Soft Pretzels

OK, this recipe uses caustic soda. So live dangerously! This is from Michael Ruhlman, a fine food writer, the picture above by his wife Donna. I used regular caustic soda, not even food grade, and it worked fine. If you are afraid to use cs, try a 1:10 solution of sodium bicarbonate, but they won't have the classic pretzel aroma and taste. You can get food-grade sodium hydroxide or cs from a chemist shop. The other interesting part is the 5:3 stanfard bread dough. With this you can make bread, pizza, focaccia (add some olive oil), and so on.

500g of GP flour

300 cc of water

This will give you a basic 5:3 bread dough

3 grams dry yeast, or slightly more if you need a quick rise.

12 grams kosher salt

4 teaspoons of food grade caustic soda dissolved in 750 ml of water

Vegetable oil or spray

Very coarse sea salt (or kosher salt) as needed

Non-reactive bakeware - glass, ceramic or silicone.

Mix the flour, water, yeast and salt until you have a smooth elastic dough. Cover it and let it rise to about double it's volume, 2 to 4 hours depending on how much yeast you've used. Beat it down manfully to release the gas and redistribute the yeast. Divide the dough into roughly 90-gram portions.

Preheat your oven to 210 degrees C.

Roll each portion into a cylinder about 15 long. Cover them with a towel while you prepare the caustic soda and ready some non-reactive baking sheets - don't use metal sheets, caustic soda can do funny things to it. Heat the cs solution in a pan that will allow you to dip your pretzels and retrieve them with a wide, slotted spatula. Coat the baking surfaces with vegetable oil.

After the dough pieces have rested for 10 minutes, roll them out into 30 cm long cylinders. To make the pretzel shape, lift either end, make one complete twist, then fold them over into the traditional pretzel shape. See the picture above. Bear in mind they will double in size.

When the lye solution is hot, just below a simmer, dip each pretzel in the cs solution for 10 to 15 seconds, then remove to your baking pan. Repeat with the others, sprinkle them with salt and bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

Morrocan Preserved Lemons

I will be posting a Morrocan recipe that needs these in about 3 weeks, so make these now (or not), but you will be sooooorry if you don't! For an authentic Moroccan dish there is no alternative to the delicious soft pickled lemon flavor. With a little forward planning have your own pickled lemons. It’s an easy and satisfying job preserving your own. The time consuming part is the wait after preserving them until they can be used.

You will need:

5-6 Lemons - to fit a large clear jar

½ kg coarse salt

1 Cinnamon stick

3 Bay leaves

¼ cup olive oil

Bottled water - to fill the jar

1. Wash the lemons and cut them into quarters from the pointed end up to within 2cm of the stalk end. Gently open them without breaking them apart, remove any visible pips, pack them with salt and then:

2. Put 1 tablespoon salt into the large sterilized clear jar.

3. Put in the lemons and press them down, adding more salt and spices between the layers. Push the lemons down firmly to release some of the juice and to make room for the other lemons. Fill the jar up with spring water, leaving enough space for the olive oil.

4. Cover the top with oil and seal the jar. The oil is to seal and protect the lemons from contact with the air.

5. Leave the lemons in a cool dry and dark place for 4-6 weeks before using.

The lemons don’t need to be refrigerated after opening, but it’s a good idea to put another thin layer of oil on the top to keep the air out. Between the acidity of the lemon juice and all the salt, nothing scary is going to grow in there, so you don’t even have to properly seal the jars, but best to be safe. They can be kept for up to a year.

Thanks to bbcgoodfoods for the picture. my jar looks horrible.

Tres Leches Cake

It is not certain what the origin of this cake is, but it is very popular in Central America and thus also in the large Central American communities in the U.S. Probably one of the most.delicious.desserts.ever. If you are not into baking, the easier way to do this is to buy a large sponge cake and give it the 3-milk treatment. That way, it is quick and easy. Do try this. Add some dark rum to the icing if you are feeling naughty.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

5 eggs

125 ml sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

50 ml milk

1 can evaporated milk

1 can sweetened condensed milk

50 ml heavy cream

500 ml heavy cream, for whipping

3 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Coat 23 cm X 33 cm (9 x 13 inch) pan well with butter

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

Separate the eggs.

Beat the egg yolks with 100 ml sugar on high speed until yolks are pale yellow. Stir in the milk and vanilla essence. Pour the egg yolk mixture over flour mixture and stir very gently until combined.Beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. With mixer on, pour in remaing sugar and beat until egg whites are stiff but not dry. Fold the egg white mixture into the other mixture very gently until just combined. Pour into the prepared pan and even out the surface. Bake it for 35 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Turn the cake out onto a rimmed platter and allow it to cool.

Or, Instead of all the above, buy a large sponge cake, square, if possible.

Combine the condensed milk, evaporated milk, and 50 ml heavy cream in a jug. When the cake is cool, pierce the surface with a fork all over (about 100 times). Slowly drizzle as much as you can of the milk mixture over the cake. Try to get the edges of the cake as well. Allow the cake to absorb the milk mixture for 30 minutes. Whip 500 ml heavy cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar until thick and spreadable.

Spread over the surface of the cake. Decorate the cake with whole or chopped maraschino cherries. Cut into squares and serve.

Prawn Tempura

Here’s another dish which I was sure I had posted a while ago but I don’t seem to have done so. Time to rectify.

I love making this, the prawns are so easy to throw together and yet you get a big "oooh and ahhh" factor when you serve them up.

The key to good tempura is a very light and lacey batter, this is not fish and chips Brit style, but what you want is a thin light coating on the prawns. To best achieve this you should:

• Make the batter up just before using, don’t let it stand around too long. Also don’t whisk it too much, lumpy is okay.

• Use VERY cold water and add a couple of ice cubes as well. The contrast of the very cold batter and very hot oil is explosive and that creates the lacey texture

• The batter mix will be quite runny, and will appear to only very thinly coat the prawns. This is perfect so don’t worry.

• If you want to substitute the cold water for cold beer or cold fizzy water as some recipes suggest please do. Apparently the bubbles also help to make a lighter batter but personally I’ve not been able to tell the difference.

Traditionally tempura is served with a dipping sauce made with something called ‘dashi’ which is a kind of stock made with dried fish flakes and seaweed. I have never been able to find this in Dubai (if any readers have come across it please do share) and so I use a made up sauce below.

This is a recipe for Prawn Tempura but obviously it is exactly the same for vegetable tempura.

You will need:

Lots of prawns, get the fishmonger to de-shell them but leave the tails on.
Lots of oil, at least 800ml. I tend to use peanut oil, but sunflower etc is okay.

For the batter:

1 egg yolk
125g plain flour
3 tbsp cornstarch
A pinch of baking soda
300ml really cold water
Ice cubes


For the dipping sauce

2 tbsp soya sauce
2 tbsp mirin or sherry
1 tbsp ketyap manis (Maestro Alexander explains what that is here )
And then you need to:

Add the dipping sauce ingredients together in a small saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer. Let gently bubble for 5 mins and then pour into a little bowl.

Add the oil to a wok and bring to a high heat. I turn my hob up to 8 (out of 10).

Make up the batter by adding the water (or beer) to the egg yolk and then mixing in the flour, cornstarch and baking soda. Add ice cubes, don’t over work and set to one side.

Wash, then dry the prawns. Dip into the batter, let the excess run off and carefully drop into the very hot oil. Don’t overcrowd the oil, do a couple at a time and don’t stir them around too much. The prawns will cook very quickly, certainly in less than 2 minutes. Remove gently, place on kitchen towel to drain a little and then arrange on a large platter for serving.

And that, as they say, is that!

Cooking Rice

I meet so many people who are intimidated by cooking rice and I frequently see bad advice about it with unnecessarily complex procedures. You know, rinse the rice twice in cold water before letting it stand and dancing around the bowl three times naked before draining it and so on and so on – all laced with dire warnings balanced with reassurances that by following the author’s method, you’ll never cry again.

Here’s how I cook rice. It works for me every time and doesn’t involve more steps than a visit to the Priory. It can’t go wrong.

Sling basmati rice in pan, around 60g per person. Boil kettle. As kettle comes to boil, turn on gas under pan so that when you slosh in the boiling water, it froths and bubbles in the pan as it hits the hot metal. There’s no particularly good reason to do this, I just like the drama of it all. Now half-cover the rice and let it boil for 12 minutes. Don’t let it boil over, otherwise you’ll have to clean up the hob.

Test a grain – go on, be a devil – it should just bite a little bit but not have a chalky core. Now drain it in a sieve (pour off any froth first before you drain it) and put the sieve resting in the pan with the lid on it. Do whatever else you need to do, it’ll wait there for you for a good hour or so quite happily. When you’re ready to serve it, refill the kettle and pour the boiling water all over the rice, tapping it a couple of times to help it drain and loosen up. It will do this quite easily.

Serve. No fuss, no messing, no tears, no drama.

Cucumber Curry Salad

Cucumbers are mostly water, so this should be made shortly before serving, or the cukes will become pulpy and floppy - no crunch. Based on a cooked Srilankan curry, This is a little unusual (to me, anyway), quick and easy. Goes well with fish, or can be served as a non-traditional mezze, Sorry, no picture of the dish. Use your imagination

2 tablespoons crême fraiche or double cream with a little lemon juice added.

2 tablespoons plain thick yogurt

1 teaspoon "curry powder"

1 medium-sized seedless cucumber, peeled if the skin is thick or waxed. If you can't find seedless, cut it in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Slice it thinly.

Salt & pepper.

Toss the cucumbers with a little salt, leave in a bowl for 30 minutes. Rinse and drain.

Mix together the cream, yogurt and curry powder. Toss with the cucumber slices.

Adjust the seasoning. Serve immediately. If you let this stand, the cucumbers will continue to lose water and your salad will become a soggy mess.

Fried Halloumi

Oh, the charm of fresh slabs of creamy, white fried halloumi with those scorched brown lines in it – warm and soft, the slight tang of the raw cheese transformed by its cooking.

Fried halloumi, 'halloum meshwe' in Arabic, is traditionally part of a Levantine mezze. Like much of Levantine cuisine, everyone claims it as their own, but it's thought that halloumi is 'properly' Cypriot. Halloumi dates back to the Byzantine period and that great mix of ideas, thought and culture that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean and traditionally has flecks of mint in it - mint was originally used to store the cheese and keep it fresh.

There’s no great secret to fried halloumi. Slice the cheese, about 1cm thickness or just under (if you slice it too thin, it’ll get messy when you cook it) heat up the grill pan and place the slices on the hot pan. Fry them for a minute or so before turning them over with a spatula, using a swift, confident stroke and uttering a sharp ‘Ha!’ just to let the cheese know who’s boss.

Some people apparently dust the cheese slices with flour. I think this is unnecessary myself.

It’s nice served with drinks as well. It’s also great barbecued and gives everyone something to nibble on while you’re getting all alpha male with the slabs of meat.