Tag: creme-fraiche

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

95. Rye Crispbread Crackers with Pepper-Dill Crème Fraîche and Smoked Salmon p.38

The recipe

This is a funny recipe, it’s a play on the old standby of lox and cream cheese on pumpernickel. In this version you bake your own crackers, use dill infused crème fraîche, and dress them up with fresh dill and orange zest. I’ve never made crackers before, and my first experience suggests it’s exactly as pointless an activity as it seems. The recipe waxes on about how great the crackers are, and how they really make the dish. If that’s the case why is this recipe in the hors d’oeuvres section? They have a perfectly good Breads and Crackers section.

The crackers are made with a yeast dough using both white and rye flour, kosher salt, and toasted caraway seeds. The dough is allowed to rise, rolled into thin sheets, and allowed a brief second rise before baking. The final texture was unusual. It wasn’t cracker crisp, it wasn’t bready soft, it was crunchy on the outside, and tough and chewy on the inside. I wasn’t impressed with the final texture at all, and I actually had to gnaw through a couple of them. My sister, who was appalled at the amount of time, effort, energy, and cash recipes from The Book seem to require, quite liked the crackers. She felt that if you were going to go to the bother of making your own, at the very least they should be softer than boxed crackers. I felt that if they’re called rye crispbread crackers the least they could do was to be crisp. The flavour was very nice, the caraway seeds added a lot, but frankly these things just weren’t worth it.

The crème fraîche layer had a structural issue. The crème was mixed with chopped dill, salt, and pepper, then added to the crackers. Unfortunately, crème fraîche is barely gelled when it’s scooped out of the container. Stirring in the other ingredients moved it back to the liquid side of things. It was prone to running off the crackers, and onto people’s laps. Not exactly ideal in a finger food. Once again the flavour was good, but the texture was off. Maybe a combination of crème fraîche and sour cream, or cream cheese would have provided the richness and flavour, while staying where I put it.

The flavours in the dish were right on. The crackers were delicious, rye and carraway are old friends. The dill and crème fraîche played well with the smoked salmon, and the orange zest set the whole thing off, making it lighter and brighter, and cutting some of the oiliness of the fish and richness of the crème. I also thought these appetizers looked great, despite the odd dribble of crème fraîche. Unfortunately the texture of the crackers left a lot to be desired, every grocery store has much better substitutes for hardly any money and no effort. The rest of the dish was pretty standard fare, the crackers were the make or break aspect of the dish. In this case they didn’t break easily enough.

Categories
Breakfast and Brunch The Book

92. Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Cups p.634

The recipe

The eggs are really pretty, taste great, and come in manageable individual sized portions. It’s not really practical to do fried eggs for a crowd, you end up spending all your time at the stove, and the toast gets cold. The solution is often scrambled, or poached eggs. Scrambled are nice, but a bit boring, and I really like having a yolk to dip into. Poached are great, and as my poaching skills improve I appreciate it more and more. I’m always worried about getting the eggs out of the pan, nicely drained, and onto the plate without breaking at least one of them though.

This type of dish is a nice option for a big brunch. Slices of ham are fitted into muffin cups, and filled with a mixture of sautéed mushrooms and shallots, fresh tarragon, and crème fraîche. Each cup is topped with an egg, and then popped in the oven at 400 degrees until the whites are set. They’re excellent little self-contained dishes that are easy to serve, and most of the work can be done ahead. They’re easy to make, the presentation is impressive, and quite charming.

I was a big fan of the flavours at work here. The ham crisped up and showed off its bacony side, which paired well with the classic mushroom tarragon combination. The crème fraîche added a bit of richness and luxury, and the egg was a none to subtle reminder that this was a breakfast dish.

Despite my enthusiasm, the recipe had some technical problems. When buying the ham for this recipe it’s important to get slices without any holes, otherwise the filling will leak out. I decided that thicker slices should stay together better, but I failed to consider that they’re less malleable. I had trouble getting them into the egg cups, and ended up cracking some of them. In the end, a lot of the filling did run out of them. This isn’t really the recipe’s fault, after all it did warn me. But your ham should be neither too thick nor too thin, and the more uniform it is the better.

The real problem with the recipe came in the baking of the eggs. I put them in the oven for the recommended 15 minutes, but the whites weren’t even close to being set. It took an extra 10 minutes for them to set up. Unfortunately the yolks were fully set by that point, which was a real letdown. It’s possible that the broiler element came on at some point during the eggs’ cooking and applied too much direct heat from the top. Since you don’t really care if the eggs steam a bit, you could probably cover the muffin tin in the oven.

I’m not sure where I went wrong with the eggs, Teena at the other gourmet project made these recently. She didn’t seem to like them nearly as much as I did, but the eggs in her photo look like they have set whites and runny yolks. I may have messed up somewhere along the line.

These eggs looked and tasted great, and were really easy to make. Mine didn’t work out as well as they could have, but they were still delicious. Tarragon is a prominent flavour here, and not one you often find in breakfast dishes. For me that was a welcome surprise, I’m always happy to eat more tarragon. It doesn’t really jump to mind when you think of flavours to pair with coffee and orange juice though. I think these eggs work best as part of a less breakfasty brunch. I served them with baguette and a green salad, which worked really well. I’m excited to try these again, if I can find a way to maintain my ham’s structural containment and sort the eggs out, I think this dish could be a real winner.

Categories
Cakes The Book

41. Orange-Poppy Seed Cake p.706

Sorry, no recipe.

I made this cake for a friend’s birthday party. The best way I can describe it is as a brunchy coffee-cake dressed up for dinner. During the day it works down at the espresso shack as that cute poppy seed loaf in the counter. It’s moist and rich with sour cream, and has a very pleasant fluffy but yielding texture. The cake has 2 tsp of orange zest mixed in, which are understated during the day, but they’ll sparkle at night.

After work the cake turns it up for an evening on the town. Most of the citrus flavour comes from the Grand-Marnier orange juice syrup it slips on. Paired with a flirty dollop of creme-fraiche, and a burst of berries to make the outfit pop it’s ready to go anywhere you’d care to take it.

This cake was simple to put together, it did require making a meringue, and some folding to keep the airy texture I was looking for, but it’s basically a breeze. Once the cake is baked little holes are poked all over and it’s bathed in the Grand Marnier syrup.

Grand Marnier is my favorite digestif, so I’m always happy to have it show up in desserts. The zip of the creme fraice was nice, but it was a touch heavy and coating. Serving this a la mode, or with whipped cream might have worked, or better yet with nothing at all. I had intended to top it with berries, but when I made it good looking berries were not to be found. No great loss as this cake stands up all on it’s own.