TGRWT #18 - Plum and Blue Cheese

This month's TGRWT hosted at Aiden Brooks: Trainee Chef seemed, to me, like a winner from the off. Something about the creamy strength of a blue cheese and the relatively quiet flavour, but great refreshing burst from the bite of a plum made Blue Cheese and Plum as good a pairing, in my mind, a .. well, cheese and grapes.

The biggest challenge that I've had this month has been living (temporarily) in a studio flat with a kitchen obviously designed for people who never cook - it has a microwave and one of these terrible halogen style hobs.

Perhaps, in the circumstances, it was a little overambitious to try a recipe with set custard and puff pastry, but I've been waiting for an excuse to try my hand at puff pastry making and the dessert competition element was such an excuse, and I like a challenge (I have also, pretty succesfully, been "baking" bread in the microwave).

Blue Cheese pastry with a Plum Custard shell

Pastry

To flavour the puff pastry I took a Heston Blumenthal method of cutting slices of butter and blue cheese (a Danish Blue) and layering them, then I left them in the fridge for almost a week while I finally got around to carrying on with recipe (I meant to leave them for a day).

I made a dough with some flour, salt and water, kneading a fair bit to get some good gluten bonds, then folded it around the butter. I rolled this out and put in the fridge. Then folded and rolled and in the fridge, and so on until I'd done this... I forget how many times.

To cook I rolled thin and flat strips of pastry and then put in the microwave on high for anything from 1 to 3 minutes (took a lot of experimenting). The flavour of the cheese just wasn't enough from the flavoured butter, despite the extra time they'd had together, so sprinkled some cheese between two strips of pastry and rolled out. This made really tasty blue cheese puff pastry sticks(and surprisingly crunchy for having been made in the microwave).

Custard

To make the set custard I made up a usual custard recipe (Egg yolks, sugar and cream) and put them in the microwave for about 2 minutes on high. I cut up and reduced the plums into a thick syrup with some sugar and mixed this into the custard, then cooked on medium for a further 10 minutes or so, until it was looking like it would be set soon. Then took it out of the microwave to continue its cooking on its own (as seems to be the method with microwave cooking). Then put it in the fridge to set more (and, in the case of one of my bowls of custard, accumulate some of the smells from its neighbours on the shelf, not very pleasant).

I formed the, now cold, custard into an egg shape and wrapped around the pastry stick. Then I added some slices of plum which I'd added towards the end of the cooking of the plum syrup.

A smattering of very bitter chocolate finished it off.

Thoughts

I would definitely like to explore this recipe at the helm of a real kitchen, rather than the paddling with one broken oar style of cooking that I've been reduced to in this one (although it has enlightened me to some of the subtleties of microwave cooking that I'd not been aware of - such as very well broken down collagen in long cooked stews, anyway I digress).

As you can see from the photos one problem that I had (as I see Erik from fooducation also had) was that the dairy in the custard and the acid from the plums caused slight curdling, which doesn't look very nice.

The main plum flavour came from the slices which I placed on top, and not from the custard which tasted very much of custard (the plum flavour not being strong enough to break through) . With the bitterness of the chocolate, sweetness of the custard, tartness of the plum and saltiness of the cheese this is certainly a good mix, and I think that all of the flavours could be beefed up a bit, so as to rise above the custard taste (which should not have been the star player) and make it a well balanced pudding (dessert). I think that dried or candied plum blended into the custard might get rid of the curdling problem and also add a stronger flavour.

Cabana Cachaca

This time on Monday I was in London for a cocktail competition to promote Cabana Cachaca. It was held in the Floridita. An interesting atmosphere change from the one I did in September up in Edinburgh (I don't know why I'm saying "up", I'm here all the time) in that it seemed to be more about image and the pazazz (sp?) of the presentation, than of the drinks themselves.. although there were 40 odd entrants so I imagine that they start to blur into each other a bit. I didn't mind it really (being at home in a, .. well .. acting essentially, environment).
Anyway. Here's my two drinks. The usual setup: One twist on a classic and one "contemporary" (although by contemporary I don't mean as in dance - "My drink is an empty coconut shell, to reflect the inner turmoil of an unenlightened being" :> )

Drink 1: A Burst of Passion.
(Recipe is for 2 drinks and measures in 25ml)
2 measures Cabana Cachaca
1 measure Gomme
1/2 measure Lemon Juice
Flesh and seeds of 4 passion fruits

Method: Shake vigorously and double strain into glasses.
Glass: Sours glasses
Garnish: None

It's a "Three twist drink".
1- A twist on a sour (usually just spirit, gomme and lemon juice).
2- A twist on a Batitda (see Batida de maracuja). Batitas are made with a variety of different fruit juices, as well as coconut milk and condensed milk.
3- A twist on a passion fruit: The experience of crunching down on passion fruit seeds is much like a sour should be - The sour hit of the seeds complimented by the sweetness of the flesh. My analogy of a good sour (a really good sour, and I'm not saying this one fits that description, as it just doesn't have enough kick) is that it should slap you, apologise and then give you a kiss that leaves you wanting another sip. Those being the sour hit, the refreshing middle and the sweet curl as you swallow.

This one went down pretty well, although it could have been less sweet I think. I may try grinding up some seeds to see if they add to the kick at all.

Drink 2: Cabana Cachaca Cashew
(Recipe is also for 2 drinks and measures are still in 25ml)
3 measures Cabana Cachaca
3 measures sweetened coconut milk (2/3 coconut milk, 1/3 gomme)
1 measure Franglelico
2/3 of a cup whole cashew nuts ground to a paste.

Method: Shake the nut paste and coconut milk with some ice, to make it easier to blend. Then blend this along with everything else and strain over crushed ice.
Glass: Rocks glasses
Garnish: Cashew nuts and chocolate powder. I had been wanting to use grated hazelnut instead of chocolate, but it turns out that they are not brown inside, so asthetically wasn't as pleasing.

The inspiration for this came from a traditional way of drinking cachaca called a Caju Amigo (Friendly Cashew) (this is also mentioned on this page). The way this is done is to take a cachew nut, chew it and take a shot of cachaca. I wanted to make a drink that used this interesting flavour match. Now, there is a recipe for a Batida that uses cachew juice, and I didn't know about this at time of competition. I'll try and get my hands on some cachew juice (I've now idea how one juices a cachew - research time I think!) and see how similar it is to my drink. It's a great drink though, one of my favourites at the moment, and a really good one for a caipirinha party as it is creamy and so contrasts with the lime acidity of the caipirinhas.

Anyway, Competition was much fun and met loads of great people - I network like a maniac after a couple of drinks!

Alex
'08