To Nourish and To Soothe.

Soup.

There’s hardly an occasion I would think it would be inappropriate for, be it to soothe after a bout of illness or to recharge after a long walk under the scorching sun. Or in my case, to nourish and cleanse after a recent corporate trip which saw a lot of singing, drinking and eating every two hours around the clock.

For some, it might be the act of baking a cake or making pasta by hand. But for me, making soup or stew of any kind is where the magic happens in the kitchen.

I mean really, water, some root vegetables, chunks of meat and a couple of hours and you get a hearty, flavourful soup? If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

And this soup, this bowl of glorious soup, was nothing short of magical. With the delirious combination of sweet root vegetables, nutty beans and a smoked ham hock simmered for just over two hours, this soup was a beautiful symphony of flavours.

And it completely doesn’t hurt that the soup, like most others, keeps well and in fact seems to improve with time.

I had the leftovers tonight, reheated and given a new life with a glug of white wine and a generous amount of balsamic vinegar (my new favourite seasoning, courtesy of Thomas Keller- really makes the flavours jump out), sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. And I tell you, there’s no better way to warm a soul on a dark Monday night.

I’ll definitely be revisiting this one especially after I get back from Korea where we’re headed to later this week. We’ll be spending the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day there so here’s wishing you all a happy Chinese New Year and a sweet Valentine’s Day in advance! May you be well and amongst loved ones this festive season.

Mixed Beans and Ham Hock Soup [Loosely adapted from Nigel Slater's Appetite]

Ingredients
6 large handful of dried beans
1 bay leaf
A knob of butter
Olive oil
1 garlic bulb, peeled and sliced thinly
1 1/2 tsp sweet paparika
2 stalks of celery, leave removed and sliced into 1 inch pieces
2 small carrots, peeled and cubed into 1 inch pieces
1 leek (white portion only), sliced into discs
1 smoked ham hock bone
Couple slices of ham hock
3 large handfuls of dried shell pasta
Balsamic vinegar, to taste
Sea salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. To be done the night before Put the dried beans in a pot. Add just enough water to cover the beans. Add a few drops of olive oil and a bay leaf to the pot. Cover the pot and leave the beans to soak overnight.
2. To make the soup Drain the beans and discard the bay leaf. Heat a large soup pot over high heat. Add the butter and olive oil. When the butter has melted, add the garlic slices and fry till fragrant. Add the smoked paparika and smoked ham hock slices. Cook until fragrant and ham slices are lightly browned. Add the leeks, carrots and celery. Cook until the vegetables start to soften.
3. Add the beans, stirring well. Add the ham bone and enough water to cover the contents of the pot by about 2 inches.
4. Bring the soup to a boil before lowering the heat so it simmers. Cover the pot and let the soup simmer for about 2 hours until the soup thickens, skimming the surface to remove any oil and scum occasionally.
5. Just before the soup is done, bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add the dried pasta and cook until al dente, stirring occasionally. Drain and add to the soup.
6. Season the soup with sea salt, balsamic vinegar and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Slice any ham on the bone off and discard the bone. Serve the soup hot and with garlic bread, if desired. Serves 4

Of Burgers and A New Kitchen Toy.

There are a few things I’m positively certain I’ll never do in this lifetime like learn to love tomatoes or resist a ride on a rollarcoaster. And firmly on that list, until very recently, was getting myself a food processor.

You see, for a long time now, I’ve been fairly comfortable with chopping my vegetables (even if it means I’m tearing the entire time I’m chopping an onion), making pastry dough and shaving my chocolate bars by hand. A food processor, to me, was one of those things that was nice to have but wouldn’t drive me insane to go without.

But slowly but surely, as things tend to go,  I started to change my mind.

It all started with the arrival of Bon Appetit’s January issue. A quick flip to the cover recipe featuring a plate of irresistible spaghetti and meatballs suggested something I had actually never given much thought to; grinding my own meat instead of buying it pre-ground off the shelves.

As if the stars were aligned to nudge me along a pre-destined path, my copy of the beautiful Martha Stewart’s Cooking School and stunning Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home arrived, both singing the same tune about how grinding your own meat can make for a much more flavourful burger because you literally can have any cut of meat you want and control the amount of fat in the patty.

So just like that, my friends, is how I ended up the proud owner of a food processor. I mean really, food processor+meat=better burgers- there wasn’t really much of a dilemma.

(It seems appropriate at this point to mention how in love I am with it. The first I did when I got home was to try every function the machine offers- chopping, slicing, grating, juicing and blending- and it worked like an absolute dream! It was like magic I tell you- in goes an onion, out comes perfect finely chopped onion slices. I don’t know how on earth I’ve been doing without one the last 23 years of my life! But I’ll stop sounding like the sad, cluelesss soul that I am but just know that I am truly in awe of this wonderful machine and my life needless to say has been changed forever.)

The trick I found to making sure the meat didn’t turn into mash in the food processor was to freeze the meat cubes until semi frozen for about an hour. I used a piece of beef brisket with beautiful marbling as well as some beef sirloin and threw in a packet of bacon fat for flavour.

With thin slices of fried garlic and rings of sweet, browned onions studded throughout the patties, these patties were like giant meatballs and sandwiched between a burger bun, made for quite a hearty and juicy burger. It was definitely more work than just opening a pack of minced meat but it was completely worth the effort- there’s no way I’ll ever buy meat pre-ground off the shelves again.

And now that I’ve ventured into grinding my own meat, it’s an endless world of possibilities out there.

Next up on my food processor’s agenda? Spaghetti and meatballs!

Beef burgers [Loosely adapted from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc At Home]

Ingredients
300g beef brisket
300g beef sirloin
200g bacon fat
2 bulbs of garlic, peeled and sliced thinly
1 brown onion, peeled and sliced into thin slices
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp sweet paprika
Olive oil
Salt flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
Burger buns, to serve

1. Cut the beef brisket, sirloin and bacon into 1 inch cubes. Place them in the freezer for an hour till semi frozen.
2. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Fry the onion and garlic till fragrant and slightly browned. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
3. Set a medium sized bowl in an ice bath. In batches, pulse the cubes of meat in the food processor until coarsely minced, taking care not to overprocess the meat or it’ll turn to mush. Transfer the minced meat to the bowl set over the ice bath.
4. Mix the sweet and smoked paprika and the garlic and onion slices into the meat gently and season well with salt and black pepper. Divide the meat mixture into 6 portions. Form each portion into a loose round patty, taking care not to compress the meat too much. Chill the patties in the fridge until ready to cook.
5. Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Frying 2 patties at a time, let the patties cook for about 3 minutes before flipping them over. Cook the patties for about another 5 minutes until well browned. Repeat with the rest of the patties.
6. Remove the cooked patties from the frying pan. Serve each patty on a halved burger bun with salad and chips of your choice. Serves 6

For the Love of Chocolate.

One of the resolutions I’ve made in attempt to go through the year a little healthier is to hop on my treadmill or cross-trainer at least twice a week.

Like everyone else I suppose, some days, I’m raving to work out a sweat. Other days, I literally have to drag myself to start the workout and hope that time flies by. Lucky for me, I have a little help in the form of my ever faithful tv, specifically my neverending list of shows I’ve recorded over the last year.

My choice of show lately has been Willie’s Chocolate Factory, an incredibly inspiring 3 part documentary about a man who, fuelled by his passion for chocolate, pumped his family’s savings and then some into his dream of producing cacao from bean to bar.

Throughout each hour long episode, Willie whips up various delicious, homey dishes, both sweet and savoury, using his 100% cacoa bars. But the one recipe he showcases that really caught my eye was a particularly luscious chocolate cake. And just like that, I had chocolate cake on my brain all week.

It’s just as well that another of my resolutions involves cooking and baking from cookbooks that have barely seen the outside of my bookcases for this particular recipe for a chocolate torte souffle comes from my practically unused copy of Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Dessert.

Baked for well over an hour in low heat, this flourless chocolate cake baked up incredibly moist with a crackly, slightly chewy crust. It certainly had all the intensity of a flourless chocolate cake and the delicateness of a souffle- the best of both worlds, if you ask me.

If this cake is anything to go by, I’ve clearly been missing out on some amazing chocolate desserts the last year this book has been sitting on my shelves. It’s certainly not too late to make up for lost time though and you can bet I’m planning on doing just that.

Chocolate Torte Souffle [adapted from Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts]

Ingredients
120g unsweetened chocolate, chopped
180g dark chocolate, chopped
150g unsalted butter, cubed
3/4 cup + 1 tbsp caster sugar, divided
7 eggs, seperated
3 tbsp Frangelino
Pinch of salt

1. Preheat the oven at 150C. Line the base of a 10-inch springform baking pan with baking paper or aluminium foil, grease the pan well with butter and set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, whisk the chocolate and butter together over low heat until a smooth mixture forms. Set the chocolate mixture aside to cool.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks together. Add 1/2 cup and 1 tbsp of sugar to the yolks, whisking well until the mixture turns thick and pale yellow. Add the Frangelino and gradually add the cooled chocolate mixture to the yolks mixture, whisking until combined.
4. Using an electric mixer, whisk the egg whites together with a pinch of salt until soft peaks form. Gradually add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar and beat the egg whites till they hold their shape but are not dry.
5. Fold the egg whites in three batches into the yolk mixture only until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.
6. Bake for an hour before lowering the oven temperature to 120C and baking for an additional 30 minutes. When the cake is done baking, turn the oven off and leave the cake in the oven to cool, leaving the oven door slightly ajar until the cake comes to room temperature. Serves 12 small portions

Turning A Culinary Corner.

Much as I do love rice and grains in all its various shapes and forms, the one thing I could never get excited about was risotto.

For years now, every time I flipped through a cookbook or skimmed a menu while out at a cafe, the second my brain registered the word risotto, it would literally blank out and skip over to the next recipe or main. It didn’t matter what kind of risotto it was- even if they found a way to make risotto, a rich, black cup of coffee, the creamiest, most decadent vanilla ice cream and a glorious pool of dark, melted Valrhona’s Manjari (my current obsession) work- I just wasn’t interested.

For all my disdain towards this traditional Italian rice dish, I wish I had a wonderfully dramatic story like I was forced fed it daily as a child or had a horrendous dining experience that left me on the verge of death to go along with it. But all I have to offer by way of explanation was that I simply didn’t like the way it looked- more specifically the way it resembled really undercooked rice porridge.

Yeaahh, I am that superficial and not (entirely) ashamed of it.

But that all changed when I caught up with a dear friend who flew into town a couple weeks ago over dinner at my favourite local cafe.

She ordered a plate of wild mushroom risotto and from the second it arrived, I just couldn’t take my eyes off it. It smelt so incredible  I couldn’t resist stealing a forkful when she offered. And boy was I was  completely blown away. It was so incredibly earthy and intensely flavourful.

And just with that one forkful, all my indifference went right out of the window. I was positively and most definitely in love with risotto, or more specifically, mushroom risotto.

So in typical me fashion, I had to attempt to make mushroom risotto in my own kitchen.

As it turns out, sourcing for the dried porcini and pancetta was the hardest part of making this dish. But once I had everything on hand, all the risotto really required was a lot of stirring to come together. Rather effortless for such a seemingly sophisicated and complex dish, if you ask me.

The risotto’s deeply savoury and intensely earthy flavour was heavily boosted by the incredibly aromatic porcini, with the sauteed onions and slightly saltish pancetta lending a nice textural contrast to the rich, creamy bed of slightly firm risotto.

GT, inspite of all his reservation while it was cooking (“it looks like Coco’s food!” “is it brown rice?” guys. -rolls eyes-), went back for a second helping while my dad proclaimed it to be really good, even going as far as to add that he didn’t touch a risotto he once ordered in a local restaurant because he didn’t like it.

Me? While I really liked this risotto, it didn’t come close to that mushroom risotto that turned that culinary corner for me. So it looks like I’m gonna have to go back to that cafe and order my own risotto, all in the name of research.

In the meantime though, I’ll be happily finishing up the leftovers tonight and dreaming of endless possibilities risotto has to offer.

Porcini & Pancetta Risotto [adapted from delicious April 2009 issue]

Ingredients
20g dried porcini mushrooms
1/3 cup water, just boiled
1 litre chicken or mushroom stock
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 a garlic bulb, finely chopped
150g pancetta, cubed
250g arborio rice, unwashed
1/3 cup dry white wine
Small handful of grated parmesan cheese

1. Soak the porcini in the hot water for fifteen minutes. Drain the porcini, reserving the liquid, chop the mushrooms and set them aside.
2. Bring the mushroom stock to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the reserved porcini liquid to the stock, lower the heat till the mixture simmers.
3. Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the olive oil and half the butter. When the butter melts, add the onions and garlic, frying until fragrant. Add the pancetta, porcini and arborio rice, stirring well to coat the rice in oil. Add the white wine, stirring well until the wine has been almost fully absorbed.
4. Add about a cup of the simmering stock mixture to the arborio rice mixture, stirring constantly until the liquid has been almost fully absorbed. Add the rest of the stock, adding each cup only after the previous cup has been absorbed by the rice mixture. It should take about twenty minutes and the rice should be creamy and al dente.
5. Take the saucepan off the heat. Add the rest of the butter, the parmesan cheese and season well with salt and pepper. Stir well then cover the saucepan for a couple of minutes to let the flavours develop. Serve warm with a drizzle of truffle oil, if you have any on hand. Serves 4