Steamed Brioche With Apple Puree and Rose Water Foam : TGRWT #17 Apple and Rose

Well this is combination of a flavour pairing suggestion of the TGRWT #17: apple and rose and a recipe from my 'A Day At Bulli' with other recipes thrown in when I had to work around issues. I must admit that I got rather excited by this idea.... great a chance to use my Lecithin to create a foam! And if you ever have a chance do look up the El Bulli recipe that I riffed on - Steamed Brioche with Rose Scented Mozzarella do so... the dish looks amazing and I just hope that someday I will be able to create something that looks that fabulous. What did I create? A humble peasant version as you can see from the above photo. Still, I learnt lots, like I cannot make brioche (hot hands I think) and try not to stray too far from the recipe.

The result of my culinary experiment - a fabulous combination of apple and rose but my straying from the recipe ruined the brioche. I think I could have upped the ante on the rose taste... should have used rose essence and not rose water and if i had some edible rose petals around the dish could have been presented a whole lot better. This is definitely something that I will try and perfect - just think it would be a great show-stopping dessert. Just need to work at that brioche recipe.

Brioche

225g flour
15g yeast
2 eggs
90g butter
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp milk (I ended up just putting a dash of milk in because of the consistency of the dough)

The brioche recipe came from Celtnet.co.uk; I abandoned the El Bulli recipe early on when it required a sourdough starter which I couldn't be bothered to wait for (first mistake). Essentially I followed the celtnet recipe until the time it came to cook the brioche then I reverted to the El Bulli recipe. I used a stoneground 5 seed flour (second mistake) thinking that it might add some different tastes to the dish (it did but they were the wrong tastes and the dough was just too dense). Plus to top it all I used dried yeast (third mistake) and even though the dough did rise I think using fresh yeast would have produced better results.

producing the brioche dough

Apple Puree

5 apples peeled, cored and chopped
32.5g sugar
187ml wine
1/2 vanilla pod

I used the recipe for apple puree from the hydrocolloid recipe collection of Martin Lersch available on his blog Khymos. I just found the recipe for apple gel and took the apple puree recipe from that. A note on the choice of apples. I chose to use Pink Lady apples because of their wonderful aroma.... perhaps they were too delicate - yes it was appley but the sugar content was too high. Some sort of cooking apple would have worked better.

The apple puree cooking with the vanilla pod

Rose Water Foam

250 g milk
2 tbsp rose water
1.75g Lecithin

Rose water foam ingredients

I just used the recipe from my El Bulli book (page 305) and exchanged rose essence for rose water. I just added the rose water to the milk until it started to smell like roses (I know pretty haphazard but this was one of the successes). Essentially I just whizzed up all the ingredients with my immersion blender and them skimmed the top of the surface of the liquid to create the foam.

Now to putting it all together....

I rolled out the dough and broke of pieces of dough about the size of a hen's egg. See below. I rolled each of the pieces into spheres that I squashed a little to make this little rounds of dough.

Next I steamed the dough balls over a water with some rose water added... the aromas were fantastic.

The brioche were steamed for 16 minutes then lifted out and laid on parchment paper to cool a little. I hollowed out the brioche (see below for my first attempt).

I filled the hollowed out brioche with the apple puree which I had previously warmed. Stuck them under the grill for 30 seconds and plated up scooping the rose water foam over the brioche.

I know it looks like a baked potato that is erupting but the apple puree and rose water foam was a great combination

Asparagus and Egg

Not the most inspiring of dishes, I know, but it does make for a no nonsense supper dish. I had tried to make a hollandaise sauce but failed - it tasted vile... so I thought well why not just have an egg. Now that the English asparagus season is upon us I can now have asparagus everyday if I chose (and I probably would). I adore asparagus and it's delicate taste, it's succulence, it's taste of spring and for a month or so I can revel in asparagus heaven. Asparagus with pasta, asparagus risotto, asparagus with hollandaise sauce (yes, I will perfect it), asparagus with cous cous, asparagus in a Thai green curry, asparagus soup, asparagus forest (blanched asparagus and an edible soil of some sort?), and of course asparagus on it's own - yummy.

Now to the recipe...

Serves 2 for a cosy supper dish

12 spears of asparagus (depending on how much you enjoy asparagus)
2 eggs (I used chicken eggs but this would go well with quails eggs as well)
Small grating of Parmesan cheese
Smear of oil
Seasoning

1. Blanche your asparagus spears in a pan of rolling boiling water. Takes about 5 minutes.
2. In a non-stick pan heat a little oil - not too much and crack your egg/s into the pan. Cook on a low to medium heat... I wanted the whites of the eggs to cook through but leave a lovely runny egg yolk. Cooking time was around 4-5 minutes I think. Sorry, I must pay attention to times when I cook.
   
3. Arrange cooked spears attractively on the plate (or just pile them up) and chuck the egg on top. Season and grate some Parmesan cheese over using a fine grate.

Good Girl Dinette

There are so many good food sites out there but this one particularly caught my eye. Listening now to KCRW's Good Food podcast I came across Diep Tran who hosts her Good Girl Suppers - exclusive dinners for her friends with a varied menu - from her own traditional Vietnamese cooking to Cuban, Spanish and Indonesian to name but a few. I am completely envious of those lucky people in L.A. who now will be able to sample some of her food in the Good Girl Dinette. It makes me want to search out some Vietnamese restaurants here in England.

Diep Tran in her kitchen - click the picture to see the wonderful video of Diep talking about her grandmother and cooking

Like any good food site it made me hunt out my south-east Asian cookbook and find a few recipes. And maybe, just maybe I will start my own supper club.... hmm.

Nettle Gnocchi

nettle gnocchi

Ok, so I have become a little obsessed now with nettles. Let's see just how many dishes I can create with nettles! This particular dish is a variation on Fergus the Forager's nettle gnocchi... a particularly lazy one where I replaced the tomato and basil sauce with a shop bought pesto. But it was delish.

I just realised that I had forgotten to explain just what nettles taste like in the last post. So I am going to correct that anomaly. You definitely have a spinach type greenness but the surprise taste is mushrooms... yes, I know... I was bowled away. This is what makes this wild green particularly useful. You can add that umami (savoury) taste quality now to various dishes without adding mushrooms or cheese.. or have double or triple umami. Now I don't actually know if the nettles actually contain the right chemicals that make up that umami taste that you find in cheese, mushrooms and meat but I would like to think that they do.

Now what shall I do next with the nettles?

Picking the nettles. Make sure you pick the young leaves. They are the best.

Mixing up the nettles, flour and potato to make the gnocchi

The gnocchi before they hit the boiling water.

Fergus the Forager

Well since my first foray into wild food I thought I would seek out some experienced wild food foragers like Fergus the Forager. This is an excellent site including some pretty unusual recipes like pan-braised squirrels and wild greens gnocchi in tomato sauce (I think I might just try a nettle version of this). His diary of trying to survive off of foraged food is a revelation and I certainly will be trying a few ideas as well as seeking out some edible wild greens this spring.

Fergus Drennan

Nettle Soup

Well after quite a long hiatus I am back with some new recipes... now that spring is here I can get to play with some interesting ingredients. I have always wanted to try some nettles in some way or another- it's free food and can be found quite easily whether you live in the town or the city. So today I went for a short walk armed with some garden gloves to snag those lovely young nettle leaves. I half filled a plastic shopping bag with some of the youngest leaves I could find and quickly returned to cook this prickly vegetable.... and even though I was cautious and I wore gloves my fingers are still tingling from the being stung through the gloves.... I think rubber gloves next time.

Now I know that some of you are thinking ergh! nettles - you are going to eat nettles - yeah it is kind of wacky but then I like trying new things.... what is the worst that can happen - it tastes awful and I have wasted a couple of hours... but you are in for a surprise... these young nettle leaves make very tasty soup. Delicious.


Serves 4

1 onion - chopped
2 cloves of garlic - finely chopped
1 large potato - peeled and chopped
1/2 a plastic shopping bag of nettle leaves
vegetable stock
water (not sure of the quantities.. I just filled by saucepan)
splash of olive oil
seasoning

1. Pick over the nettles (make sure you wear those gloves) and remove any large stalks.
2. Fry off the onion and garlic over a low heat in a large saucepan.. about 5 - 7 minutes.
   
3. Add the chopped potatoes and stir through for 5 minutes are so.
4. Wash your nettles and add to the soup pan.
5. Add enough water to cover the all the mixture and add two crumbled stock cubes.
6. Give it all a good stir and leave to cook over a low heat for 20 minutes.
7. Add some seasoning... I just added some pepper as there was salt in the stock cubes.
8. Leave to cool a little and then liquidise your concoction.
9. Reheat and serve in soup bowls.
10. You can add a dollop of cream or yogurht but I made some potato rosti to go with it...

Doesn't it look amazingly green - I think it looks better than spinach soup

Alinea At Home

Just come across Carol Blymire's wonderful blog about re-creating the dishes from the Alinea cookbook. She writes very witty and enthusiastic posts catalogueing the disasters as well as the successes. I am about to go off the read her adventures when she cooked her way through the French Laundry cookbook.

Grant Achatz of Alinea

Just passing on the great link from Khymos about Grant Achatz of the Chicago restaurant Alinea - he now has a fascinating blog delving into his inspiration and thoughts about the cooking experience. The ideas just pour out of this guy and I am sure that this blog will inspire many creative cooking experiences.