Apricot & Vanilla Jam

Given the amount of jam which my husband and I go through (about 1 jar of Bonne Mamam per week), it’s rather surprising that I only recently got into jam-making. For a long time, I always thought that you needed a gluttony of fruit in order to make jam. And in Switzerland, a gluttony of fruit comes at an extortionate price.

I recently had some good friends from Germany come to stay with me at rather short notice. They had been hiking in the Swiss alps but were forced to abandon their trek due to bad weather. So they wound up at my place, thoughtfully bringing with them a box of apricots which they bought on the way down the mountain (and a bottle of sweet wine for hubby).

There were more apricots than I could eat on my own, not to mention that I was going to be in Cardiff for several days. So I dug out some cookbooks to look up different recipes for jam, and surprisingly discovered that I didn’t need a lot of fruit after all to make a few pots of jam. In fact, it is recommended to make jam in small batches in order to retain more flavour. The various recipes which I came across all had a common blueprint – equal weight in fruit and sugar, some water to cook the fruit in, and some lemon juice to help the jam to set.

My first attempt produced a fairly good batch of jam, perhaps a little too thick in consistency but still easily spreadable.

My second batch turned out beautifully 🙂 And now that I am hooked, I don’t think we will be buying jam ever again. In fact, I find myself looking at the fruit bowl in a new light! Watch this space for more jam recipes!

Gado-gado

After seeing the mouth-watering photos of this dish made by Carrie from thePatternedPlate, as well as reading other rave reviews about this yet-another Yotam Ottolenghi recipe, I couldn’t wait to try this dish.

Gado-gado is essentially a salad dressed with a satay sauce. As far as satay sauces go, this is perhaps the most complex recipe I have ever come across! There are quite a lot of steps involved, not to mention quite a lot of ingredients. As you can see from my photos below, I used small red onions in place of shallots. I have a tendency to gather a small collection of different coloured onions and shallots and recently decided that, as a compromise, small red onions should do the trick whenever “onions” or “shallots” are called for. The sauce takes about an hour to make, so you will have to factor this time in when making this dish or perhaps even make the sauce the day before.

But is the result worth the effort? In a word, yes. As with any complex recipe, I am always skeptical about whether it will be a bad science experiment with unfortunate food waste, particularly when I was cooking the crushed peanuts in water and the mixture looked like … let’s not go there. But I was relieved when the sauce came together in the end and actually looked like a satay sauce.

And the taste? Pretty delicious. I don’t know if it’s the best satay sauce I’ve ever tasted, but it is no doubt the best satay sauce I have ever made!

The first time I served this dish, I was making it for a vegetarian friend. I used salad leaves instead of cabbage, and fried some pieces of firm tofu. I also cooked some potatoes in water with turmeric (as per the recipe), and whilst the turmeric gave a nice orange hue to the potatoes, I’m not sure if I really liked the taste. But I definitely added some hard-boiled eggs to the salad – there is something about hard-boiled eggs that make a dish so homely and comforting.

On the second occasion, I simply pan-fried some pieces of chicken breast to serve in place of the tofu. And as the satay sauce was not that hot (much depends on how hot the sambal oelek is), I added some freshly chopped chillies. I love ordering chicken satay skewers whenever I go to Thai restaurants and this is a nice variation in salad form. Also, this confirmed that the satay sauce went beautifully with chicken.

The recipe makes quite a lot of sauce, but it keeps well in the fridge for a few days. Simply reheat in a small saucepan over medium heat. If it is too thick, you can thin it by adding some coconut milk.

Overall, I really enjoyed this recipe. I’m not a big salad person but with the addition of potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and tofu or chicken, it’s a pretty substantial meal. Another winner of a recipe from Ottolenghi.

Wales and Welsh Cakes

We’ve been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to go to Wales twice, both times for weddings of close friends. It is such a beautiful country, particularly if you head outside of Cardiff where you will see picturesque rolling hillsides, lush green farms and, if you make it that far, magnificent coast lines.

On the first occasion, I recall the bride telling stories of how she had stayed up the night before cooking batches of Welsh cakes to give to guests as wedding favours. If I recall correctly, they were even heart shaped! At the time, I happily consumed my wedding favour on the way back to our hotel room that evening, not giving another thought as to why it was called a Welsh cake or what significance it held, if any.

It was only recently – two weeks ago, to be precise – that I was gratefully re-introduced to these Welsh cakes when we went back to Wales for the wedding of a school friend of mine. After arriving at Cardiff airport, we hopped into our rental car and made our way out west, excited about our drive to the Welsh countryside and the fun and relaxing weekend that lay ahead. All was well until our GPS directed us off the highway and onto some narrow one-lane roads which produced several moments of sheer panic when we were confronted with cars approaching us. Tiny and slight shoulders (i.e. bushes) on the road allowed us to somehow pull over to let the other cars pass us. Escaping these narrow roads and finding our way back onto the highway was a welcome relief, until we saw the speed limit signs and weren’t sure if they were in kph or mph … hmmm …

Upon arriving at our B&B, a quaint country house near St. Clears, our host showed us to our rooms which had gorgeous views overlooking the Welsh countryside with glimpses of cows and sheep grazing in the distance; one could only feel relaxed in such surroundings. A quick peek around the room revealed Cath Kidston mugs and homewares, and even Molton Brown products in the bathroom – this city-slicker instantly felt better!

Either sensing our state of frazzledness or, more likely, as a sign of hospitality, our host offered to make us some fresh tea and Welsh cakes, and we happily accepted. And so if I didn’t appreciate the comfort of Welsh cakes before, I certainly understood them this time around. As a traditional tea-time snack, they are lovely with a cup of tea and will do wonders in helping you to unwind. That and the fresh, country air.

I happen to really love afternoon tea, that time when the day starts to wind down but isn’t quite over yet, that one cuppa and sweet treat to get you through until it’s time to shut-down your computer and head home. I also love morning tea, lunch, dinner … breakfast not so much because I’m always in a hurry so I never quite get to enjoy what I’m eating.

The next time you think about making scones, perhaps you might like to try your hand at these Welsh cakes. Both recipes require more or less the same ingredients but, with Welsh cakes, you make something more like a shortcrust pastry which is then pan-fried on the stove. The texture is somewhat like a scone, but a bit more crumbly like a shortbread biscuit. They are wonderful served warm from the pan with just a sprinkling of sugar or even with some jam, but they also taste great cold.

I was rather surprised that I didn’t have a recipe for Welsh cakes in any of my cookbooks, but thankfully I picked up a postcard in Wales which had a recipe for it on the front, and I adapted accordingly.

The recipe calls for lard, thereby guaranteeing that melt-in-your-mouth texture that you can’t always get with just butter. I had never bought lard before in Zurich so I wasn’t even sure what it was called in German, but sitting amongst the bottles of oil, I found this darling tub of Schweinefett and instantly knew that it was what I was looking for!

This is one of the things I love about travelling – discovering foodie treats that I can try to recreate when I get back home, a taste memory if you will.

 

Profiteroles with Burnt-Sugar Custard & Chocolate Sauce

If I had to name one dessert as my “desert island dessert”, it would probably have to be profiteroles. It seems most people are abuzz with French macaroons these days (which I also adore) but, to me, the profiterole is what encapsulates a typically French dessert. There is something about the sweet custard encased in a soft choux pastry and then covered with a decadent chocolate sauce. Whenever I see it on a dessert menu, I often find it hard to resist, even if there might be many other more exotic desserts on offer.

Growing up in Brisbane, I remember eating profiteroles only on rare occasions when my French class and I would visit one of the few French restaurants in the area in an attempt to practice our clumsy French with the poor chef and waiter who probably had to put up with the same lame dialogue on a frequent basis. I often wondered if the Alliance Française or even the French Embassy collaborated with these few French restaurants to somehow facilitate unusually slow, clear and polite French with their customers.

Although these French restaurants were rather modest but served excellent food (such as Le Bressane in Stafford), the fact that it was French meant that I had a hard time convincing any of my friends to dine there with me. So desserts like profiteroles and crème brûlée were rare treats for me which I savoured until the next anxiously-awaited occasion.

Fast-forward to my adulthood and to the first dinner which my now-husband prepared for me during the early days of our courtship, either in an attempt to woo me or to prove that he had more impressive culinary skills. If he didn’t have me at hello, he certainly had me by dessert. Why? Well … he made profiteroles.

Yes, a guy actually made me profiteroles. From scratch.

I was beyond impressed that someone would even bother to make profiteroles at home and, at the same time, amazed that my future husband had made my favourite dessert without realising. And to top it all off (pardon the pun), he even made the chocolate sauce to go with.

What was rather surprising about dessert was that he had filled the profiteroles with vanilla ice-cream (shop-bought, thankfully). At the time, I quietly forgave him for not attempting to make a custard; the guy had just made choux pastry which even I had not attempted up until that time, so I couldn’t blame him for skipping the custard.

It was only (a bit) later that I queried him on why he served his profiteroles with vanilla ice-cream. His reaction was, at first, stunned silence.

Hubby: Why, profiteroles are only served with vanilla ice-cream. What else would you serve them with??

Me: Er … custard?

And so it seems that the French have a lot to laugh about when it comes to the rest of the world attempting their highly-evolved cuisine. It appears that, in France, profiteroles are traditionally only served with vanilla ice-cream and drizzled with dark chocolate sauce. Indeed, since this moment of enlightenment, this has has also been my experience in restaurants in France and other parts of Europe. Even at a recent meal at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Las Vegas, his exquisite profiteroles were served with cold, cold vanilla ice-cream.

For me, this has been a stark change to what I grew up knowing as profiteroles. I happen to prefer the custard-filling; I love the soft pastry against the unctuous custard with the bitter contrast of the dark chocolate sauce. With vanilla ice-cream, the profiteroles are less of a sweet treat and more of a proper, sit-down dessert. That said, I would never say no to a profiterole and would probably be happier to have an ice-cream filling if I was indeed stranded on a desert island.

I recently tried my hand at making profiteroles and was so wowed by my own effort that I quickly forgot the lengthy, yet relatively easy, steps in order to arrive at the finished product. After a quick research of all recipes for profiteroles I could find in my cookbooks, I settled on Nigella Lawson‘s recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess; her recipe seemed the most instructive and less scary for a novice choux-pastry maker like me. My only deviation was to make a dark chocolate ganache instead of the toffee sauce.

I also toyed with the idea of making a plain custard instead of the burnt-sugar custard, but in the spirit of trying new things, I went with the latter. The custard is absolutely delicious and gives a toffee-sweetness that means you could probably do without the chocolate sauce if you don’t have a sweet tooth.

I found Nigella’s recipe to be fairly reliable. However, I did end up using my KitchenAid to beat the choux pastry rather than doing it by hand. And instead of baking the pastries for 15 minutes, mine took about 25 minutes even though they were quite small.

I served the profiteroles later that evening and they were wonderfully delicious (though, of course, not as good as my husband’s!). I had made so many that I even imposed a plateful on my neighbour downstairs.

As per Nigella’s recipe, I kept a few unfilled profiteroles in a Tupperware container but sadly found them to be too soft the next day. Hence, I think they are best eaten on the day they are made.

There are a few other recipes for profiteroles which I would love to try sometime soon (including Thomas Keller’s), so watch this space!

Crisp Silken Tofu in a Tomato and White Pepper Sauce

I had to renew my work visa the other day, which necessitated a trip to the immigration office so that I could be fingerprinted and all the rest. The only thing worse than taking an hour out of my day to visit a government office was posing for my mug shot and realising that I would be stuck with that photo everytime I have to go through passport control in the next 12 months. Someone ought to fix the lighting in those photo booths …

Thankfully, my time at the immigration office was over in 5 minutes (that’s Swiss efficiency for you) and as I walked back to the tram stop, I popped into the Asian grocer nearby to see what I could pick up for dinner that night. It was not a store I had frequently visited before and I was giddy with excitement by how well-stocked it was. I was particularly surprised to see a large selection of different types of tofu, including silken tofu which I had never come across before in Zurich.

In the past few months, I had tried some new tofu recipes from Luke Nguyen’s The Songs of Sapa. However, at the time, I could only find firm or fried tofu in Zurich, which worked well in these recipes but I was anxious to try them with the more soft and tender silken tofu. So I stocked up on half a dozen tubs of silken tofu in preparation for some tofu feasts in the days ahead.

Tonight, I made Luke Nguyen’s Crisp Silken Tofu in a Tomato and Black Pepper Sauce. My mother makes a similar dish which I absolutely love; it’s full of fresh ingredients and easy to make during the week. Though, I seem to only have white pepper in my kitchen, something which I think I’ve picked up from my mum who has an aversion to black pepper.

Luke’s recipe calls for the tofu to be deep-fried before it is added to the sauce. I have tried doing this a few times but my tofu pieces seem to soak up the oil like crazy – maybe it’s the type of tofu I’m using? So I prefer to lightly coat the tofu pieces in cornflour before deep-frying them in order to produce a nice, crunchy coating.

The tomato sauce in this recipe is a rather common sauce in most Vietnamese homes and which is also delicious served with grilled fish or chicken. The sauce is a little salty from the fish sauce, but it is perfect when served with steamed jasmine rice. All in all, it’s a lovely and comforting dish.

I’ve only tried a few recipes from The Songs of Sapa, though I use it more as a guide when I want to recreate some Vietnamese dishes. I think Luke Nguyen is a fantastic ambassador for Vietnam and its cuisine. If you love Vietnamese food, The Songs of Sapa is a must-have in your cookbook collection.

Ginger & Honey Snaps

The past week has been rather stressful for me and I have been longing for some comfort food in the form of home-baked cookies. And for some reason, ginger snap biscuits were on my mind. I’m not sure why because I haven’t eaten ginger snap biscuits since … at least 5 years ago when I left Australia??

A quick flick through some of my cookbooks and I found a nice and simple recipe in Rachel Allen’s Bake; nice because it was spot on what I was looking for, and simple because I happened to have all of the ingredients at home and I didn’t even need to wait for the butter to soften.

If you have visited my blog before, you will have noticed a few Rachel Allen recipes here and there. I really love her books and her recipes are often easy to follow and require little fuss.

If you own Bake, you will realise that Rachel’s recipe is fairly easy and straightforward. I took an even lazier option and did everything in my KitchenAid.

These biscuits will fill your kitchen with a heady aroma of ginger and mixed spices, a comforting sign in itself. And the moment you sit down to a few biscuits with a cup of tea, life is already better.

Waffles

I have to admit that I haven’t really been into waffles until quite recently. As a child growing up in Australia, my memories of waffles were of those pre-made, pre-packaged ones sold in the bakery section of the supermarket. Not very enticing.

As I grew older and acquired more stamps in my passport, I recall visiting stands in Paris where they would make waffles fresh to order, your eyes looking on hungrily and your mouths salivating as you stand and take in the irresistible scent of the waffles cooking. In winter, you are likely to find similar stands in other European cities, including in Zurich, although I don’t think waffles are a big hit in Zurich compared to their grilled sausage stands.

On a trip to New York one year with my family, my brother and I had breakfast one morning at Le Pain Quotidien near Central Park. I was trying to be sensible and ordered a healthy breakfast of soft-boiled eggs with a bread basket (my usual choice for breakfast). My younger brother, who I think has a rather sweet tooth, ordered the sugared waffles with strawberries. As our dishes arrived, I experienced the too-frequent feeling of plate-envy – his waffles made my bread basket look like something boring, big sister would order. So naturally, we had to have breakfast there again the next day just so I could try the waffles. They were Belgian-style waffles, thick with a good crust and sweet from a generous dusting of icing sugar. I would rate them among the best waffles I have ever eaten.

On a recent trip to visit hubby’s family in France, my mother-in-law decided to make waffles for dessert after lunch one day. She made them to order in the kitchen while the rest of us sat impatiently at the dining table until she would appear with a freshly made waffle, one at a time. Although I felt bad that she was stuck in the kitchen making waffles while the rest of us were just sitting around like hungry birds, it was perhaps the first time that the thought crossed my mind that I could make waffles at home. And that waffles didn’t have to be a breakfast item, that they were quite fitting as a simple dessert.

In my hubby’s family, they like to eat their waffles with a generous dusting of icing sugar, courtesy of a fabulously retro orange icing sugar dispenser made by Tupperware. And I think waffles really are perfect with just icing sugar because the waffles remain hot and crisp, instead of going soggy if you were to add maple syrup or some other sauce.

But it wasn’t until our trip to Las Vegas this year, in particular several visits to Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bistro, that waffle fever hit me. After the Roast Chicken with Bacon & Chive Waffles, I was intent on buying a waffle maker the moment I got home just so I could try to recreate the savoury waffles at home.

It was probably the thought that waffles could be both sweet or savoury that persuaded me to think that a waffle maker could be a good investment after all. Up until that moment, I had shied away from purchasing any electrical appliances; our kitchen in Zurich is so tiny that our basement serves as an extension of our kitchen, storing most of the bulky and not-so-frequently-used items. Oh I hear hubby saying something … Ok … our kitchen is tiny because I have acquired so much kitchenware over the last 5 years that every nook and cranny is filled and even most of the wall space has been taken over by shelves to store various kitchenalia acquired over the years. We can discuss that another time …

So it was (sort of) by chance that I found myself in Fust, an electrical store in Zurich, where I saw a cute heart-shaped waffle maker on sale for CHF 29.95. I instantly grabbed it and headed straight for the cashier, grinning at having found such a bargain (at least in Switzerland). But, of course, all impulse purchases come with feelings of regret the moment you get home. Had I properly researched waffle makers on the market? No. Did I consider non-stick vs cast-iron waffle makers? No. Had I considered a Belgian waffle maker vs other waffle makers? No. After some umming and aaahing about whether to return the heart-shaped waffle maker, I decided to keep it, not least to see how often I would make waffles in order to justify a more fancy version.

Note: If you are serving waffles to guys (such as my husband), heart-shaped waffles might seem a bit dinky and they will probably look at you like, “Why couldn’t you buy a normal waffle maker?”

The first recipe I tried for waffles came from Rachel Allen’s Home Cooking, which incidentally is the same recipe from her book, Bake.

It is a wonderfully simple recipe and produces such great waffles that I haven’t felt the need to try any other recipe yet. You will need to learn the settings on your waffle maker in order to make waffles to your preference, whether lightly golden or to cook them for longer to produce something more crispy. I like them served warm with a dusting of icing sugar and perhaps some strawberries on the side, but you can make all of the waffles at once and eat them cold later, such as at breakfast the next day.

Aubergines with Buttermilk Sauce (again!)

Early this morning, one of my neighbours knocked on my door and suggested a barbeque at her place in the evening with some other neighbours. Such spontaneity is not common in Switzerland and I happen to love informal gatherings like these at short notice.

Given that one neighbour happens to be a vegetarian, the first dish that came to my mind was Yotam Ottolenghi’s Aubergines with Buttermilk Sauce which I made for the first time only a few weeks ago.

This time around, I chose much smaller aubergines as they were to be eaten as a side dish alongside other grilled vegetables. I still roasted them for about 40 minutes until they were soft and golden in colour, though they were probably still a bit too firm for my liking – it probably had something to do with the variety of aubergine and perhaps even my oven in Zurich.

Interestingly, the buttermilk sold in Zurich is much more liquid than what I had used previously in the US. So the sauce was much runnier, which I had tried to thicken by using more Greek yoghurt. And thankfully, I was able to find za’atar in Zurich so there was more flavour to the dish this time.

Overall, the aubergines still tasted great but I would roast them for a bit longer next time. They definitely did well as part of a barbeque dinner.

Cinnamon Donuts

I love donuts. I particularly love them hot, fresh from the vat and sprinkled with lots of sugar and ground cinnamon. Give me a donut and a cup of coffee for breakfast and I’m a happy camper.

Now probably isn’t the best time to confess that I once had an addiction to cinnamon donuts. I was living in Brisbane, Australia, at the time and would often buy them by the half dozen from the supermarket and finish them within a day. Not very classy but gosh they were good! Thankfully, those days of gluttony are (sort of) over for me. Though, that is probably due in part to the fact that I now live in Zurich, Switzerland, where cinnamon donuts are a rare find.

In Zurich, you can find donuts at Starbucks, but I don’t know where they are made and they are always sold cold. Jam donuts (Berliner) can often be found, but they tend to be dusted with icing sugar instead of granulated sugar. Still, I wouldn’t say no to one, especially if it comes from Sprüngli, a famous patisserie in Zurich. And I particularly love donuts filled with thick, vanilla custard. Mmmm …

Sadly, there is no Dunkin’ Donuts or similar in Zurich. Of course, they have their own lovely cake shops and bakeries with gorgeous French-inspired pastries, but there are times when you don’t want a perfect-looking Vanilla Slice (Vanille Cremeschnitte) or Raspberry Tart. There are times when only a good ol’ cinnamon donut would do.

I spent a good part of 2010 watching MasterChef Australia on iTunes. I was simply addicted to the show and couldn’t wait to come home each day to download the next episode. I’m rather disappointed that they haven’t made the 2011 series available on iTunes but at least there are other ways of watching it online (for free!). And it was on one of the episodes of MasterClass that I saw Gary Mehigan making donuts that reminded me of my lost love for donuts; I was instantly captivated and couldn’t wait to try the recipe at home.

Most donut recipes require you to make a yeast dough, but Gary’s recipe uses a batter made with yeast. The batter is incredibly simple to make and only requires about 45-60 minutes to prove. Unfortunately, I don’t own a deep-fryer but a large pot and a sugar thermometer works just as well.

These donuts are incredibly light and fluffy – not dense and chewy which leaves a heavy feeling in your tummy. In fact, these are so light that it’s hard to stop eating them!

Fish Cakes with Coriander, Ginger & Chillies

Further to my previous post, we still had another 1 kg of potatoes to get through, and as we are going away next week, I had to come up with a way to use those potatoes. And then, by chance, Carrie from thePatternedPlate posted her delicious recipe for fishcakes (or, as they are called in her Indian culture, cutlets). I was instantly sold!

Not only were these fishcakes the perfect way of using up our potatoes, but we had most of the other ingredients on hand, too, which we also needed to use up before going away. As much as I love fresh herbs such as coriander, I think they are sold in bundles which are often too large, such that they usually go brown and wilted before you can use it all. Plus, I always seem to pick up a bunch of coriander when I am out grocery shopping because I am never sure if there is enough back home in the fridge.

Any recipe which calls for punchy Asian ingredients such as garam masala, ginger, coriander and chillies can only taste good, in my opinion. Previous recipes which I have tried for fishcakes have been geared towards more the nursery-type palate, which is not a bad thing when you just want fishcakes simply made from mashed potatoes and some tinned fish. This is certainly what I grew up on and a supper of simple fishcakes with a salad (and a blob of Heinz ketchup on the side) is one of the most comforting nursery meals I can think of.

But for something with an extra kick and a bit more grown-up, Carrie’s recipe is perfect. She recommends serving the fishcakes with a Coriander Raita, but I found a small tub of thick Greek yoghurt mixed with lots of finely chopped coriander did the trick; given that I had added chilli powder and fresh chillies to my fishcakes, the yoghurt sauce was perfect to cut through the heat.

Carrie is forever inspiring me with her recipe choices and this is one which will become a regular in home, for sure.

*Note: To view the recipe, click on the image above. Depending on your computer settings, you may have to zoom in if the text is too small.