Give us a tuile!

This weekend I decided to try making tuile biscuits, to accompany green tea panna cotta.  I had seen the recipe on the Hairy Bikers "Everyday Gourmet" programme and liked the idea of both components of the dish, so I gave it a go. I had seen the biscuits made quite a few times on Masterchef too, and always wanted to try making them, but not got around to it until now.

"Tuile" means "tile" in French, as they resemble roof tiles, though if I were describing the shape to someone I would say they were "pringle-shaped".  Traditionally the batter contains flour, butter, sugar and ground almonds, but in my recipe the almonds were replaced by lightly whisked egg whites.  The biscuits are very thin and crisp, and have to be shaped as soon as they come out of the oven, going hard and brittle is a very short time.

I had made the panna cotta the night before and it was chilling in the fridge, I had tasted it and it was ok, but I think next time (and there WILL be a next time) I'll leave out the English Breakfast teabag and just use the seven green teabags, together with cinnamon stick and cardamom seeds. It was nice, but just a bit too tea-y!  In the end I quite enjoyed it, and my six year old son liked it.  He likes tea more than my teenage daughter, his Grandma makes him half a cup sometimes, mainly so he can dunk biscuits in .  The husband wasn't keen on the panna cotta and the daughter didn't even try it; but everybody liked the tuile biscuits.

So, how do you make them?  Here's what I did:  Firstly, get a plastic lid of some sort that you have finished with (I used the lid of a large takeaway box - yes I do have a chinese now and again) and draw circles on it, 2 inches across and 1 inch apart from each other. I ended up drawing round the bottom of a bottle of Japanese mirin, which was just the right size. Then cut the circles out to leave four holes in the plastic.  I joyfully stabbed the middle of one circle with the point of a pair of scissors and.... oh dear.  The whole thing split right across and was totally ruined.  Hmmm.  I tried again with another lid - I only had the two of them - and went a bit more carefully this time.  All was well.  I washed the pen off and picked the bits of green washing up pad that had become attached to the slightly rough edges of the plastic and my home made tuile template was ready.

The first template, before it all went wrong...

 

The second template, with holes cut out.

 

I had made the mixture earlier, softened butter and icing sugar mixed together in the mixer until pale and fluffy, flour, egg whites and vanilla extract folded in, and left to rest in the fridge for an hour.  I used a palette knife to spread a thin amount into the holes on the template, which I had placed on baking paper, lifted off the template to leave thin circles of mixture on the paper.  I moved the template to sread between six and nine on a baking sheet.  Some of them had cardamom seeds sprinkled on, others didn't as they aren't to everyone's taste.  And in the oven they went, for about seven minutes.

 



Circles of mixture.

 

As soon as they were out of the oven, they had to be shaped, the recipe suggested a rolling pin, so I tried that to start with, but my rolling pin is quite thick and they weren't really curly enough so I experimented with spice jars, the top of a wine bottle, a wooden fork, the handle of the palette knife, and the vanilla extract bottle.  They all worked fairly well, but I also discovered just holding between your fingers to curl them works - if you don't mind the heat!

 



Shaping the tuiles - you can see how the rolling pin was a bit too big.

 

The process was repeated until there was no mixture left, and a large plateful of biscuits appeared, which went down quite quickly as they had to keep on being "tested"!  I was quite pleased with the end result, and they tasted great.  The template will be kept to use next time...

 





The end result.

I bought a book of cookie recipes from a charity bookshop recently too so perhaps I'll be having some more adventures in biscuit-making soon...

In other news I entered another bake off at work, this time in the individual chocolate cakes category - and came last out of four!  I didn't see the competition though, I expect the standard was very high. It's the taking part that counts... and I'm planning a firmly non-competetive Easter trifle for next weekend.

Thank you for reading, more soon, and please feel free to share this blog if you so wish.

Caroline x

Dining out.

We went out for dinner as a family last Saturday.  Which was nice.  However, it got me thinking about the problems of eating out when you're used to quite adventurous cooking at home.  A bog standard pub meal sometimes just doesn't quite cut it, and you end up feeling resentful that you've paid a fortune for something you could make at home more cheaply (and sometimes to a higher standard) yourself, all for the privilege of not having to cook it or wash up afterwards.  In order to get something you couldn't cook yourself, you have to spend even more money... and it takes a bit of trial an error to find out where is good value for your pennies, and where is just going to end up being an expensive disappointment.

Next problem, what genre of cuisine? One good reason for going to an Indian restaurant, as we did, is when, as in our case, one partner likes things much spicier than the other.  If I make a curry at home, I end up stirring yogurt in, and he adds a big splodge of chilli sauce or extra cayenne pepper. So when we go out, he can have a vindaloo and I can have something with coconut in (he's not fond of coconut). The younger children love the breads and rice in an Indian restaurant, and can have some of my less spicy main course.  Mostly my kids will eat anything, though my son who is six is getting a bit more fussy.  My daughter, now a teenager, eats like a horse and will finish her brother's leftovers together with anything else she can get her hands on.

One thing I do tend to go for is deep fried things, especially real chips.  If you're eating out it's quite often a special occasion or a treat anyway, so why not go the whole hog and have something decadent?  I very rarely deep fry anything at home, for a variety of reasons, not wanting to set fire to the kitchen, not liking the smell, and fried food being generally bad for you being the main ones.  I had a go at making crispy fried squid, and while it was quite nice, it doesn't have that certain something that the stuff from the Chinese does.

Mine didn't look this good...

Generally, if I'm going out, I want something special, that I couldn't or wouldn't make at home and/or that hubby doesn't like.  I'd rather spend a bit more and go out less often in order to have a better dining experience.

I was going to discuss leftovers at restaurants, but we never seem to have any.  I'm all in favour of doggy bags, or indeed person bags, if there are remains. I wonder how much does get thrown away in restaurants? 

In other news, I had a go at making fondant fancies this week, I had seen them being made on the Great British Bake Off and thought "Can they really be that difficult?"  Oh yes they can.  The sponge rose far too well and then sank in the middle, so they weren't all the same size and a bit larger than planned.  Spreading the butter icing on five sides of each cube of apricot jam glazed cake wasn't all that easy either.  And as for dipping in the fondant icing... they would have fallen apart so I had to spread it on with a butter knife, making a huge mess all over the supporting hand.  The fondant icing was the perfect texture though, and they tasted nice, but had to be eaten in two instalments.  Everyone who braved a whole one in one go felt a bit like they had overdone it afterwards.

I also made a new twist on chicken for a lighter, more springlike Sunday dinner; this was from the latest delicious magazine.  Poached in water with root ginger, spring onions and garlic, served on a herb salad with a homemade chilli sauce (nam jim, but I kept accidentally calling it nim jam) and lemongrass scented rice.  I'll definitely be making it again.

More soon, thank you for reading,

Caroline x