Bosc Pears for the tart and Paradise Pears to poach. As Paradise Pears are not currently in season we used Packham pears which worked fine.

The pears were peeled, cored and poached in a lovely fragrant mixture of Pernod (a star anise flavoured liqueur), fennel seeds, lemon juice and water. This recipe also had caramel sauce, ginger crumble, apple puree and of course the pear tart. The crumble was just a simple mix of butter, plain flour, caster sugar and ground ginger baked in the oven until golden brown. The ginger gave it a really nice flavour. The apple puree was made by cooking apple pieces in caster sugar, vanilla bean seeds and dessert wine. It was very sad to see the beautiful dessert wine get tipped down the sink before the apple was pureed. If I made this again I think I would just use water instead of the wine. The puree did have a lovely flavour but was not a big component of the dish and I am not sure the added flavour from the wine was worth the extra money. The caramel sauce was made by cooking sugar until it turned golden brown and then adding cream and butter. It had a "burn't" caramel flavour which did balance the sweetness of the tart. The tart was made using puff pastry topped with a smooth marzipan mixture of marzipan (almond and sugar paste), egg white, vanilla extract and plain flour. This was spread onto the pastry, topped with pear slices, castor sugar and melted butter and baked for 15 minutes. The tart was then drizzled with half the caramel sauce and flipped over and baked for a further 15 minutes. Our pastry was not as crisp or cooked through as it should have been and the pear topping was not as caramelised as it could have been. If I made this recipe again I would increase the cooking time and oven temperature slightly.

To serve the tart you flip it back over and cut into rectangles. The apple puree is put into a squeeze bottle and zig-zagged onto the plate. The tart sits on top of the puree. Cut the poached pears into thirds and poke a fennel frond into one third. Drag a teaspoon of the cold caramel sauce onto the plate, put on a spoonful of crumble and top with a quenelle (a neat mini rugby ball shape) of thick cream. Our quenelles did not hold their shape very well and I think we should have beaten the thick cream before trying to shape it.

The end result really was "art on a plate" and looked even better than this photograph suggests. All the components were delicious and worked well together.

We rated this dish an 8.5 out of 10.

You can find this recipe at http://www.masterchef.com.au/warm-pear-tart.htm The same recipe in the cookbook is much easier to follow though!

I was very proud of our efforts today and felt we did both these dishes justice!