I really need to persuade Ben and David to write more frequently about BBQ beef ribs, the perfect mole sauce and other delicious umami things like that.  Any munchmun.ch reader would think we’re trying to give them diabetes.  Oh well, here is a pavlova recipe I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks.  Only give this a go if you’re on friendly terms with your dentist!

Ingredients

• 250g fresh raspberries
• The whites of 4 medium eggs (ones approaching their use by date are ideal for meringue)
• 220g caster sugar
• 2 tbsp freeze-dried raspberries
• 100g white chocolate
• 1 pot of clotted cream

Instructions

Making the shell

• Trace the online of a plate onto greaseproof paper and place on a flat baking tray
• Pre-heat the oven to 110oC
• Take 50g of the raspberries and push them through a sieve using a wooden spoon, reserving the juice
• Place your egg whites in a deep bowl and beat using an electric mixer on a high setting
• Beat for approximately 3 minutes or until you have stiff peaks (watch you don’t go too far – you’ll end up with a watery froth)
• Beat in the caster sugar a tablespoon at a time until the mixture turns glossy
• Stir in the freeze-dried raspberries and the raspberry juice gently with a metal spoon. Don’t over mix – you want a swirled effect
• Pipe the mixture onto your traced outline starting at the outside and spiralling in until you reach the middle.  Pipe an extra two layers of mixture on top of the outer circle
• Place in the oven and bake for 1½ hours.  The low heat means that you’re really just drying out the meringue, rather than cooking it through
• Remove from oven and carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool

Filling the shell

• While your shell is cooling, melt the white chocolate over a Bain Marie (reserving a couple of chunks to grate over the top of your pavlova as a finishing touch)
• Using a pastry brush, paint the inside of your shell with white chocolate.  Left to set this not only tastes nice but will form a wall between the cream and the meringue which will stop the shell going soggy (and provides a little extra support if things are looking fragile!)
• Fill the shell with clotted cream, tip the raspberries on the top and sprinkle over the grated white chocolate.
• Consume and die of sugar.

I can’t remember why I decided to try and make a batch of custard creams.  I think I caught sight of the lovely Hope & Greenwood confectionery cookbook on my Amazon recommendations (I haven’t bought it yet if you’d like to send a copy my way) and was overwhelmed with nostalgia for ten-penny mix-ups, blue panda pops and ‘special occasion’ biscuits presented on a saucer by my nan.

I feel you have to respect a woman who regarded custard creams as sophisticated but repeatedly rejected my requests for ‘flashy’ party rings.  This recipe is my attempt to find a middle-ground: somewhere between the baroque swirl-adorned custard cream we know and love and an altogether more modern mouthful.

Ingredients

For the biscuits

• 225g plain flour
• 50g custard powder
• 30g icing sugar
• 175g refrigerated butter (unsalted)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

For the buttercream filling

• 50g softened butter (unsalted)
• 200g icing sugar
• 2 tbsp custard powder

Instructions

For the biscuits

• Place the flour, custard powder, icing sugar into a bowl and mix (preferably using an electric mixer for ease)
• Chop the butter in to small cubes and add it, and vanilla bean paste, to the flour mixture
• Mix until the dough starts to come together, finishing off with a quick knead by hand
• Tip the mixture out onto a surface and bring together into a ball (there should be a really pleasing golden-custardy colour to the dough at this stage and it will smell wonderful)
• Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for around 30 minutes (and no less than 20)
• While the mixture’s in the fridge preheat the oven to 160oC
• Once chilled, place the dough on a floured surface and roll to the thickness of a pound coin
• Cut out small rounds (mine were about 3cm in diameter) and prick with a fork
• Place on a baking tray parchment lined with parchment and bake for 10 minutes (or until just starting to colour around the edges). Watch them carefully – they go from perfect to crispy in moments!
• Cool on a wire rack

For the buttercream

• Place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy
• Slowly incorporate the icing sugar and custard powder and beat until smooth and fluffy

Place the buttercream into a piping bag and pipe onto half of the biscuits sandwiching together with a second biscuit.  These can be fragile little biscuits so a light touch goes a long way here.  And there you have it, a batch of approximately 20 biscuits that will last for a few days in an airtight container or around 30 second if left unattended on a ‘special occasion’ saucer.

Here is a great recipe for a light but flavourful summer stew.  It’s based on a classic Spanish recipe called suquet de peix but with a few substitutions to account for our love of mussels, hatred of celery and what was available on the booze shelf.  There’s a fair amount of preparation going on here but it’s worth it for the depth of flavour in the resulting broth (which mops up well with crusty bread smothered in salty butter) and I can guarantee you’ll be back for second helpings.

Ingredients

For the sauce

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 leek, chopped
• 1 bulb fennel, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 30g tomato purée
• 4 large tomatoes, chopped
• 60ml whisky (traditionally you should use brandy)
• 175ml white wine
• 300g mixed salmon and cod, chopped
• 900ml pints fish stock (we made ours from scratch which was dead easy)
• 1 tsp herbs de Provence
• 1 sprig tarragon
• pinch cayenne pepper

For the stew

• 400g assorted fish and shellfish (we used sustainably sourced salmon, coley, mussels and cockles for the pictured dish but we’ll definitely replace the cockles with clams next time)
• 12 new potatoes, quartered and cooked
• 1 large carrot, sliced and cooked
• 80g fine beans, chopped and cooked
• 80ml double cream
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• the juice of 1 lemon
• salt and pepper

Instructions

• For the sauce, heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the shallots, leek, carrot, fennel, and garlic and fry for 10 minutes over a low heat until soft.
• Add the tomato purée, chopped tomatoes, white wine and whisky and cook to reduce by half.
• Add the chopped salmon and cod and cook for five minutes.
• Add the stock, herbs de Provence, tarragon and cayenne pepper, then cover and simmer for 40 minutes.
• Blend the mixture, then push through a sieve (this bit takes ages but be patient!).
• For the stew, pour the sieved sauce back into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the fish and vegetables and simmer for 3-4 minutes.  The fish should be cooked and the shellfish open.
• When cooked, stir in the double cream and mix through the parsley.
• Stir in the lemon juice and season.

I’ve been planning to make some Sloe Gin, but as the berries won’t be ripe for months the project is on hold. In the mean time we’ve acquired rather a lot of plums (from a friends garden), which Becky has been converting in to plum jam and I’ve been mixing up with some gin.

I looked at a few recipes, all much of a muchness of plums + sugar + gin with varying quantities. In the end I used this recipe, straight forward and well written. Everything came together really easily, probably less than 10 minutes work. The two large Kilner jars are going to get a shake every day for the next week then popped in a dark cupboard for a few months, right in time for winter. Exciting!

We’ve often mentioned cookbooks and blogs that we love on munchmun.ch but here’s a delicious little magazine that deserves your utmost attention: Fire & Knives Food Quarterly.  It’s a beautiful publication I’ve only just recently discovered and I’m pretty excited about it.  This ‘new writing for food lovers’ is totally different from anything else on my bookshelf, the main difference being it won’t get covered in smudges of cake batter or dribbles of lemon juice as it contains no recipes. 

This is a tiny book of bite-sized essays about food, eating, memory, flavour and the culture of the kitchen.  The list of contributors is intriguing.  For example, in the latest volume the editor, Tim Hayward, has curated accounts by Tom Alexander, Mina Holland, Tom Parker Bowles and seventeen others. 

My favourite piece in edition No.7 is David J Constable’s moving ode to the Scotch egg.  Now, I’m vegetarian but after reading this romantic, passionate description of the traditional picnic treat I’ll admit that I felt I could return to the meatier side of life. 

Frankly, the pickled onion can slowly suffocate in its jar of vinegar, mouldering on the back shelf of a bar, and the pork scratching – that disfigured popcorn parody – can have the award for swollen, artery-clogging obese morsel.  And you, pork pie, you mahogany-coloured savoury confection only appreciated in the North, you can remain the highlight of the farmer’s snack.  All pale in significance alongside the Scotch egg.  ALL. 

This spherical delight, then – like a model assembly of the sun – beautifully designed and crafted and oohhhh, that memorable meaty aroma to treasure, as if God were to fart.  It’s a winner, always has been.  A masterpiece returned.

- David J Constable

Not only is the writing interesting and inspiring but the quality of the graphic design, typography and layout (check out the image from the endpapers below) makes Fire & Knives a foodie periodical worth collecting.

I can’t recall when I first thought of the idea of cakes in jars, but it may have had something to do with receiving the lovely Meg Rivers catalogue and being introduced to the concept of postal cake.  I found myself wondering, in all seriousness, if I might have done better at University had I, rather than baking through my revision schedule, kept my head down and awaited a weekly delivery of postal cake.  The answer is probably ‘yes’.

I have some friends that live far, far away.  I thought  they would love to have some homemade postal cake but fretted about how to get it to them without it squishing, mouldering or incurring the wrath of customs officials.  I found the answer to these problems on the Instructables website (check it out, the Food section has loads of cool little experiments to try) in the form of cakes in jars.

Traditionally sent by American military wives, I thought ‘brilliant’!  Not only would the cakes stay in one piece, they’d be air-tight and – as you boil the jars and lids beforehand to get rid of any nasties – stay fresh long enough to make an overseas trip.  I decided to order some cute 1/2 pint jars from Amazon and get baking.

My jar cakes were destined for 3 different people in 3 different places so I made up 3 different recipes.  Louise in Somerset would get apple & cinnamon cake, Ben in San Fransisco would get chocolate chip loaf and Matt in Wellington, NZ, would get vanilla sponge with elderflower icing*.  I’d love to work out how to jar-ify a victoria sponge or baked cheesecake but that’s a project for another day.

If you want to ice your cakes in jars, remember not to overfill them with mix.  Another thing to remember is to carefully watch the baking times – this was my first attempt and it turned out OK but I imagine these are really easy to overcook.  If you choose not to ice your cakes, you can seal the jars when they’re hot out of the oven and – in theory – the cake should last for months in a cupboard (or even longer if you freeze it).

I carefully packaged up my rather twee-looking cakes, labelling them with hand-written luggage tags and tucking them into boxes with plenty of bubble wrap to avoid breakages.  Having sought out the correct customs forms and popped them in the post, I can’t wait to hear from the recipients.  My hope is that not only will they love the cakes, but they’ll re-use the jars by posting a long-distence pud back to me!

*if you’re interested in trying any of these recipes, I’ll be posting them here shortly.

Ingredients

• 140g chilled unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• 2 medium shallots, peeled, thinly sliced
• ½ garlic clove, peeled, thinly sliced
• 1 sprig fresh thyme
• 1 small bay leaf
• 3 black peppercorns, crushed
• 150ml white wine
• 1 tbsp cider vinegar
• sea salt flakes

Instructions

• Heat one tablespoon of the butter in a pan over a medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the shallots, garlic, thyme, bay leaf and peppercorns and fry for 2-3 minutes, or until the shallots have softened but not coloured.
• Add the white wine and wine vinegar and bring the mixture to the boil. Continue to boil until most of the liquid has evaporated.
• Gradually whisk in the chilled butter cubes, one at a time, until all of the butter has been incorporated into the mixture and the sauce has thickened and is glossy.
• Strain the beurre blanc through a fine sieve into a warmed bowl, then season, to taste.

The white wine that we had was probably a touch sweeter than it should have been, but it worked really well with the fish. I’d definitely be interested to see how using a dry white wine changes the flavour and what affect adding lemon juice would have. Either way, this sauce is now going into regular rotation!

1. At the Knead Patisserie – hidden behind Local Mission Eatery – I ate one of the yummiest chocolate cookies I have had for a while.  The Eatery itself does a mean line in brunches and, if you simply must have something savoury before tucking into your cookie, I’d recommend the eggs, asparagus and hollandaise on brioche toast.
2. San Francisco’s corner shops boast the widest range of sodas that I have ever encountered.  It seems that every store, from organic whole food purveyors to rough-round-the-edges mexican minimarkets, stocks the smooth, sweet and somewhat addictive Boylan’s Creme Soda.  Yay!
3. If you fancy a beer in San Francisco, you won’t have to look far for a good one.  Every neighbourhood seems to have its own brewery and there’s a definite theme of keeping it local.  For the ultimate in beer choice – and a pretty tasty food menu – you’ll want to try The Monk’s Kettle.  With a choice of over 180 beers on the menu and staff that are both knowledgable and friendly, it’s a great place to spend an evening (provided you have plenty of dollars in your wallet and a tolerance for ale with a high % abv).
4. We suffered a food coma of not inconsiderable proportions following Papalote burritos.  This place is also home to the best roasted tomato salsa ever to be made by man.
5. Head to Sur La Table for foodie heaven.  This kitchen shop sells everything from deluxe espresso machines to tiny unicorn shaped biscuit cutters.  We settled for a set of cedar and maple planks for roasting fish, a number of tart tins and some ridiculous edible glitter (all of which I’m sure will feature in future munchmun.ch recipes).
6. When you’re done spending all your holiday money on kitchen equipment, you should wander through the Ferry Building and marvel at all the foods that exist even when they clearly shouldn’t (vegan doughnuts, turkey jerky and mushrooms that are shaped like ears).
7. The Bi-rite Creamery is so good.  Sadly, a million other people also know this.  Never mind, queuing for 10 minutes for a scoop of their delicious brown sugar ice-cream is worth it.  Particularly when the sales assistant happily lets you sample other flavours before deciding (seriously though, go for the brown sugar).
8. For a really special evening out, Foreign Cinema is most certainly the place to go.  We sat in the courtyard and watched an early George Lucas film projected on the wall while eating oysters and sipping a cocktail called The Song Remains the Same.  This is a deceptively strong single malt whisky-based cocktail made with the juice of half a lemon, honey syrup, orange bitters and half and a good splash of cherry brandy.  It’s like a super-fruity Old Fashioned and might well be my new favourite thing.

Almost everything can come from the cupboard or freezer and will happily sit there for months, like the pasta, sardines and capers. A well stocked cupboard of basic ingredients can get you a long way. There are some cunning ways to cheat too. You can’t beat grabbing a fresh handful of parsley from a pot, but you can chop+freeze store bought herbs for later, it’s better than nothing (or worse, dried parsley).

You can also buy a pot of lemon breadcrumbs (kill two ingredients with one stone). Yes that’s incredibly lazy, but that’s kind of the point here, minimal effort on the days you still want something nice to eat.

Even cutting some of those corners the resulting dish is still lovely, a bright and flavourful dish that makes me smile on a rubbish evening. Check out the original kitchenist recipe and give it a go.