The War On Cookbooks

The Front Line Food Diary (Duck Breast with Cherry pie, almond butter mash and a port sauce)

Duck breast cooked in a water bath with a cherry pie (yes really), some almond butter mash, a port sauce and some deep fried herbs.

Inspired by a Apple lattice pie I cooked the other day at Tante Marie I looked up a few cherry pie recipes and thought I came across one for duck and cherry pie...weird right ? Actually I misread it but then figured 'what the hell !' 

Duck and cherry = good

Pie and duck = good

Pie and cherry = also good. 

I made a port sauce with some stock, port, the pan juices and some black cherry conserve. 

I also served it with some almond butter mash. Almond butter is made by blitzing some blanched and roasted almonds until they break down completely and then passing them though a fine sieve. It's basically an almond peanut butter.

Almonds and cherries both contain benzaldehyde which apparently is what makes cherries taste of cherries. This according to Harold McGee and Heston Bumenthal makes them a perfect pairing. And those clever buggers were right.

This was fab although I have to confess I messed up the short crust a bit. It turned out a bit more like flakey pastry. I assume that was down to being a bit heavy handed with the butter or the lard after my food processor failed to mix them together with the flour and I had to switch to hand mixing. I should have just made a new batch but I had hungry guests by this stage.

As always if you want recipe detail just ask.

50 Ways to Poach and Egg part 2

The Vortex

Possibly the coolest looking way to poach and egg and definitely the most popular is the vortex method.

The idea behind this method is creating a whirlpool inside a pan of simmering water using a whisk and then dropping the egg into the spinning water.  If we take a look at our rubbish (yes Dave I know it’s not dimensionally accurate), yet informative equation we see that the number we are most interested in is ‘D’ the distance travelled.

(T(e) + T(w) + D)/r+s= Xp  (see first blog for explination )

The temperature is constant with the last experiment but even though the size of the pan is smaller, the vortex moves the egg round and round the pan increasing the distance that it travels before hitting the bottom.

The other factor in the equation that is effected as well will be ‘s’ the speed of the egg in the water. If the Vortex is too fast and the pan to shallow then we may still have the same problem as before.

Ideally then and contrary to popular opinion it still should be an advantage to have the biggest pan possible, even if you are spinning the water.

The Experiment

To do the vortex experiment I incorporated three different methods into one.

The first method would be Eye of the Storm. Which is basically taking the egg and placing it slap bang in the centre of the pan so the egg spins around on itself.

The second method would be the Orbiting Egg method. Where the egg is placed on the outside of the pan, spins slowly towards the centre of the pan and then in on itself.

The third method is the use of vinegar to coagulate the egg. There are a lot of people out there who reckon it’s a useless addition… we shall see.

MY FOOD HELL (Vegan Jaffa Cakes (with a twist))

For those of you that don’t know what a jaffa cake is, let me explain.  Jaffa Cakes are chocolate and orange jelly biscuity cake things, that just happen to be immensely popular in the UK.

I don’t know where my dislike for jaffa cakes comes from? Maybe I was confused by the whole ‘looks like a biscuit but calls itself a cake’ thing, maybe my bully of a brother stuffed a whole packet in my mouth when I was a baby or maybe I was eating one during some horrendous childhood tragedy that I thankfully can’t recall?

What I do know is that I am very much alone in this. I have never to this day met anyone who even mildly dislikes them and this love for chocolate orange cakey things doesn’t stop at your typical Joe Normal. It extends as far as many as some of the best restaurants and palates in the world.

I can’t remember the dishes, because to be fair it was quite a while ago, but at both Gordon Ramsay’s Royal Hospital Road and Alain Ducasse’s Jules Verne in Paris I ended up being tricked (in my opinion) into eating a desert that tasted similar to jaffa cakes. Considerably better quality I concede, but a jaffa cake all the same. Even at the Fat Duck, during the best eating experience of my life,  my last taste of the night was a chocolate a Mandarin Aerated Chocolate Peti Four…jaffa cake. Now as far as Ramsey and Alain are concerned I would find it highly unlikely that jaffa cakes were an immediate source of inspiration, but Heston on the other hand? Well, considering his theories on childhood nostalgia I wouldn’t put it past him.

So I figured I’d set myself the hardest task I could before I head of to this place  tomorrow. I thought I should attempt to make not only my most despised flavour combination into something I enjoyed eating, but I’d make it even more difficult by making it vegan friendly.

This means no butter, no milk, no eggs, and no cream. In other words, none of the good stuff.

I won’t go too into the reasons why I dislike vegan cooking because it’s not really dislike of vegans themselves or their food. I respect veganism immensely but I intensely dislike it when they hand me a cake and call it a vegan cake, Vegan as far as I’m aware is not a flavour (unless it actually contains vegans), so I don’t want or need to know. Just let me try it and I’ll tell you if I like it or not. Telling me first that it’s lacking the necessary ingredients for proper baking and enhancement of flavour isn't unlikely to get me salivating. It might even lead to me carefully slipping it into my pocket the minute your back is turned.

On another note I intended not to use any crappy substitute ingredients.  I’m going to use science and lots of it, and it’s going to look badass.

An Egg Poached in Asparagus Velouté, with parmesan and truffle oil.

Asparagus season in upon us, and it's traditional around these parts to go out and buy big bunches of the stuff and throw them into every dish imaginable, regardless of whether or not they go together. 

One pairing that does definitely go together is asparagus and egg. A nice poached egg with a few spears of the green stuff can be one of those simple pleasures that remind you of an easier life. One without the need for expensive ingredients, scientific analysis, complicated high tech cooking techniques and fancy pants plating.

But isn't it all a bit boring ?

...I think maybe it is.

Looking back on my egg poaching blog and the ones yet to come ( I have written some of them but I keep getting distracted by shiny things and posting those instead) there was a definite need to try poaching eggs in a thicker liquid than water. So being the sort to do so I put the two projects together and here we are.

The Velouté

The basic idea of making any veloute is simply to break down the vegetable in a simmering liquid, blitz it in a mixer and then pass it though a sieve. That's it...simple.

So first of all I threw some finely chopped onion and the roughly chopped asparagus into a pan with a little butter and left until both started to soften. As soon as the asparagus was softening I threw in some chicken stock (vegetarians, veg stock will do nicely), some water and some milk. Enough stock to cover the asparagus and a little of the other two to top the mixture up. The more creamy you want your end product the more milk you add. You could even add cream as well.

Leave this on a heavy simmer until you can see the asparagus is soft enough to fall apart without much help. At this stage take it off the heat.

Spoon your asparagus into a blender and top up with the liquid (Don't over fill your blender. Do this in stages. The mixture is hot and very dangerous, so be careful). Blitz until smooth then pass though sieve into a clean pan.

Heat this mixture and season well to taste.

The Egg

Once you are happy with the veloute have your eggs ready to poach.

Bring your veloute to the boil then turn off the heat and drop your egg/eggs into the centre (if doing more than one make sure you spread them out). The mixture should be thick enough to stop it from spreading and hot enough to quickly start coagulation.

Wait for 2-3 mins or until the egg (remove with a slotted spoon to check) looks almost cooked. The egg will cook for longer in the bowl so we don't want to over do it.

Remove the egg and lay it in the bowl. Then pour over the veloute though another sieve (incase you have any thin pieces of egg).

The Rest

I added some thin strips of Parmesan, some crispy croutons and a few drops of white truffle oil (the last addition I highly recommend.)

and voila

 

Simply delicious. Do try.

The Front Line Food Diary (Sous-Vide Mackerel with Sake Noodles and a Miso Emulsion)

Sous-vide Mackerel with sake noodles, deep fried tofu, enoki mushrooms, a miso emulsion and a chili teriyaki dressing.

I bought some Mackerel from Atari-Ya in Kingston today. I love this shop, they sell fantastic sushi grade fish and the people that work there are a delight. So to honor them I thought I would do a little Japanese inspired dish. 

The fish turned out beautifully even though I messed up one of the fillets I prepped by trying in vain to remove the skin (I did want crisp the skin separately...wasn't going to happen). The skin as it turns out is very delicate so instead I opted to flash fry it after the water bath.

The sake noodles were made out of jellified sake which I gently heated in a miso soup mix. 

As always, if you want to know anymore please ask and I will go into more detail...with pleasure.

 

The Front Line Food Diary (Rabbit Cooked 4 Ways)

Elmer's Revenge (rabbit cooked 4 ways)

Braised rabbit Sausage roll, sous-vide bacon wrapped loin, Kentucky fried legs and pan fried rack accompanied by sous vide vegetables, deep fried herbs, a quick rabbit sauce and a rhubarb, pear and real ale chutney.

My primary reason for cooking this was that I had a spare rabbit left over from making my pie. I decided to use the whole rabbit to cook one dish and incorporate various techniques. All I can say is that it was bloody hard work and I desperately need a sous chef for cooking things this complicated.

The sausage roll though was spectacular. I made everything up on the spot except the loin idea I got from Thomas Keller's Under Pressure  and it was delicious. 

A Playboy Bunny Pie (A Wild Rabbit, Champagne and Tarragon Pie)

At the tender age of fifteen I was whisked away to a sleepy Boston suburb to stay with a sleepy Boston suburban family in their sleepy Boston suburban house.  On reflection this sounds like a recipe for one of the dullest summers a fifteen-year-old boy could have, but for some reason it turned out to be one of the most memorable.

This could be something to do with the lovely family I stayed with although for the life of me I can’t remember any of their names. I remember the big white wooden Simpson’s-like house with its stars and stripes flag flying high outside and I remember how every other house in the village looked much the same. I remember how many cars they had, how nice their dog was, how religious they were and how generous they were during my stay. I remember how big the supermarket was, how nice the ice cream tasted, how bad they were at holding their booze and how surprised I was to find a gun in their son’s car. I remember quite a bit about my stay but one moment I remember more than most is that I remember vividly the moment when I found a stack of Playboy Magazines under the bed I was sleeping on.

I come from Scotland, so my impression of girly magazines up until this point was crumpled pages under my brother’s bed, reader’s wives, next directory underwear section and that national geographic article. So I was surprised and somewhat excited to finally come across the Real McCoy I was even more surprised when I found out it was actually a bloody good read. In fact I’m surprised every time I’ve pick up Playboy to this day at how good a magazine it actually is.

Now I’m not trying to shirk my reasons for picking the magazine up in the first place (…I am a bit). I’m a man after all and our eternal shame for our sexual personification of women has been imprinted on our DNA ever since Adam worked out what Eve’s jiggly bits were good for. 

Still, I firmly believe playboy has always been a more honest version of what so called ‘lads mags’ are today, and the lineage of contributors puts almost every other magazine in the world to shame regardless of category. So when I was asked the other week to do some food writing for their UK website, not only did I jump at the chance, I also baked them a pie.

…A Playboy Bunny Pie.

My planned ingredients list was as follows

 

-       1 wild Rabbit (very difficult to find at your local butcher. But you can order on line from a number of supliers .Buy these whole, with bones and everything.)

-       1 bottle of good champagne.

-       4 large carrots

-       3 leaks

-       1 stick of celery

-       2 onions

-       2 cloves of garlic

-       1 pre rolled sheet of puff pastry

-       1 bunch of tarragon

-       1 bunch rosemary

-       2 bay leaves

-       Black peppercorns

-       1 litre of chicken stock (not A stock cube, buy the nice stuff)

-       Double cream

-       Flour

-       Butter

-       Plus some wild mushrooms that I would apparently forget to use. (Explained later)

    

The Front Line Food Diary

The other night I was cooking a rather tasty chicken dish for Helen, when she commented that we should be putting stuff like this on the blog. I agreed, “but not on these plates” I scoffed. So we bought some posh new ones and here we are.

I intend (I intend a lot of things so don't count on this) to keep updating this food diary every time we make a successful dish for dinner, lunch or breakfast. I wont go into any fine detail about how it was made, but if you are interested then drop us a comment and we will happily fill you in or even e-mail you a cheeky recipe.

Anyway, here we go.

Week 1 

Dinner 

Pan Fried fillet of Seabass with triple cooked chips, tempura asparagus and a gremolata dressing.

Full Recipe as requested by venus.

For the chips.

I know its fashionable to tell people to buy maris piper potatoes for making the best chips. Which is true, maris pipers make the best chips but what I do find is that I can rarely buy them in a suitable size. What I end up doing is buying a big enough baked potato from which I can cut almost precisely two portions or chips.

...credit crunch, you see ?

So cut your potato chips. Make them chunky (2-3cm wide), then place them in a pan of cold salted water and bring the pan to the boil. Take the chips out when they start to fall apart. I usually judge this by when I can cut though the chip easily with the blunt side of a knife. Just a tip here but its a good to keep the odd cuts of the potato that your not using for the dish throughout the whole cooking posses for these kind of checks.

Take them out of the pan carefully so they don't break (a slotted spoon is best), and place them on some kitchen roll and pat them dry. Then place in the fridge till cool. 

Set your fryer to about 130oC and once cool and dry place your chips in carefully (I take the basket out and lay mine in in a criss cross pattern with space in between each chip.). Leave them in till they start to develop a strong skin and gain a little colour (they wont go brown but they will darken slightly). This usually takes about 6-10 mins. Take them out and dry once more and return to the fridge to cool. 

Next set your fryer to 180oC and fry the chips till the are a light golden brown, then remove and season well.

Timing wise you a best to leave this last frying stage till you are frying the fish.

For the Gremolata

This is so simple. Finely chop a big bunch of flat leaf parsley and add to it the zest of 1 lemon, the juice of two lemons, two garlic cloves (very finely chopped) and some olive oil (olive oil is not necessary but I think gives it a better consistency on the plate). 

Timing wise do this while your potatoes are boiling.

For the tempura asparagus

Mix your tempura batter with water, dip asparagus in batter and deep fry at 170-190oC. Pat dry and season to taste. 

Timing wise this is best done last.

For Fish.

Fillet your sea bass (I recommend buying a whole fish over buying fillets. Fist of all it is easier to tell if the fish is fresh or not, it's cheaper and you can if you want reserve the head and bones and freeze to one day to use for a stock.), and season both sides with salt and pepper (I use cayenne pepper rather than black pepper for most fish and meat seasoning) and rub in a little oil. Keep the skin on as it holds the fish together and is lovely fried and crispy. Next get your pan nice an hot. I use a iron skillet but a good frying pan will do, I also use a little grapeseed oil because it has a higher smoking point but olive olive oil or standard vegetable oil will do fine. 

Lay the fish down carefully skin side down and very very quickly place a empty saucepan on top of the fish to stop it from curling up ( you could also score the skin to achieve this but I like prefer it this way). Make it a heavy sauce pan but don't push down to heavily. Be careful not to move the fish sideways on the pan of the skin will come off (as I did for me if you look closely enough).

Keep the fish cooking until the skin in deep brown and very crispy. You will notice that the fish has been cooked almost right the way through at this point. You want to just flip the fish over at this stage and cook for a matter of 5 seconds on the non skin side and then remove the fish from the pan straight away. Do not leave it there for longer or the direct heat will overcook the fish. This is the number one mistake of most cooks compared to restaurant quality food.

Timing wise you should cook this when you are frying the chips for the last time.

Overall Timing Line

1. prepare chips

2. boil chips and prepare gremolata

3. cool chips and prepare batter for asparagus

4. fry chips 

5. cool chips and prepare fish.

6. fry chips and fry fish

7. fry asparagus (if your unconfident about how it will turn out you could lightly fry it previous to this, so all you need to do at this point is heat them up a little, but it will make your oil messy and you will have to clean it or replace it before frying your chips.)

8. Plate and eat.

Breakfast

Chilli, lime and pork sausages (cooked sous vide) and served in a homemade baguette.

Strawberries and Cream Beans on Toast.

Of all the weird messed up ideas I have in your average week, I guess you could say that this ranks up their with the best of them. Ever since trying egg and bacon ice cream at the fat duck I’ve been somewhat inspired to do something a little oddball with my culinary skills. And having watched Heston Blumenthal’s recent Feast  program set me off again and I promised myself I would not hold back the stupid any longer.

I started thinking about things I could do and when I started thinking about it what came to mind was taking a classic savoury course and making it from a classic dessert. (Not entirely original in itself but still, not all that sensible either).  And after a few sessions messing around with my new Texturas kit and whist eating my hangover food at the local cafe, I had something of a brain wave. What I really wanted to do was make beans on toast.  It’s something most people in Britain have grown up eating and despite the fact that it’s actually pretty bland, there is something about the memories of childhood that keep it up there in the favourite things to eat category. It’s just brimming with nostalgia, and for anyone that has read up on Heston’s theories on the subject this makes it a pretty damn good target for my kitchen idiousy.

Next off I had to find a dessert. Something fundamentally British and something (as we are now beginning to feel a moderate amount of sunshine) summery. I asked around and there was one dessert that came out seven times out of ten.Strawberries and Cream...Perfect.