Burnt Offerings

Griddled Chicken Breast

It seemed at the time like the most bizarre cookery advice ever: 'Use your nose and you'll know!' The subject was griddled chicken, and we students were wondering how to decide when to turn the chicken cutlet over in the pan. If you lift the breast to check, then you run the danger of not putting it back quite right and therefore spoiling the neat charring pattern. The answer is deceptively simple: smell for that distinctive barbecue odour of burning flesh.

We had been learning about fresh, quality locally-sourced produce. The chickens were from a nearby farm and we had butchered them ourselves into a tray of delights. These were chickens with giblets (remember them?) and we had prepared the cutlets with both wing bone and skin in place: hardly what you'd find in an average supermarket.

Having been charred to perfection in the pan, the dish is finished in a hot oven. It can be tested for doneness with a prodding finger in just the same way as a steak, and needs resting too albeit not for as long (the breast pictured has not yet been roasted, in case you're wondering).

Back from the course, I replaced my original griddle pan with one that matched the school's pans with their slightly less severe ridges. My butchery skills are in need of some practice, though, since I never seem to be able to replicate the neatness of the skin or the cleanness of the bone cut that I achieved at school. Nevertheless, this is one of those easy dishes that is firmly on the household menu. I tend to put the griddle pan into the oven, rather than transferring the chicken to a roasting dish, as it's difficult to make a pan sauce in such a pan anyway. Make a compound butter in advance instead, and place a slice of it on the chicken when plating.

Not every chef agrees about using your nose for char-grilling, I find, even at the same school: I have had some sceptical looks when mentioning it. All the senses are there for a purpose though, so why not?

Light Supper

Poached Salmon with Saffron and Dill Risotto

My last blog post being some time ago, a few things have changed. One of them is that I have attended three courses at Ashburton Cookery School and Ashburton Chefs Academy.

The photo is of a plate of Poached Salmon with Saffron and Dill Risotto, the first dish I cooked on an Intermediate Cookery Week in 2015. The last course I attended was Food Photography earlier this year, after which I thought I'd revisit some of the recipes by way of a photography project.

The picture isn't mocked up or enhanced in any way, but since I was cooking specifically for the shoot I decided on a few shortcuts. The main one was that instead of wine and stock, I used plain water. This was an interesting way to have it reinforced that wine is used to de-glaze: I found that the spatula caught rather more on the base of the pan than when I cooked the dish actually to eat.

When I took the four-week Certificate in Professional Culinary Skills course last Spring, we made a similar dish: Saffron Risotto with Wild Mushrooms and Pears. On both courses we learned that one can prepare risotto ahead of time by adding only half of the liquor and cooling the dish, then adding the remaining liquor in time for service. I'm now a volunteer chef at a drop-in centre for the homeless, and like to prepare what I can in advance, but I must confess that a risotto is still a bit too 'busy' a dish to consider.

Putting the Knife in

The last time I mentioned my toasted-sandwich maker, it was in a post about my kitchen clutter. Yesterday I was putting some steak knives away in the back of a cupboard – they live in a wooden block which  itself is part of the clutter: to be honest we don’t often have steak – and I had to move the said sandwich maker, and the tray bake pan balanced on top of it, to do so. It was then that I discovered an electric juicer.

This particular juicer, which is more battery-powered than electric per se, is not one of those drink-making machines. It will literally juice half a citrus fruit, and is operated by pressing the lid down. The juicer was probably a free gift given away by one of my wife’s catalogues. I don’t think either of us is so silly as to have bought such an item.

The juicer count in the kitchen is thus four (I was about to type three when I recalled the lever-operated device we bought when we tasted real lemonade at a music festival). The other two are a Tupperware version which also has a grater and – if I could only find it – an egg-separator, and a simple wooden one which probably yelled out at me from an artisan craft stall somewhere.

I don’t need four juicers.

The battery version can go – we’re neither of us so crocked with arthritis or bursitis that it would save any effort or pain. The lever-operated version is useful for bulk juicing, and I suppose it has some aesthetic appeal sat on the windowsill. That leaves the Tupperware and the wooden juicers. I think the planet is already damaged by my having four when one or two is sufficient, so it is not a case of choosing recyclable material over non-recyclable.

In the final analysis, the Tupperware juicer has no redeeming features. Its built-in jug feature is of little use, the egg-separator is lost, and the grater itself one of a group of competing kitchen items.

The wooden juicer wins. A kitchen drawer becomes slightly less cramped. Mary Berry’s Cooker Course has struck again, because the steak knives were in use for her Steak with Onion Marmalade, and the juicer(s) for her Lemon Drizzle Traybake, of which more anon.

Cookin'

“I’ve gone back to basics – the classic recipes we all love, cooked simply.” So says Mary Berry in the introduction to one of her latest books (Berry, M (2013), Mary Berry’s Cookery Course, London: Dorling Kindersley Limited).

Since I too have gone back to basics, this is not the place to be churlish about whether “classic” means “recycled”. However, one observation I have about many a book masquerading as a ‘cookery course’ is that they are usually just a selection of recipes with some added ‘how to’ inserts. Mary Berry’s does however go so far as to include a compendium of techniques cross-referenced to the recipes in which they are used. That is better than most, but I am resigned to the idea that working through this book is not like undergoing a course of instruction: it is more about prompts to my learning.

The next few posts in this blog are therefore a sort of ‘learning journal’ in which to reflect on what I have picked up, practised, and pondered. Although I intend to follow every recipe and technique in the book, I don’t want to make soups for a week, become egg-bound the next, and so on. I will skip on to recipes that help vary our family diet and fit with our activities and the actual availability of ingredients: which brings us to Mango Passion.

Mango Passion is a simple pudding, and since our Abel and Cole box contained a mango the week before last, I thought it expedient to use. Unbelievably, it still wasn’t ripe enough: the flesh was quite firm and unblemished and when I cut into it, it wasn’t that deep – the ‘stone’ being quite large and impenetrable. That perhaps is why it didn’t taste of much, and perhaps next time I make such a simple pudding, I’ll use something else.

The fruit layer has a sprinkling of sugar, and the whole pudding is topped off with quite a bit too. I used dark instead of light Muscavado sugar in order to avoid a 24km round trip grocery expedition. It seems to me that Muscavado either doesn’t contain anti-caking agents, or the molasses in it are hygroscopic: either way, the bag was a solid lump. Breaking off the right amount and then using a blender I ended up with something akin to icing sugar. A search on the web indicates the ‘bricking’ is due to a loss of moisture, and that among the remedies are to put a slice of apple of moist bread in the bag for a day or so before use. Another contribution suggested using a grater, which I think more immediately practical.

On the topic of equipment, this pudding would probably look better in a dish that is slightly taller than it is wide. The shallow glass bowls I used made the pudding look a bit ‘lumpy’: simple can also look elegant!

The essence of the recipe is fruit, sugared as necessary, covered in a yoghurt and crème fraîche mix, topped off with brown sugar which absorbs moisture and hence makes the top look like a crème brulée. It can be made hours in advance, refrigerated, and brought back to room temperature before serving.

The Unbearable Squareness of Baking with a Bread Machine

At the moment I’m reading The Bread Book (Lewis, Sara (2004), The Bread Book, London: Index). It contains within it, if not a lie, the misrepresentation that bread machines are useful when pushed for time.

It has just taken me 2½ hours to bake a quick white loaf using a machine, whereas by hand typically it takes just 1½ hours. The actual contact time may be less in the bread machine, but wrestling to remove the finished loaf afterwards soon erases the benefit. Indeed, if you scarcely bother to knead the dough – and some argue it is unnecessary – then there is little benefit whatsoever in using a machine compared to the earlier ready-time of a hand-made loaf.

The crust of a machine-made loaf tends to be quite thicker than the hand-made equivalent. To my taste, such a crust is unpleasantly chewy and rough on the gums.

I believe I may have made my last machine-made loaf. Never say never, however, for the ability to set a bread machine on a timer may one day save my bacon-butty. I won’t always be young enough or well enough to appreciate the idea of getting up a tad earlier to get the oven going!

Sad but True

Related to the Madeira, which is still work in progress, is this Lemon and Thyme cake from the Hummingbird Bakery book Cake Days. Very delicious too, at the edges ...

For I made two errors in baking this, the first of which was having run out of plain flour I used self-raising but still added baking powder. That said, I would have expected it to have collapsed on top rather than in the middle. The second error, evident at the edges of the hole, is that the cake is undercooked ('sad').

Worth another try, if only because the book contains a number of variations on the basic method. It is always worth reading around recipes to see what can be changed as the mood takes you.

M'dear Madeira

A first attempt at Madeira cake using Mary Berry's Baking Bible (BBC, 2009). I don't want this to turn into Julie and Julia, making every recipe in the book and charting it. What I do want to do is to bring together the best of the recipes in the books I own and having decided on the underlying principles, see what I can do next.

Given that this is my first post in a long while, don't hold your breath for the next instalment of this search!

Stock Questions

Dealing with a recent glut of brown onions from the veg box scheme, I decided to make some French Onion Soup. That led me to re-consider the humble chicken stock.

One of the recipes for chicken stock I’ve been using includes in the recipe a stock cube (Knorr, says Nick Nairn in his book ‘Cook School’). That strikes me as oddly like saying that home-brewed beer would be helped by mixing it with Wadworth 6X or similar – you get the idea. So I began to wonder if I could get the same effect by simply making up a Knorr stock cube twice as concentrated as directed. That in itself led me to wonder if I could tell different stock cubes apart.

This is work in progress, but here is an observation. In the Channel4 series ‘ºCookery School’ it was suggested that an ideal level of seasoning equates to 1g salt dissolved in 100ml of water. That’s quite a lot, and not far off tasting of sea-water. I found that a Knorr stock cube (made as directed) tasted much the same, which is to say quite brackish. However, a Kallo organic chicken stock cube was much smoother on the palate: far more pleasing to my taste.

I’m off to make some more of my own stock now, having used the last of it in the onion soup. I’m tempted to make a cube-less version as per Joanna Farrow’s ‘Chef School’: I wonder how it’ll taste compared to the Kallo?

Batterie de Cuisine

I have too many kitchen gadgets: do they get in the way of my cooking?

My food heroes have wide-ranging attitudes to gizmos. Old Scrote professes to need little more than a knife – a table knife will do if sharpened – and a cast-iron casserole to cook everything in. Elizabeth David banned garlic presses and suchlike from her kitchen supplies shop, whereas Delia Smith has only to mention a favourite device for it to sell out in kitchenware stores.

My kitchen is too small for ephemera, but certainly contains things that I’ve either forgotten what they are for, are broken, need more effort to clean than they save, and/or simply cause clutter. Which is for baking, for example: my Roule ’Pat or the near identical Silpat? It is a shame I had to look that up (it’s the Silpat). The dishwasher is broken, but then my hand-operated whisk would probably seize up if put in it, and I’m sure my balloon whisk is just as easy to use anyway. Further, the unit drawers catch on each other because they’re so full of items I scarcely use: surely I don’t need four slices? Finally, when I was making French Onion Soup recently, I struggled to see the caramel film forming on the bottom of a pan because it had black insides: some items simply don’t work at a basic level.

I need to look again at each item and its use, researching if necessary. Anything broken I need to fix; I suspect many things will also benefit from a good clean. It is then time for a cull; I’ve bought a large storage box for the purpose.

What will survive; what will vanish only for me to remember it wistfully at a crucial moment in a recipe; and what - like the toasted-sandwich maker – will I revive more for nostalgia’s sake than gustatory pleasure? And when I know what I’ve got, what it’s for, trust it to work, can reach it easily, and believe it fit for purpose … will I be a better cook?

In the Bleak Midwinter

from Sky News

I didn't find it easy to select seasonal produce between Christmas and New Year, which is hardly surprising given few food deliveries or traders open for business. Marlborough Market was a shadow of its usual self, and the butcher had only limited prepared goods.

But seasonal means appropriate as much as available. So I decided on some braising steak in order to make a Steak and Stout pie.

The starting point is a basic casserole, but I ignored one recipe's advice to mix the stout 50:50 with water, and another's suggestion that dry-tasting stout needs something sweet like dried prunes to balance it. The crust was unashamedly out of a packet, but it is some years since I last made pastry, and I don't feel guilty about making things a little easier.

I used Guinness, but within 15km there are at least 5 breweries, so it strikes me that if my Steak and Stout pie is to become a staple recipe in my repertoire, I ought to source more locally. I recall when I was in the pub trade that one customer often brought along a jug so as to return home with beer for the pot. So perhaps I'll follow suit when taking myself off for a drink. To quote Vernon Amor of Wye Valley Brewery: "Drink your local beer. [...] Wherever I go, whenever I travel, I always drink the local brewer's beer." Sounds good to me ...

On the Menu

One of the head teachers at a local primary school liked to start governors' meetings with 'something positive about the school' from each person present. Never a big fan of 1960s group dynamics theory, I insisted on at least being able to add something negative and something perhaps missing, so as to preserve balance.

For myself, I am somewhat partial to self-criticism so I guess I should remember to preserve balance in that area. Here goes.

I tend to be quite good at following recipes. I particularly succeed when following Delia Smith and Gordon Ramsay, for example. On the other hand, I can often be too hung up on recipes, which means I can be largely unable to think on my feet and thus come up with new meals. Finally, what I don't do but could be better at is to make full use of seasonal and local produce.

These observations aren't set in concrete. I can take something like Sausage Toad in the Hole and create many variations on the basic recipe. That ability comes after a focused effort on my part to learn the recipe by heart, including the niceties of what makes for success (e.g. too much salt can prevent the batter rising). Such focus doesn't come easily to me, but I've proved I can do it.

In essence, then, my wish is to improve my food knowledge and kitchen techniques so that I make better use of what's in the shops when I get there, particularly the plethora of local markets and farm shops.

That is the thinking behind this blog: that in 2011 I will improve in these areas.