Month: June 2012

Parmesan custards

Not only do I love cooking and eating, I love reading recipes and articles about cooking and eating. I’m a great snipper and copier out of recipes that I think will be worth doing, or that interest me. I’m always on the lookout for recipes that can be made in advance – we lived in an apartment in Nottingham where the upper floor was an open space for the kitchen, dining and living area and here, in Malaysia, we have much the same layout. That’s lovely when everything is tidy and ready to go but if you have guests sitting around with drinks it’s not so great for them to see you juggling pans and plates, cursing mildly and getting hot and bothered.

I like to have things ready to bring out – for one thing, it gives me time to brush my hair and wipe flour, sweat and splashes off my shiny, red face.

In my folder of Things I Really Must Make, I found this article, from Olive Magazine, dated June 2008,  but searching the site now, there’s no recipe listed. You’ll just have to follow what I write out.

Rowley Leigh, of Le Cafe Anglais has, amongst the many wonderful dishes he makes, a classic starter, Parmesan Custards – creamy, cheesey, savoury set custard served with thin fingers of toast, spread with a thin smear of anchovies, perfect as a simple, yet stunning, make ahead starter.

I have a set of espresso cups that are just about the right size and as they are part of my Wedgwood Cornucopia dinner service, they were going to look perfect at the table. We  were having good friends round to dinner and I wanted to make sure everything was as lovely as possible. There’s no point in keeping things ‘for best ‘- my motto is, if you’ve got it, use it! If you haven’t got espresso cups, little ramekins or china moulds (they need to hold around 80 ml) will do just as well.

I needed 4 egg yolks; 300ml of single cream; 300ml of milk; 12 anchovy fillets; 100g of finely grated parmesan for the custard and another 150g for some parmesan crisps I was going to make as an extra; 50g of softened butter; 8 slices of good bread ( I used thinly sliced No Knead Bread) plus cayenne and white pepper to season everything with. The recipe said this would make 8 small pots but the six espresso cups took slightly more than the recommended 80 ml so everything evened out. Besides, there were going to be six of us eating.

This really is quick and easy – so easy, that the first thing you do is get the oven turned on to 150°C/300ºF/gas mark 2.

Then, grate the parmesan finely so it makes a lovely, light and airy mound

Remember that this is for the custard…. I need the rest of the parmesan for crisps, later.

Mix 300ml each of the milk and the cream together

….then add in all but a tablespoon of the parmesan, if you are using ramekins.  You save this because you can sprinkle this last bit on top and then grill your pots to make a crisp topping.  I was going to make parmesan crisps instead because I didn’t want to put my lovely Wedgwood under the grill.

…and heat gently in a bowl or a bain marie, over a pan of boiling water until the parmesan melts.

Allow this to cool completely

While the mix is cooling, butter your cups or little bowls.

Once your mix is cool,  whisk in the four egg yolks, a pinch of cayenne, the same of finely ground white pepper and maybe a pinch of salt. You must let it coolproperly because otherwise you will end up with cheesey scrambled egg.

Put the cups in a roasting tin, then fill them with equal amounts of the custard mix, then put the tin on the oven racck before you add boiling water. You need enough to come maybe one third of the way up the cups. Doing it this way prevents the mix slopping about and you pouring boiling water over your feet. Always a plus point in my book.

Cover the  top of this with some buttered baking parchment or a silicone sheet and then let everything bake for about 15-20 minutes, when they will be just set.

They emerge, looking gorgeous. I put them to one side while I made the toasts and the crisps……

My sister gave me some Curtis Stone silicone wafer baker molds as a Christmas present and I really wanted to try them out  –  you simply pack them with the rest of the finely grated parmesan and put in a low oven, on a baking tray

.. until they turn a soft, golden brown. Leave them to cool and you can get started on the anchovy toasts.

Thinly slice some good bread – each person will need a slice – and cut the crusts off to make lovely, neat, evenly sized rectangles

Then take your softened butter and the anchovies (drain them – you don’t want the oil)

….and mash them into a smooth paste

Lightly spread half of the slices of  bread – and I do mean lightly. You don’t want to overpower everything with too much anchovy.

 

Lay a slice of unbuttered bread over the spread ones to make dainty sandwiches. The easiest way to toast them is in a toasted sandwich bag and then pop them in the toaster for a short time. You don’t want to make them too toasty and crisp – you have to slice them into fingers after that…

 

A good way to get very thin toasts is to roll them, still in the bag, with a rolling pin to get them nice and smooth, then toast them. When they are done they can easily be cut into fine fingers.

 

By now, the parmesan crisps are cool and can be gently lifted from the molds. How fantastic is that?

And then… well, then you are nearly ready.

 

Wipe down the kitchen and set the table….

 

When you are ready to serve, if you are using ramekins or china molds, sprinkle the last of the parmesan on top of the custards and brown gently under a hot grill. I had my parmesan crisps to place on top, instead.

The fingers of anchovy toast were piled onto a plate

The starter was served…..

The crispness of the toast fingers contrasted deliciously with the soft, savoury custard.

The parmesan wafers added a gorgeous crisp bite.

Successful? Yes.

Tasty? Very much so.

Easy to do? Yes, so much so that this, with its comforting creaminess and rich, savoury flavour, would be a great dish to do when you needed some lovely comfort food.

In fact, the more I think about this, the more I want to make it again. It will remind me of a wonderfully happy night in Nottingham and I can introduce it to my new friends here in Malaysia.  What a good reason to invite people round to supper!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pineapple and Prawn Curry

I know… I know…. it’s been so long since I wrote anything but there’s been so much going on. We’ve had guests staying and we’ve been on trips abroad and time just slips on by. It didn’t help that twice I wrote out this recipe and twice something went wrong. I saved everything, both times, but half of the post still went missing. Technology, eh?

So, I’ll start again. Things have changed a lot since we moved in here with just a couple of suitcases. While we waited for the container to arrive, I did go and buy us the bare minimum of stuff to see us through…

And when I say the bare minimum, that’s what I mean.Thank goodness for IKEA. That balcony table and chairs were all we had to eat at unless we wanted to sit on the bed, which was the only other thing we had. Mind you, that gave me time to think about what I really wanted…

Having friends round to eat with us is a big part of our life. We love to share evenings and food with people and  we wanted to make sure that when we did get a table, we’d get the perfect table.

We wanted a square table because if we got a rectangular one, it meant there was someone sitting at the head of that table and for us, there’s no head of the table. Everyone eating around it is equal. We also didn’t want legs either, as someone on the corner (me, usually) always ended up banging knees on the legs. But finding the perfect table… well, that was the hard part.  I looked everywhere and there was nothing I could find that was right for us.

And then I found Teakia, where all they asked was what was it that I wanted…. square? Yes, certainly. Five feet square should be large enough? A central pedestal? Of course, what carving would I like on the pedestal? Teak? Naturally. Chairs? Try this chair… or that? What suits you? Ten chairs would fit round that perfectly.

You have no idea how happy I was. Everything made to my specification. This was the ultimate customer service.

And then it arrived…. the beautiful, solid, central pedestal

.. the square table top

… and ten lovely chairs!

No excuse now… I had to cook for our friends. I wanted us to sit down together, laughing, eating and drinking; celebrating our new start in Malaysia.

One of the first things I cooked was something I’d had a local restaurant – pineapple and prawn curry. I don’t think I’d had anything like that before but it was the most lovely dish – the pineapple was sweet and sharp while the prawns added a salty savouriness to a spicy sauce.

I went and got a big bag of prawns ( weighing them, cleaned and peeled later, they came to about 300g) ; a pineapple (you could use a tin of good pineapple in its own juice); a stalk of lemongrass, some mild red chillies, a piece of turmeric root, although ground turmeric will work as well; shallots; garlic; dried shrimp paste; coriander seeds and coconut cream. I can buy coconut cream, freshly squeezed in bags but if you don’t have access to that, a can will do just as well.

 

First of all, peel and de-vein the prawns, running a knife down their backs and pulling out the black cord of their intestines.  Put them into the fridge to keep cool, as you will add them at the end of the cooking.

The next thing to do is also something that will be needed later but it makes sense to do it straightaway and besides, you will need the pestle and mortar to do other stuff…. so, grind three tablespoons of coriander seeds and put them to one side. I’m quite fond of pounding away with a pestle and mortar as it gets the tension out of me….. If you have no tension, you could, of course, use ground coriander. Maybe three teaspoons would do.

Now, chop all of the other ingredients  – the lemongrass stalk; the shallots (maybe five or six); three or so cloves of garlic; about an inch or so or turmeric root ( a teaspoon and a half if you used ground powder) and three or four red chillies. This makes them easier to pound… or grind if you want to blitz them.

 

Once everything is in a smoothish paste  add in chopped soaked, dried chillies and pound some more. Remove the seeds from the chillies first and they add a lovely soft and rich taste to the spice mix, without overpowering everything. Using a pestle and mortar gives you a rougher mix than if you blitz it all,  and I like the difference in textures, but a  quick blitz will give the same results.

Then, heat a frying pan and add some oil – you have to fry the spice mix for a few minutes to let all the flavours blend properly

Adding some of the coconut cream, maybe half of the can, if that is what you are using, and it will stop it burning.

Add in the ground coriander and a quarter or half teaspoon of dried shrimp paste and stir it round gently before adding the rest of the coconut cream

Look at how it all swirls together. It smells really good, too.

The pineapple goes in now and needs to cook  gently so it softens.

Some Maldon salt needs to be added to balance the flavour

Then… throw in those fresh prawns, Grey now, because they are raw, but stir gently and watch them turn a beautiful rosy pink.

Five more minutes of simmering and then it will be ready

All we needed was some rice and to get up to the table

Dinner was served.

The sweet sharpness of the pineapple was balanced by the rich smoothness of the coconut cream and the salty, savoury prawns in that spicy gravy made it into a perfect supper dish.

Perfect dish at a perfect table. It was worth the wait.