Apricot Oatmeal Bar With Pistachios - Getting Ready For Christmas

As October gives way to November, that non-plussed 'it's ok, we still have time' easiness gets a jolt from reality. The head starts to throb as the year to date sales is still 40% behind budget, the business calendar is still filled with travel plans all the way to 20th Dec and the imminent loom of 2010 sends a cruel reminder that I will be turning into an ancient hag....

It is still a little early to take stock of what I have done with the year but just about the right time to experiment with Christmas treats. For giveaways, cookies have always been my favourite choice - they keep longer and are easier to scale up. I remember working with Linzer Cookies and Guimauves last year but was less skilled at baking then. Blogging over the last couple of months has made me more meticulous when I bake/cook as I terribly want my food to look good for the photos. So hopefully, this year, my treats will be more presentable.

These Apricot Oatmeal Bars are adapted from the very talented Joycelyn Shu's Christmas Cookie Class. Joycelyn's creations have always filled me with awe. She is uber meticulous and is amazing with details but she also has a tooth that is so saccharin sweet that I half suspect that she was an ant in her previous life.

Apart from cutting down the amount of sugar in the oatmeal crumble by a whopping 70% , I also chose to make my own Apricot filling. I had liked Pierre Herme's treatment of the dried apricots in his Apricot Passion Fruit Chocolate Tartlet. I had liked the way he steeped the dried apricot in a mixture of lemon juice, a dash of honey and a pinch of freshly ground pepper.The steeped apricots pureed beautifully into a thick paste and offers a healthy substitute to bottled preserves and jams.

The end result is a scrumptiously crumbly oatmeal bar filled with the natural sweetness of dried apricots. I can't wait to test them on my colleagues tomorrow!

Recipe :

Oatmeal Crumble
130g         All purpose plain flour
90g           Quick Cooking Oats
40g           Light brown muscovado sugar
1/4tsp       Salt
120g         Unsalted butter chilled and cut into small cubes

70g           Chopped Pistachios

Apricot Filling
170g         Dried apricots
1/2 cup     Water
1tsp          Honey
3Tbsp       Lemon juice
Dash of freshly ground pepper

Method :

Apricot Filling
1. Place all ingredients of Apricot filling into a heavy saucepan and bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10minutes. Remove apricot from heat and let it steep for at least 1 hour. Pour content into a blender and puree to paste.
Crumble
1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Mix all dried ingredients of crumble except for pistachios to well combined. Rub in chilled butter cubes with finger tips until mixture resembles sandy grains.
3. Divide crumble into 2 equal portions. lay a well oiled 8inchx8inch square pan with one portion of crumble.(A baking pan with removable base will make removal of the baked slab easier) Spread the crumble evenly across base of pan and press to compact the crumble. Bake at 180C for 15mins. Keep the other portion of crumble in the chiller.
4, Cool the first layer of crumble before spreading the Apricot filling evenly over it. Add chopped pistachios to the second portion of crumble. Spread this over the Apricot layer. Lightly press to set the top the layer. Bake at 180C for 30mins.
5. Cool baked bar completely at room temperature. Further chill this in the fridge until firm. (at least 2hours)
6. Demould and cut to size.

Buddha Mango Pudding...Sweet Ohmmm....

Cooking is fun and I admit very often, I don't cook to eat but to play in the kitchen. This dessert will elicit boisterous guffaws - even when it does not turn out right as demonstrated by my first attempt to use the mold with a Pandan Pana Cotta recipe. The green Pandan juice gives the Pana Cotta a nice tender jade green appearance but as this was set with gelatine, it was too soft to give definition to the facial details. I was disappointed with the photo and had sent it to L to see if he could still recognise this green glob. 'Looks like a laughing Buddha to me' - he had messaged back. I felt a little better and told him what I was doing. He messaged back a Rolling On The Floor Laughing emoticon followed by, 'I thought you want to buy a Jade Buddha!'....

I had bought these molds at the beginning of this year from my favourite quintessential curio lifestyle store, Charles & Marie. These Il Buddhino pudding molds are shaped like a laughing Buddha. I am a Buddhist and have always loved the Buddha motif. The Buddha is possibly one of the most embraced religious figure/motif in the world by Buddhists and non-buddhists alike. I don't know how and when it started but the Buddha figure seems to have become a favourite element in interior design and lifestyle products. It could have started with  The Buddha Bar Restaurant in Paris - the opulent interior design, the tragically cool music... the soothing sense of chill (out).

While I had looked forward to receive these molds, I had let them sit in my over-flowing kitchen drawer for more than 6 months after I received them. The Pandan Panna Cotta was what I really wanted to make with them - for, exactly as L had commented, it would have looked like a Jade sculpture. But alas, it did not turn out well. Also it will not photograph well because the faint facial imprints on the smooth reflective pudding would have been almost indiscernible on a light coloured finish. Hence my decision to work with a pudding with a darker colour. For my second attempt, I made a Mango Pudding with dark orange Pakistani Mangoes and set it with Agar powder instead of gelatine - to give it more structure and form.

I am quite pleased with the way the Mango Pudding turned out but am still partial towards the Jade Green finish. As for eating it....I have so far always started from the base and still feel wierd about digging my spoon into the head... अमिताभ，Amitābhaḥ.

Recipe for Mango Pudding:

Mango Puree     125g
Fresh Cream      1 Tbsp
Milk                   1/4 cup

Water                1/2 cup
Agar Powder     1/4 tsp
Sugar                 1 tbsp ( can be adjusted depending on Mango's sweetness)

Method:

1. Gradually add Fresh Cream into Mango Puree, stirring constantly to ensure good mixing.
2. Add Milk gradually to (1) with constant stirring.
3. Boild water with Agar Powder and Sugar until dissolved. Reduce heat and simmer mixture for 3 mins. Cool to luke warm and add gradually to (2).
4. Pour (3) into Buddha mold and set in the fridge.

Caneles, Canneles? - French Pastry

One of the things I like about traditional French Pastry is that every pastry seem to have a legend or story behind it. Some of these legends are mysterious and have been handed down from generation to generation... giving the pastry chefs who are still working with these recipes a sense of mission and making them guardians of these traditions.

I did not know what a Cannele was until some 2 years ago when I saw them at one of the fine patisserie in Singapore who calls themselves.. what else, but Canele. That was about the time when Singapore became infected by the Macaron fever. Like every avid baker I knew, I learnt to make macarons and was on a constant quest to seek out macarons from different patisseries to understand and compare. Together with Bakerzin, Canele has one of the best macarons I can find in Singapore. It was during my first trip to Canele that I spotted the cannele- dark crusty little knobs that were going at $1.50 a pop. Out of curiosity, I bought one piece. It was an intriguing little cake - hard, crusty on the outside and soft custardy on the inside. I didn't go ga-ga over it but I was fascinated. It wasn't until much later that I googled about this mysterious cake and discovered the magic behind it.

Originated from Bordeaux about 300 years ago, legend has it that these cakes were made by nuns using flour spilled over the dock by some cargo ships. These sweets were made using copper fluted molds buried in embers and distributed to poor children - Other tales exist about the origin of this cake but what fascinated me was that this almost charcoal black morsel had risen and lost its popularity over the centuries and it was not until about 20 years ago, they started to re-surface with a vengeance. In order to maintain the integrity of the cake, 88 patissiers in Bordeaux formed a brotherhood to safeguard the recipe. To differentiate their devotion to the original recipe, the Bordeaux chefs had spelt their cake as Caneles (with a single n, vs Canneles) and as such, the Canele de Bordeaux is the official cake of the City while elsewhere, the cake is known as Canneles... Such is the intensity of their devotion and commitment to their craft.

For the benefit of those who have not had the chance to partake of this magical cake, this is a egg and milk based recipe baked in traditional copper molds at high temperature for a long time. The end result is a dark caramelised crusty shell with a soft custard like center. The generous use of vanilla and rum gives it a refined yet robust flavour. Best served with coffee. I first learnt to make this using Bakerzin's Daniel Tay's recipe but have grown to prefer another recipe found in one of my favourite cook book Egg by Lyndsay Mikanowski. I don't make Caneles often as it tends to get tedious - not because it is difficult but because I ONLY HAVE 6 MOLDS to work with!!! Each batch needs to be baked at high temperature for an hour... so yes, after 1 hour, I only get 6 little Canneles! Why, you will ask - because the copper molds are so damn expensive! They cost me $30 each! I suppose I can buy a silicone mold but the caramelising effect is quite different from the copper mold.

Until I am willing to splurge over more molds, I probably will not make enough to distribute among friends...



Recipe :
2             whole eggs plus 1 yolk
500ml      milk
225g        sugar
50g          butter
2 tsp        Vanilla Paste
4 tbsp      Rum
100g        plain flour

Method:
One day before :
1. Boil milk with 100g sugar in a heavy saucepan. Once boiling, remove milk from heat and add butter and vanilla paste. (or vanilla pod)
2. Whisk eggs with remaining sugar until mixture whitens.Add flour and mix well. Add in boiled milk mixture.
Sieve and refrigerate for at least 24hours.

Next day:
1. Coat cooled copper Cannele mold in fridge. Coat molds with melted beewax/butter (1:1).
2. Add rum to the refrigerated batter - sieve again if necessary. Fill the molds with batter and bake at 180C for 60 minutes.
3. Unmold when still hot and leave to cool. Once unmolded, the cake is soft and spongy. The crust will harden as it cools. Ideally, the cake should be almost charcoal black.

Creamy Mashed Potato - Eat Kentang

Eat Kentang! All of you fellow bloggers from the West, you probably are scoffing at my audacity of putting up a post on mashed potatoes...does she not have anything better to share? It's almost akin to writing a post on cooking white rice. Simple as it may seem, not everyone here in Asia can make a good mashed potato. Potato is not our staple food and you may find it amusing that for most of us in Singapore who are 35 years old and above, our first exposure to mashed potato was actually through Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and our first sight of French Fries was at Mac Donald's , when they opened  shop here some 30 years ago.

Potatoes are available in Asia, but we tend to cook it differently. My favourite are the softened potatoes in the spicy curry chicken broth. In fact, I remember whenever my mother cooked curry chicken, the potatoes in the one pot dish would be the first to be wiped out - leaving behind chunks of chicken meat in dried up curry gravy... The types of potatoes we have here in Asia also tend to be very limited. Most of what we get are smaller potatoes of the waxy variety. The floury Russet, Yukon or Maris Piper are not readily available and tend to be more expensive.


When we were younger we also tended to associate potato dishes with the Westerners. Western food like pork chops and steaks were commonly served with fried potato wedges and used to be favoured by 'English speaking' families. Hence, for classmates who came from 'English Speaking' families, we commonly refer to them as kids who fed on Kentang (the malay word for potato). Looking back, those memories are so incronguent with our lifestyle today but they've taken on a retro charm of its own and I am glad to be part of the generation that had been charmed by them.

Well, having said that, I must admit the mashed potato at KFC was one of my favourite side dish back then. However, as one gains experience and a more refined palate, one gains the ability to discern the good from the bad... Hence, when I saw that guest chef ,Tim Ross-Watson's Old School Sunday Roast class at Shermay's Cooking School included a 'Michelin-Star' Mash Potatoes, I signed up in a heart beat.




The recipe is easy to follow and the end result is a smooth and creamy yet fluffy mashed potatoes that had me stealing mouthfuls of  it as I whisked. I am not going to publish the recipe as the Chef is still running classes at the school. However, I can share what I have picked up as pertinent points to a good mashed potato :

1. Choose the right potato. Floury species are best suited for mashing.
2. The technique used to mash the potato makes a difference to the final texture. I have added a new toy to my ever expanding collection of kitchen gadgets : the Mouli grater.
3. Using a smoked salt to season the potato gives it a subtle enhanced taste. ( I got the Fleur de Sel with Smoked Jalapena at a fine food store in New York last year. Possibly expired but hey, salt is salt.)
4. Last but not least  - lots and lots of good butter!


Other than that, the process is simple and any cookbook will be able to provide good instructions on how to prepare the mashed potato.

For now, this recipe is for keeps - everyone whom I had fed it to, had been impressed and loved it!

Cheese Puff (Petits Choux Au Fromage) - Choux Pastry Part 2

Continuing with my experimentation with choux pastry.Pared down to its most basic, the choux pastry is made by melting fat in liquid over heat. Flour is then added to the fatty liquid and cooked. The cooked dough is subsquently softened to the right texture with beaten eggs. Taking it from the basic recipe, so many permutations of variations can be derived - the fat can be changed from butter to liquid fat. The water can be replaced with milk or a combination of milk and water... and I wonder if anyone has worked with fruit juice. Wouldn't coconut milk make an interesting puff - I can sprinkle dessicated coconut over it and fill it with kaya cream... ooh...so many possibilities and so little time... 

For this post, I am still working with a savoury puff. A basic choux pastry made with water and butter blended with grated parmesan cheese and seasoned with pepper and nutmeg. I chose to bake this at a lower temperature for a shorter time. As a result of which, I get a rounded puff without the splitting. (Normally I prefer my puffs to split especially if I intend to fill it with cream) For this recipe, the puff is meant to be a bite-sized snack, hence a round ball would be ideal. With the lower baking temperature, the puff also turns out softer and less crusty. The Beard Papa crusty split puff is generally achieved with a higher baking temperature and longer baking time.

Geez... now the Coconut Kaya Cream Puff is beginning to feel like a really great idea...


Recipe :

Choux Pastry

All purpose flour             35g
Bread flour(high protein) 40g
Butter                            50g
Water                            125ml
Salt                                1g
Eggs                               2 beaten
Grated Parmesan Cheese 70g
Pepper & Nutmeg            to season        
Method
1.In a heavy saucepan, please water,salt, butter and bring to boil.
2.Remove the saucepan from heat and add all the flour and stir briskly with a spatula.
3.The flour will 'soak' up the the liquid and fat to form a dough. Return the saucepan with the sticky dough onto the heat source. Over gentle heat, continue to stir and cook the dough until dough develops a tackiness and leaves a thin sticky film at the bottom of the saucepan.
4. Remove dough into a blending bowl.Add beaten egg a little at a time and stir well. You will know the right consistency is achieved when the scooped batter, falls off the spatula gradually and leaves a triangle trail drooping from the spatula. (To take the guessing out of this, I used 2 60g eggs(with shell) and get what I feel is the right consistency)
5. Blend in grated parmesan cheese. Season with pepper and grated nutmeg.
6. Pipe the dough to 2cm rounds onto a baking tray laid with baking paper, leaving a 3cm gap in between each round of piped batter.
7. Bake the pastry in a 180C preheated oven for 20mins.
8. Cool the choux puffs completely.

Tuna Cream Puff - Choux Pastry Part 1

Choux Pastry, like the Genoise Sponge or the Sweet Crust Pastry (and quite a few more others) is one of those fundamental recipes that every self respecting baker needs to know. These, I believe would be the first lessons in a proper baking school. However, few of us will have the patience to work on these seemingly plain recipes. I remember when I first started baking, I had wanted so desperately to create something that is visually pretty e.g. cupcakes or something that is rich in taste like muffins that melt in your mouth or anything that is richly chocolatey chocolate. It was much later, after many overdoses of sugary sweetness and buttery richness that I found repreive in the lightness of Chiffon cakes.
I only remember making choux pastry once long time ago. It was done half heartedly out of curiosity.

During my last trip to Taipei a week ago, I spent my whole evening after work happily buried in the recipe book collection at the hip and famous Eslite Bookstore(诚品书店) . I came back with a luggage that weighed a ton. Among the books I bought, this one titled I (heart) Puff is a Chinese translated Japanese cookbook dedicated entirely to choux puff pastry. It is so detailed and so complete that I have decided that my next few postings will be on puff pastry.

This first Choux Pastry posting is modified from the basic choux pastry,replacing butter with Canola oil. As a result, the puff turns out light and fluffy, it stays soft and does not harden in the fridge. I also chose to work with a savoury filling instead of the classic creame patissierie.

Overall, a relatively easy pastry to make but it can still impress with the many variations of fillings that one can work with.



Recipe :

Choux Pastry
All purpose flour 30g
Bread flour(high protein) 30g
Canola Oil 40g
Water 50ml
Milk 50ml
Sugar 2g
Salt 1g
Eggs 2 beaten

Tuna Cream
Canned Tuna(in water) 160g
Mayonnaise 60g
Salt, pepper to taste

Method
1.In a heavy saucepan, please water, sugar, salt, milk and canola oil(choux pastry) and bring to boil.
2.Remove the saucepan from heat and add all the flour and stir briskly with a spatula.
3.The flour will 'soak' up the the liquid and oil to form a dough. Return the saucepan with the sticky dough onto the heat source. Over gentle heat, continue to stir and cook the dough until dough develops a tackiness and leaves a thin sticky film at the bottom of the saucepan.
4. Remove dough into a blending bowl. Add beaten egg a little at a time and stir well. You will know the right consistency is achieved when the scooped batter, falls off the spatula gradually and leaves a triangle trail drooping from the spatula. (To take the guessing out of this, I used 2 60g eggs(with shell) and get what I feel is the right consistency)
5. Transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain piping tip.
6. Pipe the 4cm rounds onto a baking tray laid with baking paper, leaving a 3cm gap in between each round of piped batter.
7. Bake the pastry in a 200C preheated oven for 20mins-30mins.
8. Cool the choux puffs completely. Split the puff with a serrated knif.
9. To make the Tuna Cream filling, put all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Using a star tip, pipe the tuna cream onto the bottom half of the split puff and place the top half over the piped cream.

Apricot Chocolate Tart - Another One For The Petit Fours Collection

This is another tartlet recipe from Desserts By Pierre Herme and I couldn't agree more with Dorie Greenspan's warning - this is DANGEROUS. Enjoy this with a very conscious restrain.
The apricot, steeped in lemon juice,honey and a dash of pepper(so clever) is plump with a refreshing sweetness. When these are used to pack the tart, the cool fruitiness neutralises the richness of the chocolate ganache so well that you throw caution to the wind and start to believe that it is actually almost guilt free...Sigh.

This is actually not a difficult dessert to make. When one has access to quality ingredients, in this case, choosing a good dried apricot (plump and moist) and using chocolate from Valrhona, success is guaranteed. It really doesn't take alot of skill and talent to reproduce this recipe to impress guests at a private party - that is if you are not finicky about pipping the perfect chocolate swirl on the tart.

However, before we start to naively believe that this recipe is nothing more than just good quality ingredients, I would like to highlight the cleverness of the recipe.

When I first read through the preparation of the Apricots, I couldn't understand the significance of adding pepper to the boiling mixture of water, lemon juice and honey. However, when the solution started to boil and fill the whole kitchen with the sweet aroma of honey, it became obvious. The pepper, though present in a small pinch, spiced up the honey/lemon solution. Through its subtle presence, the coyness of honey became more exotic. For a while, I almost felt like I was transported to Turkey in my own kitchen.

I always tell people, Valrhona chocolate is idiot proof. It would be very difficult to get a bad tasting dessert with Valrhona chocolate. However, it takes a master like Pierre Herme to envision which level of bitterness would pair well with his clever use of passion fruit juice in the ganache. The master specified Valrhona Noir Gastronomie but I worked with Valrhona Tainori 64% which has a hint of acidic citrus and a slightly nutty aroma.

This then brings us to the next brilliant element in the recipe. The master chose to combine passion fruit with the dark chocolate. The ganache, with its generous amount of chocolate,heavy cream and butter is super super rich however, the clever combination of tart passion fruit juice counters the heaviness of the chocolate and makes it deceptively refreshing and tangy on the palate.

The brilliance of a master like Pierre Herme lies in their ability to envision how flavours can be paired to complement each other in a harmonious manner. I practically worship PH for pairing Rose with Raspberry and Rose with Lychee. It may seem quite obvious now how these flavours go together and I wish I had thought of it first.... and in my world, that is the difference between a scientist and a chemist.

I share with you the following recipe, adapted from Desserts by PH.

Recipe :

The Apricots

10 Dried Apricots

1/2 cup water

3 Tbsp squeezed lemon juice

1 Teaspoon Manuka honey

Dash of Black Pepper

Chocolate Ganache

150g Dark Chocolate

70g Heavy Cream

70g Passion Fruit Juice

30g Unsalted Butter

Tart

Sweet Tart Dough, please refer to recipe in my Orange Tartlet Post.

Method :

1. Cut apricots into small pieces and place them in a a heavy saucepan with all the other ingredients for Apricots. Heat the mixture to boiling. Lower the heat and simmer the mixture for 10mins. Cool down mixture and steep the apricots in the syrup for 24 hours.

2. Place dark chocolate in a bowl. In a saucepan, boil heavy cream until just boiling. Remove from heat and add a little at a time to chocolate. Stir chocolate gently until fully melted.

3.Boil passion fruit juice until just boiling. Add Passion Fruit juice to (2).

4.Add softned butter to (3). Cool ganache in refrigerator until firm enough to pipe.

5. Pack pieces of steepd apricots into bottom of baked tart case. Using a star piping tip, pipe chocolate ganache over apricots in tart case. Garnish with a slice of steeped apricot.