Puff Pastry - the acme!

Years ago, I blogged the method I used at that time to make Puff Pastry.

Well, now I have a better - much better !- one. From the ever-reliable late Gaston Le Notre's technically splendid volume on pastries and desserts, this version produces pastry which puffs stratospherically every time, with a lightness and a buttery richness which is completely incomparable. There are a few tricks to getting it right:

1. Work very quickly, when rolling and folding the pastry. The longer you take, the longer the warmth from your hands is causing the butter inside the pastry to start to melt, which causes holes, which leads to disaster.

2. Use plenty of flour when rolling. And I mean plenty. This means that if any butter does start to poke through, the sprinkled flour reduces the risk of the whole process descending into a chaotic sticky mess.

3. When rolling the pastry before folding it, roll almost to each end of the strip, but never completely over the end - I'm not entirely sure why this works (TD has explained it to me, but...) but  by not closing off the ends of the rolled pastry, it seems ultimately to allow the pastry to puff much more majestically.

4. Make a large amount of pastry in one go, rather than faff around with making a smaller quantity. The quantities given here might seem improbably generous, but you can either put some into the freezer for a later date (something I generally avoid, as the freezer for me represents a gaping pit into which things have a tendency to disappear, only to emerge once more several aeons later as intriguing packages from another age - I now try to work on the basis that if something isn't going to come out of the freezer again and actually be consumed within a week or so, then it shouldn't go in at all), or else plan your menus to use the pastry up over three or four days. The last time I made a batch f pastry this size, within the course of a week, it was used for Sea Bass & Fennel en croute (main course), carrot tourte (starter), Feuillete of Leek and Chicken Livers (starter), Tarte of Sun-dried tomatoes and Chevre (starter), Apple croustade( dessert), and Tarte Tatin (Dessert). 

Ok. The process:

Ingredients: 500g flour; 75g butter; 1 cup water; 2 tsp salt; 500g chilled butter.

Method:

1. Process everything apart from the chilled butter into one homogenous lump. Wrap in clingfilm, and leave in the fridge for two hours.

2. Take the chilled butter and between two sheets of clingfilm, press it roughly into a square approximately 7" x 7". (I do this manually, by pressing down with my hands; some people talk of needing to use a rolling pin or a heavy weight to do it, which I don't find necessary. You might want to cut the butter into bits and reassamble them, to facilitate manipulating the butter more readily into the right size and shape that you want to up with).

3. Take the base pastry from the fridge, and on heavily floured surface, roll it out into a square about 14" x 14 " - you need to be able to put the square of butter onto the square of pastry, and to fold the pastry such that the butter is completely enclosed.

4. As stated, put the square of butter onto the centre of the square of pastry, and fold the pastry over the butter entirely to encase it. Immediately turn the pastry package over, so the join is underneath, sprinkle it  generously with flour, and roll it into a strip about 24" long x 6". Fold the strip legal-letter-style into three, then turn it over, with the join underneath; sprinkle with flour and roll again into 24" x 6"; and then repeat this a third time, before wrapping the folded pastry in clingfilm, and placing in the fridge for an hour. (Hint: when rolling the folded pastry into a strip, I find it helps to start by pressing down half a dozen times or so with the rolling pin  to flatten the pastry, before then quickly rolling the flattened pastry into the requisite strip. Doing this reduces the amount that the pastry is worked, and is therefore a good thing.)

5. After an hour,   take the pastry from the fridge, and repeat three times the rolling and folding process, remembering to flour generously at every stage. Then, back into the fridge for a further hour, before repeating a further three rolls and turns. The pastry can then be used - although, should you be so minded, a further hour's rest and three more rolls and folds can't possibly hurt.

After that, the world is your oyster!

Foolproof Roast Lamb...

 

Slow cooking in the oven is an absolute godsend for the harrassed host. In the place of precise timings and last-minute stress, this method means that the work is all done hours in advance (freeing up the time to be stressed about another course instead!). By the end of this past Christmas weekend - which, in practice turned into three consecutive dinner parties, interspersed with two consecutive lunch parties (a lot of fun, but....well, you know) - to be able to turn to this method for the main course for dinner on Boxing Day was an enormous help.  Painless, and entirely reliable. (One thing to remember, though, with this method is not to rely on your oven controls to tell you what temperature the oven has reached, but to put an oven thermometer in the oven alongside the meat and to take your readings from that - something I've learned from bitter experience!)

For one Lamb Loin (enough for eight servings):

 

1. Remove the joint from the refrigerator for long enough for it to reach room temperature, (about 3 hours before you want to start cooking). Then , using a blow torch, flame the joint all over to kill any surface bacteria. Season and tie the joint neatly. 

2. Pre-heat the oven to either 60°C (for medium, or pink lamb at the end of cooking) or to 65°C (if you prefer your lamb more cooked). Place the lamb in a dish with a piece of foil loosely laid over the meat, and cook for 3½ hours. (For those that like lamb really 'well done', set the temperature at  70°C.) If your oven has multiple settings, make sure to use the setting without the fan, as otherwise you risk the joint drying out. Once the joint has heated through, remove it from the oven and it can be 'held' until needed

3. 30 mins before serving, heat the oven to maximum. When the oven has reached maximum temperature, set the joint on a wire rack and roast until the outside is well browned, 10 - 15 mins. (If you have a gas grill or similar you can use this to brown the joint, instead).

4. Keep the joint warm while you have your first course then carve, season and serve on hot plates with a little hot sauce of your choice (I normally make a reduction of stock and red wine).

Recipe: Greek Yoghurt

We've been regresssing, this summer. I think it began when we 'adjusted' the access to the courtyard, in June, and suddenly found we were using it much more often than before. Bizarrely, we were both struck by how reminiscent it was of the small courtyard in the first house we lived in in Greece, in the Seventies....something to do with the shape, and the whitewashed walls, and the beautifully 'hidden' quality of the place (and although the presence of a stonking great thirteenth century church forming one wall of the courtyard ought somehow to diminish the similarity, it doesn't manage to). The fact that Esselunga were running a BOGOF promotion around that time for FAGE yoghurt was another factor in the equation, and before we knew it, a habit had developed of bowls of greek yoghurt (sprinkled with hazelnuts and raisins, and liberally drizzled with honey) to accompany coffee, taken in the courtyard each morning at around 10.00. The habit took hold, we became firm devotees...and then Esselunga finished their BOGOF. Scottish genes being what they are, I revolt at the thought of paying one euro thirty for a pot of yoghurt, and the only alternative was to see about home production. And discovered that it couldn't be easier. The fact that UHT milk can be bought, ready sterilised, in screw-top containers is an enormous help, since it means that all you need do in terms of preparation is introduce (with the aid of a scrupulously clean coffee spoon) a couple of tablespoons of yoghurt into the milk container, replace the lid, and shake.

Anyway, the actual steps are as follows:

1. Add a couple of spoons of yoghurt to a litre of UHT full milk; try and ensure that no air remains in the container before you replace the lid, as this can swell during the process, and might cause problems if it swells too much. 

2. Shake the container, to combine the yoghurt and milk, and warm for seven hours at around 43 °C. The best place to do this is in the warming drawer - if you have one - of the oven; failing that, it also works if you heat water in a deep fat fryer to the right temperature and then immerse the milk container in that.(The warming drawer is preferable, though, since it allows a number of containers to be processed at the same time). Do NOT allow the temperature to go above 55°C, as the yoghurt culture won't survive at that temperature.

3. After seven hours, place the containers in the fridge for about a day (from the afternoon of one day, they'll be ready for consumption the following morning), and then strain them through fine cloth (I use a linen napkin, placed inside a collander over a bowl) for about an hour, in order to achieve the thickness of traditional greek yoghurt. If you want a thinnner, runnier version - the sort appropriate for indian cooking - then strain for less time.

That's it. 

I believe the yoghurt will keep for up to a week, or so - but not in this house! TD calculated that the home made yoghurt came out at a fifth the cost of the commercial version (not including the cost of the electricity for the warming drawer) - but that you then have to reduce that saving by 50%, as we eat twice as much of it at each sitting!

Making Pasta - a revolutionary tip...

I've discovered a new trick in making pasta (instructions for which can be found here) which infinitely improves the quality of the finished product. The result of a malfunctioning food-processor, when making pasta dough several weeks ago, I had to remove the mixture from the bowl of the machine before the process was finished and then knead it by hand for several minutes until it appeared to have achieved the desired texture. I was slightly nervous when it subsequently came to rolling it out, half expecting it to be full of holes and next to useless. Far from it. The process of rolling was problem-free, and the texture of the cooked pasta afterwards was positively silky. Not just slightly better, but a whole step-function upwards in improvement...as pointed out by enthusiastic consumers.
I tried it again on subsequent occasions, to see if it had been a fluke. And, it isn't. After the dough has done its thing in the food processor, the trick is then to knead it for perhaps 20 - 30 seconds on the work surface, before storing and subsequently rolling out as normal. Such a small addition to the process, but the result in the quality of the pasta is phenomenal. (One note of caution, though - this works when using flour made from durum wheat, as is the case with italian flour in general; flour from the US, though, is different and might not react in the same way - it may even be that the process of kneading the dough with american flour actually makes the finished product tougher than otherwise)

Try it...

Tonight's dinner:

Taglioline with veal & lemon sauce

Pork chops braised with sage & white wine; Fennel gratin

Andalusian Tarts

Two tips...

Both born out of laziness (or good household management - which are often the opposite sides of the same coin; it's a matter of perspective how you choose to understand them! )


1. Having made crab tarts for starter on Sunday, I had some leftover dressed crab, and decided to use it in Lamb Mentonais for dinner last night in place of the more usual salmon. Excellent! And in fact a distinct improvement on the normal recipe, as the strongly favoured brown crab meat plays very well against the flavour of lamb. Definitely a modification that will be my preferred method from now on...

2. And, the height of laziness, last week I had leftovers of both puff pastry (from making a Pasqualina at Easter) and shortcrust (following both Lemon and Tomato Tarts, earlier in the week). Not enough of either to make an 8" shell, which was what I wanted for a Tarte aux Pommes. So, I combined them (giving exactly the right amount for one tart shell), by putting the ball of shortcrust on top of the ball of Puff, pressed down with the rolling pin and rolled them out together. As long as you remember to keep the shortcrust pastry on top when rolling out the pastry and lining the tin, then the result is splendid. I had my doubts that it would work, but in fact the result was probably some of the crispest pastry I've ever tasted, with the puff pastry layering nicely on the bottom, and the shortcrust on top keeping it under control and not losing the shape of the tart shell. It even remained beautifully crisp after 24 hours with the apple filling sitting inside it. Try it!

Tonight's Dinner:

Frittata in Tomato Sauce

Lamb Mentonais (leftover, reheated); with Lemon Spinach.

Chocolate Tarts with Lime Cream.

How to de-bone a Chicken...

Or a Duck, or a Guinea-fowl, or a Poussin, or indeed any kind of poultry whatsoever; there are some minor internal differences between each of them, but nothing that need get in the way of this process, which is actually quite straightforward and is well worth mastering.
A de-boned bird goes much further than one which has been cooked bone-in ( a medium-sized Chicken will feed six people with ease, treated this way) and a bird which you buy whole and cut up yourself comes out to be much cheaper than the aggregate cost of all the parts, were you to buy them all separately. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a whole Duck, which I then de-boned, and used the carcase for stock, the breasts for a main course for four, the legs for confit, and the fat was rendered down into a generous amount that should last me several weeks at least as a delicious cooking agent. Bought separately, that lot would have come to around £18 - which was almost twice what the duck had actually cost me.

I can't remember when I first de-boned Chicken, but I certainly associate it with a Paul Bocuse recipe for boned-and-roast Chicken, which I first started to do sometime in the mid eighties (I think I saw him demonstrate it on a programme on the Food Channel in the States...) and it's been a standard in my repertoire ever since.

Two points to remember in de-boning a Chicken:

1. Make sure your knife is very sharp! In fact, I tend to use a vegetable paring knife rather than a proper boning knife - it's up to you to use whichever you find most comfortable to work with - but whichever it is, make sure you sharpen the knife freshly before you begin.

2. Always work the knife towards you when de-boning. And as I'm right-handed, I always start with the left side of the bird, freeing the rib-cage from the flesh, and then, when I've done that side of the bird, I turn it round, so that the side to be worked on is once more on the left side of the bird, which means I can continue working the knife towards me. Were I left-handed, then I presume I'd start with the right side of the bird and reverse the process, in order always to be working towards myself.

Anyway...the method:

1. Place the bird breast-down on the work surface, and cut through the skin just to one side of the back-bone. Then slide the tip of the blade under the flesh and free it up between the leg and wing on the left-side of the bird.

2. Keeping the knife blade as close to the rib-cage as you can, free the meat away from the rib-cage for about an inch or so, and then turn your attention to the leg and the wing.

3. Carefully, cut around the top of the leg, freeing it from the carcase, and find exactly where the leg joins the carcase. Sever the tissue that connects the two, and then cut down to free the leg completely from the main part of the bird. Repeat this process with the wing-joint.

4. Once the wing and leg joints have been severed, free the breast meat from the rib-cage in its entirety with a couple of good cuts (try and make your cuts as clean as possible, and as close to the ribcage as you can manage, to avoid slashing the breast meat as you do so - at first it's inevitable that the breast will emerge looking a little 'ragged', but in practice this doesn't matter, and your technique will hugely improve once you've done this a few times).

5. Once you've freed one side of the bird entirely from the rib-cage, turn it round, and repeat the process with the other side. At the end of this stage you'll be able to extract the entire rib-cage and drop it into the waiting stockpot.

6. Next, remove the lower bone in each leg, by cutting down and around the bone and severing it at the 'knee' joint (this is essentially common sense, and needs no special explanation). Unless I need the bird entirely boneless (for a galantine or a ballotine, for example) then I stop at this stage, and either roast the bird in this state (with a butter and herb stuffing pushed generously between the skin and the meat) or else cut it up into its constituent parts to be used in either sauté or fricassé dishes.

Once you've tried this a few times, you'll find you get very quick at it ( I find a decent sized bird takes me about five minutes to de-bone, these days) and the result is well worth the effort.

How to make Puff Pastry...

After an initial disaster or two, many years ago, I gave up on making puff pastry, and pretended (to myself) that the commercially-made alternative was good enough. Which it isn't. At the first bite, the flavour of home-made puff pastry is immeasurably better than any commercial product - and although it involves a few stages in production, the aggregate time it takes to make a batch is no more than twenty minutes or so. Good to do in tandem with some other mundane garden or household task from which you'll happily take an enforced break once every hour!

I can't remember now what it was that went wrong with my early efforts - although I suspect it was because I was trying to go the purist route, and use the block of butter in one large lump, which is pretty challenging for the uninitiated. If you get the temperature of the butter wrong, you just end up with a sticky mess that gets wrapped around the rolling pin and tries to attach itself to all available surfaces within reach. Quite probably, including the ceiling.

The method I use is adapted from Gaston Le Nôtre, who is to be trusted implicitly in all matters pâtisserie. His method for choux pastry is equally straightforward and completely foolproof. I disagree with him, though, when he says that this puff pastry needs to be used on the day it is made - in practice, it's fine in the fridge for three or four days afterwards, and any off-cuts can perfectly safely be frozen for future use.

To make sufficient pastry for one large double crust pie, or half a dozen or so individual pastries:

Ingredients: 2 cups '00' Flour (you don't have to use '00' - ordinary 'Plain Flour' would work, too, but '00'is lighter and has a distinctively good flavour...whereas Plain Flour is just...flavourless Plain Flour); 130g Butter, at room temperature; 1.5 tsp Salt; 0.5 cup cold Water; 130g Butter, fridge-chilled and cut into small pieces.

Method:

1. Process all of the ingredients apart from the chilled Butter for a minute or so,until they form a homogenous ball within the bowlof the processor. Wrap in cling-film and refrigerate for an hour.

2. On a floured work surface, roll the ball of pastry into a strip approximately 18" x 6". On two thirds of this strip of pastry, place the pieces of chilled Butter.

3. Fold the uncovered third of pastry over half of the pieces of Butter, and then fold this again over the remaining pieces of Butter so that all of the Butter pieces are contained within an 'envelope' of pastry.

4. Turn the pastry so that one of the open ends of the roll is facing you, and roll it - gently pressing down with the rolling pin as you do so, to flatten the Butter inside the pastry - into a strip about 16" in length.

5. Fold both ends of the strip towards the middle,and then fold these once more into themselves. Turn the 'package' through ninety degrees, and repeat the rolling and folding process. Refrigerate the folded 'package' for an hour.

6. After an hour, repeat the rolling, folding and turning process twice more, and refrigerate.

7. After another hour, roll and fold the pastry twice more (making it six times in total, with two one-hour breaks in between for it to rest and re-chill).

The pastry is now ready to be used.

How to Carve...

Even people who cook regularly have a tendency to brick out when it comes to carving. Was it the first glass of wine? Or the second? The fear of failure? Or just the 'I've been on my feet in the kitchen all day... I've had enough!' moment. Hence, the image of the roast being presented for carving to the paterfamilias, who has never actually made its acquaintance until then, but will nevertheless proudly set-to.

Well, whether you're the cook or the stand-in, this is what you should do:

Rule #1. Heat the plates to at least 70°C. By the time you have carved enough for four, the meat is bound to be nearly cold. Use the old restaurant trick of a decently hot plate to put the heat back in. If you put the plates in the oven at 70°C just before you start to carve, they will be hot when you need them.

Rule #2. Cool the meat until it's barely warm. Sometimes you read about 'resting' meat - what they mean is cooling it. Not only is it difficult to carve hot meat, but all the fatty juices pour out making a terrible mess and leaving slices of dry fibre. Tepid is ideal. The combination of hot plates and hot sauce will re-heat the slices as they are served.

Rule #3. Remove some, or all, of the bones before roasting. A sharp knife and some of the elasticated netting from the butcher does the trick ( the latter to keep the thing together, post-surgery). Slice to the bone from the point with the least meat, cut round as best you can and remove it. If it's a bird, just removing the wishbone makes life infinitely easier, and boning the whole thing is better yet.

Rule #4. If you weren't in charge at rule #3 stage, but were roped in later, remove the bone if you can. Easiest is a large T bone or rib roast (aka Fiorentina). Just cut all the meat off the bone in the largest possible pieces and lob the bone at the bin, or the dog. If it is a chicken, take the breasts off in one piece - use your fingers to help if nobody is looking. If the joint is a shoulder of lamb, the carver's nightmare, it's the same method. If you are not sure where the bone actually is, prod around a bit with the tip of the knife - or better a skewer - until you have the anatomy worked out. Don't worry if you leave meat on the bone - you will probably leave less than you would have done if you had tried to carve it on the bone.

Rule #5. Take a boneless piece of meat and slice across the grain - never along the grain. Meat fibres are tough and long fibres are tougher to chew than short ones.

Rule #6. Unless the piece of meat is large, do not slice vertically, slice thinly at 45°. The slice will be longer and look better on the plate.

Rule #7. Rule's 3-6 are easier if the knife is properly sharp.

Rule #8. Slice all you need before getting the plates out of the oven. It is better to keep people waiting rather than serve them in dribs and drabs.

Making Caramel

People have been making a version of caramel pretty much since the advent of refined sugar, I would think - so, you'd expect the process would by now be well and truly sorted out. But, it seems not. No two versions that I've ever come across agree with each other - and the rather vague language the writers generally use makes me suspect that they've all had a nasty experience with the stuff at some point in the past (and which experienced cook hasn't? I know I have - it's almost impossible not to!)

Over the years, I've tried all sorts of different methods - the one where you laboriously brush the sides of the pan with cold water as the sugar bubbles...or the version where you dunk the bottom of the pan into iced water as soon as the caramel starts to colour - and the method given below is the only one I've tried that I really like and have found completely reliable. It's also the only one which uses lemon juice within the mixture, and although I have no idea structurally what difference it should make, it certainly seems to make the process much more straightforward. It comes from Anna del'Conte's 'Entertaining all'Italiana'...a book which briefly saw the light of day towards the end of the eighties and then seems to have sunk without trace.

The quantity is sufficient to use in six ramekins for either panna cotta or crème caramel.

Ingredients: 75g sugar; 3 tbs water; 1 tsp lemon juice.

Method:

Place all ingredients in a pan, and bring slowly to the boil, stirring gently with a wooden spoon. It will take some time to start to colour, but will then turn first a pale gold and then dark brown. At that point, remove it immediately from the heat and pour it into the containers. (NB: if using the caramel to line ramekins, it is best to heat them first in a 170 degree C oven for five minutes - this will prevent the caramel from 'seizing' when coming into contact with cold porcelain.)

Recipe: Vanilla Ice Cream...

Two thoughts struck me in the process of contemplating vanilla ice cream.

Firstly, that so much to do with cooking is about demystifying apparently complex techniques - sometimes because of splendid insights from others, and many times because you work out for yourself that actually a lot of what is published in recipe books is complete nonsense. So it was for me with roasting, and the discovery of Mrs Kafka......and with making pasta... and Gaston Le Notre and his techniques for puff and choux pastry....and so it is with the process of effortlessly producing rich and delicious ice cream.
When I first made ice cream, it seemed to be all about complicated temperature measurements at various different points along the way, and the absolute necessity to have a custard base of exactly the right 'coating consistency' , and it all seemed rather fraught and definitely unrelaxed. These days, I don't bother with any of that, and essentially just make an enriched Creme Anglaise to which I add whatever flavouring ingredient seems appropriate, let it cool sufficiently and then bung it into the pre-chilled machine and start the paddle working. Yesterday evening was a case in point: with some apple slices which had been sauteed in butter and an equal quantity of caramelised orange segments (both leftover from making Andalusian tarts the day before), I decided to make some Vanilla Ice Cream to have with them rather than just serving them with cream on its own. It took twenty minutes to make the custard base, whch I then left to cool on the windowsill as I turned the machine on to chill; the mixture went into the machine and started to churn just as we sat to the first course, and was exactly the right serving consistency at the moment when it was required...

And the other point? Well, it seems to me that vanilla has received an unjustifiably poor press over time, such that now it has come to be synonymous with 'plain' and 'pedestrian' and 'dull'. Why is that? Vanilla is a fantastically complex flavour...sensual and luscious and sophisticated and wonderful. A true food of the Gods, it is long overdue for rehabilitation...!

My preferred Vanilla IceCream Recipe:

Serves Four.

Ingredients: 250 ml Cream; 250 ml Milk; 1 Vanilla Pod, split; 50g Sugar; 6 Egg Yolks.

Method:

1. Combine the Milk and Cream in a double boiler or Zimmertopf; scrape the contents of the Vanilla Pod into the combine Milk and Cream, and simmer gently for ten minutes or so (I generally include the ppod itself at this stage, for added flavour, and remove it before adding the flavoured Milk/Cream to the Yolks and Sugar).

2. Meanwhile, whisk together Egg Yolks and Sugar, until the mixture is pale yellow and leaves a ribbon behind the whisk.

3. Add the simmered Milk/Cream to the beaten Yolks and Sugar, stri together thoroughly, and return to the double boiler. Simmer for a further five minutes or so, until it has thickened to a good velvety consistency (don't worry if it has some slight lumps in it - the paddle in the ice cream machine will sort those out).

4. Return the thickened custard to the bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave to cool down for half an hour or so; during this period, turn on the chiller element in the ice cream machine.

5. The longer you leave the custard to cool, the more quickly it will churn. Once you're happy that it is cool enough (half an hour is probably about the minimum length of time you can leave it) then pour it into the pre-chilled machine and start the paddle going.

As soon as it is ready, serve!

Reductio ad perfection....

Delicious sauces are ridiculously simple to make. I know James Peterson writes at fascinating length on the subject, and I love the images he conjures up of egg-yolks and oils working together to make complicatedly-structured emulsions, for example .......but, away from the pages of his deathless prose, the actual practice in the kitchen is quick and easy and capable of completely transforming what might otherwise be a rather dull offering on the plate.

My approach to sauces is very straightforward: some 'cooking residue' (which can be either stock, or the bits left in the bottom of the roasting pan or the sauté pan - anything which has captured the flavour of whatever it was that was previously being cooked), some alcohol of choice (whatever you have to hand - I generally have port and vermouth ready to use in the kitchen in London, and marsala and house white in Italy, although you can also use a slug of whatever you're quaffing as Cook's Perk in the kitchen - and often , but not always, a slug of cream. That's the beauty of the process - the sauce can be adapted to whatever you happen to have available and might feel like including. Herbs? If you have them, why not? Cream? Yes, but not necessarily...

And the secret to success - if indeed it even merits being glorified as a 'secret' - is reducing and reducing and reducing the combined liquid until it is a dense, coating consistency in the bottom of the pan. It will cling perfectly to whatever it is that you're serving, and the flavours within it will be complicated and rich and delicious!

An example: last night we were having duck breasts for dinner. Before sitting down to the first course, I'd combined in a small saucepan a cup of beef stock, along with half a cup of port and a generous slug of cream, stirred together and left simmering gently on the stove. Having cleared the first course, I grilled the duck breasts (approx four minutes per side) and then moved them into an oven pre-heated to 220 degrees C; all the while the sauce was bubbling away, not quite boiling but simmering quite energetically, and required stirring perhaps once every couple of minutes. Five minutes or so in the oven, and the breasts were ready to come out and sit under foil for a couple of minutes so that the juices would go back into the meat and not flood out when it was carved; meanwhile, I raised the heat under the sauce and boiled it down stirring constantly, until a wooden spoon drawn through it on the base of the pan left a clear line, and the sauce was almost glutinous in texture. A quick check for seasoning and adjustment as needed* and then the breasts were carved and plated, and the sauce spooned over each serving - a spoonful of richly dense sauce per serving is quite sufficient.

Simple, and fantastic.....

*only ever add seasoning at the end when you're going to reduce a sauce in this way; if you put it in at the beginning, then as the liquid reduces, the seasoning becomes much stronger and more concentrated than you had in mind. It is also at this stage that you should add any chopped fresh herbs that you might want to use to add an extra flavour element to your sauce.

Tonight's Dinner:

Tagliatelle (fatta in casa) with a sauce of Tomato, Rosemary & Pancetta.

Salmon Fillet, in Walnut Cream sauce, on julienned Celery.

Fig & Quince Tarts.

Water, Water, Everywhere.......!

And I'm not referring to the various recent meteorological events that have left people around the globe paddling knee-deep through their homes. I'm talking about ingredients - and more specifically those things that come to us via some kind of industrialised treatment and packaging process. Almost without fail, they are all full of water....

You'd think that when a recipe calls for 4oz of raisins, nothing could be simpler.

Actually...... it isn't.

If the recipe dates from before the introduction of plastic-packed food - and many of them do, even if they have been recently churned out yet again and glossily photographed by the latest TV celebrity cook - the chances are that the original writer meant 4oz of bone dry raisins of the sort I can remember being sold from jute sacks, along with apricots, prunes, rock-hard salt cod, and salt anchovies that had been preserved so that you could stand them on end. All these things were stacked together on the floor of the Aladdin's Cave that was Zani's, the local grocer in Greece in the '70's, who sported a handlebar moustache and a grizzled expression that came straight out of Zorba. The raisins he sold were tough, leathery and definitely chewy: you couldn't have used them without a good soaking first. The pre-soaked raisins generally available today are about 25% heavier than the original .........so, you need to increase the quantity of any dry fruit by about a third if you want the result the original recipe-writer intended.

And it's the same with meat. Bacon, ham - in fact, most meat - has a much higher water content these days than used to be the case. The reason is simple: it's all sold by weight, so the heavier the better - at least, from the grocer's point of view. Most fresh meat is 'hung' sealed in a plastic bag, and modern bacon is better described as 'sodden' rather than 'leathery'. The practical - and damaging - result of this is that with any cooking treatment other than roasting, the water merely gets released in the process, and seriously dilutes the flavour of the end result.

There are ways to address the problem, however.............My rule of thumb is to increase the quantity of flavouring ingredients in most recipes such as lardon, pancetta etc. by 25% and either to go easy on the liquid in stews, or else - more often - to plan to reduce the sauce at the end of the process to the absolute minimum needed for serving, and thus remove the excess water.

Pomiane's recipe for Beef with Peppers is a good example. In the good Doctor's day, the air-aged beef would have been dry to the touch, browned easily in a little fat and have given off little to no water during cooking. The root vegetables he used would quite probably have been in storage for half a year in sand and would have been getting a bit gnarled. Added to which, his earthenware casserole, with its inevitably ill-fitting lid, would have ensured that the end result - even with the addition of wine - would be tender meat in a very little unctuous sauce.

When you read these days of having to seal the lid of the daubière with flour-and-water-paste 'to keep the precious liquid in' remember this has become completely redundant - with modern equipment and modern ingredients, you could leave most stews in the oven all day and you'd still end up with the meat and vegetables swimming around in a complete soup!. Following most recipes to the letter, particularly if you are using a spanking new Le Creuset, you'll find you end up with pints of insipid liquid which need reducing in volume by at least 3/4 in order to get some flavour back.

Here's how to do the reduction:

1. Strain all the solids from the stock while still warm. A large coarse sieve is ideal but failing that a colander will do. Wait a few minutes for all the liquid to drain through.

2. Degrease the liquid. Either by leaving it over night in the 'fridge and removing the solidified fat or, if you are in a hurry, using a fat separator or, if you have plenty of ice cubes, pouring the cold stock slowly over a colander full of ice: the fat will stick to the ice and the liquid will fall through.

3. Boil the de-greased stock in the widest pan you can lay your hands on - a sauté pan is fine - until it is literally syrupy. You almost can't go too far - well, don't go on until it burns - you can always add a bit of boiled wine if there is too little juice. Scrape down the sides of the pan which will have a film of concentrated stock and then return the stock to the solids. It won't nearly cover the solids but there only needs to be just enough juice to serve.

4. Reheat carefully when needed, check the seasoning before serving

Tonight's Dinner:

Salad of Endive, with Roquefort & Walnuts, in a Sherry Vinaigrette

Raie au Beurre Noire, with Puy Lentils.

Baked Raspberry Creams.

More de-boning....

This is by way of being a corollary to the post recently about removing the wishbone in order to make life much easier when dealing with poultry. In the same way, this is a brief description of how to fillet a cooked fish, so that you don't have to watch your guests fighting with mouthfuls of bones, and, worse, having to concentrate on the mechanics of rendering their fish bonelessly edible to the detriment of their enjoyment of food, wine and conversation!

The process for a flat fish, like Sole is as follows:

1. With a couple of forks remove the fin edges which run along the sides of the fish, there's little meat in these and a lot of bones. Remove and discard them.

2. Again with two forks, start at the tail end. Push the tines of the forks one left and the other right of the spine and ease the flesh away from the centre. Work towards the head, pushing the fillets to the edge of the plate until the spine, tail and head are completely exposed.

3. Remove the spine, tail and head - you should be able to do this in one go - and there you are, push the fillets back together and the fish is ready to be served!


For a Bass or similar non-flat fish, proceed as follows:

When the fish is cooked, it makes life easier to transfer it to a large flat hot plate or tray. It also helps to have a plate for the bones you remove.

1. Remove any fins from the sides, and the dorsal(back) fin by dragging it and any bones attached to it away from the body with the edge of a knife. Put the bones on the debris plate

2. With the fish still on its side, find the join between the upper and lower fillet. If necessary remove a little - or if you prefer all - the skin to find it. Gently run a blunt knife along the join. Slip a knife or pallet knife under the upper fillet and gently ease it off, turning it skin side down. There may be some bones attached to the upper, dorsal edge. Remove them. If the flesh does not come away from the bones easily, the fish could do with a couple more minutes cooking until it does.

3. Run the knife under the lower fillet. More than likely the long rib bones which form the stomach cavity will be attached to this piece when you turn it skin side down. Pick these bones off with the point of a knife or fork. Remove the exposed backbone, head and tail in one piece. Remove the stomach bones as before and check the upper edge for remain dorsal bones.

4. The fillets are now ready for serving. Even if the fillets have cooled, serving them on very hot plates will heat them up again.

My preferred way of cooking Sea Bass, as long as it is very fresh, is merely to make a parcel of baking foil, buttered on the inside, with the fish sealed inside the parcel, and bake it for exactly half an hour in an oven pre-heated to 180 degrees C. This is a method I adapted from Prue Leith, but I don't bother with her addition of fresh rosemary and slices of Lime - completely pointless, in practice. What does work well, though, is to let a large Anchovy fillet fall to pieces in a couple of ounces of butter you have warming gently on the stove, and then spoon this over the fillets once they've been plated. The flavour-hit is excellent!


Tonight's Dinner:

Risotto of Red Onion and Sage

Rabbit in Garlic, served with braised Lettuce

Fresh Figs in Cointreau, with Vanilla Cream.

Roasting Success.....

Like many people, I suspect, I grew up with an idea of 'Roasting' as a mystical ritual that was associated with ceremonial meals - Turkey, at Christmas, and Beef or Chicken on Sundays. It was clearly a long and complicated process, in the course of which wonderful aromas would gradually and hieratically permeate the house. As a result, I developed a disproportionately cautious approach to the practice, and gave it a wide berth literally for decades. Until the advent of Mrs Kafka, that is. In 1995, she published her bible on Roasting - justifiably greeted with rapturous enthusiasm by the New York Times, when it first appeared - and in one go the mystical bubble was pricked. Her approach is so simple it hardly seems worth explaining: turn your oven up to 25o degrees C, and whatever you want to roast, zap it in there and it will be done practically before you've had time to think about it (generally around half an hour, in practice....). Crisp, caramelised skin, combined with a succulent interior. Best done using an oven with a self-clean function, as this method ends up with quite a lot of fat on the inside of the oven...... For me, this has meant that roasting has lost all of its mystique, and in fact - rather than being a highdays and holidays thing - is the most likely choice for post-cinema, or any occasion when I want to cook something quick and uncomplicated. How times have changed!

In his book on Meat, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall adopts a variant on the same approach, where he tempers Mrs Kafka's method with a second stage at a lower temperature to ensure that the inside of the roast is properly cooked. Both methods then benefit from a period of resting (under foil) to allow the juices to go back into the meat; generally, I finish roasting in time for the start of dinner, and then let it rest during the first course. The Fearnley Whittingstall method is appropriate for pieces of meat of a size appropriate for more then three people, and after your 30-40 minutes at 250 degrees C, you should then lower the temperature to 190 for a further twenty minutes or so, before resting.

Of course there are other ways of doing it. Carrier, in his New Great Dishes of the World , has a recipe for roasting beef which involves roasting it for five minutes per pound in a 250 degree C oven, then turning the oven off, and letting the meat sit for two hours in the cooling oven before you open the door. It works. The result is splendid - we did it for Christmas dinner two years ago. But I did feel as though it should have been accompanied by incantations and a few sacrificial offerings to the Lares and Penates at the same time!

Dinner Tonight:

Beef Salad, in Sesame Dressing.

Haddock, in Coriander and Lemon, with Creamed Curried Puy Lentils.

Pear Souffle

Making Mayonnaise....

This post was prompted by the current availability in the market of Globe Artichokes, my preferred complement to which is a rich home-made mayonnaise, flavoured either with Lime, Orange, or Saffron.

Mayonnaise forms because the Oil is broken down into an emulsion made of thousands of tiny droplets separated by Water from the Egg Yolk. Natural emulsifiers found in Egg Yolk and Mustard act to keep the Oil droplets separate. If the Egg is old the emulsion may not form as easily because fresh Egg Yolks are richer in emulsifiers than old ones. (If you want to know more about the science of oil in water emulsions, consult chapter 11 of Harold Magee's 'On Food & Cooking'.)


The Ingredients:

I Egg Yolk
I teaspoon of Mustard - preferably French
180ml Oil - any sort. (Strongly-flavoured Oils, such as Olive, will need the addition of strong flavouring agents such as Citrus Oils or rind, or Spices and will be best with strongly-flavoured dishes.)
12ml Lemon Juice or Vinegar.


NB: In making Mayonnaise, it makes things simpler if you use an oil bottle fitted with a pourer with a narrow spout, so you can control the oil flow precisely while holding the bottle in one hand. Since you need the other hand to mix the sauce, position the bowl (narrow based, with a capacity of between 500 ml and a litre) so that it can't slide about, for example on a damp dishcloth.

Method:

1. Using a fork or whisk, mix the Egg Yolk with the Mustard until slightly thickened.

2. Start adding Oil, literally one drop at a time, while mixing. As the Oil drops are absorbed by the egg mixture it will thicken. When, and only when, it does, you can increase the Oil flow to a drizzle.

3. If at any time you can see a pool of Oil which has not been absorbed, stop the Oil flow. Don't try to incorporate all the surplus Oil into the emulsion in one go. Tip the bowl slightly so the surplus Oil flows away from the area you are mixing and start bringing this surplus Oil into the mixture a little at a time. When all the Oil is thoroughly incorporated and the mixture is even and thick, go back to adding Oil.

4. You will find by experience that the more emulsion you have in the bowl the faster you can add Oil. I normally use a fork and start by mixing only in one small area of the bowl, occasionally bringing mixture from the rest of the bowl into the emulsion. This reduces the chance of trying to incorporate too much Oil too quickly.

5. When you have added all the Oil, flavour the Mayonnaise with Lemon Juice or Vinegar, and the flavourings of your choice.
( NB.If you are using a flavour agent which is in powder form - such as Saffron or Curry Powder - add this to the Egg Yolk at the beginning, before you start the addition of the Oil. If you add it at the end the powder can form into lumps and be difficult to amalgamate.)
You can thin the Mayonnaise with any liquid such as Lemon Juice, Water or Cream. The whole process should take 5-10 minutes.

6. It can happen that the emulsion 'breaks' because the Oil has been added too quickly. You will know the mixture has broken if it becomes runny, oily and the ingredients have obviously separated. This is more likely at the beginning of the process, hence the importance of starting by adding Oil only one drop at a time. The solution is to start again with fresh ingredients. After you have made ¼ of a cup of Mayonnaise, you can then incorporate the 'failed' mixture instead of the remaining oil. Alternatively bring 2 tablespoons of Vinegar to the boil in a pan or in the microwave and pour it into the mixture while whisking vigorously: the emulsion will re-form.

7. If 1 Egg Yolk and 180ml of Oil doesn't give you enough Mayonnaise, you can add more Oil if you mix in a teaspoon of Water first before adding any more Oil. The Mayonnaise with raw Egg Yolk will keep at least 24 hours in a refrigerator.


Tonight's Dinner:

Globe Artichokes with Saffron Mayonnaise

Pomiane's 'Spanish' Stew, with Fennel slow-cooked with Dill

Apple Strudel

Removing the Wishbone....

Poultry suffers from a severe design-fault, in the form of the Wishbone. Whether spit roast, oven roast or pot roast, when it comes to carving the bird, the process always involves a feat of manual dexterity which is both time-consuming and fiddly, and generally involves a lot more meat being left attached to the bone than is necessary. The solution is to remove the wishbone while the bird is still raw - thereafter, once the bird is cooked, you can either make clean slices from the breast as you would normally, or else remove the breasts in one go and slice them on a board. It sounds like a minor difference, but the first time I saw a de-wishboned chicken being carved I was deeply impressed. Suddenly, the task is clean, efficient and quick....

The process of removing the Wishbone:

1. Stand the bird on its rump end, push the skin covering the neck cavity aside and locate the V shaped wishbone with your fingers.

2. Using the tip of a small sharp knife, score the flesh either side of the middle of one branch of the bone until you can grip it with your finger tips. Use the tip of the knife to free the 'top of the V' end from the carcase. It is attached to the skeleton with a little bit of cartilage. If you put the tip of you knife into the join and twist, it will come free.

3. Work on the other branch in the same way.

4. Gently holding both branches - be careful they snap easily - work the tip of the knife towards the base of the V until you can free the whole wishbone. This sounds more complicated than it is. With a bit of practice the whole process only takes a couple of minutes.

5. When you come to carve you have two choices. You can make long cuts parallel to the back bone in the classic way or you can remove the entire breast from the carcase by cutting along one side of the breastbone and running the knife along the ribcage until the whole breast can be removed. This can then be thinly sliced on a board like a grilled breast. (The latter method is definitely better for Duck, if you like your bird on the pink side). Whichever method you choose you will find it much easier without the wishbone getting in your way.

Techniques: Phyllo Pastry Shells

Several years ago I discovered the huge range of possibilities that result from making pastry shells from Phyllo, rather than from either shortcrust or Pate Sucre. The end result is both light and entirely reliable, as well as being supremely dietarily sound. As a matter of course these days, any recipe I come across that calls for pastry of any kind, I automatically transcribe to be usable with phyllo. The following is the basic process I follow. This is to make two pastry shells; for more shells, simply multiply the ingredients pro rata.

1. Grease two individual false-bottomed flan tins. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Melt 1 oz Butter over very low heat.

2. Use the melted Butter to brush two sheets of Phyllo, each one approximately 12" x 6". With a sharp knife, then cut each rectangle into two squares.

3. Place one square of Phyllo buttered-side-up over the rim of a false-bottomed tin and gently ease it into the tin, being careful not to tear it. Then work your way round the tin, folding the edges of the pastry over to make as neat an edge as you can, as close to the actual shape of the tin as possible. Once one square has been folded in this way, take a second square and repeat the process as a second layer on top of the first one. When you have completed this with all tins, use any leftover melted butter to brush the inside of the uncooked Pastry shells.

4. I used to put weights into the shells at this point, as one would for blind baking a shortcrust shell, but have discovered that with phyllo it really isn't necessary. Normally, I scatter some slivered almonds over the bottom layer of phyllo, and before I put the second layer on top - which both gives added crispness and flavour to the finished shell, but also seems to help to stick the two layers together during cooking, and stops any unwelcome air bubbles from manifesting themselves.

5. Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for approximately five minutes. Remove from the oven when the visible edges of the shells appear to be going brown. Remove the foil and the weights, and return the shells to the oven for an additional five minutes or so.

6. Once the shells are properly brown, remove from the oven, and use therafter as your recipe requires.