Thomas Keller on the Importance of Rabbits

"From 1980 to 1983, I worked in the kitchen of a small restaurant near Catskill, New York, on a patch of the Hudson River Valley so remote it didn’t have an address.  The sixty-seat restaurant was owned by René and Paulette Macary (she remains its proprietor today).  La Rive, named thus because it sat on a wide running creek, was a fruitful training ground, and New York State had extraordinary livestock.  Beautiful veal came down from Utica.  I found a man who raised spectacular pigeons.  I began to ask these farmers for unusual items to experiment with, things like pigs’ ears, cockscombs, duck testicles.

One day, I asked my rabbit purveyor to show me how to kill, skin, and eviscerate a rabbit.  I had never done this, and I figured if I was going to cook rabbit, I should know it from its live state through the slaughtering, skinning and butchering, and then the cooking.  The guy showed up with twelve live rabbits.  He hit one over the head with a club, knocked it out, slit its throat, pinned it to a board, skinned it - the whole bit.  Then he left.

I don’t know what else I expected, but there I was out in the grass behind the restaurant, just me and eleven cute bunnies, all of which were on the menu that week and had to find their way into a braising pan.  I clutched at the first rabbit.  I had a hard time killing it.  It screamed.  Rabbits scream and this one screamed loudly.  Then it broke its leg trying to get away.  It was terrible.

The next ten rabbits didn’t scream and I was quick with the kill, but that first screaming rabbit not only gave me a lesson in butchering, it also taught me about waste.  Because killing those rabbits had been such an awful experience, I would not squander them.  I would use all my powers as chef to ensure that those rabbits were beautiful.  It’s very easy to go to a grocery store and buy meat, then accidentally overcook it and throw it away.  A cook sautéing a rabbit loin, working the line on a Saturday night, a million pans going, plates going out the door, who took that loin a little too far, doesn’t hesitate, just dumps it in the garbage and fires another. Would that cook, I wonder, have let his attention stray from that loin had he killed the rabbit himself?  No.  Should a cook squander anything ever?

It was a simple lesson.”

- Thomas Keller, from the French Laundry Cookbook

Sorrel - Food for Free

Up until recently, my knowledge on wild and foraged food has been virtually non-existent. College has stirred my interest in this subject and I have found myself more interested in my surroundings and the wild food I can find in the fields, the ditches and down the little country lanes nearby where I live.

There are many good books on the subject but this is the one I have mostly been using, It's called The Hedgegrow Handbook by Adele Nozedar.

Sorrel is one of the wild greens that can be found just about all year round. It is one of the most widely available wild plants, so it's perfect for foraging. You'll find it on grassland, along banks, dunes and cliffs, especially in iron-rich soil. It looks a bit like spinach - you'll recognise it by its pointy leaves on stems that sprout from the base of the plant. Sorrel is a diuretic, an antiseptic and can cool fevers. Years ago, people used wild sorrel as a substitute for apples in turnovers, using lots of brown sugar.

The following recipe is for an Italian Sorrel Flan "Crostata di Acetosella".

For the pastry:

• 200g plain flour - plus extra for dusting
• 120g butter, chilled and diced
• 1 egg yolk
• 2-3 tbsbp chilled water (you might need extra for dusting)

For the filling:

•  2 large eggs + 2 egg yolks
• 50g sorrel, finely shredded
• 150ml cream
• 100g creme fraiche
• pinch of nutmeg
• 100g of Fontina cheese, grated
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
2. Add the egg yolk and the water and mix to form a dough. Wrap the dough in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
3. While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 180 degrees and butter a 20cm flan tin with a removable base.
4. Roll out the pastry on a floured surface until it's slightly larger than the tin. Line the tin with the pastry and trim the edges. Place a circle of baking paper over the pastry and fill with baking beans. Transfer to the oven and bake for 8 minutes. Remove the beans and paper and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes.
5. To make the filling, place all the ingredients except the cheese into a large bow and mix gently.
6. Pour the filling into the pastry case and sprinkle the Fontina cheese on top. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the filling is set.

How To: Homemade Butter

Most people who cook have at some point or other overwhisked cream. You are left with solids and a milky liquid in the bowl - this is essentially butter and buttermilk. All you have to do from here is drain and wash it several times and then knead it until the butter runs clear. Salted is added to preserve it. You don't strictly need butter bats to make butter but they do make it easier to shape it into blocks.

Of course you can make butter from any amount of cream, but this amount should last a family for about a week.

• 2.4l double cream at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons dairy salt (optional)
• pair of butter bats

Soak the bats in iced water for about 30 minutes so that the butter does not stick. I didn't have butter bats and couldn't find any, so ended up using a pair of oversized wooden salad spoons! This was a bit awkward, but using your hands will obviously melt the butter.

 Pour the cream into a cold, sterile mixing bowl and mix it until it is thick. Keep whipping past the stiffly whipped stage until the water and butter separate and slosh around the bowl. Turn the mixture into a cold, spotlessly clean sieve and drain into a bowl (you can use the leftover buttermilk to make sodabread). Put the butter back into the bowl and whisk further to expel more buttermilk. Sieve like before. Then put cold water into the bowl and knead the butter in it to expel and further buttermilk. This is very important as any leftover buttermilk will cause the butter to sour. Keep doing this step, changing the water as you knead to until the water runs clear.

If you want to add salt to your butter, spread it out on a clean surface and sprinkle evenly with dairy salt. Mix thoroughly with the pats. Make the butter into a slab shape and store in your fridge in waxed or greaseproof paper. If done properly, the butter should stay fresh for months, but will be eaten in a week :)

Rainbow Trout Cooked in Newspaper

I love when I find out about an unusual way of cooking familiar ingredients, it often gives me a whole new appreciation for the food. This recipe is originally for salmon and is adapted from Darina Allen's book "Forgotten Skills of Cooking". She got the recipe from a fisherman in the west of Ireland while on a trip and uses her local newspaper The Examiner to wrap the salmon.

I caught a fish recently for the very first time at Garryhill Lakes. After standing in the rain for hours my hook eventually produced a massive rainbow trout which I was extremely proud of :) I decided that I wanted to give the food the respect it deserves and cook it in this special way. 

Cooking the fish this way gives a tender succulent result. It is best to cook the fish whole as it does tend to fall apart easily when cooked this way. However, you can cook just a portion of the fish if it is too large to fit whole on your barbecue.

Gut the fish as soon as you can after it is caught to help maintain the freshness of your catch. Carefully scrape out the line of blood along the backbone and wash out meticulously with water.

Season the cavity well with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Wrap the trout tightly in at least 7 or 8 sheets of newspaper, making sure the ends are well tucked in to create a neat package. Using cotton string, tie in 3 or 4 places to secure. Dip the entire parcel in water - using sea water if you're near the coast gives a delicious flavour. Cook in the embers of an open fire or on a barbecue until the package is charred on both sides. Cute off the charred paper with a strong scissors. Lift off the skin and eat the fish warm. I served mine with homemade mayonnaise, herbs from my garden and new potatoes.

Knife Sharpening with a Wetstone

Learning how to sharpen your knives is an essential cooking skill. A sharp knife does a better job of cutting or slicing food, which is obvious enough, but it also lets you work faster and safer.

Sharp knives cut with less brute force than dull knives. Less brute force does less damage to the food, which you can easily see by looking closely at the cut. Delicate ingredients, like herbs, sliced through cleanly will look fresher for longer, whereas a dull knife will crush more of the cells surrounding the cut, which ultimately accelerates wilting and discolouration.

A sharp blade is predictable. When it strikes, or is drawn across the food's surface, it won't slip. This makes it easy to control how the blade moves through the food, giving you control over your chopping or slicing. A dull blade will slip, which makes control difficult and risks slipping off the food and plunging into your fingers. With a dull knife, it's only a matter of time until you badly cut yourself.

By sharpening your knives yourself, you can control the bevel of the edge to suit how you use a particular knife. For example, you may choose to put a broad 45° angle on either side of a sturdy chef knife for a tough, durable blade that's well suited to chopping. Or for a fine slicing knife, you can hone the edge to a shallow angle of 15° on either side. Such a blade will be fragile, but will slice through food with ease.

Here is a video of my Sous Chef Pierre sharpening my knife on a whetstone.

---

Bagels

I don't know why, but I thought making bagels was considerably more complicated than making a loaf of bread. Well, it's not: it's easy! When I make bagels I always seem to get more use out of them than if I make regular white rolls. Homemade bread doesn't have additives in it and therefore only retains its freshness for about 24 hours. Bagels have a more solid texture to begin with that just doesn't seem to deteriorate as quickly as loaf bread. I generally toast them before eating anyhow so I tend to get a few days out of them which comes in handy for school lunches. The interesting thing about bagels is that they are boiled before baking, giving them this heavy texture and unique shape. Heat kills yeast and so stops the respiration process, keeping the hula hoop shape of the dough intact and stopping the dough from rising further.

This recipe ostensibly makes 10 bagels but I like mine carb-heavy so I'd call it more like 6.

• 7g dried yeast (one packet)
• 3 tbsp caster sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 450g strong flour
• optional - poppy seeds/whatever for the top

Put the yeast into a little warm water with the caster sugar and leave it for a few minutes to become frothy.

Put 200ml warm water into a bowl, sieve in the salt and half the flour. Stir it about while adding the yeast mixture and remaining flour. You want the dough to be soft but not wet so you might want to add a little more water or a little more flour. See how it goes yourself, be grand.

Knead it for 10 minutes.

Leave it in an oiled bowl for an hour to prove in a warm place. I like to cover the dough lightly with cling film to stop the dough getting a crust where the air touches it. Just lightly press the clingfilm onto the dough so it still has the freedom to rise but is not really exposed to the open air.

On a lightly floured surface tip out the risen dough and separate it into however many bagels you want. Take each piece and knead it into a flattish ball that is smooth and has no wrinkles.

To make the bagel shape, take the end of a wooden spoon and stick it into the middle of each ball and swirl it about to create a hole in the centre. Get a pan of water on the boil while you're doing this.

Put each bagel into the boiling water for 1-2 minutes before draining it and placing it onto a baking tray. Don't put any more than 4 bagels into the pan at a time because they might get stuck together.

At this point you can garnish the tops of the bagels, then go ahead and bake them at 180 degrees for about 25mins.

Easy Brioche

I am so excited about this recipe it's ridiculous. Brioche is a classic French bread that consists of an enriched dough and has a rich buttery crumb. It is extremely versatile and can be savoury or sweet and can be baked in many different loaf sizes. I used this recipe to bake brioche in mini loaf tins which I served with a pork terrine as a starter. Normally a brioche requires an overnight prove but with this recipe you only need prove it for an hour. Easy peasy :)

The Recipe:

• 10g yeast
• 100ml warm water
• 270g strong flour
• 1 tablespoon of caster sugar
• 3 whole eggs and one yolk - plus an extra egg beaten for egg wash
• 115g melted butter 

Put the yeast in a little warm water to wake it up and leave until bubbly.
Put all the other ingredients apart from the melted butter in a mixer and add yeast when ready.
Mix for 5 minutes.
Add the melted butter (not hot!) to the other ingredients slowly while mixing.
Mix for 2 minutes.
Allow to prove for one hour.
Put in moulds/loaf tin, brush with egg wash and cook at 180 degrees.
Baking times will differ depending on size of tin, the bread is ready when the top is a golden brown, you can employ your best guesswork here really - a regular 9" loaf tin will take about 25 minutes.

Try brioche with different components to see what you like. In the restaurant where I work we serve it toasted with fois gras. In France I have seen it served with a custard baked through the dough as a dessert. It's also commonly baked into buns and served as hamburger or sandwich bread.

:)

Sugar work

The reason I decided to write a post about sugar work is because I found the technique itself impossible. I was hoping that with a little dedicated investigation and practice that I could demystify hot sugar for myself and hopefully create a basic guide for anyone else who finds this craft complicated.

Early into my study I learned that I had been making a huge amount of mistakes in my efforts to work with caramels. Everytime I tried to melt a pot of sugar I was left with a frustrating mound of crystallisation and a destroyed pan. I spoke to the Sous Chef of La Boheme who explained that there are many things that can affect the process itself, most importantly impurities in the sugar itself or a saucepan that was not perfectly clean. You can help avoid crystallisation as a result of these things by skimming the sugar with a clean ladle fight as it is coming to boiling point. I also realised that I was not supposed to put water into the pot with the sugar when it is initially melting - this had been my mistake all along. EEJIT.

Sugar work can lend the most beautiful and elegant touch to a dish when done correctly. More and more ways of creating and designing melted sugar are always being developed but there are some basic sugar working techniques that anyone can master with practice.

The most popular techniques include the sugar cage, sugar corkscrews and spun sugar. There are variations on these methods but once the classical method is learned you can lend any type of imaginative development you wish.