Stockett and Marbles

Just a quick one to drop by and update you on my exploits of late. I would stay longer, but I'm watching Tideland and it's awfully engrossing! A few weeks ago it was my friend's birthday, and of course I couldn't let this momentous occasion pass by without a little celebratory cake. Now this wonderful gentlemen was my first honeycomb customer, so I knew what sort of thing to go for. Caramel everything.

I started off with the basic choices, what kind of flavour do I want from this cake? I knew I wanted caramel somewhere in the cake, without it being sickly, so I went for a vanilla sponge. To get the lovely sweet caramel-goodness I chose a sort of random recipe. It might need a bit of an explanation to make much sense. Don't worry, it won't be my usual ramblings I promise!

If you have ever read the book "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett you'll know all about Minny and her infamous cooking skills. Well, the caramel sauce I made was from a collection of recipes Mrs Stockett released after a massive spike of interest amongst the food-blogging community. I'm so glad she did, it's little additions like this that make me smile, much like when I found out that some valiant fellow had spent hours upon hours making a Lord of the Rings online recipe scrapbook (It's here by the way, you know you want to look). But yes, this wonderful woman, in full style created a classic southern caramel sauce, which I used...and may have eaten much of when I was icing this cake. It was freaking delicious. And well, I added the honeycomb because I love making honeycomb at the moment, it's my new favourite fad.

Moving on a little, to another wonderful cake. What a surprise! I can't help myself I'm sorry, I'm determined to either create the perfect super cake, or give myself diabetes. Could swing either way. This cracking little cake was actually a bit of a time filler, I was actually making a lasagne at the time, and whilst waiting for the behemoth dish I made of it, I decided to make something sweet. I actually ended up making a batch of oatie butter biscuits from my Women's Institute cookbook as well as the marble cake, but I sort of ate them all before taking a decent photograph, my apologies.

Marble cake is one of those cakes that is incredibly dependent on the ingredients you use. I know I say this about most of the things I make, but this one really, really is. Too many afternoons I have spent, frustrated that my baking has turned out badly, or even worse, boring. Too many afternoons I have spent mourning the failures of marble cakes. Until I started using good ingredients - cue the uplifting key change to minor to encourage hope and optimism.

But I really can't stress this enough. Please, please, use nice vanilla and nice cocoa. I think the mindset is that because it's got twice the amount of flavours, that you can get away with using half the quality ingredients. I'm sorry my lovelies, it just doesn't work like that, you can't cover up half-arsed attempts with this cake. It's quite rare that it will turn out bad, but it will taste so much better if you spent an extra pound or two on cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Plus, on top of investing in good quality stuff, you won't need to use quite so much of it to get the flavour, and the flavour you do get, won't taste like chalk, or sugar. 

Sorry, apologies for the rant.

I'm not going to lie, part of the reason I chose this topic today was to show off some of my new photographs. I've really been trying hard recently to up my game in some food styling and whatnot, to keep up with the other wonderful bloggers out there, but also to try and help convey my love for the beauty of food. I'm not quite there yet but I thought it might be nice to see my transition from the rubbish old ones I took on my phone, to the ones taken with a pretty DSLR.

I think that's enough from me today, I will be back over the next few days with a new recipe for you guys to try!

Peace
JR

Method to the Madness

I will wager that at some point in your life you will have at least half a dozen egg whites at your disposal. It will sneak up on you, like if you decide to make home-made custard and you forget you only need the yolks, or mayonnaise. In my case, it was aioli that was the culprit. That damn aioli was the bane of my life for the half an hour it took to blend and thicken, it was not my friend. Especially when I realised that I had six egg whites left over and a house that doesn't really jump at the idea of meringues. Well, I thought, it's been a while since I've made them, maybe everyone will have a change of heart. Surprise surprise, they did. And that's the story how meringues were redeemed as a valid pudding choice. 

 

Before making them, I had this idealised vision in my head of these beautiful mounds of dolloped off-white, swirled with pink dye or cocoa, or delicately swirled into little peaks, ready to be sandwiched together with rich vanilla cream. And although this is a perfectly valid (and delicious) way of thinking when preceding a meringue bake, it might not be the most productive. Just a warning to bear in mind how fickle these things can be. I am the first person to be over-ambitious when it comes to cooking, and too many times my cooking has fallen short of my baking smugness. You do have to respect the actions and reactions of eggs and sugar, both individually and together, and think about how ingredients affect each other to get it just right.

It's very, very easy to pop onto a cooking website, or look in a book and pluck out a recipe to cook. It's easy to even look at a few different recipes and compare them. It's also easy to get tangled up in the Italian-French-Swiss debate, and I think this is the point where most people's troubles begin. 

All you really need to know for today is that there are three different types of making meringue, French, Swiss and Italian. French is the most popular meringue method, and it's probably the one you made in school, it involves whipping egg whites with sugar and baking. The Italian method is cooking the sugar into a syrup and pouring it over the egg whites to slowly cook it. And the Swiss method is where the egg whites are warmed up and slowly whisk until it turns into marshmallow-ey goodness and bake it. 

It really depends what sort of meringue you are looking for as to what recipe you should follow. If you like a meringue with a crisp outer shell and a chewy centre, this is the meringue for you! This recipe is the love child of Delia Smith and Yotem Ottolenghi.

Perfect Crisp-Chewy Meringues

4 egg whites

100g caster sugar

110g icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

- Preheat the oven to 150C/130C (fan oven)/ Gas mark 2 and line a big flat baking sheet. 

- Whisk the egg whites on low until they're frothy and bubbly (this takes around 2 minutes).

- Turn it up to medium and whisk until the mixture is at soft peaks, add the vanilla, then start adding the sugar slowly a tablespoon at a time. Keep mixing!

- After all the caster sugar is mixed in, sift in the icing sugar and fold in until the mixture holds it's peaks and is beautiful and glossy.

- Pipe or dollop it onto the baking sheet and immediately turn down the heat to 100C/80C (fan oven)/gas mark 1/4. 

- Bake them for about half an hour, test them (give one a bit of a poke to see how easily it cracks), turn it down to the lowest your oven goes and leave them for about an hour. Turn the oven off, leave the door shut and take them out once the oven is completely cold. 

And there you have it, for your meringue needs!

Peace
JR

Cross-Season Confit

Today's post is quite befitting of this abysmal weather we're having in the UK right now. It embraces the constant reminder that humans are mere pawns and slaves to the weather, dwarfed by Mother Nature's awesome power. I actually really wanted to write about this last Winter, but I never got my hands on any nice duck so I didn't really have the chance. Well, there's, my not-so-discreet secret given right away.

I know it might not be the quickest recipe to make, but it'll be one of the most rewarding in taste and reaction. If you've ever had confit de canard on holiday in France you'll know how amazing, how satisfying it is. How it sets off every single Umami-detecting cell in your body and delivers only a cloud of comfort and serenity upon it's consumption. The reason I chose to write about this wonder today is partially because of the heavy rain beating at my window, but also because I've had an unusually high amount of visitors from Australia and New Zealand over the past month or so, and I know you guys are heading into the (slightly) colder months.

Don't worry my little friend, you won't be eaten today!

As I gave away, my post today is about Duck Confit, streamers, whistles and all that to be fired at will. I am aware that most of my blog is dedicated to lovely sweet treats, and I really don't pay attention to the massive world of savoury cooking. I noticed it more when I was searching by 'category' on my very own site and noticed I had only fifteen posts with savoury content, out of just over fifty posts. Most of those were merely additions to sweet posts too, so I feel it time to get my savoury on and get some meaty goodness flowing through my humble little blog.


 

Time for a few basics before I dive in with the recipe. Confit is the French word for preserve, not that difficult to grasp really, but I thought I'd stay simple to begin. The traditional way of making it is to slightly cure the meat with salt (as well as other ingredients for taste such as garlic, rosemary or thyme) to preserve   it for long winters, for special occasions or for just mighty fine eating. The salt draws much of the water out of the meat, reducing the chance of bacteria, and actually killing some common strains of bacteria altogether. To stop you getting ill. Isn't that clever, thanks alot sodium you old dog!

Then salt is then washed off and it's then slowly roasted in duck fat slowly over a long period of time - anything from three to ten hours - until the meat is tender and delicious. After everything has cooled the whole thing it's usually followed by being submerged in a clay pot or a jar of some description and covered with fat. Before the invention of fridges it could keep in a cool place for anything up to 8 months. Gotta love the classic 'canning' mind set of our neighbours. 

This is by no means my recipe, i'm not French, not even a far descendant - as far as I know at least - so I thought I would take a wonderful Frenchman's knowledge, and spread the joy to some more people. Instead of, you know, Anglicising the whole thing and taking it away from where it really came from. A need for good food, all year round. Oh! For the record, it's Raymond Blanc's recipe...slightly edited by me.

Confit Duck Legs

4 large duck/goose/chicken/turkey legs (at around 200g each, don't worry about them all being perfect!)

30g rock salt

1 tblsp black peppercorns, crushed

5 garlic cloves, all peeled and sliced up (optional: + 2 unpeeled, but bashed around a little, cloves)

6 sprigs of fresh thyme

800g duck fat (you can get this stuff in bigger bulk from butchers) 

2 bay leaves

- Lay the duck (i'm just going to say duck all the way through this, but substitute it with whatever you're using) on a tray, rub on the salt, garlic and thyme. Cover it in cling film and leave it in the fridge overnight to chill and let the salt do it's preserving thing. It needs to be at least overnight, it really can't be rushed unfortunately.
- Before you start the next step, get a casserole pot (not too wide), and preheat the oven to 120C/100C fan oven/gas mark 1 (I know it's not an equal conversion, just trust me here!).
-  Take the duck out of it's cling film prison and wash off the marinade completely, and pat it dry. If you want to be doubly sure there's not too much salt in it, you can wash it again and dab it dry. 
-  Put the duck legs, with the duck fat into the casserole pot with the bay leaves and, if you're using it, the bashed garlic. Heat it up til the fat is almost simmering and then transfer it to the preheated oven. Cook for about 3 hours. 
- Poke it a bit with a stick of some degree to see if it's tender, if it is, remove with a slotted spoon, pop it in a ceramic dish/or a Kilner jar with an airtight lid and let them cool for an hour. If you're serving them on the same day, crisp them skin side down in a pan with a little duck fat for about 5 minutes. If you're not, wait until the fat has completely cooled, strain it, and pour it over the duck in the jar/ceramic dish until it covers it completely. 
- The beauty of this recipe is that it will last for months and months in the fridge or even in a cool pantry, it actually tastes better after it has been left for at least a few weeks.  And as long as the fat covers the top of the duck it will be lovely and will keep for a very long time. 

It can be served in the winter with a tonne of lovely garlicky lentils or beans, a pile of buttery mash, or it can be eaten in the summer with a leafy salad. Rocket salad and sweet potatoes go really nicely with a super crispy duck skin. It's awesome, it's versatile, it's not really that taxing to make, and it is actually amazing tasting. A good backup for dinner parties too (do people still have those nowadays?).

I'm not going to lie, the last time I made this, I was far too cold and hungry to take a photo, so here is somebody else's lovely picture instead. Thanks to Chrystian Guy on Flickr for letting me use it! 

With the warmest of hugs to my down-under neighbours, my drizzly UK friends and for anyone who likes duck. 

Peace
JR