Fruit Desserts - Classes

I'm very much looking forward to kicking off my 2010 teaching schedule with Fruit Desserts, a demo class, at Shermay's Cooking School on 13 March 2010 (Saturday), 14 March 2010 (Sunday), 27 March 2010 (Saturday) and 28 March 2010 (Sunday). For all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or 6479 8414, or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg

On the menu:

Sticky Banana & Caramel Upside-Down Cupcakes A scrumptiously gooey topping of buttery caramel and banana slices crowns these decadent little cakes.

Fragrant and bursting with ripe banana flavour, it's just the thing with a tall, cold glass of milk.

To keep it simple, skip the caramel topping and bake the batter in a fancy pan - I think it turns out beautifully as banana cake rosebuds.

Lemon Custard & Butter Shortbread Bars I couldn't in good conscience do a fruit-themed class and not include this fabulous recipe for every lemon-lover's favourite treat. A lavishly lemony custard filling is baked atop a golden brown shortbread base. The contrast between tangy silken custard and buttery crisp crust is truly something else.

Blueberry & Sour Cream Streusel Cake Generously studded with juicy blueberries and enrobed by a crunchy streusel topping, this special cake owes its divinely tender and velvety texture to the luxurious use of sour cream in the batter.

Fantastic served plain, with a dollop of sour cream, or a scoop of blueberry frozen yoghurt.

Orange & Honey Panna Cotta Creamy, softly-set, orange zest-infused, and honey-scented, this panna cotta is perfect when simply served with a trickle of the same honey used to make the panna cotta. Alternatively, to dress it up, I like serving it with:

Kumquat & Vanilla Bean Compote A delicate and perfumed citrus compote that’s lovely with plain pound cake, ice cream or the Orange & Honey Panna Cotta.

Orange & Stem Ginger Biscuits These biscuits have a melt-in-your-mouth texture and are a great accompaniment to the Orange & Honey Panna Cotta.

I'll post details soon on the Bonus Section with Extra Recipes, Ideas & Serving Suggestions included in the recipe pack:

Chocolate Lemon Ganache & Butter Shortbread Bars The dark chocolate ganache filling (using Valrhona Manjari 64% Dark Chocolate) surprises with its depth of lemony zing, thanks to a heady combination of lemon zest, lemon juice and pure lemon extract

Lemon Confit These candied lemon slices are a delicious garnish for any citrus flavoured dessert, for instance the Lemon Custard & Butter Shortbread Bars or Chocolate Lemon Ganache & Butter Shortbread Bars

Blueberry & Greek Yoghurt Sherbet Just as wonderful whether served on its own or alongside Blueberry & Sour Cream Streusel Cake

Pistachio Torte A beautiful pistachio cake that is lovely paired with:
Rose-Scented Strawberries and Rose-Scented Whipped Cream

Plum & Hazelnut Financiers These elegant little tea cakes – crisp and chewy of crust, rich and moist of crumb – owe their sublime flavour to beurre noisette (browned butter)

Gai Juk, Chicken Congee for the Soul

Growing up, I was put under the charge of a Cantonese amah for a while. Not a very long while; let's just say having one cook in the kitchen was key to keeping the domestic peace. Her tenure may not have been long-lived, but her legacy prevailed in the humble, honest, heartening form of juk (or zhou in Mandarin), the soupy rice porridge/gruel also commonly known as congee.

There are many regional recipes for the making of congee; some are rice-based, some not, and yet some use a mixture of rice and other grains. Some start with raw rice, others specify the use of leftover cooked rice. The style in which our amah cheh made her congee, the style I was weaned on and identify with and crave, was classically southern Chinese. A mixture of two types of rice (regular long-grained white plus glutinous) slowly, slowly simmered in a vast volume of water until transformed into velvety, unctuous comfort food. No mere sustenance, this, but the penultimate restorative, a homebrewed cureall, a magical unguent to cosset the body and salve the soul. Be it the nourishment of the very young or the very old, or the nursing back to wellness of the ill, or the simple soothing of frayed nerves, there are few things that are entrusted with rising to the occasion like congee, especially if you, like me, are Chinese in ethnicity.

As a student at college half a world away from home, congee became an antidote to the occasional bout of homesickness. Till this day, whenever I've had an especially long or trying day, there is nothing I long to eat more. W had been under the weather recently, so we'd been tucking into congee suppers - gai juk (chicken congee), pei dan sau yuk juk (preserved egg and pork congee), or yu juk (fish congee) - pretty often the last couple of weeks.

Not everyone digs pei dan. And not everyone has access to super duper fresh fish, an absolute non-negotiable for yu juk, preferably slaughtered and filleted earlier in the day at the wet market, my personal preference for using in yu juk is either grass carp or snakehead (locally known as toman). So the recipe that follows is for gai juk. Some preliminary notes:

Rice I use a combination of two rices; one for taste, the other for texture, in a two-to-one ratio. First, a fragrant long grain, preferably hom mali. This translates from Thai to "fragrant jasmine", although the aroma (hom) is really redolent of pandan and not jasmine. Mali, the reference to jasmine, is meant to describe the opalescent sheen of the grain rather than the scent. The subtle yet distinctive hom mali perfume makes an important difference to the final flavour of the congee. Second, a glutinous rice (sticky rice), as its high-amylopectin/low-amylose constitutional makeup greatly enhances creaminess.

Stock or water If you have good homemade chicken stock at hand, use that. This produces a richly flavoured congee. If not, use water (rather than canned stock or a bouillon cube). The chicken simmered with the rice and water imparts sufficient good flavour to the congee. Albeit mellower than the flavour produced using stock, I nonetheless feel it stands head and shoulders above the processed flavour introduced by the canned or cubed chickeny conveniences.

Gai Juk (Chicken Congee)
Yields about 4 servings

100 gm Long grain rice
50 gm Glutinous rice
1 Tbsp Toasted white sesame oil
2.5 litres Chicken stock, or water
1 tsp Coarse sea salt, or to taste
Half a small chicken (about 400 to 450 gm)
A slice of young ginger (about 1cm-thick)

Garnishes:
Tong chai (salt-preserved Tianjin cabbage pickle)
Fried shallots
Scallions, finely sliced
Coriander sprigs
Toasted white sesame oil

1. Combine the two rices in a large bowl. Wash and drain three times under water, each time swishing the rice around whilst rubbing the grains between your fingers.
2. Place washed rice in a heavy-bottomed pot with a capacity of about 5 litres. Coat grains with the sesame oil. Add the stock (or water), salt, chicken and ginger.
3. Bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and cover. The liquid should simmer at the merest blip; use a heat diffuser/tamer mat if necessary. Cook for 2 hours, stirring occasionally to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot and scorching. The rice will have "blossomed" (the grains will have swelled and split). Remove the chicken and set aside. Continue cooking the congee for another 1 hour, stirring occasionally, until it is thick, creamy and almost smooth. Taste; season with more salt to taste if necessary.
4. Meanwhile, once the chicken is cool enough to handle, shred the flesh into medium sized pieces. Discard the skin and bones. Set the chicken shreds aside.
5. When the congee is ready, turn the heat off. Discard the ginger. Heat large soup bowls by pouring boiling water into the bowls then pouring away the water. Ladle the porridge into the heated bowls. Top each serving with chicken shreds, and a pinch each of tong chai, fried shallots, scallions and coriander. Finish with a drizzle of toasted white sesame oil. Serve immediately.

Of Cookbooks and New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I've never been much good at keeping my New Year's resolutions. But there's one resolution in particular that I've made year after year and broken - rather blithely too, I may add - as many times.

I must, I must buy less cookbooks.

Bah, humbug.

Year after year, it's not so much newfound virtuous intent that spurs me to make that doomed resolution. More like the fear that one fine day in the not-too-distant future those poor particleboard shelves whose load bearing capacity I constantly (and foolhardily) test will finally give way.

Buy another bookcase? Sadly, no can do. As it is, we're virtually walking tippy toe through corridors. Much to my dismay, there's simply no more space to shoehorn in another bookcase.

Besides, it will simply fill in double quick time, thus forcing one to come to grips with the reality that one has issues beyond just being spatially-challenged. The official designated cookbook-shoring stacked-two deep bookshelves aside, there're the sprawling stacks on my bedside table, in my study, on the kitchen counter. These stacks...these stacks have taken on a life of their own. What really started off as a way to disguise new cookbook purchases so the shelves don't look quite so crammed have grown higgledy piggledy squatter style into densely populated semi-permanent settlements.

At some point a couple of years back after the 500-book mark was passed, I stopped keeping tabs. Frankly, I am afraid to know. To put a number on it would be to quantify, to put a face to, the magnitude of my problem. Were I to cook a 5-course meal for lunch and dinner respectively everyday without ever cooking a single recipe twice, I'm going to have to live (and cook) till I'm 113 and then some to truthfully claim to have made some inroads into cooking through those books, let's not even speak of amortization.

So this year, rather than lie to myself and vow to buy less cookbooks, I've resolved instead to become a more discriminating cookbook shopper. Gone are the days (and bookshelf realty) that I can buy a cookbook on a whim, for whatever idiosyncratic reason. Henceforth, a book must possess several merits and not just one before I'll bring it home with me. Chiefly:

Form Is it attractive? Do I love the cover/photography/illustrations/food styling/prop styling/typography/layout/design/authorial voice?

Function Are there at least a handful of recipes I am keen to cook from? Would I like to learn more about the cuisine/ingredient/technique that's the subject of the book? Are the instructions written clearly? Are too many of the recipes tricky to attempt because they call for hard-to-find ingredients and/or esoteric equipment? If book in question is another book on well-represented subjects (eg. chocolate or bread or French or Italian or how to poach an egg/truss a chicken/de-bone a trotter), does it excessively replicate ground already comprehensively (and better) covered in material I currently own?

A cookbook should boast of at least 2 attributes (ideally one from each category) before I'll call it mine. It's hardly a tall order, but I am hoping the act of simply pausing to consider the place a said book has in one's collection will go a long way towards keeping profligate purchasing in check.

Wish me luck!

Season's Greetings

Here's to everyone having a very merry Christmas and an absolute blast ushering in the new year!

I for one am truly looking forward to 2010 for all sorts of reasons, firstly because I'll be kicking off my teaching calendar with the return of a familiar favourite - this macaron and biscotti class is back; to all the lovely ladies who requested its return, thank you very much and I look forward to seeing you. Only 2 sessions of this demo class have been scheduled, on 9 January 2010(Saturday) and 10 January 2010(Sunday) at Shermay's Cooking School. For inquiries, please call +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg

Another reason, of course, is that I'm also looking forward to the week thereafter as we'd re-scheduled our break to January. While there're few cities as breathtaking as la ville-lumière in December, and I'm sorry to be missing it, January brings with it the consolation prize of hitting les soldes d'hiver like a gale moving at speeds off the Beaufort scale, not a trifling consideration if you have a bit of a retail therapy thing.

But really, that aside, I am psyched to appreciate the austere beauty of the city in late winter, far from the madding crowds. In Hemingway's soul-stirring words from A Moveable Feast,

When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafes so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light.

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Pie

One of W's favourite ice cream flavours is also one that's, once the basic vanilla custard base is stirred together, a snap to make.

Seeing as there is simply no homemade substitute that comes even remotely close to replicating the mysterious flavour, colour and texture of milk's favourite cookie, and believe you me I have tried, it's hard to be a stickler to the from-scratch principles you generally try to respect. In short, there's no reason to feel like you're cheating because all it takes to make this particular ice cream add-in is plucking that familiar bright blue package right off the supermarket aisle, ripping it open, coarsely crushing the contents and et voilà - you're ready to rock out with the ice cream machine.

We had company over for dinner last night, held in celebration of our good friend J's birthday. The ice cream pies, replete with candles, were served in lieu of a conventional birthday cake. I had used individual tartlet pans to mold the cookie crumb crust, but you can just as easily use one large pan. Either way, it's awesome with hot fudge sauce. And instead of cookies and cream ice cream pie, the ice cream can just as easily be used to sandwich chocolate cake layers to construct a cookies and cream ice cream cake.

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream
Yields about 8 servings

360 gm Whipping cream
360 gm Whole milk
6 Large egg yolks (each from a 60gm egg)
135 gm Caster sugar
1/2 tsp Fine salt
2 tsp Vanilla extract
10 Oreo cookies, coarsely crushed

1. Bring the cream and milk to a simmer over medium heat in a medium saucepan.
2. While the cream mixture is being heated, whisk together the egg yolks, caster sugar and salt in a medium bowl.
3. Remove saucepan from the heat and slowly drizzle about one-quarter of the cream mixture in a thin stream into the egg yolk mixture while whisking constantly. Once incorporated, pour the mixture in the bowl back into the saucepan with the rest of the hot cream mixture, whisking constantly.
4. Place a fine-meshed sieve or chinois over a clean bowl and place this close by to the stove. Place the saucepan over low heat and immediately begin to stir the custard with a spatula, being sure to scrape the edges and bottom of the pan. Stir constantly until the custard has sufficiently thickened. If you are using a thermometer, the custard is ready when it reaches a temperature of 170 °F. Alternatively, do the “spoon-coating consistency” test – dip the spatula into the custard, withdraw the spatula, and run your finger across the spatula; the custard is ready when your finger leaves a clearly defined trail across the custard-coated spatula. If not (the custard is still runny), cook for longer and keep testing until the consistency is right.
5. Once the custard is ready, immediately take the saucepan off the heat and strain its contents through the sieve or chinois into the bowl in order to eliminate any stray strands of coagulated egg and ensure a perfectly smooth custard. Stir the vanilla extract into the strained custard.
6. Press cling wrap right against the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming, let cool, then chill the custard in the refrigerator until thoroughly cold, at least 4 hours and preferably overnight.
7. Churn the custard in the ice cream machine, following the manufacturer’s instructions. Once the ice cream attains a soft-serve consistency, add the coarsely crushed Oreos. Transfer the ice cream to a freezer-proof airtight container and store in the freezer to firm up sufficiently before scooping/serving. Depending on the efficiency of the freezer, this will take about 4 hours.
   
   Storage: Homemade ice cream will keep well for about 1 week in the freezer if properly stored in an airtight container. However, the texture is ideal and at its best if served within 48 hours.