Soufflé

If there is anything that reality cooking shows have taught me is that the humble oft maligned soufflé is setting one’s self up for disaster and disappointment for what will be the inevitable deflated result. Ironically you have certain people screaming and shouting on their TV shows at some poor sap and their soggy mess, but in their cookbooks insist on how easy and foolproof their method is, mixed messages much? Any how, with a glut of eggs in the fridge and a need to use them up, I had to make something, and I am well and truly over frittata and baked eggs, I set my sights on the Everest of egg dishes, cheese soufflé, I guess rather disappointingly soufflé is not a hard dish to make and really not all that likely to fail, that is unless you really try.

Before starting making the base and whisking up the egg whites, preheat the oven to 190°C and grease a large ramekin(s) or soufflé dish with butter and coat with finely grated parmesan, then place it in the freezer.

Base
5 Egg yolks
300 ml Milk*
30 g Butter
1 tbsp Flour
110 g Cheese (I had gouda, and used the leftover parmesan from coating the ramekin)

* For the milk, heat it up on the stove and let it infuse with a bay leaf, clove of garlic, peppercorns and half a peeled onion, this will give the milk a nice savoury flavour.

While the milk is infusing, in a large bowl whisk the egg yolks until they have about tripled in volume and have turned a pale yellow colour. After the good arm workout, place a pot over a medium heat and melt the butter, you want to get rid of as much moisture as possible but be careful not to brown it, so once the foaming has subsided stir in the flour, you don’t want any colour just cook out the flour. Gradually whisk in the milk (strained) and gently cook until thick and smooth, don’t worry if it starts off a bit lumpy they should eventually disappear. Now the tricky bit, kind of anyway, and an extra pair of hands helps, whilst vigorously whisking the egg yolks slowly pour the béchamel into the yolks, once fully incorporated stir in the cheese, taste and season accordingly. Cover with plastic wrap right on top of the base to prevent a skin forming.

Whites
5 Egg whites
1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

In an immaculately clean bowl whisk the egg whites with the cream of tartar to stiff peaks, the cream of tartar helps prevent over whisking and stabilise the foam.

Getting it all together
Take a spoonful of white and beat into the base mixture, this will help the rest incorporate, then in thirds carefully fold the rest of the whites in. Remove the dish from the freezer and place on a sheet pan, pour in the soufflé mix leaving a little headroom, place in the oven and cook for 25-35 minutes, however long it takes to cook leave it well alone for the first 20 minutes.

Potatoes baked with cream

I haven’t abandoned the blog, it’s been awhile since my last decent sized post, but not a whole heap of cooking or experimenting has been going on recently, time and other commitments keeping me occupied, and to top it all off, I fractured a tiny bone in my wrist which has ended up with my arm in a brace and the simple tasks of slicing or even lifting the smallest weights is painful and impossible. It certainly makes me appreciate the ease I normally have with even the simplest of tasks, like being able to successfully use a knife and not be menace with it, not knowing which way it’s going to slip because I can’t apply the right pressure. Thank goodness for the Mandoline I say! At least with this great little kitchen gadget I can still whip up one of my favourite comfort dishes, layers of thin potato and onion smothered in thyme infused cream and baked to a golden cheesy goodness.

There’s not too much to this, butter to coat the dish, floury potatoes, garlic (if you wish), onions, cream and thyme, with it being so simple I find taking the little bit extra effort carefully layering everything quite rewarding in the end result, a compact slice of cheesy potatoes rather than a sloppy mess.


Get some cream in a pot with the thyme and garlic and bring it up to the boil, remove from the heat and let the herbs infuse. Slice the potatoes and onions on the thinnest setting of the mandoline. Not too hard. Now carefully place a layer of potatoes in the bottom of a greased dish, having each slice slightly overlapping, next a thin layer of onions, and then season with salt and pepper. Repeat this until the dish is full or you have run out, make sure to end on a potato layer. Pour over the cream, it should cover the potatoes when pushed down. Cook in a 180°C oven for 45-60 minutes, cranking up the heat near the end to get a nice golden crust. Rest on the bench for at least 10 minutes before serving.


The miso egg yolk finally made it’s way out of the cure, and is dehydrating slowly in the fridge, I have a few plans for this amber gem, so do expect a post on that in the coming weeks. Also we’re heading up to the big little city for a long weekend, avoiding the easter crush though, and am looking forward to eating far too much, and quite excited to finally get to a few places I've been champing at the bit to try.

Miso cured egg

I've certainly posted my fair share of egg related posts, cured in salt, brined, cooked under pressure, slow cooked and this one is no different. I've been curious about using miso to cure food for a while but have never taken that next step beyond curiosity, in fact the idea for the whole thing had been sitting in my head for a good two years, ever since reading a post on one of my favourite blogs, Playing with Fire and Water, the author had written about Egg yolk cheese, the idea was intriguing and promptly filed to the dark recesses of my brain never to be heard from again, well until recently and then there was some rather frantic googling and trying to figure out where I saw the method.



The egg yolk is still encased in miso, sitting in my fridge just waiting to be released from it's fermented tomb, the egg was first cooked at 65°C for about an hour then placed in an ice bath until cool and the yolk carefully separated from the albumen. So I don't know yet what it's going to taste like, but my experience with salt cured yolks (which was cured raw) tells me it's likely to be pretty damn delicious, and miso really only makes things better, well most things anyway. So another week in the miso, and probably a few more weeks hanging in the fridge to dry out, I'm sure another post will pop up, I just need to figure out what I'm going to have with it.

Warm bean and citrus salad

This recipe was originally created for Urban Harvest, do go check out their website for some great produce and other recipe ideas.

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This is a great way to kill two birds with one stone, take advantage of the abundance of beans available at this time of year and utilise the citrus on offer. It’s not too complicated and definitely not time consuming to make, I used a variety of beans to profit from the various sizes and textures, but if you prefer green beans will do. The salad makes a satisfying light lunch or a ideal salad to accompany a BBQ, the weather giving us all an excuse to dine al fresco.

400 g Beans
2-3 Oranges
2-3 Lemons
Ewes milk feta
Olive oil
Dijon mustard
Mint (optional)

Put a pot of decently salted water on to boil. Pinch (or cut) the stem end of the beans off and discard. When the water is up to the boil, blanch the beans for about 4 minutes, you want them to be almost cooked, still have a good bite, as we’re not shocking them in ice water the beans will continue to cook once strained.

Peel the oranges with a knife and cut the segments by running the knife down each side membrane, or in other words supreme the oranges.

In a bowl combine 1 part lemon juice, 3 parts olive oil, a spoonful of dijon mustard and whisk together, the mustard helps emulsify the oil and juice together to create a homogeneous sauce. Season well with salt and pepper.

When the beans are cooked, drain off the liquid and tip into the bowl with the vinaigrette along with the orange segments, toss the beans and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Arrange the beans on a serving plate, scatter some finely sliced mint over top, crumble over the feta and finish off with any remaining vinaigrette.

Hot Wings

It just happened that our national day fell on a Wednesday this year, and of course just by chance Superbowl Sunday, happened to fall on the Monday before it, so it seemed liked a good excuse to take a 5 day weekend (or is that a 2 day week?), plus who needs a reason to pull out the nachos, wings, and other Americana food and blob out in front of a 60 minute game that lasts 4 hours, not dissing, I quite enjoy the game. Anyway the plan was hot wings, I was thinking of my crunchy, spicy, deep fried wings, but as it always seems to happen best laid plans and all, someone tweeted a link to a recipe for Buffalo Wings by the Good Eats man himself, Alton Brown, these were oven baked and intriguingly steamed before hand, well that was going save me a lot of hassle deep-frying.

So, get a pot of water on to the boil, and load up a steamer with some chicken wings, set the steamer in the pot and let it bathe in the vapour for 20 minutes, it’s quite nice to add a few aromatics to the water, such as garlic and the like.

Set up a baking tray with a rack and line with paper towels, when the wings have steamed transfer them to the tray and refrigerate for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 220˚C, swap out the paper towels with baking paper and transfer the baking tray to the hot oven and cook for 20 minutes, then flip and cook for a further 20 minutes.

Toss the wings in hot sauce and serve, a finger bowl is a good idea. Alternatively, like the original recipe, you can toss them in a mixture of butter, garlic and hot sauce, which is nice, luxurious etc, but needless calories in my opinion.

Ginger Beer

I have well and truly caught the brewers bug, I’ve just bottled the fourth batch, three of which were traditional ales, for the fourth I decided to try my hand at a dry boozy ginger beer, perfect for a hot day, well it threw me a few curveballs along the way, mainly that I think the yeast I chose was a wee bit too efficient and my nice mellow 4-5% plan ran rampant to a killer dry spicy 8%, fortunately it doesn’t have that ‘alcohol’ taste you can get when with some higher percentage beverages.

The below recipe is for a 20 litre batch and for those interested in giving it ago but lack the equipment (fermenter, hydrometer and sterilizer) I’d advise to skip the $100 starter kits you can get at supermarkets and brew shops and buy the components separately it’ll save you a considerable amount of money, a fermenter (with airlock, thermometer and tap) will cost about $30 and hydrometer will set you back about $10. Go chat to your local brew shop and I’m sure the staff will be happy to set you up, if you’re in Wellington The Brew House in Newtown is excellent.

You should be able to buy all of the ingredients for this in a supermarket, the only iffy one is dextrose, but most larger stores usually have a little brew section near the wine and beer these days. Dextrose is used instead of common sugar (Sucrose) as yeast can convert it more efficiently.

10 Litres of Water for the boil
2 Kg Dextrose
1 Kg Brown Sugar
500 ml Lemon juice (and the rinds from the lemons)
Yeast (I used Vintner's Harvest CL23 Wine Yeast)


I imagine if you had a juicer it may be easier to tackle the ginger but I don’t, so in a blender with water in batches whiz up the ginger to make a coarse paste and dump the contents into a large pot (16 litre or bigger). Add the remaining water along with the lemon rind and bring to a simmer, let it bubble away for an hour or so until you have a very strong ginger tea and the pulverised ginger has given up its flavour.


Pour the liquid into the fermenter, using some cheesecloth to strain out the solids. Give the pot a quick rinse out and pour the liquid back into the pot and put on the heat. While stirring add the lemon juice, dextrose and brown sugar, bring to the boil. Let it boil for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile wash and sterilise the fermenter (follow the instructions on of whichever type of steriliser you have).


When the 15 minutes is up pour the liquid into the fermenter and top up to 20 litres with cold water. It needs to cool down to about 20°C before its gravity can be tested. When it’s finally cooled down, take enough liquid to fill up the hydrometer testing tube three quarters of the way up and test, it should read about 1.054, take a note of the result as this is the Original Gravity (OG) and will be used later to figure out the ABV (Alcohol By Volume). Stir in the yeast and put it in a not too cool dark spot for 2-3 weeks, I keep mine under the stairs and it’s a pretty constant 15°C.

The brew will be ready to bottle once the hydrometer reading has been constant for 2-3 days, which means the fermentation has stopped. I expected this brew to be ready after 10-14 days and have a Final Gravity (FG) reading of 1.014, I was very very wrong and it ended up taking 22 days at ended up at 0.992. To figure out what the ABV of your brew is use this formula: (OG-FG) x 131.25, so (1.054 - 0.992) x 131.25 = ABV of 8.14%.

When it finally stops fermenting it’s time to bottle, now you can syphon the brew off to another bucket with 130 grams of dextrose and then bottle from there, or if you want the quick easy method, use carbonation drops (most supermarkets will have in the same section as the dextrose, or get from a brew shop) which are essentially dextrose tablets, use 2 per 750ml bottle. Once you’ve had the pleasure of cleaning, sterilising and filling 25 bottles, store them in the same place you kept the fermenter and leave for 2 weeks, at which point the they should've carbonated and be ready to drink, if not don’t panic and just wait another week, it will happen it sometimes just takes a little extra time.

Pork and Fennel Meatballs

I love meatballs, versatile great little flavour carriers, great on rice, pasta or even in a bread roll, but I’m not talking about those abominations stuffed full of breadcrumbs and egg, no a decent meatball shouldn’t need any binders, get your hands dirty and knead the meat, that's all it should take for the minced protein to bind itself together.

Meatballs
Pork mince (500g)
Fennel bulb, finely diced and frilly fronds added too
Garlic, crushed
Paprika, salt and pepper

Sauce
Passata
Chorizo
Red Onion
Cannellini Beans

Knead the pork, fennel, garlic, paprika and salt together for a couple of minutes and then form meatballs, brown in pan and cook until about 50% done, remove and set aside. In the same pan, saute diced chorizo and red onion until the sausage has given up its fat and the onion has softened, season with some salt pepper and paprika, deglaze with a touch of vinegar and add passata, cook until quite thick and then add the meatballs to the pan, along with any resting juices, as well as a handful of cooked cannellini beans, cover the pan and cook until the meatballs are done. Really nice served on some steamed rice.

Beef Cheeks, new years

We had the horde at our place for new years eve and it was put to me to sort out the non liquid nourishments, I quite frankly had my heart set on revisiting the Dr pepper-miso short ribs that I had dabbled with previously, pretty damn stubbornly I might add too, but with leaving the shopping too late and only one suitable rack of ribs at the store, reluctantly (read: kicking and screaming) I changed my mind and used beef cheeks, so there were a couple of alterations to make, no longer sticky finger licking ribs, it would be unctuous melt in the mouth beef cheeks that had been braised on a bed of peppers, onion, carrot and cilantro roots, served in a tortilla with all the trimmings.

12 Beef Cheeks
1 Can of Dr Pepper (reduced to 125 ml)
2 tsp Miso paste (shiro)
3 Chipotle Chillies
1 tsp Cider vinegar
Coriander Seeds (pulverised)
Splash, dash or glug of oil


Divide the beef cheeks between some zip lock bags. Combine all the other ingredients together in a bowl, check seasoning, then pour into the bags, massage the marinade into the meat, seal and refrigerate overnight.


In a dish large enough to hold the cheeks make a bed of diced red onion, carrots, capsicum and coriander roots (use the leaves as a garnish). Place the cheeks on top of the vegetables and pour over the marinade. Cover with a double layer of tin foil and cook for 5 hours at 130ºC

After 5 hours strain the liquid off and discard the vegetables, add a couple of chipotles to the liquid. Pour the liquid along with the cheeks back into the roasting pan, cover and cook for another 30 minutes.


Remove the cheeks and set aside. Pour the cooking liquid into a pan and reduce until thickened, season. Slice the beef cheeks and set in a serving dish, pour the reduced cooking liquid over. Cover until ready to serve.

We had the cheeks in corn tortillas with a variety of toppings we had assembled around the dish of beefy goodness on the table, made for a fuss free meal, as everyone could pick and mix as they liked.


Also finally managed to crack open my second brew, pleasantly surprised at how good it is, I don’t know how much longer it will last, I’m trying to ration it but I am weak willed. I have another very hoppy bitter IPA on the go and a ginger beer that is very very dry and very very alcoholic (a slight miscalculation).

Fried wings

Wings again! But this time fried not baked, not quite as healthy, but hey you only live once. These are pretty straightforward to make, no faffing about with batters and the like, just marinate the wings in buttermilk, with a few extras, then dredge in a mix of potato starch and flour, and deep fry for a couple of minutes. For an extra spicy twist toss the crunchy cooked wings in some hot chipotle sauce. Devour with a cold beer and crisp cooling coleslaw.

For 500 grams of wings:
250ml Buttermilk
2-3 Chipotles
150g Potato flakes
150g Flour
Salt and Pepper


Blend the chipotles and buttermilk, season well with salt and pepper, stir in the wings, cover and leave in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Buttermilk is a great tenderiser and will do wonders to the wings.

Blitz the flour and potato flakes in a food processor with some salt and pepper to make a fine powder. Toss the wings in the flour mix, making sure to shake off any excess marinade first, set the coated wings aside ready to cook.


Heat the deep frying oil to 180°C, rice bran is good. Fry the wings in batches until they’re floating on the surface and have an internal temperature of 70°C. The mini ‘drumsticks’ should take 5-10 minutes and the wings 4-7 minutes.

Bread salad with haloumi

Bread salad (Panzanella) is a great way to use a chunk of leftover stale of sourdough bread, it can be as light or a heavy as you want and in this case the simple addition of a couple of slices of fried haloumi elevated the salad to a very tasty meal.

The Salad Components:
Stale Sourdough Bread, large dice
Radish, sliced
Cherry Tomatoes, halved
Cucumber, cored and sliced
Mint, chiffonade
Parsley, finely chopped
Red Chilli, sliced
Black Olives, stoned
Capers (in salt, soaked)

Vinaigrette:
Cider vinegar (1 part)
Dijon mustard
Olive Oil (2–3 parts, depends on how acidic your vinegar is)
Salt (not too much as capers and olives are salty)

Mix all the salad ingredients in a bowl (keeping aside a little mint and chilli to dress), add enough vinaigrette to hydrate the stale bread, and allow it to sit for at least half an hour, you don’t want dry bread.

I like to fry the block of haloumi whole with a little oil over a medium heat on both sides until golden brown and warm all the way through and then slice, but if you prefer slice it first and then fry.