Fruit, florals and my 2nd Daring Bakers challenge

You might have noticed I like to play around with the macro function of my snappy little camera and invade the privacy of flowers and fruits. Here are a couple of examples of the inner chambers of tulips.




To me, there's something fascinating about close-up peering at petals, stamens and the seedy centres of fruit. Here (below) are gooseberries and hydrangeas.


The gooseberry is quite sweet but kind of funny to eat. As the skin is hairy, I don't want to eat it, so I peel off a bit of skin and squeeze out the insides into my mouth. Mmm.


On to my next Daring Bakers challenge. It's lavash! Nice to have a savoury challenge. It's quite simple to make.

Allow me to quote the hosts, Natalie of Gluten A Go Go and Shel of Musings From The Fishbowl:

"The key to a crisp lavash is to roll out the dough paper-thin. The sheet can be cut into crackers in advance or snapped into shards after baking. The shards make a nice presentation when arranged in baskets."

Makes 1 sheet pan of crackers

* 1 1/2 cups (6.75 oz) unbleached bread flour or gluten free flour blend (If you use a blend without xanthan gum, add 1 tsp xanthan or guar gum to the recipe)
* 1/2 tsp (.13 oz) salt
* 1/2 tsp (.055 oz) instant yeast
* 1 Tb (.75 oz) agave syrup or sugar
* 1 Tb (.5 oz) vegetable oil
* 1/3 to 1/2 cup + 2 Tb (3 to 4 oz) water, at room temperature
* Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, or kosher salt for toppings



1. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt yeast, agave, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup + 2 Tb of water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.

2. Sprinkle some flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should pass the windowpane test (see http://www.wikihow.com/Determine-if-Bre … ong-Enough for a description of this) and register 77 degrees to 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough should be firmer than French bread dough, but not quite as firm as bagel dough (what I call medium-firm dough), satiny to the touch, not tacky, and supple enough to stretch when pulled. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

3. Ferment at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size. (You can also retard the dough overnight in the refrigerator immediately after kneading or mixing).

4. Mist the counter lightly with spray oil and transfer the dough to the counter. Press the dough into a square with your hand and dust the top of the dough lightly with flour. Roll it out with a rolling pin into a paper thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. You may have to stop from time to time so that the gluten can relax. At these times, lift the dough from the counter and wave it a little, and then lay it back down. Cover it with a towel or plastic wrap while it relaxes. When it is the desired thinness, let the dough relax for 5 minutes. Line a sheet pan with baking parchment. Carefully lift the sheet of dough and lay it on the parchment. If it overlaps the edge of the pan, snip off the excess with scissors.

5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 C) with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Mist the top of the dough with water and sprinkle a covering of seeds or spices on the dough (such as alternating rows of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, kosher or pretzel salt, etc.) Be careful with spices and salt - a little goes a long way. If you want to precut the cracker, use a pizza cutter (rolling blade) and cut diamonds or rectangles in the dough. You do not need to separate the pieces, as they will snap apart after baking. If you want to make shards, bake the sheet of dough without cutting it first.

6. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crackers begin to brown evenly across the top (the time will depend on how thinly and evenly you rolled the dough).

7. When the crackers are baked, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. You can then snap them apart or snap off shards and serve.




I topped my lavash with swathes of powdered cumin, poppyseeds, sea salt and garlic. We were asked to make vegan dips, so I did mine with avocado and tomato mixed with cumin, salt, pepper, garlic and lime juice. I also had on hand homemade grapefruit-orange marmalade, which, surprisingly, went quite well with the non-salty bits of lavash.

A tasty introduction to Kuih Cara

When I was recently back in Malaysia, an old school friend invited me to attend her Malaysian cooking class in Petaling Jaya (see sidebar at right). Aside from nasi lemak, prawn sambal and sago gula melaka, Kuih Cara was on the menu.


It was the first time I had heard of it. My friend, Ana, told us - a class of five 'students', three of whom were visitors to Kuala Lumpur, that Kuih Cara was usually sold at roadside stalls during Ramadan. It's a hearty minced meat appetiser with a base of coconut milk dough flavoured with pounded dried prawns. The minced beef topping is first saute'ed with some curry powder and sliced shallots or onions, while the 'pancake' base is coloured with a pinch of powdered turmeric.

Kuih Cara is cooked in a kuih bolu mould pan on a gas stove (or in muffin pans in a bottom-heated oven when I got back to Switzerland) and garnished with chopped red chillies and spring onion.

Have you ever had Kuih Cara?

Wonderful Wales + My first Daring Bakers' Challenge

Some places just make your jaw drop and the corners of your lips curl up in wonderment. One such place that I visited in Wales is found along a river somewhere between Saundersfoot and St Gowan's Head. A field of grass sprouted huge bunches of bright yellow flowers. On top of it, the air was crisp and fresh from a downpour the day before.


In Bute Park in Cardiff, we came across evidence of a gardener's sense of humour: a plant, grass and wood formation of a hog's head complete with pointy ears. It did not fail to make onlookers smile and snap pictures.


Three weeks ago, I applied and got accepted as a member of Daring Bakers. This is a growing bunch of bloggers from all over the world who agree to take up a baking challenge proposed by a pair of members every month. There is a private members-only forum, but the earliest we can blog about the month's challenge is on the last day of the month.

My first challenge was Chocolate Eclairs. I had baked eclairs a few times before based on a simple cooks.com recipe and used a whipped cream and custard filling.

For the Daring Bakers challenge, we were required to follow the given many-step eclair recipe and use its chocolate pastry cream or a chocolate glaze recipe. I chose to switch the chocolate in the pastry cream recipe to white chocolate as my other half is not too enamoured of chocolate desserts. Then I simplified the glaze to microwave-melted dark chocolate mixed with powdered sugar and butter.



The recipe called for leaving the oven door a crack open for part of the baking time (likely the recipe writer Pierre Herme's way of flaying us wannabe bakers). I found that it made the puffs of the top tray in the oven not rise as much as the lower tray (see pic above left: right is the 'unpuff' and left is the 'puffed'). The pastry cream was wonderful-delicious and quite a lot was left over. So, a couple of days later, I made another (slap my 'dieting' wrist!) batch of puffs - this time without messing with the oven door. They puffed up fine. Also, I didn't bother with piping out the choux pastry (cleaning the pump is akin to gouging out my eye) so the puffs had spikes like punk eclairs. Needless to say, my other half and I were happily stuffing our faces with the yummy eclairs - mine with lots of choco glaze and his with just a bit, and both with as much white-choc pastry cream as the burdened puffs could carry.



If you want any of the recipes, please let me know.






Here's pouting at you, kid. (Doesn't it look like 'hair' and 'lips'?)





In the meantime, all over the world, a gazillion chocolate eclairs are exploding across kitchen counter tops and creaming the baking blogosphere as the hundreds of Daring Bakers post their respective blog-thingies.

Wailing at a Welsh graveyard + Perky Glass Noodle Salad

There's no place as peaceful, quiet and mysterious as a cemetery. You wonder about the lives represented by every gravestone. You ruminate on the adventures and misadventures of those who died young. You think about the meaning of those lives that had gone on before you came traipsing about. So many of us -- how much meaning can we each create?


On a recent trip to Wales, my other half and I chanced upon the remains of a church with a graveyard around it. The church tower had ivy growing on two sides of its rough-hewn walls. It seemed to be in disuse; there was no signboard proffering its name.



Creeper plants partially shrouded the gravestones of Celtic design and leaves entombed some. The dead were safe from the worry and hassle of everyday life. They were no longer concerned by the whys and wherefores of the living. You wonder if they have indeed gone on to a better place.


You ponder on the possibility that life is a mere dream from which you awake when you pass on.

You wonder if death is only a gateway to an infinite cosmos.
















After all that morbidity, how about some nudity? (Hah, awake now?!) Here's a pic of a furry friend I met at Bute Park in Cardiff. Squirrels are said to be only rats with couture and great public relations skills.



And now I tickle your tastebuds, dear reader, with a Perky Glass Noodle Salad recipe:



a handful of dried glass noodles, soaked 10 mins in freshly boiled water, then drained and rinsed with cold water
2/3 cup thinly julienned carrots
1/2 cup thinly julienned celery head (or cucumber or raw papaya)
2 spring onions, sliced thinly
1 red chilli, deseeded and sliced
a small handful of coriander leaves
1 cup of small or medium-sized shelled shrimp, salted lightly and panfried for 3-5 minutes in a bit of oil till just cooked
2 tsp lime juice (more if you like it tangier)
1 tsp castor sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
salt to taste

Mix it all together in a glass salad bowl. Adjust taste accordingly. Serves 2 right.

Discovering bodacious Croatia + stacked Blondies

Here are a few pictures of Croatia, as promised. We visited it in July when the temperatures were high and the wind was dry. Needless to say, I spent most of the days in the shade where possible.

For a week, we rented a sailing boat with a couple of friends and their two teenagers. That was the first time I've 'sailed' in my life. Learnt the meaning of tacking - when the crew shifted the front sail (jib) to the left or right, and the boat would tip strongly to the left or right. It was always interesting to hear the crockery in the galley shifting audibly. Then I understood why the gas stove is on hinges - so it could remain horizontal, more or less. ^_^



(Above) Omis in the daytime and after sunset. That rocky mountain sure is imposing, huh?


Being a visitor in Croatia is kind of expensive. The hotels are about the same prices as those in Italy and Germany but their standards are not as high or consistent. It's a better bet to rent one of the many apartmani (apartments) offered along the coastal road. We often saw an oldish 'auntie' seated in a chair at the roadside in the sunshine offering brochures or information about some apartment-for-rent.

The Croatians, generally, are friendly, helpful and courteous. They speak pretty good English, at least those in the tourism and service industry. The young women are long-legged and gorgeous, togged in all kinds of fashionable clothing. The outdoor cafe culture there is great for people-watching. It is not an uncommon thing to see families with four or five young children.

Our recommendation would be to visit during the cooler months, say, in September or May.

Ice-cream is a must for those sultry hot days, strolling about the ancient parts of small or big towns. It's five kuna for a scoop of one flavour. (Seven kunas to a euro.)

The beaches are only so-so - gravel and pebble beaches mostly - but the seawater away from main harbours is clear and beautifully blue or aquamarine. Those of us who come from South-East Asia and Australia are spoiled by the soft sandy beaches. So if you intend to visit Croatian beaches, bring a pair of rubbery beach shoes - to protect your feet against sharp pebbles and especially sea urchins in the water.

As for Croatian cuisine, alas! I've no pics for you. The most outstanding was the octopus salad and the fresh-from-the-Adriatic-Sea array of seafood. Yum, yum, yum!

One last note: Parking in Croatia can be rather costly. Don't be surprised to find fee collectors at a small desk under a tree at some remote beachside parking lot or halfway up to an ancient, picturesque chapel.


The view from a hill of a cove we anchored in. Yep, that's our rented boat with its sails furled. (Above right) The boats all docked neatly at Rogoznica at dusk.

And, for those who asked, "Where's the food?", here's the pic I took of a stack of Blondies (use Mr Oliver's recipe; just sub the dark choc for white and lessen the butter) beribboned with a cut napkin strip:

Gallivanting around St Gallen and Mrs HBT's egg tarts

In May, my elder sisters came from Malaysia to visit with us for a couple of weeks. One of the places we went to was St Gallen in the northerly part of Switzerland. It's famous for its pretty decorated window frames (designated a World Heritage feature) in its old town.



One thing that I've noticed all over the little towns in Switzerland and Germany is the old-fashioned wrought iron hanging signs for businesses. They are lovely and detailed, diligently kept new and shiny with coats of gold and black paint.



While I'm awaiting pictures of sailing off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea, I'll post the simple but tasty egg tart recipe I've adapted from Mrs HBT's 'Hip Food' blog (her link is in the column at right).

Easy Egg Tarts

2 eggs
200ml milk (low-fat or full cream)
1/4 cup fine-milled raw sugar (or castor sugar)
1/2 sachet vanilla sugar (or 1/2 tsp vanilla essence)
1 packet of frozen pie dough
20g butter, half melted

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Beat the first four ingredients together. Generously butter two six-cup muffin pans with a brush. Roll out the dough to 3mm thin (or just unroll a pre-rolled one). Cut rounds of dough to fit halfway up the muffin cups.
Through a strainer, pour the egg mixture into each dough-lined cup, leaving 4mm of rim. (You'd be in Sticky City if it overflows.) Bake for 15 minutes. Turn up heat to 175 degrees for the lower part of the oven. Bake for another 5 minutes. Remove muffin pans. Let cool for a few minutes before gently loosening tarts with a small blunt knife. Cool tarts on a wire rack.


These easy egg tarts go quicker than Michael Schumacher before he retired. I can eat four in a row - easy! Thank you, dear Mrs HBT.

Switzerland's Fickle Summer

Yesterday was rainy and cool. Today's sunny and warm. Fickle, fickle summer here. So unlike the relentless dry hot winds of Croatia and the Adriatic Sea where my other half and I were for two weeks.

We drove home on Sunday under a deeply bruised sky that spelt the end of our vacation. How can one part of Europe be so different from another, just 800km away?

Today is a salad of catching up with email on a PC I'm not used to and a series of chores - to be dressed and blessed with a tea later in the company of two friends and their daughters. No access to photos that I can upload. Sigh.

Until my laptop is reconciled with the Internet...

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.