Monthly Archives: April 2012

Muffins

26 Thursday Apr 2012

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I came late to the American muffin. It was too close to the cupcake for comfort, architecturally at least. And the last shop-bought muffin I tried was like eating my own washcloth. There was also a disconcerting bounce to it, no doubt the result of all the preservatives required to keep it ‘fresh’.

The craggily homemade version is much nicer; unprecious, easy, malleable. It’s a great one for using up left-overs, marmalade bits, old cranberries, stewed this and that, collapsed bananas and it’s good for experimenting. I like the deliberate under-mixing, and then watching it rise into smooth little balls through the smoky glass. It also absorbs and holds onto the essential flavour of things in interesting ways, like ginger nubbins, dates, vanilla and cinnamon. The botanically named ‘flavedo’ of citrus zest comes through startling well. It’s honest fare; simple, good, true, the workhorse of the kitchen. Wet into dry is the only rule, and then it likes to be left alone. But breaking it open, and getting a headful of that steamy, sweet interior, the texture reminiscent of soft, hot bread is lovely. And it has that essential lick-the-bowl-clean component, central to all great baking expeditions.

Muffins are what is known in the trade as ‘quick bread.’ Bread that uses yeast – ‘slow bread,’ you could say – has a long fermentation period, whereas quick breads use chemical leaveners such as bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and need to go straight in the oven. Muffins favour the casual, almost sloppy cook. A few desultory swipes with a spatula is all you need for the mixture to be ready – any more and the gluten will start to work, and the result will be tough and dense. Keeping a light hand also creates all the nooks and crannies for the butter and jam to fall into later, and hopefully – if the muffin is still warm – liquefy and dance around your mouth in a delightful way.

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This recipe can be made as a loaf or as individual muffins, and you can substitute the raisins for a cup of something else (prunes would be nice). Fennel is an acquired taste, I admit, being the Marmite of flavourings, but the liquorice warmth balances the sweetness here. Play around with spices though, and see what takes your fancy. I have added ground almonds to the mix because I believe that the muffin’s downfall is its tendency to dryness which almonds will mitigate. If you are less catholic in your muffin persuasion, and want to keep things simple, stick to two cups (250g) of flour.

Fennel, orange and raisin quick bread

Adapted from Nick Malgieri’s The Modern Baker

1 cup (160g) raisins

1¼ cups (150g) plain flour

¾ cup (90g) ground almonds

⅔ cup (130g) sugar

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tbs fennel seeds

Pinch of salt

¾ stick (6 tbs/3 oz) butter

Finely grated zest of 2 oranges

⅔ cup (160 ml) buttermilk

(or make up 1 cup/250 ml of milk and add 1 tbs of lemon juice.  Let this stand for 5 minutes and use the required amount)

2 large eggs, at room temperature

Method

Put the raisins and about 75 ml (5 tbs) of water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat, cover, and leave until the raisins have absorbed most of the liquid. You don’t have to do this but it makes the raisins very plump and juicy. Drain and leave to one side. Heat a dry frying pan/skillet over a medium heat and add the fennel seeds, shaking the pan so they toast evenly. They are ready when they start to release their fragrance and are beginning to brown; then whizz them in a spice or coffee grinder for a few seconds.

Preheat the oven to 400F. Lightly coat the muffin pan or loaf tin with butter. Put the flour, ground almonds, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, blitzed fennel seeds and salt in a medium-sized bowl and combine well. In a saucepan, melt the butter gently with the orange zest. Turn off the heat and add the buttermilk to the melted butter and let it sit for a few minutes, until it’s tepid. Pour the melted butter mixture into a bowl and add the eggs and whisk until well blended.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir gently with a wooden spoon or spatula. Mix until just blended. Gently fold in the raisins. Use an ice cream scoop or a spoon to pile the batter into the muffin cups (fill to the top if you want a billowing ‘crown’), or simply pour into the loaf tin. Bake the individual muffins for 18 – 20 minutes and the loaf for about 35 – 40 minutes. The top should feel firm and a skewer will come out cleanish when it’s ready. Leave the tin to cool for five minutes and then prise the loaf/muffins out using a thin knife and leave on the rack until okay to handle, but still tender and steaming. Eat very soon.

Some things to remember: All the liquid ingredients must be brought to room temperature before beginning. If, when you whisk the milk, eggs and butter together, the milk or the eggs are chilled, the butter will congeal and won’t blend well. Always add any zest to the melted butter rather than to the dry ingredients, as this releases the essential oils. Stop mixing the batter as soon as you can see no streaks of flour or liquid; don’t worry about lumps, they’ll even out during baking. Just get the darn thing in the oven.

These muffins, unlike their commercial counterparts, have a shorter shelf-life. After a day, they need a zap in the oven to bring them back to life, but by day three it’s all over. Freeze them once they’ve cooled on the rack, if you want to keep them for a while; they freeze for up to a month, wrapped and sealed in a freezer bag. When you’re ready to eat them, thaw for 30 minutes and then reheat. Alternatively, prepare the dry and wet ingredients, cover and store them separately until the morning (keep the wet in the fridge), and then whip them together and bung in the oven.

You can put the batter into squares of parchment paper, which then sit in the muffin tray, as pictured below. Though it looks quite pretty, the downside is the paper’s tendency to cling to the muffin, thus tearing it asunder. This makes it easier to eat though – doing the job of fingers. 

Soft-boiled egg and soldiers

20 Friday Apr 2012

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I remember where I was: sitting at a round, wooden table opposite my mum’s friend Pat, and flanked by her three kids in a kitchen somewhere in the Devon countryside. She’d borrowed this place I seem to remember on a break from London and I don’t know where she got the eggs, but they came in an unmarked box. They were brown and small and there was a pile of wonky toast, which we slathered in butter. There was also Marmite.

But the thing I remember most was that first scoop of egg on my spoon. Up until that moment, my mum’s insistence on runny eggs had incensed my brother and I; we wanted them as hard as ping-pong balls, rubbery if possible. Absolutely nothing must be moving within. But this was different – there was a faint sweetness on the tongue that salt only seemed to intensify. The texture was soft and yielding with the merest bite to it. To my mind the yolk was (still is) unthinkable without the white. They belong together and here it proved most true. Toast was almost redundant; the white tenderly curled itself around each spoonful of plump, yellow yolk. Everyone was quiet for a time – there was only the sound of muffled cutlery, the crunch of crust and crackly shell.

So began my life-long attachment to the boiled egg, though nothing has ever come close to that moment of transcendence. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to be distracted nowadays. The act of standing over a pan of gently bubbling water for precise minutes requires a presence of mind, a slower heartbeat perhaps. An over-boiled egg is rarely uneatable – even with grey yolk and a sulphurous ring of shame – but a runny egg, the white still translucent, the yolk thin and watery, is not simply a disappointment but a waste. Perhaps we have become too removed from what Henry James called the “bloom of punctuality.” We no longer have any concept of the laying season, where we must wait for the hen – everything is available so nothing really matters.

Soft-boiled egg and soldiers 

Get room temperature eggs and a small pan of water (so the eggs don’t go careering all over the place). Bring the water up to a simmer and gently lower the eggs into the pan using a spoon. Let them cook for exactly 1 minute. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover and leave for 6 minutes. If you want a slightly firmer set, go to 7 minutes. Serve with soldiers. I would say that a little heap of sea salt and a grind of black pepper is essential.

As eggs are invariably stored in the fridge, you can bring them to room temperature by sitting them in a bowl of hot tap water for 10 minutes. Interestingly, our habit of refrigerating eggs is not necessarily good for them – they don’t like extremes of temperature (who does?) and prefer a cool environment to a cold one. The bottom of the fridge is the safest place or an unsunny countertop.

Soldiers and their substitutes 

A strip of toast – the ‘soldier’ of the title – dunked into an egg is a great stand-in for a spoon, and it’s fun watching the yolk cascade down the sides. Butter is poetry in itself, but a soft-boiled egg can take all sorts of aggressive interlopers. Aside from Marmite soldiers, anchovies flattened on toast adds salty drama, as does a smear of pesto. If you want to forego bread altogether, asparagus tips are fresh and spring-like. Here you want a runnier yolk, so cook the eggs for 6 minutes only. Shards of crisp bacon dipped into egg are lovely; both are salty sweet, but bacon brings the toast-like ballast you may have been missing. Finally, a little spear of parmesan is nice to go rooting around with; the combination of crumbly, salty creaminess has a natural affinity with eggs in any form.

Buying eggs

I know it probably goes without saying that the words ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’ mean nothing in the context of egg buying. I can’t remember the last time I bought some ‘stale and unnatural’ eggs. And just because hens are ‘free to roam’ doesn’t mean they will; their natural tendency is to stay close to the nesting area. The most we can hope for, at least in California, is to seek out the Certified Humane and Certified (by the USDA) Organic labels, where there is third-party verification that no pesticides or herbicides have been used, hens are able to spend their days outside, grazing in small flocks, scratching around and generally being themselves. Incidentally, the best way of telling if an egg really is ‘fresh’ is to put one in a bowl of cold water; if it rests on the bottom in a horizontal position, the egg is very fresh. If it tilts or becomes vertical it’s less so.

Crème caramel

15 Sunday Apr 2012

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Spoonable and consoling crème caramel. It’s been around forever it seems. Always a restaurant staple, but rarely made at home, or at least never by me. I think I’ve always been rather intimidated by it – dark caramel running down satiny slopes of custard seemed too fancy, too much the work of a pro. Even the texture is perfectly constructed; the sultry amber syrup has just enough bitterness to stop the whole thing feeling babyish. And yet, this is surprisingly straightforward to make and downright lovely.

On the custard continuum, it’s at the lean end, with crème brûlée (of shattered sugar fame) at the other, and pot de crème somewhere in the middle. Traditionally, whole milk and whole eggs are used which helps it hold its shape, out there on its own. It also gives it that just-set texture. These days, egg yolks or cream are often added in the quest for velvet tenderness. My first attempt without either reminded me of a Mini Milk (the only ice lolly I was ever allowed because it cost 10p); no bad thing but I wanted something a bit more grown-up, so this recipe has extra yolks.

The pudding’s complexity comes from the way the caramel ‘lining’ is absorbed by the custard over the time they spend together in the fridge and sitting on the counter top, which is why crème caramel is at its best eaten at room temperature. Cold dulls our perception of taste, and this is where you want liquid warmth, not the foggy chill of ice cream.

A vanilla bean is a traditional steeping ingredient here, but this custard also takes kindly to being infused with herbs, flowers and spices.  On my first outing, I steeped rose petals in the milk mixture for about an hour, and the result was delicate and subtle. Some finely chopped rosemary on my second attempt gave it more body, with an earthy, faintly medicinal quality. Orange zest was just right; warm and fragrant, without taking away from the pudding’s beautiful simplicity, while pulling it back from mere sweetness. I include it here.

Orange crème caramel/Crème renversée à l’orange

Adapted from Simon Hopkinson, Roast Chicken and Other Stories

2 cups (500ml) of creamy milk

Finely grated zest of 1 large orange (2 if you want more intensity)

⅓ cup (80g) of sugar

2 whole eggs

4 egg yolks

Generous ⅓ cup (100g) of sugar to make the caramel

Method

Pour the milk into a pan and add ⅓ cup (80g) of sugar with the orange zest. Bring to the boil, then remove it from the heat and leave to infuse for at least an hour. Put the whole eggs and egg yolks in a bowl and whisk lightly. Bring the orange milk up to a simmer, then temper the eggs by pouring in half a cup of the milk at a time, so they don’t scramble. Mix together, but don’t allow the eggs and milk mixture to become too frothy. Strain this through a fine sieve to remove all the zest, pressing down to extract as much of the flavour as possible. Put to one side and heat the oven to 300F.

Now for the caramel. Put the generous ⅓ cup (100g) of sugar into a pan and add enough water to cover (you don’t have to be precise about how much). Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved and then boil hard. Watch as it turns from transparent to light gold to reddish brown; don’t do anything else while this is happening as you don’t want it pale and insipid, but you don’t want black sugar either. It moves from one to the other with startling speed. As soon as you think it’s ready, pour into six ramekins, swirling it so that it covers the base and some of the sides. It will harden quickly, so act fast and don’t talk to anyone. When it’s set, put each ramekin into a roasting dish, and from there gently pour the custard mixture into each mould. Now pour enough hot tap water into the roasting dish so that it goes most of the way up the sides of the moulds (about two-thirds), cover the dish with foil, and bake for about 40 minutes.

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Don’t have the heat too high, or boil the water as the custard will curdle. They’re ready when there’s still a small liquid centre, which will firm up after you remove them from the oven. Take them out and keep them in the roasting tin on the counter for 30 minutes, then refrigerate, covered, for about 5 hours or overnight. Let them come to room temperature, if you can. It also makes them easier to turn out. To serve, run a thin knife round the edges of each ramekin to loosen, put a plate over the top and flip over.

Some steeping ideas: 3 sprigs of thyme or a sprig of rosemary, rose petals from 2 untreated rose heads, the zest of a whole orange, lemon or lime, ¼ cup of fresh lemon verbena, lemon balm or lavender, ¾ cup of toasted nuts, such as almonds or hazelnuts, or 2 teaspoons of toasted cardamom seeds. The amount of time you infuse these ingredients in the milk mixture will depend on how intensely you want the flavour to come through.


A word about bitterness

06 Friday Apr 2012

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Up until relatively recently all oranges were bitter. They originated – as did all varieties, right down to the tangerine and the kumquat – from China, and go back 3,000 years. Arab traders brought them to Europe at the end of the Roman Empire, along with spices, silk and sugar, and the main crop was established around the area of Seville, in Andalusia, hence the name we English know them by. The skin of the bitter orange (Citrus aurantium) is distinct from its sweet cousin (C. sinensis) in that it is baggy and heavily dimpled, reminiscent of cellulite. Here in southern California, bitter oranges are often left to rot on the branch, untouched and overlooked, but up until the nineteenth century it was the bitterness that people prized the most. The aromatic peel and sharp juice were symbols of opulence and sensuality, and the flowers were distilled and used to flavour food as well as to perfume baths and make-up.

They make the best marmalade, without a doubt. In fact they made the first marmalade, if you ignore the Portuguese quince version and the pear, plum and gooseberry pastes of Tudor England. And of course it was all fluke: a ship containing a cargo of Seville oranges took shelter from a storm in Dundee. Local greengrocer James Keiller bought the lot, and his wife, Janet, turned them into marmalade. By 1797, they had the first marmalade factory.

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I have to include a recipe for marmalade. I came by some Chinottos here (a variety of bitter orange) and needed to put them to good use, but there are many other things you can do with them. Bitter oranges and their peel freeze well, so if you’re ever in doubt, always say yes. Their juice is a good replacement for lemon or lime, particularly to accompany rich meat, such as duck. The peel can be used for a bouquet garni which deepens and adds character to stews – pare strips of zest using a potato peeler from the fruit and hang up to dry in a warm, sunny place before adding it to a herb bundle.

The marmalade recipe below uses demerara, similar to turbinado, cassonade or Hawaiian washed sugar, which is darker and coarser than cane sugar and adds a treacly dimension. It is in no way intended to be a definitive version. Marmalade, I’ve realized, is a very personal thing and everyone has their peccadilloes – thick cut or thin, syrupy, solid, wobbly, astringent, ladled over ice cream, eaten only at night etc. In other words, marmalade is a minefield. So with that in mind, I tentatively ask you to please consider this version and we’ll hopefully leave it at that.

Bitter orange marmalade

Adapted from Pam Corbin, River Cottage Handbook No.2: Preserves

1kg (2.25lb) bitter oranges

75 ml (5 tbs) lemon juice

2kg (4.5lb) Demerara sugar

2.5 litres (4½ pints) of water

Makes 5-6 450g (1lb) jars

I followed the instructions for the bergamot and orange marmalade recipe here, with one difference: the lemon juice is added to the pan with the sugar, not before. The emphasis on weight rather than individual oranges helps keep the ratios balanced, but always taste as you go. I often add three-quarters of the warmed sugar to the juice and taste, then add some more, taking it bit by bit; only you know your sweetness threshold.

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Marmalade Tart

This dough is idiot-proof and takes well to being speckled with rosemary. Think of the tart as a ‘shelf’ for the marmalade and you have yourself a fine breakfast. It also makes a suave dessert, delicately poised over a lake of cream with the breath of the oven still upon it. I have a preference for thin, ‘single’ cream, which laps at the edges of the crust and swirls, ripple-like, through the sticky juice. A crisp cloud of vanilla ice cream is also not to be sniffed at.

Adapted from a David Lebovitz recipe for Easy Jam Tart

Serves 8-12

9 tbs (110g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup (100g) sugar

1 large egg & 1 large egg yolk

Small splash of almond extract

1½ cup (190g) flour

½ cup (70g) ground almonds

½ tsp sea salt

1 scant tsp baking powder

1¾ cups (450g) marmalade or jam (apricot would be lovely)

Zest of a lemon or orange

1 tsp finely chopped rosemary

Demerara sugar

Beat together the butter and sugar until well incorporated. Then mix in the egg, egg yolk, zest and almond extract. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, ground almonds, salt, finely chopped rosemary and baking powder. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet until the mixture just comes together. Take about ¾ of the dough and pat it into a disc shape, wrap it in plastic and put it in the fridge. Take the remaining dough and roll it into a log shape about 2ins (5cm) in diameter, wrap it in plastic and chill both pieces for about half an hour.

Remove the disc-shaped dough from the fridge and, using the heel of your hand, press it into the bottom and sides of an unbuttered tart pan (9-10ins/24cm). Pat until it looks evenly distributed. Now spread the marmalade over the top so that it forms a smooth plateau. Remove the log of dough from the fridge and slice into cookie-sized rounds, then lay these over the marmalade, in whatever pattern you want; try to cover as much of the preserve as possible as you go. Top with Demerara sugar (about 2 tbs) and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Let it cool slightly before serving.

Nasturtium-leaf sandwiches

02 Monday Apr 2012

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Avram Dumitrescu

I discovered nasturtiums and the food writer M.F.K Fisher around the same time, so it seems fitting to include them both here. This recipe might also sum up Fisher’s approach to life and cooking, as it is both daring and in some senses obvious; nasturtiums grow wild, as well as being the easiest things to cultivate, and most of us have a loaf of bread knocking about. The rest is up to you.

Her life is hard to summarize without reducing it to the amount of times she moved house. She was a true vagabond, shuttling between France, Switzerland and her native California; back and forth she went like a ping-pong ball. Possibly because of this, she had a complete lack of vanity about where she cooked and with what. Some of her early, settler-influenced dishes read like one of Edward Lear’s nonsense poems – clabber custard, cocoa toast, tomato soup cake – but her message is disarmingly relevant. Eventually, we must ditch the gurus and find our own voice. Fisher herself was entirely self-taught, spurning even her French landlady’s attempts to school her in the basics. She simply made it up as she went along. The limitations of her surroundings, and the lack of equipment – in one house the radiator stood in for a stove, and in another, the cold meant she cooked wearing a fur coat and gloves – dictated what she was able to prepare, and this was what excited her most; that making do is liberating, and we are confined by choice.

She is the antidote to our learned helplessness – our need for ‘experts’ – and the champion of trial and error. She wanted us to feel our way, physically and psychically, through the food we cooked. About this, she said “I believe that through touch, or perhaps because of its agents, other senses regain their first strengths.”

A devotee of offal at a time when Miracle Whip was considered classy, and a life-long hatred of American salads sets her apart in ways that even now appear radical and eccentric. She is often described as America’s answer to Elizabeth David, but I think this is to do her a disservice. To my mind, her writing has the tough lyricism of the survivor. Flinty, resolute, economical, she was a woman raised under big skies in a brave, new world.

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Nasturtium-leaf sandwiches

I know it may be controversial, championing the ‘wich in these carb-free times, but perhaps it’s due a revival. There can be nothing more satisfying than a torn hunk of baguette, with some sharp cheddar (crisps optional), or a few slivers of smoked salmon inside a thin, wheaty shell. And then there is toast, at which even the thought makes my cheeks sing, and gives butter a reason to live.

If you’re craving something cleaner, you could make a nasturtium salad; it works in much the same way as watercress, being from the Indian cress family. In fact, the word originally comes from the Latin nasus tortus, meaning “twisted nose”, supposedly because of what it does to your sinuses. Creamy clouds of pepperiness and a shock of blossom covered in the lightest of dressings is springtime in a bowl.

From With Bold Knife and Fork, M.F.K Fisher (1969) 

Makes about 40

1 loaf white Pullman* bread, crust removed, sliced lengthwise into three 1-inch slices

¾ cup butter, softened

2 cups nasturtium leaves, tightly packed

Nasturtium blossoms for garnish

“Using a rolling pin, firmly roll each slice of bread to flatten. Spread each slice on one side with butter. Reserve 6 nasturtium leaves for garnish. Finely chop the rest of the leaves. Spread the chopped leaves over the buttered side of each bread slice. Then, starting from a long side, roll up each slice into a log. Wrap each log separately in plastic wrap and refrigerate until the butter has hardened, about 2 hours. (Once the butter is hard, the logs will stay rolled.) Cut the chilled logs crosswise into ¾-inch-thick slices. Arrange the slices on a platter and serve garnished with nasturtium blossoms and the reserved leaves.”

 

* Otherwise known as a ‘sandwich loaf’ – the name Pullman comes from their use in the cramped kitchens of Pullman railway cars. These days, most sliced bread is actually a Pullman loaf: square, and baked in a long, rectangular, lidded pan. I used some sliced rye and wheat bread I had in the freezer and lopped off the crusts.