Food Blog
Big Green Jewish would like to introduce Rachel Davies, a Jewish chef from North West London. Rachel trained at Le Cordon Bleu and runs Rachel's Kitchen, offering catering for dinner parties and events, and teaching cookery in your home or in her kitchen. For more information please contact her at info@rachels-kitchen.com or the Rachel's Kitchen website, www.rachels-kitchen.com.
A bit about me - as this is a food blog, I should say that until about 2 years ago I was the kind of cook who burnt Super Noodles, and could just about manage 3 minute filled egg pasta with pesto from a jar as a ‘good’ meal.
Then a year volunteering with VSO in Zambia changed all that. I was alone in a village in Southern Africa where the market sold dried fish, tomatoes and sweet potato leaves, and egg noodles were a 3 hour drive away. Something had to change, and that something was my ability to cook. So using whatever ingredients I could find, I started baking my own bread, and attempting all the dishes possible with the limited fresh ingredients. And I loved it!
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August
You can travel around the world, and drink the same Starbucks frappuccino in London or Seoul, see the McDonalds golden arches in Ecuador and India, and smell the pumped-out bready smell as you walk past Subway in Australia or Zambia. And yet one of the things that I most enjoy about travelling is discovering new tastes, exciting flavours, and seeing how food differs, as well as what we all share.
I’ve spent the last few weeks in France, and whilst the Normandy sun is no stronger than in London, and summer rain falls with the same disappointing frequency, I have loved looking around the shops, patisseries and supermarkets, and enjoying the hundreds of cheeses, vast selection of wines, the fresh, crisp baguettes, delicious butter croissants, and the obvious pleasure that the French get from producing and eating really great food.
I spent a few hours in Paris, and my absolute mission, which I’d been looking forward to for months, was a kind of patisserie crawl, visiting as many shops as I could in the few hours I had. And so off I went, armed with a camera and enough Euros to sample something delicious from everywhere I visited.
I do accept that not everyone would find this adventure as exciting as me, but the number of books on Parisian patisseries does show that there is a small group of people who, similarly, could gaze at those beautiful, fresh treats for longer than the shop assistants
would like. And the patisserie didn’t disappoint, with brightly coloured macaroons and sweet, sticky fillings, lemon tarts with shiny glazes and delicate striped decorations, raspberry tarts dusted with icing sugar, chocolate tartlets embellished with gold leaf, fresh choux pastry filled with Chantilly, crème patissiere, coffee or chocolate, in every shape and size. And the Opera cakes, Fraisier, millefeuilles, financiers, madeleines, petit fours, chouquettes - hours and hours of tasty beauty.
Nothing beats fresh patisserie. Which is why, if you want to have these treats outside of France, the best way is to make it yourself. Some are more complicated than others, but the effort is absolutely worth it.
If you would like to have a go at some Parisian delicacies, showcasing some of the summer fruit still around, then I’d suggest you try millefeuille (pictured below), which means a thousand leaves, referring to the puff pastry layers. It’s an impressive dessert for any dinner party, and, of course, it tastes delicious!
To make your own fresh and lovely millefeuille you will need:
Plain flour for dusting
3 tbsp caster sugar, plus extra for serving
350g good quality puff pastry
300ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, or 1 tsp vanilla extract
600g strawberries and other summer berries
Zest ½ lemon (optional)
50g good-quality white chocolate
Method:
Heat the oven to 200?C.
On a lightly floured surface scattered with a little sugar, roll out the pastry to a rectangle slightly larger than 28 x 30cm. Line a large baking sheet with baking parchment and scatter with more sugar. Use the rolling pin to lift the pastry onto the baking parchment, and lay it out flat.
Scatter more caster sugar over the pastry and cover with another sheet of baking parchment. Lay another heavy baking sheet (or a baking sheet weighed down with an empty oven dish if yours aren't heavy) on top and bake for 20-30 mins until the pastry is golden and crisp, checking to make sure it doesn’t overcook. Then set aside to cool.
To make the filling, tip the cream into a bowl with 3 tbsp of sugar, and the vanilla seeds or extract. Lightly whisk until the cream just holds its shape and set aside.
Hull and quarter the strawberries and set a few aside for the salad, then cut the rest into 3 or 4 chunks.
Fold the chopped strawberries and lemon zest through the cream, then chill until needed.
When the pastry has cooled completely, trim the edges to form a neat 28 x 30cm rectangle. Cut into 3 equal rectangles - to get them precisely the same size, cut one, then lay it on the rest of the pastry and use it as a guide to the next rectangle, then repeat.
To assemble the millefeuille, lay down one rectangle of pastry, add half of the cream and strawberry mix and flatten with the back of a spoon. Place the second pastry layer on top and gently press down. Top with the remaining cream mix.
Place the final layer of pastry on and press down gently so that the filling just starts to bulge over the edges.
Use a palette knife to smooth the filling along the sides so that it is level with the edges of pastry and fills any gaps.
Grate the chocolate on top.
Mix the reserved strawberries and summer berries to make a salad.
To serve, carefully slice the millefeuille into 6 equal pieces. As you slice, hold the millefeuille together by placing a finger at either side of the blade.
Place a piece of millefeuille to the side of each plate. Spoon a small pile of the berry salad on the opposite side of the plate, grate a bit more chocolate over it all and serve.
(The millefeuille can be assembled up to 2 hrs ahead and kept somewhere cool. You could also prepare the puff pastry rectangles and cream mix the night before, keeping the pastry well wrapped in cling film.)
Enjoy!
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Food Crisis
As with the impact of our choices about food, there are many other ways in which our food consumption impacts on the social justice agenda.
Our sister campaign - the Jewish Fairtrade Campaign - highlights how we can ensure producers from some of the developing world's poorest communities get a fair price and are supported in working themselves out of poverty and building safe, healthy and sustainable communities.
There is also growing concern about the global food crisis that has seen food prices at an all-time peak more or less since Winter 2010.
Courtesy of Oxfam, you can see below how this food crisis is taking shape and the communities around the world it is affecting.
For more on how you can be part of the effort to "grow more food more fairly and more sustainably" visit Oxfam's GROW campaign.
The Big Green Jewish Campaign: Year of the Bagel, launched in Tu B’Shevat 2011, is a whole year of campaigns, action and education focusing on food.
Click here to have a look at the Campaign addressing one element of the underlying causes of the global food crisis - the impact of our food choices on the environment & Climate Change.
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