Turning and Two-minute Toum

We've all wasted food, but let me tell you, you know nothing about wasting food until you've been in a professional cookery class on Turned Potato Day.

For those of you who are too young to remember Nouvelle Cuisine or spent the 80s trying to master beurre blanc, turned vegetables are vegetables – usually roots and tubers – that are "turned" into five- or seven-sided barrel shapes with a turning knife (or ordinary paring knife if you're a Turning Genius).  It is not something that is relevant any more (when was the last time you saw a turned vegetable?) or something that you can learn in a few hours when you've also got another six precision cuts to learn, but still, it's in the curriculum, so we give it a go.

I show the students a video.  Then I demonstrate.  Once.  Twice.  Three times.  These kids try.  And fail.  Fail so spectacularly.  They fear cutting towards their thumbs, they fear the long continuous cut, they fear gripping the veg.  One potato looks like Headless Yoda.  One student thinks the pile of trimmings she's got is the turned potato.  I send them to get more potatoes.  The pile of potato trimmings – not peel, actual potato flesh – grows and grows.

While they try and fail, I chop up the potato trimmings and throw them into a pot for potato soup.  While I chop, I remember when I learned to turn veg.  I'd already had the obligatory lesson on turning vegetables but the turning moment, so to speak, was during a week's work experience at Mietta's in 1993, when Mietta was still alive and her restaurant was one of Melbourne's flagships.  Mietta's had a traditional French kitchen brigade (read: arrogant, tough, and properly sexist towards women in the kitchen) and a traditional French menu.  No vegetable was ever served in its original form.  Spuds were sliced thickly and then cut into rounds with a scone cutter.  Perfect baby turnips were shaved.  And carrots were turned.  So my real lesson on turning veg happened when the sous chef pointed at a 10kg bag of carrots and said, "Turn those!"  By the tenth carrot, my turning was pretty damned perfect.  (And I suffered.  That amount of turning meant that I ended up with microscopic cuts all over my thumbs from the motion of stopping the turning knife.  Not a problem, until the sous chef got me to shell 10kg of Moreton Bay bugs immediately afterwards.  Ever had an infection on your thumbs?  Not nice.)

But I digress.  I hate waste.  I use up the potato trimmings for a soup that isn't altogether a success, and while I'm putting it in the coolroom, I notice the leftover falafel from a barbeque we catered a few days ago.  They won't see another day, the students prefer the leftover sausages for their lunch, so I decide to take them home for dinner.

They're pretty good falafels, but because they were made to not offend teenage palates, they are on the bland side.  So I decide to make some Lebanese garlic sauce to go with them.

Toum, toom, or zait b'toum is the Holy Grail for garlic lovers.  It's what aioli should be but isn't since it's been discovered and reinvented for non-Spanish palates.  It is garlic extreme – there's not even a drop of olive oil to detract from the garlic flavour – and in my house, I have to stop people pouncing on it with a spoon.

For many years, I relied on my Lebanese friend Lily for it, because every time I made it, it would curdle, to the point where even though my children would still eat it, they would call it Garlic Fail.  Until the fateful day when I found Fouad's recipe and I was able to turn out an entire canister full of Garlic Win.  The family rejoiced and grabbed spoons.

Fouad's recipe is foolproof, and ideal for when you need a large amount of toum – I'll keep on using it for the rest of my life – but despite the food processor, it takes considerable care and time.  It is the only thing I make in the food processor that actually heats up the motor.  And Fouad has since posted a quicker and easier way to make toum for smaller quantities, but after a recent article on mayonnaise in Serious Eats, I suspected - sorry, Fouad! - that I could do better.

I did.  Last night's toum took two minutes flat with the stick blender - including the time it took to gather ingredients and peel garlic.  And it was full of win.  Not just garlicky, but white, perfectly fluffy and of such enviable texture that I could have cut it with a knife.  The leftover falafels went from being falafels to Those Little Round Things We Can Put Garlic Sauce on.  No waste.

  

TWO-MINUTE TOUM

No joke – this toum will take you two minutes flat, if that.  You're after a light, fluffy texture, and this recipe will give you that without any effort whatsoever.  No streaming oil in, no stress about how the emulsion will happen.  Just put the stick in and watch the magic happen.  The technique is easy, but if you're nervous, check out the Serious Eats video.  

(Makes 1 cup approx.)

Ingredients:

6-8 cloves garlic, peeled

1 tsp. salt

1 egg white

1 tbsp. water

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 cup (250ml) neutral oil (not grapeseed)

What you do:

1.  Put the garlic and salt into the canister of your stick blender (immersion blender, stab mixer – whatever).  Stab a few times to process the garlic to a paste.  Remove stick blender, pour in remaining ingredients, and allow to settle for about 15 seconds.

2.  Put stick blender back into canister, resting it on the very bottom, and switch on.  Mixture will begin to emulsify from the bottom up.  When it's 2/3 emulsified, slowly begin lifting out the stick blender.  By the time it reaches the surface, all of the mixture will be completely emulsified and fluffy. 

Yumbo McGillicutty! 

How to do summer without sizzling like a silly sausage

Summer means barbequing.  That is, grilling.  Why?  I mean - I understand the concept of eating outside.  I understand the concept of not heating up the kitchen.  What I don’t understand is why, on a day so hot that birds are falling fully cooked from the skies, some poor sap has to lean over glowing coals and volcanic rock and flames, drip-basting meat with his own sweat, and pretend that this is the perfect way to cook in warm weather.

Think about it:  those barbeques and grills get way hotter than your standard burner, your standard skillet, or heck, even your standard carbonize-you-at-closer-than-twenty-paces wok.  OK so barbeques and grills don’t heat up the kitchen like an oven does, but at least you don’t have to lean over an oven, flipping slices of eggplant every two minutes so they don’t self-combust.

So, much as I like them, summer barbeques don’t make all that much sense to me.  My heart always goes out to the aforementioned poor sap, particularly when the poor sap is a Sap on a Mission, like the venerable Sausage Sizzle.

Despite what Hoges may have said back in the '80s, the thing that is thrown most often on Aussie barbies isn’t shrimp, but sausage.  Putting a few snags on the barbie is pretty standard – on their own, or as part of a range of grilled meats – in the home, but outside the home, a sausage sizzle is one of the most common fundraisers.

Go down the street, go to the hardware store, and chances are that your local fire brigade or primary school will be having a sausage sizzle fundraiser.  $1 or $2 will get you a sausage in bread, with lots of nicely browned onions on top, and your choice of sauce.  Yes, it’s cheap, so yes, you can afford to give up another $1 or $2 because the guy (almost always it’s a guy) has been sweating over that hotplate since 9.00am and sizzling along with the sausages because his wife is in the Parents’ Association and she’s told him he’s got to do it or he won’t get any nookie for another month and HE DESERVES IT.

At home, when it’s truly hot, my barbeque stays under cover.  But sausages in bread are expected in summer, so sausages it is, with exactly the same flavour if not better flavour as barbequed, courtesy of my electric frying pan.  No heating up the kitchen.  No working over a hotplate.  No constant watching.  No sizzling except what should be sizzling in the pan while I’m sitting on the verandah, feet on my own poor sap’s lap, chatting a little dozily while we make the ice clink in our drinks.  Barbeque schmarbeque.  Feels like summer to me.

Just three easy steps, I promise.  First, chuck everything into your pan.  (No, you're not imagining it, my sausages here are two different colours.  Half are pork and half are beef.)

All right so at the end of Step 2, it pretty much looks like a dog's breakfast.  But it'll come good.  Promise!

See?  Toldja it'd come good!  Now where are those hot dog buns?...

THE SAUSAGE SIZZLE – MINUS BARBEQUE

This is such a low-effort, forgiving recipe – fiddle with the quantities, add ingredients, make it in advance, keep it warm – that it’s perfect for those lazy summer days.  If making it advance, however, it’s best done to the end of Step 2; they are best browned just before serving.  What I like to do is keep the sausages warm in the pan, pile split buns in baskets beside them, provide ketchup and mustard, and just let everyone help themselves.

(8 servings)

Ingredients:

1 kg. high-quality, high meat content sausages, such as pork, beef, bratwurst

1 kg. onions

500ml beer (what kind isn’t really important, as long as you stay away from the dark stuff – I actually used a non-alcoholic “brewed beverage”)

2 tbsp. seeded mustard

1 tbsp. oil

To serve:  hot dog buns or other bread, ketchup, mustard, and other condiments of your choice

What you do:

1.  Prick sausages several times.  Place in electric frying pan or a sauté pan large enough to hold the sausages in a single layer.  Slice onions very, very finely (a food processor or mandolin is the thing to use here) and add to pan along with remaining ingredients.  Stir briefly to combine.

2.  Bring to the boil with (or over) high heat.  Cover, and reduce heat to low.  Simmer until sausages are cooked through and onions are very tender – about 20 minutes.

3.  Uncover and increase heat to medium high.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated.  Keep cooking, stirring regularly, until sausages and onions are golden.  (Be careful when stirring:  cooked sausages can break quite easily.)  Serve sausages and onions in buns or bread with your favourite condiments.

Yumbo McGillicutty!

Self-raising flour: what it is, how to make it, and other questions on which the world hangs. Or not.

A bag of self-raising flour is a common sight in pantries across the UK and Australia, but the mention of it tends to send cooks elsewhere into a bit of tizz.  What is this strange and mysterious substance?  

What it is is no mystery.  Neither is how to make it.

SR flour is flour with a leavening agent added, so that whatever baked goodie you’re making won’t require baking powder or baking soda/bicarb-plus-an-acid-component to make it rise.  It’s very handy to have lying around, but if you can’t buy it, or if you run out, you can make yours in a trice.

The proportions are:

2 tsp. baking powder for every cup of flour

Sift together a few times, or if you’re a hard case like I am, just whisk it all vigorously for a minute or so.

Make it in bulk to have it ready to go when needed, or make as much as you need for what you’re making at the time.

OK, so I realise this is a piker’s post.  After all, it’s the last day of the year and I am in proper vacation mode right now.  More or less, I am:

a) not cooking, just subsisting on AWESOME leftovers

b) sitting in front of the telly watching all the DVDs I got for Christmas

c) crocheting

d) reading thick summery novels, and/or

e) any combination of the above.

So it’s like… yawn... Yumbo McGillicutty?  Whassat?

In my defense, however, this is a well handy hint, and I’ll be posting some recipes requiring SR flour soon.  So there.

Happy New Year everyone!  May 2012 be full of all good things for you and yours.

The things we do for love

My wacky mother and her wacky family and, in fact, a huge percentage of her wacky generation and culture have a belief that ice cream is digestive.  It was common that after a meal she would ask, “A little digestive ice cream?”  If the meal was huge, as it invariably was, the conversation would go like this:

“Would you like some ice cream?”

“No, I can’t, thank you.  I’m too full.”

“But it’s a digestive!”

It probably helped that she loved ice cream so much.  She may have loved other sweets, but she was fine without the them; on the other hand, the house was never without ice cream.  So one Christmas, when ma’s friend Lily came to stay with us and brought the dessert, a “frozen Christmas pudding” composed of chocolate ice cream, dried fruit and spices, she was in hog heaven.  As she was the following year, when she decided that for dessert she would make a frozen sweet called Parfait Fantastique, from the redoubtable "La Petrona".

It was round about that time that two important things happened:  I stopped merely being my mother’s kitchen hand and actually started cooking stuff, and my best friend, Brian, started celebrating Christmas with us.

Why are these two things important, and how are they related?  Because thanks to Brian, that very first dessert I made has been THE SAME DESSERT I’VE MADE EVERY YEAR SINCE.  This has been going on SINCE 1984.  Even though I HATE THE BLOODY THING.  Even though I TRIED MAKING SOMETHING ELSE ONE YEAR (“Yes, that was very nice,” Brian said, patting my shoulder, “now can we go back to parfait next Christmas?”).  Even though I am allowed to make as many other desserts as I like, but I CANNOT LEAVE OUT THE PARFAIT.  Even though my sister hosts Christmas every other year I still get to bring dessert, AND IT IS PARFAIT.

Why the fuss?  All the recipe is, as you can see, is something that crossed ma’s parfait and Lily’s frozen pudding, and I can’t stand the sight of it.  Make no mistake, though:  it is actually quite good.  Brian, pretending to be Donkey in Shrek has, since Shrek came out, greeted the appearance of the Christmas dessert with, “Parfait’s gotta be the most delicious thing on the whole damned planet!” and I have to admit:  it is delicious, festive, and light enough to follow the heaviest Christmas meal (and help digest it, thank you ma).

So last week, I made the yearly parfait.  Grudgingly, as is the yearly custom.  But my grumbling and whingeing and whining fell flat.  See – Brian is not here.  Brian moved to England last year, and where he is people love him and wine-and-dine him as is right and good because it is nothing less than he deserves, but I’m over here having a freakin’ existential crisis because of this stupid parfait.  Because my grumbling is nothing without his badgering me and cajoling me.  Because he won’t be here to look at me after having a mouthful, hunch his shoulders and mouth out, “YUM!”  Because he’s not here to have a third helping and the rest of my own helping after I’ve had the obligatory, grudging spoonful.  Because he may conceivably hate the dessert as much as I do but may have been wise and clever enough to realise long ago that this is one of our games.  Because he bugs me into submission and there’s no one in this world that I enjoy giving in to quite as much.  Because he’s not here to remind us that parfait is the most delicious thing on the whole damned planet.  Because the tradition of the parfait is precisely the same age as the tradition of Brian-for-Christmas, and having one without the other is just not the same.  Because truth be told, come Christmas, I don’t want to do without either.

PARFAIT NOËL

You can make the parfait up to a month before serving.  Keep well wrapped, however, in layers of both plastic wrap and foil.  And don’t be tempted to halve the recipe:  despite my personal misgivings, I can assure you that it will get eaten!

(16-24 servings)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup slivered almonds, toasted

1/3 cup red and green glacé cherries

1/3 cup chopped (candied) peel

2/3 cup raisins (or raisins and sultanas, half and half)

1/3 cup currants

1 tsp. mixed spice

1/4 cup rum, or apple or orange juice (if using fruit juice, you can also add 2 tsp. rum essence if you like)

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

3 tbsp. cocoa

8 eggs

350g. sugar

4 cups cream

1 tbsp. gelatine

1 cup milk

2 tsp. vanilla essence

Red and green glacé cherries, extra

What you do:

1.  Combine almonds, cherries, peel, raisins, currants, mixed spice, and rum or juice in a medium bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap, and allow to macerate and swell overnight.  (If you're pressed for time, you can place these in a microwave container, cover, and cook on HIGH for 5 min.).  The next day, mix in cinnamon, nutmeg, and cocoa.  Set aside.

2.  With an electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar until very thick and pale.  Add vanilla.  In a separate bowl, beat cream until soft peaks form. 

3.  Scald milk, and sprinkle over the gelatine.  Whisk with a fork to dissolve.  Add gelatine mixture to eggs and beat well.  Fold in cream.  Divide mixture in two, one rather bigger than the other.  Fold fruit mixture into the smaller quantity.

4.  Place extra cherries in a decorative pattern in the bottom of a two large loaf or bundt pans, or three medium pans.  Carefully spoon in fruit parfait mixture, and place in freezer about 15 min., until thick.  Carefully spoon in vanilla parfait mixture.  Cover with plastic wrap, place in freezer, and freeze a minimum of six hours or overnight.  Allow to soften in refrigerator one hour before serving.  Unmould and slice to serve.

Mamá's Pan Dulce (Panettone)

 

My mother died twelve years ago.  It’s strange:  in those twelve years there have been hard times when I’ve hoped and prayed for a sense of her presence and received nothing.  And times when I’ve not consciously wanted any such thing and unexpectedly been given it.  So obviously, the subtleties of communication with passed-on loved ones are totally lost on me.  When I don’t want to leave it to chance, when I want a shortcut to connection and memory and loving vibes, I open up Ma’s cookbook and cook.

Opening up Ma’s cookbook is invariably a bittersweet experience – particularly seeing her beautiful strong script before infirmity made her elegant hand shaky – but nonetheless curiosity always gets the better of me.  It isn’t just a cookbook, but a book where she jotted down all kinds of things, including clothing designs and the measurements of the women she was making them for.  This means, alas, that I know what my measurements were back in 1985.  Dammit!  Not all tears are for you, ma!

But I digress.

It is the time of year when I open up her cookbook and make her recipe for pan dulce and give thanks.  In Spanish, pan dulce means “sweet bread”, which means that throughout the Spanish-speaking nations you will encounter all kinds of sweet breads called pan dulce.  In Argentina, however, it only means one thing:  the traditional sweet Christmas bread that the myriad Italian migrants brought with them.  Panettone.

Homemade panettone bears only a passing resemblance to the (admittedly tempting on account of the fancy packaging) bought ones.  Commercial ones are airy and dry, with the occasional raisin for interest.  Made at home, they are rich, studded with fruit and nuts – particularly pine nuts – throughout, and most of all, fragrant.  The moment I combine orange blossom water, vanilla, and brandy, the combined scent, heady and exotic, rises up to my nostrils and I whisper, “It’s Christmas”. 

Despite the yeast, pan dulce/panettone is also a boon for the harried cook.  While we all know that fruitcakes and plum puddings need to be made at least a month in advance to mature and be at their best, panettone doesn’t.  It can be made the day you intend to eat it, or the day before.  Or a week before, and kept wrapped in cellophane.  Or six months before and frozen.  Leftovers are rare.  Any that don’t get snarfed make the world’s best French toast or bread pudding.

The instructions for this pan dulce/panettone are for a mixer, but it isn’t necessary.  This isn’t a particularly difficult dough to work, it’s just that because I usually make a minimum of six loaves, I’ve streamlined the process.  And I’ve streamlined the recipe, too.   You should hear the conversations I have had with Spirit Ma over her imprecise recipe:

“How much fruit, Ma?”

“As much as you like.”

“What do you mean?”

“As much as the dough will take.”

“Sigh… OK.  How many loaves will this make?”

“One.  Maybe two.  Or three.”

“What about the brandy?  The mazahar?  The vanilla?”

“Enough.”

“Of course.  How hot should the oven be?”

“The normal temperature.”

Death never stopped a person being frustrating.  Or providing you with the best darned Christmas treat you ever had.

**********

The fruit doesn't have to be perfectly spread, just relatively even.

When you've finished rolling, folding, and rolling and folding again, the fruit should be evenly distributed throughout.  Remember:  each mouthful must contain tidbits!

The scaled balls of dough in their giant paper cases.  I actually imported these, which yes, makes me a little insane since carrying them as hand luggage through a 14-hour flight without them crushing is the stuff of which Hollywood blockbusters are made.

Slashed and brushed with eggwash (yes, you're right, I need a new scalpel).

Behold!  Burnished perfection.

MAMA’S PAN DULCE (PANETTONE)

A word on the “fragrances”.  First, the brandy:  while it gives a particular flavour, the brandy’s real role here is to react with the yeast and give it a boost.  This is much needed since this is a dough rich in butter, sugar, and eggs, which affects a dough’s ability to rise.  (No, you cannot use extra yeast:  it’ll just taste yeasty and overferment the dough, giving you a dry, and crumbly loaf.)  Next, the orange blossom water (mazahar):  I have used a lot here, but depending on the quality, you may need to use a lot less.  As a rough rule, the smaller the bottle, the stronger it is.  If you buy yours in tiny 50ml bottles that cost you a decent amount of cash, you may only need half as much, but my big 500ml bottle isn’t that concentrated.  On no account, not EVER, substitute orange extract; use the zest of an orange, instead (but make it a point to find mazahar before Christmas next year). 

Makes 3 loaves

Ingredients:

1 kg. flour, plus a few tablespoons for the fruit

2 1/2 tsp. instant yeast

1/4 tsp. salt

150g. sugar

150g. butter, softened

3 eggs

1 cup warm milk

1 tbsp. brandy

1 tbsp. orange blossom water (mazahar)

1 tsp. vanilla essence

500g. mixed dried and candied fruit, and nuts (see below)

Eggwash

1/4 cup melted butter, extra

What you do:

1.  Place flour, yeast and salt in mixer bowl.  Give a few turns with the K beater.  Add sugar, and give another few turns to combine.  With motor running, add butter.  Mix until butter is mixed in.  Add eggs, milk that has been mixed with brandy, orange blossom water and vanilla, and enough water to make a soft dough.  Replace K beater with dough hook, and knead for 5 minutes.  Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled.

2.  Toss mixed fruit and nuts with flour.  This will allow them to disperse evenly through the dough.  Turn the oven on so that it is just barely warm.   (If you have a gas oven, the pilot light is enough.)  Tip dough out onto floured work surface and pat out flat.  Distribute fruit over the surface and roll up.  Roll out with rolling pin; fold in three, and roll out again.  Repeat this a few times to distribute fruit through dough.  Scale dough (see below) and divide in three.  Form dough into neat mounds and place in paper panettone moulds or tall greased pans.  Place in oven and allow to rise.  When breads are 3/4 of the way to doubled, slash tops with a scalpel or samurai-sharp knife, and brush carefully with eggwash.

3.  Place breads in warm oven and crank it up to 180oC.  (This method of only partly rising and putting into gradually heating oven givens oven spring like nobody’s business – trust me.)  Bake 30 minutes, until risen and lightly golden.  Drizzle with melted butter and bake another 15-20 minutes, until tops are deeply coloured and breads sound hollow when tapped on the base.  Cool on wire racks completely before serving.

NOTE:  The fruit and nuts you use are up to you, but you should include some glacé/candied fruit, lots of pinenuts, and chopped walnuts or pecans for bite.  “Scaling” is a fancy term for weighing out individual portions of dough to get a consistent size.  To scale these loaves, I weighed the dough (it was about 2.4kg) and divided that number by three (800g).  I divided the dough in three and weighed each portion to make sure it weighed 800g.  Behold, three loaves the exact same size.

Yumbo McGillicutty!