Does Rhubarb Go With Football?

Euro 2008 football tournament is starting this Saturday. I'm pretty excited as I'm torn over one of these nations lifting the cup: France, Germany, Spain and Croatia.

(Above) Italian national Luca Toni in a pictorial comparison with Renaissance art in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung magazine. A Bayern Munich player, he is said to bring Renaissance to the most exciting team of the German Bundesliga.

My heart is with Italy as a few of its players are my favourites (Luca Toni, Fabio Cannavaro who sadly is reported to have torn his ankle ligaments and won't be taking part, Pippo Inzaghi) but methinks Italy is not likely to be hungry enough to take the European Cup after winning the last World Cup two years ago.

Update: My story appeared in StarTwo on June 6 -- http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/6/6/lifefocus/21445912&sec=lifefocus


As for munchies, football season calls for snacks and 'portable' desserts you can take to the couch on a dish without making a mess.


My two eldest sisters who recently visited me here liked the novelty and tanginess of rhubarb. The eldest took a stalk home and is planning to make a rib stew with it. Here, I present a recipe adapted from 'Die Zeit', a German newspaper online.



Rhubarb-Souffle Pie
By Karl-Josef Fuchs

Ingredients:

Pastry:
(1 part sugar + 2 parts butter + 3 parts flour) or store-bought pie dough

400g rhubarb, stripped of fibre and cut into 1cm slices
2 tbs sugar
80g butter, softened
80g ground almond, roasted for 5 minutes at 120 degrees C
75g raw sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp flour

The stripped rhubarb pieces (right) and peel (below) make interesting visuals.

Crumble topping:
60g sugar
55g flour (75g)
20g quark or yoghurt or cream cheese
25g butter, softened or melted


Method:

1. Toss rhubarb slices with 2 tbs sugar and heat in the oven at 120 degrees C for 7-10 minutes. Sieve away liquid if any.
2. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Roll out pastry to line a baking paper-lined pan (approx. 20cmx28cm).
3. Mix sugar with butter. Add eggs, flour and almond. Fold in rhubarb slices.
4. Fill pie with rhubarb mixture.
5. Combine topping ingredients with fingertips to make a crumble. Strew it over the pie.
6. Bake for 50 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer pie to a wire rack. Slice on a board. Serve with cream whipped with vanilla sugar if desired.

An Aromatic Discovery

A couple of months ago, I was making green creamy vegetable soup with the health-giving likes of zucchini, fennel and spinach. While dreamily stirring the pureed soup, a picture of fragrant Rendang unexpectedly assailed my mind and the idea of "adding some hand-torn kaffirlime leaves during the final five minutes of simmering" floated into my head.

The result was pronounced 'fantastic' by both friends and Other Half.


You can vary the vegetables and proportions. Here I share a sample recipe with you:


Fragrant Green-Is-In Soup

2 tsp olive oil
half a medium onion, chopped
1 largish zucchini, sliced or roughly chopped
1 medium-size fennel, sliced
80g of frozen or fresh spinach
200ml chicken or vegetable stock
50ml cream or yoghurt, or 100ml milk (depending on how health-conscious you are)
2 kaffirlime leaves, hand torn many times to the spine
salt and pepper to taste


1. Preheat medium large pot to medium hot. Add olive oil.
2. Add chopped onion and stir-fry gently till translucent.
3. Add fennel, zucchini and spinach, with a minute in between additions.
4. Add stock. Lower heat. Adjust with water to just cover simmering vegetables.
5. When veggies are tender, take it off heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Puree.
6. Put puree back on low heat and add cream, yoghurt or milk. Adjust thickness with water to desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Add torn kaffirlime leaves and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove leaves before serving.
8. Serve with potato croutons (panfried little cubes of potato) or chunks of sausage or cubes of bacon.







And now that the weather is getting warmer and sunnier every day, a lovely health-giving, nutrient-rich drink is simply to puree fresh or frozen (thawed) raspberries with buttermilk (add a teaspoon or two of powdered sugar, if you like).

French Kissing Tastes Better After Eating French Apple Pie

Did that get your attention? Or did that get your attention? ^_^

Fatboybakes has inspired me to put up this recipe. I found it in an old little 'French Cooking' booklet I bought years ago in a warehouse booksale.
Since my Other Half wasn't too fond of pears, I switched the pear in Berry Rustic Pear Cake (see two posts below) to apple. That, in turn, nagged me to look for apple pie recipes in books and the 'Net.

Here it is, adjusted slightly to meet the Other Half's finicky tastes regarding crusts:


French Apple Pie

crust:
2 1/2 cups flour
110g butter
4 tbs cream

filling:
80g marzipan
1 egg
3 apples, peeled leaving bits of reddish skin for colour interest
3 tsp lemon juice
1 tbs sugar
2 tbs raisins or sultanas, presoaked for 10 mins in warm water and drained

glaze (optional):
3 tbs apricot or pineapple puree (e.g. baby food)


1. Cut butter into flour with butter knife or food processor. Pour cream over it and form into ball without kneading. Cover and put in fridge for 40 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 210 degrees C. Roll pastry out on baking paper into a round for a 25-28cm round pie tin (nice if you have the lift off the bottom plate kind) or a square (25x25cm) or rectangle to fit whatever low-rise baking tin you have, making a low 1cm wall all round.

3. If you can succeed in mixing marzipan with egg into a smooth batter, bravo! (I couldn't, so I just snipped the marzipan into little pieces and mixed them with the egg), spread it over the pastry. Bake at 200 degrees C for 10 minutes.

4. Core apples and slice into half cm thickness. Sprinkle with lemon juice as you go along, so they don't oxidise and turn an unsightly brown. Besides, the tartness adds taste. Place slices, overlapping, in baked pastry. (This will test your aesthetic patience, I tell you.) Bring oven down to 190 degrees C.

5. Sprinkle sugar over the apple slices. Scatter the raisins.
Bake for another 15-20 minutes.

(6. When pie is out of oven, brush with puree. I only had some raspberry jam, so I used a bit to add a blush to my pie.)

Touching Clown Girl and Mashed Banana Fritters

It all started with the film Fight Club, which is based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk. My good friends and I saw the film two or three times at the cinema and on video. I read the book and enjoyed it, too. Then the other books by Mr Palahniuk, an Oregonian former car mechanic, beckoned and I read and savoured all of them over a couple of years.

The author attended a writers' group when he was still a struggling writer. One of the writers was Monica Drake, someone he kindly wrote a very generous introduction for in her recent first novel, Clown Girl, after he became famous.


Ms Drake's book is published by Hawthorne Books, which produces large-format paperbacks with a difference -- they have fold-in covers that work as built-in bookmarks as well. (I would recommend looking for Clown Girl and other Hawthorne-published books online at The Book Depository as the company delivers without charging for postage and handling. You can find other titles published by Hawthorne at www.hawthornebooks.com.)

Clown Girl made me laugh and cry. It is about a young woman called Nita who has artistic clown ambitions. She rents a room with her boyfriend Rex, nude-model-cum-fellow-artist-clown, in her ex-boyfriend's house in a dodgy part of Baloneytown. Rex is away in a big city purportedly auditioning for clown college.

Nita hardly eats and suffers from some ailment. A nice police officer saves her during one of her fainting spells. While she has to collect enough of her urine output over 24 hours for a medical test, she needs to earn a living as a corporate clown. In the meantime, a bossy clown colleague tries to engage her in questionable one-on-one clown dates with men who have a fetish for clowns (coulrophiles, they're called). As if Nita doesn't have enough on her plate, her landlord's current girlfriend, who is a scary body builder, has it in for her.


The hilarious, yet in some ways sad, story involves a hot lawnmower, a urine collection funnel, a rubber chicken, a lost dog, clown sex, balloon sculptures and a cop who smells like baked cinnamon goodies. Are you intrigued yet?

Somehow cooking with bananas seems to go well with today's topic. Slipping on banana skin and fashioning banana-shaped balloons into religious icons and scenes are part of Nita's colourful life.

So here you go, a funny well-loved Malaysian snack:


Mashed Banana Fritters (Kuih Kodok in Malay)

2 big, ripe bananas (about 180g), mashed
3-4 tbs flour
1 tbs rice flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar (optional)
1 1/2 tbs oil (for frying)

1. Mix the flours, baking powder, soda, salt and sugar in a bowl. Stir it into the mashed banana with a fork. (Add the fourth tbs of flour if mixture is too soft.)
2. Heat a frying pan to medium-hot and add enough oil to coat the flat area. (Traditionally, this snack is deep-fried but I find it not all that necessary.) Spoon small mounds of the banana mixture onto the pan when the oil is heated (a soft sizzling sound when the batter touches it).
3. Fry one side till medium brown and flip over to fry the other side. Place cooked fritters on a few layers of kitchen paper. Best served warm.



Spring is in the air! Here are pictures of cut tulips I bought from the market and pink and yellow blossoms on trees in Zug.

For the Love of a Cosmic Travelling Dog + Berry Rustic Pear Cake

This post is dedicated to our lovely, lovable and loving dog-ward of five weeks, Tigi. Her 'mum' and I met through the English Forum of Switzerland. She said she needed a dog-sitter for a few weeks and I offered a trial weekend with the dog.

Tigi giving the Argus look (above right).


She knows better than to pee on art (right).

All went well, and Tigi came to stay with us for five weeks. During the twice or thrice daily walks, we got to know some neighbourhood dogs, the most notable of which are a giant-sized Malamute, a black and white Great Dane (whom we dubbed 'Horse Dog'), and a neighbour's cocker spaniel, whose 'hairstyle' was messed up by Tigi's wagging tail.

The funniest thing is that I was quite convinced Tigi is a reincarnation of my late beloved dog, Argus. (See the very first post of this blog named after her.) Tigi's face and front paws look so much like Argus'. The expression on her mug is exactly the same, not so much her colouring and waviness of fur.

One day, I looked deeply into her warm brown eyes and said, "Argus? Is that really you in there somewhere, Argus?" Tigi merely gave me a look that almost said, "Are you mad? For gnawing's sake, whom are you talking to?"

So much for clairvoyance and astral travelling. Sigh.

Whatever the case, at least Tigi appreciated my boiling her meaty bones with rice, which supplemented her premium dry dogfood diet every evening.

The mute swans like to hiss loudly at her -- in case she wants to get too close.

And so it came to be that I buried my sorrows in a spate of cake baking. And eating, of course. Here's another recipe I adapted from Rohani Jelani's (she's a chef and cooking teacher in Kuala Lumpur):

Rustic Pear & Berry Cake

80g butter
5 or 6 tbs raw sugar (depending on how sweet your tooth is)
2 eggs
50ml buttermilk or yoghurt
150g flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
one big ripe pear, sliced about 1.5x1cm and 3mm thick
1/2 cup thawed raspberries, blackberries, etc



Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Cream butter with sugar till fluffy. Add egg, mixing well before the next one. Add buttermilk or yoghurt and stir.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder and soda and salt. Mix this gently into the butter mixture. Add the fruit. Do not overmix.

Line a deep longish loaf pan with baking paper. Scoop in the cake batter. Smooth down the surface. Bake for around 35 minutes (till a small clean and dry knife inserted into the middle comes out 'clean'). Let cool in pan for 5 minutes before placing cake on wire rack.


Eating it while it's still warm is heavenly. The next day, cut a slice and heat on low in the microwave for 13 seconds.

Tubing on Mt Titlis + Quick Herring Spaghetti!

If you live in Switzerland like I do, you need to take advantage of the numerous mountains with visitor-friendly facilities such as chair-lifts, cable gondolas and Rot-air bubble cars. Not to forget free 'tubing' runways.

On Mount Titlis at Engelberg, hundreds if not thousands of visitors swarm the place - tourists from China and Taiwan (even the cable guy has learnt some Mandarin greetings for the Chinese New Year) as well as locals and residents who want to ski and snowboard.

(above right) You feel like luggage being conveyed up a 'belt' with your tube before spinning down again.

In the snow cave somewhere on the top slopes, there's a display of buttons for you to press. One of the buttons plays 'Negaraku', the Malaysian national anthem. In the Rot-air gondola, there are greetings in myriad languages including Indonesian and Malay. The only difference between the two is how 'keretakabelgantung' is all one word in Indonesian. ^_^ Old women from China like to stick their faces in the 'face holes' of cut-out figures of extreme skiers and snowboarders -- to show their friends back home gleefully, perhaps. Not that it'd fool anyone.


If you don't ski or snowboard (those crazy gravity-loving sports!) like me, you'd appreciate tubing. You sit on an inner tube covered in canvas and push off a winding path. Soon it careens out of control and you're facing backwards and sideways. You learn to relax and enjoy the ride because it's all out of your control. At the most, you might spill over the snow bank and sprain a muscle or two. It's not likely you'd break your neck and die.


And then, when the skiing friends and family converge at the igloo bar outdoors, you can join them in the oh-so-strenuous apres-ski activity of eating and napping in the sun in a hammock or lying sprawled on the bean bags so considerately provided by the mountain ministers.


After you come down from the mountain and an hour's drive home, you'd want a quick hot meal, right? (I'm entering this in Presto Pasta Nights http://onceuponafeast.blogspot.com/.) Break out a can or two of herring or mackerel in tomato sauce, cut up some onions, boil a pot of spaghetti. Heat a bit of oil in a saucepan, cook the onions with some parsley or coriander, add a generous sprinkle of chilli powder (or sliced fresh chillies), salt and pepper, throw in the canned fish, break it up, and finally swoosh in the cooked spaghetti. Turn it a few times and voila! A hot, appetizing meal within minutes.

Interview with Bissme S

Here is my email interview with Bissme S, one of the writers of 'Dark City 2', who contributed the story, 'Dad'. He is a journalist with The Sun in Malaysia.

1) What is the difference between writing fiction and journalistic writing (your day job)?

With journalistic writing, you deal with facts. You write what you see. You write what you hear. For example, when you are interviewing an actor and he talks to you about his life, about his career, about his love life and about his future projects. It is your job then to present these facts as interestingly as you can.
Fiction is an entirely a different story. You start everything from scratch. You create the characters. You create the mood. You create the beginning and the ending. Your imagination can go as wild as you want. The way I see it, with fiction, the ball is in your court and you can do whatever your heart desires.

2) Does one inform or enrich the other?

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Journalistic writing helps me to add realism to my work. Journalism is also about meeting deadlines. It builds the discipline in you to keep writing.


But there is also a drawback. As a journalist you spend eight hours chasing stories and typing them in front of the computer. So when you get home, the last thing you want to see is a computer and the last thing you want to do is to type another story. You literally have to drag yourself to the computer to write fiction.

3) Which authors' works do you read, including Malay ones if any? How do they help you in your writing?

I do not have one particular author that I adore. Instead I will pick some of my all-time favourite books.

a) 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens

This is my all-time favourite book. My favourite character is the spooky character Miss Havisham who got ditched on her wedding day. Since then she has not changed her wedding gown and has left her wedding cake to rot. Then, as part of her revenge, she adopts a child and trains her to break men's hearts.

b) 'Keluarga Gerilla' by Pramdoeya Ananta Toer

The story centres on a family during the fight for independence. My favourite character is the mother who went mad thinking of the sad fate of her favourite son who has joined the revolution to fight for freedom.



c) 'Flowers In The Attic' by VC Andrews

This was my favourite book when I was a teenager. Recently I had the opportunity to re-read this book and I do not feel the same passion for the book as I used to feel. Still, there are moments in the book which thrilled me. A mother who's willing to kill her four children just to gain wealth.

d) 'God Of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy

I wish I could be as talented as Arundhati. The way she uses words to describe situations and feelings is simply amazing.


e) 'Reading Lolita In Tehran' by Azar Nafisi

It takes place in the Islamic Republic Of Iran, where lecturer Azar Nafisi secretly gathers seven of her committed female sutdents to read the forbidden western classic. I love her usage of words. The book simply tells you that you can't take the simple things for granted.

f) 'Before Night Falls' by Reinaldo Arenas

It is the autobiography of the cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas who recounts his difficult childhood years and being oppressed under the regime of Fidel Castro. Another writer whose writing style I wish I could emulate.


g) 'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk

His imagination is simply superb. The way he writes is never to impress.

4) What are your fiction-writing habits like? Do you only write when you're inspired or do you put in a number of words every day or week no matter what? What are your inspirations?

I would love to say that I write every day. But that is not case. I try to write as much as possible. As for inspiration , I just have to look around me. Finding inspiration is never a problem to me. But turning my inspiration into a full-fledged story is where the trouble is. I have so many ideas roaming in my head. But I never take the trouble to turn them into stories. I have to confess that I am a lazy writer. *hahaha*

In fact, late last year, I had a bad episode in which the computer caught a bad virus and wiped out my hard disk. This included all the short stories and poems I had written for years. This fact has demotivated me to write. I am slowly picking up the pieces and learning to write my stories again.



5) What are your ambitions as far as fiction-writing is concerned? Do you intend to submit more stories for 'Dark City 3'? Will you author your own novel or anthology?

I have submitted a story to 'Dark City 3'. Whether it will be accepted will depend on the editor/publisher. It is my dream to have an anthology of short stories published. When this dream will become a reality - that is something I can't say for sure.


6) Which is/are your favourite story/stories in 'Dark City 2'?
'The Neighbour' by Jennifer Tai. I must confess I loved the emotional impact the story had. It was written rather beautifully. Best of all, the story sounds real. It is as if the events really took place. I like fiction that sounds real... very real.

Happy Chinese New Year + Poppyseed Honey Cookies

A very happy, healthy and prosperous Chinese year of the Rat to you and your family.

With my brother and sisters in Malaysia and Australia, it is a quiet day indeed. Only on Saturday will we throw a party for a few friends who have volunteered to provide some CNY cuisine while I, as usual, make a fav curry of the moment, carrot-celery-head pickles and biryani rice.


There's no holiday here and the other half was out of town for work, so I went to visit a friend up in a village 10km away for lunch. The dog I'm dog-sitting was left at home to mind the floor. (Didn't think she'd appreciate the twisty bus ride up some mountain roads.)


Dog-ward for five weeks Tigi says: 'Call me Sister Tigi. I was self-ordained. Did you say Year of the Rat? Yikes, bats without hats! Now be a dear and pass me one of those fragrant cats.'



I have made two batches of cookies for fun. Here is the recipe which I adapted from a nice square book called 'Big, Soft, Chewy Cookies':





Poppyseed Honey Soft Cookies

4/5 cup honey (that's almost a cup!)
50g butter
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs poppy seeds

Place honey and butter in a medium saucepan and boil for a minute. Remove from heat and stir baking soda into it. Set aside to cool.

Heat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees F). Beat eggs in butter mix. Mix baking powder and salt with flour, adding salt and poppy seeds. Stir flour mix into butter mix till dough stiffens.

Line cookie tray with baking paper. Drop a tablespoon of dough for each cookie, leaving 5cm space in between. Bake cookies for about 10 minutes, or when they're firm to the touch. Be careful not to overbake. Use spatula to transfer cookies to wire rack for cooling.


This soft, tender cookie has the lovely subtle taste of honey and the light crunch of poppy seeds - perfect for teatime or coffee!

Tobogganing down Rigi + Ripping Rendang!

Downhill skiing seems dangerous and too fast, and requires clunky equipment. Whereas snow-shoe walking would involve a lot of uphill trudging -- my heart will not go on and on (unlike Celine Dion's).

Now how about sledding? It looks relatively safe and fun. I had always thought tobogganing was a tame sport for lily-livered wussies like me.



How wrong I was.

The tobogganing path on Mount Rigi, near where I live in Switzerland, was twisty with requisite speed bumps, which meant bumping along at hair-raising speeds while my other half tried to steer us away from the steep precipice on the left of the lane. There was no railing, just an itty-bitty bit of a snow bank, between us and the blankety-blank yonder way below. 'Braking' meant putting your heels in, and 'steering' was merely putting down your right heel if you wanted to go right.

After one particularly vicious bump, both of us fell off and my right shoulder joint was dislocated (old tennis injury, happens once in a while). After it clicked back in, we rested at the side for a bit before we continued our slip-sliding journey down the mountain.

I'm amazed Swiss parents let their wee children go down on their own toboggans. No doubt their light weight meant less momentum (unlike the hefty combined weight of my other half and me, ahem! Maybe we shouldn't have shared a toboggan, but the rental ain't cheap) but the steep bank on the left is always threatening to swallow up a few delicious, winter-fattened mortals.



Here are lovely diamonds. Bet you didn't know they grew on twigs, huh? ;-)












Anyhow, after coming down a snowy mountain, what's a welcome sight and taste is Rip-roaring Rendang. I've adapted Rohani Jelani's recipe in her 'Homestyle Malay Cooking' booklet to what's available here:

Had no dried chillies, so this Rendang Veal looks less reddish-brown (aside from unsuitable kitchen lighting).


500g lamb, veal, duck or chicken, sliced into bite-size pieces (I found beef too tough or took too long to soften)
3 tbs dessicated coconut, dry-fried on medium-low heat till golden brown
3-8 shallots (depending how big they are; they're HUGE here!), sliced (substitute: 2 onions)
2cm ginger root, sliced
2 (or more if you like it hot!) big red chillies, seeded and sliced
4 dried chillies, softened in hot water for 10 minutes (substitute: 1 tsp chilli powder)
150ml coconut cream
1 tbs sunflower seed oil or corn oil
2/3 tsp turmeric powder
3 stalks lemongrass, the fat part sliced, the remaining stalk trimmed and smashed lightly
1 small fennel, sliced or julienned (this is untraditional - for added flavour, bulk and texture)
3 kaffir lime leaves, torn
1 tbs dark brown sugar
sea salt to taste (about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp)

1. Pulse the shallots, ginger, chillies and sliced lemongrass, adding enough of coconut cream to make a thick paste.
2. Heat oil in a thick-bottomed non-stick saucepan till medium hot. Stirfry the shallot paste for 2 minutes. Add turmeric and smashed lemongrass stalks. Cook for 2 minutes.
3. Add sliced meat. Stir-fry for 5 minutes. Add sliced fennel.
4. Add rest of coconut cream. Cook on medium-low heat till meat is done and quite tender, and curry sauce is very thick (you're lucky if the timing of both coincide!). If curry is getting dry before meat is tender, add a bit of water.
5. When curry is thick and almost dry, add fried dessicated coconut, brown sugar, salt and kaffir lime leaves. Cook for another 5 minutes.
Serve hot with plain white rice. Mmmm!

:)

A jolly good 2008 to you!

Hope the new year has begun well for you. We were near Munich over the new year and went walking up Wallberg as the queue for the sleds and chairlifts was too long.

The collected snow between branches and twigs reminded me of the Malaysian ice-kacang, one of my favourite desserts.


The night before, we went with friends to the heart of Munich. I experienced for the first time the lighting of many, many fireworks by private individuals at Odeonplatz. It amazed me that people would spend so much on pyrotechnics. It was also a bit scary as 'rockets' whooshed past quite nearby, and there were lots of broken bottles in the
Marienplatz after the fireworks. 'Collective irresponsibility' I called it, as normally people would not break glass in the streets or leave so much litter for the street cleaners the next day.



Here's a toast to a year in which we achieve more than we felt we could. May your days be full of love, discernment and peace.

May everything you do and say be measured if not positively spontaneous. Be true to yourself!


P.S. There is still no snow on the ground in Cham, Switzerland, where we live. Is it going to snow in February or March?! It's six degrees Celsius today - so 'warm' for winter, no?



For lovers of Pannacotta, that smooth and creamy but not-so-calorie-laden Italian dessert, here's a recipe I adapted from German chef Schubeck:

400ml milk (can be low-fat)
4 leaves of gelatine
1 tsp of vanilla sugar with bits of real vanilla in it
4 tbs sugar
100ml cream

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water. Gently heat the milk with the vanilla and sugar till simmering. Remove from heat. Stir in the softened gelatine leaves till dissolved. Leave to cool.

Whip the cream till thick but not too stiff. When milk-gelatine mixture is cool and starting to gel, stir the whipped cream into it. Scoop into 6 bowls. Place in refrigerator to cool and completely gel for an hour or more.

Note: You can increase the milk amount by 80ml without adding more gel leaves. Lessen the sugar if you prefer Pannacotta less sweet.


For topping, choose your fav: caramelised sugar syrup, poached peaches, rhubarb in sweet ginger sauce, thawed blueberries or raspberries.

You can also vary the flavour of the Pannacotta. I've substituted the vanilla flavour with ginger, stirring in a packet of ginger tea granules. Adding half a teaspoon of fresh ginger juice would strengthen the 'heat' deliciously. This reminded me of my late mum's steamed egg custard flavoured with ginger. Mmm...



:)

Mellow Days and Evenings

The days are short - 7.50am till 4.40pm -- and the sun shines like a shy maiden (now you see her, now you don't). Daily temperatures tell us winter is here but there's no snow on the ground yet.


(Right) The bakery round the corner from the apartment building where I live.

Many bakeries in Switzerland like to decorate the store facade according to the seasons and festivities. They sometimes remind me of the edible house in the story 'Hansel and Gretel'.


















(Above) The children's books in German I borrowed from the library and have read. I love the illustrations.

Learning German is hard-going if one does not use it every day. However, I enjoy choosing and reading children's books in the language. My other half helps me with the vocabulary and turns of phrases.


(Right) Where the lake in Cham pours into a river, there is a fishermen's boat-house with a backdrop of a church spire.


Other than writing and reading, I take walks in the lake park. When the day is sunny, despite the cold, lots of people stroll about - mothers with prams and children, people with their dogs, and a motley crew of other folk.


At the beginning of winter, a flock of greylag geese made a pit-stop at the Cham lake park. What's the marching soundtrack?!

For me, the best part of the lake park is the wildlife, the many swans, ducks, geese and water fowl that change their feathers with the seasons - just like fashion!


(Right) This could be Small Duck, actually a female Common Pochard (Tafelente in German), all grown up now and probably has a mate (the rusty-headed chap below). There are around 20 of her breed, both males and females, on the river and lake these days - Small Duck is no longer one of a kind.





Nearby is a yoga school, the building of which is fronted by a restaurant that was probably a milk-collection place - hence perhaps the cow statue?



Now that this is such a mish-mashy post, tell me which recipe you want and I will blog it:

Lemon iced cupcake

Naked coconut-milk cupcake

English scone (below right)




Or, lemon curdy pudding (below)?













Here's the recipe for Coconut-Milk Cupcake as requested by Cynthia:

80g butter
5 tbs sugar
7g packet of vanilla sugar or 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence
1 egg
4 tbs coconut cream or coconut milk
3 tbs plain yoghurt
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Cream sugar into butter. Add vanilla, egg, yoghurt and coconut cream. Mix gently. Mix baking powder and salt into the flour and mix the whole lot gently into the butter mixture. Spoon 3/4 full into paper cups in medium cupcake or muffin tray. Bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees C for 22 minutes or until top is golden brown. Cool on wire rack. Makes 7 or 8 cupcakes.

Note: To make it extra special, top each cupcake with a few chunks of white chocolate before baking.


For Wonda, the Lemon Iced Cupcake:

For the cupcakes, use the cupcake recipe above, except that instead of the coconut cream, use 1 more egg, 4 tbs lemon juice and 1/2 cup of ground almond or hazelnut.

For the icing, use a handmixer to whip up:

100g butter
1 cup icing (powdered) sugar
3 tbs lemon juice
(add a drop of food colouring if you like)

Ice cupcakes when they've become cool.

:)