Puff pastry

Is there anything that you can't improve by wrapping it in puff pastry?

We're coming to the end of the Australian school year, and that means that in the canteen we're cutting down on ordering fresh food, and trying to use up what's already there - EDF on a large scale. Puff pastry does an excellent job of packaging up odds and ends of food, and makes them look great - and easy to eat out of hand - in the process. We've been serving up lots of "puff" specials for morning tea, and after watching hordes of schoolkids scarf them up, I've been inspired to come home and scavenge in my own fridge.

Some things I've wrapped in puff pastry lately:

- leftover sausage (either alone, or with spicy mustard and cheddar cheese - see above)
- leftover chocolate ganache
- blackberry-apple butter
- leftover meat and veg
- leftover apple pie filling (or any pie filling, or jam, or...)

I'll stop there, but I think you get the picture. Please feel free to share your puff-pastry excesses with the rest of us.

Pasta salad

Not being a huge mayonnaise fan (although the homemade version is a much more convincing argument for its merits than the storebought kind), it took me a long time to warm up to the idea of pasta salad. Add in all the people among my family and friends who can't or don't want to eat mayo for various reasons, and it becomes an even less appealing option. But then again, remember that this is pasta we're talking about here - pretty much my single most favorite food item. And then you'll understand why I still remember the day, probably 15 years ago now, when I discovered a recipe for pasta salad that didn't involve mayo; that I could feed to vegans and people with high cholesterol; that I could leave out in the sun at cookouts without fear of giving everyone food poisoning. I've been making variations of it ever since.

Tomato-pasta salad
Adapted from Betty Crocker's 40th Anniversary Cookbook
I haven't looked at the original recipe for this in years, but I knew exactly where to find it. I had never made a pasta salad before I found this; since I have I've made dozens, and passed along the recipe almost every time. When the audience permits, I've added variations such as chopped prosciutto or salami, shredded pecorino romano, or olives. It's very adaptable.

1 450 g/16 oz package short pasta
4 Tbsp olive oil
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
4 green onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 tsp balsamic vinegar3 tsp chopped fresh basil leaves
~10 grinds black pepper

Cook pasta as directed on package in salted boiling water and take off heat while it is still a bit more al dente than you might like. Drain; rinse in cold water to stop cooking; drain again. Dump pasta into a large mixing bowl and mix oil through first, to keep from sticking together. Add in remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate about 2 hours, or until chilled.

Serves 10-12 people as a side.

Rosemary salt

When I took a break from unpacking boxes long enough to take a look at the garden of our new house, I was thrilled to discover that we are caretaking a large and flourishing rosemary bush. Rosemary seems to grow prolifically in Canberra; I’ve seen varieties that grow so big that people use them as hedges. Ours isn’t quite that impressive, but it’s definitely more than enough for my needs, and has prompted me to begin rebuilding my stash of flavored salts and sugars.

Rosemary salt is about as easy a recipe as you can find: pick some fresh rosemary, strip the needles off the stems, chop them up as finely as you can, and mix into at least double the quantity of salt. Then leave easily accessible, for adding to all sorts of things. I mentioned stirring a large pinch into my experimental cumquat curd; here are a few other things that come to mind:

-      savory cheddar oatmeal

-      disruptive bolognese sauce

-      roast chicken

-      breakfast sandwiches

-      orange soup

 

You may notice, in looking at this picture, that there’s a patch of mint flourishing alongside the rosemary – what you can see is about one-quarter of what’s there. I’m thinking mint sugar, or maybe mint simple syrup, for my next experiment.

In progress

No word yet on a delivery date for our household goods. At least once every day for the past week or more, I have a moment of complete and overwhelming frustration at being in life limbo and my total inability to do anything to change that. This is usually rapidly followed by an internal talking-to about my first world problems and an attempt to focus my attention elsewhere, on things that I can control.

This past weekend, my displacement activity was an afternoon in the kitchen, focused on cooking projects that I could carry out with the TUK’s limited resources: a batch of skillet jam for Miss B’s morning toast; a batch of roasted rhubarb (plus strawberries) for my morning yogurt; a tray of cinder toffee, drizzled with chocolate and boxed up as a hostess gift for a lunch invitation for the following day (more on this later); and two jars of preserved lemons.

Preserved lemons are a great project to undertake when you’re itching to can something, but the circumstances aren’t auspicious. At the moment, I don’t have a pot deep enough to water-bath can anything. Nor is it exactly high season for cannable produce in Canberra right now, what with it being the last month of winter and all. But citrus is definitely still in season – I got 2 kilos (~4.5 lbs) of various kinds for about AUD $5 last week at the famers’ market – and preserved lemons require exactly two ingredients: lemons and salt.

Perhaps even more appropriately for my current situation, preserved lemons also require a third, less tangible element: time. Recipes generally recommend that you let them do their thing (steep? brew? pickle? ferment?) for at least 3 weeks before using. So this project, in addition to giving purpose to a weekend afternoon and preserving a fruit at the height of its quality, is also an investment in my own future – a physical manifestation of the hope that, by the time these lemons are ready to use, I’ll be back in a kitchen of my own, settling in to the next phase of this transition.

Preserved lemons

All of the recipes I looked at included complicated instructions for slicing into the lemons to get salt into their insides while keeping them intact. Since I immediately screwed this technique up on my very first lemon, I made the executive decision that quartering the lemons wouldn’t dramatically alter the chemical process going on here, or the taste of the finished product. Plus, it made them easier to cram into the jars.

8 lemons, unwaxed if possible

2 cups/~12 oz/360 g of kosher/cooking salt

Have available 1 or 2 clean jars for storing the lemons. Avoid metal lids, as these could corrode from the salt/acid concentration.

Wash and dry the lemons, scrubbing skins if necessary to remove any grit or dirt. Put salt into a medium-sized bowl. Cut the lemons into quarters and toss in the salt to coat, then stuff into the jars, pressing down on them to release the juice. Try to extract enough juice to cover the contents of the jar(s); once you have filled up the jar(s), sprinkle over 1-2 Tbsp of salt as insurance.

Close the jar(s) and store in a cool place, away from direct sunlight, for at least 3 weeks. Turn the jar(s) occasionally to redistribute the juice and salt.

Stay tuned for updates on how mine turned out - and what I do with them.

Improvisational baking

As soon as I saw the picture of slab scones on Dinner with Julie’s blog, I was overwhelmed by the desire to make them. Do you ever get this way? That you want to cook something so badly that the adrenaline surge gives you a head rush? Maybe it’s just me? Some kind of little-known baking addiction/withdrawal? I’m not sure why I had that response to this particular recipe, which is, after all, for scones – something I’ve made about a thousand times before.

Not like this, though. There is just something so appealing about the idea of making something this way, with a layer of delicious filling in the middle. Why is this more alluring than mixing the same stuff all through the dough? I don’t know; maybe it’s the concentrated taste, contrasting with the scone texture, as opposed to having it scattered all through in bits? I haven’t analyzed it sufficiently; I just knew that it was a brilliant idea and that I was going to take the first excuse I could to make some.

An afterschool play date provided me with opportunity; then I just had to figure out how to work around my lack of equipment. These days I normally make scone dough in the food processor, because it takes me about 30 seconds and I don’t have to hassle with massaging butter into flour. Under the current circumstances, that option was obviously out, so I went to my next-best option: freezing the butter and then shredding it on a box grater. That way it’s already so small when it goes into the flour that it requires minimal additional work.

The other equipment issue, particular to this recipe, was rolling out the scone dough. I don’t have a rolling pin either, and I’m resisting the urge to buy one, since I already own at least four for this very reason. So I improvised: I filled an empty 1-litre bottle with water and put it in the freezer. Once frozen, it made a perfectly good makeshift rolling pin (if you don’t mind a little bit of a – shall we say rustic? – texture).

Julie’s recipe makes enough scone dough for two pieces of dough; I omitted the sugar so that I could make one savory (filled with about ½ cup of grated cheddar cheese and a couple of rashers of bacon, sliced thin and cooked until crisp) as well as one sweet (filled with about 6 tablespoons of raspberry jam). I got at least 6 big, triangular scones out of each slab, and they were a smash hit at the playdate. As my friend PJ pointed out, they are perfect for transporting, because you don’t need to bring anything extra for accompaniment; all the good stuff is already inside. Still warm, with a cup of tea alongside, they were just thing for a chilly Canberra winter afternoon. And would probably still make a nice snack (or breakfast) even if you’re among those sweltering somewhere in the northern hemisphere.