Category: Dairy

Naturally Leavened Panettone

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This is another recipe from this past holiday season and it is worth recording for reference (and I got it posted before the end of January!). It worked very good but I will need to change a few things next time around, so a quick record of it is a good idea. Usually I make a Panettone or Stollen for Christmas but never with a 100% natural leaven. The idea to make a Panettone with natural levain is something that I wanted to do as soon as I saw the loaves made by Roy.

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I used my regular 100% rye starter to make the levain as always using 50-50 mix of white and whole wheat flours. For the recipe, I used Peter Reinhart’s from Artisan Breads Everyday as a reference. Seeing pictures of Roy’s bread I decided on chocolate and cherry as my flavors.

I soaked the cherries in dark rum while I worked on the starter and dough. To make the levain I mixed roughly 40 gr of the rye starter with 170 gr of 50-50 white and whole wheat flours. After about 6 hours it was bubbly and good to go. The dough in Reinhart’s recipe uses commercial yeast in addition to the levain, I opted to stick only with the natural starter and skip the yeast.

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Since the dough is enriched with soft butter and egg yolks it is a good idea to make it in a KitchenAid mixer to get everything well incorporated and the gluten developed. I decided to bake it in one large loaf using a bundt pan that I sprayed with non-stick oil. The dough, like most Panettone is too slack to really shape it so I just transferred it from the bowl of the mixer into the bundt pan and evened it out as much as possible.

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The dough rises slowly for about 12 hours and develops a lot of flavor. After baking and cooling it is ready to slice. The shape, look and texture of the finished loaf are all excellent. Due to the levain and the long fermentation time, the bread had a great robust flavor. This however did not really work as much as I would’ve liked with the tart cherries and dark chocolate chips.  There was almost too much flavor in there and the bread needed more sweetness and mellow flavors. Next time I’ll go with some almonds and some sweeter fruit like currents, apricots, prunes and maybe just a few cherries.

Cappellacci di Zucca – Pumpkin Pasta with Sage, Pumpkin Butter, Pine Nuts

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This is cheat post. It’s a cheat post because I’ve posted about similar dishes before. Well, so what. We love this dish and its ilk and I try making it every fall a few times. I really love making fresh pasta and filled pasta as well so why not post about it (spoiler warning: the next post is also a filled pasta dish).

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It is a dish I make relatively often but honestly I never make it the exact same way twice, especially with the filling. This time I think is one of the favorites. The small sugar pumpkin I used was delicious on its own and I decided not to mask it with a ton of other flavors. In Mario Batali’s first book (my favorite of his really), Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two Villages,  has a recipe for this dish and his filling is very simple. It’s nothing more than the pumpkin, an egg, some Parmesan and a grating of nutmeg. I went with that and it was perfect. Usually I would use butternut squash for something like this, but I really am glad I gave the small “pie”pumpkin a try this time. The flesh was dry and had great flavor and sweetness.

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Sage with this dish is classic and so is butter. Both are here but with a couple of extra layers of flavor. I put all the pumpkin seeds and pulp into a pot with a bunch of butter and let that gently melt and simmer. After draining I had a nice half cup or so of golden delicious pumpkin butter.

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I boiled the pasta while I got butter browning in a pan and then tossed in sage leaves. For another texture and layer of flavor I threw in a handful of excellent quality pine nuts. These are great pine nuts that I picked up from Lebanon wen I was there a couple of months ago. After the nuts got a good color on them and the sage leaves were a bit crispy I tossed the dumplings into the pan and added a few spoons of the pumpkin butter. Served with a handful of Parmesan and anointed with more pumpkin butter it was lovely.

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Plums and Pistachio: Olive Oil Cake, Pistachio Gelato, Poached Plums, Yogurt

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This is the second installment of the Plums/Pistachio pairing and this one has a much better gelato. This one is an easier plate to pull together and delivers excellent flavor and texture. We have a fragrant Italian olive oil rosemary cake, excellent pistachio gelato, plums poached in a juniper syrup and a yogurt vanilla sauce. I took all the pictures using natural light for this post too and..well…I think I can use some improvement (and maybe a new camera!).

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I prepared the gelato following my usual method based on Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream template. Jeni Bauer’s formula of milk, cream tapioca (or corn) starch, sugar and corn syrup rarely fails and is very simple to make. I allowed pistachios to infuse the cream mixture and then blended it all together. The final gelato had the right flavor and creamy texture I was after.

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The cake is a classic Italian pastry. It’s one of those dry (in a good way) cakes that I love. This one is based on a recipe from Mario Batali’s Babbo Cookbook. The cake is made from flour, chopped rosemary, eggs, sugar and a fruity olive oil. It’s a very forgiving and flexible recipe that can be flavored in any number of ways (great with orange/lemon zest and ground almonds). I baked it in a small loaf pan and sliced it into neat rectangles.

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The plums I prepared with the previous plum/pistachio post were awesome. Not sure why I wanted to try a different method, but I did. Maybe I wanted to prove that my sous vide method is much better? Anyways, this time I poached the plums in a pot with blueberries and some juniper berries. I figured the juniper flavor would play off nicely against the rosemary in the cake. The flavor was pretty good and the juniper was a nice touch. However, I did not get nearly the nice ruby red color, the barely tender texture or the blueberry flavor that infused the plums that were cooked sous vide.

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The dish needed a bit of freshness some sharp notes. So, I made a quick sauce from whole milk yogurt and vanilla sugar. I added a dollop of the sauce in a bowl and topped it with a slice of cake. On that went a few slices of the plums and right next to it a scoop of the gelato. I gently poured some of the poaching syrup to finish off the dish.

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Halibut en Paupiette, Leek Royale, Red Wine Sauce

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One thing off the top here: Leek royale is awesome velvety delicious stuff. Ok, now that I’m done with that, the rest of this dish is very good too even if my execution is not as ideal or refined as I would’ve liked.

Chef Daniel Bouloud made this, a version of it actually, popular when when he was working at Le Cirque. At his restaurant, Daniel, he kept the popular dish in spirit but updated it a lot. In this version here I am doing a hybrid of sorts. The classic original is a fish, usually sea bass, wrapped in thin slices of potato and pan fried in butter. It is then served on top of sauteed leeks with a rich red wine sauce.

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In his book, Daniel: My French Cuisine, we get the updated version of the classic. It’s a steamed bass fillet with potato lyonnaise “rolls”, a rich leek custard (the aforementioned royale) and the classic red wine sauce, a Bordelaise. I started working on the recipe with the leek custard because that takes the most amount of work and needs to set in the fridge. I simmered the green part of the leeks along with Italian parsley until tender. I then cooked the drained greens in some cream and blended the whole thing, strained it through a fine sieve, seasoned it and blended in eggs and more cream.

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To cook it, I lined a small loaf pan with plastic wrap for easy removal later. I wrapped it with aluminum foil and cooked in a bain marie in the oven until set. This took a bit longer than the recipe recommends. I let the royale cool and popped it in the fridge until dinner time. Before plating, I gently unmolded the royale and cut it into neat 1 inch cubes and let them temper and come to room temperature. I tasted a few on their own. It’s rich with a lovely flavor of leek and has such a great smooth and comforting texture. For a few days after serving it with this dish we enjoyed the leek custard leftovers as a random side dish with dinner. It also goes great spread on crispy bread for a snack.

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Next I prepared the red wine sauce by reducing stock, plenty of red wine and some port along with shallots and thyme. Then I whisked in a crap load of butter until we had a glossy rich sauce. Chef Bouloud uses a vegetable sheeter to make long perfect sheets of potato which he uses to make strips to wrap the fish. I don’t have one of those contraptions so I bought the longest potatoes I could get my hand on and used the mandolin to make long paper thin sheets. This worked pretty well. I seasoned the halibut fillets with salt and pepper and some thyme. Then I brushed the potato sheets with clarified butter and used them to wrap the fish.

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The mistake I made here is to let the wrapped fish sit in the fridge for a couple of hours. The salt drew some moisture out of the fish in the meantime. So, it was a bit of a pain to get the fish to brown in clarified butter when I was cooking it for dinner. With some careful gentle heat I got the potato/fish packets cooked well, but next time I will wrap and fry the fish right away.

To plate, I poured some sauce on the plate and topped it with the fish. I put a couple of royale cubes on the side. I dressed a small salad made primarily of parsley leaves with lemon and olive oil. The salad went between the leek custard cubes. The flavors were awesome and the whole thing worked. With a bit of care with cooking the fish the dish could be quiet spectacular.

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Coppa e Cavatelli: Pork Collar in Whey, Ricotta Cavatelli, Onions and Peas

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Pork collar is normally cured and dried and is the delicious coppa that I’ve posted about before. Chefs figured out that this cut can be more versatile than just a salted and cured coppa. I’ve seen several recipes in books and restaurant menus recently that treat this marbled cut like an awesome pork loin. It has a great meat to fat ratio making it ideal for slow roasting or even braising. In this recipe I cooked it sous vide in whey, sliced it and pan-seared it.

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I prepared some good ricotta a day or so before using Jenn Lewis’ recipe from her Pasta by Hand book. It’s a really great book for all things pasta that require no machines or rolling. They are mostly referred to as “dumplings” in her book and she has a fascinating collection of pasta shapes and recipes from all over Italy with ingredients ranging from potato gnocchi to grated “pasta” and 100% semolina pasta.

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I had pasta in mind to go with the pork and the ricotta became the main ingredient in ricotta cavatelli. The dough is comprised of the homemade ricotta, eggs, flour and a little milk. It comes together quickly in the Kitchenaid mixer and is pretty simple -if a bit time consuming- to roll and form into ridged cavatelli on the little gnocchi wood board I have.

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I hate wasting when it comes to food, I try to use as much of my odds, ends and trimmings as possible. The whey produced by the ricotta making process (I also use Lewis’ recipe from the same book made with half and half, milk and buttermilk) is really tasty stuff and there’s quiet a bit of it. Typically, I mix it with about 1% salt by weight and put it in the fridge to use for cooking, baking or drinking. It lasts a couple of weeks with no problem. Lewis recommends using the whey to slow cook pork in the style of maiale al latte (pork in milk), a classic Italian recipe from Emilia-Romagna. I’ve done that before to cook a chunk of pork shoulder and it was delicious. I refined the same process for the coppa and bagged it with salted whey, thyme, lemon slices and garlic cloves. I cooked that sous vide for [[TEMP/TIME]] and allowed it to cool in the bag.

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For a tasty garnish I went with whey-cooked shallots. This is just whole peeled shallots and an onion simmered slowly in a mixture of whey and butter along with some thyme. The mixture cooks until all the liquid evaporates and the onions are golden meltingly soft and a bit caramelized. To serve, I sliced the pork and used a biscuit cutter to make neat disks. I browned them in a hot pan till crispy on the outside. The cavatelli were tossed with peas and butter. I plated the meat with the pasta around it and topped with the shallots.

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Classic Île Flottante

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Oh those classic French dishes (or Italian or Spanish). I love them and every so often one wants nothing more than a classic. While on the topic of European food, it’s a bit of pet peeve of mine when I hear something like “France (or Spain or whatever) is over, everyone is looking to blah blah, Nordic or Eastern European…or…who knows.” Before you know it we hear “Oh! France is back go check it out!” It’s really a ridiculous concept. Spain or Italy or France never went anywhere. These places have always made amazing food to one degree or another and have always produced great chefs and iconic dishes. It’s silly to trumpet the food of the Nordic countries (great as well and producing some fantastic movements now) at the expense of the rest. It’s the what’s-hot-now mentality where people put blinders on without any regard to everything else as if the exacting chefs of Denmark (10 years ago it was all Spain Spain Spain…) came out of nowhere and invented fine dining.

Ok, quick rant over and on to the delicious French dessert that is Île Flottante. It’s as awesome now as it was 100 years ago. It contains most of my favorite dessert components; custard, meringue, vanilla and a bit of crunchy caramel to top it all off.  The recipe is from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My home to Yours with almost no modifications. Afterall, why mess -well why mess too much- with a tried and true classic?

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I prepared the creme Anglaise for the dish a few days ahead of time. This is the only modernist change I used for this recipe. The loose vanilla flavored custard is usually cooked on the stove top gently so as not to curdle the egg yolks. For all these types of preparations, from ice cream base to creme Anglaise, I use my immersion circulator. This is easier, more precise, fail-proof and so convenient. I bag the well-blended mixture in FoodSaver bag and drop it in the precisely controlled water tub (around 83 C) for 20 minutes. After a quick chill in some ice water the custard is ready to be stored in the fridge for hours or days until I need it.

One cool thing about dishes like this one is that you do not end up with a ton of spare egg whites or egg yolks. The custard uses the yolks and the meringue islands use up the whites. Nice and efficient. The meringue is whipped firm with the addition of sugar and cream of tartar. To finish it, I brought milk to a gentle simmer and used two large spoons to drop ovals of meringue into it. These poach very gently on both sides, allowed to dry on parchment paper and stored in the fridge for a few hours. Contrary to the creme Anglaise, these do not hold in the fridge for days, maybe 12 hours at the most. after that they loose the pillowy texture and start to seep.

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To serve it, I whisked the custard to smooth it out and poured a good dose into a bowl. An “island” (or Île) of the poached meringue sits on top as if floating. A simple garnish of deep dark caramel that hardens on contact adds some sharp flavors and crunch. I also sprinkled in a few toasted almonds on some of the servings. That worked very well too.

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Brassicas: Cauliflower, Aligot, Kohlarbi, Leaves

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A couple of months ago all kinds of local cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli were available. The different colors of cauliflower alone was very impressive from white to green to orange and purple. I started thinking about one dish that can combine lots of these varieties in various preparation. This delicious and satisfying vegetarian dish is the result of about 2 weeks worth of research, prep, cutting and dicing, pureeing, roasting and sous vide-ing. With all the various cabbages in here what else to call it but Brassicas.

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Brassicas refers to the genus to which cabbage belongs and that includes plants like cauliflower, broccoli, turnips and mustard. They are hearty veggies that stand up to various cooking methods and robust flavors. Here we have a base of cauliflower aligot, cauliflower florets with vadouvan, seared Romanesco, kohlarbi cones filled with cauliflower puree and the plate is topped with a crispy crunchy dose of onion and breadcrumb “soil”.

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Aligot is a French potato preparation from L’Aubrac region made by mashing potatoes and blending them with copious amounts of cheese. How could that be bad. Right? This dish is over all very light and I wanted the base to be substantial enough to make it more than a fancy salad. It’s a dinner plate after all. For this version, I blended 400 gr each of sous vide cooked cauliflower (bagged with butter) and boiled potatoes that were cooked with garlic cloves. I added cream to loosen it up a bit and the cheese. Certainly not traditional but I opted for a nice smoked Swiss cheese to give the mixture more of an edge that can stand up to the strong flavors of the the vegetables. It was so delicious that I could eat it all on its own with a spoon!

In the Eleven Madison Park cookbook there is a recipe that is just cauliflower in many variations and it is definitely an inspiration for this dish. I borrowed a couple of ideas from that recipe including the puree and the sous vide cauliflower florets. I cooked the cauliflower sous vide with butter and vadouvan spice until very tender. I used mostly broken up florets and stem pieces for this saving the neater florets for another part of the recipe. To finish the puree I blended the cauliflower with whole milk and very little potato to hold it together. I put that in a squeeze bottle and kept it warm.

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For the cauliflower florets, both white and orange, I left some whole and the others (an idea from EMP again) I cut into neat disks. These also were cooked sous vide with some butter and salt.  For the crunch element I cooked onions down in oil, similar to what i did for this Alinea recipe, until deep brown and almost burnt. I tossed these with salt and darkly toasted sourdough bread crumbs. This made for a fantastic sharp and crunchy element.

When I added a couple heads of cauliflower to my order from Yonder Way Farm I was thinking I’d get a purple one maybe…or one of those green ones. Instead what I got was some very cool Romanesco. These are like broccoli crossed with cauliflower and then shot through with some alien DNA. Very neat looking. I cut those into wedges, rubbed them with oil and seared them very well to get a good caramelized flavor. I roasted them until they were cooked through but retained some crunch.

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Kohlrabi is another of those weird looking plants that we usually just pass by at the store and just barely give a second thought. These guys are delicious with a texture like jicama crossed with a turnip. Sliced paper thin on a madoline they can be salted and marinated with lemon juice or vinegar. They make for an awesome quick salad like that. They also become very flexible and can be used as a cool “wrapper” of sorts. It made perfect sense to make little cones out of them and fill that with the puree.

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After all the chopping and trimming I had a decent bit of cauliflower in random pieces. To use them up I borrowed another idea from EMP and made cauliflower couscous. Cauliflower is a very sturdy vegetable that can be easily pulsed in a processor until it’s the texture of bread crumbs or…couscous. I did not season these at all for this dish or cook them, but I can see how quickly sauteing them with butter, seasoning them with a bit of vinegar and topping them with a few scallops or shrimp would make for a delicious light dinner.

Not to waste anything I wanted to use the cauliflower leaves too. These local heads of cauliflower and the Romanesco came cocooned in thick deep green leaves. I blanched those and shocked them in ice water. To serve them I warmed them in a mixture of butter and water and then seasoned them with walnut oil, salt and homemade beer vinegar.

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