A new signature dish? Flourless chocolate cake

I'll outline the background to this particular recipe when I fill you in on the latest dinner party club menu... however, having decided that I was on dessert, I turned to a recipe that I have gazed at many many times, but wondered if I would really like.  It is a cross between a chocolate cake and a baked cheesecake from one of Julie Le Clerc's books, and was met with resounding acclaim and requests that I had better blog it IMMEDIATELY!

The other good thing about this recipe is that it is just so easy to make - I had spent the day racing round, fitting in brunch with our cousins from Westport and squeezing in some gardening, and I had never tried the recipe before (potential recipe for disaster).  But no, get all the ingredients out, turn on the oven and off you go...

Flourless chocolate cake
Serves 12

Preheat the oven to 150C (fanbake).  Grease a 22cm springform cake tin and line the base and sides with baking paper.

Vanilla cream
250g cream cheese, softened to room temperature (DON'T for a MOMENT think about using "lite" or reduced fat cream cheese)
2/3 C sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp Heilala vanilla paste

Beat together the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and beat for another minute until it is combined.  Set aside.

Chocolate batter
150g butter, roughly chopped
300g quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), roughly chopped

Place in a medium size bowl and gently melt together.  This can be done over a small pan of simmering water (which I did) - just make sure that the water is not touching the bowl. Alternatively, zap in the microwave in 30 second bursts. Once it is mostly melted, take the bowl off the pot of water and leave to cool on the bench, stirring from time to time. You want it to be warm, but not scalding hot when you add to the eggs.

3 large eggs
1/3 C sugar
1 tbsp espresso coffee
pinch salt

Place these ingredients in a bowl and whisk together for at least 5 minutes, until they are thick and pale.  Gradually add the slightly cooled chocolate mixture, while continuing to whisk, until combined.

Pour about half the chocolate batter into the prepared pan. Then alternate dollops of the vanilla cream and the chocolate batter across the pan.  Use a medium palette knife to roughly swirl the two together and get a marbled pattern. Give the bowl a gentle shake so that the top of the cake is even, and place in the middle of the oven.

Cook for 45-50 minutes. The top should be slightly crusty, and a skewer inserted into the cake should be a little sticky, but not runny.  I preferred the cake still slightly warm - it keeps overnight in the fridge, but I would warm slightly before serving.

This leads me to another essential kitchen item, the perfect basket for transporting food.  When I bought this, I really didn't know how vital it would be - but if you find a sturdy basket that will fit your most popular baking dishes, just buy it!

A roasted flattened chook

Several years ago, I was introduced to the concept of a flattened chook by the recipe books of Donna Hay.  Donna also provided the entirely sensible suggestion of putting some baking paper under the flattened chook before cooking, which makes the cleaning up part of the day MUCH quicker.  So here’s my version of a flattened chook – which finds its way into the oven almost every week.  The advantages over a traditional roast chicken are that it cooks faster, the breast doesn’t dry out, and it just tastes great!

Roast Flattened Chook

Serves 4-6 – in our house, that means it serves 4 for dinner, with enough leftover to provide the basis for another dinner for 2 of us.

1 chicken

1-2 lemons

About ½ a head of garlic

Handful each of fresh thyme and oregano

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 180-200 C.

First of all, line a flat roasting dish with baking paper.  Chop one lemon into quarters, separate the cloves of garlic (don’t worry about peeling), and pile them all into a rough bed for the chicken to lie on.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper and olive oil.

Place your chicken breast side down on your bench, with the backbone closest to you.  Using sturdy kitchen scissors, chop through the bones along one side of the backbone. 

Pull the cut sides apart and flatten the chicken out – it won’t be perfectly flat.  Turn over, place on top of the prepared bed of herbs etc, and gently flatten with your hands.

Wash your hands and then sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper, some thyme leaves, and cover with slices of lemon.  Roast potatoes can also be added – as long as they are small enough to cook in 40-50 minutes.

If you’re feeding a slightly larger than usual army, then the quantities can be doubled and stacked in the oven.

Bake for 40-50 minutes – I usually rotate the dish halfway through.  Once the chicken is cooked, leave to rest for 5-10 minutes before carving.

The juices are delicious - scoop the potatoes into a serving dish and then drain the juices.  They can be poured straight over the chicken once carved, or kept for stock. 

Roasting a leg

If you ask me to cook for a family in winter, my first option is to head for the roasting trays – roast chicken, lamb, beef or pork – all easy to get right, and usually there’s something for everyone’s tastes.  And if not, there’s always delicious, crunchy, caramelised roast winter veges.  Hungry yet? 

A few years ago, I read somewhere about the delicious alchemy that occurs when anchovies get involved with roast lamb.  I wasn’t really sure if I liked anchovies and nor was I convinced that they should be encouraged to get into the same roasting dish with a leg of lamb.  However, curiosity got the better of me.  And I was really glad it did – now I know that anchovies and lamb are meant to be together, and I have added anchovies to my list of secret ingredients that can help to make food taste great. 

This recipe is one where I prefer to use a mortar and pestle to smash the garlic to a pulp and really pound together the ingredients for covering the lamb.  You could do it in a food processor with a small bowl, or get active with a sharp knife and dice the ingredients together til they form a pulp. 

Roast Leg of Lamb with Anchovies

To feed 6 hungry people

One full leg of lamb

6 cloves of garlic, peeled

6-8 anchovies, and some of the oil they came in

Around 1tbsp of lemon juice

8 sprigs thyme

Salt and pepper

1 onion, finely chopped

½ lemon, sliced

1 tbsp red current jelly 

Turn the oven on to 200 C. 

Pound the garlic, thyme, freshly ground pepper and some sea salt together until you have a fragrant paste, add the anchovies and pound until they are unrecognisable.  Moisten with some of the anchovy oil and then thin with some lemon juice, so that it has a spreadable consistency (you don’t want it so runny that it slides off). 

Place the chopped onion in a heap in the roasting dish, along with the sliced lemon and red current jelly, and nestle the lamb leg on top.  Use a sharp knife to poke small slits through the surface of the lamb, and then massage the garlic, thyme and anchovy paste over the surface of the lamb.  An alternative option is to poke deep slits in and fill each slit with the paste, but I like the flavour all over the surface of the lamb (if you love the taste, you could always do both!). 

Place the roasting dish in the middle of the oven.  After 10 minutes, turn it down to 180 C and add about 1 cup of water to the dish.  Cook for a total of 90-180 minutes, until medium rare (actual cooking time will vary according to the size of the leg).  I like to keep adding a bit of liquid in the base of the pan, to assist with making gravy later. 

Once cooked, and this is utterly essential, REST the lamb.  Resting allows the meat to relax and become fully tender after all that brutal oven heat.  I take it out of the roasting dish and onto a platter, loosely cover with tinfoil and a towel, and leave it for 20 minutes while I finish off the veges, make gravy (if I’m so inclined), and do the last minute kitchen jobs (like making sure my wine glass is filled up).  Lastly, when carving the lamb, cut each slice AT RIGHT ANGLES TO THE BONE – this has two benefits.  Firstly, you carve across the grain of the meat (which mainly runs parallel to the bone), which means that each slice is easier to cut up with your dinner knife.  Secondly, and most importantly, every slice has the delicious, yet almost indefinable, taste of the crust.

A signature dish

You know you have a signature dish, when people track you down from the furthest reaches of the globe when they need a special recipe.  Here's what popped up on my facebook page a couple of weeks ago:

“Foodthattastesgreat”, be a darling and please pass on the finer details of your delicious apple crumble. Having a dinner party tomorrow, gonna be cold and wet so plan open fire, red wine, slow roasted pork belly with crackling followed by your apple crumble with icecream.  

Thanks 

Ben [Old friend and flatmate]

I love to share recipes, so it was no problem to oblige, and the recipe made its way from Wellington, New Zealand to Cape Town, South Africa though the wonders of the interweb.  I understand that there were no leftovers.

Apple crumble

The crumble mixture is enough for 2 crumbles.  8 apples will feed 4-6 people.  This recipe can expand/contract to feed a few or feed an army!

1 cup soft brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

1 cup self raising flour

125g butter

8 apples (plus anything else you like with them – rhubarb, berries, etc)

Whizz all ingredients except the apples together until they look like fine crumbs.

Peel, core and slice the apples, cook with enough water to cover bottom of saucepan and a good sprinkling of sugar. Put apples in baking dish (add blackberries etc if desired).

You can do all this the day before, or well before the guests arrive. The trick is to then heat the apples through in a 180 C oven for 10mins or so, then add a thick layer of crumble, and cook for another 10-20 mins, but keep an eye on it so the top doesn't burn.  The crumble will caramelise and is almost biscuit-like.

All that's left to do now, is add some ice-cream, cream or custard, and it's ready to eat.

Leftover crumble mixture freezes well – so pop it into a bag, and it’s ready to provide instant fruit crumble when you need it.