Almond Omelette

           If you are interested in cooking and read a lot about different cuisines, methods and techniques, eventually you come to the point when it’s difficult to find an innovative recipe: you realize that there’s a similar dish in another culture or it is just a traditional treat with a modern twist.

            Once, however, I got really surprised when I read a review of a book written by Madeleine Pelner Cosman who did some research on the English medieval cuisine. One of the dishes presented in her book was Amondyn Eyroun – an almond omelette. As I looked through the list of ingredients I had to admit that it’s difficult to imagine how the final dish will taste. Just think of it: you mix chopped almonds with ricotta, raisins and honey, you add rolled oats and (no kidding!) boiled eggs to it and then you bind it with raw eggs and fry in a pan. I’m actually a very open minded person when it comes to frittatas: I believe that you can put whatever you want in your morning omelette. But this seemed to be too much! Of course, I couldn’t but give the dish a try – just to form an opinion about it, you know. Surprisingly, the combination of ingredient worked really well! This big pancake-like omelette turned out to be a breakfast that I really enjoyed. So now I don’t have to decide whether I should make pancakes or frittatas in the morning – I go for this medieval in-between version of the two breakfast options!

Caesar Salad

         A few years back when my cooking skills could be given 10 points (out of possible 100) the centerpiece of my culinary repertoire was Caesar Salad. Indeed, it’s difficult to screw up such a dish: just throw everything in a bowl, pour a dressing over and toss. Needless to say, I used plain mayonnaise with the addition of grated parmesan for it. Later on, however, as my palate developed, I started to opt for more elaborate dressings and pretty soon I realized that for me this salad is actually all about that special dressing, with an anchovy zing. I know what you’re gonna say now: “But there were no anchovies in the original recipe of Chef Cardini!’ True. But I for one strongly associate Caesar with that “fish kick” so even when I buy a ready made dressing, I choose the one with anchovies in it and even if I make a low-fat, yoghurt-based dressing at home, I put some finely chopped anchovies in it as well.

            As I said, I cooked this salad for the first time pretty long ago. And since for me, with my poor kitchen experience, it was easier to make French toasts rather than to toast bread in the oven (I felt that I have more control over the process in the open pan rather than in the closed oven) I topped the salad with egg-and-milk soaked slices of bread, soft inside and crunchy on the outside. My husband loved it so much that even when I tried one day to serve the Caesar Salad with the authentic croutons, he asked for his French toast instead! So it became some sort of a signature mark of my home-made Caesar Salad!

Beggar’s Purse

           

           I love crepes! Not only because of the pleasure I get when I smell the wonderful aroma that the batter releases when it hits the hot pan, or when I see those lacy rounds on the serving plate or when I eventually take a first bite of a warm treat – crepes, from the culinary point of view, are very versatile. You can serve them plain – with butter, crème-fraiche, honey or jam, - and you can stuff them as well. There are dozens of fillings you may put inside and not a less amount of ways you can present the dish.

            One of the tricks that makes ordinary stuffed crepes look spectacular is gathering them around the filling and tying the ends with a blanched chive. Since the dish resembles a drawstring purse it is usually called “beggar’s purse” (or “aumoniere” in France). It is an elegant-looking, yet easy to make appetizer, which can be prepared with vegetables, meat or even with a sweet filling (in which case “the purses” are tied with the blanched citrus zest). Any sauce that, in your opinion, compliments the filling, would make the dish wholesome – it can even be some sort of a puree or a salsa that will add the texture to the dish. Last time I made the beggar’s purses with vegetable filling and I decided to make asparagus fondue to go with it – it was a beautiful, well-balanced dish which we both (my husband and me) enjoyed on a weekend morning!

V8 Cake

        I guess every cook has a dish that is on top of his “wish-to-prepare” list. For me it has been V8 – a multi-layered cake created by an Australian pastry chef Adriano Zumbo. It stroke a chord in my heart once I saw it – more than a year ago – in Masterchef TV show. The following day I found the recipe in the Internet but had to admit that for me it was next to impossible to reproduce this pattisserie masterpiece. However, I kept opening the webpage with the recipe and kept studying it avidly – with the hope that one day I will eventually be able to make this cake at my kitchen. Pretty soon I found myself hooked to the idea: indeed, even when I saw a 20cm square tin in a shop half a year ago, I bought it only because I knew that V8 is assembled in such a tin and a few months ago I couldn’t but buy small silver balls as I realized that they would serve as a perfect decoration for my future cake! 

Lavender Up

       

        My favourite part of the “Zumbo” book (compiled by a great contemporary pâtissier Adriano Zumbo) is the one called “Gateaux de voyage”. There this Australian pastry chef gives the recipes of bar-shaped cakes which as he claims are very popular in his shop in Sydney. He calls them “traveller cakes” because they are easy to transport and can be brought as a gift when going to somebody’s house to visit. All of these cakes are astonishing (well, as all of Zumbo’s creations, of course!) so it was very hard to decide which cake I should make first. The dilemma was solved when I had to open a can of blueberries (for my signature “Blueberry cosmopolitan’ cocktail) – it became obvious that the following day I would be able to make a pear and blueberry cake from the book. The girl (who helped me to finish my Cosmo) expressed the desire to taste it and I promised to send her a piece.

            However, as I started to make the cake, I became overwhelmed with doubts and hesitations. For me, it seemed to be way too much. First, there’s a coconut caramel (I love coconut milk and cook a lot with it but I hate coconut cream which goes into the caramel!). Second, the pears are poached in saffron syrup (I don’t have anything against saffron, but it imparts its strong aroma to the food, doesn’t it?). Last, the cake batter itself is made with jaggery and contains my not-so-beloved coconut cream and a big heap of grated coconut. Wait, there should have been lavender sugar in it as well (that’s why the cake has such a name) but since I didn’t have any I substituted it with vanilla sugar (made in the same way – combining freeze-dried powder with normal sugar) – for me, even without the lavender, there were too many flavours in the cake already. My husband suggested that we should first try this doubtful cake ourselves before sharing it with anybody.

When the cake was finally cut, we didn’t have to solve the problem “to share or not to share” any more: we simply couldn’t stop eating it! It came out to be so unbelievably good, with all the flavours complementing each other, that my poor friend didn’t have a chance to get even a small piece of it! I guess, I will have to make up for it – with some more Cosmos and a new cake from Adriano Zumbo!

Watermelon, Radish and Rocket Leaves Salad

        Yesterday my mum looked through my last posts in the blog and said: “Wow! That looks so beautiful! But what about the taste?” I was a bit taken aback. Seriously, I don’t think she has any grounds for being skeptical about this issue since I cooked a lot of different things when I stayed at my parents’ place during the vocation and none of them had said a critical word about my food – only the praising ones. Besides, I don’t think it is ethically right to write a post about a dish that turned out to be a failure, even if it looks picture perfect. I guess now you are wondering: “How does it all refer to the watermelon salad?!” Well, this salad was not a failure but, to say true, I didn’t find it to be a “wow-dish” and thus started to consider whether I should put a post about it in the blog. 

            The recipe is by an Indian Chef Floyd Cardoz who won previous year’s Top Chef Masters show. The salad, as he explained, was his take on watermelon chaat. I changed it slightly by omitting that chaat masala that basically gives this continental-looking dish an Indian flavour: for me black pepper and ginger was more than enough for providing the heat. Actually the aroma of coriander and mint and the traditional combination of sweetness coming from the melon, sourness from the lime and saltiness from the capers reminded me more of Thai cuisine. Strange as it may sound, I’m a big fan of Thai cuisine and I absolutely adore watermelon, radish and rocket leaves but for me the whole dish didn’t seem to be balanced and impressive.

            After a thorough consideration of the whole situation I eventually decided to write about this salad. It was not a complete failure after all and the fact that I didn’t like the dish doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who may do. I for one wouldn’t go for it again but – I’m sure – some gourmands will find it quite more-ish and will even appreciate a sprinkle of chaat masala on the top of it!

Fish Checkerboard with Rice Cream and Mushroom Fumet

         Last year Alessandro Pavoni, the chef and owner of a one hat restaurant Ormeggio  in Sydney, appeared a few times on Masterchef Australia Series 3 – mostly to take part in the so called “immunity challenges” where the amateur cooks compete against professional chefs for the right to win immunity from elimination rounds of the show. One of the signature dishes that Alessandro once brought to the Masterchef kitchen was Cuttlefish checkerboard. It looked so impressive that I started to think of the ways to reproduce the dish at home.

            From the very beginning I decided to substitute cuttlefish with plain white fish which is more readily available in the local markets (and enjoyed more in our family!). The question was how to make it black. Needless to say, it’s next to impossible to get the squid ink (which is used in the original recipe) in Kolkata. I wanted to find a black food condiment that could be used for “painting” the fish – just the same way as I did for creating fish “braid” – but I failed, so I had to leave the idea of making Pavoni’s dish for a while.

            This year, however, when a friend from Italy brought me a jar of Tartufona – thick bread spread made with black truffles – I realized that I can eventually make my “checkerboard”. In order to stress the earthy flavour of truffles I substituted the calamari broth with mushroom fumet. Looking at my serving plate I couldn’t but admit that’s it’s totally a fusion dish: pieces of fish marinated in Italian truffle paste, served on a bed of Indian basmati rice cream with traditional French fumet. It is amazing sometimes to see how different elements combine and merge to form a sheer delight on the plate!