Food & Wine adventures

It is one of my biggest regrets at this point of my life that I didn’t copy down the cannelet recipe that a German guy posted on a forum in the early noughties, because now it’s gone.

So I will have to attempt to recreate it from memory and other people’s recipes.

I go through a large amount of vanilla beans (my stock of 35 bought 15 months ago is long since gone), so because my blender is not up to cutting up the vanilla beans to make vanilla sugar I just store the beans in a bottle of decent quality rum, which is excellent in cocktails and of course, cannelet!

Cannelets

500mL milk
30 g semi-salted butter
1 vanilla bean, split, or 1 teaspoon vanilla essence, the husks of 3 vanilla beans which have already lost their seeds or just use vanilla rum
100 g plain flour
180 g sugar
3 eggs
80 ml rum

Yields about 20 medium cannelets.

Heat the milk, butter and vanilla (scraping the seeds out first & adding them to the mix) in a medium saucepan (or a pyrex measuring jug in the microwave), to 87 – 90 degrees. In the meantime, combine the flour and sugar in a medium mixing-bowl and break the eggs into the middle.

Pour the milk mixture (which should be at the above temperature still) into the flour + eggs, and whisk until well combined.  This temperature is very important for getting the elements to bind together & the butter to not separate out – I think it has something to do with heating the flour enough to activate it’s properties without cooking the eggs.

Add the rum and whisk well. Let cool to room temperature on the benchtop, then cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours and up to 3 days.

When you are ready to bake your cannelet (or cannele or canele, but imagine the accents in this spelling variants), preheat the oven to 250° C. Remove the batter from the fridge: it will have separated a bit, so whisk until well blended again. Pour into the prepared molds using either a drip free jug or a ladle, filling them approx 2/3 full. Put into the oven to bake for 20 minutes, then (without opening the oven door) lower the heat to 200° C and bake for another 40 to 60 minutes, the exact time is experiential depending on how cooked you like your cannelets, your oven and of course your mould size – if you have the mini moulds which are something like 30 cannelets to a sheet I give them 15mins on 250 then another 20 on 200. The cannelets are ready when the bottoms are a very dark brown, but not burnt (the bottoms being the bit on top when they are in the moulds).

Unmold onto a cooling rack (wait for about ten minutes first if you’re using silicon molds or they will collapse a little) and let cool completely before eating.

I use a silicon mould for this which I had a friend bring in from France, they appear to be surprisingly tricky to find.  You could try other shapes, if possible something substantially taller than its diameter, if you can find a tall muffin tin that may be appropriate, just keep an eye on the cooking times.

Two days ago I had a slice of the most amazing lemon & almond cake – moist, delicious, so here begins my search to recreate it. Luckily there were a lot of great recipes on the web, my main source was:

http://lucullian.blogspot.com/2006/02/almond-and-ricotta-cake-gluten-free.html

2 duck eggs (or 3 chooken eggs)
2/3 cup sugar
100 g almonds put through the blender until fine
75 g salted butter, melted
125 g oz ricotta
zest and rind of 1 lemon (or two if you like it really strongly lemony)

100mL flour

-Whisk eggs and sugar until smooth, add the ground almonds then butter.
– Break up ricotta and add, beat. When the batter is smooth, beat in the flour.
– Pour it into a round 20cm springform cake tin and bake it in a pre-heated oven (180° C) 30 minutes.

I think I baked mine a little too long (as I added an extra 10 mins, but this is probably also because I can’t justify to myself heating up the whole oven for one little cake so I just do it on the oven setting on our microwave.  Next time I will probably make a little syrup with grated rind of a lemon maybe 50g sugar, 20mL water, then add the lemon juice when it has boiled, prick the warm cake all over & pour over the syrup before taking it out of the tin.

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
3/4 cup desiccated coconut
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 – 1/2 cup chopped cashew nuts (optional)
——————————————–
1/2 tsp bicarb dissolved in 2tbs boiling water
125g butter, melted
2 tbs golden syrup

Preheat oven to 160 deg. Combine first section of ingredients, then mix in the wet ingredients. Place in teaspoonfuls on a greased baking tray. Bake for 15mins or until golden brown.

I’ve been meaning to test the recipe for curing salmon in Charcuterie by MIchael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn for ages but as with all ideas I thought it might take too long. Well we went to Billingsgate fish market with friends recently & I cured it in 5 minutes whilst chatting to them. It tasted fantastic & was so easy! To cure a smaller amount reduce the amount of cure.

1 side of salmon (1-1.5kg), skin on
125g sugar
180g soft brown sugar
175g salt
60mL limoncello / grand marnier / cointreau / other triple sec / extra orange juice
Zest of 2 lemons & 2 oranges
A squeeze of juice from lemon and orange
a pan just big enough to fit the fish

Mix sugars, salt & zests, spread half of the paste on the bottom of the pan
place salmon fillet in pan and sprinkle with liqueur, cover with remaining sugar/salt paste
cover with plastic wrap and weight down with another pan / loaf tin with 2-4kg tins in it
refrigerate for 48h, basting with cure half way through
the salmon should now feel firm to the touch
if not cure for another 24h
when cured rinse well and dry
wrap in butchers paper or greaseproof paper and store in the fridge for up to 3 weeks
this is lovely in sandwiches with creme fraiche & lettuce, on its own as a starter, in salads or with eggs for breakfast

we finished the 1+kg in a week (2 people)