Rosemary and Lemon Buns

I made a lemon tart with a rosemary filling last week and absolutely loved, loved, loved the pairing of the two in the creamy tart. Rosemary and Lemon, what a pair. Definitely a coupling I intend on exploiting further. 

I forged straight ahead and combined the two in a soft bread. 

I reverted to the tangzhong bread method which I knew would yield a really light, soft, pillowy bread. I wanted a sweetish bread - one that I could eat on its own with no need for a filling or a spread. Just bread with the additional flavours all mixed in already. 

Speaking of additional flavours, I had some leftover saffron-infused double cream which I'd used in my version Yotam Ottolengi's Broad Bean Kuku (frittata) and so I decided to use cream as the liquid for my buns instead of a water/milk combination I usually go for. 

Can you just imagine it? Cream, cheese, saffron, rosemary and lemon. My oh! my.

Rosemary and Lemon Buns

For the roux
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp custard powder
60ml milk
60ml water

For the loaf
350g bread flour
2 tbsp milk powder
4 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1 egg
80ml saffron-infused cream (heat milk+1 tsp saffron threads till boiling and let sit to infuse for 30 mins)/milk (set about 3 tbsp aside to brush on your bread)
40ml water
roux
30g butter, softened
2 sprigs rosemary, chopped fine
zest of 1 lemon

Mix the ingredients for the roux together till smooth. Put the mixture in a saucepan on the stove until it thickens to the consistency of mayonnaise, more or less. Leave to cool.

Mix the flour, sugar, milk powder, salt together. Add the yeast and whisk it in too. Add the egg and the cooled roux and mix it into the flour mixture with your hands. Add the cream/water gradually and bring everything together to form a rough dough (it won't be smooth - as long as it comes together, it's fine).

Cover and leave to proof for 10 mins.

After 10 mins, uncover and add the softened butter and gently knead it into the dough until it's well incorporated. Knead the dough a couple of times by gently stretching the dough with the heel of your hand and folding it over. Turn it 90 degrees and repeat. Cover and allow it to rest for another 10 mins.

Once it's rested for 10 mins, knead the dough a few times (maybe for about 3-5 mins) and then cover. Repeat this another three times. The sough should expand a little each time.

Once the final knead has been done, cover and let proof for about 45 mins to an hour or until doubled.

Gently punch the dough down with your fist (be gentle) and shape as you desire: a loaf or buns as I did.

Place the buns/loaf in the baking pan and let it sit for about 20-25 mins for it to rise one final time. Brush the cream you kept aside on the bread.

Bake in a 180C pre-heated oven for about 20-25 min (a little longer if its a loaf) or until golden and cooked through (check the underside of the loaf if you are unsure).

Tarts, tarts, tarts

For our monthly Don't Call Me Chef column which is published in Star2 today, we decided to derive inspiration from nursery rhymes. My nursery rhyme of choice was The Queen Of Hearts rhyme made popular by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. 

The Queen of Tarts she made some tarts

All on a summer day

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts

And took them quite away

I like this rhyme but more than that, I love tarts. It's my go-to party dish at the moment. For dinner, tea or breakfast/brunch, I'm surely gonna make you a tart should you come by my way.

For the column, I made a Dark Chocolate Rum Tart inspired by master baker Dan Lepard's Pecan Crust Bourbon Chocolate Tart which you can view in his post in The Guardian some time back. 

Let me tell you: it was delicious! Decadent! You won't be able to stop at one. You may not want to share it with your guests! 

I made a few minor adjustments: he uses bourbon, I used rum; he uses cane sugar I used palm sugar and I also added some sea salt into the chocolate. I also made a chocolate-walnut crust (adding more cocoa than Lepard uses) instead of a pecan crust. 

You can check out the recipe for the Chocolate tart I made here.

Yesterday I made another tart: a Lemon Mascarpone Tart with a Rosemary crust and sour cream topping. 

Like most lemon tarts/slices, this one is tangy and very lemony. It's also creamy because of the mascarpone. The sour cream topping helps soften the tartness of the lemon filing - especially if you're not a huge fan of lemons. 

The filling is not cooked and thickened to form a curd. Though slightly runny, the cheese helps it set quite quickly. 

The recipe was inspired by one I saw in the food section of The Telegraph's site. I added the rosemary (because at the moment, rosemary and lemon is my favourite couple) and the sour cream.

The tart is best eaten chilled.

Lemon Mascarpone Tart with Rosemary Crust

For the pastry

100g plain flour

50g icing sugar

70g ice cold butter, cubed

1 sprig rosemary, chopped fine

pinch of salt 

4-6 tbsp ice cold water/milk

Filling

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

juice and zest of 2 lemons

125g mascarpone cheese

100g castor sugar

3 tbsp sour cream

First the pastry. Whisk the flour, salt and rosemary together. Add the cold butter and with your fingers or a mixer, rub the butter into the flour until you end up with a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs. Add the cold water a little at a time and work quickly to form a dough. Shape into a disc, wrap in cling film and chill for at least 30 mins.

Once chilled, roll the pastry on a floured surface until about 2mm thick. Lift the pastry carefully and fit into tart tin (I used an 8-inch tin). Prick the bottom and sides of pastry with a fork and blind bake in a 180C oven for about 12-15 mins or until the base has hardened slightly. 

Remove. 

For the filling, beat the eggs and sugar until the mixture gets pale and creamy. Add the mascarpone and the lemon juice and zest and mix to incorporate all ingredients together.

Pour the filling into the half-baked crust and put it back in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the filling is set.

Remove from oven and let cool. Once cool. spread a thin layer of sour cream on top.

Edamame Kuku

Wasn't it John "Hannibal" Smith from the awesome 1980s show The A-Team who said, "I love it when a plan comes together"?. Well, that's kinda how I felt today after executing Yotam Ottolenghi's kuku (an Iranian Jewish Frittata), albeit having made a few ingredient-modifications for the lack of barberries and broad beans (two ingredients in the original recipe). 

I've been lusting after Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's cookbook Jerusalem for a while now - it didn't help that my friend, colleague and fellow food lover Jane of The Wayward Oven kept raving about all the recipes in the book - and today, finally, I purchased it along with a basketful of ingredients the two gentleman use abundantly in their recipes.

Jane urged me to start with the A'ja (Bread Fritters) which is on page 64 of the book but I was sidetracked before I even reached there because on page 38 was the gorgeous visual of a Broad Bean Kuku in a well-seasoned skillet. 

See for yourself: I took a picture of my frittata alongside theirs (see pic below) ... hee hee. Yes, I am pretty pleased with the way my kuku turned out ... After all I did say, I too love it when a plan, or in this case a recipe, comes together nicely. :)

As I mentioned earlier, kuku is similar to the open-faced Italian omelette, the frittata. The most well known is probably the kuku sabzi, which is flavoured with a combination of herbs and/or leafy greens like parsley, chives, coriander, dill, spinach, lettuce ...). For this recipe, Ottolenghi and Tamimi use broad beans as well as a couple of herbs: dill and mint.

In my rush to get home to cook, I missed out the broad beans. No big deal, I figured, since I had some edamame (young soy beans) at home. I love edamame more than broad beans anyways (and they kinda look the same)!

I also didn't have barberries. These aren't readily available except in middle-eastern grocers (which are few and far between here in KL) so it was not easy to source. I decided to replace them with dried cranberries. 

Cranberries aren't as tart as barberries but I read somewhere (I can't remember where or when) that the tartness can be somewhat replicated by first soaking the dried cranberries in lemon juice for about 15-30 mins. So, I did that. 

The lemon-soaked cranberries (that are also later soaked in a simple sugar-syrup) added a tarty (did I really use that word?) sweetness to the otherwise savoury and robust kuku. Their ruby redness also added a pop of colour to the dish. 

Unlike an omelette where the egg usually overpowers the ingredients, in this kuku, the egg-filling ratio favours the ingredients: the beans, herbs and berries pack the omelette and the egg is just there to bind them all together ... well kind of.

The addition of safron-infused cream adds yet another dimension to this egg dish. The recipe suggests that you eat the kuku with some yoghurt with cucumber but I served it with sour cream instead. 

Now, I don't normally judge a dish I've cooked by the response it gets from others (usually, if I love it, it's good to go!) but this time my husband R's reaction to this kuku was quite a reflection of how really good it is.

R isn't a die-hard fan of omelettes or eggs for that matter. Unlike me, who rushes straight to the omelette station at a hotel breakfast buffet, R can go a month or three without eating an omelette or a quiche or a frittata. I can't! I need my omelette fix every week. At least!

But this edamame kuku? Well, R finished half of it by himself. I was almost afraid there wouldn't be any left for me! (Disclaimer: I halved the recipe because there is only two of us at home and I didn't want leftovers as I wanted to try more recipes tomorrow!).

This was ... to put it crudely .. one damn good frittata!

Edamame Kuku
Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sam Tamimi's Broad Bean Kuku in Jerusalem

250g frozen edamame
1 tbsp castor sugar
20g dried cranberries (soaked in the juice of 1 lemon)
2 tbsp double cream
1/4 tsp saffron threads
4 tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, smashed
4 eggs
Scant 1 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp dill, chopped
1/2 tbsp mint, chopped
salt and black pepper

Add a tsp of salt to a pot of water and boil. When boiling, add the frozen edamame and cook until the water boils again, for about 3 mins. Drain and refresh under cold water. Shell the edamame and set aside.

Combine the double cream and the saffron and bring to the boil. Take the pot off the heat and let the saffron infuse into the cream for about 30 mins.

Drain the cranberries from the lemon juice.

Dissolve the sugar in about 75ml boiling water. Soak the cranberries in the syrup for 10 mins.

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a non-stick, oven-proof skillet (mine was an 8-inch one). Add the onions and cook on medium heat for about 4 mins, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 mins. Add the edamame and stir to mix ingredients together and coat the edamame with the oil, garlic and onions. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Heat the oven to 180C.

Beat the eggs until frothy in a bowl. Add the flour, baking powder, saffron cream, herbs, 1 tsp salt and pepper and whisk together well.

Add the strained cranberries and edamame and onion mix and stir together.

Wipe the skillet clean. Add the remaining 2 tbsp oil and put the skillet in the oven to heat up for about 10 mins.

Remove and pour the egg mixture in. Cover the skillet and bake for about 15 mins. Remove the lid and continue to bake for another 20-25 mins till set.

Remove and serve with sour cream/yoghurt+cucumber.

Edamame, Radish and Corn Salad

After a weekend ... no make that a week ... of unhealthy dining and irregular meals (if a chocolate tart at 10pm for supper (three days in a row) isn't unhealthy, I don't know what is!), I've decided to eat healthy this week. 

No, that doesn't mean just salads and soups and stuff but it does mean cutting back on the sweets, oily, deep-fried, greasy grub that I've been indulging on for what seems like too long.

I started with this simple Monday salad: edamame, sweet corn, red radish, walnuts and Parmesan cheese. The dressing: olive oil, rice-wine vinegar, lemon, honey, garlic, salt and pepper. Purely improvised (which means it doesn't have a fancy name) but tasty nonetheless.

I've never been a big fan of salads, rally. Raw or barely cooked vegetables with dressing? I'd reach for a plate of steaming curry noodles any day. But all it took is one fantastic salad to change my mind. That one fantastic salad was one I had recently at a friend's home. Just green apples, Feta cheese, spinach and walnuts. There was a choice of dressing: a simple red-wine vinegar dressing or a blue-cheese one. I opted for the latter and was in heaven. Wowza. Salad? Really?

That was a while ago and I have to admit that I am now a salad convert.  It won't be the first thing I gravitate towards at a buffet but it wouldn't be the last thing I'd touch with a ten-feet pole either. 

I don't know if this salad will blow your mind the way the apple salad did mine but it's tasty and has some of my favourite ingredients in it: edamame, walnuts, cheese and radish. Delicious, peppery red radish. 

Just a little but of olive oil and salt and pepper would have been enough to dress this salad, really, but I opted for a little tang from the rice-wine vinegar and lemon and then some sweetness from honey (which really goes well with the Parmesan). 

Edamame, Radish and Corn Salad

1 cup edamame (I used frozen ones in the shell so I dunked them in salted, boiling water for a couple of minutes).

1/4 cup corn, steamed. 

2-3 radishes, sliced thin.

Walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped, a loose handful

Parmesan cheese, shaved

Parsley leaves, a handful

For the dressing

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp rice-wine vinegar

1 tsp lemon juice

1 clove garlic, chopped fine

1 -2 tsp honey

salt and pepper

Combine the edamame, corn, radish, parsley, nuts and cheese. 

Whisk the oil, vinegar, lemon juice, honey and garlic until emulsified. Add the sugar, salt and pepper (as much as you need) and whisk till combined. 

Dress salad. Eat. 

Cauliflower and Green Pea Tartlets

I've been experimenting a lot with vegetarian tarts (ha!ha! I am tickled silly by the double entendre here), trying to figure out how to make really tasty vegetable pastries without using eggs. I do love quiches and custardy tarts but there are many in my family and some among my friends who do not eat eggs. 

It isn't difficult to make a tasty tart (I'm still chuckling). Once you get the crust right - sturdy and yet crumbly, buttery - the fillings are just a matter of matching flavours that go together. Mushroom and onion, leek and potato, broccoli and cheese, beetroot and ricotta .... it's pretty straightforward. 

The real challenge is making these ingredients come together or rather, bind so that they don't just fall out of the crust as you bite or cut into it.  Most of the time, I rely on an egg custard to do this. 

Soft cheeses are great binders: mix ricotta/cream cheese/goat or cottage cheese with some herbs (and seasoning) and spread in on the base of the tart and the vegetables will be anchored on securely, for example. 

But what if you don't want so much cheese. Cauliflower, pureed into a thick, chunky paste, is a delicious alternative - this I discovered this morning. 

I had a whole head of cauliflower that had been sitting in my fridge for about a week. I was going to make a mash with it but then I looked at a ball of frozen shortcrust pastry sitting there too and decided today would be the day for using up leftover ingredients.

It turned out to be a really good idea: the past week has been a really busy one at work and as a result I didn't cook much at all. Actually, I didn't eat much either, although, unfortunately this hasn't translated into looser clothes or a lighter me. Grrr.

Anyway, I ended up with three ingredients: the cauliflower, frozen green peas and oyster mushrooms. There was also a couple of sprigs of thyme and about a two-inch slice of Gruyere cheese in the chiller.

I couldn't believe my luck. These were perfect for a tart!

I borrowed a rectangular tart pan from Jane of The Wayward Oven because, well, it looks so elegant and I wanted to make elegant tarts (still a little funny ...no?). As a result, I had a little extra pastry which I used to make some mini tartlets ,,, you know, one-bite (or two) wonders?

I pureed the cauliflower with some cream, cheese and some mushroom stalks, diced and sauteed in butter - I added these in last as I wanted them to be a little chunky in the puree. I seasoned with puree with salt and pepper and this was the binder. 

I steamed some green peas and stirred half the amount (about a half cup) into the puree and left the rest (coated with a little butter) for the topping. 

I also chopped some toasted walnuts and added it into the puree, just for some crunch.

The heads of the mushrooms (I used oyster mushrooms), I shallow fried till they were almost crispy and then placed on top of the tart to bake. They ended up crunchy and, dare I say it, meaty. 

To my joy, the tart turned out really good. The cauliflower puree (which I was afraid would be too mushy for a tart) was yummy and the peas, nuts and mushrooms just added texture and also flavour. 

Cauliflower and Green Peas Tart

500g cauliflower
3 tbsp cream
1 cup green peas
1 cup oyster mushrooms
1/3 cup Gruyere cheese, grated
handful of walnuts, toasted and chopped
2 springs thyme
salt and pepper
knob of butter
olive oil
1 tbsp plain flour

For the pastry.
300g plain flour
150g butter, chilled and cubed
pinch of salt
4-6 tbsp ice water

Start with the pastry. Whisk the salt and flour together. Add the cold butter and rub into the flour (or whizz in the food processor/mixer) until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the water a little at a time until it comes together as a ball of dough. Wrap in cling film and chill for at least 30 mins.

Boil/steam the cauliflower till soft. Drain and toss in olive oil. Roast (200C) for about 20 mins or till the tops start to brown. Remove from oven and let cool.

Steam the peas till cooked.

Separate the stems of the mushrooms from the tops. Dice the stems. Lightly coat the tops with the flour. Heat about 2 tbsp oil in a skillet and, when hot, fry the mushrooms (a little at a time) till they are almost crispy. Drain.

With the remaining oil, saute the stems until they are nice and brown. Drain.

When the cauliflower has cooled, puree it with the cream. It should be a little thick. Add the stems,half the peas and the cheese and pulse a couple more times. Season and stir in thyme (leaves only).

Coat the remaining peas with softened butter.

Preheat the oven at 180C.

Roll the pastry out thin and mould it into the tart case. For mini tartlets, cut circles out and then mould.

Using a fork, puncture the base of the pastry. Blind bake the pastry shell for about 12-15 mins, till the base is firm but not golden.

Remove from the oven.

Spread the puree into the tart case. Top with the fried mushroom tops and, if you like, grate some more cheese on top.

Bake for about 20 mins or till the puree starts to set.

Remove and let cool. Garnish with the remaining buttered peas, and, thinly slice red radish slices.