Pistachio Macarons with Pistachio and White Chocolate Ganache

During December my kitchen saw many baked goodies mostly macarons, some cakes and  few desserts. Most of them were given away as gifts, some shared and some, we indulged at home when friends came over during the Christmas holidays. And my horrendous baking has started showing effects on my waistlines too. So this year, I am thinking of diverting my cooking slightly into another direction, from baking desserts and cakes, to more of curries and savoury stuffs. That’s not me, but that’s what my family need. I am not going to bake any more of those massive cakes for my men to nibble on, and leaving the whole lot for me unless there is an occasion to celebrate. That’s what I am thinking of doing this year and I have kept that deal so far. I hope it stays longer.

Pistachio macaron would probably be the first macarons that I ever wanted to try. Shelled pistachios don’t come cheap, so I thought I will wait for a special occasion to give it a shot and not on those moments where spur of macaron temptation sprouts. I was confused with what filling to go in as I thought some sort of citrusy filling or cardamom based filling would go the best. But since the gifts were going out for the son’s teachers and my neighbour friends who are all white, I dint know how they would like the flavour of cardamom as that would be something quite unusual for them. So I settled myself with some thing simple, and added ground pistachios to the white chocolate Ganache for a bite. It went down so well with all who had it and I was even told to make them again. 

The basic recipe is Ottolenghi’s. I have been wowed by my friend Finla’s amazing macarons and I thought I had to give her recipe a shot, and I am so glad I did. The recipe is perfect with all good characteristics of a perfect macaron and it tasted just awesome. I thought it was slightly less sweet than mine, but fantastic! I am so going to stick to the recipe and try different flavours using the same, which I did already around last Christmas.

When I bake macarons to give away, I always bake 3-4 flavours at the same time as I love to see the colourful combination of different macarons wrapped in a beautiful gift box. It is an eye candy and would wow anyone who haven’t had macarons before. This pistachio macaron adds to my favourite list of macarons.

Pistachio Macarons with Pistachio and White Chocolate Ganache

Makes 20-22 medium size sanwiched cookies

Ingredients:

60g aged egg whites

30g shelled pistachios

30g almond meal or blanched almonds, you can use whole almonds as well

40g caster sugar

100g icing sugar

Few drops of bruce green colour (optional)

For pistachio-white chocolate Ganache

150 mls double cream

125 g white choc

¼ cup pistachio kernals, 30g

2 tbsp caster sugar

Preparation (shells):

**For an elaborate macaron post with my tips and links to other helpful sources, check out my first macaron post here.  

1.For ageing egg whites: Place egg whites in a clean bowl. Cover it with a cling cover and poke few holes in the film. Keep it in your kitchen counter for 24-48 hours or in fridge for up to 5 days. This ageing of egg whites helps to reduce the moisture content in the egg whites and make firmer shells. Fresh egg whites make fragile cookies which may break off as you try to lift them off the baking paper.

2. Powder the nuts and icing sugar together in a food processor or a grinder into flour-like fine powder. Transfer them to a large bowl and sieve 1-2 times to break up the lumps. Transfer them to a large mixing bowl and keep aside while you work with meringue and prepare your baking sheet and piping bag.

3. Line your baking sheets with baking paper or silpat. Fit your piping bag with a plain round tip and place it in a tall glass or a jar to make the job easier while scooping the batter in.

4. For making meringue, using an electric blender, whisk egg whites in a squeaky clean bowl (preferably metallic bowl as it is difficult to maintain a plastic/glass bowl grease free) on high until it starts to form soft peaks. Add in caster sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. It should be like a smooth, glossy shaving cream like form. If adding any colour, add once stiff peaks are formed and then beat again to stiff peaks incorporating the food colour. Make sure it is not over beaten and dry, which would result in dry shells.

5. Add the dry mixture to meringue in 2-3 portions and start folding it until everything is just combined and no more of dry mixture could be seen. Use a flexible spatula for this and mix until you get a smooth, shiny batter that ruggedly drips down the spoon once you lift it. DO NOT over mix once you have reached that thick batter stage. For testing, place a teaspoon of batter in a plate and you see it spreading flat slowly, then the batter should be ready. If it has a peak on top, give couple more folds and check again. Keep checking the batter at each stage by placing a spoon of batter in the plate to judge the consistency.

6. Pour the macaron batter into the piping bag. Once the batter is all poured in, twist the ends of piping bag tight to seal the batter in. Pipe out small rounds of about 2 cm diameter on your baking paper leaving about 2 inches in between. The macaron batter will spread and then join hands with the next one if they are piped too close, so make sure leave at least 2 inches between them. Rap the baking sheet few times on a table to remove any bubbles trapped in the batter. (To help you with the round shape, you can use this template).

7. Let the macarons sit to dry for as long as it forms a thin skin on top or is dry and leaves no indentation once touched or the batter doesn’t stick to hands once touched. It depends from place to place depending on the weather and humidity. In a humid place it will take as long as 2-3 hours whereas here it takes under 30 minutes, but I leave for a bit more.

8. Preheat the oven to 140 degress Celcius. Bake the macaron for 12-14 minutes. Do not open the oven until they are completely done. Take them out and let them cool down for

30 minutes. Peel the baking paper off the shells gently, and sort them out with same size shells. Fill them with Ganache and leave it in fridge to mature for a 2-3 days two to get maximum flavour out of it.

It is very important to mature the cookies as that filling will steep into the shells and the flavours blend well. Unfilled shells can be frozen.

For the filling:

Preparation:

1. Bring double cream to scalding (steaming) point in a heavy base pan or in microwave. Once you start seeing small bubbles appearing along the sides, turn the heat off and add chopped chocolates into it. Leave it for couple of minutes and then stir well until combined.

2. Grind pista into fine powder with caster sugar and mix it well into the Ganache.

3. Leave it in fridge until it the mixture is really cold. Then whip it up to form stiff peaksfirms up enough to pipe or spoon. It should not be runny and should be stiff and easy to spread. White chocolate may take few hours to harden, but if it gets too stiff, place in the microwave and warm for few seconds until spreadable. you can also whip the Ganache once the mixture is really cold.

Chocolate Macarons with Mocha Ganache

Hi all,

Happy Halloween! Hope you all had a great time today and had a wonderful Eid last week. Belated Eid wishes to all. I was hoping to post this on the day before Eid, but things did not work the way it was supposed to work. My terrible procrastination is to be blamed for that. 

For the reason, UK being a Christian country, Eid is not widely known and hence no official holidays or celebrations. On the day, the husband was at work and kid was school, and I was at the verge of breaking into tears thinking of celebrating Eid at home all by myself. 

Being brought up in a household with lot of things happening, it is sometimes a bit hard to be all by yourself. Even though, I have got used to the solitary peace by now and enjoy it, I would still want to be around my loved ones during celebratory occasions. Thankfully, the husband came home at noon in time for lunch and we picked up kid early from school; had our usual Eid meal - Mutton Biryani and chicken fry for lunch and it went great. The dessert was something I had been looking forward to making and heard a lot about - the trifle, a very simple and quite a popular dessert and so delicious. I can’t wait to share.

Eid-al-Adha or the Feast of the sacrifice is a major festival celebrated by muslims all over the world. You can read more of it here. It actually comes towads the end of Hajj period. It is usually celebrated annually on the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th of of Dul Hijjah, the last month of Lunar Islamic calendar. Since I grew up in the Middle East, my childhood memories of Eid back in India is negligible. It was always celebrated in Abu Dhabi except for last year where I celebrated Eid in India after a long gap of 22 years. It was a grandeur family event with all our cousins, uncles and aunts meeting up in our ‘tharavadu’ and visiting all relatives.

While I used to be in Abu Dhabi, myself and my sisters sit late at night day before the big day, chitchatting and laughing and applying the henna while my mother preparing the Biryani masala for the next day. We sleep off with the henna in hand, sometimes covering the hand loosely with a plastic bag to collect any dry henna that falls off the hand and to prevent messing up the bed and staining it. The applied henna is constantly wet with lime juice mixed with sugar or black tea to bring out the rich henna colour. It is usually washed off the next day morning leaving behind a deep dark burnt orange henna pattern on hand and the intoxicating aroma of mehendi..

On the big day, we wake up much early, take shower put on the clean, new crisp clothes and go to masjid to perform Eid prayers. After the prayers, Eid greetings are exchanged with warm hug. After getting back home, we straight away indulge in luscious homemade meal, which usually is a mutton biryani, chutney, raita and a chicken fry and alisa. At home, both my sisters don’t eat mutton and fish, so my mom has to make some chicken biryani, just for them or chicken biryani for all of us. In the evening we go out in the beach or town and spend some great time together. It has all changed; changed big time after I came here where there are no official holidays for Eid, the schools are open and no celebrations in the country unless it falls on a week end where the friends make great plans and we get together for Eid.

It’ s Halloween today and we friends (neighbours) planned some games and stuff for kids to enjoy and we all had fantastic time together. I’ve got a bunch of great neighbours who I get along well with and are the sweetest of people I met in a while. It was great to see the kids in Halloween costumes; my son was dressed up as a vampire and I thought he was the cutest vampire ever! After the games and food, we were planning to light up some fireworks and then go trick or treating, but thanks to the horrible British weather, it was too windy and cold and to top it up, it started raining. So, we couldn’t go out or light up the crackers, but kids had great fun.

Anyways, coming to the recipe, chocolate macarons is the one I keep making over and over again as my little one demands it. He absolutely adore chocolate macarons. Chocolate macarons are the only macarons that took me quite a few trials to get right. For many reasons, it went wrong. I never followed a recipe right and I have been too confident that I would never expect it to go wrong. But it did. It failed few attempts yielding macarons with sloppy feet, cracked tops and hollow pockets. Macarons, even the failed ones are good to munch on, and to crush on to ice creams and desserts, so I din’t have to bin them. But the texture of a failed macaron is way different from a successful macaron with beautiful feet. Here is the recipe that gave me beautiful macarons with perfect feet and delicate shells. Double the recipe as needed.

Chocolate macarons with Mocha ganache

Makes 26 small ones

   Ingredients:

For shells:

20g caster sugar

58g aged egg whites

65g Almond (slivers, blanched or powder)

100g icing sugar

20g cocoa powder

Filling:

Mocha Ganache:

100g semisweet chocolate

100mls double cream

½ tsp-1 tsp instant coffee

Preparation (shells):

**For an elaborate macaron post with my tips and links to other helpful sources, check out my first macaron post here.

For ageing egg whites: Place egg whites in a clean bowl. Cover it with a cling cover and poke few holes in the film. Keep it in your kitchen counter for 24-48 hours or in fridge for up to 5 days. This ageing helps to reduce the moisture content in the egg whites and helps to make firmer shells. Fresh egg whites make fragile cookies which may break off as you try to lift them off the baking paper.

1. Line your baking sheet with baking paper or silpat. Fit your piping bag with a round tip nozzle and place it in a tall glass or a jar to ease you while scooping the batter in.

2.Powder almonds, cocoa powder and icing sugar in a food processor or a grinder into very flour-like fine powder. Sieve the mixture 1-2 times to break up the lumps. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl and keep aside while you work with meringue.

3. For making meringue, using an electric blender, whisk egg whites in a squeaky clean bowl (preferably metallic bowl as it is difficult to maintain a plastic/glass bowl grease free) on high until it starts to form soft peaks. Add in caster sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. It should be like a smooth, glossy shaving cream like form. Make sure it is not over beaten and dry, which would result in dry shells.

4. Add the dry mixture to meringue in 2-3 portions and start folding it until everything is just combined and no more of dry mixture could be seen. Use a flexible spatula for this and mix until you get a smooth, shiny batter that ruggedly drips down the spoon once you lift it. DO NOT over mix once you have reached that thick batter stage. For testing, place a teaspoon of batter in a plate and you see it spreading flat slowly, then the batter should be ready. If it has a peak on top, give couple more folds and check again. Keep checking the batter at each stage by placing a spoon of batter in the plate to judge the consistency.

5. Scoop the batter into the bag placed in the tall glass. Once the batter is all scooped in, twist the ends of piping bag tight to seal the batter in. Pipe out small rounds of about 2 cm diameter on your baking paper leaving about 2 inches in between. The macaron batter will spread and then join hands with the next one if they are piped too close, so make sure leave at least 2 inches between them. Rap the baking sheet few times on a table to remove any bubbles trapped in the batter. (To help you with the round shape, you can use this template).

6. Let the macarons sit to dry for as long as it forms a thin skin on top or is dry and leaves no indentation once touched or the batter doesn’t stick to hands once touched. It depends from place to place depending on the weather and humidity, and it may take anywhere between half hour up to 3 hours.

7. Preheat the oven to 150 degree Celsius. Bake the macaron for 11-13 minutes. Do not open the oven until they are completely done. Take them out and let them cool down for half an hour or so. Peel them out gently and sort them out with same size shells.

8. Sandwich the shells  with Ganache and leave it in fridge to mature for a day or two to get maximum flavour out of it. It is very important to mature the cookies as that filling will be absorbed into the shells and the flavours blend well. Unfilled shells can be frozen.

For the filling:

Preparation:

Bring double cream to simmering point in a heavy base pan or in microwave. Once you start seeing small bubbles appearing along the sides, turn the heat off and add chopped chocolates and coffee granules into it. Leave it for couple of minutes and then stir well until combined. Leave aside until it firms enough to pipe.

Nan Khatai (Cardamom Flavoured Indian Biscuits) & Exercises in Food Photography 1 - Aperture and DoF.

Nan Khatai is a popular delicate and melt-in-mouth Indian cookie, similar version of the shortbreads. This is my mother’s recipe that she’s been baking ever since I remember. Instead of butter or the regular ghee, my mother’s recipe uses pure vegetable Ghee, which comes in the famous brand label – Dalda in India. Here we get brands like Aseel, etc which you may substitute with. You may also real ghee like RKG, but it would give a different taste as ghee is one key ingredient that contributes to most of the flavour. So, the kind of shortening you use, decides the flavour and taste of your Nan khatai. The unique and distinct flavour of my mom’s nan khatai comes from the vegetable ghee that she uses. 

Every food blogger would want to present his/her food beautifully to make the food more appealing. So, if anyone of you wants to improve your photography skills or learn something extra, Aparna of Mydiversekitchen is doing little exercises on food photography every month. Apart from the great tutorials she has written on photogrphy, this is one great idea that could be useful for anyone who wishes to learn more on food photography or improve their photography skills. Check out the link here.

Her first exercise is based on Aperture and depth of field(DoF). In the exercise, she asks to shoot two pictures with same composition and setting but at different aperture settings to show the depth of field (DoF).

I don’t own a 50mm lens, but a wide angle lens. I use 18-200mm lens for photos and the maximum aperture it provides is f/3.5-f/6.3. I shoot my pictures in manual mode, and usually at 50mm focal length and above else I would have lot of cropping to do to avoid the unwanted bits.

Below is a diptych of one set of pictures that I shot for this project. The picture on the left is shot at f/5, shutter speed 1/15 sec, ISO 100 and picture on the right is shot at f/8, shutter speed 1/8 sec, ISO 100. Unlike 50mm, f/1.2 lens, the depth of field is not as shallow when you shoot in 18-200mm f/3.5 – f/6.3 lens, which means you will not get the background as blurry as you would get with f/1.2 lens. The photo is shot next to a large French door, with light coming from the right and a reflector placed on the left to reflect the light back to the food and to mellow down the shadow.

Left Image: f/5, shutter speed 1/15 sec, ISO 100.   Right Image: f/8, shutter speed 1/8 sec, ISO 100

But still, when you shoot the pictures at a significantly different aperture, you will be able to make out the amount of blurriness in both the pictures. You could see that the background is more blurred in the first one than the second one. The greater the aperture, blurrier the pictures will be. The aperture used in the first picture is 5 and the aperture used in the second picture is 8. Shutter speeds is adjusted accordingly to get the correct exposure – brightness.

When I asked my mom for the recipe, she told me the amount of ghee and sugar that she use, and then she told me to add enough flour to get a nice soft dough and nuts as per my wish! Typical of her when she gives me the recipes. She gives me just rough measures for her recipes and I can't believe she din't even have proper measurement for her regular cookie as well!! So I added flour little by little until I got a nice, soft dough. 

Nan Khatai (Cardamom Flavoured Indian Biscuits)

Makes around 20-22 small cookies

Recipe Courtesy: My mom

Ingredients:

½ cup Vegetable ghee like Dalda, Aseel etc

½ cup sugar

a pinch od salt

2 tbsp Cashew nuts

1 cup plain flour

¼ tsp powdered cardamom

Preparation:

1. Powder sugar in a grinder to fine. Chop cashew nuts. Mix cardamom powder and salt with flour and sift once.

2. Cream ghee and powdered sugar until creamy.

3. Add flour in three parts and mix with a spoon.

4. Add chopped nuts and mix well using hands to bring the mixture together.

5. Make around 20 small balls of the dough and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper spaced apart. Gently press the balls.

6. Bake them for 15 minutes at 180ºC. It doesn’t have to colour.

Notes:

1. Regular ghee can be used instead of vegetable ghee.

2. You can omit nuts or use any kind of nuts.

3. You can double the amount easily and use little bit of extra flour to avoid sticking.

     This post also goes to Kerala Kitchen event hosted by Jehanne who blogs at the cookingdoctor.

Chocolate, Fruit and Nut Biscotti

If I adore something, I would definitely be making different flavours and varieties of them. Biscotti are one among them. I have been making these jewelled cookies on and off whenever I feel like baking something that uses no butter and something that could be stored for a while. Biscotti are great to snack or for an evening tea and easy to make so I tend to load them with whatever fruits and nuts I have in hand. 

Talking about Biscotti, these are Italian biscuits that are baked twice until dry, crisp and crunchy. They are studded with dry fruits, nuts and chocolates. We normally have it by dunking in tea/coffee. These are fantastically versatile and we can use our own favourite combination of dry fruits, nuts or chocolates. I found this recipe on Good Housekeeping Magazine but added apricots, and more nuts. As my husband dislike chocolate, I added chocolate just to half the dough and they were just delicious, with or without chocolate.

Chocolate, Fruit and Nut Biscotti

Preparation time: 20 mins

Cooking time: About 45 minutes

Makes: About 40 mins

Ingredients:

90g shelled pistachios

70g lightly roasted hazelnuts

70g apricots, chopped

1 cup (200g) caster sugar

3 (~190g) medium eggs, lightly beaten

75g milk/dark chocolates, chopped into small chunks

1 tsp vanilla essence

275g all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

Preparation:

1. Line a large baking sheet with baking or parchment paper. 

2. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.

3. Add in eggs and stir until clumps form, then bring together with your hands, kneading until smooth.

4. Add nuts and chocolate and knead until evenly distributed (dough will be a stiff and a bit sticky) sprinkle little flour to make it less sticky and manageable, but don’t add too much.

5. Preheat the oven to 180 ºC (160 ºC Fan), gas mark 4.

6. Now, on a lightly floured surface, divide the dough in half and roll each dough into two 15 inch sausage shapes. Place them on lined sheets, spacing much apart. Bake them for 25 minutes or until the dough is slightly golden and has spread, then cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack. Turn down the oven to 140 ºC (120 ºC Fan), gas mark 1.

7. Using a serrated bread knife, cut rolls diagonally into 1cm thick slices. Lay flat on baking sheet. Bake for 15-18 minutes until dry and lightly golden – They will harden on cooling.

8. Cool completely on wire rack and once completely cooled store in an airtight container.