I have all but stopped buying newspapers. Taking the time to read a whole paper seems like an unaffordable luxury most days, and with several titles that I like doing good online versions, it seems wasteful to buy and then throw out big wads of paper like that. Today, though, I was tempted by the Observer as it was OFM week. It was a very long time since I'd read this supplement, and today I was reminded that it's a really good read! And when you have a collection of nice articles and photography it's much more satisfying to hold them in your hands, in print, than be peering at them online - where you might be more encouraged to skip articles that don't immediately stand out, when in fact they could be very interesting. It also invariably has lots of recipes which call for cutting out and storing in my scrapbook. Today's offering held a cover story about the ubiquitous Jamie Oliver (which despite his utter over-exposure, managed to be engaging and balanced), but more intriguingly, there was a piece about a chef called Damian Allsop, who is intent on re-inventing the process by which chocolate is made. He's found a way of producing fine, flavoured chocolates without adding any extraneous fats or creams. It's just chocolate mixed with water. Of course exactly how it's done is terribly top-secret. Anyway, the article had my mouth watering, and I'm inspired to try and hunt down some of these magic chocolates.
I think to date the best chocolates I have tasted are from the Maison du Chocolat. I was given a box of one of their flavoured assortments as a gift about a year ago, and thought they were very exciting! The flavours, such as ginger, pistachio and almond, rum, were subtle, and the textures really silky and beautiful. I got the bug and gave my dad a box of their truffles for his birthday, and I can see this developing into an expensive habit...
Sunday, 16 November 2008
Paper and Chocolate
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Wrapping Up Warm
So continues the descent into winter, and I still have no decent coat to see me through it, despite promising myself I would buy one before it turned chilly. Well, it's nothing to be surprised about, coat-shopping and I have a long history of abject failure (I remember my mum buying me one or two 'sensible' coats during high school which I shunned in favour of thick and illegal jumpers and two pairs of tights) so I may as well accept it.
Now, winter food is a seasonal routine that I'm much better at! This weekend just gone was so miserable that on Sunday, with plans to have lunch with Maddy (my good friend from uni), and Martina (my flatmate), I decided a pie was the way to go.
I can't claim to be the absolute originator of this pie, because I'm convinced that I saw a similar recipe in a magazine or book recently, and that, truth be told, was the inspiration behind it. However, I added a couple of twists that I'm pretty confident are original, and it all worked a treat.
A Hearty Mushroom, Leek and Stilton Pie
For three or four
About 250g frozen puff pastry slab, defrosted.
Sauce
25g butter
25g flour
250ml milk
60ml single cream
Filling
20g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
250g baby portabella mushrooms, or chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 large leek, sliced diagonally
200g small waxy potatoes, like Charlotte or Anya
10g dried porcini mushrooms
150g stilton
First make the sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan, and add the flour. Cook for about one minute. Add the milk gradually, whisking all the time. Keep whisking over a low heat until the sauce has thickened. Add the single cream and cook for another minute or so. Season (but not too heavily, remember you're adding very salty stilton) and set aside.
Put the porcini mushrooms in a small bowl or jug and cover with hot water. Leave them to soak while you prepare the other ingredients. Cut the potatoes into rounds about 1/2 cm thick. Steam for 10 minutes or until just soft. Set aside.
Melt 10g butter in a pan with 1tbsp olive oil over a fairly high heat until it starts to froth and add the fresh mushrooms. Season with a little salt. Fry the mushrooms until they have given off nearly all their water. (Don't want mushroom-watery pie filling!) Rinse the pan out, set back on the hob and melt the remaining butter with the olive oil. Fry the leek until it starts to turn golden and brown in parts. As you cook press the leek slices gently with a spatula so the centres pop out and have a chance to soften and brown too.
Place the leeks in a pyrex or earthenware dish about 20 x 20 cm. Add the mushrooms and potatoes. Drain the porcini and squeeze out any excess water. Chop and add to the pie dish with the other ingredients. Now crumble in the stilton. Mix so that all the ingredients are well distributed, then pour over the white sauce made earlier. Give the mixture a very gentle stir, well more of a prod, just to make sure the sauce has got into all the nooks and crannies.
Grease the exposed edge of the pie dish. Roll out the pastry and lay over the pie dish, then trim so that there's not too much excess hanging over the edge, but just enough to 'anchor' it to the dish. Pinch the pastry all around the edge of the dish, between your thumb and forefinger.I had some pastry trimmings so I made some little leaves to go on top... And a few holes pierced with a fork don't do any harm. Bake at 220° for 20-25 mins.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Hot Magic
To-ban-jan is one of my favourite recent discoveries. It's a hot, tangy Korean-style chilli sauce that gets used a lot in Japanese versions of Korean food. It's great for stir-fries, marinades and sauces, though it packs a fair punch, so you have to be careful with the dosage.
Today's trip to Whitechapel market gifted me four fat, glossy aubergines for a pound, which I wanted to use immediately. A while back Shoo tore out a recipe for spicy-dressed aubergines from a Japanese newspaper, which fortuitously calls for to-ban-jan; it seemed like the perfect death for them.
However, the recipe calls for steaming the aubergine in the microwave, which at first had me very suspicious. Now, I'm not a massive fan of the micro, but I'm not such a snob that I won't make use of it for the odd cheat or short-cut. Microwaving porridge, for example, is absolutely fine with me as it dirties one dish instead of two. And pre-cooking a potato so that it takes half an hour in the oven? No moral crisis there. So I cast my misgivings aside, and was pleasantly surprised. Not only does the aubergine retain its flavour, but the skin takes on an attractive light purple hue.
The only thing that had me grumbling was, once again, was the crap lighting conditions. How upsetting that such a zingy and flavourome dish should be made to look so pallid! In the interests of honesty, though, I'm including my photo even though it fares badly alongside illustration in the paper.
Ryanbanchezu
Enough for two as a side dish
1 aubergine
4cm piece of leek (white part)
3-4 leaves shiso (optional)
Dressing
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
dash of to-ban-jan
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
salt
Cut the aubergine in half across the short side, then cut each half into thinnish segments. If you're using shiso, cut it into thin ribbons; cut the leek lengthways into very fine strips and place in water.
Arrange the aubergine segments neatly in a pyrex dish so that they overlap and fit tightly. Cover with clingfilm and cook for about 7 minutes in the microwave on high.
Mix the dressing ingredients together in a separate bowl (add the to-ban-jan gradually, tasting as you go)
Drain the excess water from the aubergines and place in a serving dish. Spoon the dressing over and top with the shredded leek (and shiso if you're using it).
And another idea: As the aubergine is steamed, this recipe turns out a light, summery dish. To make it more autumnal - and more decadent - you could shallow-fry the aubergine in small batches in a mixture of sunflour and olive oil, before spooning on the dressing.
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Sweet Sunday
I feel like I've been on the move all day. Too tired to babble on, but I will say that I've hit on a recipe that fulfills my expectations of a satisfying brownie.
Thin, dark and chewy in the middle (even gooey, when straight out of the oven) and with an ever-so-thin crust of chocolatey sugar on top, that cracks in a very pleasing way when you cut them into squares, and again when you take your first bite.
Lately all kinds of exciting things have been happening in the brownie world - ingredients as diverse as beetroot and prunes insinuating their way in; blondies stealing the limelight and whatnot. Maybe now that I've found a formula I'm happy with I can start experimenting myself. In the meantime, these are the basics:
Perfect Brownies
Makes one tray about 20 x 30cm
110g butter
100g 70% dark chocolate
200g granulated sugar
2 eggs
30g cocoa powder
60g superfine (type '00') flour
1g baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, and melt the chocolate separately in a bain-marie. Whisk the melted butter into the chocolate.
Beat the eggs and add to the butter/chocolate mixture gradually, whisking all the time.
Whisk in cocoa, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, vanilla.
Pour into a rectangular baking tin abou 20 x 30cm, pre-lined with baking parchment.
(Note: best to use one that's relatively high-sided, so there's less danger of the rising mixture spilling over the top)
Bake for 20 minutes at 180° in the centre of the oven. Allow to cool a little before cutting into squares.
Hard to improve on such a good thing, but good vanilla or praline ice-cream would be a nice addition ;)
Saturday, 1 November 2008
No Food, Just Thoughts
It's been a full-on week. Japanese class at SOAS is going really well. After a pep talk from sensei last week about submitting essays and projects, I went in on Tuesday all charged up and armed with a short essay on Mrs. Beeton. Then on Wednesday I got an email from Academia Rossica, the Russian cultural organisation. It was about reviews of 2 films from their Russian Film Festival (back in September) that I wrote for Eyeforfilm. It turns out the next issue of their journal, Rossica (which is a rather attractive publication, covering Russian arts and culture) is a film special, and they wanted me to write short versions of both to go in it! Though I love writing for the web, it will be very nice to see my work in print, on paper.
Cue a very busy end-of-week. Throw in a Halloween party yesterday, on the other side of town, and you have a tired wee girl crawling home at six this morning. That's why the sumtotal of today's cooking was toast with marmite. The great thing about going on a bender on Friday night is that even if you spend Saturday recovering, you still have half the weekend left.
Having no culinary adventures whatsoever to report on this week, I thought I'd write a word or two about the blog itself. When I first started The Floating Kitchen, over a year ago, it was intended as a kind of therapy for the weird reverse culture-shock I was experiencing on returning to the UK after 2 years in Japan. Since then I've written very sporadically, mostly because my next move, to London this time, was another big displacement and it took time to find my feet. So the blog was sadly neglected. Today though, scanning back through the entries, I realised I've managed to post for 3 consecutive Saturdays, and I nearly made it four - unfortunately it's already 2 am on Sunday morning! (This is what happens when you sleep all day... ) Nothing special in itself, I know, but right now for me it's an achievement!
So where is this all leading? Well, hopefully to more experiments in the kitchen, to a more dedicated revisiting of the Japanese food that I grew to love so intensely, to more thorough writing about all the amazing foody opportunities around me here in London. That, dear reader, is my promise to you and to myself starting today.
