IMBB 20 - Souffle

It's hosted by Kitchen Chick. I'm not very sure that I can get a good rise out of the souffle, so I try to bend it a bit so that it doesn't have to rise perfectly. It's a souffle crepe. Since I will have to buy lemons for my chocolate recipe, I will make lemon souffle as well.

Crepe recipe
250 g flour
1 tsp sugar
2 egg, beaten.
410 ml milk
1 tbs melted butter
a pinch salt

1. Mixed all ingredients together with mixer.
2. Heat up the pan and butter. Fry the batter. Set it aside to cool.

Lemon Souffle recipe
4 tbs butter
115 g sugar
4 egg yolks
80 ml lemon juice
2 tbs freshly grated lemon zest
5 egg whites
salt

1. Whisk butter, half of the sugar, yolks and all the lemons stuff in a bowl over a shimmering water till it is thick and sticks to the spoon. Set it aside.
2. Make stiff peaks out of the egg white and the remaining of the sugar.
3. Fold in the lemon mixture.
4. Place 2 tbs of the lemon mixture in the middle of a crepe skin and fold the skin in half. Arrange the crepe on tray.
5. Baked it in preheated oven at 180 C for 25-30 minutes. Don't open the oven for the 1st 15 minutes.
6. Serve it by sprinkling sugar on top of it.

All is done and it doesn't taste funny. Although it's not sweet enough for me (I have a very bad case of sweet-tooth) other people think it's just nice. I
don't know. What do you think?

Mine's up in 2nd round up!

Sugar High Friday 13: The Dark Side

Since Lovescool had put up a challenge ".. I challenge you to find something new and interesting to make. Try a different recipe or add a twist to one of your favorites." I had taken up some experiments on my old favourite recipe. One is just a slight modification of choco-chips cookies and the other one is a twisted version of a Japanese dessert.

Dark chocolate cookies.

360 g all purpose flour
1/4 tsp Baking soda
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 tsp salt
225 g + 5 tbs Butter
225 g sugar
225 g light brown sugar (or 170 g dark brown sugar
and 55 g white sugar)
2 egg, lightly beaten
2 tbs vanilla essence
365 g dark chocolate chunks

1. Shift flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, vanilla and salt in a bowl.
2. Use mixer to beat up the butter and sugar together, add egg one by one.
3. Fold in the flour mixture bit by bit. Add on the chocolate and just mixed it well.
4. Preheat the oven 180 C. Scoop a spoonful of batter and placed it on the baking tray (keep the mound shape).
5. Bake it till it turns golden brown or till the top is not moist anymore (around 16 minutes)
Done.

It's quite nice and has a sort of caramel taste because of the brown sugar. Usually instead of the dark chocolate chunks I use choco-chips, but I changed it. Oh, yes, don't bake it for too long, it will be over dry.

Yaki Satsuma-imo

1 Sweet potato (Indonesian called it ubi, don't use yam)
4 egg yolk
60 ml heavy cream
2 tbs sugar
Dark chocolate (small) chunks
1 yolk for brushing

1. Steam or boil the sweet potatoes till it's soft. Peel the skin off. Make a mashed potato out of it.
2. Mixed on the rest of the ingredients, except the chocolate, together.
3. Make small balls out of the mashed potatoes. Put a chunk of the dark chocolate in the centre of the potato ball. Put on the baking tray.
4. Pre heat oven to 180 C.
5. Lightly brushed the potato balls with the yolk.
6. Bakes it for 15 minutes or till gold.

Usually this yaki satsuma-imo is without chocolate core and is eaten with apple jam. So for those who wants the traditional form of this, remove the chocolate part and eat it with apple jam, I put the recipe below. For those who doesn't want to make the
jam I suggest to use the apple-taste baby food. It does wonder too.

Apple jam.
4 Cooking apple. Firm and have some sour taste.
120 ml water
150 g sugar
half lemon. Take the juices. Throw the pulp.
2 tbs Apple brandy (or rum)

1. Peel the apples then quartered it. Removed the core and then cut it into thin fan shape following the natural form.
2. Boiled the apple in the water. Turn the fire to medium low and continue boiling it for another 10 minutes.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to boil.
4. Cool it down and put it in fridge.

This jam is also good for other desserts. It won't be a waste to make it actually.

I will try to take pictures of these, but if I can't do bear with my drawing of those.

By the way the result is up in lovescool!

Cooking The Old Fashioned Way - AKA Disaster Preparedness

Hosted by 18thC Cuisine.

I remember some sort of olden ways to cook using anything that is at hand. Maybe it won't be useful, but I will share it anyway. By the way, we use fire because it could be easily stored in traditional bamboo container. Once I get the proper name I will post it on, I have forgotten it since I hardly use it now.

Cooking rice.
I was taught 3 ways to do so, but I could only remember 2 ways. One is using the bamboo and the other one using tikar (or tatami).

Bamboo style.
1. Make a big fire, I mean a proper campfire.
2. Cut one section of bamboo tube, or use the bamboo water bottle. If we use bamboo tube we have to use banana leaf as well. However if we use the bamboo water bottle it won't need anything else.
3a. Put the banana leaf the bottom part up (non-shiny side), put the rice in the middle of it. Fold it into a sort of tube and fold the side so the rice won't fall off. Place the whole thing into the bamboo tube. Flood the bamboo tube with water.
3b. Put the rice into the bamboo water bottle and fill it with water to the brim and closed it.
4. Place the bamboo tube in a near the fire (around half length of your arm) or nearer, but don't let it touch the fire at all.
5. Wait till there is no more water evaporation and even then left it be some more to allow the rice to be properly steamed.

I know mere description is not enough and I found a website that explains this is great details. It's in Primitive Ways website.

The Tikar style (tatami)
1. Take a piece of the tikar out of the tikar in your house, the softer it is the better.
2. Wrap the rice inside the tikar, fold the end also, more like the banana wrap as above.
3. Soak the whole thing inside water, the more water it retains the better.
4. Put it on the ground and cover it with leaves.
5. Start fire on the top of the leaves mound. Just a small one and hold that it will not turn into a campfire size, just a small flicker is enough.
6. Wait till it reaches the tikar and then put it out. By then the rice will be cooked enough.

There is also a way to boil egg. Basically the same methods as the tikar style of cooking rice. However, instead of rice and tikar we use an egg wrapped in papers (newspapers or anything that absorb a lot of water).

Baking fish without the burnt smell.
1. Wrapped a fish in clay till it covered the entire fish.
2. Chucked the whole wrapped fish into a campfire size fire. Allow it to burnt.
3. Remove the clay and eat.
You don't need to scale the fish as when we remove the clay the scale will be removed together with the clay. This method could also be used in baking whole poultry without pulling its feathers off. In fact cooking poultry this way had made a restaurant in HangZhou (China) famous.

Stewing or making soup.
1. Dig a hole in the ground.
2. Place an animal skin over the ground (furry side down facing the ground) and pin the edge of the skin on the brink of the hole.
3. In a campfire, burnt 3-4 smooth, fist-size stones.
4. Fill the skin with water.
5. Put in the hot stones into the water.
6. Put in the soup or stew ingredients.
7. You could always replace the stoned to keep the stew/soup going. But usually it's enough to boil the whole stuff.

Frying egg. (Kind of a no-brainer)
1. Place 3 round stones of roughly the same size in a small-triangle position.
2. Built small fire in the middle of the 3 stones.
3. Place a flat stone which could cover the triangle and had been washed over the fire. Let the flat stone burnt.
4. Cooked the egg on it. I had used twigs to flip it over, messy but edible.

I can't remember much of those things anymore. My survival skill had deteriorated now that I have not done any practice for a long time (Making a campfire in here will definitely get me arrested as budding arsonist.) Hopefully this will be useful.

It's up in the round up as well.

I'm back again!

Sorry to have disappeared for quite some time, it was a busy period. In the midst of tests and examinations I still need to get some illustration job done. Now, it's all in the past!

I won Brass Band Bold award from Paper chef! Yay! I never thought I could win anything. Thank you very much for it! I'm also featured in Tomatilla's paper chef round-up and in My Home Kitchen page. I feel like patting my own back.

I really appreciate the comments that people gave me, I really do. However, I'm very sorry that I didn't get back to you all earlier. My deepest apologies.

For the next one I simply will love to go for the IMBB 20 and SHF 13 if I have the time. However I will definitely go for Cooking The Old Fashioned Way - AKA Disaster Preparedness. For Paper Chef 11 I'm very sorry but I don't think I will go for it. I have SAT the next day, must study.