quickbread

Very easy Pao de Queijo, Brazilian cheese bread via Japan

maki — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:52:03 +0100

This may not be well known outside of the two respective countries, but there are pretty strong historical and cultural ties between Japan and Brazil. There was a wave of emigration from Japan to Brazil in the early part of the 20th century and later on around the ’50s and ’60s. And in the last 30 years, many Brazilians of Japanese descent (people of Japanese descent born in another country are called nikkei-jin) have in turn emigrated to Japan to fill labor shortages. Perhaps because of this, a few years ago one of the staples of the Brazilian diet, pao de queijo, little cheese breads, became very popular. While their popularity may have descended a bit from their peaks (Japan tends to be periodically swept up by big food or fashion trends, which after a time get dropped without warning when people move onto the next thing, but that’s another story), they are still made by bakers throughout Japan.

I think that pao de queijo appeals so much to the Japanese palate because they are small, round and cute, and have a distinctive gooey-sticky-glutinous kind of texture inside. This texture is called mochi mochi, after mochi, the very gooey-glutinous rice cakes.

Traditionally, pao de queijo are made with a sour casava flour (here’s a good recipe, but that’s not that easy to find here. Looking around on some Japanese food sites, many recipes called for a readymade mix (!) or using rice flour…which isn’t that easy to get here either. Then, I found a recipe (not online…) that uses a regular mashed potato. If a potato is mashed up while it’s still hot, it does indeed get rather gooey, as anyone who’s tried to mash them in a food processor can attest to. Sticky, gooey mashed potatoes may not be ideal for straight up eating but here it serves its purpose perfectly.

The one thing I was missing though was the slightly sour taste in a traditional pao de queijo. I added some sourness by using some well drained feta cheese. The rest of the cheese should be a pretty sharp one like Parmesano or Asiago, aged Cheddar or Gruyère.

So, there’s plenty of faking going on in this recipe, but they are dead easy to make with ingredients that are widely available. So, if you are Brazilian please don’t beat me up. :) They’re still very good, I promise. And so cute. No one can have just one. They also happen to be gluten free (if you use potato starch; cornstarch may have a small amount of gluten) and vegetarian (no eggs) too.

Very easy Pao de queijo

200g / 7 oz potato, cut into small chunks (about 2 medium-small potatoes, but it’s best to weigh them after peeling)
90g / about 3 1/4 oz cornstarch or potato starch
100g / about 3 1/2 oz grated cheese - half feta and half a sharp cheese like cheddar, parmesan or gruyere (you can also try all feta, which would make them more sour)
Salt for cooking the potatoes

Suggested equipment: food processor

Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Boil the potato chunks in salted water, until they are almost falling apart. Drain well, return to the pan and shake around until the potatoes have dried out.

Put the hot cooked potato chunks in the bowl of a food processor, and process until it’s pasty and gooey. Add the cornstarch or potato starch and the cheese, and pulse until all mixed. Take the dough out of the food processor and knead a little bit. It should be a non-sticky and very pliable dough - sort of like Play-Doh. If it seems too loose add a bit more corn/potato starch. (Note: the amount of cornstarch or potato starch required seems to differ for some people. I suspect this has to do with how well you drain and dry off the potatoes, and what kind of potatoes you are using. I use a firm boiling type of potato, such as Charlotte, Nicola or Bintje. In the U.S. Yukon Gold is a good kind to use here. Baking potatoes may be a bit too floury to achieve the slightly gummy texture you want from the mashed up potato.)

If you don’t have a food processor, mash up the hot potato chunks with a masher, then mix in the other ingredients while it’s still hot, being careful not to burn your fingers. Knead well. It’s almost as quick to mix by hand as by food processor.

Divide into 12 to 16 equal pieces, and form into balls. Bake for 25-30 minutes until lightly browned on the outside. (They won’t really puff up much since they have no leavening.) Best eaten while still warm.

You can vary this by adding sesame seeds, sprinkling grated cheese on the top (brush the tops with egg white or milk to make it stick), and so on.

Troubleshooting notes

A few people have had trouble with the consistency of the dough. I’ve added some notes about the type of potato to use, and the necessity of drying the potatoes off well. If the amount of cornstarch/potato starch indicated in the recipe is not enough, add a little more by spoonfuls until the dough ceases to be sticky.

Pao de queijo, the very easy way

maki — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:10:49 +0100

Cheesy-peppery savory cookies or scones or biscuits

maki — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:00:53 +0200

Now that the weather is getting cooler, at least in these parts, there's nothing as appealing the smell of fresh baking filling the house. I don't think I have posted a simple baking recipe in a long time, so here's one that has become a favorite because it's so delicious and versatile. Here you see them in their cookie incarnation. (I used vegetable-shaped cookie cutters.)

Up close, for scale:

And here is the big scone incarnation:

The recipe is based on one for English scones, but it's savory rather than sweet. Inspiration also came in part from Hungarian cheesy scones called pogasca, which I first had on a short trip to Budapest some years ago, and can't forget since. Depending on how big you make them, they can be fluffy-in-the-middle scones, or crispy yet soft little cookies, or biscuits for Brits. (Confusing the matter even further is of course that scones are very much like American biscuits.) In any case they are really easy to make, especially if you have a food processor.

These savory scones/biscuits/cookies are made with olive oil, which imparts the unique fruity-peppery taste of the oil, and also makes them theoretically a tiny bit healthier than using vegetable shortening or butter. You can use butter of course if you prefer that taste. (I hardly ever use vegetable shortening in my cooking, so I can't speak for it. I use lard sometimes, but that's another story.)

I have used three cheeses for this - Gruyère, feta and Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan) (plus cottage cheese), but you can use any bits of leftover hard or semi-soft cheese as long as it all adds up to about 1 cup in total.

If you make the scones very small and bake them until they are quite crunchy on the outside, they make perfect nibbles for a wine tasting. Make them larger and they are great fluffy biscuits/scones to have with a hearty soup or stew. You can also turn the large versions into very rich small sandwiches with a little roast ham or something in the middle.

These freeze beautifully and can be heated up in the oven, wrapped in foil, at 300°F/150°C for about 5 minutes for the little ones, 10-15 minutes for the big ones. The little ones can also be kept in an airtight cookie tin for about a week, so they are great to make ahead for a party.

Cheesy-peppery biscuits or scones or cookies

Makes about 12 large biscuits/scones or 60 small biscuits/cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. baking powder
1 Tbs. sugar
Several grinds of coarsely ground black pepper (about 1/2 tsp or so)
1/3 cup olive oil, or softened butter
3/4 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup milk (approximately - see recipe)
1 cup of grated or crumbled cheese, a combination of Gruyère, feta and Parmesano Reggiano, or whatever you have around
Egg for glaze, optional
Extra grated cheese for topping, optional

Special equipment suggested:

a food processor, or a mixing bowl and wooden spoon
1-2 ungreased baking sheets
a cookie cutter either 2 inches / 5cm in diameter for the big ones, or 1 inch/2.5cm in diameter (or thereabouts) for the little ones

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F.

Grate or crumble the hard cheeses so they add up to about 1 cup.

If you are making this with a food processor, follow this procedure: put the steel cutting blade in, and put the dry ingredients into the bowl. Pulse to mix. Add the oil or butter and pulse again to mix into a crumbly mixture. Add the cottage cheese and the other cheeses, and pulse several times until it's starting to form a ball. Add the milk a little at a time while pulsing until the dough has formed a rough shaggy ball around the blade. Try not to overmix.

If you are mixing by hand, mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the oil or butter, and mix until the texture is crumbly. Squish up the cottage cheese curds with your hands to make them a bit smaller if you have large curds, and add to the bowl with the cheeses. Add enough milk to form a shaggy moist ball of dough, mixing vigorously with your wooden spoon.

In either case the amount of milk depends on how moist your cottage cheese is.

Once you have a ball of dough, turn it out onto floured surface. Roll or pat it out to about 1/4 inch / .75cm thickness for the large scones, or half that thickness for the small ones.

With a floured cookie cutter, cut our your shapes. For large fluffy scones, place them on the baking sheet right next to each other. For the smaller crispier scones/cookies, place them a bit apart. Optionally brush them with a mixture of egg and water, and/or sprinkle the tops with extra grated cheese. You can leave them as-is too for a more rustic finish.

Bake the small ones for about 15 minutes until they are lightly browned all over. Bake the large scones for about 25 minutes, until golden brown on top.

Variations

Add a lot more ground black pepper to make them very peppery.
Add about a teaspoonful of dried herbs, such as Herbs de Provence mix, dried oregano, dried dill, thyme, etc. to the batter.
Add some celery seed to make them very celery.
Sprinkle the tops (after brushing with egg-water or milk) with sesame seeds or poppy seeds.

What to do with Okara (Milking the Soy Bean, Part 3)

maki — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 14:36:08 +0200

This is the concluding article of my 3-part series on Milking The Soy Bean. In Part 1, I described how to make soy milk with no special equipment, and in Part 2 I showed how to make tofu.

The by-product of turning soy beans into soy milk or tofu is the ground up fibrous part of the bean. This is called okara or, more quaintly u no hana (卯の花) in Japanese. (I don't know what the u part is, but hana means flower, so it's the u-flower.) Okara is a nutritional powerhouse, containing soluble and non-soluble fiber, protein, calcium and other minerals. It's even more nutritious (because of the high fiber content) than soy milk or tofu. However, I have to confess I end up throwing much of the okara that's produced when I make tofu away. Most tofu makers actually either throw it away or give it away as feed to farms - most commonly to pig farms in Japan. (We asked a small local tofu manufacturer what he does with his okara, and he said he gives it to a local dairy farmer. Swiss cows eating okara...now that's Fusion for you.)

The problem with okara is that it's utterly bland. When it's fresh, having been squeezed of all its milk, it has a rather interesting texture, but unlike creamy tofu, it's not something that you can just eat as-is. In addition, okara has almost as short a shelf life as tofu or soy milk, so you have to hurry up and process it before it goes bad. I'm always looking for tasty ways of using okara though because throwing away all that goodness seems like such a waste.

This is what fresh okara looks like.

Dried okara is also available in Japanese/Asian food stores. Here's a pack, that proclaims its nutritional benefits.

The easiest way to preserve okara is to freeze it, but I prefer to dry it and keep it as a powder. Spread fresh okara out on baking sheets, and dry in a low oven, turning every 15-20 minutes or so. Once it's totally dry, it may be a bit lumpy so whirl it a bit in a food processor to make it finer in texture, then pack into airtight plastic bags.

Using reconstituted or fresh okara

To reconstitute dried okara for use in various foods, simmer until it's soft and smooth in water or milk, then drain in a fine mesh sieve to get rid of excess moisture.

I have found that fresh or reconstituted soft okara lightens the texture of any food it's added to. I've posted a recipe for Asian sweet and sour meatballs with okara and tofu mixed in with the ground meat. Okara can also be added to Italian style meatballs that are simmered in a tomato sauce, at the ratio of about 4 parts meat to 1 part fresh or soft/reconstituted okara. However, adding okara straight to meat sauce doesn't work - it makes it oddly grainy in texture.

Another way of using okara is to add it to polenta. Just add about 1/2 cup of dry okara to 1 1/2 cups of dry fine-ground cornmeal, and then cook in 4 cups of milk with 2 chopped garlic cloves until soft and smooth. Add salt and pepper and lots of grated Parmesan. Somehow the okara makes the polenta creamier.

The traditional Japanese way of eating okara is to flavor it up by stir-frying it with dark sesame oil and soy sauce, then to mix it together with vegetables or put it into a soup.

Fresh/soft okara is used in this tuna salad recipe. Again, the okara lightens up the texture. Be sure the okara is totally soft and smooth before you use it.

Open-faced okara and tuna salad sandwich

1/2 cup of soft okara
1 can (200g / 7 oz) can of tuna packed in water
4-5 Tbs mayonnaise (the light kind makes it healthier)
1 Tbs Dijon style mustard
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
A few grinds of black pepper
2 Tbs. finely chopped green onion
Dash of sweet paprika
Lettuce leaves
6 slices of toast

Mix together the soft okara, drained and mashed up tuna, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, salt, pepper and 1 Tbs. of the green onion until smooth. Place the lettuce leaves on the toast, a heaping tablespoon of the tuna-okara mixture on top, and sprinkle each with a little paprika and the remaining green onion.

Using dried okara

Dried okara powder adds an intriguing lightness and texture to baked items. Be sure to use dried okara, not soft/fresh, in baking - the texture comes out a lot better. I think that there are lots of possibilities for using okara powder in gluten-free recipes; I haven't explored this area myself in depth yet.

Here is a banana-okara quickbread (that is one that's raised with baking powder and eggs instead of yeast) that I adapted from a banana-coconut bread recipe in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book Of Breads, using toasted okara and brown sugar instead of coconut and white sugar. It's light, a little sweet, nutty, and very delicious. It's not gluten free since it does use regular white flour.

Banana-Okara Bread

1 cup dried okara
1/4 cup (50g, or 1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown or raw sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk or soymilk
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp lemon juice
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 medium ripe bananas, mashed

Pre-heat the oven to 175°C/250°F. Grease and flour a loaf pan.

Heat up a non-stick frying or sauté pan. Toast the okara, stirring frequently, until it's a golden brown in color. Let cool.

Mix together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and milk or soymilk, almond extract and lemon juice. Add the mashed bananas.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture, mixing just until it's combined. Fold in the okara.

Put the batter into the loaf pan. Bash the loaf pan hard on your work surface - this settles the batter and gets rid of any large air pockets. Bake for about an hour, until it's toasty brown in color and a skewer stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Take out of the loaf pan and let cool before slicing.

Note: you can also bake this as muffins, in which case the baking time will be much shorter (about 20-25 minutes).

Okara, the next In Food (maybe)

I have only started to scratch the surface of the possibilities of okara myself. It's so good for you that it has all the star power, I think, to become a Trendy Nutritious Food with claims that it can cure all human illnesses. (It can't, of course, but you know how these things go.) In any case, I am first and foremost about taste. If I find or develop more okara recipes that I really like, I will post them here in the future. At the moment I'm working on a müesli with toasted okara in it...

Technorati Tags: soy bean, okara, soy milk, tofu

Apple crumble cake

maki — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:29:22 +0100

Sometimes, you just don't want to fuss, but you still want something a little sweet and homemade. At times like that, I sometimes make this simple cake. It combines two of my favorite foods, apple and crumble topping; the cake part is a simple mix-and pour affair; and it can be served warm, or at room temperature. And, the sweetness of it doesn't hit you in the face. The only mildly fiddly part is peeling and cutting up the apples. It's a perfect accompaniment to tea or coffee.

To me, it's a very American kind of cake - the crumble part of course, and the ease of making it, and the apples. The only thing you need to be careful of is to make sure that the cake part is cooked properly. The part underneath the apples cooks a bit slower than the rest of the cake, so once your toothpick comes out clean, bake it a few more minutes to ensure you don't get any doughiness. For my oven that's about 40 minutes total.

This gave me a chance to use a new discovery - organic raw cane sugar from Italy, called Panela Granulata. Here in Switzerland it's always been impossible to find the kind of soft brown sugar with added molasses that you get in the U.S., but the regular Rohzucker (raw sugar) is is a very light brown. This Italian brown sugar is already quite dark without any added molasses, and tastes delicious just out of the bag (not that I'm eating sugar out of a bag, mind you...of course not...)

You can use any kind of apple, but a slightly softer eating apple like Golden Delicious really fits best. Don't use a sour cooking apple for this.

Incidentally, how do you peel your apples? After struggling for years to peel apples with a paring knife and such, trying not to cut off too much of the flesh with the skin, it finally dawned on me recently - just use a vegetable peeler. It was one of those 'doh' moments for sure. No one sticks around to admire those one-long-piece apple peels anyway.

Apple Crumble Cake

4 to 5 medium or small apples - about 4 cups worth of cut up apple, but you can do it with a bit more or less
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 'large' egg, beaten
1/3 cup melted butter, or a combination of melted butter and neutral-tasting oil such as safflour or canola

For the crumble mixture:

3/4 cup of raw cane sugar, muscovado sugar, or regular light brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180° C / 350° F.

Grease a standard square cake pan (20cm x 20cm x 5cm, or 8" x 8" x 2") with butter.

Sift the flour and baking powder together, and mix in the granulated sugar. Add the milk, beaten egg and melted butter or butter/oil combo; mix together just until there are no huge lumps. Pour into the pan.

Make the crumble mixture: melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, sugar and cinnamon, and mix well until it become crumble.

Peel, core and cut up the apples, and put on to of the cake batter. Sprinkle the top with the crumble mixture.

Bake for about 40 minutes. Cut into squares. Serve warm plain or with whipped cream. You can nuke this to warm it up quite successfully. Also nice at room temperature, such as in a lunch box.

Rhubarb ginger muffins

maki — Wed, 11 May 2005 18:36:50 +0200

As if last month's IMBB muffin (and cupcake) orgy weren't enough, here is another muffin that has definitely entered my must-make list. It's yet another way to enjoy the tanginess of rhubarb, with the added twist of preserved or crystallized ginger. (I used my precious homemade crystallized ginger, but you can use the store-bought kind with no problems.)

I almost hesitate to call it a muffin, because it's rather dense and moist. I don't really want this sort of denseness early in the morning. It's very well suited for a mid-morning snack, or for afternoon tea. It tastes better the day after it's been baked, and subsequently seems to improve in flavor. The little cakes or muffins turn out with a very appealing pinky hue, which I've enhanced here by using pink paper cups.

Rhubarb-ginger muffins

Makes about 24 medium sized muffins.

1 large egg
3/4 cup non-runny (if you can get a hold of it) honey
1/2 cup melted butter
3/4 cup orange juice, fresh squeezed if you can manage
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups of chopped up rhubarb (about .5cm / 1/4 inch pieces, cut by hand)
1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts
1 Tbs. finely chopped preserved or crystallized ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Ingredient notes: by non-runny honey I mean the kind that is sort of solid (or butter-texture) in the jar. If you can't get a hold of this kind, regular clear honey will do. The hazelnuts can be substituted with walnuts.

Preheat the oven to 150° C / 300° F. Make ready your paper cupcake cups - by doubling them, you can usually avoid having to stand them up in muffin tins.

Mix the honey with the butter over a very low heat until blended. Take off the heat, and add the juices and the beaten egg.

Add the chopped up rhubarb, nuts, and ginger to the wet mixture.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Fold this into the wet mixture, Don't overmix - as long as it's incorporated it's fine. Pour equally into the cupcake cups.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out more or less clean. Let cool, and ideally let rest for at least a day before eating.

This recipe is considerably adapted from the one for Rhubarb Bread, aka Pain au Rhubarbe in one of my favorite baking books, Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads. I think the richness of this works far better as little muffin-cakes than as a dense loaf. (Incidentally I have never encountered rhubarb in France, baked in a bread or any other way... but maybe I've just missed it somehow.)

Zucchini basil muffins

maki — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 20:13:21 +0200

With only one arm in action, regular bread making that involves kneading and such is still out of the question. But I wanted to make some sort of fresh baked stuff today, and that lead to these delicious and very pretty green-and-yellow muffins. The only sort of hard part is grating the zucchini and the cheese, but the food processor takes care of that. They contain grated zucchini, which give the muffins a very nice moist texture, and the basil and cheese plus the olive oil give it a sort of sunny Italian flavor. They're perfect as an afternoon snack, though they'd make a nice not-sweet breakfast too.

The original recipe is from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, one of the recommended books in my sidebar. The only change I made was to use extra virgin olive oil instead of the generic "cooking oil" used.

Zucchini basil muffins

2 large eggs
3/4 cup whole milk
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 1/2 cups white flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. baking powder
2 cups grated zucchini (about 2 medium zucchini)
2 Tbs finely julienned fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan or Grana Padano (or similar hard grating) cheese

Preheat the oven to 200°C/425°F. Make ready the muffin tins, by buttering them if they are not non-stick (here I used one regular-size 12-muffin tin, and 2 mini-muffin tins. The recipe makes about 24 regular size muffins, or 48 mini muffins.)

Combine the eggs, milk and oil in a large bowl. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in another bowl and add to the liquid mixture in batches, stirring to blend. Don't overblend!

Add the zucchini and basil and stir to blend.

Fill each muffin cup about 1/2 full. Sprinkle the top with the cheese. Bake for about 20-25 minutes for regular size muffins, 15-20 minutes for the mini muffins, until the tops are golden brown and puffy.

Serve while still warm.

You can freeze these and pop them in a toaster oven for a few minutes for a great snack..though to be honest, they rarely survive to make it to the freezer.

Mushipan: steamed bread/cake

maki — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 22:45:09 +0100

For Japanese kids, oyatsu is a big part of the day. It means snack time, and is usually in mid-afternoon. It's sort of like afternoon tea or elevenses in England. My mother usually was working when we were growing up so she didn't have much time to make us homemade oyatsu, but when she did one of the things she'd make was mushipan.

Mushipan literally means steamed bread, but it is more cakelike than bread-like. It's closely related to English steamed puddings. Sweet steamed bread/cakes are sold in Chinatown bakeries, next to the char siu bao, steamed roast pork buns. (I'm also a big fan of steamed buns, and I'll blog my recipe for that sometime.) Since it is quite filling, I wouldn't really recommend it for dessert - it's better on its own, as an afternoon snack. You could even have it for breakfast.

This mushipan has brandy-soaked raisins in it, making it look quite a lot like an English spotted dick. It's rather neutral in taste since it's not that sweet, making it a wonderful vehicle for all kinds of sweet things you can put on it. The slice in the picture above has some maple syrup that Max brought back from Ottawa a few months ago. It's also delicious with honey or preserves. My favorite way to eat this is to sprinkle it quite thickly with sugar while it's still steaming hot, then to squeeze some lemon juice over it. This forms a sort of lemony syrup and is quite addictive. You can keep this for a day; heat it up in the microwave covered in plastic wrap for a minute or two.

Since the original recipe is Japanese, the measurements are in grams rather than cups. I think you can safely round up the ounce measurements (7 ounces instead of 6 1/2, etc.). The batter is steamed in a sieve or colander, that's lined with a clean kitchen cloth (linen or cotton) or cheesecloth. The resulting bread/cake is round and quite adorable.

Mushipan, steamed bread/cake

Special equipment: a metal sieve or colander, about 20cm / 8 inches in diameter; a clean linen or cotton kitchen towel or cheesecloth, big enough to line the sieve or colander and to wrap around the top.

180g / 6 1/2 oz. white cake flour or all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
4 eggs, separated
160g / 5 1/2 oz. sugar
100g / 3 1/2 oz. butter
4 Tbs. raisins
2 Tbs brandy
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Soak the raisins in the brandy for about an hour before you start making the cake.

Sift together the flour and baking powder. Cream together the butter and half the sugar with a whisk, until fluffy. Slowly add the egg yolks, one by one to form a fairly smooth mixture. Add the brandy that the raisins were soaking in, and the vanilla.

In a separate, clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until foamy. Add the rest of the sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

Mix half of the egg white mixture into the yolk-butter mixture, then gently fold in the rest of the egg whites. Sift in the flour-baking powder mixture, folding in but not mixing vigorously (you don't want the batter to become completely flat) just until incorporated. Fold in the raisins.

Moisten the kitchen cloth or cheesecloth in hot water, and wring out well. Line the sieve or colander with the cloth and pour in the batter. Fold the cloth loosely over the batter. Steam in a steamer for about 25 minutes, until it springs back when you press the middle with your finger.

Serve steaming hot with honey, maple syrup, sugar and lemon, preserves, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Jalapeño and cheese cornbread

maki — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 15:11:28 +0100

Although I do love baking as a hobby, the fact is that it's possible to get great bread from the local bakery or even the supermarket here in Switzerland. So, most of the day to day baking I do is of quick-bread type of things.

Quickbreads, or breads made with leavening agents other than yeast or natural yeast, aren't really a part of continental European baking tradition. They are a part of British, Irish (with such things as scones, soda bread and such) and definitely American cooking tradition though. I love all kinds of American quick-bread recipes, such as biscuits or muffins, but cornbread is one of my favorites.

I made this cornbread for dinner a few days ago. It's quite rich so you don't need much else, though of course you can serve it with a barbeque, or chicken, or chili or whatever strikes your fancy. We had it with some chili with kidney beans. It would make a nice meal by itself with a salad. It also freezes very well, and works great as a take-along lunch and such. However, it is at its best fresh out of the oven.

Don't be afraid at the amount of jalapeños in this - when it's baked the heat becomes quite mellow. If you are timid however, decrease the amount to 1 small jar.

This is adapted from a recipe that appears in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, but the heat has been turned up quite a bit and I use whole corn instead of creamed corn. I made this change initially because it's just about impossible to get creamed corn here in Switzerland, but it turns out that the whole corn works even better somehow. Mr. Clayton also uses non-fat dry milk all the time in his recipes, but I prefer to use fresh milk. There are several other adjustments made which I think makes it even better.

This is a recipe that's best made with a food processor, though you can of course do it by hand.

Jalapeño and cheese cornbread

2 1/2 cups of yellow cornmeal (or medium-grind polenta)
1 cup of regular white flour (all-purpose)
2 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. salt
4 tsp. baking powder
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup olive oil
1 400g or 16 oz can whole corn
2 small jars of sliced jalapeño peppers, drained
2 cups of grated aged cheese (Gruyere or Cheddar)
1 large onion

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 425° F. Grease two square or rectangular pans, about 25cm / 9 inches square or so. (I always use a 25 cm square brownie tin and a small Pyrex glass loaf pan.)

Combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.

Cut up the onion and chop it in the food processor. Add the eggs, oil, milk and cream and process until mixed. Add the can of corn with the liquid and process briefly. Add the jalapeño peppers and pulse just until they are a bit chopped (but not too fine). (You can also use whole canned jalapeños, but in that case take off the stalk parts.)

Gradually mix the liquid into the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Stir in most of the cheese, reserving some for the top.

Pour the batter into the pans, about 2/3rds full. Sprinkle the tops with the remaining cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes until a wooden skewer poked in the middle comes out clean.

Let cool for about 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

Variation: add some bacon bits (sautéd and well drained), or cut up proscuitto ham, to the batter.

Baking bread (or thinking about it)

maki — Wed, 03 Dec 2003 10:03:40 +0100

I love to bake bread.

It's a very relaxing thing to do. It's messy enough to remind you of when you were little and played with mudpies and Play-Doh. It's a mindless thing, or at least the kneading part is. It can even help to get out some frustration, by banging the dough about (a good way of developing the gluten).

The problem is, it can be so hard to get good results. And, the other factor is that in Switzerland it's too easy to just get great bread from the stores. Even Migros, the biggest supermarket chain here, has some great bread, including the totally addictive Crusta-Baguette, a knobby, whole wheat and seed-filled (pumpkin, linseed, etc) loaf of goodness.

There are two major factors that contribute to the quality of home baked bread: the flour, and the baking conditions. The flour has to have enough gluten to develop that stringy texture. Except for some quickbreads, a bread with a crumby, cake-like texture is no good at all. Finding good bread flour is surprisingly hard. U.S. "Bread Flour" is sort of ok, but you still have to work it hard. Here in Switzerland I use Zopf Mehl. Zopf is a traditional white braided bread, where that stringy texture is critical. So Zopf Mehl sort of works okay.

Whole wheat flour is even more difficult to get right. For one thing, while white flour sort of keeps indefinitely, whole wheat flour can go rancid. I've encountered bitter tasting, or even on one occasion rotten-tasting whole wheat flour that had just been purchased. I keep my whole wheat and other grain flour (rye, buckwheat) in the freezer.

The other factor is the baking conditions. Basically you need to be able to build up a lot of humidity to obtain that crackly crust. And this can be amazingly hard, in my experience. I have tried the pan of boiling water trick, pouring a cup of water on the floor of the oven trick, and spraying vigorously with a water sprayer trick. None are really that satisfactory, though the last one seems to work the best. Of course, it would be great to have a nice, steamy brick oven....but that would indicate the sort of serious commitment to bread baking that I'm not sure I want to make.

In the meantime, there are those quickbreads that are a snap to assemble, and come out the way you want without hassle while giving you the satisfaction, and wonderful smells, of baking bread at home. One of my favorite quickbread type things is popovers. They're great on their own, or to eat with roast chicken, or scrambled eggs, or butter and jam, or whatever you like. And they only take 45 minutes from the getting out the bowl stage to in your mouth moment.

Popovers

(from James Beard's American Cookery)

2 cups all-purpose or regular flour (not bread flour or Zopf Mehl)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 Tbs. melted unsalted butter (melt in microwave)
1 tsp. salt

Sift flour (though to be honest I often skip this step and it's fine). Mix in salt.

Beat the eggs and milk, and slowly add to the flour, mixing. A few lumps are fine - don't over mix. Add butter.

Pour the mixture evenly into a 12-cup non-stick or buttered muffin tin. (There are special popover tins, but I don't make popovers often enough to justify buying this. Muffin tin works fine. I have the wonderful silicone-coated ones from Chicago Baking Company.) If you have huge lumps in the batter just fish them out with a fork.

Bake at 220 degrees C / 450 degrees F for 40 minutes, from a cold oven. Don't bake in a preheated oven or it won't "pop". Start peeking after 30 minutes until they are done to the stage you like. I like them just golden brown on top and softish inside.