The Cronut

Ah, the mythical cronut - part croissant, part donut, all noms. Tales of its sweet delights travelled to us one night on the television when Dominique Ansel was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to cook his beautiful creation. I haven't had the New York City cronut but I found a recipe for an imitation version by Edd Kimber.

These babies are an absolute treat - flaky, buttery and scrumptiously fluffy. To make these, you'll need a bit of patience and a lot of kitchen counter space. But once you cut out your little cronut discs and lower them into the oil to fulfill their delicious destiny, you'll know it was all worth it.

Ingredients

60ml milk
65ml warm water
6g dried yeast
150g cold diced butter
250g plain flour (The recipe calls for 125g plain flour and 125g strong flour. I couldn't find strong flour so I used all plain flour and added bread improver.)
5g bread improver
30g caster sugar
½ teaspoon salt
vanilla sugar
icing sugar
milk
vanilla extract

1. Combine milk, water and yeast in a bowl.
2. Pulse the cold butter, flour and bread improver in a food processor until it looks like lumpy breadcrumbs.
3. Combine the flour mixture, the wet mixture and the caster sugar and salt until form into a dough. Cover with cling wrap and fridge for 2 hours.
4. Roll the dough into a rectangle about 1cm thick. Fold the dough into thirds, turn and roll again. Repeat this 2 times. I found the dough to be quite sticky at the beginning of the rolling but by the time I folded it a few times, it became a nice, smooth dough.
5. Cover dough with cling wrap and fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.
6. Roll out the dough to about ½cm thick and cut out your cronut discs with cookie cutters. Put the discs on a tray lined with baking paper, cover with a tea towel and let prove for 1 hour.
7. Fry cronuts in oil at 170ºC until puffed up and golden.
8. Drain on paper towels and toss in vanilla sugar.
9. Make glaze by mixing icing sugar, vanilla extract to taste and a splash of milk. Drizzle on cooled cronuts.

Croquembouche

Custard-filled and white chocolate coated profiteroles on a chocolate iced sponge base

This was my first attempt at making profiteroles, which made the croquembouche idea even more ambitious. I'm so psyched that it all worked because every step was a labour of love for my boyfriend's birthday. I made the profiteroles using Raymond Blanc's recipes for choux pastry and creme patissiere here.

1. Make a cake base of your choice.

2. Make the pastries, dip them in melted white chocolate, fill with creme patissiere and stick them on the cake base with toffee.

3. Decorate with toffee strands (using a spoon, cool toffee down enough for it to make long, thin strands, then drizzle around the croquembouche).

Spicy Lamb Leg with Pumpkin & Couscous Salad

Lamb leg has everything I want in a piece of meat. It's tender, juicy, easy to cook, inexpensive and has an appropriate amount of fat. When you roast it, every part of it is delightful to eat. It's not fidgety like other cuts where you have to cook it in several pots and pans and you end up spending more time cleaning than eating. The fat renders off beautifully in the oven and it all melts in your mouth.

I love a roast with an intense spice rub. There's a lot of meat on that bone so you need a lot of flavour. This rub is so delicious and a great example of using spices for their flavour rather than heat. When it mixes in with the lamb juices, it's a marriage made in heaven.

A couscous salad is the perfect way to soak up those beautiful juices, not to mention it's dead simple to make. I also put in some roast pumpkin (tossed in those lovely spices) for colour and sweetness.

Spicy lamb leg

You'll need:

Lamb leg (mine was 1.5kg)
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon ground cumin
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
Birdseye chilis (to taste)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon salt

Combine turmeric, paprika, cumin, garlic, ginger, chili, olive oil and lemon juice in a mixing bowl.

Wash and pat dry lamb leg with paper towels.

Rub the spice mixture onto the lamb.

Marinade in fridge for at least an hour. The lemon juice tenderises the meat so the longer the better.

Preheat oven to 170°C.

Roast lamb on a wire rack for 1 hour 20 minutes for every 1.5kg. (I know my oven is pretty slow so I left it in for an extra 10 minutes.)

Rest for at least half an hour.

It should be beautifully pink medium-rare, so juicy and tender it will hardly hold onto your fork.

Pumpkin & couscous salad

You'll need:

500g pumpkin, diced
1 cup couscous
1 cup boiling water
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Pinch of salt
Juice of one lemon
½ cup red onion, finely diced
½ cup raisins
Handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped

Toss the pumpkin in any left over marinade and roast with lamb for 1 hour on a baking tray in a single layer.

Combine couscous, olive oil, salt and water in a large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap for 10 minutes.

Separate couscous with a fork and mix in pumpkin, lemon juice, onion, raisins and mint.

Enjoy!

Gnocchi with Creamy Pumpkin & Prosciutto Sauce

I remember when I was a teenager I made gnocchi from a packet and I found it revolting. I could have just accepted that I didn't like gnocchi and let it go, except it really bothered me that everyone raved about gnocchi. How could anyone like this? I thought. Was I missing something or was it the most overrated pasta? So I cooked it again and again hoping that I'd like it. I didn't and I gave up on it for years.

It wasn't until two years ago that I tried fresh gnocchi in a restaurant and it all made sense to me. It's not supposed to be tough, chewy and gluggy! It's meant to be soft and silky. Because there was such a big difference between bad gnocchi and good gnocchi, I figured that the recipe must be really difficult or the chef must have added some secret ingredient - otherwise, why didn't they have good gnocchi in packets? I was wrong again. Turns out, it's ridiculously simple to make but the key to really good gnocchi (other than a good potato-flour ratio) is freshness.

Click here for a simple baked potato gnocchi recipe. Baking the potato removes excess moisture and makes the gnocchi less gummy.

Keep in mind to use as little flour as possible. You only need enough to hold the gnocchi dough together (between 1 and 2 cups). Otherwise it won't be silky.

My batch stayed perfectly soft and silky in the fridge for two days.

For the sauce, you'll need:

300g butternut squash, diced into 1.5cm cubes
3 slices prosciutto (I used Serrano), plus more for garnish
Olive oil
25g unsalted butter
Salt, to taste
2 French shallots, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 sage leaves, finely chopped, plus more for garnish
Handful of parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon cream
Parmesan cheese

Blanch pumpkin cubes in simmering salted water for 2 minutes. Remove and place into a bowl of iced water.

Fry prosciutto in a bit of olive oil until fragrant and crispy. Remove and leave to rest.

Add half of the butter into the pan. Fry a few sage leaves in the butter until crispy. Remove and leave to rest.

Fry pumpkin in the same pan on as many sides you can be bothered until brown. Season with salt. Remove and leave to rest.

Add the rest of the butter and saute shallots, garlic and sage until the shallots are translucent.

Add pumpkin, prosciutto, parsley and cream. Remove from heat when combined.

Cook the gnocchi in rapidly boiling salted water. It's ready when it floats to the top of the water.

Place gnocchi and a little bit of pasta water into the sauce and stir together.

Garnish with a slice of prosciutto, more parsley, fried sage leaves and parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

Salt

The lovely Felicity at Arbon Publishing recently sent me a copy of The Salt Book (Gubler, Glynn, Keast). Aside from being a glossy book I'd drool over and caress my cheek with in a bookshop, it's also a very intriguing read. It contains everything you need to know about salt, from the health implications of eating salt, to how to use salt wisely and great recipes that make salt an exciting ingredient to experiment with.

I tried some recipes over the weekend and I was blown away at how simple and inexpensive it is to make really impressive dishes.

Melon & Prosciutto (recipe extracted from The Salt Book)

You'll need:
1 ripe rock melon or honeydew melon
6 slices prosciutto (I used Serrano)
Persian blue or other finishing salt (I used fine Himalayan pink salt)

Using a melon baller, scoop out the flesh of the melon. Slice the prosciutto into small strips, slightly larger than the circumference of the melon balls. Wrap the prosciutto around the melon and secure with a toothpick. Lay the melon balls on their side and sprinkle each with an attractive finishing salt such as Persian blue salt.

Salty, smokey, thinly sliced Serrano prosciutto

Chicken in Salt Crust

You've probably seen something similar on Masterchef. Basically, you wrap a whole chicken in a dough of flour and salt, bake until the dough is rock hard and rest to slowly cook the chicken. The final product is really interesting. I've never tasted chicken like this. Obviously, it's salty. It's also incredibly juicy and chickeny.

Himalayan natural pink salt, hand-mined from deep inside the Himalayan Mountains

I absolutely fell in love with Himalayan pink salt. It goes really well with lighter foods like fruit or pasta and pesto because it's more subtle and mellow in flavour. Also, it's high in minerals and iron and is super pretty.