Blimey, that's a lot of basil. At least the macaroons won't have any in (I assume).Yes, as the German title suggests, this month we celebrate the Random Kitchen debut of Backen macht Freude, the most recent addition to my collection! Alongside that, it's a basil-tastic journey through two older books that have tended to deliver mostly decent results in the past. Sounds promising, right...? Join me for the antepenultimate edition of the Random Menu and find out!
Wait a minute, "antepenultimate"? Well, I did restart this blog to help me ride out a lockdown or three, and so I don't specifically intend to carry on after Christmas unless the winter prompts the government to admit that Covid still exists after all.
So OK, not necessarily the antepenultimate edition...
◘ THE STARTER ◘
The book: A Soup For Every Day (The New Covent Garden Food Co.)
The recipe: p144, "Salmon, Tomato & Basil Soup"
Let's be honest, "salmon soup" sounds like a weird concept right from the get-go, but I'm definitely here for it.
I suppose it's not that odd really; fish soup itself is no rarity, conjuring up visions of everything from bouillabaisse to lobster bisque. "Salmon, tomato and basil" sounds more like an Ainsley main meal, though - inevitably served with a side of oven-baked potatoes, a green vegetable and a stupid recipe name - so I'm curious as to how it'll translate into soup.
(The short answer, for those who are too impatient to read on, is "lumpy".)
The ingredient list for this one is threateningly long, but the preparation isn't especially difficult. Notable ingredients include both fresh salmon and smoked salmon trimmings, and fish stock - or "shellfish stock" as M&S insists on calling theirs, because M&S. Still, it's not something that's stocked (no pun intended) by any of the other Lewisham supermarkets, so M&S it is.
There are two phases to the making: let's call them Before The Blend and After The Blend. On the "Before" side, it's all fairly standard for a soup. Butter is heated, onion and garlic are sweated, flour is stirred in, then the remainder of the soup base ingredients are added: the stock, a decent slosh of white wine, some milk, tomato purée, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a bay leaf. This combo is simmered until the onions are soft, then the bay leaf is removed, and the soup base is cooled until it can be blended without me scorching my forearms.
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| So this has started appetisingly |
As it turns out, "blend until smooth" isn't the easiest instruction to follow when what you're blending is almost all liquid, give or take a medium onion. My hand blender does its best, but what I'm left with at the end mainly resembles a fizzy latte.
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| Croissant, anyone...? |
Anyway, during the aforementioned cooling phase, I was preparing the remainder of the dish. That meant chopping a salmon steak into 2cm cubes, chopping some fresh basil (the recipe calls for one tablespoon, but that seems incredibly measly for six bowls' worth of soup, so I do at least three times as much - it's in the title, for heaven's sake, it ought to be actively present), and... ah. Apparently the 700g of ripe firm tomatoes needed to be not only deseeded and diced, but skinned first.
Well, ain't no one got time for that, as the cool kids say. The skins will soften in the soup, and it's not like I'm serving this to the Queen at one of the dinner engagements that have left her knackered of late. We'll cope.
So, the fizzy latte is reheated to boiling and the salmon cubes, salmon trimmings, diced tomatoes and chopped basil are introduced and cooked for a couple of minutes "until the salmon is just firm".
And that's it, pretty much! A "garnish" is also called for - this involves some whole basil leaves, a dusting of paprika, and a swirl of single cream that immediately merges into the ocean of liquid in each bowl.
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| Elegant |
Which, I think, goes some way to summing up the problem with this soup. Even by Random standards, it is very much just some stuff floating in (or sinking to the bottom of) an awful lot of wetness. Erm, so to speak. It's definitely not one for fans of consistency and texture, that's for sure. In hindsight, I think it would have made a lot more sense to include the salmon trimmings at the pre-blend stage and get a bit more substance into the soup base.
But, I have to admit that's the only real problem with it. The flavours are nice - how could they not be, they're a decent main course in a bowl - and there's some quite interesting stuff going on in there. It's just a bit of an odd eat and not one I feel especially compelled to repeat.
File under: Nice but conceptually flawed.
◘ THE MAIN COURSE ◘
The book: Masterclass (James Martin)
The recipe: p22, "Courgette, Tomato and Basil Pie with Goat's Cheese"
Now here's a thing.
I went through the whole process of making this dish. I found a local, far less pretentious equivalent to the "Dorstone cheese" that features in the actual recipe title. I let out a quiet cheer to myself at the return of that old Random Kitchen staple, the "thing calling itself a pie that's actually just some ingredients with a bit of puff pastry rested on top".
I sliced courgettes lengthways, cursed the recipe when they took more than twice as long to brown in the oven as they should have done, and wondered why I wasn't told to cut them into smaller pieces before adding them to the pie mixture.
I took lovingly framed photographs of the pie filling, even though courgettes, sunblush tomatoes, shallots, basil, garlic and crumbled goat's cheese were never going to be the most photogenic thing in the world.
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| See? |
I noted that the photo accompanying the recipe had some nice pastry patterns on top of the pie, so even though the recipe itself doesn't mention using the trimmed pastry for this purpose, I did what I could within the constraints of my personal lack of artistry.
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| Self-praise is no praise |
I took the pie out of the oven - again, about ten minutes after the recipe wanted me to, because it clearly wasn't browned enough yet. My "K" disintegrated a bit along the way, but these things can happen.
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| Slop |
We cut into the pie. As expected, it had precisely zero internal cohesion.
We ate it anyway. Despite being sloppy, it was quite nice. I made some notes and filed them away for later.
And then, while writing up those notes today, purely out of curiosity, I Googled the phrase "even a French crottin" to see if anyone else had picked up on James Martin's endless pretension when it comes to goat's cheese, and I realised that...
...oh.
The single solitary hit for that phrase on Google is the Random Kitchen post from October 2016 in which I made exactly the same pie.
It probably says all you need to know about the bang-averageness of this dish that Sam and I had both completely forgotten about having literally made and eaten it before.
On re-reading that post, I'm reassured to note that our verdict is largely the same as it was five years ago; broadly speaking, thumbs down for the lack of "pie-ness" but thumbs up for some of the flavours.
That's embarrassing though. My recipe books are packed full of similarly "perfectly OK" recipes that I could have been making instead. Sorry everyone...
File under: Eminently forgettable, apparently.
◘ THE DESSERT ◘
The book: Backen macht Freude (Dr. Oetker)
The recipe: p370, "Dattelmakronen" (Date Macaroons)
At least I can be sure I haven't made these before, since the book is new to my collection. But I'm shedding an anguished tear for a different reason, and that reason is the sheer cruelty of the random number generator. A big chunky cookbook packed full of hearty German bakes that would have been the perfect kitchen fit as the autumn closes in around us, and I have to make some lightweight meringue puffs?
Not only that, but the adjacent pages are full of macaroons with far more appealing flavour combinations - there's one that's basically just Nutella - and I'm stuck with poxy date and almond. Ah well. I suppose it's... kind of festive? So let's crack on.
This classic German book from the Dr. Oetker stable, updated for the modern age but still cheerfully traditional, comes with "SUCCESS GUARANTEED" emblazoned on the front cover. The ingredient list for this recipe gives a first indication as to why they feel confident in making this boast - including, as it does, a "sachet" of vanilla sugar and a "vial" (!) of rum flavouring. See, what they mean by those vague descriptions is "the packaging sizes you get when you buy the Dr. Oetker-branded products". Clever.
And so, via an order from the German Deli (and a parcel that goes missing thanks to DHL - no hyperlink for you), I find myself pre-emptively stocking my kitchen with various things that I'm likely to need as I work my way through this book, both randomly and out of choice.
Yes, I even buy the Speisestärke called for in this recipe - that's basically just cornflour, but I figure there might be something different about the German version, so better safe than sorry.
Anyway. This recipe begins with fairly standard meringue procedure - egg whites, sugar (including the sachet of vanilla sugar), and lots of beating until some nice firm peaks form. (Or "until a knife cut remains visible", as the recipe insists.) Even as an experienced German translator, I have to double-check the
meanings of a lot of the baking terminology to make sure I'm not going
wrong here - I wouldn't want to get my unterschlagen, unterheben and unterrühren confused, after all.
The vial of rum flavouring also gets added at this stage. It definitely doesn't look at all suspicious.
Now I turn my attention to the ingredients that will be stirred through the macaroon mix, and this is where things get a bit silly. Finely chopped almonds, no problem; I can get those pre-chopped from the supermarket anyway (and I do). However, the pre-chopped dates you can buy are still too big for the "fine" pieces this recipe calls for - and I have whole dates in the cupboard anyway following last month's weird dessert, so naturally, I do the job myself.
You see, the thing about chopped dates - their main distinguishing feature - is they're all sugary and sticky. So when the recipe asks me to mix them with the chopped almonds, all that's ever going to happen is some unfortunate clumping and clagging.
Thus rendering it pointless having chopped them up into tiny pieces in the first place. Sigh.
And when the recipe asks me to combine this with the meringue mixture, all that's ever going to happen is that the whole thing is going to end up looking like this.
Exactly: The almonds are nicely distributed throughout the mixture, but the dates most definitely are not, and there's no way of recovering the situation now.
I'm not sure how you'd avoid this really. Freeze the dates first, then chop them with a really sharp knife, then freeze them again before using them in the recipe? Or just surrender on the "fine pieces" requirement and use the shop-bought bigger chunks in the first place, in the hope that their coating might stop them from having the adhesive qualities that are inherent to the inside of a date?
Anyway, the next step is the slightly loose instruction to "use two teaspoons" to make "small heaps" of meringue on a baking tray.
This lack of clarity is problematic insofar as I realise I've used well over a third of the mix already and the recipe is meant to produce "around 50" macaroons. Whoopsie. Still, can't be helped - and besides, the photo in the book gives a sense that these things are meant to turn out fairly big and pillowy...
...albeit with the almonds clearly a lot more visible. (Should I have toasted them? Perhaps I should have, even though the recipe didn't tell me to. Never mind.)
Next, my baking tray goes into the oven for 20 minutes at - get this - 120 degrees. Yep, you're right, that is a subtle bake and no mistake. The idea is clearly to make the macaroons set so lightly that they're fluffy and airy. That's fine, but it also makes them very hard to handle. They break at the slightest touch, and about a quarter of them don't even make it off the baking sheet and are now being frozen for use as ice cream topping. (Waste not, want not!)
Those that do survive, however, look... well, they look much as they did before going into the oven.
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| See? Already crumbling |
They also don't look a huge amount like the photo in the book, but I've already accepted the fact that the almond and date distribution is going to be all off here. That might also be why they're so breakable, I don't know.
In case the size is the problem, I do a final mini-batch that are a lot smaller...
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| (and somehow even less attractive) |
...but no, they turn out to be just as brittle on the outside. It's clearly part of the design. To be fair, the recipe does talk about "carefully" removing them from the baking paper. I am inevitably reminded of certain other meringue-related experiences I have had in the past.
But enough about that, Faulkner - how do the things taste? Well, the flavour side of things is perfectly acceptable really. They're basically just little clouds of baked sugar, and that can never be too wrong. What's definitely a bit odd is the texture - the almond fragments are distributed fairly consistently, meaning you're always chewing on some nuts (steady, woman, steady!), but the clumping of the dates means you don't have the fruity chewiness to offset that. Instead, you get the occasional bite that's all date, whereas some of the macaroons don't have any in them at all.
Or, as Sam puts it, "It's got something not very nice in it, but everything else is good". (He got a bite that was all date.)
What is nice and chewy is the meringue interior, I have to say, despite my suspicions over the baking process. (Turns out 20 minutes at 120 degrees would have made my swans a lot more palatable too.) While going harder on the baking front would have made the macaroons firmer to the touch and less likely to immediately collapse, I suppose the gentle treatment is what gives them that chewiness that would otherwise be lost.
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| Good enough to be given to friends Good enough for us to eat Good for nothing |
Anyway, while I cannot claim that this was a wholly successful bake, it wasn't terrible either. It just wasn't really what it was supposed to be... whatever that even was (I'm still not entirely sure).
Can we have a Stollen or a Kirschtorte next time please?
Until then, allow me to finish by bestowing upon you an Ohrwurm courtesy of the only thing that should ever spring to mind where dates and the German language are concerned. You're welcome!
File under: SUCCESS NOT GUARANTEED.
