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!