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Go to the recipe for salmon with puy lentils
If you’re good at chopping vegetables, this dish is a doddle. Even if you’re a little bit slower with the knife it’s still worth the effort. We find it an easy way to boost our fish intake, and it’s sophisticated enough to put on a dinner party menu.
Because salmon has quite a strong flavour, it’s good to have something a little bit hearty with it. The bed of puy lentils, diced vegetables and herbs does the job. Continue reading ‘Salmon on a bed of puy lentils’
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Go to the recipe for crème caramel
If you want a dessert that combines simplicity and wow factor, this has got to be it – crème caramel or flan, either vanilla or au café (the latter, “with coffee”, tends to be preferred in France).
Sure you’ve got to make caramel and custard. But neither could be easier. While a careful eye is needed to get the caramel just right, if you cut and run a bit early it will probably just mean that it’s a lighter colour.
And the custard is not your fraught stove-hovering kind, where you’ve got to heat and whisk over the burner for ages while engaging in some minor bacteriological warfare until the consistency and temperature hit their alchemy point. Nope, as far as custard goes this is really a straightforward heat-and-mix job. Continue reading ‘Crème caramel: from one flan to another’
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Go to the recipe (duck breasts)
Go to the recipe (whole duck)
When I found whole duck on sale at our local supermarket, I got very excited. And I remembered that we had an episode up our sleeve not yet launched on the wider Crash Test Kitchen viewing public.
Friends and family were coming over for dinner this week and I had planned to do a simple roast chicken - but I had never cooked a whole duck before, and I want to have one next Christmas. So this would be the trial run.
It might be a tad retro, but duck a l’orange remains synonymous with birds that swim. A while back we did a show for the Word of Mouth blog that involved duck breasts and a recipe by Stefan Reynaud. Recipe-wise, what I’ll detail here is how we did the breasts-only version shown in the video, and how I handled the whole bird - a Gressingham duck in our case. Continue reading ‘Duck a l’orange’
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There’s an old Buddhist saying that goes something like: “When two paths open up before you, make soufflé.”
There are two main paths to soufflé, and in accordance with the true version of that Buddhist proverb, we chose the difficult one. Continue reading ‘About the soufflé’
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You’ve had eggs benedict - but what about eggs benedict on a fresh, home-made muffin with handcrafted hollandaise sauce? And what if your hollandaise “splits” in the middle of the cooking process? Can it be retrieved, or should you bin it and start again?
These and other questions answered in this marathon episode.
Strictly speaking, eggs benny is made with ham, but in our experience smoked salmon has become synonymous with the dish. Continue reading ‘Project Benedict’
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Go to the recipe for tarte tatin
A while back we had a giveaway for the Joy of Cooking cookbook’s latest edition. We were impressed by this American culinary tome - it really is quite an almanac, and we use it regularly. No surprise that when we decided to bake a tarte tatin it was right there in the index.
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Tarte tatin is traditionally made with apple but we have used pear once before, and Lenny reckons you could even do it with plums. Loads of butter and sugar are simmered into a buttery, sticky toffee-caramel sauce that fuses the slices of apple to a layer of puff pastry. It’s cooked upside down, first on a hob, then in the oven, and you invert it to serve. Continue reading ‘Joy of tarte tatin’
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This episode our London-based mate Phil shows us how to make real French fries - so real, in fact, they’re actually Belgian. And his wife Michelle, a genuine chef, chips in (pun for Anglo-Anzac readers) with a tasty and simple egg mayonnaise, plus the mussels that go into a traditional Belgian “moules and frites” feast.
Phil and Michelle know their way around Belgium and its cuisine. Phil is a particular specialist at locating obscure monasteries that run breweries on the side, where the monks only sell their beer to people who show up at the door, and only in bulk.
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The secret to the Belgian “frite”, Phil insists, is the twice-cooked sweating method. You give them a blast in the hot oil, let them sit for half an hour, then fry them again. Continue reading ‘Real Belgian fries, with mussels and mayo’
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In France, this ubiquitous soup is known simply as “gratinée” by virtue of the de rigueur melted Gruyère cheese on top.
Our travels through Quebec brought me into contact with the real thing (not a packet mix) for the first time, so of course we had to try and make it ourselves. Last episode we made beef stock as the base, and in this instalment we finish the process of creating French onion soup from scratch.
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It was a bit of a tearjerker for Lenny, who had to slice all the oignons because I was busy with bookkeeping. Continue reading ‘What’s French for onion soup?’
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We’ve set out to make authentic French onion soup, complete with crusty toasted bread and gruyere on top. And when you embark on such a mission, you simply must make the soup base - beef stock - from scratch.
This is one of those really rewarding kitchen marathons. The stock may take hours and hours to make, but most of that is simply the simmering process that seethes out the delicious juices from the beef bones and vegetables.
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And the preparation is enjoyably crude: vegetables roughly chopped, roasted with the bones, then tossed into a pot with water and a few simple spices. Continue reading ‘Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch’
We all want one of those chef’s blowtorches, don’t we? You know, the ones that you can use to blacken a capsicum (sorry, a pepper), blister a tomato … or make creme brulee!
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I’ve had a serious addiction to this oh-so-unhealthy French dessert for years now - probably since I saw the movie Amelie, with that pixie-faced leading lady who rates “cracking creme brulee with a spoon” as one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Most restaurants have it on the menu, and I’ve eaten all sorts of variations - fruit flavoured and the like - in different parts of the world. Continue reading ‘Cracking creme brulee’
Mmm, lamb. We can’t get enough of it … after all, we come from the country that was built on the sheep’s back. No, we don’t mean the Shaky Isles (New Zealand), we mean the Wide Brown Land (Australia)!
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After gobbling down some excellent lamb at Les Freres de la Cote restaurant in Quebec City, we couldn’t wait to do a “Canadian Safari” episode featuring this meat. But Canucks by and large don’t seem to “get” lamb, and there’s very little produced locally. So we resorted to some Kiwi lamb racks sourced at a supermarket on Prince Edward Island. Continue reading ‘Get some lamb in your pan’
Technically, Canada Day, July 1, celebrates the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation called Canada. This all took place in 1868. These days, it’s mostly a day for fireworks, lots of drinking and another excuse for a big family gathering.
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It was great to spend Canada Day with the most Canadian of families out at the L’Hirondelle ancestral property in Sturgeon County. We even participated in a good-ol’ game of horseshoes, eh. I got a “ringer” and a “point” in one go, for a score of four points - very impressive for a first-time horseshoer. Unfortunately I and my teammate Scott were knocked out by veterans Terry and Sue. I was consoled, however, by the fact the “souffle” turned out a treat! Continue reading ‘Canada Day Souffle, Part 2′
Rule number one of crepe making: there’s NO SHAME if the first one’s a failure. Rule number two: when the crepes hit the table, GET IN QUICK!
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For years, I’d made my “pancakes” according to a simple recipe: one cup of flour, one egg, one cup of milk. Lenny and my friends thought they were pretty good. But I suspected the results were a bit heavy, a bit tough. Not what you could really call crepes.
Then, while we were in the UK, I grabbed one of Delia Smith’s recipe books off a friend’s shelf. Or maybe I saw her cook crepes on her TV show. Anyway, dear old Delia turned my world upside down. My basic ratio went out the window, butter was added, and the result was a much lighter, much more delicate pancake than I had ever produced - something that could truly be called a crepe. Continue reading ‘The great crepe debate’
Duck in for Christmas
Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast
No-fuss fish pie
Classic bolognese
Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata)
About the soufflé
One chicken, three ways
Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch
Heart-melting chocolate pudding
Cracking creme brulee
These pretzels are making us … feisty!
Rhubarb’s your uncle
Cinnamon teacake
Easy peasy feta cheesy
Where did they go?
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