Irene Field

This topic of conversation came up recently with friends. They were staying overnight at our humble abode, and needless to say dinner was required.  I happened to mention the meal that I enjoyed when they last cooked, and was advised it was the only time it had been attempted and hadn’t been attempted again. Yet it was a beautiful Pork fillet, cooked to perfection.

 I then confessed that when I have guests I stick to the tried and true. Boring – yes.  At least I can relax, safe in the knowledge that my meal is edible. My friend advised that he is the exact opposite. He sticks to the tried and true for everyday meals, but when cooking for guests, the opposite applies. The recipe books come out and with a flourish and a flick of an apron and a whisk of an egg, wooden spoon or what have you, a new culinary dish is attempted.

 I really have to try and dip my toes into unknown waters where guests are concerned. If it is just us, I have no qualms and will devise concoctions of my own. Leading my dear husband to ask, is this an Irene recipe? If it is, can you please save it and remember what you did, so we can have it again.

 Possibly my reluctance to test a new recipe with guests harkens back to my young, flatting days (ie last month. OK I confess a couple of decades ago!). I was in a new country and attempting to make new friends. The dinner invitation went out to acquaintances. We sat down with our new friends to feast on the roast vegetables, the obligatory greens, and Corned Brisket – which I had roasted! Ha, can you imagine the chew fest that evolved. How was I to know that nice looking piece of beef had to be boiled? Fortunately we were flatting in the inner city. KFC made people salivate and they were conveniently located across the road – to where my partner was promptly dispensed to purchase some edible chicken. The embarrassment of that may have unknowingly scarred me for life, and hence my reluctance to treat guests with an untried recipe.

 Although not only us culinary scaredy-cats get it wrong. I happened to spy a recipe for a Risotto in a current popular woman’s magazine. The recipe calls for 750g of rice – to serve four people. Now I may be bottle blonde and I am no Nigella in the kitchen. Even I know that raw rice once cooked, triples in size. Imagine feeding dinner guests 2.25kgs of rice. Divide that by four, and you would require platters and not plates for the servings.

 It then occurred to me. Imagine if I attempted that recipe back in my young, innocent days.  

 Maybe it is safer to stick to the tried and true? What do you do when cooking for guests at home, and I am not talking BBQs or finger food here. I mean a sit down meal.  Will you attempt  a new recipe or play it safe?

 In case you were wondering. For that recent meal with our overnight guests, I decided to stick with an Italian theme. My lasagna, which I am a dab hand at. A green salad. Tiramisu (authentic recipe from scratch given to me by a lovely Italian friend) for dessert, washed down with Chianti. Background music provided by a mix of Dean Martin and Pavarotti for added intensity.

Although I have spent most of the last 20 years cooking, there are some things that have always been in my too hard basket and I have gently side stepped around making them.
Sponge cakes are one and profiteroles another – there will be plenty more but these are the two that first spring to mind.
Known for their trickiness and ability to be temperamental I have left them to those who know better.

Therefore it was with some trepidation that I took on a job to create a profiterole tower for a client that not only tasted good but also looked fabulous!

What to do….

After an inordinate amount of googling I then happened to  mention my issue to Laurel Watson of Petal Cupcake fame, and as luck would happen I asked just the right person!

Laurel has a wonderful  easy recipe for profiteroles that I think are foolproof – my first batch came out looking like something from a cake shop and they just keep getting better.

Melting butter in water is the first step and then once the flour is dumped into the  butter mixture it is just a matter of mixing (and mixing) over a low heat until a film of floury mixture appears across the bottom of the pan and the mixture starts to come together into a ball.  The mixture is then left to cool.
Then comes the even easier part – the mixture is placed in a food processor (it does need to be a decent sized bowl and a food processor with a decent amount of energy) and with the motor running eggs are dropped in, one at a time and spaced out so that the last egg is well incorporated before the next one goes in.

Once the mixture is made the rest is a doddle – simply spoon rounded circles onto a tray lined with a little baking paper and flicked with cold water (this creates steam during cooking), and then baked.
Once they come out of the oven, Sally Cameron suggests making a small slit with a sharp knife and returning them to the oven for a few minutes to ensure they are completely dried out.
They should feel light for their size.

I have now made literally hundreds and wonder what on earth I was ever afraid of.

Here is the recipe for completely easy profiteroles that anyone can make.

I find that choux pastry is best on the day of making but Sally insists that they can be frozen.

And my profiterole tower – gorgeous!

Helen Jackson

My 8 year old has just done her school speech on pizza – therefore I now know that they come from Naples and that the first recorded pizza was Napoletana, followed 30 years later by the Margherita –  originally made for the Italian Queen of the same name and the green of the basil, red from the tomato and white of the mozzarella all represent the colours of the Italian flag.

My early memories of pizza are not flash – in fact they are probably terrible.  We had pizza at boarding school for Saturday lunch and essentially it was scone dough with leftovers from the previous few days piled on top and a bit of cheese to meld the ingredients together…… essentially a lot of gloop that no self respecting Italian would ever use.

A self respecting Italian would also baulk  at ham combined with pineapple (according to my 8 year old) and goodness knows what they would say about teriyaki chicken or even worse a satay pizza!

Neapolitans take their pizza so seriously that an organisation has formed – the Assoiciazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, that defends and promotes the culture of the True Neapolitan Pizza in the world.   Their website is easily converted to English and is an insight into just has seriously Italians view their food!

Most would agree that pizza base must be thin – soft and pliable in the centre but getting crisper towards to the outer.   Ideally pizza dough should be made with  Tipo 00 flour – this is a very fine flour that is high in gluten.  It needs to be handled with some degree of gentleness in order to get a soft pliable pizza base, if overworked it can become tough.  As Tipo 00 flour is priced at  around $10 for a 1 kg bag it is probably best kept for special pizzas and instead use high grade flour when the kids and their friends are starving!
It may be worth experimenting with a mixture of Tipo 00 and high grade flour.

The pizza dough recipe that I make has the addition of olive oil for added softness (milk does the same), interestingly the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana permits only flour, water, salt and yeast in the dough.

Pizza needs to be cooked at an extremely high heat – my  dream is an outdoor woodfired pizza oven, but while I wait for that I will settle for setting the oven as high as it possibly can go and using a terracotta tile or a pizza stone.  These are heated in the oven first.   Sometimes when in a hurry I resort to the pizza pan with holes all over the base but the terracotta and pizza stone definitely cook a  better base.

The toppings on a pizza should not be mountainous and in fact if you visit a good pizzeria you will find that the toppings are moderate in quantity but hopefully high in quality.
The complexity of the tomato layer can change from a smear of tomato paste to something more sunstantial.  I generally place a can or two of tomatoes in the food processor with an onion, a few cloves of garlic, a slurp of olive oil, a small chunk of frozen pesto, salt and sugar.  This is pulsed until it is mush and then poured into a saucepan, brought to the boil and then simmered until thick.
This needs to be cooled completely before spreading a thin layer over the dough .  I make the same for pasta but reduce it more for pizza.

While my kids are still very simple ham and cheese eaters, I prefer prosciutto, olives, artichokes and slices of quality mozzarella.  Once cooked I then cover the pizza with rocket and basil leaves and drizzle with good olive oil –  although Ed thinks it odd that I am including the salad on the pizza?

What are some of your favourite flavour combinations?

My pizza restaurant recommendation in Auckland is That’s Amore in Auckland city, Alessandro is highly passionate about his craft.

Who else is making great pizza  around NZ?