Broccoli Quiche

Quiche done right is velvet smooth custard that practically evaporates when eaten, but cooked too long or too hot, the soft gel breaks, curdling and squeezing out the moisture ending up with a soggy acrid mess. So it is important not to cook it in too hot an oven, and keep an eye on it when the edges begin to puff up, once the centre just barely begins to puff, remove it from the oven, it usually takes about thirty to forty minutes in moderately slow oven (170°C), so it will require a little attention for the last ten minutes.

For the Pastry
200g Flour
100g Cold butter
2 tbsp Cream
Salt

• Mix the flour, salt and butter together until they resemble fine breadcrumbs, a food processor is handy, but not necessary.
• Incorporate enough cream to form a dough.
• Wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
• Roll out to about 2mm thick.
• Place the pastry in a quiche pan.
• Line the pastry with baking paper and add some weights (rice, dried beans etc).
• Blind bake for 10 minutes.
• Remove the baking paper and bake for 5 minutes more.
• Remove from the oven and trim the edges.

Filling
1 Broccoli cut into bite size florets blanched for a couple of minutes
1 Onion Sliced and sweated in a pan until golden
A handful of grated melting cheese, havarti works well

For the Custard
4 Large eggs
300 ml Cream
200 ml Whole Milk
Salt to taste

Mix together being careful not to add too much air to the custard, but making sure to fully homogenize the ingredients.


The egg custard has just set.

To Assemble
Preheat the oven to 170°C.
Line the pastry base with the onion.
Arrange the Broccoli florets.
Sprinkle with the grated cheese.
Pour in the Custard, giving it a little shake to make sure it gets in every little gap.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, keep an eye on it near the end, as soon as the middle begins, or even looks like it’s thinking about rising, take it out of the oven. Let it rest on the bench for a few minutes before slicing.

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.

Pork Skin Puffs

Less than successful in my last attempt at a puffed snack, I was determined to get the next attempt right, I had a plan, well a couple, chicken puffs and prawn puffs, but then I saw a big packet of pork skin sitting in the butchery shelf, and I knew the next puff goodness would be, Chicharrón. Puffed pork skin, made by first boiling the ever loving crap out of the skin in salty water, chill it, scrape off all the fat, the better job of scraping the better the puff, then dehydrating the skin, and finally deep frying.


Boiling the skin is the easier step in the process, just bring a pot of heavily salted water to the boil, add the skin and boil for about an hour. The boiling process gelatinises the collagen in the skin.


Allow the pot to cool down before attempting to handle the skin, when it’s finally at a temperature that’s not going to give you 3rd degree burns, careful lay the skin on a sheet pan, and place in the fridge overnight.


Slice, and scrape off all of the fat from the skin, it’s a bit of a messy process, but the better job you do of removing all the fat the better puff you’ll get.

Slice the the skin into bite size pieces, remember that they shrink a little when dehydrating and will triple in size when puffed. Place a rack on an oven tray and line with some baking paper, and then lay the pork skin on it, leaving room for air to circulate.

Preheat the oven to 50ºC, place the tray in the oven and leave for a couple of hours, then turn off the oven, keep the door shut and leave it alone for another 10 hours. This will need adjusting depending on ambient temperature and humidity, in the end it should almost resemble plastic. You may have to deep fry a couple of test pieces to check if they are dehydrated enough.


Finally, deep frying, heat up oil to about 190ºC, and carefully place the skin in the hot oil and cook until puffed and golden. If they don’t puff too much and have a chewy center, you will need to dehydrate for longer, if they drop to the bottom, don’t puff and burn, I’m sorry but you’re screwed, they’re over dehydrated.

Risotto

There is something therapeutic about making risotto, taking very simple ingredients, rice and stock, and turning them into a velvety pile of soul warming goodness. The more attention you give, the better the results, taking time to finely dice and slowly soften the onion or even better shallots, then toasting the rice, slowly stirring in stock one ladleful at a time, patiently waiting for each dose to be absorbed, helping release the starch from the grains making a smooth sauce.

Risotto is best simple with uncomplicated flavours, but it can be embellished to your hearts desire. I have two favourites I like to make at home, extra cheesy with a good squeeze of lemon, or like the one I’ve made recently, mushroom. I don’t always finely mince the mushrooms, as I have in this recipe, if I had something other than field mushroom I would make a simple lemon risotto and top it with mushrooms sautéed in butter. However, it was the ever so common field mushroom I had my hands on, so they got minced.

I don’t have any real quantities to give you for the recipe, but the ratio is simply 1 part rice to 3-4 parts of stock, plus whatever else you’re flavouring the dish with, in this case a handful of mushrooms. So, get a pot on the heat and pour in some stock, my stock comes from the freezer and I like to ‘refresh’ it by simmering with the stems and peelings of the mushrooms, maybe a handful of herbs and let it steep for a while.

While the stock warms up, finely dice an onion or a couple of shallots. Peel the mushrooms and remove the stems (putting them in the stock), place the mushrooms in a food processor and pulse until very finely minced, tip into a bowl and stir in a spoonful or two of crème fraîche.

Add a knob of butter to a sauté pan over a medium heat, add the diced onion and sweat until translucent, make sure not to brown the onions. Next stir in the rice, gently toast the grains, they will become translucent, but still have a solid white core. Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine, when evaporated add a ladle of stock and stir, when the stock has been absorbed repeat with another ladle of stock. The rice will take 15-20 minutes to cook, it should still have a bite and not be mushy. Stir through the mushroom mixture and heat through.

Serve in warm bowls, I topped mine with some thin slices of cacciatore sausage, but served plain is good too, or topped with some chopped herbs, or a few sautéed mushrooms.

Puff

I have been meaning to turn my hands to puffed snacks for a very long time, a good few years, but it always seems to slip my mind, but no more, I finally had a packet of tapioca flour, which I had picked up when buying supplies for kim-chi, I had oil for deep frying, and I could jury rig a steamer big enough for my purpose.

The process of making a puffed snack is pretty simple sounding, a little less so in practice I found. Basically, you mix together tapioca flour and a liquid (flavour), then roll it thin, steam it so the starch gels, dehydrate it, finally deep fry it and it should puff up.

I had a few problems, but they all stemmed from the fact that liquid + tapioca = Non-Newtonian fluid, so rolling out the dough, or in fact handling it at all, was problematic to say the least, I could form it into a shape to start rolling out, but as soon as pressure was released it behaves like a liquid, try to roll it thin and it’s hard as a rock, so more work needs to be done to solve the rolling out problem. Not being able to roll it it evenly and thinly enough, led to uneven dehydrating and some of the puffs, when deep fried, had a chewy centre.

Somewhat disheartened by the difficulties, and less than stellar flavour, I am still resolved to figure this one out, and have fun experimenting with flavours, different starches possibly too. Perhaps, my next puff should be Chicharrón, nothing beats puffed up, crispy pork skin.


Roasting pan, with steamer and dough.


Steaming for 15 minutes.


Ready to go in an 80°C oven.


Couple of hours later, dehydrated and brittle.

Bacon bone soup

It’s been a little longer than normal since my last post, but with work being crazy busy at the moment, and me going ever so slightly mental over the upcoming Visa Wellington on a Plate, The City Market: Pecha Kucha presentation, nothing like deadlines to bring out the best in you, maybe. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the pressures are slowly abating, plus I’ve got four days to unwind, de-stress and really put my thinking cap on.

In my ever humble opinion, and I know the better half very much disagrees, nothing beats split pea and bacon bone soup, rich, salty, thick, soupy goodness that warms the very soul on a dark winter's night. However as I mentioned, the better half ended up being tortured with the luscious aromas of simmering bones and split peas, and boy did she let me know she was not happy, a pity too, seeings as I made a five litre batch, oh well more for me, and anyway it was her fault for buying me a 16 litre stock pot for my birthday, what was I meant to do?

The quantities in this recipe is for a rather large batch soup, but should scale down (or up) pretty easily, and if you don’t have access to bacon bones a bacon hock should suffice. I know the vegetable quantities are rather vague, I didn’t take very good notes on this one, but just add to your own tastes.


1.5 kg Bacon Bones
4 cups Green Split Peas
1 Large bouquet garni of fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, oregano etc)
1 Tbsp Caraway seeds
4-5 Juniper berry
3 Bay leaves
Even quantity of Celery, Carrots & Onions diced
5 Litres Water

Get a pot with enough water to cover the bacon bones on to boil. When the water is at a roiling boil, blanch the bacon bones for 3 minutes, to remove any excess salt. Drain.


Add everything to the pot and bring to a simmer, cook for 2 hours.

Now the next part is a bit tricky, probably a lot easier in smaller quantities, you need to remove all of the bones. So with a combination of straining and scooping, remove all of the bones to a bowl, ready to have the meat picked off. You’ll need to let the bones cool down a little before you attempt to pick them over, so while you wait, return everything else (apart from the bouquet garni and bay leaves) to the pot and with an immersion blender, purée the soup. When the bones are cool enough to handle, pick the meat off and place back into the soup, discard the bones. Taste and season.

Serve it up nice and hot with some crusty bread, even better, crusty bread slathered with garlic confit. Unless you’re going to make it through five litres of the soup, wait for it to cool, portion it into containers and freeze.



Head over to Urban Harvest and check out my Pan Roasted Brussels Sprouts recipe.

Creaming soda syrup

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am a convert to the flavour of creaming soda, and have set about trying to make my own homemade version of the syrup. It’s a strange flavour for a soft drink, a lemonade ice cream float/soda/spider, whatever you want to call it, minus the dairy. I think that’s why it took me so long to warm to it, along with the substandard brands I had previously tried.

Ingredients
200 grams sugar
200 ml water
5 ml vanilla extract
Juice of half a lemon

Take 50 grams of sugar, a splash of water and place in a pot over a medium heat. You want the sugar to caramelise and almost burn, get it to the point where you see a small spot or two, turn a bit too dark and give off a puff or two of smoke, when it’s at this stage, immediately pour in the remaining water. When the caramelised sugar has dissolved, add the remaining sugar and stir to dissolve. Stir in the vanilla and lemon juice, remove from the heat and let cool.

I use the above syrup at a ratio of 1 part syrup to 3 or 4 parts carbonated water.

Shrimp tortillas

I have posted this recipe before, but after making it again recently, I thought it deserved another outing, and with pictures this time. It is really simple to throw together as a last minute meal, well throw together if you happen to have some frozen prawns, otherwise you may need to plan the fish ahead. Apart from the fish, you’ll need to have some Gram (chickpea) flour, which should be a staple in the pantry, it’s inexpensive, and you can’t make onion bhaji without it.

I used prawns again, but don’t feel constrained to only use prawns/shrimp, any sort of fish would work, or even a mixture, just take into account that the tortilla will cook on a medium heat for about 3 minutes aside, so use appropriate sized pieces of fish, you don’t want to overcook it. The batter can be personalised as well, add a little heat with cayenne, or load it up with herbs, just keep in mind how all the flavours will work together.

The below quantities are enough to make two 21 cm tortillas.

1 cup water
1/2 cup chickpea flour (besan/gram flour)
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup sliced shallots/spring onions
2 doz prawns
3 tbsp chopped coriander (or other leafy green herb)
1/2 tsp baking powder
Olive Oil

Mix the dry ingredients together, add the water to make a thick batter (like double cream), and stir through the shallots and coriander.


Place a 21 cm frying pan over a medium-high heat, pour in about a tablespoon of oil, ladle in half the batter. Push half of the prawns into the batter, haphazardly or with OCD precision, up to you.

Cook for 3 minutes, then flip, using a chopping board or plate makes this a bit easier, cook for a further 3 minutes.

Serve hot, with a wedge of lemon, and top with a sprinkle of slice coriander and chilli.

Grapefruit marmalade

Having a pressure cooker comes in handy sometimes, from speeding up cooking times, eliminating the need to soak dried legumes, meaning you can whip up a batch of hummus from dried chickpeas in no time at all, or braising meat, wonderful pulled pork without heating up the house and not taking hours on the stove or oven, it makes congee a effortless affair, it’s ideal for medium sized batches of stock, and you can take advantage of its unique cooking method by making things like caramelised carrot soup or hamine egg.

Recently I’ve added marmalade to the list of things to use the pressure cooker for over the traditional method. The most time consuming process of this recipe is slicing the fruit and removing the seeds, the total cooking time should be around 20 minutes, depending on the amount of sugar and liquid used, maybe another 5 minutes if you want to process your jars to make them shelf stable.

The quantities below, are enough for two 500 ml jars. Another advantage of this pressure cooked method is making small batches, or experimental batches more viable time-wise.

750 g Grapefruit (about 3 medium)
1 kg Sugar
2 cups Strong brewed Earl Grey Tea

Slice the grapefruit thinly, about 2–3 mm, a mandoline is invaluable for this. When the grapefruit have been sliced, pick out the seeds from the slices, piling them in stacks as you go. Cut each stack into four so you end up with piles of quarter slices of grapefruit.

Scrape the grapefruit into the pressure cooker, making sure to get as much of the juice from the board as possible. Add as much tea as your pressure cooker needs to get up to pressure, at least one cup, I used two, but keep in mind how much liquid you add now will increase the amount of cooking time after you add the sugar. Cook on high pressure for 10 minutes.


Remove the pressure cooker from the heat and let the pressure drop naturally. When the pressure has equalised, remove the lid, and pour in the sugar, stirring until dissolved. Place the cooker back on a medium heat, and simmer until the temperature reaches 104°C, about 5–10 minutes. If you don’t have a candy thermometer you can drop a small spoonful of the mixture into a saucer of ice-cold water, if it gels up, it should be ready.


Pour the marmalade into sterilized preserving jars, screw on the lid, but not too tightly. Place a trivet on the bottom of the pressure cooker (now clean), or other pot big enough for the jars, pour enough water to come a few centimetres up the side of the jars, bring to the boil, place on the lid (if using a pressure cooker, make sure the valve is open so pressure DOESN'T build up), simmer for five minutes. Carefully remove the jars and leave them to cool on bench. The lids should ping, and become concave, if this doesn’t happen by the time the jar is cool, reboil the offending jar(s) for five more minutes.


The processed marmalade should last years in the pantry, and once opened a good month or two in the fridge . If you don’t want to boil the jarred marmalade, it should last about a month in the fridge.

Kimchi

I had an urge to make some kimchi, fiery hot fermented cabbage, and as it happens, I had been working my way through Ideas in Food recently, and there is a recipe for their version of kimchi in the book, which I did make, but I’m not posting about that batch, I wasn’t a hundred percent satisfied with it, don’t get me wrong it is tasty, and will get eaten, it’s just a bit on the fishy side for my taste. So back to the drawing board.

So less than satisfying kimchi behind me, and taking up a good portion of the fridge, I set about gathering the required information to try another lot, more traditional this time. In the search for a recipe, I came across a great blog, Maangchi, it has a lot of good information, recipes and discussion on kimchi, so do go and check it out.

Here’s a handy tip, if you want to piss off your partner and make your house stink of cabbage, make kimchi, twice in a row!

Ingredients
1 Chinese cabbage (Napa cabbage)
1 Medium sized Daikon peeled and julienned
1 Cup garlic cloves
1 Tablespoon minced ginger
1 Cup fish sauce
2 Cups hot chilli flakes (Asian supermarkets are a good place to get large packs cheap)
1 Bunch spring onion (about 7) thinly sliced
½ Cup Glutinous rice flour (also called sweet rice flour)
¼ Cup sugar
3 Cups water
Enough 5% brine (50 grams of salt per litre of water)

• Cut the cabbage into quarters lengthwise, remove most of the core, and then slice each segment into four crosswise.
• Submerge the cabbage in the brine and weigh it down with a couple of plates.
• Leave overnight (12 hours).
• When ready, drain the cabbage, and spin dry.

• Heat the rice flour and water over a medium heat, making sure to stir constantly, when it comes to a boil add the sugar and cook until dissolved. Set aside to cool.
• When cool, transfer the rice mixture to a food processor along with the fish sauce, garlic, and ginger. Process until smooth.
• Pour it into the container that you’ll be fermenting in, add the daikon, chilli flakes, and spring onion. Give it a good stir.
• Add the cabbage, and using gloved hands make sure all of the cabbage is thoroughly coated.
• Cover the container and let it sit in a cool dark spot.

The mixture should start fermenting after 2 days, but don’t worry if it doesn’t, it can take up to 6 days, it all depends on how warm it is. It should give up quite a bit of liquid, and have lots of little bubbles. The Lactobacillus bacteria present in the cabbage produces lactic acid which lowers the pH of the mixture, making it acidic and inhospitable to other nasty microorganisms, however, if you think something has gone awry, err on the side of caution and tip it out. Although, as long as it’s not slimy or fuzzy, it should be fine. The bacteria grows best in low-oxygen conditions so it’s important to keep a lid on your container.


When the kimchi has begun fermenting, transfer it to jars and refrigerate. I filled up two 1.5 litre jars from one cabbage, so unless you have a huge fridge, don’t make too much. How long will it last? I couldn’t find a straight answer on that one, some people recommend to keep it only for a month, others say it’ll last a year, I think it’ll last till it’s gone, but a bit of commonsense is in order, when it starts to smell and taste bad, then I’ll know it’s had its time.


With a lot of kimchi in the fridge, what to have it with? Everything! Well maybe not everything, the successes so far are: a sticky roasted pork belly with pickled mustard greens and kimchi; it makes and excellent topping to a hot dog; and tasty with just a plain old bowl of rice. Even the other half with her nose screwed up at the idea enjoyed its fiery heat.