Recently, it occured to me that I seem to have some weird connection with P words.

-I have a ‘thing’ for certain words. Pony, for example.

-A good friend of mine from high school used to call me Penfold (from Danger Mouse). Apparently I look like Penfold!

-My sister and I grew up reading (but never watching) the Flumps. I had a homemade version of Pootle which I loved to death (his, not mine). B calls me Pootle sometimes. Apparently I also look like Pootle. If you combine Penfold and Pootle, you get Poofold! Hopefully I don’t look like anything called Poofold.

-I also love Pastry. Drape anything in pastry and I’ll probably eat it. Except Poofold. Inspired by Matt’s Partridge Pasties, I made Pastie versions of our curried chicken and Potato Pie dinner the other day. It was a Pleasant Pow! to the tastebuds.

-Thanks to B, I am now addicted to watching English Premier League football. That doesn’t quite start with P but I can make it : Penglish Premier Pleague Pootball!

Ok, that’s enough silliness now…

Creme fraiche pastry :
(This is my favourite standby pastry. It’s quick and easy to put together, and the end result is wonderfully tender, flaky and flavoursome. If you don’t have creme fraiche, sour cream works just as well (although it has to be said, cooking with creme fraiche is a pleasure unto itself). The recipe comes from Christine Manfield’s book, Spice. Use it for pithivier-style pies (she has a five-spice duck and shiitake mushroom pie in her book) or pasties. She doesn’t recommend it for use as a tart case because of how short the pastry is).

125g cold unsalted butter
200g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
125g creme fraiche

Chill bowl and blade of a food processor in refrigerator. Chop butter into chunks and, while still cold, blend with flour and salt in food processor until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add creme fraiche and pulse until just incorporated. Don’t overwork dough at thisstage or pastry will be difficult to handle with rolling. Form pastry into a ball by hand, then wrap in plastic film and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Roll and cut pastry as required. Keep pastry as cool as possible when working with it – you may need to return it to the refrigerator as you roll and cut.

To bake, preheat oven to 220’C and bake until golden.

Wednesday lunch buddy (WLB) and I met at Black Star Pastry this week, for a change of scenery and some coffee and pastry treats (quiche for her, mini banana cake for me – delicious; loved the fresh banana bits). Talk meandered from babies who hug with their whole bodies, to men who haven’t been hugging much lately, and eventually we turned to Audrey Hepburn. Now there’s a woman who will forever remain timeless. WLB is going through an Audrey phase, watching DVD collections of her movies. Some classics are so good they bear revisiting.

That’s what I thought, when I revisted a classic with a classic. I’m sure the hard gritty rock of Guns and Roses was never intended to be sung along to, by a short, pink clad, Asian girl, while she’s creaming butter for pound cake. But there I was, with apologies to our neighbour, knock knock knockin’ on heaven’s dooooooooah!

Pound cake is one of those sturdy, buttery cakes I freely admit to craving every now and then. Good pound cake freely kisses sugar, eggs and flour and is unabashedly a butter-burst of moistness. Your teeth thank you, when you sink them into a slice.

So here I’m offering two very different riffs on the classic pound cake. Currently in Sydney we are straddling two seasons (the hot vs the cold), and it seems quite appropriate to be celebrating the glory of Spring with fava bean (or broad bean) pound cake, whilst still giving a nod to an Autumn and Winter’s past, with a damp chestnut and walnut pound cake.

The chestnut pound cake comes from Alice Medrich’s book, Pure Dessert. She recommends having a slice of this cake with a glass of sherry (and I couldn’t agree more!). I’m not including the recipe because by now, I think everyone should already own a copy of that fabulous book!

Fava Bean Pound Cakes :
(enough for six friand-sized cakes; from The Dessert Book, by Hidemi Sugino)

For the batter :
100g unsalted butter, thinly sliced, plus additional for greasing pans
150g icing sugar
180g whole eggs
70g plain flour
1.5g (1/3 tsp) baking powder
100g almond meal
60g poached fava bean puree (see below)

For the garnish :
Poached fava beans, for top and garnish
Diced almonds, for top

For the syrup :
60g fava bean poaching syrup
60g kirsch

Combine syrup ingredients; set aside. Butter baking pans.

Sift together flour, baking powder and almond meal.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine butter and sugar; process for 4 to 5 seconds. Gradually add eggs, and flour mixture, processing for 4 to 5 seconds, after each addition. Transfer to a bowl and fold in bean puree.

Pour this batter into a pastry bag without a tip and pipe evenly into buttered pans. Lightly tap pans in order to release the trapped air from the batter. Sprinkle each with almonds and 2 fava beans on top. Bake in a 170’C oven until a cake tester inserted into the centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

Remove from pans, transfer to a wire rack, and brush syrup while warm. Garnish with poached fava beans if desired.

Poached Fava Beans :

60g granulated sugar
2/3 vanilla bean, split
150g water
150g peeled frozen fava beans

Heat sugar, vanilla and water together over high heat until sugar dissolves. Add fava beans, bring to a simmer, and cook for 1 minutes; let cool to room temperature. Transfer into an airtight container, and refrigerate overnight. To puree beans, process in a food processor or mash.

Note: If you use fresh fava beans, cook them in salted boiling water, immediately shock into cold water and peel before poaching.

I probably should be telling you about how good these crackers were. How easy they were to make, and how thrilling it was to pull them out of the oven, puffed up like little pillows for chipmunks. How, after they were assembled, you could bite into one and warm cheese would flood instantly into your mouth, caressing every single tastebud. Yes, every tastebud. Even the ones that usually only perk up in the presence of panfried brussel sprouts with chestnuts, or brownie crusts. Personally speaking, that is.

I should be telling you that these crackers, with their bellies full of cheese, were equally good topped with homemade carrot and orange marmalade. The marmalade, being eye-catchingly orange in colour, textured and vibrant in flavour, was one of the most simple but astonishingly good things I had made of late.

I should be telling you about these crackers, but what stuck in my mind most was the bit of effort it took to talk B into buying a syringe from the chemist for me, on his way home from work. How reluctant he was to do it at first, because, I mean, a syringe? What would people think!

(Tell them it’s for injecting cheese into crackers, I told him. I’d rather say it’s for drugs, he replied dryly. At least they won’t look at me as strangely.)

After a bit more cajoling, he finally acquiesced, but oh, how embarrassed he was when the chemist gave him a disapproving look, saying, “We don’t do that sort of thing here”, when he asked for a needle that would fit the syringe.

I could be telling you all these things, but I think all you really need to know is, yes, thank goodness, there is a recipe :

Cheese in Cracker :
(from Grant Achatz’s Alinea)

Cracker Dough :
215g warm water
13g fresh yeast
4g sugar
470g plain flour
4g kosher salt
55g melted butter
kosher salt

In bowl of stand mixer, stir together water, yeast, and sugar. Let stand for 5 minutes to proof yeast. Add flour, 4g salt, and butter. Attach bowl to mixer, fit mixer with dough hook, and beat on low speed for about 6 minutes, or until dough comes together and forms firm ball. Remove bowl from mixer, cover, and let dough rise in warm place for 25 minutes. Then refrigerate bowl overnight.

The following day, transfer dough to warm place. Divide dough into 4 equal pieces. Line sheet tray with parchment. Preheat oven to 230’C. Using rolling pin or pasta machine, roll out 1 piece of dough about 2mm thick. Save remaining dough for another use. Cut dough sheet into 8 2.5cm squares. Transfer squares to prepared sheet tray. Season squares liberally with salt.

Bake for 6 minutes. Each cracker will puff in center and turn golden brown. Let cool on wire rack to room temperature. Using needle of syringe, punch 1 small hole in each cracker. Reserve in airtight container.

Cheddar Cheese Sauce :
150g aged Wisconsin Cheddar cheese
150g whole milk
6g kosher salt
4g sugar

Grate cheese on large holes of box grater. Transfer cheese to blender. In small saucepan, bring milk to a simmer. Remove from heat and pour into blender. Add salt and sugar and blend on high speed until cheese has melted and liquid is very smooth. Pass through chinois into small container. Cover and reserve in warm place until ready to fill crackers.

To assemble and serve : Fill syringe with 30cc of cheese sauce. Using hole made with syringe needle, inject sauce into cracker. Do not overfill or cracker will burst.

[Notes : For the cheese sauce, I used what I had – a mixture of aged Cheddar and Parmesan. In the absence of a syringe needle, a sharp skewer works well to create a neat hole in the cracker large enough for the nozzle to transfer the cheese sauce. The sauce does not leak out once cracker is filled, but the cracker will start to soften over time.]

Carrot and Orange Marmalade :
(by Dan Hunter; from V.EAT Sept/Oct 2008)

850g carrots, peeled, coarsely grated
Juice and finely grated zest of 2 limes
Juice and finely grated zest of 2 lemons
200ml orange juice
820g caster sugar

Combine carrots, 60ml lime juice, 160ml lemon juice, lime and lemon zests and orange juice in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

The following day, transfer the mixture to a heavy-based saucepan, add sugar and cook over medium heat for 1 hour or until syrup is reduced and sticky. Transfer to an airtight container and cool. Marmalade will keep, refrigerated, for up to 2 months. Makes 2 1/2 cups.