Silverbrow on Food

Guardian guide to baking

If you are into your baking and live in the UK, scurry off to the newsagent and reserve a copy of next Saturday's Guardian. There will be a free supplement, The Guide to Baking, from their baking correspondent and my first podcast guinea-pig, Dan Lepard.

From the previews that Dan has posted on his forum, it looks like it will be one to keep - a rare treat for the weekend food sections, which at the moment are overflowing with bloody Christmas recipes.

Mushroom consomme

I recently wrote about a really enjoyable meal Silverbrowess and I had at The Goose. I was particularly taken by the mushroom consomme.

Chef patron of The Goose, Matthew Tomkinson emailed me introducing himself after I wrote my article. He has very kindly offered the recipe for the consomme which I have copied below. I understand from him that the recipe is very loosely based on Nico Ladenis' clarified wild mushroom stock.

One addendum to the recipe is that Matthew is contemplating using a different method for clarifying the stock. In the recipe below he uses the traditional method of egg whites. However, in his email to me he said that they are considering ditching the egg whites and using the ice filtration technique, as demonstrated by Heston Blumenthal when he was trying to make the perfect Peking duck in a recent episode of In Search of Perfection.

Supposedly the egg whites dull the flavour slightly. The beauty of Heston's suggested method is that the resulting liquid is pure and unsullied. To explain it quickly: you cook the stock, you then freeze it. Then you place the frozen stock in muslin or similar, over a bowl and allow it to melt in the fridge and drip through the muslin. The result is that all the fat, bits of veg etc is caught in the muslin, whilst the liquid drips into the bowl. It is important to defrost in the fridge, because if it defrosts too quickly, you risk the fat emulsifying with the liquid and slipping through the muslin, into your otherwise pure liquid. For a far more technical explanation read this.

Before you go head long into making this, I should say that I haven't yet tried it out. I'm sure it works - he is a chef afterall - but this is the first recipe I've ever posted that I haven't first cooked myself.

Many thanks to Matthew for agreeing to me posting his recipe.

Mushroom stock

• 2 large shallots finely sliced
• 2 cloves garlic crushed
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 medium bunch thyme
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1kg wild mushroom trimmings or sliced button mushrooms
• 1 glass white wine
• 250ml dried mushroom soaking liquor or veg stock if not available
• 750 ml water

Clarification

• 3 egg whites
• salt and sugar
• madiera

To make the stock firstly sweat the shallots and garlic in butter until lightly caramelised, add the mushroom trimmings and cook slowly until dry. Next add the tomato puree and cook out until starting to catch on the bottom of the pan, deglaze with the white wine and reduce until syrupy. Add the mushroom soaking liquor and reduce by half then cover with the water, add the herbs and bring to the boil. Skim well, turn down to a simmer and cook for about 30 mins. Remove the pan from the heat, season and allow to cool. Next pass the liquid through double muslin and chill.

To clarify the stock lightly whip the egg whites and season well, whisk these into the cold stock and place over a medium heat. Bring the liquid up to near boiling making sure the bottom doesn't burn by occasionally stirring. As the proteins coagulate a 'raft' will appear on the surface made of the cooked egg. As this starts to happen, stop stirring and leave to simmer very gently for about 20 mins breaking the surface of the raft as necessary to allow some of the pressure to escape. Do not allow to boil at this stage.

Using a ladle, pass the clear liquid off through muslin again and season well with salt and a pinch of sugar if necessary (wild mushrooms can be a little bitter) finally finish with a good glug of madeira to taste.

It works well with the gnocchi or a raviolo and particularly with coriander or chervil in it.

Verze Sofegate or Suffocated Cabbage

I sometimes suggest to Silverbrowess that she could afford to be a little more adventurous in the kitchen.  It's not that she's not a good cook, she is, her roast potatoes and banana cake - N.B. not eaten together - are talking points in the finest salons of North London.  But, she has no confidence to move beyond her comfort zones or rely on our over-flowing shelves of cookbooks.  Or at least that was what I thought until earlier this week when I lifted the lid on a saute-pan and smelled something fantastic.  Turned out it was verze sofegate, or less romantically, suffocated cabbage.

She had been mulling over what to do with the head of cabbage in the fridge and all those cookbooks provided inspiration, in particular, Joyce Goldstein's Cucina Ebraica, a history of Jewish food in Italy.  One method for cooking vegetables was by suffocating, read slow cooking, them in goose fat.  Although we didn't have any goose fat on hand, we did have some recently rendered duck fat and I was flabergasted to learn that Silverbrowess used that, she normally recoils from it in horror.

This should be served as a remarkably light but strongly flavoured side-dish with gutsy meats.

Serves 4-6

• 1 head cabbage
• 3 or 5 tbp goose/duck/chicken fat
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 or 2 tbp chopped fresh rosemary
• Dash of wine vinegar
• Pinch of sugar

Cut the cabbage into narrow strips, removing the core.

Warm the fat in a saute pan over a low heat.  Add the onion, garlic and rosemary and saute until it is tender.  Don't let it brown, you want the onions to be translucent - remember this is all over a low heat.

Add the cabbage, vinegar, sugar and salt and pepper.  Cover the pan.  Cook until the cabbage is very tender.  In her recipe, Joyce Goldstein recommends about 30 minutes, but she also notes that the traditional method was to really slow cook this, sauteing for up to 3 hrs.  Silverbrowess, used the shorter time period.  I imagine if you go for tradition you need to make sure your heat is way down and you might need to add a bit of water as well to make sure it doesn't all burn.  Just keep a close eye on it.

Heads-up

This is not a link for those of us that keep kosher, nor for those of you who are squeamish. But, if you want to see the epitome of nose to tail cooking, check out what Aki and Alex at Ideas in Food have been up to recently.

Smoked brisket

Smoke and be damned. It's as simple as that. Ignore the health warnings. Evolution has taught us that sweetness equals energy and sourness equals off food, then so smokiness must equal nectar. I have decided there is no better way to eat a 4kg slab of fresh brisket than after a 12 hour shvitz in a smoker, equally, can chicken ever be more majestic than eaten cold after a four hour smoke bath? I think not.

The smoking session came about as a result of a perfect storm: too much time on my hands, guilt at not having used a birthday present I'd specifically asked for and a dinner party for my family. Several years ago, in the run up to an insignificant birthday, I had mentioned in more detail than is polite, the amazing attributes of the Weber Smokey Mountain. It is true that the attributes I was extolling were those on the Weber website and other marketing guff I had read. I had never eaten something cooked on one, nor obviously had I cooked on one. Nonetheless, I sensed a calling - I bought into the PR and knew my life would be worthless without one. So for two years my WSM has been sitting under its tarp, singing like a harpe, luring me in, but I never quite fell for it until this weekend. I am deeply pissed off that I have wasted two years of my life not smoking.

Hopefully you can tell I like it. I like the fact cooking on it becomes a zen-like experience. Less of the brassiness of a traditional barbecue, more caressing and nudging and tweaking. I love the fact that the finished product tastes unlike anything I've had before. I particularly like that smoking has allowed me to fall in love again, this time with cold chicken breast. Yes, I know chicken breasts are not great cold - but try one the day after a smoke. It will restore your faith. However, this post is not about chicken breasts, it is about beef and lots of it. I plan to get around to the chicken post shortly.

I detail below what I did to the beef, how I did it and what the meat looked like at various stages. However, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the Virtual Weber Bullet, a website with a disturbing level of enthusiasm for its rather specialised focus. My method detailed below is basically their method, so any successes I had, were theirs.

From putting the meat on the grill to serving it was approximately 12 hours, that included about an hour and a half of resting in kitchen foil.

This serves 8 people, or 6 with decent amount of leftovers, which you will want.

• 4kg fresh brisket - make sure it's fresh not pickled
• apple juice for basting

For the rub

• salt & pepper
• sweet smoked paprika
• English mustard
• za'atar

You need a big hunk of meat for this. Mine was enormous - the largest cut by area that I have ever cooked. Remember though that given the length of cooking, it will shrink considerably. Also remember to keep some of that fat on the brisket, do not be tempted to remove it, despite the fact there is so much of it. Much of it will be rendered down during the process and it will help keep the meat moist during the cooking. What is left at the end, you can simply trim away before serving.

Start off by making the rub and marinading your meat overnight. Use as much of the rub ingredients as possible, but bear in mind not to use too much salt as you will dehydrate the meat unnecessarily. Usually I don't add salt to marinades, because it leaches the water, but having done some reading it seems par for the course for smoking so I dutifully followed the trend.

I cocked up slightly - forgetting what a mammoth cut it was, it wasn't fully defrosted by the time I put the rub on. Being the first time I have done this, I have no idea what impact this had on the outcome. However, it tasted to me that the rub had had an effect and I had more than one guest ask was covering the meat.

So far, so simple. The main part of the cooking process comes down to playing with the heat.

I started the smoker using the ingenious Minion method to fire it up. It was ridiculously easy and I was surprised how little charcoal I used during the cooking: 1 and a quarter 3.5kg boxes of lumpwood charcoal. I think, with a bit more experience I could probably have got away with just one box.

Once the lit coals were sitting on top of the cold coals, I added some lumps of hickory wood and filled up the water bowl.

At this stage the beef went on, fat side down and the cooking began.

I tried to be as accurate as possible compiling the details for the table below. I have listed the temp in the body of the smoker and the times I took the temperature. Where I noted it, I have also detailed the temperature of the meat itself. The method I used to determine the heat was by sticking a digital Polder thermometer in the lid vent, which remained open throughout the cooking process. All temps are in Celsius. If you're a luddite, click here.

It should be noted that the vent column represents how much the vents on the bottom of the smoker were open. 100% means they were all open all the way, 0% they were all shut all the way. 2x0 / 1x50 means two were shut entirely and one was open half-way. On the Virtual Weber website they list which vent was open to which percentage, personally I can't see it makes any difference which actual vent is open, rather the percentage. The only caveat to that is if there is a strong wind. If there is, then the vent that is face on to the wind will obviously have a greater impact on the heat in the coals than one that is leeward.

Finally, please note that I was cooking a chicken as well. This resulted in the beef getting shifted around a little, the temp dropping when the chicken went in and so on. Therefore, it did have an effect on the cooking process, so bear that in mind. However, I don't think its impact was too significant.

[If you are reading this on a RSS reader, you might want to click through to the post itself, so you can see the table of temps and timings.]

Notes
1. Meat goes onto the lower grill
2. Meat is flipped and basted with apple juice PHOTO
3. Got very scared with the plummeting heat. Added cold coals to the grate and used my kitchen blow torch to make sure all coals in grate were lit
4. Put in the chicken on the lower grill. Beef moved to top grill. Turned & basted the meat w/apple juice. Added wood. Internal temp of beef 77°C
5. Internal temp of beef 88°C
6. Internal temp of beef 95°C. Beef removed PHOTO

When the meat was taken out, I let it sit in a blanket of silver foil for about an hour and a half. I left it in the warmest place I could find - on top of the washing machine.

So how did it turn out? Simply put it was a revelation. The meat was moist (whilst hot) it had a fantastic depth of flavour and has converted me to 'cue. I made a pretty spicy and vinegary sauce to go with it. I'm not going to list it here, because I forgot to write down how I made it, but it was basically a good mix of vinegar, tomatoes, chillis, sugar, onion and garlic all sauteed down and then blended. I'm sure it's considered heresy in some places, but we loved it.

These are some of the photos during the process.

The brisket after six and a half hours

The brisket after 10 hours

The brisket after ten hours - in profile

This is not a barbecue, this is 'cue. Learn the differences and go forth and smoke.

Braised oxtail

With winter stubbornly receding, I had an urge to see off the last days of the season with a full-on hearty dish. Until I saw it in the butchers I had always thought (and assumed) that oxtail wasn't kosher. My assumption was based on the fact that a) I've never eaten it and b) I've never seen it on a kosher restaurant menu. It may be the ultimate hackneyed and massacred gastropub food, nonetheless it was something I was longing to try.

I bought a couple of tails and some chuck steak to bulk-up the stew and headed home to find a recipe that would guide me through my culinary ignorance. Cooking things you have never eaten but longed for is a strange experience. You have a mental picture of what it will taste like, but if it doesn't you have no way of knowing if you have ballsed up, or your dreams were always misplaced.

I used the indominatble The Cook's Book as a base recipe - figuring that I couldn't go too far wrong following Marcus Wareing's lead. For those who haven't got this book, you really should buy it. It could easily be the only cook book - as opposed to recipe book - you ever need. Each chapter is written by a leading chef: Marcus Wareing on meat, Charlie Trotter on vegetables, Shaun Hill on poultry, Ferran Adrià on foams and Pierre Hermé on desserts and sweets, to name just a few of the chefs and chapter headings.

This recipe is a variation on the one on p300 of the book. My changes reflect what I had in the kitchen at the time.

Mash seems to be the natural accompaniment. However, because of kosher restrictions of serving milk with meat I had to find an alternative. I boiled up some potatoes until they were nice and soft, heated some oil in a frying pan and crushed them into that until they were brown and crispy.

This serves 4 although not in the largest portions.

• 2 oxtails, cut into 4 joints, excluding the tail-ends, but keep hold of them to add body to the stew
• 250g stewing steak - optional depending on size of oxtails
• 125g carrots
• 125g leeks
• 3-4 tbsp olive oil
• 500g tinned tomatoes - The Cook's Book recommends fresh
• 8 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 fresh bay leaves - if using dried, only 1 is needed, but do try to get fresh, bay trees last forever under almost any growing conditions
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• approx 1 litre chicken stock - Marcus recommends veal which sounds much more flavourful than chicken stock, but who's got three days to skim?
• 1 btl of decent, full-bodied red wine, I used a Malbec

For the vegetable garnish

• Finely chopped mirepoix (1 carrots, 2 celery sticks, 1/2 leek and 1 onion)
• The book suggests 4 tomatoes, skinned, seeded and finely diced & 1 heaped tbsp chopped parsley - I didn't have either to hand at the time of cooking
• Pinch of fleur de sel

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F, gas mark 4)

Marinate all the meat, herbs and garlic for up to 48 hours before cooking. Even a couple of hours will have a beneficial effect.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and brown the oxtail well. Turn them when they are browned. Once browned all over, remove with a slotted spoon and drain of any liquid. If using stewing steak, sear until brown as well. Remove and drain.

Add the carrots, onions, celery and leeks to the frying pan, ensuring to coat them with the residue of the meat. When vegetables are browned add in the tomatoes, thyme, bay and garlic (retrieved from the wine) and continue to cook for a few minutes more.

Put the oxtail in an oven-proof casserole dish, I use a large Le Creuset dish. Top with the vegetables. Pour in the wine and boil over a high heat until it is nearly evaporated, then add enough stock - or water if desperate - to cover the meat. Bring to a simmer, cover and braise in a hot oven for about 2 hours.

Lift out the oxtail and the meat. Pass the sauce through a sieve into a pan and skim any fat and scum, like a banshee. You can't skim a sauce too much. Boil the sauce for 10 minutes, continuing to skim.

Blanch the garnish vegetables (except tomatoes, if using) for 5 minutes, ensuring they don't overcook and become too soft. Drain and add to the sauce (with tomatoes and parsley, if using) and simmer for a couple of minutes.

Sprinkle a touch of fleur de sel over each portion for a bit of sweety saltiness.

Marmite Guinness

It wasn't until now, a few hours post St Patrick's Day, that I realised Marmite Guinness is a special edition, for the special occasion.

This stuff is genius. It is a more mellow, hoppy version of normal Marmite, thanks to Guinness yeast extract, replacing 30% of the bog-standard Marmite yeast extract. I reckon it could be used as a condiment in its own right, maybe a spoonful added to a stew - rather than simply a spread for toast. There are only 300,000 bottles made, so try to get your hands on it whilst it lasts.

Marmalade

I know it is late in the Seville orange season to be posting about marmalade but, I figured a good proportion of you reading would be oblivious to the fact and the rest will welcome the reminder to get a shufty on and start boiling those oranges.

I tried making marmalade last year using the recipe helpfully given to me by Abel & Cole. I ended up with amber gloop that Silverbrowess attempted to turn into one of Ms Food Porn's cakes, and which itself ended up as amber, floury gloop.

Usually, a fruit based condiment or jam sets thanks to the pectin present. You can buy pectin or, you can take advantage of nature's harvest and use naturally occurring pectin. Pips are usually the best source of naturally occurring pectin. A rather unscientific study I have undertaken, indicates that the best pectin comes from those fruits with the most numerous pips, in particular: tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries and Seville oranges.

I strongly advise you taste a Seville orange. You'll hate it. Why then my pro-tasting advice? Because, if like everywhere else I say don't taste it, it tastes horrible, you'll be an inquisitive bugger and think just how bad can it be? And you'll take a bite and regret it. But, then, when you have the finished marmalade you'll be delighted you gave it a go raw and realise fully the alchemy that can be concocted with a bit of heat, a bit of sugar, some water and a glug of whisky.

I used Sally Clarke's recipe as my base and tweaked it here and there, in particular the slug of Glenmorangie.

This makes just over 2 litres of marmalade.

• 6 Seville oranges
• 1 lemon
• Sugar
• Water
• 1 sweet orange
• A slug of Glenmorangie

Shred the skin (leave it attached to the pith) and set aside.

Juice all the fruit. Set aside all the pips and pith. Add enough water to the fruit juice to make up to 2 litres of liquid.

Gather all the pips from all the fruit and put into a muslin bag.

Place the muslin bag, the liquid and the shredded skin into a bowl. Leave overnight in a cool place, I put mine in the fridge.

Put all of the above into a stainless steel pot and simmer until the liquid is slightly reduced. At this point, I added a glug of whisky. (I also managed to spill some of the liquid and so lost some of my total quantity, it didn't seem to matter in the end.) Once reduced, leave all of this in a cool place overnight.

Remove the muslin bag and squeeze out all of the juices. Weigh the fruit and the juice. Measure out three-quarters of this weight in sugar.

Place all of the above in a stainless steel pan. Simmer for 1 hour and remove any scum.

After an hour, test the set of the marmalade by putting a dollop of it on a saucer and leave in the fridge for five minutes. I needed to simmer for about an hour and twenty minutes to get a decent set. Even then, the marmalade was not quite as hard set as the commercial stuff, but that is part of the charm, or so I argue.

Don't forget to sterilise the jars you are using to store the marmalade. I am going to lift directly from Sally Clarke's book here: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Lay the scrupulously clean jam jars on a baking sheet and sterilise in the oven for 10 minutes. Boil the lids in a small pan of water for 5 minutes to sterilise. Pour the marmalade into jars and screw on the lids firmly.

According to Sally Clarke, the marmalade will keep for up to 3 months in a cool place.

Pot-au-feu

Next week is Thanksgiving in America and quite a lot of the food blogs have been writing about it. These posts got me thinking about holidays in general and the warm fuzzy feeling you get from all the food, family and festivities. That in turn got me thinking about what I could write about as a Brit which in turn reminded me that shit, I was more than a couple of months late in writing up my pot-au-feu recipe that I cooked for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Pot-au-feu is not a traditional Ashkenazi dish. However, slow cooked meat is an important element of traditional Ashkenazi cooking. Cholent is the most widely known example. It is a stew, some argue is a cousin of cassoulet, which is eaten in Ashkenazi homes on Shabbat. It is a perfect meal because it does not contravene any of the laws about what can and cannot be done during the Sabbath. It is prepared on the Friday, before Shabbat starts, stuck in the oven for twenty odd hours until it is needed for lunch on Saturday and in theory, comes out of the oven moist, succulent and beautifully cooked.

The rules for cooking on Rosh Hashanah are somewhat laxer. Nonetheless, I wanted to cook something that was going to be easy. We had a lot of entertaining over the two days of Rosh Hashanah, largely because my in-laws were staying, and on the second day my whole family were coming over. We were cooking for fifteen people. Silverbrowess was tearing her hair out at the prospect. In pursuit of a peaceful life, I promised her I would do all the cooking and cleaning and therefore would make things as easy as possible. In return, this meant I could run rampant in the kitchen. I figured pot-au-feu was the way forward. It allowed me to have all the fun in the kitchen with the preparation, but in the end make it look oh so easy. The plan worked a dream.

Another reason for the pot-au-feu was that I really wanted to get my teeth into my copy of French Provincial Cooking (p156) by Elizabeth David. I also used Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Meat as a guide as well (p284). I used both because that is what Hugh recommends. He provides a more straightforward recipe than Elizabeth, he also misses out the history and semantics that she is famed for. The recipe and process below are my interpretations of Elizabeth's and Hugh's, although reading back through theirs, mine owes more to her than it does to him.

• 3kg brisket, unpickled
• 2kg veal on the bone
• 2kg ox tongue, unpickled
• 8 pieces marrow bone approx 5cms thick
• 6 chicken giblets
• 5 leeks, trimmed
• 5 carrots, scrubbed
• 6 onions
• 1 small turnip, peeled
• 1 parsnip, peeled
• 2 stalks of celery w/leaves
• 2 large tomatoes, halved
• bouquet garni (2 bay leaves (use 1 if dried) | 2/3 springs fresh parsley | 2/3 sprigs thyme, wrapped in muslin or tied together)
• optional - or at least I didn't include: 4-6 pea pods dried in the oven. According to ED, they're used for colour
• optional - you can serve the marrow on toast, with a bit of flat leaf parsley and pinch of good salt. If you want to, buy a baguette or similar.

To serve

• capers
• cornichons
• horseradish
• mustard
• salad

First off, if you are cooking for 15 and using the proportions above, you will need a bloody big pot to put it all in. I used a 28cm round Le Creuset casserole, which I was surprised held it all in, but with some pushing and shoving did the trick.

Tie the brisket. I used Leith's Techniques Bible as guide, but frankly all you want to do is tie up the meat into a neat parcel.

Wrap and tie the marrow bones in muslin. This will stop the all important marrow from falling out into the stew.

Tie four leeks in a bundle with one stalk of celery.

Grill the tomatoes, get a decent char on the cut-side.

Wash three onions - don't peel, the skin adds colour.

Put the beef, veal, tongue and giblets into the pot and cover with cold water. Heat gently and skim religiously. After reading Thomas Keller I have had it drummed into me just how important this is when making stocks, soups or broths. Remember, Elizabeth David argues pot-au-feu is essentially two dishes, bouillon (the broth) and bouilli (the meat). She suggests they should be used at different times and for different meals. You want your broth as crystal clear and consomme like as possible.

Put in the vegetables prepared above, add a good portion of salt, approx 1 tbp and the bouquet garni.

Leave to simmer gently for five and a half hours. By gently, I mean only a light bubbling, not a raging boil. You might need to buy a heat diffuser to get sufficient control over your hob.

Put the tied marrow bones parcel into the pot for the last thirty minutes to 1 hour of cooking.

At the end of the cooking time, turn off the heat and lift out all solids. Put the beef into a covered dish and keep warm. Skim the broth again - you should have been skimming anyway, but there's always more skimming to do. You should think about passing the broth through one or two fine sieves, you could even pass it through muslin, if you want to be really anal (it is the sort of thing I do.)

Extract the marrow meat, put onto toast and serve with parsley and salt.

Elizabeth David suggests serving the broth with rice or pasta. A typical Ashkenazi interpretation would be to add kreplach. If you are going to do that, I would suggest the kreplach stuffing is liver or a well flavoured mince (maybe with a hint of paprika) to work through the complex flavours of the meaty broth. You would end up with a dish very similar to tortellini in brodo - one of the by-products of bollito misto, Italy's boiled meat dish. For the sake of my good health, I dare not compare bollito misto and pot-au-feu too closely, but there are undeniable similarities. If you are interested in bollito misto, I find Claudia Roden's book very good, or read Divina Cucina's recipe.

Back to pot-au-feu, serve the meat with cornichons, horseradish, capers, mustard and a green salad with a decent (read: homemade) vinaigrette.

Cook the remaining vegetables separately and serve with the pot-au-feu.

Personally, I found the leftovers just as tasty as the main meat dish.

Pot-au-feu leftovers

Being a perverse sort, I'm posting about what to do with the leftovers for pot-au-feu before I post about the pot-au-feu itself.  I'm only doing this out of laziness.  I reckon it will take as long to write-up the pot-au-feu as it did to cook it, this is quicker.  I am pleased to say that I'm not doing this because I have a ton of leftovers left over.  Most of what I made for lunch on second day Rosh Hashanah got eaten up.

According to Elizabeth David, pot-au-feu is two dishes in one.  First you have the boulli, the meat, second you have the bouillon, the stock.  You can use some of the bouillon to baste the boulli as you serve it, but basically the two are quite separate entities.  She suggests you serve the boulli to your guests hot - as I did.  She then notes that the bouillon can be used as the base for a multitude of recipes.  I followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe and got a third meal out of it.  The upshot is below.

Given the the length of ingredients for the p-a-f itself, the technique for the leftovers couldn't be simpler.  You shred by hand any of the meat you have left over.  Dice an onion and garlic and quickly fry in oil.  Add the meat until you get it nice and crisp and serve.  That's it, or so Hugh says.

I added a of salt.  I also made a bit of a rough and ready sauce for the fried meat.  I chopped some flat leaf parsley and mixed it with a healthy swig of wine vinegar (I used white because I'd run out of red), a swig of good olive oil, some salt and a pinch of dried chilli flakes.  I preferred the meat with the sauce, it cut through the rich meat beautifully.  However, I am quite addicted to the cold meat without any accoutrements.  Having been cooked for so long in its gelatinous stock, it is soft, shreds at the touch of a fork and is full of flavour.

As for the bouillon, I have yet to find a use for it.  Although, the fat-cap (yes, that's what the photo is) is giving me thoughts of roast potatoes.  When I crack through that, I see soups and sauces in my future.

Knaidlach

I promised in my post on chicken soup to include a post on what you can add to it.  So here we are.

I'm not sure why there is a tradition across numerous cuisines of putting some sort of carbohydrate solid into soup - think croutons, noodles and dumplings - but there is definitely a theme.  I would assume it's a good way of adding substance to a product that might otherwise appear measly.  Very often, those dishes that call specifically for some such addition are the thinner, brothier kinds of soups that tend to be associated with home or street food, rather than haute cuisine.  Chicken soup is no exception, with its addition of knaidlach.

There are two schools of cooking knaidlach, there is the depth-charge and there is the light as feather, float like a butterfly version.  Being difficult, my preference is for somewhere in the middle.  I like to know that I'm eating something, but I don't like the associated heartburn.  The recipe I enjoy most is that which I grew-up with and that Silverbrowess has taken on as her own (we can thank her for providing the recipe below).

The secret to this recipe are the fried onions - an essential part of ashkenazi cooking - that add a depth and smokiness to the balls of delight.  The recipe is simple, straightforward and quick.  This recipe doesn't include the addition of schmaltz (chicken fat) but feel free to cook the onions in it.  You'll love it, your cardiologist won't.

This recipe should give you approximately 15 golf-ball sized knaidlach.   

• 115g matzo meal    
• 250ml boiling water    
• 1 onion - diced    
• 1 egg - lightly beaten

Fry the onion so it turns a deep golden brown but be careful not to let it burn. Set aside to cool.

In a mixing bowl combine the matzo meal, the boiling water, the egg, salt & pepper. Add the onions.  Put the mixture in the fridge to expand slightly and settle.  Just prior to serving the soup, remove the mixture from the fridge and roll into golf-ball sized balls.  Try not to be heavy handed as you'll end up with heavy balls (ooer missus).

Place the balls in the pot of hot soup.  They will take less than a minute to cook through if the soup is close to boiling.  Don't let them sit in the soup for too long as they will disintegrate and can turn the soup cloudy.  Some people cook the balls in boiling water and add to the soup only in the individual balls.  I think you lose some of the flavour doing it this way.

Although this is the last word in knaidlach recipes, knaidlach are not the last word in chicken soup additions.  There are also kreplach (tortellini stuffed with chicken livers) and lokschen (sliced omelette) but we can save those for another day.

You may have seen the photo below previously, apologies for that.  But it demonstrates the knaidlach in all its carbohydrate glory.

Chicken Soup

Healthy does not necessarily mean tasteless.  Chicken soup is the finest example of this.  It is known by a whole host of names, but two of the most common demonstrate health and taste are not mutually exclusive.  The soup is renowned for its curative powers and has earned the tag, the Jewish penicillin.  This is not simply hyperbole, there is surprisingly enough, some medical evidence supporting the claim.  It is also known in Yiddish as Goldene Yoich, which translates as golden broth.  The reason for the distinctive colour was because of the golden chicken fat globules floating on the top of the soup.  I accept in these fat-fearing times of ours, it might be difficult to make the causal leap of chicken fat=penicillin-like benefits, but given the other ingredients are common or garden vegetables and aromatics, I like to think that the fat off the humble bird plays a key part.

I've realised that one of the major problems with this occasional series on kosher food is that I feel compelled to keep referring to the differences and similarities between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and any other Jewish traditions.  Chicken soup it seems, once again throws up these issues.  Initially I thought I was on safe ground with this archetypal Ashkenazi dish - how I wrong I was.  When people think of chicken soup, they think of boiled poultry, some root vegetables, a couple of aromatics and some sort of dense dumpling thrown in for good measure.  My trusty culinary sidekick, Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food informs me that under names as beautifully diverse as Shorba bi Djaj (p268) and Gondy (p278), chicken broth, in various guises, is central to Jewish cuisine wherever you are.  Whilst Roden notes "In the Sephardi world, chicken soup does not have the place it has in Ashkenazi culture", she then goes on to list five separate recipes for what is, at its most base, heated chicken, water, vegetables and carbs.  There's no getting away from the fact that this combination is important for Jews, wherever they are.

The recipe and directions I give here are pretty standard.  I've been making it like this for years and although it reflects a number of influences (my mother, my grandmothers and no doubt the odd cookery book or two), this is a pretty traditional, bog standard method for making the father of all soups.  My one addition, that my maternal grandmother in particular would not recognise, is a clove of garlic.  For me, it adds a peppery depth to the soup that is otherwise unattainable - it lifts it to another level.  For any garlicphobes out there GO AWAY.  Only kidding, you're allowed to stay, but please include it in your soup, it won't end up tasting like a Frenchman's armpit, but it will taste delicious.

So here's my list of ingredients.  As you'll notice I haven't given weights for anything.  As I see it there's no point.  You don't want to make an exact amount, you want to make enough to last you and friends and family a few servings over a few days.  This recipe will offer up the best part of 10 decent size bowls of soup:

• 1 roaster chicken with giblets & feet
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped into large pieces
• 1 stick of celery, destringed and chopped into large pieces
• 1 clove of garlic, peeled
• 1 stick leek, out leaves removed and chopped into large pieces
• 2 fresh bay leaves (if using dried, just use 1)
• 4-5l water (or enough to cover all the ingredients in a large pot)

Or to put that list another way

Frankly the directions couldn't be much more straightforward.  Put everything into a large pan and heat slowly. As the pot comes close to the boil, impurities from the chicken and vegetables will bubble to the surface of the soup, keep skimming this away.  You'll know when this tiresome but crucial job is done, when there is no more froth (grey, black or white) sitting at the top of the pot.  What you need to make sure you don't do is remove too much of the fat.  Afterall, the golden globules are what give it its taste and in my view, its health benefits.

The crucial element to this dish is how long you cook it for and how many giblets and feet you have in it.  Although the chicken feet and giblets are not the most aesthetically pleasing bits of the bird, the gelatin that comes from boiling them, adds a real depth to the dish.  Harold McGee in Food & Cooking (p628) explains the thickening and emulsifying benefits of gelatin in soups.  In McGee's example he offers up bouillabaisse, but the theory is the same with chicken soup.  Fat is rendered from the bird as it is boiled, as is gelatin, from the bones of the bird.  "When the soup is at a vigorous boil, the fat breaks up into tiny globules and is coated in the stabilising layer of gelatin.  The consistency is thus a combination of gelatin's viscosity and the enriching creaminess of the emulsified oil droplets."

In my experience the ideal cooking time is to bring the soup up to the boil and let it simmer for two hours.  Remove the chicken, giblets and feet. The chicken is delicious eaten as is, with a bit of the broth poured over it and some chips.  Throw away the giblets and feet.  Let the soup cool and put it in the fridge, if possible for 48 hours.  The longer you leave it for (within reason) the better it gets, the flavours seem to mature as the soup settles after cooking.  Then, when you are ready to eat it, reheat, bring to the boil and serve.  It's that simple.

Chicken soup is not only easy to make, there are no real secrets to it - any that are, are busted by McGee's science.  As with any cooking, the higher quality your ingredients, the higher quality of the finished product.  Leaving the soup to sit in the fridge for a couple of days does no harm either.  The trick of this is the simplicity and patience required to make it.

The one thing I haven't yet mentioned and will save for another post, is the glorious subject of knaidlach, kreplach, mandlin and all the dumpling type things you have to have in your soup.  The photo below is my finished product, with a fluffy, light kneidle (singular of knaidlach).

References
Roden C, 1999, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkind and Vilna to the Present Day, Penguin Books (ISBN: 0140466096)
McGee H, 2004, Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture, Hodder & Stoughton (ISBN: 0340831499)

Happiness is...

...a warm bagel, butter and Marmite.

Chanukah party

The New Year period is one that tends to be full of food.  Not wanting to be a killjoy, I decided I should do my bit.  With fortuitous timing, Chanukah and Christmas fell at more or less the same time, meaning we could neatly combine the two traditions of eating food and drinking alcohol and none of our friends would have to go to work the next day.

With the day off work, I was able to focus on the food, whilst Silverbrowess saved the world from evil in the office.  I remember from school reports my teachers regularly made comments along the lines of "Silverbrow must try harder..." or "...he has a tendency to show off...".  With these barbs in mind I decided to show off a lot, but try harder doing so.

I'm a big fan of simple food done well, so I'm a big fan of properly cooked potato skins, or crudites and great dips.  I also needed something fried, it was Chanukah afterall.  Apart from these stand-bys I knew I needed some top notch dips, something fried and one or two largish and filling dishes that could be easily eaten standing up, or falling down, with a drink in hand.  With these parameters in mind I started browsing through three of my favourite cook books:  The Kitchen Diaries, The Cook's Book and Elizabeth David's unequalled French Provincial Cooking.

Our menu consisted of

Crudites

Smoked paprika mayonnaise

Crème fraîche with dill

Potato skins

Stilton, onion and potato pie (recipe here)

Kipper patties (recipe here)

Tapenade (recipe here)

Tomato chilli jam (recipe here)

Homemade Baileys ice cream

Homemade chocolate ice cream

Krispy Kremes

Not a bad fress-up if I say so myself.

Tapenade

So what with all the stodge I had on our menu, I needed something a bit lighter for our guests.  And what better than some tapenade.  I started off by using Peter Gordon's recipe in The Cook's Book.  Luckily, before starting my prep I decided to check what the inestimable French Provincial Cooking had to say on the matter.  In her recipe for ouefs dur en tapénade she recommends adding lemon juice, a drop of sherry and a bit of mustard to the basic ingredients of black olives, anchovies, capers, garlic and olive oil.  By bastardising both recipes, I ended with an ingredients list that looked like this

• Black olives, pitted - 180g
• Salted anchovy fillet, rinsed - 2
• Salted capers, rinsed - 2tsp
• Garlic clove - 1
• Olive oil - 80ml
• Juice of ½ lemon
• Dijon mustard - 1tsp

Basically, combine all the ingredients, except the oil, mustard and lemon juice, together in either a mortar, or in a food processor.  I was lazy and mortar wasn't big enough so I went for the food processor option.  Then slowly drizzle in the olive oil until you have a thick paste. Then stir in the mustard and lemon juice.  And there we have it, tapenade.  One suggestion try it before adding in the mustard and lemon and then afterwards, the improvements these two flavours add is fantastic.  I didn't have any sherry, so didn't add any.  I served this on slices of baguette.  Makes 300g.

Tomato chilli jam

I once again used Peter Gordon's Flavourings chapter in The Cook's Book to make a Tomato Chilli Jam, that I served with a sliver of goats cheese on baguette as well as a dip for some potato skins.

• Ripe tomatoes - 500g
• Fresh ginger, roughly chopped - 2 thumbs
• Nam pla (fish sauce) - 3tbsp
• Red chillies (serrano), finely sliced - 4
• Garlic cloves, finely sliced - 4
• Caster sugar - 300g
• Red wine / cider vinegar - 100ml

Put half the tomatoes, the ginger and the fish sauce in the blender and whizz until smooth.  Don't be tempted to remove the tomato seeds, they provide the pectin to make the jam set.  Following Peter's recommendation in the book, I didn't bother to peel the tomatoes either.  Chop the remaining tomatoes into a fine dice.

Combine all the ingredients (purée, chopped tomatoes, garlic, sugar and vinegar) in a pot and bring to the boil, then reduce heat to a gentle simmer.  Skim off any foam that rises to the top and simmer for about 30-40 minutes or until the mixture gets glossy and thick.  Don't forget to regularly stir the pot to ensure nothing gets stuck to the bottom and the jam is evenly cooked.  That's it, all done.  My only criticism of Peter's recipe was that I think there is too much fish sauce.  It's great for that little kick, but for me, the flavour was too strong.  Anyway, you can experiment for yourself.

Stilton, onion & potato pie

For my big dishes for our recent party, Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries came up trumps: the creamy Stilton, Onion and Potato Pie was a hit.  Given that it's ingredients list consists solely of

• Floury potatoes - 1.5kg
• Onions - 4 medium
• Butter - 80g
• Milk - 150ml
• Stilton - 225g
• Grated Parmesan - 25g

it would be virtually impossible for this dish not to be drop dead delicious.  I'm not brilliant at writing out recipes, but basically, you boil the potatoes until they are soft enough to be mashed.  Take the onions, peel them and cut them into segments.  Fry them in a dollop of the butter until the turn golden brown and taste sweet and stunning (try not to eat them all).  Heat the milk, but don't boil it.  Mix the potatoes and butter together and slowly add the milk - you want to try to avoid the potatoes becoming gluey.

Nigel suggests you do the next step in a heavy frying pan, but I used a pie dish without any problems.  Anyway, butter your dish well then drop in half of the mashed potato, smooth it and add the onions.  Crumble over the Stilton.  Add the remaining potato and smooth.  Cover with the Parmesan.  You're now ready to put this in a hot oven.  Nigel recommends 25-30 minutes, frankly your nose will tell you when it's ready.  Unfortunately I don't have any photos of it because the dish was empty within 3 minutes of it being served to the table (I was worried I'd done far too much.)  This recipe serves 6, but I warn you it's popular, so make more, not less.

Kipper patties

I needed fried food to fit in with the Chanukah theme of a recent party and Nigel Slater saved the day.  Usually on Chanukah, the fried food are latkes or sufganiyot (donuts).  I like to be different, so opted for Kipper Patties.

• Floury potatoes - 500g
• Butter - a thick slice
• Kipper fillets - 440g
• Dill - a small, chopped handful
• Flour for dusting
• Groundnut oil for shallow frying

Peel and boil the potatoes until they are soft enough to be mashed.  Once boiled, put them in a mixer with the butter and buzz them until you have a smooth but firm consistency.

Put the kipper fillets in a bowl or jug and pour over boiling water.  Leave to sit in the water for ten minutes, until you are able to flake the flesh.  Try not to turn the flesh into mash, leave them in postage stamp sized pieces.

Combine the fish with the warmed potato, the dill and season with salt and pepper.  Let the mixture cool and then shape into patties.  Once that is done, leave the patties to cool further and therefore stiffen.  As you'll see from the list of ingredients above, Nigel recommends using flour, I decided to be a smart alek and used matzo meal instead - I'm sure flour does the job just as well.  Once dusted, fry in hot oil for about five minutes, don't forget to turn them.  Nigel recommends a dill mayonnaise.  I decided to go for a smoked paprika mayo instead, the pepperiness of the mayo playing off the saltiness of the smoked fish.  It seemed to work nicely.  Again these were too popular to take photos of.  This recipe serves 4 as a main course, I made my patties very small.

Thomas Keller thyme

It is hardly a revelation to hear what a fantastic chef Thomas Keller is.  I've never eaten at any of his restaurants, nor is there the prospect that I'll do so anytime soon.  The closest I could get is to purchase his high quality food porn and try to make it for myself.

The first incarnation of Keller in print was the cookbook from The French Laundry.  A beautiful but enormous book that lets us mere mortals aspire to TFL cooking.  The second book was the Bouchon cookbook. 

Bouchon is Keller's brasserie, also based in Yountville, California.  At the beginning of the book Keller joke that he "opened Bouchon...so that I'd have a place to eat after cooking all night at the French Laundry." If I get the choice, I always prefer this sort of hearty, simple but strong flavoured dishes of Bouchon over more prissy, overly dainty cooking.  I decided therefore that for dinner with my boss I'd cook the most hearty of his dishes, Boeuf Bourguignon.

I'll start at the end first, it was fantastic, truly delicious.  It was once I served it and tasted it that I realised why he is so highly regarded and why he's obsessed about every little detail.  I'm not a bad cook (he says bashfully) but I've never enjoyed anything I've made as much as I enjoyed this.  Partly that was because I alone know the amount of work that went into it, but it was also because it was simply delicious. 

Everything worked well, each flavour was clear and sharp and there seemed almost perfect balance, the meat was juicy and light, the onions adding a slight tartness, the red wine reduction adding depth

When you turn to page 212 in the Bouchon cookbook the recipe is deceptively simple.  Keller gives a brief introduction on why he loves the recipe.  The process didn't look too taxing and the ingredients list was straightforward - nothing you couldn't get your hands on with relative ease.  However, being well aware of  his views on the importance of ensuring the best ingredients I went to a bit more effort, and expense and ordered top-dog ingredients from Solstice (more of them soon).   

Two things are good exemplars of Keller's obsession with attention to detail and ultimate refinement of the dish.  The first is keeping the meat separate from the vegetables at all stages of the cooking process, until the final serving. Second, straining and restraining and restraining and so on of every liquid. 

I decided to try and stick as closely to Keller's instructions as possible, so bought my chinois and tamis and cheese cloth and got straining.  I've seen him say that no liquid moves in his restaurants without it going through a strainer.  And I can now see why.  I still can't fully get my head around the fact that you run a sauce through a given strainer, then five minutes later, pass it through the same strainer and there are suddenly more solids in there.  Suffice to say though that I have now become an obsessive strainer and skimmer.  Despite the constant straining/skimming I am embarrassed to say there was still some fat present, but without the straining the liquid would not have been anywhere near as delicate as it was. 

As for keeping the meat separate from the vegetables, with the judicious use of cheese cloth, again it works brilliantly.  In the final plating, the meat was just that, meat.  There were no bits of veg clinging to it, it sat loud and proud.  Similarly, the vegetables were not gloopy, they hadn't lost their vibrancy or leached their flavour. They looked good enough to eat.

Keller's recipe might be look complicated and detailed but really it's easy.  He's gone back to basics, revisited every step of every recipe and stripped away anything that interferes with flavour and adds in crucial elements that heighten the flavour of the final dish and there in lies his genius.  As I've said, he really doesn't need me to say this, but it was fascinating finding it out for myself.

Another thing I learnt was the importance of thyme (and time - the dish took approx 30 hours to put together including making the stock).  At every step Keller includes among staples such as salt and pepper and garlic, sprigs of thyme.  If I'm honest I can't remember ever consciously using thyme - that's now all changed.  The thyme seems to add an almost floral element to a dish.  It's subtle, but perceptibly lifts the  dish.  It shouldn't surprise me that yet again something so simple works so perfectly, but it does.  As with the straining and skimming, thyme will become another staple.

One final point when following a Keller recipe.  You need to read carefully and have your wits about you at all times.  Especially, after having drunk a few glasses of champagne and removing a sauté pan from the oven.  That metal handle on the pan gets mighty hot - use an oven glove.

Cavatelli e Orecchiette di Grano Arso

I've just seen this recipe for Cavatelli e Orecchiette di Grano Arso on Potential Gold.  Although at first sight the recipe looks like it's for pasta with a big arse, it isn't.  It not only sounds delicious but there's an intriguing history behind the dish.  I'll let Ore (Potential Gold's author) explain further. 

If you like Italian cooking, I'd also recommend looking through Ore's posts on his site about his time at Slow Food Cittá di Jesi, otherwise known as the home of the Slow Cooking movement's school in Jesi, Italy.

Soft, pink and meaty

I eventually got round to making my sausages - and if I say so myself, they're not too bad at all.  I'd had various detractors: some said that I'd have no chance of stuffing the meat into the collagen casing - wrong; others said that you can't get the right cuts of beef - wrong; and yet others felt you can't make a really good all beef sausage - again wrong.

My interest in making sausages started with a dull day at the office and clicking on vaguely interesting looking links, one in particular was www.sausagemaking.org.  It does what you'd expect and it got me thinking that I've never tasted a really good kosher sausage, not of the same quality that you can get in decent non-kosher butchers.  So I did some digging and confirmed my suspicions that none was available.  Amazingly I couldn't find a single kosher butcher in London that makes its own sausages, they all buy them in from larger commercial outfits.  It became pretty obvious that I needed to redress this balance.

In a rash moment I decided to buy the equipment before bothering to check that I could get the ingredients.  The only available kosher sausage casings you can get are made by an Australian company called Devro that are shipped into the UK.  As I've posted previously it is as far as I can gather impossible to get hold of kosher natural sausage casings, so Devro's collagen ones had to do.  As a quick aside, whilst researching this I had a very interesting chat with the technical director of a leading kosher processed meat supplier, who like me, lamented the kosher community's unwillingness to spend a bit more money for better quality (and more interesting) meat products.  Anyway, back to my sausage making.  It turned out that the only place I could get hold of these collagen sausage casings was from an ingredients supplier, Alderson Ingredients, based in Milton Keynes.  Jct 13 of M1 and £56 later, I owned a caddy (makes about 1,000 sausages) of sausage casings. 

Now for the meat.  The friendly people at sausagemaking.org were a bit stumped by my request for a 100% beef sausage with no pork product, but they put me in touch with Len Poli, who's website I strongly recommend visiting and who I gather, from his emails to me at least, is a thoroughly nice chap.  He sent me some recipes and gave me a piece of advice that was crucial: make sure that at least 30% of the meat content in a beef sausage is fat.  This is considerably higher than for pork sausages, often the fat accounts for 10-20% of the meat.  Beef is a lot drier than pork and so needs the fat for moisture.  So I got hold of my 500g of bola (beef shoulder) and 150g of fat and got mincing.

My first mistake was not to combine the meat and fat together in mincer, it was only after grinding half the meat I realised I was supposed to be combining in the fat quickly rectified my error.  When I'd minced the lot I decided to keep the additional ingredients limited to salt and pepper and a pinch of garam masala.  I cooked up a patty to check for flavour and was more or less happy.  Afterall, this was an experiment on whether I could make them, rather than whether they tasted any good. 

So came the fun of stuffing.  I have to admit that it took me a few attempts to fully appreciate that the way you stuff them is by running the casing along the stuffing tube and then playing it out from there.  Initially I tried to hold the casings over the tip of the tube and stuff that way.  After much mess I realised where I was going wrong and things became significantly easier.  I used 22mm casings that were enormously long - I couldn't begin to guess how long - and so they needed to be cut down to a manageable size, but once that was done it was all pretty straightforward.  And so, I had my own home made sausages.

I cooked a few of them for lunch and my conclusion is that they were rather good but a bit dry.  Len was right about the fat content and I reckon next time I'll use more than 30% fat, maybe 35-40%.  Other than that I was pretty happy.  They looked like sausages, despite being a bit dry they tasted better than the stuff you buy at the butchers and with some tweaking I have no doubt they'll improve considerably.  A barbecue is in the diary for this weekend so I think Friday might be another sausage making day.