Okonomiyaki

I had friends staying for the last few days. Wil, an old PhD student from where I work, needed somewhere to stay for a couple of days after having an arthroscopy here in Dunedin. He and his girlfriend, who accompanied him, went shopping before they arrived and deliberately bought, in addition to some fruit, something they were completely unfamiliar with just to see what I'd make out of it! It was taro, which is a staple starchy vegetable in the diet of Pacific Islanders.

I have used it once before to make okonomiyaki from a modified version of Maki's recipe at Just Hungry. My friend Yoshio says taro is an acceptable substitute for nagaimo, although it is nowhere near as slimy and is rather more substantial.

I also used a mixture of Chinese greens from the garden instead of cabbage, and used thinly sliced chicken thigh (sliced mushrooms for Nic's, as she's vegetarian) instead of pork slices, but apart from that I stuck pretty closely to Maki's recipe.

Okonomiyaki as first constructed in the frypan:


Okonomiyaki after it's been covered and steam cooked for 10 minutes or so, flipped to brown the chicken, then flipped again:


Okonomiyaki fully dressed in okonomiyaki sauce, katsuobushi, crushed Korean seasoned seaweed, and Kewpie mayonnaise:


Wil and Nic were well impressed, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if okonomiyaki makes its way into their regular diet. Healthy fast food!

Chocolate biscuits

While the oven was hot on Sunday I thought I may as well throw something together to take to bridge - then afterwards remembered I'm not playing bridge this week. Never mind, they'll keep.

I creamed together some brown sugar and butter, added a good dollop of Dutch cocoa powder, and enough plain flour to make a good stiff dough. Rolled it up in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so, then sliced up, put the rounds on a baking tray …


… and baked them at 180°C until they were cooked:


You may possibly notice that there are one fewer cookies in the "cooked and cooling" photo than in the "going into the oven" photo. That would be because I couldn't wait until they were cold to try one.

Delicious. Very chocolatey, not too sweet.

Recipe

Chocolate biscuits

Ingredients:
~ 50 g butter
~ 1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 very heaped tablespoon Dutch process cocoa
~ 1/2 cup plain flour - maybe 3/4 cup? Enough to make a good stiff dough, anyway.

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Cream butter and sugar, add salt and mix.
Add cocoa and mix. Add flour a bit at a time until the mix is really stiff but still holding together well - like pastry.
Roll the mix into a log and wrap in plastic. Put in the freezer for a while, until it's reasonably firm.
Take it out of the freezer, unwrap it, and slice it into 1/4 inch slices.
Put the slices on a baking sheet and bake at 180°C until cooked, ~15 minutes.

Les petites Tartes Tatin.

I bought four kg of Braeburn apples the week before last. I do this every year, and then never seem to be able to get through them before they go … not exactly soft, but less crunchy than they started off being.

My solution to the problem this year is individual tartes Tatin. I started off mixing up a little bit of pastry and putting it in the fridge to rest, then making some buttery toffee and pouring it into the bases of a nice deep old patty pan tray …


… then peeling half a dozen apples, halving and coring them, and carving the large ones to fit the patty pans. Then I put them on the toffee, core side up…


… and baked them in a 180°C oven until they were soft …


… which was about half an hour, I think. Then I got the pastry out of the fridge, rolled it out, and cut appropriately-sized circles (just a bit bigger than the patty pans) with one of my plain cookie cutters.


The pastry circles went on top of the cooked apples …


… and then it all went back into the oven, which I'd turned up to 200°C, until they looked cooked:


I let them cool for just 5 minutes or so, then turned them out onto a baking tray:


I was pretty amazed at how good they looked. I'd been fully expecting several of them to stick and need spooning out, but they behaved wonderfully. This is not to say they all fell out at once, several of them needed a little encouragement, but nothing drastic.


And they taste great too.

No, I didn't waste the bits of apple I had to carve off to make them fit the patty pans. They went into a pot with the tiniest dash of water and a bit of sugar …


… and were cooked until they were soft and transparent. Then I shared them out amongst 10 silicon muffin cups …


… and covered them with a sort of spongecake mixture before putting some in the oven with the tartes …


… and some in a steamer over a pot of water.


Here they are all cooked:


They and the tartes can go in my lunches this week, but I think I'll have to freeze some of them or I'll end up the size of a house.

Recipes

Pastry
Ingredients:
butter (I used about 100g for this)
flour, a bit more by weight than the butter (I used 120g)
salt - about 1/4 tsp for this much pastry
half a cup of water with a tbsp of vinegar in it. You won't use anywhere near all of it.

Method:
Cut up the butter and put it in a food processor with the flour and salt. Whizz until it's breadcrumb-like.
Dribble in the water/vinegar mix slowly just until the dough starts to come together.
Tip the dough out and knead lightly. Wrap in plastic and put it in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Tartes Tatin (makes 12)
Ingedients:
Pastry as above (many people use sweet short pastry, but I find it too sickly)
6 eating apples (cooking apples turn to mush, and you want them to stay whole)
3/4 cup or so of sugar
a little water
50 g butter
patty pan tray (NOT non stick)

Method:
Pre heat the oven to 180°C.
Mix the sugar and butter in a small pot with just enough water to dampen the sugar. Put on the heat and cook until it starts to go brown. Quickly pour it into the bases of the patty pan tray cups.
Peel, halve and core the six apples. Put them in water that has some lemon juice added to stop them going brown. Carve off any bits that won't fit in the patty pans.
Place the apple halves, core side up, in the patty pans and place the tray in the oven. Cook until the apples are soft. Remove the apples from the oven and increase the temperature to 200°C.
Roll out the pastry and cut circles that are slightly bigger than the patty pans. If you're really anal, put the pastry circles in the fridge for another half hour or so, but I didn't.
Place the pastry circles over the cooked apple halves, tucking in the edges.
Return the apples to the oven and cook until the pastry is cooked - maybe half an hour.
Remove them from the oven, let cool for just a very few minutes, then place a flat tray over them and quickly turn the whole lot over. Give at a few thumps to dislodge any stuck tartes. You may have to use a knife or spoon to encourage some of the apples to come out.

Apple ginger sponge

Ingredients:
apple scraps from the tarte apples, or a couple of whole apples peeled, cored and chopped.
sugar to taste
1 egg
50g butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
a little milk
1/4 tsp grated fresh ginger

Method:
Put the chopped apples in a pot with just enough water to stop them burning until they start to exude their own juice. Add sugar to your taste (I used maybe a tbsp).
Cook the apples until soft and transparent.
Place a dessertspoonful of apple at the base of as many silicon muffin cups as it takes.
Cream the butter and sugar together with the ginger.
Add the egg and mix until smooth.
Add baking powder and the flour, mix.
Add enough milk to make a soft, not quite pouring consistency, batter.
Spoon the batter on top of the apples, then place the muffin cups either in a 180°C oven, or in a covered steamer over boiling water.
Cook until the tops spring back when pressed with your finger.

Can be eaten with custard or cream for dessert, or can go in a packed lunch.

New everyday shoes

Last week I finally had to throw these shoes …


… in the bin. The soles were perfectly good, but the inside part of the uppers had completely lost its integrity and my feet were starting to slide every which way as I walked. It was the rubbish for them, or a broken ankle for me.

I so wish I could have bought a straight replacement - those shoes have been my everyday comfortable shoes for at least ten years and they only cost $20.

The closest I could find was this …


… $169 suede pair by Django & Juliette. They are comfortable, they have a small wedge heel, and they give the same impression of tights and shoes being one continuous item when I wear black tights with them. But I would much rather have paid $20 than $169.

Salmon

One of the women at work gets salmon from her Rotary Club once a year as a fundraiser.

On Friday she brought my order in, these sides …


…each one just under 1 kg, @ $20 each, and this bag of frozen steaks:


The steaks went into the freezer as is. I cut one side into three and vacuum-packed the pieces for the freezer…


… some of the remaining side got cured for smoking, some got salted…


and some got immediately cooked and eaten.


I've been having a very salmon-snack-ish sort of a weekend.

Bones

The spare shower as it is right now:


The new sausage on the right is a saussicon d'Alsace, and the three misshapen looking things on the left are more Spanish chorizo.

Which meant I had pork bones to get rid of.


I thought I may as well cook them and have a gnaw, so the next morning, when I took this …


… out of the oven, I put the (salted) bones in to cook in the residual heat.

After an hour I had this…


Which is rather out of focus. But it was a delicious snack, and now I don't have smelly slimy bones to get rid of.