Matcha Financiers with Redcurrants

Following on from my newly discovered love for baking financiers, I decided to do a little experimentation with the basic recipe and these are the initial result. This is essentially the same recipe as the one that I have previously given, the only difference being that I have substituted green tea powder for some of the plain flour and have used vanilla in place of the almond extract. I felt that the almond extract might be too assertive against the delicate almost herbaceous taste of the matcha green tea. I decided that vanilla would complement the flavour of the matcha much more effectively.

 

Green tea and in particular Japanese matcha green tea is lauded as possessing great health giving properties and restorative qualities. In many ways, matcha is an acquired taste, but luckily it is one that I have acquired and I love its taste. Ironically, I rarely drink it as a beverage, but do use it quite regularly in my baking.

The challenge facing the cook when using it in recipes is to use enough so that it imparts its beautiful vibrant almost artificial-looking green colour into those dishes in which it is used, but without using too much so that the food tastes ‘grassy’ or bitter. For this reason, I have given a specific weight of matcha powder which I recommend be used in this recipe, rather than giving a more vague teaspoon measurement.

Matcha can be difficult to get your hands on and Asian food stores would be your best bet in this regard. Alternatively, it can be bought online. It is expensive to buy, but provided you store it in the foil pouch that it is normally sold in, it keeps well and lasts an eternity.

To be completely honest, I made these financiers because I still had some redcurrants remaining after the original financiers that I made, but I am delighted with the result and think that the redcurrants work fantastically well with the matcha from a flavour point of view but the colour contrast is also fantastic. When my eldest daughter saw them, she declared them to be very Christmassy looking. She may have a point and if you were to substitute cranberries for the redcurrants, they would have a definite festive feel to them! This is what I love about cooking and baking… once you understand the basic principles behind a certain technique or the basic recipe, you can then adapt it to your own tastes and let your imagination run riot, substituting different nuts or fruits or other ingredients. Sometimes the results won’t be great, but you may also discover some hidden culinary gems that will then go on to be mainstays in your cooking repertoire.

The nature of writing a blog of this type dictates that in the main you will only ever post recipes that have been success and that you have tried and tested thoroughly. I can declare in absolute honesty, that everything you see on this blog has been tried out and cooked by me a number of times. What you don’t see are some of my less successful cookery and recipe experiments or the many attempts (resulting in failure) that I have made at creating notoriously technically difficult recipes like macarons, canelés, to mention a few.
 

Ingredients:

75g ground almonds
100g icing sugar
45g plain flour

10g matcha green tea powder

4 large egg whites

¼ tsp vanilla extract

75g unsalted butter, melted and allowed to cool a little

75g fresh redcurrants
 

Method:

1. Using a pastry brush, butter 22-24 holes of a mini-muffin tin and then flour them, shaking out any excess. Set aside.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the ground almonds, icing sugar flour and green tea powder. Add the egg whites and almond extract to the dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon, mix together until well mixed through. Next, add the melted butter and mix again until it is fully incorporated. Cover the mixing bowl with some cling film and refrigerate the cake batter for at least 30 minutes.

To bake the financiers:

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Spoon or pipe the cake batter into the prepared tins, filling each about 2/3 full. Pop 3 or 4 redcurrants on top of each financier and then bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes until well risen, slightly springy to the touch and just beginning to colour around the edge.

4. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Remove from the tins and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes 22-24.

Redcurrant Financiers

I love small cakes and buns – little sweet delights that can be eaten in one bite or (when I’m feeling more sophisticated) nibbled on with an elegance I don’t really possess! I love macaroons, fairy cakes, madeleines and all manner of single portion sized bakes, but to be honest, I had never made financiers before.

Financiers are small little sponge cakes which hail from France. They usually contain ground nuts, with ground almonds being the most commonly used. The dry ingredients in the mixture are bound together with egg whites and melted butter and the batter is then baked in small little moulds or tins. What I found particularly interesting about most of the recipes that I came across is that the egg whites are not whisked prior to being introduced to the dry ingredients but are instead mixed in as they are. Mostly where egg whites are divorced from their yolk partners in recipes, they are whisked in order to incorporate air into the finished product. Despite the fact that this is not the case here, the cakes are surprising light with a slightly springy texture and are not at all heavy to eat.

Most recipes also call for the butter to be heated and allowed colour to the beurre noisette stage. Essentially you heat the butter over a gentle heat until it starts to brown and smells slightly ‘nutty’. You have to watch over the butter like a hawk, because it is easy to overdo the browning and if it occurs it tastes bitter and burnt. There is no doubting that browned butter does add an extra dimension to the finished cakes, but I also came across recipes, where simply melted butter was used. In the recipe that I give here, I wanted my finished financiers to have a very pale colour and a purity of taste which I felt would work better with the redcurrants that I had chosen to use. I experimented using butter that had been just melted and also butter that has been brought to the beurre noisette stage. My suspicions regarding the finished product were correct and I must admit that I much preferred, from a taste perspective, the version that used plain melted butter.

I often feel sorry for redcurrants… they so often seem to be used merely as decorative afterthoughts rather than as an ingredient in their own right. Whilst there is no doubt that a sprig of redcurrants in all their jewel-like splendour are beautiful, they also have much to offer in terms of taste. The thing that I always find surprising about them is that they are far sharper and tart tasting than their iridescent red colour would lead you to believe. This is one reason why I think they worked particularly well in this recipe; these financiers ARE sweet, but the sharpness of the redcurrants cuts through the sweetness to create a little bite-sized cake that was well-balanced and just heavenly to eat.

This is an incredibly fuss-free recipe to make; the only tiresome aspect is that the moulds do have to be well prepared before the cake batter is added to them. This means that each individual one has to be brushed with very soft butter and then floured. I hate tedious jobs like this, but I am a seasoned enough baker at this stage to appreciate that so often with cooking and particularly with baking, proper preparation is the key to success.

Following on from my great success with these financiers, I decided to take the plunge and ordered some proper financier mould on the interweb thingy! In the photos that accompany this post, you will see that I used mini-muffin tins and this is what I suggest you do, if you don’t happen to own financier moulds. I will post the recipes from my other financier experimentations over the next couple of weeks.
      

Ingredients:

75g ground almonds
100g icing sugar

50g plain flour

4 large egg whites

¼ tsp almond extract

75g unsalted butter, melted and allowed to cool a little

75g fresh redcurrants
 

Method:

1. Using a pastry brush, butter 22-24 holes of a mini-muffin tin and then flour them, shaking out any excess. Set aside.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the ground almonds, icing sugar and flour. Add the egg whites and almond extract to the dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon, mix together until well mixed through. Next, add the melted butter and mix again until it is fully incorporated. Cover the mixing bowl with some cling film and refrigerate the cake batter for at least 30 minutes.

To bake the financiers:

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Spoon or pipe the cake batter into the prepared tins, filling each about 2/3 full. Pop 3 or 4 redcurrants on top of each financier and then bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes until well risen, slightly springy to the touch and just beginning to colour around the edge.

4. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Remove from the tins and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
 

Makes 22-24.
 

Roast Quail with Pomegranate, Honey, Cinnamon & Thyme

This is such an easy dish to prepare and packs a real flavour punch despite the relatively few ingredients that go into its making.
 Quail originally hail from the Middle East but are now farmed in Europe and are becoming increasingly popular and readily available to buy in many of the larger supermarkets and speciality food shops and butchers. Depending on their size and whether they are being served as a starter or main course one or two quail per person is usually sufficient. Here, I was lucky to get my hands on some nice plump little birds, so I served one per person, along with a chickpea and couscous salad generously flavoured with lemon, mint and flat leaf parsley, echoing some of the classic flavours of the Middle East and a passing nod to the quail’s origins.
 

My children love roast chicken and (as I have mentioned before) when served with all the trimmings, it is probably their favourite meal to eat. Personally, I prefer eating game, particularly game birds and have been trying to tempt my three into being a little more adventurous with what they deign to dine on. I do think that there’s something pitiful about the fact that they like chicken nuggets and dippers over experiencing the joys of eating pheasant, wild pigeon, partridge, grouse and other game. I fully appreciate the fact that some game birds taste…well… very GAMEY… and might not appeal to younger palates, but I haven’t given up the fight.
 

Rather than serve them pigeon or something radically different to what they are used to eating, I have recently started introducing them to different types of fowl including guinea fowl and quail. Admittedly, I presented each of these as “small chickens” and only owned up to what they really were after my gang had eaten them and declared them to be delicious. Sometimes we are too squeamish about the food we eat and are put off eating delicious things because we don’t like the sound of them. Being a borderline glutton with an adventurous appetite for all types of food, I have never been afraid to try anything new and I will admit that I would like to pass this on to my children.

I was delighted with the reaction to this dish and thrilled that it has been requested again by my gang. At its simplest, the quail are simply roasted, but the dish has oodles of added flavour by virtue of the garlic, herbs and honey with which the birds were cooked. This is a really simple and flavoursome dish, which I encourage you to try. You will see from the instruction given that this is an incredibly uncomplicated dish to prepare and in my books that is a further plus in its favour.

Ingredients:

4-6 quail, prepared with innards removed and oven-ready
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 lemon, cut into 4-6 wedges

A few sprigs of fresh thyme

2tblsp runny honey

1tblsp of white wine vinegar

Seeds of 3 pomegranates

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan Oven 170C/Gas Mark 5.

2. Place the prepared quail in a roasting tin and stuff their cavities with a lemon wedge and some of the garlic and thyme. Once you have stuffed the cavities, gently truss the quail legs together with some string.

3. Scatter over the pomegranate seeds from two of the pomegranates and nestle more of the garlic and thyme around the birds. Drizzle over the honey and add the white wine vinegar. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast in the preheated oven for approximately 25 minutes, basting a couple of times during the cooking with the roasting juices. When ready the birds should have a deep golden colour.

4. Scatter over the seeds of the final pomegranate, just before serving.
 

Serves 4.
 

 

Guinness Sticky Toffee Puddings

What is there not to love about sticky toffee pudding? It is warm, sweet, sticky and the ultimate in comfort food. The soft but rich sponge drenched in a toffee-like caramel sauce is just addictive despite the fact that they are sinfully sweet. I honestly believe that if a hundred people were surveyed and asked what their favourite dessert was, sticky toffee pudding would be right up there near the top of the list. Interestingly, I have found that men in particular seem to love it and often choose it on dessert menus.

The great thing about this pudding is that it is relatively easy to make at home and there are no complex processes involved. You can make it in one large dish and then portion it out when serving or you can do as I have, and make individual puddings. I love food that is prepared and served in individual sized portions… it just feels more special somehow; as if a lot of care and thought has gone into its making.

I have made many sticky toffee puddings over the years and they have always been extraordinarily popular, but rather than make my usual ‘standard’ version, I decided this time that I wanted to do something a little different. I often use stout in my cooking as I think that it adds a depth and richness to those dishes in which it is used. One of my favourite meals is Beef in Guinness Stew …which is so tasty and another great comfort food dish. I am also a great lover of traditional Christmas Pudding and my fail-safe recipe, the one that I have been using for years, is one that uses Guinness. Inspired by these recipes and others that I regularly cook and bake which also include Guinness, I decided that I would use it as the liquid in which to soak my dates for these sticky toffee puddings.

The Guinness really worked a treat lending a subtle richness but slight tang that actually cut through some of the overall sweetness of the puddings. I thought it added something extra but without taking away from the essential character of the puddings. It may be blowing my own trumpet but I think that the addition of Guinness actually improves what is a classic pudding and I shall definitely be including it when making it again.

Ingredients:

300ml Guinness
175g dates, pitted and roughly chopped
1tsp bicarbonate of soda

50g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

215g self-raising flour, sifted

Sauce:

150g butter

180g soft brown sugar

225ml double cream

To serve:

50g walnuts, lightly toasted in a dry frying pan
 

Method:

1. Place the Guinness in a small saucepan and heat until just boiling and then remove from the heat. Add the dates and bicarbonate of soda and set aside. Allow to cool for about 20 minutes.

2. Grease 8 small pudding basins (about 200ml capacity) with butter and line the base with a small circle of non-stick baking parchment. Place on a baking tray and set aside.

3. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4.

4. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition so that they are fully incorporated.

5. Fold in the flour and then add the dates and Guinness mixture, mixing everything together thoroughly. The mixture will be quite sloppy, but this is exactly how it should be.

6. Divide the batter between the prepared pudding bowls, filling each no more than 2/3 full as the mixture rises quite significantly as it bakes. Bake the puddings in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until they are well risen and a thin skewer inserted in to the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes while you make the sauce.

Sauce:

7. Place the butter and sugar into a medium sized saucepan and bring to the boil over a moderate heat. Allow to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Carefully add the cream, continuously stirring. Allow to bubble for a further minute and then remove from heat.

To serve:

8. Turn out the puddings onto individual plates and pour over some of the unctuous sauce. These puddings are fabulous served with vanilla ice-cream where the cold creaminess contrasts so well with the hot, rich pudding! Scatter around a few lightly toasted walnuts to add a little nutty crunch.
 

Serves 8.

Blog Awards Ireland 2014 and a recipe for a Plum Tart

I was thrilled to be shortlisted recently in the Food & Drink category for the Blog Awards Ireland 2014. When the shortlist was published and I saw that my blog was included, I think that it is fair to say that I was more than a little bit delighted.

I started thinking about why I first started writing this blog and the things I hoped to achieve by doing it. At its simplest, I started writing this blog because I hoped that people would be interested in the recipes that I had to share, many of which were based on much loved dishes from my childhood. I also wanted to have a collection of these recipes in one place so that my children could use them in years to come and that they would remember me (hopefully fondly) when they cooked them.  For me, cooking is about conviviality, sharing and ultimately it’s about nurturing and providing food for the people you love and care about; at its heart are family and the extended community.

I was an enthusiastic reader as a child and eagerly read anything that I could get my hands on - newspapers, magazines, hovels and reference books; but I derived the most pleasure from reading the three or four ancient looking cookbooks that my grandmother owned.

These were cookbooks without photographs and sparsely illustrated with very simple line drawings. Because of this, I had to imagine what some of the dishes would taste like from reading the ingredients lists and cooking instructions. I think it was here that my love of food and cookery really began to develop. I longed to read other cookbooks and tried to persuade my grandmother to purchase some new books, but she always resisted, preferring instead to base her cooking on tried and trusted recipes she’d learnt over the years and the ones contained in her own cookbooks.

In those childhood years, I often thought about how much I would love to be a food-writer. Over the years, life intervened and not knowing how to pursue that dream, it fell by the wayside and other priorities emerged, but my love for cooking and reading cookery books, magazines and articles remained and flourished. When I started working, I was able to afford to buy myself the occasional cookbook and my collection started to grow. (Note: a couple of decades later, it’s now at an embarrassingly large size!)
 

With social media and the world of blogging, I can now write about food and share my enthusiasm for Irish ingredients and recipes and show how travel and other food cultures have influenced my cookery. It’s hard to express how much I love writing and sharing recipes, but it is something that I truly enjoy.

The following is a recipe – a variation on the frangipane tart theme – which I regularly cook using seasonal fruits and one that is really useful for exploiting whatever is at its best. To make life really simple there is no blind baking of pastry shells involved; pastry discs are simple cut out from a sheet of puff pastry and are topped with a simple frangipane mixture and the fruit of your choice and are then baked. You can ring the changes by using other ground pistachios or hazelnuts in place of the almonds and can of course use whatever fruit takes your fancy. This recipe typifies my approach to cooking – one that is simple to prepare, easily adaptable and most important of all, delicious to eat!

In the photos accompanying this post you will see that I have served my tarts with a scoop of ice-cream. This was a roasted almond ice-cream and it went perfectly with the plum tarts. I was so pleased with the recipe for the almond ice-cream so will post the recipe for it separately.

Ingredients:

350g puff pastry (preferably made with all-butter)
Frangipane:
125g butter, softened

125g caster sugar

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

125g ground almonds

1tblsp plain flour

25ml Amaretto

Topping:

6 plums, halved and stones removed, cut into thin slices

A little icing sugar for dusting
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Line two large baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Roll out the puff pastry until it is about 3mm thick and cut out 8 discs about 12-14cms in diameter using a small plate as a guide. Place these on the prepared baking trays. Prick each pastry disc several times with a fork. Set aside.
Frangipane:
3. Place the butter and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Gradually mix in the eggs beating well after each addition. Add the ground almonds and the flour and mix these in well. Finally add the Amaretto and mix briefly until just incorporated.
To finish:
4. Spread 2 or 3 tablespoons of the frangipane on each disc to within about a centimetre of the edge of the pastry, using a small palette knife or the back of a spoon.
5. Once you have spread the frangipane on top of the puff pastry discs, arrange the plum slices in a circle on top of the frangipane. Dust lightly with icing sugar and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until the tarts have risen slightly, the frangipane is a deep golden colour and the fruit is cooked through. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking trays for at least 5 minutes before serving. Serve with a scoop of ice-cream or a little clotted cream.

Serves 4.