Grub on Sesame Street

A not so recent post in the New York Times - Grub Street featuring Anthos' 'most innovative' sesame dessert from chef Bill Corbett made me look at sesame in a different light. Like potato, sesame always seems to be the garnish and never quite the star of the show.
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After the slightly disappointing feedback on my daikon jam I thought I would do something a little more simplistic, a little more toothsome, something that would not result in deep culinary shock and convulsive reactions nor responses to the like of "I'm scared!".

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Melting Moments

230 g unsalted butter, soft
50 g pure icing sugar
2 g salt
2 g vanilla extract
240 g flour
50 g cornflour
5 g sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 160ºC.

Cream butter, sugar, salt and vanilla until pale.

Sift together flour and cornflour and mix through.

Divide mix into 6 g balls and place onto a tray lined with baking paper.

Dust a fork with flour, sprinkle the tops with sesame seeds and press each one firmly with the prongs.

Bake for 8 minutes, cool on tray before removing.

Tahini Ganache

70 g milk chocolate
60 g milk
40 g tahini

Heat milk and tahini in a small saucepan.

Bring to a simmer (strain now if using unhulled tahini).

Pour over chocolate and stir until completely emulsified.

Cool to room temperature and sandwich between biscuits.

All In Good Company

I've been pondering over testing this jam for a couple of weeks now. I could not for the life of me find any recipes for radish jam on the internet which, as a number of past experiments have taught me, usually points to my ideas being a little too wacky to actually work. So as you can imagine, I was a touch hesitant to try something which everyone else thought would turn out horribly.

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Apple and radish have been together for a long time. Apple likes things such as vanilla, celery, walnuts, cloves, five spice, ginger, cinnamon, ice cream, crispy puff pastry, etc. Married couples generally like the same things although there are the odd exceptions every now and again. In this case, when apple goes away for the monthly Original Recipes event, radish has cloves and ginger to keep it company.

Unfortunately radish doesn't contain as much pectin as apple so you'll need to add a little extra. I wasn't able to locate a store that sells pectin, I did find something called Jamsetta though. It's pectin with sugar added as a carrier to prevent clumping or something I suppose. Sugar is listed first in the ingredients list of two which means that Jamsetta is atleast 51% sugar. From shaking it around on a plate it looks to be anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 parts pectin to sugar. If you don't live in Australia or buy shitty Jamsetta and use real straight pectin you'll need to adjust the recipe to something like 4 or 5 grams. If you have a food processor (which I don't) you can blitz up the radish first before cooking instead of slicing then using a blender afterwards. You'll also need a thermometer.

Daikon Radish Jam

300 g daikon radish
40 g fresh ginger
5 whole cloves
25 g ironbark honey
210 g castor sugar
10 g Jamsetta
3 g citric acid
1 g salt
350 g water

Peel and julienne daikon and chop ginger into thick slices.

Throw everything into a smallish pot and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove ginger and cloves and blend until as smooth as possible.

Return to pot and simmer, stirring with spatula until it reaches 105ºC.

Buttermilk Mornings

What better way to start off a lazy weekend with a fridge full of buttermilk than by making Bill Granger's super-light buttermilk pancakes? I couldn't think of anything better after getting home at 5:30 in the morning to mark the end of another long night on the town.

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I did finally get around to ordering myself a kitchenaid online however. It should be arriving any day now, fingers crossed. Okaaaay, maybe not. It appears that they're waiting on their stock shipment which is not expected to arrive until the 7th of November. Poop. I had better keep my buttermilk cultures alive for the next month then I suppose. Well, for now, here's my recipe for buttermilk pancakes, adapted from Bill Granger: Sydney Food. The lemon could of course be substituted with virtually any fruit puree and the sugar content adjusted accordingly.

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Lemon Buttermilk Pancakes

56 g flour
4 g baking powder
20 g castor sugar
2 g salt
95 g buttermilk
1 egg, separated
15 g lemon juice
4 g lemon zest, fine
2 g vanilla extract
15 g unsalted butter, melted

Sift flour, baking powder, sugar and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

Whisk buttermilk, egg yolk, lemon juice, zest, vanilla and butter in a bowl.

Combine flour and buttermilk mix without over-mixing.

Beat egg white to soft peaks and gently fold into batter.

Coat pan with thin spray of vegetable oil and cook batter over medium heat.

Flip when bubbles break the surface blah blah..

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Culture Sours

I swear Alice Medrich is stalking me via the web. Everywhere I turn, her name seems to pop up attached to mouthwatering pictures of her cake recipes. My resolution this week was to buy a kitchenaid mixer from the wonderful people at Kitchenware Direct and try out Medrich's sesame seed cake. As resolutions usually go, things just didn't get done, and I instead spent my entire weekend fairly inebriated.
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Motivation finally caught up with me yesterday morning and I strolled down to the local mall to pick up some buttermilk. It seems to have burned down recently.. hmmm.. I strolled down to the next mall alongside the highway to pick up some buttermilk. When I got home (nevermind that it was 2 hours later) I began the slow process of multiplying buttermilk cultures with my store-bought starter. I used my electric blanket to incubate the bottles of buttermilk and keep them at a steady temperature during the night.
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Cultured Buttermilk

1 part buttermilk
2 parts full cream milk
mason jars or glass bottles

Wash and sterilise glass in oven at 110ºC for 20 minutes.
Allow to cool to room temperature.
Fill almost to the top with 1 part buttermilk and 2 parts milk.
Secure lid and incubate at 24ºC for 12 hours.
If successful, buttermilk should coat the glass when tilted.
Label date and refrigerate.
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Some recipes use the ratio of 1 part buttermilk to 3 or 4 parts full cream milk. You could do this of course, however keep in mind that the culture would need 18 or 24 hours respectively at 24ºC to complete the fermentation process. Do not allow the buttermilk to reach temperatures nearing 40ºC or it will curdle and will separate into curds and whey. More information can be found here.
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I'll get that mixer soon I swear.
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