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how-to

Kouign Amann

February 3, 2012

Kouign Amann

Last week, I was at Paris des Chefs – an event that had the best chefs and designers collaborate on creating food together. Watching them at work was awe inspiring. I was particularly influenced by Alain Passard’s approach to food and his irreproachable knife skills. My favourite workshops were, of course, those that required oodles of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. I was especially keen on learning to make Kouign Amann. Why? The Amélie fan that I am (who isn’t?), I wanted to make the same cake that she bakes in the movie.

Kouign Amann is a baked sweet specialty that hails from Brittany. In Brittany, ‘Kouign’ means cake and ‘Amann’ means butter. And mind you, there’s a lot of butter. Lots and lots of it. Probably the most I’ve ever seen going into a cake. The layers of the cake are made with a firm dough that is folded with butter and a good sprinkling of sugar before every fold. On baking, the sugar seeps through the layers and caramelises the outside, while leaving the inside soft and tender. Imagine a caramelised croissant. It’s even better than that.

At the workshop, I took my spot right in front of the chef to make sure I get step-by-step photos for the whole recipe since it can be a little complicated, especially if you’re not familiar with viennoiserie. This recipe, will all its butter and sugar is a recipe worth keeping forever (or in my case, blogging). If you have a cast iron or copper pan, use that. I can only imagine how gorgeously caramelised it will be. Oh, also, topped with apples or plums.

Note: This recipe makes a lot of kouign amann. It’s two of the baking trays that you see pictured below. Because it’s so rich, you won’t need more than 1 per person (I couldn’t eat more than half!). So scaling down the recipe might be a good idea if you’re not feeding a part of 12 people.

Kouign Amann

Koiugn Amann Recipe

For the dough:
800g /1.8lb flour
25g / 5tsp salt
30g / 1oz butter
15g / 0.5oz fresh yeast (or 5g instant yeast)
400ml /13.5 fl oz water

For the layering:
650g / 23 oz / 3 1/4th cup butter
400g / 14 oz/ 2 cups sugar

1. Make a firm dough will all the ingredients, making sure not to place the yeast and salt together. Mix together by hand or by using a stand mixer for about 10-12 minutes.

Kouign Amann

2 Form a ball, place it in a bowl and score the top of the dough with a cross. This increases the surface are for the dough to expand. Cover with a cling film and let the dough rest in a warm place for 30-60 minutes.

Kouign Amann

3 Next, use a slab of butter that’s meant for using to make laminated dough. Of course, neither of us has that, so we’ll cut up sticks of butter to a thickness of about 1 cm and place them next to each other for this.

Kouign Amann

4 Roll out the dough to form a rectangle that’s about 45x25cm in dimension. Place the butter (dimensions 20x25cm) in the centre.

Kouign Amann

5 Fold the dough over the butter from both the sides. With each fold, dust the flour with sugar.

Kouign Amann

6 Rotate the dough by 90º, so that the fold is now perpendicular to you when you roll the dough.

Kouign Amann

7 Roll to three times it’s length. Dust with sugar.

Kouign Amann

8 Fold the dough over the centre, just like it was done in step 5.

Kouign Amann

9 Roll the dough to thrice its length again. Dust with sugar. Kouign Amann

10 Fold it into thirds again.

Kouign Amann

Kouign Amann 11 Roll out perpendicular to the fold to thrice its length. Dust with sugar.

Kouign Amann

12 Finally, fold the dough into quarters, as shown in the photograph.

Kouign Amann

13 The kouign amann dough in now ready. Roll it out once more to thickness of slightly under 1 cm.

Kouign Amann

14 When you cut vertically into the dough, you can see distinct layers.

Kouign Amann

15 You can cut a square of 15 cms and then fold in the edges to form a circle, or you can cut vertical stips, roll them up and place in cups to make individual servings.

Kouign Amann

16 Let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes before baking in a preheated oven at 170ºC.

Kouign Amann

16 Based on the size of the cake dough, the baking time will vary. Bake until golden brown, and the sugar is caramelised.

Kouign Amann 17 Remove from the oven, turn the cake over so that the underside can caramelise just as well.
18 Kouignn Amann is ready – shimmering with butter.

Kouign Amann

19 Eat up. Now.

{ 11 comments }

How To Cut An Artichoke

January 9, 2012

How to Cut an Artichoke, the Roman way.

Early in the morning at Campo de Fiori, aside from arranging the fresh produce, the vendors are busy trimming the seasonal favourite of Italian: the artichoke. While both small and large artichokes are available whole, the trimmed artichokes, ready to cook, are also on offer.

This is how they do it in Rome: trim the outer tough leaves and thorns, pull out the fibrous choke and then rub vigorously with half a lemon so that they don’t brown. In Venice, however, instead of rubbling the artichoke with lemon, they plunge the trimmed artichokes in cold water.

Here’s the video, unedited, capturing the dexterity of the vendor and the commotion at the morning market.

{ 7 comments }

How to make Vanilla Bean Sugar

June 7, 2010

vanilla and sugar

Remember the time I told you about sticking in the used pods of vanillas into a jar of sugar to get sweet smelling vanilla sugar?

Now, what if I told you that I’ve got you something even better? Something that smells more potent, something that comes with the gorgeous specs of vanilla caviar, and something that will knock your socks off! I’m talking about whole vanilla bean sugar. The word whole is critical here.

vanilla and sugar

Normally, you would discard the pods after scraping off the inner goodness. But this time, the pods are ground to a fine powder along with the sugar. This way, not an ounce of vanilla is lost. (oh! I miss LOST and the island, but let’s not digress).

And how can you put this vanilla sugar to use? Just the same way you’d use regular sugar – in your baked goods, coffee, sprinkled over French toast or waffles (yum!).

vanilla and sugar

ash coloured vanilla sugar

Vanilla Bean Sugar Recipe

Adapted from: The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver

I used two types of Indian vanilla beans to make this, 4 of each kind. I read somewhere that mixing different types of beans results in a more flavourful end product. To make this a more economical project, what you could do is make two batches of vanilla sugar – one that can be used for special stuff (or recipes where you need the vanilla to shine through) and is very strong (with 8 vanilla beans!) and another batch for your regular use that’s made with just 4 vanilla beans.

Ingredients:
2.2 lb / 1 kg sugar, caster or granulated
8 vanilla beans

Equipment:
Food Processor

Method:

Cut the vanilla bean to make it two to three inches long.
Add all of the beans and a third of the sugar to the food processor and grind to a fine powder.
Sift the mixture and add the coarse bits back to the food processor with another third of the sugar and grind the mixture. Repeat with the last third of the sugar.
If you still have bits and bobs of the vanilla bean left, grind it again.
The first batch of sugar that you ground with the vanilla will be a lot more concentrated (and darker in colour), so whisk together all of the sugar to distribute the vanilla equally.
Transfer to an airtight jar.

{ 27 comments }

Hazelnut Extract (so easy!)

May 18, 2010

If you’ve hung around here a while, you’ll know that I’m pretty obsessed with hazelnuts (hazelnut cheesecake, hazelnut truffles, hazelnut cake, Nutella cookies, Nutella cupcakes, being some of my favourites). And to think that a hazelnut fanatic like me can’t find some quality hazelnut extract around here is a total shame.

After reading up on how homemade liqueurs and extracts are made, I made the extract with tweaks to a liqueur recipe and ended up with something extremely flavourful. Now this might not be the most ‘authentic’ way to make extract, but I promise you, you won’t complain once you smell the buttery, luxuriant extract at the end of 4 weeks. And just because we can, we’re going to add a vanilla bean to make the extract smell even sweeter.

One thing that is extremely important, and shouldn’t be skipped is toasting the hazelnuts. When you toast the hazelnuts, you will see that the oils from the hazelnuts come to the surface and make it shiny. This is the oil you want emulsified into your extract, this is the fragrance you want to capture.

Hazelnut Extract Recipe

4 oz. (100g) hazelnuts
3/4th cup or (180ml) vodka
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
½ cup sugar
1/4th cup water

Toast the hazelnuts in the oven at 175C/350F for 8-10 minutes or until fragrant.
While still hot, transfer them into a jar with vodka.
Add the innards of the vanilla bean along with the vanilla bean to the jar.
Let the flavours infuse for 3-4 weeks in a cool, dry place.
The colour of the extract will darken with time.
At the end of 3-4 weeks, drain the hazelnuts from the extract and reserve the extract. Crush the hazelnuts up and push it through a sieve to remove every last bit of flavour.
In a saucepan, heat the sugar and water together. At this point, adding the crushed hazelnuts is optional, but I went ahead and did it, just so I extract every ounce of flavour from it.
Bring the sugar syrup to a boil (and strain it, if you’ve added the crushed hazelnuts to it in the step above) and add it to the hazelnut extract mixture. You can now discard the crushed hazelnuts.
Shake it up and store in a sterilised bottle (These 1/2 pint jars would be just adorable for storage!)
Enjoy a dash of hazelnut flavour with whatever you like!
I now store mine in the refrigerator.

{ 28 comments }

Oven-Dried Tomatoes

December 17, 2009

Until now I’ve had sun dried tomatoes from a jar and only after making these cute little babies did I realize what I’d been missing out on – über concentration of flavour. They are the same as sun-dried tomatoes, except that it doesn’t sound as fancy and the job gets done a lot quicker!

While I was at the market last week, I was introduced to these seasonal tomatoes that appear for just two months in a year, so I bought myself a kilo of them. The seller extolled their flavour and when I sat to think of how to use these best, I was sure I didn’t want these tomatoes to get lost as a part of a greater dish, but be the main focus. That’s when I thought of drying them up in the oven to concentrate their flavour.

I can say for certain that this has got to be the best thing best savory thing I’ve put in my mouth in a while (the fig tart and honey roasted almonds are so good, people!). The flavour of the tomatoes is heightened by chopped garlic and oregano – something you will never find in the regular bottled sundried tomatoes. I thought I’d use them to top a pizza or something, but man these were just brilliant on their own. I snacked on so many last night that these were all that were left to take photos this morning (and you thought I was trying to be aesthetic!) Next time, I’m surely going to double the quantity I make because they shrink so much (not that I didn’t know, but so much?) I think this would make an excellent appetizer tossed with crumbled feta or fresh mozzarella.

Oven dried tomatoes

2.2 lb/ 1 kilo ripe tomatoes
coarse sea salt
6 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 tbsp dried oregano
freshly ground black pepper
extra virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to the lowest heat setting.
Depending on how big you’d like them, either slice the tomatoes, or halve them (the bigger they are, the longer they will take to dry up). Scoop out most of the seeds and sprinkle with salt and leave them skin side up so that the excess liquid from the tomatoes can drain out. Let this sit for about 15-20 minutes. Excellent thing to do because, this gets rid of the moisture and reduces the time in the oven.
In a large bowl, toss together the tomatoes with the garlic, oregano, black pepper and olive oil. Place the tomatoes on a cookie sheet lines with parchment and place sprinkle the garlic from the bowl on the tomatoes. Cook in a low oven at 100C/200F/Gas 1 for three hours.
If you’d really like to do it the sun-dried way then you can leave it in the sun for up to two days, taking them in at night.
Place the tomatoes in a sterilized glass jar and use within a week. If you’re going to use this over a longer period of time, then cover it with some olive oil.

{ 47 comments }

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