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!

Cheesecake Ice Cream

         I love cheese (well, this is pretty obvious when you look at the name of my blog!): I love to cook savoury things with it and, needless to say, sweet treats. No wonder, one of the most popular desserts in the world – classic cheesecake – is one of my favourite dishes as well. Whenever I yield to temptation to cook one, I try to restrict myself to having only one or two pieces and the rest of it – in case I don’t have a proper help for consuming it – usually goes into the freezer (luckily, it’s a type of a cake that can be easily frozen for up to one month). The only disadvantage is, if you suddenly have an urge to indulge into a piece of a velvety goody, you will have to wait for quite a while till it defrosts properly.

            Last year, however, I came across a cheesecake ice cream recipe. Wow! I’m actually a big fan of frozen desserts and the perspective of having my favourite cheesecake in the form of an ice cream was very appealing! It was a recipe by the British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. Actually all her recipes are trust-worthy but since I had already tried her Margarita ice cream I was absolutely convinced that this woman is an expert in frozen yummy treats! As I don’t have a special machine at home, I couldn’t make this ice cream in a big container – it would have lost the creaminess in this case; setting it in small ramekins, with a crunchy base (just like a real cheesecake!) saved the situation. Now I can go for a cheesecake any time I want – just restricting myself to having only one piece…or two!

Scone Festival

         Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

I've never made the scones before but they were always on my list of “trying-to-cook-one-day dishes”. It turned out that they are very easy to make, fast to bake and – amazingly – very versatile! These small biscuits can be savory and sweet, with any kind of added ingredients, and can be served as a tea/coffee accomplishments, as a cocktail snack or as a side for a main course.

As Audax provided us not only with the detailed instructions for making the perfect scones, but with the links to the recipes of scone variations as well, I couldn’t resist a temptation to visit my all-time favourite web-resource where I discovered the dishes that use basic scone dough for creating something new. I got really inspired to cook quite a number of different things and it turned out that during this month’s challenge I made a journey around the world!