Crash Test Kitchen

Go to the recipe for Bread and butter pudding

Our friend Anthony brought round one of those panettone things on Christmas Day. In the end not a lot of it got eaten – we had a decent spread lined up already, and the panettone was kind of a last-minute whim on Anthony’s part.

For those not familiar, panettone is a kind of domed bready cake, often containing dried fruit and other goodies. It’s usually risen with yeast as opposed to baking powder. Panettone is a centrepiece at Italian Christmas tables and seems to be becoming more popular in other countries.

So Christmas came and went, as did Boxing Day, New Year’s, and the thing was still sitting there in its box, with only a few slices taken off.

We decided a bread and butter pudding would be the way to go. Usually this is made with sliced and buttered white bread, raisins, brandy and the like, but using panettone slices gives you many of the ingredients in one hit.

It’s an easy pudding that is simple to adapt. In the recipe below, you could just substitute buttered white bread for the panettone, plus soak some raisins in brandy for a while and add them to the mix, along with maybe half a teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Maybe some orange zest too, or candied peel, if you like panettone-style flavours but don’t want to go rushing out to buy a whole one just to make a pudding.

Lenny mentions some other variations in the video – and remember, you don’t have to be too precise with the ingredients.

- Waz

Panettone bread pudding recipe

Slices of panettone, about 250g (9 oz) in total
Whole/full cream milk, about 500ml (17 fl oz)
Double cream, about 100ml
3 eggs
Rum, 1 tablespoon
White sugar, 2-3 tablespoons and more to put on top
Butter/margarine to grease baking dish

Preheat oven to 180C (350F).

Roughly chop the panettone slices into smaller pieces, being careful not to squash them too much. Layer the pieces into a greased 20cm (8in approx) pie dish or other suitable baking vessel.

Whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar and a dash of the rum. Then pour slowly over the bread, making sure to give it an even soaking. Sprinkle sugar evenly on top.

Place in the oven, middle shelf, for 30 minutes and then check. It shouldn’t take longer than 45 minutes. It should have a slightly wobbly feel without being wet or soggy and be nicely browned on top.

Serve with good vanilla ice cream.

How to make rum balls: two ways, humble and posh

Lenny — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:45:59 +0000

Go to the recipe for Humble rum balls
Go to the recipe for Lenny’s faff-tastic wonder balls

It’s a good idea to have a few snack-like goodies prepared for the Christmas period and rum balls always do the trick. Our friend Angie mentioned she’d made a batch to her Nana’s recipe so Waz thought he’d follow suit.

They are based on Weetbix or Weetabix, a cereal bar made out of wheat flakes, and include condensed milk for sweetening. Instead of Weetbix, if there’s no such thing where you live, you can use a plain graham cracker, digestive biscuit or similar cookie.

I’ve always found condensed milk a little too sweet, so decided to try something a little more upmarket. My version includes real melted chocolate and digestive biscuits as a base – you can just use graham crackers, or in the US and Canada there’s something called a Nilla wafer that will do the trick.

You’ll see both kinds in our video – Waz does the basic ‘humble rum ball’ and I do my posh variety, which Waz somewhat sarcastically has dubbed the ‘faff-tastic wonder ball’.

If you don’t like marzipan you can substitute that in my version with pre-prepared sugar icing that you can get in the supermarket.

Waz’s humble rum ball was quite nice, but the dessicated coconut we used was sort of rubbery. Make sure to use really finely grated coconut that’s more powdery and all your Christmas guests should be happy.

- Lenny

Humble rum ball recipe

8 Weetbix, Weetabix or Vita-Brits (crushed). Or substitute 165g crushed-up wheat biscuits/cookies
1 tin condensed milk
1/2 cup dessicated coconut, plus extra for rolling
2 tablespoons cocoa
2-3 tablespons rum (according to taste)
Extra coconut to roll in

Mix dried ingredients; add condensed milk and rum. Mix again and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Roll into balls and into extra coconut. Keep in a sealed container and they should be good for a week or so.

Lenny’s faff-tastic wonder ball recipe

170g (6oz) dark chocolate
1/4 cup almond paste or marzipan
1/2 cup sour cream
4 cups wheat biscuits/cookies. Digestives, graham crackers, Nilla wafers etc are fine
Pinch salt
3/4 cup melted butter
1/3 cup cocoa
3/4 cup rum
1 cup crushed pecans, plus extra for rolling
2 1/2 cups chocolate sprinkles for rolling

Start melting the chocolate in a double boiler. Meanwhile mix crushed biscuits with melted butter, cocoa, rum and pecans. Remember to keep your extra crushed pecans for rolling.

Into the melted chocolate, thoroughly mix sour cream, almond paste and salt.

Then mix the chocolate and biscuit mixtures together until evenly combined.

Refrigerate for at least an hour. Then roll into balls and into the coatings – crushed pecan for some, chocolate sprinkles for the others. You can also try dessicated coconut or cocoa powder. We did some in icing sugar but it just dissolved into the surface of the ball in less than a day.

Keep in an sealed container for up to a week.

How to cook with truffles

Lenny — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:46:01 +0000

Go to the recipe for Pasta with white truffle
Go to the recipe for Eggs in cocotte with white truffle

On “schoolnights”, when everything happens at helter-skelter pace, it’s always a rush to get home from work, throw a meal together and do the day’s housekeeping before crashing into bed. If I’m lucky Waz has been on an early shift and we can share the evening duties.

So on the weekends we really like to give a lot more time and attention to creating lovely meals that we can enjoy eating at a slower pace.

I thoroughly respect the ideology of the Slow Food Movement – begun in 1986 to celebrate and enjoy local and regional cuisines. So when time permits I love to create meals that embody the Slow Food philosophy of creating the simplest of dishes, with the highest quality ingredients.

Chef Michelle and I recently treated ourselves with a whirlwind weekend trip to the centre of the white truffle universe – the Alba truffle festival in Piemonte near Turin, Italy. We ate a fantastic truffle meal at a Slow Food restaurant with some luscious local Barolo wine. We couldn’t believe our luck the following day when, while roaming the Alba hills, we ran into a local truffle hunter who sold us some white truffles that his little dog had just dug out of the ground.

The white truffle has a pungent, earthy aroma that softens and mellows when you apply heat. When raw it reminds me almost of onion skin and garlic, but slow-roasted garlic or onion fried for a long time over the lowest of heats. The sharp aromas mellow into rich flavours that linger in your mouth and nose long after you’ve swallowed the last mouthful.

So Michelle and I brought our truffles home and tried to recreate our Slow Food truffle meal. Yes, yes, you cynics out there: I admit we weren’t exactly in keeping with Slow Food philosophy by taking a short-haul flying weekend break to source our main ingredient. But we really wanted to take in the whole Alba festival experience.

The thing about Slow Food is you try to use the freshest, highest quality ingredients, sourced as locally as possible. But everyone wants to cook with truffle once in their life (don’t they?), so if you’re lucky enough to be able to get hold of a truffle my suggestion is to do the least you possibly can with it so your dish is “all about the truffle”.

- Lenny

Pasta with white truffle (makes enough for 2 people)

For both these dishes, try to splash out and buy the best quality (yes, that usually means most expensive) ingredients. The creamiest butter, the freshest eggs from the happiest chickens, the right cheese. I’m not sure this meal would work if it were made with bog-standard ingredients. The pasta should be home-made with strong wheat flour and semolina flour and fresh, free-range eggs. If you don’t have a pasta maker (like me at the moment) you can buy fresh pasta. I got mine from Selfridge’s and it was OK (but not, I venture to say, as good as my own would have been).

200g fresh, long, thin pasta (like spaghetti or tagliarini)
75-100g soft, unsalted butter
5g white truffle (tartufi bianchi)

Get a large pot of salted water boiling and drop in the pasta. While it’s cooking, gently melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan – don’t let it sizzle or brown. The pasta will only take a couple of minutes. It should be al dente – with just a little bite to it. Scoop out a mugful of pasta water before very quickly draining the pasta and throwing it in the other pan with the melted butter. You don’t want the pasta to drain fully – you want it to be nice and wet. Give it a gentle stir around in the saucepan so the pasta water and butter emulsify. Add some more pasta water from your mug if the sauce seems at all oily or dry. Carefully lower the pasta onto a pasta plate, and shave half the truffle over each plate of pasta.

Eggs in cocotte with white truffle (serves 2)

At the risk of labouring a point, please use the best, freshest eggs you can in this dish – it will make all the difference. I made a bit of a rookie mistake by using single cream. Double cream is much better because single cream can split. Try to get raschera cheese – which is a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese regional to Piemonte, home of the white truffle, and is therefore perfectly matched. If you can’t get raschera, try fontina. Without practice, it’s difficult to know how long to cook this dish to get the perfect consistency, so you could do what we did and prepare four so you can discard the first two if they are undercooked when you test them. The recipe below is enough for 2, but double it if you want to make 4 so you have two test-dishes.

2 eggs
1/2 cup double cream
200g raschera cheese, grated
5g white truffle

Turn the grilll (broiler) on to medium. Butter 2 (about 200ml) medium-sized ramekins and put them on a tray so you can take them in and out of the oven easily. Carefully break the eggs into them, leaving the yolks whole. Carefully pour over the double cream – about the same volume as one egg (a bit less than 1/4 cup). Sprinkle over about the same volume of the grated cheese, so you have about one third egg, one third cream, one third cheese. Slide the ramekins under the grill and watch while they gently heat and turn brown on top. After about 5 minutes, check to see if the mixture is steaming hot and the eggs are on the brink of setting (it is easier to check if you have made extra and can discard them if they’re not done). Sit the ramekins on plates and shave truffle over the top; make sure to tell your guests to stir the truffle into the baked eggs to eat them.

Let the jelly roll: Swiss roll recipe from Waz’s Nana

Waz — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:29:50 +0000

Go to the recipe for Swiss roll, aka jelly roll

Swiss roll – or jelly roll to the Americans and Canadians – is what Lenny likes to call a store cupboard cake. Like my Mum’s teacake, this is baking at its easiest. You’ve probably got most of the ingredients already, and the results are sure to win you a disproportionate amount of praise from your guests.

Mum visited us here in the UK recently and when Lenny asked for a Swiss roll recipe she was able to give one off the top of her head. Even though she used to be a home economics teacher, I’m still impressed by the food knowledge Mum can rattle off, and grateful for the simple tricks and tests she knows for getting things right in the kitchen. It was great to have Mum lending tips while I made caramel for coating popcorn or some custard to go with a macadamia plum pudding she brought out from Australia.

This recipe for Swiss roll comes from my dear departed Nana on Mum’s side. Nana died many years ago but her cooking is still much reprised throughout the family.

The base sponge is wonderfully light and seemingly whipped up from nothing – a few eggs, a little bit of flour and some sugar.

Enjoy the video, give the recipe a go and make up your mind whether to follow the final tip about trimming the edges for better presentation. It all depends who’s coming round for tea, really.

- Waz

Swiss roll recipe from Waz’s Nana

Makes enough for an average sized sponge tray

3 eggs
3 tablespoons caster sugar, plus 1 tablespoon extra
3 rounded tablespoons sifted self-raising flour
OR
plain flour sifted with baking soda according to packet directions
Half teaspoon of vanilla
Teaspoon of cinnamon
Butter
Jam/jelly that you like
Whipping cream (optional)

- Preheat oven to 180C/350F (moderate).

- Grease the sponge roll tray, then line it with baking paper.

- Beat the eggs until thick, then beat in the sugar 1 tablespoon at a time. Keep beating until you can drizzle a figure of eight on to the surface and it remains for a second.

- Gently fold in the sifted flour. As the egg/sugar mixture is already quite thick you might get some clumps of flour, so keep going until it is all combined. Once it’s smooth, stir in the vanilla.

- Pour into the sponge roll tray, tilting the tray to distribute the mixture evenly. Bake for about 20 minutes.

- While it’s baking, prepare a clean tea towel by laying it out flat and sprinkling with the remaining tablespoon of caster sugar, mixed with the cinnamon.

- Carefully turn out the cooked sponge on to the tea towel. Peel away the baking paper and gently roll up the sponge.

- Place on a cooling rack. Once cooled, roll out and spread with your jam, then the option whipped cream, and re-roll. If using cream, keep refrigerated and eat within a day or two.

How to roast a duck, the slow and tender way

Waz — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:43:26 +0000

Go to the recipe for Christmas duck

Let’s talk turkey. Actually let’s talk about something else this Christmas. Let’s talk turkey alternatives.

This is a first for Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve never done a Christmas episode before. So we thought we’d focus on two of the basic elements you want on your table: crispy roast potatoes and a lovely bird.

But instead of turkey, we’ve chosen duck.

Now I know people are very attached to turkey as the symbolic festive centrepiece. In our case we don’t have vast amounts of turkey experience – being originally from Australia, where it’s not really eaten much. What with it being summer down under, Christmas lunch is often a cold cuts and/or barbecue affair.

Lately we’ve become big fans of roast duck, so we thought we’d nominate it as your Christmas bird of choice. The great thing is that if you use our method, you’ll get enough lovely duck fat to baste your potatoes for roasting. Nothing short of goose fat produces potatoes anywhere near as good.

Of course a duck isn’t as meaty as a turkey, but we reckon it’s a simple enough matter to cook two of them, which should give you enough flesh for up to 10 people.

Goose seems to be getting popular here in the UK, but we haven’t got our head around cooking one yet. So think of duck as a stepping stone. Maybe next year we’ll do a goose.

- Waz

Christmas slow-roast duck with crispy potatoes

As devised by Waz based on Joy of Cooking
Serves 4-5

1 duck approx 2kg/4lb, giblets removed
Good roasting potatoes, peeled, enough for everyone
Greens of choice, cooked to your liking
Salt and pepper

We haven’t written up the recipe for giblet broth and gravy yet. In the meantime you can find a recipe here – essentially it’s the one we used.

- Preheat oven to 125 degrees C (approx 250 F).

- Get a toothpick or other precision skewer and prick the duck’s skin all over but NOT STICKING THE SKEWER STRAIGHT IN – go almost parallel with the skin, through it and into the fat but not the flesh. This will let the fat drain out during cooking, which is crucial. Remove any fat around the duck’s openings – this may already have been done.

- Rub the duck all over with good salt. Then lay it in a baking tray breasts-down. Yes, breasts-down.

- Give the duck 3 hours in the oven, checking every hour or so that the fat is still draining OK (if not, re-prick).

- When the duck’s had 2 hours, boil your peeled potatoes until they are easily forkable apart, then drain them.

- After the duck’s had 3 hours, drain off the fat into a heat-safe container: preferably one of those jugs used to separate fat and juices, and preferably see-through. Turn the oven up to 180 C (350 F). Return the duck to the pan, breasts UPWARDS this time, and pop it back in the oven for 45 minutes.

- Separate the fat and juices, reserving both. Use your special jug, or get a turkey baster and suck the juices from under the fat. Or just pour off the fat carefully.

- Get your potatoes in an oven tray that’s deep enough and drizzle the fat over them. Shake them around to coat. If you’re out of trays or oven space, you may have to fit them in with the duck. Rough them up with two forks as shown in the video. Put the potatoes in the oven.

- Once the duck’s had its last 45 minutes, get it out – it should be looking brown and crisp. Check for the usual signs of uncookedness (highly unlikely unless you’ve messed up the temperatures). Cover the duck with foil and rest it on a plate. Give the potatoes more time if they don’t look golden-brown enough for you.

- Get your greens going – they won’t take long. Braised cabbage is our suggestion – sliced and briefly done in butter, salt, pepper and half a cup of stock (duck broth if you’ve made it).

- Carve up the duck to your liking – look at all that lovely rich meat. It’s nice to separate off the joints, and remove the breasts whole then slice them up retaining a bit of skin on each slice. Adorn each plate with a selection of cuts. Add the lovely golden-brown potatoes and your greens.

Baked salmon recipe, with a bed of puy lentils

Waz — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:49:07 +0000

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.

It’s important to cook the lentils in stock, which adds to the flavour of the dish. But it’s not necessary to get the amount of stock exactly right because you’ll be pouring off the liquid once the lentils are cooked, before you mix them with the veg. If you don’t have quite enough stock and the lentils are boiling dry but not quite cooked yet, you can top up with a bit of water.

Make sure you get puy lentils, which hold together throughout cooking, rather than the types that mush down and puree themselves during cooking. No other lentil will do.

Seasoning the salmon with a little bit of salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper will add that extra bit of flavour. The addition of the herbs and fresh lemon juice at the end gives the whole dish a lovely freshness.

Yes, yes, I know we had to use bottled lemon juice this time (which I’ve NEVER done before) but (as usual) I blame Waz: he used the lemon that was meant for this dish in a salad dressing earlier in the week.

Please excuse my control-freak attitude to chopping the veg in this episode – Waz is not as quick as I am. He does get there eventually though. I’m just a Very. Impatient. Person.

- Lenny

Baked salmon on a bed of puy lentils (serves 4)

4 fillets of skinless salmon (or skin it yourself)
1 cup puy lentils
5 cups vege or meat stock (3/4 cup reserved)
1 red onion
2 medium carrots
2 sticks celery
1 red capsicum (pepper)
1 handful parsley
1 handful basil
juice of 1 lemon
olive oil
qood quality sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Rinse the lentils in water. Pop them in a pot with all but 3/4 cups of the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for about half an hour until they are soft to the bite but not mushy – sort of just beyond al dente.

In the meantime, skin the salmon (if necessary), pop it on a baking tray and season with a little bit of quality salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Preheat the oven to hot – 230C/450F.

Keeping them in separate piles, finely dice the onion, carrots, celery and capsicum. It really, really helps the presentation if you can get them into a fairly consistent small dice, about half a centimetre. This can be time consuming but is worth the effort – especially if you’re making it for guests. With the carrots, celery and capsicum, slice them into chopstick-thickness batons then dice them across into small cubes. Finely chop the basil and parsley.

Check the lentils to see if the liquid needs topping up. By now, the lentils are hopefully about 15-20 minutes away from being cooked, so in a large, heavy-based saucepan, gently heat 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil then gently sweat the diced onion until it starts to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the carrot and the celery and continue to gently sweat it for about another 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pop the capsicum in and cook for another few minutes.

Now it’s time to bake the salmon in the hot oven for about 10-12 minutes.

Check the lentils. When ready, drain them and add them to the pan of veggies. Let the flavours mingle for a few minutes. Now whizz up a small amount of the lentil-veggie mixture in a blender to help the dish hold together. You can either remove about 1 cup of lentil mixture into a blender, add the reserved stock and whizz it up until it’s smooth, then return it to the pan. Or you can do what I do and just plunge a stab blender into the pan and blitz about a third of the mixture then stir it together gently.

The baked salmon should be ready to take out of the oven now and rest for a minute while you stir into the lentil mixture the chopped herbs, lemon juice and a tablespoon or two of good olive oil. Season it to taste and serve the salmon fillets on a bed of lentils with a sprig of herbs on top.

Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls

Waz — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:57:50 +0000

Go to the recipe for sausage rolls

This is my Uncle Kev’s sausage roll recipe, and it’s fantastic for parties. Or you can even make a double or triple batch before Christmas, Thanksgiving or local festive holiday and freeze them, then heat them up in the oven for a really quick finger-food for a big group of people.

Some people reckon the flavour’s even better after they have been frozen and reheated. They do heat up OK in the microwave but really it’s best done in the oven so the pastry crisps up again.

They are delicious on their own, or dip them in a bit of the old “dead horse” (tomato sauce – ketchup) for lovely zing. This mixture makes about 20-25 little sausage rolls.

One important point – you really do need to use decent sausages. Like the ones in our video.

- Lenny

Sausage roll recipe by Uncle Kev

1kg good quality sausages or sausage mince
1 large or two small onions
2 large carrots
2 tbsp mixed fresh herbs like oregano, marjoram, thyme, sage, parsley (or a good pinch of dried herbs)
1 tsp garlic
3 slices of bread
750g block of cold, ready-made puff pastry – or the ready-rolled stuff if you can spare the expense
1/4 cup poppy seeds (optional)

If you bought sausages, push the meat out from the casings into a big bowl and throw the casings away.

Finely chop the onions, fresh herbs and garlic. Finely grate the carrots. Add all this to the mince.

Whiz the bread up into crumbs using a food processor. Or soak the bread in water for a few minutes, crumble it into the sausage mince and mix the whole lot up really well. The mixture is best left overnight in the fridge to develop its flavour.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. It’s best if you can work with the pastry while it’s still cold and firm. On a floured bench, roll the puff pastry out into 4 rectangles, about 25cm x 12 cm. It’s a bit easier if you bought the ready-rolled puff pastry: just unroll the sheets and cut them in two lengthwise so you have two long, thin rectangles.

Lay about a quarter of the mixture in a long, sausage shape about an inch in from the long edge so you have a short flap of pastry near you, and a longer flap away from you. Brush the far edge of the longer flap with water or milk to help it stick. Roll it up, starting with the short flap nearest you.

Repeat this until you have four very long sausage rolls. Brush the top with milk and sprinke the poppy seeds if you’re using them over the top. Cut each long roll into the desired lengths – you can get about 5 or 6 short cocktail-sized sausage rolls out of each long roll, making about 20-25 little sausage rolls in all. Try to slicely through cleanly so you don’t squish the little rolls flat – though it doesn’t matter if you flatten them out a bit.

Pop the rolls on a lightly greased oven tray and bake for 20-25 minutes until they’re golden on top and cooked all the way through. Let them cool a bit then either eat them straight away or freeze them ready to reheat later.

Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast

Waz — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:47:57 +0000

Go to the recipe for hot and fast roast chicken

People do fuss over a roast chicken, don’t they? Doing all sorts of things like draping bacon over the fleshiest bits to keep them moist, mucking around poking seasonings under the skin, stuffing all sorts of things inside them to add flavour, even insisting that you have to roast a chicken breast-down in the pan and then flip it over part way through cooking.

In our opinion, if you keep the cooking simple, getting a good result can be reduced to one decision: buying a decent chicken in the first place. There’s been a lot of publicity about chicken welfare lately, with the focus being on battery laying hens and intensively reared, fast-growing meat birds that can hardly stand up by themselves.

In our house we haven’t gone down the full free-range route, but have settled on buying slow-growing birds that are fed better food in more spacious barns endorsed by animal welfare authorities. In the UK the scheme is called RSPCA Freedom Foods and no doubt there are equivalents elsewhere in the world.

Why haven’t we gone free range? To be honest, Lenny and I don’t think the extra quality is there for the price compared with a Freedom bird. I know the debate is not all about quality, but we do believe a meat bird can be grown indoors without the process being inherently cruel.

Since going for the better bird I have realised just how devoid of taste and texture the average cheap chicken can be. The flesh seems slimy and dense. A bird that’s been reared in better conditions seems to have a more open texture and grain to the cooked flesh, indicating that it’s been able to get plenty of exercise.

Welfare birds will sometimes have the last joint of the leg left on (like ours in the video), which allows you to check for hock burn, a sort of rawness or callousing on the joint that can be a sign of neglectful rearing.

Lenny and I don’t worry about stuffing, nor do we generally season the bird to any great extent. Just baste it liberally with brandy mixed into melted butter. Then hit it with high heat until done.

Nothing against stuffing or seasoning, mind you. A roast bird with all the trimmings can form a charming centrepiece to your Sunday or seasonal table. But at our house we get full mileage out of our birds by using the leftover carcass to make a basic stock in our slow cooker. I think it’s a good idea not to contaminate the stock with flavours that don’t belong there.

When roasting we’ll sometimes go as far as putting a lemon inside the chicken, which may help keep it moist and add some flavour – once cooked, Lenny recommends squeezing the lemon into the pan juices when making your gravy.

Roast potatoes and other vegetables are your classic accompaniment, but for a different approach Lenny also advocates canned lentils into the pan juices along with some chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon. Heat and serve.

Hot and fast roast chicken recipe
1 quality, high-welfare chicken
Butter
Brandy
Lemon (optional)
Plain flour
White wine
Salt

Preheat oven to 220C/425F. This is just below the maximum temperature on many ovens.

Remove any packaging from in or around the chicken. Check it doesn’t have plastic-wrapped neck or giblets in the cavity. If the neck is in there, you could roast it with the bird to use as part of a stock later on.

Wash the bird inside and out under a tap if it needs it. Pat dry.

Lightly oil an oven tray or dish that is deep enough to catch juices and suitable for putting on a burner or hotplate later. Put the bird in the dish.

Melt a slice of butter and splash some brandy into it. Mix together and then baste liberally over the outside of the bird. If you’re using a lemon, halve it and place inside the cavity.

Place the bird in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes, then check. A smaller bird might be done by now, but for a medium to large bird the cooking time will be more like 1 hour, or 1 hour 20 minutes.

To check for doneness, take the chicken out of the oven. If a leg can be easily pulled off, it’s usually done. If there’s sort of elastic resistance and it doesn’t break away easily, it probably needs longer. You can also check by poking a skewer into a juicy part of the chicken – if the juices run clear it’s OK. But overall, if the flesh is still obviously raw or part-cooked, put it back in until you are satisfied it’s done.

Once cooked, remove the chicken to a plate and cover with foil. Drain the pan juices into a small clear container that can take the heat. The oil floats to the top – pour it off until you are left with just the juices (a little bit of oil is OK).

Put the chicken pan over medium-high heat, pour your juices in and deglaze: pour in a goodly cup of wine and let it boil the yummy bits off the pan.

To a cup of cold water, add two teaspoons of plain flour and mix, then pour into the pan. Let it bubble away and thicken to your liking (the flour needs to cook, otherwise it will taste bland), and add salt if you want.

We won’t go into carving the chicken – generally we tend to be rustic about this, tearing the joints off, using a knife where necessary, and either slicing the breast or pulling it apart in chunks.

Serve with your side dishes and gravy. My favourite bit is the wings! On a perfectly roasted chicken they are crispy and delicious.

Crème caramel: from one flan to another

Waz — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:51:17 +0000

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.

So hold your nerve with that caramel … it will get darker, darker, as per the video. Tipping it into the ramekins quickly enough, and rolling it up the sides, is another moment when you need to be on the ball.

The only real problem we’ve struck is a bit of bubbling at the top of the cooked flans – probably caused by slight over-cooking, or aerated mixture rising to the top in the oven.

To avoid this, next time we’ll try letting the custard settle in the ramekins for a while before popping them into the water bath and oven, as well as keeping a closer eye on the cooking time.

You will need half a dozen suitable small round ramekins or similar containers that are oven-proof – see the video for different varieties, including leftover glassware containers from individual supermarket-bought oven desserts, such as chocolate pudding or crème brûlée.

The hardest bit is probably waiting the minimum 4-6 hours that they’ll need in the fridge before serving. Oh and it can be a bit tricky turning them out neatly.

But really, all these are trifling points. You shouldn’t have any serious problems if you watch the video and read the recipe. If you’re worried about impressing guests, do a practice batch for your own consumption. Or maybe two practice batches …

Once you’ve finished stuffing yourself with flan, make sure to let us know how it went.

- Waz

Crème caramel recipe (flan) – vanilla or au café
Makes about 6 depending on ramekin sizes.

Two separate measures of 3/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup water
5 large eggs
1/8 tspn salt
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups whole milk OR
2 cups whole milk + 2/3 cup full cream + 1/3 cup coffee

Preheat oven to 165C/325F.

Combine caster sugar and water in a small saucepan, preferably one with a thicker or encapsulated base. Place over medium-high heat and swirl the saucepan until sugar dissolves.

Get it bubbling until it clarifies – swirl aside any foam so you can see if the mixture underneath is clear.

Increase the heat to a rolling boil. Then place the lid on the saucepan for two minutes.

Remove lid and check colour. You want it quite dark, so be patient. Wait until bubbles start to rise up bronze-tinted, rather than clear, mixture is quite viscous and dark below the bubbles, and you’re getting the caramel smell quite strongly.

Remove from heat and quickly pour about a tablespoon of the caramel into first ramekin. Incline and rotate ramekin so the mixture runs about halfway up the sides, all the way round. DO NOT just tip the caramel in and leave it – because it won’t liquify and come out properly later.

Keep coating the ramekins, working quickly. If the caramel goes hard in the saucepan, try softening it over medium heat.

Once all ramekins are coated, start on your custard.

For vanilla crème caramel, pour 3 cups whole milk into a saucepan.

For crème caramel au café, combine 1/3 cup liquid coffee (strength to your liking – espresso, filter or instant) with 2/3 cup cream. Tip this into a saucepan with 2 cups whole milk.

Place saucepan over medium heat. Keep an eye on it as you do the next bit – once it starts to steam (not boil), take it off.

Crack 5 large eggs into clear mixing bowl. Gently whisk in your second 3/4 cup sugar until combined – don’t beat vigorously because you don’t want to make it frothy. Stir in vanilla and salt.

Once milk is steaming, pour it slowly into the egg-sugar mixture, gently whisking all the while. Going slow stops the eggs cooking and/or the mixture curdling.

Check it’s fully combined by looking at the bottom of your glass bowl and/or lifting the whisk vertically out of the mixture. If you get uncombined egg-sugar mixture, keep going.

Now fill your ramekins with the custard. The ramekins go into a water bath (use a large baking dish, hot water and a tea towel – see the video) and into the oven for 40-60 minutes. After 40 minutes wobble the tray to see if they’re still liquid or cooked.

Let cool, then refrigerate for 4-6 hours, a day, or a couple of days …

To turn them out, dunk each ramekin for a few minutes into shallow hot water. Then run a knife around the inside of the ramekin to detach the pudding. Invert ramekin on to the serving plate, jiggle and tap the ramekin, and the pudding should pop out, with a pleasing gush of delicious caramel over the top.

If you have trouble popping your puddings out, you might need to re-insert the knife in one spot, then angle it slightly to let air in as you invert the ramekin.

Sit down, enjoy and try to resist having a second one.

Duck a l’orange

Waz — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:00:52 +0000

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.

There is a bit of variation in the orange sauce, but in both cases its basic ingredients are the pan juices of the duck and fresh orange juice. These are not complicated recipes – I’m just being as detailed as I can.

Duck a l’orange recipe (breasts only)
Adapted from Stephane Reynaud’s recipe
Serves 6

4 duck breasts
4 oranges
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbs honey
200ml soy sauce
50g butter

Zest two of the oranges. Juice three of them, and take the peeled segments from one. When segmenting that last orange, don’t just break it apart by hand – try to cut between the membranes, as shown in the video.

Slash the fatty side of the duck breasts in a criss-cross pattern, through the skin and fat so the flesh shows through – best to do this while they’re still chilled as the firm flesh makes it easier to slice neatly.

Mix the orange juice with the zest, cinnamon, honey and soy sauce. Place the duck breasts in a dish, skin side up, pour over the sauce. Chill for 24 hours.

Pan-fry the duck, skin-side down, for 10 minutes on a gentle heat (the fat needs to melt and brown). Drain off the fat and return the meat to the pan, other side down. Add the orange segments, half of the marinade, and allow to reduce for five minutes.

Remove the meat and whisk in the butter to make a sauce. Slice breasts attractively as in video – don’t just serve them whole.

Best not to keep the leftover marinade – it’s had raw meat sitting in it for 24 hours. Though you could probably get away with marinating something else in it if used straight away.

Duck a l’orange recipe (whole duck) with crispy fat-roasted potatoes
As devised by Waz based on Joy of Cooking
Serves 4-5

1 duck approx 2kg/4lb, giblets removed
Good roasting potatoes, peeled, enough for everyone
Greens of choice (cook to your liking)
Soy sauce (optional)
Orange marmalade, a spoonful (optional)
Juice of 4 oranges
1 cup white wine that you like
Salt

- Preheat oven to 125 degrees C (approx 250 F).

- Rub the duck all over with good salt. Then lay it in a baking tray breasts-down. Yes, breasts-down.

- Give the duck 3 hours in the oven, checking every hour or so that the fat is still draining OK (if not, re-prick). If blood leaks out into the fat, don’t try to pour it off or otherwise disturb it. Just let it congeal/cook in the fat and then fish it out as a lump. This will keep your fat and juices clean for later use.

- When the duck’s had 2 hours, boil your peeled potatoes until they are on the brink of falling apart, then drain them. You could scratch them up with a fork before boiling if super-keen.

- After the duck’s had 3 hours, drain off the fat into a heat-safe container: preferably one of those jugs used to separate fat and juices, and preferably see-through. Turn the oven up to 180 C (350 F) Return the duck to the pan, breasts UPWARDS this time, and pop it back in the oven for 45 minutes.

- Separate the fat and juices, reserving both. Use your special jug, or get a turkey baster and suck the juices from under the fat. Or just pour off the fat carefully.

- Get your potatoes in an oven tray that’s deep enough and drizzle the fat over them. Shake them around to coat. If you’re out of trays or oven space, you may have to fit them in with the duck. Put the potatoes in the oven – after about 30 minutes give them another basting and turn them over.

- Once that 45 minutes is over, get the duck out – it should be looking brown and crisp. Check for the usual signs of uncookedness (highly unlikely unless you’ve messed up the temperatures). Cover the duck with foil and rest it on a plate. Give the potatoes more time if they don’t look golden-brown enough for you.

- Now for the sauce. In a saucepan combine the duck juices (not the fat), orange juice and white wine. The optional bits: marmalade adds a bit of tartness, and soy sauce will darken the sauce and make it a bit more salty. Bear in mind that you salted the duck before cooking, and this will come through in the juices. I’d lean towards leaving the soy sauce out.

- Simmer the sauce fairly rapidly until it reduces and becomes a bit syrupy. Do this to your liking. While reducing, don’t panic about the duck and potatoes going cold – they’ll be fine. You could pop them back in the switched off but still-warm oven if you are that worried or have messed up the sauce and need to buy time.

- Get your greens going – if you’ve chosen broccoli, snow peas, asparagus etc. they won’t take long.

- Carve up the duck to your liking – look at all that lovely, rich, brown meat. It’s nice to separate off the joints, and remove the breasts whole then slice them up retaining a bit of skin on each slice. Adorn each plate with a selection of cuts. Add the lovely golden-brown potatoes and your greens. We served the orange sauce in a small teapot and let the guests pour it over themselves.

- Waz

Braised pork belly like Mao used to make

Waz — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:13:12 +0000

Pork belly – it’s the cut of the moment, isn’t it? On the menu everywhere. Very now. And very cheap, if you buy it in the right places (look beyond the supermarkets, which have copped on to its foodie appeal and adjusted the price accordingly).

This is a recipe that we don’t do often enough. And it’s attributed to Chairman Mao himself, who always made sure he was eating well while starving the rest of the nation. Being left to starve and told to survive on revolutionary zeal alone was good enough for the masses, but let’s face it, you couldn’t lead them through the Great Leap Forward on an empty stomach!

One of the many things I love about this recipe is that the melt-in-the-mouth results don’t take long to achieve. You’re done within an hour. And you can fiddle with the cooking time depending on your tastes – a bit shorter for a saucy conclusion, or a bit longer if you want a more caramelised result.

This crash test draws heavily on Fuchsia Dunlop‘s recipe, as published in the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. We kept an excerpt that was printed in the (London) Observer Magazine a few years back.

We had nearly twice the amount of pork that Fuchsia specifies, so we adjusted the quantities accordingly. You should too, because it’s just as great for leftovers the next day.

- Waz

Chairman Mao’s red-braised pork belly

800g or roughly 2lb pork belly
groundnut/peanut or vegetable oil
fine white sugar
shaoxing wine or dry sherry
ginger, 30g (1oz)
bit more ginger for grating
clove of garlic
star anise, 1-2 bits
dried red chillies x 3
spring onions/green onions
cinnamon stick
rice
pak choi, bok choi, choi sumthing-or-other or similar Asian green
Half a chicken stock cube (or real stock)
soy sauce

- Parboil the pork belly for a few minutes, then cut into strips, then bite-sized chunks
- Put 3 tablespoons (75ml) oil in a heavy-based pan over medium high heat. We don’t recommend a wok.
- As the oil heats, add 3 tablespoons sugar and stir in to melt. Continue to heat, stirring, until it caramelises nice and dark but is still liquid (as per the video).
- Tip in the pork and then recoil from the hotplate as things start to pop and spatter.
- As Lenny says, “splash in some shaoxing wine, but we actually don’t have it, we’ve got some dry sherry”. Put in about a quarter, a third or half a cup of whichever. Mix the pork around to coat, then top up with just enough water to cover. Raise the heat to get it bubbling.
- Slice the ginger into thin rounds and add to the pot, along with the star anise, cinnamon stick and chillies. Sprinkle a bit of salt and mixy mix, then turn down to a simmer.
- Now, the lid-on, lid-off conundrum. This is braising, and there’s 50 minutes’ cooking overall, so we suggest doing it with the lid on for 30 minutes, then taking the lid off and jacking up the heat a bit for the last 20 minutes to reduce the liquid.
- In the meantime, prepare rice however you do (watch the video for our tried-and-trusted method).
- As serving time looms, chop your Asian greens into separate stalky and leafy bits. Dissolve your stock cube in some hot water or, if using liquid stock, heat it up in a pan.
- Chop up the garlic clove and grate a tablespoon of ginger.
- Heat a splash of oil in a wok or frypan, toss in the garlic and ginger, then almost immediately add the stalky greens and about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of chicken stock. Turn down low and cover for a few minutes.
- Back to the pork, where we splash in about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and (optionally) sprinkle a bit of salt.
- Chop 3 spring/green onions or whatever you call them into inch lengths and add to the pork – mix in so they soften a bit, though you still want some crunch.
- Add the leafy greens to the wok and toss – 30 seconds to a minute and they’re done.
- Serve up and eat like a dictator!

No-fuss fish pie

Lenny — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:01:41 +0000

While it’s nice to experiment in the kitchen and try exciting and slightly scary things like soufflé and partridge, it’s equally nice to build up a stock of really easy, favourite recipes that you can cook any day of the week. You know, the kind of recipes you don’t even a shopping list for, because the list of ingredients is in your head.

This fish pie recipe is like that for me. It’s fairly quick, easy, tasty and you can substitute different kinds of seafood or vegetables, depending on what you’ve got in the fridge or what’s available at the fishmonger (or, let’s face it, the supermarket).

There’s just one major variable in my version of fish pie: you can use cream or white sauce. You can save on calories by making a roux with a little bit of butter and flour (about a tablespoon of each), then carefully whisking in about 500ml of warmed milk. Or for the quick and decadent version, just use double or single cream – about 500ml.

The really great thing about dishes like this is that there are always leftovers for lunch the next day – and by then, they taste even better.

- Lenny

Easy fish pie

6 large potatoes
Salt and pepper
A few tablespoons of olive oil
3 tablespoons of milk
About 400g (1lb) smoked fish (eg haddock) – skinned
About 400g (1lb) of salmon – skinned
1 medium onion
2 carrots
½ cup of frozen peas or fresh spinach
Juice of 1 lemon
400ml-500ml (1 pint) single cream (or 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour and about 500ml milk)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Pinch of grated nutmeg
About 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
Good handful of parsley or dill
Broccoli or other veges to serve with your pie

- Preheat the oven to a moderate heat, about 180C/350F
- Peel your potatoes. Don’t chop them unless you’re short of time. Put them in a pot of cold water, bring to the boil and simmer until soft.
- In a medium-sized pan, gently heat 2 tbsp olive oil. Dice the onion and carrots and sweat them in the oil.
- Check the fish carefully for bones, remove any, and chop into a large dice. Finely chop the parsley or dill.
- If you’re using frozen peas, add them, still frozen, to the onion and carrots. If you’re using spinach, wilt it in a pot of warm water then squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Chop it up before adding to the onion and carrots.
- If you’re making white sauce, in a clean pan gently warm the milk. In another clean pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, cooking it for a minute or two. Slowly pour in the warm milk, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Keep stirring it until you take it off the heat.
- Add the white sauce (or, the cream, if you’re using it instead) to the vegetable mixture. Gently stir in the fish, mustard, nutmeg, most of the cheese and lemon juice. The mixture should be a nice, loose consistency.
- When the potatoes are nice and soft, drain and mash, adding salt, pepper, 2-3 tbsp of milk and a good glug of olive oil, which will help it to brown.
- Pour the fish mixture into the bottom of a large baking dish, top with the remaining sprinkling of cheese and bake for about 20 minutes, until the top is golden brown.
- Serve with steamed broccoli or other green vegetable.

Pad thai with two tries

Waz — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:30:40 +0000

We reckon you can’t love Thai food without loving pad thai – the country’s national dish. Your average Thai cook can probably whip this up with a few swishes of the wok and flips of the, umm, wok flipper. But for us at home there are two pitfalls that are easy to, errm, fall into. As you’ll find out in this episode.

First thing is those rice noodles (and don’t ever get taken for a ride in a restaurant – unless these particular noodles are under your nose, you’re not eating pad thai). You usually buy the dried variety in a packet. They need to be soaked in warm water before going into the wok. But soaked for how long? You’ve just come to a trap for young players.

Second thing is the wok, which needs to be smoking hot. Forget about cooking enough for the whole family in one go. The volume of the ingredients will suck the heat straight out of the cooking surface, and by the time it reheats you’ll have a gluggy mess. We speak from experience.

So, to deal with the first point. The dried noodles come folded in the packet. Our advice is to soak them in warm water just until they will straighten under their own weight when held by one end. Drain immediately, DO NOT RINSE, then get on with the cooking before they go cold.

Secondly: cook one serving at a time. Serve it, then get the wok back up to full heat before starting the next. Keep everything moving as you cook.

The good news is that a decent wok will heat up really quickly over your biggest gas ring. Got an electric stove? Then think seriously about getting a gas cylinder and gas-fired wok burner that you can sit on a heat-proof surface atop your kitchen bench.

We fell at both these hurdles on our first attempt. Then we consulted Pim’s blog, where she gives an excellent pad thai tutorial. Thanks to Pim our second effort was much more respectable. We made a few slip-ups with ingredients too – you’ll find out in the video.

Back to woks for a sec. Don’t buy a fancy one. The non-stick kind, the electric ones and other flashy variants are an expensive rip-off, even if some big-name “expert” Asian chef lends his name to a particular brand. You need a simple wok made of thin metal. They’re in all Asian supermarkets for very little money.

Don’t be turned off pad thai by an indifferent restaurant experience. This commonly comes at the hands of a flagging proprietor who has tried to rebadge their Chinese restaurant as Thai. The most cynical ones are easy to spot – on the menus they just add “Thai” as a prefix to the usual Cantonese suspects.

Pim’s blog post suggests a list of optional ingredients, like pickled turnip. We chose to go a fairly basic route first time around, as per our Pim-derived recipe below.

It does assume you’ve watched the video – after all, watching and learning is the point of Crash Test Kitchen.

- Waz and Lenny
PS Feel free to eat with chopsticks or not. Thais generally use a fork and spoon – as for us two, we use chopsticks because we like ‘em.

Right-first-time pad thai

Rice noodles, 2 cups per serving
Fish sauce
Palm sugar
Tamarind juice, made up to taste from concentrate or pulp
Chilli powder or paprika
1 egg per serving
Chinese chives, handful per serving, chopped into short lengths (if unavailable, regular chives)
Uncooked prawns/shrimps, shelled and deveined. Handful per serving
Garlic, 1 clove per serving, finely chopped
Peanuts – blanched, unsalted/unflavoured, ground but not to a powder, roasted
Vegetable/sunflower cooking oil. NOT OLIVE OIL
Bean sprouts
Lime(s) cut into segments

- Have all ingredients at room temperature
- If noodles are the dry kind, soak in warm water until they straighten under their own weight.
- In a small saucepan over low heat combine 1/3 cup each of fish sauce, palm sugar and tamarind juice. Once sugar has melted completely, kill the heat. Add a teaspoon or two of chilli powder according to taste. This is your sauce.
- Heat 2-3 tablespoons oil in wok until smoking. Throw in a clove’s worth of chopped garlic or more to taste. Fry very briefly (just a few seconds).
- KEEP THE HEAT ON HIGH. Add 2 cups noodles, then a quarter-cup or ladle of your sauce. Fry, flipping, until noodles are edibly soft. If they clump together, pick them up between two forks and shake them apart.
- Push noodles up the side of the wok and crack 1 egg into the base. Break yolk and swizzle the egg around with your wok flipper until just set. Mix the noodles back in.
- Add a handful of prawns/shrimps. Keep tossing everything until shrimps are thoroughly coloured and therefore cooked – about two minutes for big ones.
- Add 2 tablespoons of chopped peanuts
- In goes a handful of garlic chives, then a handful or more of bean sprouts. Heat and toss just briefly, then turn off the flame.
- Serve in a bowl with a wedge of lime and extra chopped peanuts sprinkled on top.
- Reheat the wok and repeat.

Partridges with bread sauce

Waz — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:54:13 +0000

Autumn is game season, and in years past I’ve indulged in wild meaty delights such as pheasant and woodcock (I think it was). I’ve fantasised about getting out in the woods with my wellies and peacoat, dogs yapping along the muddy tracks while I take a few shots at the woodland foul as the beaters scare them out of the brush. But I never really thought it would happen.

And it didn’t, exactly. But this did: our friend Richard was lucky enough to be taken on a game shoot recently and, lucky for us, his kitchen was being refurbished at the time, so we ended up with two lovely, bright-eyed fresh partridges trussed up in a plastic bag to do with what we would.

So while Waz went off to work, I went out into the back yard and plucked the pretty brown and cream feathers off the two birds, and prepared them for cooking. The plucking was easier than I’d thought; I grabbed the bird by its feet, head down, and gently pulled small fingers-full of feathers out, using a downward motion, pulling towards the bird’s neck. I turned it over and plucked all over the body and up the neck, but leaving the feathers on the head and outer parts of the wings.

Then with some kitchen scissors I snipped off the head (yerk), the wings and the feet. I made a small horizontal cut on either side of the “vent” (that’s the bumhole to the rest of us) so I could stick my fingers in and pull out the innards. I used gloves for this bit, and I won’t pretend it didn’t nauseate me a bit, but I got through it with a screwed-up nose and closed eyes!

By now they looked like tiny chickens.

If you treat them kindly, these birds keep well in the fridge. I gave them a good wash inside and out, patted them dry and put them on a plate with some paper towel under them in the fridge, covered with aluminium foil. Don’t seal them in a container or put cling film over them, because that’s when they start to sweat and smell. We kept them for a few days before wrapping them in pancetta and roasting them, and serving with braised onion and bread sauce – a very traditional English meal. And it was lovely.

The key, I think, was to season the birds very well inside and out, brown them nicely in a hot pan with a little oil, and then quickly roast them in the oven at a very high temperature. And they take a surprisingly short time to roast – about 6-8 minutes, believe it or not! They are best served, as our friend Chef Michelle described, “blushing on the bone”. And it’s important to rest them before eating.

The little birdies were lovely and had white meat, like a really flavoursome chicken. The bread sauce and braised onion were the perfect accompaniments – I could almost imagine myself at a massive oak table in the dining hall of an old English manor with the spaniel panting at my side, a pewter mug of ale next to my trencher.

- Lenny

Blackberry crumble with short ramble

Waz — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:39:02 +0000

Although we haven’t had a brilliant summer here in the UK, and it looks like what we did have is pretty much over for the year, we did manage to bid a sad farewell to the summer by taking a lovely walk in the Kent countryside.

I love the public footpaths here in the UK: there is a network crossing public and private property that anyone can walk along and enjoy what the countryside has to offer. We often take a day-trip down to Kent to wander across the rolling green dales, through the fields, woodlands and orchards, taking in the fresh air.

On this particular sunny Saturday our route took us through numerous apple orchards where crisp, pink apples shone on the trees and the hedges were thick with fat, juicy blackberries.

After we finished our roast chicken and salad picnic while sitting on the grass at the edge of someone’s apple orchard, we greedily filled a tupperware container with fat, juicy blackberries. But not before we consumed handfuls of the plump little morsels straight from the bush.

Although some of our English friends have told us that it’s not a great season for blackberries this year, I was just so deliriously happy to be able to pick edible fruit in the “wild” – something that’s not really an option in dry, sunny Queensland. I’m assured by my mates that it’s perfectly legal to pick fruit from the hedgerows. The thing that struck me about the blackberries was how every one tasted slightly different – some were sinfully sweet while others had a more savoury flavour. I suppose that’s because they were wild.

So after we’d downed a couple of pints at the Matfield pub we tootled home with our container of blackberries and whipped up a very quick and easy blackberry crumble. We used rolled oats in our crumble, but you don’t have to. The main thing is not to use too much sugar, because soft fruits are generally quite sweet. In fact, I think our crumble could have used a squeeze of lemon over the berries just to add a sour zing.

It was truly wonderful to spend the day wandering through the countryside, picking fruit and taking it home for dessert. If it sounds idyllic, that’s because it was. Would that it were like that here every weekend!

- Lenny

Classic bolognese

Waz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:52:32 +0000

Spaghetti bolognese – it’s an old standby, and as such has become one of the most used and abused recipes under creation. Outside of its hometown of Bologna in Italy, bolognese has become a catch-all name for any meat-and-tomato sauce quickly slapped together and served over pasta, which is almost invariably spaghetti.

But start investigating bolognese and you’ll find out some interesting things. In traditional Bolognese cooking, ragu alla bolognese is rarely served with spaghetti (usually it goes with tagliatelle); it contains very little tomato (eschewing the pound can or two of tommies that many people dump into the saucepan); there are no herbs in it (so rack off home with your shaker of dried oregano); and one of the key ingredients is time (not the herb – the stuff in your wristwatch).

Most surprisingly of all – to me, at least – the key to a lovely rich bolognese is a goodly portion of milk.

Until a little while ago I knew none of these things. A friend was over for dinner and wanted to make spaghetti bolognese. It’s a dish I usually steer clear of, simply because I don’t find mince doused in tinned tomatoes very appetising. I whipped out the Joy of Cooking (as much as you can whip out this tome without spraining your wrist) and we delved into the pages for a recipe.

It was an enlightening journey (jeez that sounds wanky). Despite the small amount of tomato puree involved, it still comes out a nice reddish-orange. Possibly the colour leaches out of the carrot.

I have now become a bolgnese purist. Lenny, on the other hand, thinks it is quite acceptable to mess with this classic, adding tinned tomatoes, herbs and even mushrooms.

But that’s not bolognese. It’s not.

Watch the video for further discussion and share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

- Waz

Good golly fish curry

Waz — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:48:22 +0000

King of curry Atul Kochhar had his meen molee published in Observer Food Monthly a while back – and we had the chance to crash-test the recipe.

Meen molee is a coconut fish curry, with green chillies providing the kick. Lenny elected to fillet the fish herself, as a chance to show off her flash filleting knife. We kept the wreckage for our slow cooker dabbling and made a decent fish stock. Don’t feel that you’re punking out if you just buy ordinary fillets or get the fishmonger to do it.

To rather comic effect, we used the only chillies we could get our hands on – large ones, though I don’t think they were actually jalapenos. Amazing how the heat just leached right out of them during cooking and into the sauce. You could eat them afterwards like a piece of ordinary veg – although they were rather limp and uninteresting.

Speaking for Lenny and myself, we don’t eat nearly enough fish, so anything that gets more of it into our diet is a good thing. We love curry, so this dish is a no-brainer.

* You can get Atul Kochhar’s meen molee recipe here.

- Waz

Portuguese custard tarts recipe (pasteis de nata)

Waz — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:22:45 +0000

Go to the recipe

I’m not much of a sweet tooth, and unlike Waz I’m not much of a coffee drinker. But when I do indulge in a proper espresso it’s always lovely to complement it with a sweet little morsel. Just like nata – or proper Portuguese custard tarts. These delicacies are made with a puff pastry base and a vanilla egg custard filling with a hint of orange zest.

They are by no means the only custard tart around. Waz and I are also huge fans of Chinese dan ta – those lovely little glossy-topped, flaky-based tarts you get when you have good yum cha (also known as dim sum).

A proper Australian bakery will stock the Down Under custard tart, which I think has a sweet shortcrust pastry and the telltale sprinkling of nutmeg on top.
But what I love about nata is the delicious caramelised top that complements coffee so well.

And who knew these tartlets were so easy to make? I really thought they’d take ages to prepare – and they probably would, if you were daft enough to make your own puff pastry – but with some decent shop-bought dough and a quick homemade custard you can throw them together quickly.

We made the mistake of whipping the eggs and sugar too much. The mixture was quite aerated when we added the orange-infused vanilla and milk mixture. This left a really frothy topping on our custard that rose up heaps when the tarts were in the oven, but sunk back a lot when we took them out.

Nata filling is supposed to sink down a bit as they cool, but I think we should have taken more care not to fluff up our mixture so much, which meant we couldn’t fit as much custard into our pastry cases.

These little tarts would be a great end to a dinner party with coffee and you can make them the day before, so no cooking on the night.

Thanks to Allegra McAvedy for the recipe, which we got from the Word of Mouth food blog.

Portuguese custard tartes recipe (pasteis de nata)

Makes 12 large or 24 small tarts.

250g homemade rough puff pastry ( or 1 packet frozen puff pastry)
275ml milk
zest of 1 orange
vanilla pod, split in half, seeds scraped out and kept separate
4 egg yolks
150g white sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons plain flour

- Grease your tins/trays with butter. You could use cupcake or muffin trays.
- Roll out the pastry to 3mm thick for lining the trays. Then cut circles that will line the holes and press them in. We used a cookie/biscuit cutter of the right size to make our circles – or the open end of a jar might work.
- Preheat the oven to 220°C/435°F.
- Heat milk with orange zest and the vanilla pods, not the seeds. Don’t let it boil.
- Beat egg yolks in a bowl with the sugar until pale. Stir in the flour and vanilla seeds.
- Get the milk to nearly boiling, then strain through a sieve onto the egg mix while whisking. Discard the zest and vanilla pod.
- Fill each of the pastry cases to the top.
- Cook for 15-25 minutes until they are cooked through depending on size. They might puff up but don’t worry, they will flop back down on cooling. If you don’t get the caramelised burnt spots on top, finish them off under the grill – a blowtorch would probably be a bit drastic here!

Allegra recommends eating them within 2 days and best not refrigerated.

- Lenny

Loaf to admit failure

Waz — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:32:46 +0000

You can’t beat waking up to the smell of fresh-baked bread. But how to get it without the rising, the knocking down, the second rise, and then the EARLY rise on your own part to stick the dough in the oven?

Yes yes, I’ve heard of bread machines. They seem a great idea, but aren’t they a little soulless? Load everything in the evening and it’s done in the morning – the washing machine school of cookery. Surely the tactile experience – getting your hands messy – is part of the satisfying process of baking your own bread.

From what I’ve seen, people tend to buy bread machines as a fad item, then shelve them to gather dust or ship them off to the charity store within a few months. So I’m not sure they are worth the investment.

Anyway. I thought we could try out our hand-me-down slow cooker as a bread machine. And via a bit of googling I discovered it’s been done before.

The favoured method is to place the dough within a coffee can – one of those bulk tins containing either beans or powder, widely available in North American but lesser-known elsewhere – then put the can inside the slow cooker, sitting up on an egg ring, with some water in the bowl of the slow cooker itself.

Coffee cans are hard to find in our climes, although a baby formula tin might do the trick. Without any such thing to hand, Lenny and I improvised with one of those vegetable steamers with petals that open like a flower, and some aluminium foil.

The foil part of it was all too much wasteful faffing around, and the results weren’t great – partly, I think, because we had too much mixture for our little cooker, and partly because the dough sat overnight before the cooker came on automatically in the morning. I reckon it was too bubbly inside as a result. The flavour was not objectionable but it was more like cake than bread.

It was nice and crispy on the outside, though – in fact it had a similar crust to what I’ve seen produced by bread machines.

I think it was worth the experiment, and others might like to try it out. Meanwhile I’m eyeing off that bread machine in the secondhand store …

- Waz

Stock while-u-don’t-wait

Waz — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:46:23 +0000

Making stock is easy enough – bones, vegetables, herbs, seasoning, then simmer simmer simmer. For a long, long time. And therein lies the problem – can you afford to be housebound for eight hours or so while you wait for all that boney, marrowy, veggie goodness to leach out?

We’ve heard some people talk about making stock in a pressure cooker. You can cut the cooking time down to an hour and a half, maybe less, which should fit in nicely with your TV watching. But do you have a pressure cooker? No, neither do we. But we do have a slow cooker, or crock pot, as featured in our last episode. In this latest instalment of our Adventures in Slow Cooking we find another way to put it to good use.

You can simply follow the stock recipe of your choice – here we used fish bones, left over from a delicious curry that involved fillets of sea bass. We tossed it all in, though we’ve since been told you should remove the eyes, and maybe the gills too. We didn’t brown the bones in any way – it’s fish, after all – but you probably would with beef bones. Basic stock vegetables, herbs and seasoning went in as well.

The resulting stock was to our liking, though slightly cloudy even after being double-strained to remove all solids. This may have been the gills and eyes, or possibly just that we left the cooker on high, which keeps it at full power, rather than the automatic setting, which maintains a simmer just below boiling. I have read that stock does go cloudy if boiled, so a lesson learned there. Initially we set the cooker on low, but it was taking ages to heat up. Maybe this would be fine if left overnight, though.

I have since made a chicken stock by tossing in a carcass left over from a roast dinner. It couldn’t have been easier – as with the fish stock, halve an onion, chop two carrots and a stick or three of celery, add some thyme and bay (the only herbs we had lying around), toss it all in with some parsley, fill near to the top with water and switch on. The resulting full-flavoured stock was used straight away for chicken noodle soup, bulked out with the last pickings of meat from the bones, as well as a fresh chopped carrot or two, some celery, and broken spaghetti for the noodles.

One word of warning: don’t fill it to the brim with water. The ingredients will release some moisture and the level will rise, so it could overflow.

Apart from that, happy crocking!

Oh, and some good news. We’ve been adding older episodes to the iTunes feed, which means you can now get most of them for your iPod, iPhone etc. The video quality is a bit lower, because they were filmed before the video iPod was invented … but they are still quite watchable. Next time you update the podcast in iTunes, the old episodes will appear down the list.

- Waz

Automatic for the porridge

Waz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:03:58 +0000

I’m pretty anal (can I say that in the international blogosphere?) about my breakfast routine. Rarely do I break it. I have two staples that I alternate daily. The first: two slices of toast, one with grilled cheddar, the other with quality marmalade (or, occasionally, Vegemite, and, it almost goes without saying, butter). The second: porridge cooked with chopped apple, topped with banana, milk and honey (and, occasionally, summer fruits). No sugar. No salt. Always with a pot of weak black tea (Loose. Leaf. Only.), in a proper teacup, with a saucer and a tea strainer.

So when Waz decided to experiment with a slow cooker (crock pot to many of us, though that is really a brand name) that our mates Shaun and Jeanette gave us when they left London for Australia, I was very sceptical when he told me he wanted one of the experiments to feature my tried-and-tested porridge.

Waz’s idea is to put the porridge ingredients in the slow cooker before you go to bed, and set an electrical wall timer to start the cooker in the morning so it’s ready by the time you get up.

Not a bad idea, actually, because it doesn’t do the porridge any harm to soak overnight and saves a precious few minutes in my tightly regimented morning routine.

The tricky part, though, is setting the timer so it actually comes on! The two times I’ve tried this without the help of either Waz or the auto-timer instructions, I’ve gotten up in the morning to a stone-cold gloop of soaked rolled oats with chunks of apple floating on top. Disaster!

So if you do decide to go ahead and make slow-cooker-auto-timer porridge, please be sure to get an automatic timer that a trained monkey could use (as opposed to an untrained Lenny).

Enjoy and stay tuned for more experiments with the slow cooker – one of which is genius, the other… hilarity!

- Lenny

Pudding it simply

Waz — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:31:09 +0000

Go to the recipe for baked treacle pudding

We’ve been cooking up a few videos for the Word of Mouth food blog, as we’ve mentioned before. Here’s another one, where we make a gorgeous and failsafe baked treacle pudding by Fergus Henderson of St John restaurant, London.

OK, straight away you North Americans are asking “What’s treacle?” Basically it’s a sugar syrup, lighter than molasses but heavier than golden syrup. These days you’re likely to find golden syrup used in its place, as with this recipe. I guess pancake syrup (not maple) as found in the US/Canada is fairly similar.

If you’re unsure about what to use, just substitute a jam of your choosing. I’d be willing to bet that pancake syrup would also work, but be guided by your own tastes.

Also, it uses self-raising flour, which cannot be found in some jurisdictions, so instead try half a teaspoon of baking powder (NOT BAKING SODA!) to every 100 grams of regular flour.

Lenny and I had this Fergus pud just before Christmas, and it’s a fitting alternative to Christmas pudding/plum pudding, which we both hate, pretty much.

With so much syrup involved you’d think it would come out sickly-sweet, but the relative blandness and doughiness of the pud itself, the lemon zest and the fattiness of the cream cut through the sugary bit (I’ll never make a restaurant reviewer). That’s what I reckon anyway.

By the way, if you’re visiting after seeing us on Market Kitchen, welcome. You can get CTK as a podcast in iTunes by clicking the purple thingy in the top right of the page. We’ve got an RSS feed too (down the bottom), or just keep visiting the site. All we ask is that you don’t forget to leave a comment.

Now get cracking on that pudding.

- Waz

Baked treacle pudding recipe

You’ll need a 500ml pudding basin and some tinfoil (aluminium foil) for this recipe.

100g self-raising flour
softened butter for greasing
100g softened butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
zest of one lemon
salt
6 tbsp golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Grease a 500ml pudding basin with butter. Cream the 100g butter and sugar together.

Mix one egg into the butter and sugar, then stir in one dessertspoon of the flour. Mix in the other egg, then add the lemon zest. Fold in the rest of the flour and a pinch of salt.

Pour the golden syrup into the pudding basin, then spoon the batter on top, smoothing it out a little bit.

Take a piece of foil a couple of inches bigger than the diameter of the pudding basin, grease one side, then fold it in half with the buttered sides together. Take the top half and, about an inch from the middle fold, fold it back again. You now have a piece of buttered tinfoil with a fold in it. Place the foil over the basin, buttered side down, and tie it on with a piece of kitchen string.

Bake it in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the sponge is cooked. Serve warm with cream or ice cream.

Brocolli soup with left-handedness

Waz — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:05:53 +0000

A few weeks ago, on a (typically) miserable London winter’s day, I was at home by myself and at a loss for what to have for lunch. The pantry (or store cupboard as the English call it) was pretty much bare and all I had in the fridge was a limp bit of broccoli, the dag end of some parmesan and a few dregs of cream which weren’t quite off.

I boiled up the broc in a bit of water to which I’d added some liquid stock, blitzed it in the blender and added salt, pepper, parmesan and cream for what was a surprisingly delicious repast. I couldn’t believe my luck â€“ I’d stumbled upon the recipe for a yummy, warming lunch from a few ingredients that you might just have in your fridge.

When I made it again for Waz in this episode he wasn’t quite as stunned as I’d hoped at the deliciousness of my creation, but he admitted it was pretty good for something whipped up in a few minutes.

One of his main criticisms was the texture which was, admittedly, a bit grainy. That’s because we used a blender instead of a liquidiser, so if you have a liquidiser I’d try using that.

You could probably jazz this up with different cheeses like Roquefort or Stilton, or maybe a farmhouse cheddar.

And the fresher the broccoli, the better, but it is a good way to get rid of the limp old veg that you (like me) can’t bear to throw in the bin.

- Lenny
PS Watch the video to see where the left-handedness bit comes in

Going, going, tarragon chicken

Waz — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:01:38 +0000

Go to the recipe for tarragon chicken

Here’s an episode we prepared earlier. We’ve been doing a few shows for Word of Mouth (WOM), the blog of Observer Food Monthly magazine here in the UK. A lot of you probably didn’t know about these CTK specials, as they were posted only at WOM and didn’t go out in our feed.

It seemed a shame that some of you might miss out, especially the great number who subscribe to CTK via iTunes, so we’ve decided to repost them here for your enjoyment. Even if you’ve seen the episode before, you can now download it to your iPods, Apple TVs and what-not.

This recipe – poached chicken with leeks – gave Lenny the chance to learn how to joint a chicken, i.e. cut up a whole fowl into nice meaty sections. This really isn’t too hard, and thanks to our friend Chef Michelle for clearly outlining the procedure.

It’s also much cheaper than buying all the bits separately – although you could use a bulk pack of one cut, like thighs, which are the most underrated part of a chook.

Tarragon is a herb I don’t know much about, but in amongst all the creaminess and butteriness of this dish it is a lovely fragrant foil. I reckon, anyway.

The method couldn’t be more simple. Brown chicken in butter, add stock, simmer, add everything else, simmer, serve.

- Waz

Lenny: This is based on a recipe from Rose Prince, using a herb I don’t use very often: tarragon. I don’t really care for aniseed-flavoured things, but although tarragon has an aniseed flavour, it is very understated and goes very well in creamy dishes. This dish is very, very simple and has a lovely, subtle flavour. You could use chicken pieces, but it’s much more economical to buy a whole chicken and joint it yourself. If you have a nice, sharp knife, this is easier than you think. Once you’ve done it two or three times, you’ll never look back to expensive, pre-jointed chicken pieces again. Watch the video to see how it’s done.

Tarragon chicken recipe

1 chicken
55 grams (2 oz) butter
3 leeks
900ml (1.5 pints) chicken stock
4 sprigs tarragon (leaves only)
250ml (half pint) cream
salt and pepper

Joint the chicken into 8 pieces and season with salt and pepper. Keep the leftover bits of chicken to make stock with.

Melt the butter in a large pan. Meanwhile, slice the leeks, discarding the tough parts at the top.

When the butter has melted, brown the chicken pieces in it until they’re golden on both sides. Add 900ml of chicken stock, bring to the boil and skim off the scum (which can make the dish taste bitter and look cloudy). Lower the heat and simmer for 35 minutes, then add the tarragon, leeks and cream. Simmer for a further 10 minutes.

This is supposed to be quite a “saucy” dish, but if you like the sauce a bit thicker, leave the lid off for the last 10-20 minutes of cooking so it reduces more.

In the video, we served this with sauteed potatoes, but it would actually be better with mash, or even steamed rice, to soak up those lovely juices. Crusty bread would be lovely, too. A simple green vege like broccoli (our household favourite) goes really well on the side, too.

Rice to the occasion

Waz — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:12:25 +0000

Lenny is a whiz with fried rice. Last time she made it I was well impressed, to the point that I would eat it over stuff from a Chinese restaurant any day.

And that’s saying something. I reckon it’s really hard to replicate the flavours of your better-than-average Chinese takeaway. Maybe it’s down to MSG, which in some Asian cultures is literally known as “taste” (oh, if only you could buy good taste in powdered form). We’ve got nothing against MSG, really – it’s either in the food we buy or it isn’t – but we don’t have it in our kitchen, and don’t have any idea how, or how much of it, to use.

This version of Lenny’s secret fried rice is powered by leftover turkey, ham and pork from Christmas, with the standard accompaniments, such as peas and an omelette fried in the wok then chopped up.

Lenny’s secrets, by the way, include “loads of pepper – more than you’d think it’s possible to eat”, and sesame oil. Vegetable oil for the cooking is a must as well – don’t use olive oil (or motor oil for that matter). Maybe it’s just me, but I like fried rice to have that wokky, smokey taste of slightly burnt oil.

Slicing the mushrooms thinly is another Lenny top tip – bigger chunks will go slimey when you reheat the fried rice for lunch the next day.

In this batch I think she lost her way a bit by adding sweet chilli sauce. Tomato sauce is better (maybe there’s some MSG in it).

And don’t use as much uncut chilli sauce as she did.

- Waz

We larb turkey

Waz — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:49:04 +0000

The leftover Christmas turkey was on its last legs, and sandwiches had long since lost their appeal … time for what Lenny calls a “flavour changer”.

Larb is a simple Laotian dish of spicy mince (usually pork or chicken) that is eaten with sticky rice, also known as glutinous rice. In Laos the rice comes in a little hopper-style basket made of bamboo and woven grass. The lime and chili flavours are heaven together, and ground rice powder adds a bit of crunch.

We whizzed up our turkey meat in a food processor. The problem here is that the turkey is pretty dry and lean, whereas larb is best made with fattier meat. To compensate we tipped in extra vegetable oil (DON’T use olive oil – the flavour’s too strong for south-east Asian cuisine).

Neither of us is a big fan of turkey, and for me the flavour of the meat doesn’t gel with Asian food – but in this case the chili, lime and fish sauce do quite a good job of masking it.

We’ll be converting some more Christmas leftovers in our next episode.

As you’ve probably noticed, the site presentation has changed a bit. We’re now offering a Flash video that you can play directly at our home page, as well as the usual MP4 and WMV files. There’s still a video file going out in the feed as well, and this will continue to play on things like iPods and Apple TV boxes.

- Waz
* Update, January 11: A workmate, Luke, has just pointed out that it the name of this dish is usually transmogrified into English as ‘laap’. Well I suppose he’d know, since he lives in Laos, the smarty-bum.

Tickety-Boo Tipsy Trifle (part 2)

Waz — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:09:53 +0000

Preparing and gathering together the component parts of a trifle is only half the job – it is also necessary to give some thought to assembly.

Because even though trifle is ostensibly a slapdash co-mingling of separate (and according to Waz, perfectly edible separately) bits and bobs of sweetness, sharpness and creaminess, the presentation is all-important.

In fact, the appearance of trifle is probably the only thing I have liked about this traditional English pud in the past.

As I said in the first episode, trifle has for many years been at the bottom of my wished-for-dessert list. But this is mostly because every trifle I ever tried in my childhod had jelly in it – eeurrrrggghhhhckkkkk!

When it came to putting the trifle together, we thought a little bit about how we would assemble the little beastie so, when layered up in a clear dish (albeit one far less ritzy than Grandma’s cut-glass receptacle) you can see each of the components resting lazily against the side of the bowl.

A trifle is no Eton mess. It’s not a jumbled mixture of ingredients – it’s a conscientious layering of sponge, custard, fruit, cream, almonds with a pretty, bright, inviting layer of summer fruit on top.

Just leave the bloody jelly out.

- Lenny

Trifle Part 1: The Spongeblob Redemption

Waz — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:12:25 +0000

Remember Sponge Blob Square Pan? The absolute debacle where we tried to cook a sponge cake?

It was back in the very early days of Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve learnt a few things since then, but the idea of cooking a simple sponge still gives us the collywobbles.

But then Lenny went and decided she wanted to make a classic English trifle – and of course that involves a sponge cake sliced into fingers. This time we armed ourselves with Allegra McEvedy’s “Never Fail Victoria Sponge” recipe, as handed down by her mum and published at the Word of Mouth food blog of the Observer Food Monthly, where we do some cameo appearances.

We still don’t have two matching sponge tins, but it didn’t matter this time as the cake is destined to be sliced up anyway. We did, however, find the recipe made a little less mixture than we expected.

For those not familiar with trifle: it’s a dessert made from layers of fruit, custard, sponge cake and cream, presented as attractively as possible in a suitable bowl, and optionally embellished with some almond flakes or chocolate shavings on top. With a few splashes of sherry added if you want to make a “tipsy” one.

I never liked trifle as a kid, mainly because to me it was a mish-mash of a whole lot of things I would have preferred to eat separately. Also, it’s commonly made with jelly (Jello to North Americans), and I’ve never been much of a fan.

This episode also shows us grappling with custard – just how DO you tell when it’s thick enough?

Enough for now. Lenny will write more when we post for Part 2 of our trifle-making adventures.

- Waz.

Whole lotta rosemary chicken

Waz — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:23:30 +0000

Here’s how it works. Lenny does the shopping, I do the cooking. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work – it depends on our work schedules, and I have to admit that Lenny probably does more than her fair share.

A couple of weeks ago she left me vague instructions for some sort of chicken dish. Well, she probably gave me quite good instructions, but I’m in the habit of fobbing her off with a “Yeah yeah yeah I’ll take care of it” and then instantly purging my memory.

So there I was with some chicken pieces and a vague recollection of rosemary, garlic and olive oil being mentioned.

I started by ripping the skin off. Having assumed I should be seasoning or marinating the pieces in some way, I thought the fatty skin might serve as a barrier to the flavour finding its way into the flesh.

Then came the issue of flavour. I decided to keep it simple, just rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. A side-dish of potatoes, I decided, and Lenny had mentioned she would do something with mozarella when she got home.

My main problem when it came to reproducing all this for Crash Test Kitchen was remembering exactly what I had done. Thankfully, Lenny had been there to eat the results the first time round and was able to give me a bit of a prod at the right moments.

We really like the potatoes that we did with this, by the way. I’m heavily into par-boiling when it comes to roasted or sauted root vegetables.

I’m writing this blog post really quickly because I’m on my lunch break at work – so sorry if it seems disjointed.

In fact it’s time for me to punch back in.

- Waz.

Pasta fire extinguisher

Waz — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:53:35 +0000

I’m always on the lookout for really quick, nutritious dishes that can be knocked up in about 20 minutes after I get home from work. This “herby pasta” fits the bill.

If you have a few herbs in your garden, then you can probably make this without even having to make a trip to the shop. Your store cupboard, or “pantry” to Anglo-Australasians, will have just about everything else you need.

For this dish it’s important to use what I call “soft” or “wet” herbs. I don’t know if these are accepted cookery terms, but I include such herbs as basil, parsley, mint, coriander (cilantro), marjoram, tarragon and dill in this group.

Definitely not included would be rosemary and sage, which I’d call “dry” herbs.

Once you’ve got your herbs sorted, you just need some packet pasta – spaghetti works well – plus some old bread, olive oil, garlic and a dried chilli or two. For a bit of extra saltiness you could even add anchovies to the breadcrumbs.

OK, you’re probably wondering why this episode is called “Pasta fire extinguisher”. Suffice to say it’s not only because of the chilli – during the filming we had a little accident, as we tend to on Crash Test Kitchen. Oops …

- Lenny.

About the soufflé

Waz — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:30:13 +0000

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.

My earliest knowledge of soufflé came from the Richie Rich comics I read as a kid. I seem to remember that Chef Pierre was always trying to whip one up, but it invariably fell flat after somehow getting tangled up in Richie’s antics. As a five-year-old I thought it was pronounced “soofle”.

About the two paths. At its simplest, a soufflé is a dessert combining a flavoured egg yolk base with beaten whites to produce a fluffy batter that rises impressively above the rim of the dish as it is baked.

The more complicated path we chose involves making a crème patisserie or “pastry cream” base. Abbreviated by chefs as “crème pat”, this is a multi-purpose filling for a variety of French pastries and desserts.

The fraught process of preparing the crème patisserie, then the soufflé itself, produces a dessert that is arguably more stable and contains double the amount of chef’s anxiety.

At least we had prior knowledge on our side. Two weekends earlier, Lenny had been off to Raymond Blanc’s restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxford for a cooking course. This was a Christmas surprise from me. They sent the voucher in a plain package, as promised, but Lenny mistook it for a book I had ordered from Amazon and opened it up.

Oh well, the surprise fell flat, but at least the soufflé rose to the occasion (don’t groan so hard, you’ll get a hernia).

We have to credit our mate Phil the philmmaker for the title of this episode, a high-brow cinematic reference to the 1960s New Wave film À bout de souffle.

Phil assured us that one or two of you at least would get it.

- Waz

One chicken, three ways

Waz — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:24:54 +0000

What a month it’s been. Moving to a new address on the other side of London, getting to grips with a new kitchen (while mourning the loss of the behemoth stove at our previous address), and on top of that, work work work!

THEN, just as we got this episode – where we make Hainanese chicken rice – shot and edited, Apple decided to bring out their new set-top box, Apple TV. It lets you watch podcasts like ours on your telly. Cool gadget, but it posed some issues, because to make the most of it we’ve had to step up the resolution of our videos.

But more on that later. We decided on something simple for the first show at our new place – Hainan chicken, or as some call it, Hainanese chicken rice. Like many Asian recipes it’s big on fresh ingredients prepared in a straightforward manner.

You stuff the chicken with a bit of ginger and greenery, whack it into a pot of water and simmer away. The chicken becomes fall-off-the-bone tender, the water becomes a stock and meanwhile you’re chopping other ingredients for a chilli sauce, a simple soup and the all-important chicken rice that Singaporeans claim as their very own.

It’s peasant food, intended to get the most out of a single chicken, and is the kind of meal Lenny really goes for. Me, I find the chicken a bit pale-looking and reckon it could do with a few minutes under the grill to add some colour – although a splash of the chilli sauce or soy-sesame mix does brighten things up. Some cooks suggest the use of kecap manis, the thicker, sweetened soy sauce from Indonesia.

I think we muffed it a bit with the chilli sauce – too much vinegar for my tastes. Asian-style rice vinegar is probably a better bet than our choice of cider vinegar (hey! nothing wrong with experimenting).

A bit more on the technical stuff. If you normally watch via our website, things won’t change much. You’ll continue to find a compact file that downloads snappily, either in QuickTime or Windows Media.

For now, the larger video only goes out with our RSS feed, which is picked up by iTunes and others. If you’re in this camp, it will just take a bit longer to download. Well worth the wait, we hope you’ll agree!

And if you’re watching via Apple TV please let us know how we look …

- Waz

Project Benedict

Waz — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:23:45 +0000

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.

Getting “good” eggs benedict when eating out can be surprisingly hard. We got hooked on greasy spoon breakfasts in Canada but on the occasion we broke from the staple of bacon and eggs were horrified to be confronted with a mess of ingredients smothered in a globby, translucent yellow-orange hollandaise obviously out of a squeeze bottle, the rubbery egg sitting atop a stamped-out square of processed ham. Certain Edmonton diners shall remain nameless.

The muffin recipe we drafted from numerous sources resulted in a dough, when I was expecting the pan-baked muffins to involve a batter. Afterwards I did some more research and found you do indeed need a more batter-like consistency to produce the internally bubbly muffin I would have preferred. No, I’m not confusing muffins with crumpets, but for the right amount of “crunch” after toasting a muffin really should have quite big cavities. Ours were more like scones inside.

Lenny did the scary work of making the hollandaise sauce. The bloody thing fulfilled our worst nightmares by “splitting” – basically, separating – but she rescued it by whizzing up an extra egg yolk and blitzing it into the mixture.

I’m not sure whether it was the egg yolk or the blitzing that did the trick, but after about 30 seconds the horribly separated mess morphed into a smooth, creamy hollandaise.

My egg poaching technique – using a biscuit or scone cutter to contain the egg – was decried as cheating by Lenny. The main reason I do it is so I can walk away and make a cup of coffee or some toast while the egg cooks. But her swirling method seemed to do the trick.

You can keep your ham when it comes to eggs benny – I’ll go with salmon any day. We didn’t stretch to smoking our own salmon – maybe next time!

- Waz

Your momo says …

Waz — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:48:23 +0000

Waz and I LOVE dumplings. Pretty much wherever we travel, we try to experience the local yum cha – or dim sum as itâ€™s called throughout much of the world. So we often find ourselves traipsing through Chinatown in various far-flung cities sampling the lovely little morsels in their steaming wooden baskets that make up the dim sum experience.

London has a surprisingly small Chinatown, and, sad to say, weâ€™ve had some very dodgy yum cha on Gerrard Street, which is this Chinatownâ€™s main drag. I would say the variety and quality of dishes is better in such establishments as China House and King of Kings in Brisneyland (thatâ€™s Brisbane in Queensland for you non-locals). Even good old Edmonton in Canada had some very fine dim sum establishments.

Having said that, weâ€™ve found a few places in London that put up a reasonable effort. We still havenâ€™t found anywhere that delivers it on trolleys to your table, though. And letâ€™s face it: having those brusque and sometimes pushy Chinese ladies wheeling the trolleys round and calling out the names of unpronounceable (by me, anyway) dishes is more than half the fun. Almost as fun as accidentally ordering chickenâ€™s feet (it has been done!). There certainly was no shortage of trolley-wheelers in Torontoâ€™s dim sum establishments, or, of course, in the massive banquet-hall sized rooms of Hong Kong.

But making the perfect, steaming prawn dumpling encased in a paper-thin layer of glassy dumpling wrapper is a culinary task requiring no small amount of skill. So when we tried to bring a little of that yum cha experience into our own home, we opted for one of the easier-to-make varieties.

In Japan theyâ€™re called gyÅza, in Tibet theyâ€™re called momos and in China theyâ€™re called jiaozi. And in North America I think theyâ€™re called pot stickers. ‘Cause they stick to the pot? Whatever you call them, theyâ€™re probably one of the easiest dumplings to make and, to my mind, one of the yummiest.

As long as you put in plenty of ginger for flavour and Chinese cabbage for crunchy texture, youâ€™ll get a juicy mouthful of lovely, fresh flavours. And watch out for the special fry-steam method of cooking â€“ the secret to the perfect jiaozi. GyÅza. Momo. Pot Sticker. Whatever.

- Lenny

Perfect Steak … in Time for Christmas

Waz — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:30:59 +0000

People of the Year! Yep, that’s us in Time magazine’s special issue, which awarded the Person of the Year title to “You”, meaning independent content creators like us who post video, audio, photos and what-not to the web.

It all started when Time contacted us a few weeks ago for an interview. They hinted that a photo might be needed, but when we left for our Christmas holidays in Australia and they had not been back in touch we assumed the photo call wasn’t going ahead. When we touched down in Brisbane we turned on our mobile phone and there was a frantic message from Time in Sydney saying “Where are you? We need a photo!” We arranged to meet the photographer, Paul Blackmore, on the Gold Coast and did one shoot in our friend Angie’s kitchen, and another around at her mum’s place.

But we STILL had no idea exactly what it was for until Angie saw a TV news item about it and we twigged. Sure enough, there we were on the Time web site and in the print edition (yes, we bought out all the copies we could find) with the title Person of the Year hovering above the story.

We even ended up on radio, interviewed on the ABC (the Australian national broadcaster) in the breakfast slot. There’s even this video report on a French network.

Anyway, we want to say a big thank you to everyone who watches Crash Test Kitchen – it’s your response to the show that keeps us going. Part of this moment really does belong to “You”.

As mentioned, we’re spending Christmas in Australia. It’s the first time in years that we’ve seen many of our family and friends, so it’s a special time for us.

We managed to shoot an episode a few days ago where we slow-cooked a whole rib fillet. The resulting pink, tender, succulent steaks are then quickly flame-grilled in true Aussie barbecue style before serving. It’s an unbeatable way to prepare and serve such a quality cut of meat.

All the compliments of the season to everyone! We’ll see you in ’07.

- Waz and Lenny

These pretzels are making us … feisty!

Waz — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:47:18 +0000

Well. To anyone who says I give Lenny too much hassle and back-talk in the kitchen, I say just watch this episode.

I reckon I’m pretty capable with dough and have a good feel for the right texture, moisture and density. So when we decided to make pretzels – the big soft chewy bready variety, not the nasty little crunchy bar snacks – I decided to take charge.

I got hooked on these things in Canada where there was a chain in shopping malls that baked and sold them fresh. I always wonder about those instant-baked breads – do they use yeast, for example, or some sort of chemical for a quicker result? Anyway, they were still good enough to suck me in repeatedly.

Where we live in London a local deli sells pretzels every now and then, but it’s not a reliable supply. So I did some research and found a couple of traditional pretzel recipes on the web. I amalgamated these into something that would suit Crash Test Kitchen (i.e. not too fussy in the preparation or execution!).

Shaping the pretzels is easily enough learned – the trick is in getting the dough just right. And rolling it out into long ropes a bit thicker than a pencil.

Boiling before baking is optional, but it adds a chewy skin and seems to fluff them up. I reckon you’d be mad not to boil them first.

Keep an eye on them while baking – it all happens pretty quickly and you could easily end up with something that looks and tastes like a charred piece of tangled rope.

Devour with melted butter and salt. Nothing better.

- Waz

Joy of tarte tatin

Waz — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 11:04:12 +0000

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.

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.

We used pre-made puff pastry but if you’re brave you could attempt that feat yourself. We’re leaving it for a possible future episode.

You can serve it after cooling for a short while or set it aside, reheat and serve later in the day.

- Waz

Easy tarte tatin recipe

This recipe is from The Joy of Cooking. You will need a skillet for this dish – a pan that you can put on the stove and then in the oven. See the video for the cast iron skillet that we use. It’s about 30cm in diameter overall – the base is about 25cm. A half-quantity of the ingredients below is enough for a skillet of this size. You can do this with apricots, pears, plums, and you could also sprinkle currants, sultanas or raisins on the top – or should that be on the bottom?

1 sheet puff pastry
6 large golden delicious apples
8 tbsp butter unsalted
1 cup sugar
ice cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Peel and core the apples and slice each into 6 wedges, which should keep them nice and thick.

Melt the butter in the pan, then sprinkle the sugar all over. Arrange the apple segments uniformly around the pan (see video). Leave the pan to bubble on a high heat for 6-10 minutes until you’ve got a toffee mixture that’s golden brown and soft. When the toffee turns from butterscotch in colour to deep amber, turn all the apple pieces and cook for another 5 minutes, then turn the heat off.

Shape the puff pastry sheet rougly into a square, then lay it across the apples. Tuck the sides down next to the apples so there’s no pastry hanging over the edge and put the skillet into the oven.

Check after 25 minutes; it’s ready when the pastry is puffed up and golden brown. Take it out of the oven and cool for 15-20 minutes.

Loosen the edges with a knife and turn the tarte out onto a plate. If some of the apples stay in the pan, don’t worry, just put them back in their rightful place. Serve with the ice cream.

Cinnamon teacake

Waz — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:06:30 +0000

Wow! I was interviewed as an authority on food podcasting for the Guardian Unlimited newsdesk podcast this morning and can’t believe how nervous I was. I hope they managed to edit together something sensible from all my babble. You can find the interview about 16 min 40 sec into the bulletin.

Loads of stuff I forgot to mention – like how we’ve been in Time magazine, and how we’re cited in Stephanie Bryant’s new book Videoblogging for Dummies.

Anyway. It’s been a while since we posted an episode – listen to the GU podcast and you’ll learn that it’s partly because our cooker/stove/oven was broken, and getting it replaced was a bit of a nightmare. Also we’ve been travelling again, and work life has been keeping us busy. But we’ve kicked back into gear and, to coincide with the Guardian interview, here’s an episode in which we make a simple teacake.

This video was previously posted incomplete, but it’s now the full episode, so if you saw “Part 1″ please watch again.

Now, about teacake. As the name suggests it’s the perfect accompaniment to a cup of your favourite leaf tea, and is as much a part of the Anglo-Australian baking repertoire as scones and sponge cake.

It’s also a lot easier than making a sponge – which, if you’ve watched out Sponge Blob Square Pan episode, you’ll know can be a perilous task

The cake is more dense than a sponge and you could almost say it’s slightly stodgy. Cinnamon and melted butter top it off perfectly, and as Lenny reminded me, some people actually put butter on their slice before eating it as well.

A note to those outside jurisdictions where you can get self-raising flour: instead, use one CUP of plain flour to one TEASPOON of baking POWDER – not soda! Learn that ratio as a mantra and you shouldn’t have any trouble. Every care taken, no responsibility accepted blah blah.

- Waz

Pulling a rarebit out of the hat

Waz — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 15:29:32 +0000

“Welsh rarebit” or “Welsh rabbit” was one of those dishes I’d always wondered about, along with “toad in the hole”, before moving to the UK.

Apparently its name is originally a bit of a slight on the Welsh – who were (many years ago, I’m sure) considered so inept they couldn’t catch a rabbit for dinner, so they had to settle for cheese on toast. In an early example of political correctness the name was adjusted to “rarebit”, supposedly taking a bit of the sting out of the insult.

There’s more to good rarebit than just slices of cheddar plopped on bread and stuck under the grill (broiler, if you prefer). The recipes vary, but common elements seem to be a good cheddar, some Worcestershire sauce and either beer or milk.

I did my research and cobbled together a list of ingredients that seemed like a fair thing – eschewing the egg that one recipe recommended.

A “roux” is not absolutely necessary, but our friend Chef Michelle used one when she served us rarebit during our Belgian fries excursion. Roux in its most basic form is melted butter whisked up with flour, forming a base that adds richness and body to the resulting dish.

We used Guinness for the beer part, but I reckon any beer would do the job. A dark one, though, will give your rarebit a bit more oomph. If you can’t use beer, milk is permissible.

It seems we did make one mistake: whisking for too long after melting the cheese into the roux and beer. The rarebit mixture went very quickly from a nice smooth paste into a blob – it seemed like the fat from the butter had separated out. Everything was quite salvageable, but possibly the final product was a bit greasy as a result.

Rarebit is definitely more interesting than cheese on toast, and if you get the grilling just right the lovely bubbly brown appearance is quite appetising.

Oh, make sure to use a nice crusty loaf too – no pre-sliced industrial rubbish.

- Waz

Real Belgian fries, with mussels and mayo

Waz — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:29:39 +0000

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.

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.

Phil reckons that the cooling-off period means the chip will be crisp on the outside but not overcooked in the middle. And judging by the results he’s on the money, although he wasn’t 100 per cent happy with the results.

Being an Australian, Phil speaks in degrees Celsius. His recommended temperature range of 180-190C translates to 356-374F.

Michelle’s mayonnaise is a simple recipe, but the secret is in the whisk work. Michelle explains that if you add too much oil or overwork the mixture of egg and olive oil it will “split” – you end up with scrambled egg floating in oil.

Her mussels are simply steamed in a Belgian ale after first frying some shallots in the pot.

Phil laid on a very interesting Belgian beer, Deus. It’s beer all right, but it’s matured as a champagne (in the Champagne region of France in fact) along the lines of a mÃ©thode champenoise sparkling wine.

You can see more of Phil and Michelle in episode two of our journey into the heart of banoffee piemaking.

- Waz.

Easy peasy feta cheesy

Waz — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:04:05 +0000

Sometimes you just need comfort food. I had never pictured that packet of peas in the freezer as anything other than a quick way of padding out the numbers in a meat-and-three-veg meal, or a source of temporary relief for a wrenched ankle.

Recently, though, Canadian friends and Crash Test Kitchen devotees Shel and Christie visited from Edmonton, the place where CTK had its beginnings. We got nattering about food (as we do) and Christie revealed one of her quick and easy comfort cravings: peas and feta.

It doesn’t sound like it would set the world on fire, but seriously, it goes really well together. Lenny’s addition of crusty garlic toasts makes a meal of it.

You can have this on its own, or the peas and feta would be great tossed through pasta (especially home-made pasta) with the toasts on the side. Some olive oil – garlic-infused of course – could be drizzled over the toast for a bit of lubrication.

Speaking of lubrication, a glass of the right white wine – perhaps a semillon chardonnay blend – would sit well alongside? Ah, what do I know about wines except how to quaff them.

Lenny is insistent the feta must be good quality – not the stuff with herbs, spices, flavoured oil and all that rubbish.

I’ll leave it at that – we don’t want to pretend this meal is haute cuisine, but it shows how tossing together a couple of simple ingredients can produce a tasty tummy-filler. Thanks Christie!

- Waz

Revealing our (chocolate) sauce

Waz — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 20:53:06 +0000

QuickTime video

It seems Lenny has a latent sweet tooth. In the past she was not really one for desserts, but more and more she’s turning out cakes and confections. This simple chocolate sauce based on just four ingredients has become one of her staples.

Our mate Chef Michelle gave us the recipe, handed down from her mum. You combine milk, sugar, cocoa and butter over heat, and whisk gently until it bubbles itself into a velvety and perilously rich topping. Tip it straight over ice cream and wolf down.

Crash Test Kitchen is all about improvisation, so we slapped together a cherry and brandy maceration to create what Michelle dubbed “black forest chocolate delight”. Actually, she came up with “black forest” bit and I embellished it.

Along the way Lenny and I learned the definition of “maceration”. We had thought the process simply involved sprinkling pieces of fruit with sugar and leaving them to go, well, pulpy. Strawberries being a familiar target.

Turns out, though, that true maceration (ah, go on, have a little snigger about what it sounds like) must involve a liquid element. So our splash of brandy not only gives a lift to our creation but keeps us on the right size of the culinarily pedantic.

We used cherries that were quite firm, but not unripe, and they were pleasantly “bitey”, if that’s a word (“crunchy” would be taking it too far) , even after their sousing in spirits and sugar. We don’t know what variety of cherry, but they were quite red, rather than the purplish-black kind we’re more familiar with in Australia. When macerated the flesh went nice and glossy.

This sauce is just one of the sweet sensations Lenny keeps up her sleeve. Stay tuned for a future episode featuring her version of my mum’s quick and simple tea cake.

- Waz

What’s French for onion soup?

Waz — Mon, 22 May 2006 11:31:11 +0000

QuickTime video

In France, this ubiquitous soup is known simply as “gratinÃ©e” by virtue of the de rigueur melted GruyÃ¨re 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.

Go to the recipe for banoffee pie

It was a bit of a tearjerker for Lenny, who had to slice all the oignons because I was busy with bookkeeping.

I’m sure you could just use shop-bought beef stock, but then you’d miss all the fun of making your own starting with just bones, water, vegetables and a few simple spices.

We had been a bit surprised by how light in colour and flavour our stock was, and some viewers have suggested we could have boiled it down to make it stronger. In the end, though, I think it was about right; a stock isn’t there to provide the primary flavour of a dish, and I don’t recall our Quebec gratinÃ©e experience being a particularly beefy one.

Two other examples of Quebec cuisine that caught our attention: TourtiÃ¨re Ã la quÃ©bÃ©coise, a meat pie; and cipaille or “sea pie”, a layered meat dish crammed with different species.

Sea pie crops up repeatedly in Patrick O’Brian’s “Master and Commander” book series, as a dish made from whatever leftovers are at hand or whatever species are within musket shot. I’m sure it must be the same thing.

I reckon we’ll attempt cipaille sometime, accompanying it with another batch of gratinÃ©e of course.

- Waz

Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch

Waz — Fri, 12 May 2006 13:00:26 +0000

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.

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.

Being the cheapskates we are, we took advantage of a local butcher’s offer of free bones – with the condition being that he didn’t have to cut them up. I rummaged in the loft and found a flimsy woodsaw, and you’ll see the results in the video.

When I was growing up, the closest I ever came to French onion soup was an insipid brew of powdered cup-a-soup mix and hot water. It was easy to find it underwhelming, and our visit to Quebec City on our trans-Canadian safari was the first time I’d tasted the real stuff.

I was blown away, and now our taste buds are primed in the hope our own home-made variety matches the best that French Canada can produce.

Stay tuned!

- Waz

Banoffi or Banoffee? Vol. 2

Waz — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:24:12 +0000

If you’ve watched the last episode (this one includes a quick recap) you’ll know that we made banoffee (banoffi) pie after much pleading from our gastro-pal Chef Michelle and her hubby Phil.

Most of the work was done at our place, then we transported the components , including the fragile shortcrust base, across London to Michelle and Phil’s for completion and gustation.

The crust made it intact and the results were pretty good all round, making allowances for a little over-zealous whipping of the cream by Lenny.

Michelle laid on a delicious lamb roast – the girl can cook! Check the video for Phil’s carving style – a revelation to me. Through her culinary contacts Mich also rustled up some special cheeses with that soft-and-smelly exclusivity of a pricey restaurant platter.

Beer buff Phil, meanwhile, rolled out a selection of England’s finest ales.

Pleased to report that Michelle’s expert comments on the finished pie were appreciative, although maybe it was the drink talking. Phil also wolfed it down eagerly, but I think that’s just the way he eats.

A few words about upcoming episodes. We’ll be making beef stock starting with just bones and vegetables, and turning it into an absolute classic: French onion soup. Yum!

- Waz

Coffee, Toffee, Banoffee Pie – Vol. 1

Waz — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:24:52 +0000

Banoffi or banoffee? The debate rages, and the inventors of this world-famous dessert, the Hungry Monk Cafe, arguably should get the last word – even though they would appear to be in the wrong, since the name stands for “banana and toffee/coffee”. Maybe the “i” is there to make it sound Italian.

Go to the recipe for banoffee pie

Our friend Chef Michelle and her man Phil had suggested we crash test this one at our house, under her supervision. But plans change, and we had to switch the dinner venue to their place at very short notice. That meant whipping up the base and filling at ours, then transporting the components across London and finishing the job at theirs.

The easiest and perhaps most dangerous way to make the basic caramel filling needed for this dessert is to submerge a can or two of condensed milk in a pot of water and boil for hours and hours. There’s always the risk of the cans exploding if you let the water level drop.

And even if you don’t end up blasting scalding caramel all over your kitchen, you have to wait ages for the cans to cool to room temperature and thereby depressurise before you can open them.

Time was running short, so via a quick web search I learned that condensed milk can also be caramelised by double-boiling – without the risk of detonating cans and napalm caramel. I decided to run a side-by-side test. Lenny, meanwhile, set to work with the pastry.

Incidentally, there’s been an interesting foodie discussion over at our friend Lyn’s blog Lex Culinaria about when a chef can truly claim to have invented a dish. Well, we reckon the Hungry Monk can rest their case as far as banoffee is concerned.

So is it possible to transport a delicate short-crust base across London on public transport, without ending up with a flan dish full of crumbs, albeit flaky and melt-in-the-mouthy ones? You’ll have to watch the forthcoming Vol. 2 to see how it all turns out!

- Waz

Banoffee pie recipe

Lenny says: Preparing the “toffee” takes a loooong time (up to five hours)! There are two methods, which I will explain below, but the boil-the-tin method (which can be dangerous) allows you to prepare extra and keep for ages. So if you think you’ll be making this again, I’d use this method to prepare your toffee.

2 cans condensed milk
225g flour
½ tsp salt
50g butter, cubed
50g lard, cubed
Extra butter for greasing
Water
375ml cream
1 dessertspoon caster sugar
½ tsp instant coffee
1 tsp finely ground fresh coffee (or use instant)
4-5 ripe bananas (not overripe)

Preparing the toffee:

The “double boil” method: Empty two cans of condensed milk into a heatproof bowl and put it over a pan of boiling water for about 2–2 ½ hours until it has gone dark and thick. Don’t just leave it on the hob; continually check the water level and top up when necessary. Whisk the mixture with beaters to take out any lumps. Watch the video for details

The “boil-the-tin” method: Be careful – this could prove dangerous, we have heard of instances of the tin exploding (though rare, and usually when someone lets the pot boil dry). Put as many cans of condensed milk as you think you’ll use in the upcoming months into a big pot and cover them completely with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer, keeping the tins covered with water, for 5 hours. Turn off the heat. Let them cool enough so you can handle them before opening.

Pastry:

Preheat the oven to 210C/410F. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl and use your fingers to rub the butter and lard into the dry ingredients until you get a breadcrumb-like consistency.

Add about 1 teaspoon of water at a time, mixing it in with a knife, until the mixture comes together in a ball. Don’t overwork it at this stage. Cover the ball with cling wrap and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes until it firms up.

Butter a flan tin, then roll out the pastry until it’s big enough to fill the tin and reach up the sides. Lay the pastry over the flan tin and press it gently into the corners. Prick the base all over with a fork. Don’t trim it yet: the overhanging bits will stop it from shrinking. Put it on a tray, then into the oven for 10-15 minutes until crispy and just beginning to brown on the edges. Remove it from the oven and let it cool before you trim off the overhanging excess carefully with a sharp knife.

When the base has cooled, whip the cream with the sugar and the ½ teaspoon of instant coffee until you get soft peaks. Spread the cooled toffee mixture into the base – it will be really thick now it has cooled.

Peel the bananas and slice in half lengthways, then lie the halves around the edge of the toffee mixture, working your way into the middle. You may need to break some bananas up a bit so you can make the pieces fit together like a puzzle. See the video.

Spoon the cream mixture on top of the bananas and sprinkle with a bit of freshly ground coffee or some more instant.

Slice and serve as it is. It goes really well with coffee.

Rice pudding with pineapple confusion

Waz — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:40:58 +0000

My mum would often make rice pudding when I was a kid. Though I loved the pudding, I would scrape off the skin with my spoon and plop it on mum’s plate, who made an ostentatious show of eating it while I curled up my nose in distaste.

Lenny was making risotto a while back and couldn’t find arborio rice, so bought some “Italian pudding rice” instead at a corner store. I insisted, though, that it wouldn’t work, and went out an ultimately successful mission to find the right kind for risotto. That left us with this packet of pudding rice, which Lenny has finally put to use.

In our modest cookery library she found a recipe for “nursery rice pudding” and went to work, also grilling some pineapple for a topping.

The pudding turned out well enough, but the pineapple was less successful. How do you get pineapple to brown and sort of caramelise? We’d like to hear your ideas.

As far as the pudding goes, Lenny reckons she wasn’t that happy with the overall result. I’ll have to ask mum for her recipe.

- Waz

Triumph of the Lamb, Disaster of the Dish: Braised lamb shoulder recipe

Waz — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:03:46 +0000

Don’t roast it. Braise it! That’s Lenny’s new mantra after discovering the pleasurable results of cooking less-than-choice cuts very slowly in a tasty stock or sauce.

It’s not really stewing – you carve the cooked joint or piece of meat as you would a roast, rather than chopping it up beforehand.

This episode is also a lesson in the hidden perils of pyrex-style cookware. Well, if we’d just googled it beforehand, we would have known the risks of exposing it to a naked flame.

Lamb is available fairly cheaply where we live, so Lenny went on the hunt for value and got a boned-out shoulder for about six quid. She sent me hunting for “kitchen string” so she could roll it up, and I managed to scrounge a couple of metres from a butcher. I must say, she does a fine job of binding a very ordinary looking piece of meat into something that looks like “a bought one”.

Really basic ingredients for this one. Lamb, carrots, onions, celery and simple spices. But that’s the beauty of it.

We reckon the key to braising, as with making a slow-cooked curry, stew, casserole, whatever, is to use meat that is not a select, expensive cut. If you start off with a piece of flesh that is already super-tender, surely it will just fall apart in the cooking process. You want it to end up “fork tender” – that is, you can tear it apart easily with a fork, but otherwise it stays intact.

We must warn anyone attempting this recipe to watch the whole episode first. The aftermath for our kitchenware was rather unfortunate, but it could have been a lot worse and potentially dangerous if things had gone wrong during the cooking process.

The recipe for this episode came from The Joy of Cooking, sent to us by publisher Simon and Schuster. The 75th annniversary edition of Joy comes out later this year and we plan to have some fun and prizes on offer at Crash Test Kitchen to celebrate the occasion, so keep watching us for details.

- Waz

Heart-melting chocolate pudding

Waz — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 16:01:34 +0000

Go to the recipe for heart-melting chocolate pudding

I couldn’t help it. Lenny left those blocks of delicious dark chocolate sitting there in the cupboard for weeks and weeks. Late one night I just had to have a nibble.

In the end, having not quite enough 70% cocoa dark chocolate to make these molten-centred puddings wasn’t such a big problem. Hidden away in another corner of the cupboard was some plain old Cadbury’s glass-and-a-half, and it probably took the edge off the cheek-puckering bitterness of the hardcore Green & Black’s Organic.

Lenny had been dying to cook this devilish delight after we had one at the rather posh St John restaurant in Clerkenwell, London.

She found a recipe in the Observer Food Monthly, but dithered over executing it. Hence my nibbling of the ingredients. At least it got her moving when she saw the small chocolate mountain in the cupboard being steadily eroded.

As Lenny mentions in the video, the batter can be measured out into ramekins in advance and kept in the fridge uncooked, then baked immediately before serving. We made six in all, so got to enjoy them over a few evenings.

It was a pretty easy recipe, but once again the baking time had us in a muddle, mainly because of our oven’s vagaries. Overcook this one and you’ll end up with a plain, albeit very rich, chocolate brownie or sponge of sorts. This actually happened when we tried to reheat a cooked one in the microwave and zapped it for too long – but it was still delicious.

What you’re aiming for is a cakey outer layer with a heart of chocolate lava. It sounds wicked, and it is.

- Waz

Heart-melting chocolate pudding

Lenny says: We think this is drawn originally from a Nigella Lawson recipe. You’ll need 6 pudding moulds and what seems like LOT of chocolate. I’ve been caught out on a couple of occasions thinking I’d whip this one up on the spur of the moment only to find I haven’t had 350g of chocolate in the cupboard. But I usually have at least 175g, so we’ve had to make do with a half quantity. The beauty of this recipe is that you can make the mixture beforehand and divide it into the moulds, then just put it in the oven 15 minutes before you’re ready for dessert.

50g soft unsalted butter
extra butter
150g caster sugar
50g plain flour
4 eggs
1 pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla
350g best dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 200C/390F and grease 6 pudding moulds, then line the bases with greaseproof paper (baking parchment).

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and then let it cool slightly.

In the meantime, cream together the butter and sugar until you’ve reached a uniform consistency. If this mixture looks a bit too sugary and not buttery enough, you have have to add a bit more butter – maybe another 15g or so to make it seem a bit less grainy.

Mix the eggs in a bowl with the salt.

Gradually mix the egg mixture in with the butter mixture, and add the vanilla. Keep mixing until well combined.

Gradually stir in the flour – it will still look pretty runny at this stage.

Scrape in the cooled chocolate and give it a good stir – it will turn thicker and more elastic.

Divide the mixture among the moulds and put into the oven on a tray.

Bake for 10-12 minutes – 10 minutes if cooking immediately after mixing, a couple of minutes more if you take them from the fridge to the oven. They’re ready when the tops have puffed up and cracked a bit.

Turn out and serve hot with crème fraîche, cream or ice cream.

Ready, steady, spaghetti: Puttanesca pronto

Waz — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:02:23 +0000

Every Saturday I sit down to the task of writing out the weekly grocery shopping list. It starts off easily with the staples: bread, milk, fruit, white truffles …

But then comes the tricky part: what to eat for dinner for the next seven days. Sometimes inspiration hits and I easily come up with seven tasty, nutritionally balanced dishes with a combination of ingredients that’s both affordable and at least slightly adventurous. And that yields just the right amount of left-overs to pop into a plastic container for tomorrow’s lunch.

Other times I enter into a flight of fancy that Waz might have some ideas for the week’s dinners: “Waz, can you suggest something for dinner this week?” Typical reply: “Twice smoked duck’s liver on a bed of wilted sea kale with smoked maple dressing.” Or, alternatively: “Fish.”

Yeah, thanks Waz.

So I usually end up flipping through our surprisingly meagre supply of recipe books searching for ideas.

Other times I get to the end of the list and couldn’t be shagged with more page-flipping and I fall back on one of my staples. You know what I’m talking about. You all have them: those dishes that you know how to make with one arm tied behind your back, no peeking at the recipe book necessary. Things like spag bol (spaghetti bolognese for you non-Aussies out there), beef and veg stir fry, roast chook.

Then sometimes you strike gold: the NEW staple to add to your repertoire. You come across a recipe that’s easy and delicious and keeps creeping back onto the weekly shopping list until, before you know it, you’re happily cooking it every second week.

Spaghetti puttanesca is just such a dish for me. It’s easy to make, I always have the ingredients tucked away in the pantry and just need a handful of fresh basil and a grating of parmesan cheese to add the final touches. Oftentimes I make it with tinned tomatoes. But if they’re having a special on fresh cherry tomatoes down at the market hall I buy a couple of pounds because they make this dish extra special, lending it a much more subtle sweetness. If you are using tinned tomatoes it’s a good idea to add about a tablespoon of tomato paste because, depending on the quality, tinned tommies can sometimes make a dish a bit runny and tomato paste will just thicken it up a bit.

So I hope you try this dish and maybe it’ll end up as one of your staples, too.

- Lenny

How to make cracking creme brulee

Waz — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 23:44:05 +0000

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!

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.

But the website where I found this recipe argues that the only true creme brulee is the classic variety, flavoured with vanilla bean. Essentially it’s a baked custard with that simple but crucial caramelised sugar layer on top.

A few months ago I finally convinced Lenny to let me buy the blowtorch (it was only fifteen quid!) so it was just a matter of time before we’d be attempting my favourite dessert.

I was pretty happy with the result, although the recipe called for 500ml of double cream and Lenny felt the extra 68ml in the pint container threw the mixture out of whack. True, we had to dramatically increase the cooking time, but I don’t reckon such a small amount of extra cream could lead to such a huge disparity. There must be something wrong with the oven.

I think the result wasn’t too bad for a first effort. At least the spoon went through the toffee-like crust with a resounding “crack”, and the natural vanilla flavour was heavenly.

Good enough for me.

- Waz.

Tandoori chicken on a barbecue

Waz — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:37:53 +0000

All right you purists. I know what you’re going to say. “You can’t cook tandoori without a tandoor!”

Yes, well, who has a huge earthenware oven in their kitchen, I ask you? The closest most of can get to tandoori at home is applying the curry paste or powder to meat of some description and cooking the results over a grill.

This is another of our “lost” episodes. I had genuinely forgotten about it, and found the raw video while rabbiting through our archive for holiday footage.

Traditional tandoori cooking involves meat and other edibles slathered in exotic curry pastes being impaled on a spit and placed inside a tandoor – like I said, a clay oven, often a sort of drum heated by a fire inside, with the spits placed in from the top, their ends leaning against the side.

Clear enough word picture? Good Indian restaurants will often have a tandoor. Ask nicely and they might even show you.

Naan bread is made by slapping the stretched dough on the walls of the tandoor. You can do it on a tray or racks in a normal oven, but aforesaid purists will question the results (and I would be with them, having always found our home-cooked naans a bit on the dry side).

We shot this episode back in Edmonton, at a time when we were madly filming just about everything we ate as potential fodder for Crash Test Kitchen. Things have been busy for us lately, so over a few nights I lashed together the episode, which finds me in much less fashionable spectacles!

The results were mediocre, although the rice is actually a pretty good variation on the plain boiled variety.

- Waz.

Froth my milk up: cappuccino foam and how to get it right

Waz — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 19:25:26 +0000

One of my pet hates is a cappuccino without good froth, especially one for which I’ve forked out my hard-earned readies.

After I dropped many a hint, Lenny gave me an espresso machine for Christmas. Determined not to replicate the work of dud baristas who have been fleecing me for donkeys’ years, I went to work quickly to perfect my frothing technique. Now Crash Test Kitchen is ready to go public with the cappuccino tips you’ll find in this episode.

Too many of the coffee chains get away with selling fraudulently priced beverages with coarsely bubbled, over-aerated scum on top that has absolutely no body to it. Carry a coffee like this across the room, or up the street to your job, and you’ll find the foam has burst its bubbles and collapsed into plain old milk again. Really, really bad foam will discombobulate under the weight of the mandatory chocolate powder or flakes alone.

Good froth, I reckon, should be dense and smooth with lots of fine bubbles. It should be a silky layer that you enjoy for its taste and texture – not just decoration or a reason to gouge you an extra fifty pence.

And I argue that a dense froth does a better job of keeping the heat in the coffee.

My espresso machine (thanks Lenny!) has a frothing spout with a “snorkel” that draws in air from above the milk-line using the venturi principle. I don’t think it’s the best set-up. It tends to pull in too much air too quickly, frothing the milk before it’s up to the right temperature, which is about 60-75 degrees Celsius (149-158 Fahrenheit).

My solution is to cover the top of the snorkel with my finger, letting in a short burst of air every second or two. The very small intake hole gets blocked sometimes and I clear it with a pin.

On some other machines, the air intake is incorporated with the end of the spout and you let in air by dropping the jug to bring the breather holes above the surface of the milk.

Good espresso, as any even half-baked barista will tell you, forms a nice “crema” on top as it’s expressed. Pour the milk right and you’ll get a tasty and aesthetically pleasing ring of this brown coffee oil around the perimeter of the froth layer.

A note on our coffee cups. They’re actually tea cups that Lenny got at Value Village in Edmonton, Canada, for next to nix.

We know they’re not _proper_ coffee cups, but when has Crash Test Kitchen been afraid to improvise, even when it comes to the holy grail of a perfect cappuccino?

- Waz.

Tajine or not tajine?

Waz — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 23:56:10 +0000

The festive season has come and gone, and yes, I know, I know, we sidestepped the whole issue of a Christmas episode.

Things were pretty hectic in the Crash Test Kitchen. We had 15 unruly expats and Brits over for Christmas dinner and we cooked two turkeys and a pork roast at once in our huge oven, along with a mountain of vegetables. Our freezer is now full of delightful soups – pea and ham, turkey, leek and ginger – that will keep us fuelled up well into the New Year.

Our MiniDV camera decided to see in the New Year by giving up the ghost, leaving us with no way to shoot episodes. After much heavy contemplation of the expense, followed by some serious comparison shopping, we’ve bought a new unit. So Crash Test Kitchen is back in business.

Tajine, or our version of it, was one of our staples as we travelled across Canada in Gus the Bus last year.

Although we always looked forward to making it, the dish is controversial. A true north African tajine contains lamb, but when shopping for ingredients here in London I bought beef. Why? Well, lamb was pretty much unavailable in Canada. It’s easy to buy here, but I thought we should stick with the recipe we devised on the road.

Needless to say, Lenny thought otherwise, and a somewhat passionate debate ensued.

The accompaniment – cous cous, which should have been simple – also turned into a bit of a debacle.

But my chin is wagging too hard. Time for you to watch and enjoy the first Crash Test Kitchen instalment of 2006.

- Waz.

Chocolate cake like mum makes

Waz — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:51:23 +0000

I have never found a chocolate cake as good as my mum’s. Actually it’s my grandmother’s recipe, and a great one at that.

I didn’t know until I asked mum for the recipe that it’s a “boiled” cake. You don’t actually boil it to cook it – but you simmer some of the ingredients before making the final mix.

According to family lore, Nana used to make this cake for stockmen when she was a cook on a cattle station. I don’t know whether the boiling has anything to do with it, but the cake is said to hold up well and not fall apart while being jostled around in saddlebags. As far as I can remember it always survived the trip to school in my lunchbox.

The cake is moist, tasty and seems to keep well in a sealed container. It’s not chocolate overload by any means – no doubt you could tweak the recipe by boosting the cocoa content. Or jack it up by making your own superchockified version of Lenny’s butter icing.

But I’m not one to go against family tradition, and past cake failures have made me even more reticent to mess around with recipes (longtime viewers will recall the Sponge Blob Square Pan disaster).

This episode really should have taken place in a different time, on a different continent. I wanted to use Nana’s recipe for Lenny’s birthday cake while we were on the road in Canada. Unfortunately in far northern Nova Scotia we couldn’t get the ingredients.

But I managed to find some packet cake mix and went to work with my new Outback oven, a flameproof hood that fits over a pot on our Whisperlite stove. It was a bit of a disaster; the pot was the wrong size and the bottom of the cake had burned black by the time the top was cooked and the smoke made us firmly unpopular in the campground cooking shelter. Using a serrated knife, I neatly sliced the charred disc off the bottom and served the remaining three-fifths or so with Lenny’s butter icing.

I will give Nana’s cake a try on the Whisperlite out in the wilderness at some stage. After all, back in her day all she had was a wood-fired oven.

- Waz.

Rhubarb’s your uncle

Waz — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 23:13:30 +0000

Rhubarb. To me it’s always been more a synonym for nonsense or babble, or a gap-filling nothing vegetable in the garden, than the deliciously tart and easily prepared treat it turns out to be.

We went to the Borough Markets with a chef friend on Saturday and no doubt the rhubarb we bought is a super-organic non-GM wind-powered dolphin-friendly variety.

You can spend hours at the Borough and we really should get some footage down there for a future episode. I’m sure I can overcome my fear of being clocked by a falling 25kg wheel of gourmet cheese.

I also found a couple of lonely chunks of galangal up the back of one fruit and vege stall, so I’m looking forward to jamming it into a wok with some compatible ingredients.

As for the rhubarb, what could be simpler? Bung it into a pot with some water and sugar. Boil for five minutes. It’s amazing how quickly those fibrous pink stalks break down and release all their beautiful colour, not to mention that irresistible tartness.

The last of it goes on our porridge tomorrow morning.

- Waz.

Here’s steak in your ale pie

Waz — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 21:00:28 +0000

Ah, London and its familiar smells. That tantalising, fatty waft of fish and chips. That grey electric dust that gets up your nose in the Tube.

But what we love best about London is the food culture. Fresh ingredients are plentiful in the fruit and veg stalls on the street, the multicultural stores, the market districts, and the new “gastro pub” movement is adding another dimension to the culinary scene.

After our transatlantic flight from Toronto we “dossed” with Lenny’s brother Cam for a few days while we found somewhere to live. We did our research and ended up moving into the first place we saw.

The good news is our new kitchen is EXCELLENT! Good lighting, plenty of bench space and, best of all, a gas stove.

That stove is really something to behold. Three normal burners, one for a wok, and a big long one up the middle for a cast iron hotplate. The oven is huge … two turkeys wouldn’t be a problem.

We took a few days to get the measure of our new Crash Test Kitchen before launching into our first show. It had to be something with a local flavour. And here it is: a steak and ale pie with a Yorkshire pud crust.

Let us know what you think of the new digs.

- Waz.

Where did they go?

Waz — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 12:51:05 +0000

So you’ve been wondering where we got to? Well, we’re on the move again, jetting out to parts unknown.

Canada has been good to us, and our Crash Test Kitchen Canadian Safari has been a fantastic adventure. But you know that endy stuff they say about good things.

We bid a sad farewell to our good friend Gus the Bus, our mobile Crash Test Kitchen, in Toronto. We managed to get a good price from a builder and Gus is now settling into life as a working-class van.

As for us, we’ve recovered from our jet lag and right now we’re settling into new digs in a different corner of the world. Watch the video carefully and you just might be able to figure out where.

The good news: Our new kitchen is GREAT! And fresh ingredients are so much cheaper and so much easier to get here than in Edmonton (which, by the way, is the northernmost large city in North America, so it’s no wonder produce doesn’t arrive in the best condition).

Once we get ourselves established we’ll be firing up the video camera (there’s another thing: electricity here is 220-240 volts, so it means finding a new battery charger) and continuing our routine of Crash Test cookery.

O Canada, we’ll miss your prairies, your pine trees, your Rocky Mountains and the skiing injuries we sustained there. And we’ll miss all the great mates we made. But you’ll always be in our hearts as the place Crash Test Kitchen was born.

The adventure continues!

- Waz.

A chicken crashes and burns

Waz — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:22:23 +0000

We saw a moose! Two or three, in fact, right here in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia. One with a great set of antlers that any hunter would have been delighted to bag. Luckily they’re protected in this park.

A few weeks into our road trip we developed a superb roast chicken recipe using a pistachio and plum stuffing of our own invention. When Lenny’s brother Cam flew in from London (UK) to join us for a few days, it seemed the perfect welcoming dinner.

Well, as you know, things don’t always turn out as planned on Crash Test Kitchen. Our portable barbecue ran out of gas, and that should have served as a warning.

Things went downhill from there but the chicken was still salvageable … just!

If nothing else you’ll get a laugh out of watching this episode … and you’ll meet a friendly moose or two in the process.

- Waz.

Lobster and mussels, alive, alive-o

Waz — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:19:33 +0000

If Prince Edward Island is famous for one thing, it just might be lobster suppers. These seafood feasts typically start with courses of chowder and mussels. Then the diner is presented with a whole lobster to devour. This instalment begins with us doing just that to two unfortunate specimens.

Lenny loves mussels, so was inspired by the mussel course to attempt her own version of the dish for this episode. She adds a Thai twist with coconut milk, ginger and limes. But hang on, Jalapeno chilies? What the …? Well, authentic Thai-style ingredients aren’t always close at hand.

PEI may be a small island, but a big cultural experience. For one thing, the island is home to a section of Canada’s Acadian community. The Acadians were French-speaking early settlers who were persecuted and eventually deported under British rule. Many fled south to Louisiana, where the word “Acadian” became corrupted to “Cajun” and their presence gave rise to that famous, vibrant culture.

Acadians eventually returned to the Maritime provinces of Canada. Today they maintain their language and flag, and remain fiercely proud of their roots. We got the chance to visit the Acadian village of Abram for its annual agricultural fair and had plenty of fun gathering the footage that you’ll see as a montage in this episode – our triumphant fifth “Canadian Safari” instalment!

- Waz.

Lamb rack with balsamic mint sauce – recipe

Waz — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:40:39 +0000

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)!

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.

PEI is the country’s smallest province and has been one of the highlights of our trip, by the way. Surprising beaches, idyllic country scenes, great people, and oh those lobster suppers (see upcoming episode).

Now, where would lamb be without mint sauce? And where would Crash Test Kitchen be without its spirit of improvisation? I theorised a mint sauce based on balsamic vinegar, while as usual relying on Lenny’s culinary prowess for the execution.

We wish you coulda been there to share the result. The odyssey continues.

- Waz.
P.S. For non-Aussies, the “lamb in your pan” thing is a play on an old Australian ad slogan, “Get some pork on your fork”.

How To Eat An Island

Waz — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:49:37 +0000

With epicurean delights like maple-smoked sturgeon and salmon, home-made apple cider and excellent local wines on offer, why wouldn’t a quartet of wandering gourmand-wannabes stop by Ile d’Orleans in Quebec?

After a week on the road we picked up our old friends Cristy and Robert (“Speedy” to his mates) in Ontario and whisked them away to the heady delights of French-speaking Canada – cosmopolitan Montreal first, then Quebec City with its old-world charms. Ile d’Orleans hides in the St Lawrence River not far from the capital and is a little rural haven with much to offer a travelling palate.

Excellent local ingredients also made this a perfect stopover for our next “Canadian Safari” episode of CTK.

Lenny took charge to create on-the-road pork steaks with apple, onion and cider. Cristy jumped in with a simple and delicious salad of potatoes and beans.

Speedy and I should also be credited for our loitering nearby, drinking beer and cider and injecting various off-camera witticisms.

We’ll be posting more adventures as we storm the Atlantic provinces!

- Waz.

We’re on a (cabbage) roll

Waz — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:05:52 +0000

We never thought we’d draw culinary inspiration from a place called Vegreville. But that’s just what happened when we dropped into this prairie town on the first leg of our Crash Test Kitchen “Canadian Safari.”

Vegreville, like much of Alberta, has a substantial Ukrainian population, and the town’s giant “pysanka” (Easter egg) is apparently the world’s largest. No, we didn’t make Easter eggs – we whipped up a version of a staple item that you’d probably find among the leftovers in any Ukrainian refrigerator.

Certainly, at any gathering you attend in Alberta that involves communal eating, you’ll likely be offered cabbage rolls – yummy bundles of rice and meat wrapped up in cabbage leaf. Being on the road, we decided to make the “lazy man’s” version. You’ll have to watch the vid to find out how it works, but the recipe is really easy.

Accompanying this dish are pre-made “perogies” – little Ukrainian dumplings that will usually be sitting right beside the cabbage rolls in the bain-marie. And some Ukrainian garlic sausage, just to put your breath right off the scale!

This is our first episode taped and edited entirely using our mobile Crash Test Kitchen, otherwise known as Gus the Bus. And the cooking was done under pretty trying circumstances – Lenny was almost carried away by the mosquitoes that were blanketing Lake Winnipeg.

But we got through it, and more culinary adventures await. So keep watching!

- Waz.

Boy meets blueberry

Waz — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 20:06:40 +0000

Well, we’ve moved out of our apartment, left Edmonton, and now we’re “homeowners”. That “home” being Gus the Bus, our mobile Crash Test Kitchen, which we’re driving across Canada on the trip of a lifetime.

We had to move out of the flat a week before we left town (we decided to stay for the Edmonton Folk Festival) and our friends Ian, Jen and their little boy Noah kindly put us up in their basement. So as a thank-you I made them my famous crepes, and Lenny whipped up a delicious blueberry sauce.

Len came up with a simple recipe on the spot, and you only have to watch Noah in the video to see how much he enjoyed it!

The crepes are the same ones I made in the “Great Crepe Debate” episode, just a bigger batch.

As we motor right across Canada we’ll be posting video whenever we can, so make sure to keep watching. We’ll be making the most of local ingredients and influences as we whip up travel cuisine in what we’re calling our “Crash Test Kitchen On Safari” series.

It should be a lot of fun.

- Waz.

Your sausage habits exposed

Waz — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 06:19:40 +0000

I was doing some web research after our sausage excursion to Calgary and was disturbed at the extent to which the corporate sausage machine has been keeping an eye on our snag tastes.

I’ll elaborate, but first a little on this episode of CTK. We prepare a simple dish that for want of a better name I call “sausagey pasta”. We hadn’t cooked it for a while, so our memories were a little fuzzy on the exact list of ingredients. A bit of Googling and some head-scratching, though, and we came up with a recipe.

But back to the sausage evil empire. This company called Devro has broken our habits down to pie charts and line graphs. Apparently 31% of us want our sausages straight, but 66% don’t care whether they’re straight or curved. Of more concern, 55% don’t know what’s on the outside of a sausage – natural casing made of gut, or that synthetic stuff we mentioned in the last post.

Anyway: according to Devro, next to no one thinks that a sausage being “traditional” or “premium” has anything to do with the casing. The conclusion of the Devro people? People don’t care, so BUY OUR SAUSAGE CASING! Are they kidding themselves? What silly sausages!

Fighting the good fight, though, is the International Natural Sausage Casing Association. Now the good people at the INSCA admit that the natural sausage scene hasn’t been the best at putting itself forward, or offering research to argue the superiority of its product.

But they hit the nail right on the head for me with this point: “Natural Casing Sausage has that special ‘snap’ and tender bite that’s like no other man-made product, and is so highly demanded by today’s knowledgeable consumers.”

That’s good enough for me, although other superior qualities of gut over synthetic are offered on the site. It’s actually quite interesting reading, and it’s clear from the graphics on the home page where they stand on the straight-vs-curved debate.

Anyway, enough sausage evangelism. Enjoy the episode.

- Waz.

Blessed are the sausage makers

Waz — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 20:23:29 +0000

So what do you want in a sausage? Are you content with a cellulose or collagen tube filled with anonymous, homogenous mystery-meat paste containing who knows what?

If you’re like us, you demand sausages filled with real ingredients that you can see, taste, feel and smell. Not to mention the texture â€” and when you bite through that natural sausage casing, a really good “snag” should hit you with a burst of flavour and aroma.

For a long time, our sausage benchmark was set by Tony’s Super Meats in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. I remember Tony entered the annual Sausage King contest for the first time a few years back and blitzed the competition with his continental creations.

When my Canadian colleague Judy Schultz and her collaborator Mary Bailey raved about Spolumbo’s sausages from Calgary, Lenny and I were sure to bite.

We visited Cowtown during the annual Stampede rodeo festival and the city was a sea of cowboy hats. At Spolumbo’s we were helped by Tim â€” a visiting Aussie like us, and from Brisbane, our neck of the woods.

You can try Spolumbo’s sausages on the spot as a hot dog, and we did. My expectations were exceeded.

Maybe I’m a purist, but specialty flavours like their “Cajun” and “Maple Breakfast” don’t appeal to me. It just seems a bit contrived. I’ll always go for the simple Italian, Greek or German-style snag.

It’s important to get sausages that are made with “natural casing”. That is, the cleaned intestine of a butchered beast. Might sound gross, but it’s the only way to go. You can often tell by looking at the skin of the sausage â€” natural casings appear to have crease marks.

Here’s a sausage tip. When cooking up premium sausages in natural casing, parboil them for a few seconds first. That is, dunk them briefly in boiling water. Not essential, but it seals the casing and helps keep the delicious juices inside. A real-live chef showed me that!

Watch the video for more secrets. We brought home quite a haul of Spolumbo’s sausages, so expect to see at least one more episode featuring them.

â€” Waz.

A crow-eater gives us curry

Waz — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 04:51:42 +0000

There is a fair-sized community of expatriate Australians here in Edmonton. We Aussies seem to find our way to every corner of the world, no matter how cold and forbidding the place can be.

We met Shaun through the local Down Under Club and quickly became good mates. He’s a South Australian and we’re Queenslanders, so it’s been interesting to spend time together, picking up on the little differences in language and culture. Things you probably wouldn’t notice if you’d met back in Australia.

When our other SA mates Adam and Katrina get talking with Shaun, I sometimes get lost trying to follow the conversation. No problems for them following me and my slow Sunshine State drawl.

Anyway: Shaun’s on his way to Korea soon to catch up with his lady, who departed Edmonton ahead of him a while back. We had Shaun round for dinner soon after we met and he’d been promising to return the favour before leaving by making us a Thai green chicken curry. And he insisted that we bring the video camera.

So let’s call this the second in our Crash Test Kitchen “Expedition Series” (souffle parts one and two comprising the first of our outings to other people’s kitchens).

To explain the title of this post: “crow-eater” is Aussie slang for “South Australian”. I have no idea why. To “give someone curry” is to give them a hard time. Here’s some more Aussie slang for your edjamication.

- Waz.

We Did It All For The Gnocchi – Again

Waz — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 06:22:16 +0000

We’ve decided to reprise a couple of our classic episodes – mostly for our iTunes audience, and others who find it easier to view our new MPEG4/QuickTime formats.

Here’s the first episode we posted, known amongst our small but dedicated fan base as “the one with the orange”.

What we put together here is home-made gnocchi with a very simple, classic pesto. Hope it gets your juices flowin’!

The gnocchi recipe came from here. Watch the vid for the pesto – it’s dead simple! When trying something new, Waz reckons it’s always good to choose a fairly simple version of the recipe.

- Waz and Lenny.

Canada Day Souffle, Part 2

Waz — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 20:04:18 +0000

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.

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!

We ended up cooking it for two hours, in round figures, but that was putting it in cold (i.e. from the fridge) and into a cold oven. If you put the room-temp pud into a heated oven I reckon the 1hr 10mins would be perfect. It puffed up and browned gloriously, and though it was a little bit wobbly when we took it out, it firmed up when we let it sit out of the oven for 10 minutes. We sprinkled on some sliced fresh strawbs and chopped walnuts for a truly spectacular (and incredibly simple to make) dessert.

- Lenny.

O Canada, we make souffle for thee

Waz — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 15:59:53 +0000

It’s Canada Day! We’re Aussies, but we’re in Canada, so any excuse for a party. This afternoon we’re off to our mate Tom’s place for a real Canada Day bash with his family. Last night we were up late preparing French toast souffle as our contribution.

It’s a sinful amalgam of bread, creamed cheese, eggs, butter, maple syrup and a few other delicious elements. Extremely tasty, and not a true “souffle”, so you don’t have to tiptoe around the kitchen while it’s cooking. Being “French toast souffle” we feel it’s a nod to Canada’s Francophone influences, while the maple syrup makes it true-blue Canuck tucker. Sure to get the patriotic blood flowing, if all the wicked creaminess doesn’t give you a coronary.

Our Aussie-Canadian friends Karen and Steve were the first to serve us this dish when they had us over for breakfast last Christmas. Karen shared the recipe, which I jotted down roughly in my trusty “Rite-in-the-Rain” all-weather recipe notebook. Well, you never know when you’ll be hanging one-handed off a mountain crag in a raging storm and have to whip up a tasty dessert!

This episode will be in two parts. We’ve refrigerated the uncooked souffle overnight and we’ll film the second half when we cook it at Tom’s place later today.

Here’s the list of ingredients, just to get your mouth watering. You can cook the souffle either in a baking dish 9 inches by 13 inches or invidual ramekins:

Half cup of butter
White bread, crusts removed, cut into squares half to three-quarters of an inch square. About two loaves; enough to fill bowls or tray two-thirds full.
200g (8oz) cream cheease
Half cup maple syrup
12 eggs
Three and a half cups of “half and half cream” (half cream, half milk)
One and a half teaspoons vanilla
Cinnamon
Chopped walnuts, sliced strawberries to top

Stay tuned for Part 2!

- Waz.

Sponge blob square pan

Waz — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 06:47:50 +0000

[blipit id="117224"]

QuickTime video

We started out with the best intentions: whip up a layered sponge cake to celebrate our friend Paul’s 30th birthday.

He’s back in Australia, we’re here in Canada, but we’d just eat it on his behalf we reckoned.

Well, that was the plan. You see, it seems there must be a secret to making sponge cake – and we’re not in on it.

This was our second attempt, and I must say that our first was nearer success (maybe the first time it was because we used a recipe from trusty ol’ Day-T0-Day Cookery, as opposed to the one we found on the internet this time around).

We knew things weren’t looking good once we messed up the quantity of butter. Lack of the right equipment and a general failure to plan didn’t help either. Things just went downhill pretty much from the start …

Anyway, happy birthday Paul, and be thankful you are on the other side of the world to our cake!

Earth to Pilaf! Earth to Pilaf!

Waz — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 19:48:04 +0000

When Cristy came to visit from Australia (via Ontario) she brought a packet of earthy, wholesome “wild rice” grown in Manitoba. Technically it isn’t rice at all, but the seed of some kind of water plant.

WATCH THE VIDEO

A pilaf seemed like the right thing to make, so we came up with this recipe using ingredients that were pretty much straight out of the earth: fresh asparagus, fried and chopped; crimini, or brown, mushrooms, quartered and browned; lovely vine-ripened tomatoes, roasted; shiitake mushrooms sliced and cooked in a soy-based sweet and sour jus; and roasted sweet potato, cubed.

At least we thought it was sweet potato. Turns out it was yam. They look pretty much the same!

We’d heard wild rice has a rather strong flavour so we decided to lighten it by also cooking a cup of organic brown basmati in chicken stock.

Easier said than done. It seems cooking time and water quantity for organic brown basmati is different from ordinary white basmati.

Still, we fudged the basmati a bit and it came out yummy. The wild rice has really great texture – chewy and slightly crunchy is probably the best way to describe it – and a great, grassy, earthy flavour.

When combined with the other ingredients, the whole thing turned out an absolute masterpiece. All we really needed was to be sitting round the fire by a mosquito-ridden lake singing “Kumbayah” for the earth-lovin’-hippy picture to be complete.

- Lenny

The great crepe debate

Waz — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 05:18:24 +0000

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!

Go to the recipe for chicken soup

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.

We love crepes with lemon and sugar. Simple as that. Lenny has also been known to make a fruit sauce of plums and oranges – a deliciously tangy accompaniment.

The key to great crepes is really the consistency of the mix. You want it just on the edge of going from runny to firm. Too runny and it will just burn in the pan. Too thick and you’ll get stodgy, tough non-crepes.

Here’s the basic recipe I’d suggest. We made a double quantity, but only added one extra egg instead of two. You’ll see in the video that it was quite a point of debate. It probably depends on the size of the eggs, but we managed to arrive at a “kitchen consensus” that too much egg will make the crepes tough.

110gm flour
200ml milk
75ml water
2 tbsp melted butter
2 eggs, small to medium

Make sure to watch the video (9.8 MB) for the method.

- Waz.

Chicken soup from scratch

Waz — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 19:13:12 +0000

mp4 video (small)

When Lenny’s feeling a little bit under the weather she gets a craving for soup. Actually, pretty much ANY excuse to make this simple, hearty chicken soup will do. You just start with a whole chicken, remove the skin and simmer it with tasty vegetables until the flesh is tender and comes away easily from the bone (Lenny calls this the “fall-apartability” test.

Removing the skin as Lenny does in this video might a familiar process to people who’ve basted a “chook” by getting their hands under the skin to rub a mixture of butter, garlic, herbs and what-not on the flesh.

God bless her, Lenny’s always looking out for my cholesterol levels, and removing the skin then skimming the fat off the broth no doubt helps.

I’ll say one thing about this recipe, but don’t tell Lenny. I find the vegetables in the finished soup a little bit bland, probably because their flavour has leeched out into the stock. I wonder if that could be remedied by separating the “soup” vegetables out towards the end of the cooking process, discarding them and adding a new batch, then simmering until the new veges are juuust cooked. In the meantime, I just grab our catering-size bottle of Tabasco and let fly to add a bit of zing.

Lenny has a whole book of soup recipes, so we’ll probably be diving back into the stockpot for future editions of CTK.

- Waz

Lenny’s chicken soup from scratch

1 fresh, high-welfare chicken, 1.5-2kg
5 celery stalks
2 carrots
2 onions
2 large tomatoes
1 leek
1 bunch parsley
2-3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
Fresh crusty bread rolls and butter for serving, if you like

Skin the tomatoes by slicing a shallow cross in their bottoms with a sharp knife then soaking them in just-boiled water for a couple of minutes. Once you take them out the skin will peel right off. Dice the tomatoes along with the celery, carrots and onions. Halve the leek lengthways, then slice. Finely chop the parsley.

Remove the skin from the chicken. You can use a piece of paper towel to get more grip on the slippery skin.

Put 2-3 tablespoons olive oil into a big stock pot and gently fry the onion and leeks until they’re soft. Toss in the other veg and the skinned chicken.

Cover the whole lot with water and add the soy sauce. Bring it to the boil and periodically skim the brown gunk off the surface. If you have a plate just slightly smaller than the diameter of your pot, or one of those open-out strainers (like I use in the video), you can put it on top of the chicken and veg to hold them under the surface to make it easier to skim off the gunk.

Let the soup simmer for about an hour, until the chicken is nicely cooked and the meat is falling off the bone. Take the chicken out of the pot and let it cool for a few minutes until you can handle it. While that’s cooling you can either strain the stock (keep all the veg) or hold the veg down with a plate or strainer while you let the fat rise to the surface. After the broth has settled for a few minutes, skim the fat from the surface of the soup.

Take all the flesh from the chicken and break it with your hands or a fork into small pieces. Put the meat back into the pot, give it a good stir, and it’s ready to serve. Goes nicely with crusty bread rolls and butter.

If you wanted it to be even more hearty, you could add some small pasta (or broken-up spaghetti) to the pot 15 minutes before the chicken is cooked.

Excuse our pork

Waz — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 04:34:23 +0000

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (high quality, 8.2 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (2.2 MB)

I could eat hummus (aka “hommus”) all day, as long as someone keeps putting this tasty chickpea and tahini paste in front of me. But I used to be indifferent to tabouli (aka “tabouleh”), having mostly experienced it as the padding between the meat and the wrapping in some pretty pedestrian donair kebabs.

Never liked parsley much as a kid as it was. But my tastes have mellowed; I now realise that parsley has its place, and that place is tabouli. Making it is a lot of fun and it’s easy. Ditto for the very tasty hummus (especially if you have a bigger blender than ours!).

Now, Len enthuses that what we’re making here is a lovely Middle Eastern or Lebanese dish. But what about the pork on those kebab sticks, Len? I don’t think it would go down too well at a halal or kosher table.

Well, in the spirit of Crash Test Kitchen we’re improvising. They’re not big eaters of lamb in these parts, so it’s either a matter of paying a small fortune for good New Zealand sheep meat or compromising with the abundant and much cheaper Canadian pork. The Kiwi baa-baas get a reprieve until the next very special occasion.

Anyway: watch, listen, then repeat in your own kitchen!

- Waz.

When bananas turn BAD!

Waz — Sat, 28 May 2005 05:25:30 +0000

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (high quality, 8 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (2.1 MB)

We’re always trying to eat more fruit, so we grab a hand of bananas pretty often. But at supermarkets here in Edmonton they’re always green, so they sit on your kitchen bench for a few days, taunting you and taking their sweet time to ripen.

Then, when they DO ripen, they seem to go “on the turn” (i.e. black and squishy) half a day later.

The effect is even worse if you take them to work … they go black between the front door of your house and the office cubicle, and we all know a banana packed in your cut lunch will go through everything anyway. Banana-flavoured ham, cheese and tomato sangers? We’ll give it a miss, thanks.

Well, don’t give up on those mushy narnas. We chucked together this banana bread pretty easily, making a few healthy changes to the recipe, and it lasted the best part of a week.

Enjoy the video!

- Waz.

Beating the breast

Waz — Fri, 13 May 2005 01:03:21 +0000

Our fondest memory of this dish is when we made it for our good friend Georgie’s “birthday week” party a couple of years ago. Much wine was drunk and much delicious, tender chicken saltimbocca was eaten.

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (Windows Media, high quality, 6.3 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (1.7MB)

The chicken breasts are sliced in half (horizontally – ah, maybe you’d better watch the vid) and pummelled mercilessly, rendering them more tender than an ardent lover’s first kiss. (Too much attempted poeticism, Waz?)

The prosciutto adds another dimension of mildly salty crispiness to the chicken.

It’s the sage, though, that really makes this dish one for the family recipe file. Once lightly fried in a little olive oil it transforms from a not-so-culinary herb into a tart and snazzy flavour burst that crisps and crackles deliciously.

Chicken saltimbocca need only be accompanied by some vegetables prepared to your liking. And to drink alongside? The wine that forms the basis of the saltimbocca sauce, of course.

- Lenny

It’s pizza night

Waz — Sun, 01 May 2005 23:12:59 +0000

We started making our own pizza while we were living in an old house that had a wood-fired kitchen stove. It’s now one of our staples and we insist on always making the dough from scratch.

Actually, the dough part is really fun and satisfying, and pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Just be prepared for some scraping and sweeping when it comes time to clean the kitchen. The red wine that goes hand in hand with good pizza makes up for the hard labour.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s don’t overcrowd the pizza with lots of ingredients, especially the more exotic ones. You can end up with a small fortune’s worth of sun-dried tomatoes, roasted capsicum, artichoke hearts and Hungarian salami piled on top – and you won’t really taste any one of those ingredients. So just two or three of the things you like – if you want to use more ingredients, make another pizza!

Take our advice and mix a dash of salt into the dough. Otherwise it’s pretty bland and floury.

Calzone (folded pizza) is great too. You use the same dough and you can make an individual one for each guest.

Don’t mean to nag too much on the dough but be prepared to knead, knead and knead until it’s good and consistent – moist and firm, but not too wet and sticky. Many books of assorted recipes contain one for basic dough. If in doubt, just follow what we do in the video.

Have fun!
- Len and Waz.

Dave makes a cheesecake

Waz — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:36:59 +0000

Our guest for this instalment of Crash Test Kitchen is our old mate Dave.

Now Dave is a bit of a dark horse, it seems, when it comes to matters of the kitchen. Just recently, after all our years of knowing the lad, he declared that he knew how to make a cheesecake.

And not just your fridge-set cheesecake, mind you – the full-blown baked variety. So Lenny and I found this recipe on the internet, supplied the ingredients and set Dave to work.

To make a baked cheesecake you’ll need a pop tin – one of those baking tins that tightens with a clip on the outside and has a false bottom. Making the biscuit-crumb base and filling is surprisingly easy and the ingredients are straightforward.

Dave is apparently a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to cheesecakes and he was a bit hesitant when we didn’t have exact quantities of some ingredients on hand. Watch the video and see if the results aren’t good enough to get your mouth watering.

- Waz

The fun rolls on!

Waz — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:39:07 +0000

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (Windows Media high quality, 6.3 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (1.7 MB)

We first had “fun rolls” (Vietnamese spring rolls) at The Vietnamese restaurant in Brisbane, where they bring the ingredients to your table and you make the tasty little parcels yourself – sharing a platter with your friends and inevitably getting a good giggle out of someone’s disastrous wrapping efforts.

They’re heaps of fun (who would have thought!), healthy and really simple – basically, moistened rice paper wrapped around fresh chopped vegetables with the option of pork, prawns or whatever meat filling you fancy. Many supermarkets carry the rice papers, otherwise try a supermarket that specialises in Asian or international food. Ditto the vermicelli rice noodles.

If there’s one filling ingredient we’d specify as a “must” it’s crunchy, fresh bean sprouts.

The dipping sauce can be satay, sweet chili, or maybe something spicy made with fish and soy sauce, chili, garlic and lime juice. You really do need a dipping sauce – they’re a bit bland to eat on their own.

Prawn on sugar cane is a Vietnamese classic and our FAVOURITE fun roll filling. But that’s for another episode …

Soy for the “sake” of it

Waz — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 23:17:07 +0000

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO (Windows Media, high quality, 6 MB)
Click here for the smaller version (1.6 MB)

Chicken breasts, simmered in soy and sake (thats “sak-eh”, i.e. rice wine). It’s a fast, flavoursome and DEAD SIMPLE dish we found in Donna Hay Modern Classics.

Now some people say a lot of Donna’s stuff is style over substance and her exquisitely photographed books are just an excuse for “food porn” (who says it? Okay, wesays it!). But this recipe is a gem. Just a handful of ingredients and none of them terribly esoteric (c’mon, star anise and sake aren’t THAT hard to find!).

We toss this one together whenever we need a standby. Our industrial-sized bottle of soy sauce means we’re never short of the key ingredient, and it’s also a good excuse to keep a bottle of sake on hand. But then of course you need the proper sake bottle and cups. Twenty bucks or so should get you a cute little set.

Oh yeah â€” Lenny’s advice about how to cook rice. It does work. “One quantity of rice, one and a half of liquid,” … watch the video for the rest of her mantra.

Don’t come the raw prawn

Waz — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:05:02 +0000