Russian Honey Cake

I almost didn't make anything for this round of Formula 1 Foods as I have made Russian recipes before partly as I went through a period of really liking Russian dolls. I spent two days this week making a wedding cake and was at the wedding on Saturday and today have been a bit tired (and possibly hung over...) but mid-afternoon decided I couldn't miss my own challenge and that I would make something after all.

I found this recipe for Russian honey cake online. It involves several thin layers of cake, which is made from a dough rather than a traditional cake batter, and layered with icing in between. I didn't have any sour cream so used Greek yogurt that was flavoured with honey so it's a twist on a Russian honey cake rather than the real thing. Also, mine looks a lot less neat than the one in the picture! At least, from the outside -when it's sliced I think it looks quite good.

I followed this recipe on Beets and Bones.com so I won't reproduce it in full here. It tasted more like a dough or even pastry than cake and was slightly chewy but in a good way and the honey flavour definitely comes through.

The ingredients for the honey dough:

Bringing the dough together
 

Baking each piece in a roughly circular shape

Stacking the trimmed layer

With the frosting in between and around the sides, it looks quite messy at this stage!

Sprinkling the crumbs over the top

A layer showing the much neater inside!

I'm sharing this with Formula 1 Foods in honour of today's Grand Prix which took place in Russia. Who actually won? I've been too busy catching up on things I needed to do around the house as I was away last weekend and for half of this weekend so haven't been near a TV!

I'm also sharing this with Love Cake, where the bake must be made in less than an hour. Each layer of this only takes a few minutes in the oven and it's a cinch to decorate.

 

Utah Scones - a different take on doughnuts?

The letter that Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker has chosen for Alphabakes this month is a bit challenging - U. This is the second time through the alphabet in the blogging challenge which I co-host with Ros, and last time around I thought quite creatively and made this Umbongo cake from a recipe I devised myself, which I was really pleased with.

This time my mind went to Utah and my United Cakes of America cookery book, which I haven't used for a little while. I visited Utah as part of a US road trip in 2012 and ate some lovely food. The cookery book didn't let me down with a recipe for Utah Scones - these are pretty different to English scones as they are deep-fried. The book said they were similar to what people call "frybread" elsewhere in the US; as part of the same trip I ate Navajo fry bread in Arizona and these did remind me a bit of that, but they also reminded me of churros (only more dough-y) and also a little like doughnuts. You need to make the dough the day before you want it and be very careful when you are deep frying but otherwise these are pretty easy and taste really good with the recommended honey butter; my boyfriend had them with chocolate sauce and loved them.

This recipe makes about 24 so I'd recommend halving the quantities, though I didn't.
You need:

2 cups buttermilk
7g dried yeast
2 tbsp. warm water
5 cups plain flour
1 tbsp. vegetable oil plus extra for deep frying
1 tbsp. caster sugar
2 eggs
1.5 tsp baking powder

to serve: optional-
softened butter, runny honey
icing sugar
chocolate sauce

Dissolve the yeast in a small bowl with the warm water and leave for ten minutes.

Meanwhile warm the buttermilk and place in a large bowl (or stand mixer if you have one) with all the other ingredients apart from the optional serving suggestions. Add the yeast and water and beat everything together until you have a stiff dough.

Roll the dough out onto a flat baking tray, cover with a clean tea-towel and leave to prove in a warm place for about 30 minutes.

 

 

Punch down the dough, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.

 

When you are ready to cook the dough, cut into wide strips and then cut the strips into triangles.

Heat about 1 inch of oil in a frying pan and when the oil is hot, using tongs carefully place the triangles into the oil. Allow to bubble and cook on each side for a few minutes until browned, then carefully turn over and brown on the other side.

Remove from the oil with tongs or a fish slice and drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with icing sugar, or serve with honey butter (beat softened butter with runny honey to taste) or chocolate sauce.

These are pretty filling and definitely more of an occasional treat but I'm glad I discovered them!

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, hosted by Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter this month is U.

Chicken in a Rose Petal Sauce

This month's Food n Flix movie selection is Like Water For Chocolate, chosen by Elizabeth at the Law Student's Cookbook.

I knew nothing about this film and didn't even realise it was in Spanish until I started watching. It's a story of love and families with an element of magic. Tita, the main character, is the youngest daughter of a Spanish family who is born in the kitchen, brought up mainly by the housekeeper and learns to cook from a young age. She falls in love with a boy named Pedro and says she understands how raw dough must feel when it comes into contact with boiling oil - the food imagery in this film is rife (and I gather that each chapter of the book it is based on begins with a recipe). Unfortunately Tita is told that as the youngest daughter, traditionally it is her responsibility to take care of her mother into her old age and so is not allowed to marry.

With a comment about exchanging tacos for enchiladas, Pedro decides instead to marry Tita's sister as the only way to be near the woman he truly loves. Tita is put in charge of the wedding banquet and cries as she makes the wedding cake; her tears fall into the batter and somehow when the wedding guests eat the cake, they all cry tears of a broken heart mourning a lost love - then they all throw up into the river.

This is the first time that Tita's 'powers' become apparent; later when Pedro - who is still in love with Tita- gives her a bunch of flowers, pretending they are to celebrate her first anniversary as the chief cook on the ranch after the housekeeper died. Tita's mother suggests she uses the flowers to make quail in a rose petal sauce, which she does - but this time her attraction for Pedro seeps into the food and everyone who eats it, and her other sister Gertrudis practically has an orgasm at the dinner table. Gertrudis later runs off stark naked with a federal soldier and isn't seen again until the end of the film.

I won't give away the rest of the story other than to say the passion between Tita and Pedro continues, but the story for them doesn't end in perhaps the way you would expect. At the very end of the film, Gertrudis has returned, not as a brothel whore as her family believes but as a general in the army she ran away with, and there is the implication that her daughter is the next generation of the family to have the same powers as Tita.

I was blown away by the story and now the book is high on my list of ones to read. The story is gripping and emotional and I love the way that food takes such a centre stage. I recommend the film but I am definitely looking forward to reading the book now.

When it came to deciding what to make for Food 'n' Flix, the quail in rose petal sauce stood out. I found a few websites giving the actual recipe from the book, but unfortunately it needs dragon fruit, which isn't in season. But to use rose petals from my garden I had to make the dish now - the petals are already falling off the flowers and I don't know when they will bloom again. I also hit a snag when I couldn't actually get hold of any quail or even poussin which had been my second choice!

Nonetheless I decided to push ahead and make a version of this dish. I found one recipe online that suggested you could use plums instead of dragon fruit so I did that; you also need chestnuts but again these are not in season (and in this part of the world I don't think they are in season at the same time as dragon fruit so you basically have three main ingredients but can't get all three of them at the same time!).

Here's what I did. To serve one, you need:
1 chicken leg
Fry Light
50ml chicken stock
50ml white wine
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 plums, chopped
petals from 2 roses (make sure they are edible ie have not been sprayed with pesticide)
1 tbsp runny honey

roses from my garden

Bake the chicken in the oven. When it is almost ready, spray some Fry Light in a small sauce pan, fry the garlic then add the plums. Pour in the stock and wine and simmer until reduced. Add the honey and rose petals.

I decided to try hassleback potatoes to go with this dish. Choose a large or a couple of large-ish potatoes and make several slices into them with a sharp knife, going about three quarters of the way through the potato.

Rub with oil or spray with Fry Light for a low fat option, sprinkle with salt and bake in the oven for an hour - I did these at the same time as the chicken.

Serve the chicken with the sauce and potatoes. I love the way the potatoes open up and go crispy on the outside and soft on the inside! The sauce was very nice with the chicken, it was a little bit sweet, a little bit fruity and the rose petals didn't really taste of anything (and as they cook down, you don't feel as if you are eating flowers). An unusual recipe and I would be keen to try the proper one from the book if I could get the ingredients!

I'm sending this to Elizabeth at the Law Student's Cookbook for Food 'n' Flix.

Lakeland R-Evolution Cuisine Kit - experimenting in the kitchen

 Heston Blumenthal has made the concept of 'molecular gastronomy' famous; he is known for doing strange things with liquid nitrogen and creating highly imaginative dishes that offer the unexpected. This R-Evolution kit from Lakeland allows you to experiment along similar lines in the comfort of your own kitchen.

I got this for my birthday last year but hadn't found the time to use it until new year's eve, when I decided to try out a few techniques. The kit comes with several small boxes of different ingredients - agar-agar, sodium alginate, calcium lactate, soya lecithin and xanthan gum. You get 10 sachets of each so there are plenty. You also get some pipettes, a syringe, silicon tubes, plus some measuring spoons and a mini slotted spoon. There are a few recipes and diagrams inside a printed booklet but all the recipes are provided on a DVD. I didn't find this particularly convenient as I had to watch the DVD and scribble down notes which I could then take into the kitchen. Of course, that's no problem if you have a TV and DVD player in your kitchen, or you can play a DVD on your laptop and take that into the kitchen, but I knew I would need all my workspace for the recipes. I understand though why it is on a DVD, because the method for making these recipes is very unusual - not that complicated, but it would be quite hard to describe and it's definitely much easier to watch! The DVD allows you to look at types of recipes or go through each one at a time. Each demonstration video takes about five minutes but there is no voiceover, only music, and every so often words appear on the screen. I think this is because this kit is available in different countries and it makes it easier from a language perspective (i.e. probably cheaper) just to have one film with nobody speaking!

So having gone through all the recipes on the DVD, I decided I was going to make goat's cheese ravioles, frozen parmesan foam, and honey caviar. I'll give an approximate description of what I did, but you really need to buy the kit and watch the DVD!

Goat's cheese ravioles

Sprinkle a sachet of sodium alginate into 475ml water and mix with a hand blender until dissolved. Set aside for 15 minutes.

Mix 50g goat's cheese with 20 ml milk. Add 1/2 tsp calcium lactate and stir with a fork.

Spoon the goat's cheese mixture into the sodium alginate bath using an ice cream scoop and balls will form and slowly sink to the bottom. Leave for three minutes then rinse in a bowl of clean water by adding the goat's cheese and gently stirring it around.

Remove with a slotted spoon and dry on kitchen paper.

I served these as our starter on new year's eve, on a bed of lettuce and drizzled with balsamic glaze. I wasn't that keen on these though I wondered if it was because the goat's cheese I used was quite firm and I should have used a softer cheese like Capricorn. There was a kind of jelly like membrane on the cheese balls, which I'm not sure was supposed to happen, and even though I rinsed the cheese it did seem to have a slightly funny taste. I would try doing this again though as perhaps something went wrong on my first attempt.

Frozen parmesan foam

I decided to make chicken stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon as our main course, and serve the parmesan foam with the chicken.

Mix 300ml water with 400ml (not grams) grated parmesan and add the sachet of soy lecithin.

Mix with a hand blender, then pour into a saucepan.

Stir and bring to the boil then set aside for ten minutes. The mixture will turn into a foam consistency.

Spoon the foam out into a small bowl and freeze for one hour. 

 As I was faffing around a lot with the kit I wanted to keep the main course simple so I used this
 pesto soft cheese to stuff two chicken breasts.

I wrapped them in bacon, and baked them in the oven.

 When the parmesan foam has been in the freezer for an hour it is ready to serve - simply scoop out. You need to serve immediately after it comes out of the freezer, otherwise the foam deflates. I also found that having it next to hot food meant it melted fairly fast and I was left with liquid! But it was pretty cool and tasted nice.

 I also made some creamy mashed potato topped with crispy bacon to go with the chicken.

Honey Caviar

I served this on top of a particularly nice dessert that I saw on Fuss Free Flavours for a three-layer chocolate mousse.

 To make the honey caviar, put a cup of oil in the freezer for half an hour. In a small pan, mix 80ml water with 125ml runny honey and a sachet of agar-agar. Stir and bring to the boil.

 Remove the oil from the freezer. Pour the mixture into a small bowl and use the syringe to siphon some of the liquid and drop it a droplet at a time into the cold oil - small pearls will form.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the honey caviar from the oil, and place in a bowl of clean water. Stir around gently to rinse.

Place the honey caviar on top of the dessert to serve.

To get the recipe for this gorgeous chocolate mousse visit Fuss Free Flavours. 
It's a simple but delicious recipe; all you do is mix three types of chocolate with cream and allow each one to set in turn. I started off using this dark chocolate with orange:

Melt the chocolate with cream in a small pan

Pour into a small serving glass and allow to set in the fridge.

For the next later, I used a good quality milk chocolate:

Repeat the process with the chocolate and the cream

Pour the second layer into the glass once the base has set, and allow that to cool and set.

I used white chocolate for the top layer and once again melted it with cream.

 Pour onto the top of the dessert and allow to set.

 I placed the honey caviar on top as the finishing touch.

This was a delicious dessert and the perfect way to round off our meal.

I'd be curious to know if anyone else has used the R-Evolution kit and what you think. It was quite fiddly and while it was fun and had great novelty value, I'm not sure how much the results really added to each dish and I wasn't always 100% keen on the taste. I will definitely use this kit again as there are plenty of things I haven't tried to make, but it will have to be on a day when I have plenty of free time!