Marrons.. Mmm.. the obsession continues!

So I've had roasted Marrons (Lugano autumn chestnut festival) , I've had Marron Glace (candied marrons), Japanese chestnuts (smaller but not necessarily sweeter than their European counter parts, Vermecelli marrons, chestnut cake, chestnut mousse.. but SAVORY chestnuts? I've never seen this one before! I had to try it.

Made the best way, the cooked chestnuts are just lightly sauteed, butter melted over them, a little salt and chopped parsley. They were absolutely addicting (so much so I am going to make them for my parents). To accompany the soft sweet morsels, my boyfriend's mom also made duck confit and pomme puree.. I'm sure I have gained about 5 kilos because of her fabulous cooking.

If you ever want a quick, side dish-- this is the way to go. Delicious, quick and filled with vitamin c, potassium and iron... a new marron recipe to add to my Marron obsession!

I love Jamon

I spent my Christmas in Porto with my friend Nuno and his amazing family. His family figured out that besides being a rabbit and needing my veggies ( they have french fries and bread with EVERY MEAL) I also love JAMON!!!!! we managed to go through this moist, tender and not overly salty Portuguese version in 3 days.. it usually takes them two weeks.. oops... what can I say??? It's JAMON!

Comfort Food

All feeling a bit down that the weather has taken a sudden change for the FREEZING cold, I decided to bring a little bit of home to Bulle. Britt and I had been dying for some good ol, Californian mexican food! Seeing that I hadn't cooked for months... it was nice to get back into the kitchen to make some comfort food...
The result: Chicken burritos, Guacamole, Salsa (with tons of Cilantro of course!) and great company with my girlfriends...

I miss my mexican food! The only thing that was missing was a nice huge tall glass of Horchata...


So instead, I had a nice glass of 10 year old, Tawny Port from Porto courtesy of my friend Nuno, who just so happens to be from Porto! This is his favorite vintage port.

Thank you Nuno!

Making Mochi

I suddenly had a craving for Mochi the other day. Mochi is a traditional rice cake made from glutinous rice ground into a paste. Nowadays, rice flour can be bought at your local asian market.
After some internet researching, I settled on making the following flavors for my Daifuku ( mochi filled balls):

Traditional Taiwanese peanut dusted street food style
Green tea with anko filling
Ube with black sesame filling
Regular with mung bean filling

The mochi dough recipe:
1 cup mochiko rice flour
2/3 cup water
1/4 cup sugar

to make green tea or ube, add about 1.5 tsp of green tea powder or Ube powder to the dough recipe before you start heating it up.

Instead of using the sugar called for the in recipe, I decided to make a "low carb" version since the rice flour itself is quite heavy in calories. I subsituted in 2.5 packs of stevia for every 1/4 cup of sugar called for in the recipe.

I used the easy microwave version- although I do believe that the glutens don't get a chance to build as much in this version. I will try next time to do it in a pot over direct heat.

A couple of tips
1. the recipe usually calles fro 1 cup of rice flour to 2/3 cup of water. I would up this ratio to about 1-1/4 cups of rice flour becuase the resulting mochi will be too soft and sticky to work with.
2. Continually stirring the mochi paste will help to develop gluten strands. Even when the mochi dough has turned opaque, if the dough is still hot, keep stirring to cool it down and develop those gluten strands for a chewier dough.
3. Instead of trying to make little perfect circles to roll your mochi up in, its easier to cover the spoon full of mochi dough with cornstarch and make an indention to put ur filling in. The result will be a more smooth, even mochi ball.

Next up- Mochi filled ice cream !!!

Eggs and Milk and Sugar

We have been working on making Tiramisu for the last two days. Its amazing the multitude of food that can be made from eggs, water, flour and sugar and cream. We started with making lady fingers. Lady fingers are simply egg yolks whipped to double volume, egg whites to stiff peaks, flour and cornstarch

The batter is then piped and baked. For the tiramisu filling, it is again a simple mixture of egg yolks, sugar ( cooked to 240F or soft ball stage), cream whipped to medium stiffness and gelatin dissolved in flavorings.
The lady finger discs are soaked in a coffee syrup flavored with marsala wine and alternating layers of the custard and lady fingers are put together to form the tiramisu.

Stay tuned for a multitude of other desserts made from eggs, milk and sugar!

Eclairs and Napoleans

On thursday, we concluded our first week of baking and pastry. This event cumulated to us making chocolate glazed eclairs, cream puff swans and napoleans.

Although I love making pastries, my OCD tendencies leads me to think that I can not deal with my hands constantly being sticky. I think I washed my hands 5-6 times in a 10 minute window... or pretty much anytime my hand touched the custard filling. Plating desserts is easier in my opinion then plating savory foods as you get to bend the plating rules ever so slightly- you can have more sauce, you can have lines on the rim, you don't have to follow 10-4 and back around rules. There is more artistic room with the pastries then slices of meat.

My favorite task of the night was all the chocolate work that we got to play with. Who knew that a piece of acetate could do so much! Gotta practice those chocolate cigars...