Category Archives: cooking

Preparing food for eating. Recipes, techniques, ideas, ingredients.

Searingly sour citrus tart

Lemon tart with flavoured stripes

The bag of lemons stared at me. Days turned to weeks. They greeted me every morning with an admonishing, jaundiced glare. ‘Use us!’ Weeks turned to months. Gradually the glare turned to a grey and furry myopia. ‘Save us!’ cried the survivors, still resembling a primary colour, though showing not-so-premature signs of ageing.

Permit me a moment of immodesty: I’m a dab hand at lemon tart. And this seemed a suitable tribute to the bag of surviving citrus. I dithered over the best sacrificial form: creamy, well rounded, mellow and tangy lemon tart (as in so many Australian cafés), or eggy, curdy lemon tart (Ã la tarte au citron), with its characteristic intensity and flavour explosion?

My recipe search led me to an untried candidate: the tartelettes au citron in Camille Le Foll’s Modern French Classics (a brick of a book, nicely presented and not bad recipes). Happy to try a new variant on the theme, I unpacked the ingredients and prepared to weigh and measure.

Juice of 3 lemons

I hate that. Really. Big lemons? Small lemons? Modest lemons? Gnarly lemons? Mine were small and past their prime. It seemed prudent to increase the arbitrary lemonicity to four. And I wasn’t scared of pushing the boundary of tang. A real zinger of a tart would be fun.

I made the curd, mixing happily, watching the syrup take on that yolky, glossy, slightly translucent character. I let it cool and tasted it. The curd was simultaneously sweet and strikingly sour. Not excessive, but by no means shy.

The pastry was rolled and shaped and rested. The tarts filled, baked and then removed from the oven, gently bubbling.

Tasting time approached. I decided to try Tart One au nature. Ka-bam! Not-shy had become oh-my-god-my-eyes-are-watering. I’m brave. A tart can’t slay me. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was bold. But after consuming about two thirds of it, I noticed a certain apprehension before each new mouthful. A mild burning could be felt in my throat. What monster had I created?

Lemon tart cooling in pan

Frightened, but also a little proud, I shared my searingly sour tarts around. The victims were at times tougher than I, though most agreed that some whipped cream would be nice as an accompaniment. The recipe below should yield a distinctly tart tart, but as lemons vary, so will the acidity. If you are one of these sour-mouthed dessert lovers, you could experiment — but I’d strongly recommend following the quantities in this recipe for the first attempt.

– DM

Links:

Camille le Foll: Modern French Classics Books for Cooks AU | Amazon US | Amazon UK

Recipe:

 

Searingly Sour Citrus Tarts

 
  Source: adapted from Camille Le Fol: Modern French Classics (Hachette Illustrated, 2004)

Yield: 4

 
  Ingredients  
220 g sweet shortcrust pastry
200 ml lemon juice
20 ml
(1 tbsp (AU))
lemon zest – chopped finely
250 g sugar
4 eggs
35 g butter
100 g unsalted butter – softened
  icing sugar– for dusting
equipment: six 12cm tartlet pans – preferably non-stick with loose bases
  1. If you are making the pastry yourself, let it rest in the fridge before rolling it out. Divide the pastry into six equal pieces. Gently shape each piece into a rough ball and then roll out to a thin circle, large enough to fit inside the tartlet pan.
  2. Line each tartlet pan. Trim the edges so that the pastry is level with the top of the pan rim. Rest the pans in the fridge.
  3. Combine the lemon zest, eggs and sugar in a saucepan and stir over low heat until the mixture thickens. This can take up to 15 minutes.
  4. Strain the resulting mixture (lemon curd) in order to remove the zest. (Not essential, but improves the texture.)
  5. Stir in the butter in small batches, then add the lemon juice and combine well. Leave to cool.
  6. Preheat the oven to 160°C (lower for convection oven).
  7. Place the tartlet pans on a metal baking tray. Fill each tartlet with curd to about 5 mm below the rim.
  8. Place the tray in the oven and bake for 20-30 mins, until a pale golden colour (the curd will be bubbling around the edges). Remove from the oven briefly. Dust with icing sugar and then return to the oven for another 5 mins.
  9. SERVING NOTE: The sourness will vary depending on the lemons; such is nature. If you have achieved searing sourness, I found the best accompaniments were: whipped cream, sweetened whipped cream with roasted hazelnuts, a light dusting of alkalised (Dutch process) cocoa with cream, or perhaps a coffee syrup.

Burn your hot cross! It’s time for something Swedish

ready to eat

Think of Easter and food, and you probably get images of chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. How about a change from the mundane? A diversion from arguments about peel-or-no-peel in the hot cross buns or whether people expressing affection for chocolate hot cross buns should be crucified?

I’ve never seen these in Australia (though I’m sure there’ll be some expats cooking them for family and friends), so get ready for another sweet surprise before Easter. Scrumptious little buns from Sweden — edible ones, not those of some tennis player. Known as semlor or fastlagsbullar, these babies are fairly simple to make and much too easy to eat. After spending five winters in southern Sweden, I can assure you I had had ample opportunities for detailed examination of the product (also known as gorging oneself).

Officially, they’re a pre-Lenten delight, which of course means that you shouldn’t eat them in the 40 days before Easter. More precisely, they should only be eaten during Shrovetide: Monday in southernmost Sweden (home of the term fastlagsbullar), and Shrove Tuesday elsewhere.

The astute reader will have noticed that I’m writing about these buns much too late. It’s almost Good Friday. However, few Swedes have qualms about consuming semlor anytime between the beginning of January (just like Easter eggs, they appear earlier every year) and Easter, so why quibble about religious tradition?

The basic concept: Cardamom, cream, marzipan; all in a sweet bread. They’re an institution across Sweden, with annual competitions to find the best baker, and frequent discussions about who has good ones for how much. There’s little talk of varieties or flavours, because the only common variations on this traditional item are what to do with the marzipan, whether to add extra almonds, and how to eat them. I have, however, seen recent mention (in Swedish) of chocolate semlor and ones filled with raspberry jam. Sacrilege! Crucifixion?

freshly baked

The buns (semla and bulle just refer to types of bun in Swedish) are made from an enriched yeast dough.

Semlor filled and ready to eat

Purists will actually take a little bread from the centre of the bun, crumble it, and mix it with the marzipan before filling the bun. Some bakers add flaked or crushed almonds to the cream, others garnish the top of the bun. The basic model requires that the buns be dusted with icing sugar. Cardamom is usually added to the bread, but can (unconventionally) be added to the marzipan. Don’t even think of omitting the cardamom from the recipe!

cream filled

The decision about how many buns a recipe will make is rather individual. I’ve seen a recipe where 375gm of flour makes 20 buns, but another where 500g of flour only makes 12! Yum. The recipe printed here strikes a balance between indigestion and petit-fours.

The dough for the buns sometimes includes the following, but these ingredients aren’t essential and some can be hard to find here: ground almond and bitter almond, ammonium carbonate (E503a: a raising agent rarely used in Australia), and Swedish quark (‘Kesella’, 10% fat). It’s also useful to know that the marzipan we can get here has a rather low almond content (about 30%), whereas Scandinavian ‘almond paste’ is usually 50% almonds (and appropriate for this recipe).

Finally, a little comment on how to eat a semla/fastlagsbulle. If you enjoy snorting cream, then feel free to stick your nose into the cream as it squidges out. The more conventional reader might be interested to know that semlor of the type described are only about 100-150 years old, and the main precursor to these is an enriched bun served in a pool of warm milk. This is how some people continue to eat the newer variant. Whatever you do, remember that one is never enough and three is generally a tad piggy.

burp - all gone

– DM

This is a revised version of an article which was first published in The Age (Epicure), Melbourne, on 08 Apr 2003.

 

Semlor
(Swedish Lenten Buns)

 
  Source: Duncan Markham
Yield: 8
 
  Buns  
200 g plain flour
35 g sugar
0.5 tsp ground cardamom
0.5 tsp salt
ca 14 g dried yeast (instant)
35 g butter
ca 100 ml milk
1 egg – lightly beaten
  Filling  
4 tsp milk
150 g marzipan – grated
200 ml whipping cream
1.5 tsp icing sugar (pure)
  1. Mix the flour, sugar, cardamom and salt in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the yeast.
  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the milk. Cool the liquid to lukewarm. Add 2/3 of the beaten egg.
  3. Pour the liquid into the bowl. Slowly mix the dry and wet ingredients, then knead this dough until soft, smooth and elastic. Add a little extra milk if necessary. Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place until doubled in size (60-90 mins).
  4. Knead the dough lightly, then divide it into eight equal pieces. Form each piece into a round bun. Place the buns on a greased/non-stick baking tray, ca 5 cm apart. Cover and leave in a warm place to prove until doubled in size (60-90 mins).
  5. Preheat the oven to 230°C (lower for convection oven). Lightly brush the tops of the buns with the leftover egg.
  6. Bake for 7-10 mins, until deep golden brown. Take care not to burn them (it can happen quickly). Remove and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
  7. With a very sharp knife, horizontally slice off the top quarter of each bun and put to one side. Using a fork, scrape out about two teaspoons of bread from the middle of each bun and place this in a small bowl.
  8. Mash this bread with the milk for the filling. Add the marzipan and mix to a fairly smooth paste. Place a liberal tablespoon of filling in the middle of each bun.
  9. Now whip the cream until it holds its shape well but isn’t completely stiff. Pipe or dollop the cream over the filling.
  10. Lightly place the top of each bun on top of the cream and push down gently, just enough to squidge the cream to the edge of the bun. Dust the lid with icing sugar.
  11. Best eaten with a cup of coffee or in a bowl of warm milk. Store in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours.

Iron Chef America – low sodium

It was slow to cross the ocean to Australia, but eventually cult foodies here got to see Iron Chef America — the Masters series from 2004. I love Iron Chef. It is a masterpiece of kitchen prowess in a camped-up we-love-the-ridiculous style. Inspired stuff. Completely unlike Iron Chef America.

Where Iron Chef (original) has Chairman Kaga, resplendent in dandy sartorial delights and with a cheeky twinkle in his overacting eyes, America has Chairman Who-Cares, cute, cutting a nice figure in his well-tailored suit, and overacting for the sake of, well, overacting. The gentle viewer could be forgiven thinking that Chairman Nice-Suit wouldn’t be able to tell his caviar from his tapioca. Sigh.

The Japanese series had the jolly “man alive!” banter of the (dubbed) panel. The American series gets Alton Brown, whose voice reminds me more of a cartoon character than an informative host. He does know his stuff, however. That’s nice. But the commentary becomes too didactic and repetitively inane. Whereas the Japanese panel could get away with “I think he’ll probably make X with that”, “No, it looks like Y”, “Gee, I was sure it was gonna be X, but he’s a clever guy”, Alton Brown ranges from very informative commentary on sugar decoration to the stunning “I’m sure this will probably definitely be X or maybe something like that”. Now, I don’t have a transcript in front of me, so please treat that as a paraphrase, but whatever the exact wording, it doesn’t make for scintillating watching. The camp becomes the cold and the banter becomes the banal.

Maybe I’m just a little conservative, too attached to originals. One of those guys who hates covers of my favourite songs or misappropriation of my favourite dishes. Am I just too curmudgeonly to be open-minded about Iron Chef America?

If Chairman Kaga spoke English, if Hiroyuki Sakai didn’t wear red satin, if the voice didn’t say “man alive!” would I still enjoy re-runs of the original Iron Chef? Probably not, but who cares? This isn’t a game of Hypotheticals. The only thing that Iron Chef America has over the original is a touch more commentary by the judges and a little more authoritative info from the commentator. And Vollfffffgang Puckkk.

Wolfgang Puck is like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but with a little more vim. His accent may even be more entertaining than that of the Gubernator. The latter has little more than bad-actor-meets-macho-character in Austro-English. The former has Perrrrrsonality.

Personality is something that Alton Brown shows less of in his commentary (he works better when in the frame). And I can’t forgive him for calling Spätzle “shpaytzul” (Kevin Brauch (his floor boy) should wash Alton’s mouth out with wasabi). Without the personality of the original commentary panel and lacking the poetic and eccentric judgements of the original jury, this television is pretty soulless.

For all the technical information which Iron Chef America — Battle of the Masters conveys, both visually and verbally, the lack of fun and whackiness is like undersalted pasta; nourishing, perhaps, but no yumminess. Where’s my Iron Chef umami dispenser?

-DM

Links:

contact Books for Cooks
amazon.com: Iron Chef: The Official Book
amazon.co.uk: Iron Chef: The Official Book