Masterchef - Gary's Blackforest Cake & why do you cook?

I've been meaning to try this out for some time now - and with quite a bit of stress over the past couple of weeks, I figured the best thing to do to de-stress over the weekend was to make a cake. :)

For me, cooking and baking is a way to deal with stress. Because it's so unlike anything else I do in my day to day - and it requires the utmost concentration, it really helps to reboot my brain and relieve stress. Back in 2001, when 9/11 happened, I wasn't in New York at the time as I was in college. The whole thing was so mind numbing and impossible to take in, I ended up making pasta alfredo for everyone to give me something to mentally cope. (Mind you, it tasted absolutely horrendous.)

Gary's Blackforest cake

http://www.masterchef.com.au/black-forest-cake.htm

While the recipe is quite complex and involves quite a number of techniques and creations, the whole thing wasn't actually that bad. As you can tell, I didn't end up with the 5 tier cake like the one on the show simply because it was too late to try and make a second sponge cake (I only had 1 springform pan) and I hadn't bought enough marscapone cheese. Plus, when we served it up, most people had already eaten dessert anyway, so it was probably a good thing that it was a little smaller in size.

Yummo.

Why do you cook? What hobbies help you destress?

MasterChef, Jamie Oliver and Dressing the board

As many of you are probably aware, I live in Australia and am a big big fan of Australian reality show, MasterChef. Amateur cooks compete in these amazing challenges recreating siganture dishes from some of the world's biggest culinary icons - Matt Moran, Kylie Kwong, Neil Perry - and at the end one is left standing to be named the MasterChef and gets a publishing deal, money and prestige. Anyway if you haven't seen it - you should - the eps are here - http://www.masterchef.com.au

Anyhow, this week, the show's being filmed in London, home to some of the biggest cooking names around - including of course, Jamie Oliver. I've seen his shows, read about his philanthropic work - he was showcased in a cover story I had worked on at my old job. To see this guy doing his thing on ANOTHER show though I one he's not the producer of - was actually quite phenomenal. You can see Jamie is the real deal, passionate - bursting with energy - completely eccentric and running at 50 million miles a minute!

One of the interesting concepts he presented was a new way to cook steak - he called it "dressing the board" - quite a simple concept but really brought out some fresh new flavours. Here's what we tried:

Ingredients:

1 thick juicy 200 g sirloin steak
3 tbs mint, finely chopped
2 small chilis finely chopped
1 tsp mince garlic
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs balsamic vinegar

Large wood chopping board

Method:

Cook the steak in a pan as desired. While the steak is cooking prepare your dressing ingredients and mix the mint and chili well on the board. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic and stir through. When the steak is cooked take it straight out the pan, place it on the board with your dressing and coat liberally. As the steak starts to cool and seal off, it'll take on the flavours of the board - so you have a well flavoured piece of gorgeous and juicy steak - without the typical burning of the marinade! Genius!

Master Chef Inspired Pavlova

Marshmallowy Goodness.

For Anzac Day - I decided to try and make a Pavlova, having seen Donna Hay's recipe on Masterchef. I mean what better way to celebrate a great Australian public holiday than with a great Australian dessert?

The only problem - small tiny problem - was that I didn't own a beater. And when I saw those dreaded instructions: "whip egg whites to glossy, satiny peaks" I knew I was in trouble.

About 30 minutes of hard core whipping later - I had my glossy peaks and my pavlova in the oven. Feeling quite proud of myself, I went on to read about the topping.

"300 mL cream, well whipped"

Crap.

(turned out okay, but definitely investing the $30 in a mixer!)

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Ingredients:

4 egg whites
300 g caster sugar
1 tsp vinegar
3 tbs corn flour
1 tsp vanilla
-- and if you don't have a mixer - a fork and some strong forearms!

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Lay out a piece of baking paper on a baking tray and draw a 20 cm circle, if desired.

Whip egg whites until soft peaks form. Slowly sift in sugar and continue beating until the peaks are stiff and satiny. Mix in corn flour. Fold vanilla and vinegar into the mixture.

Mound your mixture into the centre of your baking paper and bake for 25 minutes. Turn off the oven and allow pavolova to cool in the oven.

For the topping, use about 300 ml of well whipped cream and seasonal berries, kiwis, passionfruit etc.

Croquembouche!

Over Easter long weekend, I finally managed to tackle it - the elusive croquembouche. I started at about 1 pm (this time without a dinner party or non-cooks trying to tell me what to do going on in the background). Four hours, eight eggs and a burnt sauce pan later (which I managed to scrub out - whew) - I had it - a 2 foot tall croquembouche!

A croquembouche is essentially puff pastries (or choux pastries in the book), filled with custard then stacked into a tall cone shape held together by rich thick caramel. Event croquembouches use about 100 puffs and are about 3-4 ft tall. You can rent or buy a croquembouche cone from a catering shop to get the cone shape. Or you can do what I did - rolled up some newspaper into a cone and line it with baking paper.

It took about 40 choux patries (many of which were quite flat and not very well puffed, but they were okay once I turned them on their sides). Though on the small side - the results were certainly delicious!

One word of warning though, choux pastry and caramel do NOT keep in the fridge. We put 1/2 our croquembouche in the fridge thinking we could save it for later (there were only three of us that night as I was afraid of another eminent disaster). Unfortunately, I discovered the next day a gooey sticky pile of pastry with runny caramel on top. Very not cool.

(will post ingredients and methods soon!)
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