Melt the chocolate by breaking it up into small squares or pieces and putting it in the top of a double boiler above (but not touching) some simmering water in the below pan. Then whisk this, followed by the cocoa, into the eggs and milk. Now pour the chocolate mixture into a pan and cook on low to medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until everything’s smooth and amalgamated and beginning to thicken. You don’t need to cook this until it is really custardlike, which makes life easier. Now for the bit that gives this ice cream its essential smoky bitterness. Put 2 tablespoons of sugar with 2 teaspoons water into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and turn the heat to high. Make a caramel; in other words, heat this until it’s dark brown and molten. Live dangerously here; you are after the taste of burnt sugar. As it browns, whisk it into the chocolate custard; don’t worry if it crystallizes on contact, as the whisking will dissolve it.
Turn into a bowl or wide measuring cup and cool. Plunging the pan into cold water and beating, as usual, will do the trick. Then chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes (or longer, if that’s more convenient) before churning it in your ice cream maker according to instructions. Serves 4–6.
CRÊPES
At some time in your life, you might want to make crêpes. Obviously, a batter is a batter is a batter; you could easily consult the recipe for Yorkshire Pudding. But it is surprising how useful it is just to know what the proportions of a regular batter are, especially because the Yorkshire pudding recipe I give (see page 253) isn’t the traditional one.
1 cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
pinch salt
1 egg
1¼ cups milk
2–4 tablespoons melted and cooled unsweetened butter (optional)
vegetable oil, for the pan
The way I remember crêpes being made when I was a child is as follows.
Make a mound of the flour in a bowl, add the salt, then make a dip in the top. Crack open the egg and let it slip into this hole at the top of the hill and, with a wooden spoon, beat well, gradually incorporating the flour from the sides and beating in the milk to make a smooth batter. Stop when the batter’s creamy, change to a whisk, and then whisk in the melted butter if you like (ordinary, as opposed to fancy, crêpes don’t need butter). Leave the batter to stand for at least half an hour; overnight wouldn’t matter. The batter might thicken in the meantime, in which case add milk or water (or possibly a little rum, if you’re making fancy crêpes) to get the batter back to the right, thickish light-cream consistency.
The trick of crêpes is not so much in the batter, though, as in the frying: use very little oil and very little batter. The pan must be hot, and what I do is heat oil in it, then empty the oil down the sink before putting in the batter. Use less batter than you would imagine you need—you want just to line the pan. When bubbles come to the surface, the crêpe is ready to flip. You should be prepared to throw away (and by that I mean eat yourself standing up at the stove) the first crêpe. It never works. Re-oil every 4 crêpes or so. Using an 8-inch crêpe pan, you should get about 12 pancakes out of the above quantities. You don’t need a special pan, but you must use a well-seasoned frying pan. Nonstick pans are hopeless here, as the crêpes they make are blond and pallid and rubbery; the batter seems steamed rather than seared.
There is nothing better on a crêpe than a thick sprinkling of sugar (I keep only superfine in the house now, but granulated is the gritty taste I remember from my childhood) and a good squeeze of lemon juice.
If you want to make breakfast pancakes—to be eaten, preferably, with maple syrup and maybe even some crisp shards of bacon—you should alter the balance of the ingredients. Obviously you want a thicker batter, so add another egg, double the flour, and to that flour add 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon baking powder and regard the melted butter later as obligatory. Cook them, in about 3-inch rounds, on a hot griddle or pan. Makes about 22.
PASTRY
* * *
On the subject of pastry, I am positively evangelical. Until fairly recently, I practiced heavy avoidance techniques, hastily, anxiously turning away from any recipe that included pastry, as if the cookbook’s pages themselves were burning—I was hot with fear, could feel the flush rise in my panicky cheeks. I take strength from that, and so should you. Because if I can do the culinary equivalent, for me, of Learning to Love the Bomb, so can you.
It came upon me gradually. I made some plain pastry dough, alone and in silence, apart from the comforting wall of voices emanating from Radio 4, the BBC talk station. It worked; I made some more. Then I tried some pâte sucrée. It worked; I made some more; it didn’t. But the next time, it did—or rather, I dealt better with its difficulties.
But pastry dough, or even rich pastry dough, is really easy, and that’s all you need to know. If you want something a little more exalted, you can make almond pastry (see page 264); this is as simple as the plainest pastry dough, tastes rich, and rolls out like Play-Doh; the ground almonds seem to make it stretchy and extra-pliable.
PLAIN PASTRY DOUGH
At its simplest, pastry is just a quantity of flour mixed with half its weight in fat and bound with water.
So, to make enough plain pastry dough to line and cover a 9-inch pie dish (in other words, for a double-crust pie), you would mix 13⁄4 cups flour with ½ cup cold, diced fat (half lard or vegetable shortening and half butter for preference), rubbing the fat in with your fingertips until you have a bowl of floury bread crumbs or oatmeal-sized flakes. Then you add iced water until the flour and fat turn into a ball of dough; a few tablespoons should do it. But as simple as that is, I can make it simpler—or rather, I can make it easier, as easy as it can be.
The first way to do this is to use not ordinary all-purpose flour but Italian 00 flour (see page 458). This is the flour Italians at home, rather than in factories, use for pasta, and it’s certainly true that it seems to give pastry an almost pastalike elasticity.
The second part of my facilitation program is as follows.
Measure the flour into a bowl and add the cold fat, cut into ½-inch dice. You then put this, as is, in the freezer for 10 minutes. Then you put it in the food processor with the metal blade attached or into a food mixer with the paddle attached, and switch on (at slow to medium speed, if you’re using the mixer) until the mixture resembles oatmeal. Then you add, tablespoon by cautious tablespoon, the ice water, to which you’ve added a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt. I find you need a little more liquid when making pastry by this method than you do when the flour and fat haven’t had that chilling burst in the deep freeze.
When the dough looks as if it’s about to come together, but just before it actually does, you turn off all machinery, remove the dough, divide into two, and form each half into a ball; flatten the balls into fat discs and cover these discs with plastic film or put them each inside a freezer bag and shove them in the fridge for 20 minutes. This makes pastry anyone could roll out, even if you add too much liquid by mistake.
Now, this method relies on a machine to make the pastry. To tell the truth, I culled and simplified the technique from a fascinating book, Cookwise, by food scientist Shirley O. Corriher, and she does all sorts of strenuous things, including making the pastry by tipping out the freezer-chilled flour and fat onto a cold surface and battering it with a rolling pin until it looks like “paint-flakes that have fallen off a wall.” She does, however, sanction the use of a mixer bowl (well chilled) and paddle (set on slowest speed) and I have found it works well in the processor too. I know that I am not up to her hand-rolling method—or not yet, at any rate.
RICH PASTRY DOUGH
“Rich,” in terms of pastry dough, normally implies an egg to bind and more than half fat to flour, but I find my method makes the pastry taste both more tender and more buttery anyway, so I don’t change the basic dough. In all cases, I prefer half lard, half butter. Lard is unfashionable these days, but it is seriously underrated both as a frying medium and, here, as a pastry shortener; it helps the crust get w
onderfully flaky.
Since learning from Cookwise that a slightly acidic liquid makes the pastry more tender (the freezing of the flour and fat, which makes for flattened crumbs rather than beady ones, contributes to its desirable flakiness), I have taken to using lemon or orange juice instead of, or as well as, an egg yolk and water to bind. And sometimes I just add a little sour cream, yogurt, or crème fraîche, whatever’s at hand. For instance, when I make an onion tart (see page 353), I use some of the crème fraîche I’ve got in for the onion-covering custard. I always use just the yolk, not the whole egg, when making rich pastry dough.
Anyway, to make rich pastry dough to line a deep 8-inch or shallow 9-inch tart pan, you need:
1 cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into ½-inch dice
1 egg yolk
pinch salt
1 teaspoon yogurt or crème fraîche or sour cream or orange or lemon juice
Measure the flour into a bowl, add the butter, and put in the freezer for 10 minutes. Beat the egg yolk with the salt and whatever acidic ingredient you choose and put it in the fridge. Keep a few tablespoons of ice water in a measuring cup or bowl in the fridge in case you need them, too.
As above, you can make this in either a food processor or a mixer. Put the flour and butter in the processor with the metal blade fitted or in a mixer with the flat paddle on slow and turn on. After barely a minute, the mixture will begin to resemble oatmeal or flattened bread crumbs, and this is when you add the yolk mixture. Add, and process or mix. If you need more liquid, add a little ice water, but go slowly and carefully; you need to stop just as the dough looks like it’s about to clump, not once it has.
When it looks right, take it out and form into a fat disc, then put the dough disc into a freezer bag or cover with plastic film and put into the fridge to rest for 20 minutes.
SWEET PASTRY DOUGH
I have to say, I mostly use unsweetened rich pastry dough for sweet pies and tarts—in the first instance, because making pâte sucrée can give me a nervous breakdown at the best of times; in the second, because I nearly always think that a plain, sugarless, neutral base is best. There are some pies or tarts though—the custard tart on page 287 for example, or any French fruit tart—that do need a crisp and sweet crust. This is it. It is as easy as the pastry recipes above, but it has the sweet, rich, tart-base delicacy of far more complicated pastries. Just use it whenever you see pâte sucrée stipulated. I can’t guarantee your sanity otherwise.
1 cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
pinch salt
Sift the flour and confectioners’ sugar into a dish and add the cold butter, cut into small cubes (and here I always use just butter). Put this dish, just as it is, in the freezer for 10 minutes. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolk with the vanilla extract, a tablespoon of ice water, and the salt. Put this bowl in the fridge. Then, when the 10 minutes are up, proceed with the flour and butter as above (i.e., in processor or mixer) and, when you reach oatmeal stage, add the egg mixture to bind. Be prepared to add more ice water, drop by cautious drop, until you have a nearly coherent dough. Then scoop it out, still just crumbly, push it into a fat disc, cover with plastic film, and stick in the fridge for 20 minutes. Enough to line a deep 8-inch or shallow 9-inch tart pan.
BLIND BAKING
If you’re going to fill the pastry case with anything creamy or liquid, you should blind bake first. This simply means covering the pastry with foil, covering that with beans, and baking it. The beans can be ceramic, especially bought for the purpose, or you can use any old dried beans as long as you remember not to cook them later to eat by mistake. I remember reading in a magazine that a metal dog leash (a relatively fine one) is useful here, as the metal conducts the heat well and you don’t have to worry about dropping all the beads on the kitchen floor (apparently there are those who worry about just this); I’m longing to try it.
I like to bake blind at a slightly higher temperature than many people do. The drawback is that the pastry sides can burn, so I keep the edges covered with foil strips for the final bit of baking.
Take the pastry disc out of the fridge and unwrap it. Flour a work surface, put the pastry on it, and sprinkle the pastry and the rolling pin with flour. An ordinary wooden rolling pin will do; those beautiful stainless steel ones sold in some modish kitchen shops are not a good idea except for rolling out fondant icing, which needs heavy battering.
Roll out the pastry fairly thinly. I can’t see the point of giving measurements here, as you are hardly going to get your ruler out to check, are you? Anyway, in all recipes I’ve given specific quantities for the pastry to make exactly the right amount for the stipulated tart shell, so once you’ve rolled it in a circle to fit, the thickness should be right too.
You can lift the pastry over to the tart pan by carrying it on the rolling pin or you can fold it in quarters and carry the pastry over, place the corner of the dough in the center of the pan, and open it out to cover. Or just lift it up. One of the benefits of pastry made by the blitz-freezing method is that it travels, as it handles, well.
Now you have a choice. You can either line the pan with the pastry, letting it hang slightly over at the rim—use a metal tart pan with a removable bottom, not one of the ceramic tart dishes that make the soggiest pastry—and then roll the pin over the edges to cut off the pastry at the top, which looks neat and clean and smart. Or you can keep the overhang so that if it shrinks (which it can) as it cooks, you won’t find you’ve got a truncated and filling-leaking pastry case. (I never prick the base, as I think it just makes holes for the filling to seep through later.) Whichever you decide—and I veer toward the latter—put the pastry-lined pan back in the fridge for 20 minutes or longer. Indeed, you can make the pastry and line the tart pan the day before you bake it; if so, keep it covered with plastic film.
When you want to bake, preheat the oven to 400°F, put a baking sheet in it, and line the pastry with foil. Then fill with the beans of your choice and bake on the hot sheet for 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and remove the beans and foil. Cut out a long strip or a couple of strips of foil and fold over the edges so they don’t burn. Put the foil-rimmed but bare-bottomed pastry case back in the oven and give it another 10–12 minutes or until it is beginning to color lightly. Sweet pastry burns more easily, so turn down the oven to 350°F for the second bout in the oven.
I used to bake blind and then fill the tart shell as soon as it cooled a little, but my friend Tracey Scoffield, one of the best cooks I know and the daughter of a wonderful pastry maker, has taught me that you can bake blind a day in advance as long as, when the case is cool, you slip it into a freezer bag and seal and keep it in the fridge. It must be wrapped airtight—plastic film would do—or it will go soggy. The advantage of staggering the work—making the pastry, rolling it out, and blind baking it on three different days if you really want to—is that you never need to spend more than a few minutes on it each evening. But even in one go, this method is relatively painless.
CRUMBLE
I can’t say I don’t ever use machinery to make crumble, but there is something peculiarly relaxing about rubbing the cool, smooth butter through the cool, smooth flour with your fingers. It also makes for a more gratifyingly nubbly crumble; the processor can make the crumbs so fine you end up, when cooked, with a cakey rather than crumbly texture. So just remember, if you aren’t making this by hand, to go cautiously.
In either case, the texture is improved by a quick blast in the freezer, but rather than freezing the flour and butter mixture before working on it, as with the pastry recipes above, I plonk it in the freezer for 10 minutes or so after it’s been rubbed together. And, if you want, you can just leave it there, in an airtight container, on standby for when you get home from
work and want to make something sweet and comforting quickly.
PLAIN APPLE CRUMBLE
BLUEBERRY, BLACKBERRY, OR RHUBARB
I find this mixture makes enough to cover about 2 pounds of fruit in a 4-cup pie dish, which should easily be enough to feed 4–6 people. To make plain apple crumble (though see also the recipe on page 156), peel, core, and segment the apples and toss them for a minute or so in a pan, on the heat, with 1 tablespoon of butter, 3–4 tablespoons of sugar (to taste), and a good squeeze of orange juice, before transferring to the pie pan and topping with the crumble. In fact, I use orange with most fruits; it seems to bring out their flavor rather than striking an intrusive note of its own. Make a blueberry or blackberry crumble by tossing the fruit in a buttered pie pan with 1 tablespoon each of all-purpose flour and sugar for the blueberries, 2 each for the blackberries, and the juice of ½ orange. For rhubarb crumble, trim 1 pound of the fruit, cut it into 2-inch lengths, and toss, again in a buttered pan, with a couple of tablespoons each (or more to taste) of superfine and light muscovado sugar (see page 460), or light brown sugar, the zest of 1 orange, and the merest spritz of the juice.
I tend to add a bit of baking powder to the flour for the topping—it’s unorthodox, but gives a desirable lightness to the mixture, which can otherwise tend to heaviness. Add spices—ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, even a pinch of ground cardamom—as you like to the crumble recipe below; treat it merely as a blueprint.
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into about ½-inch cubes
3 tablespoons light muscovado sugar (see page 460) or light brown sugar
3 tablespoons vanilla sugar or regular sugar
Put the flour in a bowl with the baking powder and salt. Add the cold cubes of butter and, using the tips of your fingers—index and middle flutteringly stroking the fleshy pads of your thumbs—rub it into the flour. Stop when you have a mixture that resembles oatmeal. Stir in the sugars. I love the combination of muscovado and vanilla sugars, but if you haven’t got round to making vanilla sugar yet (see page 72), then don’t worry about what white sugar you use; any will do.
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