Silverbrow on Food

Doughnuts (or sufganiyot)

I'm not sure if they're donuts or doughnuts.  'Ugh' sounds ugly but with or without it, do(ugh)nuts and sufganiyot, the Israeli doughnut, are delicious. 

They are however are an extravagence.  It is very rare that you can justify getting some bread, add sugar, deep fry it, squirt in some jam and add more sugar.  So if I'm going to eat them, I want to be sure that they are the very best.  I think I've found the very best but they're a bit of a shlep, the Doughnut Plant is in New York and Roladin, has various outlets around Israel. 

With my favourite doughnuts many miles from London, I was left with little choice this past Chanucah but to bake my own. In an attempt to limit the risk of being disappointed I went straight to Dan Lepard's recipe in Short and Sweet. These are excellent, truly delicious.  Even my duff first batch tasted outstanding.

A couple of words on process.  I deep fried in a saucepan using sunflower oil.  I imagine that a deep fat fryer is ideal, but my method worked fine, once I had a sugar thermometer.  My first go round I started making them before remembering I'd chucked out my old sugar thermometer.  They were burned as a conseuqence.  I then bought a decent thermometer and it made a massive difference. 

Dan advises very long resting periods throughout.  I generally didn't rest it quite as long as he suggested and I'm not sure my specimens were any worse off.  

As ever, make sure to read the recipe fully before you start baking.  This one requires a bit of planning.

Makes 6 doughnuts (I'd seriously recommend simply accepting that 6 is not enough and double up).

• 100ml warm milk
• 1tsp fast acting yeast
• 250g strong white flour
• 1 medium egg
• 25g caster sugar
• 25g melted unsalted butter
• 3tsp vanilla extract
• 2tsp glycerine (Dan says its optional, I disagree, I think it's necessary. Gives the doughnuts a beautiful, soft, smooth finish.)
• 1/2tsp fine salt
• sunflower oil for kneading and frying
• warm jam for filling
• icing sugar and ground cinammon (make sure it's fresh) for dusting

Mix the milk, yeast and 100g of flour and leave covered in a warm place/somewhere without a draft for 1.5hrs.

Whisk the egg and sugar until thick and pale with an electric mixer.  Then beat with the yeast mixture, melted butter, vanilla and glycerine until smooth.  Add the remaining flour and salt and knead it into a sticky dough.

Briefly knead the dough on an oiled work surface.  Return it to the bowl and leave for 1hr.  Knead a couple of times during that period.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces.  Shape into balls and place on an oiled tray, cover and leave for 1hr.

Quarter fill a deep sided saucepan with oil, or your deep fat fryer, and heat to between 180°C/350°F and 190°C/375°F.  This is when that thermometer becomes essential.

Fry the donuts in small batches.  Keep a close eye on them as they brown.  At this temperature, should take 1/1.5mins each side.

Remove from oil and drain on paper.

Make sure the jam is warm.  Using the long nozzle on an icing bag, make a hole in the doughnut and squirt in the jam.  I found I used a lot more jam than I'd originally thought.

Dip in the sugar and cinammon and eat.

In Dan's recipe he says that if you don't dip in the sugar then they can be reheated at a later date and are as though they are fresh out of the oven.  I have to say, I didn't think they were quite that good and had gone a bit soggy.

Anyway, all you want to do is eat them fresh.  The problems of reheating are academic.

Smoked salmon gratin dauphinoise

I don’t think I’m being immodest by saying that generally I’m an upstanding kind of guy.  But every so often I like to go off the rails, I like to do something bad, wrong and downright dirty.  Usually that involves food.

Gratin dauphoinise is one of those dishes I love to eat but can never justify ordering, let alone making it because of the stodge.  That is until someone leads me astray and tells me I can make it. Well if I’m told I can do something then that’s fine isn’t it?  According to Supper Club, Kerstin Rodgers' (aka Ms Marmitelover) book and host of The Underground Restaurant, her salmon dauphoinise is a perfect summer dish.  Well that’s perfect because it’s summer - if served with a salad - it’s healthy - and a glass of crisp white wine - for essential lubrication, obviously.  So I am easily led astray. 

I served this as a main course on just such a wet, summer’s evening, with a salad of baby spinach leaves and a walnut oil dressing (walnut oil, white wine vinegar, diced garlic, salt and pepper).  I fear though that following it with Eton Mess might have been a bit too much cream for one night.

I should say, I’ve tweaked the recipe a bit.  She recommends it being no more than three layers deep, I did about five in my favourite dish.  I also used a bit more smoked salmon than she recommends.  In her recipe she says 250g, I ended up using 300g.

Serves 4 as a main-course (you could however serve it as a side)

• 4 large baking potatoes (e.g. Maris Pipers or King Edwards)
• 1 clove of garlic
• Butter
• 300g smoked salmon
• 2 fresh bay leaves
• 600ml double cream

Preheat the oven to 180C.  I’d recommend sitting the dish you are using for this recipe in a roasting tray or similar.  If it spills in the oven, it can get messy.

Peel the potatoes, then slice them very thinly - I use a mandoline.  Alternatively, if you’ve got a food processor there’s a good chance it comes with a slicing blade.

Slice the garlic and rub your baking dish with it.  Throw away the clove.

Grease the dish with the butter.

Arrange a layer of potatoes on the bottom.  Kerstin recommends a fish scale pattern - basically, overlap them around the dish.

Salt and pepper the layer.  Not too much salt as you’re about to add smoked salmon.

Add a layer of smoked salmon.  My layers of smoked salmon did not cover the potato entirely, rather about 75% of it.

Then add another layer of potato, salt and pepper, smoked-salmon and so on.  Topping out with potato.

Don’t fill it right to the top with potato as you need space for the cream.

Salt and pepper the top layer of potato and lay the bay leaves on top.

Pour over the cream - you will end up with a generous amount of cream covering your dish.  

Cover with silverfoil and place in the oven for 30 minutes.  Remove the foil.  I found it needed a further 25 minutes but note that Kerstin recommends only 15 minutes.

Skewer the potatoes to check there is some give, assuming there is serve.  If there's not, put it back in the oven for a bit.

Not just a chicken bagel recipe

I was asked to write a piece for The Forward's Jew & The Carrot blog on my favourite Shabbat meal.  As I say in my piece, they tend to be fairly uninventive.  I wanted to write about chopped liver, but turns out they already had that covered.  So instead, I turned to an old standby that is a pre-dinner snack, rather than dinner itself, heaven forfend.  Perhaps it is somewhat denigrating to refer to it as a snack.  

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This was originally posted on The Jew & The Carrot.

Being from solid Ashkenazi stock, Friday night dinners invariably meant several ways with chicken: chopped, boiled and roasted. Although it was the least glamorous — the boiled chicken — that most excited me.

Chicken soup is a much loved dish and I’m always partial to a bowl or two, especially with my mother’s kneidlach. But it was the by-product that got my taste buds going.

I shouldn’t call it the by-product because the chicken is the main event, everyone just forgets about it and goes straight to the diluted version — what is soup if not a watery take on a solid? Chicken soup is genius in so many ways, but particularly because you can remove the primary ingredient and the soup is in no way diminished and the chicken tastes delicious.

I realized this curious fact early on in life and it led to a pleasurable pre-Shabbat ritual. Returning home from school I would sneak into the kitchen and sidle over to the large glass rectangular dish that contained the chicken. It would sit there looking somewhat wan. The skin had probably fallen off in the pot and other than boiling water and some aromatics, there was nothing to give it a hint of color. But I could readily overlook the aesthetic shortcomings. I was focused on a sandwich and no good sandwich will ever get mistaken for an oil painting.

Ideally the chicken would be warm but not hot and sitting in some broth that is mostly liquid, but at points is quivering into jelly. I would take aim at the breast, barely having to exert any pressure as the meat gladly parted company with the carcass.

Once enough chicken had been liberated I’d root around the bread bin to find a fresh sesame-seed bagel. Still with the merest hint of warmth from the bakers oven, they were nutty from the sesame, had a hint of sweet and salt and the all important features of a bagel, a chewy crust, but a forgiving center.

Split in two I would now be at a crossroads. The only one in this process. Either I would go down the purist route or I’d pimp my sandwich a bit. The purist route would be to pile the chicken onto the bagel, add a little squeeze of ketchup and generous dousing of chicken soup to ensure continued moistness, taking full advantage of a bagel’s rigidity.

The more outre version was to add half of a thinly sliced avocado, a dab of mayo and a couple of spritzes of Tabasco to the purist.

I like to think of this wonder as the kosher lobster roll. (I say that never having eaten a lobster roll.)

At this stage I was ready to retire to a quiet corner of the kitchen to contemplate the Shabbat meal that was just around the corner and ponder a question that had been vexing me for years: why was I never as hungry as everyone else when the chicken soup, chopped liver, roast chicken, roast potatoes and crumble made their post-Kiddush procession onto the table? I’m still wondering.

Makes 1 sandwich

• 1 breast chicken, taken from a bird recently used to make chicken soup
• 1 sesame bagel
• Tomato ketchup
• 1 tablespoon of broth from the chicken soup

If you’re going for the pimped version

• Half an avocado sliced
• Tabasco to taste
• Mayonnaise

Take a fresh bagel slice it. Ideally it is still a bit warm from the baker. If you don’t have anything that fresh, then put it in the oven to warm it. Don’t toast it. This is not a sandwich that requires crunch or crumbs.

Peel the breast away from the carcass. You can use knife and fork if you insist, but I prefer pulling it away with my fingers as it comes away in nice clumps. Remove any skin that is lingering on he chicken.

Take one bagel half and compose as you see fit. I tend to put ketchup first, then chicken, then avocado, mayo and Tabasco.

Pour the broth over the other half of the bagel so that the bread soaks up the liquid and close the sandwich.

Eat in quiet contemplation awaiting the arrival of Shabbat and your dinner.

Salt beef

Better salt beef should be more widely available.  It is a cheap cut of meat ooh how age of austerity, that doesn't take much hard work, ideal because I just don't have any time to cook and yet current offerings are pretty mediocre.

True, hope might be on the horizon, West One Deli for those that keep kosher (and assuming they get round to opening, there have been interminable delays) and Mishkin's from the irrepresable team behind Polpo et al for those that don't.  

So limited supply has left me trying to perfect my salt beef recipe for sometime and I think I've now done it.  Using the recipe below, I ended up with some of the most delicious salt beef I've ever had the privilege to taste.  It is a bit saltier than commercial salt beef but far from too salty - it gives a pleasant tang, helped no doubt by the aromatics.

I feel heretical saying it, but my efforts were no thanks to two of my heroes.  My first attempt was a salty disaster - the only time that the now veggie Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has let me down.  I then read Claudia Roden's seminal work on Jewish cookery, but was uninspired by her recipe, especially the rather amorphous 'pickling spices' she proposes. 

I moved on to Fergus Henderson at the suggestion of a commenter on the blog.  I blithely followed him, until I received another comment on the blog saying his brine was far too salty.  Pah, I thought, what does this naif though compared to Henderson.  

I then re-read Henderson and realised he was recommending the same concentration of cure for a chicken as for salt beef.  This seemed a bit wrong and perhaps Nick Loman was worth listening to.

So I pimped Henderson's recipe, or rather I wimped out and watered it down.  For 4 days I had a 15% cure and for 1 day I had a 7.5% cure.  I suppose you could make life easier by just going for a 13.5% cure or 540g of salt to 4l of water.  (These percentages refer to the quantity of salt to water in the cure, where water is 100%.)

I didn't use salt-petre and didn't think it was any the worse for it.  The reason for using salt-petre is to ensure the beef doesn't lose its pink colour as a result of the brining process.  I didn't find the colour a problem.  The inside was brown, a bit like the centre of smoked brisket - rather delicious actually.

So here's what I did.

Please note that in total this recipe takes 5 days to brine and is cooked on the 6th day - although most of that time a lump of meat is sitting in some salty water and does not require much work from you. Just don't try to make it a few hours before guests arrive.

You will need a large non-metallic container to cure the meat in.

3.5kg brisket - make sure your butcher leaves some of the fat on it.

4 day brine

• 400g caster sugar
• 600g sea salt
• 12 juniper berries
• 12 cloves
• 12 black peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 4l water

5th day brine

• 4l water

Cooking the beef

• 2 bay leaves
• Bunch of thyme
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 celery stick, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to the boil.  Then allow to cool thoroughly.

Once cooled, pour the brine over the beef.  Make sure the beef is fully submerged, you may well need to weigh it down.

Leave it for 4 days.

On the 5th day, add a further 4l of water.

A note on curing & refrigeration: I don't refrigerate mine whilst it's curing because this is a preserving process afterall.  I leave it in a nice cool part of the house.  If you do refrigerate, bear in mind it will slow the curing process down, so for the same flavour you'll need to make it more concentrated or brine for longer.

On the 6th day - cooking day - remove the beef from the brine and rinse well under running water.

Put the beef in a pot with herbs and vegetables and cover with fresh water.  Cook it for about 3-3.5 hours.  You want it to be a rolling boil and by that I mean: the water's gently bubbling rather than furiously splashing for most of the cooking time.

Onions roasted in chicken soup aka Orbs of Joy

However mature we are, a recipe called 'Orbs of Joy' is always going to get a snigger. I imagine it will also generate some interesting traffic from Google.

That aside, it is one of the simplest recipes for a delicious side-dish and comes from Fergus Henderson's Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II.  I used it recently as a side-dish to a bollito misto.

I have tweaked his recipe slightly.  He uses chicken stock, but I went for a more intense flavour and used chicken soup - it also happened to be what I had to hand.  However, to compensate, I use less liquid than he recommends.

You'll end up with a sweet, caramelised, soft onion.  I imagine that whole fresh cloves of garlic would be pretty special cooked in the same way, or perhaps turnips.  The world is your oyster etc etc.

So prepare yourself for this recipe, it's a toughy.  Or not.

Reckon on 1 red onion per person.

• Red onions
• Chicken soup

Peel the onions and place in an oven proof dish.

Pour over the chicken soup.  I did it to about one-third to a half the depth of the onion.  In his recipe, Henderson, using chicken stock, suggests almost covering the onions in stock.

Braise them in a medium oven for about half an hour or until they are nice and gooey.

Bea's Vegan Chocolate Cake

I don't really bother with desserts.  It's not that I don't have a sweet tooth - I do, as much as the next fat man.  Rather, I have a technical problem with them. Specifically, the prohibition under the laws of kashrut to mix milk and meat.  

Whilst we're banned from combining milk and meat in recipes - nyet to chicken kiev for example - we also have to wait an extended period of time between eating meat and eating dairy products.  The gap I observe is 3 hours.  Which is why I don't really bother with dessert.  Dessert is all about milk, cream or butter, so really what is the point.

Some people get around this by going to town on the multitude of substitutions available but I consider them to be abominations.  I also think that generally after a relatively heavy meal, some fresh fruit or sorbet is not the end of the world.

But I have hankered for some time after a decent dessert that I can pull out of the bag when necessary. Something beyond lokshen pudding (bread and butter pudding, without the bread or butter) or almond cake in orange syrup (a Sefardi/Spanish favourite).  And I just may have found one in Tea with Bea: Recipes from Bea's of Bloomsbury.

As the name suggests, this is the first book from Bea Vo, owner of the eponymous Bea's of Bloomsbury. Over the years of blogging, tweeting and eating I've got to know Bea fairly well.  I can tell you this about her: her cakes are outstanding, she's a voracious collector of cookbooks, she's a great source for sourcing hard to find produce and she knows her way around the restaurant industry.  I implore you to try her cakes, if that fails buy her book so you can try them yourself, or if that fails, just follow her on Twitter.  Unlike others, she doesn't spend her time self-promoting and is happy to engage in fairly broad ranging debate, when she's not baking.

So, I bought the book because I'm a fan and an acquaintance.  I also was hoping to learn a bit more about baking from it because I haven't had much experience and I'm not very good at it.  

Flicking through the book from back to front, as I always do with new cookbooks, my eye was caught by the Vegan Chocolate Cake.  At first, I was a bit horrified.  Bea is not a lady who panders to whims and I feared she had sold out to the whiny-brigade.  It then dawned on me that I have a claim to be a member of that particular army and Bea might just be a saviour and perhaps I could overlook my substitution snobbishness and accept soy milk in a recipe.

The cake was a revelation.  The sponge tasted of Oreos - a good thing - and the icing was simply very rich chocolate.  It was delicious.  

I should admit that whilst it tasted lovely, mine looked like a disaster, a reflection of a few issues I had baking it.  For example, after making the chocolate mousse filling/topping, it looked like someone had staged a dirty protest in our kitchen.  Further, being an impatient baker and egged on by a young child, I decided to layer on the chocolate icing before the cake had fully cooled.  Therefore I cut the sponge before it was cool and put chocolate on top of warm sponge.  Not very accomplished.

As per Bea's note at the start of the recipe, you don't need to bother telling people it's vegan when you give it to them, it might put them off.  Then again, this does have its advantages, such as there's more for you to eat and in my experience the sponge benefits from a being a day or so old.

The recipe I give below is for my version of the chocolate cake.  The main difference with the one that Bea has in the book is that I'm lazy.  I didn't include the raspberries, strawberries or crystallised violets she suggests incorporating into the mousse.  They do sound good though.

Serves 8-12

For the cake

• 23cm round cake pan, greased and baselined with parchment paper
• 275g plain flour
• 100g natural cocoa powder
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 450ml unsweetened soy milk
• 2 tsp red wine vinegar
• 320g caster sugar
• 320ml sunflower oil
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract

For the mousse

• 800g good quality dark chocolate, chopped (or in my case smashed) into pea-sized pieces
• 600ml hot water
• lots of ice - I used about 400g

Preheat the oven to 160C, gas mark 4.

Put the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl and sift twice through a sieve.

In a separate bowl, whisk the soya milk, vinegar, sugar, oil and vanilla extract.  Pour into the flour mixture and stir until well combined.  I took that to mean a consistent colour throughout the mixture.

Spoon the lot into the prepared cake pan and bake in the preheated oven for 40-55 minutes.  Bea suggests that you can test when it's done by inserting a wooden skewer into the centre of the cake.  If cooked, the skewer should be crumb-free when you pull it out.  She also says that when the cake is ready, if you press the middle of the cake it should spring back, rather than sink.  If it does sink, or your skewer is crumb-laden, return the cake to the oven for a further 5-10 minutes and check again.

Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan, probably with the aid of a knife and cool on a rack for 1 hour.

While it's cooling you can make the mousse.

Put the chocolate in a large, wide heatproo bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Don't let the base of the bowl touch the water.  Leave the chocolate until it is melted, then stir with a wooden spoon until smooth and glossy.

Remove from the heat.

Pour the hot water into the bowl of chocolate and mix until nice and smooth.

Sit the bowl in a dish filled with ice cubes.  Using an electric whisk, quickly whisk the chocolate and water mixture thoroughly and quickly until a stiff mousse forms.

Don't forget my warning about the dirty protest.  The kitchen re-decoration wasn't helped by my mousse not thickening.  So, as per Bea's suggestion, I melted more chocolate and whisked that in quickly and suddenly it became a mousse.

She suggests that if it gets too thick, you can add a touch more warm water, or espresso, or whisky to thin it out.

Then cut the cake horizontally.  She suggests 3 layers, but I didn't risk it and opted for two.  Then again, mine was in a near state of collapse given my haste and refusal to let it fully cool.

You then spread the mousse between the layers and on top of the cake.  If you're using the various berries and sweets, now's the time to add them.

Eat and enjoy.

The SsLuT

I haven't always kept kosher.  It was a rash decision I took before my barmitzvah.  As I was learning more about my religion, I realised it was something I wanted to do.  My decision may also have been influenced by my brother who made a very similar decision some years earlier.

I've only wavered once, when I was at university and increasingly getting into food in a slightly obsessive way.  I couldn't see the point of keeping kosher.  I then met a very special lady, who got me back on track.

This is a long way of saying I know not of a BLT, but I understand from all who partake that they're tasty.  And it is from the insistence of others that the SsLuT was born: smoked salmon, lettuce and tomato.

Some years ago, I got to thinking that there was an odd similarity between bacon and smoked salmon.  Obviously, there is the issue of one coming from a land based mammal and the other a fish.  One being a cheap product and the other until recently, being quite expensive.  BUT they're both quite fatty.  They're often served in strips (tenuous I know), they err towards pink (I know, I know) and their respective flavour profiles are relatively earthy.  Ok look, maybe I'm pushing my luck, but stay with me because the resulting sandwich is a stunna. 

Get some smoked salmon.  Heat your frying pan until it gets very hot, turn on the extractor (it all gets rather fishy) and place your fish in the pan.  Stand back as it sizzles and let it cook until it turns brown at the edges - shouldn't take too long at all - turn the salmon over and repeat.

This is a sandwich best eaten in either an onion platzel or a sesame bagel.  It needs mayo, preferably homemade so it's not too claggy.  Lettuce and tomato are to taste.

It's really very good.  It's the SsLuT.

Just to finish, a (useful) bit of trivia.  There is a fish that is kosher (not all of them are) that is called shibuta that supposedly tastes of pork.  It sounds pretty gross to me, I'm not sure I want my fish tasting of pork.  Nonetheless, if anyone happens to catch one as you're fishing in the Euphrates, do let me know, I'm intrigued to try it.