Chocolate & Hazelnut Pinwheel cookies

I really do love cooking and baking, but there are certain tasks associated with it that I find incredibly tedious – skinning nuts is a perfect example! However, it is one of those jobs that for certain recipes really does make a difference.

I recently purchased a bottle of Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur which is made in Italy, and have been itching to use it in my cooking. Along with chopped hazelnuts I used a good splash of this heady liqueur in the recipe that I give here. I have also been toying with the idea of baking a pear and hazelnut Battenberg Cake sandwiched together with chocolate ganache and covered with a hazelnut marzipan. I also love the idea of a hazelnut ice-cream... it sounds like some experimenting is going to be done! More on these ideas again; but what you can see is that I am very excited about the culinary possibilities that the purchase of the bottle of Frangelico has presented.

In doing research on the liqueur, I was surprised to find that it has only been on sale since the 1980s, though the manufacturers claim that it is based on an old recipe created by a hermit monk called Fra Angelico.

 

Hazelnuts improve immeasurably if slightly roasted before being used. I always tend to do this because I like their taste to be as deeply nutty as possible. I have used finely chopped hazelnuts in this recipe; I gently roasted the shelled whole nuts for about five minutes before removing their skins. The easiest way to do this is to place them on a clean tea-towel whilst they are still warm from the oven and rub them together without breaking them up. The friction created by the tea towel and the nuts rubbing against each other result in the skins flaking off fairly easily. It’s not that difficult a task, but I still find it tiresome. You can buy ready skinned or blanched hazelnuts, but you will pay more for them and I have always found the unskinned nuts somehow more hazelnutty!

 

I think that the cookies look so pretty but what I am most pleased with is the fact that the two separate flavours come through distinctly and separately, yet complement each other so well. This is hardly surprising as chocolate and hazelnut is one of those classic combinations found in Nutella, Cadbury’s Whole Nut Bars but also in gianduja – a chocolate and hazelnut paste often used as a tempting centre in quality chocolate sweets.

 

Ingredients:

For the hazelnut layer:
150g plain flour
100g butter
35g icing sugar
50g lightly roasted hazelnuts, skinned and finely chopped
2 tablespoons of hazelnut liqueur
For the chocolate layer:
125g plain flour
100g butter
25g cocoa powder
35g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan 170C/Gas Mark 5.
2. To make the hazelnut dough, place the flour in a large mixing bowl and rub in the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the icing sugar and stir to distribute evenly. Then add the chopped hazelnuts and mix again. Finally add the hazelnut liqueur and mix with your hands to form a dough that binds together. Set aside.
3. To make the chocolate dough, place the flour in a large mixing bowl and rub in the butter as above. Sieve in the icing sugar and cocoa powder and stir well to distribute evenly. Add the egg yolk and mix with your hands to form a dough that binds together.
4. Separately roll out both doughs on a lightly floured surface to similar sized rectangles about 30cms x 20cms. Place the chocolate rectangle on the hazelnut rectangle and roll lengthways along the longer edge to create a tight roll, similar to a swiss roll.
5. Cut the dough into slices about 1cm thick and place on a parchment lined baking tray, leaving space between each biscuit to allow for spreading when cooked.
6. Bake in the preheated oven  for 12-15 minutes until they are a light golden colour. When baked, take out of oven and let them cool on the baking trays for about 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 15-20 cookies.

Arancini

This is my type of food. It’s simple, uses up leftovers and is delicious.

The photo that accompanies this post suggests that the serving that was consumed consisted of three arancini –this was not the case, because you find that you always want “just one more”. I love them and when making risotto, I always deliberately make more than is needed, just so that I have an excuse to make arancini the following day.

Historically, arancini are believed to have originated in Sicily in the 10^th Century and are so called because they resemble little oranges after they are deep fried; arancini being the Italian for “little oranges”.

Arancini are basically fried rice balls that are coated in breadcrumbs. The rice usually encases a small amount of meat ragú, but the arancini may also contain peas or, my favourite - little nuggets of mozzarella, which melt temptingly when the arancini are deep fried. Strictly speaking arancini that are filled with cheese are called supplì, which hail from Rome.

I love detective novels…the more surly and dysfunctional the detective , the more hooked I am. My all-time favourite is Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, but I recently discovered Inspector Montalbano, the fictional Sicilian detective who appears in the novels of Andrea Camilleri. Montalbano loves his food and has an almost obsessive love of arancini.  To be honest, I think that Montalbano’s success rate in solving crime is directly related to his consumption of arancini.

Ingredients:

300-500g cold leftover risotto
1 ball of mozzarella, cut into 1.5cm cubes
150g fine panko breadcrumbs
100g plain flour
2 eggs
Flavourless oil for deep-frying
 

Method:

1. Take a large tablespoon of cold risotto and encase a cube of mozzarella in it. Place on a plate lightly dusted with some flour. Continue making mozzarella-filled balls until all the risotto has been used up. I find that it is a good idea at this stage to cover the plate of rice balls and to refrigerate them for at least an hour before proceeding to the next stage.
2. Put the plain flour and the breadcrumbs into two separate bowls. Crack the eggs into a third bowl and whisk lightly with a fork to break them up.
3. Take the rice balls out of the fridge and individually dip each one first in flour, then in the egg mixture and finally in the breadcrumb. They should be completely covered in breadcrumbs. Cover and place on a plate in the fridge if you do not intend to deep fry them immediately.
4. To finish, heat up the oil in a deep fat fryer until it reaches 180C. Then drop the arancini in and cook in batches of 6 or7 for about four minutes until they are a deep golden colour. Remove from the deep fat fryer when cooked and drain on kitchen-roll. Leave in a warm place whilst you fry the remaining arancini.

Serve with green salad.

Serves: This depends on how much risotto you used, but I usually serve 3 per person as a starter.

Toffee Apple Pudding

The rain has been falling relentlessly all day long. It has been cold and windy and it has definitely not been a day to venture out. But this is hardly unusual for Ireland in November!!! When the weather is so inhospitable I crave hot and comforting things to eat.
 
Halloween was only the other night and the children have just about come down from their sugar-induced highs brought on by all the sweets that they gathered when they were out haunting the neighbourhood.
 
One of the things that we regularly ate at Halloween when I was a child were toffee covered apples. It occurred to me that a variation on this theme was the perfect combination to try out today - cooked slices of apple in a sticky, citrusy sauce topped with a light sponge and finished off with a good dollop of lightly whipped cream. Sometimes you just have to do these things in the interests of culinary research!
 

Ingredients:

Pudding:
4 large bramley apples – peeled, core and cut into thick slices
225g self-raising flour
75g caster sugar
125g butter
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
2 large eggs
150ml milk

Sauce:

75g dark muscovado sugar

50g butter

100ml orange juice (from the orange used earlier)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas 6.
2. Lightly butter the bottom of a shallow oven-proof baking dish. Place the apples in the buttered dish.
3. To make the sponge, cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add the orange zest and mix thoroughly. Next, mix in the eggs, followed by the flour and milk. Pile the sponge on top of the apples in the buttered dish. Using a spatula spread out the sponge mixture to completely cover the apples.
4. Next place all the ingredients for the sauce into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Immediately turn off the heat under the saucepan and carefully pour the sauce over the sponge topped apples. This may sound weird, but as it bakes the sponge will rise to cover the apples which will be covered in the sticky sauce. Bake for 35 minutes.

Serve with softly whipped cream or custard.

Serves 6.

Liquorice Poached Pears with Blackberries & Star Anise Ice-Cream

Pears are such a great fruit to cook with because their tendency towards being hard and a little indigestible is addressed during the cooking process.
 
All too often pears are only available to buy when under-ripe and can take an age to come to an edible stage. Oh but the sheer pleasure of eating a perfectly ripe pear... one that is juicy but not mushy or too soft and the child-like joy I feel when the juice dribbles down my chin. How disappointing it is to bite into a pear that is hard and woody in texture! I love recipes for poached pears because they usually require slightly under-ripe pears. The recipe that I have developed is one such example.
 
Liquorice is one of those ingredients that has become very trendy recently and is being used by many top chefs on their menus in both sweet and savoury dishes. For me, liquorice evokes memories of Sherbet Fountains, Black Jacks and Liquorice Allsorts sweets. I loved the taste of liquorice as a child and I still do.

The thing about liquorice is that you either love it or hate it. Liquorice sweets are not REAL liquorice which is the root of the plant Glycyrrhiza glabra. The sweets whilst they do contain the root also usually have an added aniseed flavour derived from anise, which is naturally very sweet and if not used judiciously can be unbearably over-powering.  

 

I have been thinking of ways that I could use liquorice  in my cooking and came up with the idea of liquorice poached pears. The big challenges were; firstly – how to introduce the liquorice flavour and secondly how to use it in such a way that it did not dominate the flavour of the pears.

 

So off I went hunting for guidance. I noted that many of the recipes that I stumbled across used ground liquorice root. I inquired at the local health food store as to the availability of liquorice root, but as I had suspected might be the case, there does not seem to be much demand for it. This was also the case at the supermarket. Having said that, I’m sure that I could get some in the Asia Market and I could also order some on-line. I’m definitely going to try and seek some out to satisfy my curiosity.

 

 I can be an impatient person at the best of times and was determined to try out my pear and liquorice combination as soon as was possible. I wasn’t going to let a little matter like the acquisition of liquorice root thwart me! I then stumbled upon a possible solution; one recipe that I found advocated the use of Fisherman’s Friends sweets and another suggested using natural flavoured liquorice sweets, which could be melted down in liquid. Given that the pears in my recipe had to be poached, I thought that I would add a few natural flavoured liquorice sweets to the poaching liquid. I added 6 sticks which weighed about 50g in total and they worked a treat, imparting a subtle but still distinct liquorice flavour which did not overpower the taste of the pears. I added other spices and aromatics including a halved orange, some cinnamon sticks and star anise. My daughter commented that the smell in the kitchen whilst the pears were cooking was very Christmassy.

 I am really proud of this recipe; it’s quite sophisticated tasting but is not overly sweet. I have served it with home-made star anise ice-cream, but honestly, a quality shop-bought vanilla ice-cream would also do the job!
    

Ingredients:

Poached Pears:
6 slightly under-ripe pears (I used Comice)

500ml red wine (I used Pinot Noir)

50ml Cassis

50g caster sugar

1 orange, halved

3 star anise

2 cinnamon sticks

50g liquorice sweets, chopped up into small chunks

Star Anise Ice-Cream:

284ml carton double cream

300ml full fat milk

115g golden caster sugar

8-10 whole star anise

3 large free-range egg yolks

 

Method:

Poached Pears:

1. Peel the pears, but try to leave the stalks intact as they look attractive when serving.

2. Put the pears into a medium-sized saucepan so that they still have a little room to move but fit relatively snuggly. Pour in the wine and add the Cassis. Add a little water if necessary to make sure that the pears are covered. Add the two halves of the orange, the star anise, cinnamon sticks and the chopped up liquorice sweets.

3. Bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer. Allow to poach gently in the liquid until the pears are just cooked but still retain a bite….you do not want them too soft.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the pears to a bowl and turn the heat up under the poaching liquid and boil rapidly to reduce by about a half. Pour the reduced liquid over the pears in the bowl and allow cool. Refrigerate until chilled.

 

Star Anise Ice-Cream:

1. Pour the cream and milk into a medium heavy-based pan and add half the sugar and the star anise.Heat the cream and milk over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until it almost boils. Leave it aside for half an hour so that the star anise infuses the cream mixture.

2. Put the egg yolks into a bowl with the remaining sugar and beat with an electric hand-held beater for about 2 minutes until the mixture has thickened and is paler in colour.

3. Reheat the cream until it just comes to the boil, take off the heat and stir into the egg yolk mixture. Return the pan to a low heat and cook, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon, for 8-10 minutes, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Do not allow it boil or you will end up with scrambled eggs.

4. Pour the custard into a bowl and cover with cling-film. Allow the custard to cool completely. Remove the star anise and churn according to your ice-cream maker instructions.

 

Serves 6.

 

Old-Fashioned Almond Macaroons

This is such a simple recipe using only egg whites, caster sugar and almonds!

You don't even have to whisk the egg whites; you literally just mix the other ingredients into them. There is no denying that the biscuits are sweet - they are. But they are also delicious!

Whilst these biscuits use practically the same ingredients as French macarons and obviously have a similar taste profile, they are actually very different creatures. Compared to the frivolous, "look-at-me" character of French macarons with their sometimes garish colours and often bizarre flavour combinations, these biscuits are confident in their unfussiness and at most only tolerate the addition of a single blanched almond by way of decoration. I love French macarons, but sometimes I just crave the honest simplicity of these biscuits. Bit like life really.
 

I use a piping bag to pipe the mixture out onto the parchment lined baking trays prior to cooking, but in the interests of simplicity, you can of course use a spoon to pile blobs of the macaroon mixture onto the baking trays instead. Traditionally, rice paper would have been used to line the baking trays and excess removed from the biscuits after they had finished cooking. Rice paper is not that easy to come by these days, so I use baking parchment or silpat lined trays.

You don't have to place a blanched almond on top, but I like to do so because they toast slightly in the oven and add a different texture to the finished biscuits.

These are an old-fashioned type of biscuit; there are no airs and graces about them - they simply taste of almonds and are comfortingly crispy and chewy at the same time. They are quick to make and unless some self-restraint is shown (and I think I have none where these biscuits are concerned) quick to eat! One is never enough.

Do try to use almond extract as opposed to almond essence. I find that there is a distinct flavour difference between the two.
   

Ingredients:

150g ground almonds
200g caster sugar
2 egg whites
1 tsp almond extract
12-16 blanched almonds

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C/Fan 140/Gas Mark 3.
2. Place the ground almonds and caster sugar into a large bowl and mix together with a wooden spoon. Add the egg whites and almond extract and mix well together so that everything is well incorporated. You should have a thick past like mixture.
3. Put the mixture into a piping bag with a 1cm plain nozzle and pipe out 12-14 mounds of the macaroon mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place a single blanched almond onto the top of each mound.
4. Put into the preheated oven for approximately 20 minutes but look at them after 15 minutes to check that they are not browning too much. They should be light golden colour and still look a little soft in the centre – they will harden up further when they cool.
5. Take out of the oven and once they are cool enough to handle remove them from the baking trays and leave to cool on a wire rack.
 
Make 12-14 biscuits.