FFwD - Basque Potato Tortilla

This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is a Basque Potato Tortilla. Now this confused me a little, as to me, a tortilla is a flat bread filled with spicy mince from a Mexican restaurant. However, this type of tortilla is really a large, thick potato omelette.

The tortilla is quite simple to make, and contains shallow fried potato and onions, rosemary, garlic, eggs and salt and pepper. I also added some diced bacon pieces to make it a more complete meal.




I used dried rosemary and kept it in (as opposed to fresh which is later discarded, as Dorie suggested), which I think added depth of flavour to the tortilla.

You can see in cross section how thick the tortilla is, even though I halved the recipe and could not find an especially small pan:


As Laurie has suggested on the FFwD website, I think this tortilla would be perfect for a weekend brekky. It was surprisingly good, even though I was not initially enthused about making it.

To check out some more tortillas, visit the LYL link at the FFwD website.

TWD - Great Grain Muffins

Fruit and grains sounds healthy, right? Well, I am convincing myself that they are, as this week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe contains both of them. Christine of Happy Tummy chose Dorie's Great Grain Muffins, and these contain three sorts of grain - wheat, corn and oats (or in my case, wheat, oats and rye), as well as fruit (I used dates).

These muffins were easy to put together, as they did not require an electric mixer, and baked fairly rapidly - in around 20 minutes.

They also taste really good - despite not having that much sugar in them, the sweetness from the fruit and maple syrup buoyed these muffins into the arena of sweet treats.

Here's a peek inside:



Thanks to Christine for this week's pick - she will have the recipe, and of course, it is contained in Baking - From My Home To Yours. To see what everyone else thought of these muffins, visit the TWD blogroll.

FFwD - Chicken B'stilla

I love Moroccan food - the fruit and meat combinations, the spices, the textures, the colours, the aroma and the flavours - they are all my idea of heaven. Accordingly, when the French Fridays with Dorie pick for this week was a Moroccan inspired dish, I was excited.



However, I won't say that I was immediately excited, because I didn't actually know what chicken b'stilla (pronounced bee-stee-ya) was. I had to do some research to work out the history of this dish. Apparently, the Moroccans used to bake pigeon into the b'stilla; I think it would be pretty hard for me to come by pigeon, so I am relieved that Dorie modified this dish.



The b'stilla consists of marinated chicken, steeped in a spiced broth, which broth is subsequently thickened and used as a sauce for the chicken inside the filo pastry crust of the pie. The flavours of the pie are a mixture of sweet and savoury, similar to the fruit and meat combinations of Moroccan tagines and jewelled cous cous. The saucy chicken is baked inside a filo pastry crust, and you end up with a heavenly, tasty, saucy pie.



To fill in the process blanks, here are some step by step photos of the pie making process. First up, you take skinless chicken thighs (known here as "Lovely Legs" which always raises some eyebrows when you ask the deli man if he has them), and marinate them for an hour or so with chopped onion and garlic, and spices:

The marinated chicken is then simmered in chicken broth for an hour or so:

The chicken is then removed from the broth and shredded. Meanwhile, the broth is thickened with eggs and honey:

The chicken is then added back to the sauce, along with fresh coriander:

For the pie "nest", you line a casserole dish with sheets of buttered filo, which is then covered with toasted flaked almonds:

The saucy chicken is then placed inside the filo nest and covered with more flaked almonds, before the sides of the filo are folded over the top of the filling:

You then put a filo "lid" on the pie, which is tucked in like blankets on abed, and sprinkle the buttered top with cinnamon sugar:

And after baking for another 40 minutes or so, you end up with a beautiful aromatic pie, a slice of which is featured at the top of this post.

As a side dish to serve with this pie, I think that jewelled cous cous would be perfect.

I loved this dish, and would definitely make it again.

To see what everyone else thought of the chicken b'stilla, visit the LYL section for this week at the FFwD site.

Daring Bakers - Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet

I joined the Daring Bakers because I was keen to make fancy desserts - the kind I would never try on my own. Accordingly, I was delighted when I learned that this month's challenge is definitely in the "fancy desserts" category:

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

The challenge consisted of making a biscuit joconde imprime (a sponge "printed" with a cigarette paste design). This started in my case with spreading a thin layer of cigarette paste onto a piece of baking paper:

then swirling a design in it with my finger, and covering the paste with a thin layer of sponge. On turning the sponge over, the design is revealed:

This "printed" sponge is then used design-side out to line a ring mould:

You then fill the ring mould with "entremets" or layers of your choice. I chose a strawberry cheesecake, made using this recipe (tinted dark pink for visual effect):

then covered with a layer of lemon mousse, made from this recipe:

I then decorated the dessert by piping whipped cream around the outside, and topping it with a fanned strawberry, as seen at the top of this post.

The bottom layer of the dessert did not set properly, but together, the combination tasted good. I would happily make this again with a different cheesecake recipe.

To see all the wonderful and creative efforts of the other Daring Bakers with this dessert, visit the Daring Bakers blogroll.

TWD - Nutty, Chocolatey, Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake

I adore bundt cakes. I love the huge variety of tins that you can buy to make them in all shapes and sizes. I love the infinite variety of flavours and combinations that can be included in bundt cakes. And I love the fact that they don't need any decorations to look spectacular - they are spectacular just as they are.

This week for Tuesday with Dorie, Jennifer of Cooking for Comfort chose another of Dorie's magnificent bundt cake recipes - the Nutty, Chocolatey, Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake. This bundt cake comprises a vanilla and orange infused cake, swirled in two places with a chocolate, nut and raisin mixture:

As with most other TWD bakers, I found Dorie's direction to cover over the top swirl (which ends up on the bottom of the cake) with batter a little difficult, and it didn't work that well. On unmoulding the cake, I lost some of that swirl. I also wasn't that keen on the raisins, as they burnt a little where they were exposed to the open top of the cake and the sides of the pan.

However, I overall enjoyed this cake and its complex mix of flavours and textures. I think my work colleagues agreed with me, because the cake disappeared fairly quickly.

Thanks to Jennifer, our host this week - she will have the recipe on her site. To see what the other TWD bakers made of this bundt cake, visit the TWD blogroll.

FFwD - Michel Rostang's Double Chocolate Mousse Cake

This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe is Michel Rostang's Double Chocolate Mousse Cake.

This cake is basically comprised of a baked chocolate mousse base, onto which you pile more chocolate mousse which you can serve cold, or which you can bake and serve warm or cold.

The process gives the cake a number of layers and textures despite it being made of layers of the same mousse:


I made one large cake and one mini cake (for me). I was surprised at how light this cake is - it weighs about nothing.

I made the double baked version, which I served cold. It is a very rich chocolatey cake, so it is just as well that it is light, as a small piece is enough. The cake is also not very tall - my mini one was slightly taller than the big one, but there is not acres of cake to go around.

To see what the other FFwD members thought of this cake, visit the LYL section of the website for this week.

Re-Inventing the Lamington 2011 - Chocolate Caramel Lamingtons

Mr P of Delicious Delicious Delicious has once again challenged us to Re-Invent the Lamington. As an Aussie, I believe that it is my civic duty to make a contribution, especially as many of the people who enter this event have never tasted or even heard of a lamington before. And Australia Day is just around the corner on 26 January!

For some more basic information about the lamington, see my earlier post on lamingtons.

The inspiration for my reinvention of the basic lamington, the Chocolate Caramel Lamington, is the Caramello Koala:

The Caramello Koala is a kitschy-cute koala shaped chocolate, filled with flowing caramel, and made by Cadbury:

Although he tastes gorgeous, I won't give you a peek inside because no Caramello Koalas were harmed in the course of making these lamingtons. Instead, I made two slabs of chocolate butter cake:

spread the bottom layer with dulce de leche (or, getting a little less fancy, cooked condensed milk):

and sandwiched the two layers of cake together:

I then let the sandwiched cakes chill in the fridge for around half an hour (because filled cake is mighty slippery), then cut it into cubes:

dipped the cubes in chocolate icing, and rolled them in coconut. And lo, we have chocolate caramel lamingtons:

For intellectual property reasons, I cannot name them after the Caramello Koala or its more adult cousin, Caramello chocolate.

The recipe that I used to make the chocolate butter cake is from the Margaret Fulton Cookbook, which you can find reproduced online here. (I originally tried using cocoa instead of melted chocolate for the chocolate flavouring - this did not give the cake the desired chocolate colouring, so I don't recommend it.) Margaret is an Australian cooking icon, so it is fitting that I used her cake recipe for this very Australian treat. The recipe for the dulce de leche is David Lebovitz's baked version, which you can find here. Baking the condensed milk in the oven spares you from exploding cans and nasty burns from wildly spurting hot caramel, often associated with making dulce de leche on the stovetop.

The icing is just 2 cups of sifted icing sugar, 3 tablespoons of cocoa, 1/2 teaspoon of butter and 3-4 tablespoons of boiling water. You need your icing to be runny enough to dip and coat the cakes, but not so runny that it doesn't stick, so you may need to play with the quantity of water. After dipping the cubed cakes into the icing balanced between two forks (which can then be used to roll the cakes in the icing to coat them), roll the coated cakes in dessicated coconut, which will help to set the icing and give the lamington its characteristic woolly appearance. The forks are also important because they prevent cake crumbs and coconut from being transferred from your fingers into the icing, which causes it to clump. The coconut-coated cakes are then placed on a wire rack to set, which allows the excess icing and coconut to drip off.


Here are the lamingtons with my mate Caramello Koala posing in front:

A cross section of the chocolate caramel lamington appears at the top of this post.

Mr P is offering prizes for the best two reinvented lamingtons, so if you fancy a shot at winning, get your thinking cap on and make your own reinvented version of the lamington. You have until Australia Day (26 January) to enter. Mr P will also feature a round up of the reinvented lamingtons after the competition has closed.