Prawn cocktail vol au vents

This year my husband and I were charged with the task of making the starter for the family Christmas dinner.  He suggested making a creative twist on his family's traditional starter (prawn cocktail) and suggested trying them as vol au vents. So with a little help from the instructions on the back of the pastry packet, we set to work.

Ingredients (makes 40):
500g packet pre-made puff pastry
1 egg, beaten
450g prawns, cooked and peeled
1 avacado
mayonnaise to taste
ketchup to taste
splash of lemon juice
splash of Worcester sauce
splash of hot sauce (optional; we used a Cajun jalapeño sauce from Louisiana)
ground paprika

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. We have a fan oven, so the temperature for a normal oven would be 190 degrees. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface until it formed a rectangle about 30cm by 20cm and 5mm thick, then cut these into small circles.

Cutting pastry with a whisky glass

Once the pastry had been cut score a circle half way down, leaving a small border. This makes it easier to remove the centre once baked, meaning that the pastry case can then be filled. Place the pastry circles on a baking tray lined with baking paper and brush each circle with some beaten egg to give it a better colour once cooked.

Brushing with beaten egg

Bake the pastry until it has risen and is golden brown on top (about 12 minutes) at which point remove them from the oven, carefully peel away the baking paper and place them on a wire rack to cool. When they are cool enough to touch, run a knife around the pre-scored circle and that section should pop out easily. Then leave the pastry cases to cool completely.

Pastry before the removal of the centre...

...and after

While the pastry is cooling, make the prawn cocktail. Place the prawns in a medium sized bowl. We used king prawns which were slightly too large for the cases, so I cut them in half. To these add the ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcester sauce, lemon juice and hot sauce to suit your taste. The mixture should be quite wet, but not swimming in sauce. This can be left in the fridge for a few days, depending on when you need to use it.

To serve, peel the avacado and remove the stone, then slice into thin strips about the height of the pastry case. Place 3 or 4 of these strips into each case, spoon in a little of the prawn cocktail sauce, arrange 2 prawns inside the case and sprinkle with a little paprika. These vol au vents can be served either on a large platter or on individual plates as below, where some of the remaining prawn cocktail mixture has been placed on some thinly sliced avacado to bring the plate together.

Dalry Mess

This dessert came out of a mistake. I was attempting to make macarons, adapting a recipe from the BBC, but the mixture wasn't thick enough so it wouldn't pipe properly. However, I decided to cook it anyway and in the process created a new dessert, which I dubbed Dalry Mess.

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the meringues:

125g macadamias

200g icing sugar

3 free-range egg whites

2 tbsp caster sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

For the chocolate ganache:

100g dark chocolate, chopped

100ml double cream

1 tbsp Camp Coffee

1 tbsp Tia Maria

10g unsalted butter

After weighing out the macadamias I blasted them in the blender until they were finely ground. I then added the icing sugar and blended them until they were well combined, then passed them through a sieve to remove any lumps and setting the mixture aside once that was done.

Sieving the macadamia and icing sugar mixture

I whisked the egg whites in a large bowl at a low speed until stiff peaks formed when the whisk was removed prom the bowl. I slowly added in the cream of tartar and caster sugar to the egg whites until the mixture was smooth and then folded in the icing sugar mixture.

I dropped dessert spoonfuls of the mixture a few centimetres apart on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper, banging the tray sharply on the counter top to remove any air bubbles. Then I left the tray to rest uncovered for an hour, during which time I pre-heated the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

After the hour was up, I baked the meringues for 10 minutes, then removed them from the oven and left them to cool for 5 minutes, after which I peeled off the greaseproof paper and left them to cool completely. Once cool, I crumbled them into pieces and set them aside.

While the meringues were cooling I made the chocolate ganache. For this I heated the double cream and chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until they were smooth and well combined. Then I added the Camp Coffee, Tia Maria and butter to the mixture, stirring until it was smooth, then removed from the heat and left it to cool.

To serve, I placed some of the crumbled meringue in ramekins and topped it with the chocolate ganache.

Dalry Mess

Coq au vin

My husband and I spent our honeymoon this summer in Vancouver. One of the things which most struck me about the city was the quality of the food. There is a very strong emphasis on local produce and the quality of the ingredients. One of the things we brought back with us (along with copious amounts of maple syrup and some ice wine) was The British Columbia Seasonal Cookbook (published by Lone Pine Publishing). This recipe comes from the Fall section and calls for specific local ingredients, such as Okanagan Pinot Noir, for which I substituted more generic ones. It also wanted a whole chicken cut into pieces whereas I used thighs, as I think they are an under-rated part of the chicken. So here is my version of the recipe with the North American measures (cups etc.) converted into grams.

Ingredients (serves 2):

35g unsalted butter

60g bacon lardons

4 chicken thighs, boned but with the skin left on

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

1 celery stick, diced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1tbsp flour

250ml red wine

2 sprigs fresh thyme

500ml chicken stock

2 bay leaves

100g button mushrooms, peeled

freshly ground salt and pepper

I first melted half the butter in a casserole dish then added the bacon cooking it over a medium heat until it was browned. I then removed it from the pan and drained off the excess fat on a couple of sheets of kitchen roll before putting it to one side.

Draining the fat off the bacon

I then seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper and cooked them in the butter/bacon fat mixture until golden brown, turning them every so often. I then removed these from the pan and set them aside with the bacon.

Browning the chicken

Further detail on the browning

I then added the onion, carrots and celery to the pan and cooked them on a medium heat, stirring every so often to prevent sticking, until softened. I then added the garlic to the pan and stirred in the flour, cooking this mixture for about 5 minutes.

Part way through dicing the vegetables

The vegetables softening

Once soft, I then put the chicken and bacon back in the pan, adding the thyme, bay leaves, stock and wine until the chicken was covered. I then brought this mixture to the boil, reducing it to a simmer and partially covering it with a lid and set the timer for 45 minutes.

After the dish had been simmering for about 35 minutes I melted the remaining butter in a pan, added the mushrooms and cooked them over a low heat until they had coloured and started to release their juices then seasoned them with a little salt and pepper.

After the 45 minutes were up I checked that the chicken was cooked all the way through, then turned the heat off under the mushrooms and added them to the chicken. As the sauce was still quite liquid at this point I turned the heat up and reduced it until it had thickened up and had a slight sheen to it.

Coq au vin served on a bed of buttered tagliatelle

Sauerkraut

As part of my gap year between school and university I lived in Germany for 3 months. During this time I got a taste for German food which has influenced much of the cooking I now do (although I'm not sure my husband approves). As part of this culinary flowering I first tried sauerkraut, which I hated. I found it far too vinegary for my taste. Recently, however, I decided to try making it myself as I had heard that sauerkraut is good for you since the cabbage releases probiotic bacteria during the fermentation process which aid digestion. With this in mind, I set out using a recipe I found online.

Ingredients:
1 white cabbage
1 tbsp sea salt

Equipment:
food processor (not strictly necessary as the chopping can be done with a knife)
kilner jar (or any other heavy duty glass jar)
a wooden spoon


I started off by attaching one of the shredder attachments to the food processor. After removing the nasty looking outer leaves and reserving one of the nicer ones for later use, I then cut the cabbage in half, removing the tough stalk, and then cut those halves roughly into quarts so that they would fit into the food processor. I then fed these chunks of cabbage into the processor until the entire cabbage was finely shredded.

The cabbage

Once this was done, I put the shredded cabbage into a large bowl and added the sea salt. I chose Cornish sea salt for this recipe, not through any great sense that this type of salt is superior (although it is supposed to contain mineral residues which presumably add to the flavour) but because I didn't want to detract from the natural taste of the cabbage by using a poor quality salt.

The sea salt

The next step was the massage the salt into the cabbage. This draws out the water and begins the fermentation process. This is done by grabbing handfuls of cabbage and squashing it. Once it starts to go limp and release liquid you then start to squeeze the water out, much like wringing water out of wet clothes. This is a very odd sensation, made worse by the fact that I almost always have paper cuts from work. When the volume of cabbage has decreased and it has the same texture as when steamed, the process is complete. The liquid which has been released will pool at the bottom of the bowl. This should be reserved as it will be used later.

Cabbage  pre-massage

Cabbage post-massage

The next step was spoon the cabbage in the jar. After every few spoonfuls I squashed the cabbage down to remove any air pockets. I continued to pack the cabbage in this way until I had nearly reached the top of the jar. I then topped the jar up with the remaining liquid until all the cabbage was covered and folded the leaf which I had put to one side earlier in four to make a lid. Once this had been placed on top I screwed the lid on and left the jar out at room temperature for three days. During the fermentation process the cabbage gave off a lot of gas, meaning that once a day I had to unscrew the lid to relieve the pressure so that the jar didn't run the risk of exploding.

Day 0

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

After three days I did a taste test. As this was my first attempt at making sauerkraut I decided not to let the fermentation continue any longer, putting the jar in the fridge to halt the process. There it sits, waiting to be brought out the next time I make a German-inspired meal.

Jasmine crème brûlée

My husband is a bit of a fan of Heston Blumenthal and recently we bought his book Heston Blumenthal At Home which contains a lot of his recipes for the home cook as well as some more complex ones, such as ones which require dry ice or a sous vide. We also received a cook's blowtorch as a wedding present, so of course it was necessary to combine the two and make make one of Heston's crème brûlée recipes (of which there are three).

Ingredients (serves 2):

125g whole milk

20g Jasmine tea leaves

200g double cream

3 medium egg yolks

25g caster sugar

Weighing out the Jasmine tea leaves

First I put the tea leaves and milk into a saucepan and heated them to 60°C. While this was happening Calum got a little distracted by taking pictures of the kitchen and the milk ended up boiling, so we had to throw it away and start again. This time it went to plan:

Heating the milk and tea

Checking the temperature of the milk

Once the temperature reached 60°C I removed the pan from the heat and let the mixture infuse for 10 minutes. During this time I weighed out the sugar and separated the eggs, retaining the white for later use.

Weighing the sugar

The egg yolks

After 10 minutes had elapsed I strained the milk, putting it into a saucepan along with the cream and bringing this to a simmer. While this was going on I put 5g of the sugar in with the eggs and whisked them together until they were creamy in colour:

Me whisking eggs

When the milk and cream mixture had reached a simmer I added a small amount to the eggs to temper them, then added the rest of the mixture and combined them as seen below:

I then poured the mixture into two ramekin dishes which I placed in a roasting tray and boiled the kettle.

After removing any bubbles from the surface of the egg custard I then filled the roasting tray with boiling water so that it reached two thirds of the way up the ramekins.

Then I covered the tray with tin foil and put it into the oven (which had been preheated to 140°C for half an hour. Once the custard had set but was still slightly wobbly I removed the dishes from the oven and dried them off, leaving them to cool at room temperature for 15 minutes before placing them in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Once they had cooled I sprinkled a thin layer of caster sugar on top of each:

I then caramelised the sugar with a blowtorch, sprinkling more sugar on as I went:

Fun with the blowtorch

It was then ready to eat, complete with the satisfaction of cracking the sugar shell with a spoon a la Amélie:

The finished product

Venison burgers with Guinness caramelised onions

One of the advantages of living close to the centre of Edinburgh is that we have easy access to the weekly farmers' market: http://www.edinburghfarmersmarket.co.uk/
A wander around yesterday morning resulted in a haul of goodies, including a pack of venison burgers as well as some great German rye bread and a really interesting blue cheese from the Isle of Arran. After some discussion, we decided to keep the recipe fairly plain in order to let the natural flavour of the venison come through. however, every good burger deserves a topping, hence the caramelised onions.

Ingredients:
pre-made venison burgers
red onions
Guinness
morning rolls

I decided to use red onions here because I think they have a more mellow flavour than white onions and would compliment the venison. However, white or yellow onions would work just as well. In order to get the onions really sticky and sweet, I gave them a long, slow cook. After cutting them in half and slicing lengthwise, I then heated a little olive oil in a saucepan and added the onions:

To this I then added a hearty glug of Guinness to add an extra depth of flavour from the malt to the natural sugars in the onions, seen below in the beautiful setting of my kitchen:

Once added to the onions, I turned the heat up hight to let the alcohol boil off and keep the sugars and flavour of the beer. Although the picture may look like a lot of onions, they reduced a lot during the cooking process.

Next it was time to cook the burgers. The ones we had came from a farmer in the Scottish borders, called Seriously Good Venison. As the people at the farmers' market sell their own produce, it is much easier to check the provenance and ask questions about how the animals are reared than it is buying in a supermarket. The whitish flecks which you can see in the burgers are oatmeal to help them bind together properly.

Although venison is naturally low in fat and requires the addition of another meat, such as pork, to ensure that it is properly bound together, I decided to grill the burgers rather than frying them. Again, this decision was based both upon a wish to lower the fat content of the meat and to maintain flavour without the addition of cooking oil.

To cook the burgers, I set the oven to the grill function and pre-heated it to 250 degrees Centigrade. Once they were under the grill I set a timer for 12 minutes, flipping them half way through the cooking time. While they were cooking I sliced open the morning rolls. After the cooking time was up and having checked that the burgers were cooked all the way through, I placed two onto each roll and topped them with the onions which had cooked down and become coated in the Guinness. The final picture shows the finished product.

Has it really been 2 years?!

I started this blog back in 2010 with every intention of regularly blogging about my culinary creations. However, the lack of a decent camera and having to focus on my degree intervened, meaning that I have been sorely remiss in posting here. However, that has all changed. I have now graduated and have much more time to cook, as well as no longer being constrained by a student's budget. So prepare yourselves for an onslaught of everything I have been intending to write over the last few years but did not have time to. Some of it may be recipes found in books, which I have either followed to the letter or (more frequently) adapted in my own little ways, or they may be mini masterpieces of my own creation. Either way, the blog is back.