The Sugar Bar » potatoes

Beni Imo & White Sesame Marble Pound Cake

diva — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:03:56 +0000

Think it’s chocolate? Think again. Look harder. It’s actually a dark shade of purple.

What’s that? Yea I know. Don’t you raise your eyebrows at me! I haven’t gotten over that purple phase yet. Seriously, I’m gaga-fied by it. Utterly completely totally besotted with the shade and the vegetable that can produce such a hue by very natural and earthy means – the purple sweet spud aka purple yams aka beni imo 紫芋 aka okinawan purple sweet potatoes. Cheshire cat grin.

A dear friend of mine from Chiba felt some of my pain about a month or so ago when I struggled to find a cheap variety of these spuds here. I ranted so much I reckon I might have burnt her ears right off or if I exaggerate a little less, probably melted them down. She, being the nice girl that she always is (bless her heart), sent me 400g of beni imo fumatsu 紅芋粉末 (and via express EMS mail at that!). If you understand the matcha concept, you’ll get this. It’s simply purple sweet potatoes roasted and then ground into a fine powder or funmatsu. I believe there are grades to this just as matcha does and that will determine the vividness of colour of the powder and its cooked outcome. Mine was one of a dark mauve shade in its raw state and so the colour wasn’t as vivid as I hoped it would be. Neither did it look as stunning as Junko Fukuda’s in her cookbook but hey, I’m not complaining because it was still visibly purple!

This pound cake I thought was pretty snaz, not just in terms of colour, but in terms of flavour. The use of goma dare, commonly used over tofu salad as a dressing, was interesting. I quite worried that this cake would be way too savoury and it smelt like it would be as I was mixing everything up. I have a penchant for using exotic ingredients whenever I can because it just feels a little more risky and exciting. I know Mama Diva will dislike this right away because it probably tastes way too weird and non-traditional for her. It definitely needs some getting used to but the deep and rich roasted flavours (of white sesame seeds more so than sweet potatoes) really come through in this pound cake. A dark yet earthy and vegetal fragrance from the beni imo is also quite evident. The scent of beni imo powder strangely reminds me of dark cocoa (the texture and fluffy ‘jumpy’ nature of the powder itself resembles cocoa powder too!) and the altogether nutty creamy taste and textures from the white sesame sauce with roasted nuts make it quite an appetite-reviving bit of cake.

Yet again I’ve gone purple and although this is one simple loaf cake, it contains just an edge of the weird and wonderful. An interesting flavour combination and a bit of an eye-opener but rather delicious. And GARH it sure did take away from the frustration I was experiencing due to a college fudge up this morning. I’ve never looked upon my electric mixer and pantry cupboard more affectionately than I did today. What stress-relievers they are. Bake, and let’s hope for a better day.

Note: This cake DOES NOT MARBLE ON ITS OWN like other marble cake recipes. The two separate batters must be added together, given one quick circular stir then transferred to your greased loaf tin. The batter isn’t as agile or active as we’d expect it to be. Between soymilk and firm tofu, this would be the latter.

Beni Imo & Sesame Marble Pound Cake 紫芋芝麻大理石磅蛋糕
(Recipe from 我♥和風洋菓子 – Japanese Title: 和スイーツの本 by 福田淳子 Junko Fukuda )
Ingredients

2 egg whites
50g caster sugar

10g cake flour, sifted
50g beni imo powder

50g cake flour, sifted
black & white sesame seeds, for garnishing

Preheat oven to 170d Celsius. Grease and flour a loaf tin.

In a large bowl, beat softened butter for about a minute. Add white sesame sauce (goma dare) and 50g caster sugar. Beat until it is creamy and lightens in colour.

Add an egg yolk one at a time, beating in between. Add vanilla and mix. Split the batter into 2 parts and add 1 tbs milk to one part of it. Mix to combine.

In a small bowl, combine 10g sifted cake flour with beni imo powder. Set aside.

Prepare egg whites: Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until it starts to froth. Add half the amount of sugar (25g) and beat for a bit more. Add the rest of the sugar when it starts to whiten and continue to beat until egg whites begin to form soft glossy peaks.

Add 1/4 of beaten egg whites to the batter with milk. Whisk to combine. Add half of the beni imo flour mix and beat. Then add another 1/4 of egg whites to the mix and whisk. Finally, add the rest of the beni imo mix and whisk to combine.

In the bowl containing the batter without milk, do the same. Add 1/4 of egg whites to it and whisk. Then add 25g cake flour and whisk. Add the final 1/4 of egg whites, whisk followed by the remaining 25g cake flour.

Add this onto the beni imo batter. Using a spatula, very gently give it ONE circular stir to mix (and create that marbling). Pour into your prepared tin, smoothen the surface and place in preheated oven to bake for 35mins. Remove from oven thereafter when cooked, or when a skewer inserted comes out clean, and leave it to cool in the tin completely.

Purple Ondeh Ondeh: a Royal Explosion

diva — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 03:14:09 +0000

I am experiencing one mega-normous phase of purple. And right before that, I was on a seriously crazed obsessive hunt for murasaki imo 紫芋 or a substitute for it. We spent a little more on the real imported thing from Japan but they were so delicious we ate them steamed before I could figure out what I could use it for that would do it justice. The hunt for purple sweet potatoes went on forever (you might’ve noticed me wailing away about it on Twitter). For all that wailing, I very unexpectedly stumbled upon two large, stop. ‘large’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, but you get the idea. These two sweet potatoes were huge and they were PURPLE! In addition to that, they were on sale. It was like I’d shook hands with the Queen except I hadn’t, I’d merely scored a sad root vegetable which was utterly covered in dirt.

Of course I had many ideas for my sweet potatoes especially since they were rather difficult to find in this region for some reason. However, time has been a very strained factor in the past few weeks what with all the menu planning for birthday dinners, Christmas dinner, work, planning in-between shopping trips, meeting up with the best girl to find out more about her wedding plans, yada yada. Finding time to stay home and buzz around the kitchen (for my own leisure that is) has been a luxury I am ashamed to say I have not had. So I had to think up something fairly quick, straightforward, using few ingredients (I really wasn’t keen on running around the island searching for things and lugging them home like a sweaty Santa) yet delicious beyond words.

Ondeh ondeh is surely one of my favourite Malay or Nyonya sweets. They are fragrant and terribly easy to pop in your mouth. Of course therein lies the danger of ondeh ondeh, relegating it to the top of the Evil Charts (popcorn chicken, salted nuts, cheesy nachos, etc.). The original ondeh ondeh, or at least the one you find out in the shops, are coloured green from a bit of colouring and pandan juice (which is naturally a dark thick shade of green). If regular orange sweet potatoes are used with no additional food colouring, they turn out a nice shade of orange or sometimes a light pastel yellow. Whichever way they come, they’re always delicious. And why? A little bit of mochi mochi goodness on the outside flavoured with crunchy but juicy bits of grated fresh coconut, the flavour made a little more interesting with a touch of salt in the coconut, a chestnut-y flavour to the skin and a climactic burst of molten gula malacca or palm sugar which has such a taste and fragrance it’ll leave you reeling.

Convinced? A word of advise, don’t bother doing the ladylike thing and nibbling into it. Do away with all that table etiquette and Western niceties, dive in and use your fingers. With a nice expert flick of a wrist, toss it into your mouth and bite/chomp down determinedly on the ondeh ondeh ball. Experience the explosion of senses to the max.

This is a type of dish I’ve learnt where its recipe is sorta handed down from generation to generation, picked up from friends and family. As my mother says, there is really no recipe to things like this! Hence, I haven’t got an exact ondeh ondeh recipe. You kinda feel the dough and its consistency as you go along. The measurements here are a recording of my own ondeh ondeh. They are purely a GUIDE and how yours turns out will depend on the wetness of your sweet potatoes, etc. You can alter the amount of flour or water according to how soft (wet) or chewy and stretchy you like your ondeh ondeh skin to be.

Because this seems like a feel-it-up-yourself type of recipe, I’ve added pictures I took during the process of making the dough balls. So if you did feel like trying your hand at ondeh ondeh, you can compare what yours looks like to mine! Happy days in the kitchen y’all.

Ingredients

A few things to note:
• I recommend using bare hands to combine and knead the dough so you can tell how wet or dry your dough is. If it is dry and difficult to combine into a ball, keep adding water but slowly and cautiously.
• dough that is too wet will result in a softer ondeh ondeh skin, meaning it’s less mochi mochi or chewy
• remove from boiling water once it floats to the top as the longer it stays dancing in the water after it is cooked, the softer and less firm it will be (sorta like ravioli – think al dente).
• if you are living in Singapore and like me, found it ridiculously difficult to find freshly grated coconut, you can find it at a coconut stall in Geylang Serai market. It’s at treasure trove of Asian vegetables, spices, preserved dried salted fish, local (and halal) butchers, etc. Or if you just wanna go DIY, instructions here. If you simply wanna do the touristy thing, go down and check out the range of bananas they’ve got: ranging from teeny weensy ones the size of a swollen thumb to humongasaurus-rex types slightly larger than my forearm!

Cut up gula melacca into small pieces and set aside for later.

Pound the pandan leaves

To prepare the pandan juice, you gotta do it the old school way. Get a huge bunch of pandan (or screwpine) leaves, give them a good wash and remove any sand or dirt that may be lingering near the roots and between the folds of its leaves. Snip off the ends which joins the bunch together then snip up the leaves into 2 inch pieces. In a pestle and mortar (if you use a food processor I won’t judge you), pound the leaves into as bitty as you can. You can do them in batches. When its pounched down well, remove from pestle and squeeze with your hands or in a muslin cloth to extract its dark green juices. This is what you’ll need to add to the ondeh dough.

Small batch ready to be squeezed for its juice

Use a muslin cloth if you’re worried about mess and have weak hands. If you’ve sensitive skin like me, the pandan juice might cause a mild itch. Set aside the juice for later.

Steam sweet potatoes (you may use the orange ones as well which would give you orange ondeh ondeh) in their skins. When cooked through, remove from the steamer and place in a large bowl. Peel off its skin and discard. Using a fork or potato masher, mash the potatoes until fine. Add a little warm water if your potatoes are rather dry and need the extra moisture to mash a little smoother.

Now add the sifted glutinous rice flour and pandan juice to the mix. Mix a little with a fork then using your hands, bring the dough together. Add water in the process to combine the dough if it is much too dry. My sweet potatoes were a dry sort and so I ended up using a little over a cup of warm water. How much you use will depend on the moistness of your sweet potatoes.

Form the dough into a ball and begin kneading. If it has a rather mouldable consistency and smooth to touch, you’re there.

Pull little pieces of dough and roll into 1 inch thick balls. Using your thumb or index finger, press down into the middle of the ball to form a hole. Be careful not to press all the way through. Place a little bit of gula malacca into the hole and pull up the sides of the dough to seal. Do not overfill them as this might cause the ondeh ondeh balls to explode when cooking. Roll the dough ball into a nice round and set aside. Repeat process until all the dough is used or you may keep leftover dough in the fridge for use the next day.

Bring a pot of water to the boil. Once the water is bubbling nicely, add your ondeh balls to the water and let it cook. It will start to dance in the water when it is nearly done. When it floats up to the surface, remove from the water straightaway. Place on a cold plate to cool slightly.

When you are waiting for the dough balls to cook, place grated coconut on a long flat dish. Add a pinch of salt and lightly toss it together to mix. When dough balls are cooked and cooled just slightly for about a minute, add them to the coconut and lightly toss about to coat them.

Then serve with additional grated coconut if you like. I place them on top of a pandan leaf which has been washed and patted dry to infuse a little more flavour into the ondeh ondeh on its last stretch before being devoured.

Matcha & Sweet Potato Mochi Cakes

diva — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:14:01 +0000

In Asia, we have a love affair for things chewy, stretchy, glutinous or as the Taiwanese describe it, QQ. Not surprisingly, Su-yin and I take much delight in things mochi so when she shared me some homemade mochi cakes (recipe here), I was hooked. And after patiently waiting for her recipe to be blogged, I decided it was imperative that I try my hand at making these QQ little treats too to satisfy my recurring cravings and the incessant need to gnaw. And because some things just come as BUY 1 GET 1 FREE, this recipe is flexible and allows you free reign to be fairly creative with your choice of ingredients.

It recently came to my attention that there was a Kansho Matsuri in Japan, translation: a Sweet Potato Festival; what goes on there I do not know so enlighten me if you do. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that the Japanese are cute and meticulous with their food, and how dedicated they are to such a humble ingredient! My pessimistic soulmate Y (now sharing a dirty flat with his younger bro in Tokyo and hating it) will correct me, say I’m being ridiculous and declare all Japanese people mad. I wonder why we get along so well like maple syrup and pancakes. Call it coincidence, fate or whatevs, we are going through a similar sweet potato phase in my house and the little voice in my head was suggesting we go in the direction of baked sweet potatoes. But that on its own, although delicious with honey and coconut milk, is a tad boring and might not hold your attention for long.

I’ve used Japanese sweet potatoes here, purple-skinned and of the yellow flesh which has a lovely sweet, buttery and chestnut-like flavour. I thought this might be better for a mochi-based cake since the regular Western sweet potato (orange-fleshed) tends to be a lot wetter/watery and sometimes less sweet. And you know me, after the colour green (hence the matcha), I’m drawn to purple like a kiwi bird is to shiny things so purple-skinned spuds for the win!

A very basic and popular way of eating sweet potatoes is to steam them after washing, leave to cool a little and then break them in half to share and eat with friends and family. Some other ways it is served is to have it steamed, skinned, soaked in syrup and coconut milk – another type of sweet yam, the tapioca, is served this way in my country and is so delicious and fragrant you almost feel drugged on a couple of mouthfuls; or cooked in sweet soups, savoury soups, desserts, etc. The variations are countless. A favourite bakery of mine also makes these very light and delicate steamed white cakes – it’s like eating a cloud for goodness sake – and it has little bits of steamed sweet potatoes in it. You can say that’s probably what inspired these cakes.

We all know the health properties of matcha already, that it is vit C-packed and so forth so I won’t bother to expound on that. But of course, FYI, when subjected to high heat like when baking or scalded by boiling water, matcha loses all of its amazing properties. Therefore, a word of advice is to use regular cooking grade matcha for baked goods and save the real ceremony-grade stuff for drinking. With regards to sweet potatoes, you’ll be pleased to know that they are pretty resilient babies. They aren’t just vitamin-packed and easy to cook or scrummy in anything. Sweet potatoes are rich in dietary fibre and because they contain loads of anthocyanoside, is good for bringing down high blood pressure, effects of constipation and is apparently great for the skin (not surprised, its vit C eh!). Plus, they are cheap and great at staving off hunger.

So maybe what I’m trying to say here is that my main ingredients aren’t too naughty? Does that make my mochi cakes less sinful? You decide.

So how did these turn out?

Because the steamed sweet potatoes added a bit more moisture to the cake, I had to bake them a little bit longer. I was half tempted to let these cakes dry out more in the oven, seeing as I’m not used to baking with mochiko (rather than boiling/steaming/grilling) it. These cakes upon pulling apart looked like muffins, with a similar consistency and lovely fluffiness but it is thoroughly deceiving because the cake is stretchy, chewy and almost glistens with its glutinous content. Delicious, moist and very different to the regular cupcake/muffin (might take some getting used to for mochi virgins). That chewy bite, soft but with a little resistance, is also satisfying and slightly more-ish. The taste was pretty good and that surely is the work of evaporated milk but one thing I would never ever use again, and all of it going down the drain right now, is vanilla essence! I hate that stuff and do not know why there are still bottles of that stuff in my house.

The smell of it reeks and I might have used a tad too much for these cakes in my desperation for a teaspoon of vanilla. Mistake.

Vanilla essence fail. Ignore that, and these QQ mochi cakes are still rocking it.

Matcha & Sweet Potato Mochi Cakes
(Recipe adapted from Lemonpi, inspired by Suyin from BreadetButter)
Ingredients

Wash and gently scrub the sweet potatoes being careful not to scrub off its precious skin. If your potatoes are fairly large and bulbous, you might want to pierce a few holes on it with a fork before steaming. Bring some water to boil in a steamer. Steam potatoes until they are just cooked through and not too mushy. Let cool on a place and set aside for later. When it is cool to handle, cut them up into small cubes or pieces.

Preheat the oven to 175d Celsius. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan or line with muffin papers.

Sift the mochiko, baking powder and matcha together in a bowl.
In another bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together with an electric mixer on high speed until light and fluffy.

Fold in melted butter, then the evaporated milk and vanilla. Fold in the flour mixture and the sweet potato pieces until just incorporated.

Pour cake mixture into muffin tin, filling it up to 3/4 full. Place in oven to bake for 20-25 mins. I found my muffins a little wet and baked it for another 5 mins. Cool on rack completely then store in an airtight container.

The elusive purple-fleshed sweet potato Murasaki Imo

diva — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 16:26:48 +0000

After the red velvet, kuromame (black sesame), matcha and kinako, my one other love is sweet potato! Particularly, the elusive and rather expensive purple-fleshed variety. Many regard the sweet potato as a wholesome and vitamin-stuffed carbohydrate, a lovely alternative to the regular spud in bangers and mash or a flexible ingredient used in both savoury and sweet dishes or snacks. For us, me & my family & Singaporeans in particular, sweet potatoes are a very humbling edible root. And they are symbolic of the Japanese Occupation during WWII.

Sweet potatoes were (and for some, still are) a common root vegetable grown in back gardens, etc. A hardy root, sweet potatoes can grow in many types of soil and rarely need pesticides. It is commonly known to us as belonging to that category known as ‘poor man’s food’. But like all poor man’s food, they are not only cheap and easy to grow and cook but delicious as well. They lose very little of its beneficial elements after cooking too. Both the root and its leaves can be eaten. Sweet potato leaves fried in belachan is a common Malaysian, Singaporean nyona dish that’s fragrant and quite gorgeous.

During the Japanese Occupation when rice was scarce and rationing was implemented so as to feed starving families, people were encouraged or forced to use whatever land they had to grow tapiocas, yams and sweet potatoes. However, sweet potatoes were the most commonly grown and the one root that is to today still almost immediately associated with WWII. As my gramma says, it was a sweet potato for breakfast lunch and dinner every day of the week and sometimes there wasn’t even enough to go round. There were even some people whose legs swelled up and became too painful to walk from such an imbalanced diet and malnutrition. Today, although sweet potatoes form the basis of many delicious treats, desserts and savoury dishes, when cooked in the most simple way – washed and scrubbed, then steamed and broken into 2 to share amongst family members – they are symbolic of the pain and suffering our ancestors (living or dead) had to go through during the Japanese Occupation.

On a lighter note, a favourite Chinese dessert of mine is the sweet potato ginger sweet soup. My maternal gramma once cooked it for me after a day at kindergarten but instead of using the local orange-fleshed sweet potato which can be found at all markets and bought for cheap, she’d used a purple-fleshed sweet potato that on cooking had dyed the soup a light pinkish purple. As I remember it today, it was a REAL treat! How different that soup was and although it didn’t exactly taste vastly different, its vibrant colour certainly gave it a special twinkle. Somehow, as the years have passed and I’ve grown up, finding these purple-fleshed potatoes are like searching for a needle in a haystack. My father, who used to have a little farm patch of his own and had started growing vegetables and sweet potatoes as a young boy of 12, reminisced of his days of attempting to grow the perfect purple potatoes.

Unfortunately, these purple potatoes are ridiculously hard to find here in Singapore. Instead, Australian orange-fleshed ones and the yellow-fleshed purple skin Japanese sweet spuds are increasingly popular in local markets. The purple-fleshed spud is nowhere in sight, not even a trace! Nevertheless, these purple spuds which are known as murasaki imo in Japanese are also hard to find even in Japan, being only available at certain times of the year in select supermarkets. Over the weekend, we were lucky to stumble upon these at Isetan which bring these in only once a year. They timed it well I suppose, since it coincided with their Okinawan food fair.

You can imagine my happiness…to have found my purple Queen once again.

Beni Imo Dango (Deep-Fried Sweet Potato Dango)

Sakura Daifuku with Anko Filling from Sun Moulin bakery

And with these treats we took home, I proudly declared it tea time!

Now, to fully and very completely satisfy my purple imo cravings, I need to go find me this! Pocky…oh, it shall take me back to my childhood and high school days – chomping down on stick after stick during a boring lecture. Bliss. Next on my agenda: find a way to plant these beautiful spuds in my own garden. With our ridiculously hot weather, fertile soil and green-fingered parents, we might be able to successfully harvest my purple Queens.

Guinness Beef Stew with Bitter Chocolate

diva — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:52:41 +0000

I haven’t eaten a piece of cow meat for a long time. Translated: I haven’t had beef for months. Yes. It’s madness. Think of that as a teaser, ponder upon that ridiculousness for a bit whilst I beat around the bush…and no, I’m hardly the vegetarian.

The past week’s weather has been drop dead gorgeous and hopefully mentioning that hasn’t jinxed it for this week (probably has by now). Sunny and beautiful as it was, however, I got deceived by it all a couple of times thinking a lighter jacket was more than warm enough for me to step out into the sun. Mistake. More often than not, that first step out into the cold, similar to a newborn baby’s noisy entrance into the world, was followed by general shrieking, long strings of cussing and unattractive groans and grrrs from me. Chanting ‘suck it up’ in my head, I spend about 5 mins racing through the cold to warm up and literally walking only in the sunny areas, avoiding all shadowy spots at all costs to get as much warmth as possible. Through the day, I’ll catch myself jerking uncontrollably when a big cold gust of wind comes a-blowing. Travelling between uni, work and home then, I find myself constantly thinking of warm, comfort foods as a way to encourage myself and as incentive to get those icy feet moving quickly to take me home. It certainly is most effective and definitely keeps the strangers from talking to you (I’m that engrossed in my thoughts you see).

I am happy nonetheless with this generous amount of sun we’ve got the past week and it has made the week so much bearable despite the looming deadlines and the awful stack of readings to do. And as the saying goes, good things come in pairs, so did a nice surprise come along with this beautiful sun – some very high (for The Sugar Bar at least) views for 4th March. Because they exceeded my expectations, I rewarded myself with some lovely fresh and tender stewing beef from Waitrose and got set to working on a nice hot stew to keep that bone-chilling cold away as well. In Chinese culture, having meat on the table is representative of how fortunate a family is and is partially reflective of the wealth of that family. In Korea, beef is quite a luxury and eating it becomes an occasion. So I suppose, it wasn’t such a strange thing to reward myself with beef after all! Especially since I hardly ever buy red meats in my weekly shop, finally buying some made it feel all that more special. It’s not that I don’t eat red meat. I actually love a good medium rare steak and other red meats like pork and veal. It’s just that I think cooking red meats require more effort and so never really bother to get them since I can never be sure when I have the time to cook a meal or not and dare not risk having nice meat go bad in the fridge.

I did think at first that a 22 year old like me should probably be buying nail lacquers and pretty notebooks as a reward not packets of bloody red meat from the delicatessen. It just didn’t quite fit the bill but then again, I doubt that ever bothers me; and I’m quite happy to say foodbloggers are a unique species of their own with priorities set right to a tee, fine senses highly tuned and dedicated to the arts of eating, cooking and food-shopping. So why not the beef?! Just chuck it in the shopping basket already now! By the time I’d finished my shopping and was eagerly waiting to pay at the check-outs, so hungry I was all bloodshot eyes and nearly frothing at the mouth, the basket was exploding with root vegetables, baguettes, bitter chocolate, beer and herbs, etc. I didn’t need a sign on my forehead to alert the passersby and fellow Waitrose shoppers that this Diva here was as dangerous as a rabid dog and as ravenous. Minimal chit chat with the lovely lady at the checkout till, quick goodbye and outta there like a flash. Then home, out comes the chopping board. Bang bang chop chop chop and turn on the hob.

Then here comes the biggest joke of my life. Check recipe – stew needs to cook for at least 6 hours. Ok, put lid on and move on to ‘light’ snacking. Had to reprimand myself for not putting the stew on earlier. Panic not though as here’s when I whack out another saying: Good things come to those who wait.

I waited.

And when I was done waiting, it was good. Thoroughly impressed with this recipe which is such a great find from The Parsley Thief blog. Definitely one of those that I’ve saved for future use, especially for meal times with the family. I think Dad will be very happy to find a stew like this at the dinner table. What a meat man. Not really a Guinness man but he’ll appreciate the blokish-ness of this dish. Plus bitter chocolate sure gives it such a cool edginess I think the rest of the girlies in my house will adore it. Mum may find that addition dubious – she’s the only woman I know who doesn’t like chocolate. Real tough to please when it comes to homemade birthday cakes I tell you – but this isn’t a chocolatey stew and it’s not so strong like a Mole Poblano. I don’t think I could really taste the chocolate but I bet I would taste a real difference and have seen a big difference in colour if I hadn’t added it.

Something I discovered when making this, Green & Black’s Cook’s 72% dark chocolate is heaven. It’s even better than the dark chocolate from their regular range, in my opinion. It might be because it’s a lot richer and more bitter for cooking purposes than the eating chocolate which is totally up my alley. It was good. I might just stick to buying Cook’s chocolate from now on to satiate my dark chocolate cravings.

Just sent this in to Daily Spud‘s Paddy’s Day Food Parade event too in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day on March 17th. I can’t wait to see the round-up. Yum yum Irishness.

Cranberry & Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb, with Baked Potato & Vegetables

diva — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:01:25 +0000

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

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

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!