My Top Four Ingredients of 2011

When I think back on the last year of cooking and eating, I think in terms of the ingredients I have most enjoyed using and tasting.  These ingredients have also - as you'd expect - been reflected in the posts of 2011.  In many respects, finding new foods and flavours is how I expand my repertoire of recipes and discover new dishes.  So, here they are, my top four ingredients of 2011.

1.  Coconut

Shredded.  Shaved.  Coconut milk.  Coconut cream.  Coconut frosting, powdered, toasted and desiccated.

 I have used coconut in vegetarian green curries, Thai pomelo salads and (of course) in cupcakes.  In many respects 2011 was my Year of the Coconut.  The only form of coconut I haven't be able to find since I left South East Asia is fresh, young coconut - I love these with the tops sliced off, sipping the clear juice with a straw and then scooping out the sweet, gelatinous flesh.  It doesn't get a whole lot better.

If you'd like to taste a little bit of my favourite new ingredient of 2011, check out Penny's Lemon & Coconut Tart or my Coconut Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting.  Perhaps some Coconut Bread for your Sunday brunch?  Or add some coconut cream to your pumpkin soup when the weather turns cold - I highly recommend it!

2.  Saffron

In addition to tinting a dish a lovely orange colour, the fragrance of this spice is for me the scent equivalent of mead - golden, sweet and delicious.  While not dominating a recipe, it adds terrific layers of flavour that are really very subtle.  When I did a wine tasting course last year I realised just how often the whites I love have often have the scent of saffron to them.

The best example in my repertoire of a saffron-flavoured dish is the lamb tagine with dates from Claudia Roden's Arabesque cookbook.  The dish is served piping hot over a plate of fluffy couscous, redolent with the scent of saffron wafting up as you eat.  What's not to like?

I am also about to upload a brand new lamb tagine recipe which uses saffron water - the result of pouring hot water over a pinch of saffron strands - and grated pumpkin.  It looks amazing, so I'll let you all know how it goes.

3.  Cinnamon

What is not to love about cinnamon?  Truthfully, this spice features on my list of Top Four Things of All Time.  It's up there with fresh sheets and rainy days on the couch reading a good book.

Cinnamon has always featured pretty heavily in all my cooking - from tagines (yep, right up there with saffron) to ice cream and, of course, muffins.  Check out the post on Buttermilk Choc-Chip Muffins - without the ground cinnamon these beauties would only taste (and smell) half as good.  The Tarte Tatin would also be a lesser dish without the addition of this versatile spice.  The Sugar 'N Spice Loaf is pretty damn terrific too, piping hot and straight from the oven.  Just saying.

4.  Lemon Zest

There's a bit of a theme to my top four ingredients - they are all the types of ingredients which help amp up the flavour of a dish, but not the showponies jockeying for dominance in the mix.  Always the bridesmaid, but rarely the bride.  I guess that's why I love them so much.  Is your plain cake a bit, well, plain?  Add some lemon zest.  Ditto for your icing - leave out the vanilla, add in a teaspoon of lemon juice and a teaspoon of zest.  You won't be sorry.

One of the dishes in which lemon zest really stepped out and hogged the limelight a little this year was my Gluten-Free Lemon Curd Cheesecake.  I can hand on heart say that this is one gluten-free dish which is better than the gluten-full version - the base was outstanding, nutty and held together without being either too crumbly or too hard to sink your fork through.

I have so many plans and schemes for Four Figs in 2012.  Of course, lemon zest, cinnamon, saffron and coconut will stay on high rotation, but I am also keen to extend my Asian cuisine repertoire, embrace unusual flavour combinations in my baking and bring you more of my favourite savoury dishes.  I can't wait for the cold weather to arrive so I can spend the weekend whipping up an authentic cassoulet just like we sampled in Kate Hill's kitchen in October.  So much to look forward to.

Buttermilk Choc-Chip Muffins

There are some things you just have to have and, when the craving strikes, you may need to make do with the contents of your pantry or fridge to get them from the oven to the plate as quickly as possible.  As fate would have it, when the hunger for a muffin fresh out the oven and oozing with melted chocolate chips struck, I was the proud owner of a quarter of a carton of buttermilk and a half-finished packet of dark chocolate chips.  Oh, and the small remnants of a packet of shredded coconut.

This is a great way to use up your leftover buttermilk which, if you're anything like me, ends up getting chucked out when I discover that it's out of date in the next fridge purge.  And you can substitute all the "flavouring" ingredients (coconut/cinnamon/choc-chips) with anything you happen to have handy - provided it all weighs 200 grams total.  So be creative and add in some mashed banana, crushed peanuts or grated apple instead.  Don't leave out the buttermilk though - it's the secret ingredient!

These muffins - which turned out so light and moist - are the result of the odds and ends in my pantry (and fridge) and nothing else.  Desperation is the mother of invention after all.  I recommend wolfing them down fresh out of the oven, preferably while still steaming, and they're even better if you have a cup of coffee on hand too.  Leftover muffins should be blitzed for 10 seconds in the microwave before you eat them - you want the chocolate chips melty and delicious when you dive in.

Buttermilk Choc-Chip Muffins

Ingredients
-  220 grams self-raising flour (sifted)
-  3/4 caster sugar (I love raw caster sugar)
-  1/2 cup sunflower oil
-  1 cup buttermilk
-  1 teaspoon vanilla essence
-  1 egg, beaten
-  150 grams chocolate chips
-  50 grams shredded coconut
-  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Firstly, preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius and line your baking tins with muffin liners (I have a large supply of various colours and styles but kept to a simple black liner for this very basic, unpretentious recipe).

Next, in a small bowl or jug combine all the wet ingredients (buttermilk, sunflower oil, beaten egg and vanilla essence) and combine thoroughly.


In a larger bowl, add the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, shredded coconut, cinnamon and chocolate chips).  Make a well in the centre and add your wet ingredients.  Combine quickly by folding and stop as soon as it's properly mixed.  You don't want to over-mix as this will make your muffins chewy and pretty average, to tell you the truth.

Spoon the batter into your lined muffin tins, about two-thirds full.  Don't dollop it any higher than the edge of your liner, as these rise quite a bit.

Sprinkle some reserved shredded coconut and a few choc-chips on top of each muffin, then pop the tins in the oven for 15-20 minutes.  My oven is hotter at the back, so I switched the tins around half way through.

I didn't bother letting all of the muffins cool down on the racks - I love them fresh out of the oven while the choc-chips are still melty.

Penny's Lemon and Coconut Tart

Today's post started with an invitation to dinner at a friend's house.  I had volunteered to make dessert and thought it was time to dust off the tart cases I had purchased about ten years ago at a closing down sale and had never used.

My friend Penny makes a mean lemon and coconut tart, which she very kindly brought along to dinner at my place not long ago.  She even swore it was super-duper easy!  Suddenly I thought... lemon tart + unused tart cases = a moment of genius.  The plan also had the benefit of using shredded coconut, which is officially my new favourite thing (as you might have guessed from the number of recipes featuring coconut in recent times on Four Figs).

Penny's recipe is of the never-fail kind, something I know I appreciate and thought you might too.  It's always great to have a dessert that can be made in a pinch from pantry basics - lemons, flour, butter, sugar, eggs and shredded coconut straight out of the cupboard.  And given that this was a non-pay week, it also has the benefit of being quite an economical option.  The only thing I had to purchase was plain yoghurt.

Now, I am not much of a natural pastry maker.  As a result, I took a pastry making course at Podfood (now 3 Seeds) a while ago.  To be honest, this recipe was my first ever stab at shortcrust pastry since the class I took in November last year.  I used the 3 Seeds recipe for sweet shortcrust rather than the one from Penny's recipe largely because I had seen it made, so I thought I might have a better chance of success.  I am not sure if this was a stellar example of pastry-making skills, but it didn't turn out to be completely inedible and the only way is up from here.  The cases shrunk a little at the sides, which meant the filling dripped over the edge a little bit in places.  Not that this made it any less delicious!

The filling recipe Penny recommended came from the Marie Claire Kitchen Cookbook - and Penny was right, the filling is perfectly stress-free after the (what I regard as) stressful process of making the tart cases.  If you're after the super-duper easy version, by all means buy the pre-made pastry cases in the freezer section of your supermarket and blind bake away.  I know I had one waiting just in case the homemade shortcrust pastry completely tanked.

Lemon and Coconut Tart

Ingredients

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry Cases (care of 3 Seeds)
-  2 cups plain flour
-  1/4 cup icing sugar
-  180 grams unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
-  approximately 3-5 tablespoons chilled water

Lemon and Coconut Filling (care of Penny and the Marie-Claire Kitchen Cookbook)
-  125 grams unsalted butter, softened
-  350 grams caster sugar
-  4 eggs
-  150 grams plain yoghurt
-  3 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh (I got this from one lemon - but juiciness varies!)
-  2 tablespoons lemon zest (the zest of two medium-sized lemons)
-  1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
-  1 cup shredded coconut (you can also use the same amount of desiccated coconut)

Take out your 125 grams of unsalted butter for the filling and allow to soften on the bench.  This is also a good time to remove your 4 eggs from the fridge so they can come to room temperature.  Now, preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius and grease your tart tins (either two smaller tart cases or one large 25 cm tart tin).  I used tins that have a removable base, which really helped with getting the tarts out of their cases later on.

Dust off your food processor and set it up on the bench - the shortcrust it fairly quick when you use the processor.  The trick is to make sure the butter and water you are going to use are chilled in the fridge before you start.  Now pop your flour, icing sugar and butter in the processor and process until it looks a lot like coarse breadcrumbs.  While it's processing drizzle in the chilled water a tablespoon at a time until the pastry forms a ball in the processor.  Stop immediately once this happens.  Cover the ball in cling film and put it into the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.

Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out on a floured bench.  You need to put quite a bit of flour on the bench (which should be cleaned beforehand) and on your rolling pin so the pastry doesn't stick to either the bench or the pin.  Roll it out as thinly as possible, I managed about 3 millimetres.

Next, drape the pastry over the tart case/s and gently press it in until it lines the tin.  Cut off the excess and prick the base of the tart case with a fork.  Place the tart case/s back in the fridge for 30 minutes, or in the freezer for 15 minutes.  This will help the cases hold their shape in the oven, so it's worth the extra time and fuss.  Go make yourself a cup of tea or put on a load of washing.

Now, cut some baking paper to into a circle a bit wider than the circumference of the tart case and crush it up as if you were going to ball up a piece of paper to go in the bin.  I didn't do this with my cases, but read about this tip afterwards and I can see it would make it much easier.  Uncrush the paper and pop the baking paper in the cases then add rice to weight the tart case.  Bake in the oven for approximately 15 minutes or until cooked through but not too brown.  Remove the cases from the oven and cool on racks.  Don't turn off the oven - you'll need it for the next step.

You can make the filling with either a hand beater or a fixed stand mixer like a Kitchenaid.  First cream the butter and sugar until its light and aerated.  Add the eggs one at a time until combined, then add the yoghurt, lemon juice, zest and vanilla paste.  Finally, stir in the coconut and then pour into the cooled pastry cases.  These go back into the oven for a further 30 minutes at 180 degrees Celcius.  You'll know when they're ready as the filling will brown on top and be firm to the touch.  Remove and cool on racks before attempting to remove from their cases.  A great tip from the Kitchen cookbook is to stand the cases on an upturned medium-sized bowl and allow the rim of the case to fall away.

I sliced the tart and served it with a dusting of icing sugar and a sprinkling of toasted unsweetened shredded coconut.  The Red Avenger contributed some delicious vanilla cheesecake ice cream to accompany the dessert which complemented the lemon-tart flavours perfectly.

Coconut Cupcakes and Vanilla Frosting

Firstly, let me acknowledge the growing coconut theme at Four Figs.  I don't know if this is the product of my subliminal desire for tropical warmth as the weather grows colder, or if it's simply that the curling, white shreds of dried coconut sitting in my cupboard look so irresistible.

Last post's coconut bread had a wintry spiciness from the cinnamon.  By contrast, this week's coconut cupcakes have a delicate vanilla undertone and look pretty as a picture iced and dipped in shaved coconut, and finally served in silver foil cases.  I made this batch to take to a friend's come-and-see-my-renovations afternoon tea and they looked so sophisticated laid out on my silver-edged glass platter.  All that was missing was a couple of long flutes of sparkling champagne to go along with them.  We got by with some classic gin and tonics though.

This recipe is another beauty from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook.  My personal favourite so far has been the Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, but this one is also a lovely addition for something a little less rich and it has such an appealing snow-ball presentation.

The technique for flavouring the batter was really original, and I am dying to try it out in different cakes and breads and see how it goes.  You use a food processor to grind shredded coconut into a powder and then fold it into the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt), providing a subtle coconut flavour without the metallic undertone of coconut essence.  The moistness comes from the butter and the coconut milk.  As for the frosting, I altered Martha's recipe by using coconut milk to flavour and thin out the buttercream, and it turned out pretty well.  I am curious to see if these cupcakes could take a cream cheese frosting, or whether they would be overpowered by the sweet-sourness of it.  But that is an experiment for another time...

Coconut Cupcakes and Vanilla Frosting

Ingredients

Cupcakes
-  1 3/4 cups plain flour
-  2 teaspoons baking powder
-  1/2 cup shredded, dried coconut
-  180 grams butter, unsalted (make sure it's nice and soft at room temperature)
-  1 1/2 cups white sugar (if you use raw sugar that's fine but it will change the colour and make the cupcakes a little nuttier in flavour)
-  2 whole eggs (large) and 2 egg whites (all room temperature)
-  1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (don't use essence, it just doesn't taste as good)
-  3/4 cup coconut milk

Frosting
-  360 grams butter, unsalted (again you want this to be room temperature)
-  4 cups icing sugar
-  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
-  1 1/2 tablespoons coconut milk
-  also keep a little bit of shredded coconut for topping the cupcakes

Let's kick off with the important things - preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius and line two regular muffin tins with cupcake liners (should make between 20-24 cupcakes).

Now, set up your food processor (I have a fab mini-processor that is really useful for things like this) and grind up your shredded coconut into as close to a powder as you can get.

One of the things I love about Martha's cupcake recipes is that you generally don't have to sift your dry ingredients.  Instead, you pop your flour, baking powder, ground coconut and salt, and whisk it all together in a bowl.  This aerates the flour etc without having to mess about with a sifter.

Next, you focus on the wet ingredients.  Set up your stand mixer, or if you don't have one use a electric beater and a nice large bowl, and on a medium-high speed cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy.  One by one, beat in the whole eggs and then the egg whites and, finally, the vanilla extract.  If you are using a stand mixer, you should scrape down the sides of the bowl periodically to ensure it all mixes properly.

Now, on a lower speed, add the flour in three lots, mixing in the coconut milk in between each addition.  Don't over mix this, but make sure it's all combined properly too.

Then, fill the cases up to about 2/3rds of the way full and bake.  Don't forget to switch your muffin tins around in the oven, so they cook evenly.  And remove them after 20 minutes, or a cake skewer comes out clean.

I suggest you remove them fairly quickly from the tins (so they don't continue to cook and get tough) and leave them to cook on wire racks.  They should be completely cool when you ice them - you don't want the icing melting right off them.  If you're running short of time, pop the wire racks in the fridge to cool them quickly.  It's not ideal, but it does the trick.

Next, wash out your mixer beaters and bowl because you're going to use them to mix up your frosting.  Plop (and it should plop, if you've let it reach room temperature) your butter into the bowl and whip it until it's gotten thicker, creamier and pale.

Reduce the speed to roughly medium, and add in your icing sugar about 1/2 a cup at a time.  You'll need to scrape down the sides of the bowl every so often, and after a couple of additions speed up the beaters to aerate the icing.  Don't forget to put it back onto medium when you add in the next half-cup of icing sugar.  Finally, add in the vanilla extract and coconut milk and give it one last pulse.  It's done!  (Just note that, while this keeps in the fridge in an air-tight container for up to 10 days, you do need to let it come to room temperature before you ice any cupcakes with it.)

Finally, using a butter knife or spatula, ice your cupcakes fairly simply.  Sprinkle your shredded coconut on a plate and then roll the top of your iced cupcake in the coconut.  It's a simple finish, but it looks like an edible snowball, and who doesn't want one of those?