måndag 7 januari 2013

Pork loin à l'orange

This recipe has no story at all. Just found something very similar on the internet and modified it (as usual) to fit my taste buds and my limited available time. Just to give some anecdote anyway, I can tell you that not everything went as expected when working towards this course... The meat had originally to cook for about 4 hours in the oven at 100 degrees. I actually came home less than 4 hours before the dinner and found this recipe. Wanted to go shopping in a hurry when I realized the kind of time pressure I had. But got stuck in front of the internet instead. Took myself out somewhat 2,5 hours before dinner had to be ready (-1,5 hours behind budget), went to the shop and did not find the necessary piece of meat. Went to the next shop, which luckily had it, otherwise I would have had to add 30 minutes to get the next potential place that could have had it in. In a hurry I found it, paid and got home. Just to find out I left the meat and the spices at the cashier. Calling the shop, I found out they found the spices, but someone had stolen my piece of meat. So I had to go back and buy a new one. By the time I was home, I hardly had 1 hour before the dinner. And nothing prepared. So 200 degrees it was and a cooking time of one hour made it. Maybe somewhat drier but who cares. Nobody had to starve at the end anyway.


Ingredients
800 g pork loin (in one piece, with some fat coating)
1,5 teaspoon grill spice
1 pressed garlic (solo)
1 teaspoon ginger powder
1 orange
0,5 teaspoon cinnamon (you can leave it out. Gives somewhat a special taste you might not want)
Grounded white pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil

2dl whole milk
2dl cream (38-40% fat)
1 tablespoon corn starch
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1,5 tablespoon orange liqueur (e.g. Cointreau or Grand Marnier)

Instructions
Mix the grill spice, pressed garlic, grated zest of the orange and if you want the cinnamon into a paste. Rub it in on the pork loin as evenly as possible and place it in a oven-safe dish. Sprinkle the olive oil over the meat.
Place it in the oven. Ideal temperature seemed to be 100 degrees but 4 hours were required. With 200 degrees less then one hour will do. Temperature should be under 80 degrees Celsius when you take out the steak from the oven. Whatever temperature you decide you go for in between, keep the meat under 80 degrees. The lower the temperature, the more tender the meat will get, but the longer the baking time will be.

When it is done, take it out of the oven and let the meat rest during the time you are cooking the sauce.

Take 1,5 deciliters from the juices that came out of the meat. Cook it with the juice of the orange until the quantity is reduced to half.

Mix the corn starch with 1dl cold milk. Mix it in the juice. Add the remaining milk, the cream and the soy. Add the orange liqueur and cook at a high temperature until the alcohol has vaporised. Make sure you keep stirring the sauce with a manual beater just to make sure the sauce won't stick. If you have a pot with antiadherent coating, it will be much easier to keep the sauce from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Slice the meat thinly and put it on a serving plate.

Serve with baked broccoli or sweet potato chips or whatever comes to mind.

tisdag 1 januari 2013

Chocolate gelatine cheese cake

This recipe was published by a very old pen pal of mine (not referring to her age but rather to the amount of years we have known each other, of course!) from Finland. She is genius when it comes to anything that has to do with foods and baking! And I got to steal it with pride.

I actually made this recipe in a modified form for New Year's Eve dinner to celebrate the new 2013 year coming together with friends. That explains the decoration I guess... :O)


Ingredients
Cookie bottom
15 Oreo cookies
50g unsalted butter

White chocolate filling
200g white chocolate (probably better with 250g or even more)
200g Philadelphia cheese
4 sheets gelatine (I would try to reduce it to maybe 3,5 or even less next time)
300g whipped cream

Dark chocolate filling
200g milk chocolate (probably better with 250g or even more)
200g Philadelphia cheese
4 sheets gelatine (I would try to reduce it to maybe 3,5 or even less next time)
300g whipped cream
According to the original recipe also add a bag of Fazer Marianne crushed bonbons. They seem to be some mint chocolate bonbon of some kind. Me not liking mint chocolate and not having a clue of where to get those, I actually left that detail out.
(or actually leave this out or reduce this to a half amount)


Instructions
Put the sheets of gelatine in cold water to soften up.

Mix the Oreo cookies with the melted butter until fully blended. Put it in a spring form. If you want your life to be easier, cover the bottom of the form with plastic film. Put the form in the fridge until you do the rest of the cake.

Whip the cream.
 
Melt the white chocolate. Mix in the Philadelphia cheese. Add the gelatine to to mixture. Add half of the whipped cream. Start by putting in it some heaped spoon of it and mix it well to give the basic mixture some "air" and the add the rest mixing from bottom down not to loose the air from the cream.

Put the white chocolate mixture into the form and put the form back in the fridge to cool down and get somewhat more stable before adding the next mixture.

Melt the milk chocolate. Mix in the Philadelphia cheese. Add the gelatine to the mixture. Add the other half of the whipped cream as for the previous mixture. If you have those, also add the crushed Marianne bonbons.

After removing the spring form 31/12-2012
Add in the form and put it in the fridge.

If you want a clear cut, it is recommended to put the cake in the freezer for some time or at least prepare the cake the day before serving otherwise it will not be "hard enough" to guarantee a reasonable look.
If you remove it from the refrigerator, it is a good idea to actually warm up the sides of the cake with your hands before removing them. It makes your life much easier!

Decorate as you desire. My friend did a wonderful decoration with not sure what with Santa and Christmas tree. I obviously kept it simple due to my limited craftmanship and only used some melted white chocolate to write something and to sprinke out some white decoration. In order to make it easier on myself I actually used a sharp knife to write the words on the cake and then when over them with the white chocolate later. Then I did not have to think how to write with hot chocolate, which in my opinion is not that easy (unless you are Montersino, as the guy can do anything....).


To be modified until next time
The cake was good, but I personally felt it was very very very much to melt down after a full dinner. So I probably think next time I will try to do less of it and furthermore make some changes to make it more exciting. The original recipe probably was  more exiting in itself given the Marianne bonbons which I left out. But without them, it can be a little, well, let us say boring.
Following alternatives may be viable and triable:
- Only use the white chocolate mixture and skip the other one. Or make only half of the other one just to top the whole a little and give it some color. But all of it was really too much. The cookies at the bottom were good, but too little compared with the cheese cake part. Reducing or eliminating the darker chocolate mixture will rebalance the proportions.
- I personally think little less gelatine might also do some good. Let us try to eliminate 0,5 or 1 sheet of gelatine next time from each mixture.
- I also thought the white chocolate taste was a little too subtle so next time let us add 50g more (or maybe even 75-100g, who knows)

Bigné alias Vanilla petits choux

These small delicacies are sold at any pastry shop in Milan. They are my favourite mignons and I could eat tons of them. They are called bigné.

You can actually get different variations of it with different fillings, among others you can buy some with chocolate fillings instead and glased with sugar. But the simple ones with vanilla custard are definitively and by far my all time favorites.

Petits choux to be filled 30/12-2012
Ingredients
Petits choux
Vanilla custard
Powdered sugar (if you have it, you can have "vanilla tasting powdered sugar")

For the recipes, follow the links above! 30 petits choux or some more will require vanilla custard made of around 0,5 liter milk+cream.




Instructions

Put the vanilla custard in a decorating bag with a decorating tip with a round hole. Stick the decorating tip through the bottom of each petit choux as far up as possible (might require a decisive insertion) and make sure to fill it completely by pulling out the tip slowly while the choux is filled.. Sometimes, this process might create some "leak" somewhere else in the petit choux, but that is no drama really. Just remove the exceeding amount of cream that has leaked.
Bigné with vanilla custard 31/12-2012

Sprinkle the vanilla flavoured powdered sugar over the petits choux before serving.

Vanilla custard

In Italy, you can get the most delicious vanilla custard at any patisserie. I have been trying to reproduce the same effect for ages. And never succeeded. But today I think that I kind of know the answer. When you try to do your own vanilla custard, you always use the real ingredients: egg yolks, sugar, cream, milk.... But I think the pros do not use all those eggs as it would be much too expensive to do some little amount of custard. So my guess is they use some other emulsifier instead. I think the vegegel from Dr. Oetker's is a very interesting kind of product that gives a texture similar to the purchase cream.
In the meantime, until I get to test my theory, here is the recipe with original ingredients.

Ingredients
400g milk
100g cream (38-40% fat)
150g egg yolks
150g sugar
17g corn starch
17g rice starch (I could never find this so I used rice flour instead)
1/2 vanilla flower

Instructions
Whip sugar and egg yolks. Add starches and vanilla flower powder.
Cook milk and cream. When the liquid is boiling through in the mixture above and then whip it up neatly for about 1 minute. If you wait too long to whip, the eggs might scramble up themselves giving an omelette taste to the custard (believe my word... :O( ) resulting in a less smooth custard and a less enjoyable taste.
You will notice that the whipped mixture will actually float in the liquid keeping the whole from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
Note: do not use flour as an emulsifier as the flour can make the custard liquify. Also the rice and the corn starch give different texture so it is good to mix them it seems (I have never tasted how the custard would taste with only one of those actually, but well, I simply follow the recipe.). And by the way, next time I might give it a try to actually use the vegegel from Dr. Oetker's I think. That texture reminds me of both vanilla custard from Royal my mom used to do for me when I was a child and the custard you could find in the purchased petits choux.


Petits choux

Blurred baked petits choux 30/12-2012
This dish is actually very famous in Italy. Every patisserie in Milan offers these fantastic mignons and out of any mignon, these are my favorite. In Italian they are called bignè.

I have tried to make them at home when I was a little girl with hardly any positive result. Now I got the urge to give it another try. Found the recipe in my Montersino confectioner's school CD and thoughts might even try it for this year's New Year's Eve dinner.

Ingredients
165g Butter (unsalted)
185g Water
175g Flour (weak, with as little proteins as possible, and very refined)
Pinch of salt
25g Whole Milk
270g Eggs

Instructions
Put water and butter in a big pot and bring to boil and melt.
Important tip: make sure to put butter in small pieces in the pot so it melts before the water cooks. If it is not melted by then remove from the stove and make sure it does. The reason is you do not want too much water to vaporize as it would modify the proportions in the recipe.
Add flour.
Important tip: make sure the water cooks up thoroughly before pouring in the whole flour at once.
Mix with a wooden spoon with a very quick movement until the whole dough detach from the pot.
Dough out of the Kitchen Aid treatment 30/12-2012
Put in the Kitchen Aid using the butterfly mixer.
Add the milk while mixing.
Then add a few eggs at the time until absorbed. Check before adding the last egg that the dough is not too soft. The dough should look somewhat as custard. It might be even necessary to add some additional egg to reach the right dough.
On a baking plate distribute melted butter. Then dry it up with paper as the utter needs to be as little as possible in order for the guys to be able to grow.
Piped dough ready to bake 30/12-2012
Pipe the dough with a round pipe making sure that the starting point is the plate and going up  (not from the top as you would expect.
Important tip: do not use baking paper under them as they need to stick to the surface in order to grow properly in the oven.
Bake at 220 degrees Celsius until golden.
Important tip: use oven without ventilation for a professional result and an even surface.




Note to self: CD 10 - Pasta per bignè

Profiteroles Tiramisù

This recipe is also out of Luca Montersino's CD series. My favourite pastry cook really! Not sure if it has anything to do with the fact he is actually the only patry cook I know, but, well, who cares!

For some interesting reason, the cream to be used on the outside actually tastes like tiramisu' cream! Incredible!

This recipe is also suitable for pregnant people it turned out yesterday, as it does not contain any raw eggs at all!

General ingredients
18 petits choux
Coffee chantilly for the filling (see below)
Mascarpone glaze (see below)
Cacao powder

Ingredients for the coffee chantilly filling
250g cream (38-40% fat)
125g vanilla custard
 2 gelatine sheets
25g espresso coffee
2,5g additional instant coffee powder

Ingredients for the mascarpone glaze
125g mascarpone cheese
125g cream (38-40% fat)
75g vanilla custard
40g powdered sugar

Instructions for the coffee chantilly filling
Put the gelatine sheets into cold water for about 5 minutes to soften up. Whip the vanilla custard out of the fridge in order to make sure it becomes smooth. Warm up half of it in the microwave. Add the gelatine sheets to the custard and keep whipping until the gelatine has melted completely. Mix on the side the espresso with the instant coffee until the instant coffee has absorbed. If you want, you may add some sugar, but the original recipe does not count for that (I did use some though as my coffee was not that good. Probably, if I were to redo these, I would add somewhat less sugar, but still a little). When smooth, add the cold custard to it to cool down the mixture a little. In the meantime, whip the cream. Add a heaped spoon of whipped cream to the mixture to make sure it gets somewhat fluffier. The cream will not keep its fluff, but it does not matter. On the other side, the mixture will become easier to mix to the remaining whipped cream. Put the mixture into the remaining whipped cream and only mix from bottom up slowly and smoothly not to loose the air from the cream.
Put in the fridge to chill.

Instructions for the mascarpone glaze
Mix the mascarpone, the custard and the sugar together untill very smooth. Whip the cream on the side to semi-liquid status (not too hard, to be on the clear side, so you can dip the petits choux into it without any major difficulties). Add a heaped spoon of lightly whipped cream into the mixture to get some air into the mixture. Do not bother if you loose the air from the mixture. Then put the mixture into the remaining whipped cream and stir from bottom up smoothly to maintain the air in the glaze.

Assembling instructions
Put the coffee filling into a decorating bag with a decorating round tip. Stick the tip into each and every petit choux so far into it as possible. Fill as much as possible by slowly extracting the tip from the petit choux as it fills. Let it cool down in the fridge.
Then roll the filled petits choux in the glaze until fully covered with it. Serve on a plate and sprinkle cocoa powder at the top of it.
If you have some glaze left after the procedure above, it can be served in a bowl on the side. Or simply lick up the bowl... it is too good to throw it away! But that is my humble opinion... :O)