French Onion Soup

After my last unhealthy cooking recipe, here's one to balance the cosmic scales, French Onions Soup. I mean, Onions are a member of the same family as garlic, and garlic is brimful of goodness. And it keeps vampires away too.

Once again I've delved into Lloyd Grossman's The 125 Best Recipes Ever this time a contribution from Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd's cookery book Plats Du Jour.

Ingredients

About 50g/2oz butter or beef dripping

450g/1lb sliced Spanish Onions

1 small Bay Leaf

1 clove

Salt, Pepper and Brown Sugar

2 Pints of Beef Stock (I tend to use shop bought boullion for convenience)

Some dried slices of Bread

Grated cheese (if possible Gruyere)

Preparation

Melt most of the butter with a little oil in a pan and fry gently until golden

Add the bay leaf, salt pepper and brown sugar then crumble in the knob of the clove.

Heat the Beef Stock and add it to the onions. Simmer for at least half an hour and enjoy the oniony smell wafting through your house.

About 10 minutes before you plan to eat, fry the dry bread slices in another pan. When golden sprinkle the grated cheese on top and put in the bottom of your soup bowls. Pour in the soup and serve more grated chees on the side (there goes the healthy part of the dish). Alternatively, float your bread bits on the soup while still in the pan, sprinkle on the cheese and let it bubble. The heat will slowly melt the cheese. When it has melted, remove carefully to your bowls and again ladle over the soup.

The steriotypical frenchman, as seen on Alo Alo, is normally portrayed with a string of onions around there neck. Having eaten this soup I can understand why.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Arguably two of the finest contributions to the art of the sweet snack from America are the Cookie and the Brownie. The best brownie recipe I've come across is in a Sue Lawrence cookbook and I'll blog that later. The finest chocolate chip cookie recipe I've come across is in Lloyd Grossman's The 125 Best Recipes Ever, which in turn is taken from The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook by, surprisingly enough, Wolfgang Puck.

Ingredients

100g (4oz) Unsalted Butter

75g/3 oz Sugar

75g/3 oz Brown Sugar

1 tsp good quality Vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

275g/100 oz Plain Flour sifted

1/4 tsp baking soda disolved in 2 tsp of warm water

100g/4 oz Chopped Nuts - Optional - being a purist I tend to leave out the nuts.

175g/6oz Chocolate chips - I think if you leave out the nuts you are honour bound to increase this to 200g. Better still buy 200g of good quality chocolate and chop it into largeish chunks.

Use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocoalte or a mixture.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4.

First off bring the butter to room temperature in a mixing bowl. Then cream it with a mixture until light. With the mixer on a low setting slowly add the sugars, vanilla, salt, egg, flour and disolved baking soda. Mix until just blended. Stir in the chocolate and, if used, the nuts.

If the dough is too soft put it in the fridge till it stiffens a bit (something I've never needed to do).

Divide the dough up into equally sized portions. The original recipe says that the above quantities make about 36 cookies, but being a big cookie fan I tend to make between 9 and 12.

Form the portions into balls with your hands and place on a baking sheet leaving roughly 2 inches between each (the cookies grow considerably during cooking so need th space).

Bake in the oven for 15 to 17 minutes. Let them cool in the pan then transfer to a rack. The optimum time for eating is 15 minutes after they came out of the oven when they are still a little warm. Lacking preservatives the cookies wont last more than a couple of days, but hey I don't think that's going to be a problem, you'll be lucky if they last longer than a couple of minutes. Store in an airtight container.

Freshly baked Puck cookies a warm September evening with a glass of cold milk. Mmmm could be a midsummer nights dream....

Itihaas Birmingham

Itihaas won the award for Best Restaurant in the Midlands and the top award of Best in the UK in the 2007 Good Curry Guide. The visit of the Red Dwarf and family to the UK was therefore a good excuse to give it a try. Dosas, Indian Lamb Chops and Carrot Cake were all excellent as was the smoked aubergine veggy option.

Service was a little slow but the Indian music piped through the sound system was very good for once.

Curry Fever Leicester

Another visit to Leicester, another trip to Curry Fever.

As usual the Fever's signature dishes of Jeera Chicken, Pili Pili Chicken Masala and Kenyan chicken waranted their normal 11 out of 10 ratings on the taste front. Unfortunately though the Flute Cafe is now sourced from a dfferent supplier in Italy and is now a pale shadow of its former glory. Still an excellent meal though, in the best Indian restaurant in Leicester and one of the finest in the Midlands.

Roast Chicken

There is nothing better in the world of food than a simple dish cooked simply with the best quality ingredients. A good Carbonarra made with the best Pancetta and free range eggs. or a homely roast chicken. Last night I got a craving for roast chicken and so turned to Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham's excellent cookery book Roast Chicken and Other Stories. The title dish of this book is of the best ways of roasting a chicken I've come across. Simple to cook, but tasty in the extreme

Ingredients

1.8kg (4lb) free range chicken
110g/4oz butter at room temperature
Salt (preferably Maldon Sea Salt) & Freshly Ground Black Pepper
1 lemon
A couple of sprigs of thyme, tarrogon or a mixture of the two
1 crushed clove of Garlic

Cooking

• Preheat the oven to 230 degrees C (450 F, Gas Mark 8)

• Cover the bird with butter and put it in a genrous sized roasting tin

• Season with the salt and pepper

• Halve the lemon and squeeze  juice over the bird

• Stuff the bird with the herbs, garlic and lemon halves

• Roast the chicken initially for 15 minutes at the high temperature

• Baste then reduce the temperature to 190 degress C (375 F, Gas Mark 5) and roast for about another 45 minutes, basting occaisionally. N.B. To ensure that the bird is cooked, insert a skewer or knife and press on the flesh. If the juices released are clear it is cooked, if they are red or pinkish in colour then continue cooking.

• Rest the roast bird for at least 15 minutes prior to carving to let the juices settle.

As it cooks your house will slowly fill with the fragrence of lemon and herbs which should get the mouth watering. The juices left in the pan, infused with the taste of lemon, garlic and the herbs, will make an excellent gravy for your bird. A variation popular in Italy is to 'wet roast' the bird by adding a little wine, chicken stock or water to the tin before roasting. This sauce can be further suplemented with the adition of mushrooms (porcini would be great), tomatoes, additional herbs, diced bacon, cream, spices  (both saffron and ginger go well) or anything else you can think of.

If Sherlock Holmes was asked by his sidekick, why this dish tastes so good, he'd probably say "A lemon entry my dear Watson".

Teriyaki Sauce

Teriyaki no Tare

Teriyak is the name of a grilling technique. Teri means glossy and yaki translates to grilling. The original version of teriyake no tare yaki no tare (teriyaki basting sauce) contained only shoyu (soy sauce), mirin (sweet cooking wine) and sometimes sugar.

Why use the sickly substance that passes for teriyaki sauce on supermarket shelves, when it is so easy to make the real McCoy yourself.

To make it you will need: -

Ingredients
200ml (1 cup) Mirin (sweet cooking wine)
100ml (1/2 cup) Shoyu (Soy Sauce)
1 1/2 - 2 tbsp Caster Sugar

Preperation

• Add the mirin to a pan and heat over a low heat for 1-2 minutes.

• Add the soy and sugar and simmer for another couple of minutes.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Variations

For variation you can add other seasoning to your sauce. Honey, grated ginger, grated garlic , chopped scallions, fruit juice, fresh or dried chilli or chilli bean sauce (toban jiang). Experiment to make your own signature teriyaki sauces.

Here's another varient that also includes sake (rice wine).

Ingredients

100ml (1/2 cup) Mirin (sweet cooking wine)
50ml (1/4 cup) Sake (Rice Wine)
50ml (1/4 cup) Shoyu (Soy Sauce)
2 tbsp Sugar

Preparation

• Heat the Mirin & Sake in a small saucepan over a medium heat for 5 minutes.

• Add the Shoyu & Sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

• Simmer over a low heat for 25 minutes.

• Let the sauce cool.It can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.

So go ahead and make your teriyake. And remember, the baste is yet to come.

Japanese Store Cupboard

The following is a list of basic Japanese cooking ingredients that you should have in your store cupboard if you intend to any Japanese Cooking. If you don't have a local Japanese foodstore (highly likely in the UK unless you live in London) you can obtain some from Asia shops. Failing that see the list of websites at the end of this post.




Fish Sauce (nam pla) - Nam Pla is a condiment made from fermented fish.

Hoisin Sauce - Also known as Chinese Barbeque Sauce this is made from fermented soybeans, garlic, vinegar, and chilli peppers.


Mirin - Mirin is a kind of rice wine similar to sake, but with less alcohol. It has a slightly sweet taste.


Miso - Miso is made by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, with salt and the mold kojikin (usually miso is made with soy). It is generally a thick paste and when combined with Dashi stock forms the basis of Miso Soup.



There are many different varieties of miso, ranging in flavour from salty, sweet, earthy, fruity, and savoury. Common varieties include: -

• Red (akamiso)
• White (shiromiso)
• Medium (awase miso)
• Sweet (saikyo miso)
  

Rice Vinegar - Rice vinegar is made from fermented rice or rice wine. Other than in Japan it is also made in China and Korea.

Sake - Sake is a Japanese rice wine

Soy Sauce - Soya sauce is a fermented sauce made from soya beans, roasted grain, water and salt. Two varieties are normally sold, light and the stronger dark. With the Chinese varieties the light is often called Superior Soy and the dark Soy Superior.

Shichimi - Shichimi, a.k.a. Seven-Spice Powder, a Japanese spice mixture made of a magnificent seven (or is that seven samurai?) ingredients.

• round red chili pepper
• Mandarin orange peel
• Sesame Seed
• Poppy Seed
• Hemp Seed
• Nori or Aonori
• Ground Sansho (related to Sichuan pepper)

Shichimi is also known as nanami togarashi outside of Japan.

Tamari - Tamari is, like soy sauce, a dark sauce made from the soybean, but is thicker. It has a mild flavor and is normally used as a table condiment, as a dip, or for basting.

Wasabi - Wasabi is a, blow your head off, condiment made from Horse Radish. Use sparingly with caution.