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.

I'm Back & (Egg Free) Blueberry Bread

Tadaima modorimashita! (literally: I'm back and have returned)

I'm back, alive and kicking! (well..maybe not the kicking bit) Apologies for the long hiatus, but as you may know I was previously in Malaysia and Singapore. From Singapore I jetted off to Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun. I was in Japan for 2.5 weeks and just came back to Melbourne last Friday.

So you're probably wondering.. "what took you so long to get back into blogging?"

Well.. I spent the first 2 days sleeping off the jetlag from Tokyo to Melbourne. I know the distance from Tokyo to Melbourne isn't that far, but I'm kinda pathetic when it comes to flying. In the 1 day that it took to get home from Tokyo (because Singapore Airlines has no direct flight to Melbourne!!), I barely slept more than 3 hours. So pathetic little me needed at least 2 days of full on zzz's to recover. I can only blame the rest of the 3 days before I got back to work to my lack of motivation to do anything but lying in bed and catching up on all the animes that I missed whilst I was away.

Anyway, I won't bore you with the details.. just yet. I did manage to get up to some mischief since I came back. But before that, here's something I prepared earlier...

A colleague at work celebrated her 30th Birthday at work a few days before I left for my holidays. Kathy (my manager) who is good friends with Anita (the birthday girl) asked if I wanted to bring something to the little 30th birthday morning tea party. I said "sure why not.."

My friend Michelle, who works in the same team as Anita is currently watching her food intake as her little baby Mikaela is allergic to a few things. Since Michelle is still breast feeding, whatever she consumes will be passed on to Mikaela. One of the things Mikaela has an allergy to is eggs. Kathy had already said that she would be bringing her faboulous flourless chocolate cake (think of a big double chocolate friand) which I knew contains lots and lots of eggs. I didn't want Michelle to miss out on morning tea, so I decided that I would bring something that was egg free.

Friend Google found me this faboulous and easy recipe, courtesy of Amazon's free book content preview.

Egg free Blueberry Bread

*Adapted from Bakin' without eggs by Rosemary Emro

Ingredients:
3 cups of plain flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup castor sugar
1 1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp lime peel
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 cup blueberries (frozen not thawed)
1 tbsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
2. Grease a loaf tin with butter
3. In a large bowl with wooden spoon, mix flour, sugar, milk, lemon juice, baking powder, baking soda, an lemon peel, vanilla extract.
4. In a ziplock bag, toss together blueberries and the 1tbsp of flour.*
5. Fold into batter and spoon batter into pre-greased loaf pan.
6. Bake in the oven for 45 - 50mins until skewer comes out clean.
7. Remove from oven, cool for 10mins before removing it from pan.

*Mixing the berries with flour ensures that the berries will not sink to the bottom of the tin during baking.

Notes:
The recipe initially called for lemon juice and lemon peel. But I didn't have any lemons in the fridge, so I subtituted them for lime.
I also substituted part of the caster sugar for brown sugar. I was hoping that it would make the taste of the loaf a bit more caramelly.

Verdict:
The loaf was a big hit! It's so easy to make and I must say the lime peel gave the bread a very refreshing taste. It was a tad sweet for me, so I would probably reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe the next time I make this.

I am also glad that I decided that substitute part of the caster sugar content for brown sugar. It made the bread a bit more moist and gave it a caramelly flavour. In fact, I am considering leaving out the caster sugar all together and just go with the brown sugar idea.

Oh and Michelle, she loved it! Took some home for her husband too. :)

To Melly, With Love

This is my dear friend Mel. A week and a half ago Melly walked down the aisle and became Mrs W. Damn, I can't call her Mrs W, she's younger than me! As I write this, she's enjoying (I hope) her two week honeymoon in Vanuatu.

Young Mel and I have been friends for almost 10 years now. You wouldn't guess where we first met.... Route 57 West Maribyrnong/City Tram! LOL Is this starting to sound like a love story or what? Mel and I used to live down the road from each other, she on the Flemington side of Racecourse Road and me on the Kensington side of Racecourse Road.

St Aloysius (Girl's) College was where Mel went to and where her mum Cathy was educated too; and I joined St Al's (as we call it) in 1997 when I migrated to Melbourne from Malaysia. Route 57 was the tram that we travelled on to school everyday.

Mel's house was located on a street that was between two tram stops and for some reason or other she used to board the tram from the stop before mine and her elder brother Ant would board the tram from tram stop where I would get on the tram. We used to joke that it was: (a) so that his friends wouldn't know that she was his little sister and (b) so that the girls from our school (lots of girls from our school on the same tram) wouldn't know that she was his little sister because all the girls would sneak peeks at him when he'd get on the tram, for you see big Ant was a probably the cutest boy on the tram. (Tall, fair and handsome LOL)

Anyway, Mel would get on the tram from the stop before and stand at the front of the tram behind the driver so when I get on the tram the first person I would see is her. Since we both had the same school uniform on, we'd smile and say hi to each other every morning. Me, being a newbie, would move into the middle of the tram because "that's what the tram conductor says to do" so that people from the following stops could get on the tram easily and proceed to the next stop in time.

One day, the tram arrived late (probably because the previous tram broke down), packed like a sardine can and Mel and I ended up standing next to each other at the front of the tram, behind the tram driver. We said our regular hi's and somehow or rather started chatting and I found out that she was in the same year as I was but in a different home room. We discovered that we both share a passion for netball and sports and that we literally lived 5mins from each other. To cut a long story short, from that day onward we became friends and Mel started catching the tram from 'my' tram stop.

Then one day I told Mel about the cute guy who always catches the tram from our stop but he'd be on the tram before us, she was curious and wanted to see the cute guy too so we arranged to meet up earlier so that we could 'check out' the cute guy that I was talking about. That was when things went downhill...When the cute guy turned up, Mel couldn't stop laughing! (I thought she was going mad) She went over, said "hi" and gave him a peck on the cheeks. I was like totally shocked! There I was trying to comprehend the situation, my brain struggled in that 1 long minute to understand: 1) Why was Mel laughing so hard, 2) she kissed him!!!???!! I was like, OMG this girl's got guts!

It turned out that the cute guy was her brother Anthony who was in the year above us. I was like OMG.. need a place to hide! LOL. We had a good laugh about it though. There I was thinking Mel's got guts and turns out it's her brother. Could've fooled me! and she did!

We both graduated Year 12 in 1998 and sort of went separate ways for a little while as I enrolled in Monash University in Clayton and she went to Victoria University in Footscray, a bit closer to home. It was our passion for sports that brought us back together when she invited me to play basketball with her family friends and later on we played netball together and still did until earlier this year when we both injured ourselves (and her Mum banned us from netball until after the wedding!).

Anyway, Mel is a very dear friend (and like a little sister) to me and I felt very priviledge that she thought the same of me when she asked me to be her Maid of Honour at her wedding (that occured a few weeks ago). ... By now you're probably wondering.. so what does this have to do with food? ;) This is how it's related:

For Mel's hen's party celebrations, we arranged for a weekend away at her parent's holiday house in Ocean Grove, VIC. The party was to start on Friday night with cocktail party, nibbles and lots of Singstar and to finish up with some Mini Golf and Dinner on the Saturday night. In the weeks leading up to the hen's weekend, Mel became very unsettled and stressed (as all brides would/might?) so I decided to make a little change to our Friday plans by ditching the nibbles and arranging an intimate dinner for those of us who started the celebration that day. I had the day off work on the Friday to go up earlier with Cathy so that we could decorate the place and get some food and drinks before Mel and her friends arrived; Mel was to drive down after work (about 1 1/2hrs drive from the city).

I figured, if I was Mel, and I was driving down after work, the last thing I would want to do is sit around eat nibbles and drink cocktails/champagne. So I decided that I would cook the 6 of us a nice 3 course meal and I was sure that we'd all appreciate that more than nibbles after a long day of work. In my books, a good solid meal is always better than lots of nibbles when you're exhausted.

As I know Mel was on a semi restricted diet due to 'have to fit into wedding dress' syndrome* and I was looking out for myself too, having not exercised for months because of the foot injury; I decided to go with something low fat and healthy and made the following:

Entree:
Kathy's Chicken Meatballs w/ Mango Chutney and Redcurrant Sauce

Main:
Baked Fish w/ Herbs, Grape Tomatoes and Parmesan Cheese
sides: Baked potato stack and brocollini

Dessert:
Roasted Strawberries Meringues

Kathy's Chicken Meatballs, so called because I first tasted these meat balls when one of my bosses Kathy made them as part of a farewell maternity leave party we held for one of our colleagues at work. These meatballs are superb! The ingredients are fairly simple and not too fancy yet they pack a great punch served with the mango chutney and red currant sauce. Spicy (because of the spices), sweet, tangy and juicy all together. The capsicum and lettuce was my touch as I wanted to serve them in lettuce cups - Sang Choy Bao style but since we didn't want to waste food unnecesarily^, I decided to just serve the meatballs on a slice of lettuce for a touch of green.

^Cathy (Mel's mum) told me not to get another lettuce because she was already getting some for the bbq lunch the next day.

Kathy's Chicken Meatballs w/ Spicy Sauce

Ingredients:
500 – 750 g minced chicken
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 small onion
1 small can water chestnuts
¼ cup chopped fresh coriander leaves
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 egg
2 teaspoons sweet chili sauce
½ teaspoon cumin )
½ teaspoon ground coriander) optional use any spices to your own taste
Salt & Pepper
Oil for frying

Using a food processor or stick blender process onion, water chestnut and coriander until roughly chopped. Put minced chicken, breadcrumbs, onion mixture sauce and spices in a bowl and add beaten egg. Mix for about 3 minutes until mixture comes together then form into small balls. Heat oil in pan then fry balls until golden. Remove from pan and drain on paper towel.

Sauce:
½ cup sweet mango chutney
½ cup red currant jelly
Juice of small lemon (use ½ then add to taste)
small red capsicum (or yellow) diced.

In frying pan heat chutney, red currant jelly and lemon juice and mix together. Add in diced capsicum. Place meatballs in sauce over a low heat and shake pan to cover in the sauce. This takes about 5 minutes to heat the meatballs through (may be heated from frozen but allow more time)

This dish, I came up with by combining Tobie Puttock's Roasted Milk Potatoes and a baked fish variation from one of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks. I can't remember which now. At first, I was a bit skeptical about how the parmesan cheese would go with the fish, but surprisingly they go really well together! I think it might have been the sharpness taste in the parmesan cheese that actually gave the fish a bit of more flavour since it was only seasoned with olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper. And we all know how well cheese and tomatoes go together :)

Apologies in advance for the sketchy instructions because I kinda just made it up and went with whatever I remembered.

Baked Basa Fillets w/ Grape tomatoes and Parmesan Cheese

Ingredients:

Basa fish fillets (or you could use any white fish fillets)
1 punnet Grape tomatoes or Cherry tomatoes
Parsley, chopped
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
Parmesan cheese (to your taste)
Garlic, finely chopped

Lay fillets in a large baking tray and season with garlic, olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper. Ensure that the fillets are well coated with seasoning. Slice tomatoes in halves and drizzle a bit of olive oil onto the tomatoes and mix well before scattering them onto the fillets. Bake for about 12-15mins (ensure that the fillet is cooked) and grate parmesan cheese onto the top of each fillet (amount to your preference) and grill under the griller until cheese melts and then serve.

Note: Cooking time may vary depending on the type of fish used and if your fish is not well thawed it might take a bit longer than 10 -1 5mins. My problem is that my fish was still quite frozen and I actually had to cook it for a while longer than 15mins.

Roasted Potatoes with milk

Ingredients:
Potatoes
Rosemary
Salt and Pepper
Milk (enough to cover the potatoes)

Wash, peel (optional) and slice potatoes into 0.5cm thin slices. Place potatoes in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper and rosemary and toss well to combine. Fill bowl with enough milk to cover all the potatoes and leave aside for about 30mins.

Preheat oven to 180 C. Arrange potato slices onto a baking tray lined with baking paper or an oiled tray (which ever is your preference) and bake until potatoes are crispy. I think it took about 15mins or so.

I decided to stack my potatoes into a small stack and served the fish with some blanch some brocollini, drizzled with the pan juices from baked fish.

Donna Hay lovers would recognise this recipe! It's from the current edition of DH Magazine. Roasted Strawberries meringues. I have never made meringues before and was a bit nervous about it but they looked so pretty in the magazine, I just couldn't resist! I premade the meringues the night before we left of course :)

Roasted Strawberries Meringues served with a dollop of cream and roasted strawberries, drizzled with left over syrup.

Ingredients:

150ml egg whites (approx 4 eggs)
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1 1/4 cup thick (double) cream to serve

Preheat oven to 120 C. Beat egg whites in with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Gradually add the sugar and vinegar and beat until the mixture is thick and glossy. Place spoonfuls of mixture onto baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper. Make a small dent on the centre of the meringues to creat a nest and bake them for 25minutes or until the meringues are crisp on the outside. Turn off the oven and allow the meringues to cool in the oven for 30mins.

Roasted Strawberries
16 strawberries, hulled and halved
1/3 cup caster sugar

Preheat oven to 200 C. Place strawberries in a small baking dish and sprinkle with caster sugar. Roast for approximately 10 - 15mins or until strawberries are soft and syruppy. Remove and set aside.

To serve, simply spoon strawberries into the centre of each meringue and top with cream.

Makes about 30 - 35 meringues.

I kinda played a bit with the left over syrup from the roasted strawberries, somehow got the idea to make these semi circles on the plate. I thought it was pretty cool. :)

So we spent the rest of the night boozing on Midori splices and some funny cocktails that the other girls concocted, the three girls from Mel's work got absolutely smashed and was outta batteries the next day when we went mini-golfing. We had dinner at a restaurant in Ocean Grove called 13 Steps. Nothing to blog about there. I was so disappointed with my order I didn't bother taking photos of it. But we had a fabulous weekend nonetheless.

I was wrecked from the weekend, but nevertheless, nothing gives me pleasure more than cooking for a friend and Mel is more than just a friend.. who deserves a little spoiling every now and then :)

*The dressmaker told Mel that the dress would fit better if 'they worked together' and she lost a bit around the waist, rather than get the bigger size and alter it to fit her.

Dreaming of a new oven, friands and SHF23

Friands: Raspberry surprise and Green tea Chocolate surprise

I dream of an oven.
An oven that does not turn off whilst in the middle of cooking;
One oven that does not have faulty seals that tampers with the circulation of hot air in the oven;
One that when you turn the temperature knob to 180 deg C will heat the oven at 180 deg, not 200 deg;
An oven with a working display screen;
And an oven light that will allow you to watch over the little goodies in the oven, as they bake.
I dream of the day that I can remove the hanging oven thermometer that I purchased for the oven..
I dream of the day my goodies will turn out well browned in all places, not just in patches where a large pocket of hot air lies..
I dream of an oven..

Ok, so that dream hasn't come through yet. But that doesn't stop me from fantasizing about it. :)

I have access to two ovens. One at the rental place that I'm currently living at (with my number one piggy/taste tester: the Housemate) and one at the boy's place. The oven at our place (being me and the Housemate) is an ancient electric wall oven with: non working display, an oven light that is broken and unreplaceable (not irreplaceable because the heat's in the oven probably permanently welded the light into its socket) and door seals that are way overdue for replacement. If you stand close enough to the oven, you could probably feel the heat eminating from the loose seals on the oven door. When I make roast veges in the oven, you could see see the moisture building up at the top of oven where the door meets the oven and steam rising through the gaps. LOL It's hilarious!

The second oven, is a gas oven. Yes, the notorious gas oven that turned off on me in the middle of my lemon tart and when I was baking the green tea butter cookies. It's clean, white, about 10 years old, the lights are working and it's almost perfect, except for the fact that the fire turns off whenever it feels like it. Oh and did I mention that the timer on the oven is faulty.

I am plagued by bad ovens. I can't wait til the day I own my own home with the kitchen of my dreams. I digress!

Friands also known as Financiers, are a type of French tea cakes similar to Madeleines. Spongey in texture, the difference between the two is that Friands contain almond meal (or almond flour). My friand experience was from my colleague Jules (whom I always share my goodies with and vice versa), who made them for her children. She made a double chocolate friand, in which she used cocoa powder and chocolate pieces in the friand to double the taste and texture. It is from this that I drew my inspiration for these friands.

I've been scouring the internet for friand recipes and have come across a few different ones. Most of them have your basic ingredient "beurre noisette" (brown butter), egg whites, almond meal (almond flour), vanilla extract and some flour, but all in different quantities. I have chosen to try two of the ones I've found to see the effect of difference quantity of egg white, almond meal and beurre noisette makes to the tastebuds.

Raspberry Surprise

So called because of the "raspberry surprise" inside.

This is an adaptation of the Strawberry Friand that jenjen from Milk & Cookies.

Ingredients:
2/3 cup unsalted butter
½ cup all purpose flour
1 cup almond meal or almond flour
1½ cups icing sugar
¼ tsp salt
6 large egg whites, lightly beaten
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Melt butter in a saucepan and simmer over medium heat until browned, be careful not to burn the butter. Set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 200°C.

In a bowl, combine flour, almond meal, icing sugar and salt. Fold in the lightly beaten egg whites and then add the vanilla and browned butter. Mix well.


To the recipe, I added Raspberry Coulis (frozen)

? Frozen Raspberries
1 Tbsp Lime Juice*
1.5 Tbsp of Caster Sugar

Melt frozen raspberries, lime juice and sugar in a saucepan. Cool mixture and place into ice cubes mould and freeze.
*I used Lime juice because I had 1/2 a lime lying around but you could substitute it for lemon.

Freeze a small bowl or plate in the freezer before you remove the frozen raspberries to prevent them from melting too quickly.

Half fill friand moulds, drop a cube of raspberries and top it up with more friand batter. Fill it up to about 1cm before the top and tap/knock the mould a little bit to remove any trapped air in the pan.

Bake friands for 10 - 12mins at 200 deg C. Remove from oven and cool.

Note: If you're like me and do your baking at night during the weekdays, be sure to remove the friands from the moulds before you nick of to bed! Or you'll have a nice handful removing it the next day. :(

Makes about 6 friands.

The verdict: The friands from this recipe was delicious! Moist, spongey and not to sweet at all. The raspberry surprise added a lovely blend of sweet and sour taste to the friands. Best raspberry friand I've ever had, and I'm not a big fan of raspberry either.


Green Tea Chocolate Surprise friand

For this friand, I adapted the Financiers Recipe form Joy of Baking

Ingredients:
1/3 cup (5 tablespoons) (85 grams) beurre noisette (will need 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter)
1/4 cup (35 grams) all purpose flour
1/2 cup (50 grams) almond flour (meal) or ground blanched almonds
3/4 cup (90 grams) confectioners' (powdered or icing) sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tbsp of matcha (green tea powder) melted with about 2.5 tbsp of hot water.
6 squares of dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 177 deg C and bake almond meal for approximately 6 - 8mins until browned. Turn the temperature up to 200 deg once it is done.

Melt butter in a saucepan over a medium low heat. When melted, turn up the gas and let it come to a boil and continue to cook the butter until it looks clear and the milk solids have dropped to the bottom of the pan and have turned dark brown. Remove from heat and strain through cheesecloth lined strainer. You should have more than 1/3 cup of butter. Let it cool.

Meanwhile, combine flour, almond meal, icing sugar and salt. Fold in lightly beaten egg whites, vanilla extract, butter and matcha.

Grease friand moulds with left over butter. Fill half the moulds (like in the raspberry friand) with the batter, drop in 1 square of dark chocolate and top it up with more batter until it's approximate 1cm from the top of the mould. Lightly tap mould to remove any trapped air in the pan.

Bake for 10-12mins.

Makes 6 friands.

Heat friand in the microwave for about 5 - 10secs before serving.

The verdict: I'm not sure baking the almond meal beforehand makes any difference to the friand. Maybe it's just me. Although this recipe seems to bring out the almond texture in the friand a bit more compared to the previous one. The added complexity of straining the beurre noisette kind of threw me off a bit. Considering it tastes the same with the raspberry friand when I didn't even strain it. Perhaps it's the proper way of doing it, but I don't think I fancy this recipe very much.

The chocolate however, was yummilicious. I love green tea and would normally put on more than what I've prescribed above but since I didn't want the green tea to over power the taste of the friand and chocolate, I was a bit conservative with the amount of matcha I added. That led to the chocolate overpowering the matcha effect. As you can see, the middle of the friand seems a little undercooked. It was fine when I tested it with the cake tester. Pity, it still tastes yummy and didn't taste undercooked at all.

Little surprise that this will be my entry to Sugar High Friday 23, themed "Surprise" hosted by Alanna over at A Veggie Venture. :)


Technorati tag: SHF23

Trackback link: SHF23 at A Veggie Venture

Au revoir Wendy

Today our dear friend Wendy leaves Melbourne for Vancouver, enroute tothe famous Columbia School of Law/Columbia Law School (whichever is correct), Columbia University NY to complete her Masters in Law. As a farewell celebration I offered to cook her a feast before she commences her 'poor overseas student eating habits' in NY. Since W is a vegetarian, I came up with a simple menu focussing on desserts hehe..

Farewell Dinner for Wendy
Sunday, 30 July2006
Alv's Place

Entree:
Beans salad w/ grape tomatoes and haloumi
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Main:
Chilli Linguine w/ a ragout of oriental mushrooms (Tetsuya Style)
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Dessert:
Jaffa mousse w/ Cointreau orange
Balsamic strawberries

Being a non-vegetarian I had a bit of a hard time trying to figure out a menu that would appeal to the three of us and since we all love desserts I figured that I should make that the prominent dish of the day. When I was discussing the idea with TH and some of my colleagues at work they all said something along the lines off.. "That's easy, just make a salad". Luckily, I chose the right salad because that day W told us that she didn't really like/eat 'raw vegetables'. We were like "SHOCKED" and then I was like "phew" because the only raw ingredient in my beans salad was the tomatoes. The three of us had a discussion on why/how the general perception of non-vegetarians were that 'all vegetarians eat salad.. ie. lettuce/leafs, tomatoes, carrots etc' and that W was weird. That turned into a funny discussion full of "whats", "no ways" and "you're nqr" and loads of laughters. Unfortunately, I have no photo of my beans salad because the SDcard on my camera decided to report that 'the card has not been formatted and requires formatting' before I could use it again. Photo of Beans salad courtesy of W. (Thanks W!)

Entree

The beans were flat beans and green beans, sliced, blanched and dressed with EVOO, 2tbsp lemon juice and S&P, haloumi cheese was pan fried and the salad was assembled with the cheese, halved grape tomatoes and dressed with the dressing from the beans and mint and basil leaves. The salad was very refreshing albeit salty, this was my first time cooking with haloumi cheese and boy did I get a salt attack from that. Other than that it was good, W surprisingly loved the salt in the cheese so we fed her the rest of my cheese and all the left overs.

Main

I bought these chilli linguine at Macro, the new organic shop at The Glen. They're freshly made and then frozen. Sold in packs of 300g for $8.95 each. Doesn't look much here but boy was it delicious. You could even taste the chilli in the pasta. Sweet. A while ago I was a friend's place and saw Tetsuya Wakuda's Recipes from Australia's Most Acclaimed Chef and copied the recipe for Mushroom Ragout with Linguine. The ingredients looked interesting at that time. Shimeji mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, a bit of mirin, sake, soy sauce and chicken stock. When I saw the chilli linguine at Macro I knew at once what to make for W. Substitute the chicken stock for vegetable stock and it'd be perfect.

I was a bit disappointed with the end result though. It was rather tasteless?? It was not what I expected it to be, I wonder if it's because I substituted the chicken stock with vegetable stock? Or because I tripled the pasta amount? (but then I tripled the rest of the sauce amout too) Hmm I think, I will have to give this another go next time.

Desserts

On to desserts.. yay! About the only thing that turned out right that day. hahah.. Ok perhaps I'm too harsh a judge on myself but about the only thing that perfect in my opinion was the strawberries! (If I stuff even that up I'd probably hang up my apron hahah)

Jaffa orange mousse with cointreau infused oranges. Melt about 140g of chocolate with 2 tbsp of Cointreau, add 4 egg yolks one by one and let it cool meanwhile whip cream and fold in 4 tbsp of cocoa powder into the cream. Once thats done, fold cream into chocolate and mix well. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Peel oranges, slice and marinate in about 3 tbsp of cointreau until serving.

Sounds pretty simple isn't it? I even got the mousse texture right this time because I whipped the cream properly. Except I was too lazy to sift the cocoa powder before folding into the cream, so there's bits and pieces of cocoa powder in it. hahah.. oh well.. It was still delicious, I love the Cointreau infused oranges.

We had a great and late night. Chatted, drinking, eating and laughing. Will miss W, she'll be in NY for a year, so it's only me and TH left. W, see you in 12 months time!

What do you do when.....

1) What do you do when your mum goes away?
a) You slack off and don't do any work around the house until the day before she comes back.
b) You leave all your shoes out so that you can just pick and wear whichever that would suit your outfit.
c) You invite your friends over for dinner and get your girl friend to do all the cooking.

If your name is 'Alv', the answer is ALL OF THE ABOVE!
Except, he's a little better than that, he actually helped in (c) part of things :)

2) What do you do when your friend's parents are away too?
You have a dinner party at his house!

Day/Date: Saturday, 24 June 2006,
Time: 7:30pm

Venue: FLim's Place

Entree
Deep Fried Sesame Prawns w/ Sweet Chilli Dip
Spicy Tofu Fries w/ Garlic Mayo Dip
Chawan Mushi
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Main
Roast Rack of Spring Lamb w/ Herbs
Roasted Potatoes
Roasted Pumpkin
2 Bean Salad w/ Prosciutto and Pine Nuts
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Dessert
Rich Chocolate Mousse w/ Strawberry Compote
and a Filo Nut pastry

When we found out that Alv's mum was going back to Singapore again for an indefinite time, the first thought that came across my mind was: "Damn, now I gotta cook things that he would eat!" because he's so 'easy going' when it comes to food and all.. NOT.

The day his mum left, he sent an email out to our group of friends inviting them for dinner at his place. A couple of hours after that, FLim IM me and we talked about dinner. Somewhere along the line he offered to have it at his house and after a few emails back and forth between the three of us (Alv, FLim and I) we changed the venue to his house and madame had the pleasure of planning the dinner.

So I dusted off a few of the cookbooks that 'I always buy coz it looks good but never really used' in search of the perfect menu.

Oh, I should add that Alv made the MISTAKE of asking everyone for suggestions. The Farmer came back with Lamb and the Fok came back with a full menu:

• Entree: Oysters (Mornay and Kilpatrick)
• Main: Spicy Lobster or Pepper Lobster (something like that)
• Dessert: Banana Fritters w/ Vanilla Ice Cream

Sif! I said, this is not Jamie's Kitchen and I am not cooking Lobster.

Anyway, come Saturday, I had a dinner menu devised with the help of Michelle Cranston of Marie Claire, Kitchen and Jane Lawson of Yoshoku; and on-site help in the form of Alv and FLim. Job well done I might add.

Friday, cut and marinated the Tofu fries. Saturday, started prepping and cooking at 3:30pm, a bit of delegating here and there which made things a lot easier. Alv made the mousse, FLim grinded the herbs (WHEN he managed to get off WOW), I prepped the lamb and slathered on the herb marinade once he was done with it, and FLim also did the Chawan Mushi. Somehow I managed the rest and got Q to do the sauce for the Chawan Mushi while Fok arranged the Entrees. Good Old Alv did the frying and Tj well.. he was just being Tj. Last but not least, the Farmer... he did all the washing. Funniest thing was that Flim had a dishwasher too but Jxz did all the washing. LOL

The only disappointment of the day was the Chocolate Mousse... due to a certain helper's impatience the cream was not whipped enough, so the mousse turned out to be thick in texture instead of light and fluffy. Oh well.. we all ate in anyway

--(i) Clockwise: Sesame Prawns w/ Sweet Chilli Sauce,
Spicy Tofu Fries w/ Special Mayo dip and Chawan Mushi --
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--(ii) Clockwise from the Left: Roast Rack of Lamb w/ Herbs,
Roasted Potatoes, Beans Salad w/ Pine Nuts
and Prosciutto and Roasted Pumpkins. --
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--(iii) Left to Right: Filo Nut Pastry, Rich Chocolate
Mousse and Strawberry Compote.--

>> More photos from Dinner