The Conran Cookbook: Brioche

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

I’ve decided that I really need to work my way through my collection of cookbooks in some way … and I figure that an easy way to do that is by picking a recipe from each book and making that recipe a bread recipe (if there is one). Because a/ everyone likes to eat bread and b/ it’s very much a known quantity. Bread, once you have the hang of it, is EASY. Please believe me on this. And while it takes time, it’s not time consuming. In general, you whack some stuff together and then let it sit for a bit before maybe a bit of a knead or a bit of a shape, followed by a bit more sit and then a bake.

The first book on the shelf of choice is The Conran Cookbook by Sir Terence & Caroline Conran & Simon Hopkinson – a chef turned food writer for whom I have a great deal of time. My copy, published in 1997, was purchased at Cheshire Oaks, a factory outlet in Cheshire (England), in 2001. My ex-boyfriend’s mother somewhat patronisingly remarked that it was a good choice for someone ‘starting out’ (at the time I was in my twenties and had quite a few years of good cooking under my belt … the comment rankled at the time and rankles still …).

Anyway – this is a solid book if you have limited bookshelf space or budget, because it covers almost EVERYTHING. Each section has an introduction which takes you through skills, glossary and ingredients before offering a range of recipes. It’s the type of book that I find almost always has a recipe for your ingredient or dish of choice. It is quite densely packed and there is not an illustration for every recipe. If you want beautifully laid out and designed and photographed … then you do need to look elsewhere!

Naturally, it does have a bread section and a recipe for brioche which is always a winner in our house and, to be honest, is not something I’ve yet found an entirely satisfactory recipe for. Spoiler alert: the search continues!

This dough was super super tight (more like pastry) and the finished product had a very close crumb. It tasted good but it was a bit dry (and dried out very quickly – thanks humid weather and fans going non-stop) and had a tendency to be a bit flaky. Doing the first part by hand was a mistake because of the nastiness of the dough. If I were to use this recipe again (I won’t be) I would start off in the stand mixer and add water to get a sensible consistency.

Looks good!

Brioche

Serving Size:
1 large or 2 smaller
Time:
3+ hours (including proving)
Difficulty:
Moderate

Ingredients

  • 1 tsp dried yeast
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 5 tbsp milk (room temperature)
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 565g flour (white bread flour – strong)
  • 115g unsalted butter – room temperature (a warm day serves you well!)
  • beaten egg to glaze

Directions

  1. Mix yeast with 5 tbsp luke warm water and 1/2 tsp of the sugar. Leave to become active.
  2. Beat the eggs with milk, salt and sugar in another bowl.
  3. Put the flour in a large bowl, make a well in the centre and add egg mixture and yeast mixture. Mix to a rough dough. The issue I found here is that this is a VERY dry dough – in hindsight it would have been better to add more water at this point to bring everything together. In future, I would also do this stage in the stand mixer.
  4. Once you have a smooth dough, cover and rest for a few minutes.
  5. Now – incorporate the butter. This is messy and takes a while – you definitely need soft, room temperature butter. Flatten the dough out into a rough rectangle, put a few dobs of butter over the surface, then fold up (I tried to use an envelope fold but it doesn’t matter) and then knead to incorporate the butter. Once the butter is incorporated, rinse and repeat, until all butter is incorporated and you have a smooth dough.
  6. At this point, I cracked out the stand mixer to try to bring everything together and get it smooth. For me, this was more like springy pastry than a dough.
  7. Set aside for 1.5 hours.
  8. Knock back and knead. At this point, things were looking better but the dough was still super right.
  9. Set aside for 1.5 hours.
  10. Grease your brioche tin (if you have one) or loaf tin(s). If using a brioche tin, then divide the dough in two unequal part so that you have the little top knot. Shape, pop in tin, cover and leave to prove again (maybe half an hour or so).
  11. Preheat oven to fan bake 180C.
  12. Use the beaten egg for glaze to affix the top knot to the brioche, and to glaze the entire brioche.
  13. Bake for 30-35 minutes, and allow to cool on a rack.
Here’s the less than stellar crumb.

A Classic Australian Meat Pie

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment
Classic Australian meat pie

Master 10 has recently upped his pastry game. The ‘game’ being the eating of pastry, not the making of it. After years of solid allegiance to the sausage roll he is branching out … thanks to a trip to the pool and a Mrs Mac’s Famous Meat Pie. This then triggered a request for a classic meat pie for dinner so we borrowed some pie tins from my parents and I searched the web for a recipe. For his first birthday party I’d actually made party pies but didn’t save the recipe and also recalled them being a little dry, so it was useful to take the opportunity to revisit.

I based my recipe on this one from bestrecipes but baulked at the idea of adding tomato sauce so substituted in tomato paste.

Classic Meat Pie Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 500g mince (beef, obviously!)
  • 1 cup (ish) of beef stock – substitute stock cube & water if you prefer
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • salt & pepper
  • corn flour
  • pastry – I used puff on both top & bottom

Method:

  1. Heat some oil in a pan and sweat down the onion.
  2. Ensure the pan is hot and add the mince. Break it up and ensure you brown it.
  3. Add stock, tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce, stir well and then bring to the boil.
  4. Cook well – keeping an eye on the liquid level. Taste and season with salt & pepper.
  5. Create a slurry of the corn flour & some water and stir in to the meat – this will thicken the gravy.
  6. Allow filling to cool. 
  7. When ready to assemble the pie, preheat your oven to fan 180C and beat an egg to use as the glaze. Line your prepped pie tins, fill and top. Glaze with egg & decorative pastry. Cook for about 20 minutes or until pastry is golden.

For a different take on a pie using beef, check out the beef & stout pie.

Luciano’s, Glenelg

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

disclaimer: I was a guest at the Luciano’s influencer dinner

It was a sad day when Esca down at Glenelg’s Marina Pier closed. It had been one of the longer-lived venues in this somewhat tricky space and was also one of the best located – central, with both marina and sea views. And it was actually also good.

It’s space has been recently reinvented as Luciano’s – a modern Italian restaurant, with Adam Swanson on board as consulting executive chef and Loris Facciolo as head chef. While Adam is probably going to be a familiar name (Zucca’s, San Remo ambassador) Loris probably not so much. That’s because Loris hails from northern Italy and brings his Milanese experience to Adelaide.

The refit of the restaurant is very ‘beachy’ – my guest’s word to describe it – with a big open kitchen and lots of neutral colours, with a real white-washed feel to it. Mercifully, important things like carpet, upholstered chairs, tablecloths (and really lovely cloth napkins) have been incorporated into the new design. Great news for anyone who actually wants to have a conversation! Even at our very long (and noisy!) table, you were able to hear the people next to and opposite you. This augurs well for smaller groups.

Of course, lovely furnishings, a great ambience and incredible sunsets only get a restaurant so far. The most important things are food and service (and not necessarily in that order). The waiter at my end of the table was charming (Italian, so maybe that goes without saying), efficient and helpful – volunteering mocktails for the non-drivers and ensuring that glasses were always topped up.

We were incredibly lucky to be treated to an astonishing spread of food. It felt like almost every single dish on the menu was presented to us – the idea being that we take a mouthful of everything. By the time main courses arrived, most of us were full (pasta does that to you) – it was an extremely generous spread.

I’m not going to list every dish I tried, nor am I going to put every single photo up: I’m going to go for the highlights. All the photos (good and bad!) are in a Facebook album here.

Highlight of the antipasti was the vitello tonnato. This is a dish which, to my mind, should just NOT work. Veal with tuna sauce. In English it just sounds … average (to be kind). But it is so good – the veal was beautifully tender, the tuna sauce (dressed with bottarga) was delicious. I’d have this again – and someone suggested that it would make an amazing sandwich filling. I’m on board with this – if Luciano’s starts offering a vitello tonnato sandwich at lunch … I’ll be there!

For pasta, we had mezzi rigatoni (short ones) carbonara (“no cream!” explained Adam), the linguini con volgole and the gnochetti with crab (the restaurant’s signature) along with risotto milanese. I’m not not sure which was my pick here … possibly the linguini con vongole purely because I don’t eat it often. Alongside the pasta, three pizzas were served – the winner easily being the prosciutto rucola e grana on the smoothness and creaminess of the fior di latte alone.

At this point the mains came out – I managed a mouthful of each. Twice cooked pork belly – deliciously tender and moist with crispy skin, barramundi parcel – also tasty and the veal cotoletta which was a big thick chop, crispy crumbs and beautifully cooked. A shout out to the side of broccolini although this could be improved upon with just a touch of chilli!

If you can believe it – we then wrapped up with dessert. Of these, the star was the white chocolate pannacotta with raspberries and pistachio. You don’t hear me say that often because white chocolate is comprehensively the devil’s work but this pannacotta was delicious – wobbly, smooth, sweet and cut through by the raspberries and raspberry coulis.

As I was a guest, I didn’t have to worry about the bottom line but the menu prices are all standard – if you eat out often there’s unlikely to be bill-shock. The menu (and drinks list) is online and the ‘tutto’ (or feed-me) option at $60 for six courses sounds like it should be sensational value.

Will I head back and spend my hard-earned at Luciano’s? The answer is yes. I promised Master 9 I’d take him there for a meal if it was any good … maybe we’ll see you there during the school holidays!