Squash #1: Pumpkin Fondue

The seasonality of fruits and vegetables used to be lost on me. Sure, there was 'cherry season' or 'mango season' or 'longan season', but I regarded them merely as wonderful windows of time where delicious foreign fruit was imported into my barren concrete jungle. Only after living in France have I learnt to associate each produce and its season. And with this came the realisation that my vocabulary was too weak to deal with food in France. Take something as simple as pears: a general 'pear' used to sufficient for me, but now it's all about abate, bosc, conference, comice, d'anjou, guyot, louise bonne, rochas and williams, which can be found at different times of the year.

And while the colourful fruits of summer bring back memories of sea and sand under a toasty sun, this year my heart belongs with autumn. Maybe it's the impending departure from France looming in my subconscience, but aren't the fall colours particularly beautiful this year? The crackling of leaves, the peace and quiet after a summer of cicadas, the blanket of yellow, orange and red warms me as the mercury starts to fall. With this comes chestnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, sunchokes, rutabagas and pumpkins and squashes of all shapes and sizes.

One cloudy autumn's day, we headed out to a small town called Rognes for their Fete de la Courge. Once I would have been content with just 'pumpkins', which is kind of a misnomer because pumpkin is commonly used to describe several cultivars in the squash family.

Look at the pear-shaped Butternut squash, the petite thick-skinned Red Kuri squash, the quirky decorative Colocynth (this one looks like a duck eh?), the long necked Tromboncino di Albenga, the weirdly bulbous Turban squash and the dusty-looking Muscat de Provence among many others. I ooh-ed and aah-ed over every single one of them.

Notable absentees -cos these wily French people love their squashes and snapped them all up by the time we arrived!- were the white Pattypan flying saucers and the deceptively awesome spaghetti squash (looks yellowish and normal on the outside, ribbony dangly filaments and sweet on the inside).

Squashes were everywhere! Even the village fountain was not spared the attack of the Curcubita!

We settled on a Butternut (right), a Red Kuri squash (top left) and a Rouge Vif d'Etampes pumpkin (bottom left), plus a generous slice off a large Muscat de Provence. The latter did not live to see the day: It was quickly chopped up, roasted with olive oil and rosemary, and ended up in a Mushroom and squash risotto that very night. To commemorate their fallen comrade, the 3 remaining squashes will sacrifice themselves in dishes worthy of their heroic deliciousness. It won't be just soups and puree for these fellas.

First up: the Rouge Vif d'Etampes pumpkin. Having not encountered this variety of squash before, the farmer helpfully suggested a unique way to cook it: as a pumpkin fondue in the pumpkin itself.

Ingredients:
1 pumpkin ~1.5kg
200ml white wine
400g Gruyere, coarsely grated
400g Emmental, coarsely grated
pinch of grated nutmeg
Olive oil
Salt

Preparation:
1/ Heat the oven to 200 C.

2/ Remove the top of the pumpkin, cutting a circle around the stem and leaving at least a 3-cm border. (The pumpkin will soften upon cooking and the borders will prevent the melted cheese from flowing over)

3/ Remove the seeds and loose filaments by scraping with a small spoon. (Seeds can be kept for roasting)

4/ Season the inside of the pumpkin with some salt and olive oil. Brush some olive oil on the outside as well.

5/ Put both cheeses and the white wine in the pumpkin, stirring to mix. Do not fill more than 3/4 of the pumpkin.

6/ Cover the pumpkin and put in an oven-proof pan. Bake 30 min to 1 hour until pumpkin is tender and the cheese has melted, stirring occasionally during the cooking process. Cooking time will depend on the size of the pumpkin used.

7/ Serve with toasted chunks of baguette.

This is a unique pumpkin dish that warms the stomach and the heart. Careful not to lose your piece of bread in the fondue though! (Go read Asterix in Switzerland!)

Sachertorte and my lovely Kaiser springform pan

The other night, I walked to my favorite salon de thé. The crisp autumn air. The crackling of fallen leaves beneath my feet, an eerie enchanting yellow in the harsh streetlight. Suddenly a feeling I haven't felt for months. I felt inspired to write.

This blog has been, for a lack of a less harsh word, neglected. I've been meaning to write, I really have. Ideas float in my mind but never take root and writing on a computer is just so distracting. A meerkat on psychotropics has a longer attention span than I do. So there I was, curled up in the cosy tearoom, pen and paper in hand and a pot of jasmine tea beside me. Where to start? The young couple sitting across the room are snuggling and kissing. Loudly. Too much slurping and it isn't tea. Argh. Concentrate.

So. Where do I start?

Something autumn-y, like a lovely tarte aux pommes? How about my fresh and healthy summer dishes, all sadly relegated to the back seat cos I was too busy at my summer job as beach bum extraordinaire?

Then I remember the Sachertorte. Aaaah the Sachertorte.. A thousand words could not suffice. (via Café Sacher)



Look at it and tell me you're not feeling just a little bit weak in the knees. You gasp a little, your heart's started racing. You swallow once, your mouth a little pasty like it's imagining what it would taste like. Your stomach's got off to a low rumble and there's a siren in your brain that just went off. Chocolate-based sensory overload.

The Sachertorte is a Viennese specialty, consisting of 2 layers of dense chocolate cake with apricot jam in between and topped with a silky dark chocolate icing. Sounds daunting? It did to me, but I had made a promise to two colleagues: my firstborn first Sachertorte in exchange for keeping my cells alive while I was on vacation. Cells? Yeah cells. As if all that chocolate wasn't already beckoning me, I get to use my gorgeous Kaiser springform pan which I love love love. While an 8-inch pan is a nifty size for trying out a recipe, 'm already contemplating getting another in a larger size. There's plentyof love for bakeware to go around.

Warning: Do NOT try this at home unless you are a certified level 10 chocoholic or accompanied by one who can eat it for you in case of emergency. An underqualified individual may experience respiratory and cardiac difficulties associated with an overdose that can only be treated by singing Oompa Loompas.

Ingredients:

Sacher biscuit
170 g semisweet chocolate, broken in chunks
80 g butter, softened
5 egg whites
4 egg yolks
110 g white sugar
40 g flour
20 g ground almonds
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp baking powder
Apricot jam
Optional: Brown rum or other liqueur

Chocolate icing
200 g semisweet chocolate, in chunks
20 cl heavy cream
(I used a light cream, and the difference in %fat did not seem to affect the icing)

Preparation:
1/ Heat the oven to 180°C.

2/ Melt chocolate chunks with a bit of butter in the microwave, in quick bursts to avoid burning the chocolate. Leave aside to cool.

3/ In a big bowl, cream the butter and sugar with a hand mixer until a light pale colour. Add egg yolks and vanilla extract and whisk till well mixed.

4/ Mix melted chocolate into the batter.

5/ Sift flour, ground almonds and baking powder together. Add to the batter in thirds and mix well.

6/ In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites till stiff peaks form. Fold in whisked egg whites delicately in thirds until just incorporated.

7/ Pour the batter into a 8-9 inch springform pan (buttered and floured, lined with parchment paper if desired) and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the thickest point comes out clean.

8/ Leave to cool in pan for 30 minutes. Remove the Sacher biscuit from the pan and leave to cool on a cooling rack for at least another 30 minutes to 1 hour. The cake must be thoroughly cooled before attempting to slice it in two layers.

J

9/ Wrap the Sacher biscuit well in cling film and freeze for 2 hours or overnight. This is supposed to tighten the crumbs and give layers that hold together better. (according to baking911)


10/ As it thaws, slice the Sacher biscuit in two horizontally with a long serrated knife. Avoid back and forth sawing motions as this would result in too many crumbs. Hold the biscuit down with one hand, slicing smoothly towards the centre and rotate the cake.

11/ Flip the biscuit over. The bottom of the cake will be used as as the top as it is uniformly flat and will be easier to glaze afterwards.

12/ Drizzle the rum and spread a 1-cm layer of apricot jam on the lower layer of the biscuit. Place the top layer on it and refrigerate.


Icing:
13/ In a saucepan, bring the cream to a slight boil, taking care not to let it boil over.

14/ Pour the hot cream over the chocolate chunks in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Leave to cool but it should still be slightly warm when using in it.

15/ Place the cake on a grill over a large plate or bowl.

16/ Pour the icing over the cake, letting it flow over the sides. With a spatula, spread the icing over the top, applying equal pressure across the top and smoothing out the sides.

17/ Refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

And...... *drumroll* Ta-DAH!



You know how all mothers think that THEIR baby is the most beautiful baby of them all. Well, my first ever Sachertorte was the most beautiful first ever Sachertorte of them all. Its perfectly smooth icing glistening in the light, an ephemeral beauty so delicate that I felt a little pain in my heart when I cut into it.

Considering that this was my first time at icing a cake, I'm really quite proud at how it turned out. Icing a cake sounded fairly simple: Make icing, pour icing, spread with spatula. Easy peasy lemon squeezy? More like difficult difficult lemon difficult. It's all about applying equal pressure along the spatula and pulling across uniformly. Not so hard that you scrape off too much icing and not so light that the unequal pressure gives an unequal surface. It's really a matter of practice, practice, practice and the friends and family with whom you feed it will either love you or loathe you for it.

I made the Sachertorte a second time for a birthday, swapping the apricot jam for some homemade raspberry sauce. It also went nicely with the chocolate but had a much more distinct taste.

Papa's fried rice

I seem to think about food almost all the time. What a surprise, right? But now, I don't just mean thinking of cooking and eating, but also about the evolutionary history of food. For example: How have certain dishes changed in their status over the years? Take bacon, so simple it all its fatty goodness that I imagine beside eggs on an American breakfast platter. Today, there's Bacon Mania! Yes, so much bacon a pig could get sick of its delicius self. There's deep fried bacon, bacon wrapped chicken, bacon wrapped turkey stuffed with a chicken... yeah, I'm not kidding. These crazies aside, some amateur foodies are incorporating bacon into just about any dish they can imagine, from traditional dishes like pasta and salads to audacious attempts like cupcakes and chocolate.

Dishes like bouillabaisse, a traditional Provencal fish stew, were poor man's food, conjured up by fishermen who threw local Mediterranean fish too bony to sell into a huge pot. Today, any Marseillais will tell to prepare your wallet for the shock, at 70 to 150 Euros for 2 persons.
In a way, the ordinary fried rice has a similary story. It used to be leftover rice stir fried with whatever ingredients you had on hand to avoid throwing food out!

This recipe for fried rice is my dad's. It's the first dish I have ever learnt to cook when I was, 13 I think? Time flies. There are sure to be lots of different variations out there, but this one is my dad's which I have adapted for French living. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

450 g Thai rice (weight in uncooked rice), cooked the day before
8 dried mushrooms, soaked and sliced
150 g frozen green peas
3 carrots, diced
100g corn kernels
250g ham, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
sunflower oil
oyster sauce
light soya sauce

Optional:
Lap cheong (Chinese sausage), Dried shrimp, Mixed vegetables (instead of peas, carrots, corn separately), Char siew (the ham is an angmoh substitute)


Preparation tips:
The rice should be cooked the day before and left to dry out at room temperature or in the fridge. The dryness makes the rice less clumpy and thus frying easier. The mushrooms have to be soaked in hot water at least 30 minutes before cooking.


Preparation:
1/ Heat oil in a wok and stir fry the diced ham for 2 minutes. Remove and save in a bowl.

2/ Heat oil. Squeeze the water out of the mushrooms and stir fry for 2 minutes. Add 2 tbsp oyster sauce and stir fry for another 5 minutes. Remove and save in bowl.

3/ Heat oil and fry 1 clove of garlic. Stir fry diced carrots for 5 minutes. Add the frozen peas and 2 tbsp oyster sauce then stir fry another 5 minutes. Add the corn kernels. Remove and save in bowl.

4/ Heat oil and fry 1 clove of garlic. Add rice a third at a time, mixing well to separate the grains. If necessary, trickle some more oil over the rice.

5/ Trickle 1 tbsp soy sauce onto the rice and mix well.

6/ Add the ham, mushrooms, carrots, peas and corn to the rice and mix well. Add more soy sauce to taste. Stir fry the rice for 5 minutes, taking care not to burn it entirely, but if a crust of burnt rice forms at the bottom of the wok, it's quite normal.

Pork ribs in black bean garlic sauce

Today, I salute one of the best kitchen helpers of the modern glutton: Bottled sauces. Asian sauces are delectable, but oh so time-consuming to make from scratch. All I need now is the strength to get the eff-ing top of the eff-ing bottle.

I'd also like to introduce my little darling in the kitchen: My thermal cooker.


It is comprised of a vacuum flask exterior with a removable stainless steel pot. The pot and its contents are heated to cooking temperatures then sealed in the flask, leaving the food to cook on its own without additional electricity! It's a great way to save time and reduce power bills without having to compromise on delicious dishes. It's perfect for the working crowd: In this dish for example, I simply spent 10 minutes preparing the initial cooking phase, promptly popped it into the vacuum flask where it stood all day while I was out and came home to a mouth-watering meal.For some reason, it's called a norwegian cooker in French. Go figure. It was a gift from my mother, which goes to show that mum always knows best.

Ingredients:

500g pork ribs, cut
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp black bean garlic sauce
2 tbsp chinese cooking wine
1-2 chillis, sliced
2 stalks spring onion
1 tbsp sunflower oil
20cl water


Preparation tip:
Be careful when slicing the chillis. The slightest drop of chilli juice, even by brushing lightly against the chopping board, can become a weapon of localized destruction. If you forget even for a second and bring your fingers to your eyes, they're gonna burn baby burn. It HURTS. To avoid all this, always hold the chilli by its stem, make a lengthwise incision and shake to remove the seeds. Slice the chilli while holding onto the stem.


Preparation:

1/ Heat oil in a wok. Once hot, fry the minced garlic, making sure not to burn it.

2/ Brown the pork ribs on all sides.

3/ Add the black bean garlic sauce and the sliced chillis. Stir fry for 1 minute over high heat.

4/ Deglaze with chinese cooking wine and stir fry for another 1 minute.

5/ Add water and bring to a boil. Transfer to a stewing pot.

6/ Lower heat, cover and leave to simmer for at least 1 hour. The longer it stews, the more likely the tender meat will fall off the bone!

7/ Just before serving, garnish with spring onion (green part only), cut into 3-cm pieces.

Baked panko-crusted teriyaki salmon

Ever just lack the will to cook? Some days, especially after a long day at work, even boiling water sounds like a real chore. The brain shuts down, and zejunkie exists only as a vessel for her bottomless abyss of a stomach.

So this is a quick recipe with minimal fuss, and also an excellent solution for those times you've got guests on a day you don't have the energy to cook. I love using panko instead of traditional breadcrumbs, it's so light and fluffy and crispy!

Ingredients:
4 fresh salmon filets
4 tbsp teriyaki sauce
pepper
olive oil
panko breadcrumbs
Optional: 1 tbsp sugar


Preparation:

1/ Marinate the salmon filets in the teriyaki sauce, skinless side down, for about 20 minutes. The longer it is left to marinate, the stronger the teriyaki flavour will be.

2/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

3/ Transfer the salmon into an ovenpoof dish. Pour some of the marinade onto the filets and add pepper to taste.

4/ Sprinkle the panko generously to create a nice crust. Splash some olive oil onto the filets over the breadcrumbs.

5/ Bake for 8 minutes.

Optional: Reduce the remainder of the marinade with some sugar to make a quick sauce.

Cooking tip:
The baking time should be adjusted according to the size of the salmon filets. I prefer slim but thick slabs, such that the crust is crispy but the interior is moist and barely cooked.

Wanton dumplings

If you had to choose one dish, that you would then have to eat everyday for the rest of your life, what would it be? Wanton Mee. No fight. Chilli crab, Char Kway Teow, too distinctive a taste, too easy to get sick of. If I ever have to live in space, give me my dehydrated cubes of dumpling goodness!

For the past 2 months, I have been consumed with a huge obsession with dumplings. And I am ashamed to admit that I have been highly promiscuous in my dumpling love... Wanton, Gyoza, Xiao Long Bao all have equal rights to be eaten! I don't know why I bother sometimes, it takes ages to prepare but only a few minutes to devour!

Ingredients:

15-20 wanton wrappers
100g minced pork
75 g prawns
1 spring onion, chopped
1/2 tsp ginger, grated
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp chinese cooking wine
2 water chestnut, chopped
1 tsp cornflour

Preparation:

1/ Peel, devein and chop the prawns but not too fine
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2/ Mix all the ingredients except the wrappers in a bowl.
3/ Spoon about a teaspoon full of stuffing onto a wrapper and wet the edges with water.

4/ With both hands, gather all the wet edges to the centre. Pinch together to seal the dumpling.


5/ Bring 1L water to a boil in a saucepan. Add the dumplings one by one, making sure not to overcrowd the pan.

6/ Cook for 5 minutes, they should float at the surface. Serve hot, on its own or with soup and noodles.

Tip for storage: On a tray covered with plastic wrap, place wrapped Wantons spaced apart so that they do not touch. Leave overnight in freezer and transfer into freezer bags the next day. Frozen Wantons can be stored for 2 months in the freezer.

There's always a packet of dumplings lurking in my freezer to tide me through those dreary days where you just can't bring yourself to cook and you already ate instant noodles for lunch. That describes my weekend perfectly!

Green tea-poached pears

Here goes, zejunkie's first recipe on this blog!

It's one of my favourite desserts for a while now: simple, elegant, exotic and very importantly, can be prepared in advance! I served this for CNY dinner (for 16 people in all no less!) so you can imagine what a good thing it was to be able to be done with dessert preparation beforehand. Try it for yourself, and tell me you're not bowled over!

Ingredients:7g Sencha green tea leaves1L water
2 ripe but firm Williams pears
1/2 lemon
150g brown sugar
3 slices of ginger
Optional: 100g brown sugar


Preparation:
1/ Prepare the green tea by steeping the Sencha leaves in hot (but not boiling) water for 6 minutes.

2/ In the meantime, peel and halve the pears. Remove the core and leave the pears in a bowl of water with lemon juice to avoid browning.

3/ In a medium saucepan, add the tea (with no leaves), brown sugar and ginger slices. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

4/ Reduce heat to low and add pear halves to the tea, cut side up.

5/ To keep the pears submerged in the poaching liquid, cut a circle of parchment paper the size of the pan and lay it on top of the pears. (photo on right)
6/ Poach over low heat for 15-25 minutes, until the pears are soft at its thickest part when tested with a toothpick.

7/ Remove saucepan from heat and leave the pears in the poaching liquid at room temperature. Once cool, refridgerate them for at least an hour prior to serving. The poached pears may be kept up to 2 days in the fridge.

Optional: To prepare a syrup, return 200ml of poaching liquid to the saucepan and add 100g of brown sugar. Stir over low heat, until reduced to a thick syrup. The syrup may be kept several days in the fridge or 2 months in the freezer.

When it comes to choosing pears, be sure that they are ripe but still rather firm to the touch. An overly ripe pear will become extremely fragile after poaching. For now, I've only tried Williams, also known as Bartlett pears, but Conference and Bosc pears are supposedly suitable for poaching too.

Now now, a dessert by zejunkie without any hint of chocolate? Well I have to tell you, I tried it and it is much better without. The Sencha flavour is so subtle that any amount of chocolate would be too overwhelming... Heresy! Blasphemy! Burn the dark chocolate witch!

1 kg of pure bliss

Question: What does one do with 1 kg of good Valrhona chocolate?


You know me, how could I resist? I just had to buy this lovely little darling. Well, I say little, I meant enormous. This morning I opened it, expecting to find smaller bars of 200g but instead a GIANT slab of beautiful chocolate greeted me. That's a 23 x 18 x 2 cm slab of cocoa-based goodness, I kid you not.




I have yet to decide on desserts worthy of my lovely chocolate. But once I do.. you'd better be prepared my friend!

my bottomless pit of a stomach

Spring is here! The sun is out and the birds are a-singing! And zejunkie is up to no good in the kitchen again. A beautiful dish, that wonderful smell tantalising and calling out at her growling stomach.

Now answer this.. What will she do next?

1) Eat it, savour it, devour it, annhilate it
2) Leave it to cool while she pokes and turns the food in search of that perfect photo, then with no choice but to quickly nuke it in the microwave again

If you said number 2, congratulations! Wa-hey! You do know me after all, and I guess you understand why I started this foodblog.

In this blog, I'm gonna experiment with all different types of cuisine. The french part of this blog will be focused on asian cooking and targeted at well french people who think that oyster sauce is essentially the same thing as soya sauce. (?!) The english part of the blog will deal with anything from asian to french to african. Oh and desserts, can't tear me away from my desserts.

I'm just trying to be ze curious junkie, looking for my next fix.