I feel immensely proud

Four more days, world athletes will get together to share and to compete. No politics, just a healthy dose of sportsmanship, for a few days, when I feel we are truly a family.

London 2012 and Great Britain, I feel so proud to be here and witness it all.

Survival by Muse

London Olympic 2012 Official Song

I am a convert

to Dan Lepard.

Since I made my transatlantic move 11 years ago, life has adapted rather smoothly. Don't get me wrong, even with a common language, there are considerable differences between two countries, culturally to everyday life routines. Nevertheless, overall I felt I've had a suave transition.

However, baking is not one of them.

American recipes do not seem to work well here, at least in my kitchen. It could be the different measurement system (super convenient cups vs more precise weight by scale), the quality of flour (for instance, wheat varieties, the inherent moisture and gluten content) or different ovens. There could be other reasons but my experience tells me that I simply can't pluck a recipe from an American source, no matter how reliable the source is, and expect it to work in my British kitchen. Also for reasons unknown to me, I refused to convert to the weight by scale system widely used in Europe. I am not sure why. Perhaps I was trying to hang on to the last faint connection I thought I had with America. For the past decade, my baking success is not great (50-70%) when I try a new recipe (still stubbornly chosen  from North America). As a result, I tend to stick to a few recipes which I know to reproduce.

But all changed when I got a new cooker/oven. I decided to ditch my old habit of baking and start to embrace it more scientifically, with a kitchen scale. And I switched to Dan Lepard's recipes.

Gosh, what a revelation. They turn out just like what he showed on his newspaper column. E.V.E.R.Y.T.I.M.E.

I will share with you two of his recipes. They not only make great baking goods but also are also a great fun in baking education. Both recipes call for 300 grams of flour but the amount of eggs and butter differ. The recipe which makes muffins uses only half of the eggs/butter required by the recipe making cakes. By trying both recipes, it clearly shows me the crumb texture difference between muffins and (cup) cakes. I am also amazed to see (again) how adaptable flour is. In addition, both recipes appear to be quite amendable for substitutions. I have replaced the milk/cream with plain yogurt, swapping corn flour with ground almond, adding nuts or different berries to the batter. All turned out great so far. 

Hallelujah. Thank you, Dan.

Sweet muffins with yogurt and cream 

Here are the variations I made.

Lemon muffins. Used milk instead of the milk/cream combo. Used ground almond instead of corn flour and added zest of one lemon.

Coconut muffins. Used coconut cream instead of double cream. I sprinkled dessicated coconut on top of muffins. Yummy.






I also made the blueberry version. Use plain yogurt instead of the milk/cream combo. Used ground almond instead of corn flour. Decorated the top with blueberries. They were fab.

All-purpose easy butter cake

I made them into cupcakes form. Decorate the top with one pecan each. These were wonderful!!

Three pretty good things: 7 July

1. My blackcurrant harvest

I planted a little blackcurrant bush about 30cm high last year during spring time. Ben Lomond is the variety I went for, which is wildly available here. Last summer I got about six precious blackcurrants. This year I got more than 800 grams of these babies. Wow, I am very impressed and hugely excited. As the canning bug is still with me, I turned them into five jars of jam. I relied on Dan Lepard's recipe, except for the addition of lemon. Blackcurrants are tart enough and have enough naturally occurring pectin to be jelled on its own. We are all thrilled by the end products. Yes they taste differently from the superb French blackcurrants my father-in-law grows but they are next best things, my English blackcurrants, which are adored just as much.

2. My new cooker

I inherited a camel colored cooker when I moved into this house. The oven and the grill were never working but the gas stove was. It lasted 10 years under my reign and we decided that this year it shall retire. We've got a new one with dual oven. What can I say? I've never appreciated fully a gas cooker until this week. My muffins turned out picture perfect, with cute looking dome shape top and seductively browned. The roast lamb shoulder is perfectly crisp on the skin and ever so tender inside. And the roasted cauliflowers, oh my, hubby said it's a winner in a roast lamb dinner!

3. Olympic torch relay in my town

The Olympic torch relay passed my street today. It was very moving to see the army soldiers being part of the parade. And the torch bearers are chosen not because they are TV starts but because they mean something to our local community. I like that very much. 

Pastabilities!

The idea has been on my mind for a while, to come up a list of my favorite pasta sauce/dishes. Initially I could only draw up three recipes, all cream based. It certainly showed my personal bias in pasta and that I needed to explore more before settling on a final list. So I did. I have been trying various tomato based pasta dishes this year. And how much fun I have had. Exploring new flavor combination is not only fun technically but also a learning process for the taste bud. I really had a great time working my way through the pasta world. The final list will be of course forever changing but here are our favorites so far.

My personal top 10:

Glam Mac and Cheese: the magic ingredient in this recipe is dolcelatte, a milder creation in the blue cheese department for the British market. It perks up your regular mac and cheese like no others. Try it!

Chorizo and Cream: If you like chorizo, you will like this. Quick and tasty. What can you ask for more? When I make it, I omit the herbs as I find them masking the natural flavors of the ingredients unnecessarily. Single cream works for me too. And I sometimes add two bell peppers to the sauce and call it Three-Pepper Pasta.

Pasta Carbonara: I like this Italian classic with caramelized onion, garlic and some cream. And of course, lots of freshly ground black pepper!

Tagliatelle with Gorgonzola and walnut. Walnuts are optional but provide a nice crunch. The Gorgonzola cream sauce is just heavenly.

Sardine, tomato, capers, black olives and chilli pasta. This is my favorite way to eat canned sardines. The ingredient list is very Puttanesca but I prefer sardine to anchovies. You could try with canned tuna too!

Anna del Conte's Tomato and dried porcini sauce

Giada De Laurentiis's Vegetable bolognese

Jamie Oliver's Sausage and fennel seeds pasta

My favorite pasta sauce is Marcella Hazan's Tomato, onion and butter sauce. Hands down. Best sauce ever. Three ingredients, perfectly matched and proportioned. I've tried it on pasta, rice and pizza. It just makes everything taste better. Success every time!

Self-administered sunshine

I finally saw a sign of British summer. This weekend is dry and has patches of sun. My roses are all coming out now. The garden is just a lovely place to be, the color, the smell and the life.

With external sunshine, that brings out the internal sunshine in me as well. Here is what I had for breakfast recently, coconut bread with pineapple jam, a self-administered tropical sun on the table.

This coconut bread has no added grease (don't you feel better already?)  and it tastes heavenly straight out of a toaster oven. Great for breakfast or afternoon tea.

Coconut bread (adapted from Lucinda Scala Quinn)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut flakes

Preheat the oven to 175C. 

In a bowl, sift in flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. 

In another bowl, beat the egg and vanilla together. Add in the milk, coconut and flour mixture. Stir lightly until well combined. Put in a small greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour, or until the bread is springy to touch. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Turn the bread out onto a wire rack to cool before slicing.

Best eating when just toasted. Lovely just on its own, or smear with butter, cream cheese and/ or pineapple jam (as in the photo).

It's green!

The idea came from a lovely friend and she knows a lot about making beautiful things in the kitchen and around the house. So I made my first glass of avocado smoothie today. Boy, did it look green and did it taste good!

Avocado adds a touch of creaminess to the smoothie, feeling very velvety and luxurious. Although a glass of the green smoothie might scare a few faint-hearted ones, I am not one of them. Even the hubby liked it despite taking it cautiously with some question marks all over the face.

Here is the combination I used:

- 1 ripe avocado
- mango and passion fruit yogurt
- plain yogurt
- 1 tbsp lime and pineapple jam
- soya milk
- water

Blend everything up. Adjust the thickness with water/soya milk and sweetness with jam (or honey).

ps. When hubby asked the content of my green smoothie, I simply said that it's a mixture of fruits and yogurt. Strictly, it's not deviating from the truth, right?

I make - Lime and pineapple jam

Yes, I know, another jam recipe. Canning is such a fun way to experiment flavor combination, don't you think? I seem to get a kick out of it. Please bear with me for a while. I got the idea of lime and pineapple combo from visiting Chatsworth House shop which mentions Lime and Pineapple Jam as Duchess's favorite. Hmm, you can't get more tropical than lime and pineapple. Plus, pineapples are currently half price here. How can I resist?

By the way, Chatsworth House is a wonderful place to spend a day. Its elegant architectural and landscape design is one of the best examples saying Less Is More. In addition, the staff and and the management team are some of the best I've seen, in friendliness, estate knowledge, interactions with visitors and efficiency. If you happen to be in England, you will not regret visiting the estate.

Ok, back to my lime pineapple jam. There are many pineapple recipes floating on the internet. They are more or less the same. The main ingredient is, of course, pineapple. The sour ingredient usually comes from lemon or lime. Some choose to flavor it with spice, like cardamoms or cloves. I prefer making my own plain, especially for the first time, to truly appreciate the original flavor of a recipe before adapting it further. One common thing from all the internet posts is many commenting on the extended time for pineapple jam to jell. One solution is to add commercial pectin which is as good and convenient. I opt to making my own pectin rich water. Just for fun.

Lime and Pineapple Jam

- One large pineapple, cored and grated, roughly 5-6 cups (juice and flesh)
- Juice from one lemon
- Juice from one orange and zest from half of the orange
- Zest and juice from two limes
- 2.5 cups of white sugar
- 2 cup of pectin rich water obtained with the method below (could be replaced with 1 cup of plain water)

Pectin rich water
- 2 Bramley apples (or other cooking types), roughly chopped including skins, pits and all
- Shells of juiced and zested lemons and limes
- 3 cups of water (or enough water to cover the fruits)

First, macerate grated pineapples with 1 cup of sugar for at least one hour. Longer if desired.

Now, prepare the pectin water. Put apples, shells of juiced lemons and limes, and water in a non-reactive pot. Bring it to boil and turn the heat down to simmer for at least 30 minutes. Filter the water out and discard all the fruity bits.

In a large pot, put the macerated pineapples in, juice and all. Cook the pineapples for 45 minutes. Then add in citrus juice and zest, the pectin water and remaining 1.5 cup of sugar. Bring the pot back to boil and cook the mixture until your candy thermometer registers 105C. You may need to taste the jam a few times to adjust the sugar or acidity level to your liking. Be careful when you do so, because the jam is hot and remember that hot jam tastes sweeter than room-temperature one. Be sure to take that into account when you adjust the sugar/acidity.

Pour the finished jam into sterilised jars.