Although cooking and baking with wine or brandy is quite common, cooks and chefs are discovering that whisky can introduce a delicious salty, smoky or even sweet element to recipes.
Purists may throw their hands up in horror at the thought of adding whisky to a cooking pot and, although one would not necessarily use your single malt whisky to cook with, as with using wine with cooking the adage “if it isn’t good enough to drink then it’s not good enough to cook with” still stands.
Moreover, better quality whiskies have more complex flavours, which will enhance the dishes they are used in.
During cooking, evaporation of the alcohol concentrates the tastes of the barley-malt sweetness, smokiness and caramelised sugars from the oak barrels.
Venison steak with whisky cream sauce
Serves 4
4 rashers of streaky bacon
4 venison fillet steaks
salt and pepper
30ml olive oil
Sauce
80g butter
15ml Worcestershire sauce
60ml lemon juice
125ml cream
45ml whisky
Wrap the bacon around each piece of steak and secure with a tooth pick. Season the meat with salt and lots of black pepper.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the steak until it is cooked to your liking. Medium-rare is best as the meat becomes tougher the longer it is cooked.
Remove and keep warm while preparing the sauce.
Sauce: Melt the butter in a small pot over medium heat. Add the Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and cream and bring to the boil. Simmer for 2 minutes.
Add the whisky and simmer for a minute. Serve the steaks with mashed potato and pour over the sauce.
Note: I used a springbok fillet for this recipe.
Irish coffee muffins
Makes 12
625ml flour
15ml baking powder
125ml brown sugar
30ml coffee powder dissolved
in 30ml hot water
30ml whisky
100g butter, melted
60ml milk
2 eggs, beaten
250ml cream
30ml castor sugar
5ml vanilla extract
30ml whisky
Icing sugar for sifting
Combine the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Combine the coffee, whisky, melted butter and milk and mix well. Add in the eggs.
Add this to the dry ingredients and mix until all the dry ingredients are moistened. Take care not to over mix.
Spoon the mixture generously into 12 paper-lined muffin cups and bake at 180°C for 25-30 minutes. Remove and cool.
Slice the domed part of the muffin off. Whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla until stiff then beat in the whisky.
Put some whipped cream on top of each sliced muffin and top with the sliced-off part.
Sift with icing sugar before serving.
Angela Day, Sunday Tribune