Crab Flan

This stood out from all the dishes I have been doing over the last couple of years that were usually variations on down-loaded themes. This one I believe is original. Confession number one, I have avoided pastry up until now, because of past dismal failures. So it was with some trepidation that I embarked on this one, my first pastry dish. Second confession, I used shop bought Puff Pastry. I know the shame and the convenience! Just make sure it is an all butter recipe. If you going to spend time and money making this, might as well make it the best you can. Third confession, I did not weigh or record anything and used my eye for judgement. So be warned my quantities are approximate, adjust yours to meet your instincts. So lets kick off.

Roll out (snigger, unroll) puff pastry made previously and cut out the base for a 8" diameter flan case, with removeable bottom. Cut even width strips, 1.5" wide to form the sides. Cut the remember pastry into half inch strips for the top lattice. Prepare your flan dish and line the base and sides, remember to wet just the base edge and press in the sides to seal. Return all pastry to frig.

Take quarter pound of white crab meat, check for chitin, toss with zest of a lime, dessertspoon of chopped tarragon (goes easy, don't want the tarragon to dominate), a drizzle of lime juice and pepper. Set aside. Finely chop a red onion and sweat off in an ounce of butter,  Don't overcook it, retain some bite to it, set aside. Make a thick béchamel sauce with 1.5 Tbspn plain flour, 2oz of butter, when flour and butter combined and cooked for a moment, loosen with quarter pint of full milk, keep adding milk slowly and stirring all the time until milk used up and the sauce has become thick, smooth and creamy. Stir in two Tbspn of brown crab meat and the reserved onion. Meanwhile liberally coat inside the flan pastry with one egg yolk, prick the base (oophs I forgot to do this) and bake in middle of hot oven 200°C for ten minutes. Back to the sauce, drizzle 12 drops of tabasco and stir into the sauce, check and add a few more drops at a time until the sauce has just the edge of a kick. Again do not want it to dominate and you cannot take it out if you over do it! Simmer very gently until you have the right consistency and then for the final flourish add in a Tbspn or two of cream. Keep warm. Finely grate about 2oz. of Gruyere and mix with three handfuls of coarse white breadcrumbs and zest of lime.

Now to assemble. sprinkle a dspn of semolina across the flan base, then spread a packet (70g) of brown shrimps. Cover with the béchamel sauce and then spread the white crab meat, finally topping with the breadcrumb and gruyere to completely cover the crab meat. Take the thin strips and form an open plait across the top, brush with egg yolk, then back into the hot oven, 200°C, for about 20 mins, but keep an eye on it.
Eat hot or cold and enjoy.

You will see that my pastry skills have a long way to go, but a step in the right direction?

Tasty Lunch variation

Clearly I love my sprats on toast with tomato. Tried out this variation and, can you believe it was even better! First off it was helped that I used our own beef tomato that was so sweet and tender, such a difference compared to the hard flavourless commercial 'vine' tomatoes. So generally follow my previous Tasty Lunch post. But having butterfly filleted the sprats and cleaned the inside of the fillets with a kitchen towel, the next step is to take some very thin cut prosciutto ham and cut into long strips, the length of the slice, about 30mm wide. Layout on a board. Take each fillet with tail end, less fin, placed at the bottom edge of the ham with the rest of the fillet lying on the ham up towards the top. Cut a firm gherkin into long thick strips, about 6mm square and roughly 50mm long. Place a gherkin strip on the fillet end, then, making sure you pick up the end of the ham, roll is tightly up, place with the top end of ham at the bottom to keep it in shape. Now grill with a sprinkle of olive oil for about four minutes until fish flesh turns white and ham begins to crisp, Keep a watch and do not over cook them. Keep warm and set aside

Now time for the toast, lightly grilled, cut off the crust if you prefer and coated with your prepared tomato mixture (skinned tomato, shallot, garlic, olive oil, all lightly blitzed) taking it right to the edges and then place a line of thin raw tomato slices along the toast. Splash of oil put toast and tomato mixture under the grill briefly until the raw tomato just softens, remove, place the sprat rolls onto the toast and enjoy with a green salad.

The way to Damson Jam

Damson Jam has the greatest intense flavour and a great balance between intense sweetness and the bitter sharp undertones. But these small plums with the stones clinging onto the fruit are tiresome and laborious to prepare. I read across many recipes and this is the method I followed which has produced a well set jam, full on flavour and not unduly arduous to make. Weigh your just ripe damsons, (thank you Pixford Fruit Farm, Bishops Lydeard for perfect fruit) and weigh out an equal measure of granulated sugar. Put the sugar in a low oven to warm. Using a cherry stoner, remove the stones from each fruit keeping the fruit separate from the stones. The stones will cling on to some of the fruit depending on how ripe the damsons are. No matter. Put the de-stoned fruit into a large enough preserving pan so you have room to easily turn the fruit around and put over a very low heat. At this moment you are just warming the fruit through, getting the juices to flow. Put the stones and their clinging fruit into another saucepan together with a small quantity of water. I used just under three-quarter pint water to 5lb of fruit so you must adjust the water to suit your weight of fruit. Put onto a medium to high heat but watch and keep giving an occasional stir. Very quickly the pulp will begin to thicken the water which will easily catch and burn on the bottom of the pan, a good sign that these damson have a high pectin content. When the stones are clear of any pulp, time to use a colander, yes colander not a sieve, put the stones, pulp and juice into the colander over the preserving pan that holds the fruit and stir with a spoon until just the stones are left. Discard the stones. Now turn up the heat to about a medium heat and gently simmer the fruit and the pulp juice until  the fruit and skins are soft. Remember to keep stirring occasionally as the pulp will again catch and burn very easily on the bottom of the pan. If the pulp starts to get very thick, wash the stones with a very little water just enough to slacken the pulp. Be careful when adding water, too much and the fruit wont set or you will have to boil off excess water spoiling the deep flavour, not enough and it will catch and burn. The fruit will soften very quickly and doesn't need boiling. Time to add the sugar, raise heat to highest setting, stir until sugar dissolved. With a thermometer watch the temperature rise, give the odd stir to even the heat out, until 104°C is reached. This will happen very quickly, do a plate wrinkle test for peace of mind that you have a good set. Give a final stir to make sure all is at this temperature, check temperature again, then remove from heat. Skim off the scum and leave for 20 minutes before filling your pre-warmed jars. Screw the lids on tight and impatiently wait for the next day to try out this delicious jam.

Couple of Ideas

Bought sea caught Grey Mullet, which needs a bit of care to bring it to life. Cooked it whole, gutted and descaled, stuffed the belly with ginger slices, a few chilli slices and the green heads of spring onions. Laid it on oiled and seasoned greaseproof paper that I scattered with a generous handful of refreshed wasabi (seaweed). Wrapped it up papillote style and cooked in a fan oven at 180°C for 40mins. turning it over 2/3rd of cooking time.
 

 Took the skin off, lifted the fillet off the bone and served with some of the cooking juices,

 



Was not the outstanding success expected, cooked just a little too long, still moist but I think cooking could be reduced by 10mins. Wasabe didn't have the impact expected so would probably not repeat. Definitely step up the ginger and chilli to give a bigger kick. Any suggestions welcomed!

To go with it, and to use an abundance of spinach I had at the moment,  I washed, stripped the stalks, spun dry and shredded about 1lb of spinach. Threw that into a very hot pan with a knob of butter and kept stirring to avoid catching and to drive off any lingering water. As it wilted and largely collapsed I then threw the retained ends of two bunches of spring onion which had been sliced along the length into slivers, think julienne but not so fussy.

 

Job done, time to serve, topping the spinach with a warmed soft boiled quails egg. Tasted good even if not outstanding!

I even remembered to take a photo!

Jam Making

I have a confession. Been making jam/marmalade for years. Usually manage to get good flavour, usually avoiding over caramelising the sugar but so seldom have my sets come out right. Done all the reading, done all the tests, finger test, temperature, pectin but mostly to no avail, even for those sure fire jams that novices can do with their eyes closed! Recent years I have got so despondent I spoke frequently of giving up and do no more, but, that taste of homemade is so superior I end up trying for that one more time.

A few caveats, I do not use commercial setting agents or pectin's, except in extremis. I reckon that what with all the mess for washing up, all the waste of scum or residue on a variety of tools pots and pans and processing time spent it is better to do one large batch than a number of small ones. In anycase I seems I still have a family if not to feed then to pass jars onto.

Just completed this years Dundee and also a Seville Marmalade, its looking like I may have cracked it at last. Hence this posting just incase it helps anyone out there floundering like me. Or some sharp eyed maestro can spot the errors of my ways!
 
I now routinely use a digital thermometer with a set (104°C) temperature alarm. Past reading has also highlighted, amongst other things, the need to bring the temperature up quickly and to work in small batches. But no this was not small batches, it was one large batch in my usual large preserving pan that oversails the ceramic top hob. So what was new. Well paid a lot attention to reducing the liquor level well beyond the recipe level before adding the pre-warmed sugar. My concern is not volume produced but that whatever is produced sets well. Watching the temperature rise it took a long time coming even though the probe was in the middle of the rolling boil and off the bottom. In fact it never reached a high enough temperature to trigger the temperature alarm (on my thermometer it waits until 105°C). When I stirred to make sure there was no sticking on the bottom, it happens, the temperature plummeted by almost 20°C then took a long time to get back, frequently oscillating up and down.

This then is what I have discovered. It is not just enough that the probe shows the desired temperature but the whole of the jam has to get up to that temperature. That means, leaving it alone, only folding the pan edges in at the last moment before leaving it to recover. It will take longer than the book says, particularly if your pot is wider than the heating source. It is a tightrope walk, overcook it then it caramelises, undercook it then the bulk is still under temperature, stir it and you lose massive heat, not sir it and the edges are too cold.

Don't despair, make sure your liquor is reduced well before adding the sugar then watch the temperature fluctuations and wait until it is fairly stable and you know the edges have recently been bought in. You can do it. It is worth it.

tasty lunch

From time to time our fishmonger has sprats. They are now in season. This is our favourite way of having them as a lunch. Butterfly fillet a dozen sprats, leave just the tail fins on. Try to get the larger ones and ones still intact, not too chewed up. Cost you less than a £!. Skin and de-seed three tomatoes then finely chop and crush with a fork. Add one crushed clove of garlic and one stem of spring onion finely chopped, season and mix well. Toast six slices of bread. Sprinkle each slice with olive oil spread with a generous layer of the tomato mixture and lay two sprat fillets head to tail, skin side up. Drizzle with oil and return to grill briefly. They will only take a couple of minutes so watch carefully. Lift a fillet up gently to check that flesh has turned opaque. Serve with a light green salad.

Partridge Medley

Still chuffed about the other meal last weekend. No pics again so use your imaginations, this was a reworking of something I did recently. Four partridge was the offer we couldn't refuse. So took the breasts off the birds and set them aside. Then took off all the other useable meats. Carcasses went into a stockpot with an onion and a carrot and a glass of red wine, water to barely cover, then simmered gently.
Checked all the meat for possible shot. The other useable meats I minced on a coarse grade. Then re-minced it again this time with about six spring onions and 8-12 soft no soak prunes. Make sure you mix the prunes in else they will clog up the mincer. Into this mixture one small egg, Tbsp fine chop parsley, 1.5 Tbsp chestnut flour, pepper and 1/8th tsp of cayenne. Mix well together. With wet hands take 30gms of mince mix firm up and roll into balls, should make around 15. They will hold together easily.
Strain of stock into a clean pan, bring back to a very gentle simmer and carefully roll the balls into the stock in batches, after about 15min lift out to dry and set. Roll in chestnut flour, dip in another beaten egg then roll in coarse breadcrumbs.
Now to put it all together. In a hot skillet add a large knob of butter, pan fry the breasts, turning on the two sides and the neck end until coloured and inner flesh just has a line of pink still. Pat dry and rest in a warm place for ten minutes. In a pan of hot oil slide the breadcrumbed balls into the oil for around 6 mins or until they are evenly coloured. Lift out, drain. Assemble your plate, sit back and feast!