Cooking Club 17th August 2011

 

To have with coffee I made White Chocolate and Raspberry Friands, http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/13545/raspberry+white+chocolate+friands   which were simple to make and delicious. I served them with a raspberry coulis made by boiling sugar, frozen raspberries and sugar, with a little lemon juice to taste, until syrupy. The mixture is then strained to get a nice smooth syrup.

All the dishes we made today were from Masterchef. For a starter we tried Oysters and Lemon, http://www.masterchef.com.au/oysters-and-lemon-and-truffle-marshmallow.htm. This starter is an interesting take on a "pasta" made from apple gel with a creamy seafood filling. We used crab meat instead of oysters as I am not overly keen on raw oysters. To make the apple gel you need a product called gellan which I purchased on the net from The Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot (www.mfcd.net/depot). If there is ever an ingredient you can't find try this company; they stock a lot of the ingredients used on Masterchef and even have a section just for Masterchef ingredients. Gellan is what I would describe as a very strong gelatine and it sets in seconds. The gel is made by boiling apple juice (use a nice clear one) and gellan. You then pour a 1mm layer into flat bottom trays. Once it sets you cut it into rounds.

For the filling you make a mayonnaise from egg yolk, caper water (just the water from a jar of capers), dijon mustard, pink sea salt and grape seed oil. The quantities in this recipe make a huge amount so make sure you cut it down. Unfortunately our mayonnaise separated and although we still used a bit for flavour we needed to add in a small amount of store bought mayonnaise to bind the filling. The filling is made by chopping carrot, celeriac and eschallots into 2mm cubes (a knife cut known as brunoise). The vegetables are then blanched in boiling wtaer for 10 seconds to soften them slightly and tone down the flavour of the onion. They are then refreshed in iced water to stop them over cooking. The vegetables are combined with chopped chervil, chives, parsley and capers, lemon juice, crab meat and mayonnaise. To serve you place a small amount of the filling on a gel circle and fold over to seal. We had a lot of trouble making them seal well and also found if the gel was too thick it tended to tear. The end result looked nice but was messy to eat and the flavour was not as good as we hoped. I had some of the left over filling in lettuce leaf cups for dinner and really enjoyed it so personally I wouldn't bother with the gel rounds. I also think if the mayonnaise had worked the flavour may have been better.

For main we made "Not Another Spring Chicken", http://www.masterchef.com.au/not-just-another-spring-chicken.htm This was a simple but delicious recipe that I would definitely make again. The recipe suggested using Marylands and breasts on the bone, with skin on, but we just used the breasts on the bone. To cook you pat the skin dry and sprinkle with salt, lemon zest and thyme. You then drizzle with olive oil and cook in the oven for about 45 minutes.The recipe ingredients say "the juice and zest of 1 lemon" but never tell you when to add the juice so we just left it out. The chicken had a fantastic flavour and would be nice served on its own with just vegetables.

To serve the salad you mix the chicken with some baby cos leaves which have been brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and cooked on a smoking hot griddle pan until charred. The lettuce didn't taste very nice on its own but worked well when combined with the other components of the dish. The chicken and lettuce are drizzled with the pan juices and then topped with a grape salad. To make the grape salad you combine sliced grapes, red onion, parsley leaves, chives and chopped roasted almonds with a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, dijon mustard and salt.
This really was a lovely dish and would be great for a simple lunch time party.

For dessert we made Goats Curd and Vanilla Bean Cheesecake with Poached Cumquats, Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream and Mandarin Curd, http://www.masterchef.com.au/goats-curd-and-vanilla-bean-cheesecake-with-poached-cumquats--spiced-pumpkin-ice-cream-and-mandarin-curd.htm There was 9 different components to this dish so it did take a bit of work however most can be done in advance so it would be suitable for a dinner party.

The cheesecake was made by first making a sabayon which is a light frothy custard like Italian dessert. To make the sabayon you whisk egg yolks, Muscat (we used sweet sherry), vanilla bean seeds and sugar over a saucepan of simmering water. It is important that the sabayon does not get too hot or it will become grainy so remove from heat if you think it is getting too hot. Next you mix in cream cheese, goats curd and sour cream. These should be lightly beaten first to make them easier to mix in.The next step is to make a meringue from egg whites and sugar. You then dissolve gelatine sheets in warm lime juice and add this to the cheese mixture before folding in the meringue and putting in the fridge to set.
To poach the cumquats you leave them whole and cook them for 8-10 minutes in a mixture of maple syrup, vincotto, juniper berries, cloves, cinnamon stick, star anise and grated nutmeg. They should end up plump and juicy.
For the pumpkin ice cream you grate the pumpkin and cook in butter until soft. You then simmer milk and cream with cinnamon stick and grated nutmeg to infuse it with the spice flavours. Add a little of the spiced milk to the pumpkin and puree until smooth. Next you whisk sugar and egg yolks and add some of the spiced milk. This custard mixture is cooked until it thickly coats the back of a spoon. Once the custard is thick you whisk it over an ice bath to cool, combine it with the pumpkin puree and place in an ice cream machine to freeze. Once it is frozen place the ice cream in the freezer. Our custard was not as smooth as it could have been and consequently the ice cream was also not as smooth as it could have been.
The madarin curd was made from egg, egg yolks, castor sugar, mandarin rind, white balsalmic vinegar and butter and was absolutely delicious.
The shortbread crumble was a simple shortbread dough made from plain flour, butter, icing sugar and sea salt and it was sprinkled with pepitas (dried pumpkin seeds) before cooking. We should have cooked ours a bit longer than we did as the centre was still quite doughy and we could only use the edges to make our crumble. We used a small food processor to blend the crisp edges into crumbs.
The shattered filo was made by layering filo and melted butter and then cooking it between two oven trays until crisp and golden. The sheets were then broken into pieces to resemble autumn leaves.
The candied vanilla was made by slicing the vanilla bean (once seeds removed) very finely and cooking it in a mixture of sugar and water until soft. The vanilla was then removed and sprinkled with castor sugar and left to dry.
The fennel fronds were dipped in beaten egg white and dusted with castor sugar then left to dry.
To serve this dessert you place a couple of spoonfuls of the cheesecake on a plate and spread it or smash it slightly. The crumble is placed in piles near the cheescake to resemble the base. The ice cream is scooped in the middle and the mandarin curd piped in nice little piles (ours was a bit runny and didn't pipe very well).  The cumquats are sprinkled around the plate and drizzled with some of the poaching syrup. The filo, vanilla and fennel fronds are then used to decorate the dish.
This recipe did not use the dried pancetta that they used on the Masterchef show but we added it. We just cooked the pancetta in the oven until crisp.
This dish had very mixed reviews from the four of us. Some loved the goats curd cheesecake, some found the goats curd flavour too strong. Some loved the pancetta, some found it too salty. We all agreed that the cumquats were very sour and quite unpleasant to eat with the rind on. They added great colour to the plate but needed to be cooked differently to make them more palatable. The poaching syrup and mandarin curd were delicious and next time I would put more of these two things on the plate. Some loved the pumpkin ice cream and some were unsure. The filo added nice texture. The shortbread crumble was lovely. The fennel fronds did not dry out in the time we had and some pieces were a bit limp but they still looked pretty. The vanilla was nice. Overall I would say this dish was a success but depending on who you ask you may leave certain components off the plate.
Once again a fun day and nice to try new flavours and techniques.

Cooking Club 21st July 2011

To greet us on this cooking day were some lovely pistachio and chocolate macarons. A macaron is a meringue based sweet biscuit made from egg whites, icing sugar, sugar and ground almonds. The perfect macaron should have a smooth domed top, ruffled edge or foot and a flat base. It should be crisp on the outside, moist in the middle and melt in your mouth. In this recipe, which can be found at,

 http://www.masterchef.com.au/pistachio-and-chocolate-macarons.htm the almond meal is replaced with ground pistachio nuts. Once you have piped the mixture onto baking trays it is important to let the macarons stand for about an hour, or until they form a skin, before baking them. After a few attempts at cooking the macarons it was a decided a slower oven for a longer period of time worked better than the suggested 170 degrees for 10 minutes.The chocolate ganache was "yummo" and the white chocolate adaptation with vanilla bean seeds was even better!
Even though not all of the macarons rose as well as they should have and some were a little over cooked they were still very tasty and I think this would be a great recipe once you perfected the cooking times.

Main course today was salt baked chicken with potato aioli and potato ravioli with braised leeks. Both of these dishes are found at the following links http://www.masterchef.com.au/salt-baked-chicken-with-hay.htm
http://www.masterchef.com.au/potato-ravioli-with-braised-leeks-and-potato-crisp.htm We didn't make all the components in these recipes.
To make the salt crust you combine table salt, rock salt, plain flour (however we only had wholemeal flour), egg whites and water. The dough is rolled into a circular shape and topped with a handful of hay. The chicken cavity is seasoned with salt and stuffed with lemon wedges and thyme before being placed on the hay. The recipe removes the legs and wing tips and uses the legs to make a chicken thigh roll, so we also removed them as we thought it would make it easier to encase the chicken in the crust.

The dough is folded over the chicken and stretched and pinched together until the whole bird is totally enclosed and all gaps are sealed. This was the hardest part of the recipe as the hay kept poking through and making holes in the dough. Possibly the wholemeal flour was to blame for this and our hay was quite thick and coarse as well. The rock salt also seemed to break holes in the dough and I think next time I would just use table salt. We ended up making a second lot of dough so we could fully enclose the chicken.

Finally we had our chicken enclosed and it was into the oven for 40 minutes and then it was left to rest for 10 minutes.

It was a little scary cutting the crust open and wondering if the chicken would be cooked through. The outside meat was fine but the inner pieces did need a bit longer in the oven, this may have been partially because of the thicker crust but in any case I would cook a little longer than 40 minutes if I made it again.

To make the aioli you roasted some garlic, boiled some potatoes until tender and then blended the two together with some egg yolks. Next you slowly added olive oil and vegetable oil and then seasoned with lemon juice and salt and pepper. To taste on its own I found the aioli quite oily in flavour however it worked really well when served with the chicken. The chicken meat was incredibly tender but did not have as much flavour as I thought it might. Of course you also don't get any crispy skin as you would when you bake it.

To make the filling for the potato ravioli you need to bake whole potatoes on a bed of rock salt. You then mash the flesh with some olive oil and salt and set aside. The green colour of the pasta comes from chlorophyll, which is the green pigment found in most plants. To get the chlorophyll for this recipe you blend together spinach and parsley with a little water and some salt. You then boil the puree, skim the green chlorophyll from the top and strain it through a muslin cloth into a bowl which is sitting in a second bowl full of ice. By cooling the mixture quickly you keep the wonderful green colour and prevent it turning brown.
The pasta dough is made from flour, eggs, olive oil, chlorophyll and salt.
To assemble the ravioli you roll the pasta out using a pasta maker, cut into squares, place a thin slice of par boiled potato on the base, pipe some mashed potato on top, place another pasta sheet over the top and enclose the edges well. We added some smoked salmon to some of the ravioli as well to try something different.
The braised leeks are made by cooking diced leeks in melted butter with thyme and salt until softened and then adding chicken stock and cooking until very tender.
You cook the ravioli in rapidly boiling water for 3-5 minutes and serve them on a bed of leeks topped with grated parmesan.
The ravioli was tasty but would be hard to make for more than 4 people as it needs to be cooked in small batches and then served straight away to stop the pasta getting tough. The recipe also has a potato crisp which we didn't make as you needed a potato turner, which we didn't have, to make potato "spaghetti".

For dessert we made a delicious soft hearted chocolate pudding with raspberry cream which can be found at http://www.masterchef.com.au/soft-hearted-chocolate-pudding-with-raspberry-cream-and-honeycomb-chunks.htm We didn't make the raspberry essence or honeycomb. The puddings were made from melted butter and good quality dark chocolate combined with eggs, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla and flour. The batter is cooked in individual ramekins until they are set but still wobbly in the middle. To make the raspberry cream you combine thickened cream, crushed raspberries and icing sugar. To serve you turn the puddings out onto a plate, sprinkle with icing sugar and serve with the raspberry cream. This was a very yummy dessert.
Today was a great cooking day and it was great to try some new ideas.

Croquembouche

During the school holidays the children decided they would like to have a cooking day with friends. We decided to take on the Croquembouche! This is a French dessert made by stacking cream puffs or profiteroles into a cone and cementing them together with toffee. There is a lot of work in this dessert but it looked pretty impressive at the end and tasted great.
We followed the masterchef recipe found at http://www.masterchef.com.au/croquembouche.htm
There are about 36 eggs in this recipe so it is not for the faint hearted!
The first step is to make the cream puffs which involves making a choux pastry and pastry cream to fill them with. To make the choux pastry (a light pastry dough) involves a lot of hand mixing followed by mixer beating and the first lot we tried to pipe onto the tray the mixture wasn't thick enough so formed a flat blob. We beat the mixture further and the next lot were perfect. The pastry cream is a lovely thick custard that needs to cooled fully before using so I suggest you make before baking the choux pastry.
Once the choux pastry has cooked and cooled you fill with the pastry cream. You then dip one side in toffee, taking care not to burn yourself. Once the toffee has set you dip the other side in toffee and start stacking the profiteroles  inside a cone. I bought a metal cone from a cake supplier and there were various sizes available. It is important to oil the inside of the cone well to prevent the finished dessert from sticking when you turn it out. There were cheers of delight when the Croquembouche slid easily out of the cone and didn't fall apart. To decorate the Croquembouche you hold two forks back to back, dip the ends in the toffee and swirl them around the dessert. We were all very pleased with the end result and are looking forward to the next holiday cooking day.

Cooking Club 22nd June 2011

When we arrived at cooking club we were greeted with a beautiful Sticky Orange and Vanilla Upside Down Cake which can be found in Donna Hay's Seasons cookbook. This lovely cake is made by combining water, vanilla and sugar in an oven proof non stick frying pan and stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Next you add thinly sliced oranges (rind left on) and let them cook until soft. You then make a cake batter with eggs, sugar, vanilla, self raising flour, butter and almond meal. This is poured over the oranges and the cake is cooked in the oven.

When you turn out the cake it looks really pretty with the syrupy oranges on top. The orange rind breaks through the sweetness of the cake and the flavours are lovely. Will definitely be making this one again. 

The first dish we made as a group today was tempura seafood and vegetables. Not a difficult dish but fun to make and yummy to eat! We used asparagus, sweet potato, pumpkin, egg plant, prawns and fish. The vegetables should be cut thinly and evenly and the prawns need to be deveined and partially sliced underneath (across the width of the prawn) so they sit flat, the tip of the tail should also be sliced off to remove any moisture and air so they don't pop in the oil. The batter is made with tempura flour (found in Asian supermarkets) and soda water which gives the batter lightness. The batter should be nice and thin. The soda water should be cold and many recipes advise to place the batter bowl in a bowl of ice to keep it really cold. We did neither of these things as we forgot to chill the soda water and had no ice but the batter was still fine. The batter should not be left to sit too long so make just before using and if you have a lot of tempura to make do two or more batches of batter as needed. We used a deep fryer and there were a couple of tricks to cooking the tempura. The first was to hold the the pieces of tempura with chop sticks for a few seconds and move backwards and forwards in the oil rather than dropping in as this stops it sinking to the bottom. The second is not to put too many pieces in at once as it drops the temperature of the oil too much.

We served the tempura with soy sauce and Tensuyu (a tempura dipping sauce). To make the Tensuyu you combine dashi stock (a Japanese stock which can be made from a variety of ingredients, in this case katsoubushi flakes which are dried bonito or fish flakes), dark soy sauce, mirin (low alcohol rice wine), grated ginger and grated daikon (Japanese radish). We enjoyed the tempura with a glass or two of sake (not so low alcohol rice wine!). The tempura was time consuming but fun to make and very tasty.

The second dish we made is also in Donna Hay's Seasons cookbook, Crunchy Olive Polenta Fingers with Aioli. These are made by making a thick polenta mixture from polenta (dried cornmeal), butter and chicken stock and then stirring in chopped Kalamata olives before spreading it into a flat rectangular dish to cool and set. You then turn out the polenta onto a board sprinkled with dry polenta and cut into fingers. The fingers are placed in a baking dish with rosemary and baked until crunchy. They are served sprinkled with salt with a bowl of aioli (garlic mayonnaise) to dip them in. These were very tasty and would be a great finger food to have with drinks. They can be made in advance and would just have to be placed in the oven half an hour before serving. I have made them since and didn't use good quality stock or olives and they weren't as nice so make sure you use good quality ingredients.

The final dish of the day was Donna Hay's Creme Brulee. Creme Brulee is a dessert with a rich baked custard base and a thin layer of hard caramel or toffee on top. To make the custard you combine cream and vanilla bean seeds and heat gently to let the vanilla infuse. Next you add egg yolks and caster sugar and stir over low heat until thick. You pour the custard into individual ramekins and place in a baking dish with hot water half way up the sides of the ramekins. The custards are baked for 35-40 minutes or until set. We didn't think ours were set enough and cooked them a little longer which resulted in them curdling and having a scrambled egg texture which wasn't very pleasant to eat..so don't overcook your custard! Once set the custard needs to be placed in the fridge for about an hour until cold. To make the caramel top you sprinkle the custards evenly with a fine layer of sugar and use a blow torch to melt the sugar and caramelise it. Be careful not to burn it. When you tap the caramel with a spoon it should be hard and makes a nice contrast with the soft custard. It was a pity our custard curdled as the flavours were nice.
This was a fun day of cooking and we were all extremely full by the end!