A food blog from a would be gastrop*rnographer

Lait Lardé: Bacon flavoured fried cheese

2013-04-15T06:33:00.001+02:00

I will start with a warning to readers - this is a long post!

Because I have done a rather hefty bit of documentation for this recipe, I will start by giving you the final product, and then go on to the background. That way if you just want to try making it, you can do so. If you want to know where the recipe came from, read on, and if you want to know more about the history of the ingredients etc. read on further.

What can you do to cheese to make it even better? Add bacon, and fry it!

On the stove, curds separating from the whey

Recipe

24 threads of saffron
250g smoked speck pieces
2 litres of whole (NOT lowfat) milk
1 cup of verjuice
cloves
pine nuts

Take milk, and put it in a pot, and put it on the fire to heat up. Add the lardons, and ground saffron and gradually raise to boiling temperature. Take off the heat and add the verjuice to curdle the milk.

Allow to cool in the whey. Once cooled, pour it into a piece of straining cloth and form it into a long flat shape. Place a heavy weight on top (I used nested containers and piled up weights on the container on top) and keep in the fridge overnight. The next day, slice into pieces and fry in a pan with a bit of bacon grease. Serve on plates and sprinkle with ground clove and pine nuts.

Serving suggestion: if you strain out the bacon bits after cooking, you will get a more solid cheese, but still with the lovely flavour.

The cheese curds ready to be pressed

The fully monty: Lait Lardé (Larded Milk)

A 14^th century French cheese

Recipe source (or... who came up with this idea anyway?)

Le Viandier de Taillevent is a cookbook attributed to Guillaume Tirel (1310 – 1395), who was the cook of Charles V and master of the kitchen stores of Charles VI.

14^the and 15^th century manuscripts of this cookbook are in existence: in the Biblioteque Nationale (France), the cantonal library of Sion (Switzerland), the Biblioteque Mazarine (France), and the Vatican Library (Italy).

Originally I found a recipe in the book “Le Viandier de Taillevent” by James Prescott. This claims to be a translation of a transcription of the Vatican Library manuscript.

Larded Milk

Take some [cow's], boil it on the fire, lift it down from the fire, put it on a few coals, and thread in beaten egg yolks. If you wish it for a meat day, take lardons, cut them into two or three bits, and throw them into the milk to boil. If you wish it for a fish day, do not add lardons, but throw in some wine and verjuice to curdle it before you lift it down. Remove it from the fire, put it in a white cloth, let it drain, wrap it in 2 or 3 layers of the cloth, and press it until it is as firm as beef liver. Put it on a table, slice it into strips the size of a full palm or three fingers, button them with whole cloves, fry them till they are browned, set them out and throw some sugar on top.

However as the word “Lardé” is fundamental I wished to satisfy myself that this was a correct translation of the original French.

I obtained transcriptions (in French) of the Sion, Mazarine and Biblioteque Nationale manuscripts, and was disconcerted to find that none of them contained the recipe at all. I obtained a transcription of the Vatican manuscript but unfortunately it also did not contain the recipe.

After further research I discovered that in 1893 they discovered a second part to the Vatican Library manuscript which contains 23 additional recipes, including that for Lait Lardé.

Scully's “Early French Cookery” provides the recipe in French:

Lait Lardé

Prenez le lait de vasche ou de brebis, et mectez fremier sur le feu. Et gectez des lardons et du saffran et ayez oeufs (scilicet blanc et moyeaux) bien batuz, et gectez a ung coup sans mouvoir, et faictes boulir tout ensemble. Et apres hostez hors du feu et laissiez tourner; ou sans ouefz les fait l'en tourner de vertjus. Et quant il est reffroidié l'en le lye bien fort en une piece de toille ou estamine, et luy donne l'en quelque fourme que l'en veult, ou plate ou longue, et chargié d'une grosse pierre laissiez reffroidier sur ung drecourer toute nuyt. Et l'endemain laiché, et frit au fer de paelle (et se frit de luy mesmes sans autre gresse, ou a gresse qui veult) et est mis en platz ou escuelles comme lesche de lart, et lardé de giroffle et de pignolet; et qui le veult faire vert, si prengne du tournesot.

And “Menagier de Paris”, contains an English translation:

Larded Milk

Simmer cow's or sheep's milk and add bits of diced bacon and saffron. Take whole eggs, scilicet the white and yolks, beat well and pour in all at once, without stirring, boiling all together. Remove from the fire and let it curdle; or without eggs, use verjuice to make it curdle. When it is cool, fasten it tightly in a piece of linen or cheesecloth and give it whatever shape you wish, either flat or long, and weight it with a large rock, leaving it to cool overnight on a sideboard. The next day, open it up and fry in an iron skillet – it needs no added grease, but you can add some if you wish – and place it on plates or in bowls like slices of bacon, and stick it with cloves and pine nuts. Should you want a green colour, use tournsoc.

This is clearly a very different recipe from the one written by James Prescott, which contains no references to sheeps milk, saffron, uses just egg yolks not whole eggs, uses wine and verjuice to curdle, and sprinkles the final dish with sugar (omitting the pine nuts). I was glad I spent the time to research and find a more accurate description!

However, I decided that I should, in fact, attempt to translate the original French myself. I speak some French so a fair amount of the recipe was understandable to me, however to deal with unfamiliar words and to try to ensure that I was making the minimum of linguistic assumptions, I obtained a facsimile of a 1611 French/English dictionary, which I used to translate. While this dictionary is much later than the Taillevent manuscript it seemed to me a closer bet than a modern dictionary.

Here follows my translation:

Larded Milk (translation by Kiriel)

Take the milk of a cow or sheep, and put in a tub [Mect is translated as a tub or trough] and put on the fire to simmer. Cast lardons [this term is also used in modern French, in which it refers to matchsticks of thick bacon – in 1611 it is read as “the little slice or piece of lard wherewith meat is stucke”] and saffron and whole eggs (Indeed [Yay! The hivemind that is my friends have given me the translation of scilicet, confirming to me that I really need that out-of-print latin-french dictionary!] white and middle), well beaten, and cast this in one blow, without stirring, boiling all together. And after lift off the fire and leave to turn, or if you have not added eggs, use verjuice to turn [curdle] the milk.

And when it is cooled, pour it into a piece of toille [voile – translation is actually tuille] or seiving cloth and give it what form you wish, flat or long, and press with a large rock, leaving to cool under a cover overnight. The next day, open and fry on the fire in a pan (and you can fry it without other grease, or with grease if you want), and place on plates or in a porringer like leaves of bacon, and top with clove and pine nuts; and if you would make it green, then use tournsot [I believe this might be tournesoc, a plant commonly used in period for colouring].

There are not many real differences between my version and the previous translation, however at least one of these is significant – the first sticks cloves into the pieces, whereas my translation says to top with cloves, which could be ground instead. I believe this is a much more likely scenario – why waste entire cloves when you are just after the flavour?

If you would like to know more, here is my article on the ingredients themselves.

The ingredients (Bacon flavoured cheese part 2)

2013-04-15T06:30:00.001+02:00

The ingredients

(wherein Kiriel establishes that lards aint lard, and investigates the pH of verjuice)

This recipe contains few ingredients, but the use of them is not as simple as you might assume! So let's go through each one.

Saffron

Saffron was the King of spices in the medieval world. Incredibly expensive, outrageously colourful and equally exquisitely delicate in flavour, these flower stamens remain today the world's most expensive spice. The strands are toasted lightly to dry them out so that they can be ground up and added to dishes. Imitation saffron powder will give a similar colour, however will not give the very specific flavour that real saffron imparts to the dish.

Just as Taillevent cooked for Kings, so I cook for judges deserved of great esteem, and thefore use a generous portion of this precious spice.

Lardons

The 1611 French/English dictionary describes lardons as “the little slice or piece of lard wherewith meat is stucke”. In modern France this remains pretty much the same – lardons are something akin to what we would call “bacon bits”, but in a more of a thick matchstick form.

Whatever form they are in, one thing is reasonably sure – medieval lardons would have been saltier than modern equivalents. Smoking and salting meat was the most common way of preserving meat, as refrigeration options were much more limited for the medieval cook. A well smoked and/or salted ham can be eaten for years – unlike the average slab of bacon you buy in the supermarket now! Try a lovely slender slice of Spanish jamon iberico and be converted forever away from pale and flaccid bacon!

For my initial experiments with the recipes, I tried a supermarket bacon, but it quickly became clear that as one of the fundamental flavours of this recipe, it just did not work.

I tried the recipe again with a mature salt cured speck and the improvement was enormous, but it still was missing the smoky flavour I felt was needed.

I visited two butchers that smoke their own meats and bought a wedge of speck from each. They were very different from each other and both delicious, and choosing which was the better flavour was challenging (oh the sacrifices I make for my cooking, eating lots of bacon flavoured cheese!)

Milk

Milk of course in period was not homogenised nor pasteurised. Homogenisation is the process by which the fats (the cream) in milk are broken up and distributed through the milk, where naturally they would slowly rise to the top of the bottle or carton as cream. Pasteurisation is a process whereby milk is raised to a high temperature to kill off bacteria.

What difference does this make to cheesemaking? Ask any French cheesemaker and they are likely to simply throw their hands up in the air and mutter something along the lines of “Philistine!” at the question. Homogenisation does not in my experience in fact make a great deal of difference at least at the level of cheesemaking in this recipe.

Pasteurisation does make a difference. Hundreds of modern French and Swiss cheeses are made from unpasteurised milk. These cheeses tend to have a far stronger smell than any Australian cheese you will ever have tasted, although surprisingly, often a far milder taste than you expect. Unpasteurised milk is hard to get in Australia – you can sometimes buy it as “bath milk” from organic shops.

Other things that also made a difference in period, and in some countries continue to make a difference is the season, and the feed the animals eat. The amount of fat in the milk changes according to the season and the taste and properties of the milk change dependent on the diet of the animal – Vacherin Mont d'Or for example is made from a mixture of milks – one part from when the cows eat spring grasses, and one part from when they eat hay – oh and only from one particular mountain in France.

I tried this recipe with both homogenised and non-homogenised milk, achieving the same results. You do need to use whole milk though, not skim or non-fat!

I made the decision not to use sheeps milk a) because I couldn't find it and b) I thought it best to try and get a more familiar taste in the cheese.

Verjuice

I started this experiment trying both verjuice and wine (as per the James Prescott version of the recipe). With new white wine, the milk refused to curdle. With verjuice it refused to curdle. A few days later the same wine (having sat on the kitchen bench) mixed with verjuice did curdle. I also tried with red wine which worked excellently:

But of course then I discovered that my recipe was wrong, so had to abandon the whole wine experience. I tried again with verjuice and again it failed. I tried with verjuice mixed with lemon juice and had much greater success. I decided it was time to investigate the properties of verjuice a bit further.

Verjuice is unfermented grape juice produced from early season grapes – picked before they are fully ripened. But the acidic qualities of verjuice differ from grape to grape, and within the season Menagier de Paris states that “in July old verjuice is very weak and the new is still too sharp. After this time, during the harvest, a mixture of half old and half new is best”. (recipe 279).

It was common in period too, to have substitutes for verjuice, since its unfermented nature meant that it did not preserve well. In the Italian period cookbook Libro della Cocina, it is advised that you could use lemon juice, orange juice or rosewater as substitutes. Menagier de Paris even provides a recipe for a sorrel based verjuice.

I concluded that the verjuice I had (Maggie Beer) was probably a bit more sophisticated and less acid than period verjuice. To test the acidity of my verjuice, I sought out testing strips. After some searching I had to settle on purchasing a set of strips to test swimming pools and spas. Unsurprisingly the acidity of lemons is rather off the scale compared to that of the average swimming pool but it still provided some useful data.

I compared Maggie Beer verjuice, Anchor verjuice, (squeeze) lemon juice, and later, vinegar.

The Maggie Beer tested slightly differently to the Anchor verjuice, which showed equivalently to the lemon juice in both alkalinity and pH. Interestingly the Anchor showed very low traces of free chlorine, and the vinegar's pH test result was outright bizarre.

So from then on I used the Anchor verjuice, to much better effect. The taste of verjuice in the cheese is quite different from lemon and very pleasing.

Cloves

Freshly ground cloves – ah that smell, redolent of mulled wine and easter buns! An absolute staple in every sophisticated medieval kitchen, cloves were among the most prized and necessary spices. Every cook would have a pouch of cloves and they were an essential ingredient in the classic medieval spice mixture, powder forte.

You may feel wary that something as spicy and strong as cloves would overwhelm this dish, but have faith... there is something magical that seems to happen when you combine cloves and speck...!

Pine nuts

There are many species of pine that produce edible pine nuts. As an ingredient in my research I have seen them mainly being used in period Italian and French cookery.

A brief mention of tournsoc:

This is Gozophoria tinctoria, a lichen – it is naturally blue but turns red in acid situations and blue in alkaline – presumably the combination of it and saffron creates the green mentioned in the recipe.

References:

Secondary

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Vatican manuscript
Le Viandier de Taillevent – Sion manuscript

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Mazarine manuscript

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Biblioteque Nationale manuscript

A dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), by Randle Cotgrave

Tertiary

Early French cookery – Scully

The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages – Terence Scully

Le Viandier de Taillevent – James Prescott *I do not recommend using this!

Restaurant review: Canberra: Koochi Afghan cafe

2013-03-19T14:36:00.000+01:00

Dear reader,

My penurous state has meant that I haven't been in a position to indulge myself fully in rediscovering the joys of the Canberran restaurant scene, however that does not mean I have been entirely stuck at home researching old recipes.

In fact, the other day I found a little gem that I thought I really had to share with you.

The Koochi Afghan cafe is in Gungahlin - yes I know for many of my Canberra readers, this is the equivalent of outer Mongolia, and I admit that I was not holding out a great deal of hope to find a decent meal.

But Koochi sparked my curiosity and I decided to give it a go.

The restaurant was quiet (but so was the whole of the area at the time), with only a solo diner and a small family beside myself. I was invited to sit anywhere, and settled myself down in a window seat.

The decor is all very modern, apart from the rather charming ceiling which has wooden beams and is hung with modified kerosine lamps.

I ordered a cup of tea and chose for my lunch Borrani Bonjon - described as pan-fried eggplant, topped with tomatoes, onions and drizzled with yoghurt and dried mint, served with rice.

Now I do love a bit of well prepared aubergine, and as the dish was placed before me I had to admire the colour and presentation - a rich red, swirled with yoghurt. They gave me the dish of aubergine, rice, a yoghurt based dip, and a fresh condiment that they called chutney - but you need to imagine something more like a light chilli dressing.

The scent of my dish was so tempting I took a bite immediately. Oh my. What a glorious balance of sweet and savoury and of delicate spices. It was at that moment that I decided that I had to write this review. That is why the photo I took (which I will post shortly) has a bite out of it.

I didn't quite get to the point of licking the plate, but I can promise you, there was not a morsel left of that dish. The price of this memorable meal? $12 for the dish itself - prices for meals range from 12 to 32 dollars, depending mostly on the meat factor. There is a 32 platter to share for two, which I would like to try next time..

Try it... go on, head out to outer Mongolia and let me know if you love it too!

Koochi Cafe
Gungahlin Marketplace

Deepest Darkest Chocolate Fudge biscuits

2012-09-25T14:03:00.003+02:00

Ok, I am about to share with you one of my most precious recipes. These amazingly rich, tasty and chewy biscuits (cookies for my US friends, so don't go thinking this is a scone recipe!) are seriously unbelievably good. The recipe was given to me by my friend Jocelyn, for which I will thank her forever.

It is a rare recipe that uses this much chocolate without being too sweet. Cocoa, melted chocolate, chocolate chips, this recipe has it all, and the final result is truly special.

One of the fun things too about this recipe is sharing the list of ingredients with friends... making a double batch particularly so, because then you can tell them that it contains 1.3 KILOS of chocolate chips.

I think that one of the keys to this recipe is beating the butter and sugar by hand... I don't know why it is, but I do it by hand, and my version seems to come out better than those made by friends using a mixer. Proof that there are times in life, where it is best to do things the slow way. If you are going to use a mixer, I advise beating on a slow speed.

Deepest Darkest Chocolate Fudge Biscuits (cookies)

214g plain flour
56g cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt
227g milk chocolate broken into pieces
113g unsweetened chocolate broken up (a nice dark bittersweet will do)
340g soft light brown sugar
170g unsalted butter (take out of the fridge to soften)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

OPTIONAL - 680g plain chocolate chips.

Method

Sift flour, cocoa, bicarb and salt. Set aside.

Put plain and unsweetened chocolate pieces into a double boiler and heat for 12 - 15 minutes. Stir till smooth and keep at room temperature until needed. (You can microwave the chocolate instead, but be very careful not to over cook it)

Beat butter and sugar. Once creamed, add eggs, one at a time, beating into to the mixture. Add vanilla essence and beat. Add chocolate and beat. Add flour mixture and chocolate chips stirring until thoroughly combined.

For lovely big giant cookies, drop a tablespoon of mix per biscuit onto baking sheets (about 6-8 biscuits per sheet). For more normal sized biscuits, a heaped teaspoon is about right.
Bake on the top and middle rack of the oven at 170ºC for 15 minutes, rotating half way through baking time. Do keep an eye on the time, as the high sugar content means that they can burn very easily.

Cool on sheets for 5-6 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack.

Sit back and enjoy one of the most sensational sweet experiences of your life.

Interesting new marinade

2012-07-02T14:34:00.003+02:00

Last weekend I joined some friends for the weekend in a 17th century chateau in Burgundy (sorry I know I am boasting... I can't help myself!).

On the first night, we were cooking a BBQ for dinner. My friend Christoph had bought some Bon Maman chestnut spread... he didn't quite know what it was when he bought it, but thought it might be interesting to try.

He and his girlfriend decided that it might be fun to use it as a sort of marinade on some chicken breasts they had bought for the BBQ. I suggested that mixing it with grainy Dijon mustard might balance the sweetness, so Monika did just that; smeared the chicken with pretty close to even quantities of mustard and chestnut spread.

The chicken was cooked, and the marinade declared to be an unqualified success. I thought I would post it up here so that I would remember it, and maybe you could try it sometime. It proves once more that the real key to exciting cooking is the willingness to just experiment, and try new things that you haven't tried before.

Renaissance fresh cheese fritters

2012-04-27T21:33:00.000+02:00

This simply gorgeous recipe is redacted from a translation of "The art of cooking, composed by the Eminent Maestro Martino of Como". This 15th century manuscript showcases some of the finest Italian renaissance cuisine, and has been published as "The art of cooking: the first modern cookery book" by the University of California press.

The recipe is called "Fritters made with egg whites, sifted flour, and fresh cheese" The main recipe and technique is from the previous recipe for Elderflower fritters, so I will give you the relevant bits of that recipe as well.

Recipe 1: Take some good fresh cheese, and a little aged cheese, and crush well, adding a bit of sifted flour to them and the necessary amount of egg whites; likewise, a little milk and some sugar; and grind all these things well together.. [bits about elderflowers removed]. so you can form the round fritters using your hands, or in whatever shape you like, and then fry them in good rendered lard or butter, or in good oil, and serve very hot.

Recipe 2: Follow the directions and method described in the previous recipe, but add neither milk nor elderflowers to these fritters.

Here is my version.

Fresh Cheese Fritters

250g ricotta cheese
60g parmesan, grated
2 egg whites
60g white flour
sugar

Take the ricotta and grated parmesan, and put them in a bowl. Gradually add the sifted flour, the egg whites and just a pinch of sugar. Form round fritters using your hands, and fry them in a little oil. Serve them hot. (hint: I found that having wet hands made it easier to stop the dough from sticking to the hands)

Incredibly easy, and quite incredibly delicious. Makes approximately 12 fritters.

Bizcochos - renaissance Spanish recipe

2012-03-28T01:14:00.005+02:00

This recipe is from a book by Diego Granado, "Libro del Arte de Cozina", 1599 trans. by Lady Brighid ni Chiarain

Take twelve eggs, and remove the whites from four of them, and with a little orange-flower water beat them a great deal, and grind a pound of sugar, and cast it in little by little, always beating quickly, and cast in flour, or powdered wheat starch, and beat it with force. Having cast in the said flour, when they see that it is necessary, and very fine, and the dough must remain white, just as for fritters, and then cast it in your pots, and carry them to the oven, and when half-cooked remove them, and dust them with well-ground sugar, and cut them to your taste, and return them to the oven, and let them finish baking a second time: and if they wish when they beat them, cast in as much white wine as an eggshell, it will be good.

My version of the recipe:

3 eggs
1 egg white
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp orange flower water
1 tsp wine

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees

Beat the eggs, wine and orange flower water till fluffy but not dry. Add the sugar slowly while continuing to beat. Once well blended and dissolved, add 2 cups of flour gradually, continuing to beat. This will make a sticky dough.

Put this into a loaf tin and bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes till the loaf is set and firm to the touch but not browned.

Allow to cool. Slice thinly.

Drop the oven temperature to 140 degrees. Lay the slices of cake on oven trays and put back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes until lightly browned.

These strongly resemble modern biscotti minus almonds, and are crisp and light and would be great with coffee.

Fine Cakes

2012-03-07T19:06:00.001+01:00

This recipe is from "The Widowes Treasure" which was published in 1639. It is pretty much a spiced shortbread, but made, interestingly, with pre-baked flour. This gives them a really beautiful crisp texture.

The original version:

Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in an earthen pot. Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long as you would a pasty of Venison, and when it baked it will be full of clods.Then searce your flower through a fine sercer.

Then take clouted Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then take sugar, cloves, mace, saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil seeme to season your flower. Then put these things into the Creame, temper all together. Then put thereto your flower. So make your cakes. The paste will be very short; therefore make them very little. Lay paper under them.

My version:
1 cup plain flour
3 oz butter
1 generous pinch of saffron
3 cloves
1/8 tsp mace
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg yolk

Bake flour for 20 minutes at 180 degrees, in a closed caserole dish. Sift.

Grind spices with sugar. Cream butter, sugar/spice and egg yolk till the consistency of thick cream. Fold in flour.

I pressed small amounts of this mixture into molds to make flour shapes, which popped out of the flexible mold easily. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 180 degrees.

Guerilla cooking

2011-09-06T23:04:00.000+02:00

I rented an apartment on the meditterranean for a week to study. The plus to this was that I was away from my normal space, and forced to study. The hard part was that being away from my kitchen, its tools and ingredients.

You don't realise what you have till its gone!

I arrived to find a kitchen that did have pots and a fry pan, a microwave, two hotplates (which I discovered through bitter trial and error have their numbering back to front), crockery and cutlery.

The glaring omissions were that it had no oven, sharp knives (a blunt paring knife and a twisted out of shape blunt peeler were in evidence), chopping board, storage containers, cooking tools such as slotted spoon, serving spoons, tongs, ladle.
Also no food.

Well, to give credit where it is due, there was a bottle of salt. So what to buy? I had no desire to buy a whole pile of foodstuffs and kitchen tools for someone else. I needed food for 5 days of staying in, so I needed variety, simplicity, and flexibility. And a sharp knife.

When I got to the supermarket I found some cheeses that had a cheeseboard included for free. 1 problem down. I found a little purple knife for 4 euros. Another problem down. A packet of "herbs de provence", some oil, pepper and I was just about at the end of the things I was willing to buy and donate to the apartment owner. Until I stumbled upon one of those sets of plastic containers... 14 containers for 3.90 euros. Yup I will have that.

I bought some meat, some bread, some vegetables... the usual stuff. I was set, vaguaries of my desires set aside.

Two days in and my second meal of pork chop, potato and sweet potato. The first time around it was burnt pork chop (see above comment on the stove) and mashed potato and sweet potato (pressed with a drinking glass then mashed with a fork). This time I had an onion to add to the excitement and had boiled the potato and sweet potato. But the dish cried out for a gravy. But... I had no flour, no stock... nothing to make it from!

I looked around. Ahah. There was the packet of french onion soup I had bought in case the predicted rainy day happened. There too was the "pompote" I got as part of my 'kids meal' at a cafe the day before (I usually find that a kids meal is actually more than enough food than we need and, limits in options aside, is very good value. 3.50 euros for a little hamburger patty, fries or vegetables, a drink and a dessert [the aforementioned pompote]). A pompote is a sort of apple mush in a squishy tube.

So I fried up my fresh onion, sprinkled on a tablespoon of the french onion soup mix and squeezed out a good dollop of the pompote. Gradually added some water and raised it to a simmer. What do you know? I had a very yummy gravy!

It just shows what you can do with a bit of imagination and willingess to experiment.

Shared redaction: Roman "Sauce for grilled young tuna"

2011-03-27T21:32:00.010+02:00

This recipe is from book 10, chapter 1, recipe 13 of Apicius - a Roman 1st century cookbook. The translation is by Grocock and Grainger.

The original recipe has no quantities and is translated as:

Pepper, lovage, oregano, green coriander, onion, de-seeded raisins, passum, vinegar, liquamen, defrutum, oil and cook it. This sauce is also suitable for boiled fish. If you wish, add honey too.

No quantities, no hints, just that.

So.... how did we turn this into a recipe that you and I might use? After all there are some ingredients here that you are unlikely to be able to buy off the shelf! Well with a bit of research you will find that liquimen is a form of fish sauce also known in roman recipes as "garum garos" & "muria". An acceptable replacement for every day use is Thai fish sauce. Defrutum is made from reducing sweet wine or sweet grape juice (must) to 1/3 of its original volume. Passum is sweet raisin wine (muscat is the perfect thing).

So, my friend Steve and I got busy playing with his beautiful new craticula - a Roman stove, based on one found in Pompei. He also has a lovely matching Roman pot to use as well.

Here is the recipe we came up with - it is very easy and we decided a definite two thumbs up from all of those who ate it. The sauce is enough to go with fish for four people.

3 tsp Thai fish sauce

1 cup muscato reduced to 1/3

1/3 cup muscat

1/4 cup of red wine vinegar

3/4 cup water (Roman vinegar was much weaker than our modern 5% acid vinegars)

2 tblspn chopped coriander (we used 1 because one of our eaters is not keen on coriander)

2 tblspn lovage (we couldn't find lovage in fact on the day, so used 3 tblspn flat leaf parsley)

1/3 cup raisins

1/2 a large onion

1 tsp freshly squeezed pepper

1/3 cup oil

1 tsp dried oregano (if using fresh then 2 tblspns)

700g tuna

Slice the onions into fine rings (you can chop finely instead - we did the first time but think the sliced rings would be prettier).

Place all the ingredients in a pot. Raise to a slow boil and simmer for about half an hour. Grill your fish and then serve with the sauce on top. You can stir a little honey in if you like a little sweetness in your sauces.

We tried this both with tuna and a milder flavoured fish (haddock) and recommend you stick to a good meaty fish as the haddock was overpowered.

This was so yummy that we sopped up the left over sauce with bread... mmm....

Apple and cinnamon cupcakes

2011-03-05T21:07:00.005+01:00

2 tsp cinnamon

4 tsp vegetable oil

4 tsp baking powder

250g caster sugar

320g plain flour

50g unsalted butter, melted

2 lightly beaten eggs

175ml buttermilk

2 peeled finely diced apples

Turn the oven to 175 degrees (350F). Line a cupcake tin with paper liners (this recipe makes 12 decent sized cupcakes)

In a bowl combine the sifted dry ingredients.

In a large bowl beat the liquid ingredients until well combined. Add the dry ingredients and beat until nearly combined. Stir in the apples - careful not to overmix!

Bake for 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, and then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack. Top with brown sugar frosting. These keep for up to 2 days or freeze (without icing for up to 3 months).

Honey malt slice

2011-02-24T00:55:00.005+01:00

This wickedly rich slice is based on a recipe from the Women's Weekly "biscuits and slices" recipe book.

340 grams of butter

2/3 cup honey

1 1/2 cups malted milk powder

4 cups corn flakes

4 cups rice bubbles

1 cup ground almonds

1 cup desiccated coconut

1. Lightly grease and line 2 20x30cm baking trays. Take a sheet of baking paper and lay it along the pans, allowing the paper to extend beyond the edge of the pan.

2. Combine the malted milk powder, butter and honey in a saucepan. Stir on a low heat until the butter is melted. Pour over the dry ingredients, stir, then pour the mixture into the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate till set.

Pear and butterscotch clafouti

2010-12-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

Clafouti was originally made with cherries, but has developed far further and now includes all sorts of fruit. I love it, as a simple, quick to make and incredibly elegant dessert.

Traditional cherry clafouti includes a splash of kirsch. I decided to make a pear clafouti this time around - decided by having a surfeit of eggs in the house, and a large tin of pears at hand. To add a little extra twist, I had a think about flavours and concluded that butterscotch schnapps might just work. And indeed it does - the butterscotch schnapps being quite a warm creamy flavour it worked well with the custard and contrasted with the slightly crisper sharper edge of the pear.

Now I am sure a purist would use freshly sliced pears for this recipe, but then again, a purist wouldn't be allowing butterscotch schnapps anywhere either, so they can go be purist and we can enjoy the fruits of our experimental labours. Tinned pears mean that you can create this delicious dessert at any time of the year or day of the week. If you do use fresh pears, peel and core them, and slice them thinly.

Ingredients

Butter
5 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (I make my own by keeping my vanilla bean pods in the sugar jar)
1/2 cup sifted flour
1 and a half tablespoons butterscotch schnapps
1 cup (250ml) cream (normal 35% fat cream is fine; occasionally I even use sour cream)
3 extra tablespoons of caster sugar
1 large tin of pears, drained

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Take a large ceramic or glass pie dish (a gratin dish will do at a pinch). Grease the bottom with the butter and sprinkle it with the caster sugar; shake the dish to get an even spread of sugar.

Place the eggs and vanilla sugar in a bowl and beat until pale and creamy Sprinkle on the flour, add the cream and the butterscotch schnapps and mix with the whisk to combine well.

Arrange the pears around the dish in an attractive pattern. Pour the batter over the top.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until set. Allow to cool, and serve sprinkled lightly with sugar, with or without icecream.

Chocolate Caramel Slice

2010-12-06T16:00:00.001+01:00

This is a bit of an Aussie classic, and is totally rich and sweet and addictive. I took a tray of these to a potluck the other night. My friend Kate tried one and decided that she was skipping all the other food at the party (quiches, salads, crumbles and pies) and was going to eat nothing but these for her dinner!

Base
2 cups self raising flour
250g butter
1 1/2 cups dessicated coconut
1 cup fine sugar

Caramel Layer
2 tins of sweetened condensed milk (around 400g each)
60 grams of butter
60mls (4 tablespoons)golden syrup

Topping
300g dark chocolate
40g copha/vegetable shortening

Method

Turn the oven on to warm up, to 180 degrees. Start by making the base. Put all the dry base ingredients in a bowl. Melt the butter, allow to cool a little and then mix into the dry ingredients. Line the base of a baking dish with baking paper (allowing the paper to go up two sides to help you get the slice our later). Tip the base into the tin and spread and press down with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 10 - 15 minutes until lightly golden. Cool.

While the base is baking, start the caramel - put all the ingredients in a pot and heat them, stirring continuously for 8-10 minutes - it will thicken and go golden. Pour over the biscuit base and spread out to ensure the base is covered. Cool until set (this will take 3 or 4 hours in the fridge).

Then, in a double boiler, heat the chocolate and copha and stir together till melted and pourable. Pour over the caramel and biscuit, and then cool again. Cut into squares to serve.

Hmmm... my project food blog intro

2010-09-19T00:27:00.015+02:00

So I decided to enter this "Project Foodblog Challenge" thing. This first step is more challenging than I expected. I have to share with you what defines me as a food blogger and what makes me a food blog star... It is rare that I analyse this particular part of my life.

Like most of my foodblogging friends I am passionate about food and cooking.

I guess what I have that is perhaps a little rare in the grand foodblog community is simply the span of my cooking. Not just doing home cooking, nor modern cooking, nor cooking from a particular area, my food spans not only countries, but centuries.

How many foodbloggers are catering for 200 people, as well as making dinner for one? How many are exploring medieval and renaissance recipes as well as inventing completely new and different food? Giving restaurant reviews across the world, as well as sharing recipes and cooking tips. How many are cooking Italian, French, Japanese, Australian, English, Malaysian, Indonesian, Hungarian... the world on a plate? Hosting and cooking challenge dinner parties, organising social restaurant outings, and teaching cooking from pasta to sushi? Ooh, and I forgot.. doing a bit of food design for my friend's published cookbook on the side. Many are doing one or two of these things, but I suspect very few do them all.

I hope that what I also do is share what I love most about cooking: the adventure, the fun, and how wonderfully simple it all can be.

I put together this photo montage of myself, to sort of sum up my foodie self... ======>

To vote for me and keep me cooking and experimenting, head over to the Project Foodblog site.

On a slightly different subject....

2010-08-31T23:09:00.004+02:00

I have mixed pride about my food photography, and in fact my photography generally.

Sometimes I take shots that I am absolutely thrilled with, but rather more often the photos are ok at best. I do wish I had more talent, but to be truthful, don't spend the time really learning enough about photography to become expert. That said, among the chaff are some real gems and I have decided to share them in a more formal fashion.

I just wanted to tell you that I now have a Redbubble site, where you can buy prints in the form of greetings cards and posters of some of my photos. Even if you don't lash out and buy anything, I would love it if you visited my site and commented on photos you like...

Tomato sauce/ketchup

2010-08-14T18:08:00.001+02:00

So I had made the sausage rolls, but it seemed a terrible shame to serve them with commercial tomato sauce.

But what recipe to use? A quick rummage through my cookbooks turned up nothing. Hmm... time to get inventing!

1.7kg tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 large onions
1.5 cups vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 cups water

Chop the onions finely. Cook with a splash of olive oil in a deep heavy bottomed saucepan until softened and transparent. Add the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Drop to a simmer, and simmer for an hour, topping up with water if required. Push through a seive and pour into jars.

-----------
Someone asked for my judgement on how it worked out. I would describe it as a complete success (I don't post up my failures ). Well worth the effort to make it. It was a little spicier somehow than a commercial tomato sauce. Maybe if I am lucky one of the guests at the wedding will post up their perspectives on it!

Party food - traditional sausage rolls

2010-05-22T14:15:00.005+02:00

I have another catering gig - my friend Oggy's wedding. I gave the bride and groom a list of potential dishes, from which they could choose a menu. They asked what the chances were of having every one of them, as they liked the sound of all of them so much! But the groom also had his own special request: sausage rolls.

I have posted up a sausage roll recipe previously: my chicken, basil and prosciutto sausage rolls. Various friends having made them have declared them to be a great success. That said, these are not going to fulfill the desire of the groom: I think he wants a good red meat sausage roll. So a bit of experimentation has produced this recipe, which I think will fit the bill perfectly. It makes 100 cocktail sized sausage rolls. I know that this sounds like a lot, but believe me, they disappear quickly during a party!

You do need a food processor for this recipe, and it is super quick and easy. Be warned though, there is no way to avoid getting your hands messy!

1.3kg beef mince
2 medium eggs
2 large onions
2 1/2 cups fresh white breadcrumbs - use the food processor to process stale 'square' bread.
4tsp dried herbs - I used sage, oregano, basil and marjoram
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 kg pre-rolled puff pastry (5 rolls)
1 egg lightly beaten, for brushing on top of the rolls

Peel and roughly chop the onion. Pop it into the food processor and process until it is quite fine in texture (but not liquid!). Put into a large bowl with the breadcrumbs. Stir in the herbs, salt and pepper.

There is no need to rinse the bowl of the food processor. Just put in the mince (you might need to process in two lots) and process it down to make it a sort of paste. It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth, but it does need to be much finer than the original mince. This will help the filling to hold together. Put into the bowl, and break into the bowl, two of the eggs. With your hands, mix the whole lot together.

Cut the sheet of puff pastry in half lengthwise. Take a good handful of the filling and form into a fat sausage (I guess about 2.5 cm/1 inch in diameter) and lay along the long edge of one piece of the pastry. Brush the opposite edge with water and then fold the pastry over to make a roll. Place seam side down. Repeat with the other pieces of pastry.

Cut the rolls in 3cm lengths. Brush the tops with egg yolk, and chill for at least 15 minutes. Bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown in quite a hot oven - 240 degrees. Serve warm with tomato sauce, home made or otherwise. (These can happily be made the day before, or even made and frozen uncooked)

Medieval cookery - duck pies

2010-05-07T22:20:00.000+02:00

This recipe for duck pie has few ingredients and may seem a little odd, using the juice but not flesh of onions as a seasoning. These were so good that back in the kitchens we spent quite a while trying to figure out an excuse not to send them out to be eaten at all... we wanted to keep them all for ourselves!

The hardest thing about the recipe is tracking down Verjuice. Verjuice is unfermented wine grape juice and is a common ingredient used in medieval and renaissance cooking. It has come back into modern cookery quite recently and adds a very special taste to dishes. In Australia, Maggie Beer produces verjuice commercially - sadly I have yet to find a supplier here in Europe.

At a total pinch you could use a very mild vinegar - I had a bottle of verjuice that a friend sent me and with experimentation, I made up a mixture of grape juice and wine vinegar and was able to get something that resembled verjuice for the feast, as my little bottle certainly didn't contain enough to feed 138 people!

Somewhat unusually for an ancient 'receipt', this recipe does have some guidance as to quantities of ingredients. My version used this as a guide but I made it with duck meat rather than a whole bird.

To bake a Mallard (The Good Housewife's Jewell 1596)

Take three or foure Onyons, and stampe them in a morter, then straine them with a saucer full of vergice, then take your mallard and put him into the iuyce of the sayde onyons, and season him with pepper, and salte, cloves and mace, then put your Mallard into the coffin with the saide juyce of the onyons, and a good quantity of Winter-savorye, a little tyme, and perselye chopped small, and sweete Butter, so close it up and bake it.

Take three onions and food process them. Pour 1/3 of a cup of verjuice into the food processor, then strain through muslin to extract the juices (I recommend setting aside the onions to make into onion soup). Take 1/2 a kilo of duck meat, chopped into pieces and marinate in the onion juice, with pepper, salt, 1/4 tsp ground mace and a pinch of ground cloves. I couldn't find fresh winter savory, so used dried - about 1/2 a tablespoon, then a teaspoon of thyme and a tablespoon of parsley.

Bake in a closed pie shell, or as little individual pies. Eat while piping hot.

Quick restaurant review - Alanya

2010-02-20T01:36:00.004+01:00

There are quite a few dishes that I miss from Australia. Good Vietnamese Pho, really spicy north Indian curries, Laksa, and Kabak Mucveri.

Now the latter is a Turkish dish, and you would think that being in Europe (and not that far from Turkey) it would be easy to get, but I haven't been able to find it, and even if I could, I suspect it would be a disappointment compared to the Kabak Mucveri in my fave Turkish restaurant in Canberra. A trip to Alanya was definitely on the list for my visit to Australia.

I got my chance, and met up with a friend and ex-colleague for lunch there. The restaurant itself hadn't changed much in the years I have been away. It is tucked away upstairs in the Style arcade in Manuka and has a big challenge to fight the trendy on-street restaurants that saturate this mini town centre. But fight it has, and for forty years (!) it has been serving Turkish food to hungry Canberrans.

The reason why it has managed to stay viable for all this time is because it is simply good. What more can I say than go there and check it out for yourself.

Address 22 Style Arcade, Franklin Street,
Manuka, ACT 2603

Phone (02) 6295 9678

Fax (02) 6295 9624

Website akvaryumhobisi.com/alanya/

Spicy Roasted Carrot and Sweet Potato soup

2010-02-05T00:25:00.010+01:00

This tasty winter soup was invented on a whim, as I cooked it up for a work lunch. It is fun having a workplace that uses both my normal work skills and occasionally some of my other talents! I served it up, and after a colleague tasted the leftovers, was promptly asked to do another batch for another lunch a few days later. I made the new batch and found it as tasty as the first, which tells me, this is definitely one to share with you all.

Now, as usual, I was slack about weighing and measuring, but luckily the receipts from the supermarket have weights on them. It's funny because I thought this recipe is super simple, with only a handful of ingredients, but now that I list them out, I included 12 different things!

1.2kg carrots
1kg sweet potatoes
3 large potatoes
2 medium onions
2 tsp fresh ginger
1 cloves of garlic
olive oil
1 litre vegetable stock
2 lime leaves
3 tablespoons of coconut milk powder
1 good sized pinch of chili flakes
~ 1 tsp lemon myrtle, coconut and chili seasoning

Peel and chop the carrots and sweet potatoes into even sized chunks. Lightly drizzle with just a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt. With your hands turn the pieces around to get them covered in oil, and then bake in a 200 degree (c) oven until the sweet potato has gone soft and browned. The carrots take longer to cook than the sweet potato, so while they may have browned a little, are not likely to be very soft. But don't worry about that as they will cook up in the pot - this is more to get that delicious sweet caramelisation taste into the soup.

While these are cooking, chop the onions - no need to be too fussy about how finely they are chopped as it will all be blended in the end. Brown the onion in a 5 litre pot with a bit of olive oil. Once they are transparent and going brown, add the finely chopped fresh ginger and the garlic - they will only take seconds to cook.

Once browned, add a splash of vegetable stock; enough to lift the caramelised onion and tasty bits from the pan.

Add the roasted orange vegetables, pour in the rest of the stock and add the lime leaves and chili. Peel and chop the potatoes and add them to the pot. Bring to the boil and then drop to a simmer. Simmer until the carrot and potatoes have softened - the potatoes will likely start to fall to pieces, while the carrots will crush easily with the back of a spoon.

Blend the soup with a stick blender. Stir in the coconut milk powder along with an equal amount of water. You may need to add extra water to thin the soup out as it gets very thick. If you are transporting it, I advise leaving it very thick to make it less likely to leak out of its container during transport, and then then when reheating. Reheat on quite a low heat, to prevent it sticking to the bottom.

Pour into a pretty tureen to serve, sprinkle some of the lemon myrtle sprinkle and swirl it through. There you go... all finished!

White Christmas

2009-12-19T20:54:00.003+01:00

The white christmas of my childhood had copha and milk powder in it, if I recall correctly. A lack of ability to find copha in the shops here prompted the development of this very rich and tasty version. I hope you enjoy it as much as my friends have!

600g white chocolate
2 cups rice bubbles
100g red glace cherries
100g green glace cherries
100g silvered almonds
100g dried cranberries
80g sultanas
1 cup desiccated coconut

Method

Line a 30cm x 20cm (base) baking pan with baking paper. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (don’t let bowl touch water). Fold in the remaining ingredients. Pour mixture into the prepared pan, pressing down with a large metal spoon. Refrigerate for 4 hours or until set.
Turn slice onto a chopping board. Using a knife that has been dipped in hot water, cut into squares. Serve.

Dark chocolate tartlets

2009-12-16T18:55:00.001+01:00

Photo by Ed.

I served these tiny tarts at the wedding I catered for my friends Patrizia and Ed. (Full menu here). They were a real hit - rich and creamy and just the right size for a not-quite-guilt-free mouthful.

320g dark chocolate, (at least 60% cocoa but I actually don't recommend more than 80%)
500ml cream
4 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
1/4 cup sugar
gold leaf to decorate

Combine chopped bittersweet chocolate and cream in a heavy saucepan. Whisk over low heat until chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove saucepan from heat and allow to cool a little.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks, egg & sugar. Very gradually whisk chocolate mixture into the egg mixture until smooth and blended.

Pour chocolate filling into crust, sprinkle with gold leaf, and bake at 180 degrees until set (about 15-20 minutes for a single large shell, or 5-10 for small shells).

Renaissance Recipe: Offella

2009-11-30T22:30:00.002+01:00

Cooking from original medieval and renaissance recipes can be challenging but fun. Most recipes don't come with any real guidance on quantities of the ingredients, leaving it up to the maker to decide on the balance of flavours they desire. This suits me well, as when I am inventing original recipes that is how I cook, and it takes me quite some concentration to remember to note the measurements I make!

These tasty treats are reminiscent in flavour to a strudel or cheesecake. Because the recipe contains no added sugar, I recommend leaving the mixture in the fridge overnight to allow the sultanas to sweeten it. You do have to be a bit brave to try this recipe, as it contains parmesan cheese which seems an odd ingredient for a dessert, but just place your trust in me, and go for it!

From "The Art of Cookery: the first modern cookbook", translated and annotated by Jeremy Parzen. University of California press.

Take some good Parmesan cheese that has not been overly aged, and a bit of another type of fresh cheese, and grate, adding some egg whites, whole raisins, some cinnamon, ginger and a bit of saffron. Mix all these things, incorporating well, and make sure that this filling is slightly thick. Then take a thin dough, like that used for making lasagne, and wrap the offelle in this dough, making them large, medium sized or small, as you wish, giving them some yellow colouring on top with saffron, or whatever other colour you wish, and cook them in the oven, and be careful that the oven is not too hot, because they should not be overcooked.

250g cottage cheese
3 egg whites
50g grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
10 threads saffron
100g sultanas

1 batch pasta dough.

Mix the ingredients. Cover and keep cool overnight. Cut out rounds of pastry, brush the edges with water. Place a generous teaspoon of the mix in the centre, fold in half and press the edges to seal.

Bake in an oven at 200 degrees until golden. Better served warm, but tasty either way!

Restaurant Review - The Poacher's Pantry

2009-11-24T17:11:00.001+01:00

I have a soft spot for this hidden gem in the Australian countryside.

The Poacher's Pantry is officially in Hall, NSW, just outside Canberra, ACT (Australia). That said, it is not in the town, but on Nanima Road. To get there, head along the Barton highway towards Yass and look for the signs and road off to the right.

What is special about this spot? I guess it is a combination of things. The atmosphere is a major feature. The farm property is very picturesque and the building itself seems the epitome of an Australian country house. The wide verandah and patio invite visitors to settle down for either a light snack or meal. From there you can gaze over the wide lawn, watching the birdlife, or other wildlife such as these kids playing.

The other appeal is of course, the food. The smokehouse that inspired the name makes all sorts of wonderful treats - favourites of mine are the emu prosciutto and smoked semi-dried tomatoes. Now the range has expanded with the planting of vineyards around the farm, producing Wily Trout cool climate wines.

The day we went was gloriously sunny (mind you, nowadays that is the norm for this part of the world) and we settled down to start with a glass of champagne and a mezze platter. This allowed us to try a little bit of everything: grilled zucchini, emu prosciutto, ham, smoked chicken, hommous, smoked tomatoes, baba ganoush... a grand mini feast!

For main courses, we chose:

smoked chicken and leek pie

smoked lamb with couscous

smoked lamb chops with sweet potato mash

smoked duck salad

The winning dish I would have to say, was my sister's choice of the smoked lamb chops.

But I made up for it with my dessert - I could not resist the Poacher's Mess: crumbled meringue, cream and lemon curd. Her creme brulee was good I am sure, but my dessert was divine!
I bought some brandy-smoked chicken and also 2 packets of smoked tomatoes. If you have never experienced a smoked tomato, I tell you, you have not yet truly lived! Sweet and smokey and a taste sensation like no other.

If you want to discover the Poacher's pantry for yourself, you can visit the website, or go there for yourself. "Marakei", Nanima Road, Hall, ACT. Ph +61 (0)2 6230 2487