VIVA LA FLOGNARDE!

Then I made pesto.

Shallotzachoppin

Then I made hummus.

This is a caption to a photo of pastry baking.

Then I made a roast eggplant, capsicum, feta, pesto and shallot quiche.

VIVA LA QUICHE!

I’m thinking of baking bran muffins.

I also made yoghurt and soda and iced tea and refilled all the water bottles in the fridge. I feel like I’m trying to make up for a massive gambling debt I don’t yet have.

I’m a bit surprised by this sudden burst of energy: nothing incredible happened today, I didn’t have extra coffee, I didn’t accidentally snort cocaine while blowing my nose (true story). But I got home and zing; my cooking superpower unleashed itself like a fat cat bursting through a paper bag. I could reflect on the day to figure out the trigger, and then plan to revisit the potential causes of this buzz, or I could run with it. Run like a toddler’s nose.

For a while after I got diagnosed with Addison’s Disease, I tried to keep a close eye on what variations in my day may have caused fluctuations in energy and enthusiasm, hoping to find the magic formula to secure a flawless day. Porridge + 6 glasses of water + a light walk mid-morning + wine with lunch + a good fart at 3pm + an early night with warm soy milk = ??? Now I just try and roll with it. Some days I’m up and bounding along, and I can really run with that; other days I’m tired and just want to hang back, snapping my fingers and looking cool from the sidelines; other days I’m shit on a cracker and everything sucks. It happens. Rock’n'roll. So today I got a bit of a buzz on the way home from work, felt my eyes clear, my head focus, my toes straighten, and I jumped on that pony and rode it all the way to a busy kitchen. Tomorrow I might be wrecked and stupid. If future-bethini isn’t feeling great tomorrow, she doesn’t need to sweat it: past-bethini’s got her covered.

I love crumpets. M and I have reached a point where we make more things from scratch than we buy ready-made, and now a lot of ready-made stuff has a weird preservative taste, crumpets too. So it’s been yonks since I had those lovely toasty delights full of chambers that fill with melty butter and honey (mmm) or butter and Promite (MMMM) or even – call me crazy, but it totally works – tabasco, tomato and grilled cheese. YES. Ahem. Anyway, haven’t had them in a while; want to find a way of having them without getting the rubbery-chemically ones from the supermarket (also thereby avoiding the necessity of wearing pants on the weekend); cue Pinterest. I found this recipe on Always With Butter and — well, did you click that link? LOOK at those babies! They’re faultless. Enchanté.

Crumpets are essentially a hyper-hydrated, un-kneaded yeast batter: this recipe used 2¾ cups of water to 3 cups of flour, which, if my maths isn’t totally fucked here, is about 163% hydration (also I just realised that when I cooked them, I only used 2½ cups of water, oops-la!). A regular ole bread dough round these parts is about 70%. The high hydration and long resting time both contribute to the gluten development, I gather: when I got around to the dough it was sturdy and stretchy, which is surprising for an un-kneaded dough.

So it’s Saturday morning and I’ve got the batter proofing and I’m boogying around the kitchen, then I realise I have neither egg rings nor cookie cutters, the two implements generally recommended when cooking crumpets. What’s a pantsless wonder to do?

Chop chop

With trusty kitchen scizzahs, the remains of a shipping carton, a stapler and some foil, I fashioned my own.

Crafty is cool! I should know!

M suggested I wouldn’t need rings; that, like pancakes, they would reach a balanced state where the batter’s surface tension would keep them circular and relatively even — I disagreed, citing the hyper-hydrated batter, waving my maths at him and kicking him in the kneecaps.

Homemade Crumpet Ring. (Elevation B)

I was shocked (SHOCKED) at how robust and springy this batter was. I had anticipated something like pancake batter. I began to feel bad for kicking M in the kneecaps, since it was starting to look like he might have been on to something. Compare:

Crumpets in rings, crumpets free-form.

The front one, though blobby, was definitely keeping together. I apologised to M’s kneecaps. You fry the crumpets until they have pretty well cooked through from the bottom up, forcing bubbles of air slowly to the surface, which makes the potholed top. I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of it: my first few were waaaay overcooked on the bottom.

Liberated crumpet!

When it’s pretty well cooked through, from the bottom, flip the crumpet and cook the top, just quickly. I think I may have been a little impatient. Instead of little potholes, mine are all sealed over:

Alas, sealed crumpets! Whither art the potholes we love?

But split them open and voilá!

GASP

Chambers! Chambers ripe for filling!

JAM TIME

Chambers melty with honey!

HONEY TIME

Crumpetty goodness! Huzzah! Split them open and toast them: man, so cool!

A tower of overtoasted crumpetry!

These aren’t perfect. I won’t be updating my LinkedIn account with “Can Make Crumpets” anytime soon. But I am encouraged! I can kinda see how things are supposed to work and I’ve got a feel for what I want to change next. This is the last two, when I was felt like I got the hang of it:

Final near-triumphs

So the next time around:

1. All in rings: free-form works fine, but I like the round ones best.
2. Adjust pan temperature: I think I want them to cook all the way through from the bottom up without burning — not sure if that means a higher or lower heat. I’ll try both. Not at the same time.
3. A little less in each ring: quite a few came out waaaaaay too thick and sponge-ous.

The important thing is that there will be a next time around. These went really well, but I reckon I can do even better.

My Dadini always said “Man cannot live by bread alone: he must have a bit of crumpet.” But I think he was talking about something else.

MORE JAM TIME

When I started writing this list, I decided there were two sub-lists, really: Things I Want To Learn How and One-Offs.

Thus, in 2012, I’d like to learn how to make:

• Raisin bread: full of raisins, dried peel, and spices. For toasting! Raisin toast with fresh figs and blue cheese is one of life’s greatest food things.
• Pain aux raisins: those awesome sultana-riddled snails of croissant pastry.
• Fresh plain pasta: this will be a good one to have. Right now, when I want pasta, I have to sit around whining “I wish I had some pasta right now, boy do I ever” until M takes pity on me and mixes up the dough. And frankly that’s hurting my throat.
• Bread rolls: for lunches! I’ve made bread rolls in the past, but they’re never quite right. Never quite as soft as I’d like them to be. So that’s got to change, DO YOU HEAR ME?
• Wholegrain bread: I love wholegrain bread, crunchy with seeds. Time I flexed those kneading fingers and got some for myself. Anybody else surprised at how many farinaceous challenges I’ve got here?
• Crumpets: like the ones you get in the shops, with bubbled-open tops, but without the weird preservative smell and  rubbery texture. WithbutterandhoneyOHGODYES.
• Polenta: smooth and creamy or baked and firm? Both, I think. I want to get a handle on this stuff. Especially now I’ve read a few blog posts referring to the smooth/creamy variety as a breakfast dish. I can imagine that with cheese and cooked spinach being particularly nourishing; or, better yet, with stewed fruit and toasted nuts. YEAH!
• Eggplant: it may seem slack (not to mention grammatically questionable) to list a single ingredient as something I’d like to learn how to make, but what I mean is that I want to explore eggplants further. Get me my pith helmet and lab coat! My eggplant repertoire is currently moussaka, baba ghanoush and ratatouille, and while all these are delicious, I think I do more.

I’ve also started keeping a list on Pinterest of my to-cook list: when I see a recipe I like the look of, I pin it. Leading me to the following list. In 2012, I want to try making:

1. Quince paste
2. Yoghurt cheesecake
3. Baked felafels
4. Cornbread with chilli and corn kernels
5. Stromboli! (Which I’m fairly sure is traditionally spelled with an exclamation mark and a joyful hand gesture.)
6. Pickled carrots

Whoa, okay, steady on. If I keep this up, I’m going to have an enormous list and no time to make yoghurt. Let’s draw the line there: I can already tell you this is a long, long way from being an exhaustive list of what I’m going to cook this year. But there are some skills to be learned, and adversaries to conquer (you better believe I’m looking at you, crumpets) and cooking wine to be guzzled wept into sipped while laughing delightedly. Game faces, people. 2012 is on.

Big Red Pot

Okay, maybe not more. The wok and the enormous mixing bowl probably are equal contenders. But I love that dern pot. Originally bought for the purposes of making no-knead bread (you heat a big, cast-iron core like this baby in the oven for a while before the bread dough is ready, then sling the dough in and the lid keeps the steam in and you end up with a beautiful crispy crust) (note to self: cook that bread ASAP), there is very little this pot doesn’t do now. Couscous, pasta, soup, rice, curries: it does it all. Stovetop, barbecue, oven, anywhere good times are had. Lately it’s been getting a lot of exercise serving my other big red love at the moment:

Rat-a-tat-red

Ratatouille. Through an odd set of circumstances we needn’t go into right now (although it involved a gnome, some compromising photos and me being in the right place at the right time), I ended up with an abundance of zucchini and eggplants. When life gives you lemons, you make preserved lemons. When life gives you shitloads of the nightshade family, you make ratatouille. My ratatouille recipe is beautifully simple: roughly chop eggplants, zucchini, capsicum and onions and tumble into your big red pot. Add a cup or so of pitted olives if you have them. Then add two tins of tomatoes, and a generous mix of the herbs and spices that fire your big red love. If you’re me, it’s paprika, cumin seeds, white pepper, salt and more paprika; then you go out and snip some thyme, basil, parsley and marjoram from the garden. Quantities are a little vague: chop up enough to stop said herbs going to seed. Mix well, then add more spices and herbs because you’ve just realised how much ratatouille you’ve made. Seriously, one eggplant, one zucchini, one onion and one capsicum doesn’t seem like much until you get chopping, then it pulls some weird loaves-and-fishes shit and BAM you’ve got a big red pot of big red everything.

Mix well — throw in an empty-tomato-tin’s worth of water for good measure — and put the big red lid on your big red pot. Bake it for about two hours or until you have to go do something outside the house and switch the oven on. Once hot, my big red pot will keep on baking for quite some time after the oven is switched off.

I’ve been making truckloads of this stuff. It freezes really well, so an awkward abundance is magically transformed into stockpiled provisions. We’ve used it:

• puréed as a pizza sauce;
• tossed with pasta;
• mixed with black beans and chillies for burrito frijoles;
• tossed into shakshouka;
• as a cold salsa on wraps;
• served with crusty bread as a fantastic meal all by itself.

Seriously, about twenty minutes’ chopping, then ignore it in the oven for two hours, and you’ve got meals for over a week. Awesome. Tonight I came home and M had taken it to the next level of big red glory:

Oh my big red stars...

Layer ratatouille with lasagna sheets and cheesy sauce, then top with cheese and bake for an hour and you have a lush hot lasagna fit for a bethini.

A brief snap before the elusive lasagna disappears into its natural habitat...

Holy crap, so awesome. You wouldn’t believe how lush, flavoursome, cheesy and delicious this was. The noodles cooked to a firm perfection, the provolone savoury and stringy, the ratatouille thick and rich. Big red love.

Oh, while we’re talking about big red loves:

Red red red red red red red

Recycled Red Redux rolls readily on! Nearly up to the waist already.

And so the legend was born. Inspired by Napoleon Dynamite, a friend of the awesome ilk invented the Dang Quesadilla.

Take yourself some tortillas — homemade unless you’re a lazyboneroo, and I’ll get to that in a sec — and spread half with chopped banana and a crumbly sharp cheese. Fold each tortilla over itself and fry or grill until the cheese is hot and melted and the banana hot. Then top with tomato salsa and sliced avocado and tangy yoghurt (if you’re not me, you can go right ahead and have sour cream there: if you’re me, sour cream = puking).

Sweet quesadilla skills

Take a bite. Holy cow, that’s some good quesadilla right there. The sweetness of the bananas mixes with the sharp salty cheese and adds depth to the salsa and avocado. And the textures are an incredible blend: melted cheese, soft banana and avocado, salsa and crunchy tortillas. It’s crazy-happy-good stuff. Seriously delicious. Do it! Do it nooooow! And make me one.

Now, about those tortillas: why aren’t you making your own, dag-blast-it? They’re super easy and a gazillion times better than store-bought, I’m telling you. For two really big tortillas: take a cup of plain flour, a teaspoon or so of baking powder and a generous teaspoon of salt. Add boiling water, a little at a time, working it into a dough. You want it damp enough to keep together, but not so damp that you get bits of dough stuck to you while handling it. Adjust with a kiss more flour if you need to. Knead it on the bench for a wee while, until it feels thick, cohesive and even: the longer you knead it, the more likely you’ll end up with soft, chewy tortillas. Leave it to rest for a bit; maybe ten to twenty minutes. Then divide into two balls and roll them out super-flat and super-thin. (Pro tip: spray a bit of cooking oil on the bench before rolling them out — it makes the super-thin target just a bit easier.) Dry fry, until those distinctive dalmation spots come up: flip and fry the other side. Give your tortillas a second on a plate wrapped in a plastic bag, or wrapped up in a teatowel — they’re a bit stiff when you first get them out of the pan, and the steam will soften them. Aw yeah. The only real disadvantage is that once you start making your own, you discover the store-bought ones smell weird. Seriously.

Make yourself a Dang Quesadilla!

Now, I hear or imagine you asking, what if you’re the sort of poor unfortunate who is sans cherries? Or, as the French say, sans cerises? Say, for example, the cherry season has ended with its usual suddenness. Now making Clafoutis is no longer a clever way of indulging in the abundance of cherries you’ve got cluttering up the fridge, it’s a million-dollar luxury (note: cherries now cost a million dollars). So what do you do, what DO you DO?

Why, those aren't cherries!

Don’t pop your monocle, bro: that up there is the start of a Flognarde. (Current crowd favourite for best word EVAH 2012.) A Flognarde is a Clafoutis made with anything other than cherries.

Delicious close up of non-cherries. And also some cherries.

Word got out among the bird community that the cherries were ripe: I picked a kilo bag, and then five days later went back and only got nine cherries. Nine. Those birds work fast when they want something. So I pitted my nine last cherries and then moved on to the next abundant fruit in my fruitiverse: the plums. Last year was our first summer in the house, and I was delighted, nay, ecstatic, to discover half a dozen plum trees: greengages, red plums, mirabelles (I think), and a mysterious mini-plum. This year I knew where to stand when the plums started to fall. The mirabelles — yellow skin and flesh clingstones — are particularly abundant, so into the bowl they went, chopped and pitted. I sprinkled the lot with sugar and sherry and let it stand while I had lunch, then poured the custard batter over it: 3 eggs, 60g flour, 60g sugar, dash of vanilla essence, teaspoon of baking powder, and ½ cup of soy milk. Mix it all up and pour over the fruit. Sprinkle some chopped toasted almonds over the top and bake for around an hour:

Pronounced: flog-NAARRRRD

And there’s your Flognarde! If you use moo milk instead of soy milk, use more: I used less because soy milk thickens differently and more slowly. The original recipe, from Athena Plichta‘s blog, uses 300ml of moo milk. I found using that much soy milk made it damn near impossible to set — soy milk lacks the slight fat content of moo milk, which contributes to the setting process as it cooks.

Soy or moo: dude, it’s goooood.

Somewhat squished from enthusiasm, but good.

It’s not a Clafoutis, so don’t expect it to taste like one. It’s a Flognarde, baby! It doesn’t have to meet your Clafoutis expectations! It’s busy being fantastic ALL BY ITSELF. I think this would be Flognarde Aux Prunes (Avec Cerises), but now we’re just being fancy. Perhaps too fancy for our own good.

You could do Flognarde with lots of fruits: any kind of berry would be fantastic; tropical fruits like mango might be a little weird; apple might be a little boring but okay. I think this would work really, really well with apricots: oh man, yes, that would be terrific. I’m dribbling a little just thinking about it. (I also dribble when I’m not thinking at all, so it can be hard to tell. Don’t feel bad.)

Need something tasty? Why not FLOGNARDE?

This gets a million thumbs up. Or it will soon: please send your thumbs to Million Thumbs Up Campaign, GPO Box 230000, Spoonfullyville.

A happy corridor of baked-ery

Fucked if I know, but it was fast, easy, and they taste good. Plus I revelled in my independent adulthood and ate the jam straight from the jar. Stand back, bitches.

Jam. It's got what bethini needs.

Whisky whisky whisk whisk

To raise the stakes — to skirt very close to the edge of success without toppling over — I reduced the ratio of soy milk to egg yolk So I used 3 egg yolks, 1/4 cup of white sugar, 3/4 cup soy mlik, and a dash of vanilla essence. Whisky whisky whisk whisk, until it’s well blended and not at all foamy. Don’t foam it! Pour the mix into ramekins, stand them in a baking tray full of water, and bake until set. This took ages, presumably because soy milk, with a lower fat content, doesn’t thicken and set as readily as moo milk. Now, it would be esay to dodge success at this point, by under- or over-cooking the custard. But instead, I pushed the boundary and brought out some perfectly-baked soy custards.

Note the telltale "is it done yet?" holes

Nearly stumbled into success right there. A near thing, I can tell you. Top that sucker with a little cooked fruit — maybe plums? — and serve chilled and before you know it you’re up to your arse in success. Oops. Lucky break. The next step in making crème brûleé is to top the cold cooked custards with brown sugar and grill them. Okay, yes, sure, if you’re a bit fancy-pants you can brûleé the sugar using one of those dinky little propane blowtorches. Colour me sceptical: I think it’s a bit of a stretch to by a blowtorch just to make a dessert I’ve made once in 20-odd years of cooking. So I took the old-fashioned route: cranked the grill up to eleven and popped the cold custard, sprinkled with brown sugar, and grilled the whillikers out of it.

But here’s where I cunningly avoided success: when I say “sprinkled with brown sugar”, I mean “liberally caked with brown sugar”.

A deliciously close call

This helped me dodge true crème brûleé glory by taking too long to caramelise: by the time the sugar had melted all the way through, the custard below had begun to get hot and puffy and the top layer of sugar had *just* started to singe. Yes! Success evaded! Popped it in the freezer for twenty minutes or so to chill, and then shared it with M, who declared it awesome and caramelised. But it doesn’t quite look the way I wanted it.

So, final verdict: Not the picture-perfect crème brûleé I hoped for, but the top was still crunchy and cracked when you tapped it with a spoon. Put it this way, if you showed it to someone on the street, they’d be like “why are you showing me crème brûleé you random? are you demented?” but the key point is that they’drecognise it as crème brûleé. So I guess I passed, but didn’t excel. I’m calling it a silver-medal effort.

There’s still another crème in the fridge, waiting for me to brûleé the crap out of it, so success may snag me yet.

0. Preheat oven to 180°C.

1. Cherries. Traditionally, you leave the pits in: they keep the cherries juicier and impart a slight almond flavour to the mix. They’re also an hilarious challenge to unsuspecting consumers. So I pitted them. Pile your cherries into a baking dish, making sure you at least cover the bottom.

First you do this.

Some recipes suggested soaking the cherries in kirsch, but I decided against doing so for the following two reasons: (1) I have no kirsch; and (2) I have a huge bottle of cooking sherry to use up. So I drizzled the sherry over and left it to soak in while I took care of the rest.

2. Toast some slivered almonds. ‘Nuff said. Didn’t even bother photographing this bit.

and then this happens!

3. Make some batter:

• 3 eggs
• 300mL milk (I used soy milk because we’re running low on moo)
• 60g flour
• 60g sugar
• tsp baking powder
• generous sploosh of vanilla

Whisk all the batter bits together until it’s really smooth, then pour it over your waiting cherries.

3b. (optional) You might, at this point, discover you have more batter than you need: you really want some fruit peeping out the top. So you could bake the remaining batter in another dish, or make it into pancakes, or fling it over a rainbow: but if you’re me, and don’t want to make more washing-up for yourself, you’ll simply top up the dish with all the remaining cherries and pour the entirety of the batter in.

4. Top with toasted almonds and pop in the oven.

Clafoutis goes in...

5. Yay!

Let your clafoutis cool: it’s nice warm, but I don’t know about hot. Plus I was still full from dinner, so I wrapped it up to cool on the bench overnight. Clafoutis for breakfast. Yessir.

Sleep tight, clafoutis! mwah mwah mwah

When you take it out of the oven, it will still be slightly wibbly in the middle: it should deflate and set as it cools. Mine was still a wee bit squidgy when it came time to cut it. Next time, I’ll cook it in a bigger, shallower dish, since I had to nearly double the cooking time for it. I also suspect using soy milk instead of moo milk has an effect: I think the higher fat content of moo milk makes it set better, but I’m only speculating (read: talking out my arse).

And I will definitely, definitely be making this again: how easy is it? Fruit; batter; almonds (optional); cook. Unexpected bonus: if you make it with anything other than cherries, it’s called a flaugnarde which is incredibly fun to say. Try alternating it with “plotz”, as in “this flaugnarde will totally make you plotz” and you will win friends and influence people. Trust me.

I’m craving yoghurt and vegetables and nuts. That seems healthy until you start craving them in epic proportions.

I don't ask, I just listen. More vegetables, demanding tummy?

Today I thought I’d try some cooking. My bad recovering leg can tolerate some weight, and the crutches just piss me off in the kitchen, so I prop them up in a corner and get around by putting weight on the benches and so on.

I know what this stress fracture needs!

I’ll be the first to admit that I do like to overdo things. You’re not having fun unless you’re weeping with exhaustion and self-pity by the clothesline at the end of it, that’s what I always say. Overambition plus cravings for vegetables, raised to the power of self-congratulation after a successful cup of tea equals lunch! I took all the vegetables I could find and started chopping. The veggie cravings were one thing, but while I was slicing garlic and onions, I realised there was another itch to be scratched (damn oxycodone): the return to normalcy.

The surgery I had was really, really minor; so minor that when I tell people about it I avoid saying ‘surgery’ or ‘operation’ and use words like ‘thingo’ or ‘hospital visit’ or ‘mushrooms’ instead. But the longer effects have been rattling my cage a bit. I’ve been worrying about not being able to run, ride and drive, and I’ve been a bit grouchy about having to give up some plans. Getting behind a knife and slicing up some onions is such a normal, familiar thing it immediately reassured me.

All brought together!

It was still a bit too much: I’m pretty stiff and my bad recovering leg is tired and sore now. An easy peasy recipe, but I think I might have been moving around a bit too much. It’s a really simple crustless quiche (or baked frittata, if you like): some cooked potato and cubed broccoli stalks plus sauteéd onions/chilli/garlic/broccoli leaves plus some sliced cheese, all bound together with a few eggs and baked until set and tasty-smelling.

Things I learned about cooking with a dud leg:

• If you get into the habit of putting your hands on the edge of the bench to support your weight, you will eventually try to support your weight using the handle of the wok, extended temptingly over the edge of the bench.
• Your reflexes aren’t as good as you think they are, and even if they were, your leg is still slow.
• There really is no way of moving a hot dish out of the oven if you already need to support yourself with a hand while unencumbered with a big hot bowl.
• Your vast and glorious vision for Cooking All The Things was a delusion fed on fatigue and hospital-strength painkillers. Be realistic and maybe give foodgawker a break for a while.
• You’re probably not ready for kneading bread. No, not brioche either. Put Bertinet down.
• The smell of frying onions and garlic is a panacea, a mood enhancer and an appetite stimulant all in one. The smell of frying chilli is half glorious, half mace. Try to remember that you can’t get away from the fumes as quickly as you normally do. Either forego the chilli or accept a little cheerful weeping, coughing and snorfing over the sink.

So it’s probably a bit early to be cooking anything too ambitious — but here’s the tradeoff to weigh up: does the psychological/emotional benefit I get out of doing familiar, happymaking things erase the cost of the tired, sore leg? I’ll think about that after lunch.