White Bread with Truffle Oil

Happy Sunday!

I’ve got the easiest bread recipe, and you can make it a bit more luxurious by adding truffle ok instead of olive oil.

You will need:

• 250g white plain flour
•  1 sachet of instant yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon of caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 150ml luke warm water
• 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of white truffle oil

 

Combine the flour, yeast, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Once combined make a well in the centre and pour in your water and your oil. Gradually mix the flour in until it forms a dough.

Transfer the dough to the work top and start to knead. Your dough will be wetter than a pizza dough. It should be sticky. Carry on kneading the dough for about 10 minutes. Place your dough into a lightly oiled, bowl and leave to prove covered for an hour. Whilst proving preheat the oven to 220C

Once your hour prove is done, knead the dough for another 10 minutes, then divide the dough into two parts. Put the dough in two identical bowls to create the round shape and place them in a baking tray. Form these sections into small rounds and place on covered baking trays for another hour.

Now cook your rolls in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Check the rolls at 15 min to see if they are done by tapping the bottom of the rolls to check that they sound hollow. When they are ready put them in a cooling rack covering them with a clean tea towel so that it absorbs the steam coming out from the rolls.

 

Letme know what you think!

Ana

Spicy Pulled Pork Rissoles

Hope you are all doing well.
Growing up in a Portuguese/Chinese household, I have been exposed to fusion food quite a lot.
So I have decided to make these lovely Spicy Pulled Pork Rissoles – in Portuguese Rissóis – I am basically filling this Portuguese snack with an amazing American meat.

 
For the Spicy Pulled Pork,  you will need:

• Shoulder or Pork Butt
• 2 onions
• 1/2 tablespoon of chili powder
• 1/2 tablespoon of chili flakes
• 1 tablespoon of paprika
• 500ml Pear cider
• 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
• Salt and Pepper

Start by turning on your oven on 150C.
Cut the onions in quarters and scatter the pieces all over a big roasting tin. Place the pork on top of the bed of onion and rub all of the dry ingredients on the meat – don’t forget to wash your hands thoroughly after.. you don’t want to be touching anywhere sensitive after.

Pour over the cider and cover the tin with foil and let it cook covered in the oven for 4 hours, and 1 additional hour with the tin uncovered. The meat should be fork-tender, that’s when you know it’s done.
Remove the meat from the pot and shred completely with two forks and return the shredded meat to the pot and keep in with the juices until you need it. You can always tweak the quantities of spices to your taste and add on other herbs and spices. You can also use cheap cola or a stout instead of pear cider – the world is your oyster.

To make the dough:

• 125g all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 125ml water
• Salt
• 1 beaten egg
• Breadcrumb
• Oil for frying

Bring water to a boil in a pot and add the salt and butter, turn the heat off and stir in the flour stirring with a wooden spoon until a ball is formed and leave it to cool completely.

Once the dough has cooled down, dust your work surface with flour and knead the dough. I find it easier to use the pasta machine to roll the dough out, but you can do it with a rolling pin too, or your favourite bottle of wine. Roll the dough to about 0.5cm in thickness and using a cutter (or a pint glass in my case) cut disks of dough, the diameter should be about 7cm, but again that’s to your discretion, if you want to make one giant rissol, I am not going to stop you. In fact, please do and let me have half of it!

Place the pulled pork filling in the middle of a circle and fold the dough over to form a half circle (fat half circle), pressing the edges together and set aside. When you run out of dough or run out of filling you are one step closer to AMAZINGNESS!
Brush the pastries in beaten egg, and quickly dip them in breadcrumb. Fry until golden brown in hot oil, doing so in batches. You can check if the oil is hot enough by putting one of the rissoles in.

You definitely need to try this! Let me know how it goes for you guys!

Ana

Ramen with Braised Pig’s Ears and Roasted Pork Belly

Hello!
If you have not watched THE MIND OF A CHEF, please do yourselves a favour and go check it out! it’s very inspiring and educational (culinarily speaking)

Chef David Chang is an absolute junkie for ramen like me (not much choice, we got the Asian in us!)! I was inspired to make my own Japanese ramen noodles from scratch.

For the Ramen Noodles:

• 200g all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons of baked soda
• 50ml warm tap water
• 50ml cold tap water

To make the baked soda, spread a a good amount of baking soda on a foil-lined sheet pan. Put it in the oven for about 1hour on 150C. You will only need 2 teaspoons for this recipe but you can store the extra in a jar for as long as you need. I read on a few websites and thought the baking soda would change colours, but that is not correct.

We need the baked soda to change the pH levels in the water, this is what gives the ramen its texture.

In a big mixing bowl put the warm water and the 2 teaspoons of baked soda to dissolved, then add the cold water. Lastly add the flour and mix until it forms into a dough. The mixture is quite dry and crumbly. Knead it for a full 5 minutes and wrap it in some cling film and let it rest for 20 minutes. Then knead again for another 5 minutes (very good work out). Reward the dough  in cling film and let it chill in the fridge for about 1 hour. 

For this recipe I would highly recommend for you to have a pasta machine, the dough is not easy to hand roll and cut if you don’t have the experience. Once the dough has chilled devide it into 4 equal portions. The thickness setting on the pasta machine is to your descretion, I like mine not so thin. 

Like Italian pasta, cook the noodles in a deep pot with plenty of water. The cooking time will depend on the thickness of the pasta, mine took about 3 minutes. Check the noodles regularly while they’re cooking; if they stick together, rinse them under cold water immediately after straining them from the pot to stop the cooking and rinse off any excess starch. Make sure you only cook the noodles when you’re ready to plate, you don’t want the noodles sitting around while you get the rest ready. 

Ingredients for Braised Pig’s Ears

• 2 pig’s ears
• 1/4 cup Shaoxing Rice Wine, or sake
• 3 Tablespoons dark Chinese soy sauce
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 star anise

 

f your pig’s ears come with a few strand of unwanted hair and you don’t have a blow torch to hand, like me you can burn the hair using your gas stove – it is in no means as efficient as a blow torch, but it helps. 

Par-boil the ears in a pot of water for a few minutes, this will help remove any dirty from the skin. 

Remove the ears from the pot and put it in another clean smaller pot and fill it with enough water that will cover the ears, then add all the ingredients. Bring it to a boil and reduce it to simmer for 2hours30min. You will want to keep an eye on it for about every 30 minutes to turn the ears and add more water if necessary. 

When they are done, the ears should be very soft and dark. Let it chill completely before you sliced the ears into thin strips.This dish is supposed to be served cold but is just as good hot.

Please do not discard of the liquid used to cooked the ears, this will be used for our ramen broth base!

 

For the Pork Belly: 

• 1 Strip of pork belly cut in half
• Salt and Pepper
•  Chili oil 

Use a knife to poke the rind as many holes as possible. Brush the rind with chilli oil and season it with salt and pepper. You should marinate if you have time, but if you don’t, it isn’t a problem. place it in the roasting pan lined with foil and roast it in hot oven for an hour in 200C. The skin should puff up into crackling. Remove pork from oven and allow to rest uncovered. When ready to serve, cut into 1cm slices. 
For the Broth (1 serving) 

• 1/2 ladle of the pig’s ears cooking liquid
• 1 ladle of water 
• 1 teaspoon of miso paste

If you are not making it the pig’s ear and don’t have the liquid, you can make your broth/stock from scratch with any pork, smoked meat or chicken bones/fat – I will post a recipe for an easy broth in the next couple of days for you.

Add all the ingredients to a pot and bring it to boil. The thing I like about the ramen broths is that is very open to taste, so you can add absolutely anything you want as it is to your taste. I like it fat and flavoursome.

 
To assemble your lovely bowl of awesomeness, put your noodles in a bowl, add a few strips of the pig’s ears and a few slices of the pork belly (or whatever meats or vegetables you want to have with your ramen!) and add the broth. I have served this with a soft boiled egg and some spring onions. To create those lovely curls, cut the spring onions into thin strips and put it in a bowl with cold water, this will make the strips curl up. 

I hope you enjoy making this as much as I did, I am definitely happy with the results, nothing tastes better than your own success! 
Ana 

Penne with Pesto and Black Olives

Happy new year by beautiful people! Sorry I haven’t been very active with my posting, you have to understand that I have been in multiple food and alcohol comas during the holiday season! 

My other excuse is that I can’t take good pictures of the food due to the stupid winter and not having natural sunlight! However I have solved that problem by buying a mini studio set up with lights. 

  
I’ve decided to post quite an easy, healthy and quick meal for you today (also I haven’t done food shopping yet and I was dying to test out the studio set and lights. 

I’ve chosen to use penne, but you can use any pasta you have – if you have fresh pasta that’s even better! 

Ingredients you will need for this recipe:

• 1 cup of pasta
• 1 tablespoon of pesto
•  8 black olives (chopped) 
• 1 fresh chilli (chopped) 
• salt and pepper

Cook the pasta to your liking, I like mine al dente, about 10-11min on boiled water in medium high heat. 

While your pasta is cooking, start prepping your sauce. Cut the fresh chilli in half and remove the seeds by scrapping it with the back of your knife – I love spicy food but I think this pasta benefits with just a bit of heat. Chop up the black olives, or if you want you can mince it, it’s to your preference. 

Once your pasta is cooked, make sure you drain it well and add all the ingredients. Salt and pepper is to your preference, I like to let the pesto speak for itself so I barely add any salt. 

I will be posting  my recipe for the pesto soon, I think everyone should try and make their own pesto st least once! 

Enjoy! 

Ana