Dauphinoise potatoes

I was suspicious of these at the beginning, as I thought they would be too heavy. However, they turned out less muak than I thought, with a great peppery aftertaste. You can use more or less cream and milk, depending on your taste, as long as you keep the total volume the same. And who doesn't like a dish with a fancy French word in it?

165ml milk
165 double cream (I used single cream but it still tasted great)
handful of large garlic cloves, halved
700g floury potatoes (I used Russet)
salt and pepper
30g butter

Pour the milk and cream into a pan with the garlic. Slowly bring to the boil, then take off the heat and let it infuse while you prepare the potatoes. Preheat the oven to 150°C. Peel the potatoes and slice them very thinly using a mandolin. Strain the garlic from the creamy milk. Arrange a layer of potatoes in a gratin dish or ovenproof sauté pan. Season well with salt and pepper and pour some creamy milk over. Repeat the process until you run out of potatoes and pour any remaining milk on top. Dot with butter and cook in the oven for about 1½ hours until the potatoes start to brown and are tender when poked through with the tip of a sharp knife. The book says to serve it piping hot, but I would recommend that you wait a little while or you'll scald the roof of your mouth.

First Crack Your Egg

Moving on to “First Crack Your Egg!”, Race and Angela Hartnett of the series Kitchen Criminals offer a set of “easy-to-follow recipes for culinary no-hopers”. Graded by difficulty with step-by-step photographs and variations suggestions, it promises to help kick-start you in the kitchen. As desserts are my Achilles' heel in the kitchen, I decided to go with the Cardamom Crème Caramel, rated medium on the difficulty level. I love crème caramels but have never made them before. I also figured that if this recipe could help me change my mind about my least favourite spice (cardamom), then the book would have done its job. The recipe serves 5, but I proportioned it to 3 servings with tasty results. The office had better get more ramekins soon...

"You can’t make good food with inferior ingredients"

Cardamom Crème Caramel



100g sugar
5 cardamom pods
500ml milk
3 whole eggs

Preheat the oven to 150°C.

1. Measure out 50g of the sugar and place it in a heavy-based saucepan. The recipe then says to moisten with water, but my syrup turned into toffee, so pour in enough water to cover the sugar.

2. Put the pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and cook rapidly until it colors to a light caramel.

3. At this point the recipe says to remove the pan from the heat and add a tablespoon of water, and to swirl the pan to mix the water and caramel together. I found that this separated the syrup into chunks. I would recommend you pour the syrup mixture straight off the heat into the ramekins before the syrup has a chance to cool too much.

4. Crush the cardamom pods and put them in a clean saucepan with the milk. Bring to the boil then remove from the heat and allow it to cool a little.

5. Carefully sieve the cardamom away from the milk.

6. Combine the eggs and remaining caster sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Whisk the milk into the egg mixture to make a custard. Make sure the milk isn't still too hot at this point or you'll get scrambled eggs!

7. Pour the custard into the moulds over the syrup, almost filling them. Put the moulds in a baking tray and half-fill the tray with water.

8. Put the tray of custards in the oven to poach for 30-40 minutes, or until set. Do not let the water in the tray come to the boil.

9. Remove the custards from the oven. Be extremely careful not to let water spill into the set custards like I did with my last one! Allow to cool.

10. When ready to serve, run a pointed knife around the inside of each mould, turn over on to a plate and carefully shake the custard out.

I found that the instructions were not particularly easy to follow if you are not new to the kitchen. The biggest blunder for me was the making of the caramel. If I had followed the recipe word for word, my syrup would have stuck to the bottom of the pan. It is an interesting and very tasty recipe, just not one I would recommend a beginner to attempt.

All in all, I found that Race's recipes allow for old favourites to be jazzed up by interesting flavours. The element that was missing from them, according to my colleagues, was heat. While I love chillies and spice, if the recipe doesn't call for heat, I'm okay with it not being spicy. But us being Malaysians, perhaps a sprinkle of chilli flakes on the roasted peppers and a ginger infusion in the custards might have livened the dishes up a little. Always remember that at the end of the day, recipes are guides, and not the be-all-end-all!

Latest Comments