Meal One, Part Two: Dessert edition

Ahhh dessert, that siren singing you to your doom for the sweet tooth-ed people like myself. I once noted to my mother that if sugar (or more specifically, chocolate) didn’t have calories, I would eat it all day long.

So when I saw a recipe for a Liquid centre chocolate pudding in Heston Blumenthal at Home, I knew it was a chance to try a great dessert and try to emulate (but not replicate) a similar dessert I had at Must Winebar in Margaret River that I had on our honeymoon.

Now, this looked to me much like a chocolate fondant. (The dessert, not the gooey stuff you get inside boxed chocolates).  The key difference seemed to be (other than this being served in a ceramic ramekin rather than on a plate) that this one uses a ganache filling to stop any chance of overcooking and not getting that perfect gooey centre of a fondant. Even the recipes seem, on the whole almost identical.

But hey let’s give it a go.

Steps to be taken:

1. Make chocolate ganache and chill for 2 hours
2. Make pudding mix
3. Cut out plugs of ganache
4. Put plugs in ramekins and fill with pudding mix
5. Chill for another hour
6. Bake for 15 minutes.

So the other thing worth of noting is that the recipe calls for a prestigious amount of chocolate – more than half a kilo for 6 people all told. About half of that goes into the ganache.

Right, so let’s look at how that went.

Take your rather huge pile of chocolate, and melt over a double boiler. I used a combination of Lindt 70% and Green & Black’s 70% chocolate. No real reason beyond there not being enough Lindt at the supermarket. Thank goodness it was on sale, because 6 blocks of chocolate is a lot. The chocolate for this dish ended up costing more than my free range chicken!

  At the same time, warm up your cream and some milk.

Once the chocolate is melted, pour in the cream and start mixing.

Initially it might look a bit weird but this is okay, keep mixing and it will get better.

Keep mixing until its all smooth and nice. See? Much better.

Add unsalted butter. (See what I mean last post about Heston just adding butter to everything?)

 Let it cool to room temperature.

Heston has you pour it into a “deep-sided container” until it is 3cm deep. I checked my bowl. Since this seemed to meet the criteria, I just left it as is.

Here is where I look at the size cutter you are supposed to use to cut out the 6 plugs of ganache. I think there is something seriously wrong with the volume of ganache you make – you are going to have a huge amount left over. Hmm..

You then chill for 2 hours. I decided to chill mine overnight, since I was going to have a lot to do in the morning, and didn’t want to be rushing.

So you pull the ganache out and cut out little cylinders of ganache, one for each ramekin. Incidentally, the recipe calls for 5cm diameter ramekins, and a 2 cm cutter. The 5cm ramekins would be tiny. You don't often get them that small and mine are standard souffle 10cm dishes, so that's what we used. And a 3cm cutter to help balance it all out. Oh and made five puddings, not six because that's how many guests there were.

 So this is where I realised that freezing overnight, not just for two hours was a problem. It was hard. Really hard. We tried heating the cutter in hot water but that just didn't help.I tried cutting it with a sharp heated knife. No go.

Husband and my Mum decided to help.
Husband heating the cutter over the gas flame..

Husband using brute force.

They got them out, but partly I suspect because by then it had softened up a lot. If making it ahead of time, I'd take it out of the freezer and let it defrost slightly before trying this. Or, just make it on the day and only freeze for 2 hours like your supposed to. (rolls eyes).

There is a massive amount of ganache left over, seriously you could make 1/3 the mix easy and just put in a suitable bowl. Such a waste. I stuck it in the freezer to work with later. Anyway, the ramekins are ready now for me to make the pudding mix.
 
Time for more chocolate! Melt another ridiculous quantity of chocolate (diabetics would go into shock I'm sure..) with a nearly whole pack of butter. Add token quantities of flour and a little salt.

 Whisk eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

 

Fold in the egg mix to the chocolate mix, a 1/3 at a time.

 

 

 Fill up your ramekins with their little ganache towers.

 Freeze for an hour (conveniently while you finish making your roast lunch).
As you're finishing your lunch put the ramekins straight into the oven for about 15 minutes.

 Mmmm.. Pudding..

Made better with Salted Caramel icecream..

And proof of lava-esque liquid filling.

Verdict:

These were great, though very rich. So much so that only my husband was able to finish his. Of course mine were 10cm diameter ones, not 5cm so perhaps that's why - but then the volume of mix would have been perfect for six 10cm diameter ramekins. Either way, I think there was either an error in the size of the ramekins you were supposed to use, or in the volume of both ganache and pudding mix. If making 5cm diameter puddings I think that it would have made 10-12 of them without too many problems. (And probably a better amount per person!)

I'm still unsure if they were in truth much of an improvement over the standard fondant recipe, but then I suspect they would be more stable (and can be prepared an hour ahead) which I guess is in their favour.

Guest opinions:

Well received and husband noted they were quite similar to the ones we had on our honeymoon. Mum's very much enjoyed theirs but they (and my daughter and I) found them very delicious, but too large a serving. 

I'd make them again.

Next: I'm not sure. Probably a simple dish as a breather. Maybe a soup?

Meal One: Mother's Day lunch, part one - Roast Chicken, Roast Potatoes and Glazed Carrots

So it was Mother's Day coming up, and both my own mother and my husband's were coming to lunch.
So I decided that this would be my first official Heston meal.

Heston Blumenthal : Meal 1.

Menu -

Roast Chicken (Heston Blumenthal at home)
Roast Potatoes (Heston Blumenthal at home)
Glazed Carrots (Heston Blumenthal at home)
Peas (frozen, my freezer)

     followed by

Liquid Center Chocolate Puddings (Heston Blumenthal at home)
with Salted Caramel Icecream.

Now, I'm only go to cover the Mains in this post, with the pudding to come in the next blog post.

Getting organized

So I realized that with so many components on the go, I'd need to make a a list. I ended up with a list for the fridge that listed everything I needed to do, and when, along with the various oven temperature shifts.  It was a good thing, because this is what made me realise I would need to be up around 7am. On a Sunday. Mother's Day Sunday. See the sacrifice there? I'm such a martyr to the cause! :)

If anyone following along wants a copy, let me know and I'll send it to you! There was a couple of minor adjustments required from the recipe, mostly because the potatoes needed a different temperature to the chicken so some small fudging was required, but it didn't appear to affect the outcome.

Brining the chicken overnight

So this  is something I've not done before - brining. This is basically soaking meat in salty water to increase the moisture content of the product so when you roast it, it doesn't dry out. I'd heard of doing this for Christmas turkeys, but never actually tried the technique.

Not wanting to use a tub that had been used for non-food related things (ewww) I went and bought a new one. (It now has FOOD written in large letters along the side).

I mixed up the brine solution a litre at a time. Heston suggests using a 8% solution - which is 80g of salt per litre of water. Now, it turns out, to fill a tub big enough to fit a chicken, you need a lot of water and thus, a lot of salt. More than I had counted on. I ran out of salt. But, my calculations put the finished salt levels within Heston's brining guidelines (which are 6-12% solutions) I ended up around 65g per L.

The chicken then gets soaked over night. Here is my water bath reclining chicken getting ready for her night nap.

Morning! Chicken prep for roasting.

So then the chicken gets taken out, rinsed...

 and patted dry.

Get the vegetables ready to go in the pan, along with some extra chicken wings. I wasn't entirely sure about the purpose of the chicken wings - possibly there to ensure the resulting  sauce you make has good flavour.


You cut the wing tips and parsons nose off, and then stuff the cavity with a whole lemon and fresh thyme.

Smother the whole thing with an obscene amount of butter (this meal is not diet friendly) and then into the oven at a really low temperature (90degrees) for about 3-4 hours. (Just as an aside - see my awesome new ceramic roasting dish I got for Mothers' Day? Love it.)

 

Roast potatoes, Glazed carrots

While that's going on, time to prep the spuds. I couldn't get the potato type he recommended, so these are royal blues I think. Peel your potatoes, and quarter them. Then rinse them underwater for about 5 minutes. This washes off all the starch. Apparently starch makes for bad cooked potatoes (it makes them go soft instead of crunchy - who knew?)

You then boil them until they are just about falling apart. Then treating them more gently than a drunken housemate, carefully pull them out into a colander with a slotted spoon. If you broke your slotted spoon last week making stock, just use a big spoon and drain off the water carefully, let them sit drying out in the colander.

To get the carrots ready, just peel and slice thickly and stick them to one side - you don't need those until later.

Chicken again..

Check your chicken after the requisite time (this was about 11am for me, after an 8am start).

The chicken breast internal temp should be (according to Heston) 60 degrees. Mine got to 66, so clearly it was ready. It gets to sit out on the bench resting.

Potatoes!

This works because now you crank the temp up so you can cook the pre-cooked potatoes. The pan and oil (lots of oil!) goes in to preheat, and then you pop in the potatoes to the preheated oil and coat them. Then into the oven.

Chicken - sauce

So  now you take the chicken pan and brown off those chicken wings and carrot.

Add a cup of white wine. (This was just inexpensive stuff I had in the fridge for cooking). And a cup of brown chicken stock that you slaved over the week before. (*slaving for home made stock optional). Get it reducing.

Carrots.

Stick your carrots on. You cook these with (a lot of) butter and (a little) sugar on the stove top for about 30 minutes. No water. Heston noted (at the Heston Live show) that if you cook them in water some of the flavour gets lots in the water, whereas this doesn't happen with butter. 

Back to your newly reduced sauce...

The book says to "reduce to a sauce". I found that difficult to gauge. I mean, a runny sauce is still a sauce, right?  I reduced it until it was a nice brown colour. About half the liquid I think?

Now reduced, you strain it  through a sieve.

Chop fresh parsley and tarragon. Mmm. Smells good.

Chicken goes back in the pan (which is still hot because of the all that reducing) and the oven gets cranked up to 240. This is to brown the chicken. To avoid burning the potatoes, I moved them to the very bottom of the oven.

I forgot to take a picture but while the chicken is browning you heat up the sauce and add the chopped herbs.

All ready to serve...

we have carrots ready..

roast potatoes drained on paper towel to stop them being oily..

and a roasted and browned chicken!




Ta-da! 

 

Note the breast meat, taken off and carved against the grain, "to make it seem more tender".

Things I learned from this recipe:

• The timing is really important to write out - it means you don't stress out with all the little jobs you need to do. (You even get time to stop and have morning tea!)
• The sauce was amazing! I really do think the stock brought this into its own, and the fresh tarragon I think was critical. 
• Cooking the chicken just a little longer might be good (see below under guest opinions)
• Brining is awesome. The finished meat was slightly salty, but only so as to not need extra seasoning. Meat was nice and moist.

 

Verdict:

This really was very tasty. The carrots were delicious, the roast potatoes just like good restaurant ones! Heehee. I do think this was one of the nicest roasts I've ever made.

My only reservation really is that I am starting to think that it really is a case of quadruple the amount of fat/butter/oil you would consider putting in a dish and it all becomes delicious. Not great for every day fare, surely.

And I do have to say, the homemade stock did seem to make a huge difference in the finished sauce. While I don't think I'd want to be making that all the time (unless maybe I worked from home) it certainly lifted a 'tasty' sauce into 'seriously good' territory.

Guest opinions:

Some guests (husband and mother in law) found some of the chicken a little on the pink side. I think I would consider cooking the breast to 70 degrees, as at 66 it was still a little pink, with visible veins (though only on the meat right next to the carcass).

That said, all guests stated they enjoyed it all - commenting on the chicken, said the potatoes were "really lovely" and much appreciation for the glazed carrots from my husband (they are his favourite).

I forgot to ask for a score out of ten. Oops.

Next post - liquid center chocolate puddings... and then my experience from seeing Heston Live!