Diana's desserts

What a wonderful discovery! I was looking for some dessert ideas and found Diana's delightful site, rightfully named Diana's Desserts. Her full name is Diana Baker Woodall. Baker...? you say. What a coincidence (or is it?). :)

Whether it is a coincidence or otherwise, her site is overflowing with wonderful recipes for goodies that make your mouth water just by reading their descriptions. But the site is a feast for the eyes, too. Most of the recipes are accompanied by their beautifully artful photos.

She also has a Tips&Tools section, conversion calculators, a long list of recommended cookbooks. You can also sign up for her newsletter, and she has an online discussion forum. Worth having it in your Favourites folder.

Stroopwafel

Stroopwafels or siroopwafels are favourites in our house. They make a wonderful kind here in Canada that matches the back home variety to the T. Of course, it is wonderful to just have them with your coffee, gently warming them over your steaming cuppa.

Now, at 101 Cookbooks I found a new way of serving them: with mascarpone and fresh fruit. Yum!

For those of you, who happen to own a pizzelle iron, I recommend this Answers.com page where you have a couple of make-it-yourself recipes.

No verjuice :(

With heavy heart I have to report that my experiment with the windfall grapes turned sour (pun intended). As per a discussion on the cooking forum I decided to try my hand at making verjuice (French: verjus).

According to literature found on it on the internet, verjuice is squeezed from unripe grapes that are picked when people are thinning the crop in the middle of summer. The obtained juice was widely used for cooking in the more distant past, when lemons were not readily available, and it is becoming favoured again for its milder, grapey taste.

Mine started to ferment almost immediately, and then it went way too sour. The truth is that the grapes were not really totally green any more, it was September already. Which probably caused the sugar in the juice to ferment and turn into alcohol and/or acetic acid. In any case I ended up with bottles of yucky, smelly stuff that I finally decided to dump. But now that I gained some experience, maybe next year...

What did we eat last week?

A nice new internet friend of mine from India :) asked me what do we usually eat here in Canada, and that I should make a list of the dishes that we had the last week. Hmmm... I am not exactly a typical Canadian cook. We immigrated to Canada when I was young and I really took to the multicultural aspect of Toronto. I love to peruse small ethnic grocery stores, as I described to another online friend, touching, smelling everything, asking when there are no English labels at all. My husband took to my eclectic cooking a bit more slowly, he used to call himself my lab gerbil. Our boys on the other hand grew up with it. Nowadays my younger one actually annoys me with such remarks: "We already had this dish last month! Can't you cook something new? Go find something on the internet, Mom..." They, by the way, prefer South East Asian dishes, very spicy! For the last 10 years they had a favourite pho restaurant, where they dropped the fresh, thinly sliced meat into the boiling soup right there at their table. Then for a while we favoured a - hidden in the corner, mom and pop type - Chinese restaurant, after that an also very home style Indian restaurant, smack in the middle of the Indian district. Lately we started to frequent a Mongolian barbeque, again with freshly sliced lean meats (we like lamb) prepared in front of you, and then you custom spice your stuff yourself. We went there twice already.

OK, so let's just see what did we have for dinner this last week. Here at home I still have to cook at least half the time in a more European style because of my 85 year old mother-in-law who lives with us.
- Hungarian lecsó (pronounced: le-choh), made of chopped red and green peppers, onions and fresh tomatoes, and which I usually enrich with ground meats, this time canned turkey - served with mashed potatoes.
- fish filets (sole) in lemon sauce, with Italian risibisi (parsleyed rice and green peas)
- Moroccan style vegetarian couscous
- chicken curry, spiced spinach on the side, with Basmati rice mixed with chopped roasted almonds
- birthday dinner of Wiener schnitzel, steamed sauerkraut and parsleyed potatoes. Cake, the recipe of which to follow below.
- minestrone soup, lightly panfried rice cakes (with eggs&cheese) and corn mixed with chopped roasted red peppers
- today we will have Thai style stir fried turkey breast with baby bok choy an rice, and I prepared dessert also, kheer - not from scratch, I had a box that I picked up last week at an Indian grocery.

We don't eat desserts regularly. The boys are "dieting" (well, just counting their calories, as it is the vogue today), and I am, ahem, "phat". The only person who likes to have sweets every day is my husband, because he is a tennis champ in the older guys' category and plays several times a week. But I can usually satisfy him with simple dry tea cookies topped with a dollop of fancy home made jam. (Hence those plums...)

Now here is the birthday cake











Daquoise
6 egg whites
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups toasted ground walnuts

Filling
1 pint whipping cream
icing sugar (to taste)
1/2 cups toasted ground walnuts
1 pouch vanilla sugar

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks are formed. Add salt and cream of tartar. Beat in 4 tbsp. of sugar, one at a time. The mixture should be stiff and glossy. Mix the remaining sugar with the ground walnuts an fold into the mixture. Preheat oven to not more than 200F. Grease and flour 2 baking sheets. Or use parchment paper, if you have some available, because you can draw perfect circles on it. Spread the mixture on the sheets in four circles and bake them until they feel hardened (1 to 2 hours). Leave them in the warm oven for another 2 hours.

After the layers cool (next day?), beat the whipping cream, sweeten it and mix in the walnuts and the vanilla sugar. Sandwich the cake layers together with the filling. I made a little booboo but it turned out really nice after all: it occurred to me (after I baked the layers) that my mom-in-law may have a hard time with the crunchiness of the daquoise, so I brushed them with some diluted Kahlua liqueur. It turned out that the whipping cream itself would have softened the daquoise adequately, the liqueur was a bit too much, so the cake collapsed a little and became somewhat soggy, closer to a pudding consistency. But sooo delicious!!!

BlogDay 2006

I will interrupt my plum Odyssey for a moment, in honour of a day I did not know about until now: Blog Day 2006. Unfortunately I am a bit late in recognizing it, the official date was August 31. But better late than never! Being the resident godess of this blog here, I declare (just for here and just for now) September 3rd as BlogDay!

According to the rules of the celebrations, one has to choose five blogs from five different geographical points, as far apart as possible, and introduce them to the visitors of our own blog.

So here are my five choices for this year's BlogDay offering:

1. If you want to read about exotic (Korean...) food experiences, visit Zen Kimchi.

2. A wonderful food blog, Kitchen at No. Nineteen, by a young lady (originally from Malaysia?) in a small Hungarian town.

3. Great Canadian food blog: Domestic Goddess

4. Simply Recipes: extremely well organized blog, full of great ideas, pictures, recipes.

5. And finally here is a truly avid cook/baker from Singapore. She has not one, but THREE blogs on food!
a) She bakes and she cooks
b) The baker's index
c) Crumbs...

Unexpected windfall... of unripe grapes and plums

My husband called yesterday from a friend he was visiting. The friend asked me whether I would like to have some home grown table grapes and plums. He is a bachelor, this is his first house, he has no use for them. I said, sure! Well, my husband arrived home with over 30 lbs of half ripe grapes and plums, not quite good yet for direct consumption. I was nonplussed. I even posted at the Discuss Cooking forum for advice.

In the end I decided to start with the plums because they seemed to be more fragile. I sorted them in two piles, riper and less ripe. The less ripe pile is left to ripen until tomorrow.

Tonight I worked with the smaller, riper pile. I washed them,



ground them in the blender, put the mush on the stove with the appropriate amount of sugar,



and cooked it.

When it reached the right consistency, I divided the batch in three, I mixed in the first batch 1 cup of ground almonds and a few drops of almond essence, in the second I added 1/2 cup of Jamaican rum, and into the third batch I mixed a jar of peach jam that I made last week, together with 1/2 cup of roasted, chopped walnuts. I reboiled each batch, ladled them into jars, capped them, turned them upside down and they are waiting on the counter to be cleaned and labeled. I will make some photos of them tomorrow.

Spinach-pepperoni nibbles

I was searching for a nice savoury offering for a small gathering at our house in an old issue of Better Homes and Gardens. A recipe called Spinach and Pepperoni Quiche caught my eyes. It sounded interesting but it wasn't exactly what I needed. So I tweaked it a little and this is what I got.

Spinach-pepperoni nibbles

Crust:
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup oil
3-4 tbsp. ice water

Topping:
2 medium peppers (any colour)
2-3 tablespoons oil
1 bag fresh spinach leaves
8 eggs
2 cups loosely packed shredded cheese (I used medium Cheddar)
4 ounces chopped pepperoni
1/2 cup milk or cream

Start by preparing the spinach. I always pinch off the stems because I can't stand those fine strings that can get stuck in our teeth when we use the stems, too. After cleaning, wash the leaves carefully so no sand granules get in the food either. Then wilt it in a pot without adding any extra water. Squeeze it out well when done.

Now chop the peppers and saute them in the oil just until they softens a little. Set aside.

Prepare the dough, pat it into a large pan (I use a short piece of dowel about the length of my palm to roll dough out nice and even right inside the pan) and pre-bake it for 10-15 minutes at 350F.

While the dough is in the oven, take a large bowl, dump all the filling ingredients into it and mix them together vigorously. When the dough starts to get slightly pink around the edges, take it out, spread the topping evenly over it and return it in the oven. Bake it until the top is set enough so you can touch it and it will not stick to your fingers, about half an hour.

Cool and slice it into 1 1/2 to 2 inch squares. You will get several dozen.

If you like the recipe and decide to try it, write me a teentsy little feed-back, will you?

Raspberry filled crepes with pear sorbet

I made these yesterday for dinner and it is a wonderful summer dessert. Unfortunately I am not a seasoned enough blogger yet to remember the imagery part, I forgot to take photos. Or rather, it was all gone before I remembered to do so. But it is simple enough for you to be able to imagine what it looked like, and next time (because for sure there will be a next time), I will add a nice photo.

Raspberry filled crepes with pear sorbet

For 8 servings

2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
3 lbs of fresh pears or
2 cans (29 oz each) of pear halves, drained
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
(2 tablespoons pear brandy - optional but recommended :)

8 crepes (a nice touch is to add some grated orange zest to the batter)
2 cups fresh raspberries

Creme fraiche, creme anglaise, Devon custard, or whipped creme

Early in the day or the day before:
If you use fresh pears, core them, arrange them in a circle on a plate and cook them in the microwave. When cool, remove the skins and mash them into a puree. If you use canned pears, puree them. Mix the lemon juice into the puree.

Now prepare the syrup by putting the sugar and the water in a saucepan and stir it over medium heat until the sugar dissolves completely. Just before the syrup reaches boiling point, remove the pan and let the syrup cool. (Fill the sink with some cold water and place the pan in it.) When both the pears and syrup are cold enough, mix them together and add the brandy. Pour this into a metal baking pan, cover and freeze. When the mixture is frozen solid, remove, break it into chunks and blend in the food processor (or blender) until smooth and fluffy. Pour this into an airtight plastic container and return it to the freezer.

Before the dinner test the raspberries for ripeness. If they are on the sour side, sprinkle a little sugar over them. Prepare crepes and keep them covered.

Assembly: Melt a little butter in the micro, brush the crepe with it on one side, place 1/4 cup raspberries in the centre and fold it together into a packet. Place it on the serving plate and place a nice round scoop of the pear sorbet on the side. Pour some of the creme nicely over and around it (you can further decorate the plate with a sprig of mint leaves and/or some thinly shredded orange zest) and serve.

Open concept kitchens

All right, it is time for a big vent and rant...

We live in a brand new home, built according to the latest architectural trends. One large, open main floor, with a galley kitchen in one corner that is open on one side to the living area - dining, living, familyroom combined. Luckily we are renting, so I will only have to live with it for a couple of years. I suppose that will be just about enough for me. From now on I will not even consider looking at an open concept kitchen!

Why do I choose to post my complaints today? Because I had an "accident" again, one of many, today somewhat bigger than usual. What accident am I talking about? The sink is in the open counter between the kitchen and the dining area. Without any splashguard! So whenever the smallest splash occurs, it ends up on the beautiful hardwood floor of the dining area. Well, today it was even more dramatic. One of my "smart" family members perched a large soaking pot (with greasy spaghetti sauce) on top of a smaller bowl. Then another harried member started the tap full force for a quick cold drink, the pot got off balance, tilted sideways, hit the side of the sink, and splashed a big slosh of greasy slop clear across, all the way to the dining table and chairs, soaking a couple of the beautiful Chinese brocade chair pads. Not to speak of the floor, of course. I leave the rest of the next hour to your imagination...

Besides these sink incidents I have a few other beefs about open concept kitchens. These are:
a) Smell. No matter how effective the stove hood is, one cannot completely stop cooking smells from spreading all through the house because of the lack of separation. They escape from the stove, and even more so from the oven. Not very pleasant to sink into your soft bed at night and be greeted by the smells of garlic pork roast, oven charred eggplant, or pungent nam pla emanating from your pillows.
b) Heat. This is particularly an issue in the summer. In our old house I could open windows when baking, even on the hottest sommer day, while I closed the kitchen door so the rest of the house could stay cold. Not so here. The heat from the oven goes straight up to the second floor, making the bedrooms too hot for the night, while the basement gets icy cold because of the overworking airconditioner.
c) Noise. We like to use our living area for quiet relaxation (too). Impossible to do so in this house. The hood is loud, particularly so when at full speed; we have a convection type oven, with a fan going for a while even after turning it off; people come and go, getting water from the tap, using the blender for a quick smoothie, slamming cabinet doors, rattling in the cutlery drawer. Even when I am alone at home, the refrigerator goes off and on close enough to the living room sofa to interfere in the most annoying way with the reading of a good book.
d) Mess. With five people in our family the kitchen is never pristine (an understatement). There are always dishes in the sink, dishes drying in the dripper, cabinet doors left wide open, contents of cabinets strewn around on the counter, sometimes alongside little piles of apple peelings, not to speaks of spills, left for Mom to deal with when she next happens to be in the kitchen. This makes spontaneous entertaining very difficult, if not impossible.

Mark my word, the time is getting nigh when all these fancy new open concept kitchens will quietly be walled in everywhere...

Garlic in food

I made an interesting discovery today about the smell and aftertaste of garlic. This is what happened:

I was making some hummus b'tahine, which I prefer to be quite garlicky. Not overly so, though, I usually use one large clove for one can of chick peas (cca 400 ml), and I always press it into the blender with a garlic press. Today I had the smart idea to put half of the chickpeas into the blender first, add the garlic, blend it smooth, then add the rest. I did so, it became nice and smooth, but no garlic smell and taste. Hmmm, I say, a new species of garlic they sold me...! I added another, even larger clove. Still no garlic smell. Oh, all right, says I, let me just finish the whole thing. I can go over to the store later and get another, fresher bulb.

When I was done, I could not help having a taste with a bit of fresh pita. First the same bland taste, then "Ya Allaaaah!", the aftertaste hit me like a firebreathing dragon's breath after it ate its way through an entire garlic patch! And then I figured it out: garlic needs oxygen to produce its characteristic aroma. Since I blended in whole cloves, it did not have a chance to develop it. Until, of course, it spread around on my tongue, when its essential oils (allinaise) finally got the chance to properly mix with oxygen, blossoming into this powerful aftertaste.

I wasn't entirely unaware of this before. After all for years I have roasted whole garlic bulbs, and baked Garlic Chicken with 20 whole garlic cloves shoved under its skin, knowing full well that if the cloves are left uncut, the smell does not become overpowering. But I never before experienced such a dramatic example of the oxydization process! :)