How to Make Clotted Cream - Ashta/Qashta

Ashta/Clotted Cream is a sweet, thick cream used frequently in Middle Eastern desserts. It is typically made by a painstaking process of boiling down full cream milk, but I saw this post on Joumana's breathtaking site Taste of Beirut and I had to try her at-home method for making this delightful thick cream because I was set to make the Lebanese dessert Bread of the Seraglio.

I think its use can be expanded to pastries and cakes as well, and I can't wait to try it out. But in the meantime I think I'm just going to dip myself into the bowl above and lie in it for a while. I'm sure Cleopatra would approve...
Homemade Ashta/Clotted Cream

2 cups half-and-half

2 slices white bread, crusts removed

1 heaped tsp cornstarch

1 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp orange blossom water

1 tsp rose water

1. Dice the bread.

2. Heat milk, add cornstarch, sugar and bread pieces whilst stirring.

3. Reduce heat to low, and continue stirring until milk starts to thicken and become lumpy.

4. Remove from heat, add flavourings.

Don't Be So Poolish

Don't Be So Foolish...would be the nagging mantra playing in my mind. The reason - the Fear of Baking Bread.

Breadaphobia. How could it be? I'm a breadaholic for crying out loud! Give me a slab of hot bread, some butter (marmalade would be nice too, thank you ma'am) and a cuppa tea and I'll be your friend for life. I can subsist on bread alone if given the chance. So why won't I buckle down and make one? No Knead Bread came and went in an Internet uproar. Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes was acquired, thumbed through and neatly stored away in my collection, yet I was scared to take the first step....

Well 2010 is here, and my new Years Resolution was to bake bread. By Jove!

When reading the novel Bread Alone, the December choice at This Book Makes Me Cook, I kept coming back to a recipe that the protagonist uses to bake a rustic French loaf as a peace offering for her friend. Talk about coming back. The book went into overdue status at the library and it was a mounting fine that whipped my sorry behind into embarking on this bread making exercise.

The recipe invoked the use of poolish which is a wet sponge starter for making rustic country breads e.g. Pain de Campagne.

But before we get to the nitty gritty...errrmmm....why is it called Poolish? Lore has it that this form of preferment or starter was brought to France, Austria and Beyond by Polish bakers. "Poolish" is an old English term used to refer to anything Polish..ta da. This same type of starter is also called biga by Italian bread makers.

Poolish for Pain De Campagne (from the novel Bread Alone with Recipes, by Judith Ryan)

1/2 tsp yeast

1/2 cup water

3/4 cup whole wheat flour.

1. Dissolve yeast in water, then stir in flour. Beat the batter for about a hundred srokes to develop the gluten.

2. Cover bowl with a damp cloth and let it sit for 2 - 8 hours at room temperature. The longer the better. Or let poolish develop refrigerated for up to 12 - 15 hours. Allow refrigerated poolish to come back to room temperature before baking bread.

Now go and check out the step-by-step tutorial for the Pain de Campagne that I made using this poolish.

And just between the two of us, how many times did you giggle when reading the word poolish...?

How To...Make Indian Cheese - Paneer

Paneer is an un-aged cheese made by curdling hot milk with some sort of acidic agent. It's a drier version of cottage cheese and a close cousin to queso blanco. The reason I started getting fascinated with paneer is that it is typically the only type of cheese that is used in a lot of Indian recipes, and then I found out that its fairly easy to make at home which can give one a lot of boasting rights.
I make my own cheese.

Pretty impressive. Loser.

However, I do have a lot of conviction to make this at home now, because store bought paneer, usually frozen and chock-full of preservatives and well past their prime, tastes absolutely, well, tasteless. It would be the equivalent of grating chalk into your curry.
Soul Food is a hip blog run by an equally hip and talented and cheery web friend of mine, and her exacting post on how to make your own paneer sealed the deal for me. Do check out her post for some awesome tips on how to flavor the paneer as well. What??! You can flavor the cheese too???
Cardamom paneer.
Sweet paneer.
Chilli paneeerr...
Oooohhhh, my head is spinning.

I'm just documenting the method below with some super cheesy pictures (he he), but it was sourced completely from Soul Food.
Method:
1. You need full cream or full fat milk. The less percentage fat in the milk, the less cheese you will be able to strip out. In terms of quantity yielded, I used about a litre of milk, and ended up with a a little less than a cup of paneer. Pour your milk into a heavy based pot or stainless steel utensil.

2. Boil up your milk to a roaring boil.

3. Add your curdling agent and take the milk off the heat. Vinegar is the most preferred based on what I've read, but lemon juice comes in a close second. For 1L of milk, I used 100 ml vinegar.

4. As seen above, the cheese curdles from the milk and separates to form a soft grainy mass and a clear liquid (whey). If the whey is yellowish, add a little more vinegar till the whey becomes a light green color. BE CAREFUL, adding too much vinegar at this point will end up affecting the taste of the cheese!! When everything cools down, drain the cheese using a muslin cloth in a colander.

5. After all the whey has drained, gather up the corners of the muslin cloth, and transfer the cheese to a flat surface (that can get wet). Cover the cheese with more muslin cloth. Place a heavy object on top of the cheese (to flatten and drain out the remaining mositure. When sufficiently dry (a few hours to overnight), cube or crumble the cheese and freeze or use right away.

How To...Make a Substitute for Buttermilk

Many recipes, especially for lovely baked goods, often call for buttermilk, and I've been caught dashing out to the grocery store to get a pint, whereas the recipe only called for half a cup. Invariably, I'm usually left with a pitiful half bottle of buttermilk in the fridge that just waits to get tossed in the trash.
I recently found a subsitute for buttermilk that can be made with what you probably already have in the kitchen, and this way, I never have to have drag myself out to the store to grab a pint whenever a recipe calls for it.

To make 1 cup of buttermilk:

What you need:
1 cup milk
1 tbsp white vinegar or lemon juice

Method:
1. Pour 1 tbsp of white vingear in a bowl.
2. Add the milk to the bowl.
3. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes - you'll then have buttermilk ready to use in your recipe!