Poached salmon with lemon and egg caper sauce

Poached Salmon with lemon and egg caper sauce and freekeh tabbouleh. Photos by Steve Shanahan

First published Canberra Times 27 August 2014.

As the frozen veil slowly lifts from Canberra and we enter thaw mode, its time to ditch the meaty, one pot wonders and embrace lighter acidic flavours. Don’t get me wrong - there is a place for the meaty one-pots, but I need a rest from cheek, shank and hinds for a while …… at least until next week. So I opt for moist and succulent poached salmon.

Recently I’ve been reading up on the cultivation of capers, and I am quite captivated by these feisty little buds that grow wild on hillsides throughout the Middle East, Turkey and parts of Asia. Their pickled acidity and brinyness adds a punch to fish dishes and provides a perfect match to this salmon dish. I prefer the bottled capers in salt, rather than the ones in brine as they can tend to be mushy. These can be found in supermarkets or delis.

As it happens, I’ve been lucky enough to score a bucket of juicy, sweet lemons from my sister and some fresh chook eggs from a good friend. This generosity of produce then prompted a forage to Fishco Fyshwick for wild salmon and a pile of fishheads to make a rich, fish stock. This is a bit of extra effort, but I want the flavours to shine through. 

I prepare the fish stock the day before I need it and leave it to reduce, simmering away on the stove for a few hours to extract maximum flavour. The secret to this stock is the roasting of the fish and vegetables first. The cooking smells coming from the kitchen are absolutely sublime as I am swept away on a nut-buttery seafood drift.  If I’d had any reservations about the input needed to make the fish stock as part of this recipe, they were quickly snuffed out. The sauce in this dish only requires one cup of stock, but the extra will keep for about a month in the freezer or for a few days in the fridge. If time is short, use a good quality, store bought fish stock.

To cut through the richness of the salmon, I added a freekeh tabbouleh salad and follow it up with the French classic tarte au citron, featuring both the fresh lemons and delicious chook eggs.

The following quantities serve 6 people.

Rich Fish Stock

Makes about 8 cups

2 onions

4 celery stalks

4 carrots

2 tbsp unsalted butter

Bones and heads of 3 or 4 fish

6 whole peppercorns

1 bottle of dry white wine

4 each sprigs of parsley and thyme

1 bay leaf

salt

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Coarsely chop the onions, carrots and celery. Melt the butter in a large roasting pan and add the vegetables and fish pieces. Roast for 30 minutes.

Transfer the vegetables and fish pieces to a large stockpot and add three and half litres of water, the wine, peppercorns, herbs, bay leaf and salt to taste. Bring to a boil over a medium heat and then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer for approximately two to three hours. The stock should reduce by half.

Strain the liquid and reserve and discard all of the solids.

Poached Salmon

1 carrot, peeled and sliced

1 stalk of celery, sliced

1 medium onion, peeled and sliced

1 lemon, sliced thinly with skin on

2 bay leaves

6 black peppercorns

2 kilogram piece of centre-cut wild salmon

sprigs of fresh dill and parsley

2 cups of dry white wine

Place carrot, celery, onion, lemon slices, bay leaves and pepper corns into a fish poacher or deep roasting pan large enough to take the fish and vegetables. Rub the salmon with salt and sit on top of the vegetables in the pan. Add the dill, parsley, wine and enough water to just cover the fish.

Place the pan over two hot plates or large burner and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook until the salmon is just opaque and check for doneness to your liking by separating the flakes gently with a knife. This will take about 30 to 35 minutes. Let the salmon rest in the poaching liquid for ten minutes, then transfer to a board and peel off the skin on the underside of the fish and discard. It will come away easily. Also remove any dark flesh if you prefer.

Carefully lift the salmon onto a platter and remove any bones. Serve warm with the egg caper sauce and freekeh tabbouleh.

Egg Caper Sauce

1 ½ tbsp butter

1 ½ tbsp flour

1 cup Rich Fish Stock

½ cup of heavy cream

2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped

2 tbsp salted capers, rinsed

salt and white pepper

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a medium to low heat. Whisk in the flour and cook, stirring constantly to prevent burning. This should take about two minutes.

Gradually whisk in the Rich Fish Stock, then the cream. Bring to a simmer, cook for about one minute, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool. The sauce will thicken a little as it cools.

Stir in the hard-boiled eggs and capers. Season to taste and keep warm over a very low heat until ready to serve over the salmon.

Freekeh Tabbouleh

5 tbsp of freekeh, washed

60g unsalted butter

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 stick of celery, finely chopped

2 pink shallots, finely chopped

½ medium white onion

1 tsp of kosher salt

½ tsp ground allspice

300g of cocktail tomatoes, finely chopped and drained of juice

3 cups of minced flat leaf parsley

½ cup of finely chopped fresh mint leaves

7 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

5 tbsp lemon juice

Place the butter in a medium saucepan and melt over a medium heat. Add the garlic, celery, shallots, stirring to cook for about five minutes. Add the washed and drained freekeh stirring to coat with the butter. Add 230 millilitres of water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer until the freekeh is soft, this should take about ten minutes. Drain the freekeh and vegetables in a colander.

Place the cooked freekeh into a medium sized bowl and add the chopped onion, salt to taste and the allspice. Then add the tomatoes, parsley, mint, oil and lemon juice. Stir to combine and further season to taste. Serve as a side to the poached salmon.

Caneles - Bordelaise beauties

Photo by Steve Shanahan

First published Canberra Times 4 June 2014.

Despite their size, these little pastries are surrounded by much tradition, myth and misconception. This mystery not only relates to their provenance but the mistaken believe that these are difficult to make and great patisserie skills are needed to produce a perfect pastry confection.  Seriously, if you can cook pancakes, you can cook Caneles.

As far as their provenance goes, holding Google up as your reference source, they hail from somewhere in France, particularly around the Bordeaux region.  Although, this information is highly dependent on which page of research you stumble upon. However, if you are wandering around the Bordeaux area of France, you cannot miss the plentiful supply of these cakes sold everywhere.

The other controversy surrounding the Canele, is which cooking receptacle provides the best result. Canele traditionalists, and there is such a group,  claim the little French copper moulds produce perfection, and I would agree with this. If you are going to go to the trouble of sourcing and using the copper Canele moulds, then you would probably go to the extent of coating each mould with organic edible beeswax prior to baking. I agree this sounds a bit extreme, but it is fully traditional and gives the Canele its crispy exterior.

However, the much more economically priced silicone moulds still produce an excellent Canele with the mandatory crispy exterior and molten interior without the need to use beeswax or copper. The Canele moulds are easily purchased on Ebay or Amazon for well under fifteen aussie dollars. The result is a little more rustic, but not discernibly different.

If you plug “Canele” into Google, you will see there is a significant amount of discourse about the difficulties of making these pastries and they are the subject of numerous blogs that wax lyrical about methods and equipment.  I have made these gorgeous little cakes a number of times and haven’t experienced any failures using the silicone moulds and the following recipe.

Caneles are delicious warm or cold and keep for a few days in an airtight container in the fridge. They are usually quickly eaten, but if you have any left, they can be warmed for ten seconds in the microwave oven to freshen up.

They can be eaten warm or cool, and keep for a few days in an airtight container in the fridge. My favourite is warm, where the outside is crispy and the inside is soft and a little molten.

This mixture produces about 20 Caneles and the mixture should be left at least 24 hours in the fridge before baking.  If baking for kids, leave out the rum in the recipe below.

2 cups whole milk

30g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla paste

100g plain flour, sifted

1 tsp sea salt

180g sugar

3 eggs

80 ml good quality rum

Combine the milk, butter and vanilla in a medium saucepan, and bring to a simmer. In the meantime, combine the sifted flour, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl.  Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat gently without incorporating any air. When the milk mixture stars to simmer, remove from the heat and set it aside.

Pour the eggs all at once into the flour, then immediately after, also pour the milk mixture into the flour, stirring until well combined  with a wooden spoon or spatula. Do not whisk as you do not want to incorporate air. Add the rum and stir. Let the mixture cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate for at least twenty-four hours or up to three days. The longer this mixture is left the better the flavour.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to a very hot 250C. Lightly grease the  canele moulds with melted butter. Remove the batter from the fridge and stir to incorporate the liquids that may have separated. Do not whisk.

If using a silicon mould, place the mould onto an oven tray for ease of handling. Fill each mould almost to the top with the batter and put into the oven to bake for twenty minutes. After twenty minutes, reduce the temperature to 200C and place a piece of silicon baking paper on top of the Caneles to stop them from burning.  Bake for a further twenty minutes. The tops of the Caneles should be a dark golden colour.

Remove from the oven and leave for about fifteen minutes before unmoulding the Caneles onto a cooling rack. They should drop out easily from their moulds and as they cool further, and will collapse only very slightly.

Eclairs

 Photos by Steve Shanahan

 First published Canberra Times 5 June 2013.

The original classic eclair has outlasted many boutique food trends. Yet, this unassuming pastry has never shoed it in to first place, playing second fiddle to the more sexy macaron, friand or tartelette.  That is, until now.  With eclairs sporting their luminous fondant coats and bold flavoured fillings they are enjoying the front row window of many boutique patisseries in Paris.

Fauchon, the Parisian specialty food store located at place de la Madeleine, parades eclairs as a changing and whimsical background to display their creations. Don’t be surprised to see the doleful eyes of Mona Lisa following you from her sweet pastry canvas.

Another couple of notable Paris patisseries, L’Éclair de Génie and L’Atelier de l’Éclair have both added savoury eclairs to their repertoire. If you plan to partake, be prepared to wait your turn for the privilege, as the locals have taken a liking to these and there is a regular line up of hungry customers on any given day.

The traditional eclair, and incidentally my favourite from my 1960s school tuckshop, is a simple affair. The case is made with choux pastry dough, piped from a pastry bag in a log shape, and baked until it is crisp and hollow inside. It is either filled by piping the filling in or split lengthwise and filled. The classic filling is a vanilla pastry cream and usually topped with a chocolate or coffee glaze or icing.

If you want to be adventurous, I have included some creative fillings for you to begin with. My choices were, cumquat, lime, strawberry and chocolate. I have also included the basic and traditional pastry cream filling, to add your fruit flavourings to. And just a warning before you start, if you plan to get creative, make sure you give yourself time to play.

For best flavour, allow the finished eclairs to be chilled for an hour or so before serving.

Tips

• Although not traditional, this method of using an electric mixer to incorporate the eggs into the dough saves a lot of effort and produces great results.

• If you are going to get creative and make the fruit pastes and coloured icing, there are a number of steps in the process. Prepare the fruit paste and chocolate ganache first, then secondly the pastry cream, thirdly, the choux pastry and lastly the coloured fondant icing.

• Use a large size pastry bag with a size 13, or a 1.5 centimetre piping nozzle to pipe the pastry.

• The consistency of the classic French pastry cream should be very thick and pudding like.

Recipe makes about a dozen eclairs.

Fruit pastes

You can use whatever fruit you like to extract maximum flavour. I used 6 cumquats, halved; 3 limes, 2 juiced and one chopped up; 1 punnet of strawberries, sliced.

4 tablespoons of sugar to each saucepan of fruit

Add water as needed

Using 3 small saucepans, place fruit and 4 tablespoons of sugar in each.

Add at least 3 tablespoons of water to the cumquats and the limes. The strawberries will need less water as they will produce more juice.

Place each pan on a medium heat with lid on.

Bring to a boil and reduce heat, lifting the lid to stir to ensure the mixture does not burn. Add the water as needed to loosen the mixture. Cook the fruit down until you have a jammy sauce. This will only take three to five minutes.

When cooked, push each paste through a fine sieve to extract a silky fruit gel. This should only produce a small quantity of fruit paste, however it should be enough to flavour the pastry cream. Discard the solids from the sieve.

Cool the individual pastes in the fridge.

Chocolate ganache

125g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

25g butter

125g pure cream

Place the chocolate and butter into a medium sized heatproof bowl.  Heat the cream in a small saucepan and bring to a rolling boil. Pour the scalded cream over the chocolate pieces. Stirring until the chocolate is melted and the cream is incorporated. Cool in the fridge.

Vanilla Pastry Cream

2 cups whole milk

6 jumbo egg yolks

½ cup sugar

1 ½ tsp vanilla paste

1/3 cup cornflour

50g unsalted butter, chopped into small pieces

In a small saucepan bring the milk to a boil. In another saucepan of medium size, whisk the yolks with the sugar and cornflour until thick and well blended.

Without stopping, whisk a third of a cup of the milk into the egg mixture, to loosen the mixture, then still whisking add the remaining milk in a thin and steady stream. Put the pan over a medium heat and with a wooden spoon, stir continuously and vigorously. You will need to make sure you stir into all the edges of the saucepan to stop the thickening custard mixture from sticking. While still stirring, bring the mixture to a boil, still stirring for about one to two minutes. The mixture should be thickened and pudding like. Remove the pan from the heat.

Stir in the vanilla paste and let stand for a few minutes, then stir in the butter, a piece at the time. This will make the pastry cream silky.

Scrape the pastry cream into a bowl and press a piece of plastic wrap directly on top. This will stop a skin from forming and create an airtight seal. Then place another piece of plastic wrap around the top to seal the bowl. Refrigerate to cool.

To flavour the vanilla pastry cream, when cool, divide the pastry cream into smaller portioned bowls and add some of the cooled fruit paste or chocolate ganache to each portion of the pastry cream. Tasting to ensure you have enough to flavour the pastry cream. A rule of thumb is not to incorporate any more than half the ratio of fruit paste to vanilla pastry cream, to ensure the pastry cream remains stable.

Choux pastry

½ cup whole milk

½ cup water

120g unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 tbsp sugar

½ tsp salt

1 cup plain flour

4 jumbo eggs, at room temperature

Place oven racks evenly positioned in the oven. Preheat the oven to 190C and line two baking trays with baking paper. Stick the paper down with a little cooking spray to hold it in place.

Bring the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt to a rolling boil in a medium sized heavy based saucepan over a high heat. Add the flour all in one go, and lower the heat to medium. Start to mix the flour in immediately with a wooden spoon. The dough will come together, and a light crust will form on the bottom of the saucepan. This stage is meant to dry out the pastry. Continue to stir the pastry even though it will be stiff, for another two minutes. The dough should be smooth and pull away from the sides of the saucepan.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and turn the dough into the bowl of an electric mixer with a paddle attachment. Alternatively, if you don’t have a mixer, you can continue the next stage while the pastry remains in the saucepan off the heat. Let the dough sit for a minute to rest, then add the eggs one at the time, mixing between each addition. Beat until the dough is thick and shiny. Make sure that each egg is completely incorporated before you add the next. The dough will fall apart and come together during this process. The dough should be glossy and smooth and ready to use immediately.

Fit a large pastry bag with a size 13 or 1.5 centimetre nozzle. Fill the pastry bag with the dough and pipe out even strips of dough that are about 13 centimetres (5”) in length, and about 4 centimetres apart. This will allow them to spread.  When piping the dough, cut the ends with a sharp knife to keep them even and smooth.

Bake the eclairs for about eight to ten minutes, then rotate the trays for even cooking. Check them for browning. Continue to bake the eclairs for another five minutes (or so), then wedge the handle of a wooden spoon in the oven door so it stays slightly open and bake for another three to five minutes. The total baking time is about fifteen minutes.

Remove the eclairs from the tray to an oven rack to cool.

Fondant

1 box of ready to roll fondant icing, Orchard brand is readily available at most supermarkets

food colouring

decoration

This stage will be the very last before assembly. Place the fondant in a saucepan for stove top heating, or a microwave proof jug for microwave heating, on low heat, only enough to melt just below blood temperature.

Once melted, separate into smaller portions to equal the number of different icing colours you plan to use. I chose, green, orange and pink. Mix in a few drops of food colouring to each portion, adding more to increase the colour intensity required.

The icing should be a runny consistency without being too liquid causing it to run off the top. You may need to reheat the fondant slightly to keep it at the required consistency.

Assembly

You can either cut the eclairs in half lengthwise with a bread knife, and using a small pastry bag and small nozzle, pipe on some of the flavoured pastry cream. Alternatively you can leave the eclairs whole and make a small hole with the nozzle tip in the base of the eclair and pipe the cream directly into the eclair until it is full.  The latter is my preference.

You will need to use a different pastry bag for each flavoured pastry cream.

Once you have filled the eclairs with your choice of fillings, you will need to top with the matching icing fondant.

Hold the eclair at a ninety-degree angle up over the icing and spoon the icing from the top to allow it to run down the éclair to the other end, letting the excess drop back into the bowl. The icing should settle around the top nicely without dripping off. Continue with the remaining eclairs, finishing one colour up at the time.

For the chocolate ganache eclairs, fill these with a half vanilla pastry cream, half ganache mixture. Top with the softened ganache using the same method as the fondant.

Finish off each éclair with your choice of decoration.

If you were to only make the traditional eclair, fill with the basic vanilla pastry cream, no added flavourings, and finish with the chocolate ganache for the topping.

Crunchy French toast, yoghurt and rhubarb

 Photo by  Steve Shanahan

First published Canberra Times 8 May 2013

If you’re a Mothers day breakfast-in-bed kind of family, then you could be on a winner with Mum with this easy recipe for French Toast. With some clever backstage supervision, the kids should be able to whip this one up with collateral damage such as crumbs in the sheets kept to a minimum.

While writing this, my thoughts turn to my poor Mum who, with admirable stoicism, endured a number of well meant, but horrendous breakfasts on Mothers Day.  My sisters and I, after preparing that special breakfast without Dad’s help, delivered the teetering tray to a smiling Mum, who was sitting up in bed ready and waiting. The breakfast consisted of a large bowl of cold milk, a sparse layer of rice bubbles floating indolently on the top, and lots of sugar laying in wait for the unsuspecting at the bottom. As my older sister handed the tray over, she tripped and Mum ended up with rice bubbles stuck to her eyelashes and swimming in sweet sticky milk.   

Forever scarred, I can no longer look at rice bubbles in the same way, nor any other liquid based breakfast in bed, with the mandatory, steaming hot, early morning cuppa being the total exception. My firmly held view is breakfast in bed should be toasty, fruity, not too sweet, crumbly or drippy. With this rule in mind, this crispy French Toast will work a treat for Mum; it’s low risk and with a little preparation and organisation you can have this cooked, on the brekky tray and on Mum’s lap (with the plate still under it), all within fifteen minutes.

The point of difference in this recipe is the addition of flour to the egg mixture. This increases the crispiness factor, which is perfect if you are using slices of a good sourdough or brioche loaf, as it allows the flavour of the bread to shine through.  Using day old bread also means the French toast is less likely to fall apart after soaking in the egg mixture.

I am partial to the topping of roasted rhubarb, as it’s still quite tart, without the sugar overload that’s best avoided at breakfast. Roast the rhubarb the day or evening before and leave in the fridge overnight to use the following morning. 

The leftover rhubarb can be kept in the fridge for a week and used to top porridge, muesli, ice cream or just about anything really. Top the whole dish off with a big dollop of creamy Greek yoghurt, and even some good honey to taste if you wish.

Finally, a Mums Day tip for kids and Dads; the breakfast in bed experience doesn’t finish with the breakfast on the tray. Think ahead and clean up the dirty dishes as you go. Mum will be pleasantly surprised to see that not only have you served up a delicious, gourmet brekky, but you’ve managed to leave a tidy kitchen as well.

Mum, after all that, if you still aren’t a fan of brekky in bed, well, you could always drop some heavy hints for next year. A beauty treatment or massage voucher sans crumbs, sounds awfully good to me.

Crunchy French toast

¼ cup plain flour

1 cup milk

pinch of salt

 3 eggs

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla paste

1 tbsp sugar

6 thick slices of good quality day old bread such as sourdough or brioche

Measure the flour into a wide topped and shallow mixing bowl. Slowly whisk in the milk. Whisk in the salt, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla paste and sugar until smooth.

Heat a lightly buttered frying pan over medium heat.

Soak bread slices one by one in the egg mixture until saturated. Cook bread on each side until nicely golden brown.

If you want to keep the French toast warm while you are cooking the remainder of the slices, heat the oven on very low, and place the cooked French toast in the oven on an oven tray to keep warm.

When all the slices have been cooked, serve each slice with a large spoon of roasted rhubarb and a big dollop of creamy yoghurt.

If you wish, top with a drizzle of good quality honey.

 

Roasted rhubarb

2 cups of chopped rhubarb stalks, or 1 bunch of chopped stalks

¼ cup of honey

2 tbsp fresh orange juice

1 tsp orange zest

Preheat the oven to 180C and lightly grease a shallow baking dish.  Place the chopped rhubarb in the dish.

In a small jug, whisk together the honey, orange juice and orange zest. Pour the honey mixture over the rhubarb and mix until well coated.

Place the rhubarb into the preheated oven and bake until soft and tender, about fifteen to twenty minutes. When it is cooled to room temperature, place the rhubarb in the fridge until ready to use.

Scotch Eggs

Photo by Steve Shanahan

First published Canberra Times, 13 February 2013

Always looking for innovative picnic food, I came across an old recipe of mine for scotch eggs. These retro globes seem to have vanished off the face of the earth as a popular food and were all the rage when I was a kid, along with Tupperware and Globite school bags.

The likely fall from favour of the scotch egg was probably that they were deep fried. This recipe is baked in the oven, with the additional kick of a few extra herbs and spices.

The other reason to drag my recipe into the twenty first century was because a friends’ ravenous teenage boy came to stay with us and he tried a scotch egg for the first time. The double protein hit of meat and egg provided perfect finger food fodder for his school lunch box.

For this demographic, if you really want to hit the spot, split a bread roll in half, remove some of the bread from the middle of each half and nestle the scotch egg inside the roll. Add a good squirt of sauce and you have enough protein and carbs to keep the wolf from the door for a teenage boy’s school lunch or his after school fridge raid.

Serves 4

5 large free range organic eggs

½ cup flour

sea salt and ground black pepper

100g Krummies crumbs or dried breadcrumbs

400g best quality sausages

1 rasher of finely chopped bacon

1 tsp chopped thyme

1tbsp finely chopped parsley

good pinch of nutmeg

pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line a tray with baking paper.

Place 4 eggs into a large saucepan of cold, salted water. Bring to the boil, then immediately reduce it to a simmer and cook the eggs for 8 minutes.

Drain the saucepan and run the eggs under cold water from the tap, then peel them and set aside. You can do this step ahead of time and leave the eggs in the fridge, unpeeled till you are ready.

Meanwhile, place the flour in a shallow bowl or plate and season with salt and pepper. Break the remaining egg into a second bowl and beat lightly. Place the breadcrumbs in a third bowl and line up all the bowls in a row, starting  with the flour bowl, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs bowl.

Squeeze the sausage meat out of their casings into a bowl and discard the sausage casings. To the sausage meat, add the bacon, thyme, parsley, nutmeg and cayenne pepper, mixing with your hands until evenly combined.

To assemble the eggs, flour your hands, then scoop out a large ball of sausage meat and flatten it into an oval shape in your hand. Wrap the sausage meat around the egg, pinching it together at the seam, smoothing the meat around the eggs, making sure there are no gaps where the egg is peeking through.

Dredge the sausage-covered egg in the flour, tapping off any excess. Set the wrapped egg on the lined baking tray, repeating the process with the remaining eggs.

Once all the eggs are wrapped in their sausage blankets and floured, dip each one in the beaten egg, making sure it all gets coated, then roll it in the breadcrumbs, ensuring it’s fully covered in crumbs, pressing gently. Place the finished egg back on the lined baking tray, then repeat with the remaining eggs.

Place the eggs in the oven and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are crispy and the sausage is cooked through. The surface of the scotch eggs should be crazed, cracked and crunchy.

Scotch eggs can be eaten warm, cold or at room temperature and make perfect lunch box or picnic food. Store in the fridge for up to three days.