Warm Duck Breast Salad with a Cranberry Dressing

(serves 4-5)
I just made this duck salad on Christmas eve and it is one of my favourite appetizers for the festive season; it’s got just the right amount of red, and green. Duck breast is surprisingly easy to prepare once you know the essential steps, perhaps easier than chicken breast even. Another thing I like about this recipe is the use of cranberry. We are used to having orange or red wine as the primary flavour that goes with duck and cranberry makes for a refreshing change. It is also a great ingredient for a salad dressing.   

Ingredients

1. Duck Breasts (2, frozen)
2. Baby Spinach (150g)
3. Leek (1 cup, chopped)
4. Cranberry Sauce
5. Marmalade
6. Mustard
7. Balsamic Vinegar
8. Liquid Smoke
9. Salt
10. Brown Sugar (soft)
11. Brown Mushrooms (10)
12. Cherry Tomatoes (10)

Preparation

1. Defrost the duck breasts and brine in a solution of of 4 cups of water, 3T salt, 1T muscovado sugar for about 4 hours.
2. After rinsing the duck breasts, Rub them with 2t of liquid smoke.
3. Julienne the white portion of a stalk of leek until you have 1 cup.
4. Using a sharp knife, scour the duck skin as shown. Do not cut all the way through the fat; if you can see the meat below, it’s too deep. Also, you should space the cuts in accordance with how you intend to slice the duck later. Here I’ve made my cuts two slices apart.
5. Heat up a pan with a dash of oil and on low heat pan fry the duck breasts for 2 minutes. Only pan fry with the skin side down and move the breasts occasionally to make sure they don’t stick to the pan. The purpose here is to render as much duck fat as you can from the skin.
6. Place the breasts on a lightly oiled baking pan with the skin facing up. Place the pan in an oven preheated to 175^oC (350^oF), for 12 minutes. I prefer to use the toaster oven which takes a bit longer, 15 min. If the breasts begin to shrink, this means they are done.
7. Allow the meat to rest on the pan outside the oven.
8. Saute the leeks in the duck fat in the pan until they become limp.
9. Add 5 heaped t of cranberry sauce (ocean spray), 1 heaped t of marmalade, 1T balsamic vinegar, 2t mustard, 1 flat t of salt and 1/4 cup of water to the pan. Stir fry until the mixture comes to a boil. Then transfer it to a bowl. Pour the drippings from the pan into the bowl and mix well.
10. Cut the duck breasts into slices, making sure some cuts are coincident with the cuts in the skin. The meat should be pink or you’ve over cooked the duck.
11. Slice the mushrooms and cut each cherry tomato into 2. Arrange the baby spinach, tomatoes and mushroom slices into a bed on each plate.
12. Arrange the duck slices on the salad and drench with the cranberry and leek sauce. Sprinkle with black pepper.

 Notes

• Frozen duck breasts sometimes are already brined. Please check and if they are already brined, you can skip the relevant part. The same goes for the smoked.
• The choice of salad components was made with Christmas colours in mind. You can really make the salad with whatever you like. A white plate would really complete the festive look.
• I’ve found the safest way to score the skin properly is to use a sawing motion with a knife with small teeth, applying no downward pressure.
• You can precook the duck breasts and leave them around for a few hours, but only slice the meat and and plate the salad at the last moment.  

 

Chicken Kiev

(serves 6)
Chicken Kiev is the king of chicken breast dishes, the perfect fool proof way of preventing a chicken breast from getting dry. The breast meat is kept moist and juicy because it is stuffed with butter. And when the breast is cut open, the butter serves as a sauce for the dish. No one knows for sure where Chicken Kiev comes from except that it’s not from Kiev. The Russian restaurants seemed to have claimed ownership of this dish while others insist that it was originally a French dish called Cotelettes de Volaille. No matter, it tastes just as good.

Ingredients

1. Big Chicken Breasts (6 halves)
2. Butter (140g)
3. Shallots (4)
4. Bread (4 slices)
5. Garlic (3t minced)
6. Flour
7. Eggs (2)
8. Basil
9. Mint Leaves
10. Salt
11. Brown Sugar
12. Toothpicks

Preparation

1. Begin by brining your chicken breasts overnight, for about 10 hours, in a solution of 3T Salt, 1T Brown Sugar and 4 cups of water. For details you can refer to this post.
2. Place 4 slices of bread exposed in the fridge overnight to dry out.
3. When the 10 hours are up, give the chicken breasts a quick rinse to end the brining process and keep them in the fridge until needed.
4. Finely chop 4 shallots. Pan fry the shallot bits in 2T of oil on a low flame until you notice a few pieces have turned brown. Turn off the heat and allow to cool. In the meanwhile mince a few garlic cloves until you get 3 semi-heaped teaspoons of garlic.
5. Put 140g of butter, that’s about two thirds of a block, in a bowl and cut the butter roughly into cubes. A pair of scissors is the best implement for this. Allow the butter to warm until it is soft, then fold in the minced garlic, shallots, 1T chopped mint and 1T of chopped basil. The butter should stay opaque and not be allowed to melt at any time. Spoon the herb butter onto a large sheet of cling film and roll it into a long rod. Keep the butter sausage in the fridge until it is needed.
6. Toast the bread under very low heat so it doesn’t brown, until it is dry and crisp. Place the bread into a plastic bag and smash it into crumbs using a mallet.
7. The next step is to cut a cavity into each breast. Start by drying the chicken with a tea towel. Plunge a pointed knife about two thirds of the way into a breast from the bigger end. Carefully scrape the tip of the knife along one side of the cavity a few times in a circular motion to enlarge it. Flip the knife over and do the same to the other side of the cavity. While you are doing this, take extra care at all times not to let the knife pierce out through the surface. At the same time you should do your best not to enlarge the opening.
8. Cut the butter sausage into six cylinders. Do this while it is still in the cling film. Unwrap one cylinder of butter, halve it lengthwise and push both pieces into the cavity one after another, as far as they’ll go. Repeat the same procedure for the remaining breasts.
9. Beat two eggs. Cut a one inch piece off the tip off each chicken breast. Dip these trimmings in the egg and after folding or rolling each piece, use them to plug up the openings. Secure each plug with a wooden toothpick. If you inadvertently punctured any of the breasts earlier, you can attempt to ‘repair’ the damage with toothpicks as well.
10. Coat each breast in flour, taking care to cover every part of the breast, especially the area around the plug.
11. Heat up a frying pan with some oil. Roll a breast in egg and then the breadcrumbs until it is nicely coated. Put the breast straight into frying pan. Pan fry for about a minute, making sure the entire surface is cooked. A pair of kitchen tongs will be helpful in achieving this. Control the fire to make sure the bread doesn’t get burnt. Leave the breast to rest on a wire tray inside a baking tray. Do the same for the remaining breasts, adding more oil to the pan for each new breast.
12. Preheat your oven to 175^oC (350^oF). Place the tray of chicken into the hot over for 20 minutes, or until you notice the chicken begin to shrink.
13. It’s best to serve the Chicken Kiev straight out of the oven. Sprinkle lightly with white pepper while the chicken is still on the baking tray. Remember to remove the toothpicks after plating.

 Notes

• Purists will no doubt point out that the proper way to make Chicken Kiev would be to pulverize a butterflied chicken breast into a very thin schnitzel which is then rolled around a slab of butter. This method has its merits but is quite labour intensive. Should you ever choose to try it, you should season the chicken instead of brining it.   
• Chicken breasts can be plump and roundish or elongated and you should buy the former. I find those from Denmark and Holland are very suitable for stuffing. If the breast is of the elongated type, it will be too flat, making the carving a proper cavity for the butter doubly difficult. 
• Don’t expect a large amount of melted butter to gush out when you cut the chicken as some of the butter will be infused into the surrounding meat. If you desire more flowing butter, you can increase the amount of butter to a full block. But in order to do this the cavity has to large; maybe you can wait until you have had some practice at cutting cavities into chicken breast before attempting to use more butter. 
• There is no ‘standard’ herb to use for the butter. You can substitute other herbs of your liking, or even add things like sautéed mushrooms to the butter. I even used a bacon onion dip once instead of butter and it tasted great.
• If you have a large number of diners, it may be easier to just deep fry your Chicken Kiev in one go instead.  

 

Gratin Dauphinois

(serves 8)
Gratin Dauphinois, or as the French call it Gratin de Pommes à la dauphinoise, is the fine dining version of scalloped potatoes. It is a dish of layers upon layers of thinly sliced potatoes bathed in creamy savoury goodness. Perhaps Gratin Dauphinois is the crème de la crème of potatoes precisely because of the amount of cream and milk it incorporates. This explains why it beats all other potato dishes hands down even though there is nothing special about it ingredients, and its method of preparation is unremarkable. It goes without saying Gratin Dauphinois is something every decent cook should have in his repertoire.

Ingredients

1. Waxy Potatoes (750g)
2. Cream (200ml)
3. Milk (200ml)
4. Garlic (2t minced)
5. Shallots (2)
6. Parmigiano-Reggiano (40g)
7. Butter
8. Sherry
9. Cumin
10. Tarragon

Preparation

1. Slice the potatoes. Each slice should be about 1/8 of an inch or 3mm thick. As its the waxy type of potatoes you can leave the skin on.
2. Mince a few garlic cloves until you get 2 heaped teaspoons of garlic. Finely chop 2 shallots.
3. Put 200ml of whipping cream and 200ml of milk in a pot together with the garlic and shallots. Add 1t salt, 1t cumin, and 1t tarragon and bring to a boil.
4. Arrange the potato slices into the pot, vertically as best you can. Add 1T of sherry and simmer for ten minutes, stirring gently occasionally to nudge apart any slices stuck together. Then allow the pot to cool.
5. In the meanwhile butter a 2 quart sized (i.e. holds 8 cups) casserole, preferably one with a cover. Preheat your oven to 175^oC (350^oF).
6. When the pot has cooled and the liquid within has visibly thickened, layer the potatoes a slice at a time into the casserole dish using a table spoon. Ensure each slice is coated in cream and take care to minimize any empty spaces. Spoon any remaining sauce, there shouldn’t really be much left over, over the top.
7. Cover the casserole and cook in the oven for 25 minutes. If you don’t have a proper cover, just use foil snugly crimped over the top edges of your casserole dish.
8. In the meanwhile grate 40g of parmigiano-reggiano.
9. Take the casserole out of the oven, but leave the oven on. Using a spatula, press down on the potatoes firmly to compress them. Sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the potatoes. Return the casserole to the oven uncovered and bake for a further 15 minutes, or until you see a nice golden cheese crust.
10. You may serve your gratin dauphinois in the casserole or in square cake-like blocks on the plate with the main dish.

 Notes

• The boiling in the pot allows the cream and milk to interact with the starch of the potatoes, so it thickens before you begin layering. This is the only way the slices will be coated properly. If you are thinking to skip a step and arrange the raw potato slices in the casserole to do all the cooking in one shot in the oven, it won’t work. The potato slices will end up stacked together as if they weren’t sliced at all and all you end up with is boiled potatoes.
• Also you can’t just pour the potatoes and cream from the pot into the casserole in one go. There will be too many gaps and all the liquid will end up at the bottom. 
• Gruyere is the other cheese commonly used to top off this dish. You can also try a combination of both gruyere and parmigiano.
• You can do most of the preparation of your Gratin Dauphinois ahead of time, up to the point you have baked the casserole the first time and compressed it. You can even keep the casserole in the fridge overnight. Continue with the cheese and final bake when it’s dinner time.
• Although I’ve suggested waxy-type potatoes because they hold their structure better, if you decide to use starchy-type potatoes, remember to peel the potatoes before slicing them.
• Pommes Dauphine is a deep fried cheese ball, a different thing altogether; just in case you got confused.

 

Know Your Cake

This is my 20 page guide to cakes from around the world. The countries these cakes, pastries, pies and desserts come from include France of course, and Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Japan and America.  With it you’ll be able to name your cake and eat it too. With the guide they’ll be no more not knowing the name of the cake you just ate or wondering how you are ever going to order it again.  

Sample of one of the pages

The PDF was actually made for another of my blogs, but since it is related to food I thought it would fit right in here. Don’t expect anything too fancy or detailed; a lot of it is just cut and paste from here and there on the internet, but  it’s put together everything in one place and does the job.

Download PDF of  Kobi’s Cake Guide version 2.3

 

Lemon Orange Madeleines

(Makes 30)
A Madeleine is classic French Genoise-style sponge cake that is the size of a large cookie. Miniaturizing the cakes has the desirable effect of increasing the crust to internal volume ratio. At the same time Madeleines are characterized by a moist centre with a unique rich nutty-buttery taste, although my particular version has a strong citrus kick to it as well. You can recognize a Madeleine easily because of its iconic shape, an elongated scallop shell with a ‘hump’ below. Madeleines are best served any time you are drinking coffee or tea.     

Ingredients

1. Eggs (3)
2. Butter (130g)
3. Flour (1 cup)
4. Plain Sugar (1/2 cup)
5. Icing Sugar
6. Lemon (1)
7. Orange Marmalade (3T)
8. Bicarbonate of Soda
9. Vanilla Essence

This recipe does not require, but is best made using special scallop shell pans.

Preparation 

1. Start by browning 130g of butter. Melt the butter in a small pan on low heat. After a while white particles will appear on the surface of the liquid butter. Next the butter will start to froth. At this point immediately pour the melted butter into a second pan to prevent it from going from browned to burnt. Allow to cool.
2. Spoon 3T of marmalade into a bowl to allow it to warm to room temperature.
3. Grate the skin of 1 lemon to get 1t of zest.
4. Whisk 3 eggs with half a cup of sugar, the lemon zest, 1t vanilla essence and a pinch of salt. Keep whisking until the mixture thickens and is foamy. This should be about 5 minutes by hand or 1 minute with an electric hand blender.
5. Mix half a flat t of bicarbonate of soda into 1 cup of plain flour. Sift the flour into the egg mixture, folding the flour regularly into the mixture to prevent lumping.
6. Cut the zested lemon in half and squeeze it to obtain 3T of juice. Combine the juice with the marmalade and then stir the resulting citrus syrup into the batter.
7. Reserve 3T of the melted butter and add the remaining butter to the batter 1T at a time, fold each time to incorporate the butter into the batter before adding more. Rest the batter in the fridge for a minimum of one hour, covered with cling film.
8. Mix 1T flour into the reserved butter and brush your Madeleine pans with this. Place the pans into the fridge as well, for a minimum of ten minutes.
9. Preheat your oven to 160^oC (320^oF).
10. Take the batter and pans out of the fridge. The batter should be the consistency of a thick milkshake. Spoon 1T of batter into the centre of each mould in your pan. Do not fill the moulds all the way to the rim (see photo above) as you need room for the batter to expand without spilling out.
11. Place the pan in the oven for about 8 minutes. The time will vary slightly from oven to oven, and it will take more time for multiple pans and less time for incomplete pans, so you need to keep watch as they bake. The first sign to look out for is when the characteristic camel humps develop (see photo on right) on your madeleines. Soon after the edges will start to brown. Take them out one minute after this.
12. Flip your madeleines onto a cooling rack and dust lightly with icing sugar while they are still hot. This icing (i.e. powdered) sugar will eventually dissolve in the butter of the madeleine to form a glaze so do not skip this step.

Notes

• The Madeleine was popularized to the world by the French writer Marcel Proust who wrote about eating it and the memories it triggered. Despite its simple look, this little cake is one of the quintessential petit fours, of equal standing with the Canele and the Macaron. 
• The ribbed side (facing down in the pan) will tend to darken faster than the hump side, which is the biggest challenge in Madeleine making. This is why the pans must be chilled beforehand, to help counteract this. Supplementary techniques you can try would be using the top rack of your oven or placing a (metal) baking sheet below the Madeleine pan. All this will alter the baking time, so rely on your eyes and not the clock.
• If you don’t get the camel hump, then your oven is not hot enough – or you didn’t chill your batter. If there is no hump, its not a real Madeleine.
• You probably cannot make all 30 Madeleines in one go so plan ahead to split the baking into 2 or more equal batches.
• The bicarbonate of soda is a raising agent. If you are using self raising flour, skip the bicarbonate of soda and use only half the lemon juice.
• You can stack 2 buttered madeleine trays by turning one of them ninety degrees.
• Replace the Marmalade with soft brown sugar to make ‘regular’ Madeleines.
• If you don’t have Madeleine pans, you can use mini-muffin trays, though you will end up with round cakes. Do not spoon more than 1T of batter into each depression even though they are deeper.

 

Simplified Chicken Cassoulet

(serves 2)
Cassoulet is a hearty meal-in-one dish of poultry, pork and beans in a tomato sauce from Languedoc, in the south of France. This is my simplified method for making a Cassoulet using everyday ingredients like chicken legs and baked beans. It’s not exactly the same as what you’d find in Toulouse but I think you’ll find its a close enough imitation as long as you’re not French. More importantly my recipe only takes 1 hour to prepare and cook instead of a whole day if you were to do it ‘properly’.        

Ingredients

1. Chicken Leg with Thigh (2)
2. Pork Sausages (2)
3. Pancetta (100g)
4. Onion (1/2)
5. Shallot (4)
6. White Wine (1/2 cup)
7. Baked Beans (1 can, small)
8. Oxo Beef Cube (1)
9. Tarragon
10. Thyme
11. Coriander Seed Powder

Preparation 

1. Peel the shallots but keep them whole. The half onion should be cut into 3 wedges.
2. Trim (and retain) any excess skin and visible fat from the chicken. Season the chicken legs with a dusting of pepper, but no salt.
3. Fry 100g of diced pancetta in a pan on low heat with 1T oil (goose fat if you have any) together with the chicken trimmings and the two pork sausages.
4. When the fat from the pancetta begins to render, add the shallots and onions to the pan. Move the contents of the pan around to prevent them from getting burnt until the onion breaks up into soft pieces.
5. Pour everything from the pan into a casserole. The Casserole should be tall enough to prevent boiling over. Drain the oil back into the pan and turn up the heat.
6. When the pan is hot, brown the chicken in it. The chicken shouldn’t be in the pan so long that it gets cooked completely.
7. Place the browned chicken in the casserole as well and arrange all the contents snugly as shown. Sprinkle some black pepper over everything.
8. Preheat your oven to 180^oC (350^oF).
9. Melt 1 Oxo Beef cube in 3/4 cup of hot water and use this stock to deglaze the pan. Turn on the heat again and add 1/2 cup of white wine and the can of baked beans. While the mixture is being brought to a boil, add 1T Tarragon, 1T thyme, 1t coriander seed powder.
10. After the sauce has been boiling for half a minute, pour it into the casserole. Place the casserole in the oven for 25 minutes, uncovered. The cooking time may vary slightly, you’ll know its time when enough of the liquid has evaporated and the chicken is partially exposed.
11. You may serve your cassoulet immediately but it can also be put aside and reheated later, it will taste just as good. It is traditional to serve the whole casserole (as per below), with the individual plating done at the table. The dish has a lot of sauce, so it goes well with baguette or some other kind of bread.

Notes

• If you haven’t cooked an authentic cassoulet before, here is a summary: Cassoulet is usually served with Duck Leg Confit instead of chicken and this is to be roasted separately. You’ll also need Toulouse Sausages which are hard to find, plus you also have to soak beans ahead of time and cook them for a really long time to get them soft. Other typical cassoulet ingredients that I left out include tomatoes, celery, carrots and laminated pork.
• The nice thing about canned baked beans is they come pressure-cooked and their sauce has the same effect as the gelatin you would normally get from cooking pork skin in the Cassoulet for a long time. Baked beans are thus the secret to the greatly reduced cooking time.
• Speaking of pork skin, if you’d like you could try adding pieces of smoked ham hock if you so desire; treat them the same as the sausages.
•  Some recipes sprinkle breadcrumbs on the cassoulet to form a crust, but I don’t belong to the crust camp.     
• You can use a pot or pan instead of glass or ceramic ware as long as they come with an all metal handle. Be warned – if you use an oversized sized container the liquid level will be too low to cover the chicken initially and it will get burnt. A solution is to bake the casserole covered and then again uncovered at the end. 

 

Slow Cooked Beef Shank Kebabs

(serves 4)
This is a very unauthentic recipe for kebabs, but it is however a great way to cook stew-type cuts of beef without actually making a stew. Its actually more of a cross between shish kebab and boeuf bourguignon. I think of it more as a Provencal-style dish than Persian. We start out by making a stew in white wine and end up drying up the stew into a nice tasty glazing for the beef chunks.

Ingredients

1. Beef Shank (800g)
2. Carrot (1 large)
3. Eggplant (1 large)
4. Garlic (12 cloves = 1 bulb)
5. Mushrooms (200g)
6. Shallots (8)
7. White Wine (1 cup)
8. Oxo Beef Cube
9. Pesto
10. Oregano
11. Thyme
12. flour

Preparation 

1. Cut your beef into large cubes after removing any chunky bits of connective (white) tissue. Besides using beef shank, other appropriate cuts would be rib fingers, brisket or cheek. Lightly salt the beef.
2. Preheat your over to 150^oC (300^oF). Dissolve1 Oxo beef cube in 1.25 cups of hot water.
3. Peel an entire garlic bulb and put half the cloves through a press. Peel the shallots but keep them whole. Cut the carrots, mushrooms and egg plant into pieces of the appropriate size.
4. Put the beef cubes into a zip loc bag with 2T(heaped) of flour. Shake the bag until all the surfaces are thoroughly coated.
5. Heat up a pan with 3T of oil and lightly sear all the sides of the beef cubes. Do this a few pieces at a time.
6. Place the seared beef into a large pyrex dish, followed by the cut vegetables around the meat. Sprinkle on 2T of oregano and 2T of thyme. If you really want to you can skewer everything on metal skewers first like real kebabs (except for the garlic).
7. Deglaze the pan with 1 cup of white wine. Add the beef stock. Add 2T of pesto and the crushed garlic. Cook for a minute. Pour over the beef and then cover the pyrex baking dish snugly with foil.
8. Poke 3 small holes in the foil with a toothpick. Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour 40 minutes.
9. Remove the foil and bake for a further 20 minutes to dry up the liquid and give the beef a nice glaze.

Notes

• You may have noticed I did not skewer the kebabs. I usually skip this as its tedious to do the skewering and the un-skewering. 
•  If you are having a real BBQ, you can throw your pre-cooked kebabs (skewered) over an open flame BBQ to get the charcoal flavour.  
• If you have a Dutch oven like le Creuset you can use that instead of the pyrex dish. 

 

Breton Fish Stew (Cotriade)

(serves 6)
This is my version of a classic from Brittany, the fish stew that Breton fishermen enjoy after a hard day at sea, the Cotriade. Unlike the more popular French bouillabaisse which relies on tomatoes and crustaceans for a base flavour, the Bretons prefer their fish stew au natural. Its harder to achieve a flavourful seafood stew that is white but when you do it right, the pure unadulterated flavour of fish makes a world of difference.  

Ingredients

1. White Fish Fillets (500g)
2. Black Mussels (500g)
3. Canned Sardines in oil (2 x 120g wet weight)
4. Canned Anchovies in oil (50g wet weight)
5. White Wine (1 cup)
6. Minced Garlic (3T)
7. Onions (2)
8. Celery (2 cups chopped)
9. Carrot (1)
10. Bread (3 slices)
11. Thyme
12. Dill Weed

Preparation Part I

1. Leave 3 slices of bread in the open to dry overnight.
2. Cut the crust off the bread and cube the bread into 1cm pieces. Cut the crust into small pieces as well, but separately. Toast the bread cubes till they are brown and then crush in a zip loc bag with a mallet.
3. Dice one onion. Place the onion bits into a large pot. Partially open one of the sardine tins and pour its oil into the pot. Turn on the heat and occasionally stir fry the onions.
4. In the meanwhile, spoon all the sardines and anchovies including their oil into a bowl with 3T of minced garlic. Mash everything up with a spoon.
5. When the onions are soft, turn up the heat and add the fish and garlic mash. Stir fry for a minute, continuing to mash up the fish. Next, add 1 cup of white wine, wait a further minute and then add 4 cups of water and 2T of chopped thyme. This is the stock for your stew.
6. While the stock is simmering on low heat, cut an onion into 6 wedges, dice 2 cups of celerey and 3/4 cups of carrot. Add this to the stock together with the bread crumbs.
7. While the veggies are cooking, soak your mussels in water for a few minutes. Also, cut your white fish into chicken nugget sized pieces. You can leave the skin on. Marinate with 2T of oil and a light sprinkle of salt and pepper. Do not put either the mussels or fish into the pot yet.
8. Continue the simmer until the onion wedges turn into soft individual petals. Then turn off the heat.

Preparation Part II

1. This is the part you do about fifteen minutes before serving your stew.
2. Bring the pot up to a full boil.
3. Add the clams and continue boiling for 1 minute.
4. Next add the marinated fish making sure all the pieces are submergedand. Continue boiling for 1 minute (less if you fish pieces are not thick, but never more).
5. Turn off the heat but leave the pot covered for 10 minutes while the fish continues to cook .
6. Taste and season with salt and pepper to bring out the full flavour of the stew. Garnish with a sprinkle of dill weed or chopped parsley.

 Notes

• When I first decided to come up with my own cotriade recipe, I was confronted with a typical dilemma. Fish gets hard and then flakes up if it is boiled for more than a short while. But, any kind of stew needs to be simmered for a long time for it to develop its full flavour. Many fish stew recipes get around this by using tomatoes (or worse bacon) for the base flavour, but that is the easy way out. The solution was to use canned fish and wine to form the base flavour.
• The next challenge was to get rid of the fishy smell and taste of the canned sardines. After some experimentation, I found that the combination of onions, garlic and deglazing with wine at a high temperature did the trick. When you see the stew frothing up a bit after adding the wine, don’t worry, this is normal. Its just the fishiness going away.
• The sardine stock in turn allows us to just par boil the fresh fish right at the end, so it remains intact and tender. A fish stew is supposed to have 3 types of fish for variety so I recommend you use 2 types of fresh fish. Cod I find is one of the best choices, and I also like pomfret and sole, but basically any kind of fish white fish would do. The most important thing is to not overcook the fish.
• Besides tomatoes, the other ingredient I didn’t want to use was potatoes, which would make it more like a chowder (or worse, like beef stew). This presented another problem: how do I give the stew some body? Then I got to thinking, well you eat French stews with bread, so why not just have the bread already boiled into the stew? That worked out well.
• For the white wine, the oaky tones of a chardonnay is a perfect fit with the stew.
• If you want a North Sea taste don’t use olive oil as it imparts a Mediterranean feel. I use sardines in sunflower seed oil for this stew.
• Instead of using salt at the end, consider ‘cheating’ and using Hon Dashi pellets instead. It will bring out the best in your fish stew.
• If you like French seafood stews, check out my bouillabaisse recipe.  

 

Baked Scallops on Pesto Gratin

(serves 5)
This is my take on the classic French dish, Coquilles Saint Jacques, with an Italian twist. I have devised a quick thrice-baked routine which makes the recipe extremely easy to execute. Scallops have a nice texture but it is hard to infuse flavour into them. One common way to given them additional layers of taste is to use a gratin. This is what I have done, using a simple breadcrumb mixture containing 3 complimentary flavours: garlic, pesto and parmesan.  

Ingredients

1. Large Scallops (500g)
2. Bread (3 slices)
3. Minced Garlic (3T)
4. Pesto (3T)
5. Parmesan (1T)
6. Olive Oil (1/4 cup)

Preparation

1. Leave 3 slices of bread in the open to dry overnight.
2. Cut the crust off the bread and cube the bread into 1cm pieces. Cut the crust into small pieces as well, but separately. 
3. Prepare a brine of 1T salt, 1t sugar, the juice of a wedge of lemon in two cups of water. Place the scallops in the brine for twenty minutes. Do not go beyond twenty minutes or the scallop flesh will become too salty.
4. Rinse the scallops and wrap them in a tea towel for a few minutes. Allow the scallops to dry on a few sheets of paper towel for another few minutes and then transfer them to a bowl.   
5. In a large mixing bowl mix 3T pesto, 3T minced garlic with 1/4 cup of olive oil. Spoon 2T of this mixture onto the scallops, mix well and leave to marinate.
6. To the remainder of the mixture add a light sprinkle of salt and a heavier sprinkle of pepper and stir.
7. Preheat the oven to 200^oC.
8. Place the bread pieces on a casserole dish and bake in the oven. When the bread is crispy and dry, this will take 5 minutes, take it out of the oven, but leave the oven on.
9. Allow the bread to cool for a short while on a wire tray. Then crush the bread on a piece of foil using the spiked end of a meat mallet to turn them into fine crumbs. Add the crumbs into the mixing bowl with the pesto oil and sprinkle in 1T of powdered parmesan cheese. Mix well and then put the flavoured crumbs back into the casserole dish and back into the oven, this time for 8 minutes.
10. When the gratin has formed, take the casserole dish out again, and immediately arrange the marinated scallops into the dish evenly spaced, and not touching each other. Spoon any left over marinade over the scallops. This goes back into the oven for a further six 6 minutes or so, depending on the size of your scallops.
11. Serve immediately, from oven to table, while the gratin is still crispy.

Notes

• It’s fine to use frozen scallops as long as they are thoroughly thawed.
• There are two types of scallops on the market. The more common and cheaper ‘wet’ scallops are bloated from soaking in a STPP solution, making them bigger than they actually are. 20 minutes in brine draws the extra water out – they would otherwise keep exuding water as they cook, making them rubbery and impossible to sear.
• Personally I believe the higher quality dry scallops are well worth their higher price, since they don’t shrink. You can buy them fresh or when frozen they usually come in a paper box (as opposed to a plastic bag).  
• ‘Wet’ scallops are very white while dry scallops are ivory in colour, so it’s easy to tell them apart. 
• Although it is more work, you may alternatively sear your scallops in a very hot cast iron pan, turning them over once with a pair of tongs. You can serve these individually plated with the gratin crumble as shown in the top photo.
• Scallops should not be overdone. They are best when they have shrunk slightly. Look for the right moment and take them out of the oven immediately. If your scallops have shrunken noticeably, then they are overdone and will be tough and hard.

 

Crab and Cheese Faux Soufflé

(serves 6)
This is not a real soufflé as it uses what I call the french toast method, but it is permissible for a savoury dish and it certainly tastes as good as any traditional soufflé made from beaten egg-white. Within each ramekin, there’ll be that heavenly combination of crab meat and 3 different cheeses, melded into a fluffy body of bread and egg; sort of like crab gratin meets bread and butter pudding, only lighter.    

Ingredients

1. Canned Crab Meat (300g)
2. Capsicum (1)
3. Onion (1/2)
4. Diced Bread (4 cups)
5. Cream (1 cup)
6. Milk (1 cup)
7. Eggs (3)
8. Parmigiano Reggiano (40g)
9. Cheddar (80g)
10. Brie (120g)
11. Dillweed 
12. Cognac

Preparation

1. Drain the crab meat and then soak it in a blend of 1/2 cup water and 2T brandy. Make sure you loosen the packed meat so the brandy can permeate faster.
2. In the meanwhile, julienne half an onion and one capsicum (without the seeds). Dice slices of soft crustless bread until you end up with four cups of loosely packed cubes of bread.
3. Grate the parmigiano and cheddar. You can mix them together. Dice the Brie but keep it in the fridge to maintain its hardness.
4. Using a large pan, stir-fry the onion pieces on low heat with a knob of butter till they become limp. Turn up the heat, add a second knob of butter together with the capsicum bits. Stir-fry for one further minute.
5. Drain the crab meat (the second time) and add this to the pan. Continue stir-frying for 3 minutes, and then turn off the heat.
6. Add a blend of 1/4 cup warm water and 1T brandy, then mix well. Add the diced bread to the frying pan and mix until they sponge up all the liquid. Sprinkle on the grated cheese, 1T of dillweed and 1t of pepper.
7. Distribute half the pan’s contents evenly into 6 ramekins. There is no need to brush the inside of the ramekins with butter, this soufflé does not stick. Add the brie piece by piece to ensure even distrubution; they have a tendency to clump together. Top up with the remaining contents of the pan.
8. Mix half a cup of cream, 0.5t of sugar and three eggs in a large bowl.
9. In a pot, heat to almost boiling another half cup of the cream and 2/3 cups of milk. Slowly pour this hot half & half into the bowl with the eggs, stirring all the time to make sure the egg doesn’t get cooked. Pour the hot egg mixture into the ramekins and leave to settle for at least half an hour.
10. Preheat the oven to 180^oC (350^oF) and bake your soufflés for about 20 minutes. You can see them rise, so its not too dificult to know when they are done.

Notes

• I mostly use canned crab meat, as its most convenient. Raw frozen (but thawed) crab meat will also work. If you happen to be using boiled fresh crab meat you can skip the soaking in step 1.
• I typically add a can of crab roe paste in step 5 to amp up the crab flavour. This is canned by a Korean company called YDK. I didn’t mention this in the main recipe as some people may not be able to find it.
• I would use either red or orange capsicum (bell pepper). The yellow and green ones do go as well with the soufflé visually and they have a stronger taste. 
• If this recipe turned out nicely for you, you may want to check out this similar dish, my earlier liver pate souffle recipe.