Jellies, longans and what I’ve been up to.

Somehow people have been wondering about me. Whether I’ve started on maternity, if I’ve given birth (?!), why I have disappeared and in general what I’ve been doing and why I’m always tired. I’m really thankful I’ve been well throughout the pregnancy and have been working with hardly any need for medical leave. I didn’t get the first trimester nausea and my weight gain has been the expected 12 kg with the gain slowing down in these last few weeks because I’m not exactly hungry with the growing belly compressing on the tummy. I still have one and a half weeks of work, I’ll be leaving at the end of my 38th week. I’ve originally planned to be gone at the end of my 39th week but I think I need to be realistic. I’m tired and its affecting my daytime function. It doesn’t matter if the baby comes a whole month later (at 42 weeks, lets hope not!), I need to rest and relax and enjoy the last few peaceful moments in our little flat.

I must say its been challenging cooking and doing the housework these past few weeks with swollen feet and a lack of sleep. We used to send our laundry and ironing to be done and had some help with cleaning the flat. But then we decided to see if we could manage it all on our own. So I finally opened the manual for the washing machine and figured out how to do the laundry. H does the ironing but I pitch in once in a while. I discovered the wonders of bleach for my kitchen rags and discovered the key to keeping indoor plants healthy is fertilize, fertilize, fertilize, sun and a bit of water.

Its Ramadan and we’ve been eating at our parents during the weekend, eating out twice a week and eating in the rest of the time. For the morning meal, H eats really lightly and its usually breakfast items, cereal, oats, toast, eggs occasionally. For the evening break fast meal, its usually one dish or one pot meals like roast chicken, steak, pasta and occasional frozen meals I’ve cooked stashed in the freezer like curry or stews from recent weekends. I guess we’re coping though its a lot of work and I’ve had a chronic lack of sleep these past few weeks. Sleep has eluded me for so many reasons. I miss it.

So now for the jellies. Using this write up as a guide, I made longans set in a clear kaffir lime leaf infused longan syrup jelly. I decided to use up whatever there is in my pantry and freezer as they’re both bursting at the seams. So as a sweet end to a Thai themed meal, I thought of these jellies served cold with a squeeze of lime and some ice shavings on top.

Here’s a general recipe for jelly:

6 cups of your choice of flavoured liquid

5 teaspoons of powdered gelatine (i used Bake King’s Halal Gelatine)

1/2 cup cold water

Method:

Heat the liquid till hot but not boiling. I used syrup from the tinned longans, adding water and sugar to taste to make the 6 cups, then added about 10 large kaffir lime leaves which were in my freezer. I then brought the liquid close to a boil and turned the fire off and left the leaves to steep in the hot liquid.

In a large bowl, put in the cold water and sprinkle the gelatine over the surface. Add in the hot flavoured liquid a tablespoon at a time stirring gently to dissolve. The gelatine is dissolved if you no longer see granules sticking to your spoon. Add the rest of the hot flavoured liquid. Stir well and pour into containers of your choice with fruit at the bottom. Or pour into empty containers and serve with a fruit compote spooned on top later. This is advisable if you use certain fruit that inhibits gelatine from setting like kiwi or pineapple.

 

This recipe yields a soft set jelly which would not be possible to unmould. About the texture and taste, I can’t comment yet as the jelly is still setting as I type this. Leave in the fridge at least 8 hours or overnight.

Ugly banana cake

Its 8.22pm and there’s still a load of dishes in the sink from dinner, our new favourite: seafood black pepper spagetti, dark from oyster sauce, slurpy with al dente noodles and peppered very generously with black pepper. I have it with a sauce of light soy and bird’s eyes chilli, sliced.

Still, I couldn’t wait to share this ugly banana cake with you. I went slightly over the top, dotting the top with bananas. Moist and fluffy and screaming bananas, this cake is among my favourite, totally fool proof recipes. 

I’ve made this a couple of times, you can check the recipe out here. I tweaked it a little this time, by using a whole block of butter, 250g instead of the 240g. I used Dole bananas, large. 3 1/2 bananas weighed about 400g. I baked it in 2 loaf pans, my Ikea ones seen here. I topped it with the remaining 2 1/2 bananas left in the comb that I bought. I used a different method of combining the ingredients. After creaming the butter and sugar till white and fluffy, I beat in the eggs well one at a time. I mixed the mashed bananas in a separate bowl with the milk and vanilla essence. I then sifted the flour with the baking powder and baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. I then added the banana-milk mixture and the flour mixture alternating in thirds. The science behind this is explained here. I baked it for 50 mins at 180C.

The end result was the best cake I’ve ever baked. I’m not sure where the magic was, was it in the increased butter? The load of bananas? The method? The loaf pan? The baking time? That it was made for my dad on father’s day? Whatever it was, it was way too little to go around and it left me dreaming of mmm.. banana cake.. till another sunny weekend.

Swirls and curls

Its the weekend internet slowdown, something I noticed on Sundays.. Will be back soon with more pics and my version of the recipe, have you checked it out?

More from last weekend

This is what it means by bake till a crust forms

Deceptively neat squares that don’t really separate that well becuase though the edges were set, the middle was incredibly fudgey! Which are fine if you like fudgey brownies. I think the cause of the uneven making is that my oven can’t be set at 175C which is the set temperature. I baked these at 180C. Watch them well cos overbaking will give you a super dry brownie.

 Notice the different textures, the brownie in the second row and to the right was from the edge so it baked up almost cake like while the middle brownies were noticeably fudgier. Since the recipe is right over her in Laureen’s blog, I shall not retype it. The only changes I made to the recipe was halving the sugar and using all bittersweet chocolate. I used Phoon Huat’s dark couveture because I’ll can’t afford to bake with Valrhona yet. Its a little wasteful I think, I’m saving it for truffles! Hopefully this weekend.. My dad’s coming back from the Middle East soon so I can’t wait for the pistachios and walnuts and dates.

The last of daylight on my now dead orchids. They lasted a good 3 weeks, outliving their cut flower counterparts by a good 2 weeks!

I’ll give you this look too,

If you glugged my Thai chilli sauce out of the bottle causing an avalanche over my vegetable spring rolls (thanks Mama!) H made the exact same mistake. Now why does Thai chilli sauce come in such a wide necked bottle and refuse to come out with a gentle shake then decide to totally empty on a harder shake?

Seth was in a sleepy mood.

Yawny browny

 

I love my cheap lens.

This is how I feel tonight. Its a 9 pm fall asleep kind of night.

 

Seth in the middle of a yawn.

This weekend

The weekend was spent:

Baking brownies

Finding out that cutting fudgy brownies isn’t exactly my forte

Pressing hazelnuts onto the surface of the brownie batter so each cut square would get one

Owning my first plants

Hosting the Last Official Housewarming Party

Eating lots of laksa

Getting the house cleaned (notice it wasn’t “cleaning the house”)

Rolling chapati for the leftover keema from the house party

Looking at a yawning baby

 

Pictures and recipe to come..

That scotcheroo recipe

 

Scotheroos

Ingredients

1	cup light corn syrup
1	cup sugar
1	cup peanut butter
6	cups Rice Krispies®
	or 6 cups Cocoa Rice Krispies®
1	package (6 oz., 1 cup) semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1	cup butterscotch chips

Directions
1. Place corn syrup and sugar into 3-quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar dissolves and mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Add KELLOGG’S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated. Press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Set aside.

2. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips together in 1-quart saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Spread evenly over cereal mixture. Let stand until firm. Cut into 2 x 1-inch bars when cool.

Here’s the recipe since some people were asking. I used Lyle’s golden syrup which looked like this:

Or you could get Karo that looks like this:

I bought the Lyle’s syrup from Phoon Huat. I’ve seen it at Cold Storage, and no they don’t sell it at Giant (I just checked, sorry for giving you wrong information Sheerin!).

Since its close to midnight, I won’t go on about the erm unhealthy benefits of corn syrup and where else to buy it. How did these candies taste? Well its a layer of crispy peanut butter rice crispies layered with bittersweet chocolate. I skipped the buterscotch bits because I felt the rice krispie layer was sweet enough. I didn’t dare mess with the sugar:corn syrup ratio in case they didn’t set.

Some problems people had on the net were that the bars were too hard to cut. One way was to just bring the syrup and sugar mixture to a boil then take it off the heat immediately and stir in the peanut butter. If you leave it to boil for too long they may get a little hard. Even then, serving these at room temperature is best, straight from the fridge they tend to be a little rocky. I kept mine in airtight containers in the fridge and they kept well for a week, well that’s as long as it lasted. I managed to give a few tubs away because this recipe makes lots and well, its candy, how much candy can you eat? Hmm. Don’t answer that.

its 2009!

We ate a lot of animals towards the end of the year(you’ll see them at the end of the post) and here’s a tart I spent 3 hours making. I wasn’t surprised then to realize the last time I made this tart was in medical school. Its been that long!

It was a lot of effort but worthwhile because it was so well received. I think the best part of the tart was the pate brisee(flaky pastry) tart shell. I love Sherry Yard’s Desserts by the Yard, so far the baklava, out of these world brownies and this tart shell were excellent.

The creme patissiere was from Gordon Ramsay’s Just Desserts which is one of my other favourite cookbooks. The hazlenut shortbread, orange and lemon pudding were from this book. I chose his recipe among all the recipes I had for creme patissiere because it used the least amount of egg yolks, I didn’t want to have a couple of egg whites left to handle. You know how meringues and me aren’t friends!

The pastry was lopsided as it was my very first time at blind baking (ie putting rice/beans in the tasrt shell to weigh it down and encourage it to bake evenly). I think I struggled too much trying to remove the rice in the shells and the piece of parchment stuck to the dough that the dough cooled down significantly before being returned into the oven. This resulted in serious warping and uneven baking!!

The good thing about ugly tart bases is that you can hide it with a filling!

I like the speckling of vanilla seeds and the bright yellow of the cream filling, made extra yellow by the butter stirred in at the end, a little trick to enrich the creme and give it a delicious melt in your mouth texture without that flourry custardy taste.

This looks so cheerful, don’t you think?

Apricots, blueberries and strawberries

The second smaller tart looked a little more bare as I ran out of fruit.

The leftover dough and filling in individual tartlets

Now for all the roasts.. That huge Christmas Turkey we had!

Roast lamb we had yesterday at Mummy and Daddy’s. Our aunties are really good with roasts, personally I’ve never ever cooked a roast, they scare me. I’m afriad of it turning bone dry, I’m always amazed how they create flavourful, bursting at the skins juicy pieces of meat.

Roast chicken, crispy skin and juicy insides. We had the usual sides of greens and salad

Roast potatoes lightly seasoned with salt and roasted together with the meat.

The tart was dessert shared with everyone and it was a great meal, hope you had a great start to the new year and be blessed with good food and love in 2009!

I will post the recipe for the crispy tart shell, it was so crisp and stayed crisp overnight in the fridge, we had some for breakfast.. I will also post on the different type of doughs for tart shells that result in different qualities of shells. Pate brisee for a flaky and crispy shell, pate sucree for a crumblier but still crisp and sweet shell and pate sable which is a “sandy” textured tart shell. Mastering the shell can lead to infinite possibilities including savoury quiches and meat pies, fruit pies, egg tarts, crumble pies, cream pies, custard tarts, the list goes on. The only thing is compared to say a mix and bake cake or brownie, pies take time because there are a couple of steps in making it, from assembling the crust to making the filling then assembling the whole thing.

Black on Black Pierre Herme Truffles

 

I made a vow to myself to start baking from the books I currently have till I have mastered the recipes and techniques before buying another. There’s still that voice in me that’s screaming “I need another cookbook!!” But lucky for H, I surpress that monster. Though it still comes out once in a while especially when I feel the need of some cheering up. Cookbooks have it all, beautiful words that read like a novel, pretty photos, glossy pages, excellent design, hard covers, slippery jackets, big and heavy, and everything else I love in a book.

So anyway I am going to cook my way thru my cookbooks and what better way to begin than with the pastry master himself. I had some cream that was going to expire soon so these truffles were perfect. You need just 4 ingredients: chocolate, cream, butter and cocoa powder. I used Valrhona Equitoriale 55% which was S$9.50 for 300g at Sia Lik. I used only one container for the whole recipe so its quick and easy and not much cleaning is involved in making the ganache. The cocoa powder part is a little tricky though.

Black-on Black Truffles

Adapted from Chocolate Desserts By Pierre Herme

260g bittersweet chocolate

1 cup heavy cream (I used Bulla’s Pure Cream)

31/2 tablespoons butter

cocoa powder for dusting

How I did it:

Melt the chocolate in microwave on high for 40-60 seconds in a plastic container with a cover like an old plastic ice cream tub or tupperware, timing may vary according to your microwave. My chocolate was at room temperature and my microwave is quick so I had to watch it to make sure the chocolate didn’t burn. It took slightly under a minute. Add in the cream and stir to blend, then the butter a tablespoon at a time. Stir to melt. You may need another zap in the microwave if your cream was very cold to start with and the chocolate and cream mixture has become too cold to melt the butter. Leave the ganache to cool at room temperature for a couple of minutes. Cover the container with the lid and leave in the fridge to set(now u can make sense of the tupperware bit right, less washing up and the ganache is in an airtight container), about 3 hours or overnight if its convenient for you. Put your cocoa powder into a bowl and dust your hands with the powder. Scoop a tablespoon of the cold ganache onto your palm and roll to form a ball, this can get a little messy. Toss it back into the cocoa powder and gingerly toss it around to coat. Put straight onto serving plate or in a covered parchment lined airtight container and kept in the fridge for consumption later.The ganache itself is very yummy. But please let it set to let it live to its full potential as a fat round truffle.

Addition: I think the cream wasn’t such a good idea because of the high fat content (read:45% milk fat) the ganache ended up solidifying to quite a hard block,  akin butter. And I had one hell of a time rolling it into balls. In the end my truffles looked like chocolate rocks. Ugly chocolate rocks. I have to be brutally honest. I found it easier to roll when it rested a mere 2 hours in the fridge than when it rested overnight.

For help always turn to Martha. All photos courtesy of MarthaStewart, I gave away all the truffles before having the time to photograph them. And yes, they were VERY ugly.

 On a separate note, I have so many photos from the bolywood veggies outing, here’s a sneak:

Somehow snails move seem to move very fast when you’re trying to squat, adjust your manual focus, hold your umbrella and try not to get the camera wet.

Erm Shafia (my cousin), somehow your umbrella followed me to Kranji. I think you left it at my mom’s house and I somehow picked it up and brought it home with me then its sort of found its way to my car. I only looked at it at bollywood veggies and somehow figured out it belonged to you. Let me make it clear here: when I went to medical school, it WAS NOT called Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, it was called Faculty of Medicine.

Because wordpress doesn’t allow me to shrink my vertical photos without blurring it, here’s a gigantic photo of the kuih bingka. Oh the kuih bingka. If I can create an idiom today, it would be: “never trust a bingka with a flat top” Bingka is a Malay cake made of grated tapioca, coconut milk and sugar and it should definitely have a craggy crispy top! I also had a delicious, small overpriced loaf of banana cake that was oh so delicious, I’ll share my favourite recipe soon and more photos, including the “warriors” that run Bollywood veggies.

I spent today moping bout my too short a weekend like a love lost.

Sweet Baklava

I love sweets. I inherited my sweet tooth from my Dad. He loves his dessert. From the Malay sweet porridge desserts like bubur kachang or green bean porridge to bubur pulot hitam or black glutinous rice porridge to scones for tea and baklava straight from a box from Syria. We seem to have an almost constant supply of baklava from friends who travel to the Middle East knowing how much my dad loves sweets. When my cousin was studying in Australia, aunty used to come back with boxes and boxes of baklava. Apparently the boy whos father ran a very famous baklava shop in Melbourne went to the same mosque as my cousin. They somehow had a special arrangement. The good thing about baklava is that they keep very well. The bad thing about it is that it really is quite a tedious process. Reading Sherry Yard’s recipe on macadamia baklava, I was intrigued by her method and thought I could definitely give this a go.

I tweaked the recipe as I thought there was way too much syrup for soaking. I halved the syrup recipe but used the same amount of sugar for the pastry as the recipe calls for. I prefer my baklava crispy and salty from the nuts and butter with a touch of honey. So I found this recipe a little too sticky and gooey. If I were to do it over again, I would use ghee instead of butter to get the crispiness and I would have made the syrup with less water so the sugar crystalizes more for a crisper bite. I would also definitely cut down the sugar that went in the nuts.

This got mixed reviews, some people loved it. My mother in law did. Grandma in law felt it had way too much butter. I still have plenty of baklava left, so it’ll be a while till I revisit this recipe. Its going back into the happygrub experimental kitchen waiting in line with that sugee cake I made sometime back. I was recently given a tried and tested sugee cake recipe and a fantastic marble cake and chocolate cake. I have a baking date next week with my mom so one of the cakes would probably pop up then.

See what I mean when i said the baklava was messy??

 

Baklava

Adapted from Sherry Yard’s Desserts by the Yard

300 g melted butter

3 cups of your favourite nuts: cashew/pistachio/almond or macadamias

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 16 oz package filo pastry

 

For the syrup

1.5 cups sugar

1 cup water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/4 cups honey

 

Start my mixing the nuts with sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Place melted butter in a separate bowl. Unroll the filo dough on a pieve of parchment paper with the long side toward you. Fold from left to write into a “book” so that the spine of the book is in the middle of the parchment. Brush the “cover” with butter than turn the “page” buttering each page as you go. I find a  silicon brush perfect for this, but any pastry brush would do. At the end of the 7th page, sprinkle about a 6th of the nut mixture on the page. Continue till the last page is reached. Cut in diagonals about 1.5 inches large. Shift parchement to baking sheet. Bake at 170C for 45 mins to an hour till golden brown.

Prepare the syrup by boiling all the ingredients together. Sherry says to boil till a candy thermometer registers 225F. I dont have a thermometer so I brought it to a roiling boil and continue boiling for about 10 mins till it was thick and syrupy.

Pour hot syrup over hot baklava. It would look like its swimming in the syrup. But leave it a while and its soaks up all the syrup like a sponge.

 

Stores really well in an airtight container in the fridge for at least a month.