real treat

Thursday, August 26

This is a treat from my dear friend and excellent baker Joyce. In the moist, rich cake are beautiful swirls of bitter and aromatic real Japanese green tea. Yummmm.

too rich for souffle

Wednesday, August 25

I had had some leftover fruits in the fridge for a while. They were one of each of white nectarine, regular nectarine, and plum - too little to make something individually, but just right to be used alltogether. So I used them in baked mascarpone custard.

I first found the recipe in Amanda Hesser's book called Cooking for Mr. Latte: a food lover's courtship, with recipes (2003, W.W. Norton & Co.), in which it was called "apricot slump" (Chapter 34). She got the recipe from her mother-in-law, who got the original recipe in a book Under the Tuscan Sun (Frances Mayes, 1997, Broadway) (got it?). As I was reading the recipe in Cooking for Mr. Latte, I was horiffied with the amount of sugar used and coudn't have the courage to try it. Then when I checked the recipe - called Pears in Mascarpone - in the original book (at Amazon: p139), I figured the amount of sugar was one third of that mentioned in Amanda Hesser's book; 1/2 compared to 1 1/2 cups. As the 1/2 cup sugar seemed to make way more sense, I felt relieved and decided to try this one.

Since I felt particularly lazy this afternoon, I couldn't bother to use the oven and instead used a toaster oven. Slicing up the fruits, whipping up the custard, and putting them together in ramekins and threw them in the toaster oven - so easy bleezy.

Probably because I had set the oven temparature pretty low trying not to burn the custard, it took them almost double the time required in the recipe. Other than that, they looked pretty fluffy like souffle in the oven - and immediately started "slumping" at the moment I opened the door of the oven.



Even so, they were tasty right out of the (toaster) oven, still very hot. Being so rich and buttery, that small dessert didn't allow I me to ignore the fact that they were mostly made of butter, cheese, egg yolk, sugar - definitely not a choice for weight watchers (and in the Amanda Hesser's book it was served with ice cream). But highly satisfying, filling dessert for sure.


P.S. It was nice chilled overnight, too - this way, it didn't taste as buttery as it had been when hot. I don't know if that is "better" or not.

not just another ordinary cup cake...

Tuesday, August 24

I had an urgent craving for chiffon cake for a while. A friend of mine had been making the cakes every so often and posting their pictures on her blog, and every time I saw one I got increasingly obsessed with the idea of making one myself.
I also wanted to use up fresh herbs that I had bought a while ago - I had already made herb oil, herb vinegar, herb salt, besides using in roasing and grilling - and remembered that I had a recipe for herb chiffon cake. Bingo.

The problem was, I didn't own a chiffon cake pan. Over here it is sold under a more common name, namely angel food cake pan, but either way I could only find a non-stick one (and I would want non non-stick pan for this particular kind of cake, as it is supposed to be cooled down upside down, and the pan needs to hold the cake so that it wouldn't fall off), so I decided to try and make the cake in paper cups - not those thin ones for regular cup cakes, but for drinks. This was an idea I found in more than one resources, so it seemed to be fine.

The recipe I was going to use was from an old cookbook that I bought like 15 years ago, and I also consulted several different recipe sites on the net. Although there was a variety of slightly different recipes, the one in my mind was a pretty basic recipe for plain chiffon cake, I thought.
It called for three herbs - rosemary, thyme, and basil. As I had happened to find lemon basil at the farmers' market the other day, I used them in place of regular Italian basil and I added zest and juice of a lime. The lime was also from the same vendor at the farmers' market was a bit strange one that had a bit ugly look yet bright orangy pulp, and did have a hint of orange taste (later a friend of mine suggested that it might have been kaffir lime, and that might have been it).

Chiffon cakes are made using vegetable oil, and this time my choice of oil was extra virgin olive oil - I had been sometime successful and other times not quite so in using olive oil in cakes, but I gave it a try anyways. The combination of herbs and lime somehow sounded as if they should go well with olive oil.

I tried to beat the egg yolk mixture and the egg white stiffly, and work as quick as I could so that the form wouldn't loose its air. Reducing the ingredients to half (using 2 yolks and 3 whites), it yielded 5 cups of cakes.


After 25 minutes of baking the cakes came out of the oven golden brown and risen proudly all the way up to the edge of the cups. I put them on a wire rack upside down and let cool. The last challenge in making chiffon cake might be to remove the cake from the pan; I have heard so many stories of sadly lost games of removing the chiffon cake intact. But in my case, this wasn't an issue because all I needed to do is just tearing the paper cup break, and the cakes came out no problem.



The texture of chiffon cake - light, fluffy, airly - is something you don't get to have from other kinds of cakes, and I realized how I had missed it for so long. My cakes tasted more of lime than herbs (I should have put more herbs), but were very refreshing and tasty nevertheless. Olive oil, although it had seemed to be overpowering while I was making the batter, turned out to have worked pretty well with this one. Although I served a slice with a scoop of ice cream once, I liked the cake better just as is.


Now I got a taste of success, I will be making more and more chiffon cakes - in paper cups!

old and new favorites

Thursday, August 19

For today's dinner I made my "signature" pumpkin salad and gingered pork with cheese, an old childhood favorite of mine.

The pumpkin salad has been the most frequently-appearing salad on our table here. Both he and I like it, and so does everyone else who has had it.

The pork, which I made for the first time in possible last 20 years or so, was one of the dishes my mother used to make every so often when I was a kid. Stir-fried pork flavored with grated fresh ginger and soy sauce is a very common dish in Japan, but this was with cheese - kids always like cheese, and I was no exception.

I have always believed that this is a dish for pork, and so I had taken the frozen pork out of freezer and thawed before I dropped a line to my mother just to make sure how to make it, and I came to realize the truth; my mother would, she said, make the dish with beef rather than pork. I didn't remember having it with beef, but she said she would use pork sometime but beef is better. And my mother is the one who wouldn't care for beef in gereral, which means that really must be better with beef... well, the pork had already been thawed for today, so I made it a go.

We would use very thin pieces of meat for this dish as we need to roll the cheese with them, but over here I don't find readily thinly-sliced beef or pork everywhere. So I bravely tried and sliced pork chops, only to have unevenly shaped pieces of meat (whatever). I anyways wrapped slices of mozzarella cheese with those pieces and ended up having four rolls. I carefully fried the rolls in a skillet trying to keep the shape, but somehow the cheese melted and ran out of the rolls, left a cavity in the rolls of pork. They sure weren't the way they were supposed to be, but even the run-away cheese was captured in the ginger sauce in the skillet, and we had it with pork in the end.


Years having been past and I am not a kid any longer, I still loved the dish; and so did he, who doesn't like pork much (and who remembered that my mother served us the same dish when we visited her earlier this year, and it was with beef).

For those who are interested in my two favorites, here are the recipes to share with you; please note that all the quantities are approximate, as I never measure the ingredients for this kind of dishes.

+++
My Signature Kabocha Pumpkin Salad


I first had this salad at one of my friends'. All I remembered was that there were grilled kabocha, roasted walnuts, grated parmigiano, and rocket salad, or better known as arugula in it, and I loved it at the first bite. Although I asked how to make it, I somehow forgot it and it wasn't until last year when I tried to reproduce it myself. It worked, and I have since made the salad in my way, even though it is not exactly the same as the one I had had.

Ingredients:

For topping:
1/2 lb. kabocha, trimmed (but not peeled), seeded, and cut into 3-5 mm (1/8-1/5 inch) slices
1/4 - 1/2 onion, preferably sweet onion (such as vidalia, maui), very thinly sliced
A fistful of walnuts, roasted and coarsely chopped
2 Tbs. grated parmigiano reggiano cheese, plus extra for garnish
1 Tbs. lemon juice
2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for finishing
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For salad:
Mesculin salad mix or your choice of salad greens (I prefer to include arugula), rinsed and dried

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. To make the topping, spread the slices of kabocha in a single layer on a microwave-safe large plate. Wrap and microwave it for about 2-3 minutes, flip them over in 2 minutes into heating, if necessary (this is to reduce the oven-baking time, as kabocha takes long to cook). Transfer the kabocha to a non-stick cookie sheet (I use non-stick aluminum foil) and bake in the preheated oven until tender and crisp, or about 20-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

2. If using regular yellow onion, soak the slices in cold water for about 15-20 minutes so that they won't taste too strong. Squeeze excess water. Sweet onions don't need soaking.

3. Walnuts can be roasted aside with the pumpkin, but also be roasted in a toaster oven; in this case, spread the walnuts on a half of a piece of aluminum foil, and fold the foil into half so that walnuts were covered. Toast the covered nuts for 5-10 minutes. Chop and let cool.

4. In a bowl combine the onion, lemon juice, oil, walnuts, and cheese. Grind the pepper generously, and salt to taste (do not put too much salt, as the cheese is quite salty). Mix in the kabocha.

5. Spread the greens on a large plate and place the topping on top. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with more grated cheese (optional). Grind the pepper. Serve the topping and green together. Serves 2.

Note:
We probably make double the amount of topping and reserve the leftover (if any) in the fridge and have it next day.

Kabocha is a very common type of squash widely available in Japan, with dark green skin and bright orangy yellow flesh. Pumpkins generally available in the US are somehow different from this particular kind, and I have never tried this dish with other than kabocha, so I am not sure if it works.

+++
Gingered Pork Rolls with Cheese


Ingredients:

4 large very thin pieces pork (or 8 small pieces)
4 thick slices of cheese
1 Tbs. flour
4 Tbs. peeled and grated fresh ginger
1 Tbs. soy sauce or to taste
Vegetable oil for stir-frying

Directions:

1. Place a piece of cheese on each large piece (or 2 small pieces) of pork. Roll meat so cheese is completely enclosed. Dredge rolls with flour.

2. Heat the oil in a large fry pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the floured pork rolls on both sides until golden brown. NOTE: Pork MUST be cooked thoroughly.

3. Remove the fully cooked pork rolls to a plate. In the same pan, stir in the grated ginger and soy sauce at once and heat until the mixture start bubbling. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the reserved rolls back in the pan and cover with the ginger sauce. Serve immediately with vegetables. Serves 2.

Note:
As I mentioned above, this can be made with beef as well.
At my family we would use Cheddar-based processed cheese, and this time I used mozzarella. Cheddar or Monterey Jack would also work.

fruit salad with attitude

Wednesday, August 18

It was a bit cooler today (compared to the past several days), and I made fruit salad. I don't often make fruit salad, but this isn't just an ordinary fruit salad; roasted fruit salad. Doesn't sound very summery, but it actually is - the recipe, by Trish Deseine in her book mes petits plats preferes (2002, Marabout), calls for peach, red plum, fig, and grape, all of which (except for grape, for which I don't know because I see grapes all year around) are in season now.

Luckily, I had found figs were on sale at one of my local stores (they are pretty expensive over here, specially those "imported" from California), so I took this chance and got all the fruits listed above, plus blackberries (they were on sale, too).
The fruit salad, as its name Salade de fruits rotis au beurre sale implies, is a "salad" of fruits roasted with salted butter. But I usually buy unsalted butter as I use butter almost exclusively in baking, so I just used the unsalted butter and simply sprinkled with French sea salt. I also substituted unrefined sugar for cassonade, a kind of French brown sugar that I couldn't find in my neiboughood.



A casserole of rinsed, pitted and cut up fruits sprinkled with sugar, butter, and salt went to the oven and cooked for about 20 minutes, and came out beautifully; the smell of slightly burnt and caramelized butter and sugar was so sweet and mellow I couldn't resist picking up some fruits, still sizzling hot, and popping them into my mouth... hhhhhot, and ssssweet. I instantly loved it.

Now, other than its own uniqueness for "fruit salad", another reason the recipe caught my eyes was a small note; as a serving suggestion, it mentioned good vanilla ice cream and creme anglais infused with laurel leaves. Laurel leaves for creme anglais? I read the line twice, and mildly startled with that idea. I had never heard of such a thing, but another recipe in the same book also uses bay leaves for poaching figs in port. I was being very curious and decided to give it a try.

Since I could not find a recipe for creme anglais infused with laurel, I just put a bay leaf in the milk for the cream. It was my first time to make creme anglais for the past ten years or so and I have to say I was being a bit nervous - and I messed up. I was being carefully trying not to have the cream curdled up, but it did; the recipe for creme anglais in the book used milk and cream, and no cornstarch, and I omitted cream - that could have been a factor. Anyways, as I couldn't bother to make another batch of creme anglais from scratch, I took a short cut and put the bay leaf in a very small amount of whole milk and added it to mascarpone cheese to make some cream thing. Good enough.


I thought the salad was best eaten hot right out of the oven. Although it can just be reheated later, it could get a little soggy over time. Either way, it is definitely better hot/warm, as it tasted a bit too heavy to me when it was cooled to room temperature, perhaps because of butter. Hot dessert with cold sauce (or vice versa) is always my favorite, and it was so with this one - sizzling hot fruits with cold cream sauce made a hearty dessert, even though it might not sound so appealing to those of you who are currently suffering through a truly unbearable summer....

By the way, laurel miraculously worked good with the sweet cheese cream (and the bodgy creme anglais as well, I tasted it a bit before saying goodbye to it). I am sure the sald would have been just as good with cream without bayleaf (such as vanilla ice cream), but a slight scent of laurel was really pleasant and I think it was nice.

close enough

Monday, August 16

It was another hot and stuffy afternoon. I wanted to have something nice and cold, sweet and smooth - quick. I was thinking about making something else, but ended up with this one: cream cheese baked custard. I had found the recipe (in Japanese) several days before, and was very excited, as cream cheese baked custard is one of my favorite sweets from Cheesecake Factory (in Japanese - it has nothing to do with the American chain of the same name). I had since wanted to try this.
It was a very standard recipe of baked custard, or creme caramel (except it doesn't use caramel and cream cheese was added), and looked a fairly easy recipe, which was great for an occasion like this, when I want something quick.

Like I just mentioned, it was really an easy one. I creamed the cheese (I microwaved it for a bit), added egg yolks and sugar, then milk, vanilla, and liquor - that was it. In the recipe, both heavy cream and milk were used, but I didn't have cream in the fridge so just used whole milk, in a slightly lesser amount than that said in the recipe for the cream and milk combined, to avoid the custard getting too thin. I also used amaretto instead of rum in the recipe.


After 20 minutes of cooking (in a baine-marie, or "water bath" in the oven), the surface of custard in ramekins didn't seem to have all settled, looking still runny - that is the way it should be. Straggling hard with the urge to poke a spoon in the custard, I managed to stick the ramekins in the freezer (yes, freezer, because I wanted them chilled as soon as possible).

I was being patient for what seemed like 30-40 minutes, after which I dragged the custard out of the freezer, pour some thick maple syrup over it, and finally dug in.
It was very smooth and light, sweet to rights. Cream cheese wasn't so pronounced, but I definitely tasted it (he didn't, though).

It was really good, but would have been richer (and even better) with heavy cream, I imagined... next time, I would use heavy cream (or maybe half & half) and add black sesame taste, to make it like sesame cheese baked custard, which is my all-time favorite from Cheesecake Factory (I love it even more than the plain ones - by the way, the ramekins are actually what they put their cream cheese custard at Cheesecake Factory; you pay about $3-4 and get a dainty, plus this cute ramekin will be yours! Not a bad deal, is it?)!



P.S. The custard had thickened its taste by the next day. It got a lot richer and tasted definitely more of cream cheese. I liked it a lot better that way.

homage to the late great chef

Sunday, August 15

Yesterday I went to farmers' market and bought a lot of shiny summer vegetable, with ratatouille in my mind. This southern French dish is something that I strongly associate with summer, probably because of the fact it uses aubergine, courgettes, and tomatoes - all summer vegetable, even if they are available year around nowadays.
Few years ago when I shared an apartment with my sister, we would make ratatouille throughout the summer to satiety - well, in reality we never got tired of it. It is, being so simple and delicious, something that we would always go back to.

I have not made ratatouille for years since then, but this year I thought of making it again. There are a whole bunch of different recipes for ratatouille, but I used to look up several different recipes and settle down to an easiest way; cut and saute the vegetable with olive oil and garlic, taste with salt and pepper as well as herbs de province, and simmer for 20-30 minutes. It couldn't go wrong.

But this time several separate issues caught my mind at one time, that eventually led me to the decision to try out another recipe, one by Julia Child. It must have been partly because I learned of her death a few days back, but even before that event I had a couple of occasions where I came across "Julia Child's ratatouille". It was almost like a magical set of keywords - there has to be something that tells me to try her recipe, I was convinced.
To tell you the truth, I know little about this past master. I have seen some of her recipes here and there, but hers appeared to me very complicated and time-consuming; I used to try a lot of fancy dishes many years ago, but I have steered clear of anything too complicated recently. That may be why I have never bothered to take a closer look at her works.
For this reason, I don't own any of her book, including her legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 1 in which her famous ratatouille is included. So I got on the net and searched for it, to find two basically same but somewhat different versions (this and this).
Now unfortunately I don't know which version is authentic or closer to her genuine recipe, but in both of the versions, you basically saute vegetables separately, and put them in a casserole making layers, without mixing everything up. I had known that her ratatouille recipe was quite labor-intensive, but it really looked like it.

One might regard it as a disfavor to Julia Child, but I used a bit different ingredients. I used: yellow squash (that funky-looking yellow fellow) in addition to the common zucchini, because I wanted to try one and thought it would make a nice accent in color; red bell peppers in addition to regular green bell peppers, as I like red peppers in ratatouolle; maui sweet onions instead of yellow onions, because I like them; canned whole tomatoes along with fresh roma tomatoes, since I didn't have enough of fresh ones; and fresh thyme in addition to parsley, because I like thyme in ratatouille. Well, now it may seem to be a rather different dish, but I did follow the procedure - slice up the vegetable thinly (I would just cut up in bigger chunks), and peel, seed, and juice the tomatoes (I would never bother it otherwise), saute them separately (well, I worked on eggplant and zucchini together - a bit of cheating, I admit), layer the vegetable carefully, and cooked for just short of 30 minutes. There was nothing really difficult, but it was certainly very time-consuming, especially for something supposedly easy like ratatouille.


But I understood all the reasons when I tasted it when it was done. It was different - totally different from any ratatouille I had ever made or tasted. Each slice of vegetable kept its integrity, as if it had been refusing to be mixed up with other vegetables. All at the same time, the dish as a whole had the integrity, too, with all the vegetables were well coordinated, and in harmoney. All the labor did make a huge difference.

I served my ratatouille with a small bit of basil leaves on top (I forgot to put them before taking a picture) and ate with plain cooked rice. The ratatouille impressed him as much as it did me so, and he instantly became a fan of this dish.
Now the only problem is, since it was his first time eating ratatouille, and the first thing always set the standard; he had the very good (I think I can even claim it "the best") ratatouille as the first thing, it might well disappoint him to some extent if I make a common, easier version next time....

sometime you should just stick to the recipe

Friday, August 13

It was my first time to bake some cake using tofu. It is, of course, such a staple in Japanese cuisine and I love it like most people I know back there, but sweet stuff using tofu is somehow not as common as here in the States, as far as I know. I have never been particularly into using tofu in baking, but the other day I stumbled across this recipe (in Japanese) - tofu muffin. This one uses no egg, milk, or butter (but does use vegetable oil) and uses kinako, or soy powder, soy milk, and tapioca starch, along with kinugoshi dofu, or silken (soft) tofu. A bit unusual, I thought.

I had bought tapioca starch especially for this recipe (it was in quite a big bag, and I used only a bit of it; I don't know how to use up the rest - maybe make some PortugueseBrazilian cheese rolls?) and silken tofu - or so I thought. When I cut open the package of tofu, it looked pretty firm; most of tofu available in my neighborhood is predominantly extra firm, which is basically not for eating as is. This one, although not so firm, was still pretty firm for kinugoshi, and it actually wasn't as it turned out; I picked up a wrong one. The package read "medium firm (regular)", and that was what it was. I messed up.
But I had already opened the package and was ready to make muffins, I just went on. According to the recipe, if you drain and puree 200g (approx. 7oz) of silken tofu and add 1/2 tablespoonful of lemon juice and about 2 tablespoonful of soy milk, it should make about 180cc (approx. 6 fluid ounces, or 3/4 cup). In my measuring cup, however, the pureed tofu already measured more than 3/4 cup - so I removed a bit of the pureed tofu and added lemon juice and soy milk.
The batter, with the dry ingredients added, was extremely dry and I ended up with adding some extra lemon juice and mixing probably more than I was supposed to. Things weren't looking quite bright.

The muffins that came out of oven looked fine (although the walnut bits as a topping were burnt), but their texture was pretty firm.


I could attribute it to a few factors: first, I used firm tofu instead of soft one; second, I used all-purpose flour instead of pastry flour; and third, I overmixed the batter, which might have been as a result of the former two. I usually use all-purpose flour even when using a Japanese recipe that most often uses pastry flour, which has a lesser content of gluten, and sometime it is fine, while other times it does make the cake a bit too firm, like this time. The muffins were far from good, but maybe I should give it a second try using the right ingredients, before blaming the recipe for the failure.

a poorly planed dinner

Thursday, August 12

Okay, it was cancelled at the last minute, and today was the day to invite the guest over for dinner.

Before deciding what to make for today, I had asked him to ask them what they cannot (or don't want to) eat; this is something I always consider whenever feeding someone for the first time. I might not be able to always make them something they love, but at least I want to avoid making something they cannot eat or even see.
Unfortunately, he didn't seem to have asked them about it, but I guessed, considering there were meat, fish, and vegetable when we barbecued the other day and everyone seemed to eat a lot, that anything not so eccentric should be okay.

Originally, we were going to make salad, herb-roasted vegetable, porc au cidre, and barbecue chicken. But we had already made two of them just a couple days before, and thought that the same pork dish would be too much (for us), while the salad seemed fine. Then we rethought about the menu and decided that we would make orange-flavored chicken instead of apple pork, and barbecue beef instead of chicken, and the vegetable dishes as planed. We were all set.

We went out to buy some of ingredients that were missing, and came home to start cooking right away. While he prepared orange marinade for the chicken and cut up the vegetable, I prepared beef (half with barbecue and the rest with salt & pepper) and dessert.

A little past 5:30 the guest came. He was a great host who served a little snack and drinks, kept a conversation with his friend and his wife, while at the same time entertained kids with balloon animals. I, on the other hand, did the last-minute rush in the kitchen, occasionally chatting with the guests.

It was at this point when the truth came out. Our guests for this evening, it turned out, would not eat meat except for the father. It was only for us (and well, the father) that they had beef and pork the other night; mother and kids did not eat them. What a disaster, I thought - we had a whole lot of meat but not fish! I felt so bad and so embarrassed. So did him, naturally, who hadn't bothered to ask them about their food preference. It was too late, however, and we had to serve what we had - they were being so nice telling us not to worry, and "we can survive with all the vegetable and rice".

And they did, to my great relief. We roasted a lot of vegetable and it disappeared in seconds (I didn't eat the vegetable at all), and they gave us a lot of raves. The chicken and beef, both of which turned out pretty good, were quickly gone, too (I think he and his friend tried to live on the meat, saving the vegetable for the rest of us). We were all stuffed, and ready for the dessert.

I put the pan in the oven right after I had some food at table with the guests. I made nectarine tart, an application of the peach tart mentioned in Amanda Hesser's book Cooking for Mr. Latte: a food lover's courtship, with recipes (2003, W.W. Norton & Co.) again. It was an easy recipe that tells you to mix up the ingredients of the tart dough directly in a pan, arrange the fruit wedges, and cover them with a layer of crumble-like batter.
This time I used nectarine instead of peach, as I couldn't find readily good peach. I mixed two kinds of nectarine; white and "honeysweet" nectarine. I had already tried white ones, but honeysweet nectarine was a first-timer. They looked pretty much like regular nectarine inside and out; the flesh might have been a beet more orangy. They were very ripe and sweet - I was almost tempted to use the honeysweet kind for the entire tart, as the white ones weren't rightly ripe (some part was still not ripe while other part was rotten, stuff like that).
It sure was easy to make, but took a little long time to bake, especially when we had tired and bored children. The father almost suggested they should go home, but the wife shrugged off; "we are having dessert!"



And here comes the tart. It might have been a bit underbaked (I felt I shouldn't keep them wait any longer - I took it out of oven at 30 minutes, rather than 35-40 minutes as instructed in the recipe), but looked totally fine, and tasted entirely good with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. An 8-inch pan went almost empty with a small piece left, and everyone was happy - including kids and myself.


It was nevertheless bad that we actually served something they couldn't eat in such a major portion, and we promised we would make up for that.

backed out at the last minute, but made a go...

Tuesday, August 10

This evening we were to have his friend and the family over for dinner at out place; last week we did barbecue, but today we were going to cook something and eat in the house.
We went shopping early in the afternoon and bought a whole LOT of food (we didn't forget how much we ate last time). We got home to find there was a message on his cell phone, and learned that their younger kid got sick today and they wanted to rearrange our gettogether. It was too bad that we didn't get the message before or even during shopping, but kids suddenly get sick all the time, so it was none of their fault or anything. We made it so that we would do it later sometime this week.

Fortunately, most of foodstuff we bought today was either fine for a few days refridgerated or frozen, so we could just keep the food and stick to the same menu that we had decided. But for some dishes I had already started preparing, or simply he got carried away with his desire to eat a particular dish, I decided to gave them a go.

First, I prepared porc au cidre, or what he likes to call "apple pork". This was a small recipe mentioned in a book mes petits plats preferes (2002, Marabout) by Trish Deseine, as a variation of boeuf bourguignon; using pork instead of beef, and hard cider instead of red wine. It is, in fact, the very first pork dish that impressed him who doesn't like pork, as he claimed it as "the best pork dish" he had ever tasted when he had it last time. Besides the fact that he hadn't had so many pork dishes to compare with this dish before, I thought it was pretty good, too.
I cut up vegetable and pork, sauteed them and added cider and herbs, and let it cook on the stovetop for a couple of hours.


Next was salad. Very plain salad of greens, nothing apparently peculiar - except for the dressing. The herbed vinegar dressing, whose recipe is seen in Chapter 12 of the book Cooking for Mr. Latte: a food lover's courtship, with recipes (2003, W.W. Norton & Co.) by Amanda Hesser, is highly labor-intensive to make - I soaked several different herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, and basil) in a mixture of vinegars, which I put on a heat and boil down to the half, and mixed with oil infused with shallot. In fact, it wasn't so complicated recipe, but just time-consuming than most other dressings, and definitely fancier than what I would usually do with salads (I typically pour good extra virgin olive oil or sesame oil and season with salt and pepper, with occasional addition of lemon juice or soy sauce). First thing that I came upon when I first read through the recipe was, those sophisticated salads served as a starter at a fancy restaurant.
As is often the case, I made substitution for some of the ingredients; I used white balsamic vinegar in place of red wine vinegar, and just olive oil in place of peanut oil. Also I couldn't find tarragon and chervil, so I just used mesclun salad greens with a bit of edible flowers.


The result was very impressive - my guess wasn't terribly far from the reality. We both were very impressed with the delicate flavor of the dressing; it wasn't overwhelmingly herby at all, not sour, either but very sweet due to the boiled-down balsamic vinegar. Peanut oil would have added a hint of nutty flavor to the dressing, I imagined. Since I made some more herbed vinegar, we will be able to enjoy the salad again sometime soon.

The apple pork came out somewhat different from the last time; it wasn't as apple-y as the last time, probably because I used different kind of cider. Also, I added an unnecessary bit of extra cider towards the end of cooking, which made the dish really soupy and look shabby. It was nevertheless good, and we both enjoyed it a lot. This is definitely more like a dish for winter than summer, but I don't mind as long as it is NOT hundred degrees hot.

ripe green experiment

Monday, August 9

Relieved from the work, I baked cake last night (I was still sick, but baking in the middle of the night is, to me, a remedy to collect myself). With an avocado all the way ripened in the fridge, I decided to take on avocado bread.

I had seen several recipes using avocado in place of butter/oil, but this one somehow seemed very straightforward; using a generous amount of avocado, an otherwise very standard set of ingredients, and no spice or any other flavorings, not even vanilla. I was being very curious.

My avocado was really ripe, and that locally-grown kind is particularly buttery even when it is not so ripe - the pulp was extremely soft and almost no mashing was necessary. Mixing the ingredients together and put the loaf pan in the oven, baked for about half an hour or so (I reduced the ingredients to half), took it out, and I went to bed.


This morning I cut some slices of my avocado bread. The cake looked sort of green outside, but more greenish inside. It didn't smell sweet, but not stinky either. It didn't taste great, but not so bad either. It somehow reminded me of something familiar that I couldn't figure out until my third or fourth bite; it was, I figured, kasutera, or an old-fashioned kind of sponge cake (for more details about kasutera, refer to here; although not mentioned in here, I am pretty sure that today's kasutera most likely uses honey). I don't know what made the cake taste like kasutera, but it must have had something to do with avocado, given that all other ingredients were very common. In any case, kasutera isn't my favorite kind of cake and the avocado bread was, although very interesting in terms of trying out new things, not likely to have a chance to become a staple. I love avocado, but I think there are lot other things that I should make using avocados.