The Cooking Ninja

Merry Christmas Everyone ! Hope Santa brought you lots of presents.

Winter for me is a sort of a love/hate thing. It means long cold cold days with sun rising only at 8 am and darkness already falling at 5 pm. Even after 7 years living in Europe, I still cannot get used this short daylight time. I dearly miss waking up with warm sunlight caressing my face in the morning - it's so delightful. The other thing I don't like about winter is the freezing cold - even with the right clothings, I can't go for a walk without my nose, cheeks and hands being frozen after a while. That alone is enough to put me off from going out and make me want to stand by the window with a warm cup of tea.

Other than that, I love winter because it means Christmas is around the corner and that gets me all excited like a little girl again. I don't know about you but for me, Christmas always evoke that magical joyful effects & spirit in me. I love seeing children's innocent eyes widen in delightful awe and wonder of this magical world of Santa Claus - not forgetting that famous line used by all parents (including me) that kids have to be good or else Santa won't bring you any presents.

Now the other wonderful thing about winter is FOOD - delicious sinful comfort food. We not only indulge during this period - we seriously convince ourselves that we need all this food to keep ourselves going during those cold winter days. One of those delightful food I'm going to present to you is called fondue (Cheese Fondue). It is mainly made up of 3 different type of cheese, a base blend cheese like emmental or gruyère (large quantity) and 2 more strongly flavoured cheese like comté or appenzeller, bathed in dry white wine in a earthenware pot called "caquelon" till the cheese melted. Spear a piece of hard stale bread with a fondue fork and dip into the cheese fondue. mmm... super yummy - Something so simple yet so nourishing and fun to eat.

Cheese Fondue

(Michèle's recipe)

Ingredients

• 150 g Appenzeller
• 350 g Old Comté (cut into pieces)
• 350 g Gruyère (cut into pieces)
• 3/4 bottle dry white wine
• a small glass Kirsch (eau de vie de cerise)
• old dry bread (cut into pieces)
• garlic
• a dash of pepper

Direction

1. Rub garlic all over the interior of the earthenware pot (caquelon).
2. Cut all the cheese up into cubes and put them into the pot.
3. Pour 3/4 of a bottle of dry white wine, kirsch into the pot. Season it with a dash of pepper.
4. Cook the pot of cheese/wine over medium fire, constantly stirring it with a wooden spoon till the cheese melted and the mixture becomes homogeneous.
5. Take the pot off the fire and continue to keep it hot on top of a small burner on the table.
6. The fondue is now ready.
7. Speared the hard old bread with the fondue fork and start dipping it right at the bottom of the fondue to get the cheese. Be sure not to loose your bread or you will have a fun time fishing for it.
8. Sit back, relax and enjoy this hearty meal with a glass of white wine with your family and friends.

The Verdict

hmm ... how else can I describe the taste ... it simply tastes cheesy of course I love the combination of the 3 different type of cheese together marinated and melted in white wine ... heavenly. It's quite addictive too.

The thing about fondue is that it needs 2 other strong cheeses to give that nice strong flavour. However, if you can only find 1 strong flavoured cheese, it will do also. Necessity makes law I guess.

Notes

Some add a bit of corn flour into the cheese fondue to thicken the mixture but we prefer sans it. If you don't have the above cheese, you can use emmental (the base) and 1 or 2 other stronger cheese like old cheddar cheese or beaufort.

Nowadays, one has a choice between owning a traditional caquelon (warmed by flame using liquid fuel) or an electrical fondue pot. With a powerful electrical one that goes up to 1000 watts, one can make the fondue directly in the pot instead of over a stove and then transferring it onto a stand over a burner.

Little One caught a bug after New Year and was sick for 3 days. It was no fun for her and me. You would think with her being so sick, she would be calling out 'mama' all the time .... oh no no no, the first word Miss Cheeky cried out while being so sick in bed in the middle of the night was Babar (the elephant) - her favourite story character. Each time she woke up, it's 'Babar' or 'mama, Babar' - meaning she wants to watch her favourite DVD Babar. Since then, it is always Babar, the first thing that is on her mind when she wakes up. I think we made a mistake when we introduced her to Babar.

Back to cooking, today I'm going to share with you a very nice recipe that involves lots of eggs and cheese. A Soufflé is easy to whip up yet delicate to bake. It's spectacular looking but must be eaten immediately after taken out of the oven or else it will crumble under its own weight (and that would be a pitty !).

Souffle Au Fromage

Michèle's recipe

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 100 g grated emmental cheese
• 50 g butter
• 40 g plain flour
• ¼ litre milk
• salt, pepper & ground nutmeg

Directions

1. Preheat the oven at 190°C (375 °F).
2. Melt the butter in a pot and stir in the flour.
3. Cook it for 1 or 2 minutes before adding slowly the milk. Stir the mixture vigorously to dissolve it. Make sure that there is no lumps.
4. Season it with salt, pepper and ground nutmeg.
5. Bring it to boil and let it cook until the mixture becomes firm or thickens.
6. Take it off the heat. Mix in rapidly the egg yolk one by one using an electric beater or by hand. Set it aside to let it cool.
7. Beat the egg white until it is stiff. Delicately incorporate the grated cheese. Fold this into the mixture in the pot.
8. Grease the soufflé mould with butter and sprinkle grated cheese on the base and sides of the mould.
9. Pour the mixture into the mould. It should not fill up more than 2/3 of the mold.
10. Once the mould is put into the oven, reduce the temperature to 180°C (350°F) and bake it for 30 minutes. Do not be tempted to open the oven during baking. This will cause the soufflé to collapse.
11. Serve it immediately in its mould or you can remove it from the mould and serve it on a plate.

The Verdict

It turns out very beautifully even when we removed it from the mould. For me, the taste is a bit like scrambled eggs with cheese. I simply love it. The texture is like soft bread that melts in your mouth. Little One who doesn't like cheese nor eggs was tugging in her share mouthful after mouthful.

One warning though, this soufflé is more nourishing and filling than it looks. After a few mouthful, I was already full. Given the ingredient list, it's not entirely surprising, eh ?

Notes

Soufflé goes very well with white wine like Bourgogne or Alsace. Other cheese than emmental should work, it might be interesting to experiment here.

Gougères [goozhair] are savory choux pastry with cheese - a specialty from Burgundy (France), traditionally made with Gruyère. These are mainly served as aperitifs.

My first taste of gougères was made by my mom-in-law who is quite a great cook. At the first bite, I fell in love with it immediately. It is so rich in flavour and I love that crunchy cheese toppings with the softness inside. It is very hard to stop eating it after the first one - which is probably a tragedy for your diet. Ever since then, I have always wanted to try making some myself but I didn't have the time and also I thought it was very difficult to do. Surprisingly it wasn't as complicated as I thought. In fact, it is very simple and easy to do and it doesn't take very long to get the batter ready for baking. If I can do it pretty quickly even with my baby girl clinging to my legs all the time, you can do it in a shorter time than me.

This recipe is taken from my mother-in-law's favourite cook book which is an old classic : Cuisine et Vins de France by the famous Curnonsky.

Gougères

(taken from Cuisine et Vins de France - Curnonsky)

Ingredients

• 8 eggs (for the dough)
• 1 egg (for glazing, optional)
• 500 ml milk
• 120 g butter
• 250 g flour
• 200 g gruyère or comté or any strong flavoured cheese (I guess old cheddar would do)
• 2 tbsp thick cream (crème fraîche, optional)
• 5 g salt
• A pinch of pepper

Directions

1. Cut the cheese in small cubes/dice.
2. Put the butter, milk, salt, pepper in a pot and bring it to boil.
3. Once boiled, remove pan from the heat and add in the flour. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon till the mixture is smooth and satiny.
4. Put the pot back on heat (hot), stir it vigorously till the dough doesn't stick to the pot or the wooden spoon. This is to dry the mixture.
5. Take it off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes.
6. Stir in the eggs one at the time without stopping. Make sure that each egg is well incorporated into the dough before adding the next.
7. Mix in 125 g cheese to the dough mixture and stir till it is well blended.
8. Add in the cream and mix it well.
9. Drop one level of tablespoon of mixture at the time (spaced them out) onto the baking paper on a baking tray and brush a bit of battered egg on top of each ball. Then sprinkle some diced cheese on top of it.
10. Bake in over at 200°C (400°F - gas mark 6) for approximately 20 minutes.
11. The gougères should be gold brown, crunchy yet soft on the outside and moist on the inside. It can be taken warm or room temperature but always freshly baked. Be careful not to overcook them !

The Verdict

My mom-in-law said : "wow! Ils sont beaux. Mmm...félicitations. Ils sont bons et très bien réussi. Bravo!" (translation : wow! They turned out so beautifully. Mmm...congraulations. They are very good and perfectly done.) Didn't get any complaint and the whole batch disappeared in a rather short time, so I guess it was a success

Pierre and I felt that it would have tasted even better if we had added more cheese. And that the last batch of gougères baked with grated cheese on top tasted best as it had a very nice cheese aroma and crispy top.

Note

Be warned: making these puffs using a wooden spoon needs a lot of muscle work. I did it like my MIL - use an electric mixer. I was tempted to do it manually but my MIL warned me that I will have a sore arm if I went down this road. Thank goodness, I listened to her: I could literally feel the pain of my poor hand held mixer - it was going fast at first and then laboured with great pain. My arms got tired just holding on to it !

Cheese: any type of strong cheese would do. We used cantal for our gougères because of its somewhat strong flavor, but you can experiment with whatever you have around (old blue cheese is also an option). The cheese can also be grated instead of cutting it into small cubes, making the puffs more homogenous but loosing the chunks of melted cubes.

Regarding eggs, my MIL used 6 big eggs whereas I used 8 medium size eggs. And the beating of the eggs, I followed my MIL advice - beat them all together at once. Glazing of the gougères is optional. My mom-in-law (MIL)and I baked ours without glazing and it still tasted very good. As for the thick cream, my mom-in-law always bakes hers without it. I baked mine with it just to see if there is any differences but I found none.