Friday, December 18, 2009

Second try at Kouign Amann


It's our second attempt and we're not getting better at it yet. But still a good try nonetheless.

Kouign Amann is a Brittany buttery caramelised cake. Think croissant laced with lots of sugar.

The hardest part of the cooking process is actually to look at the cake swimming in the pan of melted butter in the oven. We stared hard at it and asked ourselves if eating it is the right thing to do. The solution: follow the recipe and allow the cake to rest for 5 minutes after it's taken out from the oven. This gives the butter enough time to be soaked into the cake so that you see no evil.

And as if the butter and sugar is not enough to clog our arteries, we had a second dessert of crème brulée the same night.

For our second attempt at kougin amann, we still couldn't decide on what recipe to follow. So we used a combination of recipe proportion and instructions from:
1. Camille's cookbook;
2. David Lebowitz's blog which has a good pictorial breakdown of instruction,
3. Youtube by Atelia Chefs (he may be speaking French, but the clip is useful for seeing how you actually fold the dough into many layers)

Mixed Berry Crumble


Another berrily good dessert made by Rémi.

He found the recipe from the internet, and we found a new secret to a fabulous crumble: by replacing half the flour used in crumble with ground almond. It gives the crumble a new nutty, almony flavour and texture that is even harder to resist.

I don't have the exact recipe he used but try the ground almond. And unlike the apple crumble, it is best to refrigerate and chill the berry crumble before serving.

And just as I'm proud of his fantastic crumble, I'm equally proud of the new ice-cream scoop I just bought.

Basil Pesto


I love having fresh herbs. Unfortunately with apartment living, it is hard to keep my pots of herbs alive for long. They either don't survive the onslaught of wind outside, or the greedy bugs, or their roots outgrow the pot too fast. Especially my favourite basil.

We still like to have fresh basil in our salads every now and then, whenever we feel like it. And we do not like to buy the cut basil leaves from the supermarket and leave them to rot in the fridge (since we never know when we will feel like having basil in our salads). So what we're doing is to buy 1 pot of fresh living basil plant from the supermarket. It can usually last about 1-2 months with some tender loving care instead of just 1 week in the fridge.

And since we know my pot of basil will not survive long enough to provide for 100 servings of salads, we will almost always make some pesto to make full use of plant.


Here's a recipe from our favourite easy Italian cookbook.

Basil Pesto

20 large basil leaves
6 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
handful of pine nuts (well, recipe says 50g but we're very easygoing on this)
125g Parmesan cheese, grated
250ml olive oil (I can't bear to look at this)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Either chop or puree basil, garlic, pine nuts and cheese in a blender (glad we've got one now). If using the blender, add a little oil so that the mixture can turn well. Pour the olive oil slowly while stirring until the sauce emulsifies. Season to taste.

Goes well with gnocchi.

Simple berry delights


I love summer in Wellington. The weather still sucks, but at least there's more sunny days and it is marginally less cold.

The best part of summer is the berry season. Because of the crappy weather, we have been missing out on buying lots and lots of berries at the Sunday market. But we are still enjoying lots of berries from the supermarket.

They make perfect quick dessert. Like here, we have blackberries and strawberries in our natural plain yoghurt. Topped with vanilla sugar and some bit of cream.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Mix and match quiche


I'm feeling bad about not updating my blog for a long while. Since finding a part time job, I'm finding less time to experiment new dishes in the kitchen. What I'm getting good at though is cooking very quickly, and for multiple meals, as I pack my lunchbox most days.

For instance, I like to cook extra for dinner, so that I have some leftover for next day's lunch. It could also mean preparing for next day's lunchbox (like a tabbouleh salad) while cooking tonight's dinner. Or even better, on days when I have French till late, I would pack my lunchbox while preparing dinner during breakfast time. This is usually a slowcook dish, like chopping up vegetables to make ratatouille or a Chinese pork ribs soup.

Lunchbox tomorrow: Zucchini and Prawns Quiche with onions.
Making quiche to me is becoming more like cooking Chinese fried rice or noodles, there's a lot of improvisation. I would throw in whatever ingredients I can find in the fridge into the egg mixture.

So using the Quiche Lorraine recipe's proportion of eggs to cream, I vary the ingredients that goes into it.

Here's some mix and match combination which is definitely not exhaustive. Feel free to be inspired at cafes and supermarkets too.

- zucchini and prawns
- tomatoes and black olives
- spinach and bacon
- bacon and feta cheese
- salmon and leek
- onions and chicken
- mushrooms and ham
 
visits