Category: cream

Categories
coffee condensed milk cream food

inside out affogato

inside out affogato

One of the best things about food blogging is the community. People share things on Twitter, +1 stuff over on Google+, and like your Instagrams. It’s pretty much a lovely place to write and socialise in. And there’s a ton of good people out there. To even further encourage those bonds there’s a whole bunch of blogger challenges out there. I’m going for a few this month, and the first of which is Kavey’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream! I’m entering my inside out affogato.

I’ve entered this challenge before, and the theme this time is hot drinks. How to interpret that?

Affogato courtesy of Delicious Magazine, click to see recipe

One of my favourite desserts is affogato – the Italian dessert of vanilla ice-cream ‘drowned’ in a shot of espresso. As an entry to a challenge it’s nearly cheating, as it’s already ice-cream. But it combines two of my favourite things: coffee and ice-cream. So why not swap the flavours around a bit somehow? How about… a coffee ice-cream, coated in a vanilla-flavoured Italian meringue for a change in texture. An inside out affogato!

Here’s the thing: I’ve never owned an ice-cream maker. I’m sure they’re brilliant, but it’s just one more great big box to keep somewhere, and no doubt something that is used infrequently. The hand-churn methods, where you go in with a fork every hour to break it up, gives a flaky finish. I don’t have access to dry ice (sorry Heston). There must be another way.

Enter condensed milk. It’s dangerous having a tin of the stuff in my house, because it just gets eaten and no-one knows who’s guilty (this may be related to the fact that my nan used to dip my dummy in condensed milk, then sugar before giving it to me…) Experimenting with this as a base for ice-cream, let down with double cream, gives you a slick, sweet ice-cream with an incredible mouth-feel.

The ice-cream tastes brilliant. I mean, really good. I was absolutely floored how nice it tasted. You could add just about any flavouring to this and get a great ice-cream (as long as you wanted a sweet one, no egg and bacon here). The texture is creamy and slippery. As I said to Kavey…

It’s a great base for ice-cream flavours and ridiculously simple. Any child could do it – no scalding custards or tedious churning. Please give it a try and let me know how you get on. And why not enter Kavey’s challenge too!

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inside out affogato

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • For the ice-cream:
  • 300 ml double cream
  • 200 ml condensed milk
  • 6 tablespoons strong coffee
  • 1 teaspoon ground coffee ground further into a powder
  • For the Italian meringue:
  • 2 egg whites
  • 150 g caster sugar
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla paste
  • To serve:
  • 1 biscotti

Instructions

  • For the ice-cream whisk all the ingredients until blended. Freeze in a suitable container for at least 4 hours - I froze mine in small round moulds for presentation.
  • For the Italian meringue, put the sugar into a saucepan and add a splash of water to make a wet sand texture. Put over a heat and get it to 121C.
  • When the sugar is at about 115C, put the egg whites in a food mixer on a medium speed. When the sugar comes up to temperature add to the egg whites in a slow trickle. Whack up the speed to maximum and mix for a further 5 minutes. At the last few seconds add the vanilla paste.
  • Serve your ice-cream in a bowl and spoon or pipe over the meringue. Using a blowtorch brown all over (or pop under the grill), and scatter over crushed biscotti.

 

Categories
bacon brussels sprouts chicken cream food potatoes red onion

parmesan chicken with potato and sprout gratin

Yes! It’s sprout season again. Please don’t just boil them and leave them alone, there’s so much more to the little farty ball. Like here, a Brussels Sprout gratin baked with potatoes and cream for a great side dish.

There’s a video version of the gratin on my YouTube channel here:

I was chuffed with how everything turned out save for one flaw. To quote Michel Roux Jr “where’s the sauce?!” It needed a meaty gravy just to lend a little more moisture. But beyond that, it was dead good. A sprout is for Winter, not just Christmas.

Want more Brussels Sprout recipes? My Christmas dinner isn’t complete without sprouts and chestnuts, and you must check out my legendary sproutotto.

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parmesan chicken with potato and sprout gratin

Course Side Dish
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 500 g potatoes
  • 250 g Brussels Sprouts
  • 1 chicken stock cube
  • 1 red onion
  • 4 rashers smoked streaky bacon
  • 150 ml single cream
  • teaspoon wholegrain mustard heaped
  • 2 skinless chicken breasts
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 2 handfuls panko breadcrumbs
  • 1 handful parmesan finely grated

Instructions

  • Get a large pan of water on to boil and preheat the oven to 200C.
  • Use a food processor to thinly slice the potatoes, and add them to the water with the stock cube. After 5 minutes pass the Brussels through the processor too and add to the water.
  • Heat a casserole dish over a medium heat. Thinly slice the onion and bacon and fry in a little oil in the dish until starting to colour. After the sprouts and potatoes have had 3 or 4 more minutes drain and add to the casserole dish. Stir well, season, pour in the cream, stir in the mustard and then transfer to the oven to cook uncovered for 15 minutes, until golden on top.
  • Meanwhile heat a frying pan over a medium heat. Bash the chicken breasts with a rolling pin until thin and season. Dust lightly in flour, roll in beaten egg and then in the parmesan and breadcrumbs. Fry in shallow oil on both sides until golden. To be sure use a probe thermometer checking it reaches at least 65C inside. Serve on top of the gratin.
Categories
cream creme fraiche egg food kitchen gadgets lemon pastry

heston blumenthal’s lemon tart

Hold on to your toques, this is a Blumenthal gadget-fest. Here’s a run-down of the Heston kitchen toys employed in this recipe:

That’s a hell of a list. The odd one out in this list is the Kitchen Wizz Pro, a beast of a food processor, but more on that in a future post. I’ve also used my trusty chef’s knife, easily the best knife I’ve ever used. Most of them are Salter’s / HoMedics to celebrate the launch of their new range of Heston gadgets. It’s fair to say they’re a mixed bag.

The initial range of Heston By Salter tools are all solid: the probe thermometer, kitchen timer, fridge thermometer, oven thermometer, measuring jug, scales; all good. Some of the newer items feel superfluous. First up the adjustable rolling pin. It comes with discs that adjust the height of the pin from the surface. Genius! I was looking forward to this. As someone who is mostly terrible at pastry the ability to roll out to a consistent thickness really appealed to me. Unfortunately the pastry stuck immediately to the pin and made a complete mess. After prodding it for a while I transferred it to the pastry dish for baking and rolled it up loosely around the pin. Again it all stuck to the pin and essentially turned my smooth-plasticine dough to a patchwork quilt. Just look at the pastry in the picture, that’s supposed to be 3mm but it’s more like a centimetre! Very disappointing.

The whisk is much better, being well-balanced, sturdy and comfortable to hold when whisking an egg custard over a bain marie. The measuring spoons are a cute gimmick, in that you slide the compartment to the right measurement (e.g. 1 teaspoon, ½ tablespoon) and then drag a little lid over the powder to level it off. But a couple of things bothered me: my fingers were a little greasy from handling butter and I just couldn’t work it without putting everything down, washing hands and re-measuring. And I can’t get past the price: £17.99 RRP for two spoons when the same thing is achieved with a £1 (or less) set of plastic measuring spoons available anywhere, with the help of any knife for levelling.

Rounding out the collection are the spatulas which are quickly becoming two of my favourite things in the kitchen: with one curved end for sculpting and smoothing, and a firmer end for flipping and scraping. I use a lot of non-stick bakeware, frying pans and saucepans so having something to poke at the edges of something to flip it over is really handy. Again though I have to wince at the price: £17.99 for two spatulas isn’t great value.

All the equipment in the range is well made and thoughtfully designed, but these items are just not as “must have” as the original kitchen gadgets. They’d make great gifts though.

I used all these tools and more in making Heston’s lemon tart. There’s an awful lot of Heston in this; he spent years at the Fat Duck perfecting the ‘wobble’ in his cakes. It comes down to temperature – a tart at 70°C is perfectly set. And of course, he’s right. It’s a brilliant dessert, and the probe thermometer is the most essential gadget of them all. Just one niggle: serving with creme fraiche is a complete waste of time. Totally gets lost against the lemon flavour – don’t bother.

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Heston Blumenthal's lemon tart

Servings 12 people

Ingredients

For the pastry:

  • 120 g icing sugar
  • 3 large egg yolks
  • 300 g plain flour
  • 150 g unsalted butter
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla paste
  • Zest of ½ a lemon grated

For the filling:

  • 9 large eggs
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • Finely grated zest and juice of 5 lemons
  • 300 g double cream
  • 390 g caster sugar

To serve:

  • 80 g caster sugar
  • Creme fraiche

Instructions

  • Start with the pastry: blitz the icing sugar and yolks together and set aside. In a mixer mix the flour, butter and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the vanilla, lemon and yolk mixture and continue to mix until you have a smooth, soft dough. Mould into a rectangle and allow to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
  • Preheat the oven to 180°C. After resting, roll the pastry to 3mm (ha ha) and line it in your 20cm tart tin. Prick with a fork all over and freeze for 30 minutes. Blind bake the base for 40 minutes and trim off the excess pastry. Drop the oven to 120°C.
  • Place the eggs and egg yolks in a bain marie and whisk together until it reaches 62°C (mine took about 10 minutes). At this point strain through a sieve, remove the bubbles from the surface with a metal spoon and pour into the pastry case. Bake until the filling reaches 70°C. Allow to cool to room temperature.
  • When ready to serve, sprinkle over the caster sugar and caramelise with a blow torch. Serve with creme fraiche if you like.

Video

Categories
cherries chocolate cream food jam

black forest trifle

When making this, I had to search my blog in case I’d made something like this before. I have a severe weakness for ‘black forest’-flavoured things and I appear to have 4 separate choc-cherry desserts in my collection!

This one has been back and forth with In Search of Heston and me, we’ve noticed how obsessed Heston Blumenthal is with both Black Forest things. and trifle. There was one made for Waitrose but to be honest it sounded weird (lime?). This version is not likely one that Heston would make – not quite enough genius touches – but a tribute nonetheless. A Heston version would no doubt spherify intense cherry compote into cherry shapes and impale them with a stick of dark chocolate for the stem. This version is dead easy to do, kid-friendly (if you skip the Kirsch) and great fun to assemble.

I also hadn’t planned on sticking a biscuit in the top, but a friend had brought these smashing things from Border and they were tremendous. I could’ve skipped making this and just eaten the biscuits instead, they were that good.

Black forest trifle (serves 4):

1 chocolate swiss roll

1 jar black cherry jam

12 cherries

Kirsch (a couple of tablespoons I guess)

500g chocolate custard

1 meringue nest

Squirty cream

Dark chocolate (for grating)

  1. Put swiss roll slices at the bottom of your trifle bowl or individual serving dishes. Douse with Kirsch. Slather the swiss roll with jam.
  2. Halve nine of the cherries and stone them. Bury the cherries in the jam. Steep the remaining 4 cherries in a little Kirsch until time to serve.
  3. Top the jammy cherries with chocolate custard and refrigerate until serving. Top with crumbled meringue nest, squirty cream, a grating of chocolate and a final boozy whole cherry.
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