Meringue, the final frontier

Avid readers may have noticed a distinct lack of material recently, and yes it's true, I've decided to formally hang up my hat.
Not about cooking and stuff, but the hassle of taking grainy out of focus pictures of yet another roast pork belly.
But there have been culinary triumphs in the meantime - not exclusively involving slow cooked pork and colcannon  , lamb racks for 20 featured there (with the inevitable root and cruciciferous vegetable melange  ) , gooseberry and foraged elderflower sorbet, at which point I decided my meagre talents were better focussed on dishing the food rather out than photographing it and missing out on the post supper craic.


But one final challenge remains - the meringue.  Faffing around with mayonaise and hollandaise sauces now and again there are surplus egg whites to be dealt with. 
Egg white omelete is not an option, so that leaves the meringue. Which is beloved over all over things by eldest son for some reason.
But, boy, has he had grounds for disappointment.  But not this time, he won't even be aware of this attempt:

• 2 egg whites uncovered in fridge for 7 days
• mixing bowl clean and scalded (but notcooled)
• pinch of salt
• whisked to soft peaks
• 3 tablespoons of caster sugar added
• whisked to stiff peak
• dolloped on to oiled parchment into over at 135c
• (small dollops)
• after 40 mins, still a bit squishy
• turn up to 180 for 20 minutes
• leave with oven door open for 1 hou

Result

Damm close. Texture light and crunchy. Too much caramelisation.  

But they weren't glued to the baking tray, so this is the closest I've come yet.

Bernaise Sauce

Have some decent rib eye steak from Aldi,  the foolproof oven chips recipe
 a recommended Malbec from Lilac Wines, some backup burgers for the boys,  and it's Saturday - what could possibly go wrong?
Time to reattempt the Bearnaise Sauce, since my wife called my bluff and procured some tarragon. Don't know if it is French or Russian, but it's a big pile of tarragon that I don't have many alternatives so the bluff is called and it's time to get cooking.
Stick the oven on with the chip tray and start the hob boiling for the chips, time for one last glass of wine before the cooking starts in earnest.
Half then third the Maris Piper spuds before tippping into the pot. The race is on now. After 5 minutes decant the chips. Allow to dry while putting some olive oil in the dish to warm up.
Tip the chips into the dish along with generous amounts of turmeric, paprika, oregano, salt and pepper. Some more olive oil and mix those chips up with a spatula.

 Thirty minutes till dishing out, so time to start the bearnaise sauce (the steak, needless to say has been out of the fridge and blotted dry for a couple of hours).
Finely chop up 5 shallots, 2 bunches of tarragon.
I saw the lovely Rachael Allen use a technique of holding a bunch of herbs - sage in her case - upside down then slash at them with the biggest chef's knife. Cool!
Anyway, kinda works, looks cools but I still need to pick out the stems and chop further.
So tip that lot into the preheated pan with a good glug of red wine vinegar, some white wine and a few grinds of pepper (the classic recipe calls for white wine vinegar, but this is Aspinall's Organic so it will hopefully squeak by).

While that is boiling away it's time to assemble the bain maire. The secret here appears to be ensuring the bowl isn't touching the water, so I end up using the weighing bowl fitted on top of the stock pot, into which I've put a Tupperware dish with 150g of butter to soften up. 150g of butter! i.e a quarter pound!
I also collect a bowl of crushed ice the fridge in case of emergency - this is highly recommended,whether for physical reason, or just as a mental safety blanket.

Okay, tip the reduction into the bain maire. A bit too  hot? Chuck in some ice.
A 2 egg yolks and whisk. A bit  too frothy? Chuck in some ice.
Whisk away for a bit, meantime the butter has visited the microwave for perhaps too long to melt, so it sits in the ice bowl before going trickling in to the sauce.
Keep whisking

 Chuck in some ice for luck while boiling half a kettle. Use the boiling water to warm a gravy jug. While the jug is warming, rest the steaks in the oven with plates and chips (almost forgot, the steaks got seared in a hot cast iron pan after being brushed with some of the melted butter).
And serve

 Nom nom. Haven't tasted Bearnaise sauce before so don't know how faithful this implementation was, but that much butter, allied with that much protein and starch can hardly fail to hit the spot. 
A week of kale and broccoli beckons.

Spanakopita and Rhubard Icecream

Doing some trial runs for catering for a the eldest boys communion.  Not my idea, being an atheist and a Protestant one at that, but sometimes it's easier to go with the flow. Anyway, I'm happy to inflict my culinary meanderings on wider selection of guinea pigs, so trying to figure out how to feed the greatest number with least  effort or margin for error.
A couple things I learnt from a previous effort along these lines (youngest ones christening - oops, I'm not a very observant atheist) - garlic bread goes down a storm and the oven is the constraining resource. So anything that can be made the day before and served cold is a boon.
Coincidentally the ever reliable Domini Kemp has a spanakopita recipe, so I'll trial that.
The recipe is simple enough, 1 kg of defrosted spinach, which looks like this once you've squeezed the beejeezus out of it

Mix with one pack of feta, a sweated onion, fennel seeds and a handful of pine nuts I fortuitously have available

Domini calls for creme fraiche but I can't find any so substitute sour cream. To be honest cream varieties are not my strong point, I got some double cream earlier by mistake but that will be more appropriate for the dessert coming up.
Ms Kemp also suggests puff pastry, but I want old school with filo pastry. Never having used this before I'm a bit curious, so unwrapping it I find this

 I toy with the idea of making a layered roulade, but not finding anything comparable on the internet. Having been badly burnt by a misconceived spinach and fish bake (pictures thankfully lost, but burnt both literally and metaphorically) decide to follow the mainstream route and simply butter the three sheets together and wrap up the filling in each

nice and easy indeed.  Bake for 30 minutes

 and serve with baby potatoes slathered in the leftover butter

Very tasty, simple and eats well the following day.  But not a goer for party food because it is too messy and   has to be served in generous portions.  Though there may be mileage in making dim sum like individual portions.  Another days work, meanwhile another glut of rhubarb needs to be dealt with, and tarts gets a bit predictable so let's try an ice cream experiment.
Firstly poach the rhubarb in the juice of one orange, a bit of vanilla sugar and caster sugar

I don't have an ice cream maker so this won't be eaten tonight. Instead set a pyrex dish in the freezer for a few hours and let the rhubarb puree cool right down, then liquidize with some frozen strawberries which will further help to cool it down

whip half a litre of cream into soft peaks then fold together in a bowl which has also served time in the freezer

 hmm, a lot more than I intended, so a plastic dish is hurriedly pressed into service. Then it's back in the freezer and a good fork around every hour or when I can remember.  And unfortunately tragedy strikes later on when late at night one fork around too many and I drop the pyrex dish. Anyway, we'll find out how it eats  tomorrow.

Loveheart Pie

Out of stock again so time to poach a chicken. The poaching liquor becomes chicken noodle soup (pictures not included) with the addition some mushrooms, lemon grass, ginger, garlic, chilli, lime, rice noodles and chicken.
Meantime, the chicken gets separated into flesh and bones (pictures deliberately omitted due to them looking like like an alien autopsy, although they do nicely show the amount of gelatin preserved by poaching. Honest).

Time to make chicken pie filling with some bacon, leeks, wine and some of the stock.

Now what to do with this?  Not pasties judging by an earlier effort at using the youngest boy's impulse purchase of some diced lamb (and he played no part in the assembly)

Instead take things easy and use some frozen puff pastry.  And here comes the genius bit, rather than randomly strewing the pastry offcuts around, roll them out again and cut them with the the smallest pastry cutter, which just happens to be a love heart.  And roll these offcuts out again, repeating process till boredom sets in

bake for 30 minutes and love heart pie!

Bare Cupboard Cooking

Grabbed some mackerel for dinner but forgot to get any veg. All that's left are a few withered specimens at the bottom of the fridge

Never fear, trusty skillet to the rescue. First, shred everything in the processor.

since the processor is in use, shred the carrots along with these chaps that were hiding at the back

(shallots by the way) and a bit of the chilli, et voila, coleslaw

Hmm, looks like I found some white cabbage as well, this is turning into a bit of a stone soup.
Back to the rosti/latke, first of all decant into the every handy muslim and squeeze the beejaz out of it while the skillet is heating up.  Less water = less cooking and more caramelisation.

Pop into the skillet, and do the invert and slide trick

then quickly fry the mackerel as the other side is cooking.

and there we have a full meal from a not actually bare cupboard after all.

Medium Rare

I have an enduring fascination with early man's diet and whether that has altered our current diet to the good  . One thing standing out from these extensive researches is that we are biologically equipped to eat raw meat and fish. which would suggest the following range of cookedness:

• Room temperature
• Seared
• Cooked
• Overcooked

It would be interesting to compare these values against the experience of someone on the frontline.

My suspicision is that medium rare will be over represented because it combines "medium" i.e. cooked, with the antithetical "rare", indicating a certain Bohemian and reckless nature.

Anyhoo, cooked a steak the other day. Intended to be rare, but the meat was so thin that it got cooked medium rare to perfection:

First time sushi

So there is a bit of salmon leftover and time to try sushi and sashimi .
Down to Fresh Market to get some Clearspring sushi price, but balk at paying big bucks for the wasabi - this comes back to haunt me.
Dig out some roasted seaweed bought a few years back in one of my Asian superstore lucky dip - can't make out any date on it but it doesn't smell too bad.
Time to follow the sushi recipe which mainly involves a rice cooker. Don't have one so wash the rice four times instead of the recommended three then stick into the smallest pan at lowest heat.
Prep the seasoning which as far as I can tell is rice vinegar reduced, sugar and a bit of salt. Go low on the salt which will again come back to haunt me.
The rice is sitting there now  time to tackle the salmon. This is where it gets weird. I've eaten raw salmon many times at restaurants, but serving it up it's like I'm worried there's some Secret Sauce these restaurants apply to raw fish.
But there can't be so sharpen up the knife and slice that baby on the bias.
Now I'm waiting on the rice to cool down, though a little voice is saying to put the fish on the hot rice to at least partially cook it. I resist but stick the rice in the freezer as the family are hungry Right Now.
Ten minutes later and it's sushi chef time - roll a rice ball, press into the salmon, wrap with seaweed, repeat.

Oh yes, season the rice with the vinegar and sugar reduction - precisely.

So how did she eat? Okay is being generous:

•  The rice was simultaneously grainy and mushy.
•  Too conservative in the seasoning so extra soy was needed. 
• The portions were 3 bite rather than 1 bit sized.
• The raw salmon was delish.
• The wasabi was sorely  missed, especially as I have a jar of raw horseradish expiring in the fridge that would have made a noble substitute
• A lot cheaper than any other sushi sources

Next time the sushi will sing