The Silver Spoon

Cheese Souffle

I tend to be very sceptical of expiration dates.  When it comes to meat, they are too long, butter and eggs, too short.  Ibuprofen and film? Not sure what they mean but I usually ignore them.  Pascal, on the other hand, is a purist.  If it says March 1st on the package then you can only safely eat it up to February 28th and even that might be pushing it.  This means that every now and again I need to come up with a recipe that gets rid of nearly expiring items (see Bread Pudding).  Soufflé is the end all be all of kitchen sink dishes.  You can put pretty much anything in it and it will still turn out great and be impressive to your fellow diners  (mine was a total disaster and still got a wow).  The word soufflé comes from the French souffler or to puff or to blow, which is basically what happens to this dish made mostly from egg whites and a custardy béchamel.  Usually the reason for a soufflé in my house is a surplus of cheese in this instance it happened to be eggs; really nice farmers market eggs that I bought way too many of when the farmer wooed me with his stories of happy chickens;  eggs that just so happen to be approaching their expiry date.  No matter how many times I demonstrate the ‘how to tell an egg is not bad’ trick to Pascal, the date on the box always supersedes, thus cheese soufflé for dinner.

How to tell an egg is bad:  Fill a tall glass ¾ with water and slowly lower the egg into it.  Make sure the glass is wide enough to fully accommodate the egg otherwise, bad or good, the retrieval can get embarrassing.  If the egg is good then it will sink immediately to the bottom.  If bad, it will float either in the middle or to the top, the badder the egg the higher it floats.  The reason behind this is that there is a small pocket of air in every egg which grows as the egg ages due to dehydration thus allowing it to float.   

Ingredients:

1 tbsp flour
1oz butter
2 ¼ cups milk, warmed
2oz finely grated parmesan cheese

4 large egg yolks

5 large egg whites
salt and freshly ground pepper
cayenne pepper

Preheat the oven to 200˚C/ 400˚F, with the shelf place low in the oven.  Place a baking sheet on the rack to rest the ramekin on.  See picture above for obvious reason.

Step 1: First prepare the béchamel.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan and stir in the tbsp of flour, then integrate the milk until the mixture is smooth. Cook for about 10 minutes continuously stirring as the flour can clump at this stage.  Then add the cheese (It doesn’t have to be parmesan but that is the traditional) and the thoroughly beaten egg yolks.  Remove from the heat and continue to stir for a minute or two.  Then add the seasoning.

Step 2: Whisk the egg whites until stiff and creamy and fold into the custard mixture in halves into a 20cm buttered ramekin. Only fill the ramekin up ¾, see above picture for reason. Put in the oven immediately.  Cook for 20 minutes then keep and eye on it.  Depending on the weather (seriously) it can take between 25-35 minutes.

Note:  You can make step 1 well ahead of time.  Also should you wish to add other ingredients such as vegetables etc, just dust them with flour before adding them to the step 1 mixture, this prevents them from migrating towards the bottom.  

 

Zürcher Gschnätzlets mit Nuedeli

 

Each year I approach New Year’s with a bit of trepidation.  Resolutions have never been my strong suit and the pressure of making good on them day 1, ie Jan 1, is daunting.  Thankfully our friends Brett and Miles have remedied that problem by hosting an annual New Year’s Day party, Southern style.  This means you can stuff your face with honey glazed ham, black eyed peas (for good luck), grits and collard greens (for good sex, the spicier the better!) and put off any looming resolutions until later in the month.  So with our bellies full and our hang-overs cured (did I mention Bloody Mary’s were involved) we flew the red eye home to London from New York.  

Upon arrival we decided to do the only normal thing, rush to the grocery store and start cooking.  If there was any doubt, this enthusiasm stemmed from me reading cooking magazines the entire flight home and Pascal watching Julie & Julia. The promise of food was basically the only thing that was going to keep us from going straight to sleep for the rest of the day, an attempt (later proven unsuccessful) to stave off jet lag.  On the menu: two soups for the week, fresh whole wheat egg noodles and Zürcher Gschnätzlets, perhaps the most famous of Swiss dishes after fondue, raclette and rösti.  It’s taken me the better part of three years to even remotely pronounce it but nevertheless the dish is delicious, consisting of thinly sliced veal (the actual meaning of Gschnätzlets) with mushrooms in a cream sauce. It happens to make a wonderful ‘last supper’ given its richness. While the usual side is rösti, a large potato pancake which originated from the canton of Bern as a common farmers’ breakfast, we opted for egg noodles or 'nuedeli' since the secret to a good rösti is that you must boil and grate the potatoes the day before thus not even worth the effort for a ‘day of’ dish.  

Almost exactly three years ago, I made my first trip to Zurich with my now future husband. We had about 12 hours in the city during which time; I got a small tour, met his mother, and ate a very memorable meal of Zürcher Gschnätzlets mit Rösti at the Goethe-Stübli.  To this day I remember it as one of the best meals of my life.  We recently revisited this restaurant to celebrate our engagement and I was extremely nervous that my first impression of the dish may have been skewed by my massive in-loveness.  Thankfully the in-loveness and goodness of the dish are still intact.

Ingredients

Zürcher Gschnätzlets (serves four)

600g veal  (ask for scallops and slice into thin strips by hand)

3 tbsp butter

Flour for coating

200g button mushrooms (sliced)

Half an onion, (finely chopped)

100ml dry white wine (a Swiss fondant works well, or a sauvignon blanc)

100ml veal stock

200ml double cream (or heavy cream in the US)

1 tbsp cornflour

2 tbsp parsley (finely chopped)

Salt

Pepper

Step 1: Season the veal with salt and pepper and toss in the flour to coat before browning in 2 tbsp of clarified butter for about 2 minutes (to clarify butter, melt the butter in a sauce pan until the milk solids separate, then remove them.  They are the white bits).  You may have to do this in batches, don't despair if 2 minutes is not enough time to cook through, they will finish later.  Then set aside and keep warm. Drain the pan of any liquid.

Step 2: Using the remaining 1 tbsp of butter slowly sweat the onions and mushrooms together. Once tender add the white wine and reduce by half. 

Step 3: Follow with the stock, cream and corn flour. Stir in and add the meat, heating through for about 3 minutes.

Step 4: Salt and pepper to taste and garnish with the parsley 

Note: The cream might fool you, but this is only 520 calories per serving.  You can use a mild Greek yoghurt to reduce that number significantly.

Whole wheat Tagliatelle

2 cups whole wheat flour (sift to remove the big bits)

1 tsp kosher salt

3 eggs

Extra flour

Step 1: Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl and then combine with the flour and salt. Combine to make a dough and knead for about 10 minutes on a flour dusted flat surface (Tip: If you wear latex gloves the process is a lot less messy,it looks weird but helps), wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes to set.  Note: You will need extra flour to keep the dough from sticking.

Step 2: Cut the dough in quarters and roll them out into strips that will fit nicely into the pasta machine.  Begin running the pasta through the machine adjusting the thinness as you go.  We went very thin as whole wheat pasta can be gummy.  Then cut into noodle length and run through the cutting side, flouring as you go to prevent sticking. This is best done with two people, one to turn the crank, one to catch. 

Step 3: Hang to dry until needed.  Cook in boiling salted water for three minutes

Note:  Whole wheat pasta has its drawbacks, it’s much more robust and can often have a gritty mouth feel, in the case of making it yourself, while I wouldn’t recommend it alone with a butter sauce, due to the thinness and the texture it did do very well in picking up this heavier sauce as an accompaniment. 

Ottolenghi's Chocolate Fudge Cake

If only the lack of blogging this summer would be the direct result of lack of eating.  Alas, it is not.  I not only ate my way through the summer but I have nothing to show for it except half a dozen pairs of jeans that don’t fit. I have therefore embarked upon no less than five attempts at dieting only to find myself in the South of France or other such environs where dieting is, indeed, impossible.  I welcomed the first of September, with its ever so slightly cooler breeze, as a new start, fresh beginning, or back to school if you will:  I have sworn off carbs!  And I haven’t been so bad, one French fry here and there but I have been pretty good.  So what to do when lovely brother and sister-in-law invite themselves over for dinner (I wish more people would do this by the way)?  Well there isn’t much else to do than whip out the Ottolenghi cookbook and start flipping through the pages of what can only be categorized as food porn. It’s not too difficult to put together a starter and a main course and avoid the dreaded carbohydrate but dessert is a different matter altogether.  Enter the flourless chocolate cake: pure genius.  As soon as I laid eyes upon this recipe I knew that it was meant to be.  Isn’t that cheating you say?  Yes, of course it is.  But were my guests to suffer because of my personal battle of the bulge.  I think not!  Does that mean I have full license to have chocolate cake for every meal until I finally gave away the rest to my housekeeper? No! But did I?  Yes! And with pleasure. 

Ingredients:

240g Unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

360g Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

290g Light muscovado sugar   

4 tbsp water

5 large eggs (separated)

A pinch of salt

Cocoa for dusting

Pre-heat the oven to 170˚C and prepare your baking tin. 

Step 1: In a large bowl combine your chocolate and butter.  Both should be sufficiently cut up into small pieces. At the same time mix the sugar and water into a sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium heat.   Once boiling pour over the chocolate and butter until it is all melted together. (If you ignored the “cut it up into small pieces” directive, insert step 2a, melt mixture further over a double boiler until smooth.)

Step 2: Stir the egg yolks into the chocolate one at a time and reserve the whites in another bowl.  Then whisk the whites and the salt until firm.  Let the chocolate cool room temperature before folding in the whites. 

Step 3: Pour 2/3 of the mixture into your cake tin and cook for 40 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  Then set aside until completely cool.  Then pour the remaining mixture over and cook for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick shows a moist crumb.  Set aside to cool and dust with cocoa and/or icing sugar. (Tip: To best dust a cake, use a tea ball.  You get the right amount of dusting material with little mess and no lumps)

Notes:  Make this cake and you will make yourself and anyone around you happy.  It will keep for a couple of days. 

Peas with Ricotta and Mint

I wish I could say that I have a love affair with vegetables.  I desperately want to love them, each and every one.  But, alas, I don’t.  I have been trying to enjoy the most revered of all vegetables, the aubergine or eggplant, for the past year with no luck.  I hate it and that’s that.  Peppers also make me uneasy so that mixed grill vegetable plate is kinda out for me.  That said I have also been known to say that I hate peas; mostly because I find them annoying.  They remind me of that little song/poem: “I eat my peas with honey/ I’ve done it all my life/ I eat my peas with honey/ It keeps them on the knife.”  For me, that about sums up peas: evasive little fellows that are hard to eat.   Then I moved to England and was introduced to mushy peas, which enlightened me to the fact that I did not have a problem with the taste of peas just the format.   

Enter Rob.  In preparation for a weekend in Cornwall of 20 people, he has ordered all the groceries and planned out the menus. (PS These are the types of people with whom I like to go on holiday. If you are one of them, please feel free to contact me) I have one task; the peas.   Imagine my dismay.  I have to make a dish that I don’t eat!  Not so.  This will be peas, ricotta and mint. A salad inspired by the likes of Bocca di Lupo (an apparently great London Italian, I embarrassingly have not been to yet.)  The result was amazing and has changed my view on peas. 

Ingredients:

Serves a lot

1 bag frozen peas (1.2 kilos)

1.5 tubs of ricotta (roughly 375 grams)

Mint

Lemon

Salt

Step 1: Boil the frozen peas for 3 minutes.

Step 2: Mix in ricotta so that the peas are bound together.  Remember its peas with ricotta not the other way around. 

Step 3: Squeeze in a lemon, salt to taste, add some shredded mint. Mix and serve. 

ManSchool #1

 

It's no secret - an inordinately high proportion of the world's best chefs are men.  Joël Robuchon, Gordon Ramsay, Paul Bocuse, Tetsuya Wakuda, Alain Ducasse.  Let's leave aside all questions of right, wrong, equality, yay, nay or otherwise, because that's for another time.  What actually puzzles us most about the high number of haute cuisine male chefs is the lack of a corollary - if the creme de la creme is mostly male, then why are most mortal men utterly hopeless in the kitchen?

 

Summer is here, of sorts, and short dresses have lured the heterosexual male from the sofa to the beer garden, in pursuit of love and lust.  (Yes, this is primarily directed at straight men. ManSchool's gay friends just don't need as much help in this area.)  So you've met a nice lass at the pub, got her number, and are poised to call her up to ask her on a date.  ManSchool suggests that you don't take her to a white tablecloth overpriced restaurant.

 

Cook her dinner instead.

 

Go on.  We dare you.  Cooking a dinner party for a dozen food critics with a myriad of courses is difficult, and takes practice.  Cooking for two is just ... well ... not.  Try the following recipes for an amazing dinner which will take an hour from start to eat time, leaving you plenty of time to chat while you prep.  The dishes genuinely require the culinary skills of a monkey.  But the most important ManSchool lesson for the day: the end result of the food is immaterial; it's all about the effort.

 

 

ManSchool's Prosciutto Salmon with Roast Garlic Butternut Squash and Asparagus, followed by Balsamic Strawberries

 

We love the simplicity of this dish, and the summer flavours which come through.  The roasted garlic and the saltiness of the ham with the freshness of the fish combine to create a great summer evening dish.  Follow the main course with the sweetness of strawbs with the tang of balsamic, and you can't fail to impress.

 

Shopping List

• 2 salmon steaks
• 4 slices prosciutto or parma ham
• 1 small half butternut squash
• 1 bunch asparagus
• a couple of cloves garlic
• butter
• 1 lemon
• 1 punnet strawberries
• balsamic vinegar
• sugar

The Plan

0 minute mark: Turn the oven on, and set it at 180C.  Take the half squash and scoop out the seeds.  Into the cavity place a knob of butter and the garlic - the cloves don't even need to be peeled.  Stick it in the oven on a piece of foil or a baking tray, and bake for an hour.

10 minute mark: Take the prosciutto or parma ham out and wrap two slices around each salmon steak.  The natural stickiness of the ham will mean it sticks to the fish.  Put in a baking dish or on foil and set aside.

20 minute mark: Time to get pudding ready.  Take the strawberries' tops off with a knife, cut them in half and place in a serving bowl.  Sprinkle them with a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and then scatter about a shot glass worth of balsamic vinegar over the top.  Mix it all up with a spoon and set aside - it's finished.

40 minute mark: Put the fish in the oven - same temperature, leave the squash where it is.

45 minute mark: Chop the non-pointy ends of the asparagus off and put the remaining spears in a glass, or lay them flat in a dish.  Cover with boiling water for 5 minutes, then remove, drain and chop into roughly 2-inch lengths.  Set aside.

60 minute mark: Take the fish and the squash out of the oven - they will both be ready.  Cut the squash in half length ways, and put half on each plate parallel to a salmon steak - the melted butter will spill out and the garlic will be soft.  "Sprinkle" the asparagus on top.  Try to get as much butter or pan juice on top.  The final touch - cut the lemon in quarters, and just squeeze one quarter over the top of each plate.  Put a remaining quarter as garnish on the plate.  You're done!  And pudding can follow whenever you're ready.  Add ice cream if you like, but strawberries are so good in summer you won't need it.

 

Food tip

Asparagus should actually be broken at the end "where it gives" rather than chopped - but maybe next time, when you have more time.  It should be crunchy and never soggy like tinned asparagus - all the flavour and goodness is lost when that happens.  Also, when you're serving your food, two things.  Height is good - avoid taking up the whole plate by spreading stuff around - concentrate it in the centre and build up vertically.  Second - don't be frightened to wipe around the rim of the plate with paper towel to clean drips and spills.  This is what restaurants do and it just makes everything look a bit nicer.

 

Grog tip

You don't need French champagne at this stage.  Buy a bottle of Cava.  It's inexpensive, bubbly and a great way to start the evening.

 

Table tip

Big long candles are old-fashioned and intimidating and can convey the wrong idea.  Buy some tealights and put a couple in a bowl or on a plate, or even in a brown paper bag.  Candlelight is candlelight for a reason - it works, and it's so simple.

 

Bon courage!

 

ManSchool

 

Carrot and Walnut Cake

 

I am not sure why, maybe it’s some sort of masochism, but I have been going all out on the dessert front recently.  I am still on a food lock-down and can’t even try the recipe as I go along but I have been committed to making cakes, tarts and desserts of any kind.  And, in turn, I am sharing them with you.  This is, of course, completely out of character as I don’t even have a sweet tooth and I have embraced a healthy lifestyle of reduced sugar consumption.  But still the urge to bake haunts me.  Perhaps it’s that I never really had the time to whip up a cake on a Wednesday afternoon and that this freedom has encouraged me into creating a dinner menu from start to finish.  I do cheat on hors d’oeuvres and buy cheese and crackers and the like but I have even entertained the idea making my own crackers. 

Another logical conclusion is that I recently bought the Ottolenghi cookbook and have become obsessed.  I am blessed to be within 5 minutes walking distance to my nearest Ottolenghi and my most frequent lunch companion, Gaby, has one in spitting distance (no kidding, and you don’t even have to be a master spitter) from her house.  Thus we walk in and survey what’s on offer quite regularly, carefully choosing among the delicacies and blocking out the beautiful pastries and cakes that loom in the corner of your eye.  You have to; otherwise a trip to Ottolenghi would not just be detrimental to your waistline but also your wallet.  I am, however, a devotee as you might have noticed.  I had heard raves about this book, particularly from a vegetarian friend with a non-vegetarian husband (Skye and Paul) who plan weekends around cooking from this cookbook, “a versatile book with so many options, they say.” I had to have it. 

So when planning out my menu for a recent dinner party I was going to cook from the Ottolenghi cookbook alone and it was wonderful.  One of the highlights of my musings was when I asked Pascal whether I should bake a chocolate or carrot cake for dessert, “EVERYONE bakes chocolate cake, you should do carrot,” he replied.  Now I think that the young man might be getting a little bit spoiled because certainly not EVERYONE is baking chocolate cakes for a Wednesday night dinner, either way I got the point. 

As usual, I subbed out the refined sugar and flour with unrefined brown sugar and whole wheat flour, but the result (or so I am told) was great. Doesn’t it just kill you that I can’t even try one bite! I was unable to find an unrefined version of icing sugar so if you know of a good one please pass it on. 

Ingredients

Cake

160g whole wheat flour (sifted twice)

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ground cloves

1 egg

1 egg yolk

200g sunflower oil

270g brown caster sugar

50g walnuts (chopped)

50g desiccated coconut

135g carrots (peeled and grated)

2 egg whites

Pinch of salt

 

Icing

175g cream cheese

70g unsalted butter

35g icing sugar

25g honey

30g walnuts (chopped and toasted)

 

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 170˚C and grease a 24 cm springform cake tin and line with parchment paper.  The best way to do this is take the tin apart and use the side of the tin to draw a circle on the parchment to cut out so it fits the base, then put it back together with the base lined and then line the sides.

 

Step 2: Sift together the flour (twice for the flour), baking powder, baking soda and spices and put aside.  In a small bowl whisk together 1 egg and an egg yolk.  With an electric mixer, cream together the oil and sugar until smooth and slowly add in the egg mixture.  Mix in the walnuts coconut and carrot.  Then incorporate the dry mixture.  Use a light hand and don’t over mix.

 

Step 3: In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form peaks and gently fold into the carrot mixture in 3 steps.  Do not over mix. Some white streaks are ok.

 

Step 4:  Pour into the cake tin and bake for about 40 minutes (poke with a toothpick to check for doneness, if it’s clean it’s done).  If you use a smaller tin, say 20 cm, then cook for about 1 hour. Let the cake cook for an hour before removing from the tin.

 

Step 5: For the icing, beat the cream cheese until creamy and light.  I used light cream cheese, mostly because that is all I could find, but it is also spreadable from the get go. Then cream the sugar, butter and honey together.  Fold the two together and ice the cake, then sprinkle the walnuts.  For the walnuts, it’s easier to toast then chop than the other way around.   

 

Note:  When combining the oil and sugar in step 2 make sure the cookbook (if you buy it, which you should) is far away from the bowl and the oil has a tendency to spit.  

Grilled Vegetable Salad

 

The last couple of days in London have provided me with more summer than I had previously experienced over two full summers.   There is a lot of skin to be seen, on both women and men, for better or for worse.   For some reason 75˚F (I still operate in Fahrenheit but it’s 26˚C for those of you who don’t want to whip out the calculator) in London feels like 90˚ anywhere else.  Workers have wet wash clothes draped over their forehead, Good Samaritans are handing out bottled water in the Tube and pretty much every woman on the street has pulled out a summer dress (albeit usually ill-fitting as she hasn’t had the opportunity to wear it in over 2 years).  Although it appears my summer might end tomorrow (it says it’ll still be sunny but cooler), I wanted to impart one of my favourite and easiest (and healthiest) summer dishes.  The luxury of hot weather when cooking is that your guests (or just you) don’t mind side dishes and the like to be room temperature.  This salad simply made up of zucchini (courgettes), summer squash (oddly, yellow courgettes), scallions (spring onions) and sugar snap peas (same name on both sides of the pond I believe) requires little prep and it a great hit for barbeques as well as for dinner.

Ingredients

2 zucchini

2 summer squash

2 bunches scallions

1 box (or generous handful) sugar snap peas

Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Seasoning

 

Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C.  Slice the zucchini and summer squash into strips, remove the growing bits (squiggles at the end of the bulb) and excess green of the scallions and lay them all in a roasting dish. Bathe in olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper and any other one that suits you, I used Old Bay.  Pop into the oven for 10 minutes.

 

Step 2: Remove any stems from the sugar snap peas, slice in half on the bias (diagonally) for looks and throw into a bowl.  When the other vegetables are ready, cut them into bite sized pieces and add to the sugar snap peas.  Toss the salad and serve whenever; hot or cold.  Freshen with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. 

 

Note: You can blanch the sugar snap peas if you feel like it (plunge into boiling water for about 2 minutes) but I didn’t and I love the crunch of them raw.   You can also use eggplant (aubergine) it’ll cook the same way. I love orange by the way.  My sister gave me that bowl.   

Lemon Tart

 

 

Considering I have devoted considerable time and effort to writing about food and then going so far as to post it on the internet for all to see, it might seem logical that I am comfortable in the kitchen and like throwing dinner parties.  Yes, for all intents and purposes, this is true.  That also means that the pressure to perform and put together something special is that much greater.  So last week, I found myself looking down the barrel of another dinner party and I went into a bit of a panic.  Not only was I feeling uninspired but my guests were to be my brother and sister-in-law, Lopo and Sandrine, and my father, Bruce, flown in especially from New York (not really but he does live in NY).  Family can and should be easy dinner guests but it was also the inaugural visit to the new flat and sometimes they can be the harshest critics (or so it seems but in my case it’s mostly self-inflicted, they are nothing but supportive). But I also felt tapped out.   I had exhausted all the really wowing dishes at previous dinner parties and I have avowed to not eat anything that is remotely tasty (see Detox days 2 – 7, I am sticking with it for a little while longer). 

So in the end, I chose to make a simple and healthy dinner followed by a kick-ass dessert.  This is where I pigeon-holed myself.  I had just bought a brand new tart tin and I had to use it.  I am the type of person who can hardly wait to get home before wearing newly bought clothes. I have even been known to wear them out of the store which is usually awkward for everyone as the sales clerk gingerly tries to remove the tag without cutting off all my hair or stabbing me in the neck. 

Have I mentioned that I am really good at the internet?  To solve the problem of what tart to bake in my new tart tin, I attacked the internet with reckless abandon and came up with a lemon tart from Delicious Magazine by Raymond Blanc.  I have swapped out some ingredients for their less processed cousins but the result is still greedy and delicious and as my brother said as he was finishing up his piece, “it makes me feel better knowing that the pastry crust is whole wheat.”

Ingredients

Pastry Crust

120g unsalted butter

80g icing sugar, sifted

250g whole wheat flour, sifted

2 egg yokes      

1 additional egg

Filling

5 Medium eggs

150g caster sugar (brown)

140ml double cream

Zest of 3 lemons

Juice of 4 lemons

Step 1:  For the pastry crust, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth, then beat in the egg yolks. For best results, the butter can be slightly softened. Add the sifted flour and incorporate it into the mixture until crumbly.  Use you fingers to do this so as to get all the flour and butter mashed together.  (Tip: Buy a 20-pack of disposable rubber gloves makes this task and a lot of others much easier and less messy).  Mix in 1 or 2 tsps of ice water and press to form a ball.

Step 2:  Spread some plastic wrap on the counter and flatten the dough out onto it to form a disk.  Chill for 30 minutes.  When chilled, roll out with a rolling pin on a flour-dusted surface until it’s about 3mm thick.  My pan was 24 cm diameter and 2.5cm deep.   Since whole wheat crusts have a tendency to fall apart more easily than their white flour counterparts there is not really easy way to get the dough into the tin besides “try your best!”  My technique involved two spatulas and some cursing. Either way, the crust will end up in the tin.  Smooth it around the bottom with a baggie full of extra dough, patch up the necessary holes and trim the top.  Chill for a further 30 minutes.

Step 3:  Put a baking sheet in the oven and preheat the oven to 180˚C.  Line the pastry case with parchment paper and fill it with something heavy that will keep the pastry from puffing up.  (I used untoasted muesli, it worked just fine and in the end I had toasted muesli, bonus. But you can use rice or beans or something that won’t burn or cook.)  Bake on the sheet for 10-15 minutes.  Remove the paper and weight and bake for a further 5 minutes.  (At this point it is supposed to start looking golden but given its already brown colour that might be difficult to determine.) Brush the pastry with 1 beaten egg and return to the oven for one more minute.  Let to cool. 

Step 4: Turn the oven up to 190˚C and make the filling.  Whisk the eggs and sugar together (remember how to make castor sugar from normal sugar, if not click here).  Whisk in the cream, lemon juice and zest until just combined and pour into the case.  Cook for 20-25 minutes, allow to cool for an hour. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Note:   This looks like a lot of long steps but it’s not that daunting once you get started.  You can also make twice the amount of pastry dough and freeze it so that you can skip those steps next time. Also, the filling is really soupy so getting it into the oven without spilling is tricky.  I pulled out the rack so that it was flat and ladled the filling into the case.  You might be of surer hand than I, so do whatever works for you.  Also the original recipes calls for you to remove the case from tin before the final bake, given the fragility of the whole wheat crust I would keep it on and remove once cooled. 

 

Rainy Days at the Lake

 

Every year I try to get home for Memorial Day Weekend or the End of May Bank Holiday.  It marks the wedding anniversary of my father and step-mother, but more officially the beginning of summer.  It used to be a rather hit or miss weekend in New England; a scorcher or snowing.  Nowadays, given the glories of global warming, it’s usually pretty nice.  This year there were some blemishes on the forecast but all in all we were in for a good summer weekend.  That was until the wrath of the heavens unleashed upon us a tempestuous downpour of magnificent proportions.   Enough of the Shakespearean language, you are probably saying!  Well let me give you some background.  The house in Connecticut is a converted children’s camp complete with a theatre and corrugated tin roof.  It is the roof that makes for the flowery language.  When it rains the noise is deafening and downright frightening.  That said; there is also not much to do at a lake house when it rains except well, bake.  And so we did.   No one had planned on baking or anything less than hours upon hours of uninterrupted sunshine so we had to make due with what we had.  Banana bread was the target and it came out pretty well.  We had to figure out what to do during the hour it was meant to bake but when we came back the sun was setting over the lake as the mist rose and the kitchen was filled with the smell of banana bread.  Not a bad afternoon after all.

Ingredients

 

5 Bananas

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 ¼ baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

 

Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 350 F / 170 C and grease a loaf pan.

 

Step 2:  Mash the bananas and then combine with the other ingredients until smooth.  (You may want to sift the flour and baking soda/powder).

 

Step 3: Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for about an hour.

 

Note:  We used Sugar in the Raw or brown granulated sugar (in packets to be more specific) and we didn’t have any Baking Powder so had to use a substitute.  The recommendation is that you use baking soda (the alkali) and cream of tartar (the acid) to sub in, but the likelihood of you (or me) having cream of tartar on hand if you don’t have baking powder is unlikely. We used baking soda and lemon juice it worked just fine in bread such as this. 

Detox Day #5

 

I am now heading towards the end of the detox.  I remember to eat 5 small meals a day.  I am not complaining about rice cakes and am even embracing my various spreads although the bean spread is just not good.  One thing that has been very different about the way I have been living my life is the almost non-existence of animal products.  Granted breakfasts are dotted with yoghurt and eggs (and I cheat with butter), but actual animal flesh has been limited to fish with the choice of tofu instead.  So far, it’s been a non-stop tofu train.  I can hardly recognize myself.  Don’t worry, I still love meat, the words “Cote de Boeuf for two” will continue to send shivers down my spine, but maybe, just maybe, it’s not necessary every night.  So tonight, the menu is shrimp scampi with spinach for me and the same with whole wheat linguine for Pascal. 

Ingredients (per person)

8-10 shelled uncooked shrimp

1 tbsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp chopped onion

1 tbsp chopped flat parsley

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 lemon

1 handful spinach

Oil and butter

Salt and pepper

 

Step 1:  Add a pat of butter to a warm sauce pan, then add a squirt of olive oil (not extra virgin, just plain old) and allow them to warm up.  Add the onions and garlic, cook until soft and the onions are translucent.

 

Step 2: At the same time, steam the spinach until wilted.

 

Step 3: Add the shrimp to the onions and garlic and cook until completely pink, add the parsley and chilli flakes until they are wilted and removed from heat. 

 

Step 4: Squirt both the spinach and the shrimp with lemon and serve one piled on the other. Add salt and pepper to taste.

 

Note: For a slightly less detox version, dot the spinach with a little butter.  You can also add a little white wine while the shrimp are cooking, but beware they dry out quick.