Hi Every-one,
it's time for another Plate 2 Plate post where Juliana and I make, style and photograph the same recipe. This time Juliana chose Heidi Swanson's red lentil hummus recipe. I eat hummus all the time but rarely make it and if I do make it, I admit to using tinned chick peas. I was intrigued by the recipe and wondered how the red lentil hummus would taste. Apart from the black sesame seeds I had all the other ingredients in my pantry.
It looks like Juliana did as well.
The first thing I noticed when I opened Juliana's files were how different her red lentils looked compared to mine.
Juliana used what we'd call yellow split peas in Australia and it might explain why our finished hummus looked so different. Here's Juliana's hummus, looking well just like hummus should.
Here's how the two finished products looked side by side. Juliana's in is on the left; my effort is on the right.
My batch was a bit of a disaster.
My red lentil hummus was quite grainy and watery and looked more like a sauce than hummus. The recipe made a huge amount and while I like hummus, I decided against making another batch.
Inspired by my copy of 'Falafel for Breakfast' I decided to prepare a Middle Eastern feast. As well as the hummus I made some za-atar bread; an Israeli chopped salad and some tasty beef kofta. I filled the bread with the salad and the kofta and drizzled over the red lentil hummus/sauce. Together it tasted great!
Here's the recipe for you from NEAR & FAR: RECIPES INSPIRED BY HOME AND TRAVEL by Heidi Swanson
Red Lentil Hummus
Ingredients
2 ½ cups cooked red lentils (see Note)
2 medium cloves garlic
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
⅔ cup (160 ml) tahini
¾ tsp fine-grain sea salt
2 to 3 tablespoons whey, kefir, or warm water
2 teaspoons black sesame seeds
Extra-virgin olive oil, toasted sesame oil, minced chives, and/or chive blossoms, to serve
Directions
Start by adding the cooked lentils and garlic to a food processor and pulsing for at least a minute, scraping the paste from the corners once or twice along the way.
Add the lemon juice, tahini, and sea salt. Blend again, another minute or so. Don’t skimp on the blending time, but stop if the beans form a doughy ball inside the processor. At this point start adding the whey a splash at a time. Blend, blend, blend, until the hummus is smooth and light, aerated and creamy.
Taste, and adjust to your liking—adding more lemon juice or salt, if needed. Serve topped with the black sesame seeds, and preferably, a good amount olive oil, a few drops of toasted sesame oil, lots of chives and chive blossoms.
Note: Rinse 1½ cups (9 oz or 255 g) dried red lentils well and place in a saucepan with 1¾ cups (415 ml) of water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until tender, roughly 15 minutes.
Thanks once again to Juliana for continuing to make Plate 2 Plate happen.
See you all again next week.
Bye for now,
Jillian
For this month's Plate 2 Plate post, Juliana suggested something chocolate flavoured in honour of Valentine's Day. I've only recently discovered instagram and in particular Jo Rodgers feed. When I saw these pictures of her Chocolate hazelnut and rosemary pie I thought I'd like to give the recipe a try.
Assembling the ingredients - photo by Juliana.
As a nod to Valentine's Day I couldn't help myself and dug out my heart shaped cutters. The rosemary I used in the pie came from a small rosemary bush in my garden.
Juliana and I both made some changes to the recipe. Juliana left the syrup out entirely whilst I reduced the quantity of sugar.
I haven't made pastry for a while and used my food processor to speed up the process. Jo's pastry was very easy to handle. Oops, just noticed that some-one (that would be me) can't spell hazelnut.
Here's Juliana's pie out of the oven ready to be cut.
I'm always worried that the filling won't set so I added a tablespoon of flour to the filling. I needn't have bothered because it came out fine.
Here's a nice slice of the pie courtesy of Juliana.
For the original recipe click here. I made some adjustments as I didn't have enough light corn syrup and as it's a hard to find product in Sydney, I used some dark corn syrup and some golden syrup as well. Golden syrup is much sweeter than corn syrup, so I reduced the sugar a little. I always use a tablespoon of flour in my pecan pie to firm the filling a little so I did the same here. I also found that my flour and caster sugar weighed more, so I've noted the weight of the flour and sugar that I used. 100 g of whole hazelnuts wasn't enough to fill my 8 inch pie tin so I halved the hazelnuts. If you use whole hazelnuts, I think you'd need about 200g to fill the pie tin.
For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C
Jo Rodgers’ Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Rosemary Pie (adapted)
For the pastry
1½ cups (225g) plain flour
¼ tsp salt
115g/4oz cold butter, diced
60ml (¼ cup) cold water
1 tbs milk
For the filling
100-200 g (¾ - 1½ cup) whole hazelnuts
3 eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup each light corn syrup, dark corn syrup and golden syrup or ¾ cup of your chosen syrup
¾ cup (165g) caster sugar
1 tbs plain flour
100g melted unsalted butter
Pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbs chopped fresh rosemary
170g/6oz dark chocolate, chopped
1 sprig of fresh rosemary, for the top of the pie
To serve
Cream or mascarpone
Method
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour and salt. Add the diced cold butter and whiz for about 10 seconds or until the butter is pea sized. Tip out on to a flat surface, make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the cold water. Using your hands, mix the water into the flour until dough is formed. Otherwise, on a flat work surface, combine the flour and salt, then incorporate the cold diced butter with your fingers. Rub the butter into the flour until the butter pieces are no larger than the size of peas then continue as above. Wrap the pastry in plastic and put in the fridge for one hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Toast the hazelnuts in the oven until they begin to get fragrant, about 7 minutes. Let the hazelnuts cool, then rub off the skins; you can do this with your fingers or a cloth towel.
Grease an 8-9 inch pie plate. Roll out the dough wider than your pie tin. Gently lay the dough into the tin and trim the overhanging dough with a sharp knife. Put the pie tin back in the fridge while you make the filling.
In a medium-sized bowl, combine eggs, the syrups, sugar, flour, melted butter, salt, and vanilla extract. Stir in the chopped rosemary. Take the pie tin out of the refrigerator, and brush the edges of the dough with milk. This will help the pie to brown nicely.
Spread the chopped chocolate evenly over the bottom of the pie. Pour the filling over the chocolate then arrange the hazelnuts in concentric circles on top of the filling. If you halve the hazelnuts you'll need about 100g. If you use whole hazelnuts, you'll need about 200g to fill the pie tin. Place the single sprig of rosemary in the centre of the pie.
Bake the pie for 1 hour at 180°C/350°F or until the pie is browned and bubbling. Remove from the oven and let cool for one hour before serving. Serve with a dollop of mascarpone or cream.
The finished product from Juliana whilst mine is below.
This recipe was a bit of a challenge for me as it's the first time I've cooked pastry in my new oven. The oven is slow so I found I had to bake the pie for an hour before the filling had set. The verdict - the pie is delicious and it went down a treat at work but I found it very sweet. Next time I'd reduce the sugar even more, maybe to ½ cup in total to offset the syrup and the chocolate.
Thanks to Jo for the inspiration and for Juliana for continuing with Plate 2 Plate challenge.
Until next time,
Jillian
Welcome to the last Plate 2 Plate post for 2015, where Juliana and I take the same recipe but make and style it our own way. Juliana suggested this simple marinated olive recipe from Ghillie Basan's book, Vegetarian Tagines & Couscous.
Here's Juliana's image.
I looked through my cupboards and was low on cumin and coriander seeds so off to the fruit shop I went, list in hand.
Isn't this an elegant composition by Juliana?
The cracked green olives I already had, lovingly prepared by the wife of one of my Greek patients.
I bought this mortar and pestle ages ago and I've just been waiting for the right opportunity to use it. It ground those toasted spices in no time at all. Image below by Juliana.
These olives are really easy to make and pretty tasty.
With all that Harissa, I thought they might be a bit too spicy but they're not as hot as I feared. btw, isn't Juliana's berry spoon lovely?
I always like to give something from my kitchen at Christmas time. I thought a bottle of these olives would make the perfect hand made gift along with some of the other things I've been making, like these sour cherry amaretti and some chocolate coated peanut and pretzel brittle. To make this batch of chocolate coated peanut and pretzel brittle, I used the quantity of ingredients from the chocolate compost brittle but used the method from this recipe.
Here's the recipe for Cracked Green Olives with Cardamom and Harissa from Vegetarian Tagines & Couscous by Ghillie Basan, serves 4-6
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1-2 tsp cardamom seeds
4-6 black peppercorns
2-3 Tbs olive oil
freshly squeezed juice of 1/2 lemon
1-2 tsp Harissa
350g/12oz. cracked green olives, rinsed and drained
Dry roast the cumin, coriander and cardamom seed with the black peppercorns in a skillet, until they emit a nutty aroma. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the roasted spices to a coarse powder. Stir in the olive oil and lemon juice and add the Harissa.
Put the olives into a serving bowl and spoon the spice mixture over them. Toss well and leave to sit for at least 30 minutes before serving.
The olives will keep in a sealed jar in the refrigerator for 3-4 weeks.
Thanks again to Juliana for the recipe and for her photographs.
That's my last post for 2015 so all the best to you and yours over the holiday season. See you all again in 2016 with some more recipes from my kitchen.
Bye for now,
Jillian
Hi Every-one, welcome to this edition of Plate 2 Plate.
It was my turn to choose the recipe for Plate 2 Plate and as it's now Autumn in Zurich where Juliana lives, I suggested making an apfel kuchen (or apple cake) to Juliana and she agreed.
I chose this apple cake recipe from Australian Gourmet Traveller as I'd bookmarked it ages ago and just hadn't found the time to make it. I do have a similar apple cake in the archives but I'm always keen to try new recipes and this one intrigued me.
I made this apple cake when I was recently home in Brisbane. Topped with cream it's become one of my Dad's favourites. Juliana's cake is pictured above while mine is below.
The recipe contains no fancy ingredients, just apples, lemon, cinnamon, and the cornerstone of any baker's pantry - eggs, sugar, butter and flour. The autumnal images are courtesy of Juliana while the rest are mine.
Juliana prepping her apples.
Prepping, Jillian style.
The pastry is very easy to make in the food processor but it is soft. I'd go easy with the eggs and just add sufficient for the pastry to come together. I found the easiest way to line the tin with pastry is to cut it into 4 pieces - one piece for the base; another for the lid and 2 strips for the sides. The quantity of pastry is generous so you'll probably have a bit leftover for later.
Once baked, this a pretty rustic looking cake. The pastry is so short that little bits fall off but I think that adds to it's charm.
The cake is topped with a drizzle of apple flavoured icing, my favourite bit.
Just a note of warning, this cake is not particularly sweet so if you have a sweet tooth you may want to increase the sugar in the filling. Try using ½ cup of caster sugar rather than ⅓ cup suggested in the recipe, if you use tart green apples like I did.
Here's the recipe for you. I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.
Juliana and I shoot and style our images without any consultation and we couldn't believe how similar our cakes looked. Good enough to eat!
Apfel Kuchen, recipe by Brigitte Hafner
Filling
8 large Granny Smith or Cox’s orange pippin apples
Finely grated rind and juice of 2 lemons
Finely grated rind of ½ orange
75 gm caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
125 gm pure icing sugar, sieved
Pastry
450 gm cold butter, cut into small cubes
250 gm (1⅓ cups) plain flour
250 gm (1⅓ cups) self-raising flour
80 gm caster sugar
2 eggs, whisked
Method
1. Peel, core and finely slice the apples, then place in a bowl with citrus rinds, lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon, toss to combine and set aside to macerate (1 hour).
2. Meanwhile, for pastry, process butter, flours, sugar and a pinch of salt in a food processor until fine crumbs form. Add egg and process until mixture just comes together. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate to chill (1 hour).
3. Preheat oven to 165°C. Roll two-thirds of pastry to just under 1cm-thick on a lightly floured surface and line the base and sides of a greased 28cm spring-form tin. Drain apples well (reserve liquid) and fill pastry case. Roll out remaining pastry, roll over the rolling pin and lift pastry over the apple. Press and crimp edges with your fingers to seal and then bake until deep golden brown (1 hour). Set aside in tin to cool for 10 minutes, then release sides of spring-form tin and set aside to cool completely.
4. Meanwhile, place 1½ tbsp of reserved apple liquid in a bowl and gradually stir in icing sugar until a glaze consistency forms. Drizzle over cake and serve.
Brigitte suggests making this cake the day before you plan to serve it. The apple cake will keep for 4 days, if it lasts that long.
I've made the apple cake twice so far and tomorrow I'm planning to make another one so it's quickly become a favourite recipe. I hope you enjoy making it as well. Many thanks to Juliana for continuing to be my partner on Plate 2 Plate.
It's been a busy couple of days for me. I've just flown home to Sydney following a few days in Brisbane visiting my family, then Thursday I'm flying down to Melbourne to do some prop shopping and to attend a food photography seminar.
See you again next week.
Bye for now,
Jillian
Have you ever heard of a dish called Kaiserschmarrn? Until Juliana suggested this as our dish for July's Plate 2 Plate blog post, neither had I. This is what it looks like, made and photographed by Juliana.
From what I've read the dish was originally created for the Austrian Emperor's wife. She asked her chef to come up with a light dessert and the fluffy little dumplings he created did not fit the bill but the Emperor loved the dessert so much he ate it all by himself. This recipe for Kaiserschmarrn comes from a book by Konditorei Zauner which Juliana kindly translated from German into English for me.
I found this recipe challenging because I didn't have a reference point as I'd not seen or tasted Kaiserschmarrn before.
I found a few recipes online and Zauner's recipe was the only one that pre-cooked the milk and flour before adding the egg whites. Most of the other recipes made a pancake like batter and after frying the pancake on one side the cooking process was completed in the oven.
I decided to make a test batch and found the quantity of flour daunting so I halved it before cooking off the milk and flour. When I cooked the flour and milk, it just turned into Perkin's Paste (a thick paper glue from my childhood for those non Australian readers). Juliana thinks European flour is probably a little different from Australian flour because she didn't have the same problem.
The batter tasted a bit bland so I added a little knob of butter, some vanilla and a tablespoon of sugar before folding in the beaten egg whites. The end result was like a souffle omelette, lovely and pillow like in texture but it promptly deflated making it impossible to photograph.
I returned to the drawing board, this time baking the pancake for 5 minutes before cutting the Kaiserschmarrn into pieces and gently frying the pancake pieces in butter and a little sugar. These were more sturdy and could be photographed but I actually preferred the soft pillowy ones.
As it's winter in Sydney and apples are at their peak, I accompanied the Kaiserschmarrn with some apple I stewed with sultanas (golden raisins), also known as appletani by my friend's children. It made for a comforting winter dessert. Juliana served her kaiserschmarrn with blueberries. Her Swiss blueberries are so much more delicate than the monster blueberries we get here.
Here's the original recipe for you without any of my changes.
Kaiserschmarrn
500 mls milk
250g flour
4 eggs, separated
1 pinch of salt
1 Tbs sugar
Butter for the skillet
Heat the milk with the flour and stir until a thick mush forms. Cool. Add the egg yolks and salt to the cooled flour mixture. Whip the egg whites with the sugar until stiff and carefully fold into the flour mixture.
Heat butter in a skillet and pour in half of the batter. Cover and cook until the underside is golden then flip and carefully tear the pancake apart with a fork. Repeat with the remaining batter. Serve warm with powdered sugar and cinnamon.
I'm a little jealous of Juliana's lovely vintage pewter plate, so here's one last photo of it.
I hope you enjoyed July's Plate 2 Plate post. Many thanks to Juliana for her lovely photos. You can read her blog post here.
See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.
Bye for now,
Jillian