Flavour Bombs - pickled chilli, whipped miso butter, confit garlic and dukkah
Dressings, butters, pickles and crunchy things to make this weekend and use all of next week.
A flavour bomb (in my world) can be anything from a dressing, a crunchy thing, a pickled thing, a sprinkling thing, a drizzling thing, a spreadable thing – anything that delivers a lot of flavour and/or texture quickly and easily.
I feel like I bang on about flavour bombs a lot. But that's because they are just so handy, and when I have two or three ready to go, we do just eat so much better.
Tim and I work from home, and at the moment we are both pretty busy, plus we have our daughter Alice here in HSC study mode and Tom doing farm jobs (school holidays), so it's super convenient to be able to step away from our desks, throw together a bowl of goodness, sit in the sun (or today, by the fire) eat these good tasty things, then get back to it.
Take, for example, the lunch situation above – it might look messy, but it was seriously delicious and took only five minutes to make, not including the hour or so the weekend before making the below flavour bombs:
A batch of quinoa (cook according to packet instructions) and keep in the fridge until needed
Boiled eggs and/or tinned tuna
Pickled chilli and radish (recipe below)
Some chopped parsley and cucumber, whatever other crunchy thing was in the fridge (could have been carrots or fennel or celery; you get where I'm going).
Because it's so cold here at the moment, I'd want the eggs and quinoa hot, but otherwise, this is an assembly job that takes a few minutes max.
Below are a few more flavour bomb recipes with ideas for putting them to good use. Plus a PDF of the recipes all together if you wanted to print them easily.
Sophie x
Quick Pickled Chilli and Radish
A super easy and delicious little pickle. You could swap the radish here and replace it with fennel, carrot, or pretty much any vegetable you fancy.
Makes: About 1 big jar
Prep time: 10 minutes
Ingredients
150ml rice vinegar
100g sugar
1 tsp salt
1 bunch radishes, washed, trimmed and thinly sliced
4 large red chillies, sliced into thin rounds
Method
Combine the rice vinegar, 1/2 cup of water, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and stir until the sugar dissolves.
Remove from heat and set aside to cool for 5 minutes.
Pack the radishes and chillies in a medium-sized jar, then pour the pickling liquid over them and gently push down so that the liquid covers everything. Seal and store in the fridge.
This should be fine to serve after an hour but even better after a day or two. The heat of the chillies will die down a little in time.
Ideas for putting your pickled chillies and radish to good use
To top a plate of scrambled eggs on sourdough
Slice up some warm focaccia, spread with the whipped miso butter (below) and top with the pickled radish and chilli then sprinkle with dukkah
Serve with a big rich curry to brighten and add a bit of sharpness and heat
Chop up a tablespoon or so of these pickles, add to a bowl, chop up a couple of boiled eggs, stir through a tablespoon of natural yoghurt and maybe a sprinkle of the savoury granola or just toasted, chopped almonds and spread this very, very tasty mix on toasted pita bread or any bread you like/have.
Hazelnut Dukkah
Makes: About 1 cup
Prep time: 15 minutes
Ingredients
½ cup hazelnuts, toasted
½ cup almonds, toasted
1 tsp sea salt
â…“ cup sesame seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tbsp cumin seeds
Method
Combine the hazelnuts, almonds and salt in a food processor or mortar and pestle.
Combine the sesame seeds, coriander seeds and cumin seeds in a saucepan and toast over medium heat until fragrant and the sesame seeds are golden.
Add the toasted seed mixture to the nut mixture and blitz or bash to combine into a roughish crumb.
Once cool, store in a clean jar for up to a month (or longer in the fridge).
Ideas for putting your dukkah to good use
Sprinkle over avocado on toast with a drizzle of olive oil
Use as a crust for lamb or chicken before roasting
Sprinkle over salads for extra crunch and flavour
Serve with olive oil as a dip for fresh bread
Sprinkle over roasted vegetables or grain bowls
Mix into yoghurt with honey for a Middle Eastern-inspired breakfast
Confit Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia
For the confit garlic:
Take one head of garlic and carefully peel each clove. Cover these in a small saucepan with 1½ cups of olive oil. Place over the lowest heat possible and cook for 30 minutes or so. You want the garlic cloves to have turned a light golden colour but not to burn.
Grab a medium-sized jar and pop in a sprig of thyme or rosemary, then pour in the garlic cloves and oil. Seal and store in the fridge.
For the focaccia:
Follow the recipe here but around step 7, dot the top of your lovely bubbly dough with about ten cloves of the confit garlic and drizzle with the olive oil. Top with a few sprigs of rosemary and bake until golden.
Ideas for putting your confit garlic to good use
The soft, mellow confit cloves are beautiful mashed directly onto crusty bread or lavosh
Use them wherever you would fresh garlic, so toss whole confit cloves into pasta with olive oil, parmesan and fresh herbs. The garlic will just melt into the sauce
Roast up a tray of winter vegetables and in the last ten minutes of cooking, throw in a couple of cloves of confit garlic, toss everything around, squeeze in a bit of lemon juice and return to the oven. YUM
Mash confit garlic into softened butter and then smoosh into baked potatoes or spread over a barbecued steak or pan-fried fish fillet
Mash up a few cloves and stir through a pumpkin soup or minestrone for a beautiful deep garlicky flavour
And don't forget that the confit garlic oil is a flavour bomb in itself - use in salad dressings, over roasted vegetables or as a flavoured cooking oil.
Whipped Miso Butter
This is incredibly good just with bread but also atop baked potatoes or sweet potatoes, tossed through steamed vegetables, or anywhere else you want butter but to make it fancy. It's wonderful as a starter, served with crusty bread and a pickle or two. Also try this whipped cafe de Paris butter.
Makes: About 1½ cups
Prep time: 10 minutes
Ingredients
250g unsalted butter, room temperature (it needs to be properly soft)
100g miso paste, or to taste (some are stronger than others, so add a little, taste, then add more if you prefer! I like white miso).
â…“ cup buttermilk
Method
Combine the butter and miso in the bowl of your stand mixer with the whisk attachment.
Whisk for five minutes or until the butter and miso have become very pale and fluffy.
Lower the speed a little and drizzle in the buttermilk. Whisk until completely incorporated, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Then, increase speed again and whisk for a couple more minutes until it's light, fluffy and delicious. Serve at room temperature.
Ideas for putting your whipped miso butter to good use
Where do I start? So many uses. Oh, I know – just spread on warm, crusty bread. Honestly, this stuff is so, so good, there's not much you need to do with it.
But if you wanted to try a few different things, this is insane in a baked potato.
And with oven-baked fish with steamed greens.
And spread over barbecued corn on the cob.
And tossed through ramen or steamed rice with some pan-fried mushrooms perhaps.
Fermented Chilli Honey
Ingredients
3-4 long red chillies, thinly sliced (I include the seeds but you can remove them if you prefer less heat)
1 cup good Australian honey
Method
Pack the chillies in a jar and pour over the honey. Mix and cover the jar with a layer of clean Chux or muslin (so any gases produced by the fermentation process can escape). Leave for a couple of weeks - the honey will loosen and begin to bubble as the fermentation starts.
Once you're happy with the flavour (keep checking every week or so), place in the fridge. The heat of the chillies will mellow through this process.
Uses
Drizzle over a rich pastry tart like this leek galette.
Drizzle over a simple pizza bianca straight out of the oven (bonus points if it's peach or fig season and you have sliced or torn a few of either on the pizza with some mozzarella and then cooked until perfect, then drizzled with the honey).
Use in salad dressings.
If you happen to be making fried chicken anytime soon (PS, this is something I do once a year on my son's birthday, and it's incredibly good), drizzle it with hot honey right at the end. OMG. Or you could cut out the frying part and grill simple marinated chicken (lemon, olive oil, thyme, garlic, salt) then drizzle with the hot honey as soon as it comes off the grill.
Bake a whole brie until warm and gooey and then drizzle with hot honey before serving with crackers and crostini.
Drizzle over pancakes and serve with bacon for a spicy take on the American diner classic.
Brush over grilled peaches, pineapple, or figs and serve with ice cream. Save this one for summer!
this looks so healthy and yummy!!