Gateau Basque

An intriguing recipe from this month's Australian Gourmet Traveler ('AGT') magazine. A cake filled with pastry cream.

Last week I bought a couple of copies of gourmet topic magazines ('delicious.' and AGT) to see if there are any I would be interested in subscribing to. I found that I wasn't that impressed with the content in general. An awful lot of glossy ads for things I can't afford, and don't really want. A few nice recipes, but not that many. A lot of "celebrity"personalities covered though, which again are not in my personal domain of interests.

AGT did have a focus this month on Spanish and Basque recipes, and a particular dessert caught my attention. I was also inspired to make a 'Butter Chicken Curry Paella', my own invention, which turned out OK, but not great.

The gateau didn't look that difficult, just time consuming. It proved to be a bit more tricky than I expected. Normally with a cake you make a batter, with this one you make a dough, which is then chilled and rolled, similar to a pie crust. The dough was a lot stickier than I was prepared for, and my method of rolling onto floured baking paper wasn't entirely successful. I did manage to get it into the pan about 70% intact, and then was able to repair it. The repair process was initially frustrating, with sticky fingers doing more damage than repair, until I got my hands wet, which simplified matters greatly.

Also my abysmal St George Oven was hotter than it was supposed to be. Never buy a St George Oven, they look nice, but have the worst quality. The gateau was a bit over-cooked on the bottom. It did smell wonderful though.

It ended up tasting quite nice. The mix of textures were very pleasant, and the flavors well balanced.

It seemed like a good idea at the time....

Yes, the title has an ellipsis with 4 full stops. What does this mean? It means something really something is about to be something. I wanted to emphasize something. But I digress.

Before travelling to NYC, I decided that we (as in Siew Fong and I, not you and I) should take the opportunity to dine, at least once in our life, at a incredibly fancy restaurant. We had been to good restaurants, some even classed as 'fancy'. But I had never, at least by my recollection, been to a truly recognized fancy restaurant, as recognized by a biased and commercial guide such as Michelin. So I researched restaurants with at least 2 Michelin stars in NYC. The first couple I tried to reserve were closed the week we were in NYC, but 3 star 'Le Bernardin' was open, and had an open table.

It turned out that this was one of the top rated places in NYC, by Zagat, and #1 in French cuisine. The kids were left with the geriatric relatives to fend for themselves. We donned finer clothing than usual to dine. Fortunately a tie was optional.

So we had the tasting menu, with matching wines. This meant really tiny servings of incredibly good food, served impeccably by affable staff for a pile of cash. Well, not a pile of cash, but a whole lot of electronic bits that would come back to us as Amex points. I can say that it was reasonable value for money.

One of the dishes served was a crispy bread crusted black bass served with a parsnip custard. Mmmm, parsnip custard. You have no idea how fabulous this was. It was so smooth, creamy, and even, dare I say it, tasty.

It had to be done at home. I knew it had to be done.

So on our return to Sydney, I went to the local fruit and veg shoppe, and got some turnips. And now you know my terrible secret: I often confuse parsnips and turnips. Not quite the end of the world, and probably not as horrible a prospect as having a national health plan.

So it was a turnip custard to be made. I just don't do fish. Fish is expensive, and far too easy to ruin. So I picked up my favorite budget cut of meat: pork neck, from the Chinese butcher. I blended up (meaning chucked in a blender) a handful of almonds slices and walnut meats. A bit of flour, an egg, and a bunch of cream later, and I had a batter. The pork neck, sliced into steaks by the overly friendly butcher (I am reasonably confident that I am now his friend, or brother, or something), was marinated in some cranberry jam and salt. I grilled the pork until done, dredged it in the nutty batter, and gave it a quick shallow fry in some oil to crisp it up. Don't you just love to dredge stuff, it's just so, so industrial.

Good Lord! I haven't described the manufacture of the turnip (not parsnip) custard! OK, so I peeled the turnips, chopped them into tiny cubes, and chucked them onto a steamer tray above a teeny lake of water in the pressure cooker. 15 minutes of pressure cooking later, and after a bit of cooling, I removed the turnipettes to the blender (I cleaned it after the nut affair). A bit of blending, an egg, some cream, a tiny bit of salt and pepper, and then a tinier bit of allspice, and I had a proto-mousse. To the ramekins Batman! Holy ramekin in a bath of water in the oven at 200 degrees C for 30 minutes Batman!. This would have been really clever if I knew what I was doing. While it was very smooth, it was a bit coagulated.

But it tasted divine. Not parsnip divine, but divine enough.

I served it all with some couscous and steamed asparagus. The pork didn't crisp very well, but tasted nice.