Public holiday cooking #1

I love a well-written book about food. It turns out that some of them even come from America, despite my initial misgivings ("They use different measurements! They have different names for things! Americans don't know anything about food!"). I now have a whole continent full of cookbook authors to feed my habit, and I'm not holding back.

One of my favourite food authors (American or otherwise) is Michael Ruhlman. His new book Ratio is great, a sort of 'anti-recipe' book that tries to teach you the underlying relationships between ingredients that make up particular foods, and then builds on those relationships with all sorts of variations, modifications and improvements. It's kind of like those old CWA-style cookbooks that tell you how to cook an omelette in very terse terms, and then suggest variations on the omelette (omelette with onions! omelette with kidneys! etc).

It appeals to me, as I feel like I want to get some kind of grounding in basic kitchen techniques rather than just going through a rote process of emulating various cookbook authors’ recipes.

Anyway this is all a pre-amble to my real topic, the food I cooked on my day off. I love minor public holidays; they're days with none of the family obligations or pre-ordained activities of the big days off (Christmas, Easter, to a lesser extent Australia Day) and without the guilt, solemnity and cringe-inducing AFL 'tribute round' of Anzac Day. The minor days (Queen's Birthday, Foundation Day, etc) are unencumbered days off to spend however you likel. For me, that means cooking.

Faced with a free day, I knew I wanted to give bread another try. I'm very happy with my pizza dough and (to a lesser extent) my focaccias (focacce?), but I've never been completely satisfied with any of the proper loaves I've attempted in the past.

I'm not sure if the problem is our shitty old oven (it only goes to 220c), the yeast (I've tried sachet and instant dried yeast), the flour (I've tried Tipo 00, All Purpose, Brown and Bread flours), the temperature, the proving time, the kneading time...

There are so many variables involved in baking bread that it gets a bit overwhelming. People devote their lives to cultivating the best sourdough starters and developing their techniques, but I just want a passable loaf.

I find Ruhlman's approach in Ratio comforting. He takes things back to basics. A simple bread is just 500 grams flour, 300 mL water, ~5 grams yeast and a pinch of salt. Any variations beyond that (oil, nuts, herbs, sugar/honey, etc) are just modifications of the basic recipe, and even the basic recipe can be altered a little (as he says, any amount of yeast will leaven any amount of flour, it will just take a different amount of time). I already knew this ratio, but I think I'd scared myself by reading too many divergent bread recipes, all with their own modifications and deviations.

I tried the basic loaf with his sage and browned butter modification, in which you omit some of the water and replace it with a bit of butter and chopped sage, browned then cooled. The dough is proved as usual, and then baked in an enamelled cast iron pot. This apparently helps the dough retain some moisture as it cooks, making a reasonable replacement for the steam vents in a commercial bakery oven.

The result was definitely the best loaf I've made. The photo on the left is a bit terrible, which is why it's small (I don't know how to take a good food photo).

The crust was firm and distinct, helped along by the cast iron pot. However, the texture of the bread itself was still a bit 'cakey' for my liking, too dense and crumbly, not airy enough. I think this is either the result of not enough proving time, or insufficient kneading. I'll try it again, knead the absolute hell out of it and leave it overnight in the fridge.

Anyway, with the help of a basic ratio, I've already improved my bread baking skills.

Next stop: rhubarb jam and a sweet tart.

Fish & Salad

Did you know that eating fish pretty much makes me feel better than eating or drinking ANYTHING else? Step aside, gin and tonics, you answer to my friends of the sea now. A close third, is green beans.
There is not much to write about this other than saying I followed this Fennel & Three Bean Salad recipe and Matt cooked up some kind of fish and TADAAA DINNER SERVED. The salad also kept pretty well in the fridge for the next few days and eaten for lunch.

A+ would eat again!

Fish and Chips

All has been quiet on the cooking front lately. I seem to go in and out of cooking phases, and I'm currently 'out', but I'm reading the French Laundry Cookbook and Heat by Bill Buford so I expect I'll have a renewed enthusiasm for cooking soon.

Anyway, this is the sort of dish to cook when you can't be bothered cooking: basic grilled fish and chips. Sweetlips has disappointed us the last few times we've been there, so we thought we'd make some at home.

The fish: season and dust in a little flour, then pan-fry over medium-high heat in butter and a little olive oil. Sprinkle some lemon zest over the top and add a bit of lemon juice and parsley at the end.

The chips: cut into roughly 1cm chips, add to a large pot of cold, salted water. Bring to the boil, then immediately drain. Leave to steam/dry for a few minutes in the colander, then spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toss them in plenty of olive oil and salt, then roast at 220c for about 40 mins (or until they're nice and crispy).

Serve with a few slices of lemon and tartare sauce.

Braised oxtail with pan-fried gnocchi

This is the sort of thing that's very easy to do, but a bit tricky to do very well. Gnocchi need a light touch and as little flour as possible to make them light and delicious. I can honestly say that I'm as happy with this dish as I have been with anything I've cooked.

I love the arrival of slightly colder weather, as it gives me an excuse to go back to cooking this sort of food. If someone asked me what me favourite dish is, I'd probably have to reply "a cheap cut of meat cooked for several hours".

This dish was inspired by Cantina's delicious pan-fried gnocchi. I can't remember what they served them with, but it was incredible.

For the oxtail:

Softly sweat a large onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and maybe some celery.

Meanwhile brown the oxtail pieces on all sides over a high heat.

Add some crushed spices (fennel seeds in this case), a cinnamon stick, bay leaf, a few tins of tomatoes and some wine to the onions, then add the browned meat and braise at 150c for four or five hours. Take the tail pieces out of the braising liquid, allow to cool, carefully shred with forks, return to the braising liquid.

For the gnocchi:

Take 6 medium-sized potatoes, prick their skins all over with a fork, rub them with olive oil and place on a bed of rock salt. Roast at 220c for about an hour.

Give them a couple of minutes to cool down, then slice them in half and scoop out their insides. Push the potato insides through a sieve (a masher is not fine enough), then season, add an egg yolk and half a handful of flour.

The idea is to shape this potato mix into sausage-like strips and then cut them into gnocchi (which apparently means "lumps"). The problem with this is that your mixture will be quite wet and sticky, and hard to work with. You need to add flour to make it more pliable, but not too much flour. Flour makes your gnocchi heavier and stodgier, so you need just enough flour to bind it all together without overdoing it.

The whole thing is a bit hard to quantify, and it has taken me a few attempts to really be happy with the results, but these particular gnocchi were everything I'd hoped for: soft, light little things that still held together in the pot.

To cook them I blanched them in a large pot of salted water and then placed them in an enamelled cast iron pan with plenty of butter. Don't be tempted to turn the gnocchi too often, as they won't get that beautiful browned outside if you do. Add a good handful of sage leaves for the last 45 seconds or so, and serve on top of braised oxtail. Serve with good parmesan.

Prosciutto and Fig and Chevre, oh my!

Not much cooking went on with this but it was tasty so I say it counts. I should mention this was inspired by an awesome salad at Cantina a couple of months ago.

Onto the (West End Deli baguette, the king of the breads) sliced bread went:

1. homemade fig jam

2. some layers of prosciutto

3. small yet expensive amount of crumbled chevre

4. a mint leaf

5. candied prosciutto

For the candied prosciutto, fry strips in some oil & butter until they are all buckled and crispy and "rich mahogany" in colour, according to the recipe I vaguely went from and then leave to cool completely. While thats cooling, make a simple sugar syrup and let that cool a bit, then dip the crunchy (caution: fragile!) prosciutto in the syrup and then heat with a kitchen blow torch until its seems caramelly and almost golden. Be careful not to get the flame too close or direct onto any unsugared prosciutto or it will burn and that is no fun. Let it cool, not on paper towel, until crisp again.

(starter for dinner, 29/3/09)