Foie Gras and Orange Reduction Amuse Bouche

(serves 10)
One day I was having a crepe suzette with ice cream and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be lovely to have some foie gras with this? Somewhere along the way I dropped the crepe and ended up with a superb 3 layer foie gras suzette amuse bouche. The tart but sweet orange reduction provides an interesting contrast to the richness of the foie gras while the shot glass format allows you to control the usual appearance and temperature issues associated with canned foie gras, and to serve portions that are small enough to not overwhelm the stomach or pocket.     

Ingredients

1. Canned ‘Bloc’ Foie Gras (200g)
2. Oranges (2)
3. Butter (80g)
4. Shallots (10)
5. Vanilla Ice Cream (1 scoop)
6. Marscapone (1 scoop)
7. Marmalade
8. Dark Soya Sauce
9. Lemon Grass 
10. Cointreau

Preparation 

1. First anbd foremost, make sure you have 10 shot glasses (the double shot type).
2. Squeeze the juice from your oranges after cutting them into halves. Peel and then chop the shallots finely. If you have trouble finding shallots, use a (not 10) red onion instead.
3. Melt the butter in a pan and stir fry the shallot bits on low heat for about 10 minutes.
4. Pour in the orange juice and place the orange rind, cut side down in the pan and continue cooking for a minute so some of the bitterness bleeds into the juice.
5. Next, discard the rind, then add 2 heaped t of orange marmalade and 2t lemon grass. Proceed to boil this down till it begins to thicken. It should take a while, don’t use too high a flame after the initial stage. 
6. When the volume has been reduced to a thin syrup consistency, stir in 0.5t soya sauce. Allow the mixture to cool; it will thicken as it cools.
7. Divide the foie gras into the 10 shot glasses. Compact and flatten the foie gras with a small spoon by moving the shot glass in a circular fashion. Clean the oil off the top half of the inner surface of the shot glasses with a tissue for better visual impact.
8. When the orange butter reduction has cooled, spoon it into the shot glasses as  a second layer over the foie gras. See this picture here:

9. 

   Left tray has foie gras patted down, right tray has orange butter sauce on top of the foie gras

10. In a bowl, mix one ice cream scoop of vanilla ice cream, 1 scoop of marscapone and 1T of cointreau. Its ok if the ice cream melts. Spoon the mixture carefully into the shot glasses as the final layer. Add a few needles of lemongrass as a ganish.
11. Keep the shots refrigerated chill in the freezer for 5 min to bring the temperature down further before serving. Serve with a small spoon, instructing your guests to eat all 3 layers together.

Notes

• Use the type of canned foie gras that is labeled ‘bloc’. Just use it straight out of the can, its 98% pure foie gras and fully cooked. Do not use fresh foie gras since it is raw. Don’t use foie gras pate or mousse since you are only using a small amount per amuse bouche and you want maximum impact. 
• Soya sauce is the secret ingredient, don’t skip it. It adds just the right amount of saltiness and darkens the orange reduction to the right colour. Use the dark soya sauce if you can, it is thicker.
• The marscapone reduces the sweetness from the ice cream and allows for a stiffer consistency at room temperature. Don’t skip it.
• I do not recommend this but if you are cheating by using store bought orange juice, it is essential you get the type with pulp.
• You can use Grande Marnier instead of Cointreau. If you absolutely hate alcohol, add the cointreau to the orange juice so the alcohol boils off. However, the top creamy layer will lose all of its orange aroma and undertone.

The Apple Version

this version is made in almost the same way as the orange version. Simply make the following changes to the ingredients: 

• replace onion with one apple cut to 1/4 inch cubes, without skin
• replace lemongrasss with 0.5t nutmeg and 0.5t cinnamon
• replace orange juice with 1/2 cup white wine
• replace marmalade with 1T sugar
• replace cointreau with sherry

 

Deep Fried Polenta Fingers

(makes 24 fingers)
Polenta is a refreshing corn-based alternative to having potato on your plate day in day out. It may be one of the harder staples to cook to perfection, but triple-cooking your polenta is a sure-fire way of bringing out the full potential of polenta in a crispy on the outside, moist on the inside format. Polenta is capable of accomodating a great depth of rich flavours, and in this recipe polenta fingers are infused with hints of garlic, herbs and cheese.     

Ingredients

1. Polenta-cornmeal (1.5 cups)
2. Shallots (5)
3. Garlic Bulbs (8)
4. Grated Parmesan (0.5 cup)
5. Butter (50g)
6. Herbs de Provence
7. Chicken Stock Cubes (2) 
8. Corn Oil for deep fry

Preparation 

1. Peel the garlic and put the bulbs through a garlic press. You should end up with 2 heaped tea spoons of minced garlic.
2. Dissolve 2 chicken stock cubes in 1.5 cups of boiling water and add 0.5t sugar and 1T Herbs de Provence.
3. Chop up the shallots finely and fry them in a non-stick pan, on low heat in 25g of butter. It should take about 10 minutes for the shallot bits to soften. Then add the garlic and stir fry for a further minute making sure the garlic does not burn.
4. Add the stock to the pan and boil for five minutes, then stir in 1.5 cups of polenta and reduce the heat to a slow simmer. Stir often to keep the bottom from sticking. If the polenta begins to dry, keep adding water a bit at a time such that you end up with a mashed potato consistency at the end of twenty minutes of simmering.
5. After the heat is turned off, stir in another 25g butter, 1t black pepper and 0.5 cups of grated parmesan. The parmesan will act as the glue which will bind the mash together.
6. Preheat the oven to 175^oC (350^oF). Pick a shallow pyrex dish such that the polenta will be 1 to 1.5 inches high when poured in. Line the pyrex with parchement paper. Pour the mash in and bake for 30(1 inch) to 40(1.5 inches) minutes depending on its depth.
   

   baked polenta cake being cut into fingers

7. After baking, most of the extra water content would have been extracted and the polenta should have dried into a soft cake. When the pyrex has cooled enough to touch, flip the baked polenta onto a cutting board, also lined with parchment paper, so it can cool faster. You can keep the polenta in the fridge overnight at this juncture if you wish.
8. Allow the the polenta cake to fully cool to room temperature before you begin cutting it. Use a toothless knife to get smoother edges. You can cut them into fish finger sized pieces (see photo to the right) or perhaps combinations of squares and triagles. Preheat some corn oil and deep fry the polenta fingers until they are golden brown. Pad with kitchen towels to soak up the excess oil, they won’t be sticky anymore. Don’t try to fry too many at a time as the moisture content is still high and too much water with hot oil is not a good idea.

Notes

• As nice as the polenta fingers are, they are still a tad dry to serve on their own. Also, this recipe is not all that salty since a sauce of some sort is presumed. I use my polenta fingers to accompany ‘wet’ dishes like osso bucco or duck l’orange.
• Alternatively, you can use polenta fingers as starters by serving them with some pasta type sauces. Refer to my Sausage and Wine Pasta (used in photo on the right) or Duck Ragout Pasta for ideas. Sauteed Mushrooms will also work.
• As a healthier alternative, you can grill the fingers on a wire tray instead of deep frying them. Pan frying is not a good idea as the polenta will stick to the pan and crumble if its not free-floating in oil.
• If you have no parchment paper, line the pyrex with foil. You have to line it with something so it flips out easily after baking.
• Incidently, if you want to make a polenta mash to accompany ‘dry’ dishes, you can use the same recipe until step 4. After that, just add some hot milk and continue cooking/stirring for a short while to get a nice bed of smooth creamy polenta - for things like grilled salmon.

 

Cooking with Rillettes

Rillettes (pronounced Re-Yet with no S) is a French potted meat used mainly as a bread spread. The most common types of meat going into a rillettes are goose (rillettes d’oie), duck (rillettes de canard) and pork (rillettes de porc). Back in the old days, before there was electricity or refrigeration, this was one of the best ways to preserve meat without altering its texture or adding a lot of preservatives. Some people call it the peasant’s pâté since it costs a lot less than pâté de foie.   

To make rillettes, raw meat is salted and simmered with some herbs at low temperatures in lard (from the same animal) for a long time, sometimes as much as a whole day. Some recipes call for braising in stock instead of lard, but those are not the real deal. As the meat falls apart, the bones are removed. When the cooking is done the meat is strained, raked with a fork to shred it,  then allowed to cool in jars or pots. After the strained liquid is cooled, any congealed gelatine is mixed back into the meat with some of the lard. Each jar is then topped off with a thin layer of lard to the brim and sealed by placing a piece of wax paper on the lard. The meat is ready for consumption after aging for a few days in the fridge. The final product is a meat spread which contains very tender meat suspended in a matrix of lard and other natural juices. After you open a jar, you can keep it in the fridge for several weeks before it goes off. 

The purpose of this post is to tell you how to cook with rillettes, not how to cook rillettes. One of the easiest ways to cook with rillettes is to spread it on fingers of brioche (or any other kind of thick soft bread) and then toast them in a toaster oven or grill. The fat melts into the bread infusing it with flavour, and you end up with a nice meaty crust on top. I normally serve these delicious fingers of bread as hos d’oeuvres or as a matching side to duck or chicken dishes.

Rillettes can be used to sautee various types of vegetables. The natural oil and flavour of the rillettes is all you need to for the job although you may wish to add crushed garlic and pepper. For this purpose I usually use the rillettes that comes in a huge tub which you buy in scoops at the meat counter. These are cooked in the traditional farmhouse style and have a higher fat content. Have a look at my Sauteed Mushrooms recipe as a reference.

One other way you can use rillettes is in the making of meaty ragout pasta sauces. You can avoid the tedious task of simmering meat for a long time and still end up with a wholesome sauce of nice tender meat. The pre-shredded meat also sticks readily to pasta because it is of the right size. I usually use the rillettes that come in small jars on the shelf for making sauces, as they tend to have less fat. Have a look at my Duck Ragu Pasta recipe for further details.

 

Dried Shrimp Roe

Dried Shrimp Roe is a Chinese condiment made by salt-curing the eggs of prawns before they hatch. They are considered a semi-delicacy in Southern Chinese Cuisine and they impart a salty umami-rich seafood flavour to whatever food they are sprinkled on. Good quality Dried Shrimp Roe is a bright vermillion colour and looks a bit like paprika. Lower quality versions are darker in colour, these would be more salty and fishy. All varieties last way beyond the stated expiry date as long as you keep them refrigerated, they are after all cured and completely dessicated.

You’ll come across Dried Shrimp Roe as a condiment in quality wonton noodles. They are also sometimes cooked with with bean curd. Have you tasted Pasta Nera? That black pasta uses squid ink to give it a unique taste. Dried Shrimp Roe is used in the same way to flavour premium quality dried chinese noodles. They are mixed into the noodle dough before the noodles are dried and release their taste when the noodles are boiled. Where can you buy Dried Shrimp Roe? Anywhere they sell other kinds of Chinese dried seafood, and also in some chain wonton noodle shops if they happen to have their own brand. The Cantonese name of Dried Shrimp Roe is ‘Ha-Tzi’, meaning the offspring or seed of prawns and corresponds to the bottom two Chinese characters of the box shown in the picture.

How would you use Dried Shrimp Roe outside of traditional Chinese cooking? Have you ever tasted Bottarga (a salt-cured fish roe from Sardinia) or Karasumi (the Japanese version of Bottarga) with pasta? There is no need to cook Dried Shrimp Roe and in general you can sprinkle it on cheese, oil or cream based pasta dishes for an extra layer of flavour. I think of them as a poor man’s version of the fresh sushi type caviar I sometimes use with pasta. The taste of this roe is milder than it looks so you can afford a heavier touch. The contrasting colour will be beautiful. Dried Shrimp Roe won’t work so well with tomato and ragout based pasta. Enter Bottarga + Pasta into a search engine to get some ideas for recipes. 

How about some other uses? One of my favourites is scrambled eggs topped with this tasty red powder. You can also sprinkle it on seafood soups as a condiment. Rehydrate your shrimp roe in vegetable oil to get a nice crunchy texture and you’ll be able to use shrimp roe to flavour a variety of salads or as a topping on BBQ/baked seafood.  

Dried Shrip Roe Hydrated with Oil. This bowl is only 3 inches in diameter, so you can imagine how small each egg is.

.

 

Notes

 

• Dried shrimp roe is not the same as the shrimp eggs used as aquatic food. Two different things altogether.

 

Split-Pea and Ham Soup

(serves 8-10)
Have you heard the phrase ‘fog as thick as pea soup’? This is that soup. Split-pea and Ham Soup is a wholesome soup that has been on the menu in Northern Europe for centuries, if not longer. The Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians all have their own versions where split-peas are simmered till they disintegrate completely, leaving a gorgeous emulsion of peas suspended in ham flavoured stock. Kobi’s version doesn’t require a ham hock, so its particularly easy to make.   

Ingredients

1. Dried Spit Peas (240g)
2. Cubed Ham (150g)
3. Pork Sausages (150g)
4. Onion (1)
5. Butter (25g)
6. Cream (1/4 cup)
7. Pork Stock Cubes (2)
8. Nutmeg
9. Mint Leaves

Preparation 

1. Rinse the split peas briefly and then soak them in 2 cups of room temperature water.
2. In a seperate cup of hot water, dissolve 2 pork stock cubes.
3. Cut the onion into 1/4 inch bits.
4. Slice each sausage down the middle and open them like a book face down to remove the sausage skin. Stir 1/4 cup of water into the sausage filling to loosen it up.
5. In a large pot, fry the onion on low heat with a half inch thick slab of butter. When the onion begins to soften after about five minutes, turn the heat up and then add the wet sausage filling. Stir fry till the sausage begins to brown slightly – which means its fat has melted, then add the cubed ham and fry for another minute.
6. Add the pork stock to the pot, followed by 3 cups of plain water, and then the peas including the water they were soaked in. Add 2t chopped mint leaves, 1t nutmeg, 1t sugar and 1t black pepper.
7. Bring back up to a simmer again and maintain this for 90 minutes or so, at which time the peas would have disappeared. You’ll need to stir once in a while to prevent anything from sticking to the bottom. You’ll also need to add water from time to time as it evaporates.
8. Before serving, reboil and stir in 1/4 cup of cream. Add salt incrementally (about 2t by my experience) till you are satisfied with the taste. Pea soup turns into a sludge when it cools down so always serve it piping hot.

Notes

• If you are wondering why I’m using such and odd amount of split peas, its because 240g is half a pound and split peas more often than not come in half pound packs. It also happens to be 3 cups if you want to go by volume. 
• One of the age-old problems with split-pea soup is: the amount of ham required to make a proper stock is 10x more than the amount of ham that should be in the soup when it gets to the table. The traditional way of resolving this is to use a whole ham hock for the stock, with a small part of the hock diced for the final soup itself. When I initially experimented with pork stock cubes, I found them to be too lean and eventually I discovered that adding pork sausage to the mix was the ticket. The sausage contains fat (and other pork parts that I don’t want to discuss) and this with the pork cubes simulates a ham hock stock nicely.
• Pork stock cubes are popular in Asia and you should find them easily in a gourmet supermarket or Thai/Asian food store. If you really can’t find pork cubes, use chicken stock cubes boiled with spam instead. You’ll need to discard the spam before using the stock, but that’s still better than using a ham hock.
• If you can’t find pre-cubed ham, ask for ham from the deli counter that is sliced 1/3 inch thick and criss cross that to get your cubes.

 

Mushrooms Sauteed in Rillette

(serves 6)
This recipe is just what its name suggests, mushrooms sauteed in rillette. Some recipes use chicken stock and/or white wine to add flavour. Thats all well and good since plain sauteed mushrooms taste…. plain. The problem with stock and wine of course is they contain a lot of water which you always try to avoid when sauteeing mushrooms. This recipe sidesteps the additional water by using rillette and cognac.  

Ingredients

1. Mushrooms (200g)
2. Duck Rillette (100g)
3. Garlic (6 bulbs)
4. Thyme
5. Cognac

Preparation 

1. It doesn’t really matter what kind of musrooms you use as long as they are not too small. I usually just use plain brown or white mushrooms.
2. Cut the mushrooms into slices which are 1/3 inch thick.
3. Put enough garlic through a garlic press to get 3t of crushed garlic.
4. In a large pan, heat the rillette on high heat until the fat melts. You should mash any clumps of meat with a wooden spatula.
5. When the pan is really hot, add the mushrooms. Stir the mushrooms every minute or so and turn the heat down to medium after 3 minutes and add the garlic, followed by a good stir. Do not cover as you want the water from the mushrooms to evapourate.
6. At around the 7 minute mark, the mushrooms should have shrunk nicely. Sprinkle in 1t of chopped thyme and 1T of cognac. Turn the heat down further and continue sauteeing for a final minute.
7. After the fire is off, sprinkle on 1t of black pepper. Add salt a pinch at a time til the taste is just right. You may even wish to avoid salt altogether depending on how salty your rillette is.

Notes

• There are three main ways to use sauteed mushrooms. As a side vegetable, as a topping for steaks and burgers, or as a flavouring ingredient of a salad.
• Having more than 200g of mushrooms per pan will leave insufficient room for contact to the pan, and insufficient room for water to evaporate. If you are cooking an amount that is larger than specified, do so in batches.
• If your mushrooms are dirty, wipe them with a damp cloth. Since sauteeing is basically a drying process, washing in water will make the mushrooms too wet since water will be trapped in the gills under the caps.
• Yes can try pork or goose rillette as alternatives. For more information on rillette, refer to this post.

 

Roast Chicken Soup

(serves 6)
This is a wholesome soup that I invented after much experimenting to capture the meaty goodness of roast chicken. It’s got chunks of roasted chicken and pancetta, croutons of baked carrots and mushrooms. Trust me, you won’t be able to think of anything else but roast chicken while the soup is swirling around in your mouth. Kobi’s hearty roast chicken soup is a meal in itself, perfect for those winter months.   

Ingredients (Roast Chicken)

1. Chicken Legs with Thigh (4)
2. Diced Pancetta (80g)
3. Rosemary 
4. Thyme

Ingredients (Soup)

1. Onion (2)
2. Carrot (1)
3. Brown Mushrooms (100g)
4. Butter (50g)
5. Milk (1 cup)
6. Flour
7. Chicken Stock Cube (1)
8. Brandy

Preparation 

1. You have to first roast four chicken legs according to this recipe.
2. While the chicken is in the oven, dice your onions into 1/2 inch pieces and then stir fry them in 50g of butter under very low heat until they caramelize. It should take about 25 minutes. Turn the heat off when the onions are, a deep shade of brown and leave the pan on the stove.
3. When the chicken is cooked, place 3 legs into a pot with 4 cups of boiling water. Set to simmer and add a dissolved chicken stock cube. Set aside the fourth leg, you’ll be using it later. Pour the drippings (including the pancetta) into the frying pan with the onions.
4. Degalze the baking tray with some of the boiling chicken stock, and after some light scraping, pour the mixture back into the chiken stock.  
5. Dice your carrot into small cubes and then cut the mushrooms into pieces which are about 3x larger than the carrots (because they will shrink). Put the carrots and mushrooms into the baking tray and stir well with 2T olive oil. Bake this for 25 minutes in the oven at 175^oC (350^oF) .
6. After the chiken has simmered for at least an hour, take the chicken legs out. Mash the meat of one leg with your hands till you get loose fibres of meat and put this back in the stock. Discard the other 2 boiled legs.
7. Set the heat to medium for the frying pan with the onions. When the pan is hot, sprinkle in 2T of plain flour and reduce the heat to low. Stir fry for two minutes or so to cook the flour and then pour in 1 cup of milk 1/5 cup at a time, stirring all the time to prevent lumping. You should end up with a thick brown soup base.
8. Stir in 2 ladles of the chick stock to the pan slowly to thin down the soup base even more. Pour the resulting mixture back into the soup pot. Boil for another 5 minutes.
9. When its time to serve the soup, add 2T of brandy and a sprinkle of black pepper, and reboil. Shred the meat of the last chicken leg (the one that wasn’t boiled). Add the chicken meat only after you turn the heat off. Taste to see if you wish to add salt. Ladle the soup into serving dishes and sprinkle on the roasted carrots and mushrooms.  

Notes

• For those of you interested in french cuisine terminology, flour fried in butter is called roux. If you add milk to roux, it becomes béchamel sauce. If you had added the chicken stock without the milk, it would have become a velouté sauce instead. Since we added both milk and chicken stock, I have no idea what that is called…cream soup I guess.
• You can use leftover chicken, so make a double batch of roast chicken, that way you can eat your chicken and drink it too (at a later meal).

 

Herb Roasted Chicken Legs

(serves 2 for meal, 4 for snack)
This is a simple way of roasting really delicious chicken legs. If there is one meat you need to roast well, its chicken. Roast chicken is the intermediate ingredient for many other wonders of the kitchen, like chicken sandwiches and chicken salads. Some herbs in the marinate and pancetta, a type of Italian bacon, is all you really need to bring out the best flavours in your roast chicken. Best of all, this recipe is easy, good for those times you can’t afford to expend too much effort preparing food.   

Ingredients

1. Chicken Legs with Thigh (4)
2. Diced Pancetta (80g)
3. Rosemary 
4. Thyme

Preparation 

1. Trim off the loose flaps of skin on the chicken if any and pad with paper towels to dry them. If you have time, leave the chicken in the fridge uncovered for a few hours to dry it out, but this is an optional step you can skip if you don’t have time.
2. Dissolve 1t of salt in 3T of olive oil and then add 1.5t rosemary, 1.5t thyme and 0.5t pepper. Mix well.
3. Marinate the chicken and then leave the legs in a baking pan for an hour for the flavor to set in. The herbs like to stick to the parts of the chicken with no skin, so make sure the herbs cover the chicken evenly.
4. Sprinkle the diced pancetta on and around the chicken (see the photo below).
5. Bake for 35-40 minutes in the oven preheated to 175^oC (350^oF) depending on the size of the legs. Increase the temperature to 200^oC for the last 10 minutes if you like your chicken browned to a bronze shade.
6. That’s basically it, but there are a few options you can pick from for the chicken drippings (including the pancetta bits).
1. Meal – Boil two potatoes ahead of time and roughly mash the potatoes in the drippings and 1/4 cup milk.
2. Snack – Mix 1 t dijon mustard into the drippings to make a nice mustard gravy.
3. Sandwich – If you are going to make roast chicken sandwiches, just shred the chicken meat and then drench the meat with the drippings (plus 2T mayonnaise if you want it creamy).

Notes

• Pancetta can be bought pre-diced at the right supermarket/deli. There are usually two flavours, savoury and sweet. Make sure you don’t buy the sweet type (labled dolce) by accident.
• In case you were wondering. Pancetta is salt cured, seasoned with spices like nutmeg and fennel, and matured over a period of at least 3 months. It may look similar to but its not the same as bacon.
• Can you use chicken breasts instead? Yes. But you should brine them first, and the recipe won’t be simple anymore. Also, its crucial to get the cooking time exact for breasts. When you breasts begin to shrink a bit, that’s when they are ready.

 

Bread and Butter Pudding

(serves 10)
One of my absolute favourites, buttered bread soaked and then baked in custard. In a contest between Bread and Butter Pudding and French Toast, we see one of the rare instances where British cuisine triumphs. A great dessert made from simple ingredients, that can be made before hand, that can be made in large quantities with little effort, that can be eaten hot or cold; What more could anyone ask for?      

Ingredients

1. Milk (800ml)
2. Eggs (6)
3. Butter (80g)
4. Bread (1 loaf)
5. Raisins (1/2 cup)
6. Sugar (1/2 cup)
7. Nutmeg
8. Cinnamon
9. Rum

Pre-preparation 

1. A day before, slice your loaf into 3/4 inch slices. You can’t use pre-sliced bread as the slices are too thin.
2. Next we do the ‘test fit’. Pick a shallow pyrex dish than can hold at least 10 cups. Arrange the slices once in the bakeware so you know exactly how many slices you’ll be needing. Overlap the slices like a stack of fallen dominoes and use a left right arrangement, as shown in the photo below. 
3. Leave the bread in the fridge to dry out the bread, with or without the dish.
4. Soak 1/2 cup of raisins in 3T of rum.

Preparation

1. Its now one day later; spread butter on one side of each slice of bread. Use salted butter as a bit savoury taste is essential. Sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon on the buttered side of the bread. Be generous with the butter, nutmeg and cinnamon as they are what gives flavour to the pudding.
2. Arrange the buttered bread in the pyrex, the same way as before. Scatter 3/4 of the raisins between the slices of bread.
3. Lightly beat 4 eggs and 2 egg yolks with half a cup of sugar in a mixing bowl. Stir in 800ml of milk and any of the rum not soaked up by the raisins. Put the whole mixture through a fine strainer to remove strands of albumin.
4. Pour the strained mixture into the pyrex. The bread will float even when its wet (ever feed swans in a pond?) but their arrangement will make sure only a small amount of each piece sticks out. If you ignored me and arranged them like a brick wall, some pieces will be completely free floating now. If you ignored me and used a deep baking dish, all the bread will gather at the top now.
5. Let the bread soak for half an hour. You will need to gently push the bread (with your palm) down once in a while so they become totally submerged. Even though they float, the idea is to make sure the portions above the custard are soaked as well. If you ignored me and used thin pre-sliced bread, the bread will begin to fall apart now.
6. Preheat your oven to 150^oC (300^oF).
7. After the soaking is done, sprinkle the remaining raisins and 1T of sugar on the surface. Place uncovered into the oven and bake for about 40 minutes.
8. The bread will eventually be seen to puff up and this is a sign the pudding is close to being done. Wait a while more and the bread should begin to brown nicely, that is when the pudding can come out. Allow the pudding to stand for a few hours before serving.

Notes

• Glazing the pudding is a nice extra touch and a chance to add an extra layer of flavour. When the bread puffs, this is the signal for you to brush on a layer of golden syrup, mapel syrup, marmalade etc. Place back into the oven after brushing on the glazing of course.
• The best bread to use is supposedly brioche, i.e. a bread with a high egg and milk content. If you are unsure, this just means any bread that is yellow. Any bread that is tough or is made from whole grain will not work.
• If you wish to serve the pudding warm, you still need to allow it to cool before you reheat it. I would normally serve warm B&B pudding with a vanilla custard sauce (made easily from custard powder). 
• Some people swear that panettone, left over from christmas, is the best bread to use but i have never tried this. It helps of course that panettone conveniently has soaked raisins embedded in it to start with.

 

Lasagna Carbonara

(serves 4-5)
How does one go about marrying lasagna with carbonara? I’ve used pretty much the same run-of-the-mill ingredients as you would find in any carbonara : bacon, pasta, parmigiano, egg yolk; but I had to get a little creative to make it work, introducing a juicy bacon terrine to house the ‘carbonara’ between the layers of lasagna pasta and mushrooms. The end result is another kobi-original.  

Ingredients

1. Bacon (12 slices)
2. Marscapone (250g)
3. Parmigiano Reggiano (100g)
4. Emmental (100g)
5. Eggs (2)
6. Brown Mushrooms (200g)
7. Onion (1)
8. Lasagna (8 slices)
9. Bread (4 Slices)
10. Milk (1 cup)
11. White Wine (1/2 cup)
12. Oregano
13. Turmeric

Preparation 

1. Dice the onion and cut the mushrooms into 1/4 inch slices.
2. Cut the bread into cubes after trimming away the crust. Soak the bread in a mixture of 1 cup of milk and two egg yolks. Use a large bowl as you will be adding more things to it later.
3. Finely grate the parmigiano reggiano. Slice the emmental into thin pieces.
4. Stack your bacon on the cutting board such that the fat layers coincide and trim off some of the fat as shown in the photo. There is no where for the fat to go once it melts so this is an essential step. Discard the trimmings and then cut the meat into small pieces.
5. Pan fry the onion in a bit of oil over low heat till they soften and start to brown. Pour in 1/2 cup of white wine and reduce it to 1/4 of its original volume. After you turn off the heat, add the marscapone and stir well.
6. Add the contents of the pan to the big bowl. In addition, add 1T oregano,1t sugar, 1/2t turmeric and a generous sprinkle of black pepper. Finally add the bacon bits and 3/4 of the grated  parmigiano reggiano.
7. Mix the contents of the bowl well with a large spoon. Use a food processor to blend everything until you get a lumpy bacon paste. There is no need for it to be totally smooth. This is your sauce.
8. Preheat your oven to 160^oC (320^oF).
9. Apply a thin layer of the sauce to the bottom of a pyrex dish (that can hold eight cups of water). The add layers on top of it in the following sequence: pasta, mushroom, sauce, pasta, emmental, sauce, mushroom,  pasta, sauce. You don’t have that much sauce, ration it appropriately so you don’t run out before the end. Top off with the remaining grated parmigiano reggiano. 
10. Bake for about 30 minutes or until you see the parmigiano form a golden brown crust. The lasagna is best served with a sunny-side-up egg on top (not in the picture because I didn’t want to obscure the beautiful lasagna crust).

Notes

• The inspiration for thsi recipe comes from a ‘white’ lasagna I ate when my dad took me on a vacation to Europe. I was only 11 years old, but the taste of that dish from Venice lingers in my mind til today. I didn’t come across a similar dish for over three decades so I finally decided the only way I was going to taste something similar was to cook it myself.
• If you want to go the extra mile, use pancetta instead of regular bacon. You can also consider dressing the plate with some actual carbonara sauce (which is what I should have done for the photo but was too lazy).
• I prefer to work with ‘instant’ lasagna as it is less messy. When using this type of pre-cooked lasagna, one must remember to soak each piece of the pasta in hot water for about 10 seconds to get rid of their coating of fine flour. If you choose to use uncooked pasta, boil them till it they are semi-soft -between steps 8 and 9.