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Archive for the ‘Food & Friends’ Category

Chocolates for Easter

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , on April 17, 2011| 39 Comments »

Since we’re on a bit of a chocolate quest at the moment, we thought we’d try making our own Easter eggs this year.

They were a great success, and we finally figured out a way to make them hollow without having to heat and join two halves together.

Our dark eggs and chickens (of course) are made with a slightly darker mix (74%) of our new house blend.  We made the modification on Christina’s suggestion, and it’s proven universally popular:

  • 200g Callebaut 811 (54%)
  • 200g Cacao Barry Tanzanie (75%)
  • 150g Callebaut Cocoa Mass (100%)

The tempered chocolate was poured into one half of the egg moulds, which were then clipped together and carefully rotated as the chocolate set.

Our milk eggs are made of a blend of Callebaut 823 (33.6%) and Cocoa Mass (100%) resulting in a very grown up milk chocolate of approximately 47% cacao.  Here’s the formula:

  • 400g Callebaut 823 milk chocolate (33.6%)
  • 100g Callebaut Cocoa Mass (100%)

It was a perfect way to spend a rainy Saturday before Easter!

You might enjoy this Jacques Torres clip on tempering chocolate – unfortunately I couldn’t embed it here, so you’ll need to click through and watch it on YouTube…

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Edit: I’d like to encourage any of you who are interested to give tempering a whirl.  I wrote up the method I use here, but it’s quite fiddly, and if you google tempering, there are easier methods – usually involving melting 2/3 of your chocolate and then stirring in the remainder until the liquid chocolate reaches the right temperature.  I personally don’t find the other methods as consistent, so I stick to what works for me.

David Lebovitz wrote a great post on tempering chocolate here.

One tip: getting chocolate to temper is quite easy, but keeping it there is tricky.  The chocolate needs to go into the mould when it’s between 88 – 90F, but if it cools below that, it can drop out of temper, so the real secret to home tempering is to find a way to keep the chocolate at the ideal temperature while you work it.

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A Chocolate Experiment

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on April 13, 2011| 46 Comments »

As you know, I do love a culinary challenge!

This one came about when I discovered that my friends at Paesanella are now stocking Amedei chocolate.  Ever since I read Mort Rosenblum’s Chocolate, I’ve been keen to try this brand.

Amedei came about after brother and sister Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri, Italian sellers of baking ingredients, approached Valrhona seeking to distribute their products.   Story has it that Valrhona rejected their request, telling them that Italy wasn’t “capable of appreciating fine French chocolate”.

Furiously insulted, the Tessieris formed Amedei, which almost immediately started producing amazing chocolate.  Their true moment of triumph though, came when Alessio managed to secure exclusive access to the renowned Chuao cacao plantations, locking Valrhona out of their premium source of beans.  It’s a fabulous story – you can read more about it here and here.

Amedei are acknowledged as one of the leading chocolate houses in the world, as well as possibly the most expensive.  At $10 per 50g ($200/kg), it’s definitely a rare indulgence.  But after such a wonderful tale of passion and sustained Italian rage, how could I resist bringing home a couple of blocks to try?

The Toscano Brown, Amedei’s milk chocolate blend, was very nice.

The Toscano Black was sublime.  Big Boy and I particularly enjoyed it, but Pete said, “you know, this reminds me a little of the chocolate you make”.

The gauntlet had been thrown down.

Could I make a chocolate bar which we enjoyed as much as the Toscano Black?  The Amedei bar was a blend, so I thought it might be fun to play around and see what we could come up with.

After a few experiments, I finally arrived at something that we’re all happy with.  Pete and I personally prefer it to the Toscano Black, although Big Boy still prefers the Amedei, as does Dredgey (neighbours who pop in usually get roped into tastings).

The Toscano Black is a serious, sophisticated dark chocolate. In wine terms, it reminds me of old Bordeauxs with their distinctive cigar box and tobacco notes.  It has sweet fruit tones and just enough acidity to add complexity and depth.  It also has an amazing finish – this is a chocolate to be savoured in small pieces, with a taste that lingers in the mouth for many minutes afterwards.

Our home blend has a creamy mouthfeel, good balancing acid, and a strong cocoa flavour with hints of raisin and citrus.  The Tanzanie component contributes robust, slightly woody notes. To me, the blend lacks some of the complexity of the Toscano Black, but I enjoy the flavour profile a little more.  Like the Amedei, it also has a very long finish.

For my friend Gillian (who also reviewed the Toscano Black here) and others who are playing around with chocolate making, our final mix was:

  • 40% Callebaut 811 (54% cacao)
  • 40% Cacao Barry Tanzanie origin chocolate (75% cacao)
  • 20% Callebaut Cocoa Mass (100% cacao)

If my math is correct,  the resultant blend is a dark 72% cacao. Our bars (photo below) work out at $20/kg – definitely more affordable for every day consumption!

If you get a chance to try Amedei chocolate, I’d really recommend you do so.  Too expensive to eat on a regular basis, but perfect as a special occasion treat and conversation starter!

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Old Wives’ Tales

Posted in Food & Friends on April 9, 2011| 29 Comments »

(photo credit: Astronomy Photo of the Day: http://apod.nasa.gov)

Superstitions are a funny thing.

Being Chinese, I’ve grown up with a lifetime of old wives’ tales, drummed into me by my mother from a very young age.

One of mum’s firm beliefs is that if you point at the moon, the back of your ears will crack.  For the life of me, I can’t figure out how this one ever came about, but I do know that it was so well ingrained into my psyche that when I was first dating Pete, I once nearly tore his arm off as he raised it towards the rising moon.

“What the hell are you doing?”
“Don’t point at the moon, or the back of your ears will crack!”

Thankfully, he still married me, although that one incident all those years ago gave him an inkling of what he was getting himself into.

Today, nearly thirty years later, I can look back on all those old wives’ tales and laugh.  A conversation at dinner tonight made me wonder how varied superstitions might be from country to country.

Did you grow up with any unusual old wives’ tales?  Please share them with us – but please do keep it light – I’m going to play tough comments editor just this once and delete anything I deem too gruesome or scary.  It’s a fun and humorous topic, so long as we don’t freak anyone out!

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Garden Greens

Posted in Food & Friends on April 8, 2011| 37 Comments »

Our local fruit and veg industry has taken a real battering this year.

Extensive floods around Australia have decimated many crops, and the ones that have survived have been waterlogged and expensive.  Last week’s pickings at the markets were slim – Pete tasted and rejected peaches and plums, apples were spotty, and there wasn’t a whole lot of greenery that caught our eye.

I did bring home some fabulous wild rocket from Roula, and a few Lebanese cucumbers, but my salad was looking quite pathetic, despite my attempts to bolster it with chick peas, salami offcuts and pomegranate seeds that I found in the freezer…

Our garden is looking a little worse for wear as well, but undeterred, the boys went out to see what they could find.  I was surprised and delighted when they came in with a colander of greens for our lunch – they’d picked basil, continental parsley, a few leaves from self-sown lettuces, sorrell, purslane,  a few beans and a sprig of very young spearmint.

The finished salad was dressed simply with a little olive oil and white balsamic vinegar.

Lesson learnt – if we look carefully, the garden will always feed us.

Lunch inspired me to head outside with my camera.  I’m not sure how many more garden pics we’ll get as we head into the cooler months, so I wanted to take some photos while I still could!

A few of our tomatoes have survived the wilt – all the seedlings we planted died off, but half a dozen self-sown plants are proving virus resistant, so we’ll make sure to collect seeds from these if they ever fruit…

The next round of basil is already looking promising!

And as a result of the recent rains – our lilly pilly is rosy with new growth!

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
Let us cultivate our garden.

Candide (1759), by Voltaire

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Sunday Morning

Posted in Food & Friends on April 4, 2011| 52 Comments »

Sliding out of daylight savings meant an extra hour to play with on Sunday…

Maude popped over for tea, and we attempted (with very limited success) the Sun-Herald crossword…

I finished off my bak kwa, a caramelised Chinese pork jerky, which I’d made following this recipe…

Cool early mornings are an ideal time for tempering chocolate – a straight Callebaut origin chocolate from Peru (64%) and a batch of our “house blend” – 50/50 Callebaut 811 (54%) combined with Callebaut Tanzanie (75%).  The Peru was used to dip ginger and candied orange rind…

…and the blend was set into blocks, for a taste-off we have planned for one night this week…

And since we were feeling so mellow, we spent a little time spoiling the chooks…

Whenever I buy salmon at the markets, I ask the fishmonger to fillet it for me, and to give me all the bones and offcuts.  I portion out the fillets for the freezer – buying salmon in this way means that dinner for the four of us only costs $10 per meal.  The heads are frozen separately for a Malaysian-style fish head curry.

I roast the bones and offcuts in the oven briefly, and then strip all the meat off them.  Below is the surplus meat from two salmons – all from bits that would normally be discarded!

I keep this in a container in the fridge, and feed it to the chooks over the course of a week or so.  It’s their favourite food in the whole world…

After a generous serve of fish, the girls enjoyed a bowl of leftover rice, which they also adore.  The fish is good for them, but we’re careful not to give them too many carbs – they still have to be able to fly up to the roost!

Here’s a video of our feasting girls!

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I hope you all had a lovely weekend too!  What did you get up to?

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