Frittata

Some friends of mine recently declined a dinner with someone who was proud to be able to demonstrate his culinary skills by boiling frankfurters in their can, cremating an omelette and garnishing a Caesar salad with a torn in half Scotch egg...  I can understand why.  Said person is, however, one of the reasons this blog was started, and why it will include the most basic of dishes alongside the most gourmet cuisine.

Peel and boil a couple of potatoes in salted water.  Meanwhile chop the onion and red pepper (seeds, pith and stalk removed!) and put them with a little olive oil in a good frying pan over a medium heat to lightly brown them.  

Brighton being a University town most students spend their first year trying to learn to cook and discovering how expensive it is if you eat out every night.  By the second year most of them can manage staples of Spaghetti Bolognese, pizza, beans on toast and similar simple dishes aided by jars of ready made sauces and pre-made bases.  Depending on whether or not they go home after Uni, to the sanctuary of Mum's cooking, or whether they're staying on in the town, some of them even go on to investigate the world of food further.  

Roughly chop the mushrooms, about the same size as the peppers and put them to one side.

Fancy things like Frittata usually come about the end of year one, when they lose their fear of buying things not in tins - like vegetables.  It's pretty much as simple as it comes, really, but it is a filling, satisfying meal done in one pan for two people.  

A cupped handful each of frozen sweetcorn and frozen petit pois - set these aside for now.

Since there is yet a chance of the dinner invitation being re-offered I can only hope that my friends send the food miscreant to this blog for his step by step photo guide to cooking something without killing people or requiring a stomach pump.  

In a jug take 6 eggs out of their shells and check them for any shell that may fall into the jug.  Add about an eggcup full of milk - not a comedy eggcup, an ordinary one.  Or use a half egg shell twice to measure out some milk.  Add in some salt and freshly ground black pepper and use a fork to mash the yolks up and whisk the mixture together a little bit.   

Put the whoel pack of Frankfurters, un pierced, into the microwave for one minute 40 seconds.  When the timer goes on them, cut open one end of the pack and drain out the liquid.  You'll want about 4 or 5 of these, and you need to chop them into little barrels, about a centimetre and a half long.  Put these to one side for now.

Grate some hard cheese such as cheddar - the choice is yours, but cheddar melts easily and has a good flavour.  You want about enough that when you put your hand over it all you have your hand cupped and your fingers spread and the cheese is kind of poking through your fingers.  This is a normal sized hand, not a mahoosive hand or a tiny paw.   

When the onions are browned lightly - not dark brown, not crispy, not black, the smoke alarm is not going off, add the Frankfurters to the pan and let them brown lightly.   This means you have to stir them from time to time to turn them over and mix everything together.  Do this every time you add something to the pan to brown.  Give it a stir, let it sit so it browns, then stir it again.  This way you don't get one side raw and the other side black.  

Your potatoes should be soft after 10 to 15 minutes of boiling.  If they are starting to fall apart this is over cooked.  You want them firm but cooked.  Crispy in the middle is not good, either.  Strain them and let them dry by shaking the colander up and down to get the water out.  Do this hard enough that the potato leaves the bottom of the colander, but not so hard they leave it completely.   

Add your potatoes to the pan and mix in well then let them brown a little.   

When everything has a bit of brown on it, add in your chopped mushrooms and cook until they shrink a little.  No, not to nothing, not to burned to death little cremains, just darkened and a little shrunk where they have lost their water.   

When everything is nicely browned and the mushrooms are shrunk, you're ready to add your egg mixture.  Turn down the heat to no more than half the amount the dial can go to.  So half way round on the dial is fine.   It won't be quarter past or half past,  you should have numbers or little flames that show you how hot the cooker top is under the pan.  Choose the middle one, then turn it just down a little from that.  

Tip the sweetcorn and the peas into the egg mix and beat with the fork until all combined and spread out.   Pour this mixture into the pan.  Do not wander off at this point to go wash the jug or whatever.  Get stirring!  Use your spatula to mix in the egg and the contents of the pan before the egg starts to set.   

Once the veg are mixed in and the egg starts to set, stop stirring and let it start to become one solid lump.  Don't turn the heat up.  You need to watch the edges now and see how dry they're getting.  That will tell you how well cooked it is underneath.  We're not cooking it all the way through on the top of the stove, so don't worry if it's a bit damp on top.   

This is the point where you want to start looking under the sides.  This is still wet and runny in the middle, but while some of the edge is damp other bits are cooked and solid.    

Gently lift back the edge of the frittata and see if it is cooked.  It doesn't want to brown the egg or burn it, just set it.  If you can do this and no fluid leaks out, go a little further.  Stuart - please note - this is the colour the bottom of an egg dish cooked in a frying pan should be...

Slide the spatula further under and gently lift a little.  If it holds together well, and doesn't leak fluid,  it's time to take the pan off the stove.   

If you're thinking that doesn't look completely cooked yet, you're right.  There are still milky patches of liquid in the middle of the Frittata.  They're supposed to be there, because we haven't finished cooking yet.  Go and turn the grill on - the one that goes over things, not the George Forman (TM) or whatever gadget someone though would be cool. 

This is the big where we add in all that cheese you grated.  Just sprinkle it all over the top, as much as you like.    Just make sure you can still see some of the Frittata underneath!  Now put this under the grill, in the pan.  Make sure the handle sticks out, no matter what it's made of.  You'll need to grab hold of it to get the pan out, so you don't want it to melt, burn, be on fire or anything else.  Ok?

This is what you're looking for.  When you look under the grill and you see a Frittata through the melted cheese, it's done!  Get an oven glove or wrap a towel round your hand and get the pan out.   

This is it - done, finished, cooked through, not burned on the bottom, not raw in the middle or on the top, perfectly cooked, with melted cheese on top.  Time to get it onto a plate.  

Well, yes, you could eat it right from there, but it's nicer and more polite if you cut it into chunks and put those on a plate to eat.  Especially if you're sharing. 

See - all cooked.  Both the health inspector and your mother would heartily approve, I'm sure.  A meal with protein, carbohydrates, vegetables in three different colours and mushrooms, too.  Hearty, healthy and delicious.  How deep your pan is will dictate how thick the Frittata is,   but whatever size you make, follow the same rules.  One thing to change - if the pan is deeper turn the heat lower and let it cook until when you put a spatula in the middle and move it slightly the middle is cooked up above one half of the way through.  That's the point to take it off the stove.  

On a plate, in chunks, waiting for the Lea and Perrins!  Delicious.  

And look - no burnt bottom, either!  

Frittata  (Printed Version)

Ingredients:
2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and cut into 2.5 cm cubes or roughly that
1 onion, peeled, topped and tailed and chopped
1 red pepper, pith, seeds and stalk removed cut into 2.5 cm squares or thereabouts
Half a punnet of mushrooms, roughly chopped to be about the same size as the pepper
1 pack 10 Hurta Frankfurters
1 cupped hand of frozen petit pois
1 cupped hand of frozen sweetcorn
6 eggs, preferably large and free range
An eggcup full of milk
Salt and Black Pepper
A small block of hard cheese such as Cheddar

To Serve:
Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce (optional)
Bread and butter (optional)
Salad (optional)

Method:
Put the peeled and chopped potatoes into a pan of salted water for 10 to 15 minutes until they are cooked and just going soft.  Drain, shake dry and set to one side.

Prepare the pepper and onion as above and put into a good, non-stick frying pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil.  This is about one and a half times the spoon you eat your pudding with that isn't a teaspoon.  Turn the heat to about three quarters, so the pan gets hot enough to brown things but they don't cremate and the oil doesn't burn.  If the pan is smoking, turn the heat down and let it cool before you add the oil or you will set your kitchen alight.

So, oil in the pan, pepper and onion in the pan.  Get them lightly browned - that means mostly a pale goldish colour with the odd spot of brown here and there.

Chop the Frankfurters into 1.5 to 2.5 centimetre long logs and add them to the frying pan.  Stir them in with the rest of the ingredients and let them get a little bit browned.

Add the potatoes and again stir them in with the other bits in the pan and let them get a few brown spots on them.

Add the mushrooms and let things carry on cooking with the odd stir while they shrink down a little and get a bit darker.

Grate a good handful of the cheese and set it aside for now.

Crack the eggs into a jug and make sure there is no shell in with them.  Add the little bit of milk and the salt and pepper.  Use a fork to break the yolks and whisk the eggs a little.

Mix the sweetcorn and petit pois into the egg mixture and again, give a little whisk.

Pour the mixture into the pan and turn the heat down to a little less than half.  Immediately stir the egg through the ingredients, so it gets underneath everything and it spreads all round the pan evenly.

Stop stirring, flatten it down a little and leave it alone until you see the sides of the Frittata have set.

Put your spatula under the outer edge and gently lift.  If fluid runs out then put it back and let it carry on cooking.  Next time check a different place.  When you can pick up the outer edge and the pan remains dry underneath, slide your spatula towards the middle of the pan and gently lift a few centimetres.  If the Frittata stays together and no fluid runs out underneath, take it off the stove.

Turn on the grill to warm up.  You want the grill hot but not overly scorching, so again, somewhere between half and full, about three quarters or two thirds of what it can do.

Sprinkle the cheese over the top of the Frittata and slide the pan under the grill with the handle sticking out so you'll be able to get the pan back out again.

When the cheese has melted to your satisfaction, remove the pan from the grill and slide the Frittata out onto a plate where you can then cut it up and serve it.

Simple!

Salmon Koulibiac

It is worth buying the most up to date Larouse that you can, because it no longer retricts itself to the purely French.  These days the Larouse has expanded somewhat, it has a page on Japan, it mentions classic dishes from cuisines outside of France, and it also strays into the realms of patisserie. Just briefly.  It still has, however, all the wonderful, classic, old fashioned dishes that are still so relevant today.  Ok, so some of them need a tiny twist, maybe we're not going to cook it with lard and drippings, but if all it takes is a change to olive oil then there is no reason that an old dish cannot also be a new dish.

If you put the pastry on a sheet of parchment it will simply slide off when it's baked, no need to grease the tray at all

It is from these classic dishes that our next dish arrives, Salmon Koulibiac, from fine Russian cuisine. Eaten hot or cold this dish can can be eaten all year round.  It's great for preparing ahead for dinner parties, or having cold with a picnic.  It holds together very well in slices so it's wonderful for lunch boxes for work or school.  Sometimes spelled with a C (Coulibiac), Leith's spells it with a K, and it is this recipe we are using today.

Cut a simple third off the end of the pastry and peel it off the backing paper, onto the baking tray.

The pie can be made in several ways, either in layers, or all mixed together with the eggs chopped in.  This is a small one, just for 4 people; but if I were doing it for a buffet or banquet I would still layer it.  People like to see what they're eating, and if it's all mixed together you loose the visual appeal and you deny people the chance to decide if they don't want to eat a bit of it, too.  

I'm afraid we were incredibly lazy with this one - we used ready rolled puff pastry from the chilled section at Sainsburys.  I have to say, it's probably the best ready made pastry I've used so far, but it's still not a patch on home made.  If you decide to make your own home made pastry watch out for the tutorial that I will be doing in the next few weeks.  

The dish requires you to cook several different fillings in advance of putting the dish together.  Starting at the bottom we put in rice, mixed with chopped parsley, pepper, salt and lemon juice.  Four ounces may not seem like a lot when you weigh it out, but do remember that it will swell with cooking, and it's not the only filling.

Chopping onions is now always a job for the alligator.  As mentioned in a previous post it takes the sting out of the job, it's easy to clean, and it's reliable and simple to use.  Mr FC was happy to use it to finely chop the onion.  Don't over chop the onion here - you'll find that even with an alligator there is lots of juice comes out of the onion.  You don't want to add that to the pan; get a cloth and wipe it away.  If you over chop the onion you'll end up with a pureed pulp that won't cook properly.

The eggs need to be cooked ahead, too, then peeled and rinsed to make sure there is no shell or membrane left on them.  

Cooling the rice under cold water stops it cooking further and getting too starchy.  It also washes off any starch that the rice has released, leaving it fluffy.  Do be sure to drain it very well before you put it on the pastry.  

Despite all those fork pricks the pastry still rose rather alarmingly.  Make sure it's well cooled before you use it or it will be soggy from the trapped condensation.

Sieving the lemon juice before you use it makes sure the pips that fall out and the flesh that gets ground into the juice don't get into the finished dish.  

Chop the parsley finely.  This is a job for a mezaluna knife which rocks across the herbs, chopping them evenly.  

You can use the eggs whole, you can chop the eggs up and mix them in, or you can cut the eggs into sections and spread them evenly through the pie - which is what I did.  If you use whole eggs you will get the effect of a slice through the egg when you cut the pie.  

The salmon was steamed in a pan of water and wine, then the skin, dark strip down the middle and anything else extraneous was removed and the fish flaked.  Mr FC got a bit carried away with the flaking and we ended up with what now looks like tinned salmon - it is fresh, I promise.  You can see it in the ingredients photo at the top of the blog.

Add the salt, pepper, parsley and lemon juice to the rice and stir it through well.  

I couldn't possibly use the pastry as it had risen, so I simply laid my hands on it to flatten it a little.  A couple of tiny pats and ti was soon in a condition to have things laid on it without them rolling off!

Gather your fillings round, ready to layer onto the pastry.  

Before you start filling the pie, make sure yo tuck the remaining pastry under the cooked piece by about an inch.  This will help you later when you wrap the slab.  

Being the driest and bulkiest of the fillings, the rice was laid on first, and carefully spread about to make an even layer that went right to the edges all the way round the pastry.  

The salmon was next - you can see I had a little difficulty keeping the fillings on top, but don't worry, because you can always put it in at the end when everything has stabilised.  

Putting the eggs on their backs didn't work, so I rolled them over and topped them with the bits of salmon that had escaped previously.

The cooked mushroom and onion mixture went on last, as being the wettest and least of the ingredients.  This way the bottom of the pie won't be soggy and greasy, and the flavours will work their way down through the fish to the rice while the pie cooks.  

I took advantage of the backing sheet on the pastry, leaving it on as I wrapped the pastry over the top of the pie.  One simple peel and it came away, leaving the pastry exactly as I wanted it.  If your pastry doesn't go over with an inch to spare to tuck under, flatten your pie down a little and try again.  It's tempting to make a heap of the ingredients in the middle, but the more you spread them out to the edges the better the pie will be and the greater the chance of your pastry fitting.

Using your longest pallet knife - preferably a thin, strong, metal one - slide it completely under the base pastry.  You can see here that my 30cm knife fails to show on the opposite side of the pastry.  

Use the knife to carefully lift the pie and tuck the remaining pastry under the edge of the pie to close the second side.  

Using the pre-rolled pastry mean that I had to pull the ends a little to get the top and bottom of the pie to close over, and a good dollop of egg wash was used to stick them down well.  

The rest of the egg wash was used to coat the pie completely, ensuring that it would gain a lovely, golden glaze when it was baked.

There are a million things you can do with this pie when it comes to dressing it.  I've made it fish shaped, I've put marks on it with a teaspoon to make scales, I've done intricate vines and leaves over it, all manner of things.  But today I was exhausted, I was hungry, and all I wanted to do was bake the pie!  I will be back to form by the end of September, unfortunately until then we do rustic!  

And rustic is just as good as anything else when it tastes as wonderful as this pie.  

I trim the very ends of the pie off, only about three quarters of a centimetre, not even half an inch.  Just to get rid of the pastry overload.  You can cut it thicker for the end slices so everyone gets the same amount of filling.  You can cut it into simple quarters if you like.  The pastry isn't very thick on this one anyway.  

Even just at the very start of the pie you can see that already it has all 3 layers and the eggs clearly visible.  

Sliced and plated with new potatoes and green beans, the pie looked amazing.  It tasted amazing, too.  Mr FC felt it deserved a little parsley garnish for being so wonderful.  If you want a sauce with this, sour cream with freshly ground pepper and maybe a little dill in it goes wonderfully; however, this was moist enough that we didn't need anything with it at all.  It was delicious.  

I suspect you'll be getting a lot more recipes from Leiths - after this dish Mr FC has declared it his favourite cook book.


Salmon Koulibiac  (Printable Version)

Serves 4

110 g/4 oz long grain or basmati rice - not quick cook
170 g/6 oz flour quantity rough puff pastry - I used a single pack of ready rolled puff pastry 375 g
55 g/2 oz butter
1 onion, finely diced
30 g/1 oz mushrooms, chopped
1 tab chopped fresh parsley
Juice of half a lemon
285 g/10 oz cooked salmon, flaked
2 hard boiled eggs, roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 egg beaten with a pinch of salt, to glaze

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/gas mark 6.

Cook the rice in a large saucepan of boiling water for 10-12 minutes.  Drain in a colander or sieve and refresh with cold water.  Stand the colander on the draining board.  Using the handle of a wooden spoon make a few draining holes through the pile of rice to help the water and steam escape.  Leave until cool.

Roll a third of the pastry into a rectangle as thick as a £1 coin.  Leave to relax in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

Place the pastry on a baking sheet.  Prick lightly all over with a fork.  Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, until golden-brown.  Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool but do not turn the oven off.  Rinse the baking sheet under cold running water until cool.

Melt the butter over a medium heat and add the onion.  when nearly cooked add the mushrooms and cook gently for 5 minutes.  Allow to cool.

Put the cooked rice into a bowl and fork in the onion, mushrooms, parsley, lemon juice, salmon, eggs and plenty of salt and pepper.  (Note:  I chose to use the original method for this of layering out the rice, mushrooms with onion, fish and eggs.  I just happen to prefer the layout, but it's entirely up to you.  It certainly won't change the flavours.)

Place the cooled pastry base on the baking sheet and pile on the rice mixture.  Shape it with your hands into a neat mound, making sure that it covers the fish completely.

Roll the remaining pastry into a blanket large enough to cover the mixture with an overlap of 2.5 cm/1 inch.  Using a sharp knife, cut the corners off the blanket at right angles to the cooked base.  Working carefully with a palette knife, life the base and tuck the pastry blanket underneath it.  Brush with beaten egg to seal.  Repeat with the other 3 sides.  Chill until the pastry is firm.

Meanwhile, shae the discarded pastry corners into leaves, making the veins and stem with the back of a knife.

Brush the koulibiac with more beaten egg, decorate with the pastry leaves and brush again with egg.  Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the pastry is golden-brown.  Serve hot or cold.

Original notes: If a sauce is required, serve plain soured cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.  This is also delicious made with cooked chicken instead of salmon.

Original receipe and notes by Prue Leith & Caroline Waldegrave from Leiths Cookery Bible, with amendments and comments by Mrs FC