pork: the second of three ways to cook it! in a bid to to recreate that quintessential taste of home, he decided to whip up a batch of sweet and sour pork, even if we were missing some things, like pineapple and peppers. and due to my incessant nagging for a healthier dish that didn't include deep fried nubblets of pork, he came up with this one.

it sounds far more enticing to me, anyway.

pan-fried pork with sweet onions in a sweet and sour sauce.

as tiffy goes on her veggie adventure, i shall show you a bit of the porky adventures i've been having. because my dinner companion enjoys meat and is keen to try making some of his favorites ourselves, we've tried to make charsiu and siewyoke and gulu yoke, or roast pork done three ways for you anglophiles.

(i say it like im not one, heh heh.)

these are the pictures from our recent crispy roast pork experiment. there were so many schools of thought on how to roast the pork, in particular these three styles:

1. high heat to crisp the skin before low to cook the pork through

2. low heat to cook the meat through, before grilling/frying to crisp the skin

3. stove-top to sear the meat and skin through, before roasting to cook it thoroughly.

this girl cannot deal with so many choices. ultimately, i did it my style.

here's how i did it. first up, i scored the skin, and rubbed in wine, five-spice powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon into the top. after placing it on a pan, i left it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight (nearly 24hours) to dry it out so it'd crisp over night. also, i sliced garlic thinly to lay on the skin in the pretty pattern you see below, because he can't take the strong taste of garlic and i would have to pluck the garlic off before cooking.

first time making pancakes, with quite some help cooking them. i very nicely made the batter, which was SUPER easy, just dont over-mix them. and also took photographs of the followinglovely poppy seed pancakes (yes, i do love them):

we had lovely honey we bought from a small shop in a park somewhere in eastern europe. the shopkeeper was selling quite a few types of honey, and as you can see the honeycomb was inside the jar as well. this was realaly rather lovely honey.

I had some leftover cornmeal (from my attempt at corn pudding, some Mauritian traditional dessert) and I had a craving for the kind of Kenny Roger corn muffins I used to eat. I didn't have any corn on me, but I decided to bake cornbread. It turned out rather dry so I made a moist honey pecan syrup to drizzle all over the bread.

It's getting to be subzero temperatures and what I crave is a hot pie. Since I've gone back to my supermarket shopping lifestyle, I've discovered a whole range of "vegetarian" substitutes, like this vegetarian brown sauce. The first thing to try with it: Shepherd's Pie! Delicious.

One of the houses on the way to the farmer's market. This is the official end of the CSA season, and I miss their vegetables already. I'm not quite sure I can distinguish non-organic from organic produce, but I found the CSA veggies to be extremely flavorful and fresh.

made two cakes this year, both different style and in texture, but both equally pretty, or so i think.

here's them

2 white chocolate cake layers sandwiched with dark chocolate ganache, frosted with white chocolate frosting and sprinkled with pistachios. the layer cake was a cupcake batter that i baked in a cake pan, and it was only enough to cut into two layers.

just as a note, the white chocolate was grated into very fine 'flour' before being mixed into the batter. this gave it an intense white chocolate taste that you wouldn't normally get, and also is different to the usual chocolate batters which would require cocoa powder, or the chocolate to be melted. those cakes can end up dense and moist, but this made for a stronger white chocolate flavour and a light, dryer cake.

the dark chocolate ganache is a simply recipe, and the white chocolate frosting was meant to be cupcake frosting. the white chocolate doesn't melt easily and seizes very easily when being heated, so be careful with that. otherwise, the frosting was very easy and went smoothly. the only thing particular about it is that it needs to be chilled to be stiff enough for frosting apparently, although mine was already rather stiff fresh. i did chill it however, but also had to subsequently set it to room temperature for a bit so it would be spreadable.

the second was the brownie mosaic cheesecake, baked higher this time with a sprinkling of nuts on the ganache surface. the deeper cake made for a creamier centre and t\he brownie bits came out awesome. the tip of freezing the brownie bits before cutting really led to cleaner lines and nicer cubes. but all in all the cheesecake melded together very nicely.

i used bourbon cream (just the biscuits!) for a chocolate crust that went better with the chocolate flavours in the cake. this was well received, but quite rather rich. i liked the creamy inside though. and as with all smitten kitchen recipes, these were easy and came through with brilliant results.

possibly liked the white chocolate one best of all.

This recipe is from a friend

It makes a chocolatey puff of air

It's what dreams are made of

It's the absolute height of fall at the moment, and in fact it's a little past-we've already had first snow a week ago. Thankfully, it's warmed up again, so I hope to get some last bit of CSA-goodness before the cold season starts in full swing. It's hard to find time to bake random stuff, but it's good that my weekly visits to the farmer's market yields lots of pictures.

because a friend loves cheesecake, i decided to make some.

AND plus cream cheese was so cheap i had to buy some.

digestive cookie crust,

one cheesecake batter divided into 2 and flavored with baileys and coffee, layered into mini muffin silicon moulds,

and baked up into a gorgeous piece.

note to self: next time, if one batter is obviously denser than the other, just follow instinct and put the heavier one at the bottom. don't just layer it any way you want because it might look pretty.

i used 1/4 cup of baileys for 2/3 of this recipe, and while taste-wise it was perfect, the fact that there was only 1 tablespoon of concentrated coffee in the other half of the batter meant the alcoholic one was much wetter than the coffee one. in this case, the bailey's batter goes better on top because otherwise the coffee will sink into it and threaten to mess up the pretty layers.

just an addendum, the flavors in both batters are wonderfully strong and yet subtle. people will pick up on the flavors as according to their tastes, and i had people only picking up on the alcohol, or only on the coffee. good for telling who's an alcoholic, or a caffeine-addict since they'll be more sensitive to the other one.

i still have no internet available at home (tilll wednesday!) which would explain the long hiatus in blogging. devoid of pretty things and eventful days i have picked up baking with a vengeance once again, and this time using my favorite poppy seeds.

i bring you poppy seed sandwich cookies.

these are very simple in conception: a nice plain-ish cookie, sandwiched with filling of your choice. this was off 101cookbooks, which by the way is a blog that inspires me to cook a lot healthier and try out new and alternative flours etc., and was a simple cut-out cookie recipe with a simple melted chocolate filling.

mix up the easy batter, which came out very easily, chill it for at least half hour, cut out the shapes, and bake till golden brown. how much easier do you expect it to get?

i didn't deviate from her recipe because it looked so good and had just the right amount of poppy seeds: not so many that you couldn't enjoy the speckled look, but not so few that you didn't know they were there.

after baking and cooling, leave those pretty cookies on a plate and bring out your jar of nutella.

oh come on, you know you have one in the cupboard.

i used the jar of nutella i had as a filling so that i wouldn't keep eating eat it right out of the jar. heidi on 101 uses melted chocolate which i think would work great as well, but i haven't found anything that quite takes away the place nutella has in my heart.

and be generous with it.

place as much as you can without the nutella oozing out. although if it does, you could always just lick it off your hands.

when you have cookies this pretty, you almost don't want to eat them. almost.

i gave these away as a housewarming gift for a friend, and it was finished in 10 minutes. don't doubt the power of nutella.

Behold- the encyclopedia which I borrowed and have not read. Another unaccomplished fall break assignment... well, to some extent. Seeing as I have been unable these past few days to wake up at an early enough hour to start my dough, I tried a recipe from this book. It turned out pretty good! I guess because focaccia is basically all about the quality of olive oil used...

I learnt this from a cooking class organized at my school. It's typical Mauritian cooking, and the recipe is really simple. I don't think its too unfair to post it online, because there are similar ones available and it's no family secret or anything. Try making it, it takes about 20 minutes on the stove and 5h in the fridge before you tuck in.

 Tastes somewhat like the real thing, but isn't. So no recipe is provided until I tweak out the problems. Trouble is, I don't understand the recipe, it's in Japanese. So I went online to the first google search result and the recipe was a poor one (I'm not going to slander it, though).

Finally, back from hiatus! Here's a slice of milky, airy cheesecake- the way I grew up eating it. I just can't understand the love for American-style cheezy cake. 

i made biscotti! again, i know. i love the sheer crispness of it, and the fact that so little fat is necessary for baking (makes it easier when im just not bothered enough to warm butter, or even buy butter).

the original recipe was meant to make an immensely chunky, nut-speckled cracker with the dough serving more like gravel does to hold bricks in place, but i chose a less chunky version with sweet raisins because sometimes, i just plain like the cracker. toss the flour in a bowl and top with your assortment of goodies: here i chose mixed chopped nuts (always found that these were easier to use in biscotti because you didnt have to risk messing up your cutting when the nuts were just too hard oops i believe that was a sexual innuendo :x), sweet dark currants and poppy seeds. poppy seeds are AMAZING. i love the taste and smell of them, and miss them desperately when i can't get them in singapore.


if you would mix them all up, you get this thick dough. but persevere! halfway through i thought she had missed out adding the oil in with the egg, but if you continue, it does mix up to a very nicely thick dough that's easy to work with.



pat it into logs, or press it into a loaf pan. didnt have the latter, so i made these by hand. the dough was wonderful! i didnt even need to damp my fingers to work with it.


toss them in the oven and cook till done, and remove to a chopping board.



after slicing, toast them in the oven once more, a couple minutes each side, and you get WONDERFUL biscotti.


you can find the original list of ingredients on the link above, but here is what i used.

1 1/3 cups white whole wheat flour
1 cup currants
2 tbsp poppy seeds
2/3 cup chopped nuts
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup castor sugar

yes, i know the oil is missing from the equation. i didnt have a brush to use, and didnt think it would be necessary for my biscotti to brown, so i plain left it out. to your discretion, dearies.

and just as a treat! here is some castella cake that my housemate bought from japan. it's really a soft, lovely, butter sponge cake. i havent had it before, although i've been reading about it and i thought it would be denser, like a butter cake, and richer. but it really was rather nice and japanese, if that makes sense.

here's trying out a pie crust that i saw online and was intrigued by. david lebovitz's melted and browned butter crust, together with his recipe for a lime meringue tart tweaked to a lemon-orange one.


it's really fun! you mix oil, butter, water, sugar in a bowl, and place it in the preheating oven that you're preparing to bake the crust. after that, dump the flour in its entirety and watch it sizzle away. so exciting that i completely forgot the camera (largely because im a wimp and and didnt dare to leave in case the flour burnt or something drastic like that. rescue's are a no-no, im completely disgusting at them). then you mix it up very easily into a dough that leaves the sides of the bowl, and is malleable and easy to work with.


press the dough into tart pans ( i chose to use mini tart ones). OR you can get someone to do this sort of menial tasks while you get on with the filling.



dont press these in too thickly though, because you want a good mix between the crust and the filling, and because these crusts rise for some reason, although there isnt too much mixing or leavening.


prepare 3 eggs and 3 egg yolks in a bowl and omgosh look so pretty.


mix it in with lemon juice and butter that has been warmed in a saucepan, and whisk it in together.


see they rise and make a puffy biscuit. this was not expected, which is why the crust really was thicker than i might have wanted it. it tasted good though, but the crust was brittle and so cracked and broke a lot easier.


use the filling, and then bake this for another ten minutes to set the top. they look very aesthetically pleasing right now! and so tart and nice.


prepare a stiff meringue (although i didnt do this well enough, and the meringue didnt hold up nor hold onto the grooves when i piped them out). AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LEAVE A BOY WITH A PIPING BAG AND LEFTOVER MERINGUE.

dont do it, unless you're absolutely sure you dont want it anymore.


delegate work, and get someone else to do the piping if you're not sure about it yourself. bet you remember when earlier i said you could hence blame someone else this way (:



here's when i say the crust was brittle. tasted very good though! and here i burnt the meringue because i left it under the broiler for far too long ):

here's the recipe for the filling and crust, and just replace the lime juice with a mix of orange and lemon juice for a more interestingly-tasting one. adjust the sugar to taste, of course.

start with a hunk of bread dough. smash down and cut into strips with a pizza cutter (which you would have in your possession), brush one side with butter and dip into cinnamon sugar and bake.


make curly-wurly twists (only because the pan doesnt allow for full length twists).


or make elegant long sticks. that you could probably serve in a tall vase as an elegant starter.

ideas of savory versions with herbs, or sweet ones with other spices and or herbs.
make up your own!

how does that not sound nice to you? the formula is simple, and what's better: this cake is fat-free. which means less-guilt, since it's almost non-fat but for the chocolate, but not guilt-less, since there's quite a bit of sugar in there.


mash up three bananas to a pulpy mix. i dont usually have the patience to wait for them to ripen, so i always end up using just-ripe bananas for the bread. haven't found any problems with moistness in the final dough though.


mix this up with the usual suspects: flour, sugar, cinnamon powder and baking soda. mmmm, a one-bowl operation.


and look: i chopped up my own chocolate. the last time i properly worked with chocolate chips was a long time ago, and i have resolved not to do that unless i absolutely have to. i love having proper chunks of proper chocolate in my baked goods, and especially in cookies, where they swirl around in the dough. plus i find that many chocolate chips have this strange plasticky sort of taste to them. the hershey sort is alright, but i dont even like those. buy proper chocolate people, it's far worth it.


bake it, cool it, unmold it, cut it.

and be a good neighbor.


look at the chocolate in there! and a chunk of banana as well.
LOVE.