Panettone – The Bread Bakers Apprentice

I have set myself a challenge to work through Peter Reinhart’s Bread Bakers Apprentice book and make a new loaf each week. I am not working through the book very methodically as both P and I have completely different preferences, P’s requests so far have been the French bread, Sour Dough and Grissini but I jump straight to the sweet section and pick out the Panettone which I made last weekend. I know it is meant to be a celebration cake but I thought I should practice and perfect it before Easter or Christmas came…..it sounded logic to me! I have always loved Panettone, with it’s aromatic fruit flavours and light airy texture, it is so light I can easily eat a whole loaf myself, and have done on many occasions.

Each time I make a bread from the BBA book I am always surprised how well they turn out, granted they have a lot more steps than any other bread I have made before using this book but taking the time for the dough to ferment definitely creates a superior loaf. Peter Reinhart’s recipe for Panettone takes two days to make and starts with a sour dough barm, which in itself takes four days to create. Lucky for me I have my sour dough barm still brewing in the fridge.

I have not added the recipe here as I do not have sufficient patience to write a two page recipe down which means I could miss something critical out  and if you are serious about cultivating a sour dough I would seriously recommend buying the Bread Bakers Apprentice book which offers lots of technical tips also.

I did quite well with this Panettone, the two loaves actually lasted me over a week and I even gave some away!

Here are some other stories and photos from other people who have made the Panettone.

bewitchingkitchen

French Bread topped with Smoked Garlic & Matakana Markets

There is not a week that goes by that I don’t think how lucky I am to live in New Zealand. When I first moved here, being a girl who had lived in cities all her life (Liverpool, London & Frankfurt), I used to miss the retail therapy and the accessibility of products and produce. Now I don’t really care for that stuff, I prefer to spend my spare time as you know at the beach surfing, walking, playing golf or hanging out with friends locally, eating at each others houses. I also love the fact that NZ is still very seasonal with their produce and we generally buy what is grown locally rather than imported. Over the ten years I have lived here, small farmers markets have started to appear and are becoming very popular, Matakana Farmers Market is one of them. It is an hours drive away for us but it is well worth it, the trip itself is very scenic and there are plenty of things to do on the way if you want to make it a day out.

Matakana Village not only has a wonderful Saturday market with locally grown produce and handmade goodies, it also has wonderful cafes, patisserie, boutique shops, art galleries and the area is literally ‘littered’ with vineyards. A reason in itself to visit the area. We stopped off on the way home for lunch at Heron’s Flight Vineyard Cafe and the food was fabulous and executed with love and attention to details (sorry I never get to photo my food as I am always too excited to eat it).

While at the market I bought a bag of this beautiful smoked garlic, which just had to be eaten pure to taste the smokiness of it rather than in a dish where other flavours might mask the taste. So I whipped up some French Bread that weekend (well over two days if you know Peter Reinhart’s recipes) and put my garlic in the oven to roast for 15 minutes. I literally mashed the warm garlic onto the warm French bread, drizzled some good quality local olive oil over it and dusting of salt & cracked pepper. The perfect snack with a glass of New Zealand wine of course!

Unfortunately I had only taken my wide angle lens with me and was unable to take lovely shots of the produce but did manage a few of the area. One in particular is the incredibly ‘arty’ toilets they have there!

Matakana Village and the region is well worth a visit if you are ever this way!

Here is the recipe for Peter’s French bread

Baked Chocolate Fondant with Cardamom & Orange Blossom Ice Cream

Saturday was cooking class with the ‘Muriwai Girls’ and this week we were indulging our chocolate cravings with a warm fondant cake and a little ice cream to show we hadn’t completely forgotten that it was summer out there. Thankfully the surf was excellent on Friday and I spent two hours surfing that evening in preparation for the calorie onslaught the next day!

I had eaten this dessert at Clooney’s restaurant in Auckland a few weeks ago and just had to recreate it. The chocolate fondant was served with cardamom ice cream, I have made from a yoghurt base because I love the tang it offers and it is also more convenient than making a custard base, I also added the orange blossom water.

The fondant cake is quite easy to make but too tempting to bake it longer than the 12 minutes required, which is where most people go wrong and don’t try making it again. It might look a little undercooked when you take it out of the oven after 12 minutes with a shiny, soft top that looks like it will collapse but this is what you want in order to have the chocolate run out from the centre. The one I had at the restaurant stood tall and proud, mine always sink a little but taste divine, I am wondering if I increase the sugar would the shell crisp even more…does anyone know?

Ingredients – Baked Chocolate Fondant

• 50g unsalted butter, plus extra to grease
• 2 tsp cocoa powder, to dust
• 50g good quality bitter chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), in pieces
• 1 free range egg
• 1 free range egg yolk
• 60g caster sugar
• 50g plain flour
• Icing sugar to dust

Method

• Preheat oven to 160˚C.
• Butter two large ramekins, about 7.5cm in diameter, and dust liberally with cocoa, shaking out any excess.
• Slowly melt the chocolate and butter in a small bowl set over a pan of hot water, then take off the heat and stir until smooth. Leave to cool for 10 minutes.
• Whisk the whole egg, egg yolk and sugar together until pale and thick.
• Add to the chocolate mixture.
• Sift the flour over the mixture and gently fold in, using a large metal spoon.
• Divide between the ramekins and bake for 12 minutes.
• Turn the chocolate fondants out on to warmed plates and dust the tops with icing sugar and serve immediately with the ice cream.

Ingredients – Cardamom & Orange Blossom Ice Cream (serves 2)

• 150ml cream, whipped
• 150ml Greek yoghurt
• 1 tbsp honey
• seeds from 1 cardamom pod
• 1 tsp orange blossom water

Method

1. Melt honey and cardamon together and cook gently for 2 minutes, allow to cool.
2. Once cooled add honey and orange blossom to the yoghurt.
3. Add whipped cream to the yoghurt and gently fold together retaining as much air and volume as possible.
4. Pour into an ice cream maker as per manufacturer’s instructions.
5. If you do not have an ice cream maker place into a container as it is and freeze, the whipped cream will keep the texture light but not a creamy as from an ice cream maker. But it still taste good! For this method remove from the freeze 10 minutes before serving to allow the mixture to soften slightly.

Fennel Grissini & French Bread

I have ventured away from my sour dough this week and made some French bread and Grissini sticks, not instead of but as well as sour rye bread of course, I can’t neglect my sour dough baby growing in the fridge! I seem to be eating more bread since I received my Bread Bakers Apprentice book for Christmas, it is just as well that the surf has been good this week so we have managed to take plenty of exercise to burn it off. And if you saw the West Coast where I live you would understand how much exercise one gets paddling out on a board. If you look in the tourist brochures it is called the West Coast Wilderness because of it’s rugged coast line and perilous sea, which stretches from the North to the South Island on NZ, I must post some photos soon for you all to see.

Anyway, back to the bread. I have made French bread before but always been disappointed with the results, the key seems to be in the slow fermentation of the dough, a process which stretches over two days. The recipe below is from The Bread Bakers Apprentice and makes 3 French sticks but I made two and used the other part of the dough to make this grissini. The bread had a thick crunchy crust, one like I have not tasted since we where in France last year, it brought tears to my eyes and inches to my waist after consuming the lot between P and I in one day!

Day One: For the pre-ferment (pâte fermentée):

• 2 1/4 cups (10 ounces) unbleached bread flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
• 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons (7 ounces) water, at room temperature

Method

1. Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl until the dough comes together and knead until it goes from a sticky mess to a smooth ball.
2. Let rise in a sealed container for about 1 hour at room temperature or until it expands to 1 1/2 times its size.
3. Knead lightly for about a minute and return to the sealed container. Keep in the refrigerator overnight. The pre-ferment will be usable for up to 3 days.

For the final dough:

• All of the pâte fermentée
• 2 1/4 cups (10 ounces) unbleached bread flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
• 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons (7 ounces) water, at room temperature

Method

1. Take your pre-fermented dough out of the refrigerator and leave it at room temperature for about 1 hour to take off the chill.
2. Cut up the pre-ferment into small pieces and mix with all of the above ingredients for final dough.
3. Dust a work surface with flour and knead for about 10 minutes by hand (6 if using a machine).
4. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, ferment at room temperature for about 2 hours or until the dough doubles in size.
5. divide the dough into 3 equal pieces and use 2 to make the french bread and one to make grisini.
6. Shaping the baguettes; Lift and pull the dough gently to required length. Crease the dough down the middle and fold like a letter, pressing the seal crease against the counter top of form surface tension. Gently roll the baguette to desired length (it may have shrank back slightly). This website has some good photos of the process and suggested videos
7. Proof the shaped baguettes with the seam side down at room temperature for 45 to 75 minutes or until it expands to 1 1/2 times its size. I did not photograph the process but recommend you visit the above site for visuals of proofing the baguettes to achieve a tubular shape.
8. Preheat your oven to 500°F with a steam pan, preferably cast iron, in the bottom of the oven.
9. Transfer the proofed baguettes onto parchment paper on a sheet pan.
10. Score the baguettes. by using a very sharp knife to create incisions about half an inch deep that overlap and run parallel to the  center of the loaves.
11. Place the sheet pan with baguettes into the oven. Pour 2 cups of boiling water onto the steam pan and immediately close the oven door.
12. Lower the oven to 450°F and bake for 10 minutes. Rotate the loaves 180 degrees and bake for another 10 to 20 minutes until the crust turns golden brown.
13. Place the baguettes on a cooling rack for about 1 hour.
14. Shaping the Grissini. Roll out dough to desired thickness.
15. Cut off individual sticks.
16. To seed, roll unbaked sticks on a wet towel and then in a bed of  ground fennel or other seeds.
17. Allow the sticks to proof again to double their size.
18. Follow the same process above for baking, the only difference is the Grisini will only take 10 minutes to bake.

Lavender Martini and Co Posting with Curious Kai

The blogging world is an interesting place, you become friends with people you have never met before, you find you have something in common whether it is the style of cooking, where you live or you just seem to hit it off. I was please to bump into Nigel from Curious Kai last year, he is one of the few Kiwi Blogs I have found and follow regularly. Nigel has a great Blog that explores New Zealand’s unique foods and he has a fabulous way of writing about his adventures, some of which seem to find him discovering antique cooking implements which I am often jealous about his finds.

After I had made my lavender syrup Nigel and I got talking about the types of cocktails we could make from it and he experimented  and came up with a Lavender Martini. We decided that we should co-post our recipe and share it with you as well as introducing you all to each others Blogs. Below is my recipe which is based on one from Kingsley Amis and I hope you pop across to visit Nigel and his recipe as well as browsing his Blog, I know you will enjoy his stories.

The lavender martini is quite different to a regular martini due to the sweet syrup, P who is a bit of a martini buff preferred it with less syrup added but I am not such a big fan of martini and really enjoyed the additional sweetness to this drink. I think P is please he has finally got me to drink martinis, I wonder what other syrups I can experiment with!

Ingredients

• 6 parts gin
• 1/2 part vermouth
• ice cubes
• Handful fresh lavender flower buds
• Lavender Syrup
• Ice Cubes

Method

1. Chill Martini glasses prior to making the cocktails
2. Fill cocktail shaker with ice
3. Pour in gin & vermouth
4. Shake or stir vigorously depending if you are a James Bond fan or not!
5. Add 3 teaspoons of lavender syrup to each martini glass
6. Pour martini over the lavender syrup and float a few fresh flower buds in the glass.
7. Serve

Rhubarb & Ginger Crumble Tart

I can’t really remember why I made this tart, it has been sitting patiently waiting to be posted for weeks but then does one really need a reason for making anything with rhubarb? I know after the fact I did decided to plant rhubarb in my ‘herb’ patch because there just doesn’t seem to be that much around these days. Once upon a time people were desperate to palm it off on you but it seems to have gone out of fashion and is no longer a common garden plant. It is going to be a while till I can reap my rhubarb crop, it only has 4 leaves so far after some nasty slugs snook in one night and almost polish the whole plant off. I have since made a barricade of egg shells around the plant which seems to have done the trick and the rhubarb is flourishing….slowly. But it isn’t the only fruit I am waiting on, I have two new figs trees which were planted several months ago and the fruit crop from them this season totals..one! Not that I am disappointed, I wasn’t expecting any the first season but it is going to be a very mini dessert with one fig and that is if the birds do not beat me to it!

Ingredients

• 220g Butter
• 360g flour
• 120g icing sugar
• 1 egg
• Enough rhubarb to fit one layer of your tart tin (22cm/24cm)
• 2 cm fresh ginger grated
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• Juice & zest of one orange

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
2. Wash the rhubarb and chop into 4cm pieces and put them in a lightly buttered ovenproof dish or roasting tin.
3. Sprinkle over the sugar, ginger, orange juice and zest.
4. Roast rhubarb for 25 minutes to reduce the juices until syrupy, you want to keep the rhubarb whole and slightly firm.

1. Grease and flour a loose bottom, 22-24cm, flan tin.
2. Place the flour, butter & sugar in a bowl.
3. Work the ingredients together until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
4. Divide mixture in half.
5. Add the egg to one half of the mixture and bring dough together. Put other half aside for the crumble.
6. Rest dough in fridge for an hour before rolling out.
7. Roll out pastry to fit bottom & sides of tin, prick bottom of pastry case.
8. Place one layer of rhubarb across the bottom of the pastry case and spoon over the juices from the roasting tray.
9. Cover Rhubarb with the rest of the crumble mixture.
10. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.
11. Serve with ice cream

Vegan Onion Bhajis

I made onion bhajis last week as part of our vegan BBQ. Traditionally Bhajis are deep fried and are a lot thicker than shown in the picture but given the mixture is the same as a fritter I thought I could probably make them on the BBQ in that style. I did a trial run early on in the day since I had never made fritters without egg to bind them but yet again I was surprised by this vegan cuisine, they worked incredibly well without egg. I added a lot more spices to mine than I have seen in other recipes or tasted at restaurants in the past and I personally think they taste better that way.

Even my meat eating P loved them and it is just as well I had made plenty or there would not have been enough to feed my vegan friend. This is such an easy dish to make and the batter can be prepared ahead of cooking or you cold even cook them early on in the day and heat them up again later in the oven. I have topped my bhajis with my tomato & cumin relish from a previous post.

Ingredients

• 100g gram flour
• 2 onions, finely sliced
• 1 tsp fresh coriander, chopped
• ½ tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp cardamon seeds
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• pinch salt
• 100ml water
• oil for frying

Method

1. Place all the cumin, cardamon, mustard & coriander seeds into a frying pan and ‘dry’ cook them for 2 minutes.
2. Remove the spices from the pan and grind them into a powder.
3. Mix all the ingredients except the water together, then add the water gradually until you have a thick batter (you may not need to use it all).
4. In a non stick frying pan pour 2 tablespoons of oil.
5. Place a spoonful of the bhaji mixture in a pan and flatten slightly, repeat to create more bhajis.
6. Fry on a medium heat in batches for 2 minutes each side or until golden brown. Keep the first batch of bhajis warm in the oven until the final batch is cooked.
7. Serve with relish or chutney.

Nectarine & Lemon Shortcake

We were having friends round for a BBQ Sunday just past, one who is vegan, and I promised to make a dessert, what was I thinking “no eggs”, “no butter” what was I going to do? I do not have much experience with vegan desserts as i tend to load everything up with butter and eggs so I had to get my thinking cap on.   I had a bowl of juicy nectarines in my kitchen which I thought would go well baked on a tart base and then I decided that perhaps a shortcake would be nicer. I would normally use butter to make my shortcake and wasn’t convinced that it would have that ‘melt in the mouth’ sensation with a butter substitute so I decided to add ground almonds to the mix for a little more luxury.

It turned out really well, the shortcake was incredibly short and I didn’t even notice that there was no butter used! It also turned out that nectarines were the favourite fruit of our friend so it was a big hit all round, so much so there was non left for me to add to my lunch box the next day.

Ingredients – shortcake

• 200g SR Flour
• 100g ground almonds
• 100g icing sugar
• 200g butter/Vegan substitute (Olivani)
• zest of one lemon
• 6 Nectarines, pitted & quartered
• 1 tbsp cinnmon
• 1 tbsp brown sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven on bake (not fan bake) to 160 degrees centigrade and grease & flour a 24-26cm loose bottom flan tin.
2. Sift flour into bowl.
3. Add butter and almond and rub into flour.
4. Add sugar, lemon zest and kneed ingredients together to form a dough.Do not over kneed otherwise dough will become tough and biscuits will have a pastry texture instead of a shortbread texture.
5. Press dough into base of flan tin to fit evenly throughout the bottom and up the sides slightly.
6. Slice the nectarine quarters into 2-3 more wedges and place them onto the shortcake base, fanning them around the outside, then the inner circle.
7. Mix the brown sugar & cinnamon together and sprinkle over the nectarines.
8. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the base is cooked through to the texture of a biscuit.
9. Allow to cool in the tin.
10. Serve with yoghurt, ice cream or cream.

Sauces, Marinades & Relishes

It has been almost a month since our last girls cooking class get together so it was good to see everyone again and get down to some action in the kitchen. We are starting the year off slowly with fortnightly classes until all the kids are back to school and everyone is back from their summer holidays.

With an abundance of stone fruit and tomatoes in season we decided to make some sauces and relishes to give everyone an idea of what they can do with any excess stock they might have over the next few months. Pictured from left to right is Tomato Cumin Relish, Thai Spice Marinade & Spicy Plum Sauce. Not pictured is the Wasabi Vinaigrette.

The Plum sauce I have used today to marinade belly pork for a BBQ but you can also use this as a dipping sauce. The Tomato Relish is also good as a dipping relish, an addition to a sandwich or you can also use as a marinade for baking fish or chicken. The Thai Spice Marinade I used for making a warm beef salad by marinading the beef prior to frying it and then adding it to salad.

Tomato Cumin Relish Ingredients – makes 3 small jars

• 1kg tomatoes
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• 6 cardamom pods
• ½ tbsp mustard seeds
• 60ml vegetable oil
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 4 small chillies
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 60ml vinegar (white or cider)
• 2 tbsp brown sugar

Method

1. Place cumin & cardamon in a sauce pan and dry fry them for a few minutes.
2. Remove from the pan and grind.
3. Add oil to the pan and heat, when hot add the mustard seeds and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add the rest of the spices to the pan and cook for a few more minutes.
5. Add the tomatoes, sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil then turn heat down and simmer for about 45 minutes.
6. As the liquid starts to reduce down to wards the end of the cooking, stir frequently to avoid sticking on the bottom of the pan.
7. Pour into sterilized jars. Will keep for several weeks in sealed jars

Wasabi Vinaigrette - Ingredients

• ½ cup or 12 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp wasabi paste
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp brown sugar

Method

1. Place all the ingredients into a shake and shake to combine.
2. Serve on salads or warm summer grilled vegetables (beans, bok choi, courgettes etc)

Thai Chilli Marinade - Ingredients

• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 chilli pepper, finely chopped
• Juice of 1 lime or lemon
• ½ cup vinegar
• ¼ cup water
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• Handful coriander, chopped
• Handful mint, chopped

Method

1. In a blender combine all the ingredients together and pulse well till blended.
2. Place marinade into a pan and bring to the boil for 2 minutes.
3. Place in sterilized jar and seal.
4. Will keep for several weeks unopened.

Spicy Plum Sauce - Ingredients

• 1kg plums, pitted and quartered
• 1 small onion, quartered
• 2 clove garlic, peeled
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cups cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 fresh chillies
• Juice of 1 lemon

Method

1. In a blender or food processor, process the plums, onion and garlic in batches until smooth.
2. Transfer to a large saucepan and stir in the remaining ingredients.
3. Bring to a boil then reduce heat; simmer for 60 minutes or until reduced by a third.
4. Ladle hot mixture into sterilised jars.

Heaven in my Kitchen – My first sour dough bread!

As some you will know, I have been feeding a sour dough baby in my fridge for days after receiving the Bread Bakers Apprentice for Christmas and finally, after one failed attempt, I put my first loaves into the oven on Sunday. I made a New York Deli Rye, as called in Peter Reinhart’s book and waited nervously for them to come out of the oven. What if after all this waiting and building up my expectations the bread didn’t turn out well? What if didn’t taste like the sour dough I expect? To my relief, the bread was divine with it’s thick crisp crust and dense but chewy, soft, sweet centre. We couldn’t even wait the hour to let it cool off as Peter advises, the smell tormenting us as it wafted through the house, so we dug in as soon as it was cool enough to get our hands round it!

The wonderful thing about a sour dough bread is that the flavour seems to mature after a few days rather than go stale so we have found ourselves enjoying bread all week. Tonight I am preparing a basic white sour dough, ready to go into the oven tomorrow when I will be celebrating my birthday with bread instead of cake….and why not, Marie Antoinette will have approved!

I haven’t added the recipe since it takes 6 days to make and I would be nervous about missing something critical out so instead I have linked to Peter Reinhart’s blog.