/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>13871279
>what kind of brandy
Doesn't really matter, as long as it's not bottom of the barrell stuff. No point going higher than a VS, unless you want to keep drinking it of course.

>what tastes better
Probably brandy, because it's the strongest it'll give the meat and subsequently the dish the most distinct flavour of the three

Step 12: And finally, lift the pan and add the lemony syrup after it's boiled down. Try and have it cover the whole tarte, including the edges.

There you go, spiced pear tarte tatin. Not fully traditional but real tasty on its own or with a bit of ice cream. Vanilla if you have a sweet tooth, but it would go damn well with some lemon sorbet or some such thing.

Step 11: The fun part - put a plate on top of your pan and flip it over.

Step 10: While holding the base down with the spatula, drain any extra juices into a kettle or whatever and put that on low heat to boil it down. Because pears are a bit sweeter than apples, I find a good balance is to add about a spoonful of lemon juice to this syrup you're making here. Let it boil down to a farily thick, syrupy consistency.

Step 9: Tart comes out of the oven, if the crust if puffy push it down onto the pears with a spatula gently, get it nice and flat.

Step 8: The whole pan goes into the oven for abour 40 mins, depending on your oven. Might take a bit longer but check it at 40 mins.

Step 7: Roll the base onto your rolling pin and unravel it onto the pan, then push in the edges with a wooden spoon so they sort of go underneath the pears a little bit, you want to end up with this sort of concave shape. Then make a cross in the middle to let the steam out.

Extra note: Your oven should be heating up at 180 degrees celsius by this point.

Step 6: While the pears are cooking down, get the dough ball out the fridge and spread it out, just about the size of the diameter of your pan. Don't thin it out too much, gotta get a good balance of base to filling.

Step 5: Add the pears to the pan, ideally in a nice fan shape. I for one am lazy and will not sit around putting it down nicely. As long as the pan is covered evenly you're fine. Swill the pan around to cover the pears properly and let it cook on low heat for another 5 mins or so to let them settle in.

Step 4: Keep an eye on that butter/sugar mixture, mix it around and so on. Keep the heat low and once it gets to a good spot you'll start feeling the smell of caramel and spices, it's probably ready then. When you mix it around it should feel fairly smooth, not grainy.

It might also look too buttery at this point but don't worry it's fine.

Step 3: Peel the pears, cut in half and remove the core (I use a teaspoon going in a circle), then lay them flat and cut them into slices, not too thin.

Step 2 - 80g butter goes in a steel pan on low heat, then once it's melted in goes the 80g sugar and spices, mix it up and let it melt away slowly.

Step 1: Base ingredients all mixed together into a ball, butter should be room temp, if you keep it in the fridge blast it in the microwave for 10 secs (not the ideal option but sometimes I'm lazy like that). Cover it and put it in the fridge for now to keep it cool and ultimately crunchy

Here's the ingredients - the filling is 4 pears, 80g butter, 80g sugar, about 1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon and allspice and a dash of nutmeg. The base is 200g flour, 100g buter, about 15g sugar and a bit of salt.

Well the previous thread with the coq au vin seems to have gone over well, and what with the quarantine I'll be doing more cooking anyway, so might as well post some more.

Continuing the French atmosphere, today it's tarte tatin, but with pears, instead of the traditional apples.

>>13870655
>>13870679
I don't know if it makes a difference or not, I just went by the traditional method which includes the overnight marniade. Also it's not just wine, it's spices and herbs too. But I guess you could test one marinated and one not and see what happens...

>>13867229
Not really. I’d say just don’t have the mushrooms in there if that’s the case. Compensate by adding a bit more of the other vegetables.

>>13866419
Hm...not really. It's a classic peasant dish, unless you leave something on the stove and go shopping thus burning down your house, not much can go wrong. The secret is that it looks fancy, but isn't. I guess make sure when you brown the chicken at the start don't go overboard, you're not really trying to cook it through, just get a little Maillard reaction going.

>>13866436
The alcohol is indeed cooked off, fine for anyone. It still tastes like 'wine' at the end of course, but there's no alcohol content there.

>>13865968
It does require coq, because if anything braising coq is one of the few ways to get it to be tender. But chicken's fine, especially if you get organic or free range stuff that's a bit tougher anyway.

>>13865501
You can use chicken breast, but the important thing is not to use JUST chicken breast. As you guessed it's not fatty enough and has no bones. Part of the taste that comes through is from the skin and bones of the chicken legs as they cook for that 40 min - one hour.

But yes, you can definitely do a combination. The very classic recipe for this uses a whole chicken, rooster or capon, which would of course include the breast too. You could do 4 thighs and 2 breasts for this recipe, for example. One note is that when I made this, after frying the chicken I actually threw away a little bit of the fat as it seemed a bit too much, but this will depend on what kind of chicken you have. If you use breast you likely won't need to do this.

Step 12:

And here it is served up with some mash to soak up that juice.

Huh, fewer steps than I thought. Anyway, try it out, it sure is good.

Step 11:

Once it's reduced, turn off the heat and add in the bacon and some chopped up parsley, about a handful. Should end up looking something like this, nice and dark.

Step 10:

After the 40 minutes have elapsed, take the lid off, give it a mix and add the mushrooms. Now cook that all together for about 30 minutes with no lid, to let it reduce. You can cook it longer if you want it reduced more.

Step 9:

Chop up about 6-7 chestnut mushrooms thinly, and the bacon too. Can use other mushrooms or a combination, chestnut and porcini would be nice for example.