Today, I...

..am friggen tired.

It's been a while since I slogged so much in the kitchen on a SUNDAY. It's SUNDAY, people should be relaxing, putting their feet up on a SUNDAY. But.. no.. somehow, inspired by some unknown factor, I set out and did all these things today:

Brunch: Ricotta Hotcakes

...followed by

Afternoon baking session of: Butterscotch banana cake

...followed by

Dinner: Lasagna (click here to see my dinner)

and to top it off. I blogged... not only once! but twice today(!)

Heck that's heaps more in one day than I have done in the 6 months!

What's wrong with me???? could I be sick?? *places palm on forehead*
No, I don't have a fever....

Perhaps.. it is a start of something... or could it be.. the return of...INSPIRATION?

A bit premature maybe... but... one can hope.. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Nevertheless, I am very proud of myself today. I made some thing old and some thing new. *nod nod*

Me old boss has been down with the cold/flu for the last few weeks now and the poor guy's a wreck. When I saw him last week he asked when I was baking for him again. I said "sure... How about Monday? Tell me what you feel like eating and I'll make it for ya."

After some deliberation, he said "Banana cake. I like banana cakes."

I said: "Ok. No problem boss. Banana cake it is."

Now here, lies my problem. I'm not a big fan of the 'nanas unless it was a deep fried and dripping with oil. (read: banana fritter) I've only baked something 'banana-y' once and it was a "Banana and oat muffin" that's in my blog archive somewhere. One of those, I made last year and should've been posted over a year ago but hasn't surfaced the blogosphere. (What to do? What to do?) One of my girl friends swears by the combination of bananas and blueberries. I've had the loaf that she bakes fairly often. It's not bad. But it's a bit sweet for my taste. I could ask her for the recipe...

But then I figured, if I was P and I've been hankering from some good old banana cake, I'm not sure I'd be very happy it was 'contaminated' with some blueberries, no matter how good they (the cake) are. I thought it was best to look for something a little more old fashion.

So I went and looked up friend google. Trolled through tons of recipes but found that most of them were a bit.. umm... lacking. I envisioned my banana cake to be.. caramelly, with a soft and moist texture, a little bit of nuts on the top and fragrant - banana fragrant that is.

Only one problem. I saw P on Friday, I said I'd deliver on Monday. 2 days is not enough to ripen the bananas to the ripe and sweet banana-y fragrant that I was after. (Read: London doesn't do (sell) ripe bananas at the shops.) There was no way I was going to get sweet ripen bananas and I was going to have to compensate it someHOW..

The HOW came in the form of this recipe.

Butterscotch Banana cake
adapted from this recipe here

Ingredients:

Butterscotch Bananas:
150g caster sugar
250g banana flesh, chopped into 2cm pieces
1 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
25ml water

Cake:
100g caster sugar
175ml sunflower oil (I used Rice Bran Oil instead)
2 large eggs
150g plain flour
75g spelt, rye or wholemeal flour (I used wholemeal flour)
2 level tsp mixed spice (I used all spice)
2 level tsp baking powder
½ level tsp bicarbonate of soda
50ml plain yoghurt

a handful of walnuts (optional)

Butterscotch bananas

1. Peel and cut bananas into 1 or 2 cm slices.
2. In a saucepan, bring to boil caster sugar and water.
3. Cook over high heat until the sugar turns to a dark/red caramel.
4. Add the bananas, butter and vanilla, and simmer until the bananas become soft, mushy and becomes a part of the caramel. The mixture should be thick now.
5. Remove from stove and set aside to cool.

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 180C (160C fan-forced oven)
2. Grease and line a loaf tin. Approx 20cm long.
   
3. In a mixing bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs until mixture is thick and airy.
4. Mix in the bananas and the yoghurt.
5. Sift the flours, spice, baking powder and soda together (two or three times)*
6. Fold flour into the banana mixture.
7. Pour into tin.
8. Top with chopped walnuts.
   
9. Bake for about 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

*The recipe suggests that the bran should be poured back into the flour mixture at the end the sift. I found out the hard way that this may or may not be a good idea. Depending on whether you like finding bits of wheat in your cake or not.

The verdict:
Soft, moist and slightly fragrant banana cake. Just how I imagined it to be. The butterscotch/caramel flavour makes up for the lack of fragrant as the bananas were not as ripe as I'd wanted them to be.
A traditional yet slightly special banana cake.
I might just grow to like this banana cake thing. =)

Some things never change...

...like my love for Ricotta Hotcakes, Bill's Ricotta Hotcakes to be specific.

The first time I made this was over 2 years ago. Pretty much, not long after I started this blog. Check out the before and after shots eh?

It was like, I found my first love.. all over again...... except this time it's with ricotta (cheese). Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but you know what I mean. The first time I tried ricotta cheese, I turned my nose up and bah humbugged it. It was a baked ricotta with cumin and some salt and pepper.. I think.

Of course, that was many moons ago, when I was none the wiser.

After the hotcakes discovery, I went ricotta mad for a bit:

• Ricotta on toast with honey
• Ricotta on toasted bagel
• Ricotta on toasted raisin bread
• Ricotta cheesecake
• Ricotta and spinach cannelloni
• Ricotta this,
• Ricotta that....

... I think you get the picture.

The last time these fluffy hotcakes lined my plates were over a year ago right, just before we left Melbourne for London. Ironically, it was only this week that I started craving for them again.

Ricotta Hotcakes

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups ricotta
3/4 cup milk
4 eggs separated
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
50g of butter

1. Combine ricotta, milk and egg yolks in a bowl (mix well).
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt until just combined.
3. Beat eggs white in another bowl until light and fluffy.
4. Combine flour mix and ricotta mix.
5. Fold in egg white into batter in two separate lots.
6. Heat some butter in the pan and place 2 tbsp of batter onto the pan.
7. Cook until the top of the mix starts to bubble and flip over gently.

*Should make about 8 or 9 hotcakes depending on the size.

Oh, in case you're wondering, that blob on top of the hotcakes is actually Honeycomb Butter topped with more Honeycomb. Extravagant... but overrated. The butter bit was nice but I'm not sure I like the honeycombs. They tasted kinda... waxy.. haha. Maybe.. it's just me... ;)

Luxembourg

The famous Stain glass window at Gare de Luxembourg

Luxembourg, better known to the locals as Grand Duche De Luxembourg is a small country snuggled in between 3 of Western Europe's famous countries: Belgium, Germany and France. It is the worlds sole remaining Grand Duchy - ruled by a Grand Duke. Luxembourg's population ranges in the half a million mark but every day at least 200,000 more people enter the country from the borders of Belgium, Germany and France on a daily basis for employment purposes. Most Luxembourg natives speak at least 3 languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, it's official language. Luxembourg is also....... .

Umm... Eh... what am I doing? It's starting to feel like I'm writing an essay on Luxembourg. Really...? What was I thinking? If you really want to know about Luxembourg, you should just do what everyone does, Google or Wiki it =)

Of course, I did that too... when I went there last November.. hehe.

Luxembourg was pretty much the first European country we visited after we arrived in London last year. Usually, one would be visiting one of it's more famous cities such as: Barcelona, Paris or Rome. But not moi, considering we hitched onto a trip that one of our friends organised, I don't think we're in any place to complain *grin*

So what did we do in Luxembourg? I won't bore you with the details but in short, we hitched on a walking tour, feasted at the xmas market tents, did a bit of window shopping and took one last stroll by ourselves on the Sunday before heading back to London.

Luxembourg Town Square

One of the many paths in Luxembourg's Old town.

Grund

Top - Bottom: Pont Adolphe and Rout Bréck (Grand Duchess Charlotte - Red Bridge)

From Top L-R: Statue of Grand Duchess Charlotte,
Giant Bell in the Notre Dame church compound,
Notre Dame Cathedral spires and a laneway in Luxembourg New Town.

Top to Bottom: Houses in a valley, Old house in Old Town,
Window with Xmas decoration.

Top L-R: Some photos during our walkabouts.



Schloss Erhaut Bruecke,

An old building in Old Town



Luxembourg Christmas Market



Christmassy decorations around town and at the Xmas Market.



Top to Bottom, L-R: Toy Soldiers, Candle Holders, Christmas Trees around town.



Top to Bottom: Children art and Artwork at the Luxembourg Centre for Arts



Puppets at the xmas market.

Raclette!

Candy!

Me!

More photos on Flickr.

WTSIM - Baked Raspberry and Nectarine (pan)cake

Oh hello there. I bet you're wondering which hole I just crawled out from? ;) I must be a very rare species to be coming out of hibernation so late in the northern hemisphere summer.

Please, allow me to introduce myself. I am from the 'lost my blogging mojo' species. Have you ever heard of us? We hide behinds our (notebook/pc) screens daily, pondering on what we should post on, while stalking everyone elses blog for inspiration. What do you mean you've never heard of us? You mean I'm the only one of a kind????? ........

Hmm.. it is rather pathetic isn't it? Can't believe it's been over 2 months since I blogged and I even missed my own blog anniversary - 2nd one too, I might add. My only saving grace is that I have been planning a big long post about what I've been up to. However, that isn't quite ready to be published yet. So you'll have to be content with this for now...

I also realised that I've not participated in any blog events since Menu for Hope, Peabody's House Warming Party and WTSIM back in November when I arrived in London. Not sure I could even call this a food blog anymore. :P

I think that it's only fair that my first post in a while be something that is food related. After all, it's been a freakin long time since any food related posts graced this blog. So, for now, please accept my humble offering of an adaptation from Bill Granger's latest cook book, Holiday.

Bill made a Baked Apple Cake by caramalising some apples with butter and brown sugar in a oven proof pan and then adding the batter onto the pan and baking the whole thing (fruit/cake/pan and all!) in the oven.

I didn't have any apples around but had some pretty ripe nectarines and threw in some rapsberries for a good measure. I also didn't have an oven proof pan so this went in an oven proof dish instead.

Baked Raspberry and Nectarine (pan)cake
adapted from Bill Granger's Holiday

Ingredients:

1 large knob of butter
2 tbsp of brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 nectarines, cut into 1/8th
1 punnet of raspberries
1 tbsp flour (for dusting)

3 eggs
3/4 cup of milk
3/4 cup of flour
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp of caster sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
2. Sift baking powder, salt and flour together into a large mixing bowl.
3. Add in the caster sugar.
4. Using a whisk, slowly mix in milk and one egg at a time until the mixture is just combined (do not over mix). Once combined. Set aside.
   
5. Melt butter and brown sugar in an oven proof pan.
6. Once butter is melted, add in the the nectarines and cook for approximately 5 minutes.
7. Add in 1/3 of the raspberries towards the end of the cooking time and turn off the flame.
8. Toss the remainder of the raspberries in the flour.
9. At this stage, if you are using an oven proof pan; scatter the remainder of the raspberries into the pan and pour the batter on top of the fruits. If using oven proof dish, transfer the nectarines and berries into the dish before pouring in the batter.
   
10. Bake in the oven for 15 - 20mins until set.
11. Serve with vanilla ice cream or for a breakfast/healthy option, serve with greek yoghurt drizzled with honey.
    

The verdict:

For various reasons, this didn't come out the way I thought it was going to/should taste:-

1. Perhaps the oven dish didn't conduct the heat as well, because I ended up having to increase the cooking time as the middle of the cake wasn't quite cooked.
   
2. I didn't have enough nectarines so it ended up being a bit on the tart side because of the raspberries.
   
3. At first it tasted almost pudding like, but later on the batter tasted like a thick gooey pancake - not very nice...
4. It looks heaps better than it tasted.
   

Overall, the berries and nectarines tasted really good and both fruit and cake went well with vanilla ice cream but I must admit I was a little disappointed. Bill's recipes are generally well liked (by this household) and usually turn out quite well so I am quite surprised at the outcome of this. I must try this again to make up for the disappointment....

perhaps.. the failure was just my own self justification for being out of practise in the kitchen.... ?

For a late entry to Waiter, there's something in my berries... this month hosted by the up and coming media star - Cooksister, Jeanne.

Hello World! I'm off again! & A Meme

Hello! You must be sick off hearing me apologise (again) for the lack of food related content here lately. We've had Alv's mum visiting the last two weeks (she leaves today) and with me playing tour guide and our weekend traveling, there has barely been anytime for me to bake let alone blog. I'm off to Salzburg today, I really should be sleeping since I'll need to be awake in less than 3 hours to catch the bus to Stanstead Airport for a 6:30am flight. I promise to be up and baking again next week and have some fruits of my baking on by the start of next week. For now, I will have to leave you with this meme that Cooksister, Jeanne tagged me for a few weeks ago.

Oh, before I forget, today's trip breakfast is Banana and Nut bread from Epicurious. I'll have to blog about that another day =) Meanwhile, the above photo are some daffodils photographed earlier in March on a stroll through St James Park in London.

Have a good weekend everyone :)


What were you doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago, I was repeating my final year of high school. *pause*

Ah Hah....I bet you thought I was a high school drop out!

Actually no, I don't think my parents would've let me live through til now if I had dropped out of high school. I had just finished high school in Malaysia at the end of '96, but since we emigrated to Australia straight after that, I had to start high school again (boo!). I was in the final year of completing my Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) which is an essential University entrance exam in Melbourne, Victoria.


What were you doing 1 year ago?

A year ago today, I was in Tokyo on the last leg of my whirlwind trip through Japan. For the 18 days that we were there, we crammed in visits to some of the top visitor attractions in Japan: Nara, Himeji, Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima, Osaka, Fukushima (just outside of Tokyo) and Tokyo. We savoured as much japanese cuisine we could and overdosed on onigiri because we could not get the little buggers back home. My only regret was that I didn't spend more time in Tokyo and we weren't able to fit in Kyuushu into our schedule. I suspect falling ill in Japan contributed the shortened schedule. We lost 2 days from me being sick in bed with some nasty flu. I was so sick (coughing repeatedly) that upon arriving back at Melbourne I went straight to the doctors who pronounced that I had picked up a chest and throat infection and placed me on the antibiotics straight away. Nevertheless, it was the best trip ever and with now being spring and all, I am reminded of the time we spent in Japan every time I see a tree blossoming, getting ready for summer. sigh.....


Five snacks you enjoy

1. Strawberries
2. Chocolate - especially truffles!
   
3. Potato chips/crisps
4. KFC chips & gravy
5. Magnum almond ice cream

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire

1. Buy a nice house with a nice and fully equipped kitchen for me :)
2. Renovate my mum's kitchen because she desperately needs a new one.
   
3. Buy a dishwasher - my current one (Alv) sucks!
   
4. Support the Australian Cancer Research Program and Oxfam. - It's easy to say that I want to support a charity and I'd like to think that my little yearly donation counts towards something but sometimes I do wish that I am little less selfish and careless with my spending and have a little more to give.
   
5. Invest the rest and go on a holiday every year with what I earn from the interest.

Five bad habits

1. "I'll do it later"
2. Snoozing for 40minutes.
3. Sleeping in the shower in the mornings - one of the main reasons why I am always late!
4. Over eating - I have a habit of finishing everything on my plate because I don't want it to go to waste. This always leads me to feeling sick after a meal because I've over stuffed my stomach.
   
5. Pretending to 'still' be asleep when Alv is trying to wake me up.
   

Five things you like doing

1. Sleeping. =)
   
2. Playing netball - I miss netball =(
3. Going on walks with my camera.
   
4. Cooking. (I like cooking more than baking)
   
5. Reading whilst listening to my favourite tunes on my ipod.
   

Five things you would never wear again

1. Bike shorts*
2. Mini skirts
3. 3/4 skinny jeans
4. Black tights with an oversized top - 80's flashdance style
5. White pants*
   

*because they make my butt look huuugee!





Five favorite toys

1. My Nikon D80
2. 2nd generation mini ipod
3. Asus W7 notebook
4. My Fossil watch
5. My Panasonic lumix DMC-LX2
   

And, finally, five bloggers to tag for this:

1. Kat, Our Adventures in Japan
   
2. Patricia, Technicolor Kitchen
3. Ellie, Kitchen Wench
4. Manggy, No Special Effects
5. Dhanggit, Dhanggit's Kitchen

I woke up to..

I opened my eyes this morning to large a storm of snow flakes peering through the venetian blinds in our bedroom. I was so shocked that I got out of bed and checked the time - it was only 8:30am and it was snowing. I quickly whipped out my camera and snapped a few shots and then went to our living area which faces a garden and stuck my head out the window for more shots. I sat by the window, completely mesmerised, taking in as much of the scenery as I could.

(a sudden drop in snow!)

(a little squirrel in the neighbour's backyard)

40 minutes later I found myself snuggling back into bed at 10 past 9 because the shock of seeing snow had dissipated and the drowsiness from waking up so early had crept up and taken over my body.

I'm just finishing off my breakfast by the window and I still can't believe it's snowing/ed. I was hoping it would snow all day but I doubt this will happen as the snow is starting to melt. (Golf) balls of snow drop are starting to drop off the branches. The snow storm stopped 1/2hr ago and the snow piles on the fence has all but disappeared.

I guess all good things must come to and end.

Incidentally, breakfast was Baked egg on toast and Greek Yoghurt with strawberries drizzled with honey. No egg on toast photo here as I had already scoffed it all before I decided to take a photo to share my experience.

(snowflakes)

A Service Interruption Announcement

Hello and Sorry for the lack of updates and unanswered comments. It's been 3 weeks since we moved into the new home and we're still without a phone line nor broadband for that matter - no home phone = no broadband since everyone's on adsl over here.

In the last 3 weeks I have been leeching internet wherever possible from friends - carrying my trustee laptop with me wherever/whenever I go over to someone's house and from the nice dude 2 floors down who offered and set us up with his wireless connection. Unfortunately, the problem with leeching is that you get access whenever the router was up and running or when you're at your friend's apartment. This has lead to a shorter presence in the www and I've not been able to actively visit all of my favourite blogs nor update this little blog.

I won't bore you to death with my frustration of trying to get a phone line activated in our apartment. To summarise, my frustration = "BT CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS" - except for the 2 kind ladies who work on the phones at BT who were my saviour when I was at the point of releasing a flowery splurge of message to the next person who would be at the receiving end of my phone call.

In the mean time, here are some of my favourite photos (from travels and miscellaneous things) to fill the emptiness....

A shiny new kitchen :)

I have a new kitchen! - and a new home :)

It's not much but it has a working oven and a decent size fridge (the grey thing peeking out from the bottom left corner). This will do nicely for the next 12 months. :)

I'm still under equipped compared to my previous place. We don't have any cutlery trays, so the utensils are every where and rattling about. I am still lacking a beater and food processor but I have a scale! Which means I can still make something :)

A new plant for a new home. A lovely and thoughtful gift from our friend Bonnie. Thanks Bonnie! :)

Muffin Madness 1 - A new travel ritual

It all started off innocently. We were all gathered around the dinner table one Friday evening having a great big whinge discussion over dinner about the 8am flight the next day to Luxembourg.

Me: "Oh crap! I haven't packed!"
B: "Hmm..We should sleep early tonight."
A: "What time are you waking up tomorrow?"
Me: "Who's going into the shower first?"
A: "What time is the cab coming?"
B: "Are we going to have time for breakfast?"

... were some of the questions that was flying around the dinner table.

Somehow or rather I arrived to a pathetic conclusion that we probably won't get fed until we arrive in Luxembourg.

A: "Not my problem, I don't eat breakfast."
B: "I don't need breakfast either, so I don't care."
Me: "But.. but.. I'm going to die.. and R is "difficult" when she's hungry!"
A & B: "You can wake up early and eat breakfast."
N: "Hehe, I'm not going, so have fun!"

Sigh. Some fine and caring friends I have huh? Knowing that my poor belly was not going to function very well on an empty stomach, I decided if I wanted breakfast then I would have to do something about it. Waking up at 4am was not an option, since I treasure my sleeping time the most out of everyone. There were no guarantees that anything would be opened at the airport at 7am in the morning, so breakfast on the run was the only way to go and the best breakfast on the run would have to be muffins.

To be honest, what I really wanted to make was cupcakes - I'm more of a cupcake girl than a muffin girl. But a cupcake for breakfast seems just a tad extravagant, especially with the frosting and all. So I settled for some blueberry muffins instead.

Blueberry Muffins
adapted from Simply Recipes

Ingredients:

3 cups of all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 Tbsp unsalted butter (1 1/4 stick), softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used greek honey yoghurt)
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 1/2 cups blueberries
1 Tbsp flour (if using defrosted frozen berries)

1. Adjust the oven rack to the middle-lower part of the oven.
   
2. Preheat oven to 190°C (375°F).
3. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
4. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.
   
5. Add in the eggs one at a time, beating until the eggs are well mixed.
   
6. Beat in the grated lemon peel.
7. At this point, you beat in the dry and wet ingredients in three batches. Firstly, beat in one third of the dry ingredients until just mixed through. Then, beat in one third of the yogurt also until just mixed through.
   
8. Follow with the remaining ingredients. Take care not to over beat it. Once the ingredients are mixed through, fold in the berries. (Note: If you are using frozen berries, defrost them first, drain the excess liquid, and then coat them in a light dusting of flour.)
9. Use a standard 12-muffin muffin pan. If not using muffin liners, grease muffin tins with a little bit of olive oil or melted butter.
   
10. Distribute the muffin dough equally among the cups.
    
11. Bake until muffins are golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Test with a long toothpick to make sure the center of the muffins are cooked through.
    
12. Allow to cool slightly before remove muffins from the tin. Serve slightly warm.

Note:

You'll notice from the instructions that this recipe uses a beater all the way from beating the butter through to mixing the dry and wet ingredients. It seems strange at the start as we all know you're suppose to just fold in the ingredients not beat them through with a beater as over beating would cause the muffins to be dense.

I've actually used this recipe twice, once beating the ingredients in with the beater and once folding it through with a spatula. I didn't notice much difference in the texture of the muffin whether folding and/or beating the ingredients in. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I was using the lowest speed on the beater so as not to over beat the muffin mix.


The verdict:

These were the best blueberry muffins I have ever had. As I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of muffins. My dislike for muffins stems from the fact that they're usually either too dense in texture, too sweet or too dry and they always leaves me with a heavy stomach after every meal. But these muffins are most certainly different! They are deliciously moist, light and fluffy! I discovered this recipe at Elise's blog, Simply Recipes. She has the best collection of muffin recipes ever. I've tried three of them so far and they all got the thumbs up from me!

So what does the muffin have to do with my travel ritual? Well, it all started with this blueberry muffin breakfast on our first trip out of London to Luxembourg. Ever since then, I've made a point of making us an afternoon tea snack for Friday evening departure (trips) and breakfast for all of our early morning flights. It's an effective way of keeping my stomach happy since I almost always suffer from indigestions due to irregular eating times particularly when we're flying out after work on a Friday night or first thing in the morning on a Saturday to make the most of the weekend.

I'm off again this weekend, this time to Krakow. I haven't quite worked out what I'll be making just yet, but you can be sure that I'll be sharing it with you..... when I get around to it ;)

Breakfast on Shrove Tuesday

A little treat on Shrove Tuesday.

Ingredients:

1 batch of crepe batter (I used this recipe)
3 strawberries, halved
1 plum, halved
2 tbsp light brown sugar
1/4 lemon
(extra lemon wedges for serving)

1. Make crepes as per recipe.
2. Place brown sugar onto the pan and squeeze in lemon juice.
3. Do not stir, allow sugar to start caramelising before placing plums face down onto the pan.
4. Let it cook for about 5mins before adding in the strawberries (also face down).
5. Allow strawberries to cook for about 2mins, then remove from pan and serve.

Optional: serve with a dusting of icing sugar.

Happy Pancake Day :)