Germknödel and Custard

I am always on the lookout for new recipes, and have a ever-growing list of dishes to try at some undetermined point in the future. As soon as I saw this recipe for sweet, steamed jam filled dumplings, I had to make them- normally I  shop around for a recipe, to find the something perfect. But I was cold, hungry, and utterly seduced by the idea of dumplings, custard and a sweet poppy seed butter in one dish. And they have become one of my favourite puddings-something for a cold day, when you are enjoying a cold day indoors with the sort of friends who are willing to give you a hand with mixing dough or heating up custard, or even just chat while you shape and fill the buns.

My knowledge of Austrian cuisine really only goes so far as germknödel. But as far as introductions go, they make a spectacular one. The name germknödel, and their English description of jam dumpling evokes a heavy stodgy dish- in fact they are surprisingly light- in terms of taste, at least.

Germknodel for three.

The recipe came from a Guardian article 'The 10 Best Dumpling Recipes', which is as good as it sounds. If you want to make your own custard, I recommend Delia's recipe- it is very good. However, the dumpling recipe is quite involved, so I think good shop bought custard would be a perfectly acceptable accompaniment.

The dough after proving- it is very soft and silky, and really nice to work with!

Vodka Resolutions

I nobly stuck to 2013's resolution- to make a flavoured vodka every month (except for the months where I used gin).

Here is a photo of the fruits of my labours.

The flavours go as follows:
January: Lychee, Star Anise, Schezuan Pepper and Tangerine Peel
February: Pomegranate, Cardamom and Rose
March: Rhubarb and Raspberry
April: Blueberry, Vanilla and Lime
May: Vanilla
June: Strawberry and Black Peppercorn
July: Gooseberry and Elderflower
August: Redcurrant and Raspberry
September: Pear
October: Sloe Gin
November: Ginger and Lime Gin
December: Cranberry

For 2014, I will be starting a new resolution- to drink and review a flavoured vodka a month.

Crispy Pata and Atacharang Papaya

I first had crispy pata about 6 years ago in a pub in Kenilworth, The Famous Virgins and Castle, which has a half English, half Filipino menu. For those who aren't aware of the delights of crispy pata, it is a deep fried pork hock. It should have a rich brown skin that snaps when you break it (like the savoury equivalent of the top of a crème brulee), and very tender flesh. It's rich, fatty, and the meat in almost gelatinous in place, and you'll need a lie down after eating.
The Famous Virgins and Castle serve the pork with rice and atcharang papaya. I only ever have a few mouthfuls of rice, or I fill up and can't eat all my pata, which would be a terrible thing indeed. Atacharang papaya is a pickle, made with unripe papaya. It is sweet and sharp and cuts through the fatty pork very well.
Crispy Pata has to be the most terrifying dish I have ever cooked. I don't think I'll be making it again without a deep fat fryer, and even then, I'm not sure it's worth the clean up and the terrifying noises of the pig skin blistering and popping. I'm glad I attempted it, but I think it'll be a dish that I'll order in restaurants rather than make at home.

Atacharang Papaya
You need to know if you want atacharang papaya a few days before you eat- it improves with a little time. Every recipe I looked at specified the importance of using green, unripe papaya. Luckily, that was all I could find in the supermarket anyway.

1 green, unripe papaya
1 tbsp salt
4 cups vinegar
4 cups sugar
5-10 shallots (the recipe I was using this a base for specified red shallots- I could only find regular ones, and used these)
1 red pepper
2 large red chillies
1 large carrot
1 cucumber
handful raisins
I head garlic
a few slices of ginger.


Peel, destone and finely shred the papaya. Place in a bowl, and sprinkle with the salt. Let it sit for a minute or two, then place in a sieve and rinse off. Squeeze the papaya to remove as much as the moisture as you can. Set aside. Shred the cucumber and carrot, the pepper and the chilli (removing seeds and pith from the last two). Peel and finely slice the shallots. Mix all these together in a bowl, with the papaya and the raisins.

Put the vinegar and sugar in a large sauce pan with the slices of ginger. Slice the head of garlic horizontally in half, and add this too. Dissolve the sugar over a low heat, and then boil for 3-5 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. I discarded the ginger slices, but peeled and separated the cloves of garlic and included them in the pickle.

Put the shredded vegetables in a large jar and pour over enough of the pickling liquid to cover. Leave for 2 days before using.

Crispy Pata
1 pork hock
6 bay leaves
2 tbsp whole black peppercorns
4-6 star anise
teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 to 3 teaspoons garlic powder
12 to 15 cups water
8 to 12 cups cooking oil

Bring the water to the boil in a pan large enough to take the meat later.
Add the bay leaves, whole peppercorn, star anise and 4 teaspoons of the salt along with the pork hock. Simmer the meat until it is tender. The recipe I used suggested 45-60 minutes, I ended up cooking it for more like 2 hours.

Remove the pork hock and set aside to cool.Rub the leg with the ground pepper, garlic powder and remaining salt. Let it sit for at least 15 minutes.

Heat the oil in a large cooking pot with a lid. Don't use a pot without a lid, it is far too messy, and more importantly, dangerous to leave this uncovered.

Gently put the pork in the oil (to avoid splashing). Cover, and leave top crisp up on one side, then turn and cook the other side. This takes far longer than you would expect. The skin needs to properly crackle and blister before it is ready. When the skin is well browned and crunchy, it is ready.

Serve with the atcharang papaya and some plain rice.

Sweet Potato, Roast Garlic and Coconut Soup

I was tempted to call the title of this post Sweet Potato, Roast Garlic, Lime, Cumin and Coconut Soup, but I thought I would stick to the Rule of Three. Despite a rather long and overcomplicated name, the ingredients blend together to a much more mellow soup than you would expect. That is not to say it is dull, I like to think the combination makes a beautiful balance, like in a good Thai curry.


Ingredients
2 heads of garlic
Olive oil
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp butter
4 spring onions
1 long red chilli
800g (ish) sweet potato
1 can coconut milk
1litre chicken or vegetable stock, or water
Fish sauce (to taste)
1 lime

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Tear 2 squares of foil. Place a head of garlic on one of the foil squares, drizzle over a little oil. Crimp the edges of the foil together tightly, so the garlic is encased in a baggy foil packet. Repeat with the other head of garlic. Roast for 20-25 minutes, until the garlic is very soft- leave it for longer if it is still hard.

While the garlic is roasting, toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan until they start to smell fragrant, then tip into a pestle and mortar and grind as finely as you can.

Chop the spring onions and the chilli. You can do this quite roughly, as they will all get blended up in the end. I keep the chilli seeds in this for the extra bite, but you can remove them if you prefer a milder soup.

Melt the butter in a pan big enough to accommodate everything. Add the chilli and spring onion, and let them cook over a gentle heat. Whilst they are cooking, peel and chop the sweet potato into even sized pieces. Add to the chilli and spring onion, and cook for a few minutes more. Stir in the cumin, then add the stock or water and coconut milk. Simmer until the sweet potato is tender. How long it will take depends on the size you cut your potatoes.
Remove the garlic from the oven, unwrap and allow to cool enough so you can handle it. Squeeze the garlic pulp out of its skins into the pan. Blend the soup with a stick blender until completely smooth. Add a dash of fish sauce and half the juice of the lime, stir and taste. Add more lime or fish sauce to your taste, and serve.

The soup is surprisingly filling, I found a bowl with some bread made a very tasty and warming supper.

Plum Gingerbread Swirled with Cheesecake

A quick food shop last week turned into a splurge on autumnal produce-I came back with rough-skinned russet apples, root vegetables to turn into a comforting, cream enriched soup and two big punnets of plums. Most of the apples are gone, the majority just eaten on their own, or with some sharp cheddar. A few were used as a topping for a pecan cake, sprinkled with lots of cinnamon and nutmeg. The vegetables have been peeled, cooked, pureed and eaten; I had forgotten how nice a simple vegetable soup could be, especially when you've caught the dreaded cold, like I had. I still have a lot of plums though, even though I like them a lot I was lacking inspiration. Thank goodness for the internet, especially at the moment when I am living without most of my cookery book collection. The first thing that caught my attention was plum gingerbread, then this plum traybake with cheesecake and finally these gingerbread cheesecake bars.

The cake I made came closest to the gingerbread cheesecake bars. The recipe was essentially the same, but with a few additions. Plums, obviously, but also some stem ginger to the gingerbread mix, and some lemon zest and juice to the cheesecake. I omitted the ground ginger from the cheesecake batter, as I wanted complete contrast of the two mixes. Also, instead of pouring the gingerbread batter in the cake tin, covering it with the cheesecake mix, then marbling the two, I put alternating spoonfuls of the batters in the tin and then swirled them up with a knife. I think my method would be easier, as the gingerbread batter is much heavier and denser than the cheesecake, so to try and swirl the gingerbread above and into the cheesecake seems rather difficult.

I have just a cold piece with a cup of tea , and I was very pleased- I really like the contrast between dark, heavy gingerbread and light, tangy cheesecake. I wouldn't go as far to say that the plums 'make' the dish, but they are a really nice addition and suit the flavours of the cake.

If you want to make this recipe, I used this one as a base, from the Oven Adventures blog, which looks great- I'll be pouring over it later. Add the zest of one lemon and one teaspoon of the juice to the cheesecake batter, and one ball of stem ginger, grated, plus a little of the syrup from the jar to the gingerbread. Omit the ground ginger from the cheesecake mix. See my notes above for mixing the two batters in the cake tin. Finally top with some sliced plums. I used 4 plums, each cut into four thick slices.

Toblerone Fridge Cake

I'm a big fan of Felicity Cloake's 'How to cook the perfect...' series. Felicity has my dream job, refining recipes to perfection and writing about it. Her final recipes are great- at least the ones I have made are, but I trust the other recipes are equally good. 

One of her recipes is for the perfect fridge cake. It doesn't use Toblerone, but I had a large bar at home, and after making Nigel Slater's Toblerone sauce for ice cream, I was keen to use it in other recipes. Felicity's recipe calls for half milk, half dark chocolate, which easily could be aped with a mix of dark and milk Toblerone bars. I just used milk because it is what I had at home, but perhaps the recipe could be bettered with the substitution of dark Toblerone for some of the milk. I did enjoy it as it was though, but I do have quite a sweet tooth. 

The overall flavour wasn't especially Toblerone-like, but it did have the added bonus of nougat pieces peppered throughout. The next time I make it I may use honey in the place of the golden syrup, and add a tiny drop of almond essence to boost the flavour

I omitted the 50g of candied peel, as I don't like it much, and made up the weight with some extra dried fruit. My choice of dried fruit was 70g dried apricots, 70g dried cherries, 70g dried cranberries and 40g sultanas. I only used the sultanas to make up the weight of the dried fruit, but actually I am glad I used them- the cherries and cranberries are so tangy, it was nice to have a more mellow fruit. I decided not to do the grown up option of soaking the fruit in alcohol, and stuck to orange juice. To be honest, a boozy hit isn't what I fancy in a piece of fridge cake, I prefer to save that for puddings rather than have it in my mid morning treat.

For the nuts, I used a half and half mix of pecans and almonds. I think for a Toblerone fridge cake you need to include some almonds to match the nougat in the chocolate. Macadamia strike me as a nice, but pricey addition. 

I was interested to see how little golden syrup she used- only one tablespoon compared to 4 tbsp in my other favourite fridge cake recipe. Also, using an egg in fridge cake seemed odd to me, but the resulting texture was perfect.  

I have copied the recipe with my notes added:

200g of your favourite dried fruit, chopped into raisin-sized bits- I used 70g dried apricots, 70g dried cherries, 70g dried cranberries and 40g sultanas
150ml orange juice (or rum, whisky or Cointreau for grown-ups)- just orange juice for me- I didn't measure, just used the juice of 1 large orange
200g digestive biscuits
150g dark chocolate- dark and milk chocolate replaced with 300g milk chocolate Toblerone
150g milk chocolate- see above
120g butter, at room temperature
1tbsp golden syrup
1 egg yolk
50g mixed peel- omitted, weight made up with additional dried fruit
100g flaked almonds or other nuts, chopped- I used 50g pecans and 50g blanched almonds

Put the chopped fruit into a small pan along with the juice or alcohol and heat very gently until the fruit becomes plump and squishy, and has absorbed most of the liquid. Set aside to cool. Break the biscuits into small pieces.

Line a roughly 20cm square brownie tin with baking paper (you can use a little butter to stick it down at the corners).

Break the chocolate into pieces by whacking the sealed packets against the kitchen counter. Put a heatproof bowl above, but not touching, a pan of water and bring to the boil. Tip the chocolate into the bowl, turn down the heat, and stir until the chocolate has melted. Take off the heat and allow to cool slightly.

At this point I toasted the pecans and almonds in a dry frying pan, and let cool before chopping. The toasted flavour of the nuts was lost in the finished cake, so I probably wouldn't do this next time. 

Meanwhile, put the butter in a large mixing bowl with the syrup and use a wooden spoon, or electric beater, to beat them together until they're soft and a bit fluffy. Add the egg and mix in well.

At this point I drained the dried fruit, so the so the orange juice that wasn't absorbed didn't change the texture of the cake. 

Beat the chocolate into the butter mixture, then tip in the rest of the ingredients and stir until they're all coated with chocolate.

Spoon the mixture into your baking tin and press down firmly with a wooden spoon to make it as flat as possible.

Put in the fridge for a few hours until it has set solid, then lift the paper out, and cut into squares with a sharp knife.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Ginger and Five Spice Roast Duck

This is a Chinese-flavours-inspired way of roasting duck that tastes really good and is very simple. I was cooking a special meal for two, and originally had in mind making a stuffing with apples and chestnuts. After a long day a work I was in the mood for something simpler, both in terms of cooking and stuffing. I certainly wasn't looking forward to peeling the potatoes that I would need to roast to go alongside this stuffed duck. So I went for this altogether easier dish.

Place a rack in the sink and sit the duck on top. Fill the kettle to the maximum limit of water and put it on to boil. Pierce the duck with a skewer or fork all over the breast and legs, and when the water has boiled pour the water slowly over the duck. Leave the duck to dry off for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Make sure the duck is properly dry inside and out, dab it with some kitchen roll if necessary. Slice a piece of ginger root, and rub the cut side over the duck's skin. Put 2-3 slim slices of duck inside the cavity. Take 1tsp of 5 spice, and rub it all over the duck.
Put the duck in a roasting tin, on a rack. Roast for an hour and a half. Let it rest, and serve.

We ate this with plain rice and pak choi stir fried with some chilli bean sauce, and chinese barbecue sauce, which you can find the recipe for here (near the bottom of the page)