{ Mélanger :: to mix }

Experimenting with the techniques of baking an Indian flat bread (without a tandoor!).

Testing new flour blends in some gluten free baking recipes.

Playing around with a Mélanger household staple to introduce new flavours and textures to rye bread.

And daydreaming of future travel plans creating a sweet Moroccan tradition.

This month it has all been about fruits and nuts.  Each and every single recipe fundamentally relying on the clever combination of the two.

I hope you enjoyed the selection!

{ Peshwari Naan } A combination of pistachios, almonds, dried coconut and sultanas are at the centre of this popular Indian flat bread.  ‘Baked’ quickly and simply in a non-stick fry pan, you can make beautiful naan in a matter of minutes.  You could also omit the fruit and nuts and experiment with a range of other fillings.  { Read more here … }

{ Gluten free Linzertorte } Here the classic Austrian pastry is transformed by gluten free flours.  A combination of gram (chickpea) flour played the stable structure role, and then tapioca flour lightened the mixture. An interesting test of gluten free pastry.  Will not be the last, I am sure.  { Read more here … }

{ Orange date and walnut rye bread } This bread is lovely and soft and is perfect with both sweet and savoury accompaniments.  The flavour of the dates was fairly subtle so when I bake this bread again, I will eliminate the walnuts and boost up the quantity of dates – or vice versa.  The orange provided a lovely overall freshness to the bread but could be omitted if you prefer. { Read more here … }

{ M’hanncha :: Moroccan ‘snake’ cake } When cutting into this M’hanncha, the light, delicate crunch of the filo pastry is a glorious enticement.  The first taste will not disappoint either.  The texture is moist and the flavour is fragrant.  The rose water is subtle and works well with the confident citrus flavours.  Overall it is not overly sweet, which is as refreshing as the mint tea traditionally served with it! { Read more here … }

{ Raspberry lemon frangipane slice } The sweet bread dough base is much lighter than its tart dough or biscuit base counterparts, making it a more delicate sweet indulgence.  The flavours of raspberry and lemon are a classic.  The subtle almond flavoured frangipane helps retains a level of richness and moistness.  The arrangement altogether, is one very easy to eat treat.   { Read more here … }

{ Fig and raspberry hazelnut cake } A play on a Dorie Greenspan favourite.  This little fig cake is injected with ground hazelnuts, and the figs were matched with a handful of raspberries. The overall result was a very easy to make, moist and flavoursome cake that is perfect not only for autumn, but any day of the year really.  { Read more here … }

{ Gluten-free, dairy-free orange almond cake } If you are a fan of the rich, intense flavour of orange marmalade you should try this cake.  There is no hiding the essence of the core ingredient here.  It is bold and concentrated.  The cake is very moist and a delicate slice (or two) is delicious served with a coffee or tea for a bit of an afternoon pick me up.  { Read more here … }

{ Almond Berry Slice } This little nutty fruity sweet was the very first thing I baked after bringing Nina home from the hospital.  Chosen for its speed of assembly (only minutes to prepare!), and simplicity of ingredients.  There is nothing fancy or chic about this humble slice but it sure is wholesome and soul feeding – particularly knowing it is very likely to grace the lunchbox my baby daughter in years to come.  { Read more here … }

{ Bakewell Tart } This tart is very easy to make.  It is essentially a very simple sweet short crust pastry, topped with jam and then a deliciously rich frangipane (almond paste).  I made this tart with blackberry jam, but would love to experiment further.  Perhaps create little individual tarts next time that showcase a variety of flavours.  { Read more here … }

Quite some years ago, I made a list of all the new places around the world I would like to explore. But somehow, despite having travelled fairly extensively in my younger years, the list was visibly much longer than that of the countries I had already seen.

Hmmmmm, a bit of a predicament!

Now, as time is gently ticking away (and yes, it is), I know I must get serious about my exploration list.  Unless there is some sort of cash windfall in my future, I have serious reservations that I will accomplish a visit to all the desired countries on my original list (FYI, over 50!).

So I decided to do something extreme.  I set myself the goal to reduce the list to my absolute, critical and most essential must visit destinations.  I limited the list to … dare I admit … only five countries.

Do you know how hard that was?  I mean, it is simple to create a long, extensive, and a nothing-gets-left-out list.  But a brief, short, you really-have-to-think-about-it one?

After much deliberation though, I am happy with the final outcome – and, of course, looking forward to future travel plans!

Morocco will be one of the countries I visit.

Although Mr Mélanger has already been to this popular North African destination, he is more than happy to travel there again, with me.  Together, I hope we share one of these sweet M’hanncha delights from a local vendor – along with a range of other traditional Moroccan desserts, cookies, pastries and sweets!

{ M’hanncha :: Moroccan ‘snake’ cake }

When cutting into this M’hanncha, the light, delicate crunch of the filo pastry is a glorious enticement.  The first taste will not disappoint either.  The texture is moist and the flavour is fragrant.  The rose water is subtle and works well with the confident citrus flavours.  Overall it is not overly sweet, which is as refreshing as the mint tea traditionally served with it!

I was inspired by this recipe from Tess Mallos (The Food of Morocco) and Jamie Oliver (Jamie Does)

Ingredients *
150g ground almonds
50g pistachios, roughly ground
125g icing/confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon of plain flour
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon rose water
90g unsalted butter
8 sheets of filo pastry
1 egg
Pinch of cinnamon
Icing/ confectioners’ sugar, to serve

* Directions *
Preheat oven to 180C/350F.  Lightly butter a 20 cm/8 inch springform pan.  Set aside.  Separate the egg and place the egg white in a large bowl, and put the egg yolk aside for the end of the preparation.  Gently whisk the egg white, and then add the almonds, pistachios, icing sugar, flour, zests, and rosewater.  Mix to a paste.  Divide the mixture into 8 equal portions (around 50g each).  Roll each into a sausage shape about 20 cm in length.  Remove one sheet of filo pastry from your pile (keeping the remaining pastry covered with a clean tea towel), and place the sheet with the long side towards you.  Gently brush butter over the pastry and place another sheet on top, also brushing the top with butter.  Place two of your almond ‘sausages’ side by side at the front of the pastry leaving a gap of around 2 to 3 centimetres around the edges (sides and front).  Roll up to enclose the filling. Form into a coil and sit the coil, seam side down, in the centre of the tin, tucking under the unfilled ends of the pastry to enclose the filling.  Continue in this manner to make three more pastry ‘snakes’ shaping each around the smaller coil to make a large coil.  If the coil breaks, cut small pieces of some extra filo, brush with a little egg yolk and press the filo onto the breaks.  Add the cinnamon to the remaining egg yolk and brush over the coil.  Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.  Dust with icing sugar.  Serve with cream, ice-cream or a date sauce!

Serves 6-8

Many of my childhood food memories are modest, brief stories.  In most cases I was not a participant, not even an observer, but simply the recipient of some short narrative.  Over time, however, my imagination has romantically evolved the reality of some of those stories to include me.

I can conjure up a detailed scene in my head that is really a complete fabrication.  Like the image of my mother baking fresh bread.  I never actually saw my mother baking fresh bread, though in a way I wish I did.

My mother did in indeed bake a weekly batch of bread, but this was all before my time, so to speak.  My mother stopped baking bread when the task of travelling an almost 90 kilometre (55 mile) round trip to purchase fresh yeast became a little too time-consuming and tedious.

But 40 years on, times have changed in Brisbane.  I suffer no barriers to my basic baking efforts.  A variety of everyday ingredients is always at my fingertips.  And I reflect on that all the time – never more so then when baking bread myself.  I think it is a good thing to be reminded how lucky you are.

And even though many of my childhood food recollections are my own distorted reality, at least I have a handful of memories.

{ Orange date and walnut rye bread } Original recipe by Julia @ Mélanger

This bread is lovely and soft and is perfect with both sweet and savoury accompaniments.  The flavour of the dates was fairly subtle so when I bake this bread again, I will eliminate the walnuts and boost up the quantity of dates – or vice versa.  The orange provided a lovely overall freshness to the bread but could be omitted if you prefer.

* Ingredients *
80g dried dates, roughly chopped
50g walnuts, roughly chopped
4g instant yeast
260g warm water (approximately 45C/110F)
275g all purpose white flour
150g rye flour
7g salt
Zest of 1 orange

* Directions *
In a small bowl, place the chopped dates and cover with boiling water.  Set aside for 5 minutes.  Measure out the walnuts in a separate bowl and set aside.  In the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook, add the yeast and warm water.  Allow to sit for 5 minutes.  Mix the flours, salt and orange zest in a bowl.  Once the yeast is ready, mix on low speed slowly adding the flour mixture.  Continue to mix for a few minutes until completely combined and until the dough is cleanly coming away from the sides of the bowl.  Turn the speed up to medium, and continue to mix the dough for a further 5 minutes.  In the meantime, drain the dates and set aside.  At the end of the 5 minutes, add in the chopped walnuts and dates and mix until just combined.

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and allow to double in size, about 1 ½ hours.  After it has doubled in size, transfer to the bench and punch down gently.  Knead the dough and then form into a loaf shape.  Place the dough in an oiled loaf tin (or as I did, a 750g rectangular banneton).  Cover and set aside again for a further 1 hour until doubled in size.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 220C/430F.  Once the dough is ready, place the loaf tin in the centre of the oven (or as I did, place the dough from the banneton directly onto a lightly greased baking sheet), and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the base sounds hollow when tapped.  Allow to cool on a cooling rack.

Makes one 750g loaf (approximately 1 1/2 pounds)

:: Yeastspotting ::
I am submitting this rye bread to Yeastspotting.

The Mélanger kitchen has been loaded up with flour, dairy and sugar alternatives.  Over the last few months, my days have been filled experimenting with a completely different blend of ingredients.  Whilst trying to identify a source of ongoing pain, Mr Mélanger has been instructed to eliminate a number of food groups by his doctor as part of the process.  So here we are.

I am determined to be fully prepared if the inevitable happens, and Mr Mélanger is crowned intolerant to more than just the known lactose.  In fact, I will be very pleased to roll my sleeves up to alternative baking, if that is the only outcome to this seemingly never-ending medical investigation.

Removing foods from your diet through simple ingredient avoidance is probably the easiest solution.  Enjoying a rich flourless chocolate cake versus a wheat flour chocolate cake would certainly not be a chore for me.

But on the other hand, removing foods from your diet through ingredient substitution is a little trickier.  Wanting to enjoy, say a humble piece of pie, starts to introduce some obstacles.  There really is no substitute for pastry.

Mr Mélanger is quite partial to a piece of pie, so experimenting with pastry is a priority for me.

I wanted to start with a gluten free pastry recipe that combined both nuts and flours, hoping for a little more stability.  The linzertorte came straight to mind.

Using my go-to linzer recipe as a base, I began the substitution process.  I have gleaned from my limited research thus far that a good gluten free flour mix includes both a flour that is ‘stronger’ to provide a stable structure, and a complementary flour that helps towards lightening and binding ingredients.

So based on the limited selection of flours I had on hand, I chose gram (chickpea) flour to play the stable structure role, and then tapioca flour to play the lighten and bind position – plus I used a little measure of xanthan gum to help provide more strength.

Overall, the pastry was fairly easy to work with.  It was stickier than your usual linzer pastry, but completely manageable.

In terms of taste, both within the raw pastry and the finished baked product I could detect the flavour of raw beans from the gram flour.  In something so delicate, I will probably look to use an alternative flour next time.  But in saying that, when the tarts came out of the oven, the aroma was unmistakably hazelnut.

The texture of the pastry was still relatively soft.  It crumbled nicely but was probably what I would describe as a little too chewy.

Have you made a successful gluten free pastry?  Would love if you could share your winning formula!

In the meantime, here is my first attempt at a gluten free linzertorte.

{ Gluten free linzertorte } Adapted from Andreas Stössel – pastry chef and principal lecturer in patisserie at the College of Tourism and Hospitality at Southbank Institute of Technology in Brisbane

* Ingredients *
60g ground hazelnuts
120g gram flour
60g tapioca flour
70g caster sugar
4g xanthan gum
Pinch salt
120g chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1 large egg
60g iced water
Raspberry jam

* Directions *
Process the nuts, flour, sugar, gum and salt until combined.  Add the butter and process until you achieve a chunky, large bread crumb consistency.  Then mix in the egg only until it combines.  Lastly, add only enough water until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Remove the pastry and set aside for 10 minutes to slightly soften.  Then roll the pastry out between two pieces of baking paper.  Cut rounds of pastry to fit for mini removable bottom pie tins (approximately 10cm / 4 in).  Gently line the pie tins, neaten the edges and pop back into the fridge for 30 minutes.  Re-roll the remaining pastry and cut out strips that will be used to line the top of the tart in a crisscross pattern.  Also pop the pastry strips into the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.  Remove the pastry shells and strips.  Add enough raspberry jam to generously cover the base of the pastry.  Line 3 strips of pastry in one direction, and then 3 strips of pastry in the other on top of each tart.  Pop all the assembled tarts back in the fridge for another 30 minutes.

With the oven heated, place the tarts on a baking sheet, and bake for approximately 25 minutes.

Makes 4 mini tarts

I vividly remember my first sweet taste of a Peshwari naan while living in London.  Not surprisingly then, this fragrant bread – and all the various accompanying curries – was sampled at one (and then many!) of the delicious curry houses in Brick Lane.

In fact, Brick Lane became a regular haunt for me.  Well, actually, only when I had spare cash after trying to live on my lowly salary of an account co-ordinator (read: do anything around the office girl) while in London in the early 1990s.

It is firmly because of my South Asian discoveries at Brick Lane, that I can unequivocally declare that my favourite cuisine in the whole wide world is …. Indian.

Are you shocked?

Even though you will never see a sampling of my favourite curries on this blog, I extend a gesture towards my most favoured fare here through this Indian flatbread.

Without the addition of a tandoor in my house to bake naan, fortunately all the recipes I researched confidently stated I could replicate this famous bread at home in the domestic oven.  Great news!

But after quite a number of trials, with a range of recipes and then extending to my own experimentation, I was finding it difficult to reproduce the soft texture.  The cooked bread was coming out too firm.  I played around with the ingredients to try and create a softer, more moist dough.  I tried baking the bread with steam and without steam.  I attempted a water bath at the base of the oven, and without a water bath at the base of the oven.  I tried baking the dough at different temperatures ranging from moderate to hot.  And I varied baking times from just a few minutes up to 10 minutes.

Batch after batch was a disappointment.  But the solution was ultimately staring at me in the face, literally.

Enter, the stovetop.

A light went off and I excitedly tested the use of a nonstick fry pan to ‘bake’ the dough.  The result?  If you do not have a tandoor in your house, this could be the next best thing.  Probably not a surprise seeing traditionally naan bread dough is slapped to the side of the tandoor oven – directly on a surface more similar to a fry pan than on a tray in the oven.  (So not sure why so many recipes call for the oven?)

Anyway, I certainly plan to bake more of this bread, and would just love any feedback on any other techniques fellow naan lovers out there have found successful.

I hope you enjoy this first fruit and nut installment!

{ Peshwari Naan } Original recipe by Julia @ Mélanger

* Ingredients *
1 1/2 cup whole milk
14g instant yeast
5 cups maida flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup thick Greek yoghurt
4 tablespoons melted and cooled ghee (or oil)
1 egg
Filling:
50g each of pistachios, almonds, dried coconut and sultanas

* Directions *
Heat the milk in a saucepan until bubbles appear around the edges.  Remove and allow to cool to 45C.  Once cooled, add the yeast and set aside for a further 5 minutes.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with the dough hook, add the flour, sugar and salt.  Mix until just combined.  Then add the milk and yoghurt and continue to mix until the dough starts to come together.  With a fork, beat the egg into the melted and cooled ghee and then slowly add to the dough.  Continue to mix until your dough is uniformly soft and silky smooth.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, and cover with plastic wrap.  Set aside for 1-2 hours or until the dough doubles in volume.  In the meantime, prepare the filling.

Lightly toast the nuts in the oven, cool slightly then place in a food processor with the coconut and sultanas.  Blend until coarsely chopped.

Once the dough is ready, weigh out individual pieces (mine are around 70g each).  Roll out each piece into a circle and place 1-2 tablespoons of the filling mixture into the centre.  As if you were about to create a dumpling, fold up the sides of the dough all around the filling pinching the centre to close in the contents.

Place the filled dough seam side down and set aside covered for 30 minutes.

To prepare the naan for cooking, place a ball of dough on the counter seam side down, and gently roll out to your desired shape (traditional is a tear drop shape).  I roll my naan out to around 12 x 25 cm.

Heat a non-stick fry pan over a medium to high heat.  Once heated, brush lightly with oil.  Place one naan into the pan and cook on each side for 1 minute each (you will start to notice bubbles appearing just before you need to flip it over).  Continue with all the pieces of dough keeping the cooked naan warm in a teatowel in the meantime.  Brush the finished naans with ghee if you wish.

These breads freeze beautifully.

Makes about 16 naan breads

:: Yeastspotting ::
I am submitting this naan to Yeastspotting.

She is only 8 months old, but baby Mélanger has taught me a thing or two.

Typically driven by the impulse to constantly think 5, 10, 20 paces ahead, I can often focus too much on the future, to miss out the here and now.

But my little bundle of cheeky and mischievous joy has changed that.

She has forced me to be appreciative of the moment.  To bask in a rapturous giggle….To witness a slightly coordinated clap….To cheer on her first tentative cruising adventure.

She has made me aware of the small detail.  The small patch of curly hair on the back of her head….How she favours one hand over the other….Which toys she prefers.

And she has made me enthusiastic to seize the moment.  To stop and point out the birds chirping in the trees….To throw out the baby food plan and try something new on a whim….To let my hair down and sing, dance and laugh to entertain her.

So what has this got to do with this month’s theme?

In baking, the ingredients of fruits and nuts can be overtly used, but often can be subtlety used.  Not necessarily concealed, but not necessarily explicit.

So, with the new skills my daughter has taught me under my belt, I want to simply see and appreciate a recipe.  Be more aware of the small detail.  More aware of the ingredients.  And simply enjoy the act of baking without any other consideration.  (A big step for me!)

I hope you enjoy the selection.