vanille & chocolat

kitchen closed

2010-01-18T21:40:00.001Z

Or, more accurately, kitchen demolished. The day we left for our christmas break with our families in Belgium, the builders moved in and started tearing down our kitchen/bathroom extension. And this is what's currently left of it - some of those beautiful (not) dark blue wall tiles, lots of rubble and especially lots of dirt and dust in the rest of the house. Not to worry though; shiny new kitchen (and new bathroom, and extra bedroom) coming soon!

free(berr)ies

2009-09-23T15:10:00.004Z

A bowl of blackberries does not a blog post make. Not even when I gathered them myself while on holiday in Dorset. And not even with a gratuitous picture of bebe enjoying said berries thrown in. It will have to do for now though, since S and I are getting married next week and there are a million tiny little things to sort out still. After the wedding I'm hoping to get back into the swing of blogging, but right now I need to go sort out table arrangements, centrepieces and more of that...

figs after easter

2009-07-11T20:27:00.002Z

This post won't have anything to do with figs whatsoever. Or food for that matter. It's just that, when you do something so late that it's really no use anymore - say announcing the birth of a baby when said baby is four months old for example - in Flemish the expression for this is 'figs after easter'.

Our baby girl was born on 7 March, a week after her due date. At which point I was convinced we 'missed our window' and she would never ever come out. But that's a whole different story altogether. Delivery was smooth and easy (as was my entire pregnancy), the three of us settled nicely back into some kind of normal life at home and bébé is an absolute joy to have around. She's very alert and inquisitive, and it seems she will be as stubborn as her mummy. Having a baby is a lot of work though, especially when combined with renovating a house and planning a wedding (a combination I do not recommend by the way). It's not that I don't have time to cook or bake - I can't remember how often I have made my chocolate fudge pie in the last few months, it's the easiest cake to make and a real crowd pleaser - but having time to try out new recipes, write, photograph and blog is something else entirely. All the pics on our camera these days are of the little one. But I will try to change that, if only because the world should not be deprived of a recipe for a wonderful chocolate cake.

a weekend away, an easy dessert and nesting

2009-03-03T14:25:00.007Z

Last month S and I decided to leave our dining room/building site and all the DIY as it was and go away for a long weekend - just the two of us, one last time before the arrival of our little one. So a week after the big snow - I do wonder how Britain ever managed to colonise half the world, when something as normal as snow in the middle of winter brings the entire country to a complete standstill - we set off for a relaxing countryside weekend. We found a lovely B&B in Happisburgh, Norfolk; a beautiful Georgian farmhouse and barn owned by the wonderful David and Rosie, about a half hour's drive from Norwich and only five minutes from the sea. We saw seal colonies at Horsey Beach, where volunteers were very happy to answer all our questions about the seals; had a nice walk at the Hickling Broad Nature Reserve; had a superb pub dinner in Ingham; and visited the grounds of Blickling Hall, which made us feel very Jane Austen!

Of course both S and I were a bit paranoid about me going into labour while away (even though I was still 3 weeks away from my due date) so we packed my hospital bag and baby car seat as well, just in case - we both reasoned 'if we take the bag, we won't need it, but if we leave it at home we will'. We decided to have dinner at the B&B the first night, so this tired pregnant woman wouldn't have to go out foraging for food at night after the long drive there. After emailing back and forth with Rosie about all the good things I'm not allowed to eat, we were served a delicious and hearty home-cooked meal, perfect for the cold February month. Dessert was either a sticky toffee pudding - S's choice - or lemon posset. Which I'd never even heard of before, but I like anything lemony and am always keen to try new things, so that's what I went for. A quick google didn't return much information, other than it seems to be a very old English dish and something about MacBeth. Of course I just had to try and make it myself at home, and I can tell you it is most definitely the easiest dessert in the world. All you need is cream, sugar and lemon juice. I would love to understand the chemistry behind it - when you add the lemon juice the mixture thickens instantly - but for now I'm happy having this recipe on stand-by should I need a delicious dessert in a pinch.

Which brings me to the nesting bit. Maternity leave is a wonderful thing: I'm cooking and baking a lot and even bake my own bread most of the time - that Kitchenaid mixer sure is getting a regular workout and S isn't complaining, as his dinner is on the table by the time he gets home from work. I've been having fun with some knitting and sewing projects (our sitting room now has proper curtains, yay), the nursery is all set up, and once in a while I even have time to meet up with girlfriends for coffee. And of course I've been nesting: scrubbing floors like there is no tomorrow, doing laundry like it's going out of fashion, re-organising the kitchen cabinets and wardrobes, cleaning out the fridge and defrosting the freezer, and then spending a whole day making soup and healthy meals to restock the freezer. Now the house sparkles, my laundry basket is empty and the freezer full, so all that remains now is put my feet up and wait for our little one to arrive. And maybe have another lemon posset...

lemon posset
serves 4

300ml double cream
75g caster sugar
juice of 2 lemons

Pour cream and sugar into saucepan and bring to boil, stirring constantly. Boil for three minutes while stirring continuously. Remove from heat and add lemon juice; mixture will start to thicken instantly. Leave to cool for about five minutes and pour in small glasses. Chill in fridge for a few hours, until set.

I added a layer of lemon curd at the bottom (I used Duchy lemon curd, but of course you can make your own) and decorated with a lemon peel curl. The posset would no doubt be even better with some lavender shortbread, but that will have to wait until another time.

sugar and spice and all things nice

2009-01-09T16:02:00.005Z

Happy New Year everyone! Santa has been very good to me and brought me not only a subscription to the Donna Hay magazine, but also a Kitchenaid stand mixer! With a note from Santa saying I can now bake him lots of bread and cookies.

I haven’t had any time to use it yet though, S and I are still spending every spare moment doing DIY – I know, the story is getting really old now, but what can I say. S and I are both perfectionists, we want everything to be done properly. With my parents’ help, we did actually get our sitting room finished, decorated and furnished in time for Christmas. There is now a sofa, armchair, cabinet, tv, and even some pictures and ornaments above the fireplace. And we even managed to put up a Christmas tree. We don’t have curtains yet (the windows are still covered with newspapers, very classy) and there are some details to sort out, but the room is finished enough to enjoy spending time in there.

Now we only have the dining room to finish and we really want to get that done before our little one arrives. Yes, seems like I’m part of the baby boom in blogland. Must be something in the flour. Or the eggs. Less than two months to go now and only one more week until my maternity leave, so hopefully I’ll get some use out of that Kitchenaid before our little one makes her appearance and my days (and nights) get filled with bottles and diapers.

We’re trying to hold off on the pink (and plastic Dora/Bob/Disney/…) invasion for as long as possible, but a bit of sugar and spice never hurts. I baked these sugar and spice cookies for our antenatal class (pre-Kitchenaid), where they were demolished in the blink of an eye. I fully intended to make these cookies again for Christmas, in nice snowflake shapes with some icing swirls, but that of course never happened. They taste just as good though without any fancy shapes and go perfect with a nice cup of tea on a cold winter’s day.

sugar and spice cookies
makes 24

100g butter
1/3 cup muscovado sugar
1 tbsp mixed spice
1 cup plain white flour
1 egg, beaten
Demerara sugar

Cream butter and sugar together. Add flour and spices. Roll in a log and put in fridge for about half an hour. Cut off 24 ‘slices’ and pat those slightly out with your fingers. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with Demerara sugar. Bake for about 12 minutes at 150˚C. Enjoy.

a busman's holiday*

2008-11-12T15:13:00.004Z

A few weeks ago, my parents arrived at our house for a week’s stay. But unlike Aran’s parents, they didn’t find lavender sachets under their pillows, or beautiful chocolate pistachio cakes waiting for them. Instead they found sanding paper, a heatgun, paintbrushes and tins of paint.

Just in case you’re wondering, of course we don’t make all our houseguests work for their stay – my parents had offered to come and help us out for a week. So, while S and were sitting behind our computers at work, mom and dad were hard at work in our house, leaving us with beautifully painted ceilings and woodwork when they returned home a week later. We still haven’t finished renovating the entire house, but at least all the big jobs are done and a few more weekends of painting and decorating should be enough to get us nearly there, so we can finally put up christmas decorations and a proper tree for the first time in years. Thanks mom and dad for helping us!

Until a few hours before my parents arrived, our house was completely upside down. Luckily I managed to make our guest room look decent enough for them to actually stay there, but with our big sofa stored on its side in our kitchen, I wasn’t able to do any baking at all, so no fancy cakes or desserts for the parents this time. To keep up with all the DIY, they needed something more substantial anyway, so I made a big pot of soup to get them through the week (and of course we cooked them proper dinners every night as well). It’s one of my favourite winter soups: hearty, warming and filling. I originally found the recipe in a 2002 christmas supplement of LivingEtc. (as a way of using up left-over turkey) but have changed the recipe quite a bit over the years. My version takes a bit of prep work, but it’s absolutely worth it. And it will keep you going all day when doing DIY.

spiced chickpea soup

1 large onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
10g cumin seeds
10g coriander seeds
40g harissa
2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
500g dried chickpeas
1.5l chicken stock
2 chicken breast fillets
coriander

Soak the chickpeas overnight (8-10 hours) and then boil them for 2 hours. Dry roast he cumin and coriander seeds in a pan until they start popping and release their fragrance, then grind them roughly with a pestle and mortar. Boil the chicken fillets in water, when cool enough to handle, tear them by hand into small strips.

Fry onion and garlic in some olive oil. When the onion has softened, add cumin and coriander seeds and harissa and fry for a further 5 minutes. Then add chickpeas, tomatoes and stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Purée about half the soup in a blender, then add chicken and coriander. Enjoy.

And you could easily substitute dried chickpeas for canned ones and use cumin and coriander powder instead of seeds, to make it easier.

* I learned this expression from a neighbour only last month; when I told her my parents were visiting for a week to help us with the DIY, she said ‘oh, a busman’s holiday then’, meaning it wouldn’t be a holiday for them at all, but work.

a few short summer breaks...

2008-10-15T14:16:00.005Z

… and a very looooooong blogging break. When even my mum remarked that it had been a while since I updated my blog, I knew it was high time I did something about it. It’s been a busy summer at casa v&c, with lots of little trips and a steady stream of visitors. And not much time for baking.

After a busy July, in which we celebrated S’s birthday (though we didn’t make it there this year, the good people of Paris put on a parade and fireworks especially for the occasion again), bought a car (after 7 whole years without, doing grocery shopping is suddenly very exciting), escaped to our friends’ country cottage (for a weekend of long walks in the woods), and lots of other things, we packed our bags for a quick trip to Greece, where we were graciously hosted by our friend G in his hometown of Piraeus.

It was our first trip to Greece, somehow we had never made it there before, and we finally got to see all the ancient monuments in Athens we had learned about in school. We also discovered why Athens is empty in August: because it’s HOT. So after a few days of seeing all the monuments – and seeking refuge in museums during the afternoons (great tip: museums in Athens have airconditioning!) – we did what every straight thinking Athenian does and hopped on a boat to one of the islands. Where it was still hot, but a beach, a warm sea and a cool sea breeze are an unbeatable combination for a perfect day.

Our island of choice was Aegina, less than an hour by boat from Piraeus, and home to a wonderful sweet shop: Aiakeion. All sorts of goodies there, so we picked a few of each: almond paste with gum mastic, sugared pistacchio nuts (the product of Aegina apparently) and of course baklava. All extremely sweet, but because of their being bitesized, just perfect. And still not as sweet as all the Moroccan sweets we had in Marrakech. Then there were also the many late and leisurely dinners, with the ubiquitous ‘Greek salad’ of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and feta, meat patties, wonderful baked aubergines and lots of olives of course. Strangely enough fish is scarce and expensive. I thought I'd be eating fish all week, but no.

Back home with recharged batteries (no sunshine or real summer in London) we hosted my parents for a week and we made it into a proper British week, with fish and chips (with mushy peas of course), a lovely weekend at our friends’ countryside cottage and a proper Sunday roast at the pub. There was also a wonderful dinner at Rules, one of London’s best kept secrets. It’s the oldest English restaurant in London, they specialise in game and even have their own estate where they shoot all said game.

In September S and I made a few trips to Belgium, for a big family reunion weekend and a friend’s wedding. And we spent my birthday in the lovely and quaint seaside town of Rye in East Sussex. Rye has lots of (expensive) antique shops, a nature reserve by the sea perfect for long walks, and lots of good fish restaurants. Having a car sure is wonderful and allows us to get out of London once in a while. It also means that, when we have to buy or rent DIY stuff, we can now bring it home ourselves, rather than having to organise and pay for delivery of everything. And DIY is all we've been doing the rest of the summer; currently S is sanding the downstairs floorboards, making a lot of noise and dust in the process. All the things we had in the living room are now stacked up in the bedrooms (note to self: stop collecting stuff and do a big ruthless spring clean); the only place in our house which is still sort of usable is the kitchen. Which means in the next few days, I'll bring my baking things out of retirement and will get stuck in making autumn goodies. Something pumpkin-y perhaps...

mmmmm*

2008-07-13T15:15:00.001Z

coconut tapioca soup with mango sorbet, passion fruit, cilantro syrup and coconut tuiles

* that's Meeta's Monthly Mingle Mango Mania

Seems like I embraced all the relaxing and doing nothing of our June holiday for a bit too long. Instead of baking and posting, we spent our weekends catching up with friends, enjoying the sun (something that very rarely happens here, so whenever we do have a sunny day, I try to make the most of it), and going to Belgium for a friend's wedding. We also had a lovely dinner party with our Japanese friends S and A; last time they cooked Japanese food for us so this time it was our turn to cook. We made them Gentse waterzooi – a sort of fish stew from Ghent. Which didn't look very pretty, but tasted rather good. Which was a good thing, because we had never made it before and it could have all gone horribly wrong. I had warned our friends though, that if it did, they would have the choice between an Indian or Chinese takeaway. Or halal pizza.

For dessert I also decided to experiment, with a multi-component concoction. But even if the whole thing failed, the sorbet bit couldn't go wrong so there would be something edible for dessert at least. And fail it almost did. I had set my mind on one of Claudia Fleming's composed desserts: coconut tapioca soup with sorbet and some garnishes – something sunny and tropical.

I had never used tapioca before, so I tried the soup bit of the dessert the week before. British tapioca must be different from American one, as I ended up not with a soup, but a very thick custard. Yummy, but not soupy enough. During the week, I looked up some other recipes and found one on Steamy Kitchen that sounded promising. So promising, I didn't try it out beforehand. Big mistake. Nothing wrong with Jaden's recipe, it's just that I didn't know how to cook tapioca and there were almost no cooking instructions on the packet. I started off making the tapioca soup first thing in the morning and had to make it three times before I finally got it right! Soaking the tapioca in water for an hour didn't work, I just ended up with a big mush. Boiling it separately in water didn't work either. What did work in the end (lucky me) was combining Claudia and Jaden's recipes: I cooked the tapioca in milk, which gave me a thick custard, and later added a milk-water-coconut milk mix to thin it into a proper soup. Phew, crisis averted.

For the mango sorbet, I used those incredibly sweet, small and pretty yellow mangoes which I finally found at my local market. Unlike those sour, unripe ones I used last time. They're not cheap, but worth every penny. And they come nicely decorated with ribbon and wrapped in some tissue paper. All I did was add a bit of sugar and some lime juice, bang the whole thing into the freezer and stir it every half hour or so.

The coriander syrup takes no time at all to make and the tuiles I wasn't too fussed about: if they worked: great, if not: tant pis. Luckily they did. They didn't look anywhere as elegant and thin as Michel Roux's version, but good enough to serve to our dinner guests. Who loved the whole dessert, seeing as how they asked for seconds and even thirds...

coconut tapioca soup
adapted from Claudia Fleming's Last Course and Jaden's Steamy Kitchen

1/4 cup tapioca
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 cup milk

Bring milk and sugar to the boil, add tapioca, reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until tapioca pearls are soft (appx. 35 minutes).

plus:
1 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 cup coconut milk

Bring water and sugar to a boil. When boiling, turn heat to low and stir in milk. When mixture returns to a boil, turn off the heat and stir in the coconut milk. Remove from heat, let cool to room temperature and chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Before serving dessert, add this mixture to tapioca mix to thin as required.

mango sorbet
adapted from Tessa Kiros Apples for Jam

about 1.2 kg mango (as this sorbet basically is frozen mango, everything depends on the quality of the mangoes)
1/2 caster sugar
juice of 2 limes

Peel mangoes and cut into small chunks. Put in bowl with sugar and lime juice. Leave to macerate for a few hours. Purée everything and freeze.

coconut tuiles
adapted from Michel Roux Jr's Le Gavroche cookbook

1 egg
80g caster sugar
80g unsweetened desiccated coconut

Whisk eggs and sugar, until just mixed, add coconut and whisk until smooth. Spread out thin shapes on baking sheet (the back of a fork dipped in water works well for this) and bake at 160˚C until pale brown, about 12 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and leave to cool.

To assemble: ladle some soup into martini glass. Add a scoop of sorbet. Add passion fruit, some coriander syrup and finish with a tuile. Enjoy.

marrakech

2008-06-12T15:34:00.004Z

Last week S and I escaped a grey and wet London for a warm and sunny Marrakech. We stayed in a delightful little riyad inside the old medina, right at the edge of all the souks and about five minutes walk from the central square, Jemmàa el Fna, or ‘la place’. I had read mixed reviews about Dar Mouassine, but it suited us just fine. If you like your every whim to be tended to then it’s not the place for you, but, if like us, you prefer a more relaxed atmosphere and do your own thing, I can highly recommend it.

our riyad, Dar Mouassine

I had heard about two restaurants, Le Tobsil and Dar Moha. Dar Moha used to be owned by Pierre Balmain and is now owned by a European-trained Moroccan chef who serves ‘Moroccan nouvelle cuisine’. At Le Tobsil, there is no menu, you just eat whatever is prepared that day and you pay a fixed price, which includes drinks.

the lively Jemmàa el Fna with orange juice,
spices & dried fruits, and barbeque stalls

We dined at Le Tobsil, but although we liked the live musicians and the food was absolutely delicious, we wouldn’t really recommend it. It is quite expensive (plus the bill cheekily mentions that service is not included), tailored exclusively for tourists and we both found it rather poncy. There wasn’t anything wrong with the restaurant at all, it’s just that tables strewn with rose petals, waiters decked out in a European’s interpretation of traditional Moroccan dress, and being brought the bill in a wooden box, which contained a little book with ‘the best restaurants in Morocco, isn’t really our thing.

After that, we decided to give Dar Moha a miss and just try some barbeque stalls and restaurants at ‘la place’. I wasn’t brave enough to try the out of the way hole in the wall places, but the places where we did eat had a mix of tourists and locals, so I figured we couldn’t go wrong. We tried various tagine and couscous dishes, barbequed meat and vegetables and of course some sweets. We also had an amazing lemon and olive chicken tagine, cooked by our riyad’s own cook Latifah. There seems to be a propensity for thoroughly boiled mushy vegetables, and the sweets were VERY sweet, but other than that we thoroughly enjoyed all the food we sampled.

rooftop view over Marrakech and the Koutoubia mosque (right)

Apart from sampling Moroccan cuisine and doing a bit of shopping (babouches, a leather pouffe, some bowls and spices), our big plan was to do nothing at all, and do it very slowly. Of course there are plenty of things to see if you want: a museum, palaces, tombs and gardens, but for us this holiday was all about relaxing. We did bring back the sun with us, but of course that didn’t last and now London is grey and wet again. Time to start planning our next holiday…

SHF # 43: coconut lime cake with mango and mascarpone lime mousse

2008-05-25T11:36:00.000Z

Like Helen, of the beautiful blog tartelette, I'm a big fan of anything citrus. So when she chose citrus as the theme of this month's Sugar High Friday, I couldn't have been happier. And I immediately got Harry Nilsson's coconut, one of my all-time favourite songs, stuck in my head. I first heard it when watching Practical Magic and I have actually watched the film again just for the song. It's sweet and silly and makes me laugh. I can thoroughly recommend this song, especially on a blegh and grey day. So, SHF. I wanted to make something pretty and tropical, and after going through some cookbooks, browsing a few blogs, and taking cue from the coconut song, I decided on a combo of coconut and lime with mango, in the shape of little cakes with fruit and mousse layer. Something I'd never tried before, but it didn't look all that difficult - baking a cake? I could do that half asleep. Chopping up some fruit? Easy peasy. And whipping up a mousse? five minutes' work.

For the cake base, I chose Delia's coconut lime cake. A bit risky, since I hadn't made this cake before, but I find that Delia usually delivers. And deliver she did. The cake didn't rise very high, but it turned out quite well - I knew I could trust our Delia. The mango, unfortunately, didn't deliver. Instead of the sweet juicy and orangey-yellow fruit I was imagining, I got a hard pale and rather sour mango. That will teach me for buying mangoes out of season I guess. I should have waited for those incredibly sweet small yellow Pakistani mangoes I will find at my local market in a month or so. But all was not lost, I added a few spoons of sugar and some vanilla bean paste, which made it ok. Not great, but more than edible.

For the mousse, I browsed Bea's and Helen's archives, but all the recipes I found had gelatine in them, and I have a very strong dislike for the stuff. A google search only returned gelatine-based mousses as well, so I took a risk, and luckily it worked. I used Helen's mascarpone lime mousse recipe, but left out the gelatine and the lime zest (another thing I don't like), without changing anything else. I figured, with the whipped egg whites and whipped cream, the mousse would set in the fridge. After all, my chocolate mousse and tiramisu set in the fridge, so no reason why this mousse wouldn't set either. And I was right, phew. It might not work in hot or humid climes though. I guess that's the one good thing about living in grey and temperate London.

Getting the whole thing assembled took a bit of fiddling, but wasn't too hard. Of course I started with grand plans: I had wanted to add a frozen cone with coconut yoghurt and mango purée, like this one, put a glaze on the cakes, and add a cilantro syrup. But in between all the weekend DIY, finally getting to meet our friends' new baby, and getting engaged (yes, after almost 12 years together S proposed), I didn't get around to executing all those grand plans. They will have to wait for another time. That evening, S and I cracked open a bottle of champagne and had a simple but lovely pasta dinner, followed by these cakes were our dessert. Surprisingly, S really liked it. Separately, the three components weren't great: the cake was a bit fibrey with all the desiccated coconut, the mango not ripe and the lime mousse not very sweet, but together they were just right. A sweet end to a wonderful day...

milk jam

2008-05-18T11:02:00.000Z

About a month ago, I discovered Aran’s beautiful blog, cannelle et vanille, when she left me a comment. I instantly fell in love with her beautiful creations and photographs and luckily, she hasn’t been blogging for very long, so it didn’t take ages to read through her archives – lucky me, otherwise I would have been reading through the night. One thing immediately caught my attention and that was her milk jam. I’d never heard of it before, but it sounded intriguing and lovely.

Especially because vain little me wanted to bleach my teeth and my dentist had instructed me to only eat ‘white food’ for the two weeks it would take. No coffee, red wine, tomatoes, red peppers, strawberries … Of course after about a week I got incredibly fed up with eating cauliflower, rice and apples – we have a saying in Flemish that goes ‘they came out of my ears’, which I think pictures my sentiment quite well – and I was desperate for some variation. The milk jam provided just that; luscious, creamy, buttery and milky. Delicious! If you haven’t made it yet, stop reading and go make it right now. The recipe is here.

I have mentioned before I’m not a fan of gelatine, so I left out the gelatine and reduced it a bit more to compensate, to about 250g. It set to a very spreadable paste in the fridge. For my second batch (did I mention how delicious this is?) I had to use half and half milk (S drank all the full-fat milk) and I added some nutmeg. Out of curiosity I reduced it to 300g, which also worked fine. And for my next batch, I’m thinking coconut milk. Or maybe sweet massala spices…

breadcrumbs

2008-05-04T09:52:00.005Z

It's a good thing I made that breaded cheese salad when I did, because yesterday evening, when I was looking for the breadcrumbs to top the cauliflower gratin I was preparing for dinner, they were nowhere to be found. Of course there was only one place they could have gone, I didn't even have to ask (but I did anyway, silly me).

here’s one I made earlier…

2008-04-29T15:45:00.001Z

… because I was nowhere near my kitchen this weekend. Instead, I spent a lovely weekend in Belgium to celebrate my friend’s 30th birthday. She is Spanish and prepared some yummy food: tortilla, albondigas and much more. No pictures, too busy talking. The rest of the weekend I caught up with my family: chatting with mum, taking gran out for lunch and enjoying the wonderful sunshine and 25˚C weather. And stocking up on chocolate of course.

So all I’ve got right now is this salad: goats’ cheese, walnuts, apple (this time, I also use pear, dried cranberries or goji berries) and rocket with an olive oil-balsamic vinegar dressing.

S doesn’t like goats’ cheese at all, so I only make this occasionally, just for myself. And every time again I’m surprised how fast and easy this is. All you need to do is brush the cheese with egg, roll it in breadcrumbs and gently fry it in some olive oil, until the breadcrumbs are golden and the cheese a bit squishy in the middle. While the cheese is frying, dress the salad leaves, throw in some nuts, berries or whatever else takes your fancy. Plonk the cheese onto the salad, add a good twist of black pepper et voila…. an utterly delicious salad in about 10 minutes.

hanami

2008-04-17T16:39:00.004Z

Four years ago S and I went on holiday to Japan – my first real big trip and a very exciting thing for me. For the first four days or so, I kept on pinching S and shouting at him ‘We’re in Japan! We’re in Japan!’. He bore it patiently and we're still together, so he must really love me (or maybe he just stopped listening after the fourth time I yelled). Growing up I never lacked anything, but my parents didn’t have the money to travel far. We spent many a happy summer at the Belgian seaside, in the Belgian Ardennes, and even a few summers in France. But holidaying in exotic locations was something for rich people.

When I was at university, my student club organised a trip to Istanbul. I remember passing the poster on the notice board and thinking ‘oh that must be nice for the people who can do that sort of thing’. Then I had a second look at the poster and almost fell over backwards when I saw the price of the entire trip: BEF 6,000. That’s about £100 (or US$200), for a weeklong stay. Flights and hotel with breakfast included. Of course I signed up for this trip immediately. The realisation that I too could holiday in exotic locations and that it wasn’t just something for the other half was one of those defining moments for me, as I’d always dreamed about travelling to far-off places, but never thought those dreams could become reality.

Of course as a student I didn’t have the money to travel far and extensively, so when I started working and earning a living, travel was high up on my list of priorities. Top of that list was, and always had been, Japan. And it just so happened that it was at the very top of S’s list as well. So off to Japan we went. Our trip was perfectly timed with sakura season so a lot of hanami was to be done. We encountered a lot of people taking photographs of the cherry blossoms and even saw two sweet old ladies, sitting in the park and discussing the beauty of the flowers and how the petals wafted to the ground. And of course all the sweet shops were filled with special sweets for the occasion.

I’m a big fan of Japanese sweets and there is a shop close to where I work, so once in a wile I treat myself to a nice mochi. The sweets always seem so intricate and complex and impossible to recreate at home. But among the presents I received for my birthday last year was Harumi’s Japanese Cooking. Which had just the recipe I was looking for: little read bean-filled crepes. Delicate looking, appropriately pink and super easy to make. I feel a bit like a cheat, because it was so easy, but the results were absolutely delicious. Since I followed the recipe to the letter and didn't tinker with it, I won't repeat it here, but the crepe batter was a mix of water and flour with some sugar and oil, with a few drops of red food colouring added to it. The red bean paste I simply bought in my local Japanese supermarket.

With all the DIY I’ve been a bit out of the loop in recent months, and I haven’t kept track of all the food events, but after I had made these little crepes I discovered the theme of this month’s Sugar High Friday, hosted by La Petite Boulangette, is Asian sweet invasion. Perfect for my crepes.

whoosh*

2008-04-11T16:05:00.002Z

* that’s the sound of March flying past. And come to think of it, a good chunk of April as well.

I’ve been a very bad blogger these last few months, shame on me. Another whole month has passed without any baking or experimenting. The only action in the kitchen was that of an entire colony of mice, running around in plain daylight and eating everything in sight. Greedy little buggers. They’ve gone now; old-fashioned mousetraps with a bit of peanut butter did just the trick. I’m sure there were more than the four we caught, but the rest probably got fed up and decided to move somewhere else.

Also, last month S and I survived – barely – two very traumatic trips to Ikea. We’re scarred for life now, the mere mention of something blue and yellow Scandinavian and flatpack furniture reduces us to gibbering wrecks. Seriously, what is it with that store? Their website says everything you need is in stock, but the shelves in the warehouse are completely empty. And the personnel at the information desks think it’s much more important to chat with their mates and yell abuse at their co-workers than, I don’t know, helping out clients maybe? We did eventually manage to get an entire wardrobe puzzled together, miraculously nothing was lost when we had it delivered, we lived to tell the tale and our bedroom looks much tidier now. But those nine hours of our lives, we’ll never get those back.

Oh, and that long bank holiday weekend in March I had so many plans for? Three guesses how that was spent. Yep, even more DIY, resulting in lovingly restored sash windows, looking absolutely yummy. Sash windows aren’t edible though.

So I figured it was high time I put on my apron and baked something, before I completely lose skills like whipping egg whites. Or switching on the oven. And my good friend Claudia was just the woman to provide me with inspiration. I had been meaning to make her lemon and lavender pound cake for ages – in fact, it was the recipe that immediately caught my eye the first time I ever browsed through her book – but somehow I always got distracted trying other things. Not this time though.

The recipe is that of a very simple and basic pound cake – quite different from the one I normally make though, so it was a good ‘exercise’ to compare techniques and results. This one is certainly easier and a bit less work, withouth much difference in taste. I adapted the recipe a little bit: I omitted the lemon zest because I really don’t like lemon zest and cut down the quantities of the lavender quite a bit as I thought using the full four tablespoons might be a bit overpowering. The resulting cake was wonderfully moist and lemony with just a hint of lavender. I was convinced S wouldn’t like it, because of the lavender, but he obligingly tasted a little piece. And then… his eyes lit up, he started licking his lips and rubbing his belly, said ‘yum!’ and cut himself another piece. Maybe that 'whoosh' was also the sound of pigs flying past...

lemon and lavender pound cake
adapted from Claudia Fleming's The Last Course

200g butter
5 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup self-rising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon dried lavender

for syrup: 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup lemon juice

Melt butter with lavender, leave to infuse for 10 minutes, strain, discard lavender, and set aside to cool.
Beat eggs with sugar until thick and pale. Sift 1/3 of flour into egg mixture until thoroughly combined. Fold in rest of flour in 2 batches. Whisk one cup of batter with vanilla extract and melted butter, then add this to remaining batter. Bake cake at 150˚C for 45 minutes.

Make syrup (bring to simmer in saucepan and cook until sugar is dissolved). When cake is ready, poke all over with skewer and brush with half the syrup. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, invert cake and brush bottom and sides. Reinvert and brush with remaining syrup. Enjoy.

randomness

2008-02-22T15:52:00.004Z

with the freakish winter we've been having, the flowers in my garden have all come out way too early

Where has February gone? It seems the new year started only yesterday, and suddenly two whole months have passed! As must be glaringly obvious from a complete absence of posts, not much baking has been going on in the vanille & chocolat household.

The one thing that has been going on, in large quantities, is DIY. Which usually starts on Saturday morning and ends Sunday evening, after we’ve washed all the dust out of our hair, soothed our aching muscles with a relaxing hot bath, and settled down in front of the telly with a nice cocktail (yes, those lemons sure served their purpose, if not the one originally intended).

American pancakes, baby knitting and my beautiful new ironing board cover

During the past few weeks, there was a wonderful and comforting Flemish dish: witlof (chicory) and ham rolls, in a cheesy béchamel sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and butter, baked in the oven. Prepared by S – yes, I am one lucky woman. There were also hearty breakfasts, to get enough energy for all the DIY. I’m totally in love with the American pancakes, bacon and maple syrup combo. I know this must seem a very mundane breakfast for you Americans out there, but I find it very exotic and if S would let me, I’d make it every weekend.

Weeknights, there has been lots of soup, housework, knitting (hadn’t done that for ages and my friend L having a baby was the perfect excuse to take it up again), and also the discovery of house renovation, crafty and decoration blogs. And etsy. All very addictive, but oh so inspiring!

details of two prints I fell in love with and just had to buy on etsy

This weekend we’re taking a break from all the DIY and are jetting off to Belgium for another one of these and some retail therapy. But I’ve got some new goodies and interesting recipes I can’t wait to try, plus there’s a few bank holidays coming up and the days are getting longer, so hopefully March should see something more than one sorry blog post saying I don’t have time to blog.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

lemon meringue pie – the Daring Bakers’ January challenge

2008-01-28T15:11:00.000Z

Another month, another Daring Bakers challenge, and this month’s host – Jen, the Canadian Baker – chose lemon meringue pie. Now, I love me some lemon pie. I have a favourite, foolproof recipe, but it can’t hurt to try something a bit different once in a while. As usual, I left it to the last weekend to complete the challenge. S shopped for groceries, while I was stripping more paint off the woodwork.

With a pantry full of butter, sugar, eggs, lemon and cream, I fully intended to start baking. I even got as far as making the dough for the crust. And then… the call of the DIY became too strong to ignore. And so, by the end of the weekend, there was a lot of stripped wood, a ceiling without wallpaper on it, and not a lemon meringue pie in sight. Those lemons did come in handy though for our cocktail hour on Sunday evening…

Check out all the other Daring Bakers’ real pies here.

another weekend, another DIY project

2008-01-21T17:30:00.000Z

Now that we’ve finished renovating the upstairs of our house – we have doors in our bedrooms! with doorknobs! and blinds! – S and I started all over again downstairs. Stripping awfully textured wallpaper off the ceiling (yes, the ceiling. Must be some kind of British thing), stripping a gazillion layers of paint off the woodwork, ripping out three layers of awful carpet, sanding wooden floors and completely overhauling the beautiful but neglected sash windows. I guess we could hire someone to do all the work for us, but it is very hard to find decently skilled craftspeople here without having to take out an extra mortgage to pay them. Plus I’m still upset about how the jobs we could not do ourselves were done by so-called professionals. And that was more than two years ago. Also I’m a bit of a control freak and I’d rather do everything myself, so I know it’s done properly. Which takes a lot of time. In addition to all the DIY I’ve also found myself in a spring-cleaning mood recently (must be the too warm weather we’re having here) itching to clean out cupboards, reorganise shelves etc.

So, loads to do at home and not much time for other things. But just enough time to bake something quick and easy: I had some left-over chocolate shortcrust pastry in the freezer, and a whole bunch of walnuts from my aunt’s garden. But no nutcracker. So what does one do in a DIY-filled, nutcracker-less home? Why, use a DIY tool as a nutcracker of course. I found a quick and easy Donna Hay recipe, et voilà, little butterscotch walnut tartlets.

S wasn’t a fan (but he doesn’t like walnut and he doesn’t like honey), so I brought some tartlets over to the neighbours, who were big fans. And told me I should open a pastry shop. And please could they be my test audience. I think they just want more sweets. Now, all I have to do is find a quick way of getting rid of the other stuff in my freezer, so I can start spring-cleaning there as well.

butterscotch tartlets
adapted from Donna Hay Magazine, issue 32

shortcrust pastry
30g unsalted butter
¼ cup double cream
¼ cup honey
1 cup walnuts

bake pastry in individual moulds (I used a muffin tin) and let cool on wire rack. Put butter, honey, cream and walnuts in a pan and heat gently until butter is melted. Up heat until caramelised (a few minutes) and pour filling in pastry shells. Top with some double cream and crushed instant coffee. Eat.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-08T16:28:00.000Z

A bit late, I know, but in my family you can wish each other a happy new year during the entire month of January (I have a ginormous extended family, so it would usually take a while to tick everyone off). Also, getting a stomach bug is a wonderful way to lose all that holiday weight, but not such a fun way to start the new year. My stomach is back to its old good self now, but there hasn’t been much cooking in the V&C kitchen and hence not much to report either.

S and I spent most of the holidays with our families in Belgium – a wonderful week of eating, sleeping and not much else. And I was too busy chatting with everyone to think about updating my blog. We‘ve always celebrated with our little family on christmas’ eve; christmas day was reserved for a big lunch with my dad’s side of the family (fifty-odd people – told you I have a big family) and the last years is a perfect day for going to the cinema, or, even better, doing nothing at all.

The traditional christmas day lunch with turkey, cranberry, stuffing etc. is not really done in Belgium though (and we don’t have Santa Claus either – but we do have Sinterklaas, who comes on 6 December). We usually eat something nice and festive, and this year we all helped cooking. Mum did something nice with fish for starters, my brother made a lovely cream of mushroom soup, S made a beautiful gratin dauphinois and of course I was in charge of dessert.

I wanted to make something Sinterklaas-inspired, with speculoos, spices, and mandarines. And dad loves ice cream, so there had to be ice cream in it as well. And this is what I came up with: speculoos with cinnamon ice cream and mandarine caramel. Those fancy schmancy mandarine segments I didn’t do on purpose (I do have a life you know, and I don’t spend it dissecting mandarines into individual thingies); my original intention was to have large segments in the caramel and when I was trying to get the membrane off each segment, they just fell apart in these little thingies. And they looked kinda cute, so I used them like that. All the components for this dessert can be prepared in advance and are very easy to make; just be careful with the speculoos, because it burns easily.

speculoos

500g self raising flour
250g butter
350g soft or dark brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 shot glass of cognac (or milk or water)
mixed spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg etc.)

Knead everything together into a smooth dough. Leave to rest in the fridge for at least one hour. Roll dough to a thickness of 1/2 in for crispy speculoos, or 2 in for soft speculoos and shape as desired. Bake at 170 - 200˚C, for about 5 to 10 minutes (burns easily).

For this dessert I baked thin crispy rectangles of speculoos which I trimmed again after baking (the scraps mixed with coffee made a delicious spread for sweet sandwiches), but this recipe makes massive quantities of dough and, as my mum loves the thick soft speculoos, I baked a massive slab of that with the leftovers. Which disappeared in no time.

cinnamon ice cream

Find any basic ice cream recipe and infuse milk or cream with cinnamon sticks when heating it. (sneaky, I know, but my old basic recipe doesn't really cut it. Not enough egg yolks I think)

mandarine caramel
adapted from Claudia Fleming's Last Course

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup mandarine juice
1 tbsp butter
mandarine segments

combine water and sugar in saucepan and simmer until sugar dissolves (stir regularly). Raise heat and boil mixture until caramelised. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and fruit juice. Set over low heat and whisk until caramel is smooth. Let cool for at least 1 hour. Before serving, stir in mandarine segments (which I didn't have, so I just scattered my mandarine thingies over the plates).

learning to like Brussels sprouts

2007-12-18T11:53:00.000Z

Growing up, there was nothing I detested more than Brussels sprouts. Along with every other child in Belgium, it would seem. My dad would occasionally make them (boiled) and the house rules were such that I had to eat whatever was on the table. I usually got away with three sprouts – my brother even managed to get away with eating just the one.

I felt the same about chicory and didn’t like the bitter taste of it at all, but it now is one of my favourite vegetables. Braised, or wrapped in ham with a cheesy béchamel sauce topped with breadcrumbs in the oven – I absolutely love chicory. And so I thought I owed it to myself to give Brussels sprouts another chance as well.

Plus they keep on popping up everywhere: at my local market, in Christmas food magazine articles and on various blogs. All of which was starting to make me feel like I was missing out on something. So I bought myself some sprouts and got a-cooking.

I went with Molly’s recipe, because masses of butter, cream and brown bits are always a good thing in my book. In an ideal world I would have added some bacon as well, but I didn’t have any. And as for the result… I think I can learn to like Brussels sprouts. They probably won’t make it on my all time favourites list, but they certainly are off the yuk list. And for S, who still didn’t like them because ‘they still tasted of sprouts’ (even though he had to admit they didn’t taste as bad as he remembered from his childhood) I mixed them with potatoes into a wonderfully creamy mash the next day, which he did like.

apologies for the awful picture, but the vanille & chocolat household has been extremely busy of late with hardly any time to cook, let alone take decent snaps (and of course I will continue to blame lack of decent daylight for the next few months)

lavender crème brulée - almost

2007-12-12T11:47:00.000Z

SHF#38 the proof is in the pudding - with a Tartelette tutorial

It's been ages since I participated in Sugar High Friday, and this month's theme - the proof is in the pudding - chosen by Zorra of Kochtopf, is just up my street. Also, for my birthday way back in September my auntie gave me a nifty little blowtorch (and she even smuggled a can of gas lighter refill stuff to go with it in her luggage on Eurostar!). Which, shame on me, I hadn't used yet. Although S had a jolly good time playing around with the torch already. What can I say: boys, gadgets, and flames - an irresistible combination.

Crème brulée was on Kochtopf's approved pudding list, so crème brulée it would be. Somehow it's one of those things I've never made before, even though it seems dead simple. Maybe because it's I'm not utterly crazy about it - to me, there seems to be something not quite right about a fridge-cold dessert with a piping hot crust on top - or maybe it's because I had a few bad versions in the past, one of which made me really sick.

Anyways, I decided it was high time to put my little blowtorch to good use, finally use that lavender I still had lying around, and give crème brulée a go. The recipe I used was a Claudia Fleming one and very easy to make: basically a custard, which is then baked in the oven in a water bath covered with pierced aluminium foil. I was a bit nervous about the bain-marie - all the other times I tried similar things were complete disasters; whatever I put in there would completely boil over. And this time was no different. Luckily the cremes were not completely ruined and still salvageable. And they still tasted quite nice, so not all was lost. I was stumped though, and in need of professional advice. And who better to turn to then the one and only Tartelette! Who, very kindly, answered my questions and suddenly things seemed very clear.

Turns out that my crème brulée wasn't exactly crème brulée, more like a set custard with a layer of sugar over the top. See, you're not supposed to thicken the custard on the stove, which I did - you just pour the hot cream over the beaten egg yolks with sugar, let that mixture cool, skim off the foam on top and bake au-bain-marie. The water bath distributes the heat evenly and gently to the custard so that the eggs don't curdle. It is also a bit more forgiving if you let them cook a little bit longer than necessary. Tartelette top tip number one: 'check for that tiny giggle in the middle and remove them before they are completely done'.

Then there was that issue of my custards 'boiling over'. Enter Tartelette top tip number two: 'I am thinking the steam and heat created by the foil makes the cremes boil over. Also if you whisk your eggs too vigourously they will have a tendency to foam up a lot and create a soufflé motion.' and whisk vigourously I sure did. Funny how I almost never succeed in turning out a good soufflé, except when I'm trying to make a crème brulée.

And to finish her tutorial, Helen threw in a basic crème brulée recipe for free! Thanks so much for your advice, Helen. It is much appreciated and I will certainly give it one more try before I throw in the towel. If only because S would like to have another go playing around with that blow torch...

design dessert

2007-12-04T21:16:00.000Z

Last weekend I finally got around to doing something with the sweet potatoes I'd had lying around for way too long - I don't use sweet potatoes all that often and all the lovely Thanksgiving posts I've been reading everywhere made me itch to try something new. I browsed through my cookbooks, thought about adapting and combining different recipes and was determined not to get myself into a catch-22 situation, where I end up making nothing at all because I'm unable to choose from all the possible dishes.

Also, I wanted to challenge myself a bit: I have a few cookbooks with complex dessert recipes, consisting of several components and looking oh so beautiful. Which I never get around to making, exactly because they're so complex. Not difficult - just a lot of work. Invariably, you need a gazillion different ingredients for all the parts, so it takes half a day doing the preliminary grocery shopping, another half day to make everything and when you're finished, the kitchen looks like a battlefield. And then, of course, just when you sigh and think 'that was ok', you take a last look at the recipe and you find that, under 'assembly' or 'presentation', a few more components and some complicated garnishes are thrown in for good measure.

So I often end up making just one component, rather than the whole dessert. Which tastes nice and looks fine, but not spectacular. And sometimes, you know, a girl just wants to show off and make something that looks as if it came out of a restaurant kitchen. This girl does anyway.

And so here it is, my first show-off (but no sweat) dessert: sweet potato and white chocolate flan on a gingersnap crust, sweet potato gnocchi and coconut custard, all flavoured with sweet massala spices. Very easy to make, because it doesn't use a million different ingredients, and looks like a million dollars. Just one warning: pretend you don't know how much butter goes into the whole thing.

Also, because the flan squares tasted rather nice all by themselves and because - in my mind anyway - the sweet potato thing has a decidedly American feel to it (plus they are not too showy by themselves and won't upstage a brand new house) I'm taking them to Peabody's housewarming party.

sweet potato flan squares
inspired by D & C Duby's Wild Sweets

100g roasted and mashed sweet potatoes
100g crushed gingersnaps (by all means, make them yourself if you want, but store-bought will do just fine)
195g + 25g butter
130g white chocolate
3 eggs
80 caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean extract
1 tsp sweet massala spices

line a baking tin (I used a 20 cm square one) with baking paper, making sure it the sides of the tin are covered as well. Melt 25g butter, mix with the crushed gingersnaps and spread evenly on the bottom of the tin. Melt butter with chocolate (I used the microwave, in 30 second bursts). Combine sweet potatoes with eggs, sugar, vanilla and massala, then fold in the chocolate mixture and stir until thoroughly combined. Pour mixture over gingersnap base and bake in oven (150˚C) for 30 minutes. Refrigerate until ready to use.

sweet potato gnocchi
inspired by Hidemi Sugino The Dessert Book

125g roasted and mashed sweet potatoes
50g plain flour
1/3 whole egg
1 tbsp coconut milk
caster sugar with pinch of sweet massala spices

combine all ingredients in mixing bowl until incorporated. Cover bowl and leave to rest in fridge for at least one hour. Flour work surface and roll dough into a log, about 1 inch diametre. Cut into half inch cubes and cook in boiling water (they are ready when they float). Coat in massala sugar mix.

coconut custard
adapted from here

1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
3 egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp sweet massala spices
1/6 cup sugar

Combine 1/4 cup coconut milk and cornstarch in a bowl and blend until smooth. Whisk in yolks, beating until smooth. Combine rest of coconut milk, vanilla, massala and sugar in a saucepan and carefully bring to a boil. When the mixture just boils, whisk a ladleful into egg mixture to temper it, then whisk this back into the cream mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour into jug and cool.

To assemble: dust flan squares with icing sugar, add a few gnocchi and a drizzle of custard.

potato bread

2007-11-26T10:26:00.000Z

Another month has flown past, which means it's time for another Daring Bakers' challenge. This month, Tanna of My Kitchen In Half Cups chose potato bread - you'll find the recipe on her blog. As usual, I left it to the last minute to start baking, but this weekend was the only weekend this month I actually spent in my own home. One weekend I had to work, another weekend there was an interesting symposium, and last weekend S and I were in Antwerp, showing 'our' city to two friends, doing touristy things, and of course sampling lots of chocolate and beer. Such a hard job, playing tour guide!

When I told S I'd be making potato bread, he went 'seriously, potato bread? Why? Not so sure about that'. But by the time I switched off the oven and had him taste one of the rolls, he was singing an entirely different tune. And then... I told him he couldn't eat any more of it until the next day, because I wanted to take a decent daylight photograph. Which I couldn't take at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, because it gets dark ridiculously early these days (yes, I will probably keep complaining about this until, oh, April or so). We couldn't resist though, which is why the focaccia (brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and rosemary from my garden) is mysteriously absent in the pics. We ate it all while watching Star Trek - it didn't survive Captain Picard's mission of the day and didn't live to see real daylight.

I often bake bread at weekends - it's just so much better than the stuff you can buy here, at least you know what goes in it, and you won't get a heart attack or break your tongue when trying to pronounce all the ingredients in pre-packed breads. I'd never tried potato bread though. And one thing I can now say: when you make potato bread, make sure you have someone at hand to flour the work surface and scrape the dough together because, boy, is this a sticky bugger!

This month I've been a good daring baker and stuck to the recipe. Well, almost stuck to the recipe, but no major cheating this time. I added the butter to the mashed potatoes instead of later on, because I didn't think I'd get the butter to distribute evenly otherwise. And I skipped the second rise for half of the bread: I forgot to buy fresh yeast, so had to make do with the dried, instant, fast-action stuff, which only needs to rise once (you knead your dough, shape it, let it rise and then put it straight in the oven). In the past, I have tried two rises with this yeast, but without success: after the first rise and re-kneading the dough it wouldn't rise again, resulting in a rather dense and heavy bread. There was plenty of dough to go around though, so I put half in a rectangular bread tin and plonked that in the oven straight after the first rise. The other half I reworked into smaller bread thingies and left for a second rise, ready to put in the oven after my first bread came out. And, this time, both methods worked equally fine.

Like I said, the dough is incredibly sticky - after the 5 cups of flour specified in the recipe, the dough is nowhere near dough-y enough to turn it out onto a floured work surface. But, following the instructions to a t, that's exactly what I did (I am a bit blonde sometimes). and that's also when having an S on stand-by came in incredibly handy. He kept on adding flour until my blob became a workable, silky smooth, elastic dough, out of which I got a loaf, a piece of focaccia and some rolls I sprinkled with sesame seeds, and cumin seeds.

Even if I say so myself, this was one of the best breads I've ever baked, and S wholeheartedly agreed. The taste took him right back to his childhood, because it tasted exactly like the 'ovenkoeken' he would eat at a local harvest festival. I will certainly bake this again - but next time I might try it the other way around. Usually when I bake bread I start with flour and add a liquid gradually, however this recipe started with 'potato water' to which flour is added - rather strange and more difficult I think. But the end result was more than worth it.

random pic of dead stuff in my garden

Check out all the other Daring Bakers' potato breads here.

sweets for Diwali

2007-11-18T16:47:00.000Z

Diwali was actually celebrated on the 9th of November this year so I’m an entire week late, but I’m sure Ganesha’s appetite for sweets is the same all year around. And as for Lakshmi (even though she’s a tough cookie – my friend’s words, not mine), surely my rice pudding is sweet enough to sway her.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated big in the area where I live, with lots of fireworks. My friends who celebrate it make sure their house is spic ‘n span clean from top to bottom, in anticipation of Ganesha and Lakshmi’s visit. These Hindu deities bestow wealth, success and happiness, but only upon clean households. In addition to all the cleaning, there are also sweets. Lots of them.

Now why would I be celebrating Diwali - blonde Belgians and Indian festivals, surely that’s a strange mix? Well, blame my friend S, a crazy (in a lovely way crazy) Mauritian girl, from Indian descent. She not only decided that I was going to be half Indian, but also introduced me to Bollywood music and films, textiles, henna, and of course Indian sweets. Which, with all their spices, are absolutely perfect for this time of year. And after restraining myself with the custard last week, I was itching to make something else with a mix of heart-warming spices.

Many moons ago I made gajjar ka halwa (carrot halwa) – an extremely sweet dessert with grated carrots and lots of cream, butter and milk – which was delicious but took me an entire afternoon to make, and I just didn’t have that much time on my hands. Ras malai is my absolute favourite – it’s a sort of milk curd ball in sweetened milk with pistachios and rose water – but I have absolutely no idea how to make that myself. And so I thought I’d give my gran’s rice pudding a go.

A bit nerve-racking, considering her rice pudding is heaven on a plate (and that’s a lot to live up to!), and also a bit of a challenge, with the vague instructions she gave me. It turns out her vague instructions are absolutely spot on though, there’s no way to make them any clearer. Gran only adds saffron to her rice pudding, but I added a bunch of spices. Other than that, I stuck to her ‘recipe’. And the result? A very Flemish dessert, with an Indian twist.

recipe
1 cup of rice (I used Arborio, but any rice that is suitable for risotto will do)
a knob of butter
full fat milk (about 1 litre)
a squeeze of honey
1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract
half a stick of cinnamon
a pinch of saffron
1 star anise
5 cloves
3 cardamom pods
a pinch of nutmeg

Melt some butter in a saucepan, add rice to pan and make sure it is coated with butter. Add enough milk to cover rice and add all the spices. Keep on stirring and adding milk (I added a tiny squeeze of honey halfway through) until the rice is soft, about 45 minutes.

It’s basically like making a risotto, so it takes some dedication, but the results are more than worth it. The spices I listed are the quantities I used, but you can of course adapt according to preference (S tasted and said it was ok, but he thought the star anise was too overwhelming), add some cream instead of only milk, and sweeten it as much or as little as you like.

vanilla custard

2007-11-10T15:22:00.000Z

After reading all the comments on my last post (the cheating-custard one) saying how easy and quick the custard was to make from scratch and how delicious it was, and a ticking-off from the one and only Tartelette, I shamed myself into making the custard part of the Bostini Cream Pie Daring Baker challenge. Which, indeed, took about fifteen minutes or so to make, was incredibly easy, didn't curdle at all, thickened within a minute and was utterly delicious.

I was of course tempted to add a twist to it - I was thinking cinnamon, cardamom and maybe star anise - but I know that S loves his custard good ole' plain vanilla. And since he had volunteered to make a lovely Sunday roast (and also because I love him and like to make him happy), I decided to stick to vanilla. When the custard had thickened I called S over to the kitchen and said 'look what I made'. His eyes lit up and I didn't have to ask him twice if he wanted to scrape every last bit of the custard out of the pan and lick the whisk.

Luckily I had started early enough in the day so that I could still get a decent daylight picture of my custards - unlike the nuclear looking pics in my last post. I probably should have done something fancy with the custard, saucing it over a decadent chocolate cake or something to that effect, but that would mean I'd have to bake a chocolate cake as well, and by the time that would be ready it would be dark, resulting in more fluorescent looking food. Plus there is something quite comforting about vanilla custard all by itself and so, after the pics, S and I dug straight in.

S of course loved it but I needed a lie-down afterwards, it was so heavy. Couldn't move for half an hour. Even S had to agree that, yummy though it was, it was a bit too creamy to eat by itself - next time I might substitute all that cream with milk. It would have made a perfect sauce for a Bostini Cream Pie though.

recipe
adapted from Alpineberry

1/4 cup whole milk
1 tablespoons cornstarch
3egg yolks, beaten
1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/6 cup sugar

Combine milk and cornstarch in a bowl and blend until smooth. Whisk in and yolks, beating until smooth. Combine cream, vanilla and sugar in a saucepan and carefully bring to a boil. When the mixture just boils, whisk a ladleful into egg mixture to temper it, then whisk this back into the cream mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour into cups and refrigerate to chill. Delicious with chocolate sprinkles.

p.s. Baking Soda is only forgiving me for cheating with custard if I send her over some of that Japanese dinner our friends made us. You'll have to make do with a virtual treat, Baking Soda, I hope that's enough. And for good measure, I'll throw in a few pics of our lovely weekend in the country.

sushi rice with salmon flakes, green beans and egg ribbon;
stew with minced meat, potatoes, onions, carrots and okra, with pickles;
French beans with black sesame

countryside - you know, a place outside the M25, with real trees and fresh air

Daring (cheating, last-minute) Baker

2007-10-29T16:30:00.000Z

It’s amazing how time flies, especially when you spend one weekend at a friends’ cottage in the countryside (doing nothing all weekend but eating, sleeping, and walking the dog) and another weekend hosting friends who take over your kitchen to cook you a lovely, amazing and delicious Japanese meal. Such a hard life, I know.

After waving goodbye to our Japanese friends on Sunday morning (S duly made crepes for breakfast, the third weekend in a row), I realised I had only the rest of the day left to finish this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, hosted by Mary of Alpine Berry: bostini cream pie, which consists of vanilla custard, orange chiffon cake, and melted chocolate.

Having already missed last month’s challenge, I didn’t want to miss this month’s again, even though work has been insanely busy, my weekends filled with, you know, other things, and, last but not least, the fact I simply don’t like chocolate and orange combined. But time was running out, so prepare for a bit of cheating along the way.

The chiffon cake was an absolute doddle to make and came together in no time at all - I think it took the whole of 10 minutes to throw all the ingredients together. I halved the quantities, used leftover egg whites I had frozen a while ago, and used orange juice from a carton. Oh, and I left out the zest because I don’t exactly like zest of anything either. That’s my first bit of cheating, but it will get worse. Consider yourself warned. I used my new mini-brioche moulds and a muffin tin, and the resulting cakes were nicely fluffy, airy and moist. They did shrink and change shape after cooling tough, which I also experienced when I made the infamous strawberry mirror cake for the DB July challenge. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of chiffon cake, but I can see how it might work in a ‘supporting role’, to bring together other components of a dessert. Chiffon cake by itself always seems to lack something to me, I find it just too sweet and bland. Having said that, the orange juice added a subtle bit of tang to it, which made it taste slightly more interesting.

Warning: major cheating coming up. I didn’t have that much time left to finish and photograph the dessert – now that the clocks have gone back an hour, it starts getting dark ridiculously early in the afternoon, which means less time to make decent photographs. I could have got up early this morning to make some pics of course, but I know myself too well to know that wasn’t going to happen. So I may, ahem, have made custard from a packet. Powder from the packet, milk, vanilla sugar, and some vanilla bean paste added to it, a bit of stirring et voilà, the quick ‘n easy cheat’s way to custard. But at least I’m being honest about it - my parents brought me up well that way, teaching me not to lie.

The chocolate and butter I melted together in a soup bowl in the microwave, which took another entire minute, and I dipped my little chiffon cakes in it to give them a chocolate coating.

After a few quick piccies I found a willing guinea pig in S - who had been hovering around the kitchen, his spoon at the ready, ever since he saw the custard. He loved it (but he loves everything that comes drenched in custard) until I mentioned that there was orange in the cake, and then he didn’t like it as much any more. I knew I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. The orange was rather subtle; the combination of soft fluffy cake with custard and chocolate makes for a very comforting dessert; the cake by itself tasted ok; I’ll have to fight S for the rest of the custard; and it was incredibly easy to make and present, which makes it perfect to show off at dinner parties. It’s just not very ‘me’, this dessert. But if you like chocolate and orange combined, by all means, give it a go.

You can check out all the other Daring Bakers’ efforts here.

weekend breakfast crepes

2007-10-15T08:06:00.000Z

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not a morning person. Never have been and never will be. Mind you, I’m not moody or grumpy in the morning, it’s just that in between my stumbling out of bed and actually being awake, a fair amount of time can pass. I don’t mind people talking to me, so long as they don’t expect coherent replies. Or replies at all, for that matter. As my mum knows all too well.

S, on the other hand, opens his eyes and is wide awake, ready to start the day. Which makes me a very lucky woman, because when I get up at weekends, breakfast is always ready. I even get to choose what I’d like for breakfast: bacon & eggs, French toast, or crepes. And yesterday I was the lucky recipient of the latter.

When I was growing up, crepes were a rare occurrence and a real treat. Mum would bake them once in a blue moon – for my birthday, or when my girlfriends came over for play dates. Which is why, even though I can eat crepes every weekend now if I like (if I ask nicely), it still feels like Easter, Sinterklaas, birthdays and Christmas all rolled into one!

The crepes from my childhood were made with a ready-made mix. But making them from scratch isn’t all that much more work. And of course they taste a million times better. S likes his with sugar, I like mine with syrup (a kind of molasses, treacle-like thing that I stock up on every time I’m in Belgium). Either way, they are utterly delicious and a wonderfully indulgent weekend breakfast. Did I mention how lucky I am?

S's crepe recipe
200g self-raising flour
30g caster sugar (half of which vanilla sugar)
500ml milk
2-4 eggs (to taste)

Mix everything together and pass batter through sieve to make sure there are no lumps. Butter or oil pan (make sure pan is hot) and add one ladle-full of batter. Swirl batter around into crepe shape. When baked on one side, flip and bake other side. Repeat and then eat.

oops

2007-10-07T20:07:00.000Z

Pressies! A whole bunch of cook books and other goodies.

I woke up one morning and suddenly realised it’s October already. There was also this nagging thought in the back of my head - something to do with chocolate. And vanilla. And then it dawned on me. My little blog! So woefully neglected this past month! Oops.

Well, I guess that’s what happens when one spends weekends in Belgium visiting family (and stocking up on chocolate), frantically doing DIY preparing one’s house for a visit of said family, attending talks by certain food bloggers, and organising a big birthday party for oneself (my thirtieth, but shhh, don’t tell anyone).

Which didn’t leave much time at all for kitchen experiments. Or for the Daring Bakers September challenge, which completely passed me by. Check out all the other DBs cinnamon and sticky bun rolls here.

On the plus side, I now have beautifully oiled ‘dark Jacobean oak’ stained floors, which - I have already discovered - provide a perfect backdrop for food pics; the family (who all came over from Belgium especially for the birthday party) were suitably impressed with our house renovations and it was wonderful having them all here to celebrate with me; and, throwing yourself a birthday party of course means getting lots of presents, some of which will make appearances on vanille & chocolat in the not too distant future...

my very first meme

2007-09-13T20:17:00.000Z

Hendria from Canadian Baker Too tagged me for a fun little meme. I’ve never been tagged before, so I’m ever so slightly excited about this. Even though I haven’t got the slightest idea how ‘meme’ is even pronounced. Or who invents these things. Maybe a little fairy who lives inside the internet.

The rules for this one are as follows: list one fact, word or tidbit that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your first or middle name. Blog about this. Then choose one person for each letter of your name to tag.

Tis good I have a short name, it took me long enough to come up with four words. Since this is a foodblog, and also because I’m not ready to share my deepest and darkest secrets with the entire internet, I kept everything food related. Here goes.

innovative - I love making and baking things that tickle my imagination and pair unusual ingredients, or use techniques I’ve never heard of. Wild Sweets for example, full of exciting and unusual desserts, is one book I often browse. Having said that, I don’t often bake from it, as every finished dessert requires some serious commitment and would undoubtedly take me three days to make. Also, I do draw the line at molecular gastronomy. Although I wouldn’t mind experimenting with a syphon, only I don’t have one. And I would love to browse through the cookbooks of El Bulli, only they are prohibitively expensive.

natural - I prefer my food all natural, without any additives, colourants, flavour enhancers, genetically modified things, reconstituted whatever or the like. You’ll never ever catch me eating a ready-meal and I’m one of those annoying people you can see at the supermarket reading the list of ingredients on the label, putting things back if I don’t like what I read. This ‘rule’ of mine is very flexible though, I happily ignore the ingredient list on Nutella. Or wasabi snowpeas. Or any other terribly unhealthy thing I happen to be fond of.

new - I’m an adventurous cook and an adventurous eater, I simply love trying out foods I haven’t tried before. Unlike S, who usually wrinkles his nose when I bombard him with new recipes I want to try. He is happiest with simple ‘Vlaamse boerenkost’ (Flemish peasant fare). Maybe this tendency of mine developed as a reaction against my parents’ cooking - nothing wrong with their cooking, I was fed very well when growing up, just not very imaginative and always the same things.

easy - despite loving spending hours in the kitchen experimenting, I love it when I find a recipe that’s easy peasy but incredibly yummy. There is a chocolate fudge pie I regularly make (note to self: must blog about this soon) which takes the whole of 15 minutes to throw together, but it never fails to impress.

And there you go. Four things about me - the juicy secrets will remain secret for now. But maybe one of the following four people would like to share theirs:

Bake My Day
Feeding My Enthusiasms
Food Lover’s Journey
Rose’s Recipes

milk chocolate and caramel tart – the Daring Bakers’ August challenge

2007-08-29T14:06:00.000Z

From the moment I read the recipe Veronica and Patricia chose for this month’s DB challenge, I knew that this tart and I would make very good friends. Because, what’s not to like: chocolate hazelnut crust! Caramel! Chocolate cream! Not a drop of food colouring or a grain of gelatine in sight, just the bare minimum of no-nonsense instructions, and a recipe which didn’t generate leftovers enough to feed a small army. Apart from the crust that is, which made enough for three tarts, but the recipe duly mentions that and anyways it would be so easy to halve quantities for the crust recipe so it doesn’t count. Not that I halved the quantities, I just froze the leftovers so I can use them again in a few weeks or so. I originally planned to bake this tart when my family came to visit, but I was so frantically cleaning prior to their arrival I didn’t have enough time left to bake something as well. My parents, aunt and cousin didn’t get to sample this heavenly tart, but S’s and my work colleagues did. And they liked it. A lot.

Now, I may have purposefully ‘forgotten’ (ahem) to put cinnamon in the crust, but only because other Daring Bakers found it overwhelming and distracting from the chocolate. Which, in my book, is never a good thing. Nothing should ever distract from chocolate. Ever. I do like cinnamon, but I wasn’t convinced it would work in this tart and I was determined to love this tart (pease don’t take away my DB badge, pretty please!). I also had to substitute the ground hazelnuts with almonds, as I couldn’t find hazelnuts of the ground variety anywhere - I even went to the new ginormous Wholefoods in Kensington High Street. Also I don’t own any snazzy devices that could grind hazelnuts for me and I didn’t think my little hand held mixer would be up to this job. So almonds it was. I made the crust entirely without the aid of any electric appliances, partly because the butter was very soft anyway and partly because I made it at 11pm at night and didn’t want to wake the neighbours. The next day I rolled it quite thinly, as other DBs had experienced the crust rising exponentially. Just to make sure I stabbed it furiously with a fork and poured all my baking beans on top of it as well. I used a square, loose-bottomed tin and had no problems whatsoever rolling the dough over the square, unlike some other DBs who ended up with a brittle greasy dough, that needed to be patched onto the baking tin.

Making the caramel turned out to be really easy as well. I have heard quite a few horror stories involving caramel (massive splashing and horrible burns on forearms), so I was perhaps a bit too careful, but it all worked out nicely. Melting sugar I had done before, so I wasn’t afraid of that, but I made sure the heat was very low nonetheless. Of course the sugar seized up when I added the cream, but I continued to stir it over a low heat and it all came together nicely. I found it needed a bit longer in the oven than the suggested 15 minutes – after 15 minutes the edges had set but the centre was still liquid. Oh, and because I didn’t sculpt any edges on my crust and the crust shrank ever so slightly away from the edges of the tin during baking, the caramel of course dripped through the tin and onto the bottom of my oven, causing a terrible burnt smell which made me panic I had completely messed it up. But luckily I hadn’t, the caramel set beautifully and all I had left to do was whip up a chocolate mousse.

For the chocolate mousse, which was incredibly easy to make (and which I actually prefer to the one made with egg whites), I used a brand of fairtrade chocolate I only recently discovered: Divine milk chocolate with coffee. Since it was milk chocolate, and also since in my world chocolate, nuts and coffee are like a holy trinity, I figured I would not be breaking any DB rules. Plus I just knew this chocolate would be perfect for my tart.

Once the entire tart was finished, set and refrigerated, I cut it into rectangular individual servings and decorated the top with a single hazelnut and a shard of vanilla salt. Originally I had wanted to cover the hazelnuts in edible gold leaf, but I couldn’t find any in the shops and didn’t have enough time to order it online. But I was determined to have an elegant pastry, and even though the hazelnut was pretty enough by itself, the vanilla salt added a little extra oomph to the tart. Nut and salt got along wonderfully with each other and they lived happily ever after. No, not really, because the tart was a huge hit with everyone who tasted it and it didn’t survive very long at all. But it made all the people who ate it happy. And of course that’s the sole purpose of tarts in life.
Check out all the other Daring Bakers’ efforts here and the recipe here.

SHF#34 going local

2007-08-27T19:48:00.000Z

Passionate Cook Johanna chose local or regional specialities as the theme for this month’s Sugar High Friday. Which meant I could go a few different ways with this one - British, Asian or Belgian.

For the past six years I’ve been calling London my home, so I could opt for something quintessentially English - trifle, Eton mess, spotted dick, ... None of these really rock my boat though. Not to mention the fact that I haven’t got a clue what spotted dick might be. Or, since the area in East London where I live resembles Bombay (especially on a sunny Saturday afternoon), an Indian sweet perhaps? I absolutely love ras malai but wouldn’t know how to make it myself. Halwa I also like - I once made carrot halwa, which was absolutely delicious but took me about half a day to make. And seeing as I would be working my way through mountains of laundry in addition to adhering to the most clichéd cliche of Englishness, ie spending the bank holiday weekend doing DIY, I thought I’d better opt for something quick and easy.

Which left me with something Belgian. Most of the sweets I recall from my childhood were store bought, or made from a packet. However, one of the few things I do remember making regularly in my parents’ kitchen (apart from pound cake), is a simple chocolate mousse. I don’t even like it that much, but it is an absolute doddle to make and S loves it. And since as he has had to ‘endure’ lots of non-chocolate-and-vanilla kind of desserts lately, I thought I’d humour him and make a simple chocolate mousse.

recipe
quantities needed per person

25g chocolate
1 egg white
1 tbsp icing sugar

Whip egg whites until stiff, adding icing sugar gradually. Melt chocolate and carefully fold into egg whites. Pour into ramekins and refrigerate until firm.

matcha cookies

2007-08-21T11:27:00.000Z

Still trying to get through that humongous pile of laundry, but I couldn’t resist continuing my Japanese love affair and baking these bright green matcha cookies. I first saw them on Mae’s website; Fanny also made them and so did a whole bunch of other people. And all those people are definitely on to something, those cookies really are amazing – crumbly, buttery and very matcha-y.

Other than the fact these cookies are totally delicious and you simply must make them with the leftover matcha from when I urged you to make matcha ice cream (which remains my favourite, the cookies come in a close second), I’m afraid I don’t have a personal or interesting or funny story about these cookies. Those work issues are still dragging me down, I haven’t exactly been the most cheery person to be around these last couple of weeks, and I'm very guilty of seriously neglecting my blog. But if anything is going to cheer you up, it will be these scrumptious little matcha sweets!

Kelli from Lovescool, who makes these cookies for a living – lucky girl! – kindly provided the recipe on her website. She’s in the process of opening a shop in New York, which should be open next time I go there, and visiting that shop will be the very first thing I do.

afternoon tea

2007-08-17T17:44:00.000Z

It seems I’ve been neglecting my little blog a bit the last few weeks – mainly because some work issues that are dragging me down, a ginormous pile of laundry that I seem unable to get rid of, and the never-ending DIY. On the bright side, S and I have found the perfect colour wood stain for our floors and a nice finishing oil that doesn’t lift the stain out of the wood and turns the colour into something really nasty.

Also, last weekend, my parents, auntie and cousin were visiting, which meant S and I got to play London tour guide for a few days. We joined the hordes of tourists for a look inside Buckingham Palace, went on the London Eye and had a very posh afternoon tea at Brown's hotel. Which was every bit as good as I remembered it from the previous times.

As we were so busy doing touristy things and catching up, our kitchen didn't see much action, but I’ve got a few sweet things lined up for the next few weeks. If I ever get all that laundry done, that is.

shamelessly plugging a friend

2007-08-03T10:43:00.001Z

A friend of mine and wonderful artist, Freddy de Vierman, is exhibiting in the Mary Place Gallery (12 Mary Place, Paddington, 2021 NSW) in Sydney until this Sunday, 5 August. If you live in Sydney, like the look of his work and have spare time this weekend, please go see his show - and, while you're there, buy his work as well :-).

grmph

2007-07-30T20:52:00.000Z

translated in English: the Daring Bakers’ July challenge - strawberry mirror cake

A few months ago, I read something about a group of Daring Bakers, and then forgot about it again. But a month later, I found more Daring Baker stuff popping up on various blogs. And another month later, yet more of the same. By the time Martha’s darkest chocolate crepe cake came around, I found myself reading all the DB entries, which made for some very amusing reading. After that, I found myself keeping an eye on the DB blogroll and eagerly anticipating what they would make the next month. The Gateau St Honoré sounded rather scary, what with the puff pastry and pate à choux and all, but I thought it would be a nice challenge and encourage me to make things outside my comfort zone, so I asked them if they would have me (pretty please) and luckily enough, they had a little place for me available.

And so, this month, I prepared for my first challenge: strawberry mirror cake, chosen by Peabody's culinary concoctions. I printed the recipe, read it again and again and again and planned when to make the whole thing. It would be a challenge for me to follow the recipe to the letter (that’s a DB rule) but I was looking forward to trying something I’d never made before. Normally, when I make an American recipe, the first thing I do is reduce the sugar, as I usually find American recipes too sweet for me. Also I don’t really liked the idea of using red food colouring (I like my food all natural) and I can’t say I’m fond of gelatin - I’ve only used it a few times in the past, usually with disastrous results, and I don’t particularly like the way texture feels in my mouth. Plus I once did an evening course in conservation and restoration of paintings, where we would often use animal glue, which smells exactly the same as gelatin. But, as a true Daring Baker, I would fearlessly give it a go.

I have to admit though, I’m not that much of a cake eater, never have been and never will be - at birthdays and other occasions I always skip the cake part. Making and assembling the whole thing took ages and was a lot of bother (partly because I didn’t have all the required equipment), and I wasn’t really impressed when I tasted it (but that’s because I’m not a cake eater). It must have been good though, because S took the finished cake to work and his colleagues absolutely loved it.

To me, this cake ended up being one of those things that sound good on paper, but somehow don’t work. Like clothes in a shop that look fabulous on the hanger, but are not a good fit when you try them on. But I am glad I did try this recipe on; at least now I know it’s not a good fit for me. I would try something similar again, maybe with a pound cake or a less sweet sponge and a mousse that doesn’t need gelatin. The mirror bit I think is something would look quite pretty on any cake, so I will try that again as well.

Here’s how my weekend of cake making went down.

Friday night I made the sponge - I don’t have a jelly roll pan, so I used a 24cm round spring form and baked two separate sponges. The first one was a disaster, which I blame on my oven. I’m sure that in new and well-behaved ovens, baking a sponge for 7 minutes at 230˚C works just fine, but in my oven that resulted in a burnt top and liquid centre. Attempt number two, baked for 20 minutes at 150˚C was somewhat more successful, but the bottom of the sponge remained rather sticky. I confess I did substitute the vanilla essence with vanilla bean paste, because I had a whole bottle of the latter and none of the former. Hope that doesn’t mean I broke the rules.

Saturday I went grocery shopping for eggs, strawberries, sugar and cream. Being half space out on antibiotics must have messed up my intellectual capacities (such as adding up and reading) though, because I ended up buying way too many strawberries. And instead of 1 1/2 cup’s worth of cream, I bought 1 1/2 pints worth of cream. Also I was feeling quite sick, so I didn’t get around to making the cake that day.

Sunday I was feeling a bit better, so I started the day full of hope and good intentions to get the whole cake together. First thing was making a new sponge, as the one I’d made on Friday had gone stale. The strawberry juice and Bavarian cream were fairly easy to make, only I misread the recipe (damn those antibiotics) and found out afterwards I hadn’t added enough gelatine to the Bavarian cream. And I only have a tiny sieve with fine mesh, so it took me ages to strain the strawberry purée, so now a proper-sized is very high up on my wishlist. The red food colouring did make the Bavarian cream a bit more pink rather than the original - but natural! - muddied pink colour. Around 7pm I was quite fed up but finally ready to assemble the cake. I used an 18cm round spring form (I didn’t buy any new equipment for this recipe, but just used the things I already have), with a cardboard circle covered in aluminium foil at the bottom (very handy tip!) and a ‘collar’ of baking paper all around. I thought I had some vanilla vodka left, but I didn’t, so I didn’t put any liqueur in the soaking syrup at all. The four layers of the cake already came higher than the spring form - luckily I had added a collar to it.

Monday I finally added the mirror (I didn’t add any food colouring to it, because I thought it had an all natural beautiful intense red colour already). By then I was so fed up with it all, I couldn’t be bothered to do something about the bubbles in the mirror. Nor did I feel like adding any decoration to the cake at all. I snapped a few quick piccies (maybe I should have cut the top of my sponge, because the browned top made a dark line in my cake), ate a piece and was not impressed.

Tuesday I made S take the whole shebang into work and told him I didn’t want to see a single crumb of it ever again. And I threw the recipe printout in my paper recycling bin, feeling strangely satisfied while doing that.

Check out the other Daring Bakers' cakes here.

pV=nRT

2007-07-29T17:35:00.000Z

I was going to skip this month’s Tropical Paradise Sugar High Friday, organised by Mary of Alpine Berry, not only because it’s been a busy month for me, but also because I didn’t have any inspiration for something tropical. The word tropical speaks to me of luscious and juicy fruits, white sandy beaches, gorgeous and lazy sunny days, refreshing dips in the ocean, exotic birds and the like. Last month, I really tried very hard to get into a summer mood, with my coconut and passionfruit sorbets, but it’s simply not working. Must be the continuing total and utter lack of summer here in the UK. I find myself craving comfort winter food, such as soup and mash, rather than ice creams and sorbets. So I decided to skip SHF this time.

But then a few things happened simultaneously. Mary extended the deadline by a week (I hope your back gets better soon, Mary); due to some serious miscalculation on my part, I had 2 punnets of strawberries left from another project; there was an overripe mango in my fruit basket that I didn’t know what to do with; and I had a few unexpected days at home - not sick enough to lay in bed all day, and feeling just about good enough to potter around in the kitchen a bit.

So I decided to try my hand at jam making. Something I’d never done before, but it was the only thing I could think of to use up all the fruit before it went really bad. I had a look at a few different recipes and kind of made it up as I went along. I added vanilla, star anise and black peppercorns to the strawberries and mango, and I also used pectin, just to make sure my jam would set. I also used way too much sugar (same amount as the fruit), because my jam turned out to be really sweet. Equal amounts of sugar and fruit is a fairly standard jam thing though, so maybe it’s just my personal preference, or maybe the mango was super sweet. I admit, strawberry jam is not very tropical, but the addition of mango and star anise makes it little bit more so - just good enough for a tropical SHF, methinks.

Oh, and the pV=nRT? That’s the reason a vacuum is created in the jam jars - something scientific with pressure and volume, particles and temperature. Just ask S. Me, I’m convinced it’s magic.

recipe

500g strawberries
250g mango
750g sugar
2tbsp lemon juice
1tbsp vanilla bean paste
3 star anise
7 black pepper corns
pectin (use as per manufacturer’s instructions)

clean and hull strawberries; peel and cube mango. Put in large pot with sugar, lemon juice, vanilla, anise and pepper. Bring to boil and simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes. Take off heat, stir in pectin and put in sterilised jam jars (I reused Bonne Maman jars).

matcha white chocolate ice cream

2007-07-27T15:31:00.000Z

if you haven’t made this ice cream yet, stop reading now and go make it immediately!

I have been in a decidedly ‘Japanese’ mood for the past few weeks, getting bento boxes or sushi for lunch almost every other day, slurping soba noodles and miso soup at home, stocking up on Japanese goodies in the Arigato supermarket in Soho (48-50 Brewer Street) and treating myself to a lovely assortiment of Japanese plates and bowls from the Japan Centre shop.

And so, when I saw a matcha white chocolate ice cream (with recipe!) on Kuidaore, I couldn’t wait to make a batch myself. I hadn’t touched my matcha supply since I used it in a pound cake, and my little box of matcha was starting to feel neglected. I decided I couldn’t wait until the weekend to make this, and so, after work, a quick grocery trip was required. But somehow, every single shop I tried seemed to have run out of white chocolate! However, I simply had to make the ice cream there and then, so I kept on trawling the shops and finally found a stack of Green & Black’s white chocolate. Arriving home about 2 hours later than planned (yes, I really wanted the ice cream that badly) with my precious white chocolate, I set to work.

Making the ice cream is an absolute doddle and the result is out-of-this world good. So good, in fact, that I think I had a religious experience when I first dipped my finger in the custard and stuck it in my mouth. And again with every single taste I’ve had since. No singing angels or anything though, just a feeling of pure and utter bliss. The cloying sweetness of the white chocolate and bitterness of the matcha make for a perfectly balanced pairing - it is very rich though, so one small scoop is more than enough. I scooped mine on one of my beautiful new Japanese plates and sprinkled it with some black sesame seeds.

Seems like I’m not the only one absolutely smitten - check out Jaden and Brilynn's versions. But before you do that, go and make this ice cream. Now!

recipe
adapted from Kuidaore

375ml double cream
375ml milk
100g caster sugar
1/8 tsp fine salt
4 large egg yolks
200g white chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp matcha, sieved

Bring cream, milk, sugar and salt to a simmer over low heat, stirring constantly. Whisk egg yolks and add cream mixture in a slow and steady stream. Return to pan and cook custard until it thickens (make sure it doesn’t boil or it will curdle). Strain into bowl and set aside. Melt chocolate (I did this in the microwave, 2 30-second blasts were just right) and blend thoroughly with matcha. Add chocolate mixture to custard. Refrigerate overnight* and then churn in ice cream maker, according to instructions. Or, if like me, you still don’t have an ice cream maker**, put in freezer and stir every half hour or so until frozen.

* this is how I discovered it would also make for excellent little cream pots; when I came home from work the next evening after work and wanted to plonk it in the freezer, I couldn’t resist sneaking another taste and found it had set to a lovely cream pot consistency
** I recently found out Kitchenaid has an ice cream making attachment. I don’t have a Kitchenaid either (it’s on my wish list), but S has informed me the only reason he hasn’t bought me one yet, is that he doesn’t know what colour to buy. Only problem is, he likes the red one, I like the orange one. Or the yellow one. Or the surf green one, such a cool colour, in a surf dude kind of way.

yet another post without any food pictures...

2007-07-23T15:21:00.000Z

... but beautifully sanded floors and painted walls instead. Which is what S and I have been doing all weekend long. More food to come, very soon.

happy birthday darling!

2007-07-14T15:20:00.000Z

Today is S's birthday, and the good people of France are so nice that they always organise a parade and fireworks especially for the occasion!

Last year I did actually take S to Paris for his birthday - our minuscule hotel was very close to the Eiffel Tower and we enjoyed the most splendid sight of the fireworks. A French girlfriend had recommended me Le Comptoir du Relais, a lovely tiny bistro at the Carrefour de l'Odeon, where we had S's birthday dinner. Which was absolutely wonderful, with the token rude waitress of course (it just wouldn't be Paris without them, would it). And lots of wine.

We didn't have any particular plans for the weekend - the weather was amazing and we just roamed around and relaxed, enjoying delicious pastries, croissants and confit de canard all weekend long, in the tiniest unassuming bistros. With polite and friendly waiting staff, which threw us a bit, but we were quickly reassured by our encounter with a rude waiter in a creperie who totally refused to speak French with us.

All by accident (a good thing of wandering around a city at leisure) and long BB (before blog), I discovered Sadaharu Aoki's shop in the Rue Vaugirard and E. Dehillerin, where I asked the shop people if I could move in but they wouldn't let me, so I had to settle for buying some baking moulds.

This year, S requested dinner at Locanda Locatelli for his birthday - he is quite a fan of the cookbook already and wanted to try the restaurant. I didn't take a camera with me, so no piccies, but I can assure you the whole experience was absolutely divine! The restaurant was very smart of course, but not in a stuck-up way, with extremely friendly and efficient staff who didn't rush us. And the food, ah, where to start! Home-made Parmesan grissini, a basket full of delicious breads, amazing salads with the perfect dressing and sweetest cherry tomatoes ever, wonderful calamari with chili and lots of garlic, lovely flaky monkfish, yummy baby cow, and delicious desserts. I of course tried the most unusual thing on the dessert menu, while S went straight for the vanilla ice cream. Which he declared to be the best one ever (in fact, his exact words were: 'eat this, Häagen-Dazs!'). No fancy schmancy dishes; everything was fairly simple (not the kind of simple you'd make at home though) but the ingredients were the freshest and bestest, top-notch quality. Another restaurant we can tick off our 'must try' list, but we've now moved it to our 'must go back' list.

Still itching to go back to Paris though.

HHDD#13 passionfruit slush

2007-07-08T12:02:00.000Z

After my flirtation with coconut last weekend, I thought it was high time to continue my love affair with all things passionfruit. When handling and scooping out all those passionfruit whilst making my soufflé, I was thinking how cute the shells would be as little cups for sorbet. I cleaned the shells, stored them in the freezer and filed away the idea in a little unused corner of my brain. And whaddayaknow: yesterday, when I bought my favourite interior magazine and browsed straight to the ‘entertaining’ bit which is edited by Donna Hay, my idea was staring right back at me, in the form of a six-page spread on ice cream and sorbet, all presented inside ‘cups’ made of orange halves, melon, lime and more.

So it was only fitting I used my passionfruit shells for this month’s Hay Hay it’s Donna Day, organised by Laura of Eat Drink Live. Remember when I said I thought my coconut sorbet would taste best paired with something else? That something else would have to be, without a doubt, passionfruit sorbet. I figured the tartness of the passionfruit would be the perfect companion to the ultra-creamy coconut, with a bit of coriander syrup thrown in to add a nice twist to it all. And of course it tasted great, just not in the shape I had imagined it. Because my passionfruit sorbet turned out to be passionfruit slush, but let’s call it granita. Sounds like it was my intention all along to end up with a grainy mix, rather than a nicely scoopable or quenelle-able frozen mass. Maybe it didn’t freeze like I wanted to because I don’t have an ice cream maker, maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was because I made up the recipe as I went along.

I looked at a few different recipes, but they all combined the passionfruit with another fruit and I wanted pure, unadulterated passionfruit flavour. Also, I couldn’t find any unsweetened passionfruit juice in the shops and I had no intention of bankrupting myself by buying enough passionfruit in order to get about half a litre of pulp/juice. So I just bought the sweetened stuff (sweetened with sugar, not nasty aspartame), skipped the ‘boil juice with sugar’ stage (because I didn’t want my sorbet to be overtly sweet) and threw all my ingredients together. Which resulted in said slush.

I had it all figured out: one quenelle of my coconut sorbet, one quenelle of passionfruit sorbet, and a stripe of coriander syrup - presented like an abstract painting on a white plate.* Only one cannot make nice quenelles with slush - granita I mean. Luckily ‘help’ was at hand, in the shape of Helen’s HHDD entry, in which she combined two sorbet flavours with sauce and churned it all into one delectable-looking combination. I threw half of my coconut sorbet and half of the passionfruit granita together and ended up with a deliciously rich, creamy yet tangy, coconut-passionfruit sorbet. Which definitely won’t last long in my freezer. The other half of the coconut sorbet I’m keeping aside for my dad. And the other half of the slush, you ask? Well, S and I do cocktail hour at weekends, and the icy passionfruit with coriander syrup made a perfect base for a tropical cocktail.

* This combination is of course inspired by Claudia Fleming’s signature dessert (coconut tapioca soup with coconut and passionfruit sorbet, coconut tuile, passionfruit caramel and coriander syrup), which I had the pleasure of enjoying in the Gramercy Tavern in New York last year. I skipped a few steps and stuck to the sorbet and syrup bit. I wanted the coriander flavour to be really intense, so I doubled the amount Ms Fleming’s uses in her syrup (thinking I could always dilute it if it was too strong), and it turned out rather nice.

passionfruit granita

1/2 litre passionfruit juice
4 passionfruit (pulp and seeds)
1 shot glass passionfruit jenever (I bought a bottle in Belgium, in this shop, Peterman’s brand)

Mix everything together and freeze. Then when you end up with granita, mix it all together with the coconut sorbet you made last week to create a coconut-passionfruit sorbet.

coriander syrup
adapted from Claudia Fleming’s Last Course

1/3 cup sugar syrup
1/2 cup firmly packed coriander leaves

For sugar syrup, mix equal measures of water and sugar and bring to boil. Turn off heat as soon as sugar is dissolved and put in glass jar with lid firmly screwed on.
Plunge coriander leaves in boiling water for 15 seconds, then drain and immediately plunge them into ice water (bowl of cold water with ice cubes). Remove from water and pat dry. Combine syrup and coriander leaves and blend (I used an immersion blender). Let rest for 30 minutes, then strain and discard solids.

passionfruit shell ‘cups’

passionfruit shells, halved

With a paring knife, remove coral-looking bits from the inside of shells. This is fairly easy, try to remove the whole membrane at once. Rinse, dry and freeze.

Meeta's monthly mingle: I scream for ... Summer

2007-07-03T11:38:00.001Z

Meeta’s July is (not just hot but) HOT and she wants us all to scream for ice cream at her monthly mingle. Unfortunately the UK weather gods have other ideas about our summer, and with the wind howling outside and the rain battering the windows I think I’ll be screaming for sun rather than ice cream. However, I’m not one to sit moping around being grumpy about the weather, and so, by lack of a decent summer outside, I thought I could at least try to create a hot and tropical summer inside. And that’s exactly what I did last weekend. Plus I decided I might as well challenge myself a bit and make something outside my comfort zone: coconut sorbet.

I’ve never been a fan of coconut, except in (Thai style) curries. I simply love the combination of hot curry paste with creamy coconut milk, it’s incredibly easy to make and it features often on my dining table. But other things with coconut, no thank you. When I was a child, we used to have an old Quality Street sweets tin in the cupboard, which would always contain mini Milky Way, Mars and Bounty. My brother and I would eat the Mars and Milky Way, and the Bounty was for my dad. If I remember well, he took one in his lunch box every day and also had one after dinner (in recent years he has moved on to ice cream for dessert). I also remember trying it once, after which experience my five-year-old self decided that I hated coconut. I can still feel that dry, fibre-y taste of desiccated coconut in my mouth, so it comes as no surprise I tend to avoid any sweets that have coconut in them.

But now, almost twenty-five years later, I thought it was time to change that and broaden my horizons a little. I chose and adapted a coconut sorbet recipe from Claudia Fleming’s Last Course and was inspired by an old Donna Hay Magazine to make ice cream sandwiches. I was also determined to try Jen’s amazing lemongrass, ginger and sesame cookies, for which I just happened to have all the ingredients in my pantry. Of course, Jen’s recipe left me with two unused egg whites, perfect for coconut meringues (another first for me). I didn’t think I would actually like these, with the shredded coconut in the meringue mixture, but I surprised myself by actually thinking they weren’t too bad. The sorbet on its own is very rich and creamy – not bad (I think it will be a hit with my dad when he comes to visit next month), but best paired with something else. Both ‘sandwich’ combinations worked well; the meringue one was incredibly coconut-y with the meringue providing a light and airy crunch; whereas in the cookie sandwich the creamy coconut and spicy cookie combination provided a more balanced and complex taste.

I don’t think I’ll find myself craving or making this coconut thingy very often, but I spent a nice afternoon experimenting, created a tropical Sunday in my kitchen and I’m now less hesitant to use coconut in desserts. And, in case you’re wondering where the British summer is hiding, shhh, don’t tell anyone, but I’m keeping it in my freezer.

coconut sorbet
inspired by Claudia Fleming’s Last Course*

2 cups coconut milk
1 cup shredded coconut
1/3 cup sugar
a squeeze of lime

Mix coconut milk with sugar and shredded coconut and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils and sugar is dissolved, take the pan off the heat and cover with clingfilm for about half an hour, to infuse the flavours. Sieve into a container, add lime juice and chill in the fridge overnight. Sieve again and freeze, stirring every half hour or so until frozen (or, if you’re lucky and have an ice cream maker, churn in your machine).

*I changed Claudia’s recipe considerably, which presented me with a few questions: when does ‘adapted from’ become ‘inspired by’? And at what point does a recipe become your own? After all, Claudia Fleming must have got her recipe from somewhere as well.

coconut meringues
from the Donna Hay magazine, issue 31, Feb/Mar 2007

2 egg whites
½ cup caster sugar
½ teaspoon white vinegar
2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gradually add sugar and vinegar until mixture is thick and glossy, fold in desiccated coconut. Spoon onto a baking sheet (I used cookie cutters for a round shape) and smoothen tops. Bake for 20 minutes on 120˚C. leave to cool in oven for 30 minutes.

ginger and lemongrass cookies
from Milk and Cookies

I had to grind most of the spices myself, not having any powdered versions on hand. I also used freshly grated ginger, and the palm sugar I had was very moist (it wasn’t a lump that needed grating), which resulted in a rather wet and sticky dough. I had to add an extra half cup or so of flour to get the cookie dough to hold together and be workable, and it still had a rather strange texture (to which S remarked ‘well, what did you expect, making strange dough like that.’). The finished cookies came out of the oven just fine though, and they tasted of Christmas.

SHF #32 the sweetest thing…

2007-06-25T21:12:00.000Z

“So, I ask you. What is your favourite, most craved dessert? What do you want when you are on a diet or when you've been away from home for a long time? What dessert always catches your eye on a menu in a restaurant and you've had it made by a thousand different people but never made it yourself? I want to know. I want you to make it for SHF this month.”

This month’s Sugar High Friday, hosted by the one and only Domestic Goddess Jennifer, is all about cravings. When I hear the word cravings, I immediately think of chocolate. Can’t help it, I am Belgian after all. However, Jennifer also writes ‘what dessert always catches your eye on a menu in a restaurant and you’ve had it made by a thousand different people but never made it yourself?’. And for me that would be, without a doubt, passionfruit soufflé. Now, this might well cost me my Belgian citizenship, but I would happily forego chocolate for anything passionfruit and passionfruit soufflé in particular. I can’t exactly say I’ve had this soufflé made by ‘a thousand different people’ – two would be more like it, but oh those two times were memorable.

The very first time I had a passionfruit soufflé, was when S and I were celebrating our 8th anniversary by treating ourselves to dinner at Le Gavroche. After our incredibly indulgent meal I of course went straight for the most chocolatey dessert on the menu, but S ordered, you guessed it, a passionfruit soufflé. Which he allowed me to try. And I was in heaven. And in luck. Because after polishing off my own dessert and ogling S’s dessert, he declared he was completely full and couldn’t eat another bite. So we switched plates, during which operation Mr Roux came out of his kitchen and asked us if there was a problem. I was completely star-struck – not to mention surprised. In this day and age, a famous chef, being there in his own restaurant. And actually cooking in the kitchen! But then he is a real chef’s chef, and not a businessman/celebrity/entrepreneur kind of chef. I managed to stammer something more or less coherent about the absolutely amazing food, his cookbook, and that I loved my own dessert very much but couldn’t help eating S’s dessert as well. Or something to that effect. My second passionfruit soufflé experience was of course the perfect ending to that wonderful dinner S and I had with friends in Brisbane I wrote about here.

So, telling Jennifer about my `sweetest thing´, that was the easy bit. But now she wanted me to make this as well? Didn´t she know that my two previous attempts at soufflé had disastrous results – one involving a hot water bath, the other one especially bought Le Creuset ramekins (I think they are too thick to evenly distribute the oven heat)? And didn’t she know my oven doesn’t work properly, the oven temperature is nowhere near accurate and the oven door doesn’t have a window? I was afraid, very afraid. But I would not let myself be beaten – I’m way too stubborn to give up that easily. I bought myself two new ramekins, found myself a recipe on the internet and set to work. First things first, and in this case that was setting up the camera and styling the whole thing, since soufflé starts to deflate the moment it comes out of the oven. Playing around with the camera, light, angle, set up, props etc. took the best part of an hour, and I hadn’t even started baking yet.

Getting the soufflé together was easy enough, but putting it into the oven and not knowing what went on behind that window-less oven door was ever so slightly unnerving. It must have been my lucky day though, because when I opened my oven door eight minutes later I looked at two beautifully risen soufflés. A quick dusting with icing sugar and a few quick snaps, and S and I delved into our little ramekins filled with passionfruity fluffyness. It was every bit as good as I remembered from the first two occasions, and tasted even better because I'd made it myself. Yay! Another thing conquered! Maybe puff pastry next? The rest of the day I could be seen walking around the house with a big idiotic grin on my face, occasionally shouting out 'I made soufflé!' but luckily that’s something only S had to endure.

Note: the recipe made enough for four portions and my ramekins were on the small side, so I had quite a bit leftover batter, which I used to experiment a bit. I tried little fluffy pancakes, scrambled eggs slash soufflé-omelette and crepes. None of the results were photogenic or blog-worthy, but encouraging nonetheless, not to mention rather tasty.

my granny rocks!

2007-06-24T20:47:00.000Z

She makes the best rice pudding ever. I put in my order with her three weeks ago, well in time for my quick weekend trip to Belgium.

After spending Friday night and Saturday morning in Brussels to catch up with my bestest friend A whom I hadn´t seen for ages (this catching up included a really good dark beer and a sweet breakfast of Portuguese pastries at Pastelaria Garcia), and a rainy Saturday afternoon of shopping in Antwerp and catching up with my mum, mum and I headed straight to my granny´s flat, where three lovely plates of rice pudding and freshly brewed coffee were awaiting us.

I have not yet managed to get a proper recipe out of my gran, but I do know she adds a good knob of butter to the milk and rice, doesn´t sweeten it at all (the sugar goes on top) and puts in a good spoonful of saffron threads, all of which results in heaven on a plate.

a lovely green salad for HOTM #4

2007-06-20T11:00:00.000Z

Because a girl can’t live on chocolate alone, right? And because green is my favourite colour. Even though I’m always posting sweet things, I love my vegetables. Except beetroot. And Brussels sprouts. And come to think of it, I’m not keen on red cabbage either. But these aside, I really really really love vegetables. So much so that I often get asked whether I’m a) on a diet or b) a vegetarian. The answers to these questions are no, and no. I just love vegetables. Simple as that.

My inspiration for this salad came from, ahem, a pre-packed M&S salad that contains edamame beans, rucola, sugar snaps and comes with a sweet chilli dressing. In my defence, it’s natural ingredients only and no colourants or preservatives. This salad is of course incredibly easy to make yourself (not to mention quite a bit cheaper than the shop-bought one) so that’s exactly what I’ve been doing recently.

I’m not adding a recipe, since it’s not rocket science. Just throw in whatever greens you have on hand – I’ve used peas, sugar snaps, French beans, asparagus, broad beans and soy beans in all possible combinations – and steam, grill or cook the greens to your liking. For the version I made yesterday I used asparagus (desperately hanging on to the very last ones of the season), broad beans and soy beans, which I boiled (afterwards I used the cooking liquid to make a vegetable soup) and dressed with a drizzle of olive oil, a twist of black pepper, a handful of parsley and some feta cheese crumbled over the top.

This salad tastes lovely all by itself, but it would go equally well as a side dish with grilled chicken or tuna, with bits of bacon in it (because according to some people everything tastes better with bacon and some people are absolutely right), perhaps with a nice lamb chop and roast baby potatoes, or whichever way you fancy. Just make sure you do eat this salad – it’s summery, yummy, crisp, healthy. And green.

This is my entry for Heart of the Matter #4: vegetables. The roundup will be posted on Joanna’s food and eating for life.

cookies for S*

2007-06-18T13:05:00.000Z

* I was going to title this post ‘my name is Inne and I’m a chocoholic’ but I baked these cookies especially for S and I only ate the sorry unsightly one anyway. Plus another one, to make sure it tasted the same as the first one. And then a few more the next day, to see how the flavours had developed. Strictly for quality control purposes, really. Really!

Saturday I baked S a batch of choc chip cookies. Nothing fancy, just butter, sugar, flour and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. As I’ve mentioned before, S is very much a chocolate and vanilla kind of guy, and I thought he could do with a batch of these cookies to offset all the non-chocolate and vanilla things I make him eat so regularly.

There’s really not much to say about these cookies, except that they are extremely chocolate-y and also rather butter-y, with a crisp bite and large crumb. And they tasted even more chocolate-y the next day.

I was of course tempted to add cardamom to the cookie dough, or coffee, or maybe even some chilli flakes, but I successfully restrained myself. These cookies were for S after all. And based on the fact I saw him sneaking towards the cookie jar quite a few times and saying ‘mmmm, yummy’, licking his lips and patting his belly, methinks he liked them. Which is a good thing, because I’ve got lots of non-chocolate and vanilla recipes lined up for the next few weeks.

Very chocolate-y choc chip cookies
I searched the internet for a generic cookie recipe, tweaked it substantially and added tons of chocolate to it

100g unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of salt
½ cup chocolate (I used a mix of cocoa nibs, plain, milk and white, which I chopped into chunks myself)

cream butter and sugar together. Add salt, flour and cocoa powder and mix until the dough resembles bread crumbs/pebbles. Add the chocolate chips and shape into a log with your hands. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least one hour. Heat oven to 160˚C, cut log into discs and bake for about 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Enjoy.

weekend shenanigans

2007-06-10T17:45:00.000Z

No, I haven’t forgotton my little blog. Or the location of my kitchen. I have been rather busy though. Last Saturday S and I drove to Wiltshire for a friends’ wedding; beautiful countryside, cosy B&B, lovely ceremony and fun party. And while we were out there – we hardly ever manage to get out of London – we visited Stonehenge the day after the wedding and arrived back home in London Sunday evening. And that was the entire weekend gone, without so much as boiling water or toasting a slice of bread. Let alone making gourmet treats.

This weekend has also flown past, again without any baking. Renovating a house is hard work, not to speak of all the dust it generates and thus the amount of cleaning required. (which is totally pointless, because the dust is everywhere and settles back on the furniture as soon as you finish cleaning). Add grocery shopping and laundry to the DIY and cleaning, and that’s another bakeless weekend gone.

I would like to say thank you to everyone who has left any comments on my blog so far – it keeps on surprising me that people I don’t know actually read my ramblings. I never know whether or not I should answer each comment individually – if I do it might seem as if I’m trying to bump up my comment count, but if I don’t I might come across as rude?

So, thank you everyone for reading my blog and leaving comments. Due to a lack of baking pictures, here’s a nice picture of Stonehenge (taken by S). And I’ll be back soon with more baking – I’ve already got a few ideas for the next Sugar High Friday and July’s Monthly Mingle. But right now I’m going to scrub the paint off my arms, rinse the sanding dust out of my hair and enjoy a nice cold Cosmopolitan.

birthday baking (and Meeta's monthly mingle)

2007-05-29T13:00:00.000Z

no, not a Tiffany's box...

When I asked my friend A what she wanted for her birthday, her answer was: ‘those cookies you made for my birthday last year were really good’ so cookies it was. The ones I made her last year are a firm favourite of mine – cardamom shortbread – but I couldn’t really bake her the same ones this year, could I? I was thinking maybe a few different sweets, with different tastes and textures, assembled in a nice box. A box was found – baby blue, which made A exclaim ‘That looks like a Tiffany’s box!’ Lucky for me, she wasn’t too disappointed that the goodies were of the edible rather than the diamond kind.

Of course there had to be something chocolate-y – I do have my Belgian-ness to live up to after all – so I decided on truffles. Coffee-cardamom truffles to be exact. Which I made, ironically, with British chocolate. But only partially; I used Belgian chocolate as well. Besides, it was dark espresso Green & Black’s chocolate, and there simply is no excuse necessary, ever, for Green & Black’s chocolate. Half the truffles I coated in unsweetened cocoa powder, the other half in the cocoa nibs I finally found at Wholefoods on my last trip to New York – after various unsuccessful shopping expeditions all around London in search of the elusive cocoa nib.

And whaddyaknow, now that Fresh & Wild here in London has been taken over by Wholefoods, they sell cocoa nibs. I’m not sure I still like the shop – it seems so much more soulless, there is much more plastic packaging and lots of fruit & veg are flown in from faraway places like Kenya and Peru, rather than the locally sourced produce they used to sell, but they do seem to have more products on offer. Like cocoa nibs. And jars of lovely caramelised shredded peppers, that go perfect with brie and basil on ciabatta. Mmm, getting hungry now … but I digress. Back to the birthday baking.

Apart from the chocolates, I also made lemon squares. I had been itching to try Mary’s recipe, and this was the ideal occasion. Unlike Mary – lucky woman – I don’t have a Meyer lemon tree in my garden, so I had to make do with ordinary supermarket lemons, but apart from that I followed her recipe to the letter. And boy, it was good.

Now, since odd numbers almost always work better, I needed a third sweet for good measure. Something soft and cakey would go well with the other two I thought. Madeleines were my first choice, but those are really only good straight out of the oven methinks. If need be, they are still ok a few hours later, but the longer you leave them the more of their yumminess they lose. So no madeleines this time. Browsing through Claudia Fleming’s Last Course, I found a recipe for almond-brown butter cakes, a financier-like cake baked in mini muffin tins, which sounded perfect. Again, I didn’t change anything about the recipe (mainly because S is always chiding me about changing recipes the first time I make them) though I was a bit apprehensive about the ginormous amount of sugar going into the batter. Indeed the finished cakes were sugar-coma-inducingly sweet, so next time I will substantially lower the amount of sugar. Also, American mini muffin tins must be much bigger than European ones, because I ended up with almost double the amount of cakes stated in the recipe. The finished cakes looked a bit plain I thought, so I brushed them with rose syrup.

And there I had it. A home-made birthday present for my friend, which she loved and enjoyed. Although I bet she secretly would have preferred if it had been a Tiffany’s box – but then what girl wouldn’t? Of course I made way too much of everything for the one present and the leftovers stretched far. They accompanied me to a picnic with friends (their only comment was ‘mmmm’), S took some to work (the comment there was ‘please ask your girlfriend to give me the recipe’) and finally I took some into work as well, where they disappeared faster than the speed of light. The only thing the sweets haven’t got yet, is a virtual recipient. So what better than to take the little blue box to Meeta’s monthly mingle, where she can virtually enjoy them for her big birthday bang. Although maybe she would prefer a Tiffany’s box as well…

chocolate truffles
my own recipe

250g dark chocolate and Green & Black’s espresso chocolate
150ml whipping cream
5 cardamom pods, black seeds only (crushed)
unsweetened cocoa powder or cocoa nibs, for finishing

Chop/grind chocolate into tiny pieces or powder. Bring cream with cardamom to a boil. Take off heat as soon as it starts boiling, cover with cling film and let flavours infuse for about 10 minutes. Add chocolate to cream and mix until the chocolate has dissolved completely. Put in fridge overnight or until firm. With a teaspoon (or melon baller) shape into truffles and dunk into cocoa powder or cocoa nibs.

SHF #31 Shades of White

2007-05-21T10:47:00.000Z

After reading the theme of this month’s Sugar High Friday on Seven Spoons, so many food thoughts started spinning around in my head it made me dizzy. With white, the possibilities really are endless – coconut, banana, vanilla, pineapple, yoghurt, cream, meringue, sponge, lemon, cheesecake, … I couldn’t for the love of me choose what to make! This is a problem I often have: I think of something, or see a recipe in a magazine or cookbook, and immediately I start thinking of things to add and to change. Invariably, there are so many choices and possible combinations that I am either paralysed by the sheer magnitude of choice and end up making nothing, or try to cram too many things all into one dish, which ends up being not so good because of the overdose of ingredients and flavours.

And of course this was threatening to happen again for Sugar High Friday. Until I got a stern talking to from S. I had shown him a lovely photograph (shoved it in his face, actually) of a Donna Hay milk and rosewater jelly. Thinking it was too simple (I often feel that, when making a dessert or something for other people to taste, it has to be something spectacular and complex) I started obsessing about how to change it, make it more intricate and a million other things, but then S said to me: ‘why don’t you just make it as it is?’ So that’s what I did. Although I couldn’t help myself and just had to change it ever so slightly. It was also a chance for me to try something with gelatine again. I’d only used it a few times before, each time with disastrous results. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the smell of it, and the concept of jelly will always remain alien to me, but once the jelly was set and ready to eat, it was lovely. And a big hit with my friends. It had a silky smooth texture, the goats’ milk gave it a refreshing tang, it wasn’t overly sweet, the cardamom made it into a grown-up dessert, and there was just a subtle hint of rosewater.

Recipe
Adapted from a Donna Hay recipe

600ml goats’ milk
45g sugar
1 sachet gelatine
¼ teaspoon rosewater
3 cardamom pods, black seeds only (crushed)

Dissolve gelatine in half cup of hot milk. Heat rest of milk with sugar, rosewater and cardamom. Add gelatine to this mixture. Pour in mould and refrigerate until set.

HHDD#12 Caesar… soup?

2007-05-18T11:54:00.000Z

(an early entry, I know, but the weather seems to be turning from soupy to salady again, so I thought I'd better get this post up straight away)

When Katie of Other People’s Food announced the theme of Hay Hay it’s Donna Day, I have to admit felt a bit disappointed at first. After discovering food blogs (about eight months ago) and setting up shop in my own little corner of the internet (about four months ago), followed by a few busy months travelling around the world, I was very much looking forward to being home, getting my groove on in the kitchen and finally start participating in all those food events out there!

I had devoured all the previous round-ups of HHDD, SHF and quite a few more. All those chocolate-y, mousse, sweet, flowery, cocoa-y creations made my mouth water and my imagination run wild, and I was anticipating the day I’d have time to do something myself. And then, when the announcement for HHDD#12 came, it was … Caesar salad??? What about all those sweet bites?

But Katie was right of course, after months of sugar coma-inducing sweetness a nice crisp salad wouldn’t go amiss. She urged everyone to use the main elements of a Caesar salad and be creative with it. After doing a bit of research about Caesar salad (all right then, I read the Wikipedia entry), an idea started brewing in my head.

Seeing as the weather here in London is abysmal (grey, wet and cold), I’ve ditched the salads for now and have gone back to eating soup. And so I decided to turn my Caesar salad into a Caesar soup, with a recipe cobbled together from various other recipes I’ve made before – that parmesan galette I had last made years ago and my mother-in-law’s ‘summery lettuce soup’, which is one of my summer staples (her peppery cucumber soup is another firm favourite). And so, here it is, my Caesar soup. It has all the classic Caesar ingredients, apart from the dressing. I thought about making that into a foam, but I don’t have a foam making thingy, so I gave up on that idea. For now.

(my mother-in-law's summery) lettuce soup
2 onions
2 lettuces, washed and coarsely shredded
1 litre stock (chicken or vegetable, whatever you fancy)

Glaze onions in a bit of olive oil. Add lettuce and stir occasionally. It will start to wilt and may look rather bad, but don’t worry, this is normal. Add stock and simmer for about half an hour. Blend and season whichever way you like. Yes, it really is that easy.

Notes
* normally I use iceberg lettuce, which gives a crisp and summery taste. This time I used romaine, which has a bit more oomph and tastes a bit more spinach-y.
* if you prefer a smoother texture, you can also put the soup through a moulin-légumes after blending, though nobody outside continental Europe seems to know what that is.
* my mother-in-law’s original recipe calls for the addition of herb cheese (Boursin is perfect), which I omitted this time for Ceasar’s sake.

Parmesan galette
Grate parmesan, put on baking paper or silpat in circular shape (I use a ring mould for guidance) and put under the grill until it bubbles and is golden around the edges. Keep an eye on it, as it can go wrong real quick. You’re aiming for a disc that has an ‘interesting’ texture, with holes in it, but not so fragile that it breaks when you handle it or so thick that it becomes gloopy. Make sure the parmesan is fresh and moist and grates in long strands – my first to attempts were disasters; I used an old piece of parmesan, which I think was too dry. It would grate only in tiny flecks and didn’t melt in the oven at all.

Garlic croutons
Cut (white) bread in little squares, heat olive oil in pan, add garlic and then bread. Fry until golden and crispy.

Crispy bacon
Go to the supermarket and buy a pack of crispy bacon strips. Or, if you have lots of time and know how to make bacon crispy, go ahead and make it yourself.

Assembly
Arrange croutons in middle of plate, stick bacon and parmesan galette in crouton heap, ladle soup around it, and finally add a twist of black pepper. Looks good, don’t you think?

keeping it real

But who am I kidding; my crouton mountain tumbled down as soon as I tried to stick the bacon in it and, no matter what I tried, I could not get it to stay in the position I wanted. So I had to cheat a little (shhh, don’t tell anyone); I cut a little cube of mozzarella I had in the fridge, made two cuts in it, clamped the bacon in one cut and the parmesan in the other, plonked it in the middle of the plate, artfully arranged all the croutons around it to hide the mozzarella et voilà … oh, wait. Now the parmesan galette started to bend backwards a bit (maybe I should have left it a bit longer under the grill to crisp it up a bit more). So I pricked a sewing pin in the mozzarella behind the parmesan to hold the galette up straight. Well, at least I didn’t use bluetack. Or superglue. Or other crazy things I’ve read in a rather freakishly weird article. I’m not very fond of eating sewing pins though, so after taking my food porn pictures, I ladled my soup in a bowl, dunked in the croutons, added some parmesan shavings on the top and put the bacon on top of the bowl. One more quick snap of the real thing and then I could eat my soup like normal people would. Sans sewing pins.

I made macarons!!!

2007-05-13T10:03:00.000Z

Exclamation marks (all three of them) absolutely essential. Really. After a first, completely botched attempt to make macarons, which resulted in unremovable stains on my brand-new silpat and a few rock hard blackened heaps of something undescribeable, I shelved the idea of making macarons indefinitely. Or at least until we get around to renovating our kitchen and installing a new stove. But it just so happened I had two leftover egg whites in the fridge and in a moment of madness I thought, what the heck, let’s give it another go.

Michel Roux Jr provided me with his faultless recipe – not personally, sadly, but his Le Gavroche Cookbook did – for chocolate macarons. I sieved the icing sugar, cocoa powder and ground almonds twice, just to make sure, before adding it to the whipped egg whites. Getting the macaron mixture into a plastic bag (with a corner cut off) was a whole undertaking in itself; S had to come and help me and we could have done with a third set of hands, but between us we managed in the end. I lowered the recommended oven temperature substantially and halved the cooking time – not because I don’t trust Monsieur Roux’s instructions, oh no, but because I’m beginning to get the hang of dealing with my oven – and [insert drumroll here] they came out ok. Not great, or award-winning, most of them not even round, and the ones that were in the back of the oven started to go a bit dark already, but ok nonetheless.

Now, I have to confess I’m not a big macaron fan (I may have to go in hiding now – who knows what Robyn will do to me when she tracks me down). The ones I have had so far were invariable cloyingly sweet, with no other taste except for their sweetness. One tiny bite and I can feel a sugar coma coming on. But then I’ve never had a Ladurée or Pierre Hermé macaron, so who knows what I’ve been missing out on all my life. My chocolate macarons were still a bit sweeter than I would have liked, but not too much, and I could still taste the cocoa in them. I sandwiched a few with crème de marrons, which I’m not a big fan of, but it had exactly the right consistency and thus made for a nice photograph (yes, I am that shallow sometimes). For all the other ones I used pure, unsweetened, extremely hazelnutty, hazelnut paste, which was a bit runny, even after a good half hour in the fridge, but it balanced out the sweetness of the macaron wonderfully. The perfect combination for me. Now that I know it can be done (sort of), I will definitely try making macarons again. And while I'm at it, bring on soufflé!

ravioli update

2007-05-12T09:18:00.000Z

S has asked me to rectify the following:

1) he also eats dough, as in unbaked bread. Any kind of dough, really.

2) there's a special technique for 'inhaling' bread crumbs with a straw and one has to be careful not to choke. He usually eats them with a spoon, which is easier.

3) the spinach and ricotta filling of the ravioli also contained parmesan, pepper and nutmeg.

S starring in the kitchen (and a white plate guest starring)

2007-05-11T16:12:00.000Z

S bought me a white plate! ‘For your food pictures’ he said. Sweet, non? But the plate is only guest starring, so let’s quickly move on to the real star.

Quite a while ago, S came home after work one day with a copy of Giorgio Locatelli’s Made in Italy: Food and Stories. S has a completely food-unrelated job in a food company, and one of the food people at his office had told him it was an excellent book. S also happens to be mad about pasta; he could eat it 24-7. He even eats it uncooked. But then he also eats stock cubes, flour, coffee and bread crumbs (preferred method for these:‘inhaled’ straight from the packet with a drinking straw) and after more than ten years together I’m used to these little quirks.

The book is not one I would buy myself – my first impression was that it looked a little bit messy. There is a lot of background story and explanation intermingled with the recipes, and I prefer it somewhat more separate and organised. When I started reading however, I found myself completely absorbed in Locatelli's family stories and anecdotes. He is clearly very passionate about good food, cooking, and conveying to his readers an understanding of Italian cuisine. And of course the title of the book is food and stories, so both are of equal importance.

The first thing S made from the book was pesto a la Genovese – a beautiful and delicious intensely green paste, which we added to pasta, sandwiches, chicken and lots of other things. Last weekend he was feeling a bit more ambitious and decided to make ravioli from scratch. Now I love me a good ravioli – I usually buy mine home-made from Lina’s, a wonderfully old-fashioned, family-run Italian delicatessen in Soho (18 Brewer Street) – so I wasn’t about to pass up on that offer! Also, S had a new toy to try out; a little pasta-shaping-mould thingy that we bought on our last trip to Antwerp.

And so last Saturday, S set about making dough and filling. We don’t have a pasta machine (it’s on our wish list), so getting the dough thin enough was a bit tricky and it ended up a bit on the thick side. For the filling he used my favourite: spinach and ricotta – very simply blanched spinach, wrung dry and chopped mixed with a tub of ricotta cheese. He served it with a tomato and basil sauce – even more simply a tin of chopped tomatoes, reduced in a pan with a bit of olive oil – and of course some parmesan shavings. Pasta, a nice glass of red and Billie Holiday in the background – the perfect Saturday evening.

a taste of yellow

2007-05-08T08:56:00.000Z

With lots of DIY planned for the long bank-holiday weekend, I didn’t have any ambitious baking plans, though I did plan to whip up something for A Taste of Yellow. Barbara of Winos and Foodies is the instigating force behind this food event, which has been approved by the Lance Armstrong Foundation as an official LiveStrong event to raise cancer awareness (LiveStrong Day 2007 will take place on 16 May). Barbara writes: “there isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t been touched by cancer in some way” and that is sadly true of course.

About six weeks ago, M, a dear friend of mine, died of cancer. She was only 34. We first met at uni at our postgraduate degree in Asian art history – a wonderful year, with lots of dinner parties and in which strong worldwide friendships were forged. After graduating, M decided to stay in London and went on to do a PhD while I got myself a job. Both of us being busy people, we saw each other only occasionally, but we kept our fooding tradition going. When she started having stomach problems – and with the NHS living up to its reputation – she decided to go back home to Taiwan for a proper check-up. By the time her cancer was diagnosed, it had already spread. Unfortunately she gave up without a fight, refusing all conventional treatment (because it made her so sick and miserable), trying some herbal remedies instead and refusing to see any of her friends. I, along with our other common friends, felt frustrated and helpless, reading about her suffering in the occasional email she managed to write, but unable to do something. All we could do was send her encouraging emails, urging her not to give up. She wouldn’t have made 80, and probably not even 50, but I can’t help thinking she could have had a good few years left. However, seeing as there is nothing I could have done, I decided to make do with A Taste of Yellow.

With some vague ideas floating around in my head, I didn’t think it would be that difficult to create some sort of yellow food. Right? Hmmm, let’s see. Bread pudding with leftover raisin and cinnamon bread – bread seemed to have moulded overnight. Something with mango – nope, only one sorry-looking rock-hard mango in my fruit bowl. Banana cake – those overripe bananas I had frozen turned out all mushy, looking and smelling rather disgusting. Freezing bananas obviously doesn’t work.

Luckily I did have another bunch of rather ripe bananas and some nectarines. Since I spent most of the weekend sanding skirting boards (and cursing the man who plastered the walls, such a shoddy job, but that’s England for you) I went with an easy, tried and tested, good old Delia recipe for banana walnut loaf, which is published on her website. Having sliced the finished cake in little squares, I tried icing the squares, but my icing technique (I used icing sugar and water mixed into a paste) obviously needs a lot of work still. To jazz the whole lot up a little, I found inspiration in D&C Duby's Wild Sweets in the shape of nectarine carpaccio. I don’t have a mandoline, so I just tried slicing the nectarine as thinly as possible. The slices were then ‘marinaded’ for a few hours in simple syrup (equal measures of water and sugar, boiled and stored in a closed container) with added vanilla bean paste, and draped on top of the cake square. Et voilà, a yellow(ish) cake thingy. Which I'm sure M would have enjoyed.

weekend experimenting

2007-05-01T10:46:00.000Z

Being a big fan of Keiko’s beautiful blog Nordljus, I got intrigued about all those delectable-looking Hidemi Sugino cakes and tartlets that keep on popping up on her blog. Keiko links these entries to the Japanese Amazon store and Sugino’s cookbook Le Gôut Authentique Retrouvé. Encouraged by the French title, and since amazon.co.jp is, well, in Japanese, and my Japanese doesn’t stretch much further than some touristy phrases, I enlisted the help of my Japanese friend M in Fukuoka and asked her to check for me whether this book was written in French. If so, Mr Sugino and I were in business. No such luck though, the book was written in Japanese only. However, M informed me that he did have a second cookbook, called The Dessert Book, written in Japanese and English. Not only that, she also very kindly sent me a copy of this book. Thank you M-tyan, arigatoo gozaimashita! The recipes in this book are fairly simple, basic and easy to make, but elegant. The one that immediately caught my eye was a tiny tartlet with a rhubarb and mascarpone filling, topped with cherry tomatoes, basil and balsamic caramel, and served with a celery sorbet. And so, last weekend – jetlag forgotten, three weeks of laundry and ironing all done and itching to start baking again – I knew this was just the thing I wanted to try.

cocoa pastry cases? Nope, just burnt pastry cases...

I had some cinnamon sweet pastry dough in the freezer (leftovers from a Claudia Fleming recipe), a bunch of dainty baking moulds I bought in Paris last July and hadn’t used before, I had finally figured out how to get pastry dough thinly rolled out without it sticking to the work surface (roll it out between two sheets of baking paper), and so I set about fumbling around making the pastry cases. It took me a long time to roll the dough, drape it in the moulds and trim the excess, but I had fun with it. I wonder though how these things are done in professional pastrychef land – if you have to make, say, 800 rather than eight. After the rolling, draping and trimming I bunged the whole lot in the oven and there it all went horribly wrong. I followed the baking instructions to a T but of course the oven decided to not cooperate and my dainty rectangular pastry cases came out rather dark brown and smelling quite burnt. For a minute, I toyed with the idea of pretending that it was cocoa pastry, but there’s not much use making a tartlet that looks nice but is inedible. Luckily the somewhat larger, less dainty moulds I had put in a different place in the oven came out fine. A bit darker than I would have liked, but still very much on the right side of burnt and inedible.

The baking bit over and done with, I proceeded to the tomato and caramel bit. I had never made caramel before but I remember some stories about boiling hot things exploding on stoves, so I thought I’d better be careful with this. Sugino’s recipe said to melt butter (I used salted rather than the unsalted specified, which gave it a slight edge) in a pan, cover it with a layer of sugar, cover the sugar with a layer of honey and then, when the whole lot starts caramelising, add balsamic vinegar and sauté cherry tomatoes in this mix. It all looked rather strange, but worked perfectly. The balsamic vinegar added a nice twang to the caramel, as did the juice from the tomatoes, which also prevented the caramel from setting to a rock hard substance.

Moving on to the filling bit, I realised I had completely forgotten about the rhubarb, so I had to make do with just the mascarpone, which I mixed with sugar and shredded basil. The celery sorbet I had decided to skip altogether. You see, I was pretty sure S wouldn’t be jumping up and down with enthusiasm for this dessert, as he’s more of a vanilla and chocolate kinda guy. To his credit though, he does taste everything I make. And when he says ‘mmmmmm, yeeeees, it’s… ok’ when trying some weird concoction like, I don’t know, a dessert with tomatoes, basil and balsamic caramel, that means I’m on to a winner.

The finished tartlets were just a tad too sweet to my liking – that rhubarb I forgot would have been perfect to cut through all the sweetness of the mascarpone, caramel and tomatoes. And of course, the celery sorbet would have provided the finishing touch. Next time I’ll make sure to put celery and rhubarb on my shopping list. And not trust my oven…

cake on request

2007-04-23T15:17:00.000Z

Since S so sweetly requested a marbled cake, what else could I do but strap on my apron and start baking? It was the ideal occasion to use the cake mould my granny had given me recently. She had bought it aeons ago (the price label on the box is in Belgian francs – that long ago), only used it once and she knows I love baking so thought I would put it to better use than her.

The recipe I used is my family’s version of the classic quatre quarts, or pound cake, and is a complete doddle to make.

4 eggs (separated, whites whipped)
250g butter (softened)
250g sugar (including some vanilla sugar)
250g flour (self-raising or with baking powder)

Cream the butter with sugar, add egg yolks, fold in egg whites, add flour et voilà: basic cake dough. For a marbled cake, take a blob of dough and mix in some cocoa powder, until you’re happy with the cocoa-ness of it. Butter your cake mould, bung in a layer of plain dough, followed by a chocolate layer, another layer of plain dough and bake at 150˚C for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

The mould I used was smaller than the one I normally use, leaving me with quite a bit of leftover dough. Which mysteriously diminished every time S paid a visit to the kitchen. But still, there was enough left for me to finally try something with that unopened pack of matcha I’d had sitting in my pantry for so long and never got around to using. So I mixed a bit of matcha in the dough until the whole thing was sufficiently green, and baked it in rectangular mini moulds. The resulting mini cakes were deliciously moist, with a very subtle matcha taste – the bitterness of the tea nicely counterbalanced the sweetness of the cake.

Yummy though it was (even S approved), it did look a bit plain. So, in a vain effort to try and make it look a bit more professional and posh, I played around a bit with the presentation, plating it with strawberries, raspberry coulis and a dusting of icing sugar. The whole thing ended up looking as if the strawberries had been violently slaughtered on the cake, but the tart fruit and coulis nicely complemented the bitter matcha.

And the end result? I was happy I could finally used my ‘new’ baking mould and the matcha powder, and S was a very happy bunny indeed with his marbled cake. if only all happiness was as simple as a nice piece of cake…

g'day

2007-04-20T15:23:00.000Z

no points for guessing where I've been...

Back at home, back at work and still ‘enjoying’ jet lag. With six long haul and three short haul flights in the past month, I’ve now done more than my bit to pollute the earth – maybe I should plant my back garden full of trees (but I’m not sure the neighbours would agree) or not use electricity for about a decade (but that would pose some serious problems involving ovens and baking, not to mention computers and my little blog). It feels strange being back after such a long time away. All that’s left now is memories. Oh, and a gazillion pictures to sort through.

a spread of Peranakan food (but not the home-cooked one)

Singapore was fun – I especially liked the notices in the MRT (the local underground) listing different fines for eating, drinking and smoking, plus a separate and huge fine for eating durian. S and I caught up with friends who introduced us to the different cuisines of Singapore: cheap ‘n cheerful hawker food, chilli crab, dinner at the Fullerton hotel (our friends know the chef there and he prepared something special for us). We also enjoyed an utterly delicious home-cooked Peranakan meal (prepared by a linguitst/writer/chef) for my friend W’s birthday. Thank you B and K for inviting us into your home and making our tummies so happy!

the Blue Mountains

In Australia we spent a lot of time with various friends, ate the most wonderful fish, seafood and tropical fruits, had too many cocktails, saw lots of funny-looking birds, cute geckos, big spiders, a teeny tiny croc in the wild and a cassowary. And I even managed to get a tan – yay! I also learned that ‘terrorism is un-Australian’, which I think is a great statement and every country in the world should adopt it. Not the ‘un-Australian’ bit, obviously, but un-‘whichever-country’.

a random surfer on Bondi Beach

We worked our way up the East Coast starting in Sydney, where we did touristy things such as walking around the city all day; taking pictures of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House (which is surprisingly beige in real life – it was built in the seventies after all – but in photos it strangely becomes bright white); spending a day at Bondi Beach (which is surprisingly small); and taking a day trip to the Blue Mountains (where you don’t want to get lost, apparently the whole national park is half the size of Belgium).

ugly but oh so yummy Moreton Bay bugs
(and my newly married friend A with his shiny new wedding ring)

In Noosa we had our first big get-together with friends and our first encounter with Moreton Bay Bugs. These ugly critters won’t win any beauty contests, but they are incredibly delicious. From Noosa we all moved on to Maleny for our friends’ wedding, which was beautiful and funny. Although it was a good thing we didn't know about all the funnel web spiders the owner of the place was killing while we were enjoying champagne at the courtyard reception. Of course we had to go to Australia Zoo – we couldn’t go to the area and not visit the zoo – so now we now exactly what to do when encountering a crocodile. And how to say ‘crikey’ like a native.

the incredibly beautiful Lake McKenzie on Fraser Island

After the wedding S and I spent a few days on Fraser Island before moving on to Port Douglas, where we rejoined our friends, took a daytrip to the Daintree Rainforest and went snorkeling and diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Even though I was terribly seasick all the way out to the reef, it was so worth it. Then we enjoyed one last day in Brisbane, where we met up with S’s former colleague D and his family for a lovely leisurely afternoon and a stunning meal at River Canteen (my eyes still glaze over when I think back at the pan-seared barramundi with twice baked sand crab soufflé, Sauternes crème and grilled asparagus, or the passionfruit soufflé with vanilla bean custard and passionfruit ice cream I had for dessert).

the Glasshouse Mountains, as seen from Maleny

Getting back home was a bit of a nightmare thanks to SingaPOOR airlines. First of all, they didn’t think it necessary to let us know they changed their schedule. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 5.30am and got to Brisbane airport at 7am for our morning flight, only to discover it didn’t exist any more and we were rebooked on the 3pm flight. Hanging around at an airport for half a day is not my idea of fun, especially since this delay meant I would miss (most of) my friend W’s birthday party in Singapore. The next day we got up at 5.30am again, went to Changi airport at 7am, only to be told that our flight was full and we couldn’t get on it. Eventually, we did manage to get on the flight after all, but, needless to say, I’m not in a hurry to fly SIA again any time soon. Having said that, once we did get on board, the entire service was impeccable. And the food not half bad for airline food (btw, check out this cute website about airline meals).

On another note, I got a comment from someone who is not related to me and not a personal friend – which means that someone is actually reading what I scribble down, wow. Thank you for the kind words, Helene. Now that I’m back home I cannot wait to start baking again and trying new recipes from the cookbooks and magazines I picked up in Singapore and Oz. Although they will have to wait just a bit longer, as my darling S has expressed a craving for marbled cake. And how could I refuse such a sweet and simple request...

in between America and Australia

2007-03-25T22:30:00.000Z

It's been a while since I posted, but work has kept me quite busy, what with a business trip to New York and all. It's a yearly thing and it's always nice to go - NY is starting to feel a little bit like home, I have friends there, and, last but not least, it's good for some serious SHOPPING!
As usual, S came with - every year he says "I don't think I'll come this time", but every year he changes his mind and comes anyway. Which I don't mind at all of course. Last week Friday, while I was at work, S roamed the Big Apple with his camera and took this lovely picture in Central Park - 6 inches of snow last Friday, so beautiful. If this had happened in London, the whole city would have come to a standstill and the public transport would have gone all haywire. But it's NY, so everything kept on working just fine. Although getting a cab was near impossible.

Last Sunday I had the day off, so I went on my yearly pilgrimage to (the holy shrines of) Kiehl's and Aveda - a bit like going to Lourdes I would imagine. Maybe it will not bring salvation for my soul, but salvation for my skin is a given. It was a nice and sunny day, so S and I walked, and who else did we run into but Tim Robbins, speaking at an anti war demonstration. How cool is that. And we ended the day with a lovely home-cooked dinner, at our friends' home in Harlem. They have a ginormous flat (to NY standards at least) and it was nice to visit an area where tourists normally don't go. Still a bit rough around the edges (but then again, so is East London, where I live) but lovely open spaces and river views.

Apart from Sunday, work kept me quite busy, so I didn't have much time for fooding. Most of my food experiences were limited to Midtown, within five blocks of my hotel and work place, and are not really worth writing about. Apart from saying I still cannot get over how big American portions are. It's a good thing I only stayed a week, any longer and I might not fit in an economy seat on the plane any more. There was a whole list of places I would have loved to try, but didn't get the chance to. I did manage a cocktail or two with friends, and a lovely Japanese sushi dinner at St Marks Place though. Oh, and I did fit in a quick trip to Williams Sonoma and Wholefoods, where I finally found cocoa nibs (I've been searching high and low for those in London, but to no avail), some Scharffenberger Serious Chocolate (serious as in 99% cocoa) and vanilla bean paste.

Off to Australia tomorrow (I know, I have such a hard life), for a long holiday and a friends' wedding. No big foodie plans for Oz, but I'll be meeting up with W, an old university friend in Singapore, who will finally introduce me to the pleasures of chilli crab. And Jen from Milk and Cookies gave me some nice suggestions for Sydney food places.

easy-peasy midweek curry

2007-03-09T15:53:00.000Z

My kitchen hasn’t seen much action in the last few weeks; even at weekends the oven and hob stay woefully underused. Last weekend was filled with DIY and a necessary shopping trip. Believe me, I can think of much nicer ways to spend my Saturday than to join the masses of shopping people in Central London, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? In this case: the girl had to find a dress for a wedding. And a suit for S, also for the wedding. And holiday stuff. Funny how much stuff you think you’ll need before setting off on a holiday. Weekdays are just too busy with work and last-minute preparations for a business trip to New York, followed by a visit to the gym; the exercise does wonders to clear my head after a long day at the office, not to mention my waistline, but when S and I finally get ourselves home around 8-8.30pm, neither of us has much energy left to start cooking things from scratch. So I end up nibbling cheese, salami and chocolate, hereby undoing what the exercise has done for my waistline…

All this gymming, shopping, and DYI-ing does not do much for a blog about food of course, so here’s an oldie from the archives (god that sounds ancient): the easy-peasy midweek curry. Of course there’s a bit of prep work involved and a bit of waiting around until it’s ready, but while waiting you can read the paper. Or solve a sudoku. Or think about your holiday. There’s no exact recipe; just mix about 50g of curry paste with a tin of coconut milk and heat it in the wok. Add whatever you like and let simmer until done. I like to add carrots, onions, peas, beans, red peppers and potatoes – no need for lots of preparation, I just peel what needs to be peeled and cut it up in big chunks – but something meaty of fishy would work just as well. While your curry is simmering away, cook some rice et voilà: a delicious meal in about 30 minutes.

It tastes even better the second day when all the flavours have fused together, so you could make it in advance and have a healthy ready-meal super-easy-peasy midweek curry. And there’s no law against making it at weekends. In which case, you’ll have an easy-peasy weekend curry.

family lunch

2007-03-01T17:14:00.000Z

For her 80th birthday, my granny organised a big party at a local restaurant and invited her extended family and close friends. That day, she got a tiny bit tipsy on champagne and we made her promise to have another birthday party the following year, just for the close family. And ever since then it has become a bit of a tradition to have a birthday lunch with her. She always tries to get out of it, claiming she needs to save her money for when ‘she’ll be old’, but of course we won’t let her. Her birthday was last weekend and, after that little shopping excursion in Antwerp on Saturday, we had her birthday lunch on Sunday (‘we’ is my granny, my aunt & cousin, my parents & my brother, and S & myself).

Both these images are from the restaurant's website (www.jachthoorn-kontich.be/foto/jachthoorn_algemeen)

The restaurant we always go to, De Jachthoorn, is located in a picturesque old farmhouse, set in a large garden with playground. It has a function room, caters lots of weddings and other parties and is very popular with local people – at weekends it is always packed to the rafters. The food they serve is traditional Belgian fare (a bit like French, but simpler) – not Michelin star worthy, but on the whole quite decent. Apart from their market menu, which changes weekly, the restaurant’s menu never ever changes. And I really mean never: in the four years that we have been celebrating my granny’s birthday there, the menu has remained exactly the same. Not very imaginative, but the owners probably adhere to the mantra ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. And why should they, the place is always full, so they must be doing something right.

I think we caught them on a particularly bad ‘off-day’ last Sunday though, as a lot seemed to have gone wrong. Personally, I find their food a bit too salty for my taste and, although their dishes sound really good on paper, there is always seems to be ‘something’ that doesn’t work as well as it should. Having said that, I have to admit I’m not that easy to please. And, based on my past experiences there, I know they can do better than what they served us last Sunday, so I won’t be too harsh. Like I said, on the whole their food is quite decent. Here goes.

Granny insisted we all have the ‘market menu’, which changes weekly, and which sounded really nice:

aperitif (sparkling wine)
-
amuse-bouche
-
goat’s cheese wrapped in bacon with walnut and pear salad
or
salmon tartar with sour cream and potato crisp
-
leek and shiitake soup
-
sorbet
-
cod with herb crust and celeriac mash
or
entrecote with chicory and red wine reduction
-
dessert

goat's cheese parcel

salmon tartar

The amuse-bouche I forgot to photograph and none of us were sure what it was, but we think was sliced (smoked? carpaccio?) duck breast with shredded red cabbage and orange. I had the goat’s cheese starter, which was faultless and absolutely delectable: the soft, mild, tangy cheese contrasted nicely with the salty bacon and sweetness of the pear. I didn’t taste the other starter, but it got the thumbs up all around.

The soup, I’m sorry to say, was so salty I couldn’t eat it. It was an attack on my taste buds, I couldn’t even taste what vegetable the soup was made with, all I could feel in my mouth was the salt overload. ‘Too salty’ was the general consensus at our table, but everyone except me ate theirs. My dad, who loves his salt, liked it, but even he had to admit it was rather salty.

After the soup came a sorbet. I think it was raspberry, which I found a strange choice. As a dessert, this would have been perfect, but as a palate cleanser I found it too sweet. I would have chosen something more fresh and tart – lemon or even apple perhaps?

entrecote

herb encrusted cod -or how I discovered how difficult it is to take a decent photograph of food in a restaurant with strange lighting

My main course was the entrecote, which came as a delicious slab of ‘saignant’ perfection, with some cress and tomato. The chicory was a bit on the salty side (I told you they like their salt there) but I absolutely LOVE chicory so I happily gobbled it all up. S’s portion of chicory also found its way into my tummy, as he’s not a big fan. There was some sort of grated potato cake on the plate as well, which must have ended up there because of a space-time continuum rupture or something like that. Not only was it completely dried out, it also had a fishy taste. Literally. The thing tasted of fish. Maybe someone didn’t clean the pans very well? The other main course was good (again, I didn’t taste it) but apparently the sauce (hollandaise?) was too sour and overwhelming.

Dessert was a little plate with cake, ice cream and fruit. The cake was some sort of sponge with vanilla cream (at least, that’s what I think it was), which was kind of heavy and so cloyingly sweet I could feel myself sinking away into a complete sugar coma after one bite. Luckily the fruit and coffee ice cream saved the day.

The verdict: not too great, almost every dish seemed to have something or other wrong with it. There are better restaurants out there in the same price category serving similar food. But, at the end of the day, we had a nice family get-together, my granny likes this restaurant very much and was really pleased to have her entire family around her, she was radiating happiness and enjoying every single moment of it. And I think that’s what’s really important…

Antwerp

2007-02-27T12:21:00.000Z

Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Kathedraal in Antwerp

Last Friday after work, I left my apron, oven and baking tins behind for the weekend and went to Belgium for a quick family visit and a (tiny) bit of retail therapy. Whenever I’m in Belgium I like to spend a day in Antwerp, where S and I used to live. And so on Saturday, I dragged S out of the warm coziness of my parents’ home to a grey and rainy city. Antwerp is a really small town – certainly if you’re used to cities like New York or London – and it is very easy and manageable to walk everywhere. While the main shopping street (the Meir) is like a mini-Oxford Street, with all the big chains and identikit shops, Antwerp does have a lot of small, independent shops and boutiques, which are worth a visit. But you have to know where to find them of course.

One of my favourite shops in Antwerp is Huis A. Boon (Lombardenvest 2-4), a delightfully old-fashioned looking timewarp of a boutique that has been around since 1884. They sell gloves in every shape, material and colour imaginable – long opera gloves, fingerless ones, buttery soft leather gloves that fit like a second skin, lined with cashmere or satin, from neutral browns and greys to the most exuberant colours – all neatly stacked away in little labelled boxes that line the shop walls. I buy a new pair there every other year or so and I’d say if you don’t find what you’re looking for there, it probably doesn’t exist.

Bazar Bizar (Steenhouwersvest 18) is a veritable Aladdin’s cave, full of little trinkets that you absolutely don’t need but that would be so nice to have. Their ever-changing assortment ranges from Moroccan tea glasses and tagines to Vietnamese lacquer bowls and Indian textiles. Above the shop is a tiny B&B, quite unlike any other. They do have a website and even an on-line shop (which is rather unusual for Belgium – even Ikea in Belgium has no on-line ordering), but it’s in Flemish only. Bazar Bizar is in the street where S and I used to live, in a beautiful old flat with high ceilings, wooden floors, marble fireplaces and an amazing view of the cathedral from our bath. There are lots of other interesting shops in the street – one specialising in cognac, another one dealing in 20th century design classics, a few art nouveau specialists and more – but there’s only so much you can do in one day.

't Koetshuis, Kloosterstraat 62

I also like a good rummage around the ‘juntique’ shops of the Kloosterstraat (most of the shops here don’t open until 2pm though). S always patiently undergoes my browsing – interior-wise, he really likes clean lines, modern and minimal stuff, while I love old junk and am always on the lookout for bargains. Or things that have ‘potential’. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately – for S) there was no way I could get that giant wardrobe, lovely cabinet, or Victorian school desk from Antwerp to my parents’ place, let alone pack them in my tiny suitcase and drag them onto Eurostar back to London. What I did manage to bring back were three glass jars for the princely sum of €2.25.

De Vagant - café and shop

One of Antwerp’s little drinking holes, where I have spent many a pleasant evening, is ‘jenever café’ De Vagant (Reyndersstraat 25). This café serves more than 200 ‘jenevers’ (schnapps), all sourced from about 40 producers in either Belgium or northern France. They have numerous sorts of grain-distilled schnapps, ranging from very strong to even stronger, but they also have fruit schnapps (apple is a traditional one), creamy schnapps and liqueurs (chocolate, coffee and vanilla) and even more exotic things such as cactus or rose schnapps. All their schnapps are listed on a menu of which, by the way, copies are sold, because their menus used to ‘disappear’ all the time. The café has a few large communal tables that will most likely be sticky, as the only ‘right’ way to serve schnapps is to put a shot glass on the table and fill it to the rim. De Vagant also has a shop, located right opposite the café, which sells practically everything you’ll find on the café’s menu, in different sized bottles. I still had to drive that day and drinking driving is never a good combination, so we skipped the café, but we did buy a bottle of chocolate schnapps for a cocktail loving, chocoholic friend’s birthday.

pizza quattro staggione and spaghetti carbonara from restaurant Verona

All that running around Antwerp made us really hungry, and we ended the day at ‘our’ old Italian neighbourhood restaurant, Verona (Oude Koornmarkt 28). Nothing spectacular, but they do pretty decent pizza and pasta at very reasonable prices. And they still recognise us and treat us like regulars, even though we moved away more than five years ago.

Of course there are so much more nice places to shop, eat and drink in Antwerp (if anyone needs recommendations, I’d be more than happy to e-mail some suggestions), but we couldn’t possibly fit all those in one day . And we had to leave some room in our tummies for my granny’s birthday lunch the day after...

p.s. I got a comment on my previous post, yay!

mini-madeleines (with oomph)

2007-02-19T16:35:00.000Z

After reading Bea’s latest madeleine post, two thoughts went through my head. One was: I really should start reading Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps perdu again. In our French lessons in high school, we read an excerpt that I really loved. The page-long sentences, endless thought associations, and of course the madeleines dunked in a delicate tisane. Notice though I said ‘start reading’ and not ‘read’. Have you seen the size of this book? Daunting, to say the very least. I must have been in a world-conquering mood the day I bought the book. Needless to say, I have not yet conquered it (the book that is, not the world – I might do that some other time). I started reading it at least five times now, but never get past the first few pages.

The other thought that went through my head (and quickly drowned out the first thought) was, of course, ‘yum, gotta get me some of that’. Somewhere in the back of the kitchen cupboard there was a spanking new mini-madeleine tin, which I had bought it ages ago but somehow hadn’t got around to using yet. And I kind of made a deal with myself not to buy any new bakeware until I used everything I have at least once, so this was a perfect occasion. Also in the cupboard: a jar of chestnut honey, bought for the sole purpose of madeleine making. The recipe I had in mind is from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course, one of my favourite recipe books – the chestnut honey gives them just that little bit of extra oomph.

I was just a tad nervous about the whole thing. After all, I had never made madeleines before, someone long ago told me they are incredibly difficult to make and then of course there’s that elusive bump. But I shouldn’t have worried. After three minutes in the oven, I sneaked a quick peek (my oven doesn’t have a glass door and is not very accurate with temperatures, so I was a bit concerned) and there were beautiful little bumps on all of them. And after five minutes in the oven, they were just perfect: slightly bronzed and just a tad crunchy on one side, beautifully pale gold on the other side. Yay. So there. I made madeleines. I MADE MADELEINES! For the first time in my life. And it worked! Of course they taste best straight from the oven – let them cool just a bit, flip them over in the tin and eat while standing at the kitchen counter. One or two tiny bites (depending on how big your mouth is) of lovely airy and oomphy fluffiness and they’re gone. I enjoyed them with a mug of coffee.

After the baking (and tasting, and then tasting some more), I dug out the camera to take some pictures. Now I’m not at all good at photography and I don’t know anything about all the technical stuff. Usually I take a few snaps, quickly get fed up with it and think ‘Ah, sod it, there will be something useful’. And that’s it. But not this time. I had taken some pictures and was about to put everything away, when S tiptoed into the kitchen and took over. S is a keen amateur photographer and a bit of a gourmet himself, but I never thought he’d be interested in combining the two. And yet there he was, snapping away, re-arranging things and even exclaiming ‘we need white mugs!’ (if you’re wondering why: the white mug in the picture has its ear turned to the left, because it has an image on the other side). I’m starting to think this whole food bloggy thing is contagious. Hmm, imagine. We are blog. You will be assimilated, resistance is futile…

pignola

2007-02-15T15:14:00.000Z

Lately, I’ve been on a breakfast mission. I’m not talking about long, lazy, relaxing weekend breakfast or brunch but rather the hurried weekday ‘oh no I’m going to be late for work why didn’t I get up earlier’ breakfast. Getting thoroughly fed up with eating the same muesli every morning, I decided to embark on a quest to assemble a breakfast repertoire of all things healthy, filling (so I’m not starving at my desk come 11 am), interesting and, oh yes, delicious.

Toast, yoghurt, jam, granola and fruit all passed the revue, in various combinations. Banana-walnut loaf (or cake, or muffins) I’m undecided about; while it has all the goodness of fruit and nuts, it also has a lot of sugar and fat. Earlier this winter I ‘discovered’ porridge, which is apparently the best breakfast one can eat. Low GI and slow-release energy and takes you right through to lunch. Porridge being a quintessentially British breakfast staple, and my being not British, it took me some time to getting used to, but now I really love it. Especially on a freezing cold and crisp winter day, then it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I prepare mine in the evening (allows me some extra time in bed in the morning) with organic oats, milk and a drizzle of honey, and reheat it in the microwave.

Another new addition to my breakfast menu is pignola – a sweet, Italian breakfast bread which gets its name from one of its ingredients: pine nuts (pignoli in Italian). How authentic this is, I’m not sure – my Italian boss had never heard of pignola and a quick google search didn’t return any results. Incidentally, I left out the pine nuts, so I’m probably not allowed to call it pignola any longer. But hey, it’s my blog and my bread and I can call it whatever I like. In any case, my pignola turned out to be utterly delicious. A wonderfully fruity nutty loaf, crumbly yet not at all dry, it goes well with butter, jam or lemon curd and of course that essential first cup of coffee of the day.

Recipe
Adapted from Linda Collister "Bread. From Sourdough to Rye."

2 3/4 cups wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 stick of butter, diced
2 large eggs, beaten
1 packet of yeast
1 cup raisins, dried apricots and goji berries
juice of one two small oranges
1 cup hazelnuts and walnuts, lightly toasted
icing sugar, for dusting

Put raisins, apricots, berries and juice in a bowl and leave to soak overnight. The next day, mix flour and salt in a bowl, rub in butter with fingertips until mixture resembles breadcrumbs then add yeast. Make well in centre, add beaten eggs, raisins, apricots and berries and mix everything together. Turn out dough on floured work surface and knead for 5 minutes. Return dough to bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size (about 3 hours). Turn out risen dough onto floured work surface and work in nuts until evenly distributed. Shape dough into ball then disc and set onto baking sheet. Slip tray into large plastic bag, inflate slightly and let rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour). Bake at 375˚F for about 35 minutes until golden brown. Transfer to wire rack to cool and dust with icing sugar. Enjoy.

the ultimate carrot cake

2007-02-06T16:51:00.000Z

This is the first carrot cake I’ve ever baked, so whether it’s really the ‘ultimate’ one, I couldn’t say. Delia claims it is though, so ultimate it is. Now I have a little secret to confess: I’m not a big Delia fan. Ever watched one of her programmes on tv? She’s got such an enthusiasm for life (feel the irony here) and I find her annoyingly pedantic – telling people how to boil eggs or peel tomatoes. But maybe British people need to be told these things, I don’t know. The woman knows how to cook though, I have to admit that, and over the years I have become a huge fan of her recipes.

mise en place

A few years ago, someone at work who had just met me – and quickly figured out I liked cooking and baking – gave me Delia’s Vegetarian Collection as a christmas gift. This quickly became one of my favourite cookbooks and I, in turn, have given copies to quite a few friends, who all love the book as well. Every single thing I make from it just works, whether I follow the recipe to the letter, or muck around with it. I now trust Ms D to such an extent, I would even risk trying a new recipe from this book for a dinner party, since I know it will turn out well. Well, I wouldn’t actually, because I’m a Virgo and hence a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak, but you catch my drift.

Back to the carrot cake now. When I was a child, we used to have a ‘carrot cake joke’, which goes as follows: a rabbit enters a bakery and asks the baker: ‘Do you sell carrot cake?’ (this bit has to be said in a rabbit-like voice, of course). Baker says no, he has never even heard of carrot cake, rabbit leaves. This scenario repeats itself daily, until the baker one day decides to make a carrot cake, because the rabbit might be on to something there – after all, rabbits know their carrots. So the next day, when the rabbit enters the bakery and asks: ‘Do you have carrot cake?’, the baker proudly replies yes. To which the rabbit says ‘It’s disgusting, don’t you think?’. Silly, I know, but it seemed hilarious when I was young(er). When I told my brother on the phone I was making carrot cake, his initial reaction was something similar. Until I told him what goes in it. Not that much carrot. And it doesn’t taste the slightest bit of carrots. I wonder why it’s even called carrot cake at all. But I guess that must be a British thing.

I tweaked the original recipe a bit – I left out the orange zest (yuk) and dessicated coconut (yuk again), added some dried apricot, forgot to add the goji berries I had planned to throw in as well, substituted walnuts for pecans, added some oats, and used molasses alongside the soft dark brown sugar. I threw the whole lot into the oven, and an hour later a mountain of moist, yet crumbly deliciousness emerged, which I brushed with a lemon-orange syrup to moisten it even more. One word of advice, when Ms D says to line the cake tin with baking paper, there’s a very good reason to do exactly what she says. Otherwise, after you’ve doused the cake with the syrup, it will stick to the tin. And fall to pieces when you try to exact the cake from the tin. How do I know that? Hmm, let’s not go there. And no, the fact I wrapped my cake in paper for the pictures has nothing to do with this piece of advice whatsoever …

about me

2007-01-24T11:35:00.000Z

Many moons ago, when trying to find out what happened to a certain pastry chef, google directed me to a delightful little website called nordljus. I was instantly hooked – the recipes!!! The pictures!!! I just wanted to lick my computer screen. One click lead to another and suddenly I found I had discovered a whole new universe out there, craftily hidden away in the bowels of the world wide web. How was it possible I didn’t know this world existed? And, more importantly, how did I ever manage without my weekly fix of food blogs?

I read, clicked, followed links, read some more, clicked again, discovered many other beautiful blogs and got to know more about the people behind it all. Almost like watching a soap series. But not quite. I clicked and read for quite some time – generally just happily lurking about (apparently that’s what it’s called). Away from the computer I cooked and baked as usual, taking the occasional snapshot of the results. Then, strangely enough, I found myself looking at some blog formats and ‘how to’ websites, but found all the tech talk rather scary. Actually, make that REALLY scary. I’m not a computer person and have not patience whatsoever with them. Same with cameras. Or anything that comes with wires, lots of buttons and USB thingies, for that matter. But hey, if all those people can do it, then I can do it too! No way every single blogger out there is a computer expert. So here it is, my very own blog. And here’s a little bit more about me.

Originally from Belgium, I’ve been living in London for the past five years, with my fantabulous partner S, who’s also Belgian. We live in a rather poor and very unfashionable, yet remarkable nice, not to mention lively and vibrant part of East London, where, for the past two years, we’ve been busy renovating our house. I’m not a chef and I’ve never taken any cooking courses – I just enjoy cooking and baking and trying out new and unusual recipes. Especially sweet things, to satisfy my huge sweet tooth. I’m not a photographer either, nor a stylist – heck, I don’t even have simple white plates! And I’m way too impatient to faff around endlessly with my food and props. When it’s ready, I want to eat it. Simple as that.

At the last count, my collection of cookbooks reached the grand number of fifteen. Plus some free magazine supplements and scribbled down recipes. Not too excessive, I would think. And I’ve never ever bought a food magazine. Whenever I mention buying a new cookbook, S complains I have plenty already, but I think there’s lots of space left on the kitchen bookshelf.

In our kitchen cupboards you’ll find a mishmash of gifts and hand-me-downs – we’ve got some 80-year-old plates that used to belong to S’s grandparents, some Japanese-y style plates, bowls and cups, and some odd bits and bobs. And aprons and oven mitts. Lots of them. Possibly enough to supply the whole population of a country the size of Luxemburg. For some strange reason, people keep on giving me those things. Anyways. Our kitchen itself is a complete mishmash of things; sunglasses are highly recommended to subdue the dark blue, turquoise and lime green colour scheme we inherited from the previous owners of our house. S and I are working on it though, during our DIY-filled weekends. Once the kitchen is done, its cabinet contents will be renewed also. And then, who knows, I might finally get myself some simple white plates…