Thursday, August 23, 2007

Run out of great ideas for lunch?

Q Dear Bill,

As a reader of your weekly column, I think I have a challenge for you. We are five (junior and senior) ladies who play bridge and who have run out of great ideas for lunch. Please help me. I would like to surprise the others with something different! I have served hot and cold soups, sandwiches of all varieties and, of course, we "do lunch" whenever we can, quite often at Bills. I don't mind if I have to start the dish the day before. I would like it to be delicious, pleasing to the eye and to arouse the senses! - Sandi

A Dear Sandi,

I have always loved baked pastas for winter meals - warming, bubbling and golden, filling the house with toasty, cheesy aromas. However, I am not a big fan of thick, dominating bechamel sauce, so I set myself a mission to create a baked pasta that is lighter, but no less satisfying. In this pumpkin cannelloni, ricotta is whisked through the bechamel sauce resulting in a fresher taste and an airier, softer texture. While cannelloni can seem fiddly, I use fresh lasagne sheets that don't have to be precooked. I suggest assembling it a day in advance but baking it just before your guests arrive to ensure it stays moist, with the cheese just melted and browned.

A salad to contrast with the richness of the cannelloni is essential. The bitter greens of the season, such as the radicchio used here, complement the subtle sweetness of the pumpkin perfectly. The contrasting greens and purple in the salad also make a very pretty accompaniment.

Try freshly shelled walnuts in the apple and walnut cake for an unbeatable seasonal treat - their flavour is far superior to the shelled variety we usually settle for. This cake is perfect served with a cup of tea, which I imagine you might enjoy while playing cards after lunch. You could whisk through a little ground cinnamon while whipping the cream for a spiced variation that works beautifully with the cake's apples, walnuts and raisins. I hope this menu satisfies the card circle and gives you enough time to concentrate on your game.

Posted by Monika Jansch at 10:18 AM | Comments 0

The beet generation - what to do with beetroot

Get to know this bleeding, beautiful sweet-savoury vegetable.

What a gloriously opulent colour beetroot is. It puts me in mind of Thai silk or velvet or rubies. It has a unique, satiny smoothness when cooked, too, and an unusual, sweet yet savoury flavour.

The marvellous colour comes from a combination of the purple pigment betacyanin, and a yellow one, betaxanthin, and it will certainly stain the cook's fingers as well as the chopping board. Jane Grigson calls beetroot a "bossy vegetable" as it stains all it comes in contact with. I slip on rubber gloves to peel or chop raw beetroot, and the chopping board will always need a good scrub with a bit of kitchen salt.

It must be the purple pigment that bleeds most freely, as golden beetroot does not stain nearly as deeply. The "bleeding" is a desirable quality if making borscht or a beetroot-infused sauce for red meat, or a beetroot dip or beetroot and ginger juice for breakfast.

However, if using beetroot with other ingredients in a salad, mix all the other bits first and add the beetroot only when you are ready to serve.

Beetroot is good both cooked and raw. I have found that salads made with raw, grated beetroot bleed less than salads made with cooked beetroot. Try coarse gratings or julienne shreds of carrot, beetroot and celeriac lightly tossed with a delicate dressing of verjus and extra virgin olive oil, or cider vinegar and extra virgin
olive oil.

The sweetness and intensity of beetroot also goes very well with richly flavoured and dense-fleshed game meats such as kangaroo, squab pigeon, venison or hare. Such meats are best served medium, or even better, rare, and slices of cooked beetroot slipped into rich meat juices look most dramatic. As with all cooked beetroot preparations, if it is the rich, purple hue you wish to preserve, add the beetroot just long enough to reheat. If it simmers too long in liquid, it turns copper-red and the flavour is dulled.

A puree of beetroot, smooth or quite coarse, is another way of marrying game meats with the colour and flavour.

We can buy beetroots small or large, usually red, occasionally a fabulous orange and very occasionally striped. If the beetroot is fresh (from the garden or a farmer's market, for example), the tops will be perky and shiny and can be used as a vegetable or tossed with fresh pasta. The tops will need thorough washing and are best braised (stems and leaves) with a small amount of olive oil or butter in a tightly covered, small pan for about five minutes.

Taste a stem for tenderness and then add a few drops of sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar and a grinding of pepper. Do not use beetroot leaves that are yellow or wilted - they will taste very nasty.

I like beetroot with citrus, such as in the salad recipe at right. The avocado adds creaminess and the pita bread adds crunch.

Its sweet yet savoury character is best highlighted by being combined with something sharp, hence the popularity of the old-time, unsubtle boiled beetroot drowned in a dish of throat-catching vinegar. A little really good vinegar is excellent and, of course, sour cream is traditional when making borscht.

Beetroot is used traditionally to colour chunks of turnip in a favourite Middle Eastern pickle.
At a dinner on Hamilton Island recently as part of the Great Barrier Feast, chef Darren Simpson prepared a delicious entree of fat smoked eel with young leeks, a coarse puree of red beetroot and sliced golden beetroot with horseradish cream. A great combination.
In European markets the beetroot for sale seems to be always cooked. And very unappetising it looks, too, all sunken and shrivelled. I puzzle over the reason for this. Is it because beetroot is seen as too time-consuming to cook from raw? Is it because ovens were not very common in some homes in Europe? Surely not, for this has changed long ago. No doubt some reader will know the answer.

It is true that a good-sized beetroot can take up to an hour to become tender - the small ones much less.

I prefer to roast beetroot in the oven, well-washed and cut into wedges or slices if large, or left whole if small, together with olive oil, garlic and herbs. The skins will slip off when cooked and the juices in the pan can be served, too.

Or if the beetroot is needed whole, I wrap it in oiled foil and bake it for about an hour. If simmering the beetroot in water, do not peel beforehand and do not cut off the tap root or the colour will bleed dramatically.

Posted by Monika Jansch at 10:14 AM | Comments 0

Monday, August 13, 2007

Share your latest cooking techniques or tastes.

Curious cooks never stop adding new techniques or tastes to their repertoires. What are yours?

Thankfully no one ever knows it all. For a curious cook the infinite possibilities of ingredients and traditions means there is always another way. Whether one learns at one's mother's knee or by swapping recipes or going to cooking classes, or from reading or looking over the shoulder of a confident cook, the journey can be absorbing and almost all-consuming.

Here and there along the way a bit of passed-on wisdom or a special tip becomes part of one's own repertoire. I spent a week with America's godmother of Italian cooking, Marcella Hazan, in the mid-1980s in Venice. Marcella was fond of saying, as she scooped diced onion into a cold frying-pan and followed it with a slosh of olive oil, "It'll get hot sooner or later".

Cooks I have worked with have found it quite daring and maybe even a bit shocking when I sometimes do the same thing.

She also showed me how to peel a red or yellow capsicum using an asparagus peeler. This was a revolutionary step, as cooks were mostly instructed to roast capsicums over an open flame until well-blackened to remove the skin. But she wanted to use her capsicums raw, so they could gently cook without collapsing. These meltingly soft and sweet golden or scarlet capsicums became one of my favourite ways of accompanying seared salmon or a grilled lamb rump or quickly cooked lamb fillets. The oily juices made a perfect sauce.

She also made a lovely salad to accompany vitello tonnato using paper-thin slices of fresh lemon, lightly salted, rinsed and dried and then combined with the thinnest shavings of capsicum, again peeled raw and dressed with beautiful oil.

The best-known codifiers of late 19th-century and early 20th-century French cuisine are perhaps Escoffier or Madame Saint-Ange. Accepted flavour combinations were rarely deviated from. Sorrel, for example, is served as an accompanying puree, made with either reduced veal stock or cream or sometimes rice, or occasionally as a small dish on its own with soft-boiled eggs, or as a delicious soup to be served in the spring.

The inventiveness of Jean and Pierre Troisgros in creating their iconic dish of salmon with sorrel sauce would have seemed revolutionary to the French diner in the late 1970s. And yet the combination was perfect. Oily rich fish, a cream sauce built on a reduction of herby vermouth and the sharp acidity of the sorrel. The sorrel was roughly torn and served only just collapsed, and the salmon itself was flattened into a thin escalope and seared in the all-new Teflon pans for a moment so that it was practically raw in the centre.

I spent a week in the kitchens of the Restaurant Troisgros and watched with fascination as the cooks made a large pot of sauce vin blanc, which was variously deployed. A ladle of sauce into a clean pan, a handful of something else, a small knob of butter, a swirl of the pan and away it went. Efficiency without compromising flavour. In went a handful of sorrel with the salmon; julienne of carrots, leeks and cucumbers for poached oysters; and a touch of saffron and fresh tomato for the shellfish.

Cream sauces are rarely seen these days but they can still charm if served in small portions as part of a well-balanced meal. I sprinkle the fish with lemon salt and use fat-reduced cream of 18 per cent butterfat, and it works perfectly.

Posted by Monika Jansch at 11:46 AM | Comments 0

What are your favourite dessert classics?

Q Dear Bill,
I love entertaining and I think I do it quite successfully other than the dessert part. Could you please assist me with simple recipes of three classic desserts - creme caramel, creme brulee and souffle, and perhaps variations, such as Baileys or chocolate?
Thanks - Natalie

A Dear Natalie,
Here is a collection of the ultimate classic desserts. I have substituted the creme caramel with chocolate mousse for variety, so this trilogy of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry has all the key flavours covered. Neopolitan ice-cream, anyone?

The great thing about dessert recipes is that you really only need a few basic ones in your repertoire and they will last a lifetime. It is fascinating to think how much fashions change with savoury foods and yet our taste in desserts has remained remarkably similar over the years. The first known printed creme brulee recipe was from 1731 and, after 276 years, it is still one of the most popular desserts.

A luscious sweet to finish a meal is the perfect way to indulge your guests because most people don't often go to the effort of making desserts at home. We think of desserts as being indulgent, but their sweet richness is the perfect balance to a savoury meal and makes you feel completely satisfied.

The added joy of these desserts is that they can be prepared ahead of time - even the souffle, with ingredients ready and moulds prepared. Just watch how you wield the blowtorch after a few glasses of wine and a successful party! I have heard more than a few tales of singed eyebrows.

Short tips

I'm a purist when it comes to chocolate mousse and prefer not to adulterate the chocolate flavour, but for a Baileys chocolate mousse, add 3 tbsp of Baileys to the cream before you whip it.

Always use the best quality chocolate you can afford - it does make the world of difference.

Creme brulee is quite easy to flavour, just add the flavouring to the cream before scalding. You could replace the vanilla with 8 wide strips of mandarin peel (orange or lime would be delicious, too), or for a slightly spicy brulee try adding 2 slices of peeled, fresh ginger along with the vanilla. Remove the flavourings before pouring the cream over the egg yolks and sugar.

This fruit souffle recipe is very versatile in terms of varying the flavour. Try substituting the strawberries with other berries, peach, apricot, mango or even banana. Be aware, though, that chocolate souffle requires a different method completely.

Are are you classic desserts favourites?

Posted by Monika Jansch at 11:41 AM | Comments 1