Monthly Archives: April 2012

Chicken Cordon Bleu

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Chicken Cordon Bleu is probably one of the first non Kosher foods I’ve tried as a child. I remember being so excited by the idea of putting cheese and ham inside a chicken breast, that I had some kind of fixation for a while, about discovering the ultimate decadence. I wonder why it took me about 12 years to try it myself.

It’s fairly simple to make (yet hard to master, as anything). I started by parting a whole chicken, because I only needed one breast, and also had plans for the rest of the chicken. I followed a video by the amazing Gordon Ramsay:

I then cut pockets in the breasts, filled with salt, pepper, ham and Gruyere cheese, and used toothpicks to close it up. I also decided to try filling the two tenderloins by rolling them and it worked quite well.

Usually for breading I use only egg white and breadcrumbs, but this time I tried flouring the breasts before coating with egg white. Eventually the breading fell off a little, and I blame it on the flour.

The breaded pieces were then fried in shallow oil until brown, and then arranged on in a pan for final baking in the oven at 180°C. The picture was taken before baking, as you can see the chicken wasn’t cooked through:

It was ready after about 15 minutes in the oven. Turned out quite nice, but the filling/chicken ratio was a bit off, with too little filling. Next time I’m going to try it with spinach and ricotta.

Tarte Normande

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Few things are as comforting as baked apples. There are undoubtedly better tasting fruits than apples and more interesting combinations than apples and cinnamon – but apple pies carry the weight of representing and reminding us of the perfect home we never had.

This effect, however, is more prominent when dealing with American apple pies. When I hear the name Tarte Normande I think about sitting in a cabin in Normandy and drinking cider, surrounded by grass and cows. Needless to say, I’ve never been to Normandy – those are just visions induced by the visual appeal of sliced apples and the intoxicating smell of cinnamon.

Slicing the apples was a very meditative activity. For a moment it seemed like all existence consists of apples being skinned, cored and sliced repeatedly. I was somewhat surprised when there were no more apples to slice, and I was thrown back into reality. Apparently I should have sliced them lengthwise to get bigger slices, but it doesn’t matter that much.

When I baked the tart shell, I accidentally set the oven for 160°C which prevented the shell from browning nicely, and made the final tart too crumbly. Assembling the tart was fun but there are prettier ways to do it that I should learn.

And after baking:

It tasted good, but the texture was lacking, and so was appearance. I had way too many sliced apples so I made another one the following day:

And the baked result is at the top of this post. Quite better this time, the tart shell was properly baked and also the batter that covers the apples was better and browned nicely. However it wasn’t sweet enough (arguably an advantage) and the apples should have been a little softer.

Recipe (courtesy of Maayan)

For the tart shell (I think my tart pan is 24cm, so adjust if needed)

  • 150gr butter
  • 200gr plain flour
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp water

The technique here is similar to the pie crust here so I won’t repeat it. Refrigerate the dough for about 1 hour.

For the filling

  • Apples – I don’t know how many, I had too much
  • Some lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon
  • 90gr whipping cream
  • 36gr egg (about 3/4 egg)
  • 20gr egg yolk (about 1 yolk)
  • 20gr sugar
  • 1/2 tsp corn starch
Preheat oven to 160°C.
Skin, core and slice apples. Put the sliced apples in a big bowl, add some lemon juice sugar and cinnamon and shake to cover. The apples shouldn’t be completely covered in sugar and cinnamon, but they should brown a little and “sweat” some juices out after a while.
In a bowl, whip cream lightly, add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Arrange apples on tart shell, cover with cream mixture and bake for 20 minutes, until nicely browned. You may need to rotate the pan for more uniform baking.
Serve with vanilla ice-cream or crème fraîche.

Buckwheat Crêpes (or Galettes)

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I’ve recently been to France, for a ski trip in Val Thorens. It was at a crêperie over there, where I tried buckwheat galettes for the first time, and I really liked it. I think the texture and taste are superior to those of regular crêpes (which are still amazingly tasty if done right), perhaps its just the effect of it being novelty for me.

When I made Blini in the past, I wanted to use buckwheat flour but couldn’t find any. Omer was the one to point me to a reliable source, and we both tried to recreate the great galettes we have had in France.

I read the post on David Lebovitz’s blog about his attempt at making true Breton galettes. He wrote about a crêperie where he tried to learn this difficult art, and his failure when trying to do it at home. Apparently, a true Breton galette is made using only buckwheat flour, salt and water. So I mixed about 100gr of buckwheat flour with 1/2tsp salt and added water until the consistency seemed right. The batter waited for two nights in the fridge until it was time for crepes. I then had to add some water to make it more liquid.

The first crepe was horrible, the pan was not hot enough and I used too much butter. But then it got better and I was happy seeing the laced texture being formed nicely on the mini-galettes. I wonder if I had a bigger pan I would not have messed it all up, as small crepes are easier to handle. 

It was breakfast time so I had my galette sweet with butter, squeezed lemon and caster sugar on top. Simple yet majestic. Lemon works really great here and I never thought about that combination before that creperie in Val thorens.

For early lunch I broiled the leftover crepes with butter, tomatoes and Savoyard sausage and cheese. It was decadent but not that great, partly because the crepes were too small to hold it all inside, so they were left open and dried in the edges.

All in all I was very happy with the results, and will definitely make it again.

Leftovers

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Here are some things that I recently made but don’t really deserve a post on their own:

Kaya (Coconut Jam)

The first and only time I had Kaya was when I was in Singapore when I was 16. According to Wikipedia it is mostly popular in Singapore and Malaysia. It’s very tasty but a little weird at first. I made mine using equal portions of canned coconut milk, eggs and sugar. Cooking it slowly over lowest heat and mixing constantly until it thickens. Usually it is flavored with Pandan leaves, but I don’t know if I can even get them over here.

Passover

This year we were four people at Passover’s dinner, and I was responsible for most of the cooking. I made: asparagus soup, sourdough bread,  blinis with smoked salmon, chopped liver, leek fritters, roasted pork chops and cream spinach. The soup turned out great, the rest was fine, but nothing special. I was stupid enough to forget taking pictures.

Logo

I baked a chocolate shortbread logo for the blog. It actually turned out very cool but not too tasty.

Fresh Pasta with Fava Beans and Broccoli Leaves

Not much to say here.

Regular post coming soon…