Seeing as Neil has so eloquently described the bloggers dinner at Jamon Sushi, I thought that I would simply add some photos of the food we had that night. The only other thing that I will say is that A. loves the passion that Charles demonstrates and that I wish I had been able to stay for the soba course.
On our way home from Bright a couple of weekends ago, we stopped at Seymour to fill up. As we were finishing up at the service station, a ute laden with fresh farm produce pulled up next to us. How could we resist the temptation of purchasing the just-picked fruit that was on its way to the market?
We bought peaches, nectarines, plums, grapes…then A. spotted the green & black figs in a corner. The farmer told him that the figs would be a little more expensive than the stone fruit - $6.00/kg. What with places around Melbourne CBD sell figs at $20-25/kg, this is a bargain!
My search for a fresh fig recipe led me to a Brigitte Hafner recipe which I would love to submit for the The Mini Pie Revolution, however having misplaced the cable for downloading photos from my camera I am late, late, late for this event.
I’ll share the photos and recipe with you anyway. The pies, baked in mini tart pans, look and taste great especially with a dollop of King Island cream (or the vanilla bean yoghurt for those watching their waist) or good vanilla icecream.
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
70g almond meal
200g plain flour
pinch of salt
1. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg and yolk. Mix well.
2. Incorporate almond meal, flour and salt to form a dough. Gently knead to form a smooth ball but be careful not to overwork the dough.
3. Divide into 4 portions, wrap and refrigerate for 30 min
4. Roll out each portoin of dough to 5mm thickness and line the bottom of the tart tin. Prick the base and freeze for 30 min
5. Blind bake for 12-15 min at 180C, then cool
Filling:
1.5 cups cream
zest of 1/4 orange
1 bay leaf
1 egg
1. Bring the first 3 ingredientsto a boil then simmer for 5min until reduced by 1/2
2. Remove from heat and add 2 tbs brown sugar. Allow to cool.
3. Whisk in 1 large egg.
Tart:
1. Line the pastry base with fresh figs.
2. Pour over cream mixture
3. Bake for 25 min at 175C
4. Cool and serve!
I can’t do wontons.
What I mean by this is that I cannot wrap wontons in the traditional way, that ‘money bag’-style. When I have tried, they would just look like I had squished the top together and taste too much of dough in one spot.
I don’t know where or when I pick up this wrapping style but nowadays my fingers automatically shape these tortellini-looking wontons.
You won’t see them looking like this at your local yum cha restaurant but they taste GOOD, and have a better texture, in my opinion. These dumplings were filled with a mixture of minced pork, roughly chopped prawns, shao hsing wine, shoyu, sesame oil and seasoned to taste. I usually form a couple of tiny meatballs and cook them up so that I can check the seasoning before wrapping the rest.
This entry is my submission to the ‘Waiter, there’s something in my… dumplings’ event that Johanna, The Passoinate Cook, is hosting.
Like most of you, I think about food a lot. What we’re going to have for lunch, for dinner, what I’m going to cook for tomorrow, for the next day, for the next week. But most of all, I think about all the desserts that I would like to bake, the biscuits that my work colleagues are going to love, the cake I would like to share with my friends. There are so many goodies that it’s always difficult for me to settle on one thing. My mind is always leaping here, there and everywhere trying to decide what to bake next.
So this month’s SHF challenge from Jennifer, to post about our most craved dessert, just about had me tearing my hair. How to choose? How can anyone be expected to choose??? ARRRGGGGGG!
To be honest, I don’t actually have one dessert that I crave with a passion above everything else. When faced with a dessert menu, I normally chicken out of having to make the final selection by pointing out about 3 choices then leaving it to my husband to order.
But I remember one cake that mum used to bake when I was in primary school that I had the greatest fun eating. An INDONESIAN LAYER CAKEthat I could savour slowly by peeling off and letting each fine layer melt in my mouth. This cake takes the baker 2 hours in front of the oven to bake so the only ones I’ve had recently are not very good store-bought ones.
It was time. I browsed through several recipes on the internet and got mum to read hers to me over the phone. Making a couple of alterations here and there, I mixed together the batter and brought a stool over to the oven in preparation. For this time-consuming cake, a spoonful of batter is ladled into the baking tin and grilled, then the next spoonful ladled on and grilled, and so on until all the batter is used up.
Based on my internet research, each layer should be grilled for 5 to 7 minutes - WRONG!!! My cake turned out completely overdone and burnt in some sections. Imagine my disappointment after spending 5 hours baking this THING! I couldn’t let it defeat me though so I tried it again the next day. This time, I listened to mum and only grilled each layer for a mere 2 minutes, taking me around 2 hours in total - PERFECTION!
The result 36 eggs and 25 layers later…
It’s not a flashy look-at-me-I’m-so-gorgeous kind of cake but it is buttery and perfect for a pick-me-up at teatime. Especially if you eat it layer by layer.
My father-in-law has the most amazing green thumb. Or should that be green thumbs? Whichever it is, I love visiting his backyard to admire the fruit trees bearing loquats, pomegranates, apples, lemons and the vegetable patch filled with a variety of tomato, cucumber, chilli and capsicum plants. They are his pride and joy and he loves sharing the fruits of his labour with us.
Recently, we received a couple of eggplants which I steamed over simmering water for about 15 minutes. While the cubes of eggplant were cooking, I boiled down a simple sauce based on a Kylie Kwong recipe of soy sauce, malt vinegar, Shao Hsing wine, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, salt & pepper.
Plate the eggplant, sprinkle chopped spring onions and thin slices of chilli, then pour over the sauce. Absolutely delicious with some white rice!
This is my entry for Heart of the Matter 4 which is focussing on vegetables this month. Head to Joanne’s for the roundup!
There’s an ongoing debate as to what exactly is a brownie - a cake, a cookie, a sheet cookie, a bar, a slice? But a brownie sits in a separate category all together. It should be denser than a cake and fudgier rather than light and fluffy.
I trawled through a large handful of recipes trying to decide which would produce a great brownie but most of the recipes I came across used baking powder. How could this produce a dense and fudgey brownie? Dissatisfied with the results of my search, the only solution was to create my own recipe.
Using a few of the recipes as a rough template, I reduced the amount of flour and sugar and left out the baking powder altogether. The chocolate and butter was melted over simmering water and the rest of the ingredients mixed in with a wooden spoon. By not beating the eggs, sugar and butter, I managed to avoid aerating the batter and this resulted in a dense, fudgey, amazing brownie…oops, blondie. I forgot to mention that I mainly used white chocolate instead of milk or dark.
It was great straight out of the oven and we’ll find out tomorrow how it tastes after sitting overnight.
Cin’s Blondie
200g white chocolate, roughly chopped
150g butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups pl flour
1/4 tsp salt
50g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1/2 cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped1) Melt 1/2 white chocolate & butter in bowl over simmering water. Remove from heat.
2) Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla essence
3) Mix in flour&salt mixture
4) Fold in rest of chocolate and almond pieces
5) Bake in 20cm square tin at 160C until skewer comes out clean but with crumbs. Don’t overbake.
Of course, you can’t enjoy brownies or blondies on your own so I have to share this recipe with the rest of the Brownie Babes over at Myriam’s place.
In some parts of the world spring is in the air and an abundance of delights such as strawberries and asparagus can be found in the markets. In my part of the world however the leaves are changing colours and being shed in preparation for winter but other things are springing up everywhere - mushrooms!
At the local market, I found slippery jacks, pines (aka saffron milk caps), baby swiss browns and these other ones that I can’t remember the name of but I’m sure Neil could identify. I haven’t cooked much with wild mushrooms before so I had a look at whether they had to be prepared differently. Apparently the slimy skin of slippery jacks can cause diarrhoea for some and mushrooms with gills should be blanched briefly before sauteeing. So, off came the skin of the slippery jack and into the water went the pine mushrooms. All the mushrooms were then sauteed in butter and olive oil then generously seasoned.
I prepared the pastry two nights ago according to my French friend’s mum’s recipe. When S. wrote the recipe out for me, she noted that the same pastry could be used to make a savoury pie and a ’sweetie’ pie! I rolled the pastry out thinly then fitted it into a tin with great care but I still managed to create some tears and holes that had to be patched up. The mushrooms were spread over the base, poured over with a mixure of eggs, cream and milk, and the tart baked at 200C for 30 minutes. Keep a piece of foil handy to make sure that the top doesn’t burn though.
Well, this isn’t the ultimate spring dish but a savoury tart would be perfect for a spring picnic, right? So hopefully you will all accept this for my first monthly mingle and enjoy it all the same!
LIVESTRONG Day, an event initiated by the Lance Armstrong Foundation, provides an opportunity for us to raise awareness about cancer issues in our local communities and on a national level.
There are many LIVESTRONG Day events open to the general public, however Barbara organised a food blogging event called A Taste of Yellow that requires participants to make a dish containing something yellow.
I had plans to bake something, cook something for this event but getting home late last night after watching the amazing Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai show, we wanted something comforting and easy. What better way to end the night than with a toasted cheese sandwich.
Very simply, place some slices of lovely pale, creamy French Comté - a cheese made from the unpastuerised milk of Montbéliard cows - between 2 slices of dark rye bread and toast until melted.
Along with everyelse in blogging land, I tried my hand at the no knead bread that is light on labour but requires forward planning. Crusty exterior with a nice crumb, this one also contains mixed grains.
My firm belief is that the best way to compare products is to perform a head-to-head comparison. You can therefore imagine my excitement when I came across Helen’s post about the Cocktail Bun Challenge.
I never understood how this coconut-filled bun came to be christened with such a name, nor has it often made it onto my tray as the room was usually taken up by pork-floss and pineapple buns. As it was however, I happened to Sydney taking in some pearls of wisdom from some of today’s great social and business thinkers. What better time to continue Helen’s good work by extending the challenge to Melbourne’s bakeries?
As the Montague Bleue cocktail bun won this challenge, it was only appropriate to put it up against what Melbourne has to offer. I purchased the bun from Montague Bleue on Thursday evening, taking it with me on the flight home. The next morning, I went in search through Chinatown and managed to snag one cocktail bun from Maxim and one from the Dragon Boat Restaurant’s takeaway window. Surprisingly, Bread Top didn’t offer these but that’s okay.
So here we have it, from the left to right, cocktail buns from Dragon Boat Restaurant (Melb), Montague Bleue (Syd) and Maxim (Melb):
Immediately apparent is the more oval shape of the Montague Bleue offering, looking like a podgy kid next to the other two slimmer buns. All three are glazed and sprinkled with sesame seeds but the Maxim bun also has a swirly pattern instead of the usual two parallel lines.
Dissecting the buns horizontally reveals that Dragon Boat has the most generous filling which is tinged with the faintest hue of orange. The Maxim filling is a shade darker than Montague Bleue’s but, more importantly, closer inspection of the filling as shown in the photos below reveals that the textures are quite different. Whilst the fililng in the Dragon Boat and Montague Bleue buns are smooth, the higher level of dessicated coconut in Maxim’s gives it a coarser texture.
Now, what about the taste? The Dragon Boat bun was only worth one bite due to the stodgy filling and density of both bun and filling. I had a feeling that this would come off the worst when I initially bought it because the baked goods here don’t seem to be as popular. In fact, I wonder how fresh their breads and pastries would be given the low turnover. However, fairness demanded that it be tried.
Despite having been baked the day before, the Montague Bleue bun was as Helen reported - soft and spongy with a saltiness to the filling that reminded me of century egg puffs. Buttery and delicious.
Unlike its Dragon Boat neighbour, the Maxim bun was also soft but the filling was what differentiated it from the others. Less sugar and more coconut, it also had a more definite flavour of sesame seeds even though distribution was even across all three buns.
So, who takes it? Whose cuisine reigns supreme?
Although I wish it had the salt-edge of the Montague Bleue version, overall i enjoyed the Maxim bun the most because of the higher coconut content. The next step is to take the challenge to Boxhill’s best!
PS: Having just taken another bite out of the MB & Maxim buns, I have to say that it’s a tough pick. I like the saltiness of the MB version but I think I could eat more of the Maxim as it’s less rich and, as i’ve already said above, more coconutty.
