Chilled Sweet Corn Soup, Lime Mascarpone & Cheddar Tuile

14 May 2009 at 06:57

Kiplagat

Soups

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Cold Sweet Corn Soup

Second sweet corn post, my previous one was the Sweet Corn & Thyme Risotto , this week I am cooking vegetarian food. This is not new to me, I once as a result of a dare, tried to live as a vegan for two weeks, it was tough initially but I got to appreciate the lifestyle at the end of it. Not having a massive chunk of animal protein on the plate, forces you to become creative about what you eat. I also became a big alfalfa groupie…..

Vegetable puree soups are great because they are delicious and so easy to make, and they normally require few ingredients. This chilled sweet corn soup uses pureed kernels and a stock made from the cobs. Since sweet corn is naturally sweet & creamy, you don’t need too many ingredients or processes to coax or create flavour. This soup is sweet from the corn, creamy & tangy from the lime mascarpone, and has a little heat from the cayenne pepper. The cheddar tuile has a contrasting crunchy texture.

Sweet Corn Stock

  • From 4 corn cobs cut away the kernels. Set the kernels aside.
  • Cut cobs into small pieces about 5cm/2inches in size.
  • Add cobs into a sauce pan, along with a sprig of thyme, a small roughly chopped spanish onion, a teaspoon sugar & a pinch of salt.
  • Cover cobs with about 500mls of cold water. Gently bring to the boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.
  • Strain & reserve the stock.

Sweet Corn Soup

  • Fill a big sauce pan with water, add lots of sugar & salt. Bring the water to a vigorous boil.
  • Add sweet corn into sauce pan, cook for about 8-10 minutes.
  • Once cooked, strain off corn kernels. Refresh corn kernels in ice bath to stop the cooking process.
  • Working in batches, spoon corn kernels into a blender then add enough sweet corn stock to cover the corn. Blitz until smooth.
  • Pass sweet corn puree through a fine sieve.
  • Place sweet corn soup in the fridge to chill.

Cheddar Tuile

  • Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius.
  • Grate some cheddar cheese.
  • On a silicon baking mat, spoon some grated cheese & form to your desired shape.
  • Sprinkle some cayenne pepper on top of grated cheese.
  • Bake in oven for about 10 minutes, then set aside to let tuile cool & harden up.

Lime Mascarpone

  • Add lime juice to some mascarpone cream as per your taste.
  • Season with salt.

Assembly

  • In a bowl, spoon a dollop/quenelle of the lime mascarpone.
  • Pour in the chilled sweet corn soup.
  • Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper on soup, then garnish with cheddar tuile.
  • Done!

Sweet Corn & Thyme Risotto

13 May 2009 at 08:29

Kiplagat

Random Recipe

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Sweet Corn & Thyme Risotto

The picture above looks like some extreme risotto porn, I got carried away & zoomed in a bit too close… Anyway it looks great, doesn’t it? The risotto you are looking at is sweet, creamy & also quite sinful. I enriched with mascarpone & butter. It is pseudo vegetarian since I used dairy products, I say this because the dichotomies of vegetarianism is a vast subject. What is 100% vegetarian? Think about it…….

This risotto is made with some of my favourite ingredients, I use fresh thyme in almost all my cooking. Sweet corn is just beautiful so much so, I actually love eating raw sweet corn kernels(my mum thinks that’s weird). As an aside, I like tasting food ingredients in their raw state that way you get to appreciate the transformation that happens during the cooking process. I would not recommend this though, tasting stuff like raw chicken would be foolhardy(i’ve done it hehe). Do it at your own risk & have your health insurance in order just in case.

To make this sweet corn & thyme risotto

  • Blanch sweet corn kernels in salted boiling water until cooked(taste it you will know when it is done), refresh the corn kernels in an ice bath(this stops the cooking process), then set aside.
  • Bring 1 litre of vegetable stock to the boil in a saucepan, then reduce heat to leave the stock at a gentle simmer.
  • In another saucepan sweat a minced onion/shallot & 2 cloves of garlic, in some butter & olive oil. Stir for a few minutes until onion & garlic has softened up. Season with some salt & pepper.
  • Add half cup of risotto rice into the pan with the onion & garlic. Cook rice for a few minutes, stirring frequently until rice is slightly toasted(you will smell the toastiness) & translucent.
  • Add 100 mls of white wine to rice, stir rice until wine is absorbed/evaporated.
  • Ladle enough vegetable stock just to cover the rice and then stir until stock is absorbed, then add more stock. Repeat this until rice is al dente, this means it will be cooked but the grains will have a slight resistance when chewed.
  • Stir in the sweet corn kernels & 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves.
  • Take the rice off the heat, add 1 tablespoon of mascarpone into the rice while stirring vigorously, do the same with 1 tablespoon of cold butter.
  • Cover the risotto for about 5 minutes to rest before serving.

Simplicity: Banana Bread

05 May 2009 at 00:31

Kiplagat

Baking

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Banana Bread

Just wanted to share this amazing banana bread I made today. I got the recipe,from joyofbaking.com, this is my favourite banana bread recipe. Try it out, its great.

Banana Bread

Caramel Popcorn, Liquefied

30 Apr 2009 at 00:22

Kiplagat

Alinea by Grant Achatz

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Caramel liqueified popcorn

This was my first crack at cooking from the Alinea cookbook. Flipping through this massive book with beautiful food porn(photographs), I am filled with a sense of awe. This is not every day cooking, Grant Achatz & his team are really pushing cooking as we know further. by the way he writes a great column here.  

Back to me flipping the book, I was searching for easy recipes to start with, most recipes in the book require a massive mise en place(ingredients).

The liquefied Caramel popcorn was just popcorn, sugar, salt, butter, water & soy lecithin(which I didn’t have). It is so easy to make, the only part where i tripped up was the caramel froth that was supposed to go on top of the liquefied popcorn. According to the recipe, I was supposed to make caramel from sugar, water & simple syrup, which I did. After that was adding soy lecithin & blending the caramel with an immersion blender to aerate it and create a wonderful froth. Well I failed, I had no soy lecithin(which helps stablise foams) & used a regular blender which resulted in no froth.

Anyhoo, my first sip of the liquefied popcorn had me doing cartwheels in the kitchen, this really popped in my mouth. It is sweet, salty, buttery & popcorny at the same time…. Oh my! It rocked. I know you are reading this & can’t share in my excitement or think i’m insane.

So how is it done, since I followed Grant’s recipe in the book verbatim, I can’t reproduce it here. But i’ll run down what I did.

  • Make caramel with sugar & water.
  • Pop some corn.
  • Combine popcorn, butter, sugar, salt & water in a sauce pan, simmer.
  • Strain the popcorn mixture then blend it smooth. Set aside.
  • Then I tried to froth the caramel, Ideally I should have added soy lecithin & blended with immersion blender.
  • To serve, pour warm liquid popcorn into a glass, then add caramel froth on top.

That is it, back to scouring the alinea book for more stuff to try…..

Chilled Pea Soup, Mint Chantilly & Parmesan Crisp

28 Apr 2009 at 23:17

Kiplagat

Soups

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Chilled pea soup, mint chantilly & parmesan crisp

This lovely soup is about all the peas you use, so taste the peas raw before deciding if you want to use them to make the soup. Tasting will also help you decide if you want to tweak the sweetness with some sugar. The method I used to prep this soup is loosely based Thomas Keller’s english pea puree & his big pot blanching technique, which are found in his French Laundry cookbook.

Great soup for a sunny day, it is very sweet & refreshing…

Pea soup

No precise measurements needed to make this soup, just go with your taste & instincts,

  • Fill a big pot with boiling water, add lots of salt & sugar.
  • Add peas to boiling water, cook for about 10 minutes.
  • Strain peas from boiling water.
  • Add peas to ice bath(bowl with water & ice cubes). This is really important in giving the peas the brilliant green colour.
  • Strain peas, put them into a blender with enough vegetable stock to cover the peas, blend until smooth.
  • Pass the peas through a fine sieve, the colour of the blended peas might be a bit light, this is because of the air incorporated into it whilst blending. The air bubbles away with time.
  • The pea soup is done, it will be quite thick. You can tweak the consistency by adding more vegetable stock. Season with salt or sugar (if you want to sweeten it)
  • Chill the soup.

Parmesan crisp

  • Preheat oven to 160 degrees centigrade.
  • Grate the parmesan cheese, prep a baking sheet with grease proof paper or silicon baking mat.
  • Thinly spread grated cheese on baking use a pastry cutter as a guide.
  • Bake for 10 minutes.
  • Let them cool for another 20 minutes for the crisps to harden up.

Mint chantilly

  • Gently heat mint leaves & cream in a sauce pan. Take off the heat, then let mint infuse for about an hour.
  • Strain off mint leaves, chill cream in fridge.
  • Whisk chilled cream to stiff peaks, season with salt & few drops of lemon juice.
  • Done!

Assembly

  • Spoon a dollop of the mint chantilly to centre of bowl.
  • Pour pea soup into bowl.
  • Garnish with parmesan crisp.
  • Done!

Chicken ballotine, potato puree & carrot jus

08 Apr 2009 at 23:31

Kiplagat

French Lessons by Justin North, La Technique by Jacques Pepin, Random Recipe

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Chicken ballotine, potato puree & carrot jus

Sometime last year I had lunch at Caveau a great little restaurant in Wollongong. Head chef at Caveau is Peter Sheppard, a protege of Liam Tomlin. Anyway, the lunch special on that day was a chicken ballontine with potato puree, mushrooms, buttered spinach & cepe(porcini) sauce. The chicken was cooked perfectly, I am still trying to work on my chicken doness radar, my chicken is always seems overdone. The chicken at caveau was the best I’ve had in a while, it actually took me back to the roast chickens from Kenchic outlets in the 80′s. Back in those days Kenchic roast chickens were done so well, plus the chickens here in Kenya still tasted like chicken.

Below is what the Caveau meal looked like done by a real pro. The spinach was buttery beautiful, chicken was amazing, those two little button mushroom pieces were amazing. Can’t remember what the cepe tasted like though…

Caveau Chicken ballotine

Ok back to my cooking

Flipping through Jacques Pepin La Techique, I found the technique on how to debone half a chicken to make a small ballotine. Deboning was lots of fun, it took me a while(5 mins, pro’s would do it in seconds), just make sure you have a really sharp knife, with a sharp knife you won’t hurt yourself plus you will cut through the chicken like you are cutting soft butter.

The stuffing in the ballotine is just the thigh & leg meat diced up with a little cream, coriander, salt & white pepper. Mushrooms & spinach would also be great as stuffing along with the diced chicken.

In this dish also I incorporated a carrot jus, the recipe was from Justin North’s French Lessons. I have been looking at this jus recipe for a while, just could not figure what it would taste like. Maybe just like carrots, sometimes I expect some uber-new taste experience, but I have come to appreciate when something simple just tastes like what it is. This jus is so simple, its just carrots, bit of thyme, salt, pepper,butter & water. Treat this ingredients with care & you have something beautiful. In his book Justin recommends this jus to be served with roast poultry, meats or even as salad dressing.

The chicken ballotine

  • Debone half a chicken, take off thigh & leg meat.
  • Dice up thigh & leg meat, add some cream, coriander, salt & pepper
  • The deboned chicken will consist of the breast & lots of skin. Try & even out the flatness breast by slicing off the top. Place extra breast meat on areas of bare skin.
  • Place the diced up meat on the centre. Roll up into a long sausage & tie it off with string or whatever you can think off. I used thin rolled up strips of aluminium foil(lol!). Just tie it loosely, the chicken expands while cooking…. it does.
  • Season skin with salt & pepper.
  • Roast in 210 degree celsius oven until done…. I did mine for about 25 minutes.
  • Let it rest before you slice it up.

The carrot jus

  • Take 1 large carrot, peel it. Take the peelings & put into a saucepan, also add into the saucepan about 250mls of water, a sprig of thyme. Bring this to a boil, then simmer for about 15 minutes. Drain, reserving the stock, discard the peelings. This results in a fragrant carrot stock.
  • Slice the carrot finely, sweat the sliced carrot,butter & sprig of thyme in a sauce pan for a few minutes, then add the carrot stock. Simmer for about 10 minutes.
  • Now grab your blender, pour stock into it & about half the sliced carrots. Whiz until smooth.
  • Pass jus through a sieve, done!!!

Potato Puree

  • Do it the way you like, mine was just a potato, cream,milk, salt & pepper…. Too easy

Assembly

  • Jam the potato puree at centre of bowl, pour some of the jus around it. Then place three slices of chicken on top….. doneskis!!!

Chicken ballotine, potato puree & carrot jus

Roast Pork Belly with Puy Lentils

27 Mar 2009 at 23:35

Kiplagat

Random Recipe

2 Comments

Roast Pork Belly with Puy Lentils

I think Anthony Bourdain once said pork belly is the poor man’s foie gras, he was right on the money. Pork belly is sandwich of lean meat & pork fat, it so sinful & tasty. I fell in love with roast pork belly in Thailand 4 years ago. When every other sunday, I would go to the food court/market on the ground/basement level of Seri Center in Bangkok and indulge in lots of piping hot roast pork. Going off-topic another great snack I loved was deep fried chicken cartilage, the white bits on the bone between thigh & drumstick, this cartilage is battered & deep fried. Oh yeah a sinful crunchy treat, I am a nose to tail eater, why waste any part of an animal that has given its life for you.

Now about this dish. The pork belly & puy lentils taste are so good together, the sauce was made from roasting juices & pineapple juice added some sweetness to the salty pork. The little carrot dice in the lentils which I added just for colour actually works well, carrot flavour pops in every other spoonful of the lentils. This was a real hearty trencherman’s lunch.

This is how I did it.

Pork Belly

  • Pork belly, I took off the skin on because it was too bristly & I had no blowtorch to singe it
  • Few sprigs of thyme
  • 1 Garlic bulb
  • 1 Onion
  • Pineapple juice
  • Salt
  • Olive oil
  1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
  2. Score the top of pork belly with knife, just cut through fat layer. Then rub on some olive oil & salt
  3. Cut garlic bulb & onion into half, lay them on roasting pan allow with the thyme, this forms the bed for resting the pork.
  4. Lay the pork on top of the garlic, onion & thyme.
  5. Pour pineapple juice to cover bottom of roasting pan.
  6. Cover the pork loosely with foil, cover pork not the whole tin.
  7. Roast for 90 minutes.
  8. Take pork out of oven and roasting pan, let it rest to about room temperature.
  9. Deglaze roasting pan with some pineapple juice & little water. Set pan juices in the fridge. Put in the fridge will solidify the fat, which you can then scheme off before making the sauce.
  10. Place pork in another roasting pan. Rest another roasting pan on top of the pork, weight the top roasting pan with canned goods or whatever. Place in fridge for about 6 hours. Pressing the pork makes it look presentable.
  11. When ready to serve, place pork belly in hot oven for about 8-10 minutes.
  12. To make the sauce, pour the reserved pan juices into a saucepan. Reduce it down, then strain through a fine sieve. Season & it’s done. The sauce is really flavourful, its a cornucopia of pork juices, pineapple juice sweetness, thyme, garlic & onion.

Puy Lentils

  • Puy lentils
  • 1/2 Onion chopped
  • 1 clove of garlic sliced
  • Butter & olive oil
  • Sprig of thyme
  • 1/2 carrot finely diced
  1. Melt some butter & olive oil in saucepan.
  2. Sweat onion & garlic until soft.
  3. Add lentils continue sweating for a minute or two.
  4. Cover with water, add thyme.
  5. Simmer for 35 minutes, add carrot then season with salt. Done!

Assembly

  • Spoon lentils to centre of plate.
  • Place pork on top of lentils, whole or sliced.
  • Pour some of the sauce on top of the pork.
  • Drizzle some sauce around place………

Roast Pork Belly with Puy Lentils

Simplicity: Steak & Chips

17 Mar 2009 at 00:07

Kiplagat

Random Recipe

4 Comments

Steak & Chips

Quick lunch, steak & chips….. the pan sauce with the steak was amazing. Real easy, when steak was almost done(cooked it medium rare). I added about 20 grams of butter to pan, basted steak for a few seconds. Set aside steak to rest, deglazed the great fond(caramelised meaty bits) on the pan with brown chicken stock, reduced it down a lot. Seasoned it with a few drops of lemon juice…. finished… done… mambo kwisha!!!!!

Cheddar margherita pizza with pimento meatballs

09 Mar 2009 at 23:49

Kiplagat

Baking, Random Recipe

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Cheddar Margherita Pizza with Pimento Meatballs

This is a really fast pizza I made for lunch, it is assembled rather than cooked from scratch. This is the lazy pizza that tastes better than anything Debonairs pizza or Pizza inn in Nairobi can do IMO. It is probably cheaper too.

  • Grill ready made meatballs. I used the KMC(kenya meat commision) one’s, sprinkled some pimento, tumeric & coriander on the meatballs before grilling.
  • Using a pizza base from the supermarket, spread some ketchup on the base.
  • Add tomato slices.
  • Place basil leaves on top of tomato slices.
  • Slice meatballs into halves. Place meatball halves on top of the basil leaves.
  • Grate some cheddar cheese & sprinkle on top of pizza. The more mature the cheddar the bigger the flavour hit
  • Season with black pepper.
  • Baking 240 degree centrigrade oven for 8 minutes.
  • Presto…. Voila….. Mambo kwisha!
  • Eat it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheddar Margherita Pizza with Pimento Meatballs

Simplicity: Egg & Chips

27 Feb 2009 at 18:47

Kiplagat

random rambling, Random Recipe

5 Comments

Egg & Chips

How easy is this. Wash potatoes, leaving the skin on, cut into chips. Parboil for 10 mins, toss chips in olive oil, thyme, salt & some chili powder. Cook in hot oven for about 30 minutes. Fry an egg any way you like it, I like mine fried with sunny side up. The yolk is great for dipping the chips into. Egg & chips also goes great with ketchup.

Lots of flavour with almost no fuss. This is how I love my food, the less you do to it the better. Great ingredients will always speak for themselves with no need for cascading layers of flavour. But with a minimal approach to cooking, execution becomes very crucial. But as chef G. Garvin says with the requisite concentration and confidence, cooking great food is within reach of everybody.

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