Canelones Rossini: pâté for the gourmet

Canelones/Canalóns are well-loved in Catalunya; this blog post has a good history. The "Rossini" version is a bit fancy, adding pâté per the composer's reputation as a "militant connoisseur". This recipe comes from a Canal Sur video. 

We've made Canelones before with homemade pasta. Here in Barcelona, every store carries "placas" of Canelones: sheets of dried pasta that are uncooked or precooked; the latter saves the boiling time and reduces the risk of breaking the sheets. The original recipe used "carne" (beef) but beef/pork mixes are common, as are ground pork, chicken, and turkey -- you can use whichever you like. Rossini may have used Foie Gras, but Pâté has a better texture for this and is much more affordable. You can tweak the vegetables in the filling, but I think Onions should definitely be included. Other recipes don't use the veggies, add ham, while some mush up the meats and add cream, but we find the texture of the ground meat more pleasant. Tomate Frito is a cooked tomato sauce, thicker than uncooked puree. 

The precooked sheets ("Facil") are a little more expensive and a bit larger than the uncooked sheets. Our box had 18 sheets and we hydrated them all, but a few stuck so we ended up with 12 good ones. It's not nearly so common to find the pasta tubes I'm used to seeing in The States.

This makes 4 servings, and they reheat gracefully in the microwave.

 12 sheets  Canelone pasta (precooked)

            Olive Oil

  1         Onion, fine dice

  3 cloves  Garlic, finely sliced

  1         Carrot, grated

  1 small   Green/Red Pepper (mild), finely diced

300 g       Ground Beef/Pork mix

 60 ml      Tomate Frito [4 Tbs]

160 g       Pâté

            Salt

            Pepper

 50 g       Flour

 50 g       Olive Oil

500 ml      Milk

            Nutmeg

 30 ml      Tomate Frito [2 Tbs]

            Cheese (e.g., Parmesan, Manchego), grated or sliced

Hydrate pasta sheets in hot water, keeping the sheets separate so they don't stick together.

Sauté the Onions, Garlic, Carrot, Pepper.

Add the Meat and sauté until cooked.

Add 60 ml Tomate Frito and combine.

Turn off heat and add Pâté, then mix to meld the ingredients.

Add Salt and Pepper to taste.

Adding pâté to veg and meat

Put the Pasta sheets on a towel and gently dry them.

Add a bit of Oil and 30 ml Tomato Frito to a baking dish (we used two Pyrex loaf pans) and spread; this keeps the pasta from sticking to the dish.

Lay out a few Pasta Sheets and add about a finger-sized line of filling.

Roll them up, overlapping the seam a little, and place seam side down in a baking dish.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Cook the Flour in the Oil until the Flour's cooked.

Add the Milk and stir to make a Bechamel with a texture of light cream.

Grate in the Nutmeg.

Add 2 Tbs Tomato Sauce.

If it's a bit thick, add Milk; if too thin, boil to reduce.

Top the Canelones with the Bechamel, then add grated/sliced Cheese.

Bake 20 minutes until the Cheese is golden and the filling is heated through.

Let sit a few minutes to set up, then serve.

Japanese Cheesecake

I love cheesecake and have been hearing about this trendy light Japanese crustless version, so I tried to make it. On my third attempt, I think I've come up with something that works well: it's fluffy, almost soufflé-like. Everything here is taken from the exquisitely-detailed recipe/technique from Nami at Just One Cookbook, so look there for better photos and descriptions, including a link to a helpful video. Hers looks a lot more professional than mine, but I'm happy with the flavor and texture I've gotten with my too-short pan.

Cheesecake has a muffin top due to my short cake pan

For my first try, I used her parchment lining technique but with a springform pan and was annoyed by the fidgety parchment lining; worse, the water bath seeped through my tin foil lining making the bottom a bit soggy. For my second try, I realized I didn't need to line the springform pan -- it would release fine -- and I put the water bath below the cake pan (for humidity) instead of bathing the pan: it came out dense on the bottom, indicating the cake needed the heat moderated by the bath.  On my third try, I used a solid pan -- as Nami does -- directly in a water bath, and just dealt with the parchment lining; my pan is slope-sided where hers is straight, which makes lining a little more difficult, but it doesn't have to be exact; it worked well enough that I don't think I need to buy another pan with straight sides -- I can live with the muffin-top profile.

Her recipe is long, but very detailed, which I appreciate. First, note that if your pan is smaller than hers/mine, she provides ingredients scaled to a single egg, then she provides the full 6-egg recipe, so you can scale for your pan. 

As an overview, you "melt" the cream cheese and other batter ingredients then whisk in the egg yolks and flour to make a batter. Then you whip the egg whites into a stiff meringue, then gently fold them together.  I follow her advice about dropping the oven temperature twice.

The 6 eggs barely fit my slope-sided pan which is 20 cm at bottom and 23 cm at the top; the parchment lining must be higher than my pan's 4 cm to accommodate the rise, but the parchment lining flexed and created the muffin-top shape. If you have a different sized pan, scale the recipe appropriately, but realize this will rise dramatically before falling while it slowly cools.

Do take her advice to measure the ingredients beforehand: there's plenty of prep work. I'm trying to simplify this a little by combining measuring into cooking vessels.

Prep the Cake Pan

Use a 23 cm / 9 inch solid cake pan, preferably 10 cm / 4 inch high (mine's only about 4 cm).
Butter the pan bottom and sides so the parchment will stick.
Cut parchment strips to make straps long enough to cross the bottom, up the sides, and over the edge; set them in an X-shaped pattern to make a sling to remove the finished cake.
Cut another strip 10 cm high and line the side of the pan.
Cut a disk for the bottom and press into place.
Set aside.

Sling straps, sides and bottom lined

Batter

  6    Eggs, large

300 g  Cream Cheese

 60 g  Unsalted Butter

200 ml Heavy Whipping Cream (about 35% fat)

       Zest from 1/2 Lemon

 30 ml Lemon Juice (from about 1/2 lemon)

 80 g  Cake Flour

Separate the Eggs and chill the Whites for the Meringue below.
Make a double boiler from a pot of water topped by a medium-sized bowl.
Weigh the Cream Cheese, Butter, Cream, Sugar directly in the bowl.
Add to the double boiler and warm to melt the ingredients, combining with spatula or whisk.
When blended, remove from heat.
Sift in the Cake Flour through a strainer, and whisk to blend.
Strain through the strainer into a large bowl.
Whisk in the Lemon Zest and Juice.
Whisk in the Egg Yolks, one by one, with a hand whisk.

Prepare Oven and Water Bath

Put a roasting pan in the oven and preheat to 165C with convection (15C higher without).

Bring 1 Liter of water to boil.

Meringue

  6   Egg Whites from above, cold

100 g Sugar

1.5 g Cream of Tartar (optional to stabilize)

Clean the medium bowl thoroughly for the Meringue: don't leave any fat, soap, or water on it which would interfere with the development of the foam.

Whip the Egg Whites with an electric whisk (stick blender attachment) on medium until opaque, foamy, and just a little bubbly, about 2-4 minutes.

Whisk in the Sugar and Cream of Tartar, a bit at a time, then increase whisk speed to high; whip until quite dense and it forms stiff peaks.

Gently fold in a third of the Batter with a hand whisk, then repeat with another third, then finally mix it back into the Batter and gently combine with the whisk.

Pour into the lined cake pan.

Pour boiling water carefully into the hot roasting pan, then place the cake pan in water bath; ideally the water will come half way up the cake pan.

Drop the temperature to 145C convection, bake 70-75 minutes.

Reduce temperature to 135C convection and bake another 10 minutes.

Check for doneness: a skewer should come out clean.

Turn off the oven and open the door a crack but let the cake cool very slowly to minimize collapse.

After 20 minutes, remove from the oven.

Use the straps as a sling and move the cake to a plate.

Remove the parchment around the sides. 

Let cool and serve.

Bacalao Stuffed Piquillos in Basque Sauce: richer, for two

We've been making this for years based on the book by Teresa Barrenechea: The Basque Table. Irene said the sauce overwhelmed the dish and that she wanted more fish with larger chunks in the peppers. This revised recipe addresses those desires, and scales it for a dinner for two. 

We're scaling some of the proportions based on ingredients we can find here. For example, instead of the dried salt cod at 24€/Kg, we can use half a bag of frozen Bacalao de Punto de Sal which is just 6€/Kg and doesn't require hydration to de-salt. The Pequillos come in 220 mg jar and ours contained 11 peppers. I had one Choricero pepper, not enough, so I added a Ñora. A pastry bag really simplifies stuffing the peppers, but a zip-top bag with corner cut off should work, or you can use a spoon if you're a masochist.

Stuffed and sauced, before baking

Bacalao Béchamel

250 g      Bacalao del Punto de Sal, frozen

 40 ml     Olive Oil

 20 g      Flour

175 g      Milk

Chop the Bacalao into pea-sized chunks, this is easier while it's still partially frozen.

Sauté on high heat in 40 ml Olive Oil to drive off water, about 5 minutes.

Add Flour and cook off the raw edge on medium, about 5 minutes.

Add Milk and continue cooking until it's noticeably thicker; you don't want it pour-able when hot.

Load a pastry bag with the filling, making sure its snout is big enough to accommodate the Bacalao chunks; let cool while you make the Sauce in the same skillet.

Basque Sauce

The original recipe hydrates dried Spanish chilis, but here we can find jars of Choricero and Ñora flesh ("carne") which is convenient if you haven't planned ahead.

 14 g      Choricero or Ñora Peppers, dried, or 150 g jar "carne"

165 g      Onion, 1 small to medium, diced

 30 ml     Olive Oil

  2 cloves Garlic

 15 g      Tomato (1/4 small)

           Salt

Seed the Chili Peppers and hydrate 8 hours; you can also simmer in hot water for about 30-60 minutes if needed. Keep the hydrating water. Roughly chop the Chilis.

Sauté the Onion in the 30 ml Olive Oil until soft.

Add the Garlic, Chilis, and Tomato, and continue to cook until the Garlic is soft; it's fine if the Onions take on a bit of color.

Transfer to the jar of a stick blender and whiz to make a sauce. You may need to add some of the reserved Chili hydration water to thin it enough -- that's fine, it has flavor. 

Taste and adjust Salt. 

If the Sauce is too thin, return it to the skillet and cook down to thicken.

Assembly

10-12  Pequillo Peppers, whole, from 290 g gross / 220 g net jar

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Drain the Pequillos and arrange on a plate; I find it handy to put a shot glass in the center to hold the Pequillos as I'm stuffing them.

Fill the Pequillos with the Bacalao Béchamel using the pastry bag.

Spoon about a third of the Sauce into an oven proof baking dish.

Arrange the stuffed Pequillos around the dish and top with the remaining Sauce.

Bake for 15-30 minutes so everything's hot.

Serve.