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Monthly Archives: November 2013

Boule and camembert (aka the best starter ever)

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Zoli in bread, cheese, french, party bites, quick and awesome, snacks, Vegetarian

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

baked camembert, balthazar bakery, boule, camembert, caramelized onions, fancy appetizers, pain au levain, pain au siegle

pain au siegle

fresh pain au siegle bread from the bakery

baked camembert and boule

score the camembert and place inside the boule

baked camembert and boule

top with caramelized onions

baked camembert and boule

slice into the warm crusty bread, drenched in rich cheese and sweet onions

I’ve felt so guilty about not being on my blog here for a while and so relieved to be back. I have so much to share and can’t wait to get it all down. My absence wasn’t the Thanksgiving madness but my new passion for artisan bread. Oh yes, I have been bread baking like a… a bread fiend, I guess. But more on that later.

So it’s the day after a lovely Thanksgiving. Everything went miraculously well, minus a single smashed champagne glass. And, assessing the food and drink, my favorite dish of all was hands down this simple but oh-so-fabulous starter of wine, bread and cheese.

Camembert baked in a fresh boule with caramelized onions. Oh. My. God. We ate almost the whole thing and polished off a bottle of dry Riesling along with it. I may try this again at Christmas, perhaps with some other toppings such as figs, garlic and rosemary, sun dried tomatoes or chili jam. In the meantime, this is highly recommended.

Ingredients
1 smallish boule, such as pain au levain, from a good bakery
1 wheel camembert
2 onions, sliced thinly
1 tbs butter
1 tbs brown sugar
splash white wine
olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Heat up some olive oil and add the sliced onions, the brown sugar, salt and pepper and splash of white wine. Fry on a medium heat, stirring occasionally and turning down the heat if they start to burn. It will take about 20 minutes to cook them until soft, sweet and a nice caramelized brown. Taste as you go and add more salt and pepper if needed.

2. Carve out a lid from the boule and scoop out enough of the bread to fit a wheel of camembert inside. This leftover bread can be fried into croutons. I added it to a mushroom, leek and gruyere bread pudding.

3. Butter the inside of the bread and the bottom of the bread lid. Score the camembert all over so it doesn’t explode when it bakes. Tuck it inside the bread and spoon all the caramelized onions on top. Place the bread lid back on top.

4. Bake at 325 or 350 for about 30 minutes. You can pull it out and check inside whenever you like. It is done when the cheese is melted and gooey inside.

The bread will be hot and crispy on the outside, but light as air on the inside. Be careful cutting this as the cheese will seep out. Just dip the chunks of bread in it. We used a spoon to slather the cheese and onions over the pieces of warm bread. I find this superior to the brie or camembert baked in puff pastry. That is heavenly too, but on the greasy and heavy side. Camembert baked in the fresh rustic bread is lighter and more delicate. As for the cheese, choose camembert over brie for this. I picked up a pain au seigle from Balthazar Bakery in NYC, which was made with rye and whole wheat flour and needed a good strong tasting (and super gooey) cheese like camembert. If using brie, I would recommend a triple creme.

*inspired by the lovely farine blog

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Vegetarian cornish pasties (or how my kids learned to love the turnip)

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Zoli in British, comfort food, kids, party bites, quick and awesome, Vegetarian

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Tags

British pub food, Cornish pasties, easy vegetarian recipe, puff pastry, rutabaga, turnip, Veg

vegetable cornish pastiesvegetarian cornish pasties

I know, I know. These are TOTALLY the wrong shape! Cornish pasties should be half circles. You get this shape by spooning the filling onto a flat circle of pastry and then folding over and crimping with a fork. But my puff pastry came in a large circle shape and I had so little time last night that I just sliced that puff pastry into fourths and voila! Triangular, samosa-shaped pasties

So my kids would never touch a rutabaga (swede in England, turnip in Cornwall) or a turnip if they could help it. How about yours? But the taste of these is so mild and easy that picky kids won’t be daunted. My daughter ate two of these and my son ate almost a whole one. Ha ha, kids. Got you. The rutabaga in these adds an umami flavor that is a little unusual to some Americans. I’ve been asked, ‘These are really good. What’s in these?’ But no need to stop there. These can be filled with anything, such as curried vegetables, squash and goat cheese, spinach and pine nut and ricotta. Whatever you like.

Cornish pasties. That comforting Autumnal root vegetable deliciousness baked in flaky, buttery puff pastry. Kind of considered the national dish of Cornwall. Frequent pub food item. Something to fill up on after a night of drinking, waiting for a train at London Bridge. For the Americans out there, the ‘a’ in ‘pasty’ is pronounced the same as in ‘crafty’, not a long ‘a’ as in ‘paste’ or ‘waste’. They usually have a thick braided edge of buttery crust and are made with fillings such as beef and vegetables, steak and stilton or cheese and mushroom.

By all means make your own puff pastry (if you have a bucket of butter and a million hours available). I prefer to buy mine and keep it in the freezer. Shortcrust pastry can be used too, and it is much easier to make from scratch than the endless layering of puff pastry. But I like these with puff pastry. Make mini ones for a party plate.

This recipe is adapted from Veg, by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall

Ingredients for 8 medium-sized cornish pasties

2 sheets puff pastry dough, or 500g puff pastry dough, defrosted

1 medium potato, diced
1/2 large rutabaga or turnip, peeled and diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 small onion, grated or chopped as finely as possible
50g grated mature or sharp cheddar, grated
about a tsp of fresh thyme leaves, chopped
handful of parsley chopped
1 tsp vegetable bouillon powder (I omitted!)
1/2 tsp to 3/4 tsp salt
fresh black pepper
beaten egg for glazing

1) Combine all the ingredients together and mix thoroughly.
2) Roll out the pastry–if it hasn’t been pre-rolled already–to 3mm thickness. Use a small saucer plate to help cut out the circle shapes for the pasties.
3) Spoon 1 or 2 tbs of filling onto the lower half of each pastry circle and fold the top half over to make a half circle shape. Crimp the edges with a fork. You can make 8 medium-sized pasties or about 16 small ones (use less filling).
4) Brush each pasty with egg wash.
9) Bake on parchment on a baking tray in the oven for 35 minutes at 375F, or until golden brown.

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