Birthday Under Lockdown

We've now been in a lockdown for some 2 months and I've found a wondeful baker whose videos are just mesmerising. She publishes videos as Boone Bake and I believe she's from Korea and after spending a few hours watching her lovely creations, I decided to try this one for my birthday.

Ingredients

Pastry

125 g strong flour
125 g plain four
150 g unsalted butter
55 g water
6 g sugar
1 g salt
1 large yolk

Mould

grapeseed oil

Glazing

1 large yolk
5 g full milk

Strawberry compote

200 g strawberries
60 g granulated sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Vanilla cream filling

4 large yolks
60 g granulated sugar
20 g plain flour
10 g corn starch
400 g full milk
2 tsp vanilla essence
50 g white chocolate
60 g condensed milk
280 g double cream,whipped to stiff peaks

Decorations

selection of colourful fruit

For each part of the recipe, I measured up each ingredient in its own bowl and lined them up in the correct order before starting. I pretty much followed the video instructions, however, I split up the different parts and made them on different days, since I didn't want to go tired and mess up my cake by doing a shoddy finish.

With regards to the pastry, one thing that isn't clear from the video is how long it takes to get the butter mixed in with the flours, I think I chopped and chopped around in the bowl with the dough scraper for ages, changing hands as they got tired. I tried using both hands with two scrapers and I also tried holding two scrapers in one hand with a finger inbetween, but still I didn't manage to get things well incorporated. So I think pinching with my fingers next time will be the way forward, as long as I can keep the kitchen and my fingers reasonably cool. It's been hot this week in the UK, so I've had difficulties keeping the kitchen below 25 °C. What I must remember to do is to use glass bowls for the mixing and chill them as well overnight before starting.

What I really liked is that once the egg mixture had been stirred into the dough, it was just pushed down to the bottom of the bowl to form a lump and then moved to cling film, shaped into a square and wrapped tightly before chilling. It clearly was still very much in a crumbly state, but the three rolls and folds made it turn into a lovely smooth dough, so I'll keep this in mind for other shortcrust pastries I make. I did notice that when I made the basket handle at the end, having rolled out all the offcuts from the previous rolling, the dough had become elastic, so it developed gluten fairly quickly, thanks to the strong flour. But I think it is important to have it there, to make the basket sturdy enough to be filled with things.

I was most nervous about the weaving part, but this turned out to be easier than expected. For the basket shape, I used one of our soup bowls, which has a diameter of 19.5 cm and is possibly a bit deeper than the one used in the video. It is important to make sure to have everything ready and organised and also to make space in the fridge for the basket, if it's a hot day, so that it can be placed there while rolling the dough and cutting new strips. Another thing to keep in mind is to try and weave as tightly as possible and have a small container with water and a small brush handy, to glue together the dough strips as required. During baking, the dough shrunk quite a bit and left largish holes in the basket and it came apart in a couple of places where new strips had been added.

I had severe doubts about how long this contraption would hold, given that its filled with a pastry cream and fresh fruit, so I chose to be cautious and baked the basket for 40 minutes, which is almost twice as long as the video recommends. Of course the pastry wasn't as melt-in-the-mouth, but it tasted OK to me. The handle and the remaining dough were baked for 23 minutes as per the instruction.

So on the morning of my birthday, I finished the vanilla custard cream, which is extremely tasty and ended up a bit firmer than it looks in the video, which was good. But bacause my basket ended up a bit larger than the one in the video, there wasn't enough vanilla custard cream. It barely filled half the basket and I struggled to cover the strawberry compote, so I've doubled the amounts in the ingredients above. It was so tasty, any left-over will not go to waste for sure.

The baked fruit basket was ready just after lunchtime, so I was able to show it to my parents and my sister when it was looking its best. They were impressed. Lundulph then managed to get the barbecue going and we spent the early afternoon grilling a lot of meat and veggies before having a leisurly festive meal in the late afternoon. The fruit basket had started sagging a little, but was holding together OK. If I manage to make a tighter weave next time, it should hold even better.

The only thing is, this pastry is not possible to cut in a gracious manner. So as soon as I stuck the knife into it, it collapsed, but it was extremely tasty and light, with a very good balance of crunch from the pastry, vanilla custard and fruit. A perfect dessert for a Summer's day and it did hold together for the 4 hours between completing it and cutting it up, though it had started to sag a little. Since I had lots of fruit left over, I had placed some underneath the basket and that added a little support.

I suspect we have at least 2 more portions each to work through, so I'd say this makes enough for 6 - 8 people and for anyone who wants some extra crunch, they can take a piece from the basket handle.

I how have 4 egg whites left over, so I will be making meringues in the coming days.

Quick Kimchi

I've been thinking of trying my hand at kimchi for a while and as I'd ended up with spare courgettes the other day, I looked round for a recipe involving courgettes and I came across this one. The recipe also calls for cabbage and I had some left over from the cabbage rolls I made a couple of weeks ago, so things worked out quite nicely.

Ingredients

1.5 l water
3 tbsp salt
600 g cabbage coarsely shredded
400 g courgettes cut into 4 cm thin strips
3 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 large clove of garlic, pressed
2 tbsp Korean chilli powder (gochujang)
1 tbsp sugar

Method

1. Place the water in a large non-metal bowl and stir in 2.5 tbsp of the salt.
2. Add the cabbage and courgettes into the water and leave for about 12 h, stirring occasionally.
3. Scoop out the vegetables and transfer to a side bowl, but keep the brine.
4. In a small bowl, mix together the ginger, garlic, chilli powder, sugar and the remaining salt, then stir the mixture into the vegetables.
5. Transfer the vegetables into glass jars, packing as tightly as possible. Add any liquid the vegetables might have released and top up with the saved brine.
6. Place a piece of baking paper over each jar and secure with a rubber band. Let stand in room temperature for 3 days, the jars should start bubbling a little.
7. After 3 days, taste the kimchi. If it tastes nice, put lids on the jars and store in the fridge, if not, leave for longer and taste every now and then until ready.

We ended up leaving the kimchi for one extra day. The only thing is, the courgettes went quite mushy and neither Lundulph nor I liked them much. But the cabbage was really good. I'll try to remember to get spring onions, like in the original recipe next time. But I'll swap the courgettes for carrots. Lundulph also suggested beet root, though the whole thing will end up purple. Hm, perhaps with red cabbage...

Dolsot Bibimbap

Last year some colleagues took me to a Korean restaurant in London. It's called Bibimbap and was my first experience of Korean cuisine. It was brilliant! Since then I've taken both Lundulph and my Sister Bip and they both really enjoyed it.

However, since I no longer work in London, I decided to have a go at this wonderful dish at home and invested in two dolsots. These are large stone bowls in which the bibimbap is made. They are not strictly necessary, but I think they make the whole meal a bit more special. They arrived at my doorstep the other day, so I thought I'd try them out straight away.

The first crucial thing to do is to prepare the bowls - they need to be seasoned and oiled. The procedure was a bit curious - fill up with water and add a tbsp of salt, then heat up slowly in the oven. Then you're supposed to put them straight on the hob and let simmer for some time. Now since we had our kitchen re-vamped, we have an induction hob, so absolutely useless with stone. Thus I had to continue with just the oven. At 200 °C the dolsots were hot enough to have a rolling boil of water. Once the time was up, I took the bowls out and wiped them dry. Then I applied sesame oil with a brush and kept doing this until they stopped absorbing it and thus were ready for use. At this point I was wondering if I could also use them for bread baking...

The next thing to do was to get the ingredients and research on how to prepare the bibimbap. As Lundulph is still in his vegetarian week challenge, I had to make sure to get lots of veggies and I opted for carrots, beetroot, courgette, French beans, red and yellow pepper, pak choi and shiitake mushrooms. In addition I sprouted some mung beans and chickpeas for a couple of days. I didn't measure my ingredients, roughly about a handful of each.

Now the first thing to do is to cut everything into julienne strips, this is fairly time consuming and I've decided to invest in a mandolin at the earliest opportunity.

While doing this, boil some rice - preferably the brown short grain variety which takes about 30 minutes. Keeping all julienned vegetables separate, the instructions stated that each should be blanched and then sautéed. A massive piece of work and not entirely healthy. So I decided to just blanch everything except the pak choi and the mushrooms which I sautéed with a little sesame oil. I left the mung beans and chickpeas uncooked. I allowed 4 minutes for the French beans, 3 minutes each for the carrots and beetroot and 2 minutes each for the courgettes and peppers. I used the same water for all of them, making sure to do the beetroot at the end as it released a lot of deep pink colour.

While blanching, I started heating up the dolsots in the oven, some 15 minutes at 75 °C, then a further 10 minutes at 120 °C, 160 °C and 200 ° respectively. Once at the final oven temperature, I added about ½ tbsp of sesame oil to each bowl, swirled it around and gave it a further 5 minutes to heat up. Once the oil was hot I placed the rice at the bottom of each bowl and pressed it down to spread it evenly at the bottom and a little up along the sides. I then put the dolsots back in the oven to bake for 10 minutes to form a crunchy crust at the underside of the rice.

Then taking out one bowl at a time, I placed the vegetables around the rim of the bowl and to finish, cracked an egg in the middle. This is then ready to serve. The idea is that once on the table, the person eating will stir everything through and thus cook the egg, as the dolsot is sizzling hot. To add a bit of a kick to the whole thing, Lundulph squirted in about a tablespoon of harissa paste. I was more careful with it, but I also added half a teaspoon of smoky chipotle paste.

I'm very pleased with my first attempt, the rice got the desired crust in the oven and was wonderfully crunchy and all the veggies were really nice - cooked, but still crunchy.

Finally the cleaning of the dolsots - again the Internet had answers. Given the preparation treatment, I suspected that dishwasher was out of the question, but I wasn't too keen on just wiping the bowls clean. Actually what you do is to add a tbsp of rock salt, top up with boiling water and then scrub with a bristle brush. Keep detergents away or they might get absorbed into the stone. Allow to air dry, then brush with sesame oil and it's ready for next time.

Now the above may seem like a lot of effort and it was, which is why a mandolin makes sense. But some further reading about the concept of bibimbap noted that in fact any leftovers can be used as toppings. All you need is the rice bit and it would be a good use of leftover rice too. Lundulph seemed very pleased and agreed that the dolsots were a good investment. And as he likes his food piping hot, the stone bowls do keep their heat throughout the whole meal, which is a great bonus.

List of ingredients for two portions

1 large carrot
1 medium courgette
1 large beetroot
130 g French beans
2 sweet pointed peppers - one red and one yellow
5 - 6 large shiitake mushrooms
handful of mung bean sprouts and chickpea sprouts
2 dl brown short grain rice
toasted sesame oil
2 large eggs
harissa paste and/or smoky chipotle paste
salt to taste