Tag: winter

Categories
Grains and Beans The Book

101. Cassoulet de Canard p.273


The recipe

This is The Book’s definitive and official cassoulet recipe. I wrote about the Easy Cassoulet recipe a couple of months ago, which skipped steps and cut corners, but still resulted in a very delicious dinner. This adaptation of Julia’s from Mastering the Art of French Cooking takes two days, and goes out of it’s way to find traditional steps for you to follow.

On the first day you soak the beans. But you don’ just soak them. You bring them to a boil and let them sit for 50 minutes. Then you bring them back to a boil, with a bouquet garni, onions, salt, and pork rind you spent the preceding 50 minutes ritualistically rinsing, boiling, and slicing. Then it’s simmer and skim for the next 1 1/4 hours. The beans are then left to cool overnight.

Day one’s activities continue with the skinning, defatting, and shredding of the duck legs, the browning of mutton (I used veal) bones in a whole cup of goose fat, and the caramelizing of onions in that goose fat. The duck, the bones, the onions, and let us not forget the fat are brought to a simmer with bay leaves, stock, tomatoes, garlic, and white wine. After an hour and half on the stove it’s left to cool overnight.

Day two is fairly straightforward. You brown and slice some sausage, and remove the inedible bits from the now cold beans, and the duck mixture. Then the cassoulet is assembled in alternating layers of beans and meat, then topped with bread crumbs and parsley. The recipe calls for a 10 quart enameled cast iron pot, but the biggest one I could get my hands on was 7 3/4 quarts. I managed to get almost everything into the smaller pot, but the full sized pot would have been better. The cassoulet is brought to a simmer on the stovetop, the baked for about an hour until the juices are bubbling up through the crust.

There were a lot of steps, a lot of tricky to source ingredients, and some strange cooking instructions here. It resulted in a rather delicious cassoulet though. I cheated in more than a few places, and messed up in a few others, so I’m not sure the dish came out exactly as it did in The Book’s test kitchens. For the record I had a mix up with the bouquet garni and ended up putting in 15 cloves instead of 5, which really changed the flavour of the beans. I didn’t peel the tomatoes, because I hate peeling tomatoes and I don’t find it’s really worth the effort. I didn’t make beef stock, and I did used the specifically forbidden canned variety. I used a cured garlic kielbasa instead of the fresh garlic sausage called for. I also couldn’t stand the idea of serving the dish with all that goose fat in there, so I removed most of the fat that floated to the top of the meat pot. It was still decidedly rich and fatty, but not nearly as oily as the recipe intended.

That is a long list of cheats, normally I do my best to stick to the recipe as closely as possible, but this time I just wasn’t in the cards. I made the recipe for The Boys on one of our weekend getaways, and I was cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen, with only the equipment I’d thought to bring with me (they don’t cook much, so the facilities are minimal). I couldn’t find some ingredients, some of the steps I just didn’t have time for, and there were a couple of honest mistakes thrown in for good measure. I think the final dish was pretty close to what the original intended though.

In the end the cassoulet tasted great. It was similar to the easy cassoulet, with the duck and sausage flavours predominating. However, the beans in this version were really worth all the effort. They were tender with a bit of bite left to them, and packed with flavour. Unfortunately a lot of that flavour was cloves, but the smoky bacon, and pork belly were there, with the thyme and onions adding a nice backdrop.

The breadcrumb crust was a bit of a letdown. The easy cassoulet had an amazing crust, made by turning the duck skin into cracklings, and toasting the bread crumbs in some of the duck fat and garlic. That topping was just out of this world, whereas the topping on this dish is just there to absorb some liquid. The recipe has you throw away the confit duck skin and its fat, but then add in a whole whack of goose fat. I really didn’t understand the rationale, it seems like an obvious missed opportunity.

This dish was labour intensive, and I don’t think it would have been nearly as much fun without the help of my co-chef Al. Whenever it’s time to make an excessively fatty fat fat dish, I can count on him. I should also thank the other boys for washing the seeminly endless sink-fulls of goose fat coated dishes this produced. Cassoulet is an absolute indulgence, and indulging is much more fun with friends, especially if you’ve had to work for your reward.

I feel that this recipe is one I’ll make again and again, until I get it just right. My first attempt tasted about as good as the Easy Cassoulet, but I’m sure that with practice this recipe has the potential to blow the easy version out of the water. It’s the kind of dish that people perfect and refine over lifetimes, to get just the right texture in the beans, the perfect amount of bacon flavour, the ideal thickened but still runny texture in the juices. Next time I’ll be much better prepared for some of the more obtuse steps, and counterintuitive instructions. I can see some improvements I’d like to make, but overall it was a delicious, and faithful rendition of a very classic dish.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

82. Whipped Chipotle Sweet Potatoes p.583

The recipe

Chipotles were the taste sensation of 2006 for me. In fact they were a taste sensation that took the fast food world by storm, from Doritos to Subway you could hardy avoid these often mispronounced smoked jalapeños in adobo sauce. Bobby Flay (restaurateur, Iron Chef, and lover of limelight) is generally cited as patient 0 in the spreading chile epidemic. I’m happy to say that I’ve been infected, and that the taste sensation of 2007 are some of Bobby’s other favourites, Anchos, Gualliros, and Pasillas. I’m still deeply fond of the chipotle, it’s unbelievable depth of flavour, and layers of smoke add a mysterious smouldering quality to any dish. As it turns out this is one of Bobby Flay’s own recipes.

It’s a very straightforward preparation, sweet potatoes are roasted in their skins, then scooped out and beaten together with chipotles, butter, and salt. The mixture is spread into a baking dish and baked for another 20 minutes. The flavours are spot on in this recipe, the sugar soaked earthiness of the sweet potatoes is a perfect compliment to the chipotles. Heat and sweet go together so very well, and these two ingredients bring out the best in each other. The recipe also resists the temptation to make things complex, there are only four ingredients here, and that simplicity is its greatest strength.

Texture unfortunately is a weakness of the dish. The sweet potatoes are whipped, but not whipped in the sense of light and airy, more dense, wet, heavy, and textureless. There’s nothing in here that would give it the structure necessary to become light. I suppose you could fold in stiffly beaten egg whites before the final baking, but I’d rather go the other direction. I wouldn’t whip them at all. This would be much better as smashed chipotle sweet potatoes. Leaving some nice chunks of firm but yielding sweet potato in there would be a major improvement.

I’ve made these a couple of times, and once I had problems with my potatoes splitting and drying out in the oven. Be careful to use undamaged potatoes, and to prick them well. If they split all is lost.

I really really liked the flavours of this dish, and it’s texture could easily be improved. It’s designed as a prepare ahead casserole that can be warmed up when the Thanksgiving hoards arrive. If you’re making it a la minute you can probably skip the final baking step. It gives the dish a crust, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. If you felt like it adding cheese before baking would turn this into a nice gratinée, and a substantial main course. This recipe is easy, cheap, and delicious. I never get tired of the sweet potato chipotle interplay, and its become a standby for me.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

79. Dark Chocolate Shortbread p.688

The recipe

I made this recipe before I’d formally started The Project. I didn’t have my own camera back then so I invited friends over to both eat, and photograph, my food. I recently received a batch of those photos, and now I’m trying to remember how something tasted a year and a half later. Frankly I’m quite surprised at how well I do remember some of them. There’s a Roast Pork With Sweet-and-Sour Chile Cilantro Sauce that has faded from memory enough that I don’t feel confident writing about it, so I’ll submit it to the redo pile. But, on the whole I feel pretty confident in my memories. For next few recipes you might have to excuse some hazy spots in my recollection. I’ll try to fill in the missing bits with lies and wild imaginings.

The Book is a fan of shortbread, it gets integrated into all sorts of squares, cookies, bars, confections and who knows what else. Both of the ones I’ve tried have turned out beautifully. Shortbread is about as simple as a baked good can get, and provided that the very short list of ingredients that go in are top quality the results are inevitably delicious. It does burn rather easily, so careful monitoring is a good habit to get into. In this recipe the shortbread is cut into wedge shaped cookies, and eaten on it’s own. The recipe recommends pairing these with a glass of port after dinner.

The twist in this recipe is the addition of 1/4 cup of dutch-process cocoa powder to the basic recipe. The cocoa was successful in turning the shortbread a dark chocolaty colour, and between the name and appearance of these cookies you’d expect them to taste chocolaty. In fact they taste like shortbread, with a hint of bitterness. I was surprised at how un-chocolaty these ended up, food colouring would have produced the same result. Now, shortbread is delicious, but when you bite into something billed as Dark Chocolate Shortbread, you might expect it to taste like chocolate. I was a bit let down by that trickery.

I might make these again if I was serving a shortbread tray a Christmas and wanted to alternate light and dark pieces for visual effect, but as it was it just built up and dashed a hope of chocolately shortbread goodness. I might try cutting the white flour down to 1/2 cup, and bumping the cocoa up to 1/2 cup, maybe then we’d have a chocolate shortbread recipe worth talking about. These were by no means bad, but they were by no means chocolate either.

Categories
Cakes The Book

78. Ginger Pound Cake p.704

no recipe for this one.

I served substantial pieces of this pound cake following our Beef Wellington supper. If that sounds like a ridiculously rich follow-up to one of the heavier items of the British cookbook, you’re absolutely right. I served both the cake and the Wellington to one of The Boys and his lady friend. The last time they had us over they tried to plumb the depths of the English butter first cooking philosophy. Their opening volley was rabbit braised in a butter sauce, and asparagus gently floating in a butter pond. When we had them over, what could we do but wrap meat in pastry, and try to get as much butter into a cake as is humanly possible? The next round of this escalating war on our arteries has been planned, and intercepted intelligence indicates he’s got a duck wrapped in bacon, possibly stuffed with a rabbit ready to deploy.

This is quite a large cake, it fills a 10 inch tube pan and ends up about 6 inches tall. You really need a crowd to get through it, because as much as you might want to you’ll only be able to eat a little. The traditional proportions for a pound cake are a pound of flour, a pound of butter, and a pound of sugar, hence the name. This recipe does indeed include a pound of butter, a bit more than a pound of cake flour (at 4.6 oz / sifted cup), and a pound and a half of sugar (at 8 oz / cup) add six eggs into the mix, and you’ve got an appropriate retort to the buttered rabbit. Those proportions should tell you what you need to know about this cake. It was decidedly buttery, and a bit too sweet. In this case the more than traditional sugar level had a very good reason. When they call this a ginger pound cake they’re not fooling around. The recipe starts with 6 oz of grated fresh ginger, and they give explicit instructions about preserving every precious drop of ginger juice. Just to punch it up a bit they call for one and a half teaspoons of dried powdered ginger as well. The main flavour of the cake is not at all subtle.

Actually making the cake was very easy. I used my stand mixer, while the recipe calls for a hand mixer. There was a lot of creaming of butter and sugar to do, so I’d say go with the stand mixer if you have one. The method was straightforward, sift the dry stuff together, then cream the butter and sugar, stir in the ginger, and add the flour mixture and milk in alternating batches. This cake is already pretty dense, so building gluten would be a very bad thing. The recipe calls for cake flour, which is less prone to gluten formation, but it’s quite important to mix the flour in slowly and as little as possible. The standard recipe phrase “mix until just combined” really means until it doesn’t quite look combined and there are still some little chunks of flour, but it no longer looks like a swirled lollipop. The batter goes into a buttered and floured tube ban, and baked at 300 for up to an hour and a half.

The final cake was rich and dense, but managed to have a really excellent crumb. I was quite surprised by how good the texture was. Many pound cakes end up having a uniform, tiny, dense packed crumb. In this version there was a lot more texture, it gave the appearance of a much lighter cake, but had the mouth filling feel of the rich beast it truly is. The ginger in it’s various forms came through loud an clear. The sweetness of the cake mellowed its spiciness, and recalled the heavenly balance of candied ginger (if anyone wants to get me a Christmas present, a box wouldn’t go amiss). I served it with raspberries and whipped cream. The berries were a nice contrast, but honestly enough is enough with the dairy. I prefer a fruit coulis with a pound cake, but I guess with everything going on in this cake it would have been overkill.

I was really happy with the way this cake turned out. The texture was excellent, and the flavour was just what I’d hoped for. This cake would be best served at a function, or a pot-luck. You’ll never get enough people around one table to eat it all.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

77. Twenty-First-Century Beef Wellington p.418

The recipe

There’s not much left to say about this dish. I’ve described it pretty thoroughly in the posts for Cilantro Walnut Filling and the Sour Cream Pastry Dough . Those two recipes are the main ingredients for the final Beef Wellington recipe. A nice big beef tenderloin seasoned with salt and pepper is thoroughly browned, covered in the cilantro walnut filling, and then wrapped up in the sour cream pastry dough. The dough is decorated with cut out bits of pastry, given an egg wash, then the whole thing is baked.

As I said in their respective posts, the dough was a real winner, while the filling was just OK on it’s own, and very out of place in a beef wellington. I mildly overcooked the tenderloin but it was still excellent. Filet mignion and a perfectly baked crust were more than enough to make up for the filling. The final dish was tasty, but I really missed the mushroom of the traditional Wellington. I could live without the big slice of pâté though.

Beef tenderloin can be a real hit to the wallet, at higher end butcher shops a whole tenderloin sells for close to $100, which is really not in line with my financial reality. I managed to find a commercial cut tenderloin (PSMO) for one third the price. It was good quality meat (not organic, local, or in any way fancy, but perfectly nice), but it required a little bit of work on my part. A commercial cut tenderloin comes with a good deal of silver skin to be removed, as well as an extra little side muscle best used for something else. I can’t say that peeling off silver skin is much fun, but it’s absolutely worth doing for the price difference.

This updated beef Wellington didn’t really improve on the original, and other than having beef in a pastry had very little in common with beef Wellington. The pastry and beef were top notch, while the filling was somewhat lacking. I would use this recipe again, but I’d go back to a more traditional filling. I don’t regret making it, but I’m not itching to have the twenty-first century version again.

Categories
Cakes The Book

69. Almond Cake with Kirsch Cream and Lingonberry Preserves p.710

The recipe

In the comments for yesterday’s cassoulet someone mentioned that many of the recipes I’ve posted are heart attacks waiting to happen. This cake is no exception. With 8 eggs, 2 sticks of butter, and a bunch of almond paste it is no where near anyones definition of a light finish to a meal. The cake is dense and very moist, topped with Kirsh flavoured whipped cream and lingonberry preserves.

The cake recipe is a very standard method, but with funny proportions. It’s only got one cup of flour to 7 ounces of almond paste, 1/2 lb of butter, 8 eggs and 1 1/2 cups of sugar. The almond paste is replacing some of the flour, but why does it need 8 eggs?

With all the super rich stuff that went into it, the result is a super rich cake. With so little flour to provide structure it didn’t rise very much. The texture was like a very moist brownie that had been allowed to rise a bit more than normal. The almond paste did a good job of permeating the cake with almond flavour, but it could have been boosted with almond extract, or an almond liqueur.

The Kirsh whipped cream topping was a good concept. Almond and cherries are one of the magical flavour combinations of our world, and I’m glad to see it celebrated. The Kirsh gave the cream an alcohol bite that helped cut some of the richness. The cream was a bit potent to eat comfortably though. There were bites where I misjudged the proportion of cream to cake and just found it to be sour and unpleasant.

The lingonberry preserves were a very nice touch. Apparently this is a Scandinavian cake, and nothing says northern Europe like lingonberries. The average megalomart doesn’t carry these preserves so you’ll have to go to a specialty shop, or Ikea. Those masters of flat-packed over designed furniture sell a broad array of Swedish delights, including three different types of lingonberry preserves (one with chipotle).

This cake keeps forever, I divided it and froze half for a few months. The remains in my fridge were good for at least a week. This is a good thing, because the cake is so rich an average sized family would need that week to get through it. The lingonberry preserves were the best part of the dish, the cream topping was a nice counterpoint, but it was a bit too boozy. The cake’s flavour was fine, and the super moist texture had it’s own appeal, but overall I can’t recommend it because of it’s unconscionable ingredient list. A simple yellow cake with almond flavouring would have served the same purpose, and helped everyone to avoid an insulin coma.

Categories
Grains and Beans The Book

68. Easy Cassoulet p.272

No recipe for this one.

Easy indeed. I’ve made both of the cassoulet recipes in the book now. This is the easy version which can be prepared in 4 hours, plus soaking time for beans. The more authentic version takes 2 days. Both were delicious, and the differences between them were pretty subtle. It’s nice to know that you can get pretty much the full effect of the dish in 1/12th the time.

In more traditional versions lots of effort goes into getting flavour into the beans. They’re soaked then simmered with aromatics, meats, and browned bones then allowed to sit overnight. All of this works to pack as much taste into the beans as possible. It’s a bit of pain, but it does get the flavours in there. In contrast, this recipe soaks the beans without any added flavouring, then quickly simmers them a bouquet garni, tomato paste, and garlic. The beans are not quite as tasty, but still delicious. In this version browned sausage and shredded duck confit are added to the beans. The dish is then covered with a garlic laden topping which uses the duck fat to make make cracklings, and toast bread crumbs. Then the whole things goes into a 350 degree oven until it’s bubbling merrily.

In this versions the beans are not even close to being the star of the show. They’re functional, they soak up a lot of the other flavours, but they’re more or less just there. In the more elaborate version from The Book the beans were a much more central player. The quality of the duck confit and sausage is what will make or break the dish for you. Spare no expense, and travel great distances to find a really good cooked garlic pork sausage. As far as I know the best garlic Keilbasa in Montreal is to be found at Euro Deli (St. Viateur and St. Urbain next to the church). I picked up the duck legs at a little butcher shop on Van Horne (Boucherie France – Canada, 1142 rue Van Horne). She does a brisk business in duck confit, and cassoulet. You can also go enjoy the selection of Nicole Kidman photos she has taped to her fridge. As long as the duck and sausage are up to snuff this will be a no fail recipe.

The bread-crumb topping is hugely flavourful, and was everyone’s favorite part. The cracklings are made by tearing the duck skin into strips and then cooking it with any duck fat that was scraped off the legs. My cracklings never really crisped up, but they were still completely delicious. The bread crumbs toasted in duck fat are absolutely out of this world. Your cardiologist will hate me for recommending this to you, but the topping absolutely made the dish. Because the bread crumbs are so central to the dish, it would be nice to use a top quality baguette if at all possible.

The duck is torn into chunks in this recipe. Frequently the duck legs are left whole and then served on top of the beans, which makes for a dramatic presentation. The tearing strategy worked out well though, more surface area = more delectable duck flavour permeating the casserole.

I served this cassoulet to my brother and his girlfriend. Everyone really enjoyed themselves and the dish. It was rich, hearty, and satisfying. I liked that this version managed to simplify a classic without asking for unreasonable compromises in taste. I think a lot of people avoid making cassoulet at home because it requires so many obscure ingredients, and a fair bit of planning. This version makes it much more accessible, and still results in a delicious dish.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

53. Old Fashioned Meat Loaf p.448

The recipe

Take cover! NORAD has detected an extraterrestrial turd loaf coming in fast over the arctic. It wants our Humpback whales to save the future.

This was not the most visually appealing dish I’ve ever made, but it did taste good. I think it’s um, distinctive, shape helped with the flavour too. I’ve made meatloaf in a loaf pan before, and while it’s geometry is soothing, there isn’t all that much surface area exposed to direct heat. This loaf developed an excellent crunchy crust which really made the dish. The secret to the crispy crust was a healthy slathering of ketchup before it went into the oven.

I’m quite proud of The Book for using ketchup here. They didn’t seem to feel bad about it, or tell me that I really should be making my own, or ordering heirloom tomato preserves off the internet. They recommended plain-old funding-John-Kerry’s-political-career ketchup. Maybe this was The Book’s attempt to show that they’re in touch with the common man? who knowns? But I appreciate it.

This is a classic meat loaf recipe that doesn’t deviate or experiment too much. There are a couple of nice touches, but generally it’s straight up memories of childhood comfort food. It starts with a sweat of onions, garlic, celery, carrot, and scallions (one of the slight deviations from the textbook). Then ground beef, pork, breadcrumbs, eggs, and parsley are lightly mixed together and shaped into the giant worm of Arrakis. It’s then covered in ketchup, and baked through.

The book recommends having the butcher coarsely grind beef chuck, and pork tenderloins for this recipe, instead of using the finely textured twice-ground meat that’s available pre-packaged. It wasn’t a command from on high, so I just bought the stuff in the display case. I now see that The Book was right and I was wrong. The flavours in the meatloaf were excellent, its main problem was the texture. It was too tightly packed and dense. Using more coarsely ground meat would almost certainly have taken care of the textural issues, and made this an even better loaf.

My dining companion and I occasionally like to have cook-offs. Kind of like Iron Chef in the privacy of our own home. This dish was my entry for battle meatloaf, and I’m happy to say that it swept the judges votes. Her entry won top marks for presentation and style, but it just couldn’t compete on seasoning and depth of flavour. I’ll have to write the Heinz company to thank them.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

50. Winter Vegetables With Horseradish Dill Butter p.526

This version of the recipe makes three times as much as The Book’s, and recommends steaming the veggies for two thirds of the time.

Parsnips, turnips, and Brussels sprouts, horseradish, and dill all in one recipe? My goodness gracious, it’s almost too good to be true. The parsnips, turnips and Brussels sprouts are steamed together, while potatoes and carrots are steamed in another pot. Then everything is tossed with a horseradish dill butter augmented with a hit of cider vinegar.

I admit I cheated a bit and cooked the veggies wrapped in tin foil on the grill, but steaming is steaming right? The biggest trick with the recipe is to get all the veggies to be done at the same moment. For example, by the time my potatoes were finished, the carrots were overdone, and while the Brussels sprouts were still crisp, the turnip was a bit mushy. This is probably my fault, I don’t think I followed the recipe very precisely when it came to cutting the veggies. For example, the carrots are to be cut diagonally into 1 inch long pieces, but the parsnips were supposed to be 2 by 1 inch sticks. They’re pretty much the same shape, so I cut them into pretty much the same size chunks. The nice people at Gourmet spent quite some time experimenting with different vegetable geometries to get this right, I’d recommend taking their advice and not going it alone.

This recipe stars often overlooked and under appreciated winter vegetables, presents them beautifully, and plays up their fundamental bitter nature. I love that the recipe resists the temptation to sweeten, or add cream. The carrots and potatoes keep this from being too bitter, all the while celebrating the joys of roots. The horseradish boldly adds a tangy punch of heat, in fact I could have happily added more. The use of dill makes me think of the dish as Eastern European, and brings romantic notions of hearty Ukrainian farm families fending off the winter’s chill to my mind.

I really enjoyed the flavours and concepts here, but the execution was a bit trickier than the recipe led me to believe.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

35. Cranberry Caramel Bars p.691


the recipe

I really enjoyed these bars. I brought half of them to a party, and they disappeared instantly. I enjoyed more of them over the next week, and brought out even more from the freezer a couple months later. All that to say, the recipe make a lot of bars, and they keep and freeze well. They’re filled with pecans coated in a buttery-tart cranberry caramel. This filling goes down onto a shortbread base, and the whole thing is drizzled with melted chocolate. They weren’t light, they weren’t particularly easy to put together, they weren’t cheap, but they were absolutely worth it.

Any bar that starts with a shortbread base is off to a good start in my book. It’s so simple, and invariably fantastic. The cranberry caramel tasted great. The butter and sugar were cut by the tart cranberries, which kept it from tasting too rich. The caramel allowed me to play with my candy thermometer, and convinced me I really need a better one. Because the butter goes into the caramel from the beginning it’s got to be monitored carefully. It needs to get hot enough for the sugar to caramelize, but not so hot that the milk-solids in the butter burn. Once the cranberries and pecans have been added and the mixture has been allowed to return to 245 degrees it has to be spread out on the shortbread base very quickly. The caramel is dense, sticky, stringy, and ferociously hot. An errant bit of pecan slipped off my silicone spatula and landed on my wrist. The candy Gods reminded me not to be too casual with a nice little burn.

After the bars have cooled you can add the chocolate. The book recommends snipping the end off a Ziplock bag, but there’s no reason you can’t use a pastry bag if you have one. I wish I’d been a bit more careful in decorating them, my random crosshatch wasn’t the most attractive, nothing wrong with it, but I could have made them prettier. The chocolate was nice, but certainly not necessary. They might have been better looking without it, and while the flavour didn’t detract at all I’m not sure it added much. Between cranberries, pecans, and shortbread there was a lot going on flavour-wise, and chocolate didn’t particularly elevate, or marry these flavours. I know the “add chocolate to make it better” school is strong, but in this case adding chocolate made them chocolatier, not necessarily better.

These squares would be a welcome addition to any Christmas baking repertoire, and work well for pretty much any occasion the rest of the year too. Because they keep so well, they’re ideal do-aheads. I thought the flavour and texture were great, really crunchy between the shortbread and nuts, with a gooey chewiness from the caramel. The caramel also acted as a glue, and counteracted some of the crumbling problems that shortbread is prone to. With or without chocolate these are delicious, reliable, and impressive squares. They probably merit a 5 mushroom rating, but they lost half a mushroom for attacking me.