Lex Culinaria

Fiddlehead and prosciutto pappardelle

When I was small, maybe 5 or 6, my mother instituted the rule that every Friday night was New Vegetable Night. My sister, having attained the grand old age of 10, quickly gave her own designation to Friday nights. She called it "sleeping over at other peoples' houses night". The childhood burden of new and strange vegetables fell squarely on my shoulders. In all, I think it was probably a wise move on my mother's part. I can only recall one vegetable, Brussels sprouts, my dislike for which even New Vegetable Night could not cure. Despite that, when presented with a plateful of them by Jennifer Leffler's mum at a sleepover I attended a few short years later, I knew would not kill me and so I ate them uncomplainingly. And graciously, I thought, for an 8-year old.

My mother still swears that New Vegetable Night was my fault anyway. She claims that, when I was still very small, and we lived in a remote northern Canadian town, we were invited to the only town doctor's house for supper. Being invited to their house for supper, I gather, was to have "arrived" (inasmuch as one could ever "arrive") in Lac LaRonge. As we lived quite far north (and it was the early 1970's) fresh vegetables were very expensive and hard to come by, especially during the winter. So, on this momentous occasion of being invited to Dr. and Mrs. Weins' house for supper, I embarrassed my mother by clutching a broccoli bunch in my fat pink paw and loudly demanding, "what are these little green trees? I don't eat little green trees." Precocious for a 2 year old, I know. But my mother swears that this is what I said. She also swears it is the reason why New Vegetable Night was all my fault.

One Friday night, the new vegetable that appeared on my plate was fiddleheads.

Fiddleheads, the tightly furled shoot of the Ostrich Fern first discovered by the Maliseet and Mi'kMaq tribes in Eastern Canada, are a springtime delicacy from Virginia all the way up to Eastern Canada. Until tonight, the last time I had eaten one was on a New Vegetable Night in 1977. Not that I didn't like them, I just hadn't seen them in the store. So when I saw them at Save-On a couple of days ago, I declared New Vegetable Night in my house. Even though I don't have kids. Other than Cakes, that is.

They taste just how I remember them - like a very mild artichoke or asparagus, only slightly wilder and muskier and more mushroomy than that. They smell and taste of the earth in the same way that fresh scallops taste of the ocean.

Fiddleheads' texture is surprisingly crunchy, even after cooking for a fair amount of time. I parboiled mine less than the recommended ten minutes (apparently there was a food-borne-illness scare in British Columbia in 1990 purportedly resulting from undercooked fiddleheads - I'm hedging my bets - I hate overcooked vegetables!) and then pan fried them in butter, shredded lemon peel, garlic and white wine. They were crunchy and earthy and green tasting and paired well with the noodle-y pappardelle, crispy, smoky prosciutto and salty reggiano, although next time I might leave off the reggiano and add more lemon.

Ingredients

• One punnet (about 300 grams) Fresh fiddleheads
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp zested lemon peel
• juice of half a lemon
• 1/4 cup white wine
• salt and pepper
• enough pasta or noodles of your choice (my choice is almost always pappardelle) to feed two
• 4 slices Prosciutto, fried until crispy and crumbled

Choose tight dark green fiddleheads that are not mushy or too moist. Use them within two days after purchase. If you have picked them yourself (taking care to ensure they are Ostrich fern, other kinds are highly poisonous) they can be stored, well wrapped in plastic, for 4 or 5 days in the vegetable crisper.

Rinse fiddleheads under cold running water, rubbing gently to remove most of the brownish feathery bits. If the cut ends have got a bit of brown on them, trim them.

While your pasta is cooking, boil the fiddleheads in salted water for recommended time, usually about 10 minutes. I only boiled for 4 minutes, but I am an inherently risky chef and I might die from this. If I don't post again after tonight, you'll know the undercooked fiddleheads killed me.

While fiddleheads are boiling, melt butter in a frying pan. Cook and stir garlic until soft and slightly browned. Add lemon peel, lemon juice, wine and salt and pepper.

Remove fiddleheads from heat, strain, rinse again under cold water and then dry. I found that my salad spinner worked very wekk for this.

Toss fiddleheads into frying pan and cook and stir through the butter for about two minutes or until any excess moisture has evaporated and the butter and wine mixture has reduced enough so that it is no longer watery but thick enough to coat the pasta thinly.

Strain cooked pasta and toss in pan with fiddleheads.

Dish up into bowls and sprinkle with crumbled prosciutto. You can add crumbled reggiano if you like, I think it would be better without it.

Saturday Night Special: lamb shanks with cannelini bean ragout

After a week of hurried meals slapped together (or bought!) I wanted something homey and warm, so I set aside Saturday night as the designated home-cooking night. As it turned out, it was a brilliant end to a brilliant day.

Our Saturday that went a little like this

1. Slept in

2. Walked in the sunny sunny sunshine

3. Had a late breakfast at Culina (Cakes had the spinach crepes with poached egg and spicy hollandaise for $10. I had the fried egg, braised bacon and cheese panini with spicy ketchup $11 - both absolutely divine. The breakfast and brunch dishes were far better than the supper dishes we had there - they seem perfectly suited to what they are, whereas the supper dishes seem to be trying just a bit too hard to be cool....kind of like the kid in your grade 9 class that was trying to be cooler than he was. If only he'd just stopped trying so hard, he actually would have been pretty cool all on his own.)

4. Walked to Strathcona Farmers market and bought some pretty pretty tomatoes and some fresh baby lamb shanks.

5. Drove out to the country and visited a bison farm. Spoke to the lovely lady who runs it about how they raise and feed their bison. Bought 2 gorgeous bison t-bones, 6 bison grilling sausages and a pound of bison salami.

6. Hung out with some really cute baby cows.

7. Rode our bicycles along the riverbank from our house (near 99 street) to the far side of Hawrelak Park and back, about 8k each way, through gorgeous treed trails. You'd never know you were in the middle of a city. I had no idea Hawrelak Park was so big and gorgeous. I can see us having plenty of picnics there this summer.

8. Came home and made supper out of the fresh baby lamb shanks.

I modified a recipe from Gourmet magazine (March 1996) for this supper. I actually put this in my online "recipe box" at Epicurious.com on December 3, 2001, and hadn't got around to doing anything with it until now!

The recipe seemed a bit rich and heavy for an early summer supper so I made the following changes:

• I used white wine instead of red
• I added fresh tomato wedges and baby organic zucchini (and left out the carrots and celery altogether) to the white bean ragout only 5 mintues before the end of the cooking time so they would still be fresh tasting instead of cooked-tasting
• I used cannelini beans instead of navy beans
• I substituted fresh thyme for the dried
• I substituted fresh pureed tomatoes for the tinned tomato paste.

The result was spectacular - much fresher and lighter than it would have been had I stuck to the recipe. The leftover beans were great the next day on toast with eggs.

La Tapa

10523 - 99 Avenue NW, Edmonton, AB  T5K 0E7 tel: (780) 424-8272 fax: 424-0897

I love tapas. Can I say that again? I LOVE tapas. Because of this deep and abiding love for tapas, I was very excited to finally have a chance to visit La Tapa with a good friend last week. A few months ago I attended a function catered by La Tapa and the few items I had were quite good. So I was pretty excited about this trip. Everyone I had talked to about La Tapa told me fantastic things about it. I thought it would be a good bet for a good meal with a good friend. Unfortunately, the only 'good' thing about it was the patio (lovely!) and the white wine sangria ($13 half and $21 full carafe) which is stellar.

Before you read the rest of this review, bear in mind that, very early on in the evening, the server noticed me taking notes and asked whether I was writing a review. I said yes.

Okay. Now that you know they were aware I was writing a review and that they still served me what they did...you may now proceed.

My companion and I decided to forgo the entrees and mains, including some nice looking paella ( we gawked at what was being served at the table next to us). We settled instead on several selections of tapas - traditional small Spanish dishes for sharing.  Unfortunately, none of them were particularly Spanish and none of them were particularly good.

Let me preface the rest of this review by saying that, given the large selection of tapas, I would normally be inclined to give the restaurant the benefit of the doubt by wondering whether we had picked the wrong ones, but all the items we picked were specifically recommended by our server as popular and excellent. I can't see why. I should have been prepared for what was coming, when I asked the server whether the ham used in the croquetas was jamon. She didn't know what jamon was. I had to explain that jamon is a Spanish ham similar to Italian parma ham. She said, no, she though is was just "regular ham like in a sandwich". Oh dear.

Each of the tapas dishes we chose ranged from $6 to $8, except the olives, which were cheaper. The dishes were delivered in Tapas style, which is to say, not all at the same time, but one by one, seemingly randomly.

we were first served the Ensalada a la Mancha -  described as a salad of tomatoes, artichokes and red Spanish onion in balsamic vinaigrette, which sounded delightful. I think it's always a wise move to order a salad dish when eating tapas, as so many of the tapas are rich or fried. Unfortunately this was a pretty sad salad, and so I really didn't want to eat it t all. The tomatoes looked like they had never seen the sun. There are simply tonnes of gorgeous tomatoes available from the hot houses of BC at the moment - for less than three dollars a pound you can get beautiful, rosy red, plump, juicy tomatoes. So you can imagine, when I spied the sad, barely pink flavourless wedges, I immediately felt like La Tapa did not care at all about the sort of food it served me. If they did, they would not have served those tomatoes. They also would have provided more than the single token artichoke wedge, which my friend and I had to fight over!

After the salad came the croquetas - deep fried, barrel-shaped potato cakes, which ostensibly contained chicken. I couldn't bring myself to order the croquetas containing "regular ham,  like in a sandwich". They held their barrel shape pretty well, which I found surprising as they were mushy beyond belief. Oh yeah. And bland.

Next up were the olives - which appeared for all the world to have been fished out of the bottom of a glass bottle from Safeway. They tasted like the olives my grandma used to put in cocktails in the 1970's, when the only kind of olives you could get came from a bottle in Safeway and tasted horrible.

The fourth dish to arrive at our table was the cheese stuffed mushrooms that our server, who wore what was quite possibly the shortest and tightest skirt I have ever seen, said were fantastic and that everyone loved them! They simply took me back to 6th grade, when my sister discovered the company's coming series of cookbooks and incessantly made these horrid stuffed mushroom caps with mayonnaise, grated cheese, powdered onion and dehydrated parsley flakes in the toaster oven. My sister's were better than these. The cheese was chewy and inedible, the mushrooms weepy and bland and sad.

The fifth dish we were served, the Gambas a la Plancha, was the highlight of the meal. These were fantastic, shell on grilled shrimp, split down the back (in order to facilitate the removal of the shell) and almost perfectly done. The weren't over cooked by any stretch, but could have used a few seconds less on the grill. Nonetheless, they were quite good. Compared to the rest of the meal, they were outstanding.

We were then served the Fabada con Chorizo (white beans with Chorizo sausage). I love white beans and was telling my dining partner, who had never eaten them before, how rich and creamy and gorgeous they could be if they were done well. These were not. They managed to be both watery and mealy all at the same time. The sauce was bland and the chorizo was nothing like any Chorizo I've ever tasted - in fact it tasted of absolutely nothing.

Lastly, we were served the Patatas Bravas - roasted potatoes with spicy red sauce. I had previously eaten their roasted potatoes in aioli, which were quite good, so the fact that these were awful came as a surprise to me. These potatoes, which I'm sure were crispy at some point in their lives, as evidenced by their browned little outsides, managed only to be limp and tasteless. They were smothered in a spicy red sauce that tasted for all the world like a half and half mixture of Sunspun ketchup and Louisiana pepper sauce. I don't know if that is what the sauce was made of, but whatever it was, it sure as heck came out of a bottle.

We decided that, with 40 minutes to go before our movie (only 2 minutes away), we could probably afford to have a quick dessert, to try to redeem the meal. Unfortunately, the server took so long to return with the dessert menus, that we didn't have time to order desert and were actually late for our movie!

While I think La Tapa would be fine for a carafe or two of white wine sangria on the patio of a summer evening, I won't be going there for tapas again any time soon, and although I want to give them the benefit of the doubt by returning to try their Paella, I just can't see that ever happening.

Payment: Cash, All Major Credit Cards, Debit Card (Interac)

Rating: Food: 2 stars, Service: 2.5 stars, Decor: n/a

Hours: Mon-Fri 11:30am-2pm, 5pm-10pm; Sat 5pm-10pm; Closed Sun

Atmosphere: Great patio for summer

Cuisine Type: Spanish

Price: $60 for tapas for two, including a half carafe of white wine sangriaRatings Key
1 Star - Horrific in every way
2 Stars - Simply awful
3 Stars - Average on a good day
4 Stars - Better than average, but only just
5 Stars - Pretty good, I’d go back
6 Stars - Yum, give me more!
7 Stars - Exceptional. outstanding. bliss

What a friend we have in cheeses

It's amazing what a difference one week makes in the life of a small cheese. For cheese that started out from the same mould (literally) the camemberts

and the washed rind

have become very obviously different cheeses.

The camembert continues to develop its white fuzz while the washed rind develops a sticky orange rind.

We will continue turning the camemberts and washing the washed rinds every 2 days for the next ten days or so. Then we will stop washing the washed rinds but continue turning them all for a few more weeks. After that we will wrap them up in breathable cheese wrap and store them in the fridge to ripen further.

The difference between the 2 cheeses is even more obvious when you see them side by side.

Cheeses loves me!

The wee little baby cheesies we started out on their path to cheesiness only just last weekend, have sprouted their wee fur coats and are well on their way to teenagehood (in the life span of a cheese, that is).

Aren't they darling?

Now is the time we start to treat our cheeses differently depending on what sort of cheese they are going to be when they grow up. Just as we would if they were real little boys and girls-  they have different rules. We will leave the little Camemberts to do their own thing and get all hairy,only bothering them once every 2 days to turn them. While we gently wash the fur off all the the little washed rind cheeses on a regualr basis.

For the rind washing, we use a sterile 4% brine solution inoculated with brevibacterium linens. The washing removes the white mould fur coat and replaces it with a sticky orange rind that smells a bit like feet, but which makes the cheese taste lovely.

Culina

9914 - 89 Avenue Edmonton Alberta Phone 780.437.5588

Culina Cafe, the brainchild of Edmonton chef Brad Lazerenko, is nestled away on 89 street opposite Route 99 Diner. It's not in a particularly high-traffic location, but you'd better have a reservation if you want a table, even on a Tuesday night.

Any dining experience is as much about ambience and service as it is about food. Culina's decor is far better than the Edmonton average and they've certainly done an excellent job transforming the place from its previous incarnation. Culina is one of the few Edmonton restaurants that manages to achieve the ambiance of some of my favourite funky little cafes in Melbourne.

There are, however, a few details that seem to have been overlooked, like the out-of-place entryway and awful floor tiles left over from the previous tenant.

The paint and texture treatments on all the walls are very clever. The back wall has interesting alternating stripes of pitch black matte and gloss paints in varying widths and the side walls have nifty textural elements. These clever touches should serve as inspiration to all Edmonton restaurants - they are indeed an case study in the concept that you can totally change the look of a restaurant and make it funky and clever and interesting without significant outlay of money.

Given the trendy take on ethnic food that Mr. Lazarenko has chosen as the theme for this restaurant, I can understand why he might have chosen the hostess station in the centre of the room with the Moroccan bazaar feel to it. Unfortunately it just does not fit in with the overall design of the dining room, which is far more streamlined; bordering on Asian or Swedish in influence.

Even with these few design hiccups, the ambiance at Culina is clever and quirky (although I can't say I understand the strange little square blue light in the centre of the room). It is casual and laid back, without being boring. It is definitely a place to feel comfortable. The acoustics are better than most restaurants and the music is at the right volume. The song selections are an eclectic mix of world music-meets electronica - perfect for the decor and the food.

The wine list, by Paul Lagrange, is well thought out and is the first wine list I have seen in Edmonton that actually has excellent Australian wines on it, instead of the rote Rosemounts and Wolf Blass. Bravo to you Mr. Lagrange. It has taken me the better part of a year to find a wine list as well thought out as yours! Of course my bias is towards Australian reds, but I am trying to change that!

The wines on the list are grouped into broad price points ($29, $38, $48 and Reserve) with 8 or so wines available at each price point. The wines in the first three categories are also available by the ounce. Forgive me for thinking that pricing wines by the ounce is really an attempt to confuse customers as to the actual cost of a glass of wine. $1.75 per ounce sounds much more affordable than $9.00 per glass, which is what it works out to! That said, we were happy for such a wide selection by the glass (or ounce) as Cakes and I can never seem to finish a bottle between us these days - we've become such lightweights since leaving Melbourne where wine is drunk as if it were water! Our excitement was extinguished as our server pointed out that only one wine from each category was open and therefore available for purchase in less than full bottles.

As Cakes prefers a mellower wine, he chose the Niebaum-Coppola Rosso Old Vine Zinfandel Blend 2003 ($38 bottle or $1.50 oz.), which is a blend of 49% Zinfandel, 28% Syrah and 23% Cabernet Sauvignon . It was mellow enough even for Cakes and I was tempted to trade glasses with him. Which is saying something as I generally prefer a bigger wine. The Coppola's blackberry, plum and cherry flavors finished in a smooth, sweet vanilla. I chose the Einaudi Dolcetto di Dogliani 2002 ($48 bottle or $1.75 oz.) which had lovely sweet black cherry fruit, with spicy notes in the background. Both are excellent choices, even at the price.

Perusing the starters page of the menu, I knew at once I had to have the roast garlic custard with grilled bread  ($6).  Cakes couldn't get past the special red & yellow tomato bruschetta ($8) which, although good, was not necessarily special.

The starters arrived very quickly, perhaps 2 or 3 minutes after ordering, which was remarkable. During that short interval, I was daydreaming about creamy, white custard with a delicate roast garlic flavour and gently toasted bread. Unfortunately, that was not what arrived on my plate. It wasn't like any custard I've ever had.  It managed to be gloopy, sticky, greasy, heavy and cloying all at the same time. The taste of roasted garlic was very strong, which was perhaps necessary given the overpowering and confusing use of far too much orange oil. This dish was by far the most unnecessarily rich and overpowering thing it could have been. The great tragedy is that it has the potential to be spectacular. If executed well, roasted garlic custard could be a fantastic thing. Done the way it was, it was far too much of everything all at once. It knew what it wanted to be, it just wasn't allowed to be that thing. To top it off, the excessive richness and orange oil made me quite ill all the next day. On the positive side, the tragic execution of the potentially fantastic garlic custard idea inspired me to create for myself what I wished it had been.

The mains were better executed than the starters, and I had a hard time choosing what I would have, as did Cakes. They all sounded lovely. I finally settled on the  Moroccan lamb sausage on spinach leaves with chickpeas, asiago, and roast garlic sauce ($16). I do wish the waitress had pointed out to me that the sauce on my main was simply a diluted version of the roasted garlic custard I had for a starter. As she neglected to do so, I was dismayed to dig in and find that my disappointing starter was haunting me into my main course. That said, the roasted garlic custard was much better as a sauce, as it was much milder. The orange was still confusingly strong and the sauce a touch too rich for the dish. Thankfully, the spinach was lovely, the chickpeas perfect and the sausages tender and juicy, although not particularly Moroccan.

The real star of the meal was the sauteed scallops on coconut rice with sweet black bean sauce and Chinese greens ($20) that Cakes ordered. The scallops were huge and perfectly done. The black bean sauce was just salty and miso-y enough and the Chinese greens (whole baby bok choy) were perfectly steamed. The flavours and textures were all well balanced and thoughfully chosen.

We had to have the rest of our mains boxed up so that we could squeeze in dessert. Cakes swore  he wasn't going to have any at all, so I ordered the vanilla-almond syrup cake with cream cheese sorbet ($5), which was large enough to share. It was divine. The cream cheese sorbet was tangy and light, not at all like the heavy-sweet cheesecake type ice cream I was expecting. It paired  beautifully with the almondy, syrup drenched, cake. Once Cakes spotted the cambazola toasts with dulce de leche ($5), he resiled from his non-dessert-eating position. He was rewarded for his fickleness with two toasted slices of French bread, spread with ducle de leche and topped with slices of blue mould Camembert cheese, broiled until the cheese and caramel melted gooily on top of the toast. He was only able to finish one slice due to its decadent richness, but the look of ecstasy on his face told me he was enjoying every bite. We had the extra slice boxed up and he heated it up for breakfast the next day.

The service at Culina was polite, cheerful and thorough and left nothing to complain about, especially by Edmonton's standards. For a casual dining experience it was excellent. Although, it was priced more in accordance with a fine dining establishment. Our three-course meal for two with a glass or wine each and a bottle or two of San Pelligrino was around $100.

Culina also has some clever regular events like their Sunday "family night" meals, which cost $20 per person ($14 for kids) and are served, family-style from platters at your table. They also serve delicious-sounding takeaway soups that you can pick up on your way home from work with a family-sized 2.25 litre pail selling for $20 . You can choose from the soup of the day, or, if you order 48 hours in advance, you can choose from one of their 7 yummy-sounding ethic varieties such as Spanish Tomato Fish Stew or Vietnamese Peanut Cabbage with Beef and Pork.

Mr. Lazerenko has some fantastic ideas, but I think he can do better in the way he executes them. Culina, and its dishes (at least the ones I tried) can and should be taken to the next level. If that happened, Edmontonians would be hard-pressed to find a better restaurant and Culina would be on the same level as some of the better restaurants in more firmly established foodie cities such as Vancouver, Toronto or even Melbourne. There's no reason why Edmontonians can't enjoy that level of culinary excellence, and Mr. Lazerenko may just be the man to give it to them.

Rating: Food: 5.5 stars, Service: 5.0 stars, Decor: 5.0 stars

Hours: Mon- Fri  9-3, 5-10pm,  Sat 10-3, 5-11pm, Sun 5-9pm

Style: Global food

Payment Accepted: MC,V, Interac

Reservations:a must!

Prices: $100 per couple for three courses plus wine

Ratings Key
1 Star - Horrific in every way
2 Stars - Simply awful
3 Stars - Average on a good day
4 Stars - Better than average, but only just
5 Stars - Pretty good, I’d go back
6 Stars - Yum, give me more!
7 Stars - Exceptional. outstanding. bliss

IMBB 15: My love affair with jelly in three chapters!

I danced for joy when I found out this month's IMBB is about Jelly. I love using gelatin. Can I say that again? I LOVE Gelatin.

For those who've been with me for a while, you may recall my panacotta phase in January and February. Well, this month's IMBB brought it BACK, baby. I have for you, not one...not two,...but three, yes three, beautiful, wiggly, jiggly gelled miracles darlings!

In no particular order I give you:

Deconstructed masala chai panacotta

Espresso jelly with dark chocolate cream middles

and, my personal favourite.....

Roasted garlic and reggiano panacotta (you have NO idea how good this one is, you must must must must make this!)

I've split the recipes up into three separate posts (click on the recipe titles above to access the recipes) in order to archive them better, also, if you only want one of the recipes, you don't have to scroll through two other gratuitous posts to get to the one you want. I am so considerate.

Honestly, this is the most fun I've had doing IMBB, and probably the most fun I've had in the kitchen for a long time. Thank you so much for choosing jelly, Simply Recipes.

I have, in the past, noted that I tend to cook by the seat of my pants...that is, I pop stuff into a pot and see what comes out. I feel I need to reiterate that it was a bit of a cooking storm here on Saturday, and I may not have remembered all the proportions exactly as they were (it being Sunday now). My proportions are usually pretty accurate, but be aware that when I say 1/3 cup sugar...it may be slightly more or slightly less (particularly since I tend not to measure things like sugar, or salt, but rather add until it tastes right). Where I give measurements in grams, you can be darn sure of that measurement, as I will have weighed the ingredients on my spanky new scale.

In all the jelly recipes, I use a standard packet of Knox brand gelatin which is 7 grams per packet.

There were a whole lot of people involved in this month's IMBB and a lot of incredilbe-sounding (and looking) recipes - read them all here.

Roasted Garlic and Reggiano Panacotta

I was inspired by a sub-par restaurant experience I recently had to make this third (and I think, best) instalment in my 3 chapter IMBB series. I ordered a divine-sounding Roast Garlic Custard, and this dish is exactly what I was hoping I'd get, but didn't.

I love, love, love the way this turned out! This is definitely one of those little discoveries that makes up for all the failed attempts in the kitchen! make this as the starter for your next dinner party. Your guests will propose marriage! It is a perfect blend of cool and creamy, cheesy and garlicky. And. It spreads on warm bread like a dream!

Ingredients:

1 whole head garlic, anointed with 1 tsp good olive oil, wrapped in foil, roasted and then left to cool
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1 crushed clove fresh garlic
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp good sea salt
1 pkg gelatin
100 grams good reggiano, grated fine

Whiz cream, milk and roasted garlic in a blender. Don't worry if there are some chunks of garlic left, they add character to the dish.  Heat cream in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat with gelatin,  crushed clove, salt and pepper. When it is sufficiently warm, and the gelatin has dissolved, stir in the finely grated cheese. 

When cheese is thoroughly melted, use a fork to fish out the crushed clove. If you miss some small bits, don't worry. Pour warm mixture into little individual glasses ( I use Ikea candle holders that cost $0.50 each!) and chill until set.

Serve with warm (or toasted) crusty rye or multigrain bread. Try not to eat it all at one sitting.

Espresso jelly with chocolate cream centres

The espresso jelly, the second installment in my three-chapter love affair with jelly,  is surprisingly good. It would also be good on its own, without the chocolate cream in the middle as a late-night, post dinner alternative to the traditional end of meal cup of coffee.

I moulded these panacottas using two different methods. I have described both methods below. Choose the one which best suits you.

Method one: I filled silicone muffin moulds with the coffee jelly leaving 1 cm space at the top. I put the partly filled moulds in the fridge to set. When they were set I used a melon baller, dunked in a glass of hot water, to scoop out the centres, being careful to leave at least 3/4 cm at the edges and at the bottom.  I filled the hollowed out centres with chocolate cream and returned them to the fridge to set. I popped the scooped out jelly balls into the pot with the leftover coffee jelly for melting and use in the final fill. Once the chocolate cream had chilled and firmed up, I gently filled the remaining 1 cm of the muffin moulds with the remaining coffee jelly. The coffee jelly had set up a bit during the wait (and the scooped out bits were jelled to begin with) so I turned the element on under the pot just long enough to re-liquefy it, but not heat it.

Method  two: For the jellies in the small glasses, I poured a layer of coffee jelly in the bottom third of the glass and then set it in the fridge, propped up at one end so that it would jell on a slant. Once it had set, I added some chocolate cream and let it set at a slant as well. Once the chocolate cream had set, I poured a final layer of coffee jelly and let it set in the fridge standing upright, rather than on an angle. 

Of the two methods, I think I prefer the second over the first. The concept of the chocolate centres is nice, but much harder to execute and very easy to ruin the panacottas getting them out of the moulds. The slanted-glass presentation is much cleaner and easier to achieve. Although I added no gelatin to the chocolate cream used in the first method, I did add a little gelatin to the chocolate cream for the slanted-glass method. It is necessary in order to allow the chocolate cream to set firm enough. If you don't add the gelatin, I expect that, once you add the last layer of coffee jelly and set the glass upright in the fridge to set, the chocolate cream would slide out of formation.

Without further delay....

Ingredients:

for the chocolate cream:
170 ml thick cream
25 ml  milk
150 grams good quality dark chocolate
1/4 cup sugar
(if preparing in glasses as per the second method above, one envelope gelatin powder)

Warm the cream and chocolate and sugar in pot over medium-low heat. Stir until chocolate is all melted and the mixture forms a ganache. Add enough of the milk to thin the ganache to the consistency of a cream soup (when it is cool, it will be thicker). If you plan to prepare the jellies in glasses, add the gelatin powder and stir to dissolve.

For the coffee jelly:
2.5 cups very strong, dark roast  coffee
1/3 cup sugar
1.5 envelopes gelatin powder

Heat the coffee on the stove in a pot, dissolve the sugar and gelatin powder in the hot coffee. Be careful not to allow the coffee to boil. Stir until the sugar and gelatin are dissolved.

Use a small ladle to fill moulds with the coffee jelly mixture and chocolate cream mixture in accordance with the instructions for the preparation method of your choice above.

Deconstructed Masala Chai Panacotta

I love panacotta.

I love Chai.

I've been wanting to make a Chai panacotta for quite some time now. In fact, I tried to make a baked chai custard in January, but without much success. So when the IMBB for May was announced, I seized on it as a sign from the gods of the kitchen that I must make chai panacotta. This is the first installment in my three-chapter love affair with jelly.

Despite the amount of cream in this, it makes a gorgeous light summer dessert. It's not too sweet and is cool and refreshing.

I used a long skinny loaf 1.8L pan, but you could just as easily do this in individual little parfait glasses or some other mould if you like.

Ingredients:

3 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
1.5 cups super-strong Earl Grey tea (I used 9 teabags -how many you use will depend on the strength of your teabags)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 pieces cinnamon bark
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
7 cardamon pods
5 pkts gelatin

Combine milk and cream in medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add sugar and 4 pkts of gelatin, stirring to dissolve the sugar and gelatin. Heat the tea in a separate saucepan. To the tea add 1 pkt gelatin and 1.5 cups of the cream & milk mixture. Taste the tea mixture and add additional sugar to taste. Once the sugar and gelatin are dissolved, ladle 1/3 of the tea mixture into the bottom of a cling-film lined loaf tin. Set in the fridge to jell.

Meanwhile, pour the remaining tea mixture into a bowl and set aside. Add 1 tablespoon vanilla to the remaining cream mixture and separate it equally into two pots. To one pot add ground and whole cinnamon and leave on low heat to infuse. To the second pot add the ground and whole cardamon and leave over low heat to infuse. Taste and adjust sugar if necessary.

Strain the cardamon cream and cinnamon cream each onto a separate metal bowls and place the bowls in a sink with a few inches of cold water to reduce the temperature of the cream. This is done so that, when the layer of cream is added to the chilled panacotta layer, the first layer doesn't melt. Once they are cooled, but not set (they can be a little warm, they just should not be hot), remove the bowls from the sink and set them aside until you need them.

Remove the loaf tin with the chilled, jelled tea layer from the fridge. Gently ladle the cinnamon cream over the jelled tea layer. Return the pan to the fridge to set. Once the cinnamon layer is set, pour a further third of the tea mixture over it  and return the pan to the fridge to set. Once the most recent tea layer has jelled, pour the cardamon layer over and return the pan to the fridge to set. Once set, pour the remaining tea mixture over and return the pan to the fridge. Once the last layer is set, cover the whole pan with cling film and return it to the fridge until serving time.

To serve, remove the top clingfilm, place a serving plate upside down over the pan, and carefully, holding the plate and pan together,  flip them over. the terrine should come out nicely on the plate. Remove the plastic film carefully and slice the terrine using a sharp knife dipped in a glass of hot water.