Crabapple jelly

Well if you follow my Instagram or twitter you'll know this has been quite the week, my son was born on Tuesday the 12th, a healthy 4.4 kg. So all my attention has, of course, been on him rather than blog posts.

Just before he was born we were given a hefty bag of crabapples from Sophie's mother which brought back fond memories of youth in Hastings living next to an apple orchard with a generous crabapple tree on our property and my mother cooking up batches of the sweet sour jelly. It's a versitle product, great spread on toast with lashings of butter, used as a glaze for roast duck or used to enrich a sauce. The jelly is a relatively straightforward, but it will take two days, only about 80 minutes of cooking though.

• Pick over your crabapples removing the stems and discarding any overly bruised fruit. 
• Place the apples in a pot and cover with about an inch of water. 
• Put on medium heat and bring to the boil. 
• Cook for 30 minutes on a brisk simmer. 
• Pour through a muslin cloth and let drain naturally overnight do not be tempted to squeeze the fruit or push the liquid through otherwise you'll get a cloudy jelly.
• Measure the strained liquid and pour into a pot.
• Add 70 percent, by weight, of sugar and the juice of a lemon to the pot.
• Simmer for 40 minutes skimming off any scum that forms. Check the jelly sets by placing a spponfull on a chilled plate.
• Pour the hot jelly in to sterilised jars and screw on the lids. 
• Allow the jars to cool on the bench before transferring to a cool dark place to store.

Ultimate Cheese Sauce

This is a gooey cheese sauce with three simple ingredients, it can be made well ahead of time without fear of splitting when reheated, and it sets to a cream cheese texture in the fridge for ever so indulgent cheese sandwiches or grilled cheese. If the quantities are altered just ever so slightly you can pour the molten cheese on to a tray and set it in the “American” cheese slices.

The main components of the sauce are cheese, liquid and sodium citrate. Sodium citrate is the only odd ball ingredient here, it’s a sodium salt of citric acid and an emulsifying salt, it’s not too tricky to get hold of, you may need to order it online though. Cheese is a bit of a no brainer, any cheese you want, or a mixture. Liquid, can be water, beer, wine, stock, if you want a really luxurious sauce though, use reduced milk or add skim milk powder to the liquid, the extra protein makes for a much creamier sauce and my preferred addition.


The quantities are:
100 parts Cheese, finely grated
93 parts Liquid
4 parts Sodium citrate
(eg. 300g cheese, 279g liquid, 12g Sodium citrate)

• Pour the liquid into a pot and add the sodium citrate, place over a medium heat, stir to dissolve the sodium citrate, bring to a simmer.
• With either a whisk or immersion blender start stirring and adding the cheese bit by bit.
• Once all the cheese is incorporated and you have a thick emulsified sauce remove from the heat.
• Either use immediately, stir through some elbow pasta for the most over the top mac and cheese, or transfer to a container and when cool store in the fridge.
• The sauce can be used as a spread, grilled, stirred through hot pasta, up to you.

Recipe inspired from Modernist Cuisine

Kofta tagine

This is based on a recipe by Rick Stein from one of his many many travel cooking shows, the TV rather background noise than being watched when this dish piqued my interest, mainly because it was easy enough for me to remember to write down later, and a good excuse to drag the dusty tagine off the shelf and put it to use. The following is from memory, I did try to find a copy in one of his books I have, but no dice. It’s surprising quick and easy to throw together and perfect for the cooler months.

Kofta
Lamb mince
Cumin, ground
Salt
Hot paprika (or sweet and cayenne pepper)
Parsley, chopped

• Roughly work all the ingredients together and form into balls. Set aside.

Tagine
4–5 Garlic cloves, minced
1 Onion, finely diced
1 can of good quality diced tomatoes
Cumin
Hot paprika
1 egg per serve

• Heat the tagine over a medium heat, add in a good glug or three of olive oil and thoroughly brown the kofta. Transfer to a bowl. Sauté the onion and garlic until translucent. Add the paprika and cumin, cook until fragrant.
• Pour in the tomatoes, thin out with a little water if needed. Bring to the simmer, and adjust seasoning.
• Arrange the kofta in the tagine, leave space for the eggs to be broken in, cover and cook for a couple of minutes, or until the kofta are cooked through.


• Crack in the eggs individually, cover the tagine and cook for about 2 minutes, or until the white is set but the yolk is still runny. Serve up with some crunchy crusty bread.

Pressure cooked polenta

I love polenta, the fact is it’s a pain in the ass to cook, it’s not hard or complicated, but standing there stirring a pot of something that ultimately wants to spurt and bubble and cover you in all sorts of pain just doesn’t do it for me. Heck even the 6 minutes of bubbling hell that “instant” polenta takes is about 5 minutes too long for my liking. It may seem like a strange attitude for someone who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time fussing about in the kitchen, but life is too short to suffer third degree burns for a bowl of creamy polenta. I guess you could say that it is fortunate that I now have a method that no longer involves any camping out stove side and the most hard work is sieve pushing or mouli turning, if that, you do need a pressure cooker though.

1 part (by weight) polenta (not instant).
5 parts liquid
Butter, cheese, oil, or anything else you want to enrich with.


Place about an inch of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker and place in a trivet. Mix together the polenta, liquid and fat in a bowl and then place the bowl into the pressure cooker. Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes, let the pressure drop naturally. I like to pass the cooked polenta through a sieve to ensure a smooth consistency. Once passed, you can fold in more butter or cheese to really enrich it, or if for example you’re serving it with a roast, I'd add some of the cooking fat/liquid. Taste and season with salt.

Beurre Monté and cavatelli

Well I could wax lyrical about cavatelli, yet again, and perhaps bore you all to death with yet another combination of flours, toasted grains and instant potato flakes, but not today, yes this ultimately ended up as a pasta dish, a cavatelli dish, but it’s not so much the pasta as it is the sauce, in fact I ended up trying this out on two different versions of cavatelli, popcorn grits variety, that had been languishing in the freezer, as a tester, and then the finished dish with roasted rye cavatelli, both good combinations.

The sauce, and the excuse for more pasta, was heavily influenced (read, copied and modified) from Ideas in food’s bullet proof beurre monté and their later post bean monté. I had for a while wanted to have to make this extravagant sauce, with guests coming I had an excuse, plans started forming.

The great thing about the sauce and the cavatelli is they can both be prepared the day before, if not two, so it makes for a much easier cooking experience when guests are due, and heck you can even cook out the cavatelli on the day and shock it in an ice bath then refrigerate until needed, sautéing it until warm through and crisp on the edges. With the sauce, unlike a traditional beurre monté, it can be cooled down and reheated without the fear of it splitting.


Beurre Monté
250g Water*
225g Butter, cut into 1cm cubes and fridge cold.
0.7125g (0.15%) Xanthan Gum
2.375g (0.5%) Salt

• Place the water and salt in a pot over a medium heat.
• When at a simmer, use a stick/immersion blender to mix in the xanthan gum, blend on high speed for about 30 seconds.
• With the blender still running, start adding the butter a cube at a time, letting each piece melt and emulsify, continue until the butter is all incorporated and the sauce thickened.
• Taste, adjust salt if necessary.
• Transfer to a container, allow to cool and refrigerate until needed.

*I used water that I had cooked a batch of whole rye in, and then infused it with thyme and rosemary.


Infused oil
Over a low heat, infuse a large amount of rosemary leaves and half a dozen or so garlic cloves in about half a cup of olive oil and half a cup of canola oil. Let it bubble and warm through on the heat for about 15 minutes, then remove and cover, letting it sit for a further 15 minutes to extract all possible essential oils from the wood herb. Strain and transfer to a glass jar. Keep in the fridge until all used up.

Putting it together
Place a sauté pan over a medium heat and add a splash of the infused oil, when hot, add a sprigs worth of rosemary leaves and let them sizzle. Add the cooked, drained cavatelli to the pan and sauté until just crisp, and if chilled, warmed through. Reduce the heat to low, add enough of the beurre monté to coat the cavatelli and toss until warmed through. Plate up, finish with a smothering of finely grated sharp hard cheese and a few turns of black pepper. 

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.

Hot water pastry–Pork Pie

Hot water pastry–Pork Pie
500g flour
200ml water
100g dripping (or lard)
80g butter
1tsp salt (5–10g)

• Gently heat the water, butter and dripping over a low heat. Once melted bring to a boil.
• Sieve the flour and salt together into a bowl, make a well in the centre.
• Mix together to form a ball of dough.

• Wrap and leave to rest for an hour at room temperature.

• Roll the pastry into a rectangle and then fold in thirds, repeat until the dough is smooth, 2 or 3 times).

• Roll out the pastry to about 5mm thick. Line the dish, fill and bake. I used a terrine to make this pie, it was greased with butter and then put in the fridge to set before lining with the pastry.
• The filling was a mixture of pork, nutmeg, chilli, salt, pepper, and mustard. Half of the filling was placed in the pastry lined terrine, hard boiled eggs placed down the centre, the remaining filling tightly packed in and the whole terrine banged to dislodge any air bubbles.

• An egg yolk wash was brushed on before laying the pastry lid, with air vents cut out, on top and crimping the edges, then a final egg yolk wash.
• Cook in a 200ºC oven for 30 minutes before lowering the temperature to 180ºC and cooking for a further hour.

• Allow the pie to cool in the dish completely before carefully turning out. Best served room temperature with some relish or hot mustard.

Hot thighs

Well I had planned to actually deep fry the chicken, you know go the whole hog, brine, dredge, egg wash, fry and get greasy spicy chilli oil everywhere. However the day kind of got away from me and quite frankly I had lost all motivation to get a pot full of oil and control temperatures, and then clean up the mess, so I looked to my previous tried and trusted methods of oven “fried” wings, spiced it up and adapted it for some juicy thighs. There aren’t really any proper quantities below, they are all to taste, it’s more the method of getting pieces of chicken with a crunchy exterior and a steamy moist interior without having to resort to deep frying. The method is a little more time consuming than chucking a bunch of chicken in a hot oven and cooking, but not by much.

• In a large bowl mix together flour, salt and cayenne pepper, as much or as little as you want, go a little heavy on the salt as it will be the only seasoning the chicken will get.
• Toss the chicken pieces through the flour mix, make sure to pat the mix into all the crevices. Place on a sheet pan with a rack and refrigerate uncovered for an hour.
• Get two bowls out, in one get an egg wash ready, 50/50 mix of egg and water, in the other mix together 1 part flour and 1 part semolina, spice with cayenne and chilli flakes.
• Dip the chicken in the egg wash and then dredge in the flour mix, return to the rack. Refrigerate uncovered for at least an hour, you could do this the day before.
• Preheat the oven to 220ºC, remove the chicken from the fridge 10–15 minutes before cooking, place the tray in the oven and cook for 10 minutes. The short cooking time is to “set” the coating in place before meddling. Reduce the heat to 200ºC.
• Remove and brush the top of the chicken with chilli oil (store bought or canola blitzed with dry hot chilli flakes), return to the oven and cook for a further 20 minutes.
• Remove from the oven, turn the chicken over and brush the exposed side, return to the oven for another 20 minutes.
• Last time, remove the chicken, flip it, don’t bother brushing it, you shouldn’t need to, cook for a final 10 minutes.
• Transfer the cooked chicken to a cooling rack to rest for a 10 minutes, lace with hot sauce and devour with a cooling slaw and pickles, always pickles.

Polenta Cavatelli

There has definitely been an abundance of pasta, particularly cavatelli, recipes appearing on this blog lately, I am a little obsessed. Maybe it’s how easy fresh pasta is to throw together, or that you can customise, tweak and adjust it to your hearts content, probably a little bit of both. I have had polenta pasta on my mind for a while and have been trying to think it through before delving in head first and possibly wasting perfectly good product. After having some success with masa cavatelli it seemed like the perfect vehicle for polenta, I still had a couple of issues to resolve, polenta takes a while to cook through and what was going to bind the dough together, I didn’t want to rely on wheat flour for structure as I did with the masa. I settled on the idea of precooking the majority of the polenta, letting it set and then making a purée out of it, that would be the base of my dough, uncooked polenta and fine semolina were used to bring the purée together as a dough, I think if I used 100% polenta the cavatelli would be a wee bit dense.


I think I’ve mentioned it before but making too much cavatelli is never a problem, it freezes extremely well and can be cooked from the frozen, just allow a couple more minutes cooking time. The quantities below should be enough for four portions, so any unused raw cavatelli can be arranged on a sheet pan and placed in the freezer until solid and then transferred to a zip-lock bag for more permanent storage.


Polenta Purée
1 part polenta (50g)
5 parts water (250g)

• Place a rack or trivet on the bottom of a pressure cooker.
• Pour in an inch of water.
• Pour the ingredients into a heatproof bowl that will fit in the cooker.
• Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes.
• Allow the pressure to drop naturally.
• Remove the cooked polenta and when cool transfer to the fridge. Best left overnight.
• Purée the cooled cooked polenta, I used a fine mouli but a food processor is probably easier, I just don’t own one.

Polenta Cavatelli
2 parts polenta purée (250g)
1 part polenta (125g)
1 part fine semolina (125g)
2% salt (10g)

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
• Knead to form a ball of dough, add a splash of water if you need to.
• 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.

Sauce (for 2 portions)
Large knob of butter
2 large garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
2 tomatoes, skinned, de-seeded and finely diced
1 Lemon, juice and zest
Parsley, finely chopped
2-3 handfuls of rocket (arugula)

• Before the pasta goes in the water get a sauté pan on a medium heat.
• Melt the butter gently in the pan, add the garlic just as the pasta is going in the water.
• Gently sauté the garlic, you don’t want any colour, just cook out the rawness.
• Add the tomatoes and cook until they start to break down.
• Add a tablespoon or two of the pasta water, swirling and stirring through. The starch in the water will help emulsify the sauce and keep it from splitting. Keep adding water and cooking down until you have a nice thick sauce, probably about a third of a cup in total.
• Just before the pasta is cooked, taste the sauce, add half the lemon juice and zest, adjust the seasoning with salt. Taste and decide if you need the rest of the lemon juice, you may not.
• Scoop the cavatelli into the sauté pan and toss through the sauce, add the parsley and rocket, toss through and cook for 30–60 seconds more, just enough to wilt the rocket.

Serve with some good sharp hard cheese grated generously over top.

Spiced masa cavatelli

Well I have had a bag of masa in the pantry for a while, I have been using it, making tostada (a crispy fried flat tortilla topped with tasty things), regular tortillas (I even bought a tortilla press) and not least of all tamale. So I guess it’s a little odd my first post about masa is a pasta, there is more than enough information online regarding making the more traditional items and I’m not sure I’ve got much to add to the subject, yet.

This pasta came about due to the fact I had a container full of braised beef leftover from tortillas the previous night and a desire not have a meal rerun. When possible I try to re-purpose leftovers, it’s far too depressing to eat the same thing night after night. The usual suspects ran through my mind while trying to think of something new to do, nachos, tostada, enchilada, quesadilla, the apple not really falling far from the tree as far as ideas go. Still on my pasta making buzz, much to the chagrin of the better half, I mean I make it and eat it a lot, heck if it’s not pasta at the moment, it’s spicy noodle soups. Anyway, I had this idea of pasta nachos, make a pasta that can handle a good sauté to crisp up a bit and take a good thick braise based sauce. I thought of gnocchi and maybe revisiting the potato chip version, but I figured it would probably be best to keep on topic flavour wise so nixed that idea, masa and tortillas still banging about in my head I got to thinking if I could use it to make pasta, I couldn’t think why not, and cavatelli seemed like the perfect choice. I only wish I had a blowtorch (with a Searzall) in the house, I mean it’s the one gadget I’m lacking, but it would have been great to have the pasta tossed in the sauce, plated, topped with cheese and hit with a hot flame to really bubble and crisp up before garnishing.


Spiced masa cavatelli
100g instant masa
170g fine semolina
100g flour
280g salted water (265ml water +15g salt)
10g spice mix*

*In a spice mill, blend equal quantities of annatto, coriander seeds, and cayenne to a fine powder.

• Mix the dry ingredients together and form a well in the centre.
• Pour in the salt water and work the flour in to form a dough ball.
• Knead until smooth, about 8 minutes.
• Wrap tightly in cling film and let it rest on the bench 30 minutes.
• 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.
• Store the tray of pasta at room temp until ready to cook. Alternatively place the tray in the freezer, when frozen solid transfer the pasta to a zip lock bag. The pasta can be cooked straight from frozen.

Cooking

• Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a rolling boil.
• Place the pasta in the water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
• Cook for about 5 minutes, they’ll float to the top when cooked.
• Scoop the cooked cavatelli out with a sieve or similar scooping device.
• Sauté in a hot pan with butter to give a crisp exterior.
• Toss through a sauce and serve.