Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pizza ~ Vege style

I've had my eye on Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible for a long time. While there is plenty of resources online for cooks like me who like to bake bread, I wanted to read Beranbaum's definitive guide to bread baking. Last month, I finally bought it and I've spent the best part of the last 28 days reading her gospel of bread. 

Now this is wholly unoriginal but I think I may "do the Julie Powell" and bake my way through (a lot of) Beranbaum's recipes. I certainly want to try most of her techniques out.

I started with her recipe for Pizza. Why? Well I had some scamorza (similar to Mozzarella) cheese in the fridge that I sorely needed to use before it expired. 

I've made pizza before but I've always winged it: I never followed a recipe and kind of made a cross between a flatbread and a focaccia. So this was my first by-the-book attempt at pizza dough. Her recipe is perfect if you like a thin, crispy crust on your pizza. I do. 

Beranbaum's recipe requires no kneading. You can get the full recipe here at culinate.com but I am going to run through the process and how it went for me.

First she says to whisk the flour, yeast and sugar together. Add to this the salt: it is important to add the salt later so that it doesn't come in direct contact with the yeast (in which case the salt may kill some of the yeast!).

The next step is adding the water which should be at room temperature. Mix the flour mixture and water with a wooden spoon until a rough dough comes together. Don't over mix, she cautions.

In a smallish bowl (one that's big enough to hold 2-3 cups of water), add some olive oil. [Beranbaum's recipe is enough for two 6 inch pizza's or one 10-inch one -- thereabouts) Transfer the rough ball (the dough won't be smooth, neither will it be too sticky. Just a little sticky and scraggly) of dough into the oil, rotating the dough so that it gets oiled all over. Leave the dough in the oil and cover. Leave it to rise for at least an hour. According to Beranbaum, the longer the dough rests at this stage, the more flavour it will add to the dough (if you are resting it for the 6-24 hours she suggests, you need to put it in the fridge after the initial first hour). I rested it for two hours at room temperature but I will try this again with at least a six-hour sit.

After the two-hour sit, the dough doubled nicely; the texture wasn't smooth as with most bread dough I've handled before. It looked more like a starter dough actually: bubbly with the oil seeping in through the middle and at the sides. It actually looked good. Photos? Yes! I failed to capture the dough as it was but here's a link to another blogger who did. Thanks, Blazing Hot Wok! Check it out, the process it well documented (yikes! The next time, I will ... try, I promise).

Before working on the dough, heat up the oven: 246C for about an hour. Also, sip in your pizza stone or, if you like me don't have one, your baking sheet. Bah. I need to get a pizza stone!

Now back to the risen dough, If you're making one large pizza (well, regular actually) you can work all the dough at once. If you're making two personal-sized ones, deflate the dough gently and then divide it, keeping one half covered in the same bowl. [In case you're wondering about my pizzas, I made one small round one and another kinda rectangular one: what do they call these? Rustic? Yeah!)

Transfer the dough onto a pizza plate/a round baking tray and gently shape it into a smooth bowl (by tucking in the edges. Place it in the centre of the plate and let it sit for 15 mins (Beranbaum says this helps the dough relax, making it easy to shape). Gently use your fingers to stretch it from the centre to the edges of the plate. The dough may spring back initially; if so, let it rest a few minutes before continuing. Allow the rim to be thicker than the centre (for the crust). It should be pretty thin all around, about 2mms, maybe?

Once this is done, let the dough sit for a further 30 minutes or until the round starts to get a little puffy. Don't expect it to get really puffy: this is, after all, a thin-crust pizza!

Now, slip the tray onto the hot pizza stone/baking sheet that has been heating up. BEWARE! It's really hot so USE A MITT at all times! Yes, I got burnt a little in the transfer.

Bake for 5 minutes until the sides get golden and the centre firms up. Remove and spread the topping: I spread some pesto, piled on my scamorza and then heaped some lightly sauteed garlic mushrooms. I sprinkled some chilli flakes and drizzled some chilli oil over the pie also. Oh yummmm!

Pop the pie back in the over for another 5-7 mins or until the cheese melts.

Remove, slice and eat while hot!

The crust was lovely. You taste the olive oil that has seeped through the dough and it's just rich and wonderful. It's best eaten hot out of the oven though. I had a piece once it had cooled and though still tasty, the crunch of the crust added another dimension that should not be sacrificed. Heating it up in a toaster oven or on a grill pan works fine too.

Though I just let the dough ferment for a couple of hours, the flavour of the dough was good. I would however want to see the difference with a longer ferment. Next time!

Broccoli Pesto Pasta

It's been an unbelievably tiring week. My body is weary, my mind's a blank. My plan for the weekend? Vegetating in front of the television, reading Paul Auster's Sunset Park (I started it four months ago and am barely past the third chapter. Shame!) and ... nope, that's it. That's my plan for the weekend.

While I generally find cooking and baking quite relaxing, I really couldn't muster up the energy to cook an elaborate meal this weekend. Forget about an elaborate meal; I didn't even want to peal and chop an onion. And, don't be shocked but I didn't even feel like brewing m own tea — I used a three-in-one mix (where you just add boiling water to a premix of tea, milk and sugar).

Lazy, lazy weekend.

Now back when I was living on my own, this wouldn't have been a problem — I'd be content to just eat a bowl of cereal for dinner or a tub of yoghurt. Or a bowl of nuts. Or some instant noodles. Or just a bag of nuts. But I don't live alone and, tired as I am, I'd feel incredibly guilty if I served my husband a bowl of muesli for lunch.

So, I settled on the next best thing: I decided to make a dish that looked impressive and tasted phenomenal but took hardly any time or effort.

I made pasta. And for the sauce, I made pesto. I seriously thank God for pasta and I thank the Italians, particularly the Genoans for their pesto.

I find pesto to be the most incredible sauce ever created. Ever.  Its simply mind-blowing how much flavour you can get from simply crushing basil leaves, garlic, Parmesan cheese, toasted (pine) nuts and mixing the paste with olive oil. Mind-blowing.  And, you can use a blender to get this done although I've been told that to get the best out of your pesto, you have to chop/pound the ingredients by hand, this way yielding a slightly chunkier paste. I used a blender, of course. 

Traditional pesto is made with basil leaves but there are numerous variations: from sun-dried tomatoes to parsley to spinach ... you name it. Pesto incidentally means to pound or crush and therefore these variations may feature different main ingredients but the process is the same and they almost always incorporate the garlic, cheese, nuts and olive oil that are part of the original recipe. So far, I've stuck to making herb-based pestos: basil, parsley and coriander are my favourites. Oh. And once, when my friend bought me a tub of sun dried tomatoes from Italy, I made a sun-dried tomato pesto. Twas delicious, of course.

Today, I made broccoli pesto. Yeah, I balked at the idea too at first but I was eager to give it a go. I wasn't disappointed, let me tell you, If you ever want to trick someone into liking broccoli, this is the way to go. The pesto was delicious. Broccoli has a very distinct taste (which I love) but it is hardly overpowering in this pesto, despite it being the main ingredient. 

All in all, it took me 15 mins to cook lunch. That wasn't too painful... 

Broccoli Pesto Pasta

1 cup broccoli florets. steamed until soft (but not mushy)
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley leaves
1/3-1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 tbsp toasted pine nuts (or walnuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, etc)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Pasta

Blend (or pound/chop extremely finely) the broccoli, parsley and garlic until finely minced. Add the cheese and pulse a few times. Gently let the oil stream in as you blend until the oil is incorporated and pulse a few more times to incorporate the oil with the paste. Season.

Cook the pasta. Toss it in some olive oil and then coat as generously as you wish with the pesto. Garnish with some chilli flakes.

Pesto Pasta: A Green Dream

I recently visited a dear friend in Cham, Switzerland.

It was a dream vacation. Though only there for five days, I had a fantastic time. How could I not? Switzerland is postcard pretty and my friend JY,  her husband R and their dog Umbria were the perfect hosts. And the weather was refreshing cool ... ok, cold at times but a welcome reprieve from the typical year-round heat here in Malaysia. 

It was the perfect holiday. We roamed during the day and lazed at home in the evenings, after some very good home-cooked meals (accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol), of course. JY and R took turns cooking and I ... well, I scoffed down whatever was put before me, of course. 

I've been back almost a week now and I've been craving pasta (we had that quite a bit) since. Particularly pesto pasta which J made to perfection one evening. It was well and good to load up on carbs in Cham (I rationalised that I needed carbs to help me deal with the cold; plus we walked a whole lot). Back home, I usually stay away from too much carbohydrates. 

But, that pasta dish kept haunting me (thanks JY!). After fighting off  the urge to carbo-load for a couple of days, I gave in tonight. I needed pasta. I needed pesto pasta. 

What did I do? I bought a whole bunch of basil (unlike J who grows her own basil, I had to buy mine) and made myself a mother-load of pasta — I have foresight. I know that my craving won't be quelled so easily and so I made enough for a couple more meals.

Great pesto is truly magical. Traditionally, pesto is made with basil, cheese, olive oil and pine nuts. Garlic is almost always used too, with restraint. Time has seen many variations of the original basil pesto — coriander, parsley, sun-dried tomatoes have been used as the base ingredient; walnuts are often used as an economical substitute for pine nuts and Parmesan isn't necessarily the only cheese used in pesto anymore. The ONE ingredient that is never tampered with is the olive oil. 

I've made coriander and parsley pesto before — both delicious — but I wanted to do the original tonight. Basil. Pine nuts. Parmesan. Garlic. Olive Oil. 

However you choose to make your pesto — blender/mortar and pestle; coarse/fine; garlic, no garlic; etc — you will undoubtedly end up with a winner. You may, however, want to read this article that appeared in the Guardian ... just for reference.

My dinner was so satisfying. And, I have lots of pesto in my fridge for the rest of the week. Haven't figured out what I'll do with it next but till then, here's the how to for this Pesto Pasta!

Pesto Pasta

For the pesto

2 handfuls fresh basil 

50g pine nuts, toasted and lightly crushed

50g Parmesan, grated

1 garlic clove, roughly chopped

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil/olive oil

salt, pepper and a just a couple of drops of lemon juice

In your blender/processor, add the basil (you can roughly chop it) and pine nuts and blend in several short bursts till you have a thick paste. Add the cheese and garlic and gradually add in the oil through the feeder tube/hole as you blend. Add the seasoning and lemon juice just before you're ready to remove your pesto (you decide on the consistency)

Cook your pasta as per usual (boil in salted water till al dente), drain and toss with a little olive oil. Mix in the pesto. Garnish with some grated Parmesan.

Pesto cheesecake

So here's the story.  I saw these edible flowers in the supermarket I had to get them. I was going to make a savoury cheesecake today and since you can't ice a savoury cheescake, I though it'd be cool to decorate them with flowers right? I thought they'd be so pretty. It's Spring after all ... well, not in Malaysia but ... aren't they pretty?


The cheesecakes that we know and love are mostly dessert cakes: sweet, creamy, rich and sometimes, a little tart. If there is one dessert I find impossible to resist, its the cheesecake. I remember when I was a teenager, there was a franchise called The Cheesecake Shop in Kuala Lumpur which served an array of delicious cheesecakes. Those cakes are the reason why I fell in love with cheesecakes, my favourite at the time was the strawberry cheesecake and the marble cheesecake. And the blueberry cheesecake. And, the ungarnished, non-fussy New York cheesecake. Oh I love them all.

But have you tried cheesecake as an entree? A savoury cheesecake with a side of roasted vegetables? Oh, and a garnish of flowers (he he).

Savoury cheesecakes aren't very popular ... yet. Recipes are evolving as we speak. In fact, if wedding cake specialist Jan Kish is to be believed, savoury cheesecakes are becoming an option for wedding cakes -- for those with specific allergies or dietary inhibitions. Check out her savoury wedding cheesecake creation.

This definitely isn't a dish for non-cheese fans. Oh no. But, if you're a cheese fiend like me and an after-dinner cheese platter makes you break out in a smile, well then you'll just love savoury cake. The flavour of the cheese is full-on.  I used purely cream cheese (with just a bit of Parmesan) but you can use  a blend of cheeses: cream+ricotta, ricotta+goats cheese, Stilton, mascarpone ... options abound. 

I stumbled upon this recipe for a Pesto Parmesan Cheesecake on fatgirltrappedinaskinnybody.blogspot.com and played around with Julia Costa Mesa's recipe just a little. I used her measurements to make two cheesecakes just to experiment with flavour. The first, I made a pesto filling/garnish just like hers. The second, I tried making a sun-dried tomato pesto filling instead. Both were sublime. I've got many more variations in my mind. Apples would, I am certain, go deliciously well with this dense cheese cake. As would zucchini. 

But that's for another time. Today, we'll try the pesto cake. 

Pesto Parmesan Cheesecake

For the crust

1 cup breadcrumbs 

80 gm butter, melted

1 tbsp roasted garlic

For the filling

600g cream cheese at room temp

1 cup Parmesan, shredded

3 eggs, room temp

2 tbsp flour

1/4 cup sour cream

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup pesto ( I made my own basil pesto)

1/4 cup toasted walnuts, chopped fine.

Garnish (optional)

1/2 cup pesto 

A handful of shaved Parmesan 

Preheat oven to 180C.

Mix the breadcrumbs, butter and garlic in a bowl and press into a 23-cm (9-inch) pan. Bake for about 10 mins. Remove and allow to cool.

Prepare your pesto. 

• 1/2 cup pine nuts (you can use any walnuts or even pumpkin seeds, toasted)
• 3-4 handfuls of basil
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
• olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced 
• I use my mortar and pestle to make my pesto, especially since the amount is very little. Bash up the garlic with a little salt. Add the basil (bit by bit to fit the mortar) and pound till it becomes a nice paste. Add the toasted nuts, oil and cheese and massage with the pestle till you yield a gooey paste. 

In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream the cream cheese, Parmesan, eggs, flour, sour cream and garlic till smooth. Gently stir in the walnuts.

Pour half the cheese mixture onto the pre-baked crust. Slather on the pesto and pour the remaining cheese mixture over the pesto.

Turn up the heat of your oven to 200C. Bake for 10 mins and then lower the heat to 180C and bake for another 40-50 mins or till the cake doesn't jiggle, esp in the centre.

You can spread some pesto over as a garnish. Or use flowers like me. Or you could eat this cake with a side of roasted vegetables. I skipped the pesto garnish as it was a tad too strong for me. My basil pesto was a little too potent -- homemade pesto often is a lot stronger than the ones you get in jars. 

Enjoy.

Pesto explosion

A pesto quiche ... but where's the egg?

Well, what started off as a pesto quiche slowly became a pesto tart. I was overzealous and made too much pesto. I just kept adding more basil, more cheese and, instead of pine nuts I added some walnuts and macadamia nuts. I kept adding and adding until I ended up with a cupful of joyfully green pesto that was a little cheesy and a lot nutty. It was too good to keep any for a rainy day so I decided right then and there to fill the crust with pesto (and cheese cause you just cannot do without cheese), leaving very little space for the egg custard.

It worked out really well because, well, you can't go wrong with pesto. I think I may have used pesto in a quiche in a previous post but it doesn't matter because the star of this here quiche/tart isn't the pesto. It's the crust.

Forget about shortcrust, baby. Here's a flaky crust that will make you quiver with enjoyment at every bite. That's right. QUIVER. It's flaky and it's so buttery it just melts in your mouth. Thank you, Dan Lepard.

See the lovely bronze crust on top and the rich, flaky base? A slice of this baby is enough to satisfy. And enough to fill you up for the night. 

Let's have another look...

Ok.... the picture is a little blur but I'd just nibbled on a piece and I was QUIVERING ...!

Ok enough with the pictures. Let's get down to the crust. Lepard was inspired by a quiche he ate at the Patisserie Miremont in France. The pastry is a rough puff pastry; which takes about half the time and effort needed to make puff pastry but without having to sacrifice too much on the richness, the flakiness or the crispness.  

Here's what you need for the pastry:

150gms plain flour

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cream of tartar (optional)

150g butter, cold and cut into 1cm cubes

1 egg yolk

75 ml cold milk

Sift the flour, salt and cream of tartar into a bowl. Add the butter and gently coat it with the flour. Beat the yolk and the milk together and add the liquid to the dough. Mix to form a ball, but DON'T knead as you need to keep the butter firm.

Lightly flour your work surface and quickly but gently roll the dough into a round, about 30 cm in diameter. Fold in the two sides (equal portions) and roll again to a 10x30 cm rectangle. Fold into thirds (so you get a nice 10x10 square), wrap it in plastic and chill for 20 mins. 

Repeat the process twice.  

Lightly grease a quiche/tart dish. Roll the chilled pastry thin, careful not to tear it, and gently transfer it into the dish, pressing it carefully into the edges. Place a sheet of baking paper on the dough and fill it with beads/pastry weights. Blind bake in a preheated oven (180C) for 40 mins. If your oven is too hot like mine, bake for 35 mins and cover the edges with foil for half that time. 

Once the shell is baked, it will be bubbling a little (all that yummy butter), fill it with the filling of your choice. 

Enjoyment begins as soon as the crust starts to bake and the delicious smell of  baking butter escapes the oven.

  

Thank you, Dan Lepard. 

Vegetarian lasagna, baby

I've been on the hunt for a recipe for vegetarian lasagna for a very long time. It's not that there aren't any around; it's just that none appealed to me. Looking for a good recipe is like looking for a life partner: lotsa good men around but mostly there's just no chemistry. Know what I mean? 


Then along comes Nigel Slater. I bought Kitchen Diaries about a month ago and have been devouring the pages of his cooking journal almost non-stop. I take it with me to the gym (imagine if you will the hard-cover book propped against the counter of the cross trainer as I sweat it out!), to work (I read it as I wait for and  ride the lifts), to the post office (waiting around has never been so pleasant) and to the coffee shop (forget about having a conversation; I'm with Nigel). I am sure that the little gasps,  the oohs and aaahs that escape me uncontrollably as I read  the book make it seem like I'm reading a great book of fiction A romance novel or perhaps.a captivating mystery. 

The book is fantastic. I've come to one conclusion: this man eats really tasty meals. It isn't often that you want to try every single recipe in a book right away but that's kinda what's happened with me and the Kitchen Diaries.  

I decided to review the book for the column (Don't Call Me Chef in The Star: out tomorrow today) and was really spoilt for choice deciding the recipes to include in the review. Everything looked and sounded delicious. EVERYTHING. The desserts will make you want to throw off your diet with nary a thought. Even his take-out dinners (yes there are times he doesn't feel up to cooking) sound divine.




I settled on Slater's brownie (the best I've tasted)  and his zucchini cakes with feta and dill (see pic below). for the review. Superb.  

But what I really wanted to make was his lasagna. And his lime tart. And the no-tears onion soup. And a whole lot more.


Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries isn't a vegetarian cookbook. Hell, no. But it's a very inspiring, easy-to-read, joyful book that charts  Slater's culinary adventures every day in a particular year. There's plenty for vegetarians and plenty more for vegetarians who love to cook. 


So anyway, back to the lasagna. I am not very fond of  lasagna (or pasta, for that matter) that is bathed or tossed in tomato-based sauces. I much prefer white sauces or no sauce at all. Good old olive oil is what I want for my pasta, thank you very much. 


Slater's lasagna is doused with bechamel sauce (milk, flour, butter) and filled with mushrooms-- delicious, plump portabellos and topped with a basil pesto. Are you drooling yet? Are you?

Not a 30-minute meal, this one. There are  three components that make up Slater's lasagna with pesto and mushroom. First you have to make the bechamel sauce. He says store-bought bechamel sauce is fine but I haven't come across any here so I made it myself. Next, the basil pesto. Then you have to cook the mushroom (with onions, garlic, cream and parsley) and of course, you have to cook the lasagna sheets in boiling water .

With a 50-minute baking time, it takes at least an hour-and-a-half to make the lasagna. But it's worth it. Slater combines dried porcini mushrooms with some plump portobellos but I didn't have the former so I used some button whites instead.    

Let's start with the  Bechamel Sauce

500 ml whole milk

2 heaped tablespoons flour

2 bay leaves

5 black peppercorns

45g butter

Heat the milk, bay leaves and peppercorns in a pan until it starts to boil. Take off the heat and let the ingredients sit in the milk for about 30 mins. Strain. Melt the butter and add the flour. Whisk till smooth: low fire, remember. Take off the heat and whisk in the milk. Return to the heat until the sauce begins to thicken. Remove.

For the pesto:
1/2 cup pine nuts
3-4 handfuls of  basil
3-4 tablespoons grated parmesan
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled

I used my mortar and pestle but you can use your food processor/blender. Bash the garlic with some salt. Add the basil and pound till it's a paste. Add the toased pine nuts, cheese and olive oil till it becomes a nice gooey paste.

For the sautéed mushrooms:

A thick slice of butter

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

500g mushrooms, sliced

1 handful chopped parsley

10g porcini mushrooms

1/2 cup cream

2 tablespoons grated parmesan

Sauté the onions and garlic in the butter over a medium heat for around 15  minutes until they get transparent and really soft. Once the onions have softened, add the mushrooms and cook till they change colour and get nice and soft. Add the parsley, cream , and  parmesan. Cook for around 15  minutes, until the sauce has thickened. 

Prepare the lasagna sheets:

Cook the sheets in a pot of salted, boiling water till al dente: about 12 mins.

Heat up  the oven: 180C

Get you baking dish ready. Spoon in a bit of the bechamel to cover the bottom and then place  a layer of lasagna sheets on top of the sauce. Pour out half the mushroom mixture onto the sheets, sprinkle with some parmesan and then follow up with another layer of the bechamel sauce. Now place another  layer of pasta, the rest of the mushrooms and then the pesto. Top it with the rest of the bechamel. Right on top, shave or grate some parmesan and you're good to go.

Bake for 40-50 mins or till the top is nice and golden brown and the sauce is bubbling over.

Egg sandwich, pepped up and ready to go

An egg sandwich is hardly glamorous. But in the world of sandwiches, my comfort food is the good ol' egg sandwich. Not the type that's smothered with mayo, but a good, juicy (yes, juicy isn't reserved for steaks) fried egg sandwich with onions and relish of choice.

My egg sandwiches have gone through several phases of evolution. In the early years, they were simple — just fried with some onions and scallions, seasoned with pepper and salt.

Then, my grandmother acquianted me with her way of frying an egg — mixing cumin and chilli powder into a paste that’s beaten with the egg; the onions stay but not the scallions.

Over the years my fried eggs are filled (with a variety of vegetables from mushrooms to spinach to potato) and are served with a relish of some sort — home made and randomely concocted, of course.

This morning’s egg sandwich was filled with mushroom (swiss brown, sliced) and leek and covered with melted mozzarella; seasoned with red pepper flakes, black pepper, salt and some oregano; and served on a bed of lettuce laced with some pesto I made from parsley (pic above). I polka dotted the pesto covered leaves with some yellow mustard — a trendy sandwich — and included a generous slice of tomato, lightly grilled.

It’s a really simple sandwich but because of the pesto, there is some prep involved. You can of course use store bought pesto but I find them way too expensive. Plus, where'd you go to find parsley pesto?

But hey, you end up not only with a delicious egg sandwich but some pesto to use for a pasta dinner.