Curry Crisps

I used to love Salt n' Shake crisps - it's amazing how much more fun crisps seemed when the salt came in a separate sachet. But less well known were the 80s follow-up, 'Flavour 'n' Shake', where the little blue bag of salt was replaced with a pouch of powederd flavouring. I fondly remember combining different flavour sachets and pouring them into the packet, inevitably with revolting results.

 

So here is my homage to the Salt/Flavour 'n' Shake concept. First I made the crisps by thinly slicing potato and sweet potato, and then deep frying in vegetable oil until golden brown and very crispy.

 

I made the curry seasoning by roasting cumin, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, peppercorns and cardamon. I finely ground the roasted spices, and mixed in some salt and chilli powder... before putting the whole lot in a big bag and giving it a damn good shake!

Fresh home made crisps are simple, cheap, and taste bloody brilliant. I guess they could be a good opener at a dinner party, but I wouldn't really know - I just sat down with a nice cold beer in front of the TV, and scoffed the lot.

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Cronut

I'm sure everybody knows by now that something called a cronut has taken New York by storm. A deep-fried croissant-doughnut hybrid, which people start queuing up for at 5am, before the bakery sells out of them within 15 minutes. One unstable individual apparently cried when she arrived that little bit too late to buy one. Other people travel hundreds of miles, or even pay $100 for someone else to wait in line and buy one for them. I'm sure they're good... in fact, they look amazing... but even if I lived in NY, getting up at 5am or paying some chancer $100 just doesn't make any sense to me.

As you can imagine, the cronut hasn't reach South London yet - but where there's a will, there's a way. Croissant dough is notoriously technical and time consuming to make, but something caught my eye in the supermarket freezer cabinet the other day... ready-to-bake croissants!

The first step in transforming these into cronuts is obviously to defrost them, and then squidge them all together and roll them out. In an effort to attain vaguely even flaky layers, I rolled out the dough, folded it, and repeated a few times. Finally it was time to cut out the doughnut shapes. I only managed to get three out of it... and there wasn't much dough wasted.

I'm sure if you're doing this properly you should heat the oil to a specific temperature, but I never bother with any of that stuff. It's best just to test the temperature with a little left-over dough... I reckon you want it so the 'nuts bubble gently as soon as they hit the oil, without sizzling too violently. At this sort of temperature, they should cook through without burning, or absorbing too much oil and therefore becoming greasy (heaven forbid). They should take around 2 minutes to cook.

Thankfully they puffed up very well, and the outside was nice and crisp. I fancied a maple glaze on my cronuts, so I mixed some icing sugar with maple syrup and a little water. I dunked them into the icing so they were half covered, then left them to set for a few minutes.

 

I stopped short of awarding them the full 11/11 out of respect for the definitive version, but while these might not be as good (or as light) as the real deal, they were pretty bloody good. In fact, I polished off all three in no time at all. I didn't have to go to all the way to NY, and I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night or pay the price of a prime steak dinner.

 

 

 

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Death By Duck

Do you know the feeling when you really want something, but just can't have it? Like a pet penguin. Or an Iron Man suit.

I had such a feeling last month, during a short road trip around California. We'd left LA a couple of nights previously, and were some way up the coast when I found out about a bar in the Koreatown area of LA called Beer Belly. This place features a huge selection of craft beers, as well as a menu stuffed with drool-enducing treats including "pork belly chips", "pizza mac n' cheese", "deep fried oreos", and "death by duck". The latter dish consisting of duck fat fries topped with duck skin crackling and confit duck, served with a raspberry mustard dip.

Furious with myself for missing the opportunity to visit Beer Belly, I had two options - drive two hours back to LA and risk disturbing the matrimonial bliss... or try to forget about it, and pretend I didn't care. Under the circumstances I really had to go for the second option (and to be fair, we actually ended up having some awesome tacos that night). But after the holiday, the intense sense of unfulfillment lingered on, slowly eating away at me. There was only one solution. I had to make my own replica of Death by Duck.

Stage 1 - Duck Confit

There is no end of recipes online for confit duck, but essentially it just consists of cooking duck legs in duck fat, at a low temperature, for a bloody long time. Technically you should salt cure the meat first, but frankly life's too short for that kind of palaver. First I had to remove the skin from one of the legs to use later for the crackling, and then I begun the slow processing of "confiting" the duck. Even the smallest ring on the hob seemed a bit hot, so I ended up chucking it in the oven at 115 C for around five hours.

I then let it cool, and put it in the fridge overnight. When you're ready to use it, you just need to pan fry the legs for a few minutes. This has the added benefit of crisping up the skin very nicely indeed. The meat should be very tender, and easily come away from the bone.

Stage 2 - Duck crackling

I took the duck skin that was salvaged from stage 1, salted it, and dried it with kitchen paper. I cut it into six pieces, and put in a dry frying pan on the lowest heat for 20 minutes, regularly pouring off the excess fat. The pieces of skin puffed up and became wonderfully crunchy, although they did dramatically shrink in size as the fat slowly melted away. It actually made me wonder where Beer Belly get all that duck skin from!

Stage 3 - Raspberry Mustard

Fresh raspberries cost a fortune, so I used tinned. I strained off the juice, and then pushed the fruit through a sieve to create a loose puree. I mixed in the wholegrain mustard, and also a dash of vinegar (as the tinned fruit was not really acidic enough).

Stage 4 - Duck fat fries

I really wasn't in the mood for peeling and chopping potatoes, so I used a pack of frozen french fries. I went for a variation on the "twice cooked" method - but instead of frying them twice, I started them off in the oven on a low temperature, to make sure they were cooked through. I then finished them off by frying them in very hot duck fat for five minutes, until they were golden and crispy. Finally I drained the fries, patted them dry, and tossed them in salt and white pepper.

The finished dish made for a handsome plate of food, perfect with a cold beer and a mound of coleslaw on the side. The crackling was light and crispy, the meat was tender and flavoursome, and the fries were gloriously greasy and ducky. Even the raspberry mustard dip, which I was initially cynical about, tasted really good and cut right through all the richness (maybe I shouldn't have been such a tight-arse, and bought fresh raspberries).

The name "Death by Duck" seems rather appropriate. Your arteries would surely give up the battle if you ate this thing regularly. But the things that are bad for you are usually the things that taste the best, and in that department, I can assure your that DBD is a winner.

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Deep Fried Beer

You may remember that I mentioned my trip to Texas in a previous post. Well, one of the main highlights of the calendar in Texas is the annual state fair, held in Dallas - and at the State Fair of Texas, the highlight is the food. And almost all of it is deep fried... from fairly "normal" items such as corn dogs and spiral potatoes, through to more exotic dishes including deep fried twinkies and deep fried butter balls. And in 2010, the award for the most creative food went to fried beer.

This invention, covered in media around the world, consisted of ravioli-shaped pockets of pretzel dough, containing beer (still in liquid form) and deep fried. And even though each piece only contains a mouthful of beer at most, this being America - and deep in the bible belt - you have to be 21 to try one.

I realised, of course, that I had to try making this myself. It's one of those things which has been on my to-do list for ages... somewhere between watching Citizen Kane and painting the windowsills. But finally, the time had come. First I started by preparing the beer filling. I knew that I'd have to somehow set the beer before making the parcels. There were basically two options - freezing the beer, or setting it with a bit of gelatine - but I didn't want to risk the filling of the finished product being either icy or gelatinous. I ended up going for a hybrid approach... a little bit of gelatine, and a short period of time in the freezer. The result was a sort of sticky beer slush.

Next I made the dough out of flour, egg, and crushed pretzels. This stuff was hard to work with, and very hard to roll thin. But eventually I had ten thin discs rolled out, and I was ready to make the parcels. I made five of them, carefully filling each one with the beer goo, and sealing the edges with egg. I put them in the freezer for ten minutes, and then it was time to fry them!

I started by frying a bit of leftover dough to test the oil temperature, and was delighted to find that it tasted delicious... sort of like a crisp, brittle, pretzel flavoured biscuit. I had high hopes for this, and proceeded to fry the dough-encased beer packages.

Unfortunately one of them had sprung a leak, and when the freezing cold beer hit the oil, the thing fucking erupted, spitting out oil in all directions. I was terrified that it was going to catch fire, and I actually started preparing a wet towel to throw over the pan. Luckily it wasn't necessary in the end, and I bravely fished the thing out, through a shower of boiling oil.

Anyway, after a quick sprinkling of salt, it was time to taste them. The casing was nice and crisp, and the beer had fully melted (without being too hot). But how did it taste? Let's just say that if you like the idea of a mouthful of flat beer mixed with hot salty pastry, then this will be right up your street. As long as you don't mind beer spilling everywhere as soon as you bite into it.

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Gulab Jamun

I love curry houses, I really do. I love the retro kitsch decor, the awful music, the poppadoms with bright yellow sauce, and the overwhelming choice of dishes (which all taste reassuringly familiar). I love the token vegetable sides, the pints of Cobra, and the after-dinner mints.

But one thing I don't love is the desserts. Why on earth do 95% of Indian restaurants have the same awful selection? Lemon sorbet stuffed inside a lemon skin. Coconut ice cream stuffed inside a coconut shell. Pineapple ice cream stuffed inside a hollowed-out pineapple. Kulfi moulded into a "mountain" shape. It's pathetic... and that's coming from someone who loves ice cream. A couple of proper Indian desserts wouldn't be hard to make, and I'm sure they would be top sellers.

Anyway, the other day I was in Asda - I don't often shop there, but happened to find myself on Old Kent Road, so I popped in. And let me tell you, I was pretty impressed. Particularly with the world food section, in which I found this - Gulab Jamun Mix!

Gulab jamun is probably my favourite Indian dessert - they look like little mini doughnuts or dumplings, and are made of... well I'm not really sure what they're made of. But mine were made of water, milk, and gulab jamun mix. You just have to make up the dough, roll it into balls, and deep fry them for a few minutes. The packet says it makes 40 - but I only managed half of that.

When it comes to the syrup, you have to make it yourself - you're on your own. So I made the syrup out of equal quantities of water and sugar, and added cardamon, saffron, and honey. I then dunked the gulab jamun in the syrup, and served ate them warm with some crushed pistachios.

I honestly can't understand why every Indian restaurant up and down the country isn't serving this. It's cheap and quick to make, and tastes absolutely cracking. But no, instead we get the same old crap that's been at the bottom of the freezer for the last 10 yeas. I really wish they would stop insulting us with this rubbish, and give us the real deal.


So onto the ratings. This may be the de facto national dessert of India, but that doesn't change the fact that it is truly filthy. Deep fried dumplings soaked in syrup? You couldn't really make up a less healthy (or more tasty) dish.

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Easter Eating pt2 - Easter Katsu Curry

Some say that eggs at Easter symbolise new life, and celebrate the resurrection.

Unfortunately I don't believe any of that old cobblers for one second, but I still love Easter. And since we all associate Easter with eggs and chicks and stuff, here's my second Easter dish - the chicken and egg katsu curry.

Katsu curry has become pretty well known in the UK thanks to certain ubiquitous Japanese-style chain restaurants, but I'm prepared to stick my neck out and claim that the chicken and egg katsu curry is a brand new invention!

I took a few chicken thigh fillets and three soft boiled eggs, then dipped them in seasoned flour, then beaten egg, and finally panko breadcrumbs. Then it was time to fry them - I cooked the chicken at a moderate temperature until golden brown, but the egg had to be cooked at full blast for just one minute to ensure it stayed runny.

Most people just make Japanese curry sauce from ready-made sauce "blocks" which, to be fair, is probably the most authentic method. But although it says "hot" on the packet, I can assure you it is anything but. So I spiced mine up a bit with some chilli, garlic, and cumin. I also added some sliced onions and grated carrot, because vegetables cancel out fried chicken.

What better way to remember Jesus and all that stuff?

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Bombay Potato Hash Browns

We all look online for recipes now and again - even experts such as myself. But after searching for hash brown recipes, I felt somewhat disappointed. All the recipes I saw were for pan-fried grated potato patties - which I'm sure taste great, but to me, that's a potato rosti, not a hash brown. I wanted to make the kind of hash brown you get at a greasy spoon, or with a McD's breakfast. The best way I can describe one of these hash browns would be finely diced potato, stuck together with "potato glue", and deep fried. It sounded doable.

But then I had a brainwave - to combine the hash brown with the flavour of everybody's favourite (well, certainly my favourite) potato dish, Bombay Potato. What I needed was one of these - a packet of "Bombay Potatoes recipe mix". Yes, you could of course use your own mix of spices, but I thought that the Schwarz mix had a certain comedy kitsch value. But despite finding plenty of evidence for this product's existence online, after searching three separate supermarkets, I still had not found it. The best I could do was a jar of Asda bombay potato curry paste.

So I made my "potato glue" out of mashed potato, flour, egg, and the bombay potato curry paste. This stuff was sticky and horrible - leaving it in the fridge to dry for a few hours helped a bit, but not much. But I added a bit more flour and some extra dried spices, and it was just about workable.

Next I diced some potatoes as finely as I could, and then tried to squeeze the moisture out using a rolling pin. It was a particularly satisfying experience to feel the little cubes of potato popping like bubble wrap. I mixed the diced potatoes with the "potato glue", formed the mixture into squares, and it was ready for deep frying.

Fresh, crisp hash browns, with a spicy curry flavour. A bit of mango chutney on the side, and you can't go wrong.

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