That Egg Thing

I'm not really sure what it's called actually. Some call it egg custard, some creme caramel, some flan, some pudding. I have a bastardised name for it: "dan dan" (rhymes with 'fun'), which in actual cantonese is "steamed egg" (炖蛋).

It looks good, just that I'm not liking the pores at the sides...

I absolutely love this thing. It brings back memories of my mom bringing me to this corner coffee shop some where in the old town, after school, and I'll be enjoying this in my school uniform. And it always comes with a glass of cold water.

Of late, The Fuzzball has been itching to attempt dessert making (for some unknown reason) and we've been volleying all sorts of ideas like bread pudding with rum. And then this sudden childhood treat came to mind and I have been stuck ever since. So I thought I'd experiment with it today (the last I attempted this was several years ago).

I sort of got the recipe from HERE. I knew the ingredients, I just didnt dare to wing it when it comes to volume. (By the way, I halfed the recipe, skiffed off the vanilla, and put in a little not enough sugar.)

Ingredients:


1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 cups milk, scalded
4 beaten eggs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preparation:


Butter 6 custard cups. (I didn't do this. Butter in this thing seems wrong, and I didn't have custard cups so I used a tin cup instead...you know, those they make teh tarik with.)

Melt 1/4 cup of sugar in a small heavy skillet, stirring constantly, until a caramel syrup forms; pour immediately into prepared custard cups. 

Add a small amount of the hot milk to beaten eggs, stirring briskly. Add remaining milk; add 1/4 cup sugar and the vanilla; blend well. Pour mixture into custard cups. 


Set cups in a large, shallow baking pan in a 325° oven. Pour hot water into the large baking pan to a depth of about 1 inch. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Unmold into shallow dessert dishes to serve. 

Caramel custard recipe serves 6.

I made some massive changes after the egg-milk mixture. I didn't bake, instead I steamed it. Remember to cover your cup/bowl/container/whatever when it's steaming. It took roughly about 10-15 minutes, then I took it off the heat, left it to cool for a while, and then popped it into the fridge.

I also think you should ready the egg-milk mixture first, then only caramelise the sugar so that the syrup is still liquid when you pour the egg-milk mixture in (mine kinda hardened a little at the bottom of the cup). Make sure you pour slowly down the container's side so as to not create bubbles and mix up the syrup with the egg-milk mixture.

The inside looks awesome though. I iz happy.

Chill it, and enjoy! Good luck :)

Winter Solstice

Brigitte with her eyes so bright,

Looks toward heaven at midnight,

On the longest night of year,

That's the one she holds most dear.

~ Brigitte's Ballad

Bruma, or the Winter's Solstice, marks the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter in most temperate countries. I wonder if it will get dark any earlier here today, being so close to the equator and all...

Being Chinese, it also means it's time for tangyuan (湯圓) -- glutinous rice balls! I know that according to tradition, all these were done to bring about family togetherness, reunion, etc. However, for me, I reckon it is also an excuse to play with dough :) Last year I made a tortoise and a hare out of dough.

This year, I thought I'd make the whole thing from scratch and opted for au naturel colouring. Green from Pandanus amaryllifolius and red from beetroot. Unfortunately, the pandan plant in the backyard isn't really big so I did not had a lot of leaves to work with. After much pounding and some hot water, I only managed to extract a very small bit of green colour and it was rather diluted.

The beetroot however, was easy. The aftermath was like a massacre.

Thus, green dough wasn't as green, just a tinge...almost like white (background):

This year's balls, apart from the usual round ones with gula melaka (palm sugar) in them, and some marshmallow-shaped ones which my housemate made, I made one white elephant, and pink hearts.

Go figure.

For the sweet soup, pandanus, ginger slices, and I added some gula melaka (which explains the different coloured liquid) which were from the hacking of the large chunk of palm sugar for the rice balls.

Note: always boil the glutinous rice balls separately from the sweet soup. You don't want an ugly murky coloured dessert later.

My dough crafts for 2010 :)

Here's wishing everyone a Happy Winter Solstice Festival!

冬至节快乐!

Easy Rat-ta-too-ey

I came across this recipe here and it seemed pretty simple (otherwise the "easy" part of the recipe's name would be a lie) so I thought I'd try it out. The first time around, it looked a tad too mushy and dull of colour for my liking, so I tweaked it and I think it was better the second time.

Easy Ratatouille

Preparation Time: 25 minutes
Cooking Time: 40 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients:
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 onions, slivered
• 3 bell peppers, cut into one inch squares (try different colors)
• 2 eggplants, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 2 zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
• 2 pounds tomatoes, chopped
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

1. Heat olive oil in a heavy soup pot on medium heat. Sliver onions and add to oil.
2. While the onions cook, chop the bell peppers and add them to the pot, stirring well.
3. Chop the eggplants and add to the pot, stirring well to coat theeggplant with oil. At this point all the olive oil will have soaked into the eggplant, so you need to stir often to keep things from burning until they soften some.
4. Chop the zucchini and stir it in once the eggplant has softened a bit.
5. Chop the garlic and add to the vegetables, stirring well.
6. Chop the tomatoes and add them.
7. Mince the thyme and add it along with salt and pepper to taste. Stir well and cook two minutes.
8. Turn down heat and cover the pot. Simmer until everything is soft and well blended - about 40 minutes.
9. Stir in basil and remove from heat.

4 to 6 servings

* * *

What I did was I cut everything first, then only started cooking, adding each vegetable starting with those that take longer to cook. Slicing reduces cooking time so I won't end up with uncooked vegetables later (seeing as I didn't let stuff cook in accordance to my cutting time -- which is a bit slow). By doing so, I end up with a prettier dish as the vegetables don't get overcooked and become all yellow and olive green and gross.

By the way, it is not nicely arranged as per those pictures of true ratatouille dishes because I couldn't possibly do that with a pot on a stove. Things at the bottom of the pot would start burning if not stirred :)

Good luck!

A Slice of Heaven

Absolutely Awesome Carrot Cake:

Ingredients
4 eggs
3/4 cups vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3 cups grated carrots (use larger grater...like for cheese)

1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
• In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, applesauce, brown sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in walnuts. Pour into prepared pan.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter, softened

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar (reduce for less sweet)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Frost the cooled cake.

Recipe from Allrecipes.com with modifications. Thanks Françoise for the awesomeness :)

Have a great upcoming MALAYSIA DAY!

Grilled Chicken with Vegetables

I still owe at least SIX entries of my European experience. It's so backdated, I reckon it's not going to make that much difference either :P

Soon, people. I promise.

But today, I am going to show-off my "cooking prowess" (which I've not done for ages). For dinner, I had this:


Coming from me, rest assured that it is oh-so-simple because I do not like a lot of hassle when it comes to cooking for one.

For the chicken:

salt
pepper
slices of garlic
dried mixed herbs
Absolut Pears

Basically what I did was rub salt, pepper, and the herbs on the chicken fillets, cut some slits and stuck garlic slices into them, and then doused the fillets with a bit of vodka. The last ingredient was kind of like an experimental thing. I was just itching to add one more thing to the chicken because the other stuff are so typical. Then I left the chicken for several hours in the fridge to get drunk.

The vegetable bed is easy. What I did was heat some olive oil in a pan, put in some chopped garlic to brown, then put in potatoes and celery. I added some water occasionally and covered the pan because the potatoes need time to cook. Next I took out the celery, and put in the spinach, wilt them with the potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Grilling chicken is even easier. I heat some olive oil in a pan and placed the marinated chicken in. What was fun was that I had a pair of thongs to cook with. It makes turning the fillets over a whole lot easier (and professional looking).

Right. That's enough of me pretending that this is a cooking blog.

Absolutly yours,