recipe and cooking video

Friday, November 18, 2011

Reginette with Radicchio and Hazelnut Cream Sauce

A really simple pasta dish with crunchy bitter radicchio, that’s balanced by the rich, earthy taste of roasted hazelnuts and luscious, fresh cream. Some chopped roasted nuts would be a nice addition sprinkled on top. Serve with some garlic bread for a complete meal.

Reginette with Radicchio and Hazelnut Cream Sauce

Inspire by Robyn Cooks and All Recipes

100 g Reginette
1 Radicchio, rinsed and sliced
40 g Ground hazelnuts, toasted
30 g Butter
120 ml Low-fat cream
1 tsp Brandy
Salt and freshly mulled black pepper

Cook the reginette in in a large saucepan of rapidly boiling salted water until al dente, about 9 minutes.
In the meantime, toast the ground hazelnut in a small skillet over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly. Lower heat, then add the butter, stir until melted, then add the cream and brandy. Stir to combine, and cook until thickened, 5 minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
To serve, pile some radicchio into the bottom of a rimmed soup bowl, then top with reginette. Spoon the sauce over the top. Serve immediately.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Rye Rolls with Poppy

Those dinner rolls, made from egg white enriched rye dough, have a really shiny and beautiful crust, partly because of overnight proofing in the fridge, partly due to the egg white wash applied prior to baking at high temperature with steam.

Starter	Starter	Others
120 g Bread flour 45 g Dark rye flour 165 g Water 2 g Fresh yeast	80 g Wholegrain rye flour 80 g Dark rye flour 165 g Bread flour 130 g Water 30 g Egg white 1 tsp Malt extract 6 g Fresh yeast 8 g Salt	2 tbsp Poppy seeds 1/2 Egg white 2 tbsp Water

Dissolve the fresh yeast in the water. Stir in bread and rye flours until well combined. Cover and leave it at room temperature for 2 hours, then transfer to the fridge for 12 hours.
Place all the dough ingredients together with starter in the mixing bowl of your stand mixer. Stir at low speed until all ingredients have been incorporated, then increase the speed and mix until the dough gathers into a ball. Add more water, a tablespoon at a time, if too stiff.
Cover with a plastic and set aside until it doubles in size, 1-2 hours. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Lightly press down the dough and shape into a round. Divide the dough into 10-15 pieces. Shape each piece of dough into a round or an oval. Place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover and proof until double in bulk. This will take about 90 minutes.
Preheat oven to 230C/450F and place an old baking pan on the bottom rack. Combine egg white and water in a bowl. Brush the top of bread rolls with egg wash and sprinkle with the poppy seeds. Slash a 1/4-inch/5-mm deep cut across the top of each roll. Place rolls in the oven on the next shelf up, pour 1 cup of water into the old baking pan and close the door quickly. Bake for about 20 minutes until richly brown.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Butternut Squash and Red Lentil Soup with Five Spice Shiitakes

A quick, easy and tasty recipe for a thick and soul-warming pumpkin soup fragrantly spiced with curry and served with 5 spice shiitake mushrooms.

5 Spice Shiitakes	Soup
12 Dried shiitakes, soaked and diced 1-2 tbsp Bacon dripping 1 tsp Garlic, minced 1/3 tsp Five spice powder 1-2 tsp Maggi seasoning 1/2 tbsp Medium sweet sherry	3 tbsp Olive oil 1 Onion, finely chopped 2 Garlic cloves, crushed 2 tsp Curry powder 700 g Butternut squash, cut into 1cm pieces 100 g Red lentils, rinsed 1l Vegetable stock Salt and pepper to taste Fresh parsley leaves, to serve

Soak dried mushrooms in warm water until plump, about 30 minutes. Drain well, then dice the softened mushrooms. Heat the bacon dripping in a skillet. Add in minced garlic and diced mushrooms. Sauté briefly, adding in five spice, maggi seasoning and sherry, and continue stirring until mushrooms are tender and coated with the sauce. Keep warm until ready to use.
Heat a large saucepan with olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook, for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and curry powder and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until aromatic. Add the butternut squash, red lentils, and vegetable stock. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20 minutes or until the butternut squash and red lentils are soft.
Remove the soup from the heat and puree with a handheld blender or whirl in batches in a blender until smooth. Return the soup to the low-medium heat and cook, stirring, until heated through, about 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle among serving bowls. Top with the stir-fried mushrooms and parsley to serve.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Shepherd's pie

My least favourite thing that people say to me is that they are tired. "I'm so tired," they say. Or, worse, "I'm just so tired." It's that "just" that really fucks me off.

I never tell anyone that I'm tired. Ever. Or ill. I keep it to myself. If you are tired, go to bed earlier. Take a sleeping pill. Inhale some lavender, bang yourself smartly on the head. Be really glitzy and hire a private doctor to dose you with propofol. Just don't tell me about it - because I don't care.

(Unless you have a small baby, in which case we will keen and wail together and I will make you tea and say there there.)

My second least favourite thing people say to me is "I'm so busy." Because when you say that, what I hear is "I am incredibly disorganised, I do not know how long an hour is and I don't know how to say 'No'. I am probably also late all the time, but think it makes me seem glamorous."

I do not respect that. I spend my whole life being the fucking bad guy, saying "No, I can't" because I know how long things take; I know what you can reasonably achieve in one day. And it's not very much.

But these days, I sympathise a bit more with people who describe themselves as being a "busy mum". I seem to be in a screaming spin all the time just now, (even though I hate my own guts for saying that), constantly patting my pockets for my keys and racing back into the house five times for bottles, nappies, wallets, shoes. I always seem to be in the car at traffic lights, revving the engine saying "Come on, are you fucking dead or what???!!!!" to the car in front.

Last night I went up to bed - although I didn't actually get into bed and go to sleep - at 8.30pm in order to re-create the kind of idleness I took for granted before I had a baby.

The thing is, Kitty is eating proper food now. Fish fingers and beans, peas, baked potatoes, fish pie, chicken. The whole lot. Nyum nyum nyum, she goes. So I can no longer get away with surviving on cheddar, own-brand chocolate mousse and tea, while spooning shop-bought puree into Kitty's weeny petulant mouth and doing no cooking beyond peeling the lids off takeaway. I have had to hit the stove again. And while I'm cooking for her, I might as well cook for me. Which is good because it means I eat something. But bad because it means I'll probably get fat again. And it's so fucking time-consuming.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that it's nursery food a go-go around here right now and today it was shepherd's pie. I've only ever made one once and I muffed it by thinking that I was making a bolognese and adding canned tomatoes, which doesn't work at all.

So here we go, shepherd's pie. Take 2.

Serves about four I'd say.
2 packs lamb mince - about 500g each
1 stick rosemary
2 bay leaves (optional)
2 small onions, chopped
some celery, chopped
1 carrot, diced
2 large potatoes
chicken or veg stock if you have it - about 300ml
red wine if you have it - about a large glassful

1 Fry the onions, celery, rosemary stick, bay leaves and carrot together very gently for about 15 minutes. I say this every time because there's always ONE person out there who is very impatient and puts their onions on a really high heat and burns them and wonders why their dinner tastes horrible. Once the onions look translucent and sort of soft around the edges, throw in your glass of red wine and then turn up the heat high and bubble the wine down.

2 In another pan, fry off the lamb mince, then combine your lamb and veg and stock and simmer on the hob, very low, for 45 minutes. Chuck in some salt and pepper.

3 Now you can, of course, just boil and mash your potatoes, but if you steam (25 mins) and rice the potatoes instead, you will get a delicious crunchy potato topping. You can fashion a steamer out of a colander over a pan of boiling water. If you haven't got a potato ricer or a mouli legume then I suppose you're a bit stuffed.

4 Put your lamb mixture in a baking dish and cover with your potato, dot with butter and bake at 180C for about 25 mins.

Then go to bed, for fuck's sake.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Crusty Hard Rolls

Those bread rolls, known in Germany as Brötchen, are crunchy, richly golden brown rolls with a soft interior, and flavourful thanks to an overnight sponge. Serve them warm with jam or/and butter for the breakfast or with a bowl of piping hot soup as dinner. You can always freeze them and re-crisp in the 150C/300F oven.

Starter	Dough
125 g All purpose flour 140 g Water 5 g Fresh yeast	140 g Water, lukewarm 5 g Fresh yeast 375 g All purpose flour 1 tsp Malt extract 2 tsp Salt

Combine together the flour, water and yeast in a mixing bowl. Cover and leave the starter at room temperature for 16-20 hours.
Whisk together the water and fresh yeast in the bowl of your stand mixer. Add in the rest of ingredients together with the sponge. Mix until a soft, smooth dough forms.
Shape the dough into a ball and return it to the mixing bowl. Sprinkle a bit of flour over the top of dough. This will keep the dough from sticking. Cover with a plastic and set aside for 90 minutes to rise.
When the dough has doubled in bulk, turn it out on a lightly floured work surface. Lightly press down the dough and shape into a long roll. Cut the roll into 12 - 15 pieces. Take each piece of dough and form into a round or oval shaped roll.
Place rolls on the baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Cover and let rise until double, about an hour. Preheat oven to 230C/450F and place an old baking pan on the bottom rack. Slash a 1/4-inch/5-mm deep cut across the top of each roll.
Place rolls in the oven on the next shelf up, pour 1 cup of water into the old baking pan and close the door quickly. Turn oven down to 220C/425F and bake for 20-25 minutes until they're richly brown. Remove them from the oven, and cool on a wire rack.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Vanillekipferl Vanilla Crescent Cookies

Vanillekipferl are simply sugar cookies in the shape of crescents that are traditionally as a part of the typical Christmas baking in Austria, Hungary and Germany, but can be enjoyed all year round.They usually contain ground nuts, mostly almonds and hazelnuts, flavoured with vanilla, and often served dusted with confectioners’ sugar.

Recipe adapted from Ulrike Kraus -"Kekse und Gebäck rund ums Jahr"

300 g All purpose flour
250 g Butter, cut into small pieces
125 g Sugar
3 Egg yolks
125 g Ground almonds
1 tbsp Vanilla sugar
2-3 tbsp Powdered sugar

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Add in butter, sugar, egg yolks, and ground almonds. Mix until the dough has become smooth. Form the dough into a ball and wrap well with a cling film. Chill for one hour.
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Line two baking trays with parchment paper. Divide the dough into 80 pieces. Shape each one into a rope, approximately 7mm thick, and bend into a crescent.
Place the kipferl on a baking trays, and bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden.
Mix the powdered sugar together with the vanilla sugar. Roll the crescents in this mixture while they are still hot.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Yeast Corn Bread with Chilli, Capsicum and Cheddar

Unlike many other cornbread recipes, this one uses yeast as the leavening agent other than baking soda and baking powder, so the texture is different from the cakey quick bread. This cornbread has a crispy cheesy crust and a flavourful, moist interior, which is generously studded with sweet corn kernels, capsicum, chilli threads, and paprika salami.

Inspired by WDR

200 g Cornmeal
300 g Water, hot
60 g Olive oil
1 can / 300 g Sweet corn
300 g Red capsicum, peeled and diced
10 g Chilli threads
10 g Freshly mulled black pepper

250 ml Water, lukewarm
20 g Fresh yeast
500 g All purpose flour
120 g Paprika salami, thinly sliced
15 g Salt
200 g Cheddar slices
Cornmeal

Measure the cornmeal into a large bowl. Pour in hot water and leave it to soak for about 20 minutes. Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Heat olive oil in a skillet until hot. Add in sweet corn and red capsicum. Stir briefly, and add in chilli threads. Cook until softened. Season with black pepper. Remove and leave it to cool until ready to use.
Place water, fresh yeast, cornmeal mixture and flour in the bowl of a table mixer fitted with a dough hook. Stir at slow speed for 3 minutes, then increase the speed and mix for another 3 minutes.
Cover the dough in the bowl and leave it to rest for 10 minutes. Now add in the corn capsicum mixture and paprika salami. Use your hand to mix them evenly into the dough. Cover again and rest for 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 220C/430F. Divide the dough into 3 large portions for loaves or 12 small portions for smaller buns. Shape each small portion of dough into a round. Place Cheddar in a heatproof bowl. Put over a saucepan of simmering water and heat, stirring constantly, until the cheese melts.
Spread melted cheese all over the surface of bread and sprinkle cornmeal over the dough and lightly press in with your hands. Bake buns for 15 minutes at 220C/430F, then reduce the oven temperature to200C/400F and bake another 20-25 minutes.