Popcorn cavatelli

Popcorn cavatelli tossed in a little butter and garlic with, radish greens, shallots and thyme flour.

Well I was planning on moving away from cavatelli with this idea, but as I got making the dough it was just too fragile to be shaped in the way I wanted, so I adapted and bought out the trusty gnocchi board and got rolling cavatelli. I’ve pretty much posted about how to make cavatelli dough before and how to make cavatelli dough from polenta, and perhaps after this post I should take a break from posting every damn pasta idea I have, but it's been a quiet week in the kitchen. You’re going to have to forgive the lack of exact measurements, it will all depend on the amount of popcorn grits you produce and how much water is in the purée, so below is a guide but feel free to add a little extra semolina or flour to help bring the dough together.

Popcorn Grits
Follow this recipe, and then transfer to the fridge overnight.

Popcorn Cavatelli
2 parts popcorn grits purée
1 part flour
1 part fine semolina
1% salt

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
• Knead to form a ball of dough.

• Wrap tightly in cling-film and rest in the fridge for an hour.
• Divide the dough into four.
• Take one portion and cover the remainder.
• Using your hands, roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.

• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Hold the gnocchi board at an angle and place a segment on the top edge. Use the heel of your thumb push down on the dough and towards the bottom edge of the board, the dough should curl up and fall of the board.
• Arrange competed cavatelli on a sheet pan dusted with semolina.
• Repeat with remaining dough.

Cooking

• Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil.
• Place the pasta in the water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
• Cook for 4–5 minutes, they’ll float to the top when cooked.
• Scoop the cooked cavatelli out with a sieve or similar scooping device.

Popcorn Grits

Well I managed to stumble my way through my allotted 20 slides, when my turn came up at the City Market Visa Wellington on a Plate event, Pecha Kucha: Imbibe. I won't lie, I was a bunch of nerves standing on stage, all eyes on me, and my slides, mouth dried up, but words managed to flow, I think, although it is a haze, I managed a joke or two, wasn’t booed or humiliated, not suffering from PTSD, in the end it was a lot of fun, and quite proud to be part of the 14 presenters who took to the stage that night. Well on to the regularly scheduled blog post.

I hate waiting for packages, the ten days between seeing “item dispatched” on my orders and the package arriving, I find myself checking the mail daily with growing anticipation followed by soul crushing depression, until it finally turns up. Having a magazine subscription, I get to go through this cycle regularly. The termination of the latest hope-sadness cycle was with Lucky Peach finally landing on my desk, and trying so hard to not to flick through it during work hours, but as soon as I got home I started devouring it page by page.

Flicking my way through the lastest issue, with Americana recipes inspired by the film Diner, which I have ever so vague recollections about, I came across Daniel Patterson's popcorn grits (Lucky Peach, Issue #4, page 83), and I knew I had to make it.


Ingredients
½ cup Popcorn Kernels
¼ cup Oil (something neutral, such as rice bran, rapeseed or canola)
3 cups Water
7 Tablespoons Butter, unsalted
Salt, to taste

• Over a medium heat, pop the corn in the oil. Be very careful not burn it, sacrifice a few kernels if you have to, but if you burn it, or it smells slightly acrid, bin it.

• Bring lightly salted water and butter to a simmer.
• Add a third of the popped corn to the water and simmer for 1 minute.
• Strain through a sieve, reserving the liquid.
• Pour the liquid back into the pot, bring back to a simmer.
• With the back of a spoon press the simmered popped corn through the sieve, scraping the underside into a bowl.
• Repeat with the other two thirds of the popped corn.

• Put the purée into a pot loosen with some of the popcorn ‘stock’, I used almost all of mine.
• Season with salt.

It sounds like it’s a more effort than it actually is, it really only takes a few minutes to prepare, and it’s totally worth it, there’s something odd about eating something with the texture of loose polenta and tasting exactly like buttered popcorn, odd but damn delicious. I sautéed chorizo and field mushrooms to pile on to the grits, spicy earthy flavours to cut through the rich buttery grits.

Corn and mushrooms are pretty good friends on a plate together, corn sweet and nutty, mushrooms earthy and can be meaty and nutty, heck even nature puts it together, and man puts it in a can, à la huitlacoche the fungal infected swollen corn kernels.

Caramel Corn - aka homemade Cracker Jack

A good movie night just isn’t the same without some form of snack, and nothing really beats buttery salty popcorn... Well almost nothing, Cracker Jacks do, salty caramel covered popped corn studded with roasted peanuts, far too moreish, an I can’t believe I finished the whole bowl, kind of food, but you should indulge now and then. I found this recipe on Brown Eyed Baker, and it’s pretty close to what I remember of the caramel corn in a box with a prize.

I really recommend you roast your own peanuts, so you can control how salty they are, but store bought roasted peanuts are good too.

100 grams of popped corn (about 10 cups popped)
1 cup Brown Sugar
1/4 cup Glucose syrup
85 grams unsalted butter (6 tablespoons), melted
1 cup of roasted lightly salted peanuts
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat Oven to 120ºC.
2. Pop the corn and put it in a very lightly greased bowl, set aside.
3. In a small pan whisk together the brown sugar, glucose syrup, butter, salt, and water. Simmer, stirring often, until the mixture reaches 120ºC (firm/hard ball stage)
4. Remove from the heat, whisk in the vanilla and baking soda.
5. Using a rubber spatula, fold the caramel into the popcorn until all of popped corn is coated, then stir in the roasted peanuts.
6. Spread the mixture on to a lined baking tray and bake for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes.
   
7. Remove from the oven and let it cool on a wire rack for half an hour.
8. Gently break up the popcorn. It will keep for about 5 days in a airtight container.

Truffle powder

I've had a bunch of N-Zorbit sitting at the back of the pantry for a while. N-Zorbit is a tapioca maltodextrin which absorbs 2 times its weight of oil/fat. N-Zorbit is very very light, 1 litre = 100 grams. 1 litre would absorb 192mls of olive oil (1 litre = 920 grams). It turns in to a free flowing powder that dissolves back in to oil in the mouth.


Blitz in the food processor with some truffle oil, ready to pass through a sieve to get rid of any lumps.


Very light coating of oil on the popcorn then add the powder.