Now this was rather decadent cake to bake – a flourless chocolate cake with port! Completely luscious and pathetically easy to make as long as you know how to separate eggs, melt chocolate and use a beater. Don’t forget the cream. Some berries would be lovely, too.
This is my second attempt at making madeleines using a different recipe. This one’s much better – the cakes are much lighter. Also interesting to see the effect different pans have: the darker cakes were baked in a metal pan and the lighter ones were baked in a silicone pan. Somehow I prefer the ones from the metal pan…
Time for another soup creation: a twist on good old pumpkin soup with a little green apple for added tang, a splash of cream for richness, and a sprinkle of Chinese Five Spice for flavour.
Had an urge to bake one night, and the easiest thing to make was a simple tart of apples…
And of pears…
The Granny Smith apples were really too tart (pardon the pun) for such a simple tart since the only additive was a sprinkle of brown sugar. The pears though, were superb.
This is the result of the best blueberry muffin recipe ever. I scrounged it off SMH years and years ago, which isn’t on-line anywhere. They’re reliable, have the muffin texture that you’d expect, but tastes better. The secret? Natural Yoghurt and melted butter. And no buttermilk!
Very chilly in Sydney last weekend, so what better time to make minestrone soup. Bought a soup mix from my local greengrocer. This one had potato, parsnip, turnip, carrot, celery and a couple of sprigs of parsley. Add it a few cloves of chopped garlic, a bit of canned crushed tomatoes, a beef stock cube (yes, I still use those), and lots of black pepper. Oh yes, and this curly rigatoni pasta, which were very cool.
I didn’t put any salt in during cooking. In the end, I put in a slug of light soy sauce, which worked really well. Well, that’s my bit of fusion cooking for the day.
I’ve obviously been watching Poh too much on Masterchef because last week I had a huge craving for Malaysian food. During the week I sought out some murtabak, nasi lemak, and harmee, but what I really wanted was a nice, comforting meal of Hainan Chicken Rice. Yes, this was the dish that Poh made in the finals, and on the weekend I visited a tiny eatery around the corner from me, Satay Inn, that makes it extremely well.
The chicken was perfectly steamed. The rice delicious and very more-rish. The condiments balanced, although it could have had more ginger. The soup flavoursome. Lots of sesame oil all around to make it taste damn good.
There was also an order of Sizzling Satay King Prawns on the table, but we were all so full from the chicken rice that we could only pick at the prawns.
Well, we’re at the start of a very long journey through the Northern Territory, folks, although in reality the whole trip was only a fortnight. I must say that it’s the most invigorating as well as enlightening holiday I’ve had since Japan.
I began in Darwin, where I touched down after a long 4.5 hour flight. God, Australia is big! After crashing on the hotel bed, the next thought I had was of food. I’d heard about Char, and since it was only 2 blocks from my hotel wandered down on a balmy Darwin evening.
Now this is what al fresco dining is all about! It was good to defrost after the chilly Sydney winter weather. It was also good to taste the pork belly and scallops, served with an apple peanut salad and chilli caramel sauce. I was tempted to try this after watching George cook up a pork belly/scallop dish on Masterchef. The skin of the pork was nicely crisp and the scallops were cooked perfectly. The salad and nutty sauce (along with a glass of Riesling), and it was a lovely dish for a tropical climate.
I followed it up with a Mango Panna Cotta with passionfruit cream. The panna cotta was lovely and light, but I think they went too far with the passionfruit here, which was too bitter for my taste.
The restaurant seemed to be popular with locals and visitors alike and got very full, even for a midweek dinner. I’m just impressed that Darwin has such a sophisticated dining option.
After my visit to Kazbah, I had a craving for more Moroccan food, so last weekend I tried out two recipes: chicken and date tagine, served with curried apple couscous.
The tagine was wonderful, with the subtle flavour of cinnamon, honey and almonds. I couldn’t find any dates so I used prunes instead. And the curried apple couscous is a dream, good enough to have on its own.
Nowhere near the real Black Forest, but here is a fair imitation of the celebrated cake, at a very popular German bakery in Wentworth Falls.
Static and Silence 