This time I cooked from the much loved, and epic, the cook’s companion by stephanie alexandre, touted as “The complete book of ingredients and recipes for the Australian kitchen”. It’s a great book, it is incredibly thorough and lists far more recipes than I’ll likely ever cook in my entire life. It is aimed at readers who are familiar with cooking, it certainly isn’t a beginners book. Some recipes in this book utilise skills that several years of cooking on top of basic Home Economics, others are more straightforward. They are all tasty, overall I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Chicken and leek pie
Ingredients:
- 1.2kg boned chicken thighs, skin removed
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons plain flour
- 2 large leeks, quartered lengthwise
- 150g unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup freshly chopped parsley
- 2/3 cup milk
- 2 cup cream
- 1 egg
- puff pasty or mashed potatoes
Method:
- Chop each chicken thigh into 12 bite-sized pieces and toss with seasoned flour. Wash leek well and dry in a cloth. Melt half the butter in a large frying pan or enamelled casserole and saute leek for 10 minutes over a moderate heat until well softened. Tip into a bowl.
- Melt half the remaining butter in pan and saute half the chicken pieces until golden and barely cooked. Transfer to bowl with leek. Repeat with remainder of butter and chicken. Toss chicken with leek and add parsley. Return half the mixture to the pan, add half the milk and half the cream and allow to bubble for about 5 minutes.
- Transfer to a clean bowl and repeat with remainder of chicken mixture, cream and milk. Combine both batches and check seasoning. Cool.
- Preheat oven to 200C. Mix egg with a pinch of salt to make eggwash. Pack chicken filling into a large 1.5 litre pie dish and cover with puff pastry or pip on mashed potato to make a crust. Brush with eggwash and bake for 25 – 30 minutes until golden and filling is bubbling around edges.
- Warn diners to wait a few minutes before they tuck in.
Notes on this recipe:
- It’s really really tasty. I had left overs the next day and they were so good. I was sad that it went so quickly.
- This makes a really really big pie. I ended up using a pyrex baking dish because there was far too much chicken mixture for my pie dishes.
Gratin of pumpkin
Ingredients:
- 650g pumpkin, peeled and cubed
- olive oil
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 clove garlic, sliced paper thin
- 1 large sprig rosemary or 8 fresh sage leaves
- 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180C. Toss pumpkin with 2 tablespoons oil, salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary. Tip into a spacious oiled gratin dish and bake for about 45 minutes, stirring pieces around once or twice. Scatter breadcrumbs mixed with a little oil over surface and bake for a further 15 minutes, by which time the crumbs should be golden and the pumpkin beautifully soft.
Notes on this recipe:
- I used pumpkins I had grown last year, as I really needed to use them. Sadly these pumpkins are quite watery, so they don’t have a lot of flavour. This meant that this dish, when I cooked it, was rather boring. Had my pumpkins been less watery, such as a butternut, then this wouldn’t’ve been a problem
- It really is useful to know what size cubes I should be aiming for when I’m cubing something.
- We used pre-packaged breadcrumbs instead of freshly made ones. They turned out nicely.
Michael’s turnip dumplings
Ingredients:
- 1 potato
- 250g turnips
- 1/2 onion, finely chopped
- 50g butter
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 100g fine semolina
- 100g self-raising flour
- white pepper
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 litre chicken stock or lightly salted water
Method:
- Peel potato and turnips, then cut into 4cm cubes. Put potatoes, turnips, onion, butter, salt and sugar into a wide saucepan and barely cover with water. Bring to the boil, uncovered, then cook at a moderate pace, stirring regularly, until the vegetables are tender and liquid has nearly evaporated. Increase heat. The last few minutes are important – the pan will need a shake or two as the last spoonfuls of liquid begin to caramelise around the collapsing vegetables. Tip mixture into a food processor and quickly process until smooth. Transfer to a bowl to cool a little. Whisk in semolina, flour, pepper and eggs. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Bring stock of a boil in a large saucepan, then reduce heat so stock is barely simmering. Dip a tablespoon into the stock, then use the same spoon to take a spoonful of dumpling mixture and drop it into stock.
- Continue with rest of mixture, allowing room for dumplings to swell. As they rise to the surface (5-6 minutes), life them out with a perforated skimmer and drain for a moment over pot. If intended as a garnish for a consomme or creamy soup, transfer at once to hot consomme or soup. Otherwise, tip into a buttered dish and put into a warm oven until ready to serve.
Notes on this recipe:
- The bit with the last bit of liquid caramelising didn’t work for me. I’m not sure why, but it all reduced and smelt amazing, but it didn’t caramelise.
- We added cheese to our dumplings because we thought they looked a bit plain. They are really delicious on their own, and would be really delicious in soup.
- Cooking at a moderate pace is a very odd description for stovetop cooking. I took it to mean not quite a boil, but not as low as a simmer. A better instruction would have been helpful.
- And the bit about using a spoon dipped into the hot liquid before spooning your dumplings (or gnocchi) into the pot is the best instruction ever.
Potato flatbreads
Ingredients:
- 150g potatoes (not waxy varieties), peeled
- 500g unbleached strong flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons instant dried yeast
- 1 cup warm water
- extra-virgin olive oil
- sea salt (optional)
- freshly chopped rosemary leaves (optional)
Method:
- Boil potatoes until tender, then puree using a potato ricer or food mill. Mix flour, salt and potato with youru fingers. Dissolve yeast in a little of the water, then mix with remaining water and 1 tablespoon oil. Make a well in the flour mixture, then tip in yeast mixture and stir in some of the flour. Transfer to bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook and beat until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. (This will take up to 15 minutes of firm kneading by hand). Put dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave in a draught free place to double in size, about 1.1/2 hours.
- Gently knock back dough, then divide into 4 or 8 pieces and roll each piece into a ball. Place on a lightly oiled tray, cover with a clean, dry tea towel and leave to prove in a draught-free place for 10 minutes. Cover tray tightly with plastic film and refrigerate.
- When ready to use, put a heavy baking tray or a baking stone into the oven and preheat to 220C. Lightly knock back each ball of dough on a floured working surface, then stretch the dough by hand or roll out using a rolling pin. If you like, brush with oil and scatter with sea salt and rosemary. Slap shaped dough onto heated baking tray and bake for 5 – 8 minutes, until surface has bubbled and edges are crisp and brown.
Notes on this recipe:
- This makes the most deliciously soft and pliable dough, and delicious soft bread.
- Dipping this into the sauce of the pie was perfect. It beautifully complimented it.
- We mashed the potato by hand instead of using equipment I don’t have.
- Waxy vs non-waxy potatoes. Most supermarkets won’t be helpful in this regard, but if the packaging says that the potatoes are good for mashing, then they’ll be good for this recipe.
Chocolate self-saucing pudding
Ingredients:
- 125g plain flour
- small pinch of salt
- 1/4 cup castor sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 tablespoons Dutch cocoa
- 60g chopped walnuts or 90g bittersweet chocolate chopped (optional)
- 1/2 cup milk
- 40g unsalted butter, melted
- 1 egg
- few drops of pure vanilla
Topping:
- 125g brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons Dutch cocoa
- 1 cup boiling water
- 2 tablespoons espresso coffee
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180C and butter a 1.25 litre pie dish.
- Sift flour, salt, castor sugar, baking powder and cocoa into a bowl, and then stir in nuts or chocolate, if using. Combine milk, melted butter, egg and vanilla and mix into dry ingredients. Pour into pie dish.
- To make the topping, mix brown sugar and cocoa and sprinkle over pudding batter. Pour boiling water and coffee carefully over all ingredients. Bake for 35 – 40 minutes until puffed in centre and firm when pressed lightly with your fingertips. To serve, spoon out pudding and its sauce while hot.
Notes on this recipe:
- I’d check in with the pudding at about 30 minutes, as mine was a bit dry by the end of cooking time.
- It was delicious, and very easy given the melted butter.
- I skipped the coffee, because eugh – but if you like coffee go ahead.
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