Stilton en croûte aux Champignons et Épinard

The weather is getting colder these few weeks in the coast and for several days it rained continuously. Looks like Winter maybe earlier this year! My little boy caught the cold and coughs from his Dad. Felt like I'm started to have the symptoms too ... sigh... :-( Anyway, I don't want this to upset my day, grabbed few food mags and newsletters from couple of shops my family frequent to. Sometimes, you can get very good deals when the supermarkets and wholesalers on promotions. Few months ago, I got few promo packs of 2 + 1 Galbani Cow Mozzarella for € 2.99! I missed the one that gave 1 tub of Ricotta Finetta :-( Back in my hometown, that price is for 1 piece of the same item! Of course, at the same time, I bought Buffalo Mozzarella too. It's a must in my menu :-D Both items shared the same shelf anyway :-P.

So, this time I was keen to try out some recipes with Stilton cheese and I saw one version called Melty Mushroom Wellington in Good Food magazine, October issue. Now, 'Wellington' in the culinary world is informally used to describe other dishes in which meat or fish are baked in a puff pastry not boots! That reminded me fondly of Paddington Bear and his cute yellow wellington boots :-D Anyway, instead of the usual fare of having Stilton, I was torn between cooking a soup with Stilton or bake the savoury pastry. In the end, I chose the savoury pastry recipe as I want to use up an 'ancient' ready-to-roll pastry in the freezer. It would be great for l'heure de l'apéro before dinner and I'll have the Stilton (again!) to end the dinner with :-D. I want to try out the recipe because it's vegetarian and it looked quite easy. I'm not that good in baking and I want to improve it seriously. By the way, anyone follows BBC's Masterchef: The Professionals? It's really a great challenging cooking shows among chefs. I skipped others cooking challenges just to watch it.

One more thing, if you have those Stilton cheese that came in ceramic jars, you need to spoon it out thinly to layer the fillings for this recipe. It's easier if you can find sliced Stilton (or any sliced Blue Cheeses). I was lucky this time to taste Stilton from Paxton & Whitfield (last Stilton-in-a-Jar I had was from Harrod's) brought back by my father-in-law during his trip to London recently. Here's my adaptation of the original recipe. I'm not sure if I followed it correctly in the pastry steps but the Verdict? It's delicious and will definitely make it again!

Stilton with Mushroom and Spinach Puffs

(Stilton en croûte aux Champignons et Épinard)

Serves 4

4 Medium-size White/Brown Mushrooms

300 g Spinach leaves

1 Tbl Thyme leaves ~ hand picked

1 clove Garlic ~ chopped finely

1 Shallot ~ chopped finlely

4 Tbl Olive Oil

1 Egg ~ plus a good pinch of salt, beaten for brushing and taste :-)

100 g Stilton Cheese (or any Bleu Cheese you fancy)

1 x 32 cm ⌀ Roll Ready Made Butter Puff Pastry (or x 500g block)

Flour for dusting

Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 200 ºC/180 ºC Fan.

2. Remove stalks from mushrooms. In a pan enough to cook the mushrooms all at once, heat half of the olive oil and sizzle the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes on each sides until golden and cooked through (depends on the size of the mushrooms, you may need longer time to cook them). Lift the mushrooms out onto kitchen paper for a moment. Set aside.

3. In the same frying pan, heat the rest of the oil. Fry garlic for few seconds and add in the chopped shallot. Fry until the shallots turn transparent, then add in the spinach. Cook for 2-3 minutes over high heat until completely wilted. Season with salt and pepper. Remove the cooked spinach into a sieve to drain the liquid thoroughly.

4. On a cleaned, lightly floured working surface, scatter the picked thyme leaves and roll out the puff pastry on top of the herb. Light press the pastry surface evenly to make sure the thyme leaves stick to it nicely. Using a cutter, cut out 4 size pastry rounds 2 cm wider than the mushrooms for the base and 4 pieces of 4 cm wider rounds for the tops (that is 4 cm wider than the measured base).

*After several attempts to maximise the yield of the ready-made rolled puff pastry, it gave me about 4 pcs x 8 cm base and 4 pcs x 10 cm top. I was lucky to find smaller mushrooms than the base size.

5. To Esemble:

Divide the cooked spinach into 4 portions and stilton cheese into 8 portions. Place the smaller circles on a lined baking sheet. Top with 1/4 of the spinach and making sure that the amount isn't wider than the size of the mushroom. Top with 1/8 of the stilton cheese and then a mushroom, top side up and another 1/8 portion of stilton cheese. Brush the edges with beaten egg. Top it with one larger puff pastry round and gently stretch the pastry over the mushroom ~ trying not to trap any air, then press the edges together with a fork. Trim the edges if needed and brush the top generously with beaten egg. Complete the rest of the cut out puff pastries with mushrooms, spinach and cheese.

6. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. Leave them to cool for few minutes before serving. (Depends on the types of oven, you may need to adjust the temperature or the pastries may burn. Please read the manufacturer's manual).

Tip: This recipe can be made several days before as it freezes well and it's great for tea time as well.

Note:

If using large mushrooms like Field mushrooms or Portobellos, it's best to use a 500 g block Ready-made Puff pastry. Scatter the thyme leaves (or suitable fresh herbs available) on floured surface, roll out the block to the thickness of 3 mm. Cut out 4 pieces pastry rounds 5 cm wider than the mushrooms and 4 pieces of 10 cm wider rounds for the tops, re-rolling the trimmings if needed. If you're short of time (like me), you can use 2 ready-to-roll puff pastries; 1 for the base and 1 for the top (like making Ravioli) and follow Step 5 to finish.

Salmon Tartare Asian Style With Chicon

This is my third time making raw fish tartare as apéro. Usually, my preferred raw fish for raw fish tartare is Tuna but it's very expensive compared to salmon! The species of Tuna available in the supermarket here is Nageoire Jaune or Albacore. The usual common seafood over here are flat fish, crevette grises, or mussels (my 2 darlings saw juicy ones clinging on the dike this afternoon :-P). Then... flashbacks of poor tunas that were caught before maturing age I saw in National Geographic channel not long ago made my hand grab that pack of salmon! Anyway, the results for this recipe turned out well and my guests were fine and loved it. One of my close Belgian friends, Aldina in Hamburg requested this recipe to be on my blog when she visited me in Penang but I postponed it for quite sometime (until she had to PM me for the recipe! Sorry, for giving the recipe late :-P and I hope your guests loved it as much as we did).

I served this tartare back then with large size papadums and boiled edamame beans. Now, I'm back in Belgium, I have the pleasure of eating kilos of Belgium 'White Gold' ~ the Chicon! The thought of serving this salmon tartare using the chicon leaves was because of the fresh and crunchy tasty leaves. I stil wonder why Chicons are considered bitter... I don't taste it that much actually. I had tasted worst than that with other vegetables like bitter gourd and some terrible Traditional Chinese Medicine when I was sick. The other reason(s) was I short of small plates and don't have those tiny individual serving bowls :-D Banana leaf did come across my mind but you can't eat it, right? :-D I stored minimum 2 kilos of chicon at a time in the fridge and why not using them?

Most importantly to remember when handling raw seafood and meat, clean your hands, utensils and working surfaces before and after thoroughly. Put raw ingredients in the fridge if you're not serving it before time. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much I did.

Salmon Tartare Asian Style With Chicon

Serves 6-8 persons

300 g Salmon fillet (w/o skin) ~ Sushi-grade quality

Several ears of Chicon (Belgian Endives) ~ I used about 1 kg!

Marinade:

60 ml Light Soya Sauce/Tamari

30 ml Fresh Lime Juice

1 tsp Lime zest ~ grated finely

½ tsp Garlic ~ grated from 1 large/2 small cloves

1 tsp Ginger ~ grated from a thumb-size ginger root

1 Shallots ~ sliced and chopped finely

Garnish:

1 tsp White Sesame seeds ~ toasted and lightly crushed

1 pc Red Chilli ~ deseeded and chopped finely

1 stalk Spring Onion ~ sliced diagonally into thin slices

Salt & Pepper to taste (optional)

Method:

1. Clean the raw salmon fillet under running water. Pat dry with kitchen paper and set aside.

2. Wash the Chicons properly and pat them dry. Trim off the browned ends, few outer leaves and any bruises. Leave it whole until needed as chicons turned brown and wilted quickly (I usually put them back in the fridge or covered it up in a drainer).

3. In a clean bottle or container with a lid, mix all the Marinade ingredients and give it a good shake until the ingredients well incorporated. Set aside until needed.

4. Cut the salmon steak into long strips and dice into cubes ~ roughly about 1 cm x 1 cm thickness or just the way you would prepare Salmon/Tuna Tartare. Be careful not to dice the fish too small or it would be mushy and break apart when you mix in the marinade.

5. In a bowl, add in the diced salmon and ¾ of the marinade mixture.With a spoon, slowly fold them together.Wrap up with cling film and refrigerate until time to serve.

6. When it's time to serve, make sure the salmon tartare changed color or turned opaque and the meat is 'springy' cooked by the Lime juice.Taste it again to make sure the tartare is well seasoned. Add more of the left over marinade if needed.

7. Add in the sliced spring onions, chopped chilli & lightly crushed toasted sesame seeds. Mix it well and serve in small individual serving bowls with separated chicon leaves or spoon the salmon tartare ready in the chicon leaves.

Note:

I put few whole chicons on the side so that the guests can have extras. If you like more pungent, try it with small amount of wasabi to give it a Japanese taste, bird's eye chillies or Scotch Bonnet to give extra kick for the adventurous guests :-) I suggest that you put separately the wasabi or chillies and let the daring guests help themselves.

You can use skin-on salmon steak which is a bit cheaper than skin-off salmon steaks. Just don't forget to remove the skin when you dice it! :-P This recipe is also wonderful and delicious with Tuna. You can use Lemon or Yuzu as well :-)

Enjoy!

G Is For... Gazpacho

It was hot and sunny few weeks ago that I decided to try my hands and knives for the first time to make Gazpacho ~ that famous cold soup slurped world wide! Every where I went, it's in the Summer Menu. It's so famous that food companies even produced it in tetra-paks, cans and bottles! It's one of Spain's famous export besides Paella, La Tomatina, Bull Fighting, Flamenco and... Real Madrid :-D Ok, I admit am not a football fan but I do knew few names here and there.

Gazpacho is a kind of seasonal raw soup with refreshing quality ingredients that's a sure hit and instantly remembered of European Summers besides it's suitable for vegetarians too. You won't go wrong if you serve it at dinner in those hot summer days! By the way, another similar cold soup to Gazpacho is the Vichyssoise (scroll down to the bottom page of how Vichyssoise influenced Anthony Bourdain and in entertainment). Traditionally, it's blended with hard bread (or stale bread) rather than serve separately as toasts with or without onions. Some people don't like hard bread incorporated into the soup :-) Of course, you can add hard boiled eggs, ham, croutons, almonds if you want to make other variation of non-vegetarian cold raw soups like Salmorejo and Ajo Blanco or Gazpacho Manchego which is a meat stew (mainly rabbit and chicken meat) from La Mancha, Spain.

So, here's my first try of traditional homemade Gazpacho or Gazpacho Andaluz with seasonal ingredients! I don't use mortar and pestle for the pounding of vegetables even though is sometimes favoured to give the soup textures and to avoid foaming created by food processors. I imagined with horror, a large barrel-size mortar, long pestle pounding away with loads of vegetable chunks strewing everywhere on the kitchen floor... and a chirpy 3 ½ year old, happily picking up the scraps? Oooofff... :-|

Gazpacho Andaluz

Serves 4-6 portions

To be blended in food processor:

½ Cucumber ~ skinned, deseeded & chopped roughly

5 nos Red Tomatoes ~ deseeded & diced (choose medium size sun ripened tomatoes)

1 no Yellow Onion/White Onion ~ medium size, roughly diced

½ Red Capsicum ~deseeded & diced

2 cloves Garlic

3 slices of hard breads (or stale bread) ~ wholemeal or white, no problem

1 Liter Water

2 Tbl Red Wine Vinegar/Xérès Vinegar

3 Tbl Olive Oil

2 Tbl Tomato Concentrate

Sea Salt & freshly grounded Black Pepper to taste

Garnish:

½ Yellow Onion/White Onion - finely diced

½ Cucumber ~ deseeded & diced

½ Green Capsicum ~ deseeded & diced

Extra Virgin Olive Oil ~ for drizzling, generously

Method:

1. In a food processor, add in the vegetables and stale bread. Blend them into a mixture. Add in the salt and pepper to taste. Then the vinegar and blend the mixture again until it's smooth and creamy.

2. While the food processor still turning, add in the olive oil and tomato concentrate.

3. Pour into a soup tureen or pot and chill it minimum 2 hours in the refrigerator. Just before serving, check the taste again and adjust if necessary.

4. Ladle the gazpacho into individual bowls or soup plates and sprinkle the reserved garnishes over the soup.

Note: I like to use Yellow Onion for this soup because I like it's stronger and complex flavour that complements the Capsicums and vinegar. You can use milder and sweeter white onions or omit it if preferred as sometimes it's not included in the Andalusian region . To chill the soup faster, I poured it into a stainless steel pot ( I would love to have it in a Soup Tureen but I don't want to break it accidently) or if you use a tall blender, you can just put the whole jug in the fridge. If you think it's too liquid, you can start with 800 ml of water and slowly add extra water to achieve the consistency you like... or lessen the liquid to make Arranque Roteño, gazpacho cream :-)

Enjoy!