thepassionatecook

Galette super-complète: IMBB23

Having spent ample time in France, I have seen a lot of regions and eaten my way through many a local cuisine, but I have always had a very special connection with Brittany. Maybe because it was the first region I ever visited, maybe because I know this area like the back of my hand, since I've got a lot of friends there and have travelled it extensively. Or maybe because I am addicted to its glorious cuisine (galettes, crêpes, far breton, kouign aman etc) and the fact that you can drop into any restaurant and get the freshest, most succulent seafood and it won't cost and arm and a leg, pick up a basket of fruits de mer early in the morning when the fishermen have just come in with their catch or eat oysters straight from the sea.
I was only 15 on my first trip to Brittany and completely hooked by the end of it... going back there at every occasion. At the start of every holiday, long or short, I would hop on the Orient Express to Paris, take the first train from Montparnasse to Rennes the next morning and be reunited with a bunch of friends there. Back then, I obviously didn't have much disposable income, so grand eateries were out of the question. When I wasn't staying over at a friend's and raiding their fridge, I mostly resorted to one of the many crêperies to be found up and down the country which used to offer the regional speciality at very reasonable prices.
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the "cuisine bretonne", here's a pancake crash course: Many people think "pancake" translates into "crêpe". Well, it does. But that's only half the story.
A "crêpe" is made with regular (wheat) flour and is enjoyed with a sweet filling. But there's also a far more interesting incarnation by the name of "galette", an extremely thin pancake made with buckwheat flour (blé noir, sarrasin) which will always have a savoury filling. And there are NO exceptions to this rule.
The fillings are many and varied and most crêperies will let you choose your own combinations. For the savoury galettes, you usually have a choice of butter (always salted), cheese, onions, mushrooms, ham, bacon, eggs and sometimes less traditional options like blue cheese or spinach. As for the sweet, you'll find a simple jam or butter & sugar crêpe as well as more elaborate combinations like the famous crêpe suzette, or pairings like apple and caramel, chocolate and vanilla ice cream, nuts and cream... the list is endless.
For this 23rd instalment of Is My Blog Burning (read the roundup), which calls for a piece of regional French cooking and almost coincides with the British Pancake Day, I chose to make galettes - but not just any kind: the queen of galettes, a "super-complète". This is something you will find on every menu in any crêperie and as the name suggests, it is the Rolls-Royce of the Breton pancake and comes with everything you could possibly wish for: onions, tomatoes, ham, cheese, mushrooms and a fried egg on top.
Now, I'd like to say that my galettes turned out perfectly thin on the first try... they didn't. I was expecting the first ones to be messy, always remembering the French saying: "La première, c'est pour le chien!" ("The first one's for the dog"). But the third and forth were still nowhere near what I have become used to eating in Brittany. Then again, I don't have the right equipment, let's just blame it on that. In France, there's no need to make your own anyway, as you can buy perfect galettes to fill and reheat at every bakery and every supermarket. Not here, unfortunately, so I'll have to get used to pancakes that are slightly thicker then the norm. But they tasted just like the real thing and that's all that matters.
PS: The rules for this round of IMBB call for a "verre de vin" to go with the dish. Well, I'd be an ignorant if I was to offer wine with a galette: the drink of choice is a glass of cidre, of course, an alcoholic beverage made from apples, similar to cider, but a bit more refined, shall I say. If you can't find that, you can always have a beer.

Yellow-fin tuna steaks stuffed with pork-scratchings

The biggest shake-up in Vienna's restaurant scene, at least judging from what I can observe here in London, was the opening of a restaurant in 2001 which kicked off a wave of new culinary initiatives inspired by Asian cuisine. I dare say that none of them was as successful as Sohi Kim, and most certainly, none was as controversial.
Leading a restaurant, shop and show kitchen at the same time, Kim also has authored a cook book (winning has won a "Gourmand World Cookbook Award" in 2004) and many of the recipes are daring, to say the least. For months on end, her restaurant was the all the rage, her name resounded throughout the country and it is not surprising that this incredible success should have gone to her head. The story goes that when someone calls and asks for a table for, say, Friday, she'll respond "I'm not interested in when you want to come, it is me who will tell you when I have an availability". Her cook book also displays a certain kind of arrogance on her part ("Japanese cuisine? Pork scratchings? Impossible! But I do make the impossible happen and everybody loves it!"), but some of the recipes sound intriguing enough for me to try them. My friend Martina, successful caterer, chef-for-hire and teacher of various cooking courses here in London, thinks differently: she doesn't think highly of the book at all, and for the recipe I chose to make last weekend, she only has one word: revolting.
And this is exactly why I wanted to try it. A further push came from Carlo of My latest supper, who suggested "taboo foods" for a recent IMBB event. I didn't have a chance to participate then, but this could sort of be accepted as a late contribution. Pork scratchings, aka "Grammeln", may be a frightening thought for many, but they are as wide-spread in Austria as they're frowned upon by the uninitiated - we eat them in dumplings (Grammelknoedel), in dripping (Grammelschmalz) on rye bread with freshly cut onions, no Sunday roast is complete without a tasty crackling and my Mum would keep the rind of our bacon to cut it into small pieces and fry them until crisp for a nibble when we gathered for a game of cards on the weekend.
To serve them with fish is quite a step from there, I have to admit, especially when paired with pears, sweet chilli sauce and sherry. But we approached it with an open mind and I declare that it DID work for me. I wouldn't eat it in large quantities (especially not without some sort of carbohydrate to support all this heavy protein), but as an amuse-bouche, this is a perfect power-play of flavours... admittedly not for the faint-hearted, but certainly a spectacular and undisputedly mind-shifting culinary experience!
Wine suggestion: we liked our Villa Maria Pinot Gris from New Zealand, but even something fruitier and slightly sweeter could work.

My blog DOES look good in this!!!

Oh wow! I've actually done it! Just found out that I have taken home January's award for the best food photograph... This must be the first time in my life that I've won something as far as I remember, at least since that tricycle race against my brother when he wasn't yet walking, and probably some awards for the worst fashion sense, when legwarmers, net shirts and ear muffs were totally de rigeur!
Thanks to all of you who thought this photo of pistachio & semolina pears was standing out in the crowd of excellent pictures nominated... what can I say - I am chuffed, to say the least!

Prune & almond chocolate terrine (IMBB 9)

It's IMBB time again - brought to life by Alberto of Il Forno, this month's edition of this much-loved foodbloggers' event is hosted by Derrick Schneider who has An Obsession with Food. The theme he has set is "terrines": now, I've been collecting many recipes over the years and have had some good successes with a pork and spinach terrine and a fabulous vegetarian version involving super thin fried slices of courgettes, tomatoes and mozzarella - but the meat terrines and liver pates would feature in abundance, I thought, and our fabulous host himself had stolen my thunder by including a vegetarian one in his prologue which looked dangerously similar to mine, so I had to find something different.

The answer was to make a sweet terrine, inspired by a recipe by Sara Jayne-Stanes of the Academy of Culinary Arts. It doesn't respond to the brief 100% as there are no real layers involved, but it uses a terrine mould and therefore certainly has the right shape for one, and who could resist chocolate anyway? I interlaced the chocolate and cream mixture with a prune purée and some roughly chopped almonds, but I am sure any dried fruit would work nicely - or even fresh fruit purée like passion fruit or mango... As I used chocolates (Hachez "Cocoa d'Arriba classic" and Michel Cluizel "Chocolat Amer Brut") with 77% and 72% cocoa solids respectively, the terrine ended up being rich, but not overly sweet - it's the intense flavour of top-quality dark chocolate enhanced by the compressed fruitiness of half-dry Agen prunes which makes this dessert a perfect finish for a wintery dinner party.

IMBB VIII - Cheese fondue

Donna gave me quite a challenge this month with her theme for the 8th edition of the IMBB ("Is my blog burning") event: "Raise your spirits high". She asked to prepare anything which has wine or spirits as a protagonist and while I use alcohol a lot in sauces, soups, risottos etc, I would not necessarily list them as a main component.
Then I woke up one morning and I realised that summer was over - it's cold, miserable and wet, and - to add insult to injury - Christmas decoration is piling up high everywhere you look... this is when my body starts longing not for quick and simple suppers like salads and pasta, but is screaming for stodge and carbs, or anything rich in calories, really.
So I decided to arrange a laid back, heart-warming evening with a cheese fondue, which definitely responds to Donna's brief, as the cheese is melted in a lot of white wine AND some spirits (cherry or some other fruit schnaps, to be precise). And while quantity-wise the alcohol only comes in second, cheese quite obviously being the predominant ingredient, it certainly is a VITAL component.
Kudos for this recipe to my better half, since I am not the cheese fondue meister at home. I can merely take credit for the careful selection of ingredients: a Pinot Grigio from the North of Italy, a great range of tasty, but creamy cheeses (Raclette, Gruyère, Comté and Bergkäse), crunchy cornichons, pickled silverskin onions, crusty baguette and Teufelswürstel (little spicy hard sausages which I buy at Hable Landmetzgerei in Aurolzmünster, Austria) and last, but not least a home-made (if not self-made) apricot schnaps distilled by an old woman in the South-East of Hungary (the mother of my father's colleague Šandor) and "smuggled" into the UK in an innocent-looking bottle of mineral water.
The latter plays a more important role than you might think, as cheese fondue etiquette demands that if anyone loses their bread in the cheese melt, they must drink a glass of schnaps immediately. And if you think this is harsh, think again: the traditional rule says they must be drowned in lake Geneva with a millstone tied to their neck: this is too terminal a punishment for my liking and you will find that our schnaps fining system is much more fun!

Dumpling parade - spinach, bacon, curd and poppyseed (a recipe each, of course!)

At this month's event, "IMBB 7 - You're just the cutest little dumpling", I really feel at home. Being Austrian, I have grown up on dumplings, in their various shapes and formats. They're served as main courses, side dishes or as desserts, they can be savoury or sweet, filled or not... so how could I have chosen just one! I needed to give you a sample of what Austria has to offer in this field.
The principle of dumplings is fairly simple and they're wide-spread for a good reason: Austria used to be a farming nation and dumplings tend to be made purely out of a farm's own produce, so there was no need to buy anything: potatoes and flour for the dough, eggs and butter added if you're lavish, and filled with left-over meats, bacon or fruits from the garden... whatever you have on hand, really.
One of my favourites are spinach dumplings, one of the few varieties which are not filled. Instead, you take white bread (great for using a loaf which has gone stale), soak it in milk, work in some blanched spinach and season generously with nutmeg. Some people add fried bacon bits to the dough, but I prefer a vegetarian version. They're best served with a simple blue cheese sauce. These can actually also be prepared as finger food to pass around at a party: just make smaller dumplings (ca. 2-3 cm in diameter), cook them for less time (no more than 5 minutes) and pass them around on toothpicks with the sauce to dip in!
There's one important rule which you need to observe when cooking dumplings. The water in which you cook them should always be simmering, never cook them at a rolling boil or you might end up with nothing but dough and filling on the bottom of the pan, certainly not in dumpling shape.
Next up is a filled variety: Speckknödel, made from a versatile potato dough which can be used for savoury fillings like this one, but also works a treat envelopping whole fruits (like apricots or plums, stone removed and replaced with a sugar cube). The sweet variety is cooked in water, then rolled in a breadcrumb and butter mix. The version we have here uses very lean, cured bacon as a filling, nothing else added. They're then baked in the oven for 30 minutes before adding an egg and cream mixture. This is traditionally served wih a white cabbage salad or sauerkraut.
Another dumpling technique is to steam them - usually using a yeast-based dough, filled with Powidl, a dark roast plum jam... as for Germknödel. This results in really fluffy dough balls which are topped with poppyseeds and icing sugar.
Other sweet examples for dumplings are Topfenknödel (see picture on top of this post), made of sweet curd and brioche crumbs, the cooked in water and rolled in a sweet butter and crumb mixture. I serve this on a compote of rhubarb and strawberries - a refreshing treat in late spring when these fruits are at their best!