Berry Nice!

Came back from meeting at Kowloon Bay and realised that I had promised to bring dessert tonight and forgot all about it... So went to supermarket quickly to see what I could get and managed to get some berries and mascorpone cheese.

I used a Nigella Lawson recipe for black and white berry tart and substituted the toppings. I also didn't have digestives so I used my fave Waitrose Stem Ginger Cookies as a base instead, reducing the amount of butter used as these cookies were quite rich anyway. I also used half portion of mascorpone.. well.. cos, I just couldn't imagine eating that much cream after steam boat dinner. Didn't have a pie tray.. so used the old springform cake tray...

So basically, I've changed the recipe quite a bit.. does it mean it's mine now? I own it? is this how it works!?!?!? Yey!!





Anyway, so here's the recipe as per A's request (to have recipes posted as well):

For the base:
250 g ginger biscuits, roughly broken up
50g butter, melted (if using digestives, 75 g)
cake or flan tin

For filling/topping:
1 large egg, separated
75 g caster sugar
250 g mascarpone (original asked for 500g)
squeeze of lime
Mixed berries (as much as you want)

Blitz the biscuits to crumbs and add melted butter. Tip over into tin and press with fingers onto the base and up the sides
Put in the fridge while you get the filling done
Whisk egg white until stiff and set aside, Beat the yolk with sugar till thick and pale (it'll take a while but persist)
Add mascarpone and beat till smooth. Then add the lime
Fold in the egg while and smooth the mixture into the tin
Arrange the toppings loosely on top.

Done!

Guess who came for dinner last night

We had dinner with Anthony Bourdain! Well... not alone of course.. (but who cares about the the other 100 people in the room!) I won't go into details of how we managed to bag tickets for the evening. But the atmosphere was pretty electric... it certainly had a superstar feel to it all.

I'm really amazed at how celebrity chefs have become a sudden and huge phenomenon. (In fact, my friend, SL, is writing a doctoral thesis on the same subject matter). Unlike chefs like Wolfgang Puck, celebrity chefs are less likely to be the French bloke who speaks in a quaint accent and more likely to be the cool dude on the bike you least expect to be working in a kitchen. In other words, they make cuisine and pastry look cool.

There's a sense of 'voyeurism' as well as behind this obsession. We tune into cooking programs as much to find out who they're hanging out with, what their wife and kids look like and what they're up to lately, as to find out recipes. Celebrity chefs are not just great cooks, but also great writers, poets, musicians etc.. in short, they are reality TV, gossip magazines and talkshow combined. Now do we need any persuasion????!!



Anyway, this was my big bonus from the evening - a free cookbook by Anthony Bourdain which I may not have paid for (french cooking? I don't know...) It's also autographed!

He's really a very funny guy. Quite a lot of good quotes from him.

On bad food experiences: "Everything the lonely planet says not to eat, I've eaten.. and never gotten sick from it.. The only place where I've actually eaten something and thrown up is the land of my ancestors, France"

On what he won't eat: "If you're smaller than me, slower than me, stupider than me... I'll say "run"... pass the salt man..."

On his new show: "It's features me eating too much, drinking too much, smoking too much, behaving really badly and having a really good time."



But we're not really the big fan. T is... C and I are just props! Later, after the event, he dropped by our table and we were chatting. It was funny.. he said that there are times when he's asked by a bloke - who's not sure who he is - for his autograph. He pens: 'The best sex I've ever had....' and he signs off: Jamie Oliver...

Hhaha... anyway, it went on for a while longer and we were just too tired to hang and left...

I told C, "I can't believe we were just shooting the breeze with Anthony Bourdain".... maybe I'm a fan after all.

Chocolate Chip cookies

I made chocolate chip cookies last night...

Easy peasy... didn't even have to use the mixer at all...

it's a case of baking envy... It all started when Big J told me that she made chocolate chip cookies over the weekend... she was so inspired with how easy it was to make the banana bread that she went to mini's house and whipped up what was (in her words) even better than famous amos cookies...

Suffering from mild case of kiasu-ism, I wanted to make it a little more complex:

C: How come you don't make something like choc chip cookies?

Me: ok! I make!... how about I make chocolate chip peanut butter cookies?

(mind zooms in on the half finished jar of peanut butter in the fridge)

C: .... why must you make it so complicated?? can't you just make chocolate chip cookies???

Me: ok! how about I make chocolate chip cookies and then also a coca cola cake?

C: ... (ignores me...)

So it's plain chocolate chip cookies....The first batch turned out real nice...



I took a call when I was baking the second batch.. so it turned out a little burnt..



that's only from leaving it in for an extra minute longer! I tell you... that's why I love cuisine over baking... can I ever be this precise!?!???!

Up to my ears with orange and plum muffins

I'm never going to bake when I've got no friends in town... the joy of baking is in the giving... cos otherwise, you have to eat it all by yourself!

C's out of town, and both Jases are busy... so I ended up eating one muffin a day - FOR A WEEK!!!

The only reason why I didn't have to stretch it over the next weekend was because I fortuitously gave away 2 muffins each to the ah soks guarding our building in the morning before I left for meetings... hehehe... He's already seeing the gas man up to our doorstep and brings our letters to our front door even though we have a mail box -- cos we made him coffee one cold winter afternoon... (and I buy him a dan tat (custard pie) or po lo bao (pineapple bun) whenever I come back early from afternoon meetings, now and then)... maybe now he'll make sure they take off their shoes and call me miss before they step into my house!

I baked them in two batches on two mornings... Anyway, true to form, I've got so many things in the fridge, eaten to half portion.. like 2 plums.. half a cabbage... 2 straw mushrooms etc... I decided to use up the plums and cut them into the second batch.. quite nice!

I used Nigella Lawson's recipe for orange muffins and added a two tablespoons of pomelo honey (as in the syrup for the drink)... very nice!



... and here's an aerial view: