Foodiva's Kitchen

French Fridays With Dorie - Mussels With Mushroom and Peperoncino Pasta

2012-02-17T20:51:00.000+08:00

The only kind of seafood I trust is the fish stick, a totally featureless fish that doesn't have eyeballs or fins.
~ Dave Barry

I bit my nails when I saw that this week's French Fridays with Dorie featured mussels. Not that I have an aversion to it or any seafood in general, and in fact, I love to eat all sorts of creatures that come out of the sea! What I'm not a fan of is the cleaning and preparation side of things. So every time someone brings any seafood into this house (I've never bought or caught any of it), they'd better be all ready-to-cook or somebody else - usually Foodivo - better be willing to get their hands dirty and smell of the stale sea for a while.

You can therefore bet that I went and searched for the cleanest, most prepped mussels and found these ones that have been quick-frozen on the half-shelf. I high-fived myself in my mind when I scored these. Firstly, they don't smell much and best of all...there were no more beards to clean up! Sure, aesthetically they didn't look as good as the two-shelled mussels but since we were not going to eat the shells anyway, I didn't let that small detail get to me.

I also wasn't keen on mixing my seafood with meat, so I omitted the chorizo and substituted it with some tender brown beech mushrooms. And the bell pepper was replaced with chilli peppers although I must make a disclaimer that I deseeded most of them (you know how awfully chicken I am at the prospect of too much heat in my food).

I served the mussels and mushroom up on a bed of Spaghetti al Peperoncino that was slightly spicy but manageably so. Eating this brought back fond memories of our frequent day-trips to Brussels, a mere two-hours' drive from where I used to live in Germany. Basically, we only went there for three reasons - to eat chocolates, waffles and their famous moules. Sightseeing? Forget it.

Before this week, I thought there was no way I could replicate those fine mussels from Brussels (sidetrack: why does an image of Jean-Claude Van Damme come up every time someone says that?) in my very own kitchen. After cooking this, well I'm very sure I hadn't replicated them at all. But boy, it was a very good try. No bad shellfish-related incidents occurred on this occasion and everyone in the house lived to tell the tale! :)

On a final note, I've recovered somewhat from the nasty bug that got hold of me over last weekend and earlier this week. Thanks to all of you who dropped by and shared your comments and kind wishes. With your encouragement and friendship, I'm getting my blogging mojo back although it's proving to be a bit slow on the uptake... (remember, I used to post 3-4 times a week...oh, what happened to those days?). In the meantime, I shall come over to yours and check out some of your talented offerings.

Have a gorgeous weekend, Doristas and everyone else!

Muffin Monday - Triple Chocolate Muffins

2012-02-13T20:42:00.000+08:00

In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known.
~ Joanne Harris, Chocolat

So are you ready to face your week head-on with these devilishly decadent Triple Chocolate Muffins? I'm very late for this week's Muffin Monday, so late in fact that there's only a few hours left to my Monday over where I'm at :). Let me explain the reason for this unusual (but fast becoming the usual!) tardiness - it's partly because I'm sick as a dog today, but mainly, it's because I've been very disorganized. The complete opposite of our event host, Anuradha of Baker Street, who actually sent this recipe early on last week. My apologies again, An and many thanks for letting me still participate.

Get ready for some love....and lovin'.

Chocolate is hands down my most irresistable indulgence, as in, I am not able to resist having it in any of its forms. Sounds a bit like an illness when I put it that way, but maybe it is a kind of addiction. Well let's be grateful that at least it's legal :).

I looked through the recipe and the 'triple-ness' came from the cocoa, bittersweet and semisweet chocolate chips, with a dash of espresso powder to give the muffins a kick. My sister had brought back a stash of some rather lovely Swiss chocolates the last time she came home to get married (actually, she only got married once), so I decided to use some of those in place of the chocolate chips. I'm surprised we still had some left over, or perhaps our chocolate stash was really the size of a sweet-toothed pirate's treasure loot... ;).

I chopped up a handful of bite-sized, white-tipped Toblerones which went into the batter as chips and to top each muffin, I placed a slice of milk chocolate filled with salted caramel in the middle. I don't have to tell you how good this combination of chocolate-everything tastes like as you bite into the muffin's warm belly, do I?

The recipe is so easy that I did everything by hand as soon as I rolled out of bed and had these ready in time for breakfast! We don't normally start off each day with Triple Chocolate Muffins (unfortunately sanity and willpower prevail) but this one time we did, you can bet we walked out the front door with an extra bounce in our step!

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop in a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Muffin Monday: Triple Chocolate Muffins
Makes 12
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter
1 3/4 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
2/3 cup dutch-process cocoa
11/4 cup sugar
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 c. bittersweet chocolate chips (I used mini-white topped Toblerones, cut into small chunks)
1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips (I used salted caramel-filled milk chocolate, as a topping)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tsp white vinegar

Method:

1. Line a muffin tin with 12 paper cups. Spray lightly with cooking spray. Preheat oven to 425.

Melt the butter; set aside to cool.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, sugar, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt and chopped chocolate.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, vanilla and vinegar until blended. Stir in the cooled, melted butter.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir with a rubber spatula, just until blended.

5. Spoon into the prepared muffin liners…the cups will be very full. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the muffins bounce back when pressed with a finger. Cool on a wire cooling rack for 5 minutes.

6. Remove from the pan and let them cool just a bit longer. Serve warm.

French Fridays With Dorie - Nutella Tartine

2012-02-10T00:01:00.003+08:00

Chocolate, thick and oh so sweet
From a spoon, it's you I eat,
You look so good, taste so nice
I'd even eat you on fried rice...

~ Nutella poem, Ninja Girl

January was a write-off as far as blogging is concerned. Here I am thinking February will be much, much better but I've already missed last week's French Fridays recipe, Gorgonzola-Apple Quiche, something I had so wanted to bake as well! Already, I'm running out of excuses as to why I've gone MIA lately...let's just say life has taken over and left me with very little time and energy to focus on my culinary activities and writing. To quote E.B. White, "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day". Yes, too right, my friend!

Anyway, back to today....I couldn't possibly pass up the chance to make this week's FFWD recipe, Nutella Tartine. Well, it isn't even a recipe per se but an assemblage of several beautiful ingredients we all have in our pantries (and if you don't, you should start questioning if you're really living, you know).

Nutella Tartine is a favorite French after-school treat and apparently - because I hardly drink coffee - it also goes quite well with a hot cup of espresso. All you have to do to make it is warm up several spoonsfuls of Nutella, then drizzle it over buttered, toasted brioche slices. In Pierre Hermé's version as recounted by Dorie in Around My French Table, the toasted bread is slathered with bitter orange marmalade, Nutella and sprinkled on top with chopped hazelnuts and fleur de sel.

Of course, in my version of Nutella Tartine, that would be wholemeal toast spread with a layer of butter, a layer of peach jam (I had run out of marmalade, sadly) and frivolously decorated with thin orange slices, warmed-up Nutella, toasted almonds and pink river salt. These deviations from the original Tartine didn't affect its deliciousness one bit, that much I can assure you.

So Voilà...this week's recipe has been accomplished! Next week's will be a savory one - Mussels and Chorizo with or without Pasta. Oh, that will be a challenge for me as I'm really not that good with all things seafood, or let me rephrase that, all things savory. If you're keen though, come back next week to this same spot to see how I've done. No sorry, don't come back....just come and cook with us in French Fridays with Dorie :).

I've really missed you, Doristahs (my Dorista sistahs and brothahs). Here's wishing all of you a weekend crammed with heaven!

French Fridays With Dorie - Quatre-Quarts

2012-01-20T23:33:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I do wake up in the mornings and feel like I've just had the most incredible dream.

I've just dreamt my life.

~ Richard Branson

Helleww......I'm back! After several weeks of wedding-related shenanigans, I'm glad to be wiping the mounting dust off my copy of Dorie's Around My French Table cookbook in order to partake in this week's recipe, a classic French pound cake, or Quatre-Quarts. It's a simple recipe with only four main ingredients, flour, butter, eggs and sugar - used in equal amounts (hence "four-fourths") - and flavored only with a hint of vanilla.

This cake is a great one to bake if you're a rookie in the baking department, it's so easy and quite literally is "a piece of cake", if you'll forgive the pun! The eggs are separated and the whipped egg-whites are then folded into the batter, giving a light and airy-textured cake. By Dorie's reckoning, this is a dry cake compared to American pound cakes, but I thought it was just fine. Or I just may have a propensity for dry, crumbly cakes from having lived in Europe for a bit.

I chose not to dress up the cake and instead sprinkled the top with a mixture of black sesame powder and brown sugar prior to baking it. This gave the resulting cake a slight, pleasant crust from the caramelized sugar and a nutty flavor from the sesame. I loved biting through the crisp top layer into the tender inside of the cake, such an understated but elegant cake. So very French!

Instead of using a round cake pan, I used a heart-shaped mold to bake the batter in. Speaking of hearts, I'd like to share with you some images from my sister's wedding last weekend. Nothing to do with a food blog, of course...but there was a lot of food and feasting involved, I assure you!

The groom saying his wedding vows - just one take and he's part of our clan :).

After the wedding vows, or nikah ceremony

My sister's husband hails from Kosovo, a country only independent in 2008. He was one of the millions of displaced individuals resulting from the war in Kosovo in 1999. At the insistence of his ageing father, he escaped through the mountains, leaving all his family members behind and two weeks later arrived in Switzerland, where he has lived and worked since. And that's where he met my sister. It's hugely ironic that someone who'd come from a war-torn region has ended up with someone who comes from one of the most peaceful countries on earth (Brunei a.k.a. Abode of Peace). Maybe they were brought together for a good reason - to show us that Hope, well it's not just a myth, after all. :)

With family and friends - the controlled, regal pose

The inevitable kawaii pose!

Bride and groom getting ready for the wedding reception

Have a blessed marriage, Fidah & Ardian!

Back to the quatre-quarts! See how my online cooking group buddies fared with this recipe here. Better still, get yourself a copy of the book and join us, won't you?

Have a beautiful weekend, everyone!

Muffin Monday - Crusty Cheese and Onion Muffins

2012-01-09T13:00:00.054+08:00

This has been a whirlwind of a year so far, and we're only in the second week. You see, last week, my brother-in-law (on Foodivo's side) had gotten married while this weekend, it's my younger sister's turn. Both events are very much a family affair, and that has meant getting down and dirty with the wedding preparations, as if Foodivo and I were the ones getting married for the umpteenth time! Both my brother-in-law and sister have been quite happy to leave all the planning details to their mothers...they know what to do, after all. In turn, both mothers have turned to the best party/event planners in the family, namely Mr. and Mrs. Foodivo a.k.a. us!

So yes, there's been a whole load of invitations sent, phone-calls made, fittings (and necessary fighting too) carried out, as well as color-scheming, styling and capturing of the big day for posterity and the happily-ever-after viewing with new friends/relatives/children. One wedding down, one to go before our life returns back to normal.

My sister works and lives in Switzerland, while my brother-in-law had to move abroad for work just two days after his wedding. As you can imagine, while the process of getting married for them is a necessity, a fancy wedding do back home is actually the last thing on their minds. Which is why Foodivo and I are in the depth of it all. Really, all the bride and groom have to do is to turn up for their big day! It's been fun, though, and I'm honestly not complaining. That said, I also can't wait to get the second wedding over and done with so I can concentrate on this rather neglected blog and by proxy, all of you, my blogger friends :'(.

To get my mind off all things wedding for a while, I managed to bake these scrumptious savory muffins for Muffin Monday. They were really easy to put together and turned out beautifully fluffy inside with a crusty, cheesy topping that pleasantly crackles as you bite into it. I added garlic to the onion and cheese topping, and that simple act brought out the extra yum! Do drop by Baker Street blog, where you can drool over the variations of these delectable muffins. Have a great week ahead, stay happy and content!

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop a quick line to the host, Anuradha, to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Crusty Cheese and Onion Muffins
(Recipe adapted from Home Baked, Women's Weekly)
Makes 6-8 muffins
Ingredients:
1/4 cup all purpose flour
20 grams butter
1 teaspoon water, approximately
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium (150g) onion, halved and sliced
4 garlic cloves, diced*
13/4 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 egg, lightly beaten
11/4 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Method:

1. Place the all purpose flour in a small bowl and rub in the butter, mix in just enough water to bind ingredients. Press dough into a ball, cover, freeze about 30 minutes or until firm

2. Preheat the oven to 200C. Grease a 6 hole (3/4 cup deep) muffin tray.

3. Heat Oil in a frying pan, add onion, cook, stirring, until soft and lightly brown. Set aside to cool.

7. Sift self raising and extra flour into a large bowl, stir in half the onion, half the cheese and all of the chives, then egg, buttermilk and extra oil.

8. Spoon mixture into prepared tray. Grate frozen dough into a small bowl, quickly mix in remaining onion and cheese. Sprinkle over muffins.

9. Bake muffins for about 25 minutes. Serve warm with chive butter.

French Fridays With Dorie - Bubble-Top Brioches

2012-01-06T21:28:00.000+08:00

For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.
~ T.S. Eliot

This is it - my first new year post, finally. Nearly a week into January, I'm taking my time to ease into 2012. No need to rush...I'm trying to savor every minute (and that's not even a new year resolution, by the way). What better way to start off with than by baking bread, and Dorie Greenspan's Bubble-Top Brioches at that? After a couple of weeks of missing out on French Fridays with Dorie, I was truly looking forward to baking these beauties!

The dough was soft, buttery and beautiful to work with. Part of the preparation method was to chill the dough in the fridge for at least 2 hours after the first rising, slapping it down every half hour or so until it no longer rises so actively. Then chill it overnight to attain a perfect brioche texture. Call me weird, but that slapping part was probably the most stress-busting fun I've had in a while. The dough was so accommodating to my hard whacks, it kept bouncing gently back. So inspirational, I should carry that resilient attitude inside me throughout the year. For always, even.

Whack the dough down until you leave your mark :)

In the past, I've tried baking several versions of brioches using slightly different techniques of preparing the dough but I must admit, this was the best-textured dough I've ever made. I was worried because it was very soft, almost batter-like to start with, but I simply stuck to Dorie's instructions and suddenly, magic happened! The dough was not even as sticky as I'd anticipated, and sadly for this post, no drama whatsoever was involved in rolling it into 'bubbles'. Pretty easy (not to mention, boring).

4 to 5 bubble-tops - I was just trying to be clever ( it didn't work!).

I forgot to take pictures of the inside of a brioche, but to quote my 7-year old's description as he peeled off and munched on a bubble-top, "It feels soft, mommy, just like your powder puff". Yes, well. I just hope he hadn't been patting his nose with my puff when I wasn't looking. I wouldn't want to see him relegated to the powderpuff sports team in school!

Do check out this fab brioche recipe in Dorie's cookbook, Around My French Table. It can be made into brioche loaves too. Hmm...I wonder if any of the Doristas did just that? Find out more about their versions of this bread here.

Going With The Flow in 2012

2011-12-31T00:57:00.002+08:00

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still.

~ Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

2012

Ironically, for my last post of the year, I have no profound words nor a new recipe to offer you. A bit strange for a blog, and a food blog at that. I decided not to make any resolutions for the year ahead because, well, I am who I am. If I hadn't already made any significant changes in myself over the last decade or so, I doubt if writing something down on a list will now work to elevate my character. Not that I'm anywhere near perfect, but I'm in a happy place right now and would rather focus on living very much in the present.

Now let me tell you something about this food blog and what it has come to mean to me. Like many other years, this year has had its share of ups and downs but this blog, it's a soothing constant in my universe. I do believe the regularity of writing and interacting with you all has kept me sane. Even though I may have sounded insane at times, believe me, having you guys in my life has made me very, very happy. You (yes, you!) have become like a family member, my additional family to complement my real one.

Of course, our passion for food is the actual thing that binds us all together. Because it is a source of nourishment, I hope we will never get tired of it. Or rather, we shouldn't. I'd wear the adage, "All that you believe about love, change, joy and possibility is revealed in how, when and what you eat" on my apron sleeves if my apron had them. Everything I had ever presented on my plate therefore represents my experiences, the world through my eyes and more importantly, my heart.

And so for my end of year 'share 'n care' package for you, I've resisted posting up my favorite new year song by ABBA and instead have chosen these 3 powerful videos. First and foremost, they are all beautifully shot and composed. Secondly, they contain messages that I think all of us can carry in our hearts over the coming year.

Robin Thicke's Can You Believe for those crappy days ahead:

Kina Grannis' Strong Enough for those crappy people you're going to encounter, and you are going to meet them!:

One of my favorite commercials showcasing filial piety, for when you forget what's (or who's) important. It's corny and the lead actress shares my name, but if you can look past those details, this ad is extremely touching:

Have a blessed New Year and let's continue having a blast in 2012!

Muffin Monday - Eggnog Muffins

2011-12-26T13:00:00.047+08:00

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
~ Henry W. Longfellow

In most countries around the world, today is a public holiday or at the very least, the day after a public holiday. Whether you celebrated Christmas or not, I hope yesterday was good for you (and yours, if you're with them). I am writing this early, so that when this post gets published, I will be on a beach or in a pool somewhere under the hot sun. Hang on.... that sounds very much like everyday at home. Let me rephrase that - I will be going nowhere far but shall be taking a bit of a blogging break this week to ponder about the things I'd like to happen in 2012. In my life, I mean.

As I'm writing this, it's 3 days till Christmas and I'm feeling bad because most of my seasons greeting cards are sitting on my dresser, not yet mailed. Well, they have to be written in first before they can be posted, and I'm stalling on the writing part. Lately, I seem to have acquired a super-clingy new best friend and she goes by the name, Procrastination. I'm still trying to figure out how to give her the slip.

To cheer me up today though, 'P' (my new friend's nick) and I baked some eggnog-flavored muffins for Muffin Monday. Not having any eggnog essence, we stuck with vanilla and it still tasted great. Just for fun, P suggested we pipe some muffin batter into clean, empty eggshells just to go with the 'Egg'nog theme. She's so entertaining, that girl!

Well, since I had oh...hours to waste, I agreed and we used this technique by SandeeA to attain our egg-shaped muffins. We didn't make them with the suggested topping in the original recipe, instead we sprinkled some crushed peppermint candy cane over the batter. These eggnog muffins had some serious swag, and they tasted delightful to boot!

Note: Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop Anuradha a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Eggnog Muffins
(recipe from King Arthur Flour)
Makes: 12 muffins

Batter

1/4 cup (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) butter

3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) sugar

2 large eggs

2 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon eggnog flavor or 1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) eggnog or half and half

Topping*

1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) sugar

1/2 cup (2 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon eggnog flavor, optional

3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) butter, melted

*(I used crushed peppermint candy cane)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a muffin tin with 12 paper or silicone muffin cups, and grease the cups with non-stick vegetable oil spray; this will ensure that they peel off the muffins nicely.

2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar till smooth. Add the eggs, beating for several minutes and scraping the bowl, till the mixture is smooth and light colored. Beat in the baking powder, nutmeg, salt, and eggnog flavor or vanilla.

3. Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the eggnog or half and half, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined. Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared muffin cups.

4. Stir together all of the topping ingredients JUST till crumbly. Stir gently, and don't overmix; you don't want to turn this crumbly topping into a solid mass. Sprinkle the topping over the muffins.

5. Bake the muffins for 20 minutes, or until they're a pale golden brown. Remove them from the oven, and serve warm, or at room temperature.

White Chocolate and Cranberry Wreath Bread

2011-12-19T00:02:00.000+08:00

Break open the forbidden happiness.
~ Rob Brezsny

I suppose I should warn you... this post contains graphic scenes of peace, love, joy, passion, reverence, splendor, and understanding. All in the form of food. So if you're feeling even the slightest bit jaded today, I suggest you proceed to read on with caution or else, come back another day. For this wreath bread is every bit as delicious as it is joyous to look at and what makes it even more splendid is that it is deceptively easy to make. Wish to be the next Bread Idol? Then you should attempt this recipe during the holiday season : ).

Following on from the success of my Happy Bread, a bouquet of pull-apart brioche rolls, I decided to use the same buttery dough and adapt it to the festive atmosphere by adding dried cranberries, candied lemon and orange peel (homemade) and white chocolate chunks. The yeasted wreath idea is nothing new, of course. When I first caught sight of this one on my Bread Idol's blog, Farine, I couldn't get the image out of my mind for weeks and knew I simply had to try making it myself!

I had plans for a colored, candy-stripey kind of dough but in the end kept it simple as I didn't want any distractions from the decadent flavors. The first wreath bread I made I gave away to a friend, who asked how I created the spiky 'leaves' on the crust to look similar to dragon fruit skin? It was something that never occurred to me before, but once uttered, was all I could think of every time I see the bread spikes....Geez.

As far as I am concerned, you need only three skills to make this incredible bread - kneading, braiding and snipping (with a pair of scissors). If you're a hairdresser, you're probably already three-quarters on your way towards producing a beautiful wreath bread should you ever want to do so. And oh, you really should want to!

So we've come to the part I have set aside for some reverence and gratitude. I am not kidding when I say how in awe I am of the many, many, MANY people who have pinned (on Pinterest) the picture below and who have baked/are planning to bake this Happy Bread. As a big thank you to you all, I have made a quick video that shows you how the cut dough pieces are magically transformed into the bread bouquet below. Enjoy!

Happy Bread (above) and how-to video (below)

FUN STUFF OVER THE WEEKEND- HARVESTING OUR OWN RICE

Padi stalks strewn into the air as the grains are taken off

Passion. I've never equated it with anything much to do with romance but love, yes. A grand love for life! And speaking of passion, both my parents have a great love for the land. Or rather, growing things out of it. While it's unfortunate that I have inherited none of their mother earth-nurturing skills, I do have a strong leaning towards organically-grown food. Thinking of pure, unadulterated food makes my heart beat faster than say, thinking about Brad Pitt or (gulp) Paudge Behan.

And so via the sheer luck of it all, I was born to parents who happen to own a rather nifty vegetable patch and also acres of farmland on which to grow rice, or as we call that type of land here, padi fields. Last weekend, I managed to drag my two of my three kids, the15 and 7-year old, away from their iPods and iPads (good job, Steve) long enough to visit the rice fields situated a few miles from our village. My dad is there everyday to oversee the harvesting season and the kids enjoyed helping lay out the rice grains for drying under the hot sun. Once dry, the grains will be milled to remove their husks and we'll have a supply of rice to last us until the next harvest, sometime next February/March. We are in the midst of the rainy season here now, so it is crucial to harvest the crop quickly on clear, sunny days. The heat from the sun feels so elusive and precious as gold right now.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...peace, love, joy, passion, reverence, splendor, and understanding. Let's hope I've covered everything!

P.S. I'm sending this post to Yeastspotting over at Susan's Wild Yeast. She also got married last weekend, so 'love' and 'joy' - double-checked!

Cranberry and White Chocolate Wreath Bread
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons dry instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar or honey
100ml warm milk
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup candied orange and lemon peel, chopped
1 orange, juiced
100g white chocolate, finely chopped
500g all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading and flouring
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
150 ml warm milk (extra)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice
100 g butter, melted and cooled

Method:

1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in 100 ml warm milk, cover and leave in a warm place to rise 10 minutes.

2. Soak the cranberries and candied peel in the orange juice in a bowl and leave for at least 1 hour before use.

3. In another bowl, sift the flour and salt together. Make a well in the middle and add beaten eggs into it, the remaining warm milk, olive oil, vinegar and yeast mixture. Knead the dough with your hands or in your mixer until it separates from the sides of the bowl. Remove dough, place on lightly floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes until it becomes a soft, pliable dough. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a towel and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in volume - about an hour.

4. Punch risen dough and transfer on a lightly floured surface, divide dough into 3 equal parts. Roll each piece of dough out into a roughly rectangular shape with a thickness of 1/4-inch. Brush cooled, melted butter over each piece. Reserve the rest of the butter for later.

5. Drain the soaked dried fruits, mix with the white chocolate and divide into 3 portions. Sprinkle 1/3 of fruits and chocolate on a buttered piece of dough. Press fruits lightly into the dough so they stick. Take the long edge and roll/ shape it into a rough cylinder. Do the same to each of the other 2 dough pieces.

6. Keep on rolling until you get a 30-inch long rope. (Note: It's best to do it in stages: roll out the first one to about 20 inches, then put it back under the plastic sheet and roll the next one, etc. By the time you come back to the first one, it will have slackened some and it'll be easier to get it to the desired length).

7. When you have your three ropes, braid them into a thick plait, then join the ends to make a wreath. Press ends firmly together. Cover with towel and leave the dough to rise in a warm place for about 30-40 minutes.

8. Preheat oven to 180C. When the dough has risen, brush all over top of the bread with the melted butter. Reserve some butter for when the bread comes out of the oven.

9. Take a pair of scissors and cut 1 to 2-inch "leaves" by snipping horizontally in each section of the braid. (Refer to above video). Continue to snip leaves all around the wreath; the leaves will lift themselves up as the bread bakes.

10. Bake bread for 20-30 minutes, reducing the temperature to 160C after 10 minutes in the oven.

11. Brush bread with the remaining melted butter as soon as it comes out of the oven, cover with a towel and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes before eating.

French Fridays with Dorie - Potato Chip Tortilla

2011-12-16T18:32:00.000+08:00

A simple and fun recipe this week, we got to make Potato Chip Tortilla for French Fridays with Dorie. Just as the name clearly states, we had to use potato chips, the very kind that comes out of a bag! I don't know about you, but that to me was thrilling not because of the processed chips but because of the unexpected element and creativity of whoever first thought up the recipe.

All we had to do was open up a bag of chips, crush them with our fingers (yummy!) and stir them into an egg mixture before frying it into a tortilla. Or rather, a loaded omelette tortilla. I bought myself a bag of crinkle-cut potato chips flavored with Sweet Thai Chilli... seriously delicious on its own but even better in this tortilla. Yes, trust me.

Dorie suggested several herbs such as basil, parsley or cilantro be included in the egg mixture, but I only had fresh purple basil, oregano and spring onions from my garden so I simply used those. And a mild red chilli pepper that I deseeded completely was also added to offer a burst of color to the tortilla. This makes a quick and easy appetizer and is a definite feature in our upcoming dinner parties. The other great thing about this recipe is that you can use more than one type of flavored potato chips (salt and vinegar, mesquite BBQ, hot and spicy, sour cream and chives, etc) which allows you to set up several tortilla stations in your buffet according to the different flavors. Or even have a mix of them in one big serving platter. The boring hostess you certainly will not be!

Our cooking group does not publish any of Dorie's recipes but if you're keen on joining our weekly cook-along, you can get yourself a copy of Around My French Table here. For other versions of this potato chip tortilla, please check out the group's attempts here.

I'll have something beautiful, something festive for you on Monday so watch out for that. You'll want to make it even if you don't celebrate Christmas. Well I did, and gave these away to friends! :)

In the meantime, I wish everyone a brilliant weekend!

The Super-Sized Moon and Muffin Monday: Baklava Muffins with Figs and Rose Syrup Glaze

2011-12-12T13:00:00.009+08:00

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

I'm thrilled to be joining in Muffin Monday again after a long hiatus. Thank you, Anuradha of Baker Street blog for including me after my rather last minute plea :). Actually, I was quite excited at the thought of baking some special, festive-flavored muffins this holiday season and this week's recipe was no disappointment. Baklava Muffins! Have you ever tasted such a thing? Well, it certainly was my first time having a baklava that's not traditionally diamond shaped, with no sticky, crispy bits of dough flying all over the place upon that first bite.

Wanting to play up the baklava-ness of the muffins, I mulled over ways to incorporate rose flavor into the batter. Using rosewater would've been the obvious way to go, and while I did have it, I also remembered something else I had lying around...just begging to be noticed, eaten or used. They're these flower-shaped, pink rock candy from Ladurée that are infused with natural rose flavor. The kids stayed away from these because to them the floral scent was 'kinda weird' in a candy, and there was only so much I could eat all by myself.

Filling, mixed with cinnamon powder

I ground the candy up in my grinder and realized I'd just created a two-fer. There was no longer any need for the sugar because the rock candy essentially did the same job, and it contained flavoring too! Pistachios would have made the muffins more authentic to the Middle-Eastern style of baklavas, but alas I had none (no walnuts either) and used almonds instead. Dried figs were thrown in the batter because they reminded me of the bounties of the Mediterranean and Middle East where baklavas are often listed as part of the national cuisine.

Cooked!

For the topping, I replaced the honey with a pink glaze concocted out of confectioner's/icing sugar, rose syrup and milk. Okay, the pink won't have you instantly exclaiming "Aha, baklava!", but didn't anyone ever tell you not to judge a muffin by its color? If you're one of those who are skilled at word association, you'd probably spot the pink and think, 'Turkish delight', which in turn makes you think of 'Turkey', which then gives you flashes of (no, no, not Christmas!) 'Baklava'. A-n-y-w-a-y..., these muffins tasted pretty darn good, with a pleasantly floral note and soft, pillowy texture. Thanks An for the fab recipe!

Everything came up roses....

OTHER FUN STUFF OVER THE WEEKEND

Super-Sized Suds

My son and I discovered yesterday morning that my kitchen utensils could be used for fun things other than cooking. I'm just a bit upset that it's taken me over 4 decades to realize this, but relieved that my son's still at that playful age to not think of this as a thoroughly stupid idea. We created the biggest bubbles in recent blowing history (and believe me, I've had plenty of practice!) using dishwashing liquid and our makeshift bubble-blowing devices. God, that was fun, must do it again soon.

Super-Sized Moon

And how about that total lunar eclipse ending up with a sombre, reddish-colored moon last Saturday (Nov 10), did you all get to witness it where you're at? This was my second time seeing it this year (last one was in June), but I would have to wait another 2 years to see it again. I decided to stalk the moon and take pictures of the eclipse in progress.

Beginning of the eclipse, as viewed from my porch

Ever since I can remember, I've always been immensely fascinated by astronomy. If I hadn't been reincarnated as the successfully frivolous SAHM that I am now, I believe I would've made an annoyingly awesome astronomer or astrophysicist. I memorized the nomenclature of the stars and constellation shapes in the same way other people memorize their home address or their first love's eye pupil color.

Anyway, none of my 3 kids were excited to join me in observing the moon being gradually covered by the earth's shadow (their reasoning - when you can see it on YouTube, why would you want to watch the real thing as it's happening? They are right of course, but still I find it so sad). So armed with my camera with a lens that only zooms up to 20 times, a large cup of hot chocolate and my faithful neck travel pillow (let's face it, there was going to be a lot of looking up involved), I set about to capture the total eclipse, seen below.

Total lunar eclipse, taken with my (non-SLR) camera.

Psst...someone please get me a telescope already!

And to round-off my nerdy side, here's a NASA video that describes the whys and the hows of the total lunar eclipse. It's amusingly dry and yes, it's on YouTube....

Congratulations on making it to the end of this post. You have no idea how grateful I am that you're interested in anything else here apart from these muffins. I'm off to munch on a baklava muffin now, did I already tell you they are really, really good?

Baklava Muffins with Figs and Rose Syrup Glaze
Filling:
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (almonds*)
1/2 cup dried figs, sliced thinly*
1/3 cup sugar (Rose-flavored candy, ground finely*)
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons butter, melted

Muffins:
1 cup + 7 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup sugar (Rose-flavored candy, ground finely*)
1 large egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup + 2 tablespoons buttermilk (substitute: 3/4 cup plain yogurt + 1/2 cup low fat milk)

Topping:
about 1/2 cup honey (I used the glaze below instead)

Rose Syrup Glaze*
1 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 tablespoon rose syrup (Monin brand)
2 tablespoons milk

* These are my variations.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F and prepare a 12 hole muffin baking pan with liners

2. For the Filling: Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl, set aside

3. For the Muffins: In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar.

4. For the Topping: Mix the confectioner's sugar with butter and mix. Add rose syrup and milk to make a drizzling consistency and pass through a sieve to eliminate lumps. Set aside.

5. In a small measuring jar, lightly whisk together the egg, buttermilk and butter.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the egg mixture. Stir gently. Its okay if its bumpy.

6. Fill the muffin cups one third, add the filling and then top with the muffin mixture again till the cup is two thirds full.

7. Use any remaining filling as a topping. Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Take out from the oven and transfer to a wire rack, still in the muffin liners. Let cool and drizzle with rose syrup glaze.

Note: Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop in a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Rosemary Apricots with Black Sesame Crème Gelée and Raw Corn

2011-12-09T22:50:00.000+08:00

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

You see, when I was 12, I had a life plan and this was it:

Chase adventures in my 20s.
Get married at 35 and start breeding.
Raise my children and teach them how to be self-sufficient in my 40s.
Discover a cure for *insert name of incurable disease* or ignorance in my 50s.
Travel in luxury in my 60s.
Knit socks and tablecloths in my 70s.
Die in my sleep (painlessly) in my 80s.
If I'm still alive from the 90s onwards, initiate a Joan Collins Appreciation Society.

Instead, what actually happened was this:

In my teens and 20s, I travelled - a lot. I've seen some pretty outrageous stuff and sported the most embarassing hairstyles!

Somewhere in my 20s, I got married. Yes, that's us below :-). What I wouldn't do now for a more relaxed wedding style and yeah, pose.

In my 30s, I set about to become a good mommy...brainwashing my kids with all sorts of zany ideas. They seem to have turned out ok. Relief.

Then it had to happen. I turned 40 and life as a more interesting 'me' had at last begun.

So here I am now enjoying my 40s, leading a life peppered with adventures. Because I have the time, and because I want to. Except the bones and muscles are a pain with their constant reminders for me to take things easy!

So evidently, things have happened not in the order that I originally planned. That's okay, if given another opportunity, I don't think I'd live my life any other way - except perhaps to eat better in my 20s and exercise more :). I really can't wait to see what the 50s bring as I believe things will be even better. If this body holds up, that is. Right now, I plan to stay adventurous and that means with my food creations too.

Which brings us to today's post. At first glance everything here doesn't seem like they belong together - I mean, black sesame, apricots, rosemary and corn. Raw corn. Oh come on... But I assure you, they do. And the sum of all things makes for a pretty dashing dessert!

What brought this about was the fact that I had so much leftover fresh corn from my mother's farm that I really wanted to do something different with them. This was compounded by my sudden discovery of the joys of raw corn. It's crunchy, and bears more sweetness and succulence unlike corn that has undergone the cooking process. Admittedly, there won't be many fans of raw corn out there and even I was skeptical at first. But one bite into the raw kernels changed my perspective completely, I suggest you try it too when you next get your hands on some fresh corn. Organically grown like mine is better, of course.

My baking buddy, Y, had recently returned from Melbourne and he bought me some beautiful apricots that were on the verge of tangy. I poached these with a sprig of rosemary, then layered them in the wine glasses with the raw corn alongside the earlier-prepared black sesame crème gelée. I say black sesame although somewhere along my baking adventures, my black seeds got all mixed up with the white ones so the resulting sesame powder was more greyish than black. However, grey sesame gelée just doesn't sound as cool, does it?

Y, looking cute in his apron

For the setting agent, I utilized agar agar powder instead of gelatine because I'm impatient and the former just sets much quicker than the latter. It does make for a firmer gelée but you can play around with the agar agar to liquid ratio to get the texture you want. Or you can use gelatine, which gives a softer, bouncier gelée.

I personally like the provocative combination of flavors in this dessert. Tangy versus sweet with a savory edge from the rosemary and sesame. It may not be for everybody, but then neither is a life of adventure.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Rosemary Apricots with Black Sesame Crème Gelée and Raw Corn

Servings: 2-3

Rosemary Apricots

1 cup water

3 tablespoons brown sugar

4-5 small fresh apricots, pitted and quartered

1 sprig (3-inch) rosemary

1. Bring a pot of water and brown sugar to boil in a small pan. Lower the heat to low and gently add the sliced apricots. Let simmer for 5-7 minutes but do not let the apricots turn mushy and fall apart.

2. Drain and reserve the liquid, pop the rosemary sprig back into the liquid to steep further. Allow the apricots and liquid to cool completely. Set aside until ready to assemble dessert.

Black Sesame Crème Gelée

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon agar agar powder

1/3 cup black sesame seeds, ground finely

1/4 cup heavy cream

1. Place water, sugar and agar agar powder in a small pan and place on medium heat, stirring constantly. Bring to the boil, and quickly add the black sesame powder and cream and stir well to combine. Remove from heat and let it cool for 1 minute.

2. Spoon or pour black sesame crème gelee equally into 2-3 serving glasses (1-cup capacity each). Tilt glasses to achieve the asymmetrical effect and leave in that position to set at room temperature.

Raw Corn and Rosemary

1 cup sweet corn kernels, leave raw

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves

1. Mix corn kernels with rosemary and set aside until ready to assemble dessert.

Assembly:

1. In the glass containing the Black Sesame Crème Gelee, layer poached apricots and corn, ending with an apricot on top.

2. Drizzle about 2 tablespoons of the reserved poaching liquid and garnish dessert with a tiny sprig of rosemary. Serve immediately.

Crispy Spiral Garlicky Mustard and Rosemary Murukku

2011-12-06T19:16:00.002+08:00

It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.
~ David Sedaris

It's safe to say that this blog leans towards the sweet more than savory side of things. However, despite still baking desserts and sweet breads regularly in my kitchen, I have produced nothing that I truly wanted to post up here. Uninspired baking, I call these wasted sessions. So imagine my surprise when an exciting recipe idea suddenly popped up in my head that was not sweet (and therefore not my forte) but the exact opposite - savory.

I had been wanting to try my hand at making the spicy Indian snack, Murukku, for a while but the thought had been withheld by my lack of a press or a sev maker used to churn out perfect murukku spirals. That is, until I stumbled across a YouTube video showing that it can all in fact be done... by hand! Of course, my first attempts at twisting the pliable rice flour dough are not very pretty but at least there is some semblance to the murukkus made by the pros in Indian kitchens across the globe!

Now, flavor-wise was where I had purposely decided to make it un-Indian. My tastebuds had experienced a sensorial shift recently when a friend gifted me with a substantial packet of crispy, floury tidbits from her travels abroad. The snack was so addictive that I really wanted to recreate it once I ran out of the stuff (which didn't take very long - less than two days). I tried to dissect the flavor profile and deduced that the snack must've contained a healthy dose of mustard and garlic because none of my children, let alone Foodivo, wanted me to smother them with my enthusiastic kisses even long after the packet had run empty...

So, when the murukku-without-a-press video came along, I immediately knew I wanted to incorporate mustard and garlic in the soft dough and dispense with the traditional Indian spices. I also wanted to utilize my latest fresh herb, rosemary - sown by my mama, of course, and passed over to me so it doesn't wilt and die off at the seedling stage. (To all of you with green fingers, I envy your gift!)

My thriving rosemary plant, photo taken from Instagram (@divababu)

Along this process, there were several other things I discovered:

my handling and twisting of the dough was genuinely as pathetic as it looked in the video. That's okay though, I'm not into beating myself up over nothing and will probably get better with practice.
when I got tired of the twisting and turning, I made simple snake-like spirals but these unfortunately didn't remain crisp for very long after cooling. Perhaps the dough was still too moist inside, I must investigate this further.
this spiral snack does double-duty as the perfect fashion accessory. The fact that you can munch on them in between photoshoots make them extra-covetable. Yep, there will never be any skinny girls on my set!

These are best consumed right after they've cooled down and are still crisp. The flavors meld really well together that the exact combo could be adapted to other cracker recipes as well. The murukku tasted incredibly cheesy, a pleasant surprise, while texture-wise they are very similar to thin breadsticks. Once I figure out how to make them stay crisp when stored in an airtight package or container, I'll be packing them to be presented as gifts over the festive season!

Crispy Spiral Garlicky Mustard and Rosemary Murukku
Makes: 16 spirals (2-inch)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp finely chopped Rosemary leaves
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup rice flour
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
ground pepper, to taste
2-3 tablespoons extra rice flour, to add if dough is too sticky
oil, for deep frying

Method:

1. In a medium mixing bowl, add all ingredients except the extra rice flour and oil and mix well with a spatula.

2. Knead to form a soft dough using your hands. If dough is still too moist and sticky, add rice flour a tablespoon at a time and knead in.

3. Place a plastic bottle cap on a napkin or serviette. The napkin prevents the dough from sticking to the working surface. Form small balls with the dough and twist out each one into a spiral rope around the bottle cap (please refer to the video above).

Note: The thinner the ropes, the crispier will be the murukku.

4. Heat oil on medium high heat in a pan. Carefully lift the napkin to turn the spirals onto your palm and gently lower into the hot oil. Do this slowly or you will be sad if any of the hot oil lands on your skin :).

5. Fry as many spirals as will fit into the pan without overlapping each other. Once they turn light golden, flip them over and fry other side until light golden. (about 3 minutes each side)

6. Remove spirals from oil onto a paper-towel lined plate. Cool completely before eating. Store in an airtight container or ziploc bag at room temperature. Good for consumption up to a week.

French Fridays with Dorie - Matafan

2011-12-02T19:13:00.001+08:00

So we contemplate each other, and we want each other, and I give it life and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living.
~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I returned home from my foot massage session to this. Fluffy. Mashed potatoes. Pancakes. Don't these four words sound really good to you? Put them consecutively together in one sentence and you've got the perfect thing to start off or complement your meal, or simply to patch up those pesky hunger pangs. Matafan, that's what they're called in France and this is our French Fridays with Dorie recipe this week.

You would make these savory pancakes not by way of a regular pancake batter. The potatoes need to be roasted with salt for just over an hour and passed through a sieve or potato ricer. I admit I did neither, instead I boiled little slices of potatoes and mashed them with my old-fashioned potato masher. In fact, preparing the matafan batter only took me a mere 20 minutes or so to do. The photoshoot session might have taken longer to orchestrate.... :).

As I bit into the first matafan, I was expecting a pancake-y texture but it wasn't like that at all. In fact, it tasted a lot like mashed potatoes contained within a pancake! Or perhaps more accurately, a mashed potato fritter. I made mine as blini-sized appetizers, topped with creme fraiche and basil-roasted chicken strips. According to my food-obsessed brain, they were totally delicious and matafan definitely needs to be on our regular rotation from now on.

I bet the other Doristas had their own revelations about matafan, and if you'd like to be in on what they are, have a look here.

Foot massage was great... but these fluffy potato pancakes were even better!

Have a fab weekend, everyone!

Matcha Stollen with Rose Marzipan Filling

2011-11-30T17:09:00.001+08:00

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.
~ Chuck Palahniuk

My young family and I spent 3 Christmases in Germany while I worked there more than a decade ago, and every time the festive season rolled around, the shops, markets and bakeries were filled to the brim with beautiful baked goodies bearing the scents of cinnamon, almond, apples and all the heartwarming things of the earth. Stollens would be amongst the good things in abundance and I never missed the opportunity to purchase and savor them - lots of them! The ones I especially enjoy are the marzipan-filled stollens, so moist and heart-stoppingly rich...it's no wonder I was then double the size I am today!

You may have noticed that I have done zilch-all on this blog lately. It's not that I've stopped cooking or baking completely, for if you're on Instagram, you may have spotted some of my baked goods being captured and uploaded for posterity there. It just seems to me like everything I do right now is bordering on the (how shall I phrase this?)...UGLY. Yes, that's right. Not nearly postable, in fact downright yuckky. Or maybe that's just how I'm feeling inside.

Anyway, a quick peek at the blogosphere shows me that many people around the world are in a celebratory mood, and therefore coming up with joyous kinds of food. The festive season has dawned, Ms. Foodiva, so why don't you get with the program already?

So yes, today I decide to crawl out of my own blue funk and attempt a blasphemous take on the Christmas Stollen. One with a green dough laden with premium matcha and filled with a homemade marzipan roll that's just on the shady side of pink due to the rose syrup I used to flavor it. Apart from the usual dried raisins and cherries, I also kneaded in some homemade candied ginger and candied lemon and orange peels, but didn't bother with the nuts and spices. As someone who's eaten plenty of stollens in her life, take it from me, you won't find this exotic one anywhere on the planet (yet) outside of my very own kitchen!

I won't tire you needlessly with the history of stollens and what the swaddled loaf signifies, but if you're interested you can have a quick read here. What I am going to regale you with, however, is the tale of what actually happened to me while I was baking this. After I was done making the marzipan and candied ginger/peels (which I dried under the hot sun and not overnight as should have been done), I set about to make the dough and film the process while I was at it.

You can imagine that the set up took a fair amount of time and by the second hour into the first rising, it was very nearly 5pm and the precious sun was sinking fast in tandem with my heart. At that point, Diva D. saunters into the kitchen and asks, "So are you coming to the Parents-Teacher evening with me? First appointment is at 5pm". I looked at the clock, peered at my surreal, green dough and ran to the bedroom only to find Foodivo in bed with a fever. I had forgotten all about the appointments with the High School Sifus...so alas, I chose to take up the nobler cause of educational pursuit in lieu of the rising dough!

2 hours later (4 hours total first rising), I returned to find my dough hadn't exploded and as a favor to me, had risen very, very slowly. Phew... all was well.

Normally after the process of baking, the fresh loaves are buttered two times before they get a coat of sugar. I buttered mine before and after baking, just to be on the safe side of decadence. What usually happens to the stollen after the sugar coating is that it is sealed to allow the fruits and spices (if you're using any) to develop their flavors. The sealing is also the reason a stollen can be stored and stay fresh for a long time.

The texture of this stollen is somewhere in between a bread and a cake and is an excellent alternative to a traditional Christmas cake. Although my rolling wasn't quite up to my usual standards, causing the marzipan cylinder to happily sit on one side, it didn't affect the taste of the loaf one bit. Yes, it's not my most beautiful stollen, but then so what...it's festive and rocks to the high heavens with original flavors. It certainly does not want to be invisible!

Matcha Stollen with Rose Marzipan Filling
(adapted from One Perfect Bite)
Makes: 1 loaf

Ingredients:
2¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons matcha powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 scant tablespoon dry instant yeast
1/2 cup milk
6 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup raisins
2 tablespoons candied orange peel, finely chopped (see recipe below)
1 tablespoon candied lemon peel, finely chopped
1 teaspoon candied ginger strips, finely chopped
1/2 cup quartered, glaced cherries (mixed red and green)
250g rose-flavored marzipan/almond paste (see recipe below)
2 tablespoons butter, melted for brushing
icing or confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Method:
1. Mix salt with flour in a microwavable bowl. Place in microwave oven and heat on HIGH power for 1 minute. Whisk. Add matcha powder and yeast and whisk again to mix. Set aside.
2. Combine milk, butter and sugar in a microwavable bowl. Cook on HIGH power for 1 minute, or until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved. When mixture is tepid add egg and whisk to combine.
3. Pour milk mixture into flour and mix well until the dough leaves the sides of bowl and forms a ball. Add candied fruits and nuts working into dough with hands.
4. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes, or until fruits and nuts are evenly distributed.
5. Place dough into an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 to 3 hours.
6. Turn onto a lighly floured board. Flatten and roll into a 14 x 8-inch rectangle, about 1cm thick.
7. Form almond paste into a log about 13-inches long. Place in the middle of dough, then roll dough around it. Pinch the and two ends of the cylinder and turn edges under. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place dough on parchment paper, cover with damp towel and let rise until double, about 1 hour. Brush loaf with melted butter, and set aside the remainder of the butter.
8. Preheat oven to 180C/375F. Bake in the center of oven for about 35 minutes, or until an even golden brown. Move loaf to cooling rack. Brush top with melted butter. Let cool for 30 minutes. Dust liberally with confectioners' sugar. Can be frozen up to a month and also keeps at room temperature for a few days if wrapped with plastic wrap.

Candied Ginger, Orange and Lemon Peels
(Adapted from Wild Yeast)

Ingredients:
1 medium lemon
1 medium orange
2-inches fresh ginger
water for blanching
2 cups caster sugar
1 cup water

Method:
1. Score the orange and lemon peel in quarters. Peel off, leaving the orange and lemon whole.
2. Peel and slice the ginger into thin strips, set aside.
3. In a saucepan, cover the peels with cold water. Bring to a boil, drain, and rinse the peels in cold water.
4. Slice each peel into 4 strips. Blanch the peel strips twice more, changing the water each time.
5. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
6. Add the ginger and peels, then reduce the heat and simmer until the peels are starting to become translucent, about 45 minutes.
7. Drain the ginger and peels, reserving the syrup in a jar for future use.
8. Place the peels in a single layer on a wire rack and allow to dry overnight.
9. Store in an airtight container, or in the freezer. Store the syrup in the refrigerator.

Rose-Flavored Marzipan

Ingredients:
250g of peeled almonds
1/2 cup icing/confectioners sugar
1-2 tablespoons rose syrup (Monin)
1 small egg white

Method:
1. In a food processor, pulse the almonds until you obtain a very fine almond flour.
2. Add the sugar a quarter cup at a time and pulse until very well combined.
3. Finally add the egg white and one tablespoon rose syrup. Pulse until the mixture starts to resemble marzipan. Pinch a bit of the dough and press in between your fingers, it should feel soft and pliable. Add more almond flour and rose syrup if necessary.
4. Roll the dough in a plastic film and refrigerate it for at least one hour. After that take it out and place on a clean surface dusted lightly with confectioners sugar. Roll out the dough and fold it two or three times.Roll into a 13-inch long cylinder and return it to refrigerator. The dough is ready to be used when it is no longer sticky.

French Fridays With Dorie - Braised Cardamom-Curry Beef

2011-11-18T00:00:00.001+08:00

There is a general consensus that I am doing "nothing much" nowadays (this blog counting as part of that nothing-muchness), so the tasks that used to be Foodivo's are passed on to me to keep me uhm, occupied and hopefully relieve some of the boredom of being stuck at home. Tasks like taking my boys to the barbers' for their haircuts, for example. In a sea of stubbled faces being shaved/massaged/encased in hot towels and sharp, pointy scissors puncturing the testosterone-filled air I often sit on the wooden bench as the only female at our local barber shop. The only mommy, in fact.

I have no real idea about barber terminology nor of their tools so more often than not, a session spent there would end up with tantrums and sour faces when the boys don't get the exact haircut they wanted. One time, I told the barber to give my youngest a "Number 2", thinking it's the standard haircut - short sides, back and top. If you don't already know, Nos. 1, 2, 3, etc. is an indication to the barber to adjust his electric hair-shaving tool according to the hair length that needed to be cut...or left behind, whichever. On that day, my son ended up looking like a little monk, minus the zen-ness! Coaxing a stomping, bawling 7-year old screaming that I'd ruined his life is not an experience I particularly want to repeat and yet, it happened again today. My misinterpretation of barbershop lingo ruined the whole outing. Sigh...just give me a multinational organization to run anyday, and I can guarantee you there'll be no such screw-ups!

But thank God it's Friday, and for French Fridays which serve to punctuate my week of nothing-muchness (the weekends are always full of buzz with the kids and Foodivo around). This week saw us cooking a wonderfully aromatic recipe for Braised Cardamom-Curry Lamb. Except that I had a freezer full of beef from Eid-al-Adha a fortnight ago. You see, to commemorate this so-named "festival of sacrifice", my family had slaughtered a cow and distributed the meat to family, friends and neighbors. Here, I share with you some of the gruesome happenings of that day. If you're the slightest bit squeamish, I suggest close your eyes right now and scroll right down to the bottom of the post :).

Left: Peaced-out cow(s) Middle: Leggies Right: Weighed and packaged meat for distribution.

L to R: Brain, heart and lungs (nothing was wasted!)

Left-handed Foodivo, doing his best to give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money.

All that raw meat can get to you!

We ended up with over 100 packages of meat that we shared with friends and family, while still keeping a few kilos for ourselves. The kids were around while we did this and despite the goriness, I believe it's always good for them to see first-hand where all their meatballs, burgers, sausages, etc. were coming from. In actual fact, we've been doing this every year since they were babies so it's nothing new for them but just a reminder not to ever take their food for granted.

With all this meat, you will understand why I didn't exactly run out to buy lamb for this recipe. Well, I don't normally run out to buy extra stuff for French Fridays, period. So there were the usual substitutions - beef for the lamb, dried apricots for the figs, and coriander/cilantro for the mint. I had tons of cardamom pods from our local Indian spice shop (we normally buy them in scoopfuls), so instead of using ground cardamom, I simply coaxed the seeds out of the green pods. Lots of pods, I failed to count how many.

The cardamom in the curry was a distinct presence as the scent of the braised beef wafted into the air every time I lifted the foil cover for a quick peek. The layers of apples, raisins and apricots as well as honey offered some sweetness that cut into the spiciness of my madras curry - simply beautiful!

I served this curry over a bed of Lime Rice Pilaf (a variation of Lemon Pilaf on page 272 in Around My French Table). Foodivo happened to pick limes from our garden and brought a big basket of them into the kitchen while I was cooking the curry so I thought, why not?

If you think these limes look bigger than your regular limes, then your sense is spot on. That's because they're not exactly limes... but I don't know their official nomenclature either, so I just call them pomelo limes. The zest smells of lime and the skin is thin like lime.When you bite into the flesh, however, it tastes exactly like a pomelo! Sweet, not sour at all, with a texture similar to grapefruit. Anyway, I only used the zest for the rice...consider the rest of the info above as some useful babble. My side "greens" were a mix of red cabbage and carrots, sauteed with a bit of garlic and oyster sauce.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the curries cooked by my online cooking group, a.k.a. Doristas, turned out. Hop over to French Fridays with Dorie to find out!

Happy weekend to all!

Nutella Ding Dong Cake

2011-11-14T21:00:00.188+08:00

A Ding Dong Cake - now doesn't that name just fire up the imagination? When I was assigned the blog Sweet Flours for this month's Secret Recipe Club, I found out that the blog author Allison and I have one thing in common - a big sweet tooth - and like me, discovered it while she was pregnant! Her blog features plenty of baked goodies which makes it a dream site for me. She actually baked this cake for her great grandmother's 91st birthday, and another time once before for her 89th birthday. I took my cue from great grandma, that lady sounds like she has quite a discerning taste in her choice of birthday cakes :).

At first I hadn't a clue why the cake was named so, but after a bit of googling discovered that Ding Dong cakes are those little chocolate-covered cakes with with a white creamy filling sold by Hostess Brand. The ones I so obviously had never eaten while growing up. While Allison had made a regular cake-sized version of Ding Dongs, I decided to make the original puck-sized ones because sometimes eating minicakes makes things a bit easier on the conscience. And a lot easier for me to fit into my skinny Levi's too, not that they're not already made of stretch denim, but still...

The recipe for this cake originally came from Smitten Kitchen, but the adapted recipe can be found here on Sweet Flours. The process of making the minicakes was slightly fiddly, but nothing that I hadn't already done in my kitchen many times. The coffee-chocolate cake batter was straightforward enough, however the marshmallow filling needed a fair amount of whisking in a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water, a bit like making swiss meringue buttercream frosting but without the butter.

In an original Ding Dong (I just love saying that!), the entire chocolate cake is coated with a thin layer of chocolate glaze but Allison had coated her birthday cake with chocolate ganache, all glistening on the top and sides. I was a bit short for time on this occasion so my topping was simply warmed up Nutella (30 seconds in the microwave) that I spread with a knife and let drizzle a bit down the sides. Did I just say simply Nutella? Of course, that wasn't the case at all because you and I know that Nutella is King and in actual fact stole the show!

This will be my last participation in the Secret Recipe Club. It has been really fun discovering many new blogs and cooking from my assigned ones, however I feel it's time to get back to doing my "own thing". Creating recipes that come from my own heart and imagination and make me truly fulfilled, you know. I'm on a quest to get my old ding dong back! :-)

French Fridays With Dorie - Spiced Squash, Fennel and Apple-Pear Soup

2011-11-11T00:07:00.001+08:00

Soup is cuisine's kindest course. It breathes reassurance; it steams consolation; after a weary day it promotes sociability, as the five o'clock cup of tea or the cocktail hour.

~ Louis P. De Gouy, ‘The Soup Book’

I've been really atrocious at catching up on everyone else's blogs this past fortnight or so and therefore am surprised (and majorly touched) that people still do come over and leave comments on mine. To all those kind souls who have visited this site and taken the time to let me know you were here, a very big thank you. And apologies that I have been a rude hostess and not acknowledged your visits until now. When I'm mentally "back in the zone", I'll make an effort to come around to yours and give you a big, massive hug :-).

Until then, you can take some comfort in this soup I made specially for French Fridays with Dorie - Spiced Squash, Fennel and Apple-Pear Soup. It contained everything listed in the title, plus more...and it this case, 'plus more' meant slight improvisations on the original ingredients. For the squash, Dorie recommended we use the Long Island Cheese Squash but I wasn't quite sure whether we could get that variety over here. So I went down to my mum's farm to pick a Kabocha squash to use in this recipe instead.

Another ingredient I didn't have was fresh fennel, but I had tons of fennel seeds in my spice cupboard so I simply assumed they were interchangeable? Anyway, for the spices part of the recipe, I ground the fennel and cumin seeds together in a grinder and sieved the resulting powder to eliminate any chunky bits. The ginger, nutmeg and black pepper were freshly grated/ground in order to extract their strongest aroma.

At the time of making this, I didn't have any regular green pears but what I did have was a sole Asian (or Chinese) pear in the fridge that knew it was somehow destined to be part of this soup. A red apple was also tossed in there to keep the pear company, as was a carrot because I had this theory that: 1. it (ie. the carrot) would add a lovely orange hue to the yellowish squash soup and 2. it would make up for the lack of mass due to using fennel seeds instead of the bulb. Of course, the whole theory bombed, as you may already have gathered.

Hearty goodness in 6 easy steps

By the way, ever notice how I like to list my points down in numerical form just to make things clear (in my head more than anything else)? It's an annoying, slap-worthy habit but I can't always stop myself from running off all these lists in my head...and yes, they invariably come out while I'm typing up my posts ;).

Garnish - the spring onion strips curled up when immersed in iced water

After blending, I found the soup to be the exact texture and consistency I wanted it to be. Not too thick nor too thin, which was absolutely lucky on my part, I suppose. The murky beige color was slightly off-putting though, probably the result of mixing the greens with orange-yellow squash, and not forgetting purple from the big onion!. Nevertheless, when the first spoonful entered my mouth... I found the euphony of flavors to be very pleasant and so comforting that my lips involuntarily turned upright into a big grin :-).

Singapore Airlines must be missing a soup spoon right now.

My online cooking group or Doristas will be rustling up their own variations of this squash soup, so if you would like to hop over here, you can have a look at theirs.

Have a gorgeous weekend!

pumpkin

Crazy Cooking Challenge - Mashed Potato Spring Rolls

2011-11-07T23:59:00.003+08:00

Sometimes we will hit the target but miss the self. At other times we will miss the target but hit the self. Our purpose, though, is to hit the target as the self and hope that the sharp sound of arrow penetrating paper will awaken us from the so-called 'dream of life' and give us real insight into the ultimate state of being.

~ Hideharu Onuma sensei, Japanese Kyudo archery

It seemed like I had simply disappeared over the past week or so, but in reality, I am still here. Just holding off on blogging while tending to my (rather neglected) life. That's the trouble with passion sometimes, you can get so thoroughly consumed by it at the expense of everything else in your life. Okay, when I write "you", who I'm really talking about is myself. I went off to tend to my garden because the weeds had started to overrun my beautiful patches and it was time to pull them out and discard them. Yes, metaphorically speaking :-).

So to start off this week, I'm back for another Crazy Cooking Challenge, this time sharing a recipe from Momofuku for 2 blog. Tina of Mom's Crazy Cooking, as host of the challenge declared this month's theme to be "Mashed Potatoes" and I thought....wow, what a breeze! Well, I couldn't be more wrong because there are thousands (if not more) mashed potato recipes out there and it proved really hard to decide which one to showcase for this post.

In the end, I settled for this Mashed Potato Spring Rolls recipe posted by Steph of Momofuku for 2. In case you haven't come across her blog, this is a woman who has cooked and eaten her way through all of David Chang's Momofuku Cookbook and this recipe was adapted out of that book. Steph has no official association with the Momofuku brand, chain or David Chang, but she'a a huge Momofuku fan and enjoys cooking their recipes at home for her and her husband (who's the 'for 2' person).

I, on the other hand, chose this recipe not because it was created by food Sifu, Chang but due to a variety of other reasons which I shall list here:

1. It contains mashed potato (right on theme).

2. It includes bread (we all know carb on carb = sinful, but oh-so-irresistible!).

3. There is frying involved (I know, it's starting to sound bad but bear with me).

4. There is 'spring roll' in the recipe title (although I just realized that mine looked more pop-tartlike than cylindrical).

5. It contains some heat and a green vegetable (which to me negate 1-3 above).

In case you're wondering, yes, it does taste as lovely as it looks....great as a snack or appetizers. Although after you've finished two, you probably won't want to eat anything else because of the thought that it'll take roughly 200 hours on the treadmill to work all this off!

For a mashed potato overload, head over to the blogs listed in the linky below. Go on, show them some love and oh, don't forget to vote for your favorites.

Mashed Potato Spring Rolls
(recipe from Momofuku For 2)
Serves: 2

4 slices white bread
1/4 cup mashed potato
2 green beans, cooked and sliced in two
pinch shichimi togarashi
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg yolk

oil for frying
sriracha for dipping

1. Trim the crusts from the bread and using a rolling pin, roll out each bread slice to a thin 3-by-5-inch rectangle.

2. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes and togarashi; season with salt and pepper.

3. Brush the edges of 4 bread rectangles with the egg yolk mixture. Shape 1 tablespoon of the potato mixture into a log along a long edge of a rectangle, leaving 1/2 inch on each end. Top with half a green bean. Tightly roll up the bread to form a cylinder; press the ends together to seal. Repeat with the remaining bread and potato mixture.

4. In a skillet, heat the oil on medium high. Add half of the rolls and fry, turning occasionally, until well-browned, about 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer to paper towels. Repeat with the remaining rolls. Serve with sriracha.

5-Star Makeover - Spicy Quiche with Easy Oats Crust and Bilimbi

2011-10-29T11:19:00.000+08:00

Its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.
~ Chuck Palahniuk

I'm very disorganized this month that I'm late for the 5-Star Makeover Challenge hosted by Natasha of 5 Star Foodie and Lazaro, of Lazaro Cooks!. Our challenge was to take tailgate party food and turn it deliciously gourmet.

The only problem was, I had never tailgated before so I had no idea what people ate at these sorts of parties. A few turns at Google later, I gathered that tailgating involved a lot of grilling (preferably meat) and consuming plenty of ahem, beverages. Basically it's a social event that often takes place at stadium or arena parking lots before major team sports matches or even concerts. Something that almost never happens in Asia, I imagine. Or maybe I was never invited to one :-(.

Don't get me wrong. We do barbeques at home very well - for new years, birthdays, hell...even anniversaries (which totally sucks, but hey at least it gets celebrated). So for this tailgate party, I'm thinking of the same food that we would prepare and eat for our own version of tailgating a.k.a. barbeque parties here, and what better to make than quiche? Admittedly, it's hard to think of quiche and gourmet in the same frame of mind but I made this an appetizer-styled quiche so I'm hoping that makes it more gourmet-ish.

By the time I finished assembling this dish, it looked more appropriate for a bridal shower than for a tailgating party. The flower-like bilimbi I used as a topping probably had a lot to do with it, but those actually had a specific purpose. You see, while the quiche looked quite delicate on the outside, I really packed it with spices on the inside. I used my favorite oats crust infused with crushed Nigella seeds, cumin and coriander and at the base of the crust, I sneaked in a (small) dollop of my homemade hot sauce. A really hot sauce made out of Scotch Bonnets, Thai chillies and apple! You will feel the punchy heat - and all your pores opening - soon after the second bite, promise. What fun is a tailgating party if you can't sweat a little, right?

Oh, the extremely acidic bilimbi works to offset the heat, so they're not just there to look pretty, by the way.

Do head over here to view the round-up of this Makeover Challenge!

hosted by 5 Star Foodie & Lazaro Cooks!

Spicy Quiche with Easy Oats Crust and Bilimbi
Makes: 6 muffin-sized quiches
Crust
1 teaspoon Nigella seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1teaspoon coriander seeds
1 cup organic rolled oats
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons grapeseed oil
2 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Filling
3-4 teaspoons extra hot sauce (I used this Scotch-Bonnet and Thai chilli one)
1 cup heavy cream
1 egg
1/3 cup grated Dutch-aged Gouda cheese
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 small red onion, finely chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
3 bilimbis, sliced

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Dry roast Nigella, cumin and coriander seeds in a pan over medium heat until fragrant - about 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and grind coarsely using a mortar and pestle or in a grinder.

2. Put ground spices in a bowl and add oats, flour, grapeseed oil, salt and pepper and mix until the oil is absorbed evenly into the oats. Add water and stir evenly until the mixture becomes sticky when you pinch a little between your fingertips.

3. Brush 6 muffin cups lightly with grapeseed oil. Scoop about two tablespoons of the spiced oats mixture into each muffin cup. With your fingertips, press the mixture into the base and sides of the cup. The edges won't be even, so don't worry about it. Bake for 10 minutes.

3. In the meantime, make the filling. Simply mix all the ingredients in a bowl and stil until well combined.

4. Remove the oats crusts and pour in the filling mixture into each crust until very near the top (I used 1/3 cup). Bake at 180C/350F for 20 minutes or until filling just starts to set on top.

5. Remove the muffin cups from the oven and leave to cool for at least 10 minutes. Before turning out, run a knife around the crust to release any bits sticking to the cup. Tip the muffin tray onto another tray and transfer upright to a serving platter. If not served immediately, store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

French Fridays With Dorie - Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good

2011-10-28T00:24:00.002+08:00

Dorie wasn't kidding when she said this recipe was good. It was SO good... I made it twice in one week! Admittedly, I used Kabocha squash instead of pumpkin, and it was only teeny-weeny that Foodivo and I can finish the whole thing in one sitting. In Around My French Table, Dorie had likened this dish to an arts and craft project and it's really up to our own creativity what we want to stuff into the pumpkin (I'll just call it this because 'stuffed squash' just doesn't sound as aesthetic and welcoming, don't you think?).

Well, I made this the very day I picked the pumpkins from my mother's farm...I couldn't wait to stuff them with everything good! Or rather, everything I had in the kitchen that seemed good and tempting and more importantly, got along well together flavor-wise. There was actually a lot more that I wanted to insert in that hollowed out pumpkin, but the hole just wasn't big enough. Darn you, Kabocha....err, I mean, tiny pumpkin!

So these were my stuffing ingredients - very tender sweet corn and long beans (from the same farm), cooked rice, carrots, apple slices, mature cheddar and heavy cream. I decided to forego the meaty bits and it still tasted great, the very sweet pumpkin flesh contrasting rather nicely with the savory filling.

As you can see, I seemed to have overstuffed the small cavity (and I also couldn't fathom how the apples should fit in there) but after 'squashing' (haha...private giggle here) everything down with the pumpkin lid and baking it, the filling sunk way down and actually looked quite presentable. The baked pumpkin smelled utterly wonderful and this dish really did its title justice. I'm tempted to make it a third time this week, but I fear the kids will beg Foodivo to hire a new French cuisine short order cook to replace me!

Anyway, I felt so excited about this recipe that I even had my friend Kate make it and she too was in awe of how good it tasted. I'm hoping my fellow Doristas feel the same way! You can check out their stuffed pumpkins (or squashes) here.

pumpkin

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday - Scotch Bonnet-Thai Chilli Apple Hot Sauce

2011-10-26T13:27:00.002+08:00

I went vegetable picking at my mother's farm last weekend and came back with plenty of organically grown goodies, including these super sweat-inducing Scotch Bonnets and Thai Chillies. I decided to brave it up and make a hot sauce from them - a REALLY hot sauce! You can cut down the heat by discarding half the seeds or deseeding completely (wimp!) but I left all the seeds in. And added an apple for texture. Whoooah mamma! That's all I can say :-).

A lot of sputtering and gasping for air was involved in the making of this hot sauce, but you may be pleased to know that no long-term damage was caused. At least, I hope not.

Scotch Bonnet-Thai Chilli Apple Hot Sauce

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

18 fresh Scotch Bonnet peppers, sliced and seeded

6 fresh red Thai chillies, sliced

6 cloves garlic, sliced

1/2 cup onion, diced

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups water

1/4 cup distilled white vinegar

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 apple, peeled, cored and sliced

1 lime, juiced

Method:

1. In a large sauce pan over medium-high heat, combine oil, peppers, garlic, onion, and salt; cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

2. Pour in water and apples, and cook for 20 minutes or until the ingredients are soft. Stir frequently. The mixture should reduce down a bit. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn or dry out too much. When it starts to look like it might dry out, add about 1 to 2 tablespoons of extra water.

3. Remove from the heat, stir in vinegar, sugar and lime and allow to cool.

4. Meanwhile take your glass jars/bottles and sterilize by either boiling in water or heating in the oven for 5 minutes.

5. Transfer the mixture to a blender, and puree until smooth. Add the sauce to your sterilized jars, seal and allow to cool completely. Keep refrigerated.

Notes:

Leave some of some or all the seeds in for a spicier sauce. Replace the Scotch Bonnets with habaneros or jalapenos for a "milder" sauce or if Scotch Bonnets are not available in your area. Use peppers of the same color to keep the sauce a consistent color.

Once opened store the sauce in the refrigerator. The sauce should keep for several months unopened and at least 12 weeks once opened and refrigerated.

Ginseng Leaf Salad with Pomegranate, Orange and Green Thai Mango

2011-10-24T16:24:00.004+08:00

There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.
~ Mirabel Osler

My mother is the most gifted gardener I know. For as long as I can remember, she never possessed the best-looking nails because of all the muck she plays around with everyday, but as a positive spin-off of that, we always had really nice gardens wherever we lived. Even when there was no garden, like the house we had in Central London where there was only a rooftop area for some pots of greenery...well, she managed to landscape that area to make it pretty somehow.

Of course, coming back here we have acres of land for my mother to do whatever she wishes to it. The land is like her blank canvas and her art is transforming it into beautiful bursts of colors and terrains and textures, filling it with numerous flowers, plants, fruits trees and vegetables. Such is her passion for gardening that she almost always brings back some new "plant" or seeds from her travels abroad and will then replant them in her garden.

Many times when I'm out in the yard with her, she would point out to some shrub and say, "Do you remember when we lived in/visited (insert country name) and we went to that (insert park name, botanic centre, neighbor's house, etc)? Well, this is the plant I smuggled back from there!". Yes, she's incorrigible. And her soil-stained, 'green' fingers seem to be able to nurture anything, so smuggling plants is a way to feed her gardening addiction.

One day last week, as we were both walking around with her in the newly-configured garden, I saw an unfamiliar plant. My mother informed me it was ginseng she had brought back from Kuching, Malaysia and the leaves can be eaten as a salad or sauteed with some garlic to make a hot side-dish. Meanwhile, the finger-like roots can be boiled into a herbal drink. I plucked a leaf, popped it into my mouth and it tasted pleasantly tangy, turning into a velvety texture as I chewed on it. Inevitably, I ended up clutching a bunch of these ginseng leaves home and the first thing I did was turn them into this beautiful Ginseng Leaf salad.

This is a very easy salad to throw together. It has a predominantly citrus/tangy note due to the orange, pomegranate, Ginger Torch flower and sweet-sourish Thai green mango (Nang Klang Wan) I added to it. A simple dressing made from lime juice, red onion, garlic and sesame oil completed the salad. Out of my mother's garden, I also picked some Scotch Bonnet peppers below and added just half of one (it was HOT!) into the salad. That sweet-sour-spicy salad really made my day!

Scotch Bonnets.

I turned these into a mind-blowing hot sauce, mixed with fiery Thai chillies! Recipe here :-).

Last weekend, I invited some friends over to "The Farm" (a.k.a. my mom's play area) to pick some vegetables - we brought home sweet corn, squashes, long beans, eggplants, spinach, Thai chillies and more Scotch Bonnets. Kate (from It's The Norm) and her husband Rob came along and I bet they're now at home wondering what to do with all the vegetables they'd picked! You can read Kate's related post here.

Once a food blogger, always a food blogger... Kate and Co. in action.

Having a nice cuppa after all that veggie-picking.

Spot the squash on the floor!

Ginseng Leaf Salad with Pomegranate, Orange and Green Thai Mango

Serves: 2

Salad:

2-3 handfuls ginseng leaves, plucked from the stems

1 cup pomegranate arils

1/2 Thai green mango, peeled and sliced thinly

1 orange, peeled and sliced

Lime Dressing

Juice of 2-3 limes

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 small scallion/onion, diced

2 Torch Ginger flower petals, finely diced

1/2 Scotch Bonnet, finely sliced (optional)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

sea salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. Mix all the salad ingredients in a bowl and prepare the dressing.

2. For dressing, mix the lime, sugar, sesame oil in a small bowl and marinate the garlic, onions, Ginger Torch, Scotch Bonnet (if using) in this lime mixture for about 5-10 minutes to allow the flavors to come out. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss to distribute. Serve immediately or keep in the fridge to chill before eating (note: the ginseng leaves do not wilt).

French Fridays with Dorie - Pissaladière

2011-10-21T14:22:00.003+08:00

I made this at the last minute as the thought of pizza or pissaladière, as the French say, didn't quite appeal to me on a Friday when we were supposed to hone in on our French cooking skills. The odds were stacked against this dish coming into being - I had no anchovies in my kitchen, nor did I have black olives (or any olives, for that matter). You know me by now, I wasn't going to go out shopping for any extra ingredients to comply with a recipe....if I could use whatever I had at home, I would. In this case, I did.

So for this week's French Fridays recipe, I managed to rustle up a pissaladière, a specialty from Nice in the South of France. Essentially what it is is a caramelized onion tart with black olives and anchovies, spread on a thin pizza-like dough. At this point, I shall dispense of the pizza idea, as I feel like a better Francophile calling pissaladière a 'tart'.

Dorie in her cookbook, Around My French Table, mentioned that the name of this tart comes from "pissala", a condiment made with pureed anchovies, thyme and bay leaves, mixed into caramelized onions and spread on the tart before baking. Since I didn't use any anchovies on mine, I did wonder if it should be renamed something else....

Brushing that bothersome thought aside, I went looking around the kitchen for some anchovy-like substitutes and voila! I found some tuna preserved in brine and salmon I cured at home (said with confidence now, thanks to several goes at making Dorie's 'Salmon in a Jar' recipe!). The tuna was mixed into the caramelized onions while the salmon strips posed as pretend-anchovy crosses on top of the tart. For the black olives, I found some dried black dates in the fridge that I pitted and softened in a bowl of water.

I'm used to making pizza at home so the dough-making part didn't really bother me. Since it was a pretty thin crust, I used malted grain bread flour which made for a gloriously crisp and crunchy base. You can see the many, many dots of grain in the video. Oh, did I mention that I made a small production out of this? Which explains why I'm slightly late posting this week!

Despite the heavy subs, I was delighted with the way it turned out. It's really hard to go wrong with an onion tart, isn't it? Luckily all the flavors melded well together, and I'm not taking the pissaladière when I say that nobody at home missed the anchovies at all :-).

We don't give the recipes out over at FFWD but you can find it online here, and for more variations of this pissaladière, please check out our cooking group here.

I served this up with some refreshing Ginseng leaf salad, which isn't French at all, but then neither am I. Recipe for this salad will be up next week...consider this a teaser!

Have a fun weekend!

Autumnal Baking Challenge - Pomegranate, Fig and Pistachio Tart in a Chocolate Stripe Crust

2011-10-19T16:18:00.002+08:00

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.

~ Stanley Horowitz

Where I reside now, there are no seasons and only two types of weather - sunny and often thunderstorm-like rain. But I do remember autumns spent in Europe and North America when I studied and worked there. Cardigan-weather, we used to call it. It must've been my favorite season out of the four, with the bearable coolness in the air and the messy, leaf-kicking path to school, Uni., office, etc.

I know I looked forward to the heartier autumnal dishes and heartwarming desserts although I can't in all honesty recall what I ate as a student. So let's fast forward to the period when I could afford to eat the good stuff - my working days! Living in Europe at the time, my kitchen was constantly filled with figs, plums, pomegranates, etc. freshly bought from the farmer's market. Out of everything else, I miss the fresh purple figs the most... I could eat baskets of them - and probably did!

Don't these scream "AUTUMN" to you?

It was around that time also that I'd learnt to bake properly, trying to decipher recipes from books published in another language (well, I mean other than English, which is another language for me too). The first results were disastrous but I guess I got better with practice. It seemed that the more stressful my job got, the more I baked, sometimes even during the wee hours of the morning when I couldn't sleep. It was certainly cheaper than having therapy, but unfortunately my waistline paid dearly for it. Hey, I was still trying to build a career then...so something had to give.

Anyway, those figs are what stuck with me most about autumn. The first time I ever made a tart with them and brought the dessert over to a friend's dinner party, it received so many oohs and ahhs that I became known as "that yummy fig tart lady" thereon after. Yummy for the fig tart, of course, although I shall forgive you if you thought it was 'yummy' for the lady who made it too :-).

So why all this waxing lyrical about autumn when I now live in a tropical rainforest climate? Well, Kate over at What Kate Baked is running an Autumnal Baking Challenge until 21st October, 2011 and I'm participating in it. There's also a giveaway tied to the challenge but that's not why I'm linking this post. I simply want to re-live those memories of fall and my 15 minutes of fame with that first yummy fig tart.

Alas, there are no fresh figs to be found over here although I had no qualms about reconstituting the dried ones that we do have plenty of. Beggars can't be choosers, and since we have no autumn to speak of, we are technically (sigh) beggars. Fresh pomegranates are everywhere now, so I incorporated the arils into some custard flavored with a dash of rosewater. That simple act gave the tart an extra dimension of interest - flavor, color and texture-wise.

You didn't think I just stopped there, did you? Well, if the tart filling was going to be beautiful, I figured the tart crust would have to be as equally interesting, so what I did was to create chocolate stripes along the edges of the crust. On the base of the crust, I gently pressed chopped pistachio nuts before baking and pouring the filling in. If you were to take a bite out of this tart, you would just about be able to sense the presence of the chocolate and pistachios, very subtle notes amongst the melee of other flavors. Ahh...I have complex tastebuds, can you not already tell?

Pomegranate, Fig and Pistachio Tart in a Chocolate Stripe Crust
Makes one 8-inch shallow tart
Chocolate Stripe Crust:
125g all-purpose flour
63g cold butter, chopped into cubes
50g sugar
1/2 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

(Note: You can make double the above amount for two 8-inch tarts, or freeze the rest of the dough for future use)

Filling:
1 egg
1 scant tablespoon sugar
100ml coconut cream (or double cream)
1/2 teaspoon rosewater
100g sliced figs (fresh or reconstituted dried ones)
100g pomegranate arils
20g shelled pistachio nuts, roasted and chopped

Method:

1. To make the crust: Place flour, butter and sugar in a bowl and rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add beaten egg and knead with your hands quickly until it becomes a moist (but not sticky) ball of dough.

2. To make the chocolate stripes: Scoop out a tablespoonful of the above dough and add the cocoa powder. Knead the cocoa into the dough on a clean surface until fully incorporated. Roll cocoa dough into thin ropes using your palms, arrange strips of this upright along the ridges of the tart pan (see photo above). Flatten the strips lightly against the edge.

3. Press the plain dough into the base and sides of the tart pan. Cut off excess dough at the top with a sharp knife. Prick the base of the dough all over with a fork and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

4. Preheat oven to 180C/375F. Take a tablespoon of the chopped pistachio nuts and sprinkle on the base of the tart crust. Press the nuts gently into the dough. Line the top of the crust with parchment paper and place rice or beans on top. Bake blind for 15 minutes.

5. In the meantime, make the filling. Mix the egg, sugar, rosewater and coconut cream in a small bowl until well-blended, then stir in half the pomegranate arils.

6. Take the tart pan out of the oven, remove the parchment paper and baking beans. Pour in the pomegranate coconut custard into the crust and arrange sliced figs at the edges. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the custard just sets on top. Leave to cool completely. Top with the rest of the pomegranates and pistachios before serving. Best eaten on day of baking.

Desserts, Tart

Secret Recipe Club - Snickers Coffee Cheesecake Brownies

2011-10-17T20:00:00.068+08:00

Childhood smells of perfume and brownies.
~ David Leavitt

After a two-month break from the Secret Recipe Club, I'm back with a delicious bake attributed to Frugal Antics of the Harried Homemaker, the blog of which I was assigned. Kristen, the blog owner is a fantastic mother of 5 and an even more amazing cook, as evidenced by the wide-ranging recipes on her blog. She comes from a long line of women who ran restaurants, catered, taught other people how to cook, and Kristen is no different. What I find as equally fascinating as her recipes are her Saturday Stories series, depicting multigenerational tales of her family, her childhood as well as her own Rainbow Family, as she calls it. I really can't imagine there'd be many people who haven't already come across Kristen and her blog, but in case you've been living under a rock lately, I highly recommend that you leg it over there for some fabulous food gems!

Don't you just love it when blogs have a Recipe tab or index that allows you to easily find recipes that resonate with you? Well, Kristen's blog has a pretty extensive recipe index and it didn't take me long to settle on what I wanted to make. Predictably, I headed first to the Dessert section before looking through all the rest of the other categories. Then I returned to 'Desserts' again to decide on what had caught my eye in the first place - Snickers Cheesecake Brownies. If this was how love at first sight worked, then yes, I wasn't able to shake this dessert out of my head.....the idea and image of it had that strong a grip :-).

Oh, just so you know, my other favorite eye-candies off this blog were:

Mint Brownie Cheesecake Bars

Peanut Butter Cookie Bars with Nutella Glaze
Caramel Bars

If I wasn't just limited to one, I'd probably marry all of them (or at least, the guy equivalent of them)!

Anytime a recipe contains these three words together - Snickers + Cheesecake + Brownies - you know you've got a winner! I'm a huge fan of Snickers bars and although I try really hard to steer myself away from the Snickers counter (or chocolate, in general) whenever I'm out shopping, I do sneak it into my diet about once a month. Hey, everything in moderation does not a man kill. How I wish I have the same strategy in place when it comes to butter!

The cake is made up of a decadent brownie layer, topped with a layer of chocolate cheesecake, topped again with slices of Snickers. I followed the original recipe to a near 'T' but still wanted a bit of 'me' in there so I added coffee to the cheesecake layer, replaced the white sugar with brown for a hint of molasses, and upped the amount of Snickers because... well, because I can, that's why!

I confess that I very nearly added Nutella and fresh ginger in there somewhere too, but managed to stop myself. Good thing I did because these cheesecake-brownie slices tasted heavenly as they were (and those other additions will have to wait for the next time I bake these!).

I chuckled when I saw this Snickers commercial because I could so imagine my kid and I dressing up in this costume for a bit of fun:

The Secret Recipe Club is a little like a fellowship, with each participant learning some delicious lessons from another food blogger's experience of making something in their kitchen. To see what the other SRC fellows brought to the table today, please click on any of the thumbnails displayed below.

Many thanks to Tina of Mom's Crazy Cooking for being our group's efficient and ever-cheerful host!

Snickers Coffee Cheesecake Brownies
(adapted from Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker)

Ingredients:
Brownie layer
1 1/2 sticks butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Coffee Cheesecake and Snickers layer
3/4 cup milk chocolate chips, melted
1 (250g/8oz) brick cream cheese
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 full-sized Snickers bars, sliced into pieces

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 175F/350C and grease a 9 x 9-inch baking pan.

2. Combine the melted butter with the sugar and cocoa. Add the eggs and stir well. Add the flour, salt and vanilla. Pour the brownie batter into the greased pan.

3. Beat cheesecake layer ingredients together in a mixing bowl until very smooth. Spoon over the brownie batter and carefully spread to the edges of the pan.

4. Arrange the Snickers bar pieces all over the batter. Bake for 35 minutes (if you are using a glass pan, lower the heat to 160F/325C). Remove from oven and cool, then place in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Desserts, Chocolate, Coffee

French Fridays With Dorie - Wholewheat Blini with Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraîche

2011-10-14T00:05:00.001+08:00

A Zen blessing at mealtime:
"In this plate of food, I see the entire universe
supporting my existence."

It's official - I like my blinis with crisp, burnt edges. Well, it's either that or admitting that I really suck at cooking blinis. Or pancakes, for that matter. What I liked about this week's recipe on French Fridays with Dorie, Blini with Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraîche, is that it was easy to assemble, with very minimal cooking.

Having worked in Moscow 14 years ago, I've had my share of authentic buckwheat blinis made and served on Russian soil. I knew how they were supposed to taste, however in this instance I didn't have buckwheat flour so substituted that with wholewheat flour instead. Not as dark or as nutty as buckwheat, but healthier than white flour, wholewheat is my flour of choice for many of my baked items lately. Maybe it's the guilty conscience kicking in... in any case, it made me feel better about eating a rather tall stack of blinis as a precursor to this post :-).

In front of the Kremlin just before the emergence of digital cameras and the fashionable self (oh, those bangs!)...

don't you just miss the 90s?

Happy blini bubbles

The texture of my blinis was surprisingly light and lacked the density and chewability of buckwheat, they were softer and more pancakey but nobody at home took issue with that. In fact, the kids all loved the "mini-pancakes" topped with salmon, crème fraîche and caviar. If I had served them up as blinis, weird and wary looks would've been thrown my way... Sometimes it just pays to shield your kids from the whole truth (well, as far as getting them to eat something nutritious is concerned)!

Torch Ginger flowers

The salmon I bought already came with dill leaves sprinkled along the edges, so for the garnish I sliced up some fresh Torch Ginger flower petals thinly and perched them upright on top of the blinis. Not only did the pinkish-red color draw the eyes into the heart of the blini, its sweet floral fragrance with a hint of ginger and lemon flavors offered the essence of the tropics. Can your mind even comprehend the thought of a tropical Russian-French blini? No, neither could mine. But they tasted wonderful, nonetheless.

I had these as a refreshing snack with my afternoon tea, and then again the following morning for breakfast. Yes, as Doristas, we are allowed to be decadent like that. You can find the recipe for this in Dorie's cookbook, Around My French Table or online here. For other takes on this blini recipe, please visit the other members of my French Fridays cooking group here.

I really enjoyed listening to Richard Seymour talk about "How Beauty Feels", and although it's a bit long at just over 15 minutes, there are some gems in here I think worth being reminded about.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Dragonfruit Striped Ravioli

2011-10-12T19:45:00.001+08:00

Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm.
~ Andre Kostelanetz

Among the few things in life I find relaxing to do is making pasta. The others are swimming (in the ocean), ogling at the stars on a clear evening and creating something beautiful, be it food, jewelry or even (let's be truthful here) babies.

Okay enough of that, back to the pasta. When I first posted about my quirky dish for the 5-Star Makeover Challenge, a number of readers commented on the striped ravioli I made using dragonfruit and some even asked how I did it. Well, I promised to show you and *ta-daah*...here's a video of my hands doing all the work. Once I can afford the hair and make-up guy, you'll get to see me from the neck up, I promise. For now, you can admire my cool T-shirt that looks as if a massive bearded guy is about to devour the ravioli!

This striped ravioli is easy to make, looks super fancy and is fun to eat. When you cut into the ravioli, the gooey dragonfruit mingles with the spring onions to give a sweet-savory flavor to the pasta – delicious!

Start with a basic pasta dough; the recipes vary wildly depending on your sources. The recipe below is one I find easy to use, as well as easy to convert to a vegan version by swapping out the egg with water or clear vegetable broth in the pasta dough. The filling here is vegan friendly anyway, but you could also try alternative fillings like sweet peas mashed with a bit of mint leaf, or roasted pumpkin or butternut squash mashed with a bit of salt. Just remember to change the color of the stripes accordingly :-).

Have a good Wednesday, everyone!

Dragonfruit Striped Ravioli

Basic Egg Pasta Dough

To make about 1/2 pound (2 servings):

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 egg*

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

1/4 tablespoon lukewarm water

To make about 3/4 pound (3 to 4 servings):

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 tablespoons lukewarm water

To make about 1 pound (5 to 6 servings):

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

3 eggs

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon lukewarm water

* For the dragonfruit pasta, I just replaced one egg with 2 tablespoons dragonfruit juice.

Filling:
1/2 to 1 medium dragonfruit, diced
spring onion stalks, sliced finely

1. Place the flour on a large floured surface.

2. Make a well in the center. Break the eggs or add the dragonfruit juice into the well.

3. Add the salt, oil, and water. Beat the mixture in the well with a fork.

4. Using a fork, gently start to work the flour into the liquid. Continue until the dough becomes sticky and difficult to work with the fork.

5. Use your hands to form the rough dough into a ball. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

6. Cover with a bowl or towel and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes before rolling and cutting the pasta.

7. For striped pasta, you’re going to need two portions of dough, one plain and one colored with the dragonfruit juice. If you prefer, you can use various natural colorants – powdered spinach, matcha or beets, for example. You could use liquid natural colorants (like beet juice) as well — just keep a handful of flour on hand to make sure you’re able to adjust the texture of the dough.

8. Start rolling out the plain dough first with a pasta machine. Stop when the thickness is on the second- or third-to-last setting. Set aside.

9. Roll the colored dough in the same way and then pass the dough through the fettuccine cutter on your machine.

10. Lay your plain pasta sheet on a well-floured surface and brush the exposed side with a brush dipped in water. Arrange the colored pasta strips on the uncolored sheet and press gently to adhere.

11. Lightly dust the top of the pasta and run through the pasta roller. I start at a slightly wider setting (third or fourth) on the machine to set the stripes, then gradually move to thinner settings to get the right thickness for my ravioli. It takes some practice to get the stripes clean and straight, but even crooked stripes make delicious noodles!

12. To make the filling, chop the dragonfruit flesh into small cubes and mix with finely sliced spring onions in a bowl. Place spoonfuls of filling on the bottom sheet of pasta and carefully cover the filling with a second sheet of pasta. Press around the filling to ensure as little air as possible gets inside the pocket, and seal carefully by pressing edges between your fingers.

13. To cook the ravioli, bring a pot of well-salted water to a rolling boil. Gently lower the ravioli into the boiling water and cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Carefully remove the pasta from the water and serve. I like mine with a drizzle of browned butter and slices of crispy garlic chips.

Muffin Monday - Basil Lime Olive Oil Muffins

2011-10-10T12:00:00.077+08:00

I'm back on the Muffin Monday wagon this week, and what a delicious and healthy recipe we were given to try out. Our host, An of Baker Street provided one of Giada De Laurentiis's recipes to make Olive Oil Muffins. As much as I think butter rules when it comes to baking in general, olive and coconut oils do come in as equal seconds.

Flavorwise, I fancied the muffins up a little by adding fresh purple basil leaves and substituting lime zest in place of the lemon. The basil made its distinct presence known without being overpowering, and that suited me just fine. The orange and lime zests provided the right amount of citrus-ness to the muffins and tied the flavors all nicely together. I included almonds as per the original recipe but mine were chopped whole almonds instead of slivers, and they guaranteed a pleasant crunchiness to the muffins.

Brace yourselves because I made another video (a more subdued version to the previous one) in case anyone out there thinks these yummy muffins are beyond their baking capabilities. LOL, you know I'm just kidding, right? My 7-year old can make these, or rather, assemble the muffin batter while I perform the manic Iron Chef-like chopping! In case you're wondering, in this video I made half a batch and baked them as mini-muffins.

These tasted delightfully light and refreshing. While I was making them, I thought the basic olive oil batter could be adapted to incorporate various other flavors. Chocolate comes foremost to my mind, but you could add ginger, cinnamon, black sesame, apple, pumpkin, coffee, etc. in there...although not at the same time, and the muffins would taste as wonderful. Definitely a great way to start the week with!

Basil Lime Olive Oil Muffins
(Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis)

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons orange zest
2 teaspoons lemon zest (I used lime zest)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil leaves*
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons whole milk
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted (I used whole almonds, chopped)
2 limes, sliced thinly for decoration*
Powdered sugar, for sifting (I left this out)

*My additions to the original recipe

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/350F.

2. Place paper liners in a 12-cup muffin tin.

3. In a medium bowl, blend together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. Using an electric mixer beat the sugar and eggs in a large bowl until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

5. Beat in the vinegar and milk. Gradually beat in the oil.

6. Add the zests and basil and stir.

7. Add the flour mixture and stir just until blended.

8. Crush the almonds with your hands (for sliced almonds) as you add them to the batter and stir until mixed.

9. Fill the muffin tin almost to the top of the paper liners. Top with tiny slices of lime.

10. Bake until golden on top and a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out with moist crumbs attached, about 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes.

11. Remove the muffins onto a platter and let cool for 5 more minutes. Sift powdered sugar over the muffins and serve.

Desserts, Muffin, Olive Oil

Crazy Cooking Challenge - Dark Chocolate and Mint Chip Cookies and Other Stuff

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

Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.
~ Barbara Jordan

I've decided to give up my usual French Fridays slot to take part in the Crazy Cooking Challenge hosted by Tina of Mom's Crazy Cooking The challenge is to pick a blog (a non-celebrity one), choose a recipe from that blog that fits the criteria of a featured food item chosen each month, and then make/bake and post about it. The posts are put up on the same day at the same time, like today (see the blog hop linky below). And then of course, because we're nice people, we let the blog owner know that we've picked their recipe. And as long as we haven't majorly messed up their creation, they should be delighted that their recipe was highlighted.

Another fun dimension to this challenge is that readers can actually vote for what they think is the ULTIMATE recipe for that month's food choice. Well, it's fun if you do receive plenty of votes, but not as exciting if people think your choice is umm... not so ultimate (no offence meant to the original blogger, of course).

This month's featured food item is a universal favorite, Chocolate Chip Cookies. I've been on a cookie-baking binge lately so this just fed right into my addiction. I looked at plenty of blogs and just when I thought I'd found the best-looking-best-tasting choc chip cookie recipe, another good one showed up on someone else's blog to top it. After scouring about 30 blogs, I thought I'd never find my 'ultimate' choc chip cookie choice!

Until one day, I remembered one of my more recent favorite haunts, Beth Michelle, owned by funnily enough, a lovely young lady called Beth Michelle who lives and blogs out of Israel. Her food is always captured in the most beautiful perspective and lighting but more important than that, like me, she's fond of experimenting with her ingredients. You know that saying, "opposites attract"? Well, it certainly wasn't the case here.

When I did a 'cookie' search on her blog, it came up with several mouthwatering options. It didn't take me long to settle on her Dark Chocolate and Mint Cookies recipe for this challenge. Why? Four reasons, really: 1. they looked amazing, and judging from the ingredients, I knew they tasted incredible too; 2. they were flourless and butterless (no, do not adjust your monitor, you read that right!); 3. they contained mint chocolate chips, except I didn't have any so I swopped them for Aero Mint - oh, loveliness!; and 4. Beth Michelle made them for her brother-in-law to take on his 16-hour journey home to the US, which was a thoughtful thing she did. You see, it's always good to re-enact another person's gesture of kindness because it's like paying that gesture forward. Except in this case, I was being kind to myself since I scoffed down half the cookies accompanied with plenty of milk!

So do you reckon this will get your vote as the ULTIMATE chocolate chip cookie? Please take some time to go through the linky list below, there are fab cookie selections in there!

SOME OTHER IMPORTANT STUFF:

Online Bake Sale for Juvenile Diabetes
October 8 to10: Gerry over at Foodness Gracious will be holding his first ever online bake sale to raise funds for The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. His 6-year old daughter, Miranda, has Type 1 Diabetes and every year, they walk to support the cause. I am donating this funky package of kitchen items to the sale, and I will ship it internationally too :-).

Valentine cookie cutters, silicon diamond ring ice mold, silicon lemon squeezer/bottle,

pyramidal measuring spoon set, silicon tea infuser.

Bids for all items start at $10, so if you'd like to help out, you can consider placing a bid on my item or any of the other fantastic goodies here.

The Big Eat-a-Lot Reunion
My posting schedule has been thrown slightly off-kilt this week because my old friend, Ju, who I haven't seen in over 30 years had come to visit all the way from Scotland where he now lives. We were classmates in junior and middle school but parted ways when we went to different high schools. When Ju left for India and I went to the United Kingdom for further studies, we lost touch completely. Well, thank heavens for Facebook because that brought all our ex-schoolmates back in touch with each other.

The detention room regulars (okay, not everyone in here!)

So the whole week has been one big reunion, which was fun because we were back to our playful (but now no longer innocent) middle school selves. It was fun being distracted away from the blog....we all took time out to catch up, to laugh ourselves silly, to eat real good food, even did some sightseeing - something we never do when there are no 'visitors' around.

Gorgeous food (clockwise, top-bottom): Eggplant, crispy Chinese leaves, fishead curry with tofu and okra,

cupcake with runny salted egg yolk filling.

Forget spatchcock chicken...this poor thing was featured on the menu, I swear!

We celebrated two birthdays. And yes, I even 'tailgated' without breaking a sweat. LOL.

Sightseeing on the Brunei River.

We miss you already, Ju! Next year's reunion... Phuket :-)

Dark Chocolate and Mint Chip Cookies
(Recipe from Beth Michelle)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips, plus 1/4 cup extra
1/2 cup mint chocolate chips, plus 1/4 cup (I used Aero Mint Chocolate, finely chopped)
3 egg whites
2 cups powdered sugar, divided into 2 portions
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/375°F and grease or line baking sheet with non-stick parchment paper.

2. Melt 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips and 1/2 cup of mint chocolate chips in bowl in microwave, about 2 minutes, and set aside to cool slightly.

3. With an electric mixer, beat egg whites in large bowl until soft peaks form.

4. Gradually beat in 1 cup sugar and continue beating until mixture resembles marshmallow creme.

5. Whisk 1 cup sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and salt in medium bowl to blend and on low speed, beat dry ingredients into egg whites.

6. Stir in melted chocolate and dark chocolate chips and mint chocolate chips.

7. Scoop a tablespoon of cookie dough on baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake until puffed and tops crack, about 10 minutes. Cool on sheets on rack for 10 minutes. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Thanks for stopping by and have a fabulous weekend!

Linked to Jane Deere Fusion Fridays

A Beautiful Mess - Chocolate-filled Brioche Rolls, YBR and Awards

2011-10-03T23:59:00.004+08:00

On, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.

~ Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere

I was supposed to do a pasta post today, but I've done a bread one instead. It's the first day of the week and truthfully speaking, I think I'm experiencing the Monday blues. Like only a stay-at-home-mom can experience it... sans colleagues, sans kids, sans Foodivo. Just home alone by myself. Yep, the boredom can get pretty stressful.

So a bit of kneading therapy was required today. I tossed away the pasta idea and replaced it with this slice-pinch-squeeze brioche one. Oh, and I made a video for it, my very first one. Okay, a pretty crappy one too since I'm the most technologically-challenged person living in this house (surpassing even my 7-year old and housekeeper). But it was a giggle to do, and relieved the boredom of the day somewhat.

Using a standard buttery bread recipe, I basically adapted the steps for making cinnamon rolls but instead of slicing them into 1-inch thick rolls, I divided the cylindrically-rolled dough into 4 parts and sliced each of them thinly. The ends were given a good pinch and then squeezed/folded together backwards into a ball, fanning out the thin slices. Oh...just refer to the video I painstakingly made below, won't you?

You have the option of leaving the bread rolls plain, but I chose to grate some dark chocolate as a filling for mine. And topped them up with poppy seeds to finish off. So simple, yet so unusually lovely to look at. I must make these again for when guests come around, and maybe try different fillings.

Here, enjoy the laughable first video :-).

This post will be sent right through to that bread-heaven on earth, Yeastspotting!

Here are a couple of quickies:

YBR

My friend Nancy of Spicie Foodie blog has posted a fantastic round-up of nearly 40 blogger's best recipes for September. The collection of dishes is fit for a King's feast, and if you haven't already checked it out, you can do so here. Thanks once again for hosting this, Nancy!

Awards:

I don't receive awards too often, so when I get them, it's really exciting! And just when I thought the blogosphere had forgotten all about me, I received these from two very lovely blogger friends:

Thanks so much, Sandra of Sandra's Easy Cooking!

Thank you, Reem of Simply Reem!

These two ladies have the most enticing blogs, filled with the most magnificent recipes and photographs. If you haven't checked them out yet, you really don't know what you're missing out on.

So, I'm supposed to be passing these awards on to fellow bloggers. I want to honor newer blogs that I've discovered so if you don't mind, I'm going to have a bit of a think on this one and will do the forwarding in another post.

Right, enough distractions and let's get right on to the recipe!

Beautifully Messy Chocolate-Filled Brioche Rolls
Ingredients:
250 g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
250 g (2 cups) bread flour
2 eggs
2 teaspoons dried instant yeast
50 g (1.8 oz) butter, melted and cooled
120 g (little more than 1/2 cup) sugar
200 ml (about 3/4 cup) lukewarm milk
1 tablespoon rose water (optional)
50g dark chocolate
Milk, for brushing
Poppy seeds
Melted butter, for brushing

Method:

1. In a large bowl mix the flour, the sugar and the butter. Mix for 5 minutes by hand or with a mixer.

2. Add the eggs and mix for a further 5 minutes. Meanwhile, turn on the oven to 50C/122F and turn it off as soon as it has reached the temperature.

3. Let the yeast dissolve in the warm milk in a small bowl. Add the rosewater to the milk/yeast mixture and then incorporate the mixture, little by little, to the flour/sugar bowl and mix for other 5 minutes. The dough should be now smooth and even. If not, place on a board and mix by hand, eventually adding a little flour. Shape it into a ball.

4. Place the ball back into the big bowl (oil it) and place it uncovered in the oven. Let rest for at least an hour up to a couple of hours. Take the ball out of the oven and divide into 2 equal parts.

5. Roll each portion flat into a rectangular shape, grate some chocolate filling on top and finally roll into a cylinder. Divide each cylinder into 4 parts. Take each part and slice thinly about 1/2cm wide. Pinch the ends together and fold backwards to form a ball shape (refer to video above).

6. Place on parchment paper and leave to rise for another 30 minutes, cover with a clean, damp cloth. Preheat the oven to 180C/375F.

7. Brush milk on top and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until tops are golden brown. As soon as they come out of the oven, brush rolls all over with melted butter. Best eaten on the day they are made.

Bread

5-Star Makeover: Teriyaki Chicken with Dragonfruit Ravioli and Apple-Plum Chutney, and a Charitable Cause

2011-09-29T00:00:00.326+08:00

Today marks my first participation in the 5-Star Makeover challenge hosted by Natasha of 5 Star Foodie and Laz of Lazaro Cooks! So honored to be cooking amongst these very creative lot. I've left it till the very last minute because the theme this month stumped me a little...it's 'Cooking with Wine'.

hosted by 5 Star Foodie & Lazaro Cooks!

If you're a regular here, you'll know that I've never featured wine on this blog for the simple reason that we do not drink or cook with it. But hey, rather than back out, I thought this will be a great opportunity to be creative and look for alternatives that could possibly fit the challenge. And in my manic thinking (for that is the state I normally get into during a creative process), this is what I came up with. It's Teriyaki Chicken with Dragonfruit Ravioli and Apple-Plum Chutney, which I can confidently declare is not a dish I grew up eating! These are simply memorable fragments of the food I loved to eat whilst travelling or living abroad. Hah...at least that's my story (in case mom asks), and I'm sticking to it! :-).

So where does the wine bit come into all this? Well, for the most part, I used mirin, a sweet cooking wine commonly used in Japanese cooking, especially in nimono dishes (braised or stewed vegetables and meats), soups and sauces. Mirin is pale golden in color, lighter than white wine. It's found in almost every Japanese kitchen and is essential for Japanese cooking. This teriyaki chicken, for example, was marinated in a sweet mirin marinate and the marinade was later transformed into the sauce that coated the chicken.

The use of mirin in food has several plus points - it adds luster to ingredients when they are cooked together and also gives the dish a rather nice aroma; it's effective in masking the gamey smell of meat and fish but the most important reason of all, at least for me, is that mirin tends to draw out the umami in food. Food somehow tastes softer and elegant with mirin, precisely what I was aiming for here.

Instead of serving the dish over rice or noodles as per the norm, I decided to make a 'fruity' ravioli using dragonfruit which is now in season and abundant in Brunei. The dragonfruit was simply seasoned with spring onions picked fresh from my garden, so while it was refreshing, there's a touch of savory-ness to the ravioli as well. Perfect with the umami flavor of the chicken.

You can just do a simple ravioli pasta, but here I'll show you how I did mine :-)
(The pink pasta strips were naturally colored with dragonfruit juice, by the way)

But wait... I'm a tropical girl, and I felt there needed to be some heat involved somewhere in the dish as well, and that's how the apple-plum chutney (also cooked with mirin) came into being. Apples and plums are so fall, aren't they? Although we don't have four seasons where I live now, it was just nice to reminisce about the cooler weather from my previous abodes. I was also thinking that half of the world who are experiencing fall right now can actually make this chutney as a kind of consolation in case dragonfruit is not accessible to them. You see, I think of everything when I cook! LOL.

I don't know why, but I felt like this dish was my 'rights of passage' offering to the 5-Star Makeover group whose participants have such impeccable knowledge and innovation with the food they create. I just hope this meets their expectations!

Onto the charitable part of the post, I'd like to give a shout-out for my friend Gerry of Foodness Gracious, who is holding a charity Online Bake Sale from October 6 to 10, 2011. His lovely 6-year old daughter, Miranda, has Type 1 diabetes and every year on November 6, his family and friends take part in a fundraising walk for The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In lieu of donations this year, Gerry wanted to raise funds by organizing a food-related event and as a show of support, I will be donating a funky baking accessories package to be won by the highest bidder. (I would've loved to bake something, but I fear that it will be reduced to crumbs by the time it reaches its destination should the winner live overseas from me!)

Miranda and Gerry

So why is this cause important to me? Well, diabetes runs in my family too and I suffered from gestational diabetes while I was carrying my firstborn. It was not much fun having to stick needles in my fingers and other body parts 6 (six!) times a day for many, many months. Luckily, with a controlled diet and regular exercise, my temporary diabetes has been kept at bay. But can you imagine a 6-year old girl having to live like this for the rest of her life? So, won't you please help and pledge something for Team Miranda by October 3? If you're talented enough to run a food blog, I figured you'd want to be doing some good with a fraction of that talent too :-).

Teriyaki Chicken with Dragonfruit Ravioli and Apple-Plum Chutney

Serves: 2-3

Apple-plum chutney

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon mustard seeds

2.5 cm ginger, finely diced

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 apple, cored, peeled and sliced

1 plum, pitted and sliced

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup Mirin

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1. First, make the chutney. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add in the mustard seeds, ginger and cayenne and fry 1-2 minutes, stirring now and then.

2. Add the apple and plum slices, cook for 1 minute.

3. Add the lemon zest and juice, Mirin and brown sugar. Bring mixture to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes until 'jammy', stirring often. (note: the plum slices will disintegrate faster, so if you want more intact slices, add the plum halfway through cooking).

4. Leave to cool completely before serving.

Teriyaki Chicken

Mirin Marinade:

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup Mirin

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated

1. Combine all the marinade ingredients in a small saucepan. Heat on stove until the brown sugar is dissolved, then leave to cool completely before using to marinate the chicken.

Teriyaki Chicken:

450g (1 lb) boneless chicken breasts

Mirin marinade (above)

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1. Poke the chicken breasts all over with a toothpick and immerse in the marinade, cover and leave in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Proceed to cook the chicken (below) but set the marinade aside, do not discard.

2. Heat oil in large nonstick pan over medium-high heat and cook chicken until moderately brown, about 10 minutes. If too browned, reduce heat; if pale, increase heat. Turn chicken over, reduce heat to medium, and cook until second side is brown and meat is thoroughly cooked, about 10-15 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, whisk the cornstarch into the remaining mirin marinade until smooth.

4. Transfer chicken to a plate and pour off fat in pan. Add mirin mixture to pan and return to medium heat. Return chicken to skillet, turn to coat with sauce and let it simmer until sauce is thick and glossy, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and serve.

Dragonfruit Ravioli

Pasta Dough:

1 cup all-purpose flour

extra flour, to adjust dough consistency

1 egg

Filling:

1/2 medium dragonfruit, diced

2 stalks spring onions, chopped

1. Place the flour in a food processor. Add egg and process for 10 seconds until the flour is moist and crumbly. Adjust by adding some more flour to the dough if it is extra sticky and process further. Each time you stop the machine, pinch the dough between your fingers, it should feel firmer each time. After about 30 seconds of processing, the dough should come together and form a loose ball on top of the blade, and feel moist but not sticky when pinched.

2. Take the dough out, sprinkle some flour on a hard surface and start to knead the dough. With the heel of one hand, push the ball of dough away from you. Fold it back toward you and rotate the dough a quarter turn. Repeat this process until the dough feels damp without being sticky, then stop kneading (about 1-2 minutes). Shape dough into a ball and cover with a large overturned bowl, let it rest for 30 minutes.

3. Divide dough equally into 2, run each through pasta machine according to the instructions, until it is thin enough for your ravioli sheet.

4. Mix together the filling ingredients in a bowl. Place a scant tablespoon of filling (for each ravioli) along one side of the ravioli sheet and fold the other side of the ravioli sheet over the filling to cover it. Pat down around the fillings to seal dough, then cut into shapes with a ravioli cutter. Gently pinch edges of ravioli to seal it further.

5. Boil water with some olive oil and cook the ravioli for about 5 minutes until the edges are soft but still chewy. Serve immediately with chopped garlic sauteed in browned butter sauce.

Assembly:

1. Place the cooked ravioli on the plate, drizzle with browned butter and garlic sauce.

2. Place teriyaki chicken on top of ravioli. Spoon a portion of cooled chutney at the side and serve immediately.

(Note: The mirin sold in Brunei is branded 'halal' so it has no actual alcohol content but mimics the flavor-inhancing properties of alcoholic mirin. Just in case mom asks about this too!)

Savory Tomato and Beetroot Cobbler with Turmeric Curry Leaf Biscuit Topping

2011-09-28T09:00:00.271+08:00

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.
~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Our party host Penny of Jeroxie blog had us all 'cobblered' this month and believe me when I say this... it is a rare occasion that I will post something savory up on this blog, least of all a cobbler. When you hear the word 'cobbler', images of the freshest seasonal fruits dotted all over or buried underneath something sweet tend to flash across the mind. Correction, make that my mind.

That is why I find it most bizarre that whenever I'm participating in cooking groups such as this International Incident Party (IIP), the savory side of me that forever struggles to exert her presence against that dominatrix of a sweet-toothed side, manages to find a voice loud enough for me to hear her version of a cooking theme - and often (wow!) wins. Case in point, this is my fifth savory IIP dish in a row.... what is happening to me?!

Do you want to know made me bow down to my savory persona? This Murraya koenigii tree.

It's also known as the Curry Leaf tree, and it grows right in my backyard. In fact, I hadn't realized its presence over the last 12 years until I started this blog and more importantly, cooking in earnest. You see, when we moved into the property over a decade ago, my mother the green-fingered extraordinaire, had already planted numerous fruit trees, flowering plants, herbs and landscaped bushes. I think she may have made up her mind back then that we could live however the hell we wanted inside our home but no way would she allow us to completely screw up our garden! Why? Because that's the first thing the neighbors and passers-by would see and judge us by. But of course....

So ever since I became conscious of the existence of our curry leaf tree, I had been looking for more ways to use its impossibly-hard-to-describe but highly aromatic leaves. Our usage of curry leaves in Asian cuisine is akin to that of bay leaves in Western cuisine, but they are not the same thing. I've thrown in curry leaves to flavor many curries and also used them in chutneys and savory preserves, but that was about it. Then when this cobbler idea came around, it occurred to me how brilliantly the curry leaves would impart its flavor somewhere in there. Exactly where, I hadn't decided then, but that slowly came to me too. The topping, which would be made out of curry leaf biscuit dough!

As for the cobbler filling, I decided tomatoes would be a good savory choice and since I had some beetroot left over, that went into the bowl too. You can never have enough red in your food, that's my philosophy! To spice it up a bit, I added purple Thai basil and cumin. I don't know if you already realize this, but those two go horrendously well together. Too well, that I can't seem to stop pairing them up in other recipes as well!

Oh, one more thing....the turmeric. I added a dash to the biscuit dough not only for its warm, inviting color but for the easy way it mingled and danced around the curry leaf flavor. The buttery, exotic biscuit topping totally complemented the earthy, comforting tomato and beetroot filling. If all human marriages were like this cobbler, I suspect the world would be a content place. Yes, boring too, but you can't have everything, can you?

We are a cosy party of 5 this month, so why don't you come and party with us? Just click on the thumbnails below this post to be in our midst. Thanks again Penny, for pushing me beyond my comfort (sweet-toothed) zone :-).

I'd like to end this post with Adele's video, Set Fire to the Rain, my current favorite song. I'm sorry I have to run back to her again...I simply love her fantastic voice. Someone once said, it's like listening to God!

Savory Tomato and Beetroot Cobbler with Turmeric Curry Leaf Biscuit Topping

Serves: 4
Ingredients:
Tomato-Beetroot filling
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, finely diced
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
450g (1 lb) grape or cherry tomatoes
1 medium beetroot, cubed
3 tablespoons chopped purple basil leaves (or regular basil)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper, to taste

Turmeric Curry Leaf Biscuit Topping
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
15 pieces curry leaves, rolled and sliced thinly (chiffonade)
60g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
1/3 cup heavy cream, buttermilk or creme fraiche
Extra cream, for brushing

Method:

1. Make the filling: Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a pan over medium heat. Cook onions, stirring occasionally, until caramelized and softened. Add garlic and cumin seeds and cook until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Let cool.

2. Toss onion mixture, tomatoes, beetroot, flour, and basil with salt and some pepper.

3.Preheat oven to 180C/375F.

4. Make the biscuit topping: Whisk together flour, baking powder, turmeric, curry leaves and salt in a bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter or rub in with your fingers until small clumps form. Add cream or buttermilk, stirring with a fork to combine until dough forms. (Dough will be slightly sticky.) Roll dough to about 1cm thickness and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter.

5. Transfer tomato mixture to 4 small ramekins. Arrange biscuit dough all over the top, making sure not to overlap dough. Brush dough with cream. Bake until tomatoes and beetroot are bubbling in the center and biscuits are golden brown, about 45-50 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack. Let cool for 20 minutes before serving.

Muffin Monday - Carrot Spice Muffins

2011-09-26T12:00:00.004+08:00

I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.
~ Jerry Seinfeld

I've always had a weakness for moist carrot cake, packed to the brim with grated carrots, nuts and dried fruits and topped with the most decadent cream cheese frosting. So you can imagine how much I was looking forward to making this week's Muffin Monday recipe, Carrot Spice Muffins. Our host, Anuradha of Baker Street blog specified that this was to be a healthy muffin, so I reluctantly tossed out the evil frosting idea and ended up with a healthier topping instead.

But first, I made several tweaks to the original recipe - virgin coconut oil in place of butter, vegetable oil or applesauce; soft dried figs instead of raisins, and walnuts as my choice of nuts. I also added plenty of orange zest to complement the carrot and complex spice flavors (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice!). I'm not sure if it was due to the whole wheat flour used, but my batter still seemed a little dry so to rectify this, I added another egg and that gave me the consistency I wanted. I suppose a dash of milk would also work if you're reluctant to add on the extra egg.

For the topping, I decided to boil thin slivers of carrots in a syrup made from freshly squeezed orange juice and brown sugar. The carrot slivers were soft on the outside but still retained some crunchiness on the inside. Once the muffins came out of the oven, I doused them with the orange syrup and topped each muffin with a teaspoonful of carrot slivers. By the time I took a bite out of one of these muffins, I'd long forgotten all about the cream cheese frosting....I mean, who really needed it? This healthy topping was so delicious in its own right!

If you think the convergence of carrots, orange, spices, coconut, yoghurt, vanilla, figs and walnuts seem like an overwhelming amount of flavors packed into just one little muffin cup, then you have every reason to think that. But let me tell you that these flavors managed to blend into one another in all the right manner (there is a Baking God!) that they actually resulted in scrumptious and perfectly textured muffins! Thanks Anuradha, for another week of healthy baking....I can't wait to check out the other carrot muffins over at Baker Street.

We had another busy weekend due to it being a long holiday weekend over here. The whole nation was granted an extra day off for Teacher's Day, specially to honor those rare breed of individuals who have taken upon themselves the task of knocking some sense into the rest of us. A very big thank you, teachers!

We took the opportunity to have an Open House, yes.... another one. The month of Eid celebrations is nearly up and after this, we will have no real excuse to eat this much. LOL.

We also invited my food blogger friend, Kate and her husband Rob, to our new home and it was lovely to catch up where we left off (from the last Open House!). I wasn't quite sure if they marveled at or were scared off by the colorful, architecturally-constructed cakes and the deafening noise levels in our home due to a combination of our high ceiling and the sheer numbers of relatives and friends gabbing away.... I just hope they'll come back here again!

And of course, a celebration wouldn't be complete without a big tray of chocolates somewhere in the house.

My little cousin, N, who's about 20 years younger than me, also got married this weekend. So we were also busy attending her wedding ceremonies, she has around 6 which is the norm in our part of the world. It's both an exciting and exhausting time for the bride, groom and their families, that I've found myself saying to my 14, 13 and 7-year olds how I wouldn't mind it if they wanted to get married on a beach someday with just a handful of guests and a single ceremony. I would be the happiest, most stress-free mother-of-the-bride/groom I know! LOL, let's see if that will really happen...

Congratulations, li'l Cuz!

Carrot Spice Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
Ingredients:
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon allspice
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 1/3 cup virgin coconut oil
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups grated carrots
• 1/2 cup chopped dried figs
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Orange-Carrot Topping
Juice of one orange
1 cup thinly sliced carrots (I used a mandoline)
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients- flour, soda, powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice.

3. In another bowl, mix together wet ingredients - brown sugar, egg, yogurt, coconut oil, vanilla and the carrots, figs and walnuts.

4. Gently fold in wet and dry ingredients together until just moistened.

5. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

6. While the muffins are baking, boil the carrots in the orange juice and brown sugar mixture and let it simmer for about 5-8 minutes until the carrots are softened. As soon as the muffins come out of the oven, prick the tops all over with a toothpick and spoon about 1 teaspoon of hot orange juice on each muffin. Top with a teaspoonful of soft boiled carrots. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

French Fridays With Dorie - Honey Rose Spiced Madeleines and Giveaway Winner

2011-09-23T01:00:00.006+08:00

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
~ Mark Twain

Did I manage to fool you into thinking that I made madeleines this week for French Fridays? Well, the batter was for madeleine cookies for sure, but I do not own a madeleine baking pan. Although I've had these delicious, made-for-dunking cookies before, I'd never been tempted to make them until this week's recipe came along. As soon as these came out of the oven and were popped into my mouth, however, I wondered why I never tried my hand at making them for they were A+ delicious!

I fretted for weeks trying to figure out how to bake these madeleines without resorting to another possibly-one-off kitchen gadget purchase. Besides, my baking cabinet was already bulging to the brim with baking tools and gadgets that there was no way I could possibly squeeze another implement in there. Unless Foodivo builds me a bigger cabinet or buys me another one, of course :-).

My faux madeleine molds

So while I was out at a baking store, not really *ahem* looking for a madeleine pan, I came across stacks of these disposable, shallow tart molds (above). They were sold for around US$1.00 for 50 pieces, a bargain, wouldn't you say? The sides of the molds had grooves that reminded me of the shell-like features of a proper madeleine pan. I spent the $1.00 without hesitation.

Julienned orange peel (left) and some wild Borneo honey (right)!

Dorie's recipe was an absolute delight because of the flavorful ingredients contained in it. Ginger, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper gave the cookies an interestingly subtle spiciness while the honey provided the warmth and sweetness. I made two slight modifications - instead of orange zest, I used very thinly sliced orange peel (dislodged using a potato peeler), and instead of vanilla, I added a dash of rosewater. The mix of orange and rose aromas is magic in itself, but coupled with the presence of the spices... well, they all reacted chemically to transform these madeleines into some form of drug. Probably to my detriment, I discovered that I couldn't just stop eating them at one (or two, or three). These babies were seriously addictive!

Using my mini-muffin pan, I tilted the tart molds into the muffin cups so that one side of the grooves will be more prominent once the cookies were baked, à la proper madeleines. Then of course, my first batch spilled out over the brim but the whole debacle simply taught me some valuable lessons: 1. never tilt molds when baking runny-ish batter, 2. the spilled-over cookie edges can be easily trimmed after baking, 3. don't be afraid of seeming foolish and just experiment away. If this hadn't worked out, I could always have made another one of Dorie's recipes... :-)

So it looks as if I may have to hunt down that madeleine pan after all. This is a recipe I definitely want to try out again, however I have no desire to tilt more shallow tart molds in order to do it. Oh boy...that extra baking cabinet better be in our next kitchen expansion plans!

And now for the winner of my mooncake press giveaway.....by Random.org's pronouncement, it's Ei of Cookbook Immersion Project. If that's not enough to make you jealous, she's also moving to NAPLES (as in Italy)! Ei, I'll get in touch with you soon about which mailing address to send this to - the US or Europe? :-)

List Randomizer

There were 22 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Ei
Evelyne
Jen
Adriana
Betsy
Trix
Mardi

Before you enter the weekend, take some time to watch this 3-minute talk by Stacey Kramer on a mysterious gift she once received, and the things she learnt from it. Have a lovely weekend, peeps!

Happy Bread

2011-09-21T00:01:00.005+08:00

You have a masterpiece inside you, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.

~ Gordon MacKenzie

*Update*: I have made a video for this bread here!

First of all, let me clarify that this bread is not a masterpiece that came out of my usual daydreams and doodles. No, I first spotted this on Eva Toneva blog and while she called it 'Holiday Bread', I decided even back then that I would rename it 'Happy Bread' because it made me light up inside just looking at it! My penchant for unusual-looking breads had me bookmarking this recipe immediately.

It wasn't until my beautiful cousin, A, tweeted from Australia yesterday announcing that she had lost her bread virginity (by successfully producing her first crusty baby) that I remembered all about my Happy Bread. The original baking instructions were in Bulgarian, so I figured I'd get it all sorted with Google Translate. What eventually came out in English read like a bad script for a dream sequence rather than a baking method. Something had gotten 'lost in translation' and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how the dough pieces were sculpted and arranged...

But wait, this was Google Translate, listing more than half the world's languages under its service (though you'd have to be a pretty good decipherer as well to use it). I thought I'd fare a little better if I translated the recipe into Malay, my mother tongue. And I was right, it made a bit more sense. Just to make sure though, I also translated it into Bahasa Indonesia, German and then French and got a much better picture overall. Gawd, the pros and cons of technology!

So this post had me rewriting the original instructions to something I would understand for future usage. Just so you know, the original ingredients and their amounts remained the same (except for the sesame seeds topping, which was optional, anyway). All that translating effort must have killed off any every iota of creativity in me :-s.

If you can make cinnamon rolls, you can make this Happy Bread.

Despite that and the minimal effort required to actually make the bread, it turned out dashingly well and totally earned its new name. Wouldn't the sight of something this soft, this buttery and this swirly cheer you up immensely too?

Last weekend saw a continuation of our Eid celebrations, or rather gave us the excuse to continue our gatherings and incorrigible feasting. We also celebrated a birthday in the family at the same time, so the kids were given the Sunday off from wearing their colorful traditional costumes and donned their neon swimming gear instead.

We had the wet and wild corner outside....

...and the zen-n-techy corner indoors.

Anyway, I hope you're all having a great week so far. Ease off any strains you may have by listening to this lovely song by The Corrs entitled Dreams.

This post also goes to Yeastspotting!

Happy Bread

(Adapted from Eva Toneva)

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons dry instant yeast

1 tablespoon sugar or honey

100ml warm milk

500g all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading and flouring

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

150 ml warm milk (extra)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice

100 g butter, melted and cooled

Glaze

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons milk

Method:

1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in 100 ml warm milk, cover and leave in a warm place to rise 10 minutes.

2. In another bowl, sift the flour and salt together. Make a well in the middle and add beaten eggs into it, the remaining warm milk, olive oil, vinegar and yeast mixture. Knead the dough with your hands or in your mixer until it separates from the sides of the bowl. Remove dough, place on lightly floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes until it becomes a soft, pliable dough. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a towel and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in volume - about an hour.

3. Punch risen dough and transfer on a floured surface, divide dough into 2 equal parts. Divide each of these again into 4, so you have 8 pieces of dough altogether.

4. Roll each piece of dough out into a roughly rectangular shape with a thickness of 3-5 mm. Brush cooled, melted butter over each piece. Set aside remaining butter for later.

5. Place one piece of rectangular dough over another one and start to roll into a cylinder. Do the same with the rest of the dough; you will end up with 4 cylindrical rolls altogether.

6. Cut each roll into three pieces in this way - slice at both ends of the roll about 1.5 inch long each, and put these two pieces aside. Then cut the middle part of the roll into 4 triangles.

7. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease or line a large baking tray. In the middle of the tray, arrange the cut ends of the rolls around each other to form a circle, placing the cut sides down. Arrange the cut triangles to completely surround the middle circle. Cover with towel and leave the dough to rise in a warm place for about 30-40 minutes.

8. Beat the yolk with the milk with a fork to form a glaze and brush top of the bread with the glaze. (You can sprinkle with sesame seeds or other dry toppings at this point.) Bake bread for 20-30 minutes, reducing the temperature to 160C after 10 minutes in the oven.

9. Brush bread with melted butter as soon as it comes out of the oven, cover with a towel and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes before eating.

Muffin Monday - Pineapple Jam-Filled Muffins with Luscious Lemon Glaze

2011-09-19T12:00:00.008+08:00

The recipe for Muffin Monday this week couldn't be any easier, it's jam-filled muffins. Anuradha from Baker Street blog provided us with a basic recipe and all we had to do really was 'fill in the blank' where the jam was featured in the ingredient list. I decided to fill mine with the pineapple jam that I had made a week earlier and had used to fill some pineapple tart cookies.

My fresh pineapple was procured from a little hut serving as a fruit stall just down the road from my home. Bearing in mind that my neighborhood lies within a village, the fruits were sold by an elderly lady who grew them in her very own backyard. The pineapple I chose was rather large and super-sweet, probably due to all the organic manure (a.k.a. chicken poop) lavished on the soil where these fruits are cultivated.

The chickens in this village are super-social, the original Twitter crowd, I tell you. And they roam everywhere they please and eat the best stuff nature can offer, making for very fertile gardens and vibrant plants and fruits. Well, I hope you see the connection :-).

Anyway, I added anise and cloves to spice up the pineapple puree and cooked it down to a thick jam consistency. To achieve this, I had to stand by the hot stove for one hour, stirring constantly so the pineapple jam didn't burn. Here are some useful tips for you...it really helps to have the fan blowing in your face (à la Mariah Carey's video), some funky music playing in the background, a friend on speaker phone - or all three - to help alleviate the heat and boredom experienced during this tedious process.

Different consistencies of the pineapple jam during cooking

I made slight alterations to An's recipe, one of which was to use whole wheat flour. I was hoping it would compensate (health-wise) for the scary amount of sugar used in the pineapple jam. Although I must add, the lemon sugar glaze drizzled on top of the muffins at the end somehow negated that guilt-driven, health-conscious effort. Oh well, at least the intention was good!

Jam-stirring aside, these muffins were easily one of the simplest that I've made so far. And of course, one of the yummiest, with the pineapple complementing the lemony flavor of the muffin well. Thanks An, for once again sharing with us such a delightful muffin recipe. Don't forget to check the other bakers' jam-filled muffins out over at An's blog, you won't be disappointed!

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. Drop in a quick line to join her on her journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.

Pineapple Jam-Filled Muffins with Luscious Lemon Glaze
Makes: 12 muffins

Muffins

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour*

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup milk

1/3 cup butter, melted

2 eggs

2 teaspoons lemon rind/zest*

1/2 cup pineapple jam (recipe below)

Lemon glaze (recipe below)

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

3. In another bowl, lightly beat eggs, milk, butter and lemon rind.

4. Pour into the dry ingredients and the stir until moistened.

5. Spoon half batter, make a well, add 1 teaspoon pineapple jam, spoon the remaining batter on top and bake in a preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until the top is golden. Cool for 10 minutes before glazing.

6. Drizzle lemon glaze over the top of the muffins and leave to set before serving.

(Note: * Alterations to the original recipe)

Pineapple Jam Filling

500g ripe fresh pineapple or canned pineapple

100-200 g granulated sugar (adjust according to your level of sweetness)

3 cloves

2 star anise

1. Slice pineapples and process briefly (about 30 seconds) in a food processor until pineapple flesh is roughly pureed. Pour pineapple into a strainer over a bowl. Press down with a spoon to squeeze more juice out. Keep juice aside.

2. Combine pineapple flesh with sugar, star anise and cloves in a heavy-bottomed pot and cook over low heat until almost dry.

3. Stir constantly until mixture is gluey and thick, the consistency of thick jam.

4. If mixture is too dry, add a bit of pineapple juice that has been set aside.

5. Cool and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Lemon Glaze

1 tablespoon butter, melted

1 cup sifted icing sugar

3-4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Mix icing sugar with cooled, melted butter and enough lemon juice to make a drizzling consistency. Spoon over the muffins, letting some of the glaze drip down the sides.

Desserts, Muffin, Pineapple, lemon

French Fridays with Dorie - Cinnamon Crunch Chicken

2011-09-16T01:00:00.004+08:00

I'll get straight to the point - I liked this recipe. It had only 3 ingredients (three!) - chicken, crème fraiche and spéculoos. Specu....what?

Okay, I'll spare you the misery and tell you that these are spicy shortcrust cookies traditionally baked around Christmastime in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Spices used in spéculoos are, in different variations, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper. I know this because I used to eat tons of them when I lived in Europe. Safe to say, my tastebuds have very fond memories of that time.

This week on French Fridays with Dorie saw us attempting Cinnamon Crunch Chicken. In her book, Around My French Table, Dorie explained that it is better to use store-bought rather than homemade spéculoos although she didn't clearly explain why. Was it because of the complexity of the spices, the crunchiness of the commercially-produced biscuits? I don't know but in any case, I wasn't going to traipse all over the island looking for them. Not when there's a recipe to make them out of the very same cookbook!

Below left and right: Before and after baking

So I set out to bake the spiced cookies as per Dorie's instructions (with cloves, cinnamon and ginger) and used my mooncake plunger press to cut out the shapes. Don't they just look pretty? And instead of chilling my dough in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours or overnight, I placed the rolled and cut-out dough in the freezer for 15 minutes, complete with silpat. Hey, I'm a busy woman! The cookie dough didn't rise or expand much, as you can see above. I substituted all purpose flour with whole wheat and that, I think, gave a nice texture and crispness to the baked cookies.

Here's where I sneak in my giveaway. Just wanted to see if people actually read the whole post or simply skim through the pictures and then go straight to the comments, or... or (gasp) just close the post without reading it fully nor commenting! Right, I'm giving away a mooncake plunger press like the one I was using above to anyone who writes in to let me know that they want it and what they're going to make with it if they win. The winner will be picked via (yawn) random.org and the closing date for this giveaway is on Thursday, September 22. I'll announce the winner on next week's French Fridays with Dorie post. Now let's see how many of you actually caught that. :-)

(Post update: This giveaway is now closed, a winner has been picked)

On with the recipe. Once I stirred the cookie crumbs into the crème fraiche, I found the flavor of the spices became somewhat diluted, so I liberally added more cinnamon and clove powders into the mixture. The sliced red chillies you see were not in the recipe but I thought, why not? The slight heat would balance out the sweetness of the cookies (since the spéculoos contained both regular and brown sugars, they were pretty sweet!).

I'm sorry but I have to ask, did any one of you who made this experience the 'crunch' at all? My chicken batter was more soggy rather than satisfyingly crunchy. Perhaps Dorie had a point when she recommended the store-bought versus homemade spéculoos. If I ever find spéculoos in the stores here, I will definitely give this another try.

The cinnamon-y encrusted chicken tasted delicious nevertheless, and it went very well served on a bed of saffron couscous. Yum...what more do you want me to say?

Click here to find out if the other Doristas came to a crunchy ending with their chickens. Or not.

We Should Cocoa - Marie Chocolate Fudge Cake with Purple Sweet Potato and Nutella Onde-Onde

2011-09-14T17:06:00.008+08:00

Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
~Richard Brinsley Sheridan

As I was coming to the end of my morning jog recently, I came across two butterflies 'dancing' around each other in mid-air. They were black butterflies, with beautiful purple spots on their wings, and the unusual sight of their interaction literally stopped me in my tracks. I observed them for 15 minutes, keeping still as they flew around me whilst also flying in circles around each other. I took it to be some sort of courtship or mating ritual, definitely on a more complex plane than The Bachelor or Bachelorette. It was quite fascinating, I had never seen anything like it, especially up so close except on National Geographic Channel. I had no clue why those butterflies were flying around me as if they had given me their explicit approval to become a voyeur to their activity.

No, they didn't end up mating in front of my eyes, if that's what you're wondering. I wasn't sure how long I stood statue-like on that quiet pavement, it felt longer but I'm estimating it to be around 15 minutes or so. Eventually a car approached and the butterflies flew away across the road to continue their dervish-like fun. And I went along on my way home, thinking about that oddity.. no, that privilege. I was also unable to shake off the image of those striking purple spots. Oh dear, you're about to find out that today's recipe is inspired by a pair of frisky butterflies!

In any case, I had been thinking about what to make for this month's We Should Cocoa challenge. Our host, Chele of Chocolate Teapot announced that September is the challenge's 1st anniversary and we are to make a chocolate masterpiece fit to serve at a virtual birthday party. So here's the thing - I could not make butterflies to save my life, but hey, I could do purple. Purple dumplings or onde-onde, as they are called here. The full-scale cake is called Marie Chocolate Fudge Cake with Purple Sweet Potato and Nutella Onde-Onde. As you can see, the name spells out its very components.

This is a two-layered cake, the bottom one made of Marie cookies or biscuits cocooned within a creamy chocolate fudge layer. In Brunei, this cake is popularly known as Batik Cake because when it is sliced, the pattern of the biscuits in the slices resembles traditional batik print on cloths.

The other component is sweet potato onde-onde, a popular bite-sized dessert in Southeast Asia. I made my dumpling dough out of purple sweet potato and glutinous rice flour, and I filled the onde-onde with what else, Nutella! Normally, these dumplings are coated in freshly grated coconut flesh but if that's not available or like me, you cannot be a**ed to get the grater out, dessicated coconut is an acceptable substitute. Just steam it in a muslin pouch and add a pinch of salt to taste.

Of course, these two things - Batik Cake and Onde-Onde are never eaten together as far as I know. I decided to couple them up in this cake because:

1. I like the idea of rows of purple balls atop a dark, crunchy malt cake. Thank you, butterflies!

2. This cake is full of chocolate flavors. And we are celebrating a year of fantastic chocolate creations, are we not?

3. It's textural heaven in one bite. Chewy dumplings vs. gooey Nutella vs. grainy coconut vs. creamy fudge batter vs. crunchy biscuits. If it was possible to pluck even more textures out of the air, I probably would.

4. I don't do conventional.

Need I tell you how this tasted? Naah, why not try making it and see for yourself. Even if you just make one of the layers, it will be well worth your time.

The video below is linked to my affinity for all things non-conventional. In it, one of my favorite artists, Rags KK, speaks below about the importance of teaching kids about perspectives from a very young age since it cultivates creativity and more importantly, empathy. This is only a 4 minute talk but as usual, he is entertaining and inspiring. If you have kids, do yourself (and your community) a favor and click the play button below.

Marie Chocolate Fudge Cake with Purple Sweet Potato and Nutella Onde-Onde

Marie Chocolate Fudge Cake

100g Milo powder (or any sweet chocolate malt powder)

25g cocoa powder

125ml boiling water

190g butter

200ml sweetened condensed milk

90g white granulated sugar

5 eggs, lightly beaten

250g Marie biscuits (or graham crackers), broken into quarters

Method:

1. Grease and line a 23cm x 9cm x 7cm deep loaf tin (or other loaf tin with a capacity of at least 5 cups or 1.25L) with baking paper, extending paper 2-3cm above edge of tin.

2. In a deep saucepan, slowly add boiling water to Milo and cocoa, stirring vigorously until it is smooth. Add butter, sweetened condensed milk, sugar, and eggs to the mixture.

3. Place the saucepan over moderate heat and cook, stirring all the time with a whisk or a spoon, until you feel the bottom start to thicken, about 5 minutes.

4. Turn heat down to low, and continue to cook, stirring without stopping, for about another 20 minutes until a thick custard forms.

(Tip: It may look like the custard will never thicken, and when it already has, you may feel like it has already thickened too much. I’ve found that the best way to gauge is when the mixture is reduced to about half of its original amount, and when stirring, you can actually see the mixture coagulate together, scraping off the sides of the pan perfectly; ie. you don’t see any liquid remaining at the sides of the pan.)

5. Turn off the heat, and stir in the quartered biscuits. Mix until all the biscuits are coated with the custard.

6. Transfer mixture to the prepared tin. Press down firmly so there are no air pockets in the mixture. Fold the paper extensions over the top and press down with the back of a spoon to even the surface. Then let cool to the touch. Cover with cling film, and refrigerate overnight.

7. When the cake is firm, use the paper extension as handle to pull the cake out of the tin. You can slice and serve this chilled on its own or use it as a base for the onde-onde layer (below).

Purple Sweet Potato Onde-Onde with Nutella Filling

Makes: 18 balls

Dough

180g purple sweet potato, peeled and cubed

50g glutinous rice flour

20g tapioca or corn flour

25g sugar

30-45ml water, depending on the dough

Filling

4-5 tablespoons Nutella

Coating

1/4 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut

Method

1. Toast or dry fry dessicated coconut until lightly brown, about 3 minutes. Remove and place in a shallow bowl. Set aside.

2. Place cubed sweet potatoes in a steamer and steam for about 15 minutes until soft and mashable. Remove and place steamed sweet potatoes in a large bowl. Mash sweet potatoes with a potato masher. Add glutinous rice flour, corn flour and sugar. Add water slowly and knead with your fingers until a soft pliable dough forms.

3. Scoop out one tablespoonful of dough and form into balls. Flatten a ball of dough in the palm of your hand into flat disks of about 2-inch diameter. Place a heaped 1/4 teaspoon of Nutella in the center. Gather up the sides and seal well to form a ball of about 1-inch diameter. Roll between your palms carefully until ball of dough is smooth. (Tip: Moisten your palms with a bit of water in between rolling the balls, it makes it easier to handle the dough). Place filled ball on a plate. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

4. Bring a medium sized pot of water to boil. Gently drop in filled onde-onde. Reduce heat to medium and allow onde-onde to cook until they float to the surface, about 3 to 4 minutes.

5. Remove with a slotted spoon and tap spoon on a paper towel each time to drain excess water. 6. To eat onde-onde as is, drop balls into toasted coconut one at a time to coat. Serve warm or at room temperature. For use as cake topping, do not coat in coconut just yet (see below).

Cake Assembly:

1. Arrange the warm onde onde balls snugly on top of the chilled cake while it is still in the loaf pan. Sprinkle the toasted coconut on top of the balls, coating completely.

2. Remove from the pan carefully by pulling on the baking paper, making sure not to dislodge the sweet potato balls. Slice into 1-inch slices (the diameter of one row of balls) and serve immediately. Leftovers may be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 days.

Desserts, Chocolate, purple sweet potato

Muffin Monday - Lavender Granola Muffins with Apricots, Cranberries and Chocolate

2011-09-12T12:00:00.030+08:00

After a whole week of decadent feasting, baking these granola muffins made me feel immensely better about my eating binges of late. Admittedly, I did try to work off the calories by running and hiking up hills under the blazing heat over the past several days, but all that simply made me tired and not really that much happier. It'd been a while since my muffin pan had seen the inside of my oven walls anyway, so I decided it was time to put it to good use again.

For Muffin Monday hosted by Anuradha of Baker Street blog, we were given a granola muffin recipe from Martha Rose Shulman. It's a healthy alternative to a regular dessert muffin and quite lovely to have for breakfast too since it contains granola, whole wheat flour, honey, yoghurt and dried fruits. In my version, I substituted dried apricots and cranberries for the raisins, and also added another special ingredient that had been festering in my fridge for a while - dried lavender flowers.

This was a last minute baking exercise and I had no time to run out for ingredients, so imagine my dismay when I rummaged through my pantry only to find out that we had run out of granola! Grr-reat. Ahh, but we did have rolled oats, and flax seeds and no, not oat flour... but would brown rice flour do to help hold the oats in clusters? Because brown rice flour was exactly what we had. It dawned on me then that I had everything required to make my own granola. Yay!

During the granola-making process, I found it dichotomous to have to toast the oat clusters to crisp perfection and yet immediately afterwards have them soaking in milk as stipulated in the muffin recipe. Oh well, life's a little silly like that sometimes. It was just best to get on with it and not dwell on the ridiculousness of some of the situations we find ourselves in.

I topped the muffin batter with more crisp granola and a sprinkling of chocolate chips because I knew they both belonged there (yes, they did!). The lavender really turned these granola muffins into something else, I loved the floral note they provided and the smell...oh, let me not get started on how glooorrious that was too.

My baking buddy, Y had the day off work so right before I made these granola muffins, Y and I were baking up other evil things in my kitchen. We made New York cheesecake, lavender cupcakes with lemon glaze and brownie muffins, funnily enough using a recipe from Baker Street. I 'graciously' let Y take all the goodies home, but not after sampling one of each. Or perhaps two.

Oh, remember my red velvet ice cream? Well, Y had some of that as well. It was so nice to be able to share and distribute some of the sugary hazards in this manner. It means that I don't have to eat everything I make!

Red velvet ice cream joy

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street. A culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week. If you wish to join Anuradha in her journey to brighten up Monday mornings across the globe, drop her a quick note and hop on aboard!

Lavender Granola Muffins with Apricots, Cranberries and Chocolate

Makes 12

Ingredients:

1 cup granola (for how to make your own, see below)

1/2 cup low-fat milk

1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped

1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons dried lavender buds, ground finely

2 large eggs

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt

1/4 cup canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup chocolate chips

Extra granola, for sprinkling

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/375ºF with a rack in the middle. Grease or line 12 muffin cups.

2. Combine the granola and milk in a bowl and let sit for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, soak the dried cranberries and apricots together in another bowl for 15 minutes. Drain and dry on paper towels.

3. Sift together whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, then add the ground lavender and stir to mix.

4. In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, honey, yogurt, canola oil and vanilla. Quickly whisk in the flour mixture, then fold in the granola and dried fruits until combined.

5. Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Sprinkle extra granola and chocolate chips on top.

6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until lightly browned and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then unmold and cool on a rack.

Homemade Plain Granola Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups organic rolled oats

1/4 cup flax seeds

2 tablespoons oat flour or brown rice flour

1/4 cup honey or maple syrup

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 150ºC/300ºF. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients (oats, seeds, flour) together.

2. In another bowl mix the honey/maple syrup, oil and vanilla extract together. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. The liquids will be absorbed and the granola will become darker and shinier.

3. Spread the granola in a shallow baking pan and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and stir the granola with a large spatula so that it does not over-brown on the bottom and edges. (Add dried fruits and nuts at this point if you wish).

4. Return the granola to the oven and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Remove the granola from the oven and let it cool on the baking sheet. Letting the granola cool on the baking sheet will retain the clumps. Granola will become crispier and crunchier as it cools. Once the granola has cooled, scrape it into a large bowl.

5. Store the granola in an airtight container and use within ten days. May be stored for longer periods in the refrigerator or freezer.

Desserts, Muffin, Lavender, Chocolate