Cheese and Cardamom Cocktail Puffs

Of all the nibbles I have offered to my guests over the years, this one, I think, has been the most asked-for recipe.  These, my dear readers, are the cheesiest, lightest, most gloriously flavorsome tiny cocktail savories that I have ever met!  If you love cheese, please, I urge you to make these – they are like all the flavor and richness of cheese but in a light as air and gently spiced puff shape that you pop into your mouth, and… reach for another, washing it down with whatever you happen to have in your drink hand!

Alongside all their culinary virtues, they are also one of the most ridiculously easy things to make, so the reward to effort ratio nears infinity here – my favorite sort!  The only excuse for not posting it here sooner has been the fact that these are usually gone before I have a chance to grab the camera and snap a few photos.

Well, today was different – I made them to take along to an informal dinner this evening, and so they were not ravenously devoured by the hungry horde before I could sneak the camera into the kitchen.  So I did, and now I am posting about them, and then I will pack them into a box, put on a pretty top and head out into the winter night in anticipation of excellent food and a good time, and the rest is history.  Or well, at least now I can just point all the “how do you make those cheese things…?” questions here, and you, too, can make your very own savory and spiced just as you like and oh-so-cheesy and fluffy and light cocktail snacks.

Disclaimer – when I say they are light, I mean it as in not a heavy mouthful of chewy stuff people – this is no diet food of any kind, nor will I make any health claims for it, other than the fact that they are likely still better for you than all their sugary cousins.  So there.

What do you need to make your own?

(This will make about 1.5 baking sheets worth of cookies, depending on how thin you roll the dough and how small you cut them)

• 3-3.5dl plain flour
• 3-3.5dl grated cheeses of your choice – I tend to use a mix of about 2/3 random aged cheese such as strong cheddar or brännvinsost (a Swedish cheese made with spiced vodka of a local variety), and about 1/3 of some hard cheese such as Parmesan, Grana Padano and the like.
• 1/3 – 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2/3 tsp salt
• 1/5 tsp cardamom seeds (not pods), pounded in a mortar, or a large pinch of ground cardamom.  (Note:  It can probably easily stand up to 1/2 a teaspoon of those really, if you like cardamom!)  Or you can use a little of your favorite savory spice – fennel, rosemary, lavender, whatever floats your cheese!
• 1 egg yolk
• 125g unsalted butter (omit salt above if using salted), cut into small pieces

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 200C (fan) or 210C (regular).  Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
• Mix flour, salt, cardamom and baking powder.  Add butter and cut in till it is the size of small peas.
• Mix in cheese and mix till fully incorporated.  Add egg yolk and mix with spatula for a while, then stick your hands in and start rubbing the crumbly stuff together till it comes together into a dough.
• Wrap dough ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10-15 min while you clear the counters from the mixing clutter.
• Flour your work surface and rolling pin thoroughly, roll the dough out to desired thickness (I go for about 5mm, approximately), and use a small cookie cutter to cut these out.  Generally 2.5-5cm is a good size for these.  The ones pictured were made on the small side.  Space cookies about 1cm apart on the baking sheet.
• Place sheets in oven and bake for 5-10 minutes (depending on oven, thickness and size of puffs, use common sense people!) until puffed up and just barely beginning to turn golden.  You do not want them to brown much at all.
• Cool on a rack, and place into a baking parchment lined airtight container (a tin box works really well).  Puffs will keep for 3-5 days (if they survive to keep that long!)  I have not tried to freeze them so I have no idea how well that would work, but I would hate for these to get soggy.

In my very biased view – and I am a cheese addict! – these work equally well with a glass of bubbly or a glass of a good red wine, or even a coffee if that is what you fancy.  Me, I will have it all, thank you very much!

Margarita! Cookies! MARGARITA COOKIES!!! (Need I say more?)

Ok, so I do.  And I will.  Right now.

I have recently made the best cookies I have ever made.  Also, quite possibly the best cookies I have ever eaten.  If you love citrus, if you love tequila, if you love margaritas, if you adore just the tiniest hint of saltiness in your sweets, or any or all of the above, and you never thought their essence could be contained in a cookie – you’d be wrong.  It can.  It is.  And you need to try this.  They are crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth delicately textured and oh so aromatic!  The cookies are not overly sweet, but the sugar-and-salt crust adds just the needed edge of sweetness with the very light, not at all pungent salty fleck.

Yes, I know that’s a pretty astounding claim to make, not to mention prideful, but there it is.  These have, as of last weekend, become my favorite cookies to eat.  Move over lemon shortbread, and gooey triple-chocolate chocolate chunk cookies, these, these are the cookies which I place upon the throne and hand the holy scepter of cookie royalty to.

Erm.  Yes, they’re good enough to wax poetic about.  No, they aren’t actually my idea, though now I feel it should have been – I have come across these on a great foodie blog I read on a regular basis, namely Zoe’s Dare to Eat a Peach, the same place which has given me the foodgazmic cast-iron home pizza-making method.

Zoe’s blog is one of the few that I have stumbled over while randomly browsing wordpress “food” tags.  I cannot even remember what it was on her blog that attracted me – it may well have been that pizza post, but after reading a few posts on it, I ended up bookmarking and following it, because Zoe is not just a great amateur chef, but her writing is incredibly inviting, in the sense that it convinces you that yes, despite the fact that this (whatever this may be) sounds a bit new and strange, it is worth trying and really very accessible – many food bloggers try the “if I can do this, so can you!” ploy, but in Zoe’s case, she actually does convince you that you can.  And, with spectacular results to boot!  It also helps that the food she writes about is as good as these cookies.  Or the aforementioned pizza.

And it’s not just the food – as I’ve said, her writing is wonderful to read (Zoe, if you publish a cookbook, I’d buy it!), and that refers to the rants that are sprinkled in-between the recipes, which are well-written, to the point and poke the social conventions in the eye.  With a sharp twig, which is very needed and more than deserved.  So, before I get to the actual recipe, there are two things which need to be said:

In fact, I will say them in all caps too:

YOU SHOULD MAKE THESE COOKIES FOR YOUR NEW YEAR’S PARTY!

And

GO READ ZOE’S BLOG!

So, now that I’ve gotten the important bits out of the way, here’s my adaptation of Zoe’s recipe (in turn adapted from Smitten Kitchen, but with Zoe’s valuable notes about the dough which were a lot of use, at least to me).

Special equipment:

• A hand or stand mixer.
• Cling film (saran or plastic wrap).
• Baking parchment.

Ingredients:

• 230g unsalted butter, softened (room temperature)
• 70-75g confectioners’ sugar  (my scale only does 25g increments, so I erred on the side of excess and it worked fine)
• 1 egg yolk (large, free-range and organic if you can get it – eggs bought that way are notably better than not, unlike many other things where you can’t tell the difference)
• Small pinch of salt
• 1-1.5 tablespoons good tequila (mine was cold from -20°C freezer)
• 2-3 limes’ worth of zest (I used 2 and wished I had another one – so if your limes are small, use 3.  I will, next time.)
• Zest of 1 large orange.  Or 1.5 smaller ones.
• 5dl or just over 2 cups of all-purpose (plain) flour.

• Coating:
• 1 1/4 dl (1/2 cup) granulated or caster sugar (I only had caster but it works fine)
• 2 teaspoons flaked sea salt (if using regular non-flaked salt, use 1 teaspoon or less!)

What you do:

• Beat the butter with a mixer until it’s fluffy, add the sugar and beat until it’s incorporated and pale.
• Add yolk, zest of lime and orange, salt, and tequila.  Beat to incorporate.
• Add the flour and beat on low speed until it’s barely combined into crumbs.  Stop.
• Using a silicone spatula or your hands, carefully mash the crumbs into a ball of dough.  Warning!!!  The dough is incredibly smooth and buttery and will tend to want to melt into your hands and pretend to be hand lotion.  Don’t let it.  Handle it as little as possible.  In fact, I wrapped it in some plastic wrap and then mashed it together.
• Refrigerate the dough for about 10-15 minutes wrapped in plastic, then take out, and cut in half, placing halves on prepared pieces of plastic wrap.
• Shape each half into a rough log by wrapping it in the plastic, and rolling and mashing it out a bit.  Wrap and refrigerate another 30 minutes.
• Take the logs out of the fridge, and finish shaping them (they will be noticeably firmer).  I used a wooden cutting board on top of them and rolled them (still wrapped in plastic!) between the board and kitchen counter to get them to more or less even thickness.  You can make them as thick or thin as you like – mine were about 3.5cm across when I was done.  Note that cookies will expand a little bit when baked, and shape your log accordingly.
• Rewrap the logs tightly in the plastic wrap, twisting the ends to seal, and place in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours or overnight (I did the latter).
• When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 180°C (350F) and place a piece of baking parchment on a cookie sheet.
• Mix coating ingredients together by putting it all in a mug and stirring vigorously with a fork.
• Place a piece of baking parchment on your counter (to avoid mess), and pour half of coating sugar/salt onto it.  Spread a little.
• Zoe recommended painting the logs with another egg yolk, but I found that unnecessary.  Unwrap one of your logs, and roll it around in the sugar, pressing down a bit, to coat well and thoroughly.
• Slice into 0.7-1cm thick slices, and place those on the baking sheet.  If any slices get coating on one cut side, place them that side up.  Repeat with the remaining coating and the other dough log.
• Bake for 12-17 minutes (depending on your oven and size of cookies).  Mine baked in about 16 minutes.  Take them out when the edges just barely, barely begin to turn golden.
• Cool on their sheet, and finish on a rack if you have one.  Store in an airtight container for as long as you manage to store them (apparently they are meant to keep for up to 5 days.  I suspect a week won’t do them much harm, but really, who in their right mind can manage to keep them around that long?!).

Certainly not us.  I baked them for a party last Saturday, and they are already gone.  All gone.  I feel the urge to go out and buy a few limes and an orange already, to repeat the divine experience – but I won’t.  I need to pace myself else I won’t fit into any pants after this holiday season.  But… soon.  Soon.

Review: Yee Rah @ Liverpool One

Last weekend I have been visited by a friend from Norway. It was a little bit spur-of-the-moment, but as both she and I have needed some girl-time, and we both have a limited supply of female friends (women are terribly hard to get along with, I have no idea how most men manage!), it made perfect sense to have her call me early in the week and ask if I were going to be available, and then just drop by.  For the record, I do so much love living in the globalised world – years ago this sort of thing would not be possible, except maybe to the super-rich (which neither one of us is).

Since we had a couple of evenings, we split the food ideas evenly between a dinner cooked by yours truly (photo and recipe to follow in a separate post), and going out to a very nice place in Liverpool One called Yee Rah, which is a sort of an oriental-fusion food restaurant, very modern, and with a fantastic ambience that I had wanted to try for a while, but never had the occasion to.  The hall itself is designed in muted shades of natural green and brown, reminiscent of a tropical rain forest in palette.  It is double-level (ground and upper), comfortable, and softly lit, providing a very relaxing atmosphere.  The kitchen is open, and an array of food at various stages of preparation is displayed under lights to anyone passing through.  I must say, though we did not end up having dessert in the end, those made us salivate even as we walked by.

We were greeted promptly, offered a window table overlooking Chavasse Park, and most importantly, the servers neither abandoned us, nor hovered, but were rather responsive to a raised hand and eye contact, the way too few restaurant staff seem to know to look for these days.  I give the staff full marks for exemplary service.

Regarding the food – we ate one of the Tapas platters, the one including squid rings, which was both, generous in size, and incredibly good (the pork spare ribs are to die for!).  Then I had Beef Teriyaki, and Hanne – a Koreah-spiced breast of duck.  Having tried each other’s food, I have to say I preferred the duck.  Hanne did, too – it was warmly spiced and not too sweet, as well as incredibly tender, and I’d order it next time I go there!  The beef was also very decent, despite the sauce being a touch too salty for my preference.  Portions were generous, and presentation beautiful, despite it being a busy Friday evening (which I can imagine is hell in restaurant kitchens).

The cocktail menu was short but well-chosen, and though it didn’t have a Margarita listed, it was furnished complete with properly salted glass on my request.

Unfortunately, I have no photos.  All I can say for myself is that we were too busy eating, talking and enjoying ourselves to remember to snap pictures before wolfing the food down.

In short, I would gladly recommend this to anyone who wants a classy and stressless evening out, without it being overly formal or stuffy.  For the price-conscious – while the price of food and cocktails is not cheap, it is certainly not unreasonable.  For us, a large shared starter platter, a hot drink, main entree off the “Grill” section, and a cocktail ran to about £60 total for two (not including tip, which had been richly deserved, as we had a wonderful time!).