Coleslaw

(serves 6)
Coleslaw is the perfect chilled and tangy salad to go with BBQ and deep fried dishes. It’s also visually appealing, with just the right proportion of green, white, red and purple. Coleslaw is an easy salad to make, but its also quite difficult to perfect. Follow this recipe, which contains all the traditional elements of a proper slaw, and you will get it right every time.

Ingredients

1. Cabbage (1 head)
2. Carrot (1 large)
3. Purple Onion (1/2)
4. Mayonnaise
5. Rice Vinegar
6. Mustard
7. Maple Syrup
8. Caraway Seeds
9. Raisins (40g)
10. Salt

Preparation  

1. Spoon 3 heaped T of mayonnaise and 1 heaped t of mustard into a small bowl ahead of time, so they can warm to room temperature.
2. Add 2T of rice vinegar to the mayonnaise and mix until there are no more lumps. Add 1T Maple syrup, 40g of raisins, 1 heaped t of caraway seeds and stir. Place the dressing in the fridge.
3. Cut the cabbage in quarters and divot out the stem. Cut the cabbage into 5mm slices and then manually break apart the slices into strips.
4. Make a brine using 4 cups of water with 2T of salt and 2t of sugar. Soak the cabbage in the brine solution for 25 minutes.
5. After rinsing, lay the cabbage on a tea towel. Roll the towel up and while holding both ends, shake to dry the cabbage. Open up the towel on the table.
6. Cut a purple onion in half from top to bottom. Peel off the dead layers and then slice half of the onion into 3mm slices. Manually break the onion slices into individual half rings.
7. Using a serrated peeler, peel away and discard the outer layer of a carrot. Continue to ‘peel’ the carrot until the entire carrot is gone. Cut the carrot strips in half.
8. Arrange the onion and carrot over the cabbage. Transfer the three veggies into a salad bowl by the fistful. This is a great way to create an evenly distributed slaw.
9. Spoon the dressing over the coleslaw and then toss.
10. Leave the coleslaw in the fridge for half an hour to mature, toss again before serving.

Notes

• Brining the cabbage removes the water that would otherwise leach out after a while and make your coleslaw a watery mess. Some recipes simply ask you to salt the cabbage directly, but I think brining applies the salt more evenly and lets you use the right amount of salt every time.     
• Making the dressing first gives time for the flavour of the caraway and raisins to infuse into the dressing. If you don’t allow the mayonnaise to warm up first, your dressing will be lumpy.
• While they have the same shape and size, fennel seeds (light brown) are not the same thing as caraway seeds (very dark brown). I would not consider fennel seeds an alternative; only use them in coleslaw as a last resort.

 

Toaster Oven BBQ Chicken Wings

(serves 2-3)
This is a recipe for BBQ wings, the type you’d find in a sports bar. For years I tried to cook these wings at home in the same style with limited success. Then one day I discovered the secret to marinating chicken wings. Most recipes use the method of brushing the wings with sauce as you cook them, because its very difficult for flavours to penetrate  chicken skin and reach the meat within, but this recipe doesn’t. The secret is counter-intuitive: you have to cook the wings before marinating them. 

Ingredients

1. Chicken Wings (20 mid joint, 700g)
2. Shallots (4)
3. Garlic (1 bulb)
4. BBQ Sauce (1/3 cup)
5. Cumin
6. Mustard
7. Liquid Smoke
8. Whiskey

Preparation

1. In a medium sized pot, mix 1/3 cup of BBQ sauce with 1.5 cups water, 1t mustard, 1t cumin and 1t salt.
2. Peel the garlic and shallots and put them whole into the pot.
3. Rinse your chicken wings and add them to the pot.
4. Bring the pot to a boil. After 5 minutes of boiling, carefully fish out the chicken wings without damaging the skin. Put the wings in a Tupperware-like of container.
5. Continue to simmer the sauce until it has halved in volume. This should take perhaps fifteen minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in 1t liquid smoke and 1T whiskey.
6. After the sauce has cooled sufficiently, pour it into the container with the wings. Cover and leave the wings to marinate in the fridge overnight, or in any case for at least six hours. Shake once or twice to allow the marinade to reach between the wings.
7. Preheat your toaster oven to 200^oC (390^oF) degrees.
8. Arrange the wings on a wire rack in the toaster oven tray and bake for 25 minutes. You’ll need to do this in two batches as the wings should not touch each other.
9. Warm up the leftover marinade in the microwave or in a saucepan. You can serve the wings either with the BBQ sauce separate or coated with the BBQ sauce.

Notes

• The most important thing you can do is cover your toaster oven tray with foil, so you don’t have to wash off the carbonized BBQ sauce.
• Do not boil the wings for more than 5 minutes. You want the wings to be cooked, but not the skin to soften too much.
• If you are cooking the wings in a full sized oven, it will probably take less than 25 minutes. They are done when you notice dark splotches develop. You can of course also simply cook the wings over a actual BBQ.
• The same method works for all kinds of sauces you might want to flavour wings with, like teriyaki or oyster sauce. Just boil for five minutes and marinate overnight in the fridge.

 

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.  

 

Types of Bottled Truffle Produce

I love truffles, they enhance the pleasure of eating for so many different dishes. Unfortunately, it is impractical to keep fresh truffles around at home just so you can shave some onto your food whenever the need arises. That’s not to say truffles can’t be used in home cooking. Bottled or Jarred Truffle Produce can be kept in the fridge for a long time, they capture the aroma and flavor of truffles nicely and there is a variety of such products to choose from, including Truffle Paste, Truffle Sauce, Truffle Cream and Truffle Mustard.     

Rudimentary Naming Conventions for Truffles

1. White Truffle is the more expensive variety, as they can only be found in the wild using specially trained pigs or dogs. The best White Truffles come from Piedmont in Italy. These are also called Summer or Alba Truffles.
2. Black Truffles are less, but still expensive. They cost less as they can be cultivated, albeit with some effort. It’s debatable if they are really inferior to the White Truffle. Maybe they cost less simply because they are more common. The best Black Truffles come from Perigord in France, so Black Truffles are sometimes called Perigord Truffles, and also Winter Truffles.
3. Both Black and White Truffles can be found beyond the borders of Italy and France, but these are generally considered to be inferior cousins to the Alba and Perigord.
4. ‘Tartufo’ is Italian for truffle, ‘Tartufi’ the plural and ‘Tartufata’ is Italian for truffle product. If you see any of these on the bottle, it is a product of Italy. ‘Truffe’ is French for truffles. If you see this on the label, this means the bottle is from France.
5. The truffle percentage content is an indicator of quality, and it varies greatly from product to product. Always determine the country of origin and check the truffle percentage content before buying any bottled truffle produce.

Basic Guidelines for Cooking with Truffles

1. Heat dissipates the aromatics of truffles and since truffles are 80% aroma and 20% taste, cooking truffles is tantamount to not having truffles in the first place. Thus one only adds the truffles after  the cooking is done.
2. Truffles go with savoury foods. Macaroni and cheese for example tastes great with truffles. Pasta in a consommé reduction is another viable pairing with truffles. Sour and sweet foods are the opposite. So truffles don’t work with tomato based sauces, vinegar, red wine reductions or anything with fresh or preserved fruits.
3. Don’t use fragrant ingredients that compete with the truffles for the centre stage. Garlic, raw celery and onions, sardines, smoked meats, blue cheese, BBQ sauce are all foods to avoid with truffles. Mild foods on the other hand serve as the perfect medium for truffles. Some examples are scrambled, steamed or poached eggs, butter, brioche, mushrooms, potatoes and cream soups.

Truffle Paste (Pate)

This is bottled truffle produce of the highest quality and needless to say it is also the most expensive. According to the label at the back of the jar, it is 70% truffles by weight with the remainder being mostly olive oil and truffle juice. Truffle Paste has the most intense aroma, and luxurious taste and texture.

As you might expect something this expensive would be from France and will usually contain the phrase ‘Pâte de Truffe’ on the jar. Actually it is not really a paste, but more a suspension of truffle bits in oil. Do not get misled by the term pâte, pâte does not need to contain foie gras or liver; this is pâte made from truffles.

Use this when the truffle is meant to be a topping, akin to caviar, say like when served on a blini. In other words your intention is to taste the truffle directly in a concentrated dose, as opposed to mixing it into some food. Of course if cost is of no concern to you, then use it all the time by all means.

Truffle Sauce (Salsa)

Truffle Sauce is a less concentrated version of bottled truffle more suitable for every day use and gram for gram it is perhaps only a tenth of the price of Truffle Paste. It is more common in Italy, and the label will usually say “Salsa Tartufata” or “Salsa di Tartufo”, but not always. Sometimes it is also ‘mislabelled’ as a pate (see the top picture, a truffle pate from Italy is actually a sauce). Typically the truffle content of Truffle Sauce is somewhere in the 3-5% region, with most of the rest of the solids in the bottle being minced mushrooms. Don’t look down on Truffle Sauce, it still packs a punch with its truffle aroma.

If you are stirring truffle into your scrambled eggs, pasta or a cream of mushroom soup, this is probably the type of truffle product you’d use. I also use for truffle mayonnaise. Truffle Sauce is also an ideal gift to bring to a casual home dinner, instead of that boring bottle of wine.

Truffle Cream

Truffle Cream is in the same quality category as Truffle Sauce and also tends to be an Italian product. The truffle content will be around the same, that is to say 3-5%, but it is typically (but not always) light coloured and has a more creamy texture. In Italian the label is similar to Truffle Sauce except the word ‘Salsa’ is replaced with ‘Sapor’ or ‘Crema’. ‘Sapor’ means flavour or taste. You are also more likely to see labels in plain English as it is produced in various Commonwealth countries too. Unlike Truffle Paste and Sauce, Truffle Cream contains more than just truffles, mushrooms and oil. If you have a look at the nutrition information you’ll see additional ingredients like vegetable extracts, herbs, spices and emulsifiers.

One of the best ways to use Truffle Cream is to mix it into a cream sauce like hollandaise or béarnaise. Another is mashed potatoes. In general, the time to use Truffle Cream is with light coloured food. This way you get the taste and aroma of truffles but not dark flecks of truffle, and your guests will be pleasantly surprised.

Truffle Mustard

The truffle content of Truffle Mustard is usually not stated but I can’t imagine it to be much given its price. Its even cheaper than Truffle Sauce and Cream. It tends to be French in origin and the label might say something like ‘Moutarde a la Truffe’.

This type of truffle product is best just as a condiment with steak, roast pork and game birds. Not so much with lamb or chicken. Basically it as a really expensive mustard, so use it as such.

Truffle Oil

Truffle Oil is the least desirable kind of truffle product and I really don’t recommend it, which is why I don’t have any on hand to take a photo of. I suppose you could use it for salads. It contains very little truffle and is not value for money. If you insist on buying Truffle Oil look for bottles with a few flakes of truffle in them for many actually contain no truffle at all and are purely artificially flavoured. Alternatively, get a bottle of truffle pate and make your own by combining a few spoons of truffle with sunflower or other similar oil in a bottle.

Whole and Sliced Truffle

The other type of bottled truffle I am not too keen on is whole or sliced truffle in oil. The solids are 100% truffle and this makes it very expensive. When it comes to truffles texture is secondary to aroma and flavour. In my opinion the effect of having large pieces of truffle on your food compared to small bits is really not that much.

Please note I am not endorsing any of the brands featured here. These bottles are just what I happened to have in the fridge at the time.