Chocolate Fondant

Crème Brulèé used to be my favourite dessert but ever since I tasted Chocolate Fondant (aka Warm Chocolate Cake or Lava Cake) where it must be served warm and the middle of the risen cake is all gooey with goodness.
If you love chocolate, then you'll love this dessert.
It's very easy to make, the only drawback is you'll need an oven.
There're lots of additions to the recipie but mine is just the basic one.
This will yield 3 small fondants.
You'll need :-
- Small amount of butter and cocoa powder to wipe and dust the insides of the ramekins. Remove excess dust.
- 1/3 to 1/4 butter
- handful of good quality dark chocolates.
Both melted under a bàin marié. Mix well and allow it to cool.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degree celcius.
- Beat 1 egg & 1 yolk (I think can safely use 2 whole eggs as the volume won't be that much of a difference) with 1-2 tablespoon of sugar (don't really need it to be that sweet as the chocolates too are sweet). Whisk it until color changes with increased density.
- Pour the butter+chocolate mixture into the egg+sugar mixture and continue to whisk to incorporate mixture.
- Sieve all-purpose flour (plain flour) into mixture. Not too much, cause it'll thicken. Just about 1/2 amount of the volume of the butter. Do not whisk it but instead use a rubber spatula and fold in gently, the mixture from the bottom to the sides.
- Soup mixture into dusted ramekins halfway only. This is because like a soufflé, the fondant will rise.
- Bake it at 180 degrees for 6 minutes. Keep an eye on it. You do not want it raised to high up and cook all the insides.
- Take it out of the ramekin with a small knife / gently tap / hit the base. Careful, you'll need to do it while it's still hot from the oven.
- The chocolate fondant must be served warm. Best eaten by plunging your fork in the middle and let the goodness flow out.
- Best served with some topping of icing sugar on the fondant for color contrast and vanilla ice-cream. The hot-cold contrast increases your 'highness' while eating it.
As you can see from the photos, my first attempt wasn't that good. The fondant was cooked right through. I tot the mixture wasn't too cooked at 6 minutes, so I doubled it to 12 minutes. When it was done, it was too cooked alreadi.
My 2nd attempt was at 6 minutes, even though it still hasn't risen throughly yet. Perhaps, some baking powder?

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Rawa Thosai

My first rawa thosai was more than 10 years ago and I've not looked back. One of the better ones was near me hse in Msia. They're so good and was very generous with the cilantro.
The rawa thosai does not need to be fermented hence can be easily mixed and cooked almost instantly.
For my version I used green chillies, onions, grated ginger, mint and spring onions. I would have used cilantro if I could get my hands on it.
The flour mixture consists of Semonila, plain and rice flour.
Just mix them with water into a watery batter and use a flat iron cast pan to cook 'em until golden brown.
If you scrape the top while cooking, it'll be extra crispy :-)
Serve with chutney or like in my case... Curry Chicken.

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Oktopasta

Bought all the ingredients from Isetan Shaw @ Orchard.  Cooked linguine with mushroom and served with Sesame Octopus.
The dark sauce is made from reduction of mirin and teriyaki.
Start off with chopped garlic, enoki mushrooms, deglazed with bonito flakes (the one I bought ($7) is the really thick shaved flakes, not the tissue paper thin ones).
Add the cooked linguine and let the gravy soak into the pasta.
Finish up with salt and pepper and spinach leaves (me dun like the stalks).

Granish with the teriyaki sauce on the side and seasoned sesame baby octopus ($7, the ones you can buy prepacked).

Yummy!!!


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Simple Steam Fish

I wanted to eat something simple, since I'm alone. It has to be healthy too.
One garoupa $3.50, ginger $0.15. Make slits on fish and julienne the ginger. Steam with soy sauce and a dash of Benedictine Dom.
Of course one can jazz it up but for a quiet evening, this will do, this will do.
Served with fried shallots rice.

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Creme Brulee

Very easy to make. Beat egg yolks with sugar (less sugar if dun wan so sweet). Simmer the cream, but do not let it boil (allow to cool a little).
Pour cream into the egg mixture slowly (called tampering, so u dun get scrambled eggs), add vanilla essence and strain. Pour into ramekins (or larger surface area for better results), and bake in water bath (130 degree) for about 40 mins.
Since my oven broke down, I steamed it equally with good results.

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Tiramitsu

I'm making it for my friends daughters 6th birthday party. It needs to be chilled overnite for best result.
The Mascoporne cheese is the most expensive item. I didn't hand whisked it this time, cause hand too tired, got an electronic hand held to do it.
Didn't make it too sweet too.
One tub of cheese is enough for one whole tray.
In order to make the cocoa powder last longer on the wet dessert, dust the bottom layer with icing sugar first.

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More elobrate porridge (congee)

Another congee post. Ppl who know me knows I heart porridge. My late mum introduced it to me but frankly it's not as smooth as the Cantonese smooth sticky version.
Since matey is at home, even just for a day, I decided to make lunch. The markets were all close at my neighbourhood cause it's their rest day.
I prepared Green Olive leaf, pickled turnip (green and yellow), 3 types of different eggs, salted fish, caramelised anchovies, fermented salted beancurd and fried dough fritters. Even the porridge is cooked with chicken stock and smoked herring garnished with fried shallots and high quality sesame oil.
Presented it to matey :-)

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Attempt on Banofee pie (cake)

cooking post. [Backdated post on 17 Nov08. An old friend wanted me to bake a chocolate cake for her daughter's birthday, so matey is helping me.
I'm experimenting with different bases: Graham crackers, ladyfingers and Tim Tam. The other layers are toffee (which I forgot to add), banana and choco whipping cream.
I'm now thinking of dunking the ladyfingers in hot choco sauce to seep in the moisture (goodness), instead of just covering the outer layer.
Now I'm figuring choco moose would be better than cream as it gives more 'bite'.
In the end I just decorated it with choco and strawberry coulis (fruit puree). I know it's flugly! No wonder Culinary chef's cannot be Pastry chef's.

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