Basil Vinaigrette – shaken not stirred

Pin It This recipe is now in the book Alchemy: Simple Ingredients... Magical Food, under Sauce'ry

On my first ever visit to the States, our Floridian concierge recommended a restaurant “just down the block”. I wasn’t smart enough to translate that into “several miles away – you’ll need the car.” Half an hour later, my beloved and I were still walking... in pitch darkness... accompanied by a million mosquitos – I was hobbling along in high heels. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Alchemy's jam jar 'Super Salad Shaker'

Beloved spotted a sign that promised Great Food! and Great Music! so we pushed open the door to the warmest friendliest of welcomes. Drinks and menus were placed in our hands. We’d be brought through to the restaurant when our meal was ready. Smart move on their part, given the restaurant turned out to be completely empty and we were the only diners for the entire evening. We were outnumbered 6 to 2 by the staff and musicians.

My low-tech garlic squisher from Provence

Tired and jetlagged, I had ordered a salad but none of the long list of sauces grabbed me. “Have you got a simple vinaigrette?” I asked. “A what?” replied the kitchen. I described the ingredients to the waitress, who came back with a tray of all the items I'd mentioned. Everyone gathered round to watch with amazement and amusement while I whisked up a vinaigrette. My first cookery demo! (Ok, so they were low on entertainment that evening.)

Vivacious Vinaigrette - shaken, not stirred

Every cook worth their salt has their own range of kitchen gadgets. I’ve decided Alchemy shouldn’t be left out. For this vinaigrette, I use my Super Salad Shaker (a jam jar with a lid) J

This recipe is now in the book Alchemy: Simple Ingredients... Magical Food, under Sauce'ry

Pin It

Strawberry and Rose Petal Ice Cream – practically Italian!

Pin It I cannot resist a car boot sale ... ‘one woman’s junk is another woman’s treasure’ and all that. 

Take time to stop and smell eat the roses!

My pasta maker came from a car boot sale. It was in mint condition. I figured that by the time I’d rolled out a few yards of fettucini, I’d be practically Italian.  Then I discovered that soft Irish flour - so fantastic for bread and cakes - is rubbish for making pasta. I packed the pasta maker back into its box and brought it to a charity shop.

My coffee machine came from a car boot sale. It looked brand new. I am a tea drinker, but I fancied myself a barista. I could turn out a few foaming cappuccini or a couple of gallons of espresso, and hey presto, I’d be practically Italian. One teeny problem... there were no instructions. I muddled through and drank a lot of coffee. That week I was WIDE AWAKE. Then I left the cap on the steamer and blew the damn thing up. Do you know how hard it is to remove damp coffee grinds from the ceiling?!

A spoonful of sugar does wonders for strawberries

I was so proud of myself when I managed to walk past a bloke selling an ice cream maker. Sitting innocently in the centre of his stall, it wore a price tag - €2. “It must be broken,” I thought. “I’m not taking that gorgeous retro Gelatiera home.” Later, as I was leaving, the man called me over. He’d seen me eyeing the ice cream maker. He assured me it was working.  “Tell you what,” he said, “I’d murder a coffee but I can’t leave my stall. Get me a coffee and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

I use the simplest of ingredients but if you tasted the magical ice creams this funny little machine is capable of churning out, you’d think I was practically Italian.

Strawberry and Rose Petal ice cream is my latest experiment. Because it is made from Greek yoghurt, fresh fruit and honey, it can be considered breakfast! ;-)

Rose Water adds a delicate floral note to this ice cream

For 4 - 6 servings you will need...

250g fresh strawberries, quartered
1 tablespoon caster sugar
550g Greek yoghurt
120g runny honey
10g fresh fragrant red or pink rose petals, unsprayed
3 tablespoons rose water

1                  Sprinkle the caster sugar over the quartered strawberries and set aside for about 30 minutes. Then purée 200g of the strawberries and pass the purée through a sieve to remove the seeds.

2                  Place the yoghurt, strawberry purée, honey and rosewater in your ice cream maker and churn until thick and smooth – about 30 minutes or so though this will vary according to the make and model you use. (If you don’t have an ice cream maker, mix the ingredients well and place in a freezer proof container. Stir well every 30 minutes to break up any large ice crystals. Repeat until the ice cream is smooth and thick.)

3                 Chop the remaining strawberries into small pieces.

4                 Wash the rose petals and pat dry with kitchen paper. Snip off and discard the white portion of each petal (the part where it joined the stem) and tear roughly into pieces. Fold the strawberries and rose petals into the ice cream and transfer to a freezer container. Cover and freeze until required. Ice cream matures so while this is ready to eat straight away, it is even better if you leave it overnight.

Ahh days of wine and roses...

Tip: Remove from the freezer a few minutes before serving to allow it to soften.

Pin It

Walnut Frangipane Tart with Apple and Fudge – when ingredients rebel...

Pin It

Yesterday, I bought some Bramley apples. They had “apple pie” written all over them - or so I thought.  Somehow a stray bag of fudge ended up among my shopping. I didn’t spot this stowaway until it had been through the checkout and all the way home.

 

Hey Apple! We've got a better plan...

On the journey, these ingredients conspired and by the time they were unpacked, the apples refused to be mere apple pie. They recruited the fudge and a bag of walnuts that needed using up, (remember War On Waste?), then staged a revolution.

I gave in and packed the apples and fudge into a crumbly sweet pastry shell, then topped the lot with a walnut frangipane. OMG! I’m glad I listened to those apples. They were so right!

It's a conspiracy!

For one large delicious tart you will need...

Sweet Pastry

150g butter

50g caster sugar

1 egg, beaten

½ teaspoon vanilla essence

225g plain flour

1          For the pastry: In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale in colour. Now add the flour to the creamed sugar/butter mixture, beating until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix together the egg and vanilla essence and add a little at a time, until the mixture comes together in a soft paste. You may not need to use all of the egg. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes in the fridge (or overnight if possible).

2          Remove the pastry from the fridge and place on a lightly floured surface or on a large sheet of non-stick baking parchment. Roll the pastry out, making sure to roll in one direction, turning the pastry a quarter at a time to keep it spreading out evenly to a thickness of about 3mm (about the thickness of a euro coin).  If you roll in both directions you can end up stretching the pastry which will shrink back in the oven. Use to line a 23cm (9 inch) tart tin. Press gently into place, then run the rolling pin over the top – this neatly removes any pastry overhang. Return the pastry to the fridge to rest while you pre-heat the oven to 170°C.

Apple and Fudge filling

1 - 2 Bramley apples, or your favourite apple (yielding about 250g of fruit when prepared)

150g vanilla fudge, finely chopped (or 12 tablespoons of fleur de sel caramel sauce)

3          Peel the apples and cut into 1cm cubes. Place the apple cubes in a bowl of cold water to which you’ve added a squeeze of lemon juice to stop them turning brown, or if using the fleur de sel caramel sauce pour over the apple cubes and set aside until ready to use.

Walnut Frangipane

100g butter

100g caster sugar

3 medium eggs, beaten

100g walnuts, ground

100g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

4          Make the frangipane filling: Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl or stand mixer and beat together until pale and fluffy. Add the beaten egg, a little at a time, mixing well between additions. When all the beaten egg has been added, sprinkle in the ground walnuts, flour and baking powder, and mix well until all the ingredients have been combined.

5          Remove the chilled tart shell from the fridge. Dry the apple cubes in a clean teacloth and arrange evenly in the pastry shell, leaving a margin of about 1cm around the edge .  Sprinkle the chopped fudge over the apple (or if using the fleur de sel caramel sauce simply spoon the apple/caramel mixture into the shell). Now spoon the walnut frangipane filling over this, levelling it out with the back of the spoon or a spatula, right to the edge of the pastry.

6          Place in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes or until the filling is golden brown and risen and springs back when pressed lightly with your finger. Leave to cool, then remove from the baking tin. Dust with icing sugar before serving with a swirl of whipped cream.


Couldn't resist an extra hit of caramel

There are some apples left over from that batch. With such ambition and creativity, who knows what they’ll become! J

Pin It

Mushrooms à la Grecque – a mayo-free zone

Pin It

My Aussie pal, Elena, made an observation about Irish salad/sandwich bars... “What’s with all the mayonnaise!!!!” she asked.

It’s true. It is practically impossible to avoid mayo in Ireland. We even have a county called Mayo.



Cute as a button...



As a broad generalisation, if you walk into a sandwich bar in Ireland your choices are limited: You may be offered tuna... mayonnaise; or egg... mayonnaise; or if you manage not to have mayonnaise in your main filling choice, the server will try and foist some “coleslaw” on you. What is this coleslaw, only shreds of cabbage and carrot drowned in a sea of... mayonnaise. If you manage to parry the coleslaw, they will launch a final offensive, the squeezy mayo bottle already in their hand, and smilingly offer you a squirt to glue the top slice of bread in place.

I have nothing against mayonnaise – the sort that has actually seen a fresh egg yolk or two, a spoonful of Dijon mustard, some garlic and a light olive oil can be unbelieveable good. And I’ll admit that sometimes even Hellman’s is just the thing – but all things in moderation.



We're hiding from the mayonnaise!



One ingredient that shouldn’t even be in the same room as mayonnaise is the mushroom. Yuk. Even thinking about mushrooms in mayo is making me queasy. If I am going to include mushrooms in a salad then here’s how that would go...

For 4 - 6 servings you will need...

5 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons olive oil

150mls passata, or two tinned plum tomatoes, finely chopped

1 teaspoon coriander seed, crushed

1 bayleaf

a sprig of thyme (lemon thyme is great if you can get it)

1 clove garlic, crushed

juice and zest of an unwaxed lemon

400g button mushrooms (or larger mushrooms cut into bite-sized pieces)

1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leafed parsley

1          Place all the ingredients - except the parsley – in a medium saucepan over a medium heat and bring to simmering. Simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.

2          Using a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms and place in a serving dish. Now turn up the heat and allow the sauce to reduce and thicken for a further 5 minutes or so.

3          Taste the sauce and add salt and or pepper if necessary. Then pour the thickened sauce over the mushrooms and leave to cool to room temperature. Scatter with the parsley before serving. This dish will keep for a few days if refrigerated but is best at room temperature. Served hot, it is also wonderful with grilled meats.



Just add crusty bread

Pin It

Strawberry and Orange Cream Cheese Cupcakes – the 3-second rule applies !

Pin It

 When my sister got married, she made a special request. Would I please, please, please make “that amazing carrot cake with the cream cheese frosting” as her wedding cake. While I’d never made a wedding cake before, I was delighted to oblige.

Strawberries and Cream Cheese - the perfect marriage!

The project got off to a bad start...  As I was transferring the largest of the cakes into the oven, the base fell out of the tin, dumping batter all over the bottom of the oven... the floor... my shoes... I made up some new swear words that day.

The hours to the wedding were ticking down so I rolled up my sleeves, gritted my teeth, and started again.

By next morning, the three tiers were baked and frosted. Before the ceremony, I went to the hotel to set up the cake. I had my list: Cake boards ... ü Ribbons ... ü Dowels ... ü Pillars ... ü Roses ... ü It was like a mini-construction site, complete with landscaping.  With the multi-storey cake set up and refrigerated, I went off to the ceremony, much relieved. Job done!

At the end of a wonderful meal, the cake was wheeled out. Was it just me... perhaps the champagne... or was there an ever so slightly Leaning Tower of Pisa look about the cake? Hmmmm...  



I ♥ Strawberries

Thankfully, the cake made it through the photos. I had turned back to chat to my fellow guests when I heard a collective gasp, followed by a soft thud, as if someone had fainted. I refused to look and moments later, the groom tapped me on the shoulder. “Great cake, Hester” he said, “but the engineering skills need work!”  Ooops! The light fluffy carrot cake just wasn't up to the task of supporting several kilos of pillars, and frosting, and roses and the layers of cake above it. (Doh!) Luckily there was enough in the surviving tier for everyone in the room.

Funnily enough, there was no sign of the fallen cake when the hotel staff arrived to clear it up. I have a sneaking suspicion that the 3-second rule was employed by the hungry boy children in the room.

Lower fat cupcakes: "Does my bun look big in this?"

For the most part, I’ve stuck to single-storey cakes since then, but my love of cream cheese has grown so much that as well as using it for frosting, I now put it in various cake batters in place of butter. It adds a whole new flavour dimension as well as cutting the fat content dramatically. Butter is about 81% - cream cheese is around 23%.

The 3-second rule applies to these cakes. In my experience, that’s about how long they remain on the plate J

For 12 cupcakes you will need:

150g Philadelphia Cream Cheese

150g caster sugar

3 eggs

Grated zest of an orange

150g plain flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

Pre-heat your fan oven to 160°C and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake papers

1          In a mixing bowl, whisk the Philadelphia together with the sugar until smoothly blended. Add in the eggs and the orange zest and continue whisking until well combined.

2          Sprinkle in the flour and baking powder and continue whisking until the flour is incorporated into the mixture.

3          Divide the mixture between the 12 cupcake papers and transfer to the preheated oven.

4          Bake for 18 – 20 minutes or until risen and evenly golden.

5          Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Leave to cool completely before piping on the frosting.

For the cream cheese frosting you will need:

125g Philadelphia Cream Cheese

125g softened butter

325g icing sugar

1 punnet of fresh Irish strawberries

6          In a mixing bowl, whisk the Philadelphia together with the butter then slowly add in the icing sugar, whisking continuously until all the sugar has been incorporated and the mixture is smooth and thick. Transfer to a piping bag with a large star nozzle and refrigerate until needed.

7          To finish, pipe a swirl of frosting onto each cupcake and top with a fresh strawberry. Apply to face. Grin happily! 

Apply to face...

Pin It

My Bread – well, it’s Jim Lahey’s bread really...

Pin It

Robert Browning said “If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens." Try saying “tastest” with a mouth full of bread J but he’s right. I could happily work my way through an entire loaf, warm from the oven and slathered with butter – fresh raspberry jam optional.

Flour, water, salt, yeast... and time



Bread has the power to win hearts and sell houses. When I say bread, I mean the sort made with love, not with industrial machinery.

In a recent giveaway, Absurd Baker very kindly sent me Jim Lahey’s My Bread: The revolutionary no-work, no-knead method. Jim is a man in love with bread. The introduction follows his progress from Tuscany in the ‘90s, through selling bread in a SoHo street market, to the Sullivan Street Bakery and beyond.

Bread in a pot - weird... but wonderful!

He talks about the ‘singing loaf’ in his overview of the method: the loaf crackles as it cools in the final and very important phase of baking as the damp crumb forces steam through the dry crust. Cut into the loaf before it sings and suffer average bread. Defer that pleasure until the bread has sung, for an entirely different experience.

I’ve made two of Jim Lahey's breads: the basic recipe and the Pane Integrale – a wholewheat version – both using his bread-in-a-pot method.

In some ways, if you’ve never made bread before, you have the advantage with this book because you are not comparing it to traditional kneaded doughs. In the recipes I’ve tried so far, I’ve found the dough alarmingly wet - almost porridgy. However, because this bread is no-knead, handling is minimal and the dough firms up a little as it rises. Lahey uses a mere 2 grams of yeast – a quarter of what I would normally use. 2 grams of yeast is sufficient because of the long rising time.

From porridgy dough to 'Pane' perfection

If you are a seasoned baker, hold your nerve. You think it’s not going to work out and the whole cook-it-in-a-pot thing is downright weird... but actually, it’s how my great-great-grandparents would have cooked their bread and the result is sensational. The basic loaf didn’t last long enough to be photographed.

After commenting that the finished Pane Integral looked like a cowpat (it is rather flat) my beloved helped me polish off half the loaf in one sitting. The crumb is open and even and the bread has real flavour despite having the most basic of ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast.

I am going to work my way through this book: there is carrot bread, peanut bread, chocolate bread. There is foccacia, and pizza, and olive bread, and the book’s party pieces such as Stecca (next on my list to try). The book is illustrated with clear step-by-step photos where needed.

Absurb Baker, you said I’d enjoy this book. I LOVE it!

My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey with Rick Flaste

Published by W & W Norton and Co

ISBN 978-0-393-06630-2

Hardback

Pin It

Boozy Eton Mess – A Celebration of Summer!

Pin It If you’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting a Wexford strawberry that has been basking in rare Irish sunshine, then you’ll remember it as possibly the most strawberry-flavoured strawberry you’ve tasted in your life. Each perfect specimen looks like it was hand-picked to star in an advert for strawberry-related products. They are the super-models of the strawberry world.

Summer 2011 starts right now!

Fantastic as a no-effort dessert, Wexford strawberries and cream were my choice for one of the ‘afters’ at a recent family party. Madame Unexpected-But-Very-Welcome-Guest, the-mother-of-a-friend-of-my-sister’s, was deposited at my door the previous evening due to double-booking of rooms elsewhere. A sweet lady, she was determined to make herself useful as I bustled around the kitchen, hulling strawberries, preparing salads and generally not being a very good hostess.

Another fine mess...



Without a word of English, she gestured that she would whip cream for me. I gratefully accepted as there was about a litre of the stuff. The trouble is, I assume that people know – by osmosis - where everything is in my kitchen, so when I turned around 10 minutes later, I was surprised to find that poor Madame, sweat dripping from her forehead, had bypassed my trusty stand mixer and was whipping the cream by hand. I pointed to the mixer – not sure she knew what it was – and said in that voice that is reserved for poor cross-language communication “IF ... YOU... PUT ... THE ... CREAM... IN ... THERE... – MUCH FASTER. Plus Vite, I added for good measure, feeling rather pleased with my command of French. The poor lady looked at me with a large measure of confusion and a sprinkling of anxiety, and quizzically confirmed the instruction ...“errr... faster?” When I nodded, she started whipping the cream at a rate that rendered her hand a blur.

I'm from Wexford too!

Confiscating the whisk, I sat her down and made her an Irish coffee while the cream was whisked to soft peaks by mechanical means. She, in turn, confiscated the strawberries and made them the star of the show with this slightly boozy version of Eton Mess, a silly name for one of the easiest, most summery desserts in the world. I can’t think of anything more appropriate to celebrate the start of Summer 2011. Happy May Day!



For 2 Summery servings you will need:

300g ripe strawberries

1 – 2 tablespoons icing sugar

1 – 2 tablespoons Strawberry/Raspberry liqueur (Crème de Fraise/Crème de Framboise)

1 ½ - 2 individual ready-made meringue nests, chopped into small bite-sized pieces

125mls double cream, whipped to soft peaks



Fresh mint leaves and 2 perfect strawberries to decorate

1          Start by cutting the strawberries into smallish bite-sized pieces. Place 200g of the chopped strawberries in a mixing bowl. In another bowl, roughly mash the remaining 100g of strawberries and mix in the icing sugar and the strawberry/raspberry liqueur. (You could use a teaspoon of vanilla extract if you prefer). Add to the bowl of chopped strawberries and mix gently.

2          Spoon a little of the strawberry mixture into two beautiful glasses or Sundae dishes.

3          Gently stir the meringue pieces through the whipped cream, followed by about half the remaining strawberry mixture.

4          Spoon some of the cream mixture in the glasses, and add a layer of the strawberry mixture. Continue layering until you have used up both mixtures, finishing with a final layer of the cream mixture.

5          Decorate with the mint leaves and a perfect strawberry.

Wexford Strawberries hard at work soaking up the sunshine

This can be eaten straight away, but I prefer to leave it in the fridge for about an hour to allow the flavours to meld – alchemy at work.

GXBM8778JJ3W Pin It