2006 in review

June

My first venture into food blogging, after salivating over the many food blogs out there occured on a Friday night when I was at home and bored silly. The first food related post was about the Matcha sponge cake Hoi and I made at her place, our attempt at immitating the Matcha Opera Cake made by Keiko (Nordljus) and Hoi's Baked Lemon Slice.

It was then followed by some Jaffa Crepes we made at Queenie's house following the lovely dinner made by Mrs Chan for us.

Third was a quick soba dinner idea for Ali and Ange and we closed off the month of June with a big dinner 'when the cat's away, the mice comes out to play' dinner at FLim's when his parents and Alv's Mum went on another overseas escapade.

July

July became a very 'Bill' month almost 3/4 of the posts were reincarnations of Bill Granger recipes. We kicked off July with some Garlic Prawns w/ Linguine that I adapted from Bill Granger's Garlic Prawn recipe in Bill's Food. Then disaster followed as I misread Cayenne Pepper for Cajun and emptied the bottle onto some chicken tenderloins that was to be my favourite Caesar salad. After that disaster, I dug into some home made club sandwich and pondered where I could find the best club sandwich in Melbourne.

A saturday afternoon saw me playing with Matcha and Chocolate again as I made some matcha and chocolate butter cookies. The following monday, my housemate was out for dinner (she's not a big prawn eater - unless you count lobster as a prawn) so I was able to try out Bill's Seafood stew.. a tomato stew with loads of prawns, mussels and scallops in it and a taste of Bill's famous Ricotta hotcakes. Then a follow up of Bill's Ricotta Hotcakes with some left over batter, Vanilla ice cream and Jeanne's chocolate sauce.. (mmmm.. heavenly dessert..) and a moroccan filo parcel appetiser to round up July.

August

Incidentally, I participated in my first blogging event in August. Up til then, I had been salivating over other bloggers Took me two months to work out the courage to do so but it wasn't too bad of an experience. Eomeote #17 was hard headline to come up with.

Friend Wendy left us for NY in August, and as a farewell we had a small dinner party for 3 at Alv's when he went skiing in Hotham. Dinner for Wendy was a bit of a challenge for me as I had never cooked for a vegetarian before, especially not one as strict as W. But all was good, I made it up with dessert.

That was followed by a small blog makeover and a semi lemon tart disaster that started a long list of terrible meals that ensued. A quick visit to a new organic store in the nearby shopping centre saw me leaving with some lovely spices to experiment with whilst the boy goes off on another skiing escapade.

We had an earlish spring this year, everything in the front and backyard bloomed in late August. I woke up early one Sunday morning and went out to the yard with my little Nikon and snapped to my little hearts content. (blistfully unaware that my housemate snuck a little giant guess in the house the night before LOL)

Breakfast out in trendy Elwood on a nice sunny sunday rounded up the posts for August.


September

Come September, Little Bethany turned a big '1' year old and we had a big bash with loads of yummy food from Great Gran's cherry slices, Aunty Rachel little cupcakes (and cupcake birthday cake) and a fruit tart (from me) and lots of cool pressies.

September was the month I went pistachio "nuts" with pistachio cookies and pistachio cupcakes galore and I came out of my little shell, went all out and participated in 4 food blogging events! Blogging by Mail 2, Hey Hey it's Donna Day 5, Blog Party 14 and Sugar High Friday 23.

Must've been the nuts. ;)

Towards the end of September we took a short weekend trip to Sydney and friend Ali came back from London for her brother's wedding. With the holiday and her return, that last week of september saw us doing so much together that I didn't get around to posting them until october came around.

October

Started off october with another entry to HHDD and a lovely package from Clivia of Clivia's Cuisine via BBM2. I got a taste of Sweden in the lingonberry and cloudberry jams and swedish candy that she sent me as well as a very informative book on stockholm and some dala horse sourviettes.

October was also the month of the impending wedding of my dear friend Mel. With loads of wedding related activities such as hen's weekend at Ocean Grove and Kitchen Tea, I only managed to sneak in a bit of cooking at the Hen's weekend, a bit of petit fours for SHF24 and a cake for my mum's birthday before the wedding. (plus a gastro bug a week before the wedding)


November

Mel's wedding was the most perfect wedding day I have ever experienced/attended. With that well and truly over and Mel lapping up the sun in Vanuatu, I finally found the time for a bit of rest before the crazy end of the year christmas rush began at work. I spent some time playing with chocolate and came up with some Matcha truffles for SHF25, cooked up a farewell dinner at my rental place (I left the rent paying world and moved into the free-loader world) and experienced another oven semi-disaster.

After that, being the good girl friend that I am *wink*, I whipped up some raspberry semi-freddo and a black forest cheesecake for Alv's birthday.

I also managed to make a blueberry vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting that is still parked in my draft folder. It was a little tea cake that I whipped up for a lunch at friend Bec's house before we scooted off to watch her partner kick some butt at inline hockey.

December

Christmas rush at work began, and I barely had time to do any christmas baking until the last weekend before work finished. Cooked up a christmas lunch for the family-to-be (when the time comes) and baked some pistachio cookies that was going in as part of my christmas gift package this year.

Also whipped up some Lime and Honey chocolate truffles that weekend and when I finished work on Dec 20, whipped up some almond bread, chocolate pistachio biscottis and tried my hand at making pistachio brittles.

Alv's mum jetted off to Singapore and left us to fend for ourselves again on christmas day. Fend for ourselves we did as a few our friends joined us for christmas dinner and the rest all rocked up for dessert.

December also saw Menu for Hope 3 raising an amazing US$60,000 in donations for the UN World Food Program.

Last but not least, who can forget New Year's Eve? LOL It's a quiet one this year, a small bbq and the companionship of a Nintendo Wii was how we spent ours.

Hope yours was more exciting than that :)

Happy New Year!

May 2007 be a year full of promises, good fortunes and good food for all of us!

Ed: hmm.. just realised I messed up the photos a bit. November and December related ones especially.

Christmas Baking - Part 2

In the time that I had between finishing work for the year and christmas, I manage to do a bit more baking. My colleague Julie has been trying to get me to try this Almond Bread recipe of hers for months now. Ever since we had a conversation of almond bread vs biscotti.

I have to admit that it's a pretty simple and fool proof recipe. Although, if you're me, you'd probably stuff it up by not reading the 'entire' recipe properly! Somehow, I manage to overlook the most important aspect of this recipe which was that 'a non-fan forced oven' should be used for this recipe. Would you believe I even drew stars and marked a big square over the temperature note to highlight the point and still missed it?! Sigh..

Another reason I took so long before attempting this recipe was because my old oven at the rental place did not come with an option to turn off the fan force functionality.

Anyway, I have no way of knowing whether I manage to get the right texture for this almond bread since I forgot to turn off the fan force feature. But suffice to say that it was nice and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and wasn't too sweet. Which I think almond bread is meant to taste like.. at least from what I remembered of the ones I purchased anyway. I also recalled that they were a bit crispier, so I sliced up the bread, halved them in size and baked it in the oven at about 100 deg C for about 8mins on each side, so they ended up being a bit crispy and browned.

Jules's Almond Bread

6 egg whites
1 pinch of cream of tartar
230g caster sugar
200g plain flour, sifted
230g unblanched almonds

Preheat oven (non fan forced) at 170 deg C. Beat eggs and cream of tartar until soft peaks. Slowly add in sugar and beat until firm peaks and mixture becomes glossy. Fold in sifted flour and almonds. (Do not over beat) Pour into a greased and floured tin and bake for 40mins.

Remove bread from tin, let it cool, wrap it up in foil and store away in a cool, dry place for about 1 week or 2 (I'm not sure why, I think it's to do with drying it so that it's easier to slice) before slicing it up and rebaking the slices in the oven for 10 mins at 100 deg C.

Ed: Today (2.1.07) I showed Jules and she told me that I had potential. My bread was well formed and it looked like the way it's suppose to be. Although she neglected to mention that I was suppose to wrap it up in foil and store for about 1 week before slicing it up and putting it back in the oven for 10mins to crispen it up a bit. So I kinda got the right idea.

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After reading Ellie's peanut brittle post, I was dying for some brittle! I searched high and low at all the supermarkets and speciality stores at the nearby shopping centre but couldn't for the life of me find a place that sold light corn syrup. Arghh.. it was so frustrating! Reading Ellie's post had reminded me of the pistachio brittle from The Last Course and not being able to find the key ingredient drove me absolutely nuts. Fortunately Ellie was kind enough to tell me the name of the store she found that sold light corn syrup. Though by the time I got around to purchasing it, my crazy craving had almost disappeared. (Funny what work does to you!)

I have to say making brittle of any sorts is hard work! I don't know how you did it Ellie, but you sure did it well. I made two batches of these brittle and sweated heaps over the step where I had to spread it onto the baking tray. It took massive amounts of effort to spread the mixture evenly and half way through the process the sugar started to harden and struggle against my every efforts to spread it through the baking sheet. It became so stubborn, lumpy and uneven that I almost gave up on it. Breaking them to pieces when they were done though was a piece of cake (and mess with brittle flying everywhere!)... lol. Nevertheless, these babies are delicious. Caramelly, sugary and sweet pistachios..mmm I have enough to last me through another two cravings attack :D

Pistachio-nut Brittle
*From Claudia Fleming's The Last Course. p142
*Please note: The Last Course ingredients are written in imperial measurements form, so my conversions may not be entirely accurate

1 + 1/2 cup shelled pistachio nuts
1 + 1/3 cup of sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 + 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to approx 177 deg C (350 F). Spread nuts out in one layer on a baking sheet and bake them for about 10mins until golden brown. Remove from oven and cool

Butter a baking sheet or line it with a non stick liner. Grease a spatula and set aside.

In a large, heavy saucepan, combine sugar, water, corn syrup and butter. Cook over medium heat, stirring at first to dissolve the sugar and then leave until mixture is light caramel colour. This should take about 12mins or if you have a candy thermometer, when the temperature reaches 160 deg C. Remove saucepan from heat and whisk in baking soda, salt and nuts.

Work very quickly and spread the mixture with the buttered spatula onto the baking sheet. Be extra careful as the mixture will be very hot. Let brittle cool completely and break it into pieces.

Notes:
A candy thermometer would really help but is not essential.

Ellie has a good tip for the 'spreading' step on her blog. She recommends heating up a silicon baking mat in the oven and spreading the mixture over it. I didn't have a baking tray that was big enough to fit my silicon mat, nor was I willing to cut up my silicon mat for this purpose. But it's something I would probably try next time when I find a smaller silicon baking mat.

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Last but not least, is another of my Claudia Fleming favourites, Chocolate Biscotti with Pistachios and Sour Cherries. I had intended to make a small batch of these as Christmas nibbles, but was only left with half when I was done because Alv's Mum's friends ate about 1/4 of it whilst they were here playing mahjong and his Mum took another 1/2 home for her friend in Singapore.

Humph.. well I always knew they were popular but I didn't think that I would have to ration them over christmas!


Chocolate Biscotti w/ Pistachios and Sour Cherries
*From Claudia Fleming's The Last Course. p. 227
*Please note: The Last Course ingredients are written in imperial measurements form, so my conversions may not be entirely accurate

1 cup dried sour cherries
2 cup shelled pistachio nuts
1 + 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 + 3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
3 large eggs
4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 + 1/4 tbsp coffee extract
1 + 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
220g (7 1/2 oz) extra-bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks

Cover cherries in a saucepan with water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Once the water is simmering, turn off the heat and let it cool. Drain the cherries and set aside.

Preheat oven to 165 deg C (325 deg F*) and toast the pistachio nuts in the oven until fragrant and lightly golden around the edges (may take about 5 - 7mins). Remove from oven and cool.

In an electric mixer (with a paddle attachment) mix flour, sugars, cocoa, salt and baking soda on low speed. Add eggs one at a time and mix well before adding the next egg. Then add butter and the extracts and mix well to combine. Finally stir in the pistachios, chocolate and cherries and let the dough rest for 5mins.

Wet hands and divide dough into two logs (or more) each approximately 5cm (2inches) in diameter. Place each log on a lined baking tray and bake for 30mins until firm. Remove from oven and let it cool.

Reduce oven temperature to 95 deg C (200 deg F). Using a serrated knife, slice each log into 1/4 inch thick slices. Arrange biscotti on lined baking tray and dry them in the oven until firm and crisp. This may take 1 hr to 1 1/2 hrs. Remove from oven and transfer onto wire rack to cool.

Makes about 5 dozen.


My biscotti ended up being fairly large, so I sliced them in halves so that they would fit into my containers.

These biscotti tastes absolutely deliciously chocolately. I love the combination of chocolate biscuit, chunks of chocolate, tart sour cherries and bits of pistachios littered thorough the biscotti. Make no mistake, this biscotti is rich and absolutely moreish. I just love how the tartness of the sour cherries would occasionally cut through the rich chocolate taste whilst the pistachios just gives it a nutty texture and flavour.