Daring Bakers - Cheese Cake pops

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was something a bit different, Cheesecake Pops. The idea of taking a baked cheesecake, rolling it into balls & dipping into chocolate was different & somewhat appealing. Work commitments this month actually spared me enough time to do the Daring Bakers Challenge. I admit I did make some modifications to the recipe. Bad me. But 5x 8-oz packs of cream cheese is way too much for just 2 health conscious guys. So I made 1/5th of the recipe. The other modification was no vanilla extract - just the seeds from a very plump vanilla pod. The cheesecake mixture turned out very creamy and delicious, so delicious that it almost didn’t get baked, thanks to Paul constantly tasting the mixture! But baked it was & the result was perfectly golden topped & moist. It’s definitely a recipe that will be made again.
Rather than weighing each ball, I rolled them into walnut sized balls (as stated in the recipe) and realized that I had too many balls. The original recipe said it made 30-40 balls, 30-40 divided by 5 is 6-8. I had a dozen. Oops. So I tried to increase the size. Mistake. The cheesecake was becoming too soft to remold into larger balls, so it was the walnut sized balls rather than 2oz balls. These were then frozen & then dipped into melted 70% cocoa chocolate. To let the chocolate set evenly I wedged them between two thick cookbooks (thanks to Maggie & Stephanie).

The end result? Beautiful soft delicious cheesecake coated with thin crisp chocolate coating. In hindsight I’d use chocolate with a much lower cocoa content. Even the thin coating was overpowering the delicate cheesecake. The mistake with the size of the balls was for the better. Larger balls would have been harder to eat neatly. These were just the right size.

Favourite Photos

I was just tagged by Paz from The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz for a meme called 10.

10 what?

10 of my own favourite food photo's.

It sounded easy till I started going through all the photo's that I had taken of Paul's cooking (& my own). Two days later & I've finally decided. Paul might not agree, but here they are:

I'd just come home from the markets with these very fresh tomatoes.

One of my favourite pastimes is making pasta, & eating it of course!

I really can't remember what this dish was, but it looks great.

Truffles. Do you know how hard it is to take a photo of a brown lump of fungus?

Paul had just zested some limes for a dish & left them sitting on the bench. Very much a spur of the moment photo.

Alfajores & hot chocolate...

Some artisic pics...

Tangellos

Strawberry Jam

And to finish it all off, some humour. This is what happens when you try to be too creative. I call this "sunbaking quail"

This is the part that I hate. selecting others to carry on the meme. So rather than pointing the finger at people I'll let you decide if you want to be tagged.

Paper Chef

When Ilva announced that she was resurrecting The Paper Chef, both Paul & myself wanted to participate. So, rather than combining our talents and creating one entry, we decided to do one each.
You’ve seen Paul’s entry, and here is my attempt.
Given what the four Paper Chef ingredients were – bacon, potato, plum tomato, and swede, I decided to use primarily those four ingredients.
I steamed some of the swede & mashed it with some salt, pepper & cream.
I created some chips by slicing & frying the potato and some of the swede.
The plum tomato was roasted with some a touch of garlic, bay leaf & olive oil. These were then mashed & the skins removed.
And simply fried the bacon.
The end results were some petite little morsels.

To the right we have a potato chip, smeared with mashed swede, drizzled with roasted plum tomato and sprinkled with finely diced bacon.
To the left we have a tasty little sandwich of potato chip, bacon, roasted tomato & topped with a swede chip (Swedish chip??).
I enjoyed letting my imagination run riot & creating these promising little mouthfuls. Some fine-tuning and they will be superb.

Daring Bakers - Lemon Meringe Pie

Another Daring Bakers Challenge.
Another interesting recipe.
Another learning experience.

This challenge was a recipe which I have never made. Lemon Meringue Pie. I’ve made that type of pastry before. I’ve made meringues and pavlova’s before. & Paul has his own recipe for citrus curd. The challenge was to follow the recipe. While making the lemon curd, Paul was standing there asking me what on earth I was doing. “Following the recipe” was the obvious response. To which he replied. “That’s not any curd recipe I’ve ever seen” and left me to follow the recipe. Using exactly the ingredients, measures & procedures stipulated in the recipe, I was a bit perturbed to see the curd thicken, then go past the point that I would have considered “ideal”. Maybe the cornflour here in Australia is different to the USA. Who knows.
I also differed slightly in the construction of the pies. Instead of one large pie, or 6 free-form pies, I made eight individual pies, 3 each of 6.5cm, 8.5cm & 2 of 10cm diameter ramekins. After cutting out the pastry rounds, I upturned the ramekins & (covering them in foil) draped & pressed the pastry over the ramekins. Saves on blind baking & gave a nice home-style finish to the pastry. After the pastry is cooked, simply flip the whole ramekin & pastry onto a cooling rack.
The rest of the construction was as laid out in the recipe, with piped meringue to top it off. The end result was a series of good looking pies. We had the 3 smallest ones as individual desserts later that day, and friends acquired the other pies. Over all it was quite tasty, Paul suggested the lemon curd could be stronger in flavour & sweeter. I also thought that the curd was too firm in texture, making it chewier than I’d prefer. Still, it was fun making them. Next challenge please…

Apples & Thyme - Figgie Lollies

I have fond memories of Christmas as a child with my family. The family dinner with the various different courses prepared by my paternal grandmother. From a very young age I can remember her serving these sugar coated, rolled balls of figs. I’m sure that there was a proper name for these sweets, but we always referred to them as “Figgy Lollies”. A traditional sweet that made its way to the Australian table from the Caucasus Mountains of Russia, via Zagreb, with our grandmother. Our Christmas table is incomplete now without them.

Sadly, my grandmother passed away and for the last few years my sister, Tess, has been making them. Thankyou Tess for preserving the recipe and ensuring it remains with us for all time, and thank you to Jeni at The Passionate Palate & Inge at Vanielje Kitchen) for hosting Apples & Thyme.
This year I thought I’d make them for the family, but with a few very slight changes. My grandmother coated the balls in sugar but we decided to experiment & rolled some in cocoa, and coated others with dark chocolate. Some we left plain, and of course some were rolled in fine sugar.
These need to be prepared at least three weeks in advance to allow them to dry sufficiently. And they are excellent as simple, tasty, presents!

Components
500g dried figs (the drier the better)
1 thick skinned orange
125ml rum or brandy
400g dark brown sugar (approx)
Ground cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg

Process
Finely chop the figs by hand with a sharp knife or puree in food processor.
Add the orange juice, orange rind, sugar, liquor and spices. Combine ingredients and cook slowly for about an hour, stirring occasionally. My grandmother used a double saucepan over boiling water, but I simply used a saucepan.
The mixture should be a thick and sticky paste (do not be tempted to add water)- the colour will darken and the fig seeds obvious. The longer the mixture cooks the better, but be careful it doesn’t burn.
Spread the mixture onto a baking sheet, cover with a clean tea towel and put on a high shelf somewhere out of the way for a week or two. It is very important that the mixture be allowed to dry for 3 –4 weeks. It is ready when the mixture is dry to touch and somewhat set. Do not use an airtight container, for the obvious reason. Roll the fig mixture into balls (approx 2cm in diameter). Roll the balls in fine sugar (or cocoa and fine dark chocolate, as I did).
Place the Figgy Lollies in petit fours cases, and store somewhere dry until ready to eat.

Daring Bakers - Yule Log

This was a totally new experience for me. My family never had Yule logs, & I have actually never tasted one either, so I guess I had nothing to compare this recipe to. Paul on the other hand, has made logs before, so his supervision was greatly appreciated. There were a few hiccups along the way, but I succeeded.
The first of these was the baking tray. I thought the one we had was the right size. That is until I had made the sponge mixture & was about to pour it into the tray. My esteemed partner advised me to measure the tray as he thought it was too small. He was right. It was 10x12 rather than the 10x15 (as stated in the recipe). I made the full amount anyway, then sliced it in half to make 2 slightly thinner sponges.
My second stumbling block was the buttercream. It curdled. Again Paul came to my rescue with the solution which saved the day (& a lot of buttercream). He advised whipping an amount of butter (I only had 50g left) then very slowly adding the curdled mixture a spoon at a time to the whipped butter and incorporating it thoroughly before adding the next spoonful. It worked.
Onto the sponge I spread a brandy syrup mixture, peach jam, vanilla buttercream and a dusting of cocoa powder. It was then rolled. The remaining buttercream was flavoured with coffee and applied to the log.
I decided to go with the meringue mushroom option & stuck the stems onto the caps with some buttercream and, as its summer here in Australia, I then added a few flowers for decoration.
It worked marvelously & even Paul was impressed.

Memories - Kotlety

I was born on a farm in Africa…. Well not really, but it sounds good.
I was actually born in Melbourne Australia to parents of Russian decent, whose parents left Russia during the revolution. My father came to Australia at the age of 17, by himself and barely able to speak English. His mother followed later. My mother’s family migrated out to Australia when she was 5. So while my family’s cuisine is mainly Russian/Eastern European, there is also a strong English/Australian influence.
I also had the privilege of having a great-grandma for the first 20 years of my life, who did cook the traditional foods of Russia and Eastern Europe. While I remember fondly the foods that she cooked, I now have to teach myself to read Russian to pass on those recipes…
At family gatherings we still have vodka, herring, and other delicacies, but we now have a strong Australian twist on things. My sister, who much to my mother’s dismay has based herself in northern Australia, has introduced some unique foods to our family. Apart from kangaroo, emu & water buffalo, one of the more memorable is crocodile!
One of my fondest memories of childhood was the food that my family prepared. My favourite was Kotlety. Again as with all “traditional” recipes there as many variations as there are cooks. Paul has also previously prepared kotlety. I always buy my mince from a particular butcher on Carlisle St Balaclava, just near where we live. This suburb is very diverse and has a very high concentration of people of Russian background, and because of this there are some great delis, butchers & bakers on the street. Buying the meat from our favourite shop, I ended up in a conversation (with me speaking my broken Russian) with the shop assistant about different Kotlety recipes. She used potato in her recipe whereas my mother had always used egg in our recipe.
I thought I’d try her version, it is still traditional after all, and the kotlety turned out well.

Components
3 slices bread, crusts removed
Milk
1 small potato, peeled
½ small onion, very finely chopped
250g minced veal
250g minced pork
Sea salt
Fresh black pepper
Dried Greek oregano
Dried bread crumbs
Butter or oil
Sour cream, to serve

Process
Soak the bread in enough milk to moisten. Squeeze the excess milk from the soaked bread.
Grate the potato as finely as you can manage.
Combine the veal, pork, raw potato, onion and oregano. Season with salt and pepper
Using your hands combine all the ingredients thoroughly.
Form into slightly flattened balls, about 50g in weight.
Roll each ball thoroughly with bread crumbs.
Shallow fry the kotlety over a medium heat, about 5-7 minutes each side until nicely browned. My family used a combination of oil & butter, but other recipes say all butter, or all oil.
At this stage you can either serve the kotlety with sour cream and potatoes, boiled or mashed. Or prepare a sauce detailed below.

Optional Sauce
100ml beef stock
3-4tbls crème fraiche.

Remove the kotlety from the pan and set aside.
Drain the excess oil leaving any brown sediment clinging to the pan
Deglaze the pan with stock. Lower the heat before adding the crème fraiche, stirring to combine.
Return the kotlety to the pan & gently simmer for 5-10 minutes, adding a more stock or water if the sauce becomes too thick.
Serves 2 –3

Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream

What to do with all these strawberries that we bought from Prahran Markets? Paul suggested making Strawberry Ice-cream, which sounded like a brilliant idea. But how to mix the strawberries into the ice-cream was the question. Do we pulp the berries & add them? Do we coarsely chop them and run the risk of frozen berry lumps attacking the teeth? Or do we make a strawberry jam & use the jam as flavouring in the ice-cream?
The picture in the previous post should have been a give away – we went with the last idea. Half a kilo of fresh strawberries made into some divine jam. I purposely left it a bit syrupy so that it would combine better with the ice-cream. The higher sugar content of the cooked berries would also help prevent them from freezing into solid lumps.

Components
500g strawberries, cleaned & cut in to quarters
500g castor sugar
6 free range egg yolks
600ml cream (35% milk fat)
40g vanilla sugar

Process
To make the jam: place the berries in a saucepan, add the sugar and cook over a medium heat, until the berries have lost most of their moisture content. The syrup should be nice and thick. A small teaspoon will set when tested on a cold plate.
Be careful not to over cook the berries, as they will end up with a burnt, caramel taste. Pour the jam into sterilized jars & let cool.

To make the ice-cream base: This is a classic Crème Anglaise, place the cream in to a saucepan and heat till it just starts to bubble. Meantime beat the egg yolks and vanilla sugar till light & fluffy. Add the heated cream slowly to the egg mixture whisking crazily to thoroughly combine the two mixtures.
Pour back into the saucepan & return to a low heat stirring constantly till it thickens.
Strain through a fine sieve to a cold bowl & keep stirring to help remove the heat from the mixture. I have also read that you can place the bowl in chilled water to help cool it.
Let the mixture cool to room temperature.
Once cooled, add a few spoonfuls of your fresh strawberry jam, how much depends on your taste buds & your sweet tooth. I used about 100ml of the jam.
Mix thoroughly, cover & leave over night in the fridge.
Next day pour the mixture into an ice-cream churn & churn till it thickens & starts setting. Pour this into a clean container & place into the freezer to set totally.
Serves 4. Needless to say, eat as quickly as possible while its fresh.

Homemade Strawberry Jam

Making Pasta

Yes, my partner Paul, has managed to teach me the mysterious Italian art of pasta making.
Having attempted this Italian art in times gone by, and failing miserably, I was wary when Paul decided to break me in. Having learnt from his grandmother, Paul decided to pass on the secret to me. And I responded to the challenge!
I was eased into this mysterious art by learning the basic formula:
Italian Tipo 00 flour
Free range eggs at room temperature
100g flour = 1 egg
Sounds simple? Yes. The trick is making it all work together.
Italian Tipo 00 flour is a finely ground flour that is ideal for making pastas. I have tried the Australian Tipo 00 but while it was easier to work the texture, once cooked, wasn’t as good as the Italian flour. (actually, it was horrible- Paul)
I usually use 200g of flour in which I then gently combine 2 eggs. This is done on the bench. As the eggs and flour combine; you start working it eventually kneading the formed dough. This is a very tactile exercise where the feel of the dough is very important. I’ve found the dough should be ever so slightly tacky, just so you can barely feel it sticking to you fingers. Add some flour a little at a time if you feel that the dough is too tacky. You don’t want the dough to be too dry either, as it will become difficult to knead. Keep kneading the dough till it looks and feels completely smooth, “as smooth as babies skin” I’m told….
Once you have reached this point, wrap the dough tightly in cling film and let it rest for 15-20 minutes.
Now the fun starts.
Set up your pasta machine. If you don’t have one I guess you could use the rolling pin (or use the rolling pin on your partner & get them to buy a pasta machine).
Divide the dough into 3 roughly equal portions. Keep 2 of the portions wrapped in cling wrap so they don’t dry out. Press out the portion on a floured bench top. Make sure both sides of the flattened dough are dusted with flour. While the dough was kneaded, the tackiness was important. Tackiness here is the enemy of the pasta machine (trust me or you will be cleaning the insides of the machine). Pass the dough through the largest setting on the machine. Then fold the dough in half. Dust the outsides if it’s feeling tacky, and pass through the machine again. Repeat this 10 (yes 10) times- this is important as it helps work the dough to an ultra smooth consistency.
Now we start winding up the settings, dusting the dough if needed between each pass through the machine. If at some stage you feel the length of the dough is getting unwieldy, cut it in half.
I’ve found from experience that any higher than the 3rd last setting, makes the pasta too thin, leading to it disintegrating rather than being coated in sauce.
Once you have reached this stage, place the rolled out dough on a floured surface & dust with additional flour.
Repeat this with the remaining portions.

Leave the pasta sheets to dry for about 15-20minute. You can trim these sheets & use them for lasagna, or you can pass them through the cutters on the machine making tagliatelle or tagliarini. After each sheet of pasta is cut, wrap the pasta around your hand & then slide it off to form a little nest. Dust the cut pasta with flour & set aside till you are ready to use.

To cook your pasta, have a large pot of salted water boiling (use the biggest pot you have). Test the cooking time with a few strands of pasta. It should only take seconds, a minute at most, to cook, depending on how long you have let it dry. With fresh pasta it’s pretty much, in then straight out. It should be strong enough to be able to be picked up with a fork without breaking. It will be delicate and silky in texture, poles apart from commercial pasta. They are different products and should not be compared.
Drain the cooked pasta & toss with some butter (or oil if need be) before combining with the sauce.
You will find that homemade pasta has a different texture to commercial dry pasta. Once you have tried & mastered the process, you’ll be amazed & addicted. A 2 egg pasta makes enough for 3 decent serves.