Fancy Schmancy

Do you ever get a sudden, irrepressible urge to bake? I did this morning, at about 9am when I was supposed to be getting ready to go to uni. Instead, I baked a cake which took longer than expected, and ended up missing my first class. Whoops.

301. Fancy Cake (Basics etc.)

The fancy cake is yet another one of Nigella's citrus-flavoured almond-based cakes.

39. Clementine Cake
47. Moorish Cake
186. Almond & Orange-Blossom Cake

It is basically the same as the Moorish Cake, (in fact, the Moorish Cake is a variation of the basic "fancy cake" recipe), but with different proportions of ingredients, and without the orange syrup. It's called "fancy cake" because it is made in a brioche tin, giving it a fancy shape. The actual cake mixture is quite simple - you beat egg yolks with sugar until light, then fold in almond meal, lemon zest and beaten egg whites.

I didn't have any lemons to hand, so I used the zest of a seville orange, retrieved from the icy depths of my freezer. Furthermore, whenever I make this sort of cake, I whisk up the egg whites first, and leave them, in their stiff peaks, to the side while I get on with the rest of the cake. This is to save washing up. You see, I use my KitchenAid mixer for all stages of this cake, and when you whisk egg whites, you need your equipment - the bowl and the whisk - to be scupulously clean. Doing the egg yolks first means that you need to wash and dry the equipment before beating the egg whites. Egg yolks, on the other hand, require no such lavish attention. If you do the egg whites first, you don't need to wash anything before you beat the egg yolks. You can just scrape the beaten stiff whites into another bowl, not worrying about the bits that remain on the equipment.

I've found that egg-whites don't come to too much harm if left out for a short period of time. In fact, back at my old job as a cook at Crown Casino, our soufflés were made up and portioned into ramekins in the afternoon, in the pastry kitchen on the opposite side of the complex. We'd transfer trays of ramekins of the raw mixture from the pastry kitchen to our own kitchen (none too delicately), and cook them to order in the evening, which could be as late as 10:30pm. They always turned out fine.

Anyway, the egg whites for this cake only stayed out for about 15 minutes. No worries.



Those of you with sharper memories will remember that when I made the Moorish Cake, I had a bit of drama going all over town trying to find a tin. In the end, I didn't use a proper brioche tin, but a brioche-shaped ceramic pudding dish. As you can see now, I have a proper brioche tin. And it was ludicrously easy to find. They're actually sold at The Essential Ingredient, only about $12, in the right size, and with non-stick surface. I found it, by chance, about a week after I made the Moorish Cake, and I felt quite the douchebag when I saw them.

So, the cake takes an hour to bake in a 160C oven.



After cooling in the tin for 10 minutes, you have to turn out the cake, which is not that easy, considering how many crevices there are on the tin. My only advice is to be patient and gentle with the cake. I used a butterknife and a plastic chopstick to wedge it out, slowly, and in one piece.


le gateau upside down

When I made the Moorish Cake, I served it upside down, which I think looks better, but Nigella does stipulate turning it up the right way, immediately.



I let it cool in the kitchen whilst I spent the day at uni, and ate it in the evening with my parents. I assume that you're supposed to serve this type of cake plain, but I couldn't bear the plain brown top (and was afraid the cake would be dry), so I topped it with strawberries which I'd macerated in castor sugar and orange flower water. And served it with crème fraiche, just as I did with the Almond & Orange-Blossom Cake.



It was fabulous, and not dry at all. There was a fantastic contrast between crunchy top and the fragrantly dense moistness within. I do believe you could make any egg-white leavened cake in a brioche tin to get the "fancy" thang happening, but I can't honestly see why you'd want to go past this one.

Food Source: Prahran Market

Food and shopping are two of my favourite hobbies. Logically, you’d think that food shopping, the combination of these two favourite pastimes, would be my ultimate leisure activity. Sadly, this is not always the case. I’m sure you’ve read about my run-ins with not-so-intelligent sales assistants, my searches for obscure and impossible ingredients and my last-minute forced substitutions. And even when there are no major problems, the whole shopping-for-food-for-the-How-to-Eat-project thing can be a bit of a challenge in itself. You see, I can’t just wander whimsically through the markets, selecting whatever looks the best and freshest. No, no no, I have a project to do. I have recipes. I have things that need to be made.

Before I can even think about shopping, there’s the essential planning of meal times around our various work commitments and social engagements, choosing which recipes to make, and carefully compiling a shopping list, with contingency plans and substitutions, in the case that I can’t find what I’m looking for. (This is all the more difficult because I don’t drive). So then, I have to get Dad, Mum or sometimes Daniel to take me out to the shops – Box Hill, Coles, Safeway, Prahran Market or even Victoria Market.

Luckily this food-sourcing challenge usually does not prove impossible, and sometimes, just sometimes, everything works out fantastically.

Case in point – today’s shopping expedition. It started off last night when I was bumming about on-line last night (MSN messenger, Ebay, blogs, forums etc). I had a look at the recipe count on this very blog, and realised, to steal the words of a much wiser woman, that I really had to “light a fire under my ass”. So I spent the next three hours with my mate DG on MSN messenger planning my week of meals, and came up with one scary-ass shopping list. (These will all make an appearance on this blog in the not-too-distant future!)

- calvados
- clams
- cod
- chives
- crab
- 100g smoked cod’s roe
- fresh pita bread
- proper chorizo (none of that “Spanish-style” bullshit)
- bacon

I figured that I’d be able to find all that stuff at Prahran market, except for the calvados. I knew that my ordinary bottle-o wouldn’t stock it, so I googled “calvados”, and found ONE place in Melbourne that stocks it – Como Wine & Spirits Bottle Shop. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s right around the corner from Prahran market, on the corner of Toorak road and River street.

So this morning, Mum, Dad & I drove down to Como Wine & Spirits, and got the last bottle of calvados there. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Next was Prahran market. All of the fishmongers stocked clams, and I substituted gummy shark for the cod (it’s easier to find, and firmer, I think). I saw some very delicious-looking crabs at Theos and Sons Seafood, but the friendly and very delicious-looking fish-selling-dude didn’t have the facilities to cook and pick those crabs for me. Not to worry though. Dad unexpectedly said, “Nah, don’t worry about it! Cooking crabs is easy. I used to do it all the time in Malaysia, I’ll show you how to do it”. Fantastic! So I bought the crabs.

I got the chorizo at one of the delis, whose name I forget. Smoked cod's roe was a bit more challenging, though. None of the fishmongers had it (though I must say, the dude at Theos and Sons was quite impressed when I said "I need the roe to make taramasalata", pronounced in a proper Greek way), and then we started looking through the delis. It was all looking a bit hopeless, until we got to Delicatess. The sales assistants there gave us the usual response, "Er no... um... we've got salmon caviar?", but out of the corner of my eye, I could see the owner looking at us.

Owner-dude: Hey, what are you making with it?
Me: I want to make taramasalata.
Owner-dude: Yes, I've got what you need, we've always got it in stock if you ever need it.

He then went to the fridge and pulled out a 100g tin of "tarama", smoked mullet roe, which is EXACTLY what I needed! YAY!. The owner of Delicatess totally rocks. We love him.

Ownder-dude: ...to the sales assistants in a kinda pissed-off way... Look, guys, THIS is smoked roe, ok?

We got our bacon there too. And finally, we got fresh pita at the wonderful Falafel Cart, run by a father and son, who make their own fresh pita and salads and dips and felafels every day. We'd have eaten lunch there if I hadn't already planned to cook something. But for your interest, here's a picture of a felafel I had from there a few months ago.


felafel - delicious!


And here are our ingredients...


crabs


Chorizo, calvados, tin of tarama, chives, carton of pomegranate juice (I have no recipe in mind for that, but saw it and couldn't not buy it!)


ingredients

This was a fab way to spend our morning.


SUPPLIERS

Como Wine & Spirits Bottle Shop: Corner Toorak road and River streetSouth Yarra - Vic 3141

Prahran Market: 163 Commercial Road, South Yarra 3141 Victoria, Australia
Theos and Sons Seafood 9826 4288
Delicatess 9824 1752
Falafel Cart 0414 724 578

The 3 Bird Orgy, Part IV [Goose Duck Goose]

And today was the day of the dinner party!

This morning, Dad took me to Box Hill to get all the last ingredients I would need – easy stuff, like red cabbage, onions, etc. One thing I realized might be difficult to obtain was a goose gizzard. I doubted the Box Hill butchers would have any goose gizzards, but I figured that one from a duck or chicken would suffice. So we went to the poultry shops in the Box Hill Market, asking for gizzard. We got the same response from everyone. “Gizzard, what’s a gizzard? You mean giblet! We got giblet, you want giblet?” Er, no.

So once we’d done all the other shopping, we headed to Belmore Butchers (which is kinda like Rendinas in terms of quality, but a 20 minute walk from our house, instead of a 5 minute walk).

Butcher: Hi there love, how are you?
Me: Good thanks, how are you?
Butcher: I’m well, thank-you! How can I help you?
Me: Hi, have you got any gizzards?
Butcher: Sorry love, we don’t keep giblets.
Me: Wait, are gizzards and giblets the same thing?
Butcher: Yes they are.

BLOODY HELL. Dad very kindly drove us back to Box Hill, where I sheepishly bought some duck gizzards and then went home to start on the cooking.

211. Christmas Eve Goose (Basics etc.)
212. Red Cabbage Cooked in the Viennese Fashion (Weekend Lunch)

In addition to the giblets, you also need the goose neck for the recipe, which, I discovered, had been cut off by the butcher and stored within the cavity. Sweet as!


There's the neck. Not a disturbing sight at all.

Before you start anything else, you need to remove the fat from around the goose’s cavity, and render it down.


goosefat

The goose needs to be started early. Remember, this is the “holy shit! A fan is involved” goose. The whole fan fandango (har har) is supposed to make the goose’s skin crisp, much like the poaching-then-roasting technique makes the duck soft and crisp. I wonder if you could poach the goose. It certainly would make life easier.

For this recipe, you prick the skin all over with a knife, then pour boiled water over the skin. Nigella suggests doing this over a roasting tray, and then draining the tray, but I just did it in the sink, on a rack. Much easier.


goose in sink

It’s so cool when you pour the water on the skin – it contracts and stretches over the meat.

It wasn’t too much trouble using the fan; it is summer after all (sorry to my friends in the northern hemisphere), we had our free-standing fan already out in the lounge room. I just moved it to the kitchen and aimed it at the goose.


fan

It was about 3:30pm when I realized the goose wasn’t drying fast enough for my liking, so I turned on the airconditioner as well. (Plus, I was getting hot standing at the stove).


with airconditioning

While the goose is drying, you can do the stuffing. You cook some normal onion in the rendered goosefat (yeah baby, yeah), add garlic and lemon zest, and then stir that into 1.4 kilos of potatoes, which have been boiled and mashed.


mashed potato stuffing

Then you pack it into the capacious cavity and it’s ready for the oven. There was a decent amount of stuffing left over, so I put that into a loaf tin, and baked it with the duck later on.


Stuffing

I’m no expert on food hygiene, but I’m pretty sure that once the hot stuffing goes into the raw goose, it has to be cooked immediately. And you know, for all my worrying about how small my goose was, I’m glad I only got a 3 kg gosling – it just fit in my oven!


in oven

Ok, so in the meantime, I made the cabbage. It is suggested as an accompaniment to pork, but would also be perfect with goose. The cabbage is finely shredded, and then cooked in oil with dark muscovado sugar, some Spanish onion, a cooking apple and some vinegar. Then you add some beef stock, and cook it slowly (either on stovetop or in oven – I used the stove) for 2 hours.


sliced cabbage


in pot

It seems like a hell of a lot of cabbage at first, but it does collapse and soften. After the two hours cooking are up, you slowly stir in a mixture of crème fraiche (woohoo! I got to finish off my half-used tub!) and flour, and let it cook for a minute or two. Then you can forget about it, and just reheat it when you want it.

Next was the gravy for the goose. Brown some bacon in more goosefat, then add the giblets and chopped neck, and brown those, followed by onion and carrot. Then you add some chicken stock, and let it simmer for 30 minutes, before straining it and thickening it with cornflour. Once this is all done, you can just leave it in the pot, off the heat, with the lid on to keep it warm.


unstrained gravy

I put the duck in the oven while the goose was resting, covered in foil.

Check out the goose – during cooking, the stuffing expands (or the goose shrinks) and comes out of the cavity.


"I have stuffing coming out the wazoo"

Now, between the consommé, the duck, the goose, the gravy and the cabbage, I'd made a right fucking mess in the kitchen, and used almost every single utensil we own. Normally we eat in the kitchen, but looking at the mess in there, I knew there was no way it was going to happen tonight. We ate dinner in the dining room.


mess

I heated up the consommé when Uncle Mike and Aunty Helen arrived. But looking into the pot, I was suddenly a bit worried about serving it. It looked so boring! I mean, I know that the point of consommé is to have a clear and tasty soup, but still... and I'd never eaten proper consommé before, so I had no idea what it was supposed to be like. I tasted some, then made my mum, my dad, and my brother taste it in turn. We all had the same reaction - "Er... it's ok, but it's boring. You want us to eat a whole bowl of that?" I was almost considering going straight to the goose, and skipping the soup entirely. But then I got Uncle Mike to taste some, and he said, "Yes, that tastes right". And my fears were allayed. We scooped it out into small bowls and started eating.


consommé

It was, surprisingly, really good! Even Mum and Dad enjoyed it. I think it was fine once we knew what to expect. It was heaps stronger than the Italian broth, but as a soup to be eaten plain, it had a lovely delicate flavour. The small bowls we had were perfect for a light starter before the big meal.


dinner

We tried to carve the goose at the table, but it turned out to be more difficult than we'd hoped.


Mum & Aunty Helen carving

So, Mum & I took the goose into the kitchen, and hacked away at it on a board, in a very uncivilised manner. It was really messy, but it was worth it.


Me - and that's the Dangerfield dress. Same price as a 3-kg gosling.


carnage


messy goose


Potato stuffing - the stuffing that had been cooked inside the goose tasted heaps better than the stuffing that had been cooked separately.

We started off by just eating the goose. And by the time we'd gotten through the goose, we were full!!! I didn't need a second bird after all! Bloody Nigella portioning. But seeing as I'd gone to the trouble of making the duck, we tried some anyway.


Soft & Crispy Duck


my plate

That cabbage was just unbelievably good. It looked like a big pile of sweet purple jammy crap in the pan, but it tasted fantastic. It wasn't overly sweet, overly sharp, too mushy or anything like that - it was just perfect. I seriously could have eaten a bowl of it by itself for dinner. (And I might do that tomorrow night with the leftovers).

Now, about the goose. I'd never had goose before, and didn't know quite what to expect. But I loved it! It wasn't tough at all; it was moist and tender, and the fabulous skin was crisp. And the stuffing was wonderful too - all that goosefat and goose juice seeping through the potato. Like, DROOL! It's such a great celebratory dish!

The duck was, as you might have guessed, both soft and crispy. I love a good roast duck, and this one was so easy to make! I highly recommend it for anytime you're entertaining.

On Nigella's suggestion, I didn't make a separate pudding, but just had some fruit and nuts on the table to share. I had cherries on ice, and some whole nuts, which we cracked at the table. I also put a bowl of gooseberries on the table. I hadn't planned to serve them, but I'd found a punnet at Coles in the morning, and never having seen them in Australia before, knew I just had to buy them instantly. (Also, there's a gooseberry recipe in How to Eat somewhere). I'd left them on the kitchen counter, and when Uncle Mike came in, he exclaimed, "Gooseberries! I haven't had them since I was a lad!" So we added them to the table.


dessert


Gooseberries

This was just the right ending to the meal - satisfying, but not too heavy. And the social aspect of cracking the nuts at the table was great. Dad also opened a packet of Lindt chocolate-covered hazelnuts, which went down very, very well. After the meal, we just sat around the table, drinking wine, chatting, and picking at the bits and pieces.

Ooh and check this out - it's Uncle Mike and Aunty Helen's Christmas gift for me. They gave it to me tonight after dinner. It's a gorgeous little amethyst bracelet. How fab is it?!

Monday Night Dinner

So, I went back to uni today. Woohoo. I know I said I'd be taking it more seriously this semester, but yeah...

Today, in between classes, I went down to Safeway with my friend An to pick up some rhubarb. Low Fat August is coming up, and I need to get as many of Nigella's eight rhubarb recipes out of the way before this happens. Also, rhubarb happens to be in season until about September, October at the latest, I think.

It was so funny, I had a kilo of these massive rhubarb sticks in a plastic bag, and I tried to shove them in my uni bag, so that I wouldn't look so gimp-like, carrying groceries around uni. But the rhubarb could only fit (just) when I removed the biggest book I was carrying - How To Eat. So I ended up carrying a cookbook around in my arms like a textbook, with these massive rhubarbs sticking out of my bag and bumping into people as I walked. And I thought I was going to be focusing on my studies this semester!


Rhubarb in the bag - they were actually covered in plastic today, but I took it off so you could see the lovely red colour.

So after all that, dinner!

66. Spaghetti Aglio Olio

This is from the One & Two chapter, and Nigella suggests it for a night when you're extremely exhausted. Perfect for me! I still haven't taken any down time to recover from last week's spate of going out, staying out, late night chats, cooking, and 3 consecutive nights of work. Anyway, back to the spaghetti... I tripled it to feed three of us. It's super easy, and super quick. I actually made it this evening whilst preparing other parts of my upcoming first rhubarb recipe. (Stay tuned...)

You simply turn some cooked spaghetti in some oil (I used extra virgin - with so few ingredients I assume you need the best quality), which you warm in a pan with some garlic and crumbled chilli peppers. I added chopped parsley, and we added grated cheese (pecorino for me, parmesan for my parents) at the table.


Spaghetti Aglio Olio

It's incredibly satisfying - tasty and warm and nourishing. It's a very simple, storecupboard standby dinner. Mmm...

Does nobody make their own brioche any more?

It’s my mum’s birthday tomorrow, and I’m cooking the “Mildy Wintry Dinner for 8”, with a Moorish Cake instead of the suggested pudding. So today Mum and I went all over town to try and find supplies.

Today was sooooo rough!

First, it’s cold. I mean really cold. In Melbourne, “cold” means a bitingly icy wind which will penetrate any number of layers of clothing, dry out your skin and turn your fingers blue.

Secondly, no-one in all of Melbourne seems to stock a full-sized brioche tin, let alone a non-stick one! (You need a brioche tin for the Moorish Cake, to make it look fancy). We started off in all the homeware shops in Camberwell, then in Hawthorn, then finally we went to Cuisine World in the city. They all only had these poncy little tins, and all the shop assistants looked at me strangely when I asked for a large one. By the time we left Cuisine World, still tin-less, I was almost in tears, and thinking despondently, "Does nobody make their own brioche any more?". I think now, that I will use one of those fancy ring tins that my mum has had since the seventies. Either a rose jelly mould or a rum baba tin.

Then we went to Victoria Market – none of those fishmongers have monkfish! Again, I got funny looks when I asked for it. On the plus side, though, I stumbled across blood oranges! (These will make an “impossibly scarlet syrup” for the Moorish Cake). And more importantly, I also found SEVILLE ORANGES! I had no idea we could get them here! Any Nigella fan will know why I got so excited, because Nigella is obsessed with them. I immediately snapped up 2.5 kilos.

Grocer: Er… do you know what these oranges are for?
Me: smiling and nodding extremely enthusiastically… YES!
Grocer: You know, not for eating, for making jam and stuff.
Me: still smiling nodding extremely enthusiastically… YES!
Grocer: Ok sweetie! I just didn’t want to get into trouble.
Me: No worries! still smiling, but thinking, "JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN ORANGES!"

He also told me that they’re only in season for a month… so stay tuned for a Seville orange cooking bonanza!

I did feel a bit Nigella-like as I was walking through the market, because I happened to be wearing a long black skirt and sneakers. (Of course, wearing the skirt-sneaker combo was all about getting in the cooking mood, and had nothing to do with the fact that my jeans are getting tight...)

Then we went to Canal Fishmonger on Nicholson Street in Fitzroy. Still no monkfish, so I took the fishmonger’s advice and got rock ling as a substitute. We stopped off at Laurent on the way home and I picked up some sourdough baguettes (for crostini) as well.

Phew! Ok, so here’s my lunch. As soon as I came home, I made a coffee, and then lunch for my mother and I. Nigella says that leftover upmarket mushy peas make a wonderful soup, and she was right. I added some boiled water from the kettle and half a stock cube to the peas, heated them up, and slurped it down hungrily with some of that baguette.


Soup + Baguette - yes, that IS a red kitchen aid and two Living Kitchen 3L storage jars in the background

After lunch, I walked up to the corner store, got some porcini mushrooms and some more almond meal, because when I went to Nut King yesterday, they, despite their name, only had 218 grams of the stuff. Hmph! Nut "King" my butt.

Well, now the shopping’s done… all I’ve got to do now is actually make the stuff! Sigh…