Goat Cheese Flan

Goat Cheese Flan
Originally uploaded by cookiejesus

Here's the recipe for a piece I wrote on Sugar Savvy:

Goat Cheese Flan with Orange Purée and Pistacchio Crumble

Goat Cheese Flan:
100g. Condensed Sweetened Milk
100g. Goat Cheese
200g. Evaporated Milk
80g. Heavy Cream
4 Eggs.

Blend all the ingredients. Pour into molds, cook at 175°C until set.

Orange Purée:
Cut one orange in eight parts. Simmer in simple syrup along with a branch of rosemary. Blend while adjusting the consistency and taste with the syrup, pass through a fine mesh sieve. Reserve.

Pistacchio Crumbs:
Equal Parts Ground Pistacchio, Flour, Butter and Sugar. Mix until it resembles a coarse sand. Bake at 150°C until dry and just slightly golden.

TGRWT #15 Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon by Travis

Travis from Australia has sent in his submission for this edition of TGRWT. Since he hasn't got a blog of his own, I'm uploading his submission here.

Not wanting to over-complicate things, and in the midst of party planning, I decided to make a salmon and dark chocolate canapé - and, since I live in Australia, I thought I'd give it an auzzie twist.

We have a biscuit here which is gaining in notoriety - it's called a tim-tam, and is basically 2 layers of chocolate biscuit, with a chocolate-cream filling, and then coated in a layer of chocolate..

I bought a variation on this one - which was a black-forest style, containing a dark, sweet cherry centre.

I also picked up a beautiful tray of sliced, smoked Tasmanian salmon, which is very lucky to have survived long enough to make it to the next step!

At home, in my mad-science lab of a kitchen, I merrily chopped a tim tam in two, and then cut a square of soft cheddar to roughly the same size.

I sandwiched the salmon and cheddar between the two biscuits, skewered them with a long wooden stick, and then cut the shape into rounds with an apple corer.

Now - on to the important bit... The taste! Oh. My. God. So GOOD!

The first sense one gets is of the biscuit, as you crunch through it. The dark chocolate clings to your tongue a bit - with bittersweet intensity, but then gives way to the soft, buttery texture of the salmon, and it's delicate smoky-fishy flavour.

The cheddar added a more complicated salty note, that really helped to round out the whole experience. I was utterly delighted, and proceeded to make several more. Unfortunately, all but two were harmed before I could take any photos..

This flavour combo is lovely, and my only regret is the finish on my little 'nibblies' - I think I'll try to turn them into petite fours next time, using chocolate biscuit, a small amount of cherry jelly / jam, cheddar and smoked salmon, and then dipping it all into melted dark chocolate.

It's not exactly 'cookery' - but it certainly is a quick way to get this flavour pairing into your mouth ;)

TGRWT #15 Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon

Martin, from Khymos is letting me host round 15 of "They go really well together" or TGRWT. If you don't know TGRWT, it's the food blogging event that has us put together seemingly strange pairs of ingredients that share a certain number of chemical components, thus, making them "compatible".

After spending whatever free time I had trying to come up with some flavor pairing that would be interesting to work with. Thanks to the foodpairing website, I've come up with a couple of ingredients that might be interesting to play with: Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon. Since we're in a bit of a rush, and I'm not much of a chemist, I'll leave the Chemistry for later.

Here's how to participate in this event:

1. Prepare a dish that combines dark chocolate and smoked salmon.
   
2. Write a entry in your blog by March first with TGRWT #15 in the subject and make sure to include a link to the header of this post for trackback links. Readers will probably be particularily interested in how the flavour pairing worked out, so make an attempt at describing it.
3. Deadline for submissions is March first. A round-up will be posted by me here some days later with pictures.
4. Please send me an email at jrnavlag (at) gmail (dot) com with the following details: Your name, URL of blog and URL of the TGRWT #15 post and a picture for your entry in the round-up.
5. If you don’t have a blog, email me your recipe, name and location and I’ll be glad to include it in the final round-up.

Have fun!

Hans Beck

Photo AFP

German carpenter Hans Beck passed away last January 30th. I have many memories from my childhood of playing with his most famous creation: Playmobil figures. Somewhere in my parent's house there's still a big Playmobil pirate ship tucked away.

I stopped seeing playmobil toys for a while until I went to France. I found myself face to face with a great childhood memory. Now I know that they are still here in toy stores... and I still love them.

Thanks Mr. Beck. Rest in Peace.