Recipe: Caramelized Onions

One theme I've been thinking about recently is this recurring idea of "Luxe for Less". This concept can be applied to some inexpensive home-made recipes that really take the cake on the store-bought version, or, quick, simple ways that you can jazz up recipes or well-worn dishes.

This is a really simple side dish or garnish that really adds to meat dishes or burgers. What you do is get some red onions (I tend to use 4-5 large ones) and slice them thinly. You can slice them in half, then in thin half-rounds or if you're aesthetically picky, you can slice them all in round onion rings. I tend to make a big batch of this and then freeze the remainder, so when you need an emergency side or garnish for meat, it's already there waiting for you. The way this recipe approximates also makes it a bit hard to make a wee little bit for say, 2 people.

Heat a pan and add a small slice of butter and 3 Tbsp of olive oil (or grapeseed oil, if you prefer). Saute your onion shavings, leaving them to cook and soften in the pan. This can take up to 10-15 minutes if you've crowded your pan. If you have a pan that you've used to sear meat and then deglazed, you can use the same pan for these onions. You can also add thyme or rosemary to your onions if you fancy. This will all add to the flavour absorbed by the onions, which should now have turned wet, transculent and shiny.


Throw 3 heaped soup spoons of white sugar into the onions and stir to distribute. The heat will continue to melt the sugar into the onion mixture. When the sugar has at least partially dissolved, pour in 1/2 a cup (feel free to approximate, depending on how many onions you've used, you may need more or less sugar and balsamic) of balsamic vinegar into the onions and mix again.

As you cook the mixture, the onions will continue to soften, take on a dark hue and the resulting liquid will thicken slightly. The mixture is done, as soon as the vinegar is well distributed and the onions are an even colour. You can either drain away the liquid, or save it for something else. Serve a heapful of this on burger patties or with steak, or pack it like a skin, over a hot roast. Delish!


Just a note, this works with yellow or white onions too but it really actualizes itself with red onions which are sweeter and caramelize better. If you use small red onions, you will probably have to use 8-10 little ones but the trade-off is that the small little rings and dainty shavings are aesthetically very pretty, especially when plated with small-boned meat like frenched lamb rack.

Recipe: Yorkshire Pudding and Vegetarian Quesadillas

Remember those BBQs from your teenagehood? A gaggle of guys and girls crowded over a smoky pit eating half charred or half cooked pieces of skinny chicken wings, tough satay and canned Coke?

Those are terrible memories! Maybe it wasn't even about the BBQ at all, just to have something to do and a reason to invite people to gather. Since then, I've learned the value of a orangewood grill but never really been tempted to go back and stand over a charcoal fire.

Life throws you curveballs though. After many years of neglect and in preparation to host some college friends for a remember-those-times dinner, we finally got down to reviving the BBQ pit that my parents built into the garden many decades ago. It was exciting, building the grills, discovering that since my teenage years, Singapore has progressed to the point where we now have quick-burning charcoal (charcoal soaked in kerosene) and packs of hickory and applewood chips.

As luck would have it, the day dawned bright and windy but as it went on, grey clouds overshadowed the BBQ (although the weather was still perfect for outdoor eating). In the end, we had to make do with a makeshift BBQ but hey, it was worth it for a reason to wake up early to go to the market for some fresh produce. I was so happy I entirely overbought food (or so I thought but them good college friends came with matching appetites).

The beef above was a combination of 4 steaks of Grain-fed Ribeye and 2 steaks of Wagyu Ribeye from the Swiss Butcher and a 800g bone-in Cote de Bouef that I had bought and froze over Christmas from Greengrocer. The regular ribeye was surprisingly reasonable and very well marbled but the Wagyu is almost quardraple the price!

I must admit that the Wagyu does taste more tender and the Cote de Bouef was superb, of course the guys claimed it for themselves! I've heard it referred to as a super-prime, or a beef loin plus a beef rib, or in the US, a T-bone, which is the combination of a NY strip and the Tenderloin strip.

Sadly I have no picture of the largest cut of meat, since it took the longest to cook. The marinades were very simple, just lemon, a splash of red wine, rosemary, parsley and sliced garlic. The fragrance and juice was an explosion of meat, lemon and smoked applewood!


After a weekend of watching Jamie Oliver DVDs, I decided to make his Yorkshire pudding recipe, although the method of dumping batter in smoking hot oil struck me as a bit worrisome. I needn't have worried though, the recipe does work out perfectly and I'll definitly be making these from now on, it was both a cinch and a crowd pleaser!

Yorkshire Pudding
1/2 pint (285 milliliters) milk
4 ounces (115 grams) all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
3 eggs
A odourless vegetable oil like sunflower or grapeseed

1. Preheat oven to 220 C
2. Mix the batter ingredients together with a hand whisk or blender. Let rest for 10 minutes or a couple hours. The longer you rest the batter, the higher your puddings will be.
3. Preheat a Yorkshire pudding tray or a shallow muffin tin with 1/2-inch (1 centimeter) of oil in each section. The oil will heat up in the oven and when it's sputtering hot, quickly pull out the tray, ladle batter into each.
4. Put it back into the oven and cook for around 15 to 20 minutes until crisp and puffy, don't open the oven door before then or they won't rise.
5. Things to watch out for include, make sure your batter is not lumpy by mixing the eggs together first. Put a tray under the muffin tray in the oven to catch the spillover oil. Make sure your oil is Really Very Hot, or the batter will not cook immediately.

Don't forget to season the batter, as I did (producing somewhat bland although puffy puddings) and don't panic if the batter looks limp when you replace the tray in the oven, it Will puff up, just wait with the oven door closed!


These are the crayfish and squid that I bought from Tekka market in the morning, marinated in ginger juice with cilantro, chillis, lemon and a splash of white wine.


These are the crayfish after they're cooked, they don't entirely turn red so it's a bit deceptive. The BBQ squid was very good as well and significantly cheaper than the crayfish, which were about $22 for 7 medium sized ones, although they were fairly fat and meaty.


I also bought some lamb chops which I seasoned with herbs (thyme, mint and parsley) and ground cashew nuts and some sausages from Swiss Butcher, their white veal sausages and fat chipolata sausages are excellent and are I suppose, the higher grade alternative to the chicken picnic sausages or frozen chicken frankfurters from those teenage parties!


To keep the guests filled up while the meat was cooking, we made some quick vegetarian quesadillas. I'm slowly coming round to the idea that these are super effective and convenient snacks (this from someone who only ever ate egg white quesadillas with mushrooms in California). The filling of grilled capsicum, cheddar cheese and cilantro really is light and yummy. We omitted the roast chicken (which you can put in for a more filling regular meal) so that it would make a better snack and we finished several rounds of these.


Vegetarian Quesadillas
2 capsicums, 1 red and 1 yellow
A handful of spring onion stalks
A large bunch of cilantro
1 package of shredded cheddar cheese
2 large portobello mushrooms
Sour Cream
Wheat or flour tortillas

1. Roast two capsicums over an open fire till the skins are mottled black
2. Scrape away the skins and chop up the capsicum flesh
3. Roast two portobello mushrooms and dice it up
4. Mix into chopped cilantro and spring onion, mix in the chedder cheese
5. Pan fry some flour tortilla, spread the insides with sour cream and fill
6. Lay on a cutting board and quarter
7. Variations include adding sundried tomatoes, guacamole or shredded roast chicken.


We also had an awesome salad from J. who completely outdid himself again. I entirely forgot to take pictures of it but it was particularly amusing because he snitched his mom's yu-sheng plate to contain the mountain of salad he'd made. It was a most imagenative combination as well, mixed salad greens with cherry tomatoes, sultanas, hazlenuts, walnuts, all mixed with a clever chutney jam sauce. Suffice to say it was a gigantic plate and it was all finished.

Recipe: Cranberry Pecan Bread

Thank you E. for the lovely, thoughtful gift of fresh unshelled pecans! I just had to use these gorgeous chocolate-smelling babies. I wanted to make a buttermilk banana cake but those rotting pisang emas were a bit hard to come by so I thought I'd keep celebrating the season with some cranberry nut bread.


The funny thing about cranberries is that I don't think I really appreciate them for a long time. I associated them with runny turkey sauce or dried indestructable things that you chewed on camping trips trails. This is because I never had the fresh ones, which are raisin sweet and tangy bursts of goodness.


I tried two recipes. None really make bread, but then I must admit, I don't really like it to be a bread. The first one will make a classic butter cake where, if you beat hard and fast, the crystals of cake will fluff and seperate lightly.


The second recipe will make a more classic coffeecake, crumby and with a crusty sugared cake-top. I like both but I think I am partial to the first one. It's a golden brown, nutty, slightly spicy cake with these gorgeous interludes of moist plump cranberries.


To me, the texture and varied tastes of the spices, zest (you can use anything citrus and light, lemon, lime or orange) and the brandy really give the cake a kick but if it is too strong for you, you can omit it.


Also, while all pecans can be used, I tend to mix macadamia and pecan for a milder, smoother flavour. The taste of all pecans winds up being more dark and heaty. I'm not a huge fan of walnuts as I feel they have a woodier flavour.


Cranberry Nut Bread (1)

INGREDIENTS
185g/1.5 C self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
200g unsalted butter, softened
230g/1 C caster sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons grated lemon/lime/orange zest
80ml/1/3 C milk
1 Tablespoon brandy
1.25C fresh whole cranberries
200g/1.25 C pecan and macadamia nuts

DIRECTIONS
(1) Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Grind the pecans and macadamia nuts in a food processor. Soak the cranberries in the brandy.
(2) Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and light yellow. Add the eggs slowly and add the vanilla, zest, the spices and the nuts.
(3) Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Add flour mixture and milk alternately and then at the end, add the cranberries and brandy.

Bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake is dark golden and comes away slightly from the side of the tin. Cool in pans 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.



Cranberry Nut Bread (2)

INGREDIENTS
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons grated lemon/lime/orange zest
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped pecans and macadamias

DIRECTIONS
(1)In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients.
(2) Stir in buttermilk, egg, butter, cranberries and nuts just until moistened.
(3) Bake at 170 degrees C for 50min or until it test done. Cool in pan 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Recipe: Roast Potatoes

I've become rather fond of roast potatoes, which probably has something to do with the fact that they're served quite often for lunch in the UK. Properly done, they're crunchy and crispy on the outside, but still soft and fluffy on the inside; a perfect accompaniment to any roast or grill.

Recently we had to cook up a storm for Christmas dinner, and one of the side dishes was garlic roast potatoes.

This recipe comes from Steaks, Chops, Roasts and Ribs by Parragon Publishing, but I've tweaked it a bit.

Ingredients (Serves 6)
10 large potatoes, peeled and cut into even-sized chunks
3 Tbsp dripping, goose fat or olive oil
Salt
5 cloves garlic, peeled (optional)
5 cherry tomatoes (optional)
Rosemary (optional)



Notes on Ingredients: Goose or duck fat work very well with roast potatoes, you can probably buy them from gourmet supermarkets or Culina.

Preheat the oven to 220°C.



Cook the potatoes in a large pan of lightly salted boiling water over medium heat, covered, for 5-7 minutes. They will still be firm.



Meanwhile, add the fat to a roasting pan and place in the hot oven.

Drain the potatoes well and return them to the pan. Cover with the lid and firmly shake the pan so that the surface of the potatoes is slightly roughened to help givem them a much crispier texture.



Remove the roasting pan from the oven and carefully tip the potatoes into the hot fat. Baste them to ensure that they are all coated with it. Lay two or three sprigs of rosemary over the potatoes and scatter the cloves of garlic among the potatoes.

Roast the potatoes at the top of the oven for 45-50 minutes until they are browned all over and thoroughly crisp. Turn the potatoes and baste again only once during the process or the crunchy edges will be destroyed.

In the last 5-10 minutes of roasting, toss in the cherry tomoatoes, which will help to keep the potatoes moist as they finish cooking.



Using a slotted spoon, transfer the potatoes to a warmed serving dish and sprinkle over with some salt.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Sides, Roast potatoes

Recipe: Aubergine Caviar


Finally got some time over the weekend to do some cooking. The occasion was my mother's birthday, and the opportunity was Gordon Ramsay's Passion for Flavour that I had borrowed from the library earlier. It fell upon me to do a starter, and I originally thought of Ramsay's Tian of Tomatoes a la Greque. It seemed a little complicated though, so I decided to modify it.

Central to either recipe is the Aubergine Caviar, though. Aubergines, I have discovered, are much underrated. Their off-putting purplish hue belies a very versatile and useful vegetable. Ramsay's aubergine caviar is a neutral-tasting all-purpose intermediate ingredient that can be used as a stuffing, side or starter.

Ingredients

1 Aubergine
1 sprig rosemary
1 clove garlic
50g diced cucumber (optional)
1 tsp each of sliced basil, chives and parsley
Salt



Notes on ingredients: It's better to use larger aubergines rather than the small Japanese nasu, even if the latter are sweeter.

Preheat the oven to 220°C.



Cut the tops off the aubergine and halve it lengthwise. Score the flesh in a diamond pattern and sprinkle with salt, though not too generously.



Place the garlic and rosemary on one half and sandwich with the other, then wrap aubergine sandwich with foil. Place it on a baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for 45 mins.

Reduce the temperature to 110°C and bake for another 20 mins.



Unwrap the aubergine, by which time its skin should have shrivelled and the flesh should have become very soft. Scrape away the garlic and rosemary.



Scoop out the aubergine flesh onto a chopping board and chop with a knife till you obtain aubergine pulp.

Place the pulp in a saucepan and heat over a low flame, until the excess moisture has evaporated and the aubergine pulp - caviar, as Ramsay now calls it - is quite dry. I added in the sliced herbs while heating, allowing them to wilt and infuse the aubergine pulp. Use either warm or cold.

I underestimated the amount of stuffing I needed, so I bulked it up with some diced cucumber, mixed in after the aubergine pulp had been heated and cooled. I found this added texture and moisture to the aubergine without making it moist and improved it considerably.



In this particular instance, the aubergine caviar was used to stuff hollowed out Japanese Momotaro tomatoes. If you plan on doing this, I strongly recommend buying these expensive tomatoes, because they are the sweetest I have ever tasted, which works well with the otherwise slightly bland caviar. Using sour local tomatoes, or even the pricey vine-ripened ones just isn't worth it, and the dish probably will not be well-received.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Sides, Aubergine, Aubergine Caviar

Recipe: Sauce Duxelles

It has been said that one of the great triumphs of French cuisine is the sauces. There is a huge variety of sauces to accompany just about any dish. The problem with authentic French sauces, though, is that they are not exactly the easiest things to make. Not only do they require lots of wine and stock, occasionally they need rather specialised ingredients like truffles, port and milk. Okay, so milk isn't specialised, but who has so much milk to spare!

Anyway, I decided to try a different sauce for the Roast Rack of Lamb; instead of a red wine sauce, I'd try a Sauce Duxelles, or mushroom sauce. Once again, it's Julia to the rescue.

Ingredients

1 cup finely miced fresh mushrooms
2 Tb shallots or green onions
1 Tb butter
1/2 Tb oil
1/2 cup dry white wine or 1/3 cup dry white vermouth
1½ brown sauce (or brown stock)
1½ tomato paste
1 to 3 Tb softened butter



Instead of white wine, I decided to use Verjuice, this rather strange non-alcoholic white wine. I mean, isn't that grape juice? Anyway, I was intrigued by EatzyBitzy's use of it, so I thought I'd give it a try.



Saute the mushrooms with the shallots or onions in the hot butter and oil for 4 to 5 minutes. The mushrooms should produce copious amounts of fluids.



Add the wine, or verjuice, as the case may be.



Boil down rapidly until the wine has almost reduced completely. I believe the idea of this is to boil off the alcohol, leaving the residual taste of the wine, but with verjuice, what are you boiling off?



Stir in the brown sauce and tomato paste and simmer for 5 minutes. Correct seasoning. The sauce is likely to be rather salty, so you'll need to be liberal with the sugar. If you're using stock rather than sauce, you'll need to simmer it for much longer than 5 minutes, but the downside is that then it really gets salty.



This is what I landed up with eventually. A good sauce, but I'm not sure if using Verjuice made any difference.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Sauces, Mushrooms, Sauce Duxelles

Recipe: Tomato focaccia bread

This recipe comes off Jamie Oliver, who always looks like he enjoys making his bread, so I guess he knows what he's doing. Making bread is really enjoyable because it's relaxing, and you get to work out your frustrations on the dough, but best of all, there's nothing like the smell of freshly-baked bread and the knowledge that you made it.

Ingredients (Serves 8)

500g flour
15g yeast
15g sugar
15g salt
310ml water
300g cherry tomatoes
5 - 10 Tbsp olive oil



Again, click on the image to see what the different ingredients are. What you don't see in the meez is basil, because I like mine freshly-plucked. You can buy some from the supermarket if you don't grow your own. The bread flour you see in the picture comes from Phoon Huat, and I find it makes a lighter, fluffier bread than the bread flour you get from NTUC, so try and get that if you can. The olive oil is essential to this recipe so try and get a good one. Naturel works well for me.

Basically, 500g of flour, 15g of yeast, 15g of sugar, 15g of salt and 310ml of water makes enough bread for eight people, depending on how much bread each person can/will eat.

So dissolve the yeast and sugar in the water, stirring to make sure it's all dissolved.

Pour the flour and salt into a big, clean mixing bowl, and make a well in the centre of the pile.



Pour half the water into the well you've made (don't worry if it leaks out) and using your right hand, incorporate the flour and water in circular motions, working inwards. When all the water's been absorbed (your flour will still be in flakes and strands), pour in half the remaining water and continue incorporating. Continue in this manner until you have a ball of moist, but not sticky, dough.



If your dough becomes too sticky, sprinkle some flour onto it and work it in until the stickiness is gone. If it's too floury and flaky, pour in a bit more water till you've got it right. It's all about whether you've got the touch. You should end up with something that resembles the ball of dough in the picture.

Now, the best part - kneading! You'll want to knead because you get to vent all your frustrations on the dough, and you get to abuse it the way you'd like to abuse your spouse but prevented from doing so by the Woman's Charter. Oh yeah, it helps develop the gluten and structure of the dough too.

Just keep rolling, pushing, folding, bashing, punching, working and massaging the dough for about 10 - 15 minutes, or until your arms feel like they're going to fall off, whichever is sooner. Try not to let your perspiration drip into the dough.



Once you're done kneading, form the dough into a roundish shape and dust it lightly with flour. Score it deeply with a knife (just pretend you're acting in a Hitchcock and plunge it in) and place it back in your mixing bowl. Cover it with a damp cloth, and leave it somewhere warm, moist and draft-free to prove (rise) for 40 minutes. I like to use my oven, switched off, of course. If you want to speed things up a bit you could preheat your oven on the lowest setting, then switch it off and pop the dough in. Wouldn't advise it though.

While it's proving, boil up some water till it's good and rolling, and drop in about 300g of cherry tomatoes, for about ten seconds, then fish them out and plunge them into ice-cold water. Remove them from the water into a clean bowl. Most of them should have split and you can spend the next ten minutes removing the skins. Leave the skins on the small ones and the unsplit ones. Once they're all peeled, cover them with 5-10 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil. More is better, I feel.



Now that it's doubled up, just punch it down to get all the air out. Take out the dough and transfer it to a baking tray, pushing the dough to fill out the whole tray.

Pour over the olive oil and tomatoes and sprinkle one handful of fresh basil. You can sprinkle over a handful of fresh rosemary leaves if you have any. Try not to let the oil pool in one spot (usually the centre because it's the shallowest).



Using all ten of your fingers, push down into the dough to form little wells of olive oil. Do this across the whole dough, poking some of the basil leaves into the wells, but avoiding the tomatoes.

Allow it to prove for another 40 minutes.



You usually have to poke it again with your fingers after this time, as the wells would probably have disappeared. Try and distribute the oil as evenly as possible by tilting it this way and that.

Once done, pop it into a preheated 220C/425F oven for 20 minutes.



It should look something like that by the end of the 20 minutes. Don't worry about the oil - I added about one and a half times too much. You'll find that where the tomatoes are resting the bread is still rather dough-like. To overcome this, you could let the bread sit in the oven a little while more at a lower heat, or you could have made sure the tomatoes were sitting in the wells of oil before you began.



In any case it doesn't really matter, the bread should turn out just fine.

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Focaccia, Bread