The Sugar Bar

Kid Diva’s back in the nest. And joy to the reunion with her oven, finally. Living without one was not only upsetting me, it was making me almost allergic to the thought of surviving without one. The things I could normally roast and bake had been reduced so drastically it wasn’t a surprise that I found myself relying more on cereal and rabbit food than ever!

The past month has been very hectic too, what with balancing a Masters and part-time retail work at American Apparel, there really wasn’t much time left to do any sort of fancy cooking. It was simple, easy-peasy, bang bang type of cooking. And sometimes, there wasn’t even any cooking involved except for re-heating or microwave blasting the damn thing. I can’t tell you more how glad I am to be home for Christmas, to smell dinner cooking at half 7, to be able to flip through my recipe books very (and I stress that word ‘very’) leisurely whilst planning some sweet treat to bake the next day. I admit I am procrastinating and not giving my essays the appropriate amount of attention and care as I do my cookbooks, but it’s all worth it after being forced into oven abstinence the past few months.

I may not be able to fit as many recipes as I intend to attempt into the remaining few days I’m home for Christmas, and I’m constantly reminding myself that the reason for this is the heffer of an essay I have to tackle next. Yes, I’ve just about finished the 1st one I kept bitching about on Twitter and now have to haul ass on the next. Wish I could laze away another day doing nothing (except baking) but that’s really not likely at all. And it’s a real shame since returning to London means living without an oven for another 9 months – that’s madness. Pure torture. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. Might have to eat myself to death as a way to console my aching heart.

I find that I have recently crashed into a state of poverty which is a really awful time of the year to realize your purse has become as dry and unfertile as the Sahara desert. Fortunately, all my Christmas presents have been sorted out and I managed to (with help from the Mama) purchase some Christmassy ingredients for a bit of baking this week. So not very much left to worry about I suppose in terms of spending (she says). But before I start waxing lyrical about this babe of a recipe I found scribbled in a very old recipe book of mine, let me share with you this bit of shopping I thoroughly enjoyed today – RIBBON SHOPPING. Might have overshot my tiny miserly budget I set out for ribbons today. I’m still waiting for guilt to set in but it seems it’s gonna take a few more years for it to hit me.

Pretty, chic, Laura Ashley-type ribbons in lovely pastels (my favourite is duck egg and mint green) are quite hard to find. I often purchase mine online from that Cakes Cookies & Craft Shop I talk about quite a lot. Although they’ve got quite a range of plain ribbons advertised on their retail shop, it’s pretty much a race against other eager customers as the colours I want are always sold out. Purchasing by the metre pisses me off too as I hate having to estimate how much I’m going to use or how large my ribbons tied will look like, etc. For Pete’s sake I’m just buying ribbons not attempting to plan a conspiracy act against the Senate or something like that. Just give me my ribbons! Moreover, it’s even more difficult to find ribbons in pretty but not garish, childish patterns. After reading about a fantastic cheap ribbon find in Singapore via Evan’s blog Bossacafez, I knew I’d finally struck gold. When Evan posted a post Really Cheap Ribbons II, I snapped, threw caution to the wind and nicely asked Mum for a lift to Arab Street to check out this ribbon treasure chest.

I wasn’t disappointed. Polka dots? Oui. I love ‘em. Duck egg shades? Awesome, bung it in my basket. Mint green and contrasting baby pink dots? Holy smokes, isn’t that simply adorable? Yep. Gotta have it. Ladybugs? Geeez, you’re killing me, mate. Chocolate brown ribbons, mocha coloured ones, milky latte types, fuschia strips with white lace edges, cut-out-heart ones for the soppy lovesick ones, baby pink/blues with milk bottle patterns for baby showers, etc. They’ve got it all! After deliberating for quite some time, I managed to come round to 5 rolls, paid and left grinning from ear to ear.

Happy days.

Don’t you like how sometimes you purchase things you know you don’t need at the moment, but like an investment, you’re buying for the future? Some people think that’s foolish and so self-indulgent. I, on the other hand, would like to argue (in defense of us eager shoppers) and say we’re stocking up for the winter. In times of need, when you just can’t bloody find any ribbon about the house, or need an emergency gift for a friend, may be in desperate need to put your hair up on a hot day when all hair ties have decided to go missing or rip at the very last second which counts the most, you’ve got ribbon.

How comforting does that phrase : ‘You’ve got ribbon’ sound? Surely you agree!

And on to moi Christmas cookies. I know cranberry, white chocolate and walnut combo can be pretty normal, unexciting and predictable at this time of the year but surely a little stereotyping, a little cliché at Christmas time is totally forgivable? I love this combination of flavours (even if I dislike white chocolate. It’s weird but with raspberries or cranberries, I’d eat the white crap) and cranberry white chocolate was a duo I fell in love with in high school. Funnily enough, I liked it so much it was what inspired me to start baking and make truckloads of cranberry white chocolate cookies to last me a lifetime. Besides I thought it was pretty apt to return to my beloved oven with a favourite recipe of mine – and at that, one which I’d left to drown in the back of a very old recipe book forgotten behind newer, fancier celebrity chef cookbooks.

These cookies may not look great. They’re not as chunky, as fat, as voluptuous as I’d like them to be but I’m sure I’m to blame for that. Nevertheless, I think they taste great. A little on the sweet side so might have to reduce the amount of white chocolate buttons used in this but the flavours meshed together brilliantly and the cookies turned out nice and chewy in the middle and perfectly crunchy on the outer edges. I used cheap vanilla essence and that wasn’t as delightful as it would’ve been with a better quality vanilla extract but not complaining since they still quite scrumptious, evidence thanks to my elder sister A.

Mum: You’re baking tonight? Right now?
Me: Nah. Gonna head upstairs and do some work first (in my head, really I’m going to be blogging and twittering). I’ll bake a little later tonight. I’ll make another loaf cake tomorrow (after our Christmas eve roast dinner) for the family gathering on Christmas day.
A, my elder sister: You’re certainly attacking the oven with a vengeance, huh.
Me: Yea.
A: These cookies are delicious. Your best I think.
Me: They’re a little too sweet, no?
C, my younger sister: Yea! They’re so sweet.
A: Where? If you tell me where it’s sweet, maybe. But I don’t think they are. They’re good.

Feel really good about that vote of confidence. It’s always so rewarding to see the people you love enjoy the things you make. Okie dokie, I must be off to get working on these essays even more before I tackle my carrot cake for tomorrow’s dessert. Went to bed at 4am this morning trying to tie up all my arguments and have a feeling that it will be done again tonight so that I can both enjoy my holiday and meet my uni deadline.

To all those furiously baking and working away like Silas Marner in their kitchen dens, I salute you all. Happy Christmas! I can’t wait to catch up on all that Christmas food blogging soon.

Cranberry, White Chocolate & Walnut Cookies
Ingredients

1 1/4 cup plain flour
113g unsalted butter, cold & cut into pieces
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1 cup white chocolate chips or chunks
1 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 150dC.

Beat sugars and butter together til light and creamy. Mix in egg, vanilla and baking soda. Sift in flour, add salt and mix into batter. Fold in chocolate chips, cranberries and walnuts.

Drop rounded tablespoonful of batter onto parchment-lined cookie trays and bake 2″ apart. Careful as these cookies will spread a bit and some of mine stuck together. If it does, use a small butter knife or spatula to separate and reshape cookies.

Bake 18-20 mins or until pale golden brown. Leave to cool about 2-3mins on the tray before transferring to cool completely on a wire rack. These cookies will firm and crunch up as they cool.

The pear is a particularly humble fruit often forgotten in my house or outshone by the more appealing apple,the milkshake-worthy banana, the stunning golden kiwi or the refreshing watermelon. If it were a game of ball, the pear would be the last to be picked onto the team. It may be its delicate flavour, subtle sweetness and generally modest but spotty complexion that causes it to be overlooked, to fade into the background of other more colourful, juicy, sweet and tangy fruit. Nevertheless, I have a special fondness for this bottom-heavy fruit, especially the conference and packham variety; I love them on its own, in salads or poached and served with cream or custard. They’re quite the versatile fruit and cooking them releases its delicate honeyed flavour all the more.

The last upside-down cake I made (years ago, geez) was a recipe from Bill Granger and I remember using heckloads of maple syrup in it. I’d used bananas in the base and so the cake was pretty rich and intensely sweet. Mindblowingly so in fact. I believe the post-cake sugar high lasted for bout half an hour or so, which isn’t quite a good thing for sugar-maniacs like me. But this recipe – Bill Granger’s Banana Maple Upside Down Cake from Bill’s Open Kitchen – is still gorgeous if you aren’t too calorie or sugar-conscious. Instead of using this same Granger recipe, however, I wanted a recipe that wouldn’t have too many flavours working in the syrupy base so as not to overpower the pears. I found one from Ottolenghi and was really excited to give it a go since many have raved about Ottolenghi. Because I have yet to taste their gorgeous food for myself, I simply cannot wait to be in London next year to taste Ottolenghi amongst other equally, if not more, amazing restaurants like Maze, Nobu and dans le noir?. Reckon I should start organizing a list of restaurants to visit with my future flatmate (if she’s nice and amiable!). Someone pass me my diary please…Diva’s got an important restaurant visit-list to note down! Figures I’ll have to work doubly hard to earn a wage that’ll support my shopping, my desire for shoes and that insatiable hunger for yum yummy food.

I’m really pleased with this recipe. I admit it’s a lot of work since you’ve got to poach the pears, make the caramel topping from scratch and basically make sure nothing burns and that you don’t burn yourself, but the results were fantastic. The recipe uses cranberries which I thought would be quite a wonderful marriage with pears, giving it a sweetness boost and a light touch of tanginess. The cake batter incorporates lemon and orange zest amidst spices like ground star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg. The ground almonds also gave it a lovely fluffy texture. Any recipe that uses ground almonds I love. Something about ground almonds that gives all baked goods a special x-factor. So anyway, this is sort of an autumnal cake which I found delightful especially since September is finally here and we’ve gotta say goodbye to summer. I might add a little more cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter in the future as I quite like a bit more spice in cakes like these. The pears which were poached in lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar and spices tasted wonderful with the caramel topping and cranberries soaked in the pear poaching water. Together with the cake, served warm, it was lush! I loved the lemoniness and laces of orange together with the cinnamon-sweetness of the pears and cranberries. I’m not that great at describing how good food tastes to me but honestly, this was good. Moist, very tasty and not overly sweet such that you couldn’t even taste the pear.

Gorgeous.

One problem I had with the recipe, aside from all my kitchen accidents which I’ll get to in a bit, was the baking time. The recipe states that you bake it for 35 mins but I had to bake mine in the oven for nearly 50 mins. I’m not too sure why that was and I have a nagging suspicion that my oven wasn’t preheated long enough to get to the right temperature for baking the cake and thus, required a longer cooking time than advised in the recipe. Any ideas?

I chose not to glaze the cake with jam a little watered down in a saucepan as I felt the caramel topping was sufficient and the cake moist and pretty enough. Like I’d mentioned before, I wanted to keep the recipe simple so I’d stay true to the pears. Any other jam, apricot, strawberry or marmalade would just be unhelpful.  

Right, so some of you might be wondering about those kitchen accidents and if you’ve kept up with me on Twitter, you’d have some idea of the silly things I’d done to myself. I guess today’s just one of those days where hand-eye coordination totally fails you. On days like that, I usually ruin everything and by the end of the day, I feel exhausted and emotionally drained. Ie., I feel like a failure. The upside down cake gave me hope but the process of making it was utterly chaotic. Whilst preparing the lemon zest, I’d grated my thumb into the zest as well. Quite a mess I created with the blood streaked across the white sink. Yes. My kitchen’s got a white, dark brown and silver theme to it. All the table tops are marble white and mum loves to keep it absolutely spotless. She’s anal. And I’m OCD-ed. Great. Picture me freaking out and washing away all the blood, picking out the bad zest and all – don’t worry. It didn’t really get onto the lemon but totally irked me out. 

So what happened next? Yes, there’s more. The caramel was a successful event. As I stirred the butter into the melted sugar, the itchy-fingered bit of me suddenly stuck a finger into the beautifully browning (and still, bubbling) mixture. Yep. I burnt my finger through and through. It’s now red, sore and still throbbing. To top it off with the cherry on the icing, I’ve got a bulbous white blister on the tip of my finger that really gets in the way of typing, washing my hair, etc. 

Wally brain in the kitchen. Stay away.

I’d like to stop here and end your pain. I mean, seriously, you can hurl me some verbal abuse and I wouldn’t mind. Haha. Getting my cake out of the oven was interesting as well. As I’d placed my cake tin on a cookie tray to prevent any accidental spillage, I had to get the cake out of the oven with oven mitts by grabbing the cookie tray and pulling it out. I gather my brain had executed complete shutdown or just decided a simple act like this didn’t require complex thinking – I turned 90 degrees to my left without moving my right arm away from the oven and seared the flesh of my upper right arm with the cookie tray. WOW. The skin’s kinda like welded down where I’ve burned it. A burn line of about 1.5 inches. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I was in a fight or something. My life’s way cooler than ‘Whoops. I burned myself with a cookie tray.’ Oh no. I can already imagine the looks on their faces when they find out the truth. Scarred for life I am, pun not intended.

Right. But the cake was good so I’m a happy chappy. Off to go reap the rewards of my efforts today. If you’re looking for that recipe, check it out over at Ottolenghi’s website. They’ve got loads of other cool recipes as well.

My mum has ears like a bat. And I, whenever I’m shopping for clothes, cosmetics, or simply groceries, am always found making verbal wishes: Really want some mussels; Fancy some really good warm bread now with just a little bit of butter; I could do with some king prawns for a paella this weekend; Oh wow, the lamb rack is going pretty cheap now!…I think it’s an annoying habit since I sorta do it unconsciously. But sometimes, it’s a good thing since I’ll in some weird spur of the moment remember the things I lusted after, jot them down in a list and stick it up on a 3M sticky note as my new List of Definite ‘To Buys’. Shit. I’m a materialistic, greedy fatty betty. Cursed for life with this horrible disposition.

It so happened that mum remembered my wish for lamb rack and since I coveted it so much, she bought an Australian rack and another from New Zealand. Both were fresh, looked gorgeously red and juicy. The only difference between the two was the colour of the meat. When cooked, both were to die for. Equally succulent and tender. When mum came home with the beautiful cuts of lamb in her grocery bags, I was overcome with a mix of anticipation and absolute fear. I’m just not good with cooking red meat. It simply isn’t my forte. I don’t eat a lot of red meat but when I do, I love it medium to medium-rare if possible. And to others, it may seem like I’m not cooking it for long enough and that may be likely since I am rather clueless as well with red meats. But they always turn out fairly edible and delicious. Thus far, I’ve never given myself food-poisoning either. So I suppose that’s a good thing, huh. Nevertheless, this time’s different. The pressure is on. Cooking for the family is a stressful affair as my parents are quite picky eaters and mum will not be afraid to point out the areas found totally lacking and unsatisfying. Yep, tough love runs in the family. 

I was pretty nervous all day, worrying about how the rack would turn out. I just didn’t want to mess it up and throw about 70 bucks worth of rack into the bin. That would just be awful. I was glad that I had some support from friends on Twitter. Sitting on the stairs (I don’t get no internet connection in the kitchen), nervously documenting the cooking process to friends was simply one of my darker kitchen moments. But thankfully, it all worked out fine. I was little upset that we didn’t have proper carving knives (or at least, the one we had was nowhere to be found) and so most of the crust ended up falling off the lamb as we literally manhandled the rack to split it into individual ribs. Shame. But still delicious. Surprisingly, the honey mustard I used as a marinade and glue to hold the crust gave the lamb a lot of flavour, even if I chose not to marinade it for an hour or so. The meat was extremely tender and succulent. I didn’t think it needed some kind of sauce as I wanted to taste the lamb as it was, thus keeping the dish simple and true to itself.

The crust was seriously, and I really mean like seriously, good. Garlic and cranberry is honestly one of the best combinations of flavours ever. Totally loved the crust. I could eat that shit all day. Munch on it 24/7, giving myself water breaks to wash it down probably. And then carry on. Somehow I’m thinking the crust and sour cream in a jacket potato could be a new heaven for me. 

Dinner wasn’t impressive or restaurant quality, but it felt a little bit like Sunday Roast. Just homely and chilled out. And hey, it’s just me cooking, what do you expect? But I was very happy with my success and I think I got the thumbs-up from almost everyone. Definitely a keeper of a recipe. I have a feeling the dogs felt the same. Every time I opened the oven, the dogs went wild. Dashing about in the garden, barking like the apocalypse was near. Absolute pandemonium. My dogs love lamb, which is supposed to be really good for their bones and fur coat, or something like that. We used to feed them mutton bones (for some strange reason) but it got a little bit of a costly expense so obviously, scrapped that habit pretty quickly. Anyhow, the dogs got all the lamb rib bones and some leftover potato skins. They couldn’t have been happier. I think the rest of the family was pretty happy too. 

Cranberry & Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb
Ingredients

2 racks of lamb, 8 ribs each
a heaped 1/2 cup full of breadcrumbs
4 tbs dried whole cranberries
a sprig of fresh rosemary, chopped
2 tsp dried thyme
3 tbs honey mustard marinade
3 garlic cloves, skin removed
1 large shallot, skin removed
freshly ground black pepper, for seasoning
crushed sea salt, for seasoning
olive oil
serve with your choice of vegetables

Preheat oven to 220d Celsius.

Combine cranberries, fresh rosemary, thyme, garlic, and shallot in a food processor; Pulse. Remove from processor then add breadcrumbs and season well to taste.

To prepare the rack, wrap the rib bones with aluminium foil to prevent charring. Spread honey mustard over lamb and massage in. When it comes to red meat, be prepared to get down and dirty so make sure hands are clean and nails trimmed. Next, pat breadcrumb mixture into mustard marinade on the lamb. Press on any bits that fall off and it should stay on. Drizzle on some olive oil before placing lamb on a broiler pan, meat side up, in the oven to cook.

This should roast for 35-40 minutes for medium-rare to medium. After removing from the oven, leave lamb covered for 10 minutes. Slice rack into chops to serve.

Baked Potatoes or Student-style Jackets
Ingredients

5 medium-sized baking potatoes or US Russetts, which makes 5 servings
square of salted butter for each potato
dollop of sour cream for each potato (optional)
your choice of filling (optional)

Wash and scrub potatoes, then pat dry with a kitchen towel. WIth a fork, pierce the potatoes all over.

Preheat the oven to 200d Celsius, or you can simply use the already heated oven you’ve got for the lamb rack.

Place in microwave, and on high power, microwave for 4 minutes. Turn the potatoes over and repeat the process for another 4 minutes. You should be able to pierce through the potatoes with a fork with relative ease. If there is a little resistance, microwave for another 2 minutes. Now whack it in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, or till the skin has gone nice and crisp and the insides are soft and fluffy when cut through.

Split open down the middle, throw in some butter, sour cream and whatever garnishes you like. Or if you’re going for a student-style jacket, cheese and beans it is!