So. I know I’ve posted this recipe for Steak & Guinness Pie before. But that was a while – slightly over two years! – ago. (Whoa, has it only been two and a half years since this bastion of deliciousness made its way into my home, stomach and heart?) So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to repost it, and nag all of you who haven’t yet made it into finally doing so!

Last week, I also downloaded Paper by 53 which is an incredible sketchpad app. Actually, to call it a ‘sketchpad app’ seems a bit dimunitive, since the whole point of making it fairly minimalist (it’s meant to feel like you, anywhere between 1-5 simple, intuitive tools, and a piece of paper) is that you’re only limited by your imagination. So after making this pie for D’s belated birthday dinner last night, I was nursing my food baby in front of the TV and sent a doodle of the ingredients list to Vick, who then commanded me to sketch the rest of the recipe steps out and post them here.

I don’t know if this will be the first and last post in my new Doodles category, since it took me about 45 minutes to sketch all this out (and then my hand was super sore from colouring), but this was pretty fun. :) Also, I figure I’ve probably left out some ingredients and less important steps, so for the detailed version, please refer to the original post.

It’s no secret by now how much I love cake. Cupcakes, muffins, teacakes, cakey breads, coffeecakes; iced, frosted, buttercreamed, or any which way, cakes are all good. They’re delicious and never fail to hit the spot (when done well anyway).

One of my favourite teacakes, though, is the financier. There’s a little bit of debate going around as to the origins of their names – some say it’s due to the traditional rectangular mold used to bake them in which makes them resemble gold ingots, others say it’s because the cakes became popular around the financial district of Paris, as finance-types found it easy to grab one of these very portable cakes on the way back to the office after lunch or meetings.

Whatever the etymology of its name, I personally remember wheedling my mum into a pit stop whenever we would pass by a Delifrance when I was a kid. Now, I know as well as you do that Delifrance really isn’t the gold standard one measures Parisian pastries against, but those financiers were (and still are) irresistable to me. I’d take a box of 6 home, and toast them one by one until piping hot and slightly crispy around the edges, and enjoy them in my room, as I took a break from homework or studying, with a glass of cold milk.

And the best part? The batter really couldn’t be easier to assemble. The basic financier comprises powdered sugar, egg whites, browned butter and almond flour (held together with a little extra cake flour), but there’s no beating to stiff peaks, creaming, or any elbow grease involved. This is, in fact, a perfect recipe for those without stand mixers in your kitchen. I did tweak my go-to recipe a little to incorporate my favourite nut, and it does add in an extra dimension of fiddliness since you need to grind the pistachios quite finely or the texture of the teacakes won’t be right. (The key to this is to do it in small batches so your grinder doesn’t overheat and the nuts don’t turn to a nut butter.)

The one thing you do have to pay attention during though, is the browning of your butter. There’s about 10-20 seconds tops that separates browned butter from burnt butter. And having learnt the hard way that there are some times when one shouldn’t multitask in the kitchen, keep an eye on your butter once it starts to bubble and foam. The moment you start smelling hazelnuts and the milk solids in the bottom of the pan have turned a deep brown, remove the pan from the heat and scrape the butter out into a cool bowl. (The residual heat from the pan – especially if you’re using a thick-based one – could easily bring your butter past the point of no return.)

Pistachio Financiers
(adapted from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking)

230g unsalted butter
55g almond meal
55g shelled pistachios, plus more to garnish
90g cake flour
280g powdered sugar
8 large egg whites, at room temperature

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Cook until the solids separate and brown to a dark golden colour, 7-10 minutes. Immediately pour off into a clean bowl, scraping out all of the browned bits at the bottom of the pan, and let cool at room temperature until it reaches around 20ºC. Be sure not to chill it, as it needs to remain in liquid form (but it also can’t be hot when you add it to the rest of the ingredients or the cake will turn out gooey and clumpy).

Preheat your oven to 180ºC. Adjust the rack to the centre of the oven. Spray or grease your moulds, and dust lightly with flour, tapping out any excess flour.

Finely grind the pistachios in a food processor, in batches if necessary. Toast the extra pistachios for garnish in the oven for 5-10 minutes, then pulse in the food processor to roughly chop, or crush with the base of a heavy skillet.

Sift together the almond meal, ground pistachios, cake flour and powdered sugar into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Turn the machine on low and mix the dry ingredients for 30 seconds. Add the egg whites all at once and mix on medium speed for 3 minutes.

Add the cooled browned butter all at once, including all of the browned bits. Mix for 3 minutes on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl well (the butter tends to sink to the bottom). Financier batter will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. When using refrigerated batter, be sure to bring it back to room temperature, then stir the entire mixture from the bottom up to the top to reincorporate any separated butter.

Fill each mold about two-thirds full, top with a little of the roughly chopped pistachios, and bake, rotating once halfway through for even browning, for 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes, then invert the financiers onto the rack and cool completely before serving. Financiers taste best on the day they’ve been baked, but, wrapped airtight, will keep at room temperature for up to 2 days, or in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.

Yield: around 30 financiers

Goose. Cabbage. Carrots. Stuffing. Potatoes. Corn. Ham. Gravy. Tiramisu. Oh my god, I feel sick all over again. Which is probably why it’s taken me two weeks to muster up the strength to look at the photos I took of the food (whilst slowly working my way through the leftovers) so that I could do up this post. But boy was that a meal to write home about. :) One guest at our dinner of Christmas orphans, D, even dubbed our apartment The Goose & Cabbage and proceeded to draw a sign for our gastropub. (PS: D – Don’t kill me, I love that picture to bits!)

I’ve always wanted a Christmas dinner with a gigantic roast bird, but the size of my flat (and, therefore, the respective sizes of my dinner table – seats 6, tops – and my tiny, tiny oven) meant that roasting a turkey was pretty much out of the question. Which wasn’t an issue, since I’m not the biggest fan of turkey anyway. Chickens didn’t seem festive or special enough, which is how I landed up with a 6kg goose stuffed in the bottom of my fridge on the 23rd of last month.

That got roasted with a blend of fresh citrus zests and spices, glazed with a little extra marmalade and honey mid-way through the cooking process, and once I had decided on that, I got to thinking about the more interesting tasks: the sides. To me, big meals centering around a roast (be it a prime rib, chicken, turkey, or goose like in this case) are more about the sides than the main event. Potatoes roasted in goose fat were a no-brainer, and I picked two more veggie sides (creamed corn with parmesan and nutmeg, and savoy cabbage shredded and sautéed in more goose fat and scented with rosemary and minced garlic), outsourced the glazing of a ham to E, and then set about thoroughly researching stuffing (or, if you’re gonna be a pedant, dressing, since I didn’t actually stuff it in the bird’s cavity) recipes.

And boy was that stuffing my downfall. I barely managed to finish one small helping of the actual goose, delicious as it was, ‘cos I couldn’t help going back for seconds and thirds and fourths! of stuffing. Juicy, well-seasoned sausagemeat, toasted pine nuts, garlic ciabatta croutons, packed together with loads of herbs into a well-buttered dish and baked to juicy perfection. But I’m glad I made tonnes of it, ‘cos it made a delicious breakfast hash or two with the leftover roast potatoes, and topped with a fried egg.

Stuffing and Roast Potato Breakfast Hash
1 cup sausage stuffing (see recipe below)
1 cup leftover roast potatoes
3 tsp goose fat, divided
2 eggs
salt and pepper

Roughly chop the stuffing and potatoes. In a cast iron pan (or another heavy based sauté pan), heat 1 tsp of the goose fat over high heat. Add the potatoes, and cook, stirring gently, until sizzling hot and starting to crisp up again around the edges, about 6-8 minutes.

Lower the heat to medium and add the stuffing, stirring gently until completely heated through.

Fry each egg in 1 tsp of the remaining goose fat in a nonstick pan to your liking – I personally think a very runny yolk makes a delicious sauce for the hash. Divide the hash between two warmed plates, and top each with an egg. Season the eggs with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt and a few twists of the pepper mill, and serve immediately.

Yield: Serves 2

Sausage, Sage and Pinenut Stuffing
2 cloves garlic, microplaned (divided)
1/3 loaf bread, torn into 1/2 inch dice (I used ciabatta, but I think brioche would work wonderfully too)
2 tbsp butter, plus extra for greasing
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 stalk celery/leek, finely chopped
500g sausage meat (I used sage sausages, but any fresh sausages you normally like would work well here)
large bunch of fresh sage, minced
slightly under 1 cup chicken broth
1 egg
small handful of flat-leaf parsley, minced
100g pine nuts, toasted
salt and pepper
olive oil

Preheat oven to 160ºC. Combine 1 tbsp of the microplaned garlic with 2 tbsp of olive oil, and mix well. Toss the bread pieces with the garlic and oil, season lightly with salt and toast in the preheated oven until golden brown, rotating the pan and tossing the croutons to toast evenly, about 15-20 minutes. (Can be prepared a day in advance and stored, once cool, in an airtight container.)

Turn the oven up to 180ºC. Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based pan over medium-low heat. Add the shallots, the rest of the garlic, and leek, and gently sweat until softened, about 5 minutes. You don’t want the vegetables to brown too much. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Turn the heat up to medium, and add about 1-2 tsp more of olive oil to the same pan. Tip the sausage meat and the minced sage into the pan. Using a wooden spoon, break up all of the sausage meat and stir well so that there are no large clumps remaining – the largest pieces should be no bigger than 1/2cm or so. Continue to stir and cook until about 75% of the meat is no longer pink, about 8-10 minutes. Add the reserved vegetables and half the chicken stock to the pan, then remove from heat.

Whisk the remaining stock, the egg, and the minced parsley (about 2 tbsp) together, and add this to the sausage mixture, stirring continuously. Season with a little more salt (you shouldn’t need too much since the sausages are already seasoned), and very generously with black pepper. Gently fold the croutons and pine nuts in.

Transfer to an appropriately sized, buttered baking dish, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and bake until the centre of the stuffing registers 66ºC on an instant-read thermometer, about 45 minutes. (The stuffing can be prepared until this stage a day in advance, then cooled and kept refrigerated. Just bring it to room temperature before the next step.)

Uncover and continue to bake until golden brown and crispy on top, about 15-20 more minutes. Serve warm.

Yield: Makes enough to serve 6 with leftovers (about a 9″ square cake pan’s worth)

I don’t know about you lot, but I’m still recovering from the last month of mayhem. And I think I will be for another month or so. When I begin to think about the buckets of booze, piles of food, and general excess we partook of in the name of festive fun, I still feel a bit sick.

But! January’s here – which means it’s time for everyone to hit the gym, cut back on the unhealthy food (until the Chinese New Year anyway), and get on with life. For me, one of my weekday morning rituals that I’ve missed is having a quiet breakfast and cup of coffee (thanks, Vick, I still use the V60 almost every day!) on the balcony after I send the bunny to work. This morning, having stockpiled a nice stash of the awesomest brioche in HK in my freezer, I decided to go with Egg in the Basket.

This dish is probably best described as the bastard child of a fried egg sandwich and oeufs en cocotte, where you replace the cocotte with bread and cook it all in a frying pan instead! (GENIUS, I say!) The trick to doing this dish well is to toast one side of the bread first and then to crack an egg into the middle after you’ve flipped it, and then to moderate the heat carefully so your bread doesn’t burn before the egg is cooked. I generally also cover the pan to let the top of the egg steam a little (or pop the entire pan under the broiler for a minute). The resulting 2-D sandwich is the picture of perfection, especially with the tendrils of egg-white that spread out under the bread and go crispy and delicious! This way, you also avoid having to flip the entire thing over which could result in a broken or over-cooked egg yolk (read: CATASTROPHE).

Egg in a Basket

1 2cm-thick slice of brioche (or your bread of choice)
softened butter
1 large egg
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Using a cookie cutter, cut the middle of your slice of bread out. I generally just go with round, but please feel free to use whatever shape tickles your fancy – as long as the hole is large enough to mostly contain your egg. Spread a thin but even layer of butter over both sides of the bread, and on the cut-out portion as well.

Crack your egg into a small bowl or ramekin; set aside.

Heat a frying pan with a well-fitting lid over medium heat, and drop the slice of bread in. Cook for about 2-3 minutes or until golden brown. Flip the slice of bread over, drop about half a teaspoon of extra butter into the hole, and carefully tip the egg into the hole.

Lower the heat slightly, and cook for 2 minutes. The egg should be mostly cooked by now, but you will probably still have a layer of uncooked white on the top. Pour about 10-15ml of water into the pan (near the side, not directly onto the bread), then immediately cover with the lid for 45 seconds to 1 minute. Uncover, nudge the egg gently to see if it is cooked to your liking, then remove to a plate, sprinkle with salt and a few twists of the pepper mill, and serve immediately.

Yield: Serves 1

WOW – I’ve been gone for a while, huh. I’m not entirely sure what happened – but an entire summer came and went and I seem to have completely forgotten about this space. Yeesh, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how that happened. But I’m sorry! And I’m back! And the weather is cool again! And I’ve gotten the blown lightbulbs in my kitchen replaced! Which means I’m back in the kitchen, pottering around with jamming and breading and various cookery, including getting cracking on my Christmas 2011 menu (I’ve earmarked a few roast goose recipes) so I’ve got my fingers crossed that I won’t get too distracted by the festive season and forget to take pictures and post the button-popping, pants-splitting feast I’m intending to inflict upon my guests.

In the meantime, I thought I’d post a recipe which we could all use on those hungover mornings amidst the festive (read: alcohol-drenched party) season. It’s a post that I’ve had saved in my drafts for over a year now, and that’s not even because I managed to forget about my blog. Scrambled eggs are a slightly controversial topic – in the kitchen, at least. It’s probably got to do with how there are so many different incarnations of scrambled eggs – do you like large or small curds, runny or fully set eggs? How creamy do you like it? And do you want them plain or flavoured with simple herbs like chives, or have you been fortunate enough to come into possession of truffles whose fragrance you can imbue your raw eggs with, before topping the hot mess with a few (or many!) thin shavings?

Since I figure we who scramble eggs at home don’t tend to have fresh truffles on hand, I figured I’d talk about how I like to do my basic scramble. If I feel like poshing it up a little I’ll fold in some fresh chives, or drizzle with truffle oil (for the fragrance without the cost!). I also don’t normally bother with cooking my eggs in a bain marie – it’s too much of a hassle without a proportionate pay-off, especially if I’m hungover and just want to cobble together a hot meal to settle my stomach.

For the record, I’m a fan of medium-soft set large curds, and in order to scramble eggs to my liking, I find the best tool to move your eggs around a non-stick pan is a silicone spatula. It’s flexible enough to scrape up every last bit of egg from the sides of your pan, whilst allowing for the least disruption of your eggs, which leaves you with large ribbons of eggs weaved around each other as the proteins coagulate. And one point to note which I find most important, regardless of how you like your eggs done, is to ensure that you pull your eggs off the heat (and onto a warmed plate or slice of toasted bread) before they are cooked to your liking, so the residual heat doesn’t overcook your gently scrambled eggs by the time they move from the kitchen to your mouth!

My Favourite Scrambled Eggs

3 large eggs
fine sea salt
50g whipping cream
10g cold unsalted butter
10g unsalted butter, softened
fleur de sel
freshly cracked black pepper
freshly toasted bread
optional: truffle oil and chives, to garnish

Crack the eggs into a bowl, a season very lightly with a tiny pinch of fine sea salt. Add the cream, and beat gently with a fork until the whites and yolks are amalgamated, but try not to incorporate too much air into it. Cut the first 10g of (cold) butter into small cubes, and add it, along with the cream, to the eggs, and stir briefly.

Heat a medium-sized nonstick pan over medium-low heat. Add the next 10g of butter to the pan, and move it about to coat the entire surface, until it melts and starts to foam. Be careful that the butter doesn’t burn – you don’t even really want it to brown at all.

Tip the eggs into the pan, and let it sit for about 15-20 seconds: just long enough to form a thin skin on the base, then gather the solidified layer from the outside to the inside, or in a large, circular movement. You don’t want to beat the eggs or whisk them up to form tiny bits, you want to smoothly crumple up large curds and allow the uncooked egg to settle back to the bottom of the pan before repeating this process. Depending on the size of your pan, it should take about 2-3 minutes to cook altogether. If the egg seems to be setting too quickly, remove the pan from the heat and to let the pan cool slightly.

About 1 minute before the eggs are done, remove the pan from the heat. Fold the eggs gently, one last time, then tip them out onto your toasted slices of bread. If using, drizzle the truffle oil over the eggs, and snip a couple of lengths of chives over to garnish. Otherwise, just sprinkle with a little extra fleur de sel, and top with a few more twists of the pepper mill. Serve immediately.

Yield: Serves 1

A couple of months ago, D – a good friend of mine – suddenly turned to me whilst we were having drinks, and declared that she wanted to make blueberry jam. Naturally, I was delighted to hear this, having assumed she meant she was going to make some and gift me with a bottle or two. :P Sadly, what she really meant was that she wanted to learn how to make jam (specifically, blueberry), and was hoping for a lesson. Naturally, I obliged.

Blueberries are a soft, sweet, and not especially acidic fruit that generally contains about 0.4% concentration of pectin at most. This means that when making jam, you will most likely need to add additional acid and pectin to the fruit in order to get a firm set, as you generally need about 1% pectin in your jam, and a pH level of around 2.8-3.6 for the jam to set.

I had a sniff around a couple of supermarkets here in Hong Kong, and for some reason, couldn’t find any plain pectin, but I did find a bag of jam sugar – which is sugar that has pectin already added to it. (Jam sugar normally also contains some added citric acid in order to allow the jam to set.) As you can see in the picture above, the appearance of jam sugar is kinda clumpy – this is to be expected, thanks to the additives.

Now, one benefit of using jam sugar over extracting your own pectin (or cooking a jam without any added pectin), is that you only need to bring the mixture to a rolling boil for between 1-4 minutes (depending on your brand of pectin – just follow the manufacturer’s instructions for timing), and you’ll be able to achieve your firm set. This translates to a jam that generally will retain brighter colours and flavours, as the amount of time you need to cook the jam for is greatly reduced. (Some say it also retains more nutrients in the fruit since it’s not cooked to hell and back – anybody know if it’s true?)

Nutritional content aside though, when making jam, it’s always important to taste some of the fruit you’re preserving before you start. Like all cooking, the flavour of your final product is very much contingent on the raw ingredients you start with. For example, the blueberries we used were fairly sweet, but not very acidic, so I decided to add in the juice of two lemons, and used a ratio of about 3:5 for sugar to fruit (by weight).

Anyway, she’s probably going to kill me for putting up this picture, but I really couldn’t resist. :) Hopefully, this post (this picture?) will inspire you to get jamming too – it probably took about 15 minutes of weighing, measuring, juicing, and stirring before D was delightedly peering into that steaming pot of jam. And in case you needed a little more convincing with regards to commercial pectin, all I can say is this: the faster the jam sets, the faster you’ll be on your way to making out with a sticky ladle too. ;P

Blueberry Jam

1kg fresh blueberries
600g jam sugar (I used this one)
juice of 1-3 lemons
20g unsalted butter

Wash and drain the blueberries. Tip them all into a large, heavy-based pot set over medium heat. Add in the sugar and lemon juice.

Stir the mixture, crushing the blueberries as you go, with a wooden spoon, and as it heats up, until the sugar has dissolved in the blueberries and its juice. Moderate the heat and do not allow the mixture to come to a boil until the sugar is completely dissolved. Have a taste, and adjust the sweetness and/or acidity, if necessary.

Once the sugar has dissolved, add in the butter, stir it in, and turn the heat up. Let the pot come to a rolling boil (that doesn’t go away with stirring). When it boils, let it cook, stirring occasionally, for 4 minutes (or as long as the manufacturer of your jam sugar instructs). Ladle or pour the jam into warm, sterilized jars, screw on the lids and place in a deep pot of boiling water. The jars should be submerged by at least an inch. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes, then remove from the heat, dry off the bottles and allow to cool to room temperature in a cool, draught-free place. With their seals intact, bottles of jam will keep in a cool, dark place for about a year. (Once open, keep refrigerated and consume within 4 weeks.)

Alternatively, store the jam in clean containers in the fridge for up to 4 weeks.

Yield: About 1.5L of jam

Yesterday, 8th March, was Shrove Tuesday, or – more commonly known in our all-inclusive society today – Pancake Day. Pancake Day isn’t that commonly celebrated outside the western world, but for those of you in Asia who may have heard about it but don’t know where it comes from, Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent, where Christians and Catholics historically practice abstinence in the period leading up to Easter. Since rich foods like eggs, fat, sugar, and dairy (or food containing them) are some common items that practicing households might give up, pancakes were an easy way to use up these perishable items before the abstinence began.

About a week ago, I had a gluten-free cook-date with a friend of mine who’s mildly gluten intolerant. One of the recipes I tried out was this one for Gluten Free Buckwheat Pancakes from Wrightfood. These buckwheat pancakes are so freaking delicious, I’ve pretty much abandoned all hope of ever making any other pancake in my (very much gluten-loving) household. As much as I love pancakes, and as fluffy and lovely as the pancakes I get from my usual go-to recipe are, they tend to run a little plain, and pancakes are just a slightly more texturally interesting version of toast in my Sunday brunches. These, on the other hand, have a lovely nutty and slightly savoury flavour. They go equally well with a lightly spiced chutney, good marmalade, or the classic butter-and-maple syrup topping. In fact, they’re even good enough to eat on their own!

Most pancake recipes I’ve found online don’t generally bother separating the eggs whilst whipping up the batter, but ever since I started doing that, and was delighted with the fluffy, pillowy texture, I’ve never gone back. If you’ve got a handheld mixer, or a stand mixer, these will take no time at all to put together. It’s a bit of a fuss if you need to do it by hand, but I like to think of it as burning off the calories you’re about to consume. As Matt notes in his blog post, it’s also a fairly healthy recipe – whole grains, maple syrup instead of sugar, but I’ve tweaked the recipe slightly and converted the measurements into weight instead of volume.

For this year’s Fat Tuesday, I decided to go the savoury route and have breakfast for dinner. :) Inspired by the Sausage McMuffins, I bought a few sausage patties from Citysuper, fried up some eggs, and sandwiched them together to make a rather scrumptious meal. I’d strongly recommend anyone who likes pancakes to give this recipe a shot – I know it’s a little annoying to have to go out and buy a bag of buckwheat flour *just* to use about a cup of it, but once you taste how awesome these pancakes are, I promise that bag will disappear in a flash.

Browned Butter Buckwheat Pancakes
(adapted from Wrightfood)

150g buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
50g butter
300g milk
50g maple syrup (or honey)
2 large eggs, separated

clarified butter for frying

to serve: sausage patties, fried egg, tomato chutney, and maple syrup (optional, but not really!)

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium mixing bowl.

In a small pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue to heat until the solids start to brown, and the butter smells nutty. Immediately pour the butter off into a measuring jug (that will fit your liquid ingredients) to ensure it doesn’t burn.

In the measuring jug, combine the milk, maple syrup and egg yolks with the browned butter. Whisk to combine. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, and gently mix together. It’s okay if your batter is a little bit lumpy.

Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whisk about 1/5 of the egg whites into the batter to lighten the mixture slightly, then gently – but quickly – fold the rest of your whites in using a large metal spoon. You should take care to not deflate the egg whites too much, but I’ve found that faffing about with the batter for too long also results in lots of the air being lost.

Once the batter is ready, get frying – heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat, and lightly brush the surface with clarified butter. (I prefer using clarified butter – over regular butter – when frying, since this way the solids don’t burn, but you still get that buttery taste and aroma in whatever you’re cooking.) Pour in about 1/4 cup of the batter at a time, cook until holes form on the top (uncooked bit) of the pancake, and it’s mostly solid, about 2 minutes. Flip it over with an offset spatula or your pancake-flipper of choice to finish cooking, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a warmed plate, and keep warm in a low oven while you cook the rest of the batter.

To assemble a Sausage McPancake (TM), lay one pancake out on your work surface. Spread a good dollop of chutney, layer over as many sausage patties as you’d like, and a runny fried egg. Top with another pancake, then drizzle over a little maple syrup, and tuck in.

Yield: Makes about 10 pancakes – i.e. enough for 3 Sausage McPancakes plus an extra dessert pancake each :)

A couple of my friends know that I’ve been trying to live a smidge healthier of late – a little exercise, aiming for my 8 glasses of water per day, and adding some vegetables into the dietary mix. Nothing too drastic – I’m not giving up meat or fat or beer, and I think I wouldn’t survive the exercise bit if not for my post-gym, pre-shower cigarette. Haha. But anyway, I’m getting a little side tracked.

When bunny and I eat at home (or bento lunches), it’s easy enough to include a fruit & vegetable component into the meal, but the problem is that we do eat out quite a bit, and most of those meals tend to run a little dry on the vegetable side. To combat this, I’ve started keeping a sort of salad bar in my fridge: every weekend I chop, wash and spin a gallon-ziploc bag of salad vegetables, some toppings (fruits, nuts, carrot sticks, maybe a little crumbled/shaved cheese), and when I get hungry for a snack, or when bunny’s got a work function so I’m dinnering alone, I now (sometimes) have a salad instead of instant noodles or chips.

It’s actually been great – nowhere near as tough as I thought it might be to incorporate all these vegetables in. I’m not the hugest fan of salads, but making them at home with 100% stuff that I like means I don’t need to pick out raisins or feel sick when I see a rotting leaf that didn’t get picked out and flash back to my restaurant slave days. And it’s pretty satisfying too – half a ball of fresh mozzarella, torn up, or a few fish fingers (I’m not even going to apologise for how much I love fish fingers) reheated and gently tossed in with the leaves, or even just a poached egg sitting pretty on the top for protein and you’ve got yourself a surprisingly tasty meal.

The best part for me though, is probably the dressing. Additives and mystery-ingredients aside, I’ve never met a store-bought salad dressing that I actually liked. Thousand Island? Bleh. Blue Cheese? Yech. Weird Vinaigrette With Unidentifiable Particles Floating Around? UGH. Which isn’t a huge problem, since vinaigrettes are such easy things to sort out anyway at home.

Armed with the basic ratio of 3:1 (fat to acid), you’re limited only by your imagination. And while I favour slightly more interesting combinations like mandarin orange and bacon fat (probably 2:1 here though, since orange juice isn’t as acidic) when entertaining, the staple in my fridge is a simple sherry vinegar and sesame oil vinaigrette. I love that toasted nuttiness that sesame oil brings; it’s so much more interesting than using a neutral flavoured oil, and olive oil would probably have had me bored by bowl #2. Flavoured with some minced shallot, whose sharpness gets mellowed by a quick prelimary soak in the vinegar, I make up a bottle, shake it like a polaroid picture, and am good to go for a couple of weeks. All the convenience of store-bought, only a gazillion times tastier.

Sesame Sherry Vinaigrette

1 shallot
1/2 tsp flaky sea salt
50g (about 3-4 tbsp) sherry vinegar (see note*)
1 tbsp good Dijon mustard (I recommend Maille)
50g grapeseed (or another neutral flavoured) oil
100g sesame oil

black pepper
freshly chopped soft herbs (eg parsley, taragon)

Finely mince the shallot, then add it, with the salt and vinegar, to a small mixing bowl. Let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. Stir in the mustard. Pour all of this into a bottle that has a tight-fitting lid, and add both oils. Cap the bottle, then give it a good shake.

If using the salad dressing immediately, you can whisk the oils into the vinegar-mustard mixture, in the same bowl.

Taste, adjusting the seasoning as necessary (more oil if it’s too tart, more vinegar or salt if it’s too bland), and you’re good to go.

Use a couple of tablespoons, along with 3-4 turns of the pepper mill, and a sprinkling of freshly chopped herbs, to coat a few handfuls of washed and spun salad leaves. It will keep in the fridge for a week or two, but give the bottle a good shake before using each time.

Yield: 200-250 ml (i.e. about 4-6 generous servings)

Note: If you haven’t got any sherry vinegar in the house, please don’t go out and buy some just for this recipe (though, it is quite lovely in vinaigrettes). Feel free to substitute with red wine or white wine vinegar – or any other fragrant vinegar you like, except probably balsamic, since that’s generally a bit too sweet to make salad dressings with.

I’ve been in a little bit of a cooking-rut. I’m not entirely sure how it started or when exactly this happened, but for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been starting to feel like I lost my kitchen-mojo. The first instance I remember was when I left a rib of beef in the SVS for a few hours too long (borne out of my paranoia of oversleeping and not plonking the meat into the water oven early enough for dinner), and, although it remained very much edible, the texture was just a little bit off. Kind of like a cross between pastrami and roast beef (and I don’t mean that in a good way).

Then I had a few bread-baking mishaps – No-Knead Bread not turning out at all how I would have liked (and no idea if the fault lay with me or the recipe), and my first few attempts at making this milkbread went strangely awry, thanks to an overzealous addition of random ingredients on my part, and very uncooperative yeast. (It expired, apparently. Then I bought some new yeast, and it failed to proof in warm water, the bowl of yeasty water staring balefully at me and stubbornly refusing to froth. But I tried anyway – the dry ingredients were all weighted out and mixed together already – and when it rose, I may or may not have left it to rise for too long, in too warm a spot.) Finally, I tried to make some peanutella to cheer myself up, in spite of not having any home-baked bread to spread it on, but for some reason it turned out rather clumpy and dry. It tasted pretty good, but it wasn’t the delicious, glistening, oozy spread I’d envisioned either.

But! That’s all over now – knock on wood. Before throwing in the (kitchen) towel and declaring myself officially kitchen-mojo-less, I decided to give it one last shot. I took Michael Ruhlman’s 5:3 bread ratio, swapped out about a third of the water for milk, and threw in a couple of teaspoons of sugar for a hint of sweetness. And – behold! – it felt like the kitchen gods were all smiling down upon me once again! My dough kneaded to a delightfully supple elasticity; it rose; it smelled wonderful! When I punched it down, it deflated happily, and was most amenable to being kneaded again briefly before its second rise, and subsequent baking, in a cast iron cocotte.

For those of you interested in bread-baking, baking the loaf in an enameled (or well-seasoned) cast iron Dutch oven is a great way to improve the texture of your bread, without having to invest in some high-tech steam-injection oven, or risk damaging your oven by spritzing the inside of your oven with cold water. The thick, heavy walls of the cocotte do a great job of retaining heat, and – covered for the first half of your baking time – steam in the cooking vessel, which in turn softens the outer layer of the loaf, allowing for a greater initial growth (also known as oven spring, which is the effect of the yeast’s last activity before it’s killed off by the heat of the oven), before the crust dries out and hardens.

There are two ways to go about doing this – one is to preheat your cocotte along with the oven (for about 20-30 minutes), and drop the proofed dough straight into the pan. The other is to let the dough proof directly in the Dutch oven on the second rise, and chuck the entire pot – dough and all – into your preheated oven. The upside of the first (potentially messy and slightly dangerous) method is an even greater oven spring, but I personally prefer the second method, as you don’t disrupt the structure you’ve just developed in your second rise. (Also, I’m a little prone to burning myself, and why play with fire, right?)

As you can see, this loaf gave me a delightfully airy (and fairly even) crumb, with a thin crust. It was fantastic fresh with a little salted butter – rather delicately straddling that bridge between tender and chewy, and it toasted up great – rendering the crust crisp and shattery once reheated – for breakfast the next morning, smeared with a spoonful of homemade blueberry jam. (Post on the blueberry jam to follow soon!) I really can’t think of a better way to have been welcomed back into my kitchen’s good favour, than with this beautiful boule. :)

Dutch Oven Milk Boule
(based on Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio – you can also find this book in my store!)

300g unbleached bread flour, plus more for dusting
5g salt
20g caster sugar
120g warm water (preferably at around 35-40ºC)
2g active dry yeast
60g whole milk

Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in a large mixing bowl.

Proof the yeast in the water, and let stand for 5-10 minutes, before combining with the milk.

Add this to the dry ingredients, and mix with your fingers or a wooden spoon till you’ve got a shaggy-ish dough. Dump the contents of the bowl onto a floured surface, roll your sleeves up, and start kneading. I like to press forward using the heel of my hand, fold the dough over and turn it 90°, then repeat. You should be going at this – dusting your hands and the surface lightly with more flour as necessary – for about 10 minutes. The dough will become smooth and elastic, and slightly tacky. Try not to add any more flour than the barest minimum to keep it from sticking, as too much flour will give you a dry dough and dense loaf.

Cut off a small bit of dough, and roll it into a ball. Gently stretch this piece between your fingers – if it can be stretched thin enough to be translucent (you should be able to just about make out the print of a newspaper through it) before tearing, congrats! Your dough has passed the windowpane test: this means long – and strong – enough gluten strands have been formed during the kneading, which will give your loaf structure, and hold up the air bubbles that the yeast creates. If it doesn’t, smush the little ball back into the rest of your dough, and knead until it passes this test.

Transfer the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with clingfilm, and leave to rise in a warm spot – preferably around 20-25°C. Once it has doubled in size, tip the dough back onto a floured surface, punch it down to deflate it, and knead it gently to redistribute the yeast.

To shape the dough into a boule, gather the ends of the dough and pull them together, smoothing, tucking, and pinching the crease to form a smooth, taut surface on the opposite side. As far as my experience goes, it’s pretty much impossible to have the smooth side tight enough, so keep going at it till you’ve got a nicely formed ball. This will help the dough to rise upwards instead of spreading out during the second rise.

Dust the entire ball lightly with flour, then sit it, seam-side down, on a circle of parchment that will fit in your baking vessel. You can then either drape the loosely with a floured kitchen towel (the linen, not terry-cloth, sort), or transfer the entire thing into the Dutch oven to proof, depending on whether or not you intend to preheat the pot. Leave it to rise for about 1 hour, or until doubled.

About 20-30 minutes before the second rise is done, preheat your oven to 220°C. (If you’re preheating the Dutch oven, go ahead and pop it – lid and all – into the oven too, at this point.) Once the dough is ready, slash it a couple of times with a lame (I just use a Stanley knife, lightly oiled to prevent dragging, that I keep specifically for bread-slashing.) and pop it into the oven. Cook for about 20 minutes, covered, then uncover, turn the oven down to about 175°C, and bake for an extra 20-30 minutes, rotating the pot halfway through for even browning.

To check that your bread is done, you can either tip it out of the pan and tap the bottom – you should hear a hollow thump. Alternatively, insert an instant-read thermometer into the middle of the loaf (from the side, so you don’t mar the appearance of your gorgeous boule!) and it’s done once the thermometer reads 91°C.

Remove the bread from the pan and allow to cool completely on a wire rack before slicing. This bread should keep fresh for about two days, well-wrapped, at room temperature, or you can freeze it for about 3-6 months, well-wrapped in foil. If freezing bread, I prefer to pre-slice it and freeze it (fresh) in pairs, then you can chuck the whole foil package into a low oven (about 125°C) for 15-20 minutes and you’ll have steaming bread that tastes like it’s been freshly baked. :)

Yield: Makes one small boule (about 8 inches in diameter, 5 inches high) – good for about 8 good slices of bread, plus the two crusty ends (baker’s treat!)

Note: Active dry yeast is the same as instant yeast, only it needs to be dissolved in warm water first for the spores to be activated. If you use instant/bread-machine yeast, you can substitute it with the same amount. There will be no need for you to proof the yeast, so you can just mix all the ingredients together all at once. To proof active dry yeast, stir the yeast into a small amount of warm water (the water should be around 35-40ºC, or just warm to the touch), and leave it to stand for 5-10 minutes. Once bubbles form on the surface of the water, indicating microbial activity (if none form, there’s a pretty strong chance your yeast has expired), continue with the recipe.

As much as I love roast beef (and roast beef dinners), I find that what I look forward to more than the actual dinner is the leftovers. Wafer thin slices of cold roast beef, rewarmed in a little gravy, piled atop lightly buttered bread with various accoutrements like caramelised onions, blistered cheese, mustard, and – of course – a fried egg.

Of course, this sandwich would be nothing if I didn’t start out with a good piece of meat. Thanks to my sous vide supreme (what’s a beef-related post on this blog without a little ode to my SVS, eh?) all I did was season about a kilo of boneless Black Angus rib well on all sides with salt and pepper, then I popped it into the water oven at 55ºC for 8 hours, and I browned it quickly in a preheated cast iron pan just before serving.

And, if you’ve gone through the trouble of roasting up a some beef and making a whole bunch of sides like glazed carrots, creamed corn/spinach, and buttery mashed potatoes, you really can’t settle for gravy out of a jar either. I personally love a caramelised onion gravy, so I’ve included a recipe for one below. It follows the usual method of thickening a stock into a sauce by means of a roux, which can be adapted to pretty much any other roasts you make by swapping out the beef stock and adjusting the aromats for whatever’s appropriate (e.g. chicken stock, with some roasted garlic and thyme instead of star anise with the onions, for a roast chicken).

Roast Beef Sandwiches

300g leftover roast beef
2 large slices of french bread
softened butter
wholegrain mustard
3-4 tbsp gravy, reheated (see below)
4 slices melty cheese (I like cheddar or gruyere)
2 eggs
optional: caramelised onions, and finely chopped parsley

Preheat your oven to 180ºC. Line a tray with greaseproof paper. (This will make your cleanup a little bit easier since chances are the cheese is going to melt onto the tray.)

Thinly slice your roast beef. It’s a little easier to get the slices really thin – without the use of a meat slicer anyway – if the meat is cold, so I’d recommend slicing it up straight out of the fridge, with the help of a really sharp knife. If the meat is in one big chunk, it’s also less likely to dry out in the fridge.

Generously smear each slice of bread with butter, going right to the edges – this will prevent the bread from getting soggy. Place the bread, buttered side up, on the prepared tray. Spread a thin layer of mustard over the butter, then, in as even a layer as possible, divide the beef between the two slices of bread. If using onions, spread them evenly over the beef, and dollop the gravy over. Lay two slices of cheese on top, letting the corners hang over the edges of the bread, then place the tray in the oven for about 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly and the meat has been warmed through.

While the sandwiches are toasting, fry two eggs to your liking. Once they’re ready, top each sandwich with an egg, shower a little chopped parsley over, and serve immediately.

If you’re intending to pack the sandwiches, I prefer to have the eggs cooked over easy so they’re a little less runny, then top with an extra slice of buttered bread, and wrap the entire sandwich in foil. Turn your oven off and let it cool slightly, then pop the foil packets into the oven so that the top slice of bread is warm as well, then keep in an insulated bag and try to eat it within 30 minutes so it doesn’t get too cold and claggy.

Yield: Makes two sandwiches

Caramelised Onion Beef Gravy
2 medium red onions, thinly sliced
one piece of star anise
60g + 10g unsalted butter
2 tbsp AP flour
S+P
500ml beef stock

Melt 60g of the butter in a deep sauté pan over medium heat. Add in the onions and star anise, and cook until deeply caramelised, about 30 minutes. Season gently with salt and black pepper.

Sift in the flour, and cook for about 2 minutes. The pan should smell nutty from the butter and if you tasted it, there shouldn’t be a pasty, floury taste to it anymore.

Add in about 50ml of the warmed stock, whisking to fully incorporate the stock, then continue to add it to your onion-roux in additions of about 50-100ml at a time. When all the stock has been added, simmer for about 10 minutes, until thickened to your preferred consistency. Strain into a clean pan, stir in any extra pan drippings or juices from the roast beef (removing any fat first, if possible. Taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary, then keep warm in a covered pan on the stove. Just before serving, remove from heat and monte the last 10g of butter.

The gravy – which, incidentally, goes great with mashed potatoes, and makes a fantastic dipping sauce for piping hot fries as well – will keep in a tightly covered container in the fridge for about 3 days, assuming no one steals it – or your sandwich, for that matter – first. :)

Yield: Makes 1-1.5 cups of gravy