It all started when I was last in London, and I had a scoop of the most perfect Pistachio ice cream at the Fortnum & Mason cafe. Wanting desperately to replicate it, I trawled through the internet looking for pistachio ice cream/gelato recipes, but each and every single one of them called for this elusive ingredient – pistachio cream/paste. (All the online stores selling it only either shipped it in industrial-sized tubs, or wouldn’t ship to Asia due to customs regulations.) After a couple of weeks, I started looking to try and make this darned paste on my own, only to be shot down again – you need some specialized heated rollers to extract the oils out of pistachios and mash them into such a smooth paste. And as much as I love pistachios, I wasn’t about to go that far, so I all but gave up the hope of ever getting my hands on any, especially when I couldn’t even find it last December in New York.

Fast forward to last month, where you’ll find the bunny and I trundling around Tokyo on a quick weekend trip. We were staying at the Ritz, which is conveniently located just off Roppongi, above Tokyo Midtown, aka home to patisserie Sadaharu Aoki (where you’ll find the best eclairs in Tokyo), and a Dean & Deluca store. While nosing around D&D one morning, I happened across an entire shelf of these petite clear bottles, each containing 5oz of a pale green paste. I swept as many bottles off the shelf and into my basket as the bunny would allow, and – grinning to everyone I skipped past – exultantly made my way to the cashier.

Once I got back to HK, I started digging around my bookmarks for all the recipes I’d found, and came across a rather recent addition – just one month prior, a recipe for Pistachio Eclairs had been posted over on Cafe Fernando. The bunny not being a fan of chocolate, I made a few tweaks, subbing a salted caramel sauce for the chocolate glaze, and reducing the sugar slightly in the pastry cream.

All I can say is, I regret not buying more pistachio paste. But all’s well – a bunch of friends are headed to Tokyo in July, and a few thoughtfully proffered eclairs have ensured that they’ll be saving some space in their luggage for my next stash of pistachio cream. :)

Pistachio Eclairs

Pistachio Pastry Cream (adapted from cafe fernando):

280ml whole milk
3 large egg yolks
2.5 tbsp cornflour, sifted
30g caster sugar (2 heaped tbsp)
140g (5oz) pistachio cream

Prepare an ice bath in a baking dish about 2-4 inches deep. In a heavy-based saucepan, scald the milk, then set aside. While the milk is boiling, whisk together the egg yolks, cornflour, and sugar until pale.

Whisking constantly, slowly pour the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture to temper it. Once all the milk has been added, transfer the mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, whisking vigorously, and bring it to the boil. Boil for 1-2 minutes, still whisking, then remove from the heat, and whisk in the pistachio cream. Place the entire saucepan into the prepared ice bath, and – stirring frequently – cool the mixture to 60C.

Scrape all the mixture out into a piping bag, clipping the mouth and tip as close to the pastry cream as possible, creating an airtight seal, and refrigerate until cold. The pastry cream will keep for 2 days, refrigerated.

Yield: About 2 cups

Salted Caramel Butter Sauce (from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop):

40g unsalted butter
75g caster sugar
125ml heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp coarse sea salt (fleur de sel)

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter has liquefied, add all the sugar and cook, stirring, until the sugar turns a deep golden brown and just starts to smoke.

Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in half the cream (be careful – it will splatter!) until smooth. Whisk in the rest of the cream, then add the vanilla extract and salt. If there are any lumps, whisk the sauce over a very low heat until it has all dissolved. The sauce keeps for 2 weeks in the refrigerator, and can be rewarmed over a low heat on the stove, or in the microwave.

Yield: Makes about 3/4 cup, which is much more than you’ll need, but it’s excellent drizzled on pancakes, ice cream, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Pâte à Choux (from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking):

1/2 cup bread flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup whole milk
3 tbsp unsalted butter
2-3 large eggs

Preheat your oven to 220C with the rack in the centre of the oven and place a heatproof baking dish or pan on the floor of the oven. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper (you can glue each corner of the parchment to the sheet with a dab of choux paste to keep the paper in place). Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Bring the water, milk and butter to a boil in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. At the boil, remove the pan from the heat and add the flour mixture all at once. Using a wooden spoon, beat vigorously to combine.

Return the mixture to medium heat and stir constantly in figure eights. Cook for about 4 minutes, or until the mixture has a smooth, mashed-potato-like appearance. This helps to break down starch and develop gluten. Remove it from the heat, and continue to beat for 2-5 minutes, to cool the mixture down to about 80C. Add 2 of the eggs, one at a time, mixing until thoroughly incorporated before adding the next. Pinch off 1 teaspoon of the dough between your thumb and index finger, then pull your fingers apart – the dough should stretch rather than break. If it breaks, add the last egg. (I didn’t need to add the last egg.)

Fit a large plain tip into a large piping bag and fill the bag halfway with pâte à choux dough, pushing the contents towards the tip. Pipe 2″ strips, leaving 1″ of space between each strip. If desired, before baking, score each eclair with the tines of a fork or a sharp knife to aid the expansion.

Place the puffs in the oven and pour a cup of hot water into the pan on the oven floor. Quickly close the door to keep all the steam in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the puffs begin to rise, then turn the oven down to 175C and rotate the baking sheet. Prop the oven door open slightly with a wooden spoon and bake for an additional 10-12 minutes, or until the puffs turn nutty brown.

Remove from the oven and cool completely on a rack, about 15-20 minutes, before filling and serving.

To fill: either cut the eclair shells open horizontally, or use a piping nozzle with a long tip to pierce the side and fill with the pistachio pastry cream. Spoon or brush a little salted caramel sauce onto the tops, allowing it to drip down the sidest.

Yield: about 25 mini eclairs.

Happy 2010, everyone! Things have been a little busy in the ‘Kong, what with our NYC trip (which I will try to write about soon!), and back-to-back visitors over December. New Year’s Eve was a fairly tame affair in this household, with just four of us (the last houseguest of the decade, J, and S joined us in this year’s feasting), a delicious spread, and a healthy dose of booze.

To bunny’s dismay, J has been the first person around to not just entertain but encourage my crazy kitchen ideas, and while I was showing him one of newest cookbook acquisitions, we decided that NYE’s dinner needed to pay tribute to some of the yummiest food I partook of in the big apple. Having regaled him with tales of the Momofuku Pork Bun, that naturally was on the menu. When we flipped through and found the fried chicken recipe, things just started to fall into place.

And dinner was thoroughly badass. A fittingly epic last meal of the decade, starting with my take on the pork & egg buns, followed by David Chang’s fried chicken (which he brines, then steams, then fries, delivering a shatteringly crisp skin), and ending off with the River Cottage pistachio cake topped with a batch of cereal milk (based on Christina Tosi’s cereal milk panna cotta) frozen custard.

It’s now two days later and I’m still reeling from the deliciousness of the meal – something I couldn’t have carried off at such short notice without my trusty sous chef! (He also took most of the photos here – and you can see the rest of his shots – plenty of which involve the three monsters who have been haranguing him nonstop – on his flickr stream.) I’m also more than relieved that I don’t need to wait till my next visit to Manhattan before I get to sample more of David Chang’s awesome Momofuku creations!

Now, how did everyone else count down?

Pork & Egg Buns
(inspired by and based largely on recipes from David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook)

8 slices pork belly (see below)
4 slow-poached eggs (see below)
4 or 8 frozen chinese buns (the white sweet-ish sort, I substituted man tou ‘cos I couldn’t find the proper ones, but it worked fine)
quick-pickled cucumbers (see below)
4 tsp hoisin sauce
rendered pork fat or oil for deep frying, heated to 190C

Steam the buns according to the instructions on the packet (generally about 5-8 minutes on medium-high heat), and halve them if necessary. While the buns are steaming, deep fry the pork belly slices just so they’re heated through and the edges are golden brown and starting to get crispy. Crack the eggs out of their shells and slide them into the hot oil, deep-frying until golden brown all over and just heated through.

Assemble the buns from bottom-up as follows: bun, pork belly, egg, 1 tsp hoisin, 4-5 slices of the pickled cukes, then the top bun. Serve immediately, with chilli sauce and scallions on the side.

Pork Belly

5-600g slab of pork belly, with the cross section measuring roughly 2×4″
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
50g rendered pork, beef, goose, or duck fat

Mix the salt and sugar together, then rub it all over the pork belly in a ziploc bag, then seal and refrigerate for 4-8 hours. Rinse, discarding any liquid that has collected in the bag, then transfer to a new, clean ziploc bag. Warm the rendered fat until liquid and pour it into the bag over the belly. Seal the bag, pressing out as much air as you can.

Heat a pot of water to between 80-85C. Using a flame-retarder, or any other method you prefer – if you’re a lucky bastard and already own a sous vide supreme, you should clearly use that (heated to 82C, specifically – maintain the temperature of the water in that range and confit the pork belly, en sous vide for 8 hours. Once the cooking is complete, plunge the bag into an ice bath to stop the cooking process, then refrigerate until completely cold (this makes it easier to slice). You can prepare the pork up to a week in advance until this step.

Before serving, run warm tap water over the bag to slightly loosen the fat, then remove the pork belly from the bag, scraping off the excess fat. Cut into slices roughly 0.5cm thick. The slices can then be warmed in a little oil in a skillet, deep fried, or grilled.

Slow-Poached Eggs

This is basically David Chang’s take on the ubiquitous onsen tamago – i.e. eggs that Japanese women used to make by carrying a basket of raw eggs into then onsen or hot spring baths with them while they bathed. In the time it took for a good soak, you’d emerge not just refreshed, but with a basket of creamy eggs, coddled in their shells.

There isn’t so much a recipe for this, it’s just a method. Essentially, the raw eggs – shells intact – need to bathe for about 45 minutes at 62C. Again, unless you have an immersion circulator, it’s a little hard to keep your water at Precisely this temperature, so if you keep it within maybe 60-63C, you should be good to go. Once I got a large-ish pot of water to 62C, I popped the eggs (previously brought to room temperature) in, and just turned the heat back on to medium-low for about 30 seconds every 7-8 minutes. Obviously, if you have a bigger pot of water, it’s going to maintain its temperature better, especially immediately after adding the eggs in.

Once the eggs are cooked, you can use them immediately, or chill them in an ice bath to arrest the cooking, and refrigerate until you reheat for use up to 2 days later. When you crack them open, there will be a little bit of egg white that’s still fairly loose, just crack your egg onto a saucer, and tip the dish over your sink, using your fingers to hold the egg in. It will drain off the loosest, translucent bits, and the rest are fine for eating.

Quick-Pickled Cucumbers

Another non-recipe: slice two to three small cucumbers into 1/8-inch-thick discs, and toss with 1 tsp each coarse salt and caster sugar. Set aside for 5 minutes, then rinse and drain. Taste them: if you like how they are (slightly crunchy, with a little saltiness and a hum of sweetness in the background), you’re good to go. Otherwise, correct the seasoning with extra salt or sugar, and drain again before using. It takes literally 8 minutes to do from start to finish, and the cukes can be held for a couple of hours max, so do this right at the end, just before you start your steaming and deep-frying!

Yield: Serves 4 as a first course, or 1 really hungry person. :)

I find it a little disconcerting that I’ve never posted about les croque monsieurs et madames before. I’m not the hugest fan of sandwiches but I don’t think the words exist to adequately describe my love for these. Stripped back to its core, you really have little more than a glorified ham and cheese sandwich, but oh what a difference that little makes. In one of my most recent food posts, on Mac & Cheese, I waxed lyrical about the joys of pasta, cheese and bechamel. Here, that same heavenly combination of cheese, bechamel and carbohydrate perform in an equally loved sequel, only with ham making his debut.

Of course, no sandwich ever lamented the addition of an additional egg, and that’s where the croque truly shines in my opinion. A sunny side up is the perfect ingredient to any dish – especially if you like it the way I do, that is slightly browned around the edges. From one little 2 oz package, and in a single mouthful, you have the ultimate dish really – a combination of textures, flavours, and a self-saucing one at that. Naturally, the gooeyness of an egg yolk lends itself well to sandwiches which, especially when toasted, might turn a shade dry.

Now, simple as this sandwich is, I’m not going to try to convince anyone that it’s a dish one should be whipping up every morning for breakfast. It’s a little too rich for that, for starters. But on a lazy Sunday morning, I can really think of nothing I’d rather be eating on my balcony with the bunny. Plus, if you made mac & cheese earlier in the week, all you need to do is save a couple of dollops, and thin that out on Sunday morning with a splash of milk for a croque that will come together in no time. :)

Croque Madame

2 tbsp unsalted butter, plus more for spreading
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
500ml full cream milk
nutmeg
150g freshly grated cheese (I like using either a mild cheddar or gruyere)
4 large slices of country bread
1 tsp of dijon mustard
2 thick slices of smoked leg ham (or as much as you want to pile in)
olive oil
2 eggs
salt & pepper

Preheat your oven to 200C with a rack on the upper third of the oven. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Once it is liquid, pour in the flour, and stir briskly so that the butter and flour are evenly incorporated. Turn the heat up to medium, and, stirring often, cook for about 2-3 minutes, or until the butter starts to smell nutty, but before it takes on any colour. Slowly whisk in the milk, adding a little at a time and whisking all the while, to get a smooth sauce. Once all the milk is added, turn the fire down to medium-low and let it simmer, stirring and scraping the bottom every couple of minutes until it reduces into a velvety sauce. Season with salt and white pepper, and grate it about half a nutmeg. Whisk in 100g of the cheese, then set aside and keep warm.

While the bechamel is simmering, spread your bread on both sides with a little butter and toast it lightly. You don’t want it to get too brown, just to very lightly colour it. One one side of each slice, smear a little dijon mustard. Assemble each sandwich from the bottom up as follows: bread (mustard side up), ham, 1/4 of the cheese, bread (mustard side up again), a generous dollop of the cheesy bechamel, and another 1/4 of the cheese. Place the two sandwiches on a baking tray and bake for about 5-10 minutes, or until the sandwich is just warmed through and the cheese is bubbling and lightly browned in spots.

While the sandwiches toast, fry two eggs sunny-side up, or to your liking. Once the sandwiches are done, top each with an egg, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and tuck in!

Yield: Serves 2

Note: It’s hard to make the bechamel in a much smaller quantity than this, so I’d either save a little bechamel from another dish, or save the rest to use later. If you’re refrigerating bechamel, store it in an airtight container, with a little piece of clingfilm pressed to the surface (to prevent a skin from forming). It will thicken (or solidify, really), but you can thin it out easily but whisking a splash of milk in, and – if necessary – reheating it gently on the stove top. I don’t think it’ll keep for very long, but a little tub of bechamel has never lasted more than 2 days in my fridge anyhow. :)

I’m a huge fan of macaroni & cheese. I mean, what’s not to love? Perfectly cooked pasta (I quite casually use whatever shell, tubular or twisty short pasta I’ve got lying around interchangeably), creamy béchamel, and – swoon – oh, the cheese. I also really love that it’s one of those dishes you can eat unadorned, but it stands up so well to additions of protein, vegetables, or whatever leftovers you’ve got hiding out in your fridge.

This version that I’ve finally come to rely on is one that really doesn’t utilise too many things that you aren’t likely to have lying around. And since we’re just back from a holiday to Tokyo, and still suffering some withdrawal symptoms from it, it’s the perfect dish to whip up, while savouring the last financier from Pierre Hermé or peeking at the hoarded èclairs from Sadaharu Aoki. (But I’ll talk more about that holiday in another post soon!) A little milk, some seasonings, a little butter and flour come together to make a béchamel, which you then stir whatever mixture of cheeses you so desire into. Leftover roast chicken, crisped bacon lardons, or even steamed broccoli florets can be stirred in if you don’t feel like having it plain, then cook your pasta al dente and fold that in gently. If you’ve made your roux (and béchamel) in an ovenproof pot, the entire thing can then go under a hot grill (with a couple more handfuls of cheese scattered over), and once bubbling, browned and almost-burnt in spots, you’ve got a delectable one dish meal. Or a sinful side that would be in danger of showing up whatever main you’ve got on display.

Either way, please, please, PLEASE put those boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese away. This one takes as much time to assemble as it does to cook your pasta, and is so, so worth it. I mean, c’mon – just look at the picture at the top of this post and tell me that hasn’t got your mouth watering already.

My Favourite Mac & Cheese

20g unsalted butter
20g all-purpose flour
500ml whole milk
200g freshly shredded mozzarella
100g freshly grated parmesan
250g dried macaroni (substitute with the same amount of any other short dried pasta)
salt & pepper
optional: a couple sprigs of thyme or rosemary, leaves picked and roughly chopped
optional: shredded leftover roast chicken, crisped bacon lardons etc

Preheat your grill to 200C. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to the boil.

Melt the butter in a medium-sized, preferably ovenproof, pot or dutch oven over medium heat. Add the flour in, and stir with a wooden spoon, until the pan starts to smell slightly nutty, regulating the heat to ensure that the roux does not brown. Gradually add in the milk, stirring or whisking all the while so you get a smooth, velvety mixture. Once all the milk is added, simmer over low heat to reduce until you have a sauce that coats the back of a wooden spoon.

Add the mozzarella and half the parmesan, a little at a time, then season to taste with salt and plenty of black pepper. If using, stir in the herbs and whatever proteins or vegetables you’d like to include. (I suggest around 1/4-1/2 cup of shredded leftover roast chicken, or 3-4 rashers worth of lardons.) Cover, and keep warm.

Cook the pasta until just al dente, then drain, reserving a little of the cooking water. Fold the pasta into the sauce, taking care not to break the pasta up. If necessary, add a little of the cooking water to loosen the sauce. Sprinkle the remaining 50g of parmesan over the top, and put the entire pot into the oven. (If you don’t have an ovenproof pot, transfer the mixture to an ovenproof dish or casserole before sprinkling the parmesan over.) Cook under the grill for just 5-10 minutes, or until bubbling, the sauce is browned in spots, and the edges are getting kind of crispy.

Yield: Serves 2 as a main dish, or 4 as a side.

There are no words to describe this pie. You need to make it, you need to eat it. There’s no two ways about it, so get to it already. The first crunch of your serving spoon breaking through the puff pastry top, releasing the steam and aroma into your dining room will be more than worth the effort. And then you’ll get to the pie. Oh god, I think I might pass out from happiness, just thinking about it again.

I’m considering this pie for one of those last-meal-ever stock answers. It’s that good.

PS: For those of you who read this from a feed reader, I’ve recently changed the look of the blog, so you should click into a browser and check it out. I’m more or less done with the small tweaks to the theme I’m using, so this is pretty much how it should look until I next get bored with the layout. :)

Steak & Guinness Pie
(Adapated from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie At Home)

Olive oil
3 medium red onions, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
30g butter, plus extra for greasing
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 sticks celery, trimmed and chopped
4 field mushrooms (I used portabellos), peeled and sliced
1kg beef brisket (or other stewing beef – I used a combination of brisket and shin), cut into 1-inch cubes
a few sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked and chopped
sea salt & black pepper
1 x 440ml can Guinness
2 heaped tbsp all-purpose flour
250g freshly grated Cheddar cheese
500g ready made all-butter puff pastry (I used the ready-rolled sort to cut down the work even more)
1 large egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to 190C. In a large ovenproof pan, heat a couple tbsp of olive oil on low heat. Add the onions and fry gently for about 10 minutes – try not to colour them too much. Turn the heat up, add the garlic, butter, carrots and celery, then scatter in the mushrooms. Mix everything together before stirring in the beef, rosemary, a pinch of salt and a level teaspoon of pepper.

Fry fast for 3-4 minutes, then pour in the Guinness, stir in the flour, and add just enough water to cover. Bring to a simmer, cover the pan with a lid and place in the preheated oven for about 1 1/2 hours. Remove the pan from the oven give it a stir. Return it to the pan (uncovered, this time) for another hour, or until the meat is very tender and the stew is rich, dark and thick. A perfect pie filling needs to be robust, so if it’s still quite liquidy, place the pan on the hob and reduce until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat and stir in half the cheese, then correct the seasoning if necessary (I usually add quite a lot more pepper), and leave to cool slightly.

If you’re not using ready-rolled puff pastry, cut about a third of the pastry off the block. Dust a clean work surface with flour and roll both pieces of pastry out evenly with a floured rolling pin until they’re both about 2-3mm thick. If you’re using ready-rolled, you might have to patch 2 squares together to make one large one, plus another single sheet – base this on the size of your dish. Butter an appropriately sized pie dish (I used a well-seasoned 10 1/2-inch cast iron skillet), and line with the larger sheet, leaving the edges dangling over the side. Tip the stew into your lined dish and even it out, before sprinkling over the remaining cheese. Brush the edges of the pastry with a little beaten egg.

Cut the other rolled sheet of pastry to fit the top of the pie dish and criss-cross it lightly with a sharp knife. Place it over the top of the pie and fold the overhanging pastry onto the pastry lid to make it look nice and rustic. Brust the top with beaten egg, then bake the pie directly on the bottom of the oven for 45 minutes, until the pastry is cooked, puffed and golden. Delicious served simply with peas.

Yield: Serves 4-6

I’m really more of a cook than a baker. I like the heat of the kitchen, the reliance on taste, sight, smell and feel to prepare and execute a dish whose flavours meld together on a warmed dinner plate, hastened by that rush of adrenaline where everything has to be brought together, seasonings corrected, and plated to be served in the last 60 seconds. But it’s not to say that I don’t enjoy baking – baking to me is something to be done on lazy afternoons, or in the middle of the night. When I have a craving that needs to be satiated, or when I want to gift someone with a homemade present (a plate of pasta really wouldn’t survive sitting around for a couple of hours, wrapped up in foil, before it is consumed), it is usually to baked goods that I turn.

Another of bunny’s friends recently gave birth, and it’s become a habit of mine to bake something for the family (hopefully to be shared by all of us!) when we visit the new baby. Along with the loot that I brought home to Hong Kong from our recent trip to Singapore, I also acquired The Cake Book by Tish Boyle. Now, I’ve already got a number of baking/dessert tomes, but having one fully devoted to cakes is my idea of heaven. I love this book not just for the way that the recipes are sorted, but also because of the clear and precise instructions, and the beautiful results I’ve had so far.

This cake is really a ginger pound cake, baked in a bundt cake pan for an elegant presentation, which is soaked with a ginger syrup while it’s still warm. Once cooled, I whipped up a ginger-crème fraïche frosting to punch up the presentation a little, and garnished it with the leftover slices of crystallized ginger that already went into the cake itself. It turned out beautifully – both in terms of flavour and presentation – with the subtle heat of ginger complemented by the tart fragrance of the lemon. The cake itself is very moist and has the tenderest of crumbs; in short it’s what all pound cakes should taste like!

Note: The original recipe called for sour cream, not crème fraïche, but I couldn’t seem to find any, which is why I made the substitution. Feel free to revert to the original – I’ve used the latter in my recipe below as it’s what I used. I also used the leftover to make the frosting, so if you’re buying sour cream for the cake, feel free to use it instead for the frosting in equal amounts. Just omit the lemon juice (which I added as crème fraïche is a little less tart), unless you feel that you need to loosen the consistency, which can also be done by adding milk.

Lemon Ginger Bundt Cake
(Based on the Lemon-Soaked Ginger Pound Cake recipe in The Cake Book by Tish Boyle)

Ginger Pound Cake:
302g all-purpose flour
57g cake flour
2 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
227g unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing
350g granulated sugar
4 large eggs at room temperature
30g peeled grated fresh ginger
80g finely chopped crystallized ginger (plus more to serve)
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract
242g crème fraïche

Lemon Syrup:
80ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
133g granulated sugar
20ml water

Ginger-Crème Fraïche Frosting:
115g icing sugar, plus more for dusting
15g peeled grated fresh ginger
1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
80g creme fraiche
pinch of salt

Start by making the cake: Position a rack in the centre of the oven and preheat the oven to 180C. Grease the inside of a 10 inch bundt pan generously, then dust with flour, shaking the excess out. Set aside.

Sift together the flours, ground ginger, baking power, baking soda and salt into a large bowl. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer using the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy; 2 minutes. Gradually add the sugar and beat at medium-high speed until the mixture is light in texture and colour; 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating for 30-40 seconds after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. Beat in the grated ginger, crystallized ginger, lemon zest and vanilla extract. Reduce the speed to low, add the sifted flour mixture in three additions, alternating it with crème fraïche in two additions. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Cool the cake in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes, then invert it onto the rack set over a baking sheet.

Meanwhile, make the syrup: Combine the lemon juice, sugar and water in a small non-reactive saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves; 3-4 minutes. Remove the pan from heat. Using a pastry brush, dab the syrup generously all over the surface of the warm cake, allowing it to soak into the cake before reapplying. Dab any syrup that has dripped onto the baking sheet onto the cake. Let the cake cool completely.

To frost: Sift the icing sugar into a medium-sized mixing bowl. Place the grated ginger into a four-layer square of cheesecloth/muslin, and squeeze to extract the juice. There should be about 1 tbsp of ginger juice. Combine this with the rest of the wet ingredients and salt, whisking to form a smooth, thick liquid, then whisk it into the sugar until there are no more lumps. Drizzle it over the cooled cake, allowing the frosting to drip down over the sides, then scatter over some thin slices of crystallized ginger and allow it to dry at least 30 minutes before serving. Once dry, dust the cake with icing sugar.

The cake will keep for 4 days in an air-tight container at room temperature, or refrigerated for up to a week.

Yield: One 10-inch bundt cake, which serves 10-12.

As someone who has lived all her life in “the tropics” – particularly, Singapore – I’ve never had the chance to experience living in a climate where you feel the weather slowly growing warmer, cooler, wetter, drier, or anything of the sort. Sure, I’ve been to temperate regions before, and played in the snow, but that’s all very different from observing first-hand the subtle changes in weather and to appreciating the shorter days, produce in season, or even having the Zara window displays to make any sense to me in the last quarter of the year.

The weather in Hong Kong is starting to cool down significantly. While most Hong Kong-ers take this as an excuse to pull out their fur coats, gloves, and knee-high boots, it’s my signal to get cracking on autumn or winter foods – rich, starchy, stick-to-your-ribs dishes that warm you right through to your bones in cold, dreary weather. Unfortunately for all of us, the temperature’s only dipping slightly below 20C (and for the last week it’s actually gone back up to about 25C), so I think we’re all overreacting a little. But I’m as guilty as the winter fashionistas, I guess.

One of my favourite soups of all time is French Onion Soup. It’s sweet, it’s savoury, it’s kind of clear (in that it doesn’t have any cream in it), but it’s so rich and unctuous. I think what I love most about it is how all that flavour and complexity comes from the absolute simplicity of it all – it’s pretty much onions, butter and stock. That’s IT. The rest – whatever herbs you use to perfume it – is secondary. Precisely for this reason, it’s more important than ever to make sure that whatever goes into your pot is of the highest quality: there isn’t anything to hide mediocre flavours from mediocre ingredients. (In my world, this means you use home made stock – or water – as no over-salted, store-bought, god-knows-what-crap-went-into-it tetrapacks of stock, please.) To my delight, it’s also probably best made when the world outside your kitchen windows is icy cold so the soup steams up your glasses as you’re eating it and the smell perfumes your entire house, warming everyone who enters. So it’s no surprise that it was one of the top items on my To-Do list come cool weather.

As I’ve come to expect of any recipe from Thomas Keller, this one – too – is time-consuming. But for good reason. The 5 hours you’ll spend slowly caramelizing the onions results in strips of onion which are completely caramelized through, and not just on the outsides. It brings out this incredible sweetness and depth to the final product. It’s also better if the soup is prepared the day before and allowed to rest overnight in the fridge, which allows all the flavours to amalgamate.

Soupe a l’Oignon
(From Thomas Keller’s Bouchon)

2 bay leaves
6 large sprigs of thyme
12 black peppercorns

8 pounds (about 8 large) yellow onions
4 oz (8 tbsp) unsalted butter
1 1/2 tsp all-purpose flour
3-3 1/2 quarts home-made beef, veal, chicken stock or water
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
sherry or red wine vinegar

1 baguette (about 2 1/2 inches in diameter)
extra virgin olive oil
salt
6-12 slices (1/8 inch thick) aged Comté or Emmentaler cheese (at least 4 inches square)
1 1/2 cups grated aged Comté or Emmentaler cheese, or a combination of the two

Tie the thyme, bay leaf and peppercorns into a cheesecloth sachet and set aside.

Cut off the tops and bottoms of the onions, then cut the onions lengthwise in half. Remove the peels and tough outer layers. Cut a V wedge in each one to remove the core and pull out any solid, flat pieces of onion running up from the core.

Lay an onion half cut side down on a cutting board with the root end towards you. Holding the knife on an angle, almost parallel to the board, cut the onion lengthwise into 1/4 inch thick slices. Once you’ve cut past the centre of the onion, the knife angle will become awkward: flip the onion onto its side, toward the knife, and finish slicing it. Separate the slices of onion, trimming away any root sections that are still attached and holding the slices together. Repeat with the remaining onions. (You should have about 7 quarts of onions.)

Melt the butter in a large heavy stockpot over medium heat. Add the onions and 1 tbsp salt, place a diffuser under the pot, and reduce the heat to low. Cook, stirring every 15 minutes and regulating the heat to keep the mixture bubbling gently, for about 1 hour, or until the onions have wilted and released a lot of liquid. Continue to stir the onions every 15 minutes, being sure to scrape the bottom and get into the corners of the pot, for about 4 hours more, or until the onions are caramelized throughout and a rich deep brown. Keep a closer eye on the onions toward the end of the cooking when the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the heat. You will need 1 1/2 cups of onions for the soup; reserve any extra for another use. The onions can be made up tot 2 days ahead and refrigerated.

Transfer the caramlized onions to a 5-quart pot (reheat if they’ve been refrigerated). Sift in the flour and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, for 2-3 minutes. Add the stock and sachet, bring to a simmer, and simmer for about 1 hour, or until the liquid is reduced to 2 1/2 quarts. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and a few drops of vinegar. Remove from the heat.

To prepare the croutons, preheat the broiler. Cut twelve 3/8-inch thick slices from the baguette (reserving the remainder for another use), and place on a baking sheet. Brush the bread lightly on both sides with olive oil and sprinkle lightly with salt. Place under the broiler and toast the first side until golden brown, then turn and brown the second side. Set aside and leave the broiler on.

To complete, return the soup to a simmer. Place six flameproof soup tureens, with about 1 1/2 cups capacity, on a baking sheet to catch any spills (the soup will bubble up over the sides of the tureens). Add the hot soup to the tureens, filling them up to within 1/2 inch of the tops. Top each serving with 2 croutons: lay them on the surface without pushing them into the soup. Lay the slices of cheese over the croutons so that the cheese overlaps the edges of the tureens by about 1/2 inch. Scatter the grated cheese over the sliced cheese, filling in the areas where the sliced cheese is thinner, or it may melt into the soup rather than forming a crust.

Place the tureens under the broiler for a few minutes, until the cheese bubbles, browns, and forms a thick crust. Eat carefully, the soup will be very hot.

Yield: 6 servings

I’ve also been having a little bit of a scratchy throat, so I figured if I made some ice cream (which is fine for sore throats, just not coughs – before I get scolded by anyone), I could flavour and sweeten it with honey and that should work just as well as drinking honey water! So I whipped up a very simple Philadelphia-stype ice cream base, but used honey in place of the usual sugar. I decided against using a custard base because I didn’t want anything to overpower the delicate flavour of the honey, excepting a touch of vanilla to marry the flavours together.

Anyway, it’s super easy to make, and pretty darned tasty – it tasted like Honey Stars! I’m quite pleased with my recent successes in the ice cream frontier. Hopefully I’ll have time for a couple of batches yet before the weather turns too cold for me to churn anymore batches.

Honey Ice Cream

400ml whipping cream
200ml full cream milk
1/3 cup aromatic honey, such as heather honey
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
pinch of salt

Combine all the ingredients in a heavy-based saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook gently, stirring often to dissolve the honey, until just below boiling point. Remove from the heat, and set aside, covered, to steep for 1 hour at room temperature.

Strain the cream into another container, discarding the vanilla pod. Chill, covered, at least 8 hours or overnight, then churn in your ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I’m not a fan of tomato based sauces. That’s not entirely accurate. While I don’t really like them as the sauces for my tagliatelle or linguine, I’m quite a big fan of baked dishes that have a nice red or meat sauce in them. Shepherds and cottage pie (though those technically aren’t red sauces either), lasagne, and tomato-based ragùs are all welcome on my plate, as long as they don’t go with noodles, for some strange reason.

I’ve been craving lasagne for a couple of weeks now. And I valiantly tried to assuage this craving with a picnic lunch one weekday, having ordered lasagne from the city super deli counter. It didn’t really work. Then as I was walking through the aisles of sogo’s supermarket section in Causeway Bay, I saw a packet of rigatoni and had an idea.

The base of this pasta bake was a relatively quick meat sauce which starts with a soffrito of celery, onions and carrots, sweated and lightly caramelized with some cubed and browned pancetta. I then browned the mince (a mixture of pork and beef), seasoned it well and threw in a smattering of herbs – both fresh and dried. The soffrito was then returned to the pot along with some tomato paste, a tin of peeled plum tomatos, a glass of red wine and a little chicken stock. Then I let it simmer away for about 45 minutes while I went to play a little guitar hero. It was quickly finished off with a little milk and cream, after which I stirred in some fresh basil, letting it wilt from the residual heat.

I then made a white roux of butter and flour, and gently whisked in half a litre of milk that had been infused with bay leaf, thyme, garlic and an onion studded with cloves. Grate in a little nutmeg and stir through some parmesan and that was ready to go.

Assembly was the fun part though. Half the white sauce was mixed with a little wilted spinach and laid at the base of a buttered dutch oven. Over that went a third of my meat sauce, and then I stood over my pot cursing my bright idea for the next 35 minutes while I painstakingly stood all 500g of that pack of rigatoni upright in the sauce. (The photo breaks were really more for my back to get a rest than to blog!) Then I ladled over the rest of the meat sauce, pushing it down into the pasta tubes, smeared the rest of the white sauce over, and topped it off with the motherload of grated cheese (mozarella first and parmesan on top), and sprinkled a few basil leaves over it. The whole thing went, covered, into a moderate oven for an hour, and then I let it brown for the last 10-15 minutes uncovered, before scooping it onto plates and chowing down.

It was a pretty awesome dinner, if I say so myself – rustic, delicious, and a one-pot meal. And after serving 4, I even had enough leftovers for a couple of midnight fridge runs. :)

I was at a friend’s place a couple of weeks ago, two fingers of Bailey’s Irish Cream poured over a few ice cubes in a lowball. Swirling, sipping. Now, Bailey’s – contrary to popular belief – is a difficult drink to drink. You see, there’s that optimum point where it has been gently swirled around ice cubes long enough for it to be chilled perfectly, yet not left too long that it’s gotten diluted. You have to keep sniffing, swirling, and sipping, to figure out when that point is, then stop talking and enjoy it, before it passes and you have to top it up with more ice and Bailey’s before you’ll get back there again.

Suddenly I had a craving for Bailey’s ice cream. 15 minutes of Googling later, I’d perused a bunch of recipes that essentially directed you to make a pint of vanilla ice cream, then add in 1/2 a cup of Baileys before churning. Custard and eggless varieties included, I even saw one “recipe” where someone bought a tub of vanilla ice cream, stirred in Baileys, and froze it again.

So this weekend, when the same friend rang me up telling me that she’d gotten a bottle of Baileys for me, I slapped together the ingredients for a vanilla custard, and waited for the bottle to arrive with my dinner guests in tow. An hour later, I had a pint of probably the best ice cream I’ve had in a long time. It was so good fresh out of the machine, when it hadn’t really frozen completely yet, but even better the next day. Also, it went great with my pistachio cake, as well as straight up, or with an extra drizzle of Baileys over the ice cream.

Note: Measurements are approximated in the recipe below, as I didn’t actually measure carefully when I was making it this time. It should be about right though, just taste the custard before churning to make sure you’re happy with it before you start. Also, resist the urge to add too much Baileys – too much alcohol will prevent it from freezing solid, and also you really don’t want to get drunk on ice cream. It sounds like a good idea now, but it isn’t – trust me!

Bailey’s Ice Cream

400ml whipping cream
400ml full cream milk (I used Hokkaido milk for that extra creaminess)
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
6 tbsp caster sugar
1 pinch of salt
4 large egg yolks
1/2 to 2/3 cup Baileys Irish Cream

Combine the cream, milk, vanilla seeds and pod, and half the sugar in a saucepan over very low heat until just below boiling point, then remove from the heat. Meanwhile, combine egg yolks, salt and the rest of the sugar in a mixing bowl and whip until very pale and fluffy. It should triple in volume at least.

When the cream is ready, fish out the pod and discard. Temper the eggs by slowly pour the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly so as to prevent the eggs from curdling. Prepare a large bowl with ice water, and set a smaller bowl inside it. Strain the mixture into a clean saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until it thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Pour the custard into the prepared bowl in the ice bath, and cool to room temperature quickly. Cover, and chill until cold (or preferably overnight).

Mix in the Baileys, then churn in an ice-cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions, or freeze in a shallow container, whisking the mixture every 30 minutes to break up the ice crystals, for 4 hours or until soft-serve consistency. Transfer to an air-tight container and freeze until solid.