The Thymes

The Thymes, they are a-changing

2011-11-11T07:30:00.000+08:00

This is the final post from The Thymes. From this day forth, 11.11.11, I shall be writing from The Wayward Oven, a blog that is a better reflection of who I am as a food anthropology and cookery enthusiast. For the reasons I am moving, please read this post, 11.11.11, at the new site.

The Wayward Oven contains all the content from this blog. martythyme.blogspot.com will no longer be updated but will continue to be online as it will take a while to update my new space and some of the older links may still be directed here.

Thank you for reading this little 'newspaper' of mine and for all your comments and encouragement. I hope you'll come visit again at The Wayward Oven.

Easier than pie

2011-11-07T11:29:00.001+08:00

MANGO-BERRY COBBLER WITH GINGER BISCUIT TOPPING

A pie, when made right, is nice, but unless I have the time, I think there is too much work involved. And making pie isn't as easy as the idiom proclaims – the dough needs to be rolled out (not to mention made well in the first place) and properly laid into the pie dish, blind-baked, cooled, filled, maybe topped with an upper crust, crimped and baked again. After all that effort, I can't even guarantee that I will get everything right.
    I don't like to say a recipe is fast or easy; we don't all have the same levels of cooking skills so it's relative. But I do think a cobbler is easier to make than a double-crust (or even single-crust) pie because the preparation isn't as elaborate: a biscuit topping spooned onto a fruit filling is the most direct way to describe it.
    A cobbler isn't the most elegant-looking dish, but unlike a pie, it has all the elements of a perfect dessert and can hold its own – it doesn't need ice cream or cream or custard to make it better than it already is.
I have another cobbler recipe out in print today ("The upper crust"). The filling uses pineapple and the biscuit dough is made with buttermilk.
    Still in the cobbler mood, I looked for inspiration in my latest acquisition, the newly minted Cook's Illustrated Cookbook. I liked the sound of a biscuit topping with crystallised ginger added to it but didn't want to use pineapple again. Mango seemed like a good combination with ginger.
    That's the good thing about a cobbler – it can be made with almost any fruit. Tropical fruit, I suppose, is unusual in a cobbler, but if strawberries and balsamic vinegar go well together and maple syrup and bacon are a marriage made in culinary heaven, then combining pineapple or mango with ginger, vanilla or allspice can't be bad.
It wasn't.

A cobbler is easily tweaked to use whatever fruit is available

The fruit is prebaked before the topping is put on and baked some more. In that initial baking, the fruit caramelises and adds flavour. Since I had half a tin of cherries left over from the pineapple cobbler I had made earlier, I added that to the mango and blueberries. It gave the mix a rosy tinge and broke down into a jammy texture.

Use a light hand when mixing the dough for a tender topping

My sister Judy helped with the recipe. She was a little timid when rubbing in the butter, though, so I took over and she snapped the pictures.

A sprinkling of flavoured sugar adds crunch to the topping

When Judy saw the amount of dough we had mixed, she remarked that there might be too little of it for the top. But the dough rises and spreads out in the oven, while remaining puffy, and lets some of the filling show through for an attractive finish as well.

The cherries become jammy when they bake

We made this at my godmother's home yesterday and she put out a vintage table-cloth inlaid with lovely needlework for the photo. Being the clumsy clod that I am, I was so afraid I would get a spill on the cloth but Godma insisted I use it. Fortunately, it remained stain-free.

No need for formalities, just scoop and serve

MANGO-BERRY GINGER COBBLER

Serves 6-8

Filling
450g flesh of a firm ripe mango, diced into 1.5cm cubes (about 2 cups)
150g blueberries
100g tinned cherries, drained
3 tbsp caster sugar
¼ tsp allspice
1 tbsp cornstarch
Pinch of salt
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
Zest and juice of 1 lime

Ginger biscuit topping
140g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
60g (3 tbsp) caster sugar

¾ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ salt

3 tbsp minced crystallised ginger

50g (5 tbsp) unsalted butter, diced and chilled

80g full-fat plain yoghurt

1 tbsp coarse sugar

Pinch of ginger powder

Preheat oven to 220°C. Add all the filling ingredients to a buttered 23cm pie dish. Toss gently, then arrange the fruit evenly in the dish. Bake until the fruit begin to bubble around the edges, about 10 minutes.
For the biscuit topping: While the fruit is baking, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and crystallised ginger together in a medium bowl. Add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until mixture resembled coarse meal (this can be done in a food processor). Add the yoghurt and mix with a fork until a cohesive dough comes together (do not overmix). This step should be done just before the biscuit topping is mounded on the fruit to bake.
Remove the fruit from the oven and put mounds of dough (about a heaped tablespoon each; use an ice cream scoop for even-sized portions) on top of the fruit, spacing them slightly apart.
Mix the 1 tbsp of coarse sugar and ginger powder together and sprinkle each mound with the mixture.
Return to the oven and bake until filling is bubbling and biscuits are golden brown, about 20 minutes, rotating pie dish halfway through baking. Transfer to wire rack to cool until warm, about 20 minutes, before serving.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Top this box mix

2011-11-04T20:21:00.000+08:00

TOFFEE AND PRETZELS ON A BROWNIE FROM A BOX

I was missing my oven – wonky as it is – and needed to use it. I didn't want to bake anything with a lot of ingredients or with too much prep work, so to the pantry I went and came out with:

A box of Ghirardelli Chocolate Supreme brownie mix;
A packet of Werther's Original toffee; and
A bag of mini salty pretzels I had brought back from the US (it had been in my checked-in baggage and didn't get crushed!).

I know it's not difficult to make brownies from scratch and this is sort of cheating, but I like Ghirardelli brownie mixes, and am not ashamed to say I use them. Their brownies don't have the synthetic after-taste of many other box mixes. The similarity is that you add egg, oil and water.
I had read about brownies with a topping of salty pretzels and toffee and when I typed "pretzel and toffee brownies" into Google, I got 419,000 results in 0.15 seconds. And so I thought I might make the 419,001st brownie with a topping of pretzels and toffee.

The components

I assembled the components, chopped up the toffee, mixed up the brownie batter, filled 13 cupcake cases (a 12-cup muffin pan and an extra mould) with it and topped each portion with toffee pieces and one mini pretzel, which was broken up roughly. I baked the cupcakes as directed and out came something I could get used to. They were a little sweet but a glass of cold milk was the perfect counter to that.

Salty and sweet with crunch and chewiness – all in a bite

In hindsight, I probably should have used a little more pretzel bits, maybe from 1½ pretzels. Adjustments shall be made next time.

Bay Area buffet

2011-10-31T10:31:00.000+08:00

THE GOOD, THE MAD AND THE LOVELY

Before I left to visit my sister and her family in San Jose, California, I thought about what food stories could come out of the Bay Area. Most of the time, I would be eating what Joyce prepared at home but I was sure we would go out and look for something special as well. I knew that there would be plenty of fresh, organic food and I could always find a farmers' market somewhere. Food trucks were also big in the San Area and that was something else I could focus on. And let's not forget Californian wine, San Francisco sourdough and amazing seafood.
There's all that, and pleasantly, I found more.
I am ashamed to say that, although I read everything I can about bread, I had never heard of Dutch Crunch, or Tiger bread, until I looked up the sandwich menu at Driftwood Deli & Market in Palo Alto. I had never tasted a pluot, a cross between a plum and an apricot, or Santa Maria tri-tip, or held a 35cm (14-inch) churro in my hand (every one of these items was excellent). And doughnuts with strange names and stranger toppings? Fuhgeddaboudit!
And I'm going to be laughed right out of town for admitting this but I used Twitter for the first time to hunt down a food truck. Look, this social media stuff is not my thing, okay.
So, yes, I did have plenty to write about for the newspaper column (and included a recipe for corn dogs), apart from several posts in this space on:

Of course, there's always room for more images by which to remember all the food and food-finding excursions.

Visit the Campbell Farmers' Market for fresh produce and freshly made food

Sam's ChowderMobile is well-known in the Bay Area. On the menu are clam chowder, lobster roll and Baja fish tacos

This no-name food truck sells cold drinks, packaged snacks and goodies like corn dogs and deep-fried burritos

There's not been much baking in the past few weeks, and the most complicated thing I got around to when I got home was opening a packet of instant noodles and pouring water onto them. But as I write this, something I learned about in America – which I hope will turn out well – is proofing on my kitchen counter as the oven heats up.
I think I might also try making a S'More doughnut , like the one from Psycho Donuts. This is how I plan to do it:

Buy a chocolate-covered doughnut.
Melt some marshmallows in the microwave oven.
Melt some chocolate in another bowl in the microwave oven.
Break up some graham crackers.
Spread the melted marshmallows on the purchased chocolate-covered doughnut.
Pile the graham cracker shards on the melted marshmallows, pressing them down lightly so they stick, and drizzle on the melted chocolate.

Now I just have to see if it actually works.

Away from San Jose*

2011-10-29T07:28:00.001+08:00

SAND, SEA AND A SANDWICH

* A post that is not about food

The beach makes everything tastes better, doesn't it? On picnics, that first bite of nasi lemak after a swim, whether in the Straits of Malacca or the South China Sea, is glorious. Someone should come up with a gimmick/gadget to simulate that ambience. They would make money.
On our visit to Monterey one Saturday, we stopped by the Point Pinos Lighthouse. We got there before it opened, so we headed down to the beach nearby to have an early lunch (I found out that when you have two small children, everything has to be early). We had made tortilla wraps with slices of honey smoked turkey, cheese and avocado. The avocado was still a little under-ripe, but when you have a vista like the one we did, everything tastes good.

Point Pinos Lighthouse

The lighthouse is lovely. The cottage is so pretty and would be my perfect place to live: great view, close to the sea, and a little remote.
I don't know if it was because of the weekend, but there were so many people in Monterey. We took a walk down Cannery Row although we didn't make it far enough to see John Steinbeck's bronze statue. We had some frozen yoghurt and stopped by the beach.

Monterey beach

On the rocks, sea-lions were sunning themselves. They're actually on the left in the picture above, on that little rocky outlay in the centre and they're the ones I was focusing on but unfortunately, I didn't get a good shot.

Visiting two pumpkin patches

Halfway to Monterey, we stopped at Earthbound Farm in Carmel. In the collage above, the two top pictures were taken at the farm. There's Mady on the left looking up at a sunflower that's bigger than her head, although with her mass of brown curls, she almost measured up. We had fun going through the corn maze and running around the stone labyrinth. And the herb garden was quite amazing. Just the mint varieties alone drove me crazy – if I were a pixie, I would live in just that one section of the garden.
The two bottom pictures are from Uesugi Farms near Gilroy, which we visited another day. This pumpkin patch has a fairground atmosphere, with rides and games. Mady and I went on the big train ride (on rails), as well as the Cow Train which was pulled by a tractor. Any child shorter than 36 inches has to be accompanied by an adult, and me trying to get into one of those sawn-off barrels that was a "cow" was a comical sight. The barrel wasn't very big and it was a tight squeeze fitting my bum into it. But I got to ride it with my god-daughter so there's nothing to complain about.
The last stop on the visit was to get pumpkins to carve for Halloween. Joyce got a Sugar Pie Pumpkin each for Mady and Sophie – there they are making their choices in the bottom left picture. In Malaysia, all the pumpkin varieties seem to be round, and I was fascinated with what you could find in America. I really liked the shape of that Turban Squash on the far right.
But know something: there was pumpkin everywhere and I didn't eat any during my visit.

Stanford University: (clockwise from top left) a 'You Are Here' map; a delightful drinking fountain; the Memorial Church; the corridor of Building 40-70 facing the Main Quad; Hoover Tower; and a sculpture at the Rodin Sculpture Garden (Mady has her hands in the dirt. That girl!)

Now, one last place I have to include in this post that is not about food is Stanford University, although being in Palo Alto, it isn't exactly far away from San Jose. The last time I visited Joyce and Keith (before the girls were born) I had mentioned that I was interested in seeing Stanford. When I was thinking of doing a PhD some years ago, this was one of the universities I looked at because it had (and probably still does although I haven't checked since then) the perfect area of language studies for my research interest. I enjoyed the visit. Thanks Joyce!
Actually, I have much to appreciate Joyce for. My sister is the ultimate multi-tasking mum. First of all, it amazes me how, when she is driving the minivan with the girls in it, she is able to comfort Sophie when she is fussing, answer Mady's constant questions, keep her eye on the road, follow the GPS thingy and listen to the radio all at the same time! And then she also has a guest to take care of for two and a half weeks. I am humbled. The next time I have another badly written story to edit at work, I shall remember that it is nothing compared to what Joyce does.
I shall end this post with a picture of the amazing vista we passed as we made our way back to San Jose from the pumpkin patch in Gilroy.

Meatopia

2011-10-24T21:56:00.002+08:00

HOWLING FOR A CORN DOG

I am not a vegetarian but my diet is primarily meatless. Joyce and family eat meat at practically every meal. So by my calculations, I must have eaten four months' worth of meat in the two and a half weeks I was at her place. That's a lot of meat for me. Almost as much as I have mentioned meat in this one paragraph.
My first dine-out meal out in California was at a sports bar called Smoke Eaters, which is known for its hot wings. Adam Richman of Man vs Food has been there for the restaurant's hell-fire challenge. Its seven levels of heat are mild, traditional, atomic, nuclear, traditional death, 4 alarm, and inferno.

Clockwise from top left: Braised beef short ribs; Smoke Eaters' fried chicken wings and tenders; St John's Bar and Grill tri-tip sandwich; and pork and beef meatballs (uncooked)

With our fried chicken wings and tenders, we decided on atomic as our hottest hot sauce. Based on the name, I expected some level of explosion but there wasn't even a small one. Quite a dud, I must say.
Another time, Keith met us for lunch at St John's Bar & Grill on Tri-Tip Tuesday. It was the first time I have tasted this cut of beef, which was grilled Santa Maria-style, and I thought the sandwich it came in was good, but Joyce says she has tasted better. The fries at the restaurant, however, deserve the right to be called "the best in the universe".
As I said, meat features prominently on the menu at home. For dinner one night, Joyce made an excellent braised beef short rib, and although she portioned two hefty ribs for each of us, I could only eat one. It was just too much for me. Another night, Mady and I made meatballs for a spaghetti sauce. They looked like cannonballs in her little three-year-old hands.

Turkey, cheese and avocado sandwich

On our way to Stanford University in Palo Alto, we stopped at Driftwood Deli & Market for one of its gourmet sandwiches. We were not disappointed. Sitting under a big tree in front of the students financial aid office in Stanford, Joyce and I shared a pastrami melt and a turkey, cheese and avocado. Both came in a Dutch crunch roll, a type of bread I encountered for the first time. It is something I am planning to try to make myself.

Crispy bacon and maple cream doughnut

And then, when I thought I had had enough meat, we go to Psycho Donuts and even the confections are not meat-free. On the same day, we had some corn dogs which we microwaved from frozen. They weren't bad, although frying them would have probably been better.
Needless to say, there's a lot of extra meat on me now. It's going to take me longer than two and a half weeks to work it all off.

Crabby and lovin' it

2011-10-19T02:02:00.000+08:00

CRAB BOIL: SEAFOOD AT ITS BEST

What's not to like about a crab boil? Place seafood and a bunch of extras into a pot of seasoned poaching liquid, remove them when cooked, place on newspapers and get cracking.
Well, there is one step in the process that isn't so pleasant: For the best flavour, the crabs have to be fresh and they must go into the pot alive. Put them to sleep in the freezer or iced water before cooking.
There's really not much to do to enjoy a crab boil. The toughest part is probably putting down enough newspaper for all the cracked shells and discarded skin. The corn needs to be husked, but the seafood goes into the pot innards and all. Onions can be added to the poaching liquid for added flavour but since the broth isn't drunk, unless one wants to, the onions can go in with their skins on.

The brand of seasoning we used for the crab boil. The whole mesh bag of spices is put into a pot of water.

We had the crab boil when Jer was over from Malaysia for a business meeting at his company's headquarters in Silicon Valley so it just happened that there were three Ragavans in San Jose at one time. We had just had a brunch of dim sum at home and then cousin Philip, who had driven over from his home five minutes away, decides that he wants to have a crab boil. So he goes out to get the blue crabs, prawns and crab boil seasoning and at 2pm, with the dim sum hardly digested, we sat down to another meal. Talk about eating too much!

Corn and red potatoes are traditional extras, but not the Vietnamese beef balls

Spicy andouille sausages are the traditional addition to the mix of sides, but Philip is fond of Vietnamese beef balls so we used those instead. I didn't think they looked very appealing, but they tasted good.

Scoop out the seafood and sides from the poaching liquid

My fingers smelled of seafood for hours after the crab boil. But with the fantastic frozen strawberry margarita that brother-in-law Keith had made in my hand, who could be bothered with smelly fingers.

How to prepare an artichoke

2011-10-13T07:40:00.000+08:00

FRESH ARTICHOKES: PRETTY AND PRETTY DELICIOUS

The last time I had fresh artichokes was the first time I visited Joyce in San Jose three years ago. Having the ones pickled in bottles at home is nice, but of course that is just the heart of the artichoke and one doesn't get to enjoy all of the globe.
I thought these facts about the artichoke from whatscookingamerica are quite interesting. I didn't know that artichokes are the oldest foods known to humans, and that Marilyn Monroe was the first official California Artichoke Queen in 1949.
I wouldn't know where to begin preparing an artichoke and documented the process when Joyce was doing it. It wasn't as intimidating as I had thought.

Preparing and eating an artichoke

Top row: Trim the stalk; cut off a little of the top to expose the leaves; rub lemon juice on the cut side to prevent browning.
Second row: Trim the tip of the leaves; the trimmed leaves; cut the artichoke in half lengthwise.
Third row: The pretty cross-section; remove the choke (the "beard"); the prepared artichoke halves are ready to tbe cooked.
Bottom row: Arrange the halves in a steamer and cook for 10-20 minutes depending on size; to serve pour a little melted butter in the centre, pull off a leaf/petal and dip the bottom (the inside soft surface) in the butter; place leaf against bottom teeth, butter side down, and pull against teeth to remove the pulp.
Not shown: I was too busy eating the the heart of the artichoke after all the leaves are enjoyed to take a picture.
Grilled artichokes are also delicious. They're steamed for about five minutes less and then put on the barbecue to get those pretty grill marks and smoky taste. But getting the outdoor grill going was too much work for just the small family (plus sister/sister-in-law/aunt!). We did have dinner outdoors that night because it was a little warmer than usual, but while everyone else was in shorts, I was in my jeans and had to put on a light jacket. What a wuss!

California dreamin'

2011-10-10T06:10:00.004+08:00

A MORNING AT A FARMERS' MARKET

After three days in San Jose, I finally slept through the night and did not wake up at 2am as I have been since arriving in America. Insufficient sleep wasn't going to get in the way of my having a good time, but I could enjoy the Californian sights more if I didn't keep falling asleep in the car.
On Sunday, we all piled into the family minivan and headed off to the Campbell Farmers' Market about 15 minutes from home. The market isn't very large, spreading over just three blocks and it sells fresh and cooked food. There are also a few stalls selling hand-crafted items like earrings and soap.

I'll be writing about the farmers' market for the newspaper when I go back to work (boo hoo), so I have to keep some pictures for that.

Fresh from the market

We got a lot of wonderful fresh produce: strawberries, potatoes, nectarines and a hybrid plum-apricot called pluots, artichokes, crimini mushrooms and a bunch of basil whose aroma lingered on my fingers now! There were a couple of girls selling Indian food, and we bought a couple of their samosas, but I have to say, they were not very good. The pastry was soggy and the filling rather meagre.
I had to get a bag of kettle corn, of course. The one in the picture is the smallest bag for US$3. It's the size of my head but I still wanted to get the medium-size one. Joyce said it was too much, even though she knows how much I like popcorn.

Something you don't necessarily need but is always welcomed

As we walked back to the minivan, we passed a restaurant with a sign on the window that beckoned. If only it wasn't 10 o'clock in the morning.

The Bernard Clayton Jr collection

2011-10-04T12:01:00.002+08:00

LAYERED FLAVOURS IN A SABICH

The sabich is a sandwich with a bunch of goodies layered into pita bread. I knew I had to make it as soon as I read this recipe. I've used it as a guide and changed the form slightly. On the bottom of a sliced baguette, I spread a thick layer of chickpea purée, topped that with fried eggplant slices, fried potato slices, sliced hard-boiled egg and cucumber slices, seasoning in between with salt and pepper. On the other half, I spread hot mango chutney and topped that with fresh coriander leaves. Put the two halves together and there's my version of sabich – which has become my favourite vegetarian sandwich.

The slices that hold the sandwich together are from an egg-white bread. I made it to use up the last bits of flour in the pantry. I am going away and don't want to come back after three weeks to containers of flour hosting The War of the Weevils.
And so for the past week or so, I have been making various breads using various types of flour.
First, I made bagels using a recipe given by Adam Kuban at Serious Eats.
Then, I made a loaf based on the recipe for honey-lemon whole-wheat rolls from The Wednesday Chef.
And finally, because I had egg whites left over from when I made Coconut Crème Brûleé, I made French bread with egg whites, a recipe from food.com.
By coincidence, these three recipes have two things in common: 1) the dough is made in a food processor, which is something I hardly do as I prefer to mix with my trusty powered-by-one's-own-energy dough whisk; and 2) Bernard Clayton Jr.
I actually only realised the common elements after making the third bread. And funnily enough, Veggie Chick had asked me a few days ago whether I owned any books by Clayton Jr, the journalist-turned-baker and cookbook writer who passed away this April at the age of 94. The universe must be telling me something.

Cranberry bagels

I think the bagel recipe is excellent (and Adam Kuban provides metric measurements, which I prefer). I made some plain bagels topped with poppy seeds, and to some of the dough, I added chopped cranberries.The ends of a couple of the bagels weren't stuck together properly, however, and the circles came apart during poaching so I ended up with bagel sticks instead. They were still nice and chewy.

Honey-lemon whole-wheat spelt batons

For the honey-lemon bread, I substituted some whole-wheat flour for spelt and made batons instead of rolls. This is a very tasty bread even if mine turned out a little dry. I added a bit too much flour at one point and couldn't go back to remedy the imbalance.

Egg white baguettes

For the egg white bread, I also substituted some of the white flour with whole-wheat. As usual, I did all the kneading by hand, but used Dan Lepard's exceptional method of the 10-second knead at 10-minute intervals. I don't know if it had anything to do with the egg whites, but my hands felt so soft and smooth after every knead! Unlike the recipe, I allowed the dough to proof in the fridge overnight. The bread rose beautifully in the oven. It was light with a closed crumb and soft crust. Now, since it touts itself as French bread, I was expecting a baguette-like texture with a crisp golden crust and open crumb. It is obviously not like that but makes good sandwich bread nonetheless and is another way to use up egg whites.

Cannonball eggs

2011-09-30T00:01:00.004+08:00

CRAB-CRUSTED 'SCOTCH' EGG

After reading this article on Scotch Eggs by Tim Hayward in The Guardian, I had to make boiled eggs encrusted with some sort of meat and deep-fried to look like a cannonball. His suggestion for a crab crust reminded me that I had a packet of crab meat in the freezer.

I don't know what crab this meat came from, or even if it was really crab meat – there were only the words on the packet to rely on. This "crab meat" tasted fishy – both literally and metaphorically. Once it had thawed, I added a variety of seasonings to it. Only then it began to be palatable.
Then it got better. But before I say how, a quick rundown of what went into it. There's no real recipe, I simply tasted as I went along.
First, cook eggs for four minutes, then plunge them into cold water to stop the cooking before peeling the shells carefully. They should be soft-boiled but mine are obviously overcooked because the yolks are not runny. To get the yolks in the centre, I swirled the eggs in the water when they were in the pot before cooking.
To the crab meat for the "scotching", I added cayenne pepper, onion powder, lime juice and chopped fresh mint to taste. Everything was bound together with breadcrumbs, mayonnaise and beaten egg. In fact, without the raw egg, this would have made an excellent sandwich filling.
The crab meat is then wrapped around the boiled egg. I was a little generous with the coating around the egg in the picture above, but the second egg had a thinner crust. To bread it, I first dusted the balls in flour, then dipped them in beaten egg and finally rolled them in a mixture of fine breadcrumbs and (and this is what made the eggs – oh God of Language, forgive me this terrible pun – eggs-ellent. I shall atone!) grated Parmesan. Then deep-fry, drain on paper towels and serve with any kind of sauce. I made some mint pesto. Best eaten cold. I liked the eggs better the next day straight from the fridge.

Daring Bakers: Croissants

2011-09-27T00:01:00.289+08:00

FRIED CROISSANTS, ANYONE?

The pastries in the picture above may look edible but they are not. The are hard, yet undercooked; and there was butter in it when the croissants went into the oven, but they actually fried in their own fat.

Here's what happened: Halfway through baking, I noticed an oily pool in the base of the pan – the butter in the dough had actually melted out and in effect, the croissants were frying! I had to remove the pan, drain off the melted butter and put the pan back in the oven for the croissants to finish baking. The inside didn't puff up and the whole batch was hard.
This was my second attempt. I had made a batch of croissants a few days earlier from half the dough (pictured below) and those didn't turn out too bad taste-wise although the shaping leaves much to be desired.

First batch – not a total disaster – of croissants and pain au chocolat.

Enough said about my failure. The Daring Kitchen site has a slide show of much better-looking, and undoubtedly better-tasting, croissants made by the other Daring Bakers. Here's what we had to do:

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

The recipe comes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two, by Julia Child and Simone Beck.

I liked Sarah's recipe for the yeast dough because it was for a quantity of dough that was easy to manage by hand (no need for heavy machinery for mixing and kneading). I referred to Ciril Hitz's book Baking Artisan Pastries & Bread and his accompanying DVD for the laminated dough technique, including how to make a butter block (he shows some of the techniques in his own video on YouTube). This link to a YouTube video of a baker guy making all sorts of pastries gives ideas on the uses for the laminated dough. His grin at the end of the video when he shows off what he spent the day making is priceless.
I want to make all those pastries too. One day...

That's why they call it passion

2011-09-18T09:08:00.003+08:00

TART WITH A HEART FULL OF PASSION

When I was growing up, my next door neighbour, who also happened to be my great-uncle Ben, had a large metal and wire structure in his front yard on which he grew climbing plants. We children simply used it as a climbing frame and like monkeys, we would be all over said structure at one of our games until one of the adults would eventually yell at us to get off.

One of the vines that twisted and twirled over the trellis was passion fruit. I never understood what they had to do with passion: They were so sour, the only strong feeling they could arouse was repulsion. I avoided passion fruit for years because of that memory.

Who said wrinkles were bad?

Years later, passion fruit sold at the market caught my eye again. People with their own plants would wait until the purplish skin (another variety is yellow) shrivels a little or falls off the plant, but suppliers of course, will get them to the market while the skin is still smooth. I take them home, leave them on the kitchen counter and wait until they start to look like my cellulite-ridden hips. The inside will be full of tangy pulp. Not the passion fruit I remember from my childhood.

I still don't know how the fruit got its name, but since I got reacquainted with passion fruit, I have looked for as many recipes as I can in which to use it.

Like this tart, for instance. It has a few components, but comes together quite easily. For a different flavour, I would change the type of biscuit or spices I use for the tart shell or substitute the fruit. In fact, the pastry cream is a good, basic go-to custard filling.

I brought the tart over to a family gathering on the Malaysia Day (Sept 16) holiday and it went down a treat, especially with Nephew No.1 who sheepishly asked for a second slice (good boy!). I couldn't convince Nephew No.2 (my dear godson a.k.a The One Who Doesn't Eat) despite telling him the little black things on top of the tart were tadpoles.

Quite easy to put together: Cook, bake, pour, chill

PASSION FRUIT CREAM TART

Serves 8-10

1 baked tart shell (still in baking tin)
1 quantity pastry cream

100g passion fruit pulp (from 2-3 fruits)

Garnish (optional)
Whipped cream and passion fruit pulp
Snow sugar (decorating icing sugar)

Fold pulp into pastry cream. Spoon into tart shell and smooth the top. Cover and refrigerate until set and firm.
To serve, remove sides of pan and place tart on a serving dish. Pipe whipped cream around top edge or dust the top with snow sugar, and garnish with passion fruit pulp.

Tart Shell

250g digestive biscuits, finely crushed

½ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon allspice

150g unsalted butter, melted

Combine the biscuit crumbs and spices in a bowl. Add the melted butter and combine well. Press crumbs into the base and 2.5cm up the sides of a 23cm springform pan (the crust will be thin). Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 160°C. Bake crust for 10 minutes. It will be soft but will become firm as it cools.

Pastry Cream

Based on the recipe from the Daring Bakers July 2011 Challenge for Fresh Fraisiers

250ml full-fat milk
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

⅛ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cornstarch

55g sugar

1 medium egg + 1 medium egg yolk

1 teaspoon vegetarian gelatin

½ tablespoon water

200 ml heavy cream

Pour the milk, vanilla, and salt into a heavy sauce pan. Place over medium-high heat and scald, bringing it to a near boiling point. Stir occasionally.
Meanwhile, place the cornstarch and sugar in a mixing bowl; whisk to combine. Add the eggs to the bowl and whisk until smooth.
When the milk is ready, gently and slowly pour it into the bowl with the eggs, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture back into the warm pot and continue to cook over a medium heat until the custard is thick, just about to boil and coats the back of a spoon. Remove from heat and pass through a fine mesh sieve into a large mixing bowl. Allow to cool for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.
Cover the cream with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic wrap onto the top of the cream to prevent a skin from forming. Chill in the refrigerator for up to five days.
In a small dish, sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let stand for a few minutes to soften. Put 5.5cm of water into a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer over a medium heat.
Place about a quarter of the chilled pastry cream into a small stainless steel bowl that will sit across the sauce pan with the simmering water, without touching the water.
Heat the cream until it is warm (body temperature) and you can hold your finger in it for 10 seconds without feeling discomfort. Add the gelatin and whisk until smooth. Remove from the water bath, and whisk the remaining cold pastry cream in to incorporate.
Whip the cream until it holds medium stiff peaks. Gently fold the whipped cream into the pastry cream with a rubber spatula. Use immediately.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Explosive buns

2011-09-14T19:38:00.003+08:00

BREAD THAT WON'T BOMB: CHEESE AND ONION GRENADES

The taste buds and nose are being bombarded. First, a hit of cheese, then a shot of heat-seeking mustard and finally, an olfactory strike from the onions.

I've wanted to try Dan Lepard's Cheese Torpedoes since the recipe appeared in Guardian, and finally I have. Five or six torpedoes, as his original produces, are a little too much for my needs, so I halved the recipe. Actually, the fact that I only had half the amount of cheese decided it for me. I made smaller rolls instead of larger batons because they're easier to eat. The onion I used was a little pungent and added to the explosion. I suppose onion powder could be used instead (¼-½ teaspoon maybe, depending on taste).
On the explosive device theme, I went for a smaller weapon and shaped the grenades by making a shallow criss-cross pattern on the top of the rolls. But I didn't score them so well and so the pattern wasn't distinct. Let's just say they had already exploded and so the shells look a little beat up.
They may look like bombs, but taste-wise, they didn't bomb. The cheese is cut into cubes of significant size so when they melt while the rolls are baking, they leave little holes in the crumb. And then they start oozing out and there's all this crisp baked cheese sticking on the outside. They're like cheese wafers. I took some pictures with my camera but then couldn't upload them because the SD card was corrupted. These photos were taken with my camera phone a few days later, and by that time, I only had two of the rolls left, and none of the cheesy bits to show off.

Whether small or large, these cheesy rolls are great

CHEESE AND ONION GRENADES
Using the recipe for Dan Lepard's Cheddar Torpedoes
Makes 5 grenades

225g strong white flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ tablespoon powdered mustard

150g Cheddar, cut into 1cm cubes

½ medium onion, finely chopped

150g warm water

1 teaspoon fast-action yeast

1 medium egg, beaten (divided)

Oil, for kneading

Fresh ground black pepper

Put the flour, salt and mustard in a large bowl, add the cheese and onion, and toss together.
Weigh the beaten egg and set aside half of it (for the egg wash to finish). In a jug, whisk the water, yeast and the other half of the egg until smooth. Pour this into the flour mixture and mix everything together to a soft dough. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and set aside for 10 minutes.
Lightly oil a worktop and knead the dough for just 10 seconds. Cover; repeat this 10-second knead two more times at 10-second intervals. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave for an hour.
Divide the dough into 5 equal pieces, shape into fat sausages with tapered ends and place on a tray lined with baking/parchment paper. Cover and leave until risen between half and double.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220°C. Once the sausages have risen, using a shape knife, score the top in a criss-cross pattern. Brush with beaten egg, grind black pepper over them and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until evenly golden all over.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Stretching the doughnut

2011-09-08T19:54:00.002+08:00

CAKE DOUGHNUTS AS 'BREAD' PUDDING WITH PASSION FRUIT

I never knew how bad stale doughnuts tasted until I ate two-day-old ones recently. I mean, how could I know since doughnuts never stay around long enough to become leftovers, right?
Well, I made some buttermilk cake doughnuts and doughnut holes last Saturday for a newspaper article (it'll be out on Sept 26), ate one – all right, three! and a couple of doughnut holes – and didn't have anyone to offer the rest to until the following Monday at work. But by that time, they were already stale and after I popped a whole doughnut hole into my mouth, I knew they were not fit to be shared as they were. I couldn't bear to dump them, and wondered what I could do with them.

There are many suggestions online for truffles (make doughnuts into crumbs, combine with a liquid, form into balls and dunk in melted chocolate). There are recipes for bread pudding as well, but most use yeast-raised doughnuts.
But I thought that might actually be a good idea even if my doughnuts were the cake type. The yeast doughnuts, like in normal bread pudding, would be allowed to soak in the egg and milk mixture to soak up some of the liquid before baking. I didn't do that with these doughnuts though, and baked them immediately after the custard had been pour into the baking dish in which I had arranged the broken doughnuts.
I mixed in some rather sour passion fruit pulp on a whim and I'm glad I did because the combination of tangy and sweet together with the vanilla flavoured doughnuts made this dessert quite special. Though not particularly elegant, I think it would make a nice closing to a fancy meal, perhaps with some pouring cream or a dollop of Greek yoghurt. I am rather proud of it and would happily share this dish.
Oh, who am I kidding? This is all a ploy to eat more doughnuts than I should.

Paired with passion fruit for tang

CAKE DOUGHNUT & PASSION FRUIT PUDDING
Serves 2

2-3 stale (day-old) cake doughnuts, preferably plain
1 egg
60ml milk
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 teaspoon cornflour
Pulp of one small passion fruit
Coarse golden sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 15cm shallow ramekin or two 125ml ramekins. Break up the doughnuts into two or three pieces and arrange in the ramekins.
Beat the egg, milk, caster sugar and cornflour together. Stir in the passion fruit pulp. Pour mixture over the doughnuts. Sprinkle with the coarse sugar, if using. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the edges are golden and the centre is still a little wobbly. Set on a wire rack to cool; the custard will firm up a little more. Serve warm or at room temperature. Do not refrigerate as the doughnuts will become hard.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Mustard for zing

2011-09-05T00:01:00.037+08:00

MUSTARD AND CREAM CHEESE BREAD STICKS

For a dish with heat, chillies are the common choice. But other ingredients have zing too. There's also the heat from mustard, which is different to that from chillies. Mustard has its place in certain dishes, and is sometimes even preferable.

For the Don't Call Me Chef column, which comes out in print today, we wrote on spices and I chose mustard to feature. I made prawns with mustard which is inspired by Bengali cuisine.
What else could I make with mustard? Well, the bread sticks came to mind when I was looking through the fridge and found some cream cheese that was already starting to grow mould. I believe that unless the mould has penetrated the cheese and if there's only a little bit on the outside, there's no need to throw it out. I just scrape off the mould and have never fallen ill from consuming the cheese.
Both mustard powder and crushed mustard seeds are used. I use yellow mustard seeds because I didn't want the bread sticks to be too hot.

MUSTARD AND CREAM CHEESE BREAD STICKS
Makes 30-40 sticks depending on length

155g plain flour
Pinch of salt
½ teaspoon powdered mustard
Dash of paprika
60g butter
Cold water (about 80ml), to mix
60g cream cheese, softened
Freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon yellow mustard seeds, cracked

Preheat oven to 200°C and grease a baking tray or line with baking parchment.
This step may be done in a food processor. Put flour, salt, mustard and paprika in a bowl and mix well. Rub in butter so that mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then add water, a little at a time, to form a stiff dough. Knead lightly and form a disk. Roll out on a floured surface to a rectangle 5mm thick.
Spread cream cheese even over half the dough. Fold over the other half to completely cover cheese. Sprinkle with black pepper and cracked mustard seeds. Roll out again until 5mm thick and the cheese just begins to show through. With a floured knife or pizza wheel, trim edges, the cut dough into sticks 5mm wide and as long as you like. (I got 32 sticks between 23cm and 30cm long.)
Transfer to prepared tray and bake until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Pasta with mustard caper cheese sauce

I had a little cream cheese left over and when it was time for lunch, I thought I would put it into a sauce with mustard and capers. The sauce can be served on the side with grilled meat, chicken and even fish, but I tossed it through some vermicelli. For this dish I used both black and yellow mustard seeds, as well as powdered mustard.

MUSTARD CAPER CHEESE SAUCE
Serves 1

Cooked long pasta for one (save some of the cooking water)
Chopped green onion leaves for garnish

Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 teaspoon mustard seeds (any colour or a combination)
1½ tablespoons cream cheese
5 caper berries, lightly smashed
½ teaspoon powdered mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat and fry the garlic until aromatic. Add the mustard seeds and toss them around to toast. Stir in the cream cheese and a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water to get a thick sauce. Add the caper berries and powdered mustard; if the sauce is too thick, add more pasta cooking water. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
When the sauce is the desired consistency, add the cooked pasta to the pan and toss through to coat well. Dish out and sprinkle with chopped green onion leaves.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

On this site are a couple more recipes with mustard in them: Cheese and mustard scones and Mr Silu's Baked Crabs

Top banana

2011-09-02T08:42:00.002+08:00

FORGET-ME-NOT BANANA-PECAN BISCOTTI

I bought a small bunch of bananas for something, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what it was I had planned to do with it. I know I wanted to use the fruit while they were still fresh (was it in a layer cake filling?) but now they have turned brown.

On to Plan B then, although I only decided what it would be just now.

While I was searching online for recipes, I thought I would look up a Banana Dacquiri. I don't actually know what it is but I like to deconstruct cocktails and make them into baked goods. I did find a recipe, but what interested me was a video on the same site. A man was blending a Frozen Banana Bread Cocktail which comprised a pear, banana, scotch, cinnamon and lots of ice. I thought I would try something similar using what I had on hand: a banana, a wedge of apple, cinnamon and a splash each of orange juice and rum. It was not bad although I think I might have been a little heavy handed with the rum.
Fortunately, it didn't stop me from trying out this recipe for Banana-Pecan Biscotti from myrecipes, which got good reviews. The original recipe gives measurements in cups, and below are the weight quantities along with my own interpretation. (And yes, for my own picture of the biscotti, I did copy the way the picture is styled on the site. It was pretty and I am not averse to flattery by imitation.)
The logs, when they come out of the oven after the first round of baking, have such a good aroma of banana and spices, I just wanted to have it all there and then. In fact, when I sliced the logs to make the biscotti, I kept the little pieces at the end for myself, and was not disappointed. I could not wait until they cooked completely especially since the aroma from the oven was again very appealing. It took every ounce of willpower not to pop a hot morsel into my mouth when I turned the slices over at the halfway point.
I know what I'll be doing with the last overripe banana I've saved in the freezer. This is one time it paid to be forgetful.

BANANA-PECAN BISCOTTI
Makes 2 dozen

230g all-purpose flour

90g sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon mixed spice

¼ teaspoon salt

70g mashed very ripe banana (about 1 banana)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 medium egg

50g toasted pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 180°C.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, mixed spice and salt in a mixing bowl. Combine banana, oil, vanilla, and egg in a medium bowl; stir into flour mixture with pecans (dough will be sticky).
Shape dough into 2 (20cm-long) rolls with floured hands. Place rolls on a parchment-lined baking sheet; flatten to 1cm thickness.
Bake at 180°C until surface is firm and pale brown, 20-23 minutes. Remove rolls from baking sheet; cool 10 minutes on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, turn down the oven to 120°C. Cut each roll diagonally into 12 (1cm) slices. Place slices, cut sides down, on baking sheet; bake 12-15 minutes. Turn cookies over; bake an additional 10-12 minutes until nicely golden (cookies may be slightly soft in centre but will harden as they cool). Remove from baking sheet; cool completely on wire racks.

Postscript: Sept 4, 2011
I made the biscotti again, this time, substituting 30g of the flour with the same amount of dessicated coconut, and using chopped walnuts instead of pecans.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Dough, you're kuchen

2011-08-31T14:49:00.001+08:00

SOUR CREAM KUCHEN WITH BERRIES AND CRUMBLE

Bread is fickle, isn't it? I have made Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Sandwich Bread so many times and the dough has always been perfectly behaved, but the last time I did, it played the temperamental prima donna.
I used the same brand of ingredients that I always do, weighed everything to the gram/millilitre, did exactly as instructed in the recipe, and waited just as long for the alchemy to happen. The dough, however, had something else in mind. It was a little obstinate, less compliant, refusing to do as required.
But wait, actually I did change something. I usually only make half the dough, but this time, I went with the full amount. Can it be that I have a problem handling larger quantities? I never have a problem eating a whole loaf on my own.
Well, if I cannot cajole the dough into seeing things my way, I have to trick it into submission. Give it a different part to play. Take away its main role as the sandwich bread and put it into the supporting role as the base for a coffee cake.
...
Worked like a charm. In fact, the sour cream dough even managed to steal some of the thunder away from the blueberries and sour strawberries that I used for the topping.
Here's how it went down:
I made the sour cream dough (as per Dan Lepard's recipe) by first mixing together sour cream and water. To that I added salt, caster sugar and yeast, and then mixed in plain white flour to form a rough ball*. The dough was then rested and kneaded (the quick 10-second knead), and left to rise.
*This is where the dough started acting up. It was a little wet so I took the risk and added slightly more flour but it just wouldn't budge. It remained wet and I could only handle it with a plastic dough scraper. So I let the dough rest until it had doubled in size, then spread half of it into a greased and floured 30cm x 10cm tin and set it aside for 10 minutes. I refrigerated the other half.
After resting, the dough was brushed with beaten egg and topped with chopped strawberries and whole blueberries. I made a crumble (Nigella Lawson's recipe) with self-raising flour, ground almonds, ground cinnamon, unsalted butter, caster sugar, brown sugar crystals, and flaked almonds, and spread half of that on top of the berries, baked it at 180°C for about 40 minutes until the base was cooked (main picture above).

Apple-passion fruit crumble kuchen

The next day, I used the other half of the dough for an apple-passion fruit version. Instead of brushing the dough with egg, I spread it with a thick layer of apricot jam and topped that with one diced green apple and the pulp of a large passionfruit. The other half of the crumble was used but with an extra sprinkling of sliced almonds.
I baked this kuchen for longer, just under an hour, and the topping was crispier, toastier and the jam became nicely sticky. I preferred this to the berry kuchen. Perhaps if the strawberries had been sweeter, and I should have used jam for that one too. Apple and passion fruit are a good combination.
I wouldn't serve this as a dessert; it's a snack for elevenses or teatime. For the past two mornings, I had a sufficiently large slab with my cup of coffee for breakfast. It made my day.

Daring Bakers: Candylicious!

2011-08-27T16:27:00.001+08:00

A CROWN FOR CANDY ROYALTY... NOT ME :-(

I went through a phase when I was so interested in making candy that I bought myself a candy thermometer and Candy Making For Dummies.
    As if that was all the equipment that was needed, I imagined myself quitting my newspaper job and becoming a candymaker, enticing millions... well, thou... hundreds of people with my own brand of confectionery and becoming a hero to dentists.

   That was about two years ago. I have used the candy thermometer twice in that time and only opened the Dummies book at end-June this year for a recipe for jelly candy (paté de fruit), which I tried numerous times and failed each time. Candy conglomerate? A queue outside my door? People would more likely be lining up to pelt me with jawbreakers they got from someone else's shop.
    Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive to take part in this month's Daring Bakers challenge when I saw "Candylicious!" screaming from the title. Here's the brief:

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

For the recipes and all the instructions, here's the document.
The Daring Bakers had to make two types of candy: one had to have chocolate either in it or on it, and the other could be any other candy. The main challenge – although I like to look at it as "the lesson of the month" – was to temper chocolate.
Among the choices of non-chocolate candy was sponge candy (also called honeycomb or sea foam candy). The last time I made this candy was almost three years ago. It was for the first edition of Don't Call Me Chef, the newspaper cooking column my mates and I started co-producing in December 2009. The recipe from Lisa and Mandy was slightly different, so why not?
Well, that first time I made honeycomb candy, it took a few tries and a kilo of sugar before I finally got it right. This time, I failed again the first time round. Experts always warn us to keep an eye on the syrup once the sugar is melted because it can burn if kept on the heat a second longer than necessary. But no-o-o-o... I had to go do some washing up, and pfft, everything in the pot was suddenly black and smelly!

A honey bee pays a visit (right) and chocolate-covered truffles

Never mind, clean the pot and on to the next try. Fortunately, I only decided to make a third of the amount given in the recipe, so it didn't feel like a total waste. The second time, as evidenced by the pictures, turned out better even if it wasn't perfect. At least I got a crown out of it.

For the chocolate candy, I made a chocolate-covered cake truffle. Since I wanted to focus on the chocolate coating, I admit I did take a short cut with the cake part of the truffle. I already had crumbs from a batch of cream cheese-swirled brownies which didn't cook all the way through, so I added a little rum to it and made little rum balls which would be dipped in tempered chocolate. Nothing difficult in that task.
The tempering was another story. Without a chocolate thermometer, I relied solely on appearance, but without any expertise, of course I couldn't tell by eye or feel if the chocolate was ready. In the end, it was still chocolate even though it didn't pass any tempering test – it wasn't shiny, it didn't snap and it certainly wouldn't have qualified for any confectionery title I might have dreamed for myself.
Those truffles got eaten but nobody was fooled. Everyone knew it was solely because of the rum.

Deconstructing Boston

2011-08-15T00:01:00.016+08:00

THREE-GRAIN BROWN BREAD BAKED IN A CAN

At the risk of being accused of blasphemy, I am paraphrasing a line from the Bible:

Man (or woman) shall not live by (other people's) bread (recipes) alone,

but by the work of their own doing.

(Needs work.)

I've had an almost full bag of dark rye flour sitting in the fridge for a while now and I've been looking for ways to use it up. Boston Brown Bread of course uses the flour and I've wanted to make it for awhile. However, lack of proper equipment has prevented me from doing so. It's steamed and I don't have any vessel big enough for it. But I should also admit that I don't want to keep the gas fire on for two hours or more. Also BBB is a baking powder and soda bread and they're okay, but I like yeasted breads.

So, I was looking at Tom Jaine's BBB recipe from his Making Bread At Home, and saw that it uses the same amount of rye, cornmeal and wholemeal flours. I started with that ratio and then added white bread flour and enough liquid to get a wet but pliable dough. The Brown Bread I made has Three Grains and is Baked in a Can. The name doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as the alliterative Boston Brown Bread, but it turned out edible.

On its own, though, it is not an easy bread to eat because it is so stodgy. But put it together with Boston Baked Beans and you get that Bogart-Hepburn sync that peanut butter and jelly have, or bagels and cream cheese, or rum and raisin. I wonder if the people who first put them together knew how wonderful the combination would be!

With homemade baked beans and a fried egg

The baked beans are homemade and were cooked in a crock pot. The taste is what you would expect of good baked beans but without the undesirable metallic taste. Now if they look a little dark, yes, I burned them. I didn't realise there wasn't enough water covering them when I left them overnight to stew and the next morning, while the aroma was quite lovely, the beans had blackened. However, the beans were still a little firm, so I topped up the water and left them to cook in the pot for a couple more hours, and this time, I checked from time to time. Despite the colour, they didn't taste burned, and the beans were al dente, not mushy soft.

I checked out some recipes to get an idea of the ingredients, but I just went with taste when making the sauce. It has molasses, brown sugar, ground mustard and hotdog mustard (the mustard is supposed to be Dijon), salt, cider vinegar and water. I used dried pinto beans that had been soaked overnight.

For my own purposes, I have recorded the recipe for the bread here, but it definitely needs tweaking. I think whether steamed or baked, bread with these low-gluten flours will be dense, even with the addition of white bread flour.

1. The ingredients; 2. the slurry; 3. white bread flour added; 4. the proofed dough

For this Three-Grain Brown Bread in a Can,

Step 1: Mix together 90g each rye flour, cornmeal and fine wholemeal flour (pic 1 above; L-R in plate). Stir in 1 tbsp malt flour, ½ tsp instant yeast and ½ tsp salt. Add 50ml molasses and 200ml milk and mix into a slurry (pic 2). Leave to rest for 30 minutes. The mixture will smooth out and flatten in the bowl.

Step 2: Add 120g strong white bread flour to the slurry and stir to combine. The dough should come together into a wet ball. Use a plastic dough scraper to fold the dough over itself a few times until smooth. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes, then repeat folding. Repeat resting and folding one more time (pic 3). Place bowl in a large plastic bag and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Step 3: Remove dough from fridge. It will have doubled in size. Punch down and fold over itself a few times with a plastic dough scraper. Divide dough into two. To one portion, I folded in two large pinches of caraway seeds; I left the other portion plain. Place into two greased and lined coffee cans or large fruit tins. Cover and leave to rise until doubled in size (pic 4).

Step 4: Preheat the oven at 250°C for 30 minutes while the dough is proofing in the tin. As soon as the dough goes into the oven, turn it down to 180°C. Bake for 30-35 minutes until top is brown and the bread sounds hollow when tapped. Cool before slicing.

Mug my words, it's cake

2011-08-12T23:30:00.002+08:00

MICROWAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE FOR ONE... BUT BETTER FOR TWO

There are a lot of cravings I can tell myself I don't need to fulfil: a candy bar, fried chicken from a fast food chain, a soda pop. The craving comes, I say no, and it passes.

But I never ignore the voice telling me to have chocolate cake. Thank goodness I don't have them very often because I don't like store-bought cake and making it myself is too much trouble.

Many years ago, my cousin and I tried making cake in a microwave. The vanilla batter tasted good as we were mixing it and the little cupcakes we made puffed up beautifully in the oven, but once out, they tasted quite horrible and hardened almost immediately. I never tried to make cake in the microwave again.

But when I got this recent craving, I thought I'd look online for a microwave recipe. Maybe there was one that I could try. Well, there are many.

So 12 years later, I was making a cake in the microwave again. This time, the recipe was for just one cake, and it would be made in a coffee mug. The recipe is from instructables.com, but here's a quick rundown of what I did using an alternative suggested at the site:

In a mug, mix 4 tablespoons each of sugar and flour with 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa and 3 tablespoons of chopped chocolate. Add 3 tablespoons each of milk and oil and a splash of vanilla extract. Stir everything together. Microwave on Medium for 4 minutes.

Mud cake in a mug. Next time, clean up the sides first.

I suppose I could have eaten it out of the mug but I thought I'd try to unmould it. So I ran a small spatula around the outside of the cake and inverted the cake onto a plate. A little bit of the base stayed in the mug, so I scooped it out and pressed it onto the top of the cake. I ate it with a scoop of tangy Greek yoghurt.

The original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of egg, but it also states that the egg can be omitted for a fudgier cake, which is what I did. The mixture was supposed to crown up to the rim of the mug while cooking, but mine didn't rise much. I don't know if it was supposed to be oozy in the middle, like a molten lava cake, but mine came out cooked all the way. It might have been in the oven for too long. Next time, go for three minutes.

I really liked how the inside was red like a Devil's Food Cake. That happens when bicarbonate of soda is added to cocoa powder. Thing is, there is no soda in this chocolate cake. That's something to read up on for another time.

First spoonful of this cake, and I was impressed. It was fudgy and tasted very good. I was actually surprised. Even though it took some time for me to photograph, the cake remained soft. For one minute of work and four minutes of waiting, this was not bad at all.

But notice the 4 tablespoons of sugar among the ingredients? And the 3 tablespoons of oil? By the time, I was into the third scoop, it had become too much for me. I couldn't go on and finished the yoghurt, leaving the cake on the plate. Half an hour later, I had a headache, a sign of too much sugar. The cake remained soft though. I will need to work out a better balance of ingredients for myself. Since it only takes five minutes, I'll be experimenting until I get this right.

For now, even the thought of this cake will be quite enough to keep the cravings away for a while.

Mmm... is for mint

2011-08-08T09:55:00.002+08:00

ADD FRESH MINT TO CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

The fresh mint in the picture above is a week old. I got it at a little grocer's shop close to the place I go to for pilates. It surprises me that the leaves are still so fresh after a week. A week! I've never had mint last a week. The mint I get from the many other places starts to wilt and the leaves turn black and mushy after only a day. The grocers must get their supply from some fine growers. How green are their thumbs and what are they putting in their soil?

I've tried growing mint in a pot on my balcony many times. Every article I've read about mint and every person I've spoken to about it says mint is one of the easiest plants to grow. Just stick a cutting in soil and it'll be growing like a weed in no time, they tell me. That makes me feel shamefully small and useless since every cutting I've potted, while initially showing promise, has ended up lacklustre and insipid like so many American Idols after their win. (At least I can uproot my plants and start over with new soil and fertiliser.)

Minty rice salad

Mint is one of those herbs I like to use like a salad leaf, especially when it is as lush as the bunch I recently bought. In the rice salad and the chicken noodles shown here, mint leaves feature prominently.

Mint is also used in confection, usually cold desserts, but often, only as that bit of garnish on top of the cream or fruit. Why shouldn't it be an ingredient with a more starring role in a sweet?

With that in mind, I looked around for something minty and sweet. Mint and chocolate go well together and when I searched for "fresh mint and chocolate", lo and behold, there are several recipes online with the two ingredients together.

Minty chicken noodles

Fresh mint is easy to incorporate onto a chocolate chip ice cream, for example, but a fresh mint and chocolate chip cookies is quite unusual. Here are a number of sites with recipes:
Une Gamine dans la Cuisine
Homecookingrocks
Spabettie
Heather Cristo Cooks

Like a lot of people, I have my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe, and here I would just have to add chopped fresh mint to it. However, I thought I would try something else and decided to go with Michael Ruhlman's ratio which uses the same amount of butter, sugar and flour. With just those ingredients, I'll get a crisp plain cookie, but since I am adding egg and chocolate, it should be slightly softer and chewier. However, when I mixed the dough, it was a little too soft for my liking and didn't firm up very much after chilling in the fridge. So I added a little more flour. The dough still spread out quite a bit in the oven, but it has the texture of a brandy snap, only without the lacy look.

Minty chocolate cookies

CHOCOLATE & FRESH MINT WAFERS
Makes 16 cookies

50g butter, softened
50g soft brown sugar
White from 1 medium egg
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
80g plain flour
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
50g coarsely chopped dark chocolate
4-6 tbsp coarsely chopped mint leaves (depending on strength of mint and individual preference)

Cream butter and sugar together. Beat in egg white and vanilla extract.
Combine flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt; add to butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chunks and mint (to taste). Place the dough in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up.
Meanwhile, preheat oven at 180°C. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop heaped teaspoons of the dough onto the sheets 7cm apart; bake until golden brown, 10-12 minutes.
Leave the cookies to cool on the sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. Store tightly covered.

Pretty flecks of green

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Hey mac

2011-08-05T19:03:00.003+08:00

MAC 'N' CHOC-RY SANDWICHES

It has been a tiring week at work. I haven't been cooking as even the simplest task of boiling water for pasta and tossing it with a few slices of fried garlic and tinned anchovies has been too much for me. My lunches have been mostly from the shops around my workplace but being a little heavy, they make me quite lethargic.

But last night I decided that I needed to bake something and it had to be something simple because I wasn't in the mood to knead, beat or whisk. The item still had to look pretty though.

Well, since I am currently fixated on biscuits/cookies, it would have to be something of that persuasion. The fridge and pantry didn't have much but there was enough to make coconut macaroons. With half a tin of cherries sitting in the back of the fridge and a whole bag of white chocolate on hand, the macaroons could even be sandwich cookies.

Within minutes I was done with the mixing. The oven was heating up and I was ready to spoon portions of the coconut mixture onto the parchment-lined baking sheet when I looked at the instructions again (the recipe is scribbled in rather bad handwriting) and noticed that I had to refrigerate the mixture overnight.

I debated on whether to chance it and go ahead and bake. I mean, the cookies wouldn't turn out bad, surely?

In the end, the instructions won and I turned off the oven, put the coconut mixture in the fridge. The chocolate cherry filling wasn't difficult to make and I wanted it in the fridge too so it was quickly made and I washed up.

As soon as I was up this morning, the macaroons were shaped, baked and cooled before I sandwiched a pair with the pink crème that had nicely firmed up overnight. Not an ideal breakfast, but cute enough to keep me happy until the end of the day. TGIF.

CHOC-CHERRY COCONUT CRÈMES

Makes 10 sandwiches

Dainty little bites

50g dessicated coconut
50g caster sugar
2 medium egg whites
½ teaspoon coconut extract
Pinch of salt

Stir together all the ingredients. Refrigerate, covered, at least 1 hour or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 175°C. Line baking sheets with parchment. Form heaping teaspoonfuls of the coconut mixture into balls and place on the sheets; flatten into discs. These cookies do not spread so they can be placed close together. Bake, rotating the sheets halfway through for even cooking, until edges begin to turn golden, 9-10 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack; cool completely.
Sandwich two cookies together with the Chocolate Cherry Filling (recipe follows).

Chocolate Cherry Filling
70g white chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons sour cream
35g tinned cherries, drained (about 7)*
Dash of balsamic vinegar

Melt chocolate and sour cream together in the microwave or in a double boiler over simmering water. Remove from heat and stir in the cherries and vinegar. Cool, then blend until smooth. Refrigerate to firm up to a spreading consistency before using.

* Alternatively, use a little more than a tablespoon of cherry jam (or other red fruit jam).

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Pillow talk on a date

2011-08-01T00:01:00.115+08:00

BEDTIME BISCUIT

Give me a packet of Fig Newtons and I will polish it off in one sitting. Heck, give me two packets and I may only falter with the last two slices to go. I will eat it all and not feel an iota of guilt for it. I will not skip meals or even think of the exercise I will have to do to work off the empty calories. That is how much I love Fig Newtons (not named for Sir Isaac Newton, by the way).

Unfortunately, Fig Newtons are hard to come by in Malaysia nowadays. Although, I have to say that the last time I managed to get them, I didn't feel like eating the whole packet. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think they tasted quite the way I remembered them. Perhaps my tastes have changed or I have just grown up and no longer feel the childhood glee of getting a biscuit that seemed so exotic because it came "from overseas".

Ingredients can now be made in a lab, but I won't speculate on whether the company that produces Fig Newtons is doing anything different to their recipe and just go on to making my own biscuit based on what I remember.

It's not difficult to get figs, but since dates are in abundance at the moment due to the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan which starts today, I want to get this dried fruit in everything. Already I have made a sticky glaze for chicken and a rice salad with dates, and now on to some confection.

Deglet Nour: Cheery, sunny and a good eating date

Because figs have those tiny seeds and dates don't, I have added poppy seeds to the date filling to replicate the texture of the Fig Newton filling. Another ingredient I added but which I did not include in the recipe below is glacé pineapple. I used only one little ring of it (chopped up and cooked with the dates), and while I don't think it makes a big difference, there is a hint of tartness in the filling which I like. The pineapple is purely optional, of course.

To make the rolls, I divide the dough into four because it's easier to handle smaller portions. The dough is quite soft, and it's easier to roll it out between cling film. In fact, a rolling pin isn't even necessary as the dough can be easily pressed out with my hands. The cling film also helps form straight edges.

The verdict: These date pillows (the name is from a biscuit recipe book that I no longer have) may slightly resemble traditional Fig Newtons but besides the fact that they don't contain figs, are quite different. The date pillows are made with natural ingredients, organic flour and free-range eggs, and the pastry is more tender and buttery, but I have to admit I prefer the texture of the commercial Fig Newton pastry as it is not so crumbly. I'll need to work on the dough some more.

For now, I am happy to have a batch of good homemade biscuits on stand-by. Next time, I must remember not to try them as soon as they come out of the oven no matter how tempting they look. That date filling is hot!

Another slice?

DATE PILLOWS

Makes 20 cookies

Dough
125g butter
75g caster (fine) sugar
1 medium egg, lightly beaten
220g pastry flour sifted with a pinch of salt

Filling
225g dried dates, chopped
1½ tablespoons poppy seeds
40-50g caster sugar (to taste)
100ml water
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Egg wash (combined)
1 medium egg
¼ teaspoon water
Pinch of salt

To make the dough, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg gradually and mix thoroughly. Add the flour mixture and mix just to combine. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the refrigerator.
To make the filling, place all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat. Turn down heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened and there is no more liquid in the pan, about 5 minutes. Process or blend for a few seconds until smooth. Set aside to cool.
To assemble the date pillows, divide the dough into four portions. Work with one quarter at a time and refrigerate the other portions. Place one portion on a piece of cling film, cover with another piece and roll or press out into a 10cm x 20cm rectangle. Use the edge of the cling film to help neaten and even out the edges of the dough. Brush the edges with egg wash. Place a quarter of the filling along the centre of each piece of dough. Use the edge of the cling film to fold the edge of the dough up to cover the filling. Roll each log so that the seam is on the bottom. Leave the cling film in and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling.
Line baking sheets with parchment. Preheat oven to 180°C. Remove filled logs from the fridge, place onto the parchment-line sheets and unwrap the cling film carefully. Make deep slits in the logs 4cm apart but do not cut all the way through.
Egg-wash the top of the logs. Bake until nicely browned, 10-15 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the sheet; while still warm, slice the logs all the way through to separate the pillows and cool them on a wire rack.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Ave Caesar

2011-07-30T14:25:00.002+08:00

SALAD IN STILL LIFE: FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY

I may be a masochist. I realised this while watching Masterchef Australia Season 2 recently.

The amateur cooks on the show are fantastic. In one challenge, they're given 45 minutes to come up with their own dish, and they do so brilliantly – it would take me that long just to think of what to make. They know how to cook something off the top of their head – I would be frantically looking through recipes for how long to boil an egg!

It pains me to know I could never do what they do and yet I get pleasure out of watching them show me exactly what I am incapable of. Traits of a masochist? Ouch, big time.

Of course, I am not incapable of learning. And there is so much that the show teaches. Gosh, the contestants who stay as long as they can get so much out of being there; the time spent on Masterchef (and that can be up to six months, apparently) is surely as good as being in culinary school.

In one episode, Donna Hay shows her take on Caesar Salad, that dish that every restaurant serves and yet you find unsatisfactory in every one because you probably have your own idea of how it should be made. Well, Donna Hay's salad looked really good on the plate and I had to try it. The components are half a head of baby cos/romaine lettuce, croutons made from thin slices of baguette, a soft-boiled egg, maple syrup-baked bacon and homemade mayonnaise with anchovies.

History tells us that the Caesar was a dish thrown together using whatever was available at the time it was created. Well, that's the way a lot of salads are made, and mine was no different. I used cos, although the one I had was a full-size head, and I made the mayo from scratch, so I got two of the components called for. But I didn't have maple syrup and glazed the bacon with pomegranate molasses instead, I accidentally overcooked the eggs, my croutons were made from soda bread, and I forgot the sprinkling of grated Parmesan. Purists would have had a field day taking every component of this salad apart and criticising it.

But I didn't make it for a purist. I fed myself and I liked the way it tasted. It just shows that if you put enough effort into a dish (and taste as you go along, as the Masterchef contestants are constantly reminded), it will be presentable and not bad to eat, even if you don't follow every single instruction or use only the ingredients called for.

Was it better or could it even compare with anything the Masterchef cooks would have made? I don't know. But I am painfully aware that it's a pleasure not knowing.

Daring Bakers: Fresh Fraisier

2011-07-27T00:01:00.107+08:00

BUT WHERE ARE THE STRAWBERRIES?

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make Fresh Fraisiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

Now, my confection isn't actually a fraisier. A Fresh Fraisier is a layer cake with fresh strawberries (strawberry in French is la fraise). But since I didn't use strawberries, it's not a fraisier.

And so, taking the liberty, I shall call it Ananasier, after l'ananas, the French word for pineapple. In fact, the Malay word for pineapple is nanas so it's quite appropriate.

Jana did an excellent job with her well-articulated instructions. They were easy to follow and the components were not difficult to make. It takes a little time, mostly due to the refrigeration, but it makes an impressive confection. Here are her instructions. For a slide show of the Daring Bakers' cakes, go to the website.

This is the Ananasier's makeup:

Sweet and high. It's heavy too... Lots to enjoy

The pineapple started out as rings, and then were cut in half and arranged end to end to make that wave pattern. I had some leftover jelly from a series of failures from another project, and cut out pieces to decorate in between the pineapple as well as to use inside the cake (with the pastry cream filling). The cake is flavoured with the juice of pandan leaves (chop them up, pound them in a mortar and pestle and use the green juice).

Cake, cream, fruit, almond paste – a good combination

I really like the disc of almond paste that tops the cake. When eaten together, there's a nice chewy bite to the cake combined with the soft, billowy pastry cream – another component with an easy-to-manage recipe. As a filling, I might add a touch more gelling agent (I used agar-agar instead of gelatin) as the cake got somewhat squashed when I sliced into it. But then, that may just be the fault of my heavy hand.

Those leaves that I used to decorate the plate, by the way, are edible. They are fuzzy and I am told they are lemon thyme. The bush is growing wild in a pot on my balcony.

My initial plan was to make two individual-size servings by cutting out discs from a sheet cake made in a Swiss roll pan and using a large biscuit cutter to act as the collar to mould the cakes. Obviously, that didn't happen. Maybe the next time I make the cake. And maybe next time, it'll actually be a Fraisier.

Never too many biccies

2011-07-25T17:07:00.001+08:00

WHAT BISCUIT DO YOU LIKE?

This article on The Guardian's Money Blog on the sort of biscuits (cookies) readers of various British newspapers like made me think about my own preference.

The post states:

"Britons munched, dunked and dipped their way through 141 million packets of biscuits in the past year, equivalent to 2.7 million packs a week or 22,596 every hour... The figures, crunched by Sainbury's using Nectar data from 12 million shoppers, show that UK consumers spent £123m on biscuits since July 2010 with cookies, jam rings, chocolate fingers and Rich Teas following digestives in the biscuit popularity contest."

One hundred and forty-one million packets! One hundred and twenty-three million pounds! Britons like their biscuits, eh? You don't say.

Many things are better homemade, but for me, biscuits are not one of them. I like commercially made ones so much I can sit down and eat a whole packet of Ginger Nuts or Mint Slices or Milanos or Hobnobs or Fig Newtons and not even realise it until I'm picking at the last crumb. No matter how good homemade biscuits are, and how much healthier they can be, I am never tempted to have more than two.

But reading about biscuits has made me want to bake some. I like so many mentioned in the article and here are some I am planning to make:

Garibaldis
Ginger crunch
Fig rolls
Coconut creams
Oat

Actually, as I write this, I have already made two types. One is a sandwich cookie with all the main components in it – by sheer coincidence (and I have just realised this!) – starting with the letter "C". More on them in upcoming posts.

There aren't any real Malaysian equivalents of British newspapers so I can't tell whether my taste in biscuits reflects the kind of newspaper I prefer. I do know, however, that I can eat practically any biscuit and keep it down, but the way the government-controlled media over here covers the news makes me sick.

Soda pops

2011-07-22T16:13:00.001+08:00

WHO RAISED MY FLAT BREAD?

I buy baking soda by the half-kilo bagfuls. Sure I use it in cooking but the huge amount that I have in store is mostly for cleaning my home. That and vinegar, often together, are my favourite cleaning agents... even if cleaning isn't always my favourite thing to do.

But back to cooking. Bicarbonate of soda, a name some of us may be more familiar with, enhances the colour of vegetables, keeps them crisp, and rids dried beans of their gassiness. But baking is where I like using sodium bicarbonate or to get technical, NaHCO₃ (okay, now I'm just showing off; don't know why since my Chemistry grades in high school were abysmal). It make cookies, biscuits and muffins tender and high, and gives that reddish-brown colour to devil's food cake.

Lately, I've been making hand pies for a project using a buttermilk dough, which contains bicarb of soda. Here's the basic recipe:

BASIC BUTTERMILK SODA DOUGH

250g bread flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 tablespoon butter or shortening

175ml buttermilk (see note below)

Sift flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. Rub in the butter or shortening. Stir in the buttermilk, bringing the ingredients together with a fork to form a soft rough dough. Cover the bowl and set aside to rest for 10 minutes.
On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough gently for 10 seconds and form a smooth ball. Set aside for 30 minutes before using.

Note: Use buttermilk from the packet or make your own by mixing together 2 teaspoons vinegar (apple cider or white) and enough milk to make 175ml; set aside for about 10 minutes for the mixture to curdle before using.

Braided hand pies: Like a papoose swaddled in its blanket

The dough is sufficient for four large hand pies (these are actually as big as my open hand). They are formed, brushed with beaten egg and baked for about 30 minutes.

The basic dough takes well to modifications as well. Since making Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Sandwich Bread and using it for a grilled cheese and chutney sandwich, I find myself putting sour cream in everything. Sure, I know sour cream isn't the healthiest thing to consume all the time with its high fat content (full-fat, of course, for the taste) but it is natural animal fat and not trans fat. It's not as if it's as unhealthy as mayonnaise, I tell myself as I scoop another dollop of sour cream onto my baked potato.

All things in moderation is advice that goes unheeded when something is this delicious.

I use the basic recipe above but substitute 50g of sour cream for 50ml of buttermilk. Stir the two together before adding to the dry ingredients. Both the flat bread at the top of the post and the quick soda bread below are made with sour cream dough. The flat bread is rolled out and cooked in a griddle on the stove. It tastes like naan and has the same puffiness. It also stays soft even from the fridge.

Quick soda bread

For the soda bread, I also substituted half the white bread flour with wholewheat flour, hence the lovely brownish orange colour (although that could just be because I took the picture in the natural light of dusk). Thirty minutes before baking, place a lidded pot in a 220°C oven. The dough, once mixed, does not need to be kneaded until smooth or rested; form it into a rough ball with floured hands. Carefully take the hot pot out of the oven and sprinkle the bottom of the inside generously with flour. Place the ball of dough in the pot and cut a cross on top; sprinkle with flour, replace the lid and return the pot to the oven. Bake the loaf for about 25 minutes or until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Best eaten warm.

English gourd? Oh, chayote!

2011-07-20T00:01:00.002+08:00

GOURD OF SMALL THINGS?

I didn't know what it was I looking at. English gourd? What the heck is that?

Turns out the green gourd-like vegetable that I was holding in my palm was a chayote (pronounced CHA-yo-tay). I was familiar with the name as I have seen it mentioned in many Mexican recipes, but I had never seen one until that moment in the supermarket aisle.

Chayote

Why English gourd? Well, like many names we use for foreign products (and I'm sure this doesn't just happen in Malaysia), it is easy to tag on the name of a country or nationality to the generic name to identify them – even if their provenance is elsewhere. Off the top of my head, there's turkey, which is ayam belanda (Dutch chicken) in Malay, and... that's all I can think of now, but I'm sure more will come to me later.

Apparently, the chayote is also known as labu Siam (Siamese gourd – ah, again with the country tag) in Indonesia and Buddha's Fist/Hand among the Chinese. I don't know what the connection is with the spiritual teacher since I think the fist could look like anyone's. But then, Chinese dishes are often given such poetic names so it may be the case with vegetables too.

Chayote is said to be nutritious. However, I can't say much about the taste. It seemed to be a bit bland. Or perhaps, I just didn't buy the right one. The gourd can help bulk up a dish and here I have added it to a sausage stew.

CHAYOTE AND SAUSAGE STEW
Serves 4

1 chayote (about 250g)
Vegetable oil
1 medium onion
4 sausages, thickly sliced*
1 small jalapeño, coarsely chopped
200g tinned tomatoes, crushed
½ cup water
1 teaspoon stock powder, or to taste
½ cup vegetables (mangetout, frozen corn)
2 tablespoons finely grated cheese
2 tablespoons chopped coriander

Cut the chayote in half and remove the seed. Cut into short, 1cm-thick pieces. Heat a little vegetable oil, add the sausage pieces and cook until nicely browned. Remove from pan. Add the onion to the pan and fry until translucent. Add the jalapeño, tomatoes, water and chayote slices and return the sausages to the pan. Stir in stock powder and simmer, covered, until chayote is tender, about 10 minutes.
Add vegetables and check seasoning. When vegetables are tender, spoon into bowls and serve garnished with grated cheese and chopped coriander.

* To make this dish vegetarian, replace the sausages with chickpeas or another bean, or use vegetarian sausages.

Chutney, oh ya!

2011-07-17T10:58:00.003+08:00

GRILLED CHEESE AND CHUTNEY SANDWICH

Take two thick slices of good quality bread, spread one slice with mango chutney, grate cheese over it, cover with the other slice and grill in a ridged griddle pan until cheese is melted.

I like it when instructions for a meal can be given in one sentence.

Grilled cheese sandwiches are always good snacks. But of course, good bread is absolutely necessary. The loaf is Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Sandwich Bread. I was looking for a way to use up about half a tub of sour cream that already had one foot in the side of no-good, but it returned to the light with its role in this bread. My only regret is that I didn't have enough sour cream to make a full loaf and had to settle for a smaller one. I polished the loaf off in just two days.

A perfect combination of tastes

I used Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese but I think a light Cheddar would have been a better complement. You want the chutney to be the star of the show, not have something else fight it for the spotlight.

Happy uncle on the chutney label

Mr NoTime got the chutney for me. Not because he knew I would like them, mind you. He was out running some errands and an elderly gentleman stopped him in front of one of the shops to show him his homemade chutney. The gentleman had a sweet, friendly face and looked not unlike the "Uncle Vince" on the label, and Mr NoTime was reeled in quite easily. The chutney, notwithstanding the grammatical mistakes and incorrect use of punctuation in the tagline, "We didn't say it's Great! People Did.", really does live up to its claims on the jar. It's sweet-sour, salty, hot and with the right type and balance of spices. Dee-lee-cious!

I haven't seen Uncle Vince's chutney in the shops. Mr NoTime had better be on the lookout.

Bread bulletin: Poor Man's Brioche

2011-07-13T21:11:00.001+08:00

BALLERINAS IN TUTUS: BRIOCHE À TÊTE

I was shocked to learn that very rich brioche has more butter than flour. According to the magisterial Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, brioche princière (princely) can be made with 625g butter to 500g flour. If I've done my math correctly, that's 1¼ times more butter than flour. I don't know, I think that would be quite cloying.

At the other end of the brioche butter scale is brioche très commune (very common). This bread contains only 25% butter. I came upon Flour, Water and Yeast (I think this is an excellent blog about breadmaking) and blogger Nina also finds the liberal use of butter in brioche too much. (Gosh, it's weird to see myself write that something has too much butter.) She uses this recipe for a poor man's version of brioche. I tried the recipe, with some modifications.

I made brioche à tête (or Parisian brioche) as I recently got a set of individual fluted loaf tins. It has that classic topknot that looks like a head. Brioche de Nanterre (a city west of Paris) is another classic form. The dough is rolled into small balls and arranged in two rows in a loaf tin. This is termed as (wait for it...) parallelepipedic (another snippet courtesy of the late great Alan Davidson).

This brioche dough is not only soft but buttery as well, even with the reduced amount of butter in this recipe. Now, I am no expert in kneading but I have developed my own techniques, and the pictures below show how I knead soft dough. I don't know if this is the correct way to do it, but it works for me. A stand mixer and dough hook would do the job for a large amount of dough, but I usually only make small batches which means it's a waste of time and effort to get the machine out.

For the poor man's brioche, I start out by combining the dry ingredients:
250g all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons full-cream milk powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon active dry yeast, and
1 teaspoon caster sugar.

Then I add:
1 medium egg plus 1 egg white (reserve the yolk for glazing the brioche before baking)
¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract, and
enough tepid water (about 90ml) to combine the dry and wet ingredients to form a soft, but clumpy dough.

I then place the dough on the work surface, cover it with a mixing bowl and leave for 10 minutes to rest.

A note on the vanilla extract: If I didn't have pure vanilla extract, I would just leave it out. Imitation vanilla essence is just not worth it. I used a Mexican variety, which is quite lovely. Inhaling the aroma during the kneading process was wonderful. Very calming!

After the dough has had a brief sitting time, it needs to be kneaded before butter is added. I try not to add any extra flour as that would ruin the balance. Instead, I use a plastic dough scraper to stretch and fold the dough, and this is best done on a marble surface. Here's the process in pictures:

S-t-r-e-t-c-h the dough...

...and fold it over itself several times with a plastic scraper until smooth

After the dough is stretched and folded for 10 minutes and is smooth, I let it rest again for about 15 minutes to proof a little. Then I deflate it and spread it with 65g very soft butter (not melted). Work the butter into the dough with both hands until fully incorporated, about 5 minutes. When the butter is first added, the dough will be stringy, like an old rag that is full of holes. It will be squelchy and the butter will spread all over the marble work surface. Keep on squeezing and stretching the dough – I use The River Cottage Bread Handbook's tip to wring the dough as one would a wet towel; it will eventually come together into a smooth, elastic ball. (This time I couldn't record the kneading in pictures as both my hands were greasy with butter.)

Place the ball in a bowl and cover with cling film. Leave to rest for 30 minutes, or until slightly puffy, then refrigerate overnight. Note that the resting time is, of course, based on room temperature. At a temperature of 28°C (82°F), it takes 10-15 minutes to start rising.

The next day, deflate the dough. Divide the dough into 100g portions and pinch a quarter off each portion for the head. Roll the larger portion into a ball and the smaller portion into a teardrop (or elongated egg). With a flour-dusted finger, poke a hole in the centre of the larger portion to form a doughnut and place into the mould. Insert the tapered end of the smaller portion into the hole. Egg wash the brioche with the reserved egg yolk, and set aside to double in size.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180°C. When the brioche have risen, bake until golden, about 15 minutes. Set on a wire rack to cool, 5 minutes, then remove from moulds.

The verdict: The egg wash produces a crisp crust. The crumb is tight but springy. I think a good brioche should be lighter. In terms of richness, it is as expected. The small amount of egg and butter make it a good white bread, but it certainly wouldn't pass muster with any prince. This is definitely a poor man's brioche.

Actually, I think spreading butter on the less rich brioche is a better use of butter. As a spread, I can use best-quality butter (always more expensive), something I wouldn't use for the dough.

Bread bulletin: Red quinoa ring

2011-07-09T14:47:00.004+08:00

WE WANT FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS

GOOD THINGS COME IN LITTLE (RED QUINOA) PACKAGES

Up until a few years ago, many of us in Malaysia were not even aware of quinoa, a super crop that has been around for thousands of years (the Incas called it "the mother of all grains"). I'm so happy we can get this seed (it's not a grain, as I first thought) so easily nowadays.

Because quinoa is so nutritious, people find ways of putting it into everything, from breakfast dishes to desserts. Bread is, of course, a good place for it. There are loads of quinoa bread recipes online, and here are the ones I looked into:
The Single Girl's Kitchen: Honey Quinoa Bread
The New York Times: Whole-Wheat Quinoa Bread
Chef In You: Quinoa Dinner Rolls

However, I went ahead and did my own thing. Actually, it was a combination of all three recipes – only thing is, I threw things together in a bowl, literally. No measuring, no weighing, just a bunch of this and a scoop of that. All I went on was a famililar feel – a texture that felt right, a

I had to be one lucky person because the bread was not a mess. It had a moist, slightly open crumb and the crust was chewy (it's brushed with egg). It wasn't the best bread I have made, but it was edible. I don't have another quinoa bread to compare it to so in a competition of one, this one did okay.

I believe this was a fluke though and won't be throwing things together again.

Puffed up and ready for baking (left); and just out of the oven

White quinoa is more common and tastes good, but the red quinoa that I used was excellent. It seems to have an even nuttier flavour. (Black quinoa is also available, and I will try that soon.) I should remember in the future to stop cooking it as soon as it plumps up and becomes tender. Recipes say to cook it in water/stock in a ratio of 1 part quinoa to 2 parts liquid, but I would cook it in a little less liquid. As soon as the quinoa is tender, take the pot off the heat. If there is still liquid in the pot, drain the quinoa. The seeds should still be whole and not split open.

I've only used quinoa for "western" type dishes so far so maybe I should try it, instead of rice, with curry. I wonder if it'll feel strange eating it with my fingers...

Bread bulletin: Peynirli Pide

2011-07-07T00:01:00.041+08:00

TURKISH DELIGHT: A CROSS BETWEEN QUICHE AND PIZZA

Sometimes, it's nice to simply open a page in any cookbook and try whatever recipe is on the page. You're only challenging yourself, so you can always close the book and open it at another page if you don't like the recipe, but lucky for me, most of the cookbooks I consult are for bread, so I know I will get something that I would want to make.

My latest crack-the-book-and-cook recipe was Peynirli Pide from Linda Collister's Bread: From Ciabatta to Rye (2005; pp. 110-111). Peynirli, I am informed, translates as "with cheese" and pide is a thick pita bread (though pocket-less). The dough is shaped into an oval, or more accurately, a boat shape and it has a thick rim to hold in the filling in the centre. I found this out after I made the recipe from the book, but in the future, my pide will look like a boat (very much like a sampan, actually).

From what I gather through various online comments, likening the pide to a pizza isn't accurate as it is much more than that. Linda Collister says it's a cross between a quiche and a pizza, because the filling contains eggs as well as cheese, typically Mozzarella on an Italian pizza, but in her recipe, feta is used. Kaseri is often the cheese of choice in Turkish and Greek pides.

Six-strand braid using leftover pide dough

The dough contains eggs and butter, which makes it extra delicious and moist. When the butter is first kneaded with the dough, it may be a bit worrying because in the beginning, the ingredients don't seem to want to gel (like oil and water, right?). But keep at it (and I would recommend kneading by hand) and everything comes together beautifully.

I think the dough is perfect as a loaf as well. I actually made only four pide and used the remaining dough for a six-strand braid (right; here's a tutorial on braiding). I just got some small fluted baking tins and with the addition of a little more butter to the dough, it could make some presentable brioche à tête, I think. Hmm, definitely an attempt for the future...

I am submitting this to YeastSpotting.

PEYNIRLI PIDE
From Bread: From Ciabatta to Rye
Makes 6 large pides

350g unbleached strong white bread flour
7g easy blend dry yeast
1 teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons tepid water
100ml tepid milk
2 medium eggs, beaten
30g unsalted butter, very soft

Cheese Filling
175g feta cheese, crumbled
1 medium egg, beaten
Several grinds of black pepper
1 rounded tablespoon chopped, flat leaf parsley
Several dashes of Tabasco
About 20g butter, for dotting

Grease several baking sheets.
To make the dough, put the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add the water, milk and eggs and work in the flour to make a soft dough.
Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead thoroughly for 5 minutes. Work in the soft butter and knead again for 1 minute until evenly distributed. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1½ hours.
Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and punch down to deflate. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and shape into balls using well-floured hands. Pat or roll out the balls to ovals, about 15cm long. Pinch and crimp the rim of each oval to prevent the filling spilling over the edge. Arrange well apart on the prepared sheets.
To make the filling, put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork. Spread the filling in the centre of each oval, then dot with little flakes of butter. Let rise for 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C.
Transfer the baking sheets to the preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes. Eat while still warm.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Jelly wobbles

2011-07-04T07:17:00.004+08:00

HOW CAN MAKING JELLY BE SO DIFFICULT?

The Persian proverb "When fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your teeth" was never more true than when I made jelly; in one case, the meaning was almost literal.

To beat the heat, the theme of the Don't Call Me Chef column this month (out in print today) was jellies. Refreshing, cool and very popular in Malaysia, this dessert would go down a treat.

And everyone says it is easy to do. Dried agar-agar strips were traditionally used but nowadays, there's agar-agar powder and instructions on how to make jelly on the back of the packet. All you need to think about is the flavour. That shouldn't be too difficult.

Well, easier said than done. This is my journey down the road to ruin...

JELLY BABIES

Having proper equipment doesn't guarantee success

Ambition is a good thing but if you just don't have the talent, it's okay to give up, move on, do something else. I should have told myself that long before that fourth attempt at making jelly babies (or gumdrops).

I used several recipes.

Round 1: A simple recipe that uses powdered agar-agar and also corn syrup. It came out no different than normal jelly, except a little harder. Not chewy or springy at all. It was nice as a jelly, but it was no jelly baby.

Round 2: This recipe required heating sugar, corn syrup and gelatin up to 140°C, cooling it down and blending with flavourings. It was supposed to have been firm enough that it could be piped out. All I got was a thick but still fluid mixture. And when it set, the texture was all wrong. It was sort of chalky and not very pleasant. In the picture, it's the brownish cube in the background. I tried covering it with chocolate (foreground), but that's didn't help.

Round 3: I consulted Candy Making for Dummies, and since this is an informative and non-threatening series of books, and the recipe is called "Easy Raspberry Fruit Jellies", I thought I couldn't go wrong with it. While the instructions are precise and easy to follow (this time, the syrup needs to be heated to 110°C) and the gelatin can be substituted with agar-agar, again the texture was all wrong.

Round 4: Finally, I just went with the instructions on a packet of agar-agar powder but used less water. I didn't have human-shape moulds, but I had some nifty ice-cube trays with numbers and the alphabet that could make cute shapes. After the pieces come out of the mould, ideally they should be dried under the sun over a day or two so the moisture completely evaporates. That wasn't practical so I left the pieces on the kitchen counter. But that was like putting a feast out for the ants... and they came a-calling!

Verdict: I failed with every recipe. But I am determined to get this right, although it will probably be a while before I attempt this again.

KONNYAKU JELLY

Pretty but so rubbery

Konnyaku jelly powder sure works fast! The sugar syrup started to thicken almost as soon as I stirred in the powder. I think left it a tad long on the heat and it was quite hard and chewy – like biting into the rubber sole of a shoe! I have a feeling konnyaku may work better than agar-agar if I tried to make the jelly babies again.

The jelly was moulded both in the skins of the dragonfruit as well as in a ramekin (above, right).

JELLY PARFAIT

Fruit and cake soup - not a winning combination

This was the WORST of all attempts (yes, the capital letters are a necessary emphasis). If the jelly doesn't firm up, fine, I still had a fruit soup, but this had soggy sponge fingers in it. No good.

I saw this recipe on China Daily and it had been sliced into a lovely looking bar. Instead of agar-agar, I used vegetarian gelatin, which hardly gelled. It must have expired. Or perhaps I didn't use enough.

The parfait may look palatable in the mould, but the sponge fingers disintegrated when I scooped some out into a bowl (see inset). But disgusting as it looked, I had to try it... It. Is. Not. Good. The fruit saves it in terms of taste, but the mushy texture is awful. I salvaged it by separating as much of the fruit from the sponge as I could.

SPARKLING WINE JELLY

The one that worked... second time round

Finally, the jelly dish that I featured in Don't Call Me Chef. I had to make it twice. The first time (pictured above, right), I didn't chill the wine enough and I was a little heavy-handed with blending the wine and jelly syrup so there were no bubbles. I was more gentle the second time round and followed the instructions faithfully. Here's the link to the recipe.

Making these jellies in wine or cocktail glasses would have made a better picture and the bubbles would have been more visible, but I only had these glass bowls. Maybe it's time I took up wine-drinking.

Daring Bakers: From Phyllo to Baklava

2011-06-27T00:01:00.243+08:00

TRYING MY HAND AT MAKING PHYLLO PASTRY

I've used store-bought phyllo enough times to know that I like it a lot but I only recently made baklava for the first time – with pistachio and coconut from Lori Longbotham's Luscious Coconut Desserts (pictured below). It was an easy process and I knew I would be making the sweet again and again. I've always liked baklava despite the common complaint of it being too sweet – I think the syrup is essential to produce that unique and moreish crisp and chewy texture and flavour.

I like making doughs and pastries from scratch, but I never thought I'd ever make phyllo. This month, the Daring Bakers were given precisely that mission.

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

Here's the Daring Bakers' pdf of the recipe and the whole process. I adapted the coconut-nut filling from the baklava I did before for the confection (filling recipe follows).

Baklava using ready-made phyllo

I'll be honest, for baklava – and other pastries where you want to see those puffy layers – I would use ready-made phyllo dough. Though a little expensive over here, it makes a better-looking baklava, as in the picture on the right of the baklava I made some time ago. Compare it to the picture below. Not very pretty, is it? (Which I why I put it last in this post!)

But it was still enjoyable making phyllo from scratch. Mixing the dough and rolling it out was not difficult. This is a sturdy dough which readily allows itself to be pushed and pulled into compliance. However, I couldn't roll out the sheets evenly. So after the first three sheets, I decided that instead of rolling out all the portions of dough into sheets before lining the tin, I would roll out one portion at a time, lining and brushing with butter as I went along, then layering with the filling before continuing with more pastry sheets and filling. If the dough sheet was a little thick in some places, I would just stretch it gently and cut off the excess at the edge of the tin. In the end, I got quite thin sheets, after all. I rolled out the cut-off dough and made cigars with leftover filling.

To have a go at making your own phyllo dough, go to the pdf link provided earlier. For a filling made with coconut, try out the recipe that follows. The lime syrup is a must – it is really what makes this baklava special. And it makes me want to get up and do the joget (a lively traditional Malay dance)!

Pumpkin seed and coconut baklava with lime syrup

BAKLAVA FILLING: TASTE OF THE ISLANDS

Makes 2 layers for a 20cm square baking tin

1¼ cup shredded coconut
½ cup toasted pumpkin seeds, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons finely chopped glacé pineapple
2 tablespoons water
½ tablespoon rose water
Pinch of salt

Stir all the ingredients together.

Lime Syrup
½ cup caster sugar
100ml water
Large pinch of salt
2 tablespoon lime juice
½ tablespoon rose water

Put sugar, water and salt into a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring constantly until sugar dissolves. Lower heat and simmer syrup for 10 minutes until slightly reduced and thickened. Take off the heat and stir in lime juice and rose water.
When baklava has been taken out of the oven and allowed to cool for 10 minutes, sprinkle top with finely minced nuts and pour the syrup evenly over the top. Cool completely on wire rack.

Pink, it's like red but not quite

2011-06-20T15:19:00.001+08:00

SALT & PINK PEPPER SQUID

I often forget what dried goods I have stashed away in my kitchen. I keep a lot of these – left in their original packaging or transferred to glass bottles – in two large basket drawers in an island trolley, but the stuff sometimes get nudged into a corner or under something bigger and are lost from sight. And when you don't see something, you probably will not use it, right?

I bought a bag of pink peppercorns more than a year ago, put it away and only found it a couple of days ago. As you can see in the picture below, the opening of the plastic bag the peppercorns came in was simply folded over twice and stapled, so I was surprised to find that the berries hadn't gone stale. In fact, they were still potent.

Here's what GourmetSleuth says about these berries: "Pink peppercorns (Schinus Terebinthifolius) are from Brazil but are not a true peppercorn. They are actually the dried fruit of the Baies Rose. The berries have a sweet peppery flavour and are quite popular in French cuisine. Use in a vinaigrette or crush and use as a coating for a filet mignon or pork tenderloin."

According to Wikipedia, the American Food and Drug Administration banned pink peppercorns in 1982 because they were thought to cause allergic reactions. However, it was later discovered that the toxic berries actually came from another plant and the ban was lifted in 2005.

Pink peppercorns

It so happened, I was channel surfing and came upon Nigella Lawson in the process of making salt and pepper squid. While not a fan of her TV persona, especially in her later shows, I admit I'm okay with the way she cooks. I like fried calamari, but I am no fan of deep frying, so when I saw that Nigella Lawson uses only 1cm of oil when frying the squid, I decided to give the recipe a try, substituting the pink peppercorns for the black variety she uses.

I don't know if it was my imagination, but I felt quite lightheaded after having just a couple of those squid rings. Pink is thought to have a happy effect, and as Aerosmith sang, "Pink gets me high as a kite" (the title of this post is also from that song), so perhaps I wasn't completely out of my mind.

The recipe says to bash the Maldon salt and peppercorns together using a mortar and pestle. I roughly pounded the pink peppercorns and then mixed in some flaky sea salt instead, before combining them with cornflour to coat the squid rings and tentacles. While frying, the squid still spit some hot oil at me, but I used long tongs and stood quite a way back from the stove so only my arms got spattered.

It was worth it. I wish I had a little fresh lime or lemon juice to squeeze over the squid after they came out of the hot oil, but they were still good without it. Don't forget to drain the used oil through a sieve to collect all those crunchy salt and pepper bits that floated off the squid when you put them into the pan – they're delicious!

Sass up your supper

2011-06-13T10:39:00.001+08:00

QUESADILLAS WITH GUACAMOLE AND SALSA CRUDA

Under the Don't Call Me Chef column in the newspaper I work at, my co-producers and I started three new recipe series to coincide with the paper's revamp on May 27. Veggie Chick started off the first "Singled Out" segment with her sandwich recipes, and Hungry Caterpillar followed a week later with a food and travel story on Taipei in the segment called "On The Road". The last new segment is "Review", which is not really new because we used to review only cookbooks before but have now expanded the series to include other food-related items such as gadgets, recipe blogs and cooking shows on TV.

I was actually supposed to come out with the first Singled Out column for the initial revamp date on Feb 14, and I had fun writing about cooking for one on a day meant for couples. Unfortunately, the revamp was postponed, but I'm keeping my story on file. Maybe for Valentine's Day next year. (Actually, Singled out isn't just for someone cooking only for themselves; it also focuses on a specific ingredient, cooking method, or food item.)

Anyway, my new story appears in print today. The quick tomato sauce I feature is good on its own, but can also be transformed into other sauces with a few additions as shown in the two other recipes in the article. As promised in that story, here are a couple more recipes. For some reason, I went Mexican and made guacamole and salsa cruda (both recipes are adapted from 500 Mexican Recipes by Judith Fertig). Maybe because I happen to have all the ingredients at hand. In fact, I found some Roma tomatoes at my neighbourhood grocer and they taste really good. Italian tomatoes in a Mexican dish – eating around the world at home.

The quesadillas in the picture above are made with the two condiments: Heat a little oil in a skillet. Place a flour tortilla into the skillet, spread with a thin layer of guacamole and salsa cruda, and sprinkle with grated cheese. When the cheese starts to melt, fold one half of the tortilla over the other into a half moon; serve cut into wedges.

Dip away!

TOMATO GUACAMOLE
Makes about 375ml. Serve right away as guacamole can discolour as it sits.

2 large ripe avocado
160g fresh tomatoes, chopped*
3 tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh coriander
2 fresh jalapeño peppers^, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

Halve, pit, peel and slice the avocados into a bowl. With a fork, mash the avocados with the remaining ingredients until chunky but well blended. Serve with tortilla chips or as a garnish for other dishes.

* Use cherry tomatoes in red and yellow for colour.
^ Use long green chillies as a substitute.

Salad supremo

SALSA CRUDA
Makes about 500ml

2 cloves garlic, minced
40g finely chopped onions
75g chopped green pepper
75g chopped cucumber
1 fresh jalapeño pepper*, stemmed, deseeded and finely chopped
10g fresh chopped coriander
450g firm ripe tomatoes, stemmed and chopped
Juice of 2 limes
Salt and pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste and leave to sit at room temperature until ready to serve.

* Use long green chillies as a substitute.

Cookie counter

2011-06-06T00:01:00.316+08:00

AND THE TURTLE PULLS AHEAD... a cookie and two bars

We all know what's it like. When you're out of it, there's nothing anyone can do to help. You just have to wait it out.

My enthusiasm for cooking went away for a while. I don't know why and I don't know how. And it wasn't just all those things I love doing in the kitchen; it was everything I knew about cooking and baking, and all my interest in food (I rarely visited cooking sites and recipe blogs and even neglected my own). They all just left.

Everything I cooked tasted terrible, my breads (and people who know me know I am crazy about breadmaking) were either hard or gummy, and one batch of buns I made were so salty though I don't remember adding more salt than usual.

On top of that, my oven went on the blink. A non-functioning oven is, of course, one of the biggest misfortunes for any avid baker. The trouble started when it wouldn't heat from the bottom. Later, the top started overheating. Only certain dishes can be cooked in the oven now. Breads are okay, since they do well in high heat, and cookies are all right, since they only take minutes to bake. But cakes are out – the centre hardly cooks. And that's the reason the Tiger Brownies here look terrible.

Oh yes, the cookie and two bars in the picture above. I'll come to those in a bit.

Long story short, I'm back to cooking and baking and happily being in the kitchen now. My oven is still wonky, but I'll have to use it until I put my new one in.

Right, the cookie and bars. The theme for the June issue of Don't Call Me Chef (out today in print) was "road trip". My story was on food aptly named for travel, and I featured Rocky Road Chunky Chews. The other three snacks that I mentioned are featured here.

First up is a Happy Trails Bar. These are high-fibre granola/muesli bars and use whole wheat instead of white flour. With all the nuts, seeds, and dried fruit, they're healthy and great to snack on anytime of the day. I have a set of recipe books from Pillsbury and one of the books has a recipe for apple sauce granola bar. I have adapted the recipe below from that one. On the Pillsbury website, however, there is a recipe for Crunchy Trail Mix Bars which has a topping of cereal.

A bar that's full of energy

HAPPY TRAILS BAR
½ cup butter, at room temperature
½ cup firmly packed soft brown sugar
½ cup apple sauce*
1 egg
1 cup fine whole wheat flour
¼ teaspoon allspice
¾ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup trail mix^

Preheat oven at 180°C. Grease a 24cm square baking tin.
Cream butter and sugar together. Beat in apple sauce and egg; blend well.
Sift flour, allspice, bicarbonate of soda and salt together; add to the butter mixture and mix well.
Stir in trail mix. Spread into prepared tin and bake for 20-25 minutes until cooked. Cool completely before cutting into bars.

* Cut peeled apples into cubes; place in a saucepan with a tiny bit of water and cook until soft enough to mash; purée. Store tightly covered in the fridge.
^ Mix your choice of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and grain together. The one used here is a combination of sliced almonds, sunflower seeds, dried coconut, dates and crystallised ginger.

Next are Tiger Brownies. As you can see from the picture, the tiger stripes (made from cream cheese) are not at all distinct. The bottoms of the brownies are also undercooked and I admit, I had to smoosh two bars together for them to look a little presentable. So I am cheating here with the picture.

A brownie that earns its stripes

However, I have made these before when the oven was fine, and they turned out well. The Pillsbury website has a recipe for Tiger Brownies that utilises a fudge brownie mix (the picture on the site looks delicious!). There are lots of recipes from scratch online (look for cream cheese swirl brownies and colour the cream cheese mixture with food gel – mix yellow and red together as in the Pillsbury recipe).

Finally, I mentioned Turtle Cookies in my article. After the Rocky Road Chews, these were my favourite snack to make because of the amusing shape. The cookie dough is good even without the turtle's head and feet, but why omit them, right?

A cookie that makes you smile

One of my Pillsbury books has a recipe for Snappy Turtle Cookies. Since the recipe is also online at Pillsbury's website, I am directing you there. I followed it to a T(urtle!)

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Marquise

2011-05-27T00:01:00.369+08:00

CHOCOLATE MARQUISE WITH MERINGUE, CARAMEL, PRALINE AND FRUIT

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

Get the full original recipe in pdf here.

At first glance, the recipe looked terribly complicated. A litany of ingredients and instructions, and several components to the dish – it was too much to take in at one go. However, a second look showed that while it was complex, it wasn't as difficult as it seemed. It's a chef's recipe, I suppose, and if it were written for the "common folk", then we would all be professional chefs, wouldn't we?

While there should be some adherence to the recipe, I think if the quantity of ingredients for the mousse part of the marquise isn't absolutely exact, it would still come out not only edible, but luscious too.

A chocolate marquise is a mousse. When I consulted Larousse Gastronomique about this confection, I found that there is also a drink with the same name. Here's the recipe:

MARQUISE (DRINK)

From Larousse Gastronomique
Dissolve 500g sugar in a little water, then add a bottle of dry white wine and 1 litre sparkling mineral water. Cut 2 lemons into thin slices, remove the seeds and add them to the drink. Store in the refrigerator and serve with ice cubes.

All the chocolate marquise recipes I looked up contain butter – and quite a lot too. Nothing against butter, but I think egg yolks, chocolate and cream are sufficient for a lovely dessert, so I'm glad this one doesn't have a substantial amount of it.

I used the recipe that yielded the smallest quantity (thanks to Audax Artifax for scaling it down), but modified it slightly. While I used all the ingredients (except for substituting tequila with cognac), I didn't follow the directions exactly. I used the sabayon/zabaglione method where egg yolks are beaten in a double boiler. This avoids cooking the sugar to soft ball stage. I don't know about anyone else, but I find trying to use a candy thermometer (one of those that hook on to the side of the pot) for such a small amount of sugar syrup isn't easy.

Many years ago I learned that adding cornstarch to egg yolks when they are heated (for example, when making a custard) will prevent them from curdling so that's what I've done. Good tip since my eggs have never seized up since following this advice.

Roll the whole slice in cocoa powder, or just dredge the top

CHOCOLATE MARQUISE
Serves 6
120ml heavy cream

3 egg yolks at room temperature
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Chocolate Base, barely warm (recipe follows)
½ cup Dutch process cocoa powder (for rolling)

Mint Meringue Clouds (recipe follows)
Almond praline (recipe follows)

Tequila caramel (see pdf)

Grease a small loaf pan with vegetable oil and line with 2 layers of cling film, making sure there is about 8cm of overhang on all sides.
Whip the heavy cream until it forms stiff peaks. Place in the refrigerator while preparing the other components.
Place egg yolks, sugar, water and cornstarch in a large mixing bowl (metal or glass) over a saucepan of simmering water. Using an electric hand mixer, whisk the eggs until thick, pale and have doubled in volume.
Remove from the heat and fold in the chocolate base. Stir in a third of the whipped cream to loosen the mixture, then fold in the rest of the cream.
Spoon into prepared pan, smoothing the top. Fold the overhanging cling film onto the surface of the marquise; freeze until firm.
When ready to serve, remove marquise from pan using the cling film overhang. Dredge the loaf in cocoa powder before slicing, or cut into thick slices and roll in cocoa powder before plating with meringue clouds, almond praline, Tequila caramel and fruit*.

*The fruit in the first picture are red dragon fruit formed with a melon baller.

Chocolate Base

90ml heavy cream

85g bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Pinch of salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon cognac
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
¼ teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon Dutch-processed cocoa powder

Dash freshly ground black pepper
½ tablespoon butter, softened

Heat cream in the microwave (do no allow to boil) and pour onto chocolate; allow chocolate to melt, then add the rest of the ingredients; stir to incorporate.

MINT MERINGUE ROSETTES

Makes about 18 cookies
2 egg whites
Pinch of salt
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
6 tablespoons castor sugar
Splash of apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon mint essence
⅛ teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 150°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place egg whites, salt and cream of tartar in a metal or glass mixing bowl; whisk together until frothy. With an electric mixer, start whisking the eggs and gradually add the sugar one tablespoon at a time, making sure the sugar is fully incorporated after each tablespoon. When the eggs form stiff peaks, fold in the vinegar, mint essence, vanilla and cornstarch.
Place meringue in a piping bag with a large fluted nozzle and pipe rosettes 5cm apart on the baking sheet. Place in the oven and immediately turn down the temperature to120°C. Bake cookies until dry and crisp and they come off the parchment paper easily. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

ALMOND PRALINE

Makes 1 cup

½ cup sugar

½ cup slivered almonds

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a dry heavy saucepan cook sugar over moderately low heat, stirring slowly until melted and pale golden. Cook caramel, without stirring, swirling pan, until deep golden. Add almonds, stirring until coated well, and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Working quickly, with a metal spatula spread mixture onto foil about 0.5cm thick and cool until set, about 3 minutes. Chill praline on paper until hard, about 15 minutes. Chop praline. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.

Bread bulletin: Prune babas

2011-05-09T00:01:00.005+08:00

BABAS: TALL, SLENDER AND OFTEN SPIRITED (and here, a little burnt...)

If I didn't know better, I would have given up, chucked the recipe and what looked like a complete mess in the mixing bowl.

But this was a Dan Lepard recipe and I've never had problems with any of them before. So I continued despite the initial unappealing appearance of the dough and was rewarded with some very delicious buns – even if the tops are singed! (The new oven is on the way.)

The recipe for Dan Lepard's prune babas require a good amount of butter. It is added to a yeasted egg dough, and worked in roughly at first. At this stage, all you have is a squishy mixture that oozes between your fingers and you think this is like oil and water – they're never going to come together.

But after just five minutes of gentle kneading, everything miraculously gels together – and once again, there's that joy you feel every time the bread dough starts yielding in your hands.

As I said, this is a delicious bread. And rich too. How could it not be with three egg yolks and about a half cup of butter. Babas are usually made in deep, slender tins. I would like metal ones, but I only found the silicone mould I used and that will come in handy for muffins, jellies and lollies too.

Babas are usually dunked in a syrup which includes some sort of spirit (rum usually, and Dan Lepard's with Armagnac) after they are made. But since I will probably be having them for breakfast, I decided to forgo the alcohol and instead of a simple sugar syrup, I reduced the syrup from a tin of cherries (that I used for something else) to which I added a few tablespoons of pomegranate molasses for another level of flavour.

This post has been submitted to YeastSpotting.

Prune babas with pomegranate syrup

PRUNE BABAS

Based on Dan Lepard's Prune and Rye Babas with Armagnac Syrup from The Handmade Loaf
Makes 12 (can also be made into two small loaves)
200g strong white flour
50g rye flour
¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
1¼ teaspoon dried yeast
80g rye leaven
100g milk at 20°C (about room temperature)
3 medium egg yolks
60g castor sugar
100 unsalted butter
200g soft prunes, pitted and cut into quarters

In a large bowl, combine the white flour, rye flour, salt and yeast. In another bowl, beat together the rye leaven, milk, egg yolks and castor sugar. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until you have a soft, sticky dough. Cover bowl and leave for 10 minutes.
Slice the butter into pieces and allow to soften. Spread these on top of the dough and work them roughly into it. Tip the dough on to the work surface and work it gently and evenly for 5 minutes, until the butter is combined and the dough is smooth. *Shape into a ball and return it to the bowl. Cover and leave to rise until doubled in size. (*Dan Lepard's instruction is to place the dough in the refrigerator in a tightly covered large container that allows the dough enough room to rise overnight. I couldn't wait and let the dough rise at room temperature on the kitchen counter.)
Lightly flour the work surface and roll out the dough to a 30x50cm rectangle. Lay the prunes evenly over two-thirds of the dough, then fold the dough in by thirds. With a rolling pin, knock the dough flat, then fold in by thirds again. Tap the dough with the rolling pin to seal it, then put back in the bowl and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Lightly grease and flour 12 baba moulds (or if using a silicone mould, do nothing to it). Roll out the dough until it is 2cm thick and cut it into 5cm squares. For each piece, pinch the corners of the dough together to seal them, creating a ball of dough and avoiding any air pockets in the centre. Press into the mould, seam side down (if using individual moulds, place them on a baking tray). Cover with a cloth and leave to rise until doubled in height (the dough should rise higher than the rim of the mould).
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Bake babas in the centre of the oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180°C and bake for a further 20 minutes, or until the babas are a good brown colour. Leave to settle in their moulds for a minute, then ease them out carefully.
Serve warm, split open lengthways with syrup: Bring 250g caster sugar and 500ml water to the boil. Remove from heat and leave to cool.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

P is for palm sugar

2011-05-02T00:01:00.179+08:00

COCONUT PALM SUGAR OR GULA MELAKA

I'll be honest with you: I never knew palm sugar was a "good" kind of sugar. I wasn't aware it had a low glycemic index or that it is higher in micronutrients than processed sugar. I use palm sugar because it tastes good and has a natural sweetness; it also adds a lovely caramel colour to a dish.

Not all palm sugar is created equal, it seems. The type of palm sugar I am familiar with is made from the sap of the coconut blossom (from the coco nucifera tree, if we want to get technical) and has long been a staple in Malaysian cooking, especially desserts.

We call it gula Melaka (Malacca sugar, because apparently it was first made in that Malaysian state, but I haven't been able to confirm that), gula merah (red sugar, for obvious reasons), or gula tuak (tuak is the coconut flower sap). Gula Melaka is also the name of a moulded sago pudding served with coconut milk and drizzled (or doused!) with palm sugar syrup.

The colour of gula Melaka ranges from a honeycomb yellow to a dark chocolate to a black treacle. It's usually found in a cylinder shape, because it is moulded in bamboo. It is sometimes "tall" like a silo and or a squat disc like an ice hockey puck. Sometimes smaller cylinders are wrapped in coconut fronds. Palm sugar also comes in wafer-like bars and is sometimes sold already grated.

Any which way, it's hard to imagine Malaysian sweets and desserts made without palm sugar. It's very often paired with coconut milk as well as grated coconut and together, they make some of the best confections.

Palm sugar can be substituted with soft brown sugar, but I don't need to tell you that the taste will be different. Like maple syrup, it has a distinctive taste and that's why I chose it for the mousse in the Daring Bakers challenge (previous post).

After I had completed the challenge, I was so inspired by coconut palm sugar that I went out and got a few blocks of it. Here are a few things I made with that wonderful gula Melaka.

A fine spread of coconut milk dulce de leche

I adapted this recipe from Lori Longbotham's Luscious Coconut Desserts. I used both fresh coconut milk and the boxed variety with good results. Remember, the final colour will depend on the colour of the palm sugar you use. I have the feeling the cooking time determines the colour too – the microwave method produced the lightest colour while the stove-top and slow-cooker/crock pot versions were about the same dark colour. Coconut does not appeal to everyone, of course, but if you're a fan, this will definitely please you. It's tropical toffee.

COCONUT MILK DULCE DE LECHE
Makes 1 cup
500ml coconut milk (fresh, box or can)
150g palm sugar, grated (¾ cup, firmly packed)
Large pinch of salt

Place all the ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil.
From here, there are three ways to proceed:

Stove-top method
Turn down the heat slightly so that the mixture bubbles gently. Cook it on the stove, stirring occasionally until reduced by half, about 1 hour. Take off the heat and cool before storing in an air-tight jar.

Slow-cooker method
Pour the mixture into a slow-cooker. Cover and turn on the cooker to High. When beads of steam start to form on the lid, remove the lid and leave the pot open. Continue cooking the mixture, stirring occasionally until thickened, 30-40 minutes. Cool before storing.

Microwave method
cookingforengineers has instructions for making dulce de leche with condensed milk and I thought I could cook the coconut milk version this way as well. It worked! Basically, it's putting all the ingredients in a large microwaveable bowl and giving it 2-minute nukes on Medium, whisking in between, until the mixture starts to look curdled. But I suggest you go to the site for the step-by-step instructions with pictures – they explain it much better, mistakes and all. This method cuts the cooking time down to only 15 minutes so it is the quickest way but you still have to keep an eye on the mixture. I halved the recipe and even then, the milk bubbled up high and a little spilled out of the bowl.

Use coconut dulce de leche...

as a filling in cakes and sandwich cookies; beaten with cream cheese for a frosting; or as a layer in Millionaire's Shortbread Bars
as a dip (diluted with a little cream/milk or coconut milk) with fresh/grilled fruit (the photo above, bottom right, is for illustration purposes; no double dipping allowed!)
to turn the English dessert Banoffee Pie (here's a quick recipe) into a tropical version
instead of chocolate ganache to bind cake crumbs for truffles
swirled through a brownie or cheesecake batter
straight out of the jar and into your mouth (best use ever!)

Sweet prawns with pineapple and capsicum

Here's a recipe that's based on the Vietnamese caramel prawn dish called Tom Rim. I am not calling it that since I used vegetarian prawns and included vegetables that aren't normally added. I was inspired to make it with pineapple after seeing this recipe from Jeannie at chinadoll-bakingdiary. I only use vegetarian prawns (it's made with soy bean sheets or foo chok) because that was what I had in the freezer, but fresh prawns will be perfect. Shell and devein them but keep the tails on.

FRIED VEGETARIAN PRAWNS IN CARAMEL SAUCE

350g vegetarian prawns
Vegetable oil for frying
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
2cm ginger, sliced thinly
½ green capsicum (bell pepper), cut into wedges
1 cup pineapple slices
Palm sugar syrup, recipe follows
1-3 finely chopped bird's eye chillies
1 tablespoon fish sauce

Heat a little oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat and fry the vegetarian prawns, tossing occasionally, until golden. Set aside.
Leave a tablespoon of oil in the pan and add the sesame oil. When hot, add the garlic and ginger slices. Add the capsicum and pineapple and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the palm sugar syrup and fried vegetarian prawns; stir-fry for 30 seconds, making sure the prawns are well coated with the sauce.
Add the chillies (to taste) and fish sauce and let the sauce come to the boil. Cook for another minute, then dish out and serve.

Palm sugar syrup
2 tablespoons grated palm sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Heat the vegetable oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the sugar and stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is caramel-coloured. Remove from heat and set aside.

Stewed bananas in a creamy sweet sauce

This is a traditional sweet dish with three components that scream Southeast Asia – bananas, coconut milk and gula Melaka.

PENGAT PISANG (BANANAS IN SWEET COCONUT SAUCE)
Serves 4
4 small ripe bananas
6 tablespoons palm sugar
6 tablespoons water
1 tbsp sesame oil
375ml coconut milk

Garnish
4 tbsp white sesame seeds, toasted

Peel and slice banana into 2.5cm-thick slices on the diagonal. Place all the ingredients into a saucepan. Cook over high heat for 3 minutes, then lower heat and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Dish out and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Daring Bakers: Mousse in an Edible Container

2011-04-27T00:01:00.126+08:00

PALM SYRUP MOUSSE IN A NUT CUP

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favourite from April 27 to May 27 at thedaringkitchen.com!

Bacon cups were part of this challenge (for the original recipe and instructions, please go to this pdf) and I really wanted to try those at first. But after hunting for maple syrup – which was strongly recommended for its distinctive flavour – at three shops and not finding even a small bottle of it (all the shops had maple-flavoured syrup), I changed my edible containers to the nut variation (using almond nibs) that was given in the challenge.

The thing is, I decided to make a mousse flavoured with palm syrup, and I have a feeling that it would have worked just as well with the bacon. Never mind, next time.

Palm sugar

So yes, the mousse is flavoured with palm syrup, which I made by cooking down a mixture of shaved palm sugar and water (the same volume of each) until reduced by half so that there was a thick syrup. The palm sugar I use is from the coconut palm, and like maple syrup, has a taste all its own.

I know I didn't put as much effort into this challenge as some of the other Daring Bakers – you must check out their creations at the Daring Kitchen (this challenge is also a competition, so if you can, vote for the one you like) – but I didn't want to sit it out. The palm sugar, however, inspired me to come up with some dishes that incorporate it and I will writing on that in my regular post on Monday. One of them is coconut dulce de leche. It is now my favourite spread/frosting/flavouring.

Easter feaster

2011-04-25T00:01:00.002+08:00

EASTER LUNCH: TOO MANY THINGS ON ONE PLATE

Easter lunch with the family yesterday was the usual – a mix of dishes with no connection to one another. They were Indian, Chinese, Malay and Western, as well as a Moroccan-inspired one (my roast chicken dish).

I don't think we really eat a lot of meat on a daily basis – I certainly don't – but when Christmas and Easter roll by, we become Americans (they are one-fifteenth of the world's population, but eat one-third of the world's meat, according to Harold McGee). Just take a look at this:

The meat...

And that wasn't all. There were also beef satay, beef meat balls and liver with ginger (a favourite of one of my brothers). Even the dishes that don't need to include meat had some variant of it, like the mac 'n cheese and sausage-stuffed onions. My mother made garlic rice, which I don't think went with any of the dishes here because none of them really had a gravy. And yet, I had some rice anyway and moistened it with a scoop of peanut sauce from the satay. The food combinations certainly need some rethinking.

...and other dishes (meat was included in many of them as well *sigh*)

Having said that, we still wolfed down a lot of the food like it was our last meal. At the end we had the chocolate éclairs I made, the same kind I featured in April's Don't Call Me Chef column.

Potato-egg-apple salad is our traditional side dish on Christmas, but I felt like having some yesterday, so my sister made a huge amount of it and I took home half of it. It could probably feed four, but I am quite sure I will finish it all by myself. Hey, the next we have it is at Christmas!

Tried & Tested: Jacques Pépin's Almond Cake

2011-04-18T00:10:00.001+08:00

ALMOND CAKE WITH DRIED FRUIT

It's raining buckets as I write this. I don't think it has stopped raining since yesterday evening. I had wanted to come home after work yesterday and make a cake using almond paste, but traffic had been so bad, I actually had to turn round and go back to the office. When I left two hours later, it still took me 50 minutes to get home on a drive that usually takes 15 minutes. Too late to make the cake.

The recipe is for an Almond Cake With Berries, from Jacques Pépin. It is easily whizzed up in a food processor, but even by hand, it doesn't look like it should take much effort.

I am a big fan of Monsieur Pépin and loved watching him when his cooking show was on TV. He's such a great teacher and makes every dish uncomplicated. No need to be intimidated by French food when Jacques Pépin shows you how to cook it. I have none of his recipe books but I do have his autobiography, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, which has a few recipes in it.

When I got some almond paste recently, I looked up some cake recipes and saw this one by Pépin. He uses fresh berries to garnish the cake, but he also suggests dried fruit like currants, peaches and apricots. Fresh berries are so expensive over here and I can't think of any local fresh fruit that would be suitable, so I went with the dried and even managed to find dried peaches and apricots. I also added currants and crystallized pineapple. Dice them so that they are the same size as the currants. They may not look as pretty as fresh fruit, but I think they work just as well.

I also had a little bottle of cognac that someone gave me and that came in handy for this recipe. I think the original recipe makes too much syrup for such a small cake, and instead of adding all water to dilute the apricot jam, I used the leftover syrup for that. This cake has one boozy garnish!

I changed the recipe slightly so if you want the original, please go to the link given above.

Individual serving

ALMOND CAKE WITH DRIED FRUIT
From a recipe by Jacques Pépin
Serves 6-8
115g almond paste
¾ cup sugar
110g unsalted butter + extra to butter the cake pan
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 medium free-range eggs
¼ cup milk
Dash of salt
1 cup cake flour
½ teaspoon baking powder

Syrup
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons whiskey, rum or cognac
2 tablespoons sugar

Garnish
1½ cups diced dried fruit (currants, peaches, apricots, pineapple)
¼ cup good apricot jam, diluted with 2 tablespoons water
8-10 mint leaves
1 cup Greek yoghurt for serving

Butter a 17cm round cake pan (5cm deep) and line the base with greaseproof paper. Heat the oven to 180°C.
Put the almond paste, sugar, butter and vanilla in a food processor and process for about 10 seconds. Add the eggs, milk, and salt and process for 5 seconds. Add the flour and the baking powder and process for another 5 to 10 seconds, or until smooth. Pour the cake batter into the pan and bake for 45 minutes. Cool on a rack.
At serving time, place the cake on a serving platter.
Combine the ingredients for the syrup in a small bowl. Using a spoon or pastry brush, moisten the cake with the syrup. Scatter the dried fruit on top of the cake. Brush on the diluted apricot jam and garnish with the mint leaves. Serve with the Greek yoghurt.

In the scone zone

2011-04-11T00:01:00.232+08:00

SCONES 3 WAYS: (clockwise from left) cheese and mustard; ginger-spelt; and Cheddar-scallion

I hadn't even put down my bag when I turned on the oven to heat it up for the biscuits I was going to make. I had read this post on Cheddar-Scallion Biscuits by Donna Currie at Cookistry and couldn't wait to try out the recipe.

I got all the ingredients out and then discovered I didn't have any baking powder. Fortunately, there is a little sundry shop in my apartment complex and I trotted over for a tin of it.

Now, this isn't the first time I am making scones (biscuits in America; over here, we're more familiar with scones), but these were, by far, the best I have made.

Cheddar-scallion biscuits (recipe from Cookistry)

Now, I don't normally praise my own cooking. Dishes by celebrities like Nigella Lawson, Laura Calder and Jamie Oliver always look good on TV and probably taste good too, but I find it off-putting when they have a taste of dishes they have prepared themselves and start making yummy noises. This time, however, I am going to be like them because I think these scones were close to perfect.

They rose beautifully and were tender and fluffy on the inside. They were completely different from the scones I have made before – heavy, hard and suitable only for house-building. This time, I used a light hand, not kneading at all but simply pressing the dough together. Donna's instructions were spot on. Folding the dough like an envelope a couple of times produced layers, like puff pastry, and her advice to gather the scraps and keep the layers together also helped.

By the time I had finished making the scones, the natural light was gone and it was too dark for me to take a picture. But that was a good thing because if I had managed to photograph them, it would have been an excuse for me to eat the whole batch! (In my defence, I made only half the amount specified in the recipe, so there were just five whole scones and a runt-y one...)

Fired up by that success, I went ahead and tried something else, this time with spelt flour and crystallised ginger. I decided to add some coconut oil as I thought it would go well with the flavours. It did, but I might add more coconut oil next time because it wasn't strong enough for my taste (recipe below).

The next day, I went for Scone Number Three – this time, with Parmesan in the topping. Here's the recipe:

CRUSTY CHEESE AND MUSTARD DAMPERETTES

From Australian Women's Weekly Home Library:
Muffins, Scones & Breads
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
½ teaspoon dry mustard
30g cold butter, chopped
1 cup milk, approximate
Topping (recipe follows)

Sift flour and mustard into a mixing bowl; rub in butter. Stir in enough milk to mix to a soft, sticky dough. Turn dough onto floured surface and press together into a large square. Fold the top third onto the centre, and then the bottom third over. Press out again to 1.5cm thick. Now fold the right third to the centre and the left third over it. Press out to 2cm thick. Cut out with a pastry cutter or knife and place on a prepared oven tray. Press the scraps together and cut out more scones. Sprinkle with topping. Bake for about 15 minutes until top is melted and golden.

Topping
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon seeded mustard
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¾ cup coarsely grated fresh Parmesan cheese

Melt butter on the stove or in the microwave oven. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Coconut oil adds flavour to these spelt scones and is said to be good for health as well.

GINGER SPELT SCONES

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup spelt flour
1 tablespoon cold butter, chopped
1 tablespoon coconut oil (or just use butter)
2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallised ginger
1 cup buttermilk, approximate

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a baking tray or line with parchment paper.
Sift all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt together into a mixing bowl. Stir in spelt flour. Add butter and coconut oil. Using your fingertips, rub the fat into the dry ingredients. Stir in the crystallised ginger. Using a butter knife or fork, stir in enough milk to mix to a soft, sticky dough.
Remove the dough from the bowl onto a lightly floured work surface. Pat it together; gently and lightly press out the dough into a 1.5cm-thick square. Fold the top third onto the centre, and then the bottom third over. Press out again to 1.5cm thick. Now fold the right third to the centre and the left third over it. Press out to 2cm thick. Cut out with a pastry cutter or knife. Place on prepared tray. Press the scraps together and cut out more scones. Bake the scones for about 15 minutes until puffed and brown.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Kitchen kit: Tagine

2011-04-04T00:01:00.194+08:00

PRAWN TAGINE ON COUSCOUS

I recently cooked with my Moroccan tagine for the first time. I've had it for almost a year, and I don't know why it has taken me this long.

The cooking vessel is not decorated or glazed, and it is made by hand. It is rough and rustic, and that is why I bought it. It cost something like US$5. I got it from a little shop selling tagines and other clayware on the edge of the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakesh from an elderly gentleman with such an amazing face. He looked at first like a sage spiritual guru, and then as he started talking about his pots, this cheeky man suddenly appeared!

Tagine

The tagine has to be seasoned first and I learnt how to do it with instructions (and pictures) at itagine.com. The tagine is soaked first, then oiled and placed in the oven for about an hour before it can be used. On the stove, it should sit over very low heat or the tagine may crack. I don't know what it's like with a glazed casserole/pot, but for my unglazed clay one, the food isn't browned first (as you might also do if cooking in a skillet or casserole dish). I loved how, when I lifted the cone-shaped lid halfway through cooking the prawns and fennel, the sauce was bubbling and the smell was delicious.

This tagine – or any tagine, for that matter – makes an impressive dish (just like the chocolate éclairs I made for this month's Don't Call Me Chef column – the theme was "dish to impress". The column appears in print today; link to pdf here). The food itself is good, or course, but it will certainly taste better if cooked in an actual tagine, and will look impressive when the vessel is brought directly to the dining table.

My tagine will only make enough for two people but I ate the whole dish by myself, and I can say decisively that I was impressed!

The secret – if you want to call it that – of this dish is the chermoula, a fresh herb mixture used to marinate the prawns. My recipe simply throws things together and I go by taste but if you want some actual recipes, which I think look good, here are three links:
The Epicentre
Herbivoracious
New York Times

Green herb marinade

HERB MARINADE BASED ON CHERMOULA

Makes about 1 cup
2 cups fresh coriander (cilantro)
1 cup fresh Italian parsley
1 lime, zest and juice
2 cloves garlic
¼ teaspoon chilli flakes
1 teaspoon sumac
Salt, to taste
½ cup olive oil

Use a mortar and pestle to pound all the ingredients, except the oil, until smooth but not too fine (or do this in a food processor). Taste and adjust seasoning. Add the olive oil gradually and stir in with a fork until an emulsion forms.

Layer the ingredients...

Prawn & Fennel Tagine
Jumbo prawns
Potato, peeled and cut into 2cm-thick slices
Fennel bulb, sliced thinly
Red capsicum (pepper), sliced into rings
Ras el hanout
Fennel sprigs for garnish

Peel the prawn, leaving the tailed intact. Cut down the back and remove the dark vein. Marinate with come of the herb marinade for 30 minutes.
Layer the ingredients in the oiled tagine base: First the potatoes, next the sliced fennel bulb, then the prawns (with the marinade) and finally the capsicum rings.
Mix ras el hanout to taste with a few tablespoons of water and pour over the layers.

...and all the flavours meld when the dish is cooked

Cover the tagine and place it on a low flame. The dish is cooked when the potatoes are soft. Before serving, garnish with a feathery fennel sprig.

Daring Bakers: Meringue-Filled Coffee Cake

2011-03-27T00:01:00.219+08:00

FLOWER POWER: YEASTED COFFEE CAKE WITH HALVA FILLING

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

This month's Daring Bakers challenge could not have made me happier. I make yeasted breads every week. And I love coffee cakes because of their baked-in toppings/fillings. (Well, it seems this challenge was quite a favourite with the other Daring Bakers as well. Check out their dishes at the Daring Kitchen website.)

The squashed flower *sob* didn't stop anyone from ripping it apart rather quickly (right).

I tried Jamie's version first and the bread dough was perfectly soft. However, I spread it out a little too thin (I simply stretched out the dough into a rectangle using my hands) and so when I had filled it with meringue, nuts and chocolate chips, it was a little delicate and difficult to manoeuvre into a ring and then onto the baking sheet. The result was that squashed flower you see in the picture on the left (above).

Place the semolina halva log on one long end of the dough, and start rolling up the dough from that side so that the semolina will be in the centre of the spiral

I have to say the Indian half of me was intrigued by Ria's version with the saffron and spices. The ingredients got me thinking about Indian sweets so I decided to incorporate one of them, kaseri or semolina halva, into the filling. I think it worked well with the rest of the ingredients.

The halva can, of course, be eaten on its own. Mix in some chopped cashews and raisins. Another version is to cook the mixture until very thick and then press it into a baking tin or shallow bowl until firm (like polenta). It is served cut into shapes, usually diamonds.

To avoid another flattened flower, I let the dough rise in the fridge overnight. The next day, I left the dough out for about 30 minutes (it was still a little cold) before rolling it out with a rolling pin and filling it. It was easier to handle this way.

There are many recipes for semolina halva, of course. This is how I made it for the filling.

With semolina halva filling

SEMOLINA HALVA

2 tablespoons ghee
½ cup semolina
1½ cup water
3 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of saffron, mixed with 1 tablespoon water
Large pinch of cardamom powder
Pinch of salt

Heat ghee in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat and fry the semolina until lightly toasted. Add the water and sugar and stir until sugar dissolves. Keep stirring until mixture thickens and semolina starts to leave the sides of the pan. Stir in the remaining ingredients and remove from heat. Allow to cool before using as the coffee cake filling.

Kitchen kit: Silicone baking moulds

2011-03-21T00:01:00.263+08:00

SCALLOP-SHAPED MADELEINE

Although I like the charm and durability of metal bakeware, silicon moulds have their plus points.

They often catch the eye with their bright colours – like the lime green ones I got on my last visit to the baking supply shop – but it's the unusual shapes that are probably the biggest attraction. We are getting more choices now in Malaysia, but the thicker, better-quality branded moulds (if you can find them) are rather expensive.

I've wanted to make madeleines for a while now, not least to dedicate to my god-daughter Madelyn. Not quite the same spelling, but these little cakes are certainly made for a sweetie like Mady. So I was happy to find the madeleine mould at the baking supply store. The lime green colour inspired a cake flavoured with lime and speckled with lovely bright zest.

There's quite a bit of discussion about madeleines at various blogs: Should the plain side be flat or have a hump? Should the batter contain baking powder or not? Should the eggs be beaten to incorporate a lot of air? Is it all right to simply mix everything together? Is it necessary to leave the batter in the refrigerator overnight? Can the batter be used immediately?

Well, so far, I've only made one attempt at this cake so that is all I can base my judgement on. I followed a recipe for lemon madeleines from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook but used lime instead. It does not contain baking powder and the batter is mixed together easily. The cakes had a strong aroma of lime but I would have liked a stronger flavour so for my second batch, I added more lime juice. The recipe is given at the bottom of the post.

Back to silicone baking moulds. Below are a few that I have used.

Marble cake in a rose shape

Jelly in the shape of a rose

Pyramid-shaped coconut macaroons

LIME MADELEINES

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

Makes 18

125g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

¾ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup cashew nuts, toasted and finely ground

½ cup caster sugar

2 tablespoons finely grated lime zest

1 tablespoon lime juice

3 medium eggs

½ teaspoon salt

Whisk together the flour, ground cashew nuts and sugar; set aside.
Add the lime zest and juice to the cooled butter; stir to combine.
In a large bowl, combine the eggs with the salt and whisk until frothy. Whisk in flour mixture to combine. With the whisk, fold in the butter mixture. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease two 9-mould madeleine pans*. Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a 12mm (½-inch) plain round tip. Pipe the batter into the prepared pans, filling each mould about three-quarter full. bake, rotating the pans halfway through, until the edges of the cakes are golden brown, 12-14 minutes. Immediately invert the madeleines onto a wire rack to cool. Madeleines should be served the same day they are baked.

* Silicone moulds just need to be greased; if using metal moulds, dust with flour after greasing and tap out excess. Flouring the tins prevents the cakes from sticking. If you have only one madeleine pan, store the remaining batter in the fridge while you bake the first batch. Wait for the pan to cool slightly (silicone pans don't take very long to cool) when you take it out of the oven and after you remove the cakes, grease again and make the second batch.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Bread bulletin: Kahk

2011-03-14T00:01:00.066+08:00

IRAQI BREAD BRACELETS

I was looking for a recipe for Italian taralli pugliese in one of my bread books when I came upon this recipe for kahk and noticed the similiarities between these two bread snacks. Both are looped into a ring or bracelet shape, contain olive oil and are seasoned with spices – cumin and coriander in kahk and fennel in taralli. The difference is the addition of white wine in taralli, and the rings are first poached like bagels before they are baked.

The recipe for kahk comes from Linda Collister's Bread: From Ciabatta to Rye. She writes in her introduction to the recipe that kahk are Arab bread bracelets or rings and the one she presents in her book is an Iraqi recipe. I read that there is also a sweet variety, filled with dates and nuts, or plain dusted simply with sugar.

After reading some recipes for taralli online, I thought why not use Linda Collister's recipe for the kahk, which makes 18 bracelets, and divide that into kahk and taralli? I substituted the cumin and coriander with fennel, and omitted the wine (since I didn't have any). Because I had a little bit of discard from a sourdough leaven I was going to use the next day, I added that to the mix. After shaping into rings, I proceeded to bake half of them for kahk and poach the other half before baking for taralli.

This has to work, I thought, or I'll have people

from two countries laughing at me.

Well, as it turned out, I didn't quite pull off either one. My "mock" taralli failed completely. They were pallid and tasted raw despite being cooked twice (poached and baked). I had let the dough rise overnight in the fridge and poached them the next morning without allowing them to come to room temperature. Can that have been the reason for the insipid look and taste, I wonder.

The kahk are twice-baked, first in a medium hot oven, then at a lower temperature to crisp up. I didn't let the oven cool down significantly before the second baking, so they were hard and a little burnt. But when I managed to crack one with my teeth, it tasted better than it looked. If made well, I can see myself chewing on these crisps all day.

Which meant a second attempt was in order. This time, the kahk turned out good! They were crisp on the outside but tender on the inside. My jaw didn't hurt and my teeth were still intact. I am submitting this recipe to YeastSpotting (which discussed taralli pugliese some time ago).

I'm going to get those taralli to work next.

Perfect for dunking

KAHK
From Bread: From Ciabatta to Rye by Linda Collister
Makes 18

300g unbleached strong bread flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons cumin seeds, roasted*
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, roasted and ground*
1½ teaspoons (7g) instant dried yeast
100ml tepid water
100ml olive oil
1 egg, beaten, to glaze
Sesame seeds*, to sprinkle

Put the flour, salt, roasted and ground seeds and yeast in a large bowl and mix well. Make a well in the centre.
Add the water and olive oil. Gradually draw the flour into the liquids to make a firm, heavy dough. If the dough feels a little sticky, work in a little more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time; if there are dry crumbs in the bowl, work in a little more tepid water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead thoroughly for 10 minutes. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave to double in size, about 1½ hours.
Turn out the risen dough onto a lightly floured work surface and punch down to deflate. Divide into 18 equal pieces about the size of a walnut. Using your hands, roll the pieces into sausages about 12cm long. Overlap the ends to form rings.
Arrange slightly apart well-greased baking sheets, then very lightly brush with beaten egg, taking care not to glue the dough to the sheets. Sprinkle with sesame seeds^. Slip the sheets into large plastic bags, slightly inflate, seal, then let rise as before until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 190°C.
Uncover the rings and bake for 25 minutes until firm and golden. Remove from the oven, turn down the heat to the lowest setting˜, then, when the oven has cooled sufficiently, bake for a further 20 minutes until crisp and dry. Cool on a wire rack.
Eat immediately or store in an airtight tin for up to 1 month.

* Instead of cumin and coriander, I used 2½ teaspoons of fennel seeds only, roasted and left whole. Besides sesame seeds, I used onion (nigella) seeds as a garnish.

^ To get the seeds to stick better, I pressed a finger into the seeds and then pressed them on each egg-washed ring.

˜ Each oven will be different. I actually turn my oven off, wait about 10 minutes, then return the kahk to the oven to crisp and dry from the residual heat.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Morning mix

2011-03-07T00:01:00.088+08:00

HOMEMADE GRANOLA

Last week was crazy. Being away on assignment for a week, then coming back to catch up on work and on top of that falling ill, I really didn't get much done. Luckily, I managed to write my story for the March issue of "Don't Call Me Chef" and make my breakfast dish (story out today in print; here's the link).

I eat granola for breakfast quite often, either with milk or strained (Greek) yoghurt with a little berry jam. It's nice to make your own because you get to put whatever you like in it and leave out what you don't. I like adding flaxseed to the mix because it's healthy; commercial granola hardly ever has it. I often use almonds, but since I only had peanuts this time, I put those in instead. It's a really flexible recipe and easily scaled up.

HOMEMADE GRANOLA
Makes 4 cups

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup shredded coconut
½ cup pumpkin seeds
½ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup flaxseeds
½ cup peanuts
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup honey
¾ cup sunflower or canola oil
1 cup dried fruit (apricots, dates, glacé pineapple), chopped

Preheat oven to 180°C. Combine oats, coconut, seeds, almonds and cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir the honey and oil in a small saucepan over low heat for 2 minutes until melted and combined. Add the honey mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to combine.
Spread the mixture on a greased baking tray. Bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden. Remove from oven and leave to cool – it will be a solid mass.
Once cooled completely, break up into clusters and mix in dried fruit. Store in an air-tight jar for up to 4 weeks at room temperature.

Granola parfait: Layers of granola, yoghurt and fruit

Here are links to some of my other posts which feature dishes that make good breakfasts:
Any Morning Cinnamon Rolls
Bamboo Charcoal Braid
Banana Mochaccino
Cheese on Toast ala Harold Pinter
Easy Orange Marmalade

Homemade Butter

Julia Child's Egg Project: Four ways to cook eggs

Multi-grain Bread
Nutty Cinnamon Sticky Buns
Strained Yoghurt
Poppy Seed Bread Rolls
Potstickers with Chicken
Vegetable Mung Bean Griddle Cakes

Daring Bakers: Panna Cotta & Florentines

2011-02-27T00:01:00.030+08:00

LIME COCONUT PANNA COTTA & GINGER FLORENTINES

Here are three facts about my first attempt at making panna cotta:
1. I enjoyed the process and experimenting with flavours, but had some problems along the way.
2. Neither the taste nor look was what I had envisioned.
3. It was delicious – which makes facts 1 and 2 irrelevant.

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

Here's the original recipe in pdf. For all the fantastic pictures from other Daring Bakers, go to The Daring Kitchen.

A cool dessert – now that's what you want when you live in a hot, humid country, and panna cotta and jelly is perfect.

Mallory apologises for the enormous amount of fat in this panna cotta. So it has a lot of cream in it. Well, add rich, thick coconut milk (instead of plain milk) to that, as I have, and anyone with even the slightest issue with their heart or cholesterol level should stay away from it. This is TO BE EATEN ONLY IN MODERATION! (Apologies for shouting out this warning with the capital letters and exclamation point.)

Agar-agar strips and kaffir lime leaves

In attempt No.1, kaffir lime leaves were steeped in the coconut milk for flavour. The coconut milk came out of a box. Instead of gelatin (which is available here), I used agar-agar (I can't really say how much; just eye-balled it), and used palm sugar instead of white sugar. I also made a gelée from fresh coconut water. The panna cotta is made in a rose-shaped silicone mould.

The citrus taste wasn't as strong as I would have liked it to be, but the panna cotta was creamy and still delicious.

For the florentines, instead of instant oats, I used rolled oats which I processed for a bit. In terms of shape and "lacy-ness", they came out perfect. But they were a little too sweet. I also added a bit of minced crystallised ginger.

Attempt No. 2: Moulded (left) and layered in a glass

In the second attempt, I squeezed milk from grated fresh coconut and left the kaffir lime leaves in the coconut milk overnight and a stronger flavour came through. I had to stop myself from drinking the mixture on its own! The gelée was layered on top of the panna cotta so that the rose shape was more defined. Before processing the rolled oats, I toasted them first and that made the florentines taste better, but they didn't come out lacy. However, I liked the taste better than the first attempt.

The middle layer in the glass is plain jelly with Kahlúa added to it. It goes very well with the rest of the flavours.

C-lucky find

2011-02-21T00:01:00.048+08:00

CHICKEN VESUVIO.

The first recipe in America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2010 magazine is for Chicken Vesuvio, a specialty of Chicago. The picture, while small, stopped me on that page and I read the whole story and recipe before moving on. Actually every page of this magazine has something interesting. What a good deal I got when I found this in the bargain bin at one of the magazine stores close to where I live.

As this post appears, I am in India. Obviously, I wrote this before I left to visit a huge handicraft fair in New Delhi and write about it for my newspaper. I didn't want to have a gap in my publishing schedule, and that's why this post is out. Today, according to the programme, I will be in Agra, at the Taj Mahal. I will probably be tearing a little in awe at the majesty of the structure.

I'm sure I would already have gorged on lovely Indian vegetarian food and will be looking forward to some more until I leave in a few days. I know I'll be taking pictures of all the dishes I tried.

For now, here's a dish I made some time ago; it is really good, so those of you who like chicken, this is a good recipe to have (the picture doesn't do justice to the dish, though, so please don't judge it by that). Enjoy!

CHICKEN VESUVIO
From Cooking for Two 2010
Serves 2

¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 (170-225g) boneless, skinless chicken breasts (please use free-range), trimmed and pounded 1¼cm thick
Salt and pepper
5 teaspoons olive oil
340g red potatoes (about 3), cut into 2½cm chunks
1 garlic clove, minced
⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano or ¼ teaspoon dried
½ teaspoon minced fresh rosemary or ⅛ teaspoon dried
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
¼ cup dry white wine
½ cup frozen peas, thawed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Place the flour in a shallow dish. Pat the chicken breast dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Working with 1 breast at a time, dredge in the flour, shaking off the excess.
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a 25cm nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Carefully lay the chicken in the skillet and cook until lightly browned on both sides, 6-8 minutes, flipping the breasts halfway through. Transfer chicken to a plate.
Wipe out the skillet with paper towels. heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil in the skillet over medium-high heat until simmering. Add the potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally until golden brown, about 7 minutes. Stir in the garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, rosemary and ⅛ teaspoon salt and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the broth and wine, scrapping up any browned bits. Nestle the chicken, along with any accumulated juice, into the potatoes and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until the chicken is cooked, 12-18 minutes, flipping the chicken halfway through.
Transfer the chicken to a serving platter and tent loosely with foil to keep warm. Increase the heat to medium and continue to cook, uncovered, until the potatoes are tender and the sauce is thickened slightly, 5-7 minutes longer. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the potatoes to the platter with the chicken. Off the heat, stir in the peas, butter and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour the sauce over the chicken and potatoes and serve.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Bread bulletin: 1 dough, 6 ways

2011-02-14T00:01:00.248+08:00

A BUN FOR (ALMOST) EVERY MORNING OF THE WEEK.

Breakfast should be quick to make and easy to eat. Making toast from a thick slice of homemade loaf and spreading it with butter and jam is easy enough, but sometimes even that seems too much work for me. Terrible.

So I thought that if I just baked different flavours into a batch of dough, I could avoid using the knife, getting the toaster out and cleaning up afterwards. The usual amount of dough I make is enough for six rolls, so I looked through the fridge and found enough items to do that: 1 dough, 6 ways!

Here's a different roll for breakfast every work day and an extra one for whenever. The pictures show the ones I made recently, and the flavours are easy to adapt with whatever you have at hand.

Top row, from left: Sambal pasty; jam twist; chocolate crescent.

Bottom row: Cinnamon-apple pocket; sausage roll; cheese windmill.

CHEESE WINDMILL

Roll dough into a square; place a little square of hard cheese in the centre. With scissors or sharp knife, cut diagonally through dough from each corner until the edge of the cheese. Fold alternate points of square to centre to form a windmill, overlapping and pinching gently to seal in the centre. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with grated cheese.

CHOCOLATE CRESCENT

Shape the dough into a long triangle; make a small snip in the short end. Place a square of chocolate or some chips in the centre and roll up from the snipped end.

SAMBAL PASTY

Roll or press the dough into a circle; put a heaped tablespoon of any sambal (I used ikan bilis or anchovy) on one side and fold the other side over to enclose and form a half moon. Pinch the seam into a ruffle. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

SAUSAGE ROLL

Roll the dough into a long strip and wrap along the length of a cooked sausage, overlapping the edges slightly. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with grated cheese.

JAM TWIST

Roll out the dough into a wide strip; spread with jam and fold lengthways, with the seam facing upwards. Twist into a spiral, like a snail shell.

CINNAMON-APPLE POCKET

The apple is finely diced and mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon. Roll the dough into a square. Place apple filling in the centre and bring up the corners into the centre to form an envelop. brush with melted butter and sprinkle with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

Ring-a-ring o' rosy cakes

2011-02-07T00:01:00.304+08:00

HOMEMADE CAKE MIX.

For some reason, ring moulds are currently my favourite baking pans. I used mini bundt moulds last week for the gingerbread cakes featured at the bottom of this post and a fluted one for the Apple Streusel Coffee Cake I made for this month's Don't Call Me Chef column (out in print today; ~~link to pdf up soon~~ here's the link). Two days ago, I baked a Zebra Cake in a ring mould.

I first saw the recipe and instructions for a zebra cake – a marble cake but with zebra stripes on the inside! – at AZ Cookbook back in 2008. (Real Epicurean has a slightly different recipe but with the same design.) I tried the recipe, and the stripes came out quite nicely, but the centre of the cake was uncooked. I usually have myself to blame when my cooking attempts fail, but this time it was the fault of my oven which didn't heat properly from the bottom.

Now it was time to try that cake again. But with my current obsession with rings, it had to be doughnut-shaped. I used a cake mix this time – BUT it was a homemade cake mix, not from a box.

There are some really good box mixes on the market and I have even used them without feeling guilty about it. Recently, I tried the lemon cake and English tea cake mixes from the Australian brand Green's and liked both. But with any box mix, there are always those nasty preservatives to contend with. When you make your own, you can use the best quality, natural products.

There are quite a few sites with recipes for homemade cake mix. Here's mine:

HOMEMADE CAKE MIX

Makes 3 portions

4½ cups plain flour

½ cup cornstarch

½ cup milk powder

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 tablespoon salt

2¼ cups sugar

½ cup cold unsalted butter, chopped

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Sift the flour, cornstarch, milk powder, baking powder and salt together; place into a food processor and pulse for 10 seconds to combine. Add remaining ingredients and pulse to form a fine meal.
Divide into three portions, about 420g each, and store in zipper bags in the freezer.

To make a vanilla cake using the cake mix, beat with 2 medium eggs, 3 tablespoons softened butter and ½ cup milk or water. For a chocolate cake, sift 3 tablespoons cocoa powder into the cake mix before beating with the other ingredients to make a batter. Blend 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda with 1 tablespoon milk or water and stir this into the batter; immediately pour batter into prepared tin to bake. Baking instructions as for the Spiced Zebra Cake below.

Batter up

SPICED ZEBRA CAKE
1 (one-third) portion homemade cake mix
2 medium eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
½ mixed spice
½ cup milk or water, divided
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted

Preheat oven to 180°C. Base-line, grease and flour a 20cm ring mould. Combine cocoa powder with 1 tablespoon water; stir until dissolved. Set aside.
Place the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes. The batter will have a flowing consistency but will not be runny. Place half the batter in another bowl and blend in the cocoa mixture.
Starting on one side of the prepared pan, place 2 tablespoons of the plain batter into the pan; it will start to spread slowly on its own. Quickly drop 2 tablespoons of the cocoa batter on top of the plain batter; the cocoa batter will push the plain batter outwards (pictured top, left). Continue alternating the batters until they are used up; by this time, the batters would have met on the other side of the pan (pictured top, right).
Bake for 30-35 minutes until top is springy and a skewer comes out clean when inserted near the centre of the cake. Cool on wire rack for 15 minutes; remove tin and leave on wire rack to cool completely. Serve plain or with a simple sugar glaze (icing sugar mixed with a little milk to a drizzling consistency).

PRINTABLE RECIPE

And here are more spicy ring cakes, this time flavoured with ginger...

Bundt on the run

I know I have used both cup and weight measures in this recipe – it couldn't be helped. I adapted this recipe from one in Donna Hay magazine, which uses cups, but made a smaller amount and weighed the dry ingredients instead.

MINI GINGERBREAD CAKES
Makes 12 ⅓-cup Bundt cakes

100g plain flour
1¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp mixed spice
Pinch of nutmeg
60g butter, chopped
¼ cup golden syrup
½ cup brown sugar
100ml milk
1 medium egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons chopped crystallised ginger

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Process the flour, baking powder, ginger, mixed spice, nutmeg and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Place the golden syrup, brown sugar and milk in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Cool until lukewarm. Pour the mixture into the processor while the motor is running and process until smooth. Add the egg and process for 1 minute. Stir in crystallised ginger until combined. Spoon the mixture into 12 lightly greased mini ⅓-cup capacity Bundt cakes tins and bake for 12-15 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool on wire rack.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

I have linked up this post to Sweet As Sugar Cookies, a blog by Lisa; her "Sweet for a Saturday" linky party is great! You'll get a lot of ideas for sweet treats there from many bloggers.

How-to: Strudel dough

2011-01-31T00:01:00.453+08:00

APPLE STRUDEL.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of Larousse Gastronomique which I've had for almost six months now. There is so much to read and so many interesting items to mull over.

I mention the book because I am writing about my meeting with Joël Robuchon for my newspaper and he happens to be the Gastronomic Committee president of the new Larousse. I should have carried it with me to Singapore last October and got M. Robuchon to sign it, but this book is so thick and heavy, it needs its own wheelie bag! The master chef is opening three restaurants at Resorts World Sentosa and was there to check up on the progress. The press were told the eateries would be open sometime in February, but nothing has been confirmed yet. (My story is slotted for sometime next month as well and a link to the pdf of the printed version will be up – in the sidebar – when it comes out.)

I still can't believe I met Joël Robuchon. You read about him and admire him on paper, and then you actually come face-to-face – that's the kind of highlight you look forward to in your job. While I kept my professional journalist composure throughout the interview, when it was over, I was like some wide-eyed pop idol fan the way I trotted up and asked to have a photograph taken with him. He was very obliging and even put a hand over my shoulder.

Robuchon and the Fan's Right Ear

So, back to Larousse Gastronomique. After browsing through it for a while now, I thought preparing a dish from one of the recipes in the book should be the next step – something with ingredients I always have in the house. And that would, of course, be some sort of bread or cake. The apple strudel is a little bit of both.

Strudel must be made with bread flour, says Larousse, because the dough needs to be stretched into a thin sheet and only a strong flour will allow that. I wondered about the vinegar in the dough. There are recipes that don't contain vinegar and other that do but I can't find an explanation for why the ingredient is included. Usually there would also be bicarbonate of soda and the two would react to give lift as in certain cakes and breads. If anyone can help me on this, I would be most grateful. Perhaps I should email Monsieur Robuchon and ask him since we've become ;-D great chums...

Larousse Gastronomique, while encyclopedic in nature, doesn't often give detailed recipe instructions. It must be assumed that readers will already be familiar with cooking concepts and methods. Anyway, more information would make the book even thicker and heavier! I've laid out the strudel recipe in customary format for ease of reading, but have adapted the recipe from Larousse and elaborated on the method after reading up on strudel-making.

Site check: About.com has pictures on how to stretch the dough, and Diana's Kitchen has instructions without pictures, but with a good description of the process. Baking911 has recipes for several fillings and suggests holding a "strudel bee": get some friends over to help with stretching the dough! I've tried to record each step in pictures myself.

APPLE STRUDEL

Adapted from Larousse Gastronomique
Serves 8-10

Dough
250g strong plain (bread) flour
150ml tepid water
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon oil

(A)
200g dried fruit (raisins, chopped dates and crystallised ginger)
1 tablespoon rum (optional)
1kg cooking apples
3 tablespoons caster sugar
75 melted butter, plus extra for brushing

A handful of breadcrumbs

100g chopped walnuts

2 tablespoons milk

Icing sugar for dusting

(B) – combined

2 teaspoon cinnamon
8 tablespoons soft brown sugar

Place flour in the bowl of an electric mixer; add the rest of the dough ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together. Using the mixer's dough hook, knead until the dough is smooth and elastic (Pix 1) but still tacky (Pix 2), about 8 minutes. Scoop up into a small bowl, cover with cling film and leave for 1 hour at room temperature, then place in the fridge overnight. When ready to make strudel, remove dough from fridge and allow to come to room temperature, about 1 hour.
Combine the dried fruit with the rum, if using; set aside for 30 minutes. Peel and finely dice the apples; sprinkle with caster sugar. Mix dried fruit and apples together.

Spread a large floured tea towel or sheet on a large table you can walk around; place the dough on it. Flour a rolling pin and roll out the dough into a rough rectangle (Pix 3). Flour the back of your hands, make fists and place them under the sheet of dough. Stretch the dough carefully using your knuckles (Pix 4), pulling your hands gently apart. Move around the table to work from all sides. Brush with extra melted butter, then keep on stretching it until it is very thin, taking care not to tear it; you should be able to see through the dough. Trim the edges to the shape of a large even rectangle (Pix 5). Use the trimmings to make a another, smaller strudel.

Lightly brown the breadcrumbs and walnuts in 75g melted butter; spread this mixture evenly over the dough. Sprinkle with the fruit (try not to include too much liquid), then dust with the cinnamon-sugar mixture (Pix 6). Fold the two outer sides in, then, using the tea towel/sheet, roll up the dough carefully to enclose all the ingredients (Pix 7). Slide the strudel on to a buttered baking sheet. Brush with the milk (Pix 8). It's all right if the strudel does not lie straight; it can be curled to fit the tray.

Cook in a preheated oven at 200°C for 40-45 minutes. When golden, take it out of the oven, dust with icing sugar and serve lukewarm.

PRINTABLE RECIPE