Cheese Soufflé Revisited

PBS had done the world a great service. Without further ado, Julia and the cheese soufflé.

We maintain that we have always loved Julia before "Julia" was in vogue. In fact, about 10 years ago, we found an original imprint of From Julia Child's Kitchen. The conversational style and tolerance for culinary incompetence make it far more accessible than her monumental Mastering the Art.

Ben's Birthday Brownies

[I did not take this photo... ours is below. But, like stew, all brownies look the same.]

Ingredients
200 g dark chocolate
100 g butter
200 g cream cheese
360 g sugar
4 large eggs
60 g self-rising flour
Mixed spices (cinnamon and nutmeg in particular), about 1 t

Method
Preheat oven to 350˚
1. Melt chocolate, butter, and cream cheese in a bain marie.
2. Beat eggs with sugar.
3. When chocolate mixture is melted, incorporate by spoonful into the eggs. Whisk.
4. Add flour and spices, and mix just to incorporate.
5. Pour into a 10x12 baking pan, and bake for 20-25 minutes. (I made a half recipe, used a pan about half the size of this, and cooked them for 15 minutes. I am guessing at the cooking time here. The final texture should be like that of a fondant.)
6. While still warm, dust with confectioners' sugar.

Cooking Supplies

One of our favourite discoveries in one of the world's most expensive cities is Pages. The supplies are high quality and inexpensive. In the showroom (as with the website) prices are listed excluding VAT. If you don't own a restaurant, you'll have to add on 15% at the till. Still well worth it and cheap.


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On offer were some Luminarc tumblers that we fell in love with in Corsica and Italy. There's no fancy stemware; just hardy, low volume glasses.

Sauce Espagnole and Beef Stew

Sauce Espagnole. Also known as "brown sauce," it is a strong-flavored, rich, dark sauce that serves as the basis for a true demi-glace, as well as often being used in classic French recipes like Beef Bourguignon. It can be made vegetarian through the simple removal of the lardons or bacon and substituting the beef stock with vegetable.
As always, La Rousse:

Espagnole Sauce: A brown sauce, which is used as a basis for a large number of derivative brown sauces, such as Robert, genevoise, bordelaise, Bercy, Madeira, and Périgueux. It is made with a brown stock to which a brown roux and a mirepoix are added, followed by a tomato purée. Cooking takes several hours and the sauce needs to be skimmed, stirred, and strained.

So, first things first, the Mirepoix:


Mirepoix Ingredients:
1 part celery, diced
2 parts onion, diced
1 part carrot, diced
1/2 part (by volume) streaky bacon or lardons

Method
1. Melt just enough butter in the pan to thinly coat the bottom.
2. Let the onion and carrots sweat briefly, then add celery and lardons.
3. Cover and cook on medium for about 20 minutes.

You will not use much of this mixture for the Espagnole, so set all but about half a cup aside to store in the freezer. Mirepoix, once made, comes in handy in all sorts of stocks and soups!
The next step is to make a brown roux:



Like a blonde roux, the recipe includes using equal parts butter and flour (by weight), melting, and letting the flour toast. However, unlike the blonde, you allow the process to carry on until the mixture has formed a deep, chestnut color. For our Espagnole, we used 25 grams of both butter and flour, which works out to 2 tablespoons butter and 1/4 cup flour.

Mix the roux with 1/2 a cup mirepoix, and then combine with 1 cup chopped mushrooms and a can of chopped tomatoes. Add 1 liter of beef stock, along with thyme, chervil, and parsley, and simmer uncovered for 4 hours.


After cooking, skim the sauce and strain through a cheesecloth to get all the veggies out. Even though they'd had--as my high school bio teacher would say--"the snot and vitamins cooked out of them", I was sad throwing all those good vegetables away. Of course, the sauce was flavorful and completely saturated with the taste of carrots, celery, onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, and bacon (!), we decided to make a stew that could reincorporate them in some way.

First, we browned a pound of cheap beef with simple herbs:

And then stewed it with the sauce, in the oven, covered, for about 4 hours at 250˚ F. Three or so hours in, we added some diced butternut squash and reincorporated the veggies from before, along with about 1/2 a cup of reduced red wine and the juice of half a lemon. This made for the most hearty, deepest-flavored stew I'd ever had, and it tasted delicious on couscous (though I couldn't fault anyone who wanted to cook up some simple dumplings or egg pasta to accompany it instead). I don't have any photos of the stew, though, because all stew is incredibly unphotogenic.

It was wonderful.

Hollandaise --> Eggs Florentine

The poached egg. Slightly less perfect than the oeuf en cocotte, but simpler and healthier. Unless you decide to cover it in Hollandaise sauce, put it on top of some spinach (healthy again, maybe?), and toast. I needed an extra hand in the kitchen.

But first, the Hollandaise Sauce. Once again, Larousse:

Hollandaise. A hot emulsified sauce based on egg yolks and clarified butter. It is the foundation of several other sauces, including chantilly (or mousseline), maltaise, mikado and mustard sauce, depending on the ingredients added. It is served with fish cooked in a court-bouillon, or with boiled or steamed vegetables. The sauce should be made in a well-tinned copper or stainless steel sauté pan; an aluminium pan wil turn it greenish. As it must not get too hot, hollandaise sauce should be kept warm in a bain marie. If it does curdle, it can be re-emulsified by adding a spoonful of water, drop by drop; use hot water if the sauce is cold, cold water if the sauce is hot.

Basically, Hollandaise is an emulsion of butter and lemon using egg as the emulsifier, since lemon (acid) and butter (fat) are mortal enemies in real life. The recipe is finicky enough that it's important to have everything in the mise-en-place ahead of time.

Hollandaise Ingredients
3 egg yolks
1/2 T lemon juice
200 g butter (50 g cold, 150 melted)
salt
white pepper

Method
1. Whisk the egg yolks in a pan (not on the stove!) until they are a lighter yellow. Depending on the color of the yolk to start with (organic eggs may never get to the 'lemon yellow' color our recipe hinted at).
2. Place the pan in a bain-marie and add the lemon juice, whisking continuously. The water should be warm, but not hot. Whisk the eggs until they are the consistency of cream, not thoroughly cooked, but warm.
3. Add the cold butter, take the eggs off the heat, and whisk until incorporated. The mixture should be thickening and pulling away from the pan.
4. Add salt and pepper and more lemon juice if desired, but only by tiny bits at a time.
5. Incorporate the rest of the melted butter bit by bit, whisking, letting the sauce thicken. Keep warm and use immediately.

Eggs Florentine Ingredients
1 piece of toast
1/2 cup of spinach, cooked, with salt and pepper (and garlic powder if desired)
1 poached egg
4 T Hollandaise sauce

Method
If you've gotten this far, you don't need instructions. Just pile it all on and enjoy. :)

Oeufs en cocotte

Since working on the canonical mother sauces has meant we have, at any time, 15-20 eggs in the kitchen, we've been essentially pigging out on eggs for the last two weeks. A quick search will reveal plenty of prettier oeufs en cocotte out there, but ours were delicious anyway.



Ingredients
1 egg, preferably at room temperature
1/2 T heavy cream
five drops of truffle oil
black pepper and salt

Method
1. Boil some water and preheat the oven to 375˚.
2. Crack the egg into a ramekin.
3. Add the cream, truffle oil, salt and pepper, being careful not to break the yolk.
4. Place the ramekin into a larger, ovenproof pot, and pour the boiled water about halfway up the side of the ramekin.
5. Place egg in the oven for 11-12 minutes, until white is done but yolk is still runny (we still haven't succeeded in getting it cooked just right...)


Eaten with toast or by itself, this is one of the most delicious forms of egg I've ever had!

Poached Eggs over Spinach with Sauce Velouté (Ravigote)

This might not look the most appetizing in photos, but trust me, this tasted delicious.

Ravigote sauce has this sort of cryptic and scary entry in Larousse:

Ravigote. A spicy sauce served hot or cold but always highly seasoned. Cold ravigote is a vinaigrette mixed with capers, chopped herbs, and chopped onion. The hot sauce is made by adding velouté sauce to equal quantities of white wine and wine vinegar, reducing with chopped shallots; it is finished with chopped herbs and served particularly with calf's head and brains and boiled fowl.

Essentially, the cold version is a herbed vinaigrette that lends itself to mussels, veggies,, and salad in general.

We couldn't find a more exact recipe for warm ravigote anywhere, so we used this opportunity to practice a velouté and then go crazy with some leftover spinach and eggs and a package of smoked salmon I accidentally carried with me in my bag all the way to London and back while British-Librarying the whole day.

Velouté Ingredients
75 g butter
75 g flour
1.5 litres chicken stock

Cooking procedure
1. Melt butter with flour in a pan to make a blond roux.
2. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil, cooking for up to 30 minutes.



If I could do it again, I'd halve the white wine vinegar and put in a bit more white wine to compensate for the lost flavor. The sauce ended up very tart, and although I liked it a lot (sauerkraut, pickled beets, and mustard being some of my favorite foods), I don't that many people would.

Ravigote Ingredients
75 ml white wine vinegar
75 ml white wine
5 shallots
2 cloves garlic
1 T Herbs de Provence
pepper

Ravigote Procedure
1. Chop the shallots and garlic and let sweat in some butter for about 5 minutes.
2. Add white wine and vinegar to a stockpot, and simmer to reduce a bit.
3. Combine shallots and garlic to liquid, and add herbs.
4. Reduce to ~50% the original volume, and add to the velouté.
5. Reduce slightly more if desired, and add pepper to taste.

The Best Pasta Salad... EVER

This is a variation on a theme, really, so I think it would be cheating to put this recipe up were it not for the most important ingredient and the thing that makes this salad the best thing in the world:



They come from The Tomato Stall, based in the Isle of Wight, and the oak-roasted tomatoes in particular are... amazing. Sweet and tangy and marinated, you can use the tomatoes in one dish and the olive oil in another. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water. Of course, you can use regular marinated, sun-dried tomatoes and make a darn good salad, but don't even try to call it TBPSE. I won't let you.



Ingredients
1 package oak-roasted tomatoes, cut into thirds
1 bunch green onions (just the white bits, chopped)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1 ball mozarella, chopped
balsamic vinegar (to taste, about 6 T?)
salt and pepper (to taste)
olive oil (to taste. I used the oil from the tomatoes, about 3 T)
2 cups uncooked pasta (fusilli, penne, etc)
Sprinkling of Parmesan cheese

Procedure
Simple and almost ridiculous to point out, but here it is:
1. Cook the pasta and drain.
2. Add everything else.
3. Chill in fridge.
4. Sprinkle with parmesan.

Hughenden Manor Apple Cheesecake

This weekend, some friends of ours took us to Hughenden Manor, the country home of Benjamin Disraeli. The house was gorgeous, with portraits of family and friends (including a large one of Lord Byron) and a lot of the original decoration. The best part, though, was the walled garden. Full of just-ripening apples, pumpkins, chard, kale, pears, and even figs (!), it was the perfect place to take a break in the middle of the afternoon.

On the way out, I stopped to buy some apples. Fifteen for £1 meant that I went home with enough to make dessert--and more! I picked up some cream cheese, sour cream, lemon, and digestive biscuits at Sainsbury's, and that was that:



The base recipe for the cheesecake is an old one my mom gave me a couple years ago.

Crust Ingredients
1.5 cup digestive biscuit crumbs
about half a cup of sugar, more or less
4 T melted butter
Nutmeg

Crust Directions
Preheat the oven to 350˚
1. Mix the crumbs, butter, and sugar together and pat onto the bottom of a springform pan.
2. Bake at 350˚ for 10 minutes.
3. Sprinkle with nutmeg and chill.

Cake Ingredients
1 lb cream cheese
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1-2 T lemon juice
1 T vanilla
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1 T mixed spice (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, etc)
1 cup sour cream

Cake directions
Preheat oven to 325˚
1. Cream together cream cheese, sugar, and eggs.
2. In a separate bowl, mix lemon, lemon juice, vanilla, and flour.
3. Mix dry ingredients with wet.
4. Add the spice.
5. Fold in the sour cream.
6. Pour into springform pan and bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
7. After baking for 45 minutes, turn off oven and let sit in closed oven for another 20 minutes to half an hour.
8. After this, take the cake out of the oven and let cool on counter.

Topping Ingredients
Apples
Juice of half a lemon
A bit of sugar
Allspice

Topping Directions
I wasn't measuring anything at this point--just playing around--so the proportions are going to be vague.
1. Make applesauce with the above ingredients, keeping the skins on if you want the color, but taking them off before topping the cheesecake. Basically, boil the apples for about 25 minutes on medium with a bit of water, stirring frequently. Reduce to a thick sauce.
2. With two apples, cut into very thin slices, and place on a tin-foil covered baking sheet. Grill in the oven until slightly shriveled and browning.
3. Spread applesauce on top of the cheesecake, then some caramel sauce (see below).
4. Sprinkle apple pieces on top of the sauce, and drizzle more sauce on top.

Caramel/ization

Today I was in a cheesecake kind of mood. More on that later. I was also in a mood to eat inexpensively, though.
Trying to cut down on costs and still cooking a delicious dessert are not mutually exclusive activities, though, especially when the topping drizzled over the cake is a creamy, homemade caramel sauce!
Ever since reading On Food and Cooking--during my brief, brief life as a scientist--I've been fascinated by the chemical reactions that take place during candy making, and caramelization are so complex that they aren't completely understood. But, really, there's no need to understand the science behind candy-making to create a good caramel, even though it's the reason I find baking and candy-making so interesting!

The only thing you really need to know is this: when the sugar melts and gets that deep brown color, it's well over 300˚F. Keep your head well away from the pot and your hands covered with oven mitts while you pour in the cream, or you will end up with nasty burns. And the burning sugar will stick to you. It will be bad.

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup double cream (whipping cream)
4-6 T butter
dash of vanilla or other flavoring (if desired)

Method
1. Pour the sugar into a heavy-bottomed sauce pan and turn the stove on to med-med/high
2. Stir occasionally until the sugar begins to melt. It will look like this:

3. The sugar will quickly get darker as it cooks. Make sure the butter and cream are nearby, and, stirring constantly, pour the cream into the sugar when it reaches a deep, amber brown color.
4. Take the cream/sugar off the heat, stirring constantly, and when the mixture has stopped bubbling furiously, add the butter.
5. Incorporate the butter, and then add any flavorings you'd like.
6. Pour into a mason jar for storage. Reheat to serve if desired.