Moist Steam Carrot Cheese Fruit Cake

Ingredients - 23cm cake tin
2 grated carrots
1 cup of dried currants and raisins
80g cream cheese
125g butter
50g castor sugar
80g almond meal
70g self raising wholemeal flour
5 eggs, separated
Juice of 1/2 an orange
1 tsp of whisky/brandy etc.

Preheat oven to 160degF.

Melt butter and cream cheese in a double boil pot - switch heat off when water starts to boil. (Note: cheese will not be completely melted)

Separately, add dried fruits to the flour and mix it up.

Whisk egg yolks and sugar till become light pale yellow and creamy. Slowly add the melted butter and cheese, and whisk together till combined into creamy texture. Slowly add in flour mixture with fruits and almond meal, then carrots in several batches, orange juice and liquer, while folding the mixture slowly and combining mixture.

Whisk egg white till form white peaks. Add into egg yolk mixture in batches and combine.

Steam bake (ie put a tray of water in oven below baking dish) in oven for 25-30 minutes, not more than 30 minutes. Take it out and cool for 1 hour before serving.

Reminder for next try: Reduce butter to 100g. And increase orange juice to juice of 1 orange or add 1 extra grated carrot.

Bon Appetit!

Tuna and leek pasta

A very simple but tasty one, can be done in 1/2 hour. I suggest either a tuna with leek, or bacon with leek with feta cheese. This cheese gives you a light creamy texture without smelly cheese smell and not too rich unlike cream. Buy a fresh good feta.

Ingredients for 4p:
- Either spaghetti or linguine - Cecco is a good Italian brand. The trick is dont buy those shiny smooth ones, buy the floury/powdery ones, they absorb the sauce better. 1 packet usually feeds 5.
- 1 leek, very very finely sliced.
Use only the white parts ie the stem, the dark green leefy bits are too course which I put aside for making stock for future use.
- 1/2 bulb of garlic ie about - or about 6 cloves - finely chopped or sliced.
- Either 500g of can tuna or 8 pieces of bacon
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Fresh parsley, chopped - maybe 3/4 of a Chinese soup bowl full when chopped.
- Good feta cheese about 60g. Chopped or crumbled into crumbly bits and set aside.

Cooking pasta
Boil water onto pot, make sure covers pasta well so that pasta cooks properly and evenly. When boiled, add a pinch of salt into water, and add pasta to cook. (Cooking time, look at instructions on pasta pack. Different ones/thickness etc requires different cooking time. )
When ready, dish out pasta onto a large mixing bowl together with a ladle full of the "hot pasta water". Then, add generously extra virgin olive oil and stir, for flavour and to keep the pasta from sticking together.

Cooking sauce
Sautee chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil till fragrant - not browned nor burnt. Add the leek and sautee till the leek is softened. Season with a pinch of sea salt.
When leek is cooked, while it is all hot, pour onto cooked pasta. Quickly add tuna, chopped parsley, lightly toss all together. Then add crumbled feta, lightly tossed all the ingredients, and serve.You want to toss with the still piping hot leek, to bring out the flavour of the fresh parsley and melt the feta! Which is why I time my cooking pasta such that it is almost done when my leek is done, so that everything is nice and hot when I am about to toss all together.

Bona apettite.:-)

Tip: If you like anchovies (I call it the kwai loh salted fish) - put 1 o 2 anchovies in when sauteeing garlic and combine together with leek for cooking.
- Fry chopped bacon, and add on to pasta, if you prefer bacon to tuna. Bon Appetit!

Bon Appetit!

My favourite fluorless dark chocolate cake

Bon Appetit!

This is a moist chocolate fluorless cake that has a just nice density yet light texture. Not sweet.

Ingredients
350g dark chocolate
160g almond or walnut meal.
5 eggs, yolks and white separated
2 egg whites
125g butter
80g raw sugar
2 tsp orange oil
3 tsp mandarin flavoured vodka
1 tsp of tawny port
1 orange zest

Steps
Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
Line bottom of a non stick square cake tin with baking paper. (If not using non stick, rub evenly a very light layer of butter on sides). I do this first so that I am not frantically trying to get this done when my batter is all ready to go into the oven!
Pour chocolate into a steel bowl sitting onto a pot of simmering hot water - make sure bowl doesnt touch steel bowl. I used Belgian cooking dark chocolate drops. If using from a bar of chocolate, chop chocolate to small pieces first, for easier melting.
Chop butter. Add to chocolate, and let both melt, stirring to blend both evenly.
When chocolate and butter are melted and no longer in lumps, set aside away from heat, to prevent over heating. Stir in all the orange flavouring and port.
Measure almond meal and sugar.
Separate the egg yolks.
Whisk egg yolk with sugar until it turns pale and creamy.
Pour it into melted chocolate and butter in 3 batches, and fold together.
Add almond meal and fold in.
Whisk egg white until it forms a soft white peak which can fall over.
Add egg white to the other chocolate batter in 3 batches and fold in till even.
Pour mixture into cake tin.
Put into oven for 30 minutes at 160 deg.
When time is up, take it out and cool down for at least 1 hour before serving.

The cake will be moist and melting with chocolate in the middle.

Tip: Cut individual serving piece into 4 cm x 4 cm pieces and microwave about 12 seconds each to "warm up" the chocolate - it makes the cake lighter and softer!

Can increase or decrease quantum of walnut/almond meal by up to 40g, depending on whether you want the cake to be lighter or more densed:-)

Option: Sprinkle toasted almond flakes on cake with icing sugar.

Option: For less rich chocolate cake, can reduce chocolate to 300g, and use 6 eggs, and 8 egg whites. Can also omit walnut meal, and replace with more butter ie 175g.
Increase oven time to 35 minutes.

Enjoy!

Tuna beans spanish onion n sultanas on turkish toast

As I am writing to this, I am listening to Michael Nyman, "The heart ask for pleasure first". How apt. It has been such a pleasurable sunny cool Sunday afternoon, and I just had a lovely turkish toast with soothing music, and now sipping my cup of hot green tea.

This morning as I woke up and lazying in bed, I thought we will have tuna beans for lunch, but what will complement it well? After trying a bunch of different ingredients on my imaginary palate, I finally decided on this mix:

Turkish bread
500g Sole Marie tuna and beans
1 finely chopped spanish red onion
2 cloves of finely chopped garlic
Handful of of sultanas
5-6 basil leaves, chopped
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Salt n pepper

To me, turkish bread is absolutely fabulous for toasts with olive oil. Its crunchy soft and light.

On a small non-stick pan, lightly caramelise the onions with sultanas for about a minute with a dash of olive oil, a crack of salt and a touch of balsamic vinegar. Dont overcook. We want the onion to remain crunchy(I dont like raw onions but if you like them raw, go for it). Put aside.
Drain the oil off the can of tuna and beans.
On a bowl, toss the tuna, beans and chopped basil with olive oil ( I much prefer olive oil. It is fresher and healthier than the oil that comes with the tuna).
Half the turkish bread
"Butter" the halved turkish bread with chopped garlic
Grill the bread on a preheated toasted oven, just enough to warm the bread and release the flavour from the garlic.
When done, drizzle olive oil onto turkish bread. Then add the tuna mix, followed by the sauteed onions.
Crackle some pepper.

The crunchy onions and sweetness of the sultanas adds texture and taste to the tuna. And the fresh basil adds a nice refreshing "zing". I think parsley would have complemented these ingredients better , but I didnt have parsley at home today.

Bon Appetit!

Snack, dinner

Some of the colourful meals we made last week.
Garlic bruschetta with fresh tomato and basil in olive oil.
Vietnamese "bun" with spanish chorizo









Bon Appetit!

Stewed pork ribs in chicken and dried honey dates soup

Simple and comforting home cooked meal.

I dont know why, but I have been feeling so dehydrated these days. I havent missed soups lately until now. So I bought 5 pieces of drumsticks to make clear soup, with the packet of dried yellow dates (I think its called "mut cho" in cantonese)I have in the pantry.

Ingredients
Chicken drumsticks
1 stalk of fennel
1 carrot
A dozen of golden/honey dates ("mut cho" in cantonese)
A pinch of salt

We use a le creuset cast iron pot (it seals all the flavours well).

Place chicken into the pot with cold water, enough to cover the chicken.
Turn heat on high.
When it starts to boil, remove the layer of white/grayish foam that emerged. This takes away the impurities of the meat which floats to the surface when boiling.
Put the rest of the ingredients into the boiling water.
Turn heat to lowest heat. Boil the chicken soup for 2 1/2 hours.

The finished clear soup was nice and sweet. The chicken was lovely, falling off its bones. We had it with soy sauce and fresh chilly, accompanied with plain steam rice, and fried choy sum with eshallots and garlic and a dash of oyster sauce.

With the leftover clear soup, with its sweetish flavour, we thought it would make a nice sort of Thai/Vietnamese noodle soup.

I added about:
5 star anise,
another fennel stalk,
1 chopped onion
a chopped tomato
a teaspoonsful of corn starch powder
and boiled the soup for about 45 minutes.

The corn starch powder makes the soup slightly thicker so that it will bind better onto my taiwanese noodles. The fennel stalk gives it a nice licorish taste which blends well with the star anise.

While the soup was simmering, I boiled some taiwanese noodle and blanched some lettuce and placed them onto a bowl. To keep the noodle separated I tossed it with a dash of sesame oil and tiny weeny bit of oyster sauce for flavouring. When the soup was ready, and the ingredients drained, I then poured it onto the bowl of noodles. I hesitated whether to put in some fesh basil leaves, but opted to leave it out, so that I can enjoy the pure simple sweet taste of the soup. As this was meant to be a fast food nite, we opened up a can of chinese stew pork ribs (Gulong brand), heat it up in the pot, and put the ribs on top of the noodles (minus the juice that comes with it in the can, as I didnt want it to change the flavour of the soup) I must say I enjoyed the soup very much. The soup was clear but tasty with the natural sweetness of all the fresh veg and dates.

The best way to describe it is to imagine a fusion between a taiwanese brisket soup noodle and a indochine beef soup noodle, just minus the beef :-)

Bon Appetit!