Pumpkin and Blue Cheese Pie, the Second

I've been wanting to revisit the idea of the pumpkin and blue cheese pie since the first time I made one. This time I changed the recipe a little, and used a rough puff pastry.

Half of the resulting pie

Pastry (rough puff)

• 180g unsalted butter, cut into <1cm cubes and chilled in freezer but not frozen
• 240g plain flour
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup water, chilled

Filling

• Flesh of half a butternut pumpkin weighing about 1kg
• 2 brown onions, chopped finely
• 1 head of garlic, split into cloves and peeled
• 100g blue cheese (Stilton in this case), crumbled
• 50g parmesan, grated
• 150g or so spinach leaves, chopped finely

Method

• Make the pastry in advance: smoosh the butter into the flour with your fingers until all the pieces of butter are flattened. Then gradually mix the water into the flour with fingertips until the dough forms - don't add all the water if you don't need to. Now give it a gentle kneading before rolling out into about a 5x10cm piece. Fold it once into a square, cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate until well cooled. Over the next hours / days take the dough out, roll out until it can be folder in half (or thirds, or even quarters and halves, whatever you can to get lots of layers). If it's cool enough then do that again before returning to the plastic and the fridge. Fold at least 6-8 times - the more times the nicer the result will be. Because it's warm at the moment I did this over several days, getting a some folds in during the morning.
• Chop the pumpkin into small pieces, no larger than about 2cm at most a side.
• Roast pumpkin and garlic at 200ºC until both are nicely cooked (about 40 minutes). Give them a toss to mix up about half-way through.
• Place pumpkin and garlic in a mixing bowl, mash both together a little to mix and leave to cool.
• Fry the onion slowly for about 30 minutes (a fully hour if you want it fully caramelised) and then add to the bowl with the pumpkin and garlic.
• Fry the spinach until wilted and add to the bowl also. Add in parmesan and some salt and pepper, and mix well. Finally add the crumbled blue cheese and mix through gently (I find it smooshes through if mixed too much and it's nice to have blobs).
• Preheat your oven to 200ºC
• Roll out the pastry until it's a good 50cm across. Try for a circle if you can, but if you can't then a square will also work. Place in the middle of a baking tray that's at least 30cm across. Put the pumpkin filling from the bowl in the middle of the pastry, evenly spread out to leave about 5cm or more at the edges. Fold the pastry in to the centre, crimping together so it holds while baking. Brush the top with a beaten egg if you like to have a nice brown glazed finish.
• Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the pastry is nice and cooked.

All up, I preferred this mix of ingredients to the last. It does take a while to cook, but a bunch of that can be only minimally supervised.

Chicken, chorizo & potato pie

I wanted to make a pie with chorizo sausage in it, and try a new combination of ingredients, and this pie popped up in my searching. I made some modifications that I would come to regret. Because I was in low-effort mode I used shortcrust pastry which ended up horribly crumbly. Next time I'll use (rough) puff pastry that'll have more structural integrity and suit the pie better. It'll be worth putting in that extra effort of rolling and folding.

Also, no photo because I plumb forgot, sorry!

Pastry Which Did Not Work

1. 2 cups plain flour
2. 160g butter chopped into chunks
3. 1 egg

Blend the flour and butter until the texture is like grainy sand. Then blend in the egg until the whole mixture clumps. In the future, I would also add some water to give the pastry some sticking power. The above mixture was far too crumbly, and I ended up having to knead it slightly to have it hold together at all when being rolled out. Even then it cracked far too easily.

Filling Which Did Work

1. 400g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm pieces
2. 2 chicken breasts, cut into 2cm pieces
3. 1 chorizo sausage chopped into thin slices
4. 1 leek thinly sliced
5. thyme and rosemary
6. optional whisked egg

Method

1. Place the potato and water in a large heatproof microwave-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Cook in microwave on High/800watts/100% for 8 minutes or until just tender. Drain.
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook half the chicken, stirring, for 4-5 minutes or until light golden and almost cooked through. Transfer to a heatproof bowl. Repeat with the remaining chicken.
3. Add chorizo to pan and cook, turning occasionally, for 3-4 minutes or until light golden. Add leek, thyme and rosemary and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes or until the leek is soft. Add the potato and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until well combined. Transfer to the bowl with the chicken. Toss gently to combine. Set aside for 30 minutes to cool slightly.
4. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line 1 large baking tray with non-stick baking paper or use a non-stick baking tray. Roll out half the pastry and place on the tray. Place half the chicken mixture in the centre of the pastry and shape to form a circle, leaving a 3cm border. Fold pastry edge over the filling to partially enclose, leaving the centre of the pie open. Repeat with remaining pastry and chicken mixture to make a second pie. Brush the pastry edges with egg if you like.
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the pastry is cooked through. Set aside on the tray for 5 minutes to cool slightly.

Even with the pastry disaster, it was very tasty :-)

Custard tarts, third edition

Time for some holiday baking. Abbey decided custard tarts were the go. Rather than repeat the previous cooked-in-oven custard, she wanted to try filling tarts with Creme Patisserie. So, making sure we grabbed some extra eggs at the shop, we started the creation as soon as we got home, borrowing from a few places to make the recipe below (as remembered / dictated by Abbey).

Pastry Ingredients

1. 225g plain flour
2. 125g butter
3. 2 tbsp chilled water

Custard Ingredients

1. 125g caster sugar
2. 50g plain flour
3. 3 egg yolks
4. 1 whole egg
5. 500ml milk
6. 3 tsp vanilla essence (or a bean, we cheated)

Pastry Method

1. Chop butter into little cubes and chill.
2. Blend flour and chilled butter until the texture is grainy like sand.
3. Slowly add water while blending.
4. Continue to blend until lumpy.
5. Wrap dough in glad wrap and chill in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 200ºC (fan forced) [ed: this could be reduced to 180, I think]
7. Prepare a 12 cupcake pan with strips of baking paper (large enough to pull the baked tart cases out).
8. Roll the dough thin and cut circles large enough to fill the cupcake moulds. Combine leftovery bits if needed to make up 12 cases. It's hot here so we did this in two halves, putting the pan in the fridge in the middle.
9. Chill the pan for about 20 minutes before baking.
10. Stab the bottom of each tart case a couple of times with a fork.
11. Cut out 12 squares of foil and place in the tart cases with baking beads in the foil.
12. Bake for 10 minutes.
13. Remove foil and beads.
14. Bake for further 5-10 minutes [ed: this is where I discovered the oven might have been a bit hot since a full 10 minutes is ideal]
15. Cool for a few minutes before extracting onto a cooling rack.

Custard Method

1. Measure and combine dry ingredients in a large heatproof bowl.
2. Whisk in eggs until thoroughly combined.
3. Boil milk and vanilla on a medium to high heat on the stove, stirring constantly.
4. Once milk is boiling, pour into the egg stuff [ed: Abbey's word] and whisk until combined.
5. Quickly pour back into the same pan and stir over medium heat until thickened.
6. Pour into a cool pouring jug and fill the cases with the yummy yummy custard goop!
7. Cool and EAT

Guest post: Elena's Extreme Olive, Sun-dried Tomato and Feta Bread

I think the secret to making really good food is taking things pretty far.

This was an experiment in that.

So I like olive a lot and also have strong positive feelings about cheeses of all sorts.

Everyone knows (cough) that these things should naturally go in bread. Though when I get olive bread from shops I often feel as if they go too easy on the olives. I decided to test the bounds.

Olives, Sun-dried Tomatoes and a hefty block of Feta:

OK, so this is the thing: this came to being a non-trivial amount
(in case that's not clear >850g/1.88lb, ie "testing bounds" volumes):

Oh bread, you looks so innocent.

... but not any more.
I didn't want the cheese to be pulverised so was quite careful with timing.

So ... Did I go too far?
Proobably depends on who you ask, but in my opinion: Goodness no!
Check it out, could even have gone further!

Structural integrity could have been slightly better, though trust that
it would have been if I had actually let it cool before I hoed in to it.
(Though hopefully you can understand I wanted to eat it while it was warm.)

... and ... it ... was ... amazing.

Kanga-bangers and whitebread indeed.

The end :)

---

nb. I apologise for the blurry photos, I do actually try to stay still, but still not enough. I'll persist!

Orange and White Chocolate Buns, Version 2

I got a new zest grater so decided to give the Orange and White Chocolate buns a second try. The new grater produced about 4 times the zest:

I modified the recipe to use the enriched dough from the cinnamon buns so I could use the mixer to knead it all. Also there's none of that milk scalding malarky.

I mixed up the dry ingredients and then added all the wet ingredients in one go, had the machine knead it for about 10 minutes and then added half the white chocolate and peel mix for a final 1 minute knead:

I let that prove for a couple of hours (it really does need a while) until it was double in size (sorry, no photo) then knocked it back and put it on a floured bench:

Rolled out until it was about ½ cm thick:

Sprinkled the remaining white chocolate and peel over the top and rolled:

Nicely rolled up. It'll inevitably be a little fatter in the middle. I just gave it a gentle squeeze to even it out a bit.

Sliced up into 1-2cm thick pieces and placed into tins. These are then covered in plastic and put in the fridge for later baking

Baked for 20 minutes at 190°C and they're very yummy indeed!

Ingredients

• 3 teaspoons dry yeast 
• 1 cup warm milk 
• ½ cup sugar 
• 115g melted butter 
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• 2 eggs 
• 4 cups plain flour
• ¾ tsp ground cardamom
• 3 oranges, zest only
• 200g white chocolate chips
• 100g candied mixed peel

Method

1. Mix all ingredients (but only half of the white chocolate and peel amounts) until a stretchy, sticky, smooth ball forms. I used a mixer with a dough hook, since the dough is quite sticky. It would be possible to do by hand, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you do need to then you can coat your hands and the bench with a spray of oil to prevent the dough sticking too much.
2. Leave in a warm place until doubled in size. Since this is an enriched (with milk, butter and egg) dough it can take quite a while to prove - even a couple of hours).
3. Punch and roll into a rectangle (golden ratio, please) until approximately ½ cm thick
4. Spread remaining white chocolate and peel over the dough.
5. Roll up lengthwise. Cut into pieces about 2-3cm wide.
6. Place scrolls with a good separation (1-2cm) on a greased biscuit tray, or cake tins - any shape will do. At this point you have a few choices:
1. cover lightly with a towel and leave to rise for about an hour, or until the scrolls are just about to touch, or
2. cover with plastic and refrigerate up to two days for later baking, or
3. keep longer if frozen (about a month, apparently) and thaw in the fridge overnight before baking.
7. If you do refrigerate the scrolls then remove them from the fridge about 30 minutes before baking - while the oven is preheating.
8. Heat oven to 190°C and bake for 10-15 minutes until brown around the edges.

So there we go - a much simpler enriched dough recipe and a better grater for the zesting resulting in a whole lot of yummy rolls!

Cinnamon Swirl Loaf

I decided to make pies for dinner last night and while we were at the shop we saw raisin bread on sale - and obvious cue for me to make some myself at home. I ended up not having raisins in the pantry so I just adapted the cinnamon scroll recipe into loaf form (by not cutting it up) and it ... mostly worked. There's a few notes:

1. the loaf was too large for my loaf tin - I need to lose at least ½ cup of flour, probably more
2. I shouldn't have included the butter in the cinnamon sugar mix
3. leaving the loaf in the fridge overnight to bake next morning worked well, though I wrapped it in cling wrap and the loaf burst out of that in a couple of places
4. we accidentally used 3½ tablespoons of cinnamon instead of 2½ and that was too much - there's a kinda gritty feel to the swirl (perhaps some cinnamon could be mixed into the dough instead if extra is desired)
5. I should have buttered the baking tin as the sugar in the dough stuck to the tin in places

Other than that, it's a pretty tasty loaf. The butter in the swirls makes the loaf pull apart too easily though, so I can't toast it and butter it, which means it's a little dry to eat.

I'll give the cinnamon loaf another try with the above in mind. Maybe next weekend :)

Also, the pies were quite tasty (lamb, rosemary and vegetable) but there wasn't nearly enough gravy - something to watch out for next time.

Cinnamon Scrolls

There are (possibly quite literally) thousands of recipes out there, and a lot of them get overly complex or ... well, some of them get a little bizarre and almost mystical. These aren't magic, they're pretty easy to make and are just so delicious (even a friend who doesn't normally like cinnamon things loved these). So here's the straight-forward recipe from Best Recipes.

Ingredients
Dough

• 3 teaspoons dry yeast 
• 1 cup warm milk 
• ½ cup sugar 
• 115g melted butter 
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• 2 eggs 
• 4 cups plain flour 

Filling

• 1 cup brown sugar 
• 2½ tablespoons cinnamon 
• ⅓ cup softened butter or margarine 

Icing

• 8 tablespoons softened butter or margarine 
• 1½ cups icing sugar 
• ½ cup cream cheese 
• ½ teaspoon vanilla

Method

1. Dough: Mix all ingredients until a stretchy, sticky, smooth ball forms. I used a mixer with a dough hook, since the dough is quite sticky. It would be possible to do by hand, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you do need to then you can coat your hands and the bench with a spray of oil to prevent the dough sticking too much.
2. Leave in a warm place until doubled in size. Since this is an enriched (with milk, butter and egg) dough it can take quite a while to prove - even a couple of hours).
3. Punch and roll into a rectangle (golden ratio, please) until approximately ½ cm thick
4. Filling: Beat butter until creamy, add brown sugar and cinnamon and mix until smooth. Spread over the dough.
5. Roll up lengthwise. Cut into pieces about 2-3cm wide.
6. Place scrolls with a good separation (1-2cm) on a greased biscuit tray, or a cake tin(s) - any shape will do. At this point you have a few choices:
   1. cover lightly with a towel and leave to rise for about an hour, or until the scrolls are just about to touch, or
   2. cover with plastic and refrigerate up to two days for later baking, or
   3. keep longer if frozen (about a month, apparently) and thaw in the fridge overnight before baking.
   If you do refrigerate the scrolls then remove them from the fridge about 30 minutes before baking - while the oven is preheating.
7. Heat oven to 190°C and bake for 10-15 minutes until brown around the edges.
8. Icing: While scrolls are baking, beat the icing ingredients together and spread generously over each roll while still hot.

I apologise for the lack of photos! I'll have to make them again and force myself to not eat them all up before taking a photo :)

As I said, a lot of recipes get very complex requiring you to scald the milk, or dance counter-clockwise around your bench while it's mixing (sorry if you don't have an island kitchen bench!) but it's really not necessary. The above recipe makes deliciously light, fluffy and tasty scrolls without all that malarky.

The really nice part about this recipe is that you can chill portions and consume them over time. I made 15 scrolls and then some from the recipe; I made the dough and scrolls on Saturday evening and then Abbey and I had 4 smallish end bits (sans frosting) for breakfast on Sunday morning, 9 scrolls on Sunday afternoon with friends and the remaining 6 today for morning tea with co-workers. All baked withing minutes of consumption, which made them very yummy indeed :)