Ham and Cheese Tortellini in Whisky and Balsamic Vinegar mint cream sauce

Sometimes, I wish the dishes one creates can be expressed or described in a single word, like 'Schnitzel', or 'Papadofragakis', or something along those lines. It's so much more catchy, see what I mean? Everyone knows 'escargot'--imagine how much more unwieldy it'd be to call it 'baked snails in mint sauce' blah blah.

Case in point being the dish featured in today's post, made of instant tortellini sold in the Costcutters' supermarket (but which I am sure I can make once I get the ingredients together), and more importantly, a sauce that I invented myself (unless in some obscure Scottish or Italian village, someone else has thought of putting this together). This was inspired by my penne alla vodka, but differs significantly in its ingredients and its 'kick', which comes from vinegar rather than the spiciness of vodka.

I created this because I was hungry, and had only certain ingredients available...and because I refused to eat plain instant tortellini boiled in water. :)

Before I share the recipe, though, I would like to say that having tasted the sauce, I felt it could do with somewhat MORE tomato puree (which I didn't put too much of because I ran out), and with the ham -outside- rather than -inside- the tortellini.

Thus, here is my [approximate and modified] recipe for the sauce, enough to coat about 400-500g of tortellini/pasta.

4-6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (more or less depending on whether you like the taste of garlic)
About 4-5 tbsp tomato puree
1.5 cup (1 cup = 250ml) sliced ham/bacon/cubed pancetta/prosciutto ham, depending on availability and choice.
1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp dried mint (fresh mint is far better, but as a student, I must make do with dried mint)
1 tbsp dried oregano
140 ml double cream
60ml whisky
Emmenthal/Parmigiano/Parmesan cheese for grating.
mild olive oil
salt and white pepper
lighter

1) Heat up oil on medium high heat and fry the finely chopped garlic. Keep a watch as it will brown fast. Once it starts darkening, add the meat and fry.

2) Once the garlic starts darkening, add the meat and fry it. If there is bacon involved, add the bacon first and fry until it starts sweating its oil into the sauce, then add the ham.

3) Add the tomato puree, mix it with the meat, and cook for a minute or two, then add the whisky.

4) As the whisky comes to a boil in the pan, burn off whatever alcohol comes out. When the flames go out, add the cream.

5) Stir constantly until oil, tomato and cream are mixed together. Add more tomato puree as needed if you wish to have a more orange/tangy sauce. Otherwise, for a more creamy taste, leave it as it is.

6) Add mint,oregano and balsamic vinegar into the sauce while it is still on the heat, stirring constantly, and let the sauce reduce slightly while letting the tastes of the herb release into the cream. The mint lightens the sauce so it does not sit too heavily on the tongue, while the balsamic vinegar imparts the distinctive sourness that it is famous for, surprising the senses. This is the step in which i depart from penne alla vodka.

7) Add salt and pepper to taste, take the sauce off the heat, and toss the freshly-boiled pasta in it (you WERE boiling pasta while making this sauce, right?).

8) Grate cheese over it while the whole thing is still hot, toss again, and let the cheese melt slightly into the meal, then enjoy!


This was one delicious and unique holiday dinner. :)

A French Dinner

Today, I made a dinner for some of my good friends here in York, to celebrate the end of the term, and because I've always wanted to make one on a French theme. The dinner tonight was completely French--or so I hope. The dishes have nice French names, anyway.

My menu for tonight was:

Hors d'oeuvres: Camembert Bonbons (that barely visible white plate in front of Sharon in black)

Entree: Tartiflette (Savoyard baked potato with meat)(circular pan in foreground)

Main courses: Chicken chasseur (hunter-style chicken)(the wok on the right), Confit Byaldi (the ratatouille that Remy made in the movie Ratatouille)(the central pan), Poisson provencal (Provence-style fish)(the tray on the left), Teurgoule (Normandy rice pudding)(the tub beside the tartiflette)

Dessert: Delice aux chocolat et bananes (Chocolate and banana flan)(at that time it was lounging in the freezer)

All accompanied by a sweet white dessert wine whose name I have forgotten, but which was sweet indeed, and which combined well especially with the poisson provencal, according to comments.

I'm not going to put my recipes up for them here, but suffice it to say that they are all somewhat complex, and take from an hour (poisson Provencal) to three (Teurgoule) to prepare and cook.

Here are some (not so nice) photographs that I took after I completed each dish...

Above, you can see the poisson Provencal... There wasn't time to touch up its makeup for the camera, I'm afraid... The sauce is particularly difficult to make and was my sous-chef Clara's effort and mine combined! It involved passing a stirfry of mushrooms, onions and tomatoes through a sieve to form a smooth sauce--which I assure you is FAR, FAR more tiring and tedious than it sounds, involving a small sieve, a repetitious arm motion, and an oyster sauce bottle.





This tartiflette looks gorgeous, and was gorgeous. The taste of creme fraiche and bacon had diffused into the tartiflette after baking--just that slicing the potatoes finer would have created a far nicer taste. This dish has the dubious honour of being the first and only potato dish I have cooked here, and which also made me buy potatoes for the first time since coming to the UK. :D I now have a working potato dish!


This confit byaldi (since it isn't strictly a ratatouille--the name's just for publicity purposes) came out nicely, as it always has. The only grouse I have about it is that it's SO HARD to remove the skins of the peppers! Even after I've grilled the living daylights out of them. It came out really nicely though, with a sour taste from the vinaigrette that was imparted tastefully by my trusty bottle of balsamic vinegar from Italy (which my Italian friend Matteo assures me is NOT true Aceto Balsamico di Modena). It would look far better with aubergines that were actually the same diameter as the rest of the vegetables, though. And also would've been much better if I had a slicer...which I don't. Slicing the vegetables thinly is a touch and go business. At least I've a good knife sharpener to make it easier.

This is chicken chasseur. It tastes far better than it looks. Like my Jaegersauce schnitzel, this is a dish of sauteed/fried chicken simmered in a wine sauce with onion and mushrooms. It makes good use of tomato to impart a slightly tangy taste to the whole, and its taste was simply heavenly... It has an even more intense taste, both as a sauce and in terms of the wine, than the German version, which is creamier.

The teurgoule was made with Chinese glutinous rice--and it came out perfectly well, surprisingly. As I had absolutely no way of measuring weights, I just guessed at how much rice went into the ensemble and it turned out to be JUST RIGHT.

Well, needless to say the dinner went extremely well, and I am most pleased. I shall try to do individualised photoshoots of the dishes in future, and spruce them up more...

Delice au Chocolat et aux Bananes: Chocolate and Banana Flan

Today I decided to make a French dessert, one meant for tomorrow's all-French dinner that I am cooking for some of my good friends here in York. What is a flan? Simply put, it is a more high-class version of custard, soft yet not oozy, with a base of...anything, really. I have seen recipes for Asparagus flan, but I do not want to go there. No.

This is actually not a difficult dessert to make--and it's oh so sinfully good. It looks like a cake, but sink your teeth into it and meet no resistance at all as it embraces your mouth from the inside, and clings on to it in sticky, chocolatey goodness.

For dark chocolate lovers, this is one of those dishes-that-will-send-you-into-paradise that you seem to have an inordinately large share of. Although in my case I don't actually like dark chocolate instinctively--I don't really find the bitterness of it palatable (I hear your cries of 'blasphemy!', and I am ignoring them)--I have found myself liking it more with each successive slice I eat.

In future I will use milk chocolate, though...or just add more sugar to the ensemble.

Here's how to make this Delice, which is enough to fill a 12 by 7.5 inch baking tray nicely. This dish took me about an hour to finish, from preparation to completion. Cooling it, however, will take another half an hour or so, ideally, so that the Delice can solidify and be handled as a slice instead of having bananas fall off when you try to pick up a slice. But if you can't stand the temptation and want to eat it already, well, it tastes as good warm as it does cold!


Ingredients
(note: 1 ounce = 28.34 grams, 1 cup = 250ml)

7 ounces semi-sweet or 70% dark chocolate (I had to use 86% because that's all they had)
3 eggs, beaten
2/3 cup creme fraiche (or double cream)
1/2 cup whole milk
3 long bananas
1 small bottlecap-full of rum (optional: I used Bacardi)
Icing sugar for decoration

For lining the baking tray:
1 tbsp butter (not a heaped tablespoon) at room temperature
Sugar

Instructions

1) Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (that's nearly 350 degrees Fahrenheit, if you need to know).

2) Chop, or break, the chocolate up into small pieces, and put them into a mixing bowl. They don't have to be toooo small. Just...little chunks.

3) Put the cream and milk into a saucepan and heat it up until it simmers and begins bubbling slightly. Don't allow it to boil.

TIP: To prevent milk from sticking to the pot or burning, either drop in a tablespoonful of water into the pot with the milk, or simply wash the pot in cold water, and pour the milk in without drying it first.

4) Pour the hot cream-and-milk over the chocolate chunks in the bowl, and stir the mixture around as the chocolate melts, until the batter is smooth.

5) While letting the batter cool, beat 3 eggs, then add them to the batter and mix well with a whisk for best effect.

6) Using your room-temperature butter, coat the bottom and sides of the baking tray you are using, then sprinkle a liberal layer of sugar over it.

7) Slice the bananas into slices about half a centimetre thick or more, and line the bottom of the baking tray with them to form a base.

8) Pour the chocolate batter into the dish over the bananas, then place it into the preheated oven and bake it for 15-25 minutes, depending on how hard or unresisting you want the final Delice to be. I baked mine midway, for about 20 minutes.

9) When time is up, remove the flan from the oven, sprinkle its top with rum (I splattered it, rather than sprinkled it, though) and some icing sugar, then put it back in the oven to bake. Place it right under the grill if possible, and bake at the same temperature for another 3-5 minutes.

10) Take the flan out of the oven, and let it cool. Snow the flan under with icing sugar for visual effect, then serve it up, or slice it up and enjoy! :) Serve it with a sauce dribbled over it to counteract the bitterness of the chocolate, if you're one with a sweet tooth. Otherwise, just eat it as it is!

TIP: According to the recipe I found online, it is also possible to bake the flan in advance up to step 8, then refrigerate until you need to serve it up, upon which you continue with steps 9 and 10. I haven't tried this yet.


Hope you liked this dish! More to come, maybe even tomorrow. :) Stay tuned!

A Food Blog?

I figured, why not? I've always loved to cook.

I'm Jonathan, 22 years old and studying in the University of York, and I cook pretty good food, for someone who's only been seriously cooking for 5-6 months. I love experimenting with new dishes, and I usually do this by finding innovative, unique and new recipes from the Internet, and trying them out. Having been inspired by THIS *points above* food meme which I compiled for Facebook tagging, I decided to learn about food photography.

After learning about it the same I way I learned to cook (from the Internet) I decided to strike out and create a food blog to showcase the food I cook in experimentation, and to share it. Here it is!