A Truffle-y Treat for Mother's Day!

 

Today I’m off for a yummy Sunday lunch with my auntie and my Gran, at an undisclosed countryside location. It’ll be great to get out of London, and especially to be able to wish them both a very happy Mother’s Day! Sadly, I can’t be with my Mum – she’s at home back in the Bleak North – but I’ve already sent her some flowers and a card. I wanted to do something for my auntie and Gran as well though, and I thought that something home-made and cookery-related would be better than a shop-bought card. Of course, chocolate was the first thing that sprung to mind. The recipe for truffles below is great for any special occasion; don't forget Easter, that ultimate festival of all things chocolate-y, is just around the corner!

If you’re stuck for something to do for Mother’s Day, the clock is ticking, and all the florists and supermarkets are closed, I urge you: head to that local shop that’s still open on Sunday and buy a nice bar of chocolate, a tin of cocoa and a tub of cream. They’ll always see you through!

 But first, read on...

Some Interesting Science-y Stuff

No one knows why chocolate seems to exert such a fatal attraction over so many of us, although scientists have proposed that the taste of it raises levels of serotonin in the brain – the chemical associated with feelings of happiness. It’s a mysterious substance: it can appear in many different forms, from the cacao bean through to nibs, bars, drops, liquid and powder. To make it, manufacturers must go through a complex process which involves fermenting the harvested beans then extracting the ‘nib’ from the shell of the bean. Ground nibs form a liquid known as chocolate liquor; this is pure chocolate. It’s separated into cocoa butter and cocoa solids, which are then blended by the manufacturer in varying ratios with other elements like sugar and milk to create their own brands of dark, white or milk chocolate.

Chocolate changes its state depending on what levels of heat it is subjected to, and in what order. In order to make chocolate couverture (the type of chocolate used by chocolatiers) set hard and shiny, they ‘temper’ it. By heating the chocolate to a certain temperature, then cooling it whilst stirring or agitating and then re-heating it to a slightly lower temperature, they can change the size of the crystals which form as the chocolate sets. Smaller crystals mean a glossy appearance, a firm set, and a crisp snap when the chocolate is broken. It’s very difficult to temper chocolate without the proper equipment and knowledge (you either need a tempering machine or a slab of marble and a lot of experience!), so in the recipes I’ve given here, I’ve made soft chocolate truffles which don’t need tempering. But I promise they’re just as delicious as hard chocolates!

All About Truffles (Mmmm...)

Truffles are so called because they look rather like the rare fungus of the same name which is often used in French cookery, particularly in higher-end restaurants. Although this association with an expensive and exclusive ingredient gives chocolate truffles an air of luxury and sophistication, they are actually very simple to make! The base mixture is a ganache, which is a name for chocolate which has been lightened and stabilised by adding another substance to it, usually cream. A standard ganache will use equal quantities of cream and chocolate, so however many grams of chocolate you have, just use the same number of millilitres of cream.

Once you’ve made your basic ganache, you can flavour it with various things and once the truffles are shaped you can roll them in lots of different coverings. The best bit of this is that you can personalise your truffles to match the favourite flavours of the person you’re making them for. I made three kinds for my auntie and Gran: coffee rolled in almond; vodka rolled in icing sugar (adventurous choice, I admit!); and rosewater and honey rolled in caster sugar. You can buy rosewater at some supermarkets or online; they also sell it at a store near me which specialises in Persian ingredients. I’ve included a couple of other suggestions for flavourings and toppings below.

The Easy Option

If you think truffles are beyond you I have two things to say to you: first of all, they’re not! Believe in yourself! Secondly, I can tell you from experience that the old chocolate-dipped strawberry or coffee bean never goes amiss: just melt the chocolate, hold the strawberry by the green hull or the coffee bean between two forks, dip them in and leave them to set in the fridge on some greaseproof paper.

One Final Thing

When melted, chocolate mustn’t be subjected to sudden changes in heat, otherwise it will ‘sieze’ or ‘split’ and become unworkable. When heating it over hot water, it’s important not to allow any of the water to get into the chocolate for the same reason.

And now, down to the good stuff...

Ingredients

Ganache:

150g best quality dark chocolate

150ml cream

25g butter (unsalted is best)

Flavourings:

 Either:

20ml rum, Cointreau or other alcohol

OR

30ml very strong coffee

OR

30ml rosewater and/or 1 tbsp honey

OR

Zest of 1 orange/lemon and 1 tbsp juice

Coverings:

Flaked or chopped almonds, toasted until golden brown

OR

Cocoa powder

OR

Sugar: icing, caster or demerara

OR

Ground or chopped pistachios

OR

Melted chocolate

Method

 Put the cream and butter in a large mixing bowl and heat it gently, stirring, over a pan of hot water until the butter is completely melted and the cream begins to steam slightly. There is no need to boil the cream.

Break the chocolate into pieces and add it to the cream. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir the cream until it melts in. The best thing to stir it with is a spatula, but a wooden or metal spoon will do. If the mixture gets too cool and the chocolate isn’t melting, put it back over the hot water, but make sure no water gets into the mixture – it can make the chocolate ‘spilt’, which is when it goes hard and unworkable. Once it splits, there’s no going back, so be careful!

When all the chocolate is melted and thoroughly mixed into the hot cream, add your chosen flavouring and stir it in thoroughly. Put the mixture in the fridge and leave it to cool. This will probably take a couple of hours, but stirring the mixture over a bowl of ice can speed up the process. Bear in mind that if you use alcohol for your flavouring the ganache will take longer to set.

While the ganache mixture is cooling, prepare your coverings. Toast the almonds if you’re using them. If you wanted chopped almonds but could only get flaked, you can toast them until they’re a bit crunchy then bash them up in a pestle and mortar or with a rolling pin. If you’re using chocolate, melt it over a pan of hot water, remembering about not letting any water get near the chocolate itself: it is much more liable to split when not mixed with cream. Leave the chocolate in the bowl and keep it warm. For all toppings except the chocolate, just spread out a thick layer on a plate. 

Now for the messy bit! Wash and dry your hands thoroughly, then, once the ganache is cooled, take a piece as large as you want your truffle to be and roll it into a sphere with your hands. Some people find that coating their hands with a layer of neutral-flavoured oil, such as sunflower, stops it sticking as much; personally, find this makes it harder to shape the ganache. You can also shape the mixture between two spoons, or using a melon scoop (or an ice cream scoop for giant supertruffles!)

 As soon as you’ve shaped your truffles, roll them in your chosen covering. You may need two or three layers if you’re using sugar, especially icing sugar – some of the sugar will be absorbed by the chocolate. If you're using chocolate as a covering, gently spear a truffle on a cocktail stick, hold it over the bowl and spoon over chocolate until it's all covered. Then leave to set in the fridge on a lined tray.

Whatever your covering, put your truffles straight back in the fridge to set once they're done. They only need a little while before serving – just try not to let them get too warm, otherwise they get remarkably sticky! They’re best eaten on the day, but will keep for up to three days in the fridge.

That's all folks! I hope you have a truffle-y Mother’s Day!

Homemade Chicken Stock Cubes

 

I had a lovely roast chicken recently and, like any conscientious cook, I wanted to make stock from the leftovers. But there’s nothing more annoying than a freezer full of huge bags of stock that you'll never manage to use, especially if you just want a little bit and you end up having to defrost an entire ocean! So I used this clever trick to save myself some freezer space and a lot of hassle. Chicken stock might not sound like the most exciting of recipes, but I can promise you that from now on, you’ll be using this trick every time you roast a chicken. 

Essentially, once the stock is ready you remove the flavourings and reduce it to a strongly flavoured syrup, then freeze it in an ice cube mould. When you need some, you just pop a cube into boiling water, and you’ve got instant stock. It’s the same principle used in making industrial stock cubes, except that they dehydrate the original stock rather than reducing it, so that it forms a dry powder rather than a syrup, and can be pressed into cubes to be kept in your cupboard. And, of course, they put a lot more artificial flavours and colours into their mixture, whereas yours will be completely homemade; nothing will go into it that you didn’t put there yourself.

I’ve included the basic method for making stock below, as well as a more detailed explanation of the reduction and freezing. If you have your own favourite method, or flavourings you like to add which I haven’t included, just change the recipe to suit you. The reduction and freezing method works for other chicken, fish and veal stocks too. 

I’ve browned the chicken bones in this recipe, because I prefer the taste. This is technically known as a brown chicken stock; if you want to use the stock in light chicken, fish or vegetable dishes, you might prefer to make a white chicken stock, which uses the same method but without roasting the bones. White chicken stock tastes lighter and a little less rich.

Enough chatter now, and on to a recipe. 

Chicken stock cubes

Ingredients

1 chicken carcass, meat removed

1 carrot

1 onion

1 celery stem

10 black peppercorns

Bay leaf

Sprig of thyme

A parsley stem

Water

Method

Put the bones in the oven at 180° for around 10 or 15 minutes, or until they begin to brown up a bit.

Peel and roughly chop the carrot and onion, and wash and roughly chop the celery. Tie the herbs together with a piece of white, natural fibre string.

Pop the chicken in a large pan with all the vegetables, herbs and peppercorns. Cover with water so it comes to about 1-2cm over the highest point of the chicken.

Bring the pan to the boil. As it heats up you’ll need a bowl of cold water and a spoon. Scum and fat will rise to the surface as the liquid comes to the boil; carefully skim all of this off with the spoon, cleaning it in the cold water if necessary.

Once the liquid is boiling and there is no more scum rising, turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and allow to bubble quietly away for around 2 hours, and not more than three.

Once the stock is ready (give it a taste if you’re not sure – if you don’t think the flavour is strong enough, you can leave it to simmer a bit longer), drain out all the veg and chicken. RESERVE THE REMAINING LIQUID – you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve poured perfectly good stock down the sink!

Return the liquid to the pan and put it back on the heat. Bring it to a gentle boil and reduce it by about ¾ (reducing, for anyone who doesn’t know, is when you boil a liquid until the water starts to boil away and it reduces in volume).

This is a bit of a subjective bit. You need to taste your reduced mixture, and it should taste too strong – imagine the taste you want in your stock, and reduce the mixture until it is 3-4 times stronger than that. 

When you’ve reached your desired strength, pour the mixture into an ice cube mould and pop it in the freezer.

Finally, when you want some stock just pop out a couple of cubes and stir into some boiling water – use about 300-400ml per cube, or just taste it and bring it to the strength you want.

I do hope you get a lot of use out of this recipe, it really is a keeper. Enjoy!

Some rather gourmet Granitas

Originating in Sicily, a granita is rather like a coarse-grained sorbet. It works well as a light option for pudding, or an accompaniment to some fresh fruit in summer. It also makes a wonderful palate cleanser between courses, especially when you want to make an impact. 

There are various kinds of frozen dessert created in slightly different ways; for example, ice cream is made by freezing a dairy-based mixture, such as cream or custard, while it’s being either regularly stirred or churned to break up the ice-crystals as they are formed. This creates a smaller crystal and therefore a smooth, creamy-textured ice cream. Sorbet-making uses the same process, but the mixture is based on water or fruit juice. The base mixture of a granita is very similar to that of a sorbet, but the freezing process involves less stirring. This means that larger ice crystals are allowed to form, giving granita a coarser texture than sorbet. 

Don’t think that a coarse texture means an unsophisticated dessert, however. There is a huge scope for subtle flavour combinations in a granita, and it looks fantastic piled up in a martini or wine glass with a couple of appropriate garnishes. Including alcohol in your granita is not an absolute necessity, although I've done so in both of mine. However, it does stop the ice from setting too hard, creating a pleasingly slushy texture rather like a grown-up Slush Puppy; and of course, the fact that it’s frozen doesn’t stop it getting you tipsy...

Granita really is a fantastic opportunity to get creative with flavours, so without further ado, here are a couple of suggestions to get you started.

Apple and Mint Granita

Lovely for summer (spring’s just around the corner folks!)

Ingredients

1 litre of apple juice, preferably unsweetened and not from concentrate

A few sprigs of mint

A couple of cooking apples

A squeeze of lemon or lime

200g sugar

A dash of calvados or apple vodka (optional)

Method

Chop up, peel and deseed the apples and cook them with 100g of the sugar and a little water until they are very tender or falling apart. If necessary, blend them until they’re sufficiently mushy. Leave to cool. 

Meanwhile, put the apple juice, mint and the rest of the sugar in a large pan with some lemon juice and your choice of alcohol if using. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Leave to cool to room temperature so that the mint infuses, then sieve or pick out the mint stems and add the apple pulp.

Put the resulting mixture in the freezer (you can use the pan you boiled it in as long as it’s freezer-safe) and allow it to freeze, stirring every 20 minutes or so. You won’t need to stir so often if you’ve included alcohol, and the granita may take longer to freeze.

Before serving, fluff the granita up with the tines of a fork so that the ice crystals are of a roughly even size. Serve in a martini glass with a sprig of mint and perhaps a twist of apple or a couple of raspberries.

Mulled Wine Granita

This is a very easy recipe I did as a palate-cleanser on Christmas Day. It also makes a great light dessert. 

Ingredients

1 bottle of red wine

1 orange

1 lemon or lime

1 cinnamon stick

2 star anise

4 cloves

135g granulated sugar

125ml water

Method

Zest and juice all the citrus fruit. Put the wine in a large pan and add all the other ingredients. Gently heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Bring very briefly to the boil (take the pan off the heat as soon as it starts to bubble). Then put the pan aside for the spices to infuse, and leave it until it’s cool. 

Pour the wine through a sieve into a freezer-friendly container and pop it in your freezer. If the pan you boiled it in is ok to freeze you can use that. You need to leave it until set – for at least six hours, depending on your freezer. Give it a stir every one or two hours if you can. It will set eventually, but not particularly hard, as the alcohol stops it from freezing solid. 

Serve in a glass, decorated with a cinnamon stick if you've got enough. You could also use a twist of orange, a couple of skinned segments, or even a star anise of two (but don't let your guests bite into them!). This granita also looks very striking served over a scoop of vanilla ice cream, although I can't say that the flavour combination is everyone's cup of tea...

So that was granita. Remember to experiment, and Happy Freezing!

‘Tis the season to be jelly...

Welcome back!

Hello all, and a hearty winter welcome back to Please Don’t Kiss the Cook! Apologies for the lengthy break: the combined Basic Cuisine and Patisserie certificates at Le Cordon Bleu took up rather too much time to leave any over for writing. However, I’m now a Cuisine-only bird (albeit a bird who rather misses her weekly cake) and have a whole two days a week going spare. 

On a much duller note, I should point out for copyright reasons that this blog is in no way affiliated with Le Cordon Bleu, nor are the posts based on any material given to me by the school as part of the course. Sorry folks, if you want the Cordon Bleu experience you’ll have to go there yourself.

Jelly time

Around this time last year, I wrote a brief couple of paragraphs about a Leftover Jelly I’d seen on River Cottage. Well, its (just coming to the end of) jelly season again, and I’d like to celebrate that by giving you another couple of jelly recipes which I’ve used this year. Both are apple-based, as befits an autumn jelly, but in summer you can use a similar method to make jellies from redcurrants and blackcurrants too. 

The apple season in the UK varies depending on the type of apple, but if you’re lucky enough to have an orchard with a few different varieties of tree you can swing it so that you have a supply right from mid-September through to January or February. Picking and eating seasons can be separate for each different variety, so that you might pick an apple in September, store it individually wrapped in a cool, dry place, and eat it in October. 

October, as it happens, was just when I sneaked home from the Big Smoke for a little two-week break to find the orchard stuffed with plums and apples and the vegetable patch overflowing with mint. I whipped up some mint and apple jelly on the spot, slaved over pots and pots of plum jam, and nabbed some crab-apples to take back to London for my absolute favourite, crab-apple jelly.

The basic premise of any jam or jelly is always the same: boil fruit with sugar to set and preserve it. The setting bit requires pectin, which is naturally present in all fruit to a greater or lesser degree: the preserving is achieved by the high sugar levels which discourage the growth of bacteria. Jelly differs from jam in that it does not contain whole pieces of fruit, but rather the juice obtained from boiling fruit and straining it through a muslin bag. 

If your interest in jelly has reached such mammoth proportions that you are not satisfied with the above information, may I suggest that you pick over the wealth of knowledge available elsewhere on the internetzzz. Just Google ‘jelly’. Or ‘jam’. Or (God forbid!) both...

Recipes

Mint and Apple Jelly

Ingredients

2kg apples

170ml white wine vinegar

Large bunch of mint

Sugar (the amount will depend on the amount of juice yielded)

Possibly a bit of water

Method

Chop the apples into quarters and pop them in a large pan with the vinegar and about 2/3 of the mint. Boil (not too hard) until the apples cook down to a pulp. You don’t need to peel or core the apples because you’re draining out the juice later; in fact, there’s some useful pectin in the skin and seeds. If the mixture tries to stick to the bottom, you can add a little extra water to get it started. Once the apples begin to cook they should also release some moisture of their own.

Once the apple is very soft and mushy, scoop the whole lot into a muslin bag and hang it up over a bowl to catch all the juice which comes out. If you don’t have a bag or any muslin, you can use a clean tea towel. Just tie it firmly into a bag shape full of pulp, then hang it off something (one particular cupboard handle in my flat works well) over the bowl. DON’T squeeze the bag, however tempted you get, but you can put a small plate and a weight on top of the pulp to help press the juice through. It’s best left overnight to drip.

Once you have all the juice you think you’re going to get, measure it out into a jug and weigh out 450g of sugar for every 570ml of juice. Warm the sugar gently in a low oven, or the top left of an Aga. At the same time, pop a couple of small plates in the fridge, and sterilise some jam jars. Either leave them in the low oven with the sugar, or pop them in a saucepan with some cold water and bring them to the boil, then leave to cool IN A WARM PLACE – if their temperature changes too quickly, they will shatter. Also note that the jars must still be warm when you pour in the hot jam, as the same principle applies and a pair of legs covered in boiling jam and broken glass often offends.

Put the juice and sugar into a high-sided, thick-bottomed pan and heat gently, stirring, until all the sugar has dissolved. Then bring the resulting syrup to the boil. 

This is the tricky bit. You want to boil the sugar and juice until it comes to setting point – that is, until the sugar’s reached the right temperature and it will set into a lovely clear jelly texture when it cools. Too low a temperature and it will be runny; too high, and the jelly will be all gummy and sticky instead of light and delicious. You can do this with a sugar thermometer, in which case it’s fairly easy – either your own thermometer will tell you the right point, or you need what is known as ‘soft thread’ stage, which is around 105-108°C. 

If you don’t have a sugar thermometer, there are two ways of determining setting point, both of which involve those small plates you left in the fridge earlier. Remember those? Right. Get one out and leave the other in there. For both methods you need to take a little of the boiling sugar syrup from the pan and pop it in a blob on the plate. Then you can either wait a minute for it to cool and push the edge of the blob with a finger, or you can pick a bit up on your fingertip and pinch it between finger and thumb. In the former case, the jelly is ready when a little skin is formed on the cooling blob and it wrinkles up when you push it with a finger. In the latter case, it’s ready when a small thread forms as you gently part finger and thumb. It’ll only get to a few millimetres before it breaks, but this indicates the soft thread stage you are looking for. Fabby. 

Now it’s time for your warm jam jars; pour the syrup in right to the top if you can, and (CAREFULLY, it is HOT) screw or clip on the lids. Still being careful (it’s STILL hot), quickly invert each jar so the hot syrup sterilises the lid, then turn back the right way up and leave to cool. If you’re using wax discs instead of lids you can’t do this, so just pour in the jam, secure the wax disc, and cross your fingers. 

Finally, gorge unashamedly on roast lamb and homemade mint and apple jelly.

Crabapple Jelly

Ingredients

1.8kg crabapples

1 litre water

Sugar (the amount will depend on the amount of juice yielded)

Method

Halve all the crabapples.

Congratulations, that was the hard bit. Now boil them in the water until they are mushy, spoon them into a jelly bag or muslin (see above for extra advice). Leave overnight hanging over a bowl for the juice to drip out. Weight out 450g sugar for every 570ml juice. Warm until the sugar dissolves, then boil until setting point (see above) and pour into warm, sterilised jam jars (see above...are we sensing a trend here?). Screw on lids, invert, turn back upright, and leave to cool.

Crabapple jelly is a bit like a lighter, more subtle version of redcurrant, and goes excellently with roast lamb or pork, or with bread and cheese as a light lunch. I think it’s seriously under-rated, and I hope you agree with me.

Focaccia with Rosemary and Sea Salt

Hello and welcome, dear reader. First of all, an even-longer-than-usual hiatus in the fun and games here at PDKTC requires a little explanation: I've been in Venice. It being my parents' Silver Wedding year this sunny 2011 (congrats guys!), my Dad decided to whisk my Mum off to Venezia for a mini-break and, as he put it, 'I know she won't really enjoy it unless you lot come too'. Cue surprise family holiday, and the inspiration behind today's recipe, my favourite Italian invention (well, a tie with pasta and risotto, anyway), focaccia. It's pronounced 'fok-CATCH-ya', by the way - as a child I caused much hilarity by perisitently calling it 'foccercheeya'.

It's a type of bread flavoured with olive oil and sea salt, made flat instead of loaf-shaped, and dimpled to allow the flavours to penetrate when it's sprinkled with salt, rosemary, olives and all sorts of other delicious things before cooking. Like many breads, the thought of tackling it from scratch scares a lot of people, but its really a whole lot simpler than you think. Furthermore, thumping a basket of homemade focaccia on the table before a meal will pretty much impress anyone. The recipe may look complicated and time-consuming, but in fact a lot of it is waiting and a bit of kneading (genuinely the most theraputic activity in the world, by the way). The actual combining of ingredients takes about 30 seconds.

Ok gang. Here we go.

Ingredients
(Makes one baking-tray-sized 'loaf')

700g strong white flour ('bread' flour)
10g dried yeast, or 20g live yeast
4 tbsp good quality olive oil, plus a bit extra
10g sugar
2 tsp salt
Water
Plenty of sea salt
Chopped rosemary - a generous sprinkling

Method

First of all, pre-heat your oven to gas mark 8, about 230 degrees, and liberally oil a high-sided baking tray with olive oil. Next, you're going to want some lukewarm water - 150ml to start with. For dried yeast, whisk the yeast into the water until it's all dissolved, then leave in a warm place - but not hot - for around 15 minutes until bubbles have begun to form. This means that the yeast is activated. For live yeast, just mix straight in to the same amount of water until dissolved, then you can use it straight away.

Whenever you're dealing with yeast, remember that it's a living thing. If the water is too hot for you, it'll kill it; if it's too cold for you, it's too cold for it. Treat it with love - it's what makes your bread rise.

While the yeast is activating, measure out 150ml of very hot water and mix in the salt, sugar and 4tbsp of olive oil, then add 150ml cold water and check that the resulting liquid is lukewarm. Combine this with the yeast mixture.Then sieve the flour into a large bowl, make a dip in it, and pour most of the liquid in. Make your hand into a claw shape and gently stir the liquid, drawing in the flour slowly until it all comes together into a gooey dough. Add more flour or liquid if you need to.

Sit back and be proud of yourself, because that is genuinely the hardest bit over with. It's just a waiting game from now on, and the occasional brief bicep workout.

When your dough is formed, flour the table and leave the dough on the floured surface to rest for five minutes or so. Then it's kneading time! The best therapy around. pummel and stretch and work the dough for ten minutes or so, until it's smooth and elastic like a big stress-ball. Then pop it back in the bowl, cover tigtly with clingfilm, and leave in a warm place to rise until it's more than doubled in size. This can take a few hours, so have a nice cup of tea and put your feet up.

Once the dough is all risen, you need to do what's called 'knocking back' - grab the dough out of the pan and knead it again for a couple of minutes until you've knocked all the air out of it. Then leave to rest again for ten minures before shaping the dough to your roasting tin. Press your fingers into the dough to make little dimples in the top, then sprinkle over the sea salt and rosemary and and leave to rise again, this time only for around 20-30 minutes. Bake in the oven for five minutes, then turn down to 200 degrees or gas mark 6 for another 15-20 minutes until it's risen and golden brown. Sprinkle over a little more olive oil and eat your first slice while it's still warm, dipped in a mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Perfetto!