Quince is not something I'd ever cooked with, or even tasted, before. Naturally that meant that when I saw some at Sobey's I had to purchase it. And then it sat for ages in my fruit bowl until finally I figured they would need to be used before they starting going off. I decided to poach these (as they cannot be eaten raw) and use them in an adapted clafoutis. It's a French recipe that's a little bit asian, with star anise in the poached quince and Zen Green Tea liqueur in the clafoutis.
Step 1: Poaching the quince.
4 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
a couple of star anise or stick of cinnamon
3 quince
I tried to peel these, then got lazy and gave up. They were simply chopped and cored and dropped in the poaching liquid, then simmered for an hour plus. These need to be drained very well, as they retain a lot of liquid. I let them sit overnight in the fridge to get as much liquid out as I could. They have a lovely fragrant flavour and would be delicious on their own just after poaching, but I didn't want the extra liquid to ruin the clafoutis.
Step 2: Making the clafoutis.
3 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
6 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
zest of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp Zen Green Tea Liqueur
3 quince, poached
Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Butter a 1 quart/1 litre dish and sprinkle the bottom and sides with sugar. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in the flour, cream, zest, salt, and liqueur. Set that aside and line the dish with your poached quince. Pour the batter over the quince and bake around 40-45 minutes until the custard is firm and golden.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Quince Clafoutis
Monday, January 18, 2010
Renkon Chips
I actually cook with lotus root (or renkon) quite often, mostly because it makes such a pretty addition to my bento lunches. Luckily, it turns out it's also quite good for you. It has a delicate flavour and a lovely crunchy texture (even when not deep fried).
1 section renkon
vegetable oil for frying
1 tbsp flour
1/2 tbsp shichimi togarashi or szechuan pepper
Peel the vegetable, then slice thinly. I used a mandoline for this as I wanted paper-thin slices for the chips. Drop them in a bowl of water with a generous splash of vinegar to keep them white, as they start to discolour quite quickly. Once cut, briefly dry on paper towel and drop them into a plastic bag with the flour and spice, then shake around to coat.
Drop into the heated oil in batches, pulling out when lightly browned. This only took a couple of minutes as my slices were so thin.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Prosciutto & Fig Crostini
I don't recall where I first read about someone combining fig jam and butter, but whoever it was is a genius. These appetizers have been a hit every time, and have even resulted in a marriage proposal. The sweet fig butter and salty prosciutto are a perfect contrast to each other. The first time I made these I went down to the Italian Centre to get Parma ham and kofylitiri cheese, and I recommend splurging on a good quality prosciutto. Subsequent attempts with supermarket prosciutto didn't have the same saltiness and bite.
Prosciutto & Fig Crostini:
1 loaf skinny french bread
olive oil
1/2 cup butter, softened
5-6 tbsp fig jam
salty firm cheese
prosciutto or Parma ham
For the crostini, I like them a little crispy and a little soft so I only toast one side. Slice the bread and lay out on a baking sheet, then brush the slices with olive oil. Heat under a broiler until just browning, then lay out to cool. These can be done a day or two in advance and kept in ziploc.
Mix the butter and fig jam together very well (this takes some doing). Spread generously on the crostini, top with a thin slice of cheese and then prosciutto. These appetizers were very easy to assemble on site, which is a lot more convenient than worrying about how to transport them as a finished product.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Crème Brûlée
This recipe is from John Burton Race's book, French Leave. It was my first crack at making Crème brûlée, and I expected it to be difficult, but it was surprisingly easy! Seriously, I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. It amazes me that I have had so many bad brûlées at restaurants in the past (seriously - scrambled egg consistency at a high end restaurant that I won't name!). This is going to be a bad bad thing for me, as I will likely start keeping full cream in my fridge at all times and make this very regularly. Methinks that will not help me on the road to losing the baby weight...
Crème Brûlée (Serves 4):
2 egg yolks
90 grams caster sugar (seeing as we are in North America I used fine berry sugar)
1 vanilla pod (I used vanilla extract about a teaspoon)
70 mL milk
175 mL double cream
Put the egg yolks and 40g of the sugar into a bowl with the vanilla and whisk to a smooth paste. Add the milk, whisk in the cream (thicken a bit, but it won't be like whipped cream), pour into four ramekins and refrigerate for an hour before cooking.
Preheat the oven to 300F/150C and put the ramekins in a shallow pan filled with water to a depth of about 2.5 cm (1 inch) as shown. The brûlées will take about an hour in the oven to set. When cooked, remove from the oven and let the brûlées cool to room temperature.
When you are about ready to serve, sprinkle the tops with the remaining sugar and put them either under a very hot broiler or use a torch to caramelize the sugar. Using high heat is important because you want to create the sugar crust on top, but not warm the custard through and make it runny. Serve right away.
This is so good I am thinking about making it for breakfast now, thank goodness I don't have any cream on hand and I have a baby that will be back up to eat again any second!
Friday, January 8, 2010
Pizza Dough - Take 1
Being a stay at home mom now, I keep trying to make more things from scratch. Part of the reason is that I want things to be healthier (without a bunch of preservatives), and it is usually less expensive and tastier to have anything made from scratch. Other Edmonton food bloggers seem to be big fans of Peter Reinhart, so I looked up his Neo-Neapolitan Pizza dough recipe. Ours ended up a bit heavy, so I will have to try it again and see if I can work more air into it and let it rise better. This is a picture of the cheese pizza I made with it. Hopefully the next round goes better.
Pizza Dough:
5 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar or honey
2 teaspoons salt (or 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)
1 teaspoon instant yeast
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 to 2 cups room-temperature water
Combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon or mix in an electric mixer. After you've combined all of the ingredients, set the dough aside to rest for 5 minutes. Stir again for 3 to 5 minutes, adding more water or flour if necessary. Generally speaking, you want the dough to be wetter and stickier than your typical bread dough. It should be dry enough that it holds together and pulls away from the side of the bowl when you mix it, but it doesn't need to be dry enough to knead by hand.
Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Place each one into an oiled freezer bag.
If you aren't going to bake them that day, you can throw the bags into the freezer. They'll stay good in there for at least a month. The evening before you intend to bake them, move the frozen dough balls to the refrigerator to thaw.
If you intend to bake them later that day, place the bagged dough balls in the refrigerator. Remove them from the fridge and let them warm to room temperature an hour or two before you intend to bake them.
Remember that, as a baker, time is your friend: longer, slower rises at reduced temperature result in better tasting bread. But sometimes you don't have the luxury of time - that is OK; this dough will still work well if only given an hour or so to rise at room temperature. Allowing pizza dough to rise is more about giving the yeast time to bring flavors out of the wheat than it is about leavening. Most of the leavening occurs when you put the active dough into the hot oven, so you don't need to wait until the dough balls double in size.
Top with your pizza toppings and bake at 450 F for 5 to 7 minutes or until the cheese and dough are brown.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Creamy Mushroom Soup
After the overindulgences at Christmas, I don't really feel like cooking a lot. (And even the thought of sweets makes me slightly ill!) This is an easy, homey dinner that makes great leftovers as well. You could easily omit the dried mushrooms, but they seem to give the soup an even richer depth of flavour... along with the cognac, which is my new "secret" ingredient in almost everything. I like to keep the texture of this quite rustic, rather than making it a puree.
Mushroom Soup (serves 4):
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock 
1 litre water
1/2 cup dried shiitake mushrooms
24 oz button mushrooms, chopped
1/4 cup butter
1 leek, finely chopped
salt & pepper
1 tbsp fresh thyme
1/4 cup cream
3 tbsp cognac
Bring the stock, water, and dried mushrooms up to a boil in a large soup pot. While that is heating, fry the butter, leeks, and mushrooms until softened and browned. Dump that to the hot water and cook for about 1 hour, adding salt, pepper, and thyme to season. Pulse with an immersion blender until it's to your desired consistency, then add the the cream and cognac and bring it back up nearly to a boil.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Reese's PB Cookie Tarts
Well, here it is almost Christmas time. As I mentioned in my last cookie post, my mom came by to help me with Christmas baking (and more importantly child minding). This cookie is a real hit with all peanut butter and chocolate lovers. It looks really cute too!
Reese's PB Cookie Tarts:
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 package mini peanut butter cups
Cream the margarine, peanut butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla together. In another bowl, sift together the dry ingredients and blend into the creamed mixture. Shape into 1 inch balls and press into ungreased mini muffin tins (tins should be about 3/4 full).
Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes - don't over bake! While cookies are baking, unwrap the peanut butter cups, and keep them in the fridge. As soon as you remove the cookies from the oven, press a peanut butter cup into the centre of each cookie. Work quickly while the cookies are still soft and hot. Let the muffin tins cool completely before removing the cookies.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Pear Clafoutis
Court and I invited the family over for a spur of the moment french dinner, featuring rabbit stew and this clafoutis for dessert. When we were deciding on what to make, we wanted something relatively simple since we were putting most of our effort into cooking rabbit for the first time. We remembered Chris' experiments in clafoutis back in June and decided to try our own.
Pear Clafoutis (adapted from Ina Garten):
1 tbsp butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar, plus enough to line dish
3 eggs
6 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
seeds from 1 vanilla pod
zest of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp cognac
2-3 ripe Bartlett pears
Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Butter a 1 quart/1 litre dish and sprinkle the bottom and sides with sugar. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in the flour, cream, vanilla seeds, zest, salt, and cognac. Set that aside and peel and slice the pears to line the dish. Pour the batter over the pears and bake around 30-40 minutes until the custard is firm and golden.
We used vanilla seeds instead of extract and added the cognac, and then tried to convince ourselves that fruit desserts are always healthy.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
The other day my lovely mother came over to help me watch the baby, and we did some Christmas baking. We actually made four different things all in one day! It's wonderful because now when people pop over I have sweets to pull out of the freezer. It also doesn't hurt that I refer to my mother as the baby wisperer. Seriously, the woman can calm the most angry baby as if it is nothing! There are days I wish she would move in with me...
These cookies are from my Canadian Living cookbook that I got when I got married. My husband thinks they are better than when I make my mom's chocolate chip cookies with pudding mix. I can't say I agree, but they are pretty good.
Oatmeal Cookies:
2/3 cup softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups quick oats
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
In a large bowl beat the butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla, and cinnamon. In a sparate bowl mix the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture along with the chocolate chips and walnuts.
Drop by heaping spoonful onto greased baking sheets and bake at 375 F for 10 minutes or until golden. Delish and great for freezing!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Marc's Creamy Salmon Miso Soup
I have been dreaming of this since I saw it 9 months ago on No Recipes. Mine doesn't have the lovely glistening fat that Marc's does, since it is so difficult to find salmon belly in land-locked Edmonton (and I didn't bother making the trek to any specialty shops to check for it). Still, it was ridiculously good and 
incredibly simple to make. I luckily had most of the ingredients on hand so only had to pick up soy milk and parsnips. And what was even better is that I got all the leftovers to myself!
