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!

Chicken and enoki mushrooms noodles

In my last blog we made claypot chicken with corn and oregano. We had the drumsticks, thighs and wings for dinner. We were deciding whether to have chicken apple salad like a waldorf salad with the remaining chicken pieces, mainly breast, but opted for something warm so we made dry noodles ie a "kon loh mee" instead. We had dry taiwanese noodles with chopped enoki mushrooms and fennel. I thought of the enoki as it has a nice crunchy bite to it. The enoki was fried with the fennel. Separately, I fried some eshallots. The noodles were tossed with thick soy sauce, sesame oil and oyster sauce. Then I just combine all of it together. Overall, the noodles was not great, but good for a "fast food". The touch of soy sauce with extra hot fresh bullet chilli made a huge difference. Well, we still have a whole packet of this zinging hot chilli in the fridge, so it will be spicy hot food for a while I guess :-)

Bon Appetit!

Claypot Corn Chicken

This was the dinner that Andrew made last night! It's simple, uses one pot, no oily splitter splatter, we make full use of the whole chicken, AND importantly, it's yummy! When the chicken is cooked, the whiff of roasted chicken, garlic and herbs smell just floated in the air filling the house with a heavenly smell.
The chicken tasted like steam chicken and more, with a good "roasty" flavour. The claypot sealed all the flavours beautifully giving an intense and aromatic chicken with rich broth. We often add potatoes and last night we experimented with fresh sweet corn as well. The potatoes having absorbed all the rich broth while cooking was so flavourful. We used a few of the large potatoes we had in the pantry, but if buying them, we'd use several new (ie baby) potatoes instead as baby potatoes hold together better in the heat since the skin need not be peeled.

Cooked in a Rometoff clay pot.

1 Whole Chicken (corn fed if available).
2 large fresh cobs of corn (or a 4 pack of small ones), cut the sweet corn off the cob and put both aside.
2 large potatoes, quartered (or several new potatoes).
1/2 cup of white wine.

Marinade / rub
4 cloves of garlic, crushed.
1 or 2 teaspoons of salt.
1 tablespoon or so of olive oil.
2 teaspoons of chopped oregano (dry if no fresh available).

Mix marinade well and push under the chicken skin with a teaspoon, and spread around. Rub the remainder on the outside of the bird. Fill the cavity with the corn cobs. As an option you could also put a few lemon wedges into the chook as well, plus more garlic cloves and fresh oregano.

Put the chicken into a soaked claypot. Spread the potatoes around, then add the white wine. Put the lid of the claypot on and put into an unheated oven for 1 hour at 220. After 45mins, scatter the corn all over the chicken, then return to oven for another 15 mins. Remove and let rest with lid on for 10 - 15 mins.

To serve, cut the chicken as preferred and scoop corn and juices over the meat and potatoes. If you don't have potatoes, use white rice - this is especially delicious with the left over corn and juice!

This time we had the chicken thigh and wings and potatoes for dinner, with plain white rice. The remaining chicken breast we may save for making sandwiches or noodles the next day.

The carcass, we used to make stock, adding the bones, skin, corn cobs plus one onion and a couple of bay leaves to a stock pot, bring to boil then simmer for a few hours, cool & skim. It's placed in freezer in tubs, and to be used another day for making soupy noodle, or simply used as stock for cooking. Its good savings considering a carton of 500g Campbell chicken stock costs about AUD3.50. We ended up with over 2 ltrs of stock, plenty to use fresh and to freeze for later. We made a few ice cube trays of stock so I can just use as many or as little cubes as I like :-)

Bon Appetit

Hot Spanish chorizo and leek pasta

I have not been posting any blogs the last few days. I made some good food, but none of them seem WOW enough for me to want to put on the blog. But today, Andrew made me this pasta that blew me away. It was a pretty blue day, and he blew the blues off with this pasta. Of late, we have been into experimenting cooking with leeks. I did make a pretty good leek, tuna and feta cheese pasta a few weeks ago, but I am not putting it into the blog till I next make it.

Today is about Andrew's SUPER YUMMY pasta. As those who love chilli will understand, this has a great "kick" to it. Not for faint hearted, for this is HOT. I took my 1st bite, it was yummy. It was so hot, my tongue burnt, but I just wanted to go on eating. My tongue is still burning now, 2 hours after dinner, a hot chamomile tea and a hot milo. No regrets:-)

The trick I have learnt about good pasta is that once the sauce and ingredients are cooked, it is best just to toss and mix the pasta in the sauce, with the heat OFF. That way, pasta doesnt get overcooked.

Serves two.
Pasta (chitarra) for two.
2 chorizo sausages, sliced.
1 leek, sliced.
2 cloves of garlic crushed, 2 cloves sliced.
1 or 2 small chillies, as hot as you dare.
2 large mushrooms, coarsely chopped.
Half cup of white wine.
Handful of grated cheese, a soft mild cheddar or havarti.

Cook pasta and set aside.
Heat a little olive oil in pan.
Add sliced chorizo and crushed garlic, fry over medium heat until chorizo cooked.
Add sliced leek and fry until leek separates and softens.
Add mushrooms, sliced chilli, sliced garlic, cook until mushroom softens.
Add salt and pepper as desired, then turn up the heat and deglaze pan with white wine.
Turn off heat, add cheese and mix in then add pasta, mix together well and serve

Bon Appetit!