SHF #11: Coffee

eclairs, originally uploaded by emily loke.

When I first learnt to appreciate coffee’s potent ability to prolong my waking state, I was extremely abusive of it: chasing three espresso shots with three tequila shots was my way of kicking off a night of clubbing. I can’t imagine where the inspiration for that combination came from, or how I could ever think that was a smart thing to do, but I was thankfully young enough then for me to now write it off as one of youth’s many follies.

The next stage in the relationship was less abusive. As my passion for clubbing mellowed out, so did my lifestyle and my drink of choice. Since espresso was all of a sudden too overwhelming for me, it was no wonder that when I discovered ice-blended maraschino-cherry-infused mochas it was love at first sip –they were the perfect drink to nurse while one was deep in conversation about boys. Though the buzz that the hint of coffee generated was nothing compared to the fluttering of teenage hearts, everything about the drink (from its pinkish hue to its innocent sweetness) made it the closest consumable thing to love for me. Even now, I can’t think of a more perfect beverage to be in love over.

Today, for coffee and I, our relationship is all about acceptance. I haven’t progressed past the puppy love stage of my coffee drinking, but my stunted growth in the relationship department doesn’t bother me: I’ll proudly admit to not wanting coffee without chocolate, sugar and cream. Life is just too short to not give yourself what you want.

A Note: Before I forget, thanks so much to this month's host, Ronald, for being so gracious about accepting my tardy entry.

Black Forest Éclairs
(but only because the recipe for Black Forest Ice Blended Mochas is copyrighted.)

Choux Pastry

1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tbs sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs

Cream

2 cups whipping cream
¼ cup maraschino cherry syrup
1 tbs instant coffee powder
½ cup icing sugar

1. In a saucepan, bring water and butter to a boil on medium heat. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Toss in the flour, cocoa powder, salt and sugar, and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon till mixture leaves sides of pan. Remove from heat and cool till just warm to the touch, about 10 mins.
3. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, till mixture becomes a smooth but slightly sticky paste, then transfer to piping bag with a 1 inch nozzle.
4. Pipe éclairs about 4-6 inches long, about 3 inches apart, and bake for 35 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and cool on wire racks.
6. Slice off top of éclairs and hollow them out.
7. In a mixing bowl, dissolve the coffee crystals in the maraschino cherry syrup and then add the whipping cream.
8. Beat on high till mixture becomes whipped cream and then transfer to a piping bag with a star nozzle.
9. Pipe cream into the bottoms of the éclairs, and then cover with the tops.
10. Garnish with icing sugar or melted dark chocolate, if desired.

Catching Up 2005

My prolonged absence from this site was the result of a brief period of hyperactivity in my life, the beginning of this period marked by my mother’s arrival and the end of it by her departure. Life sometimes takes over and leaves you wondering at the end of each day where the time went- the past three weeks have been that way for me. Though I know I shouldn’t have to justify the lack of recent entries, I feel I owe it to you all to fill in some of the blanks.

Thus begins my short series called Catching Up 2005, an allocated cache of blogs that were meant to be up already. Some were half-written and never completed, some began with pictures but never progressed past that stage, some are still shimmering memories that have to be caught and tamed into text.

Hopefully, they'll soon materialize into the proper posts that they were always meant to be.

Let Them Eat Cake (I'll Have Something Else)

catching up, originally uploaded by emily loke.

It wasn’t an easy task growing up as the kid who couldn’t eat eggs. For the most part, I was left unquestioned about my allergy and managed to live a very normal egg free life, but there was always that one day of the year where my hypersensitivity would antagonize me to no end – my birthday.

When I was little, kids at my school would always have their maids show up at recess time with a huge cake for the teachers and students in their class. These cakes were always boxed in huge, crisp bakery boxes which were tied with a multitude of colourful ribbons and would be proudly displayed on a table in the canteen while a chorus of hungry voices sang for their supper. I always foolishly went to these canteen celebrations, nursing some silly hope that the box would be opened and a birthday jello would be revealed. Or a birthday mound of candies. Or heck, a birthday pizza even – something, anything non eggy that I could eat. Needless to say I was always sorely disappointed.

The really stinger was that the same thing would happen on my birthday, because I would always stubbornly insist on having a cake despite my allergy. Not having a birthday cake at a birthday party? The idea was too ludicrous to entertain. Plus, what sort of horrible whispers would circulate on the morning of the next school day if there was no cake? Children are evil, evil people. There had to be cake.

Much to my mother’s credit, she never took an I-told-you-so attitude towards my initial instance on having (and later inability to eat) birthday cake. Each year, she’d spend the night before the party baking and icing some elaborate and theme-coordinated spectacle-on-a-plate. She’d even let me pick the flavour (always chocolate), fully knowing I would never be able to eat it, and would always make sure there was a birthday-something-else for me to eat while everyone was having cake.

Her tradition of birthday-something-elses continues to this day, long after my birthday parties stopped. I’ve had birthday fudge, birthday ice cream profiteroles (made with egg whites), birthday cheesecakes, birthday truffles…the list goes on. This year, I was pleasantly surprised with a birthday mango jelly that my mother made on the sneak (which is impressive, given that she, A. and I were at that point living in a one bedroom apartment together) just when I had thought she’d have forgotten. Silly me.

It’s taken me a long time to make peace with my egg allergy – like I said, it wasn’t easy being the kid who couldn’t eat cake – but having a mom who made an allergy sufferer feel special instead of excluded made all the difference. Lesson of the day: It doesn’t matter what your birthday cake really is, as long as it was made with love and has a mound of candles in it.

Happy Birthday to Me.

mango jelly, originally uploaded by emily loke.

The Fried Rice Challenge

friedrice, originally uploaded by emily loke.

I don’t have many food prejudices, but the one I do have seems to be unconquerable. I should probably clarify this: to me, a food prejudice is a strong dislike for a dish that tastes good, looks edible (at least) and is made of perfectly normal things that you would happily consume in any other recipe. I hate to think that I’m prejudiced against anything – let alone food, of all things! – but in light of my recent attempt to (and failure at) overcoming my bias, I’m giving up and admitting this to the world: I hate fried rice.

I’m not sure if the fact that I’m Asian makes my prejudice peculiar or acceptable: while fried rice is a very Chinese dish, it is synonymous with Americanized Asian cuisine and its accompanying Chinese stereotypes. I’ve always found my dislike for it strange and have tried mouthfuls of it on several occasions in attempts to understand the reason behind my aversion to it, to no avail.

Finally, A. suggested a make-or-break type of trial that would either lead to me loving fried rice (as he does) or writing it off forever, never to experimentally eat any again. We decided that I would make a plate of fried rice to my exact preferences, within certain ingredient guidelines. The challenge would be fair.

As I prepared my ingredients (extra char siew and spring onions, no eggs), I began to feel the stress of the challenge: should I dislike the fried rice, was giving up on eating it ever again a little drastic? I tried not to think about it as I swirled the rice around in my wok. When it was done, I mounded it onto a plate and handed it to A., the in-house fried rice connoisseur, for approval. It was deemed an authentic representation of fried rice, which was good enough for me. I took a tentative bite.

I could feel A. watching me with bated breath as I, ever the optimist, ate a couple more spoonfuls of it. I didn’t eat much more than that before I began to pick at it with my chopsticks and push it around my plate. I managed to catch my inner child from fully surfacing just before the whining and pouting started, but at that point I knew I had my answer.

So for all you foodies out there who are prejudiced against some dish or another, I have a challenge for you: try making it at home and see if you like your take on it better. If you do, great! If not, then go ahead and be prejudiced. I won’t tell if you don’t.

SHF #10: Honey

honeycomb, originally uploaded by emily loke.

Honey is a beautiful thing. Thick, sweet and ranging in colours from gold to deep amber, honey is liquid sugar on fire. Its glows with both sweet innocence and blatant sensuality, stirring up memories both naughty and nice upon gliding over one’s taste buds. That’s the best thing about honey – its split personality. For every mother doling it out as a throat soothing remedy to her child, there is a hedonist licking it straight off her fingers; for every proper lady spooning it into her cup at high tea, there is a gamine dusting her body in edible honey powder. Few things are as charmingly contradictory.

Honey’s adaptability was, in this case, (and I hate to say it) a hindrance to me. Not being able to think of a single thing that wouldn’t benefit from its gold touch definitely stems from my personal bias: I could eat honey on anything. Therein lay yet another dilemma – as if trying to narrow my field down wasn’t hard enough, I was also obligated (out of my passion for honey) to make something truly worth bearing its regal colour. My indecisiveness tormented me for days.

Finally, inspiration materialized in the unlikely form of S., A.’s decidedly non-epicurean friend. After hearing me rant about the impossibility of being able to pin honey down to a single, fabulous dish, it was suggested by S. that I slice up an apple and dip it in honey. The irreverence! I almost collapsed in convulsions.

Before I could come up with a suitably scathing remark, however, I felt a faint memory of the offending suggestion niggle my brain. Apples and honey – I knew I’d never eaten them together like that before, yet the combination seemed familiar somehow. Then it dawned on me – Silk Apples! – and just like that, apples had won a leading role in the final dish.

It all fell into place from there. As though the stopper had been pulled from the Bottle of All Revelations, inspiration began coursing through my veins as I snatched bottles, tins and jars from cupboards. The kitchen stove glowed through the steam that whistled up from the myriad of pots on it, and I scurried about, mixing, stirring and whipping like a woman possessed. Till I burnt my thumb, that is, which started a terrible chain reaction ending in A. calling a ‘Kitchen Time-Out’ and gallantly proceeding to make the sesame snaps for me. I love this man.

To me, the final product was well worth the two-person effort, burnt thumb, and Time-Out – after all, this is honey we’re talking about! The dessert, affectionately christened ‘The Silk Road at Sunset’ by A. and I, is a geography lesson on a plate. Trying to incorporate as many flavours from regions along the silk road as possible was tricky, but ultimately very gratifying…in more ways than one. Not only did it turn out tasting melodiously complex, it also made a honey lover out of A.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be outside and under that beehive, worshipping at the alter of honey.

silk road at sunset, originally uploaded by emily loke.

The Silk Road at Sunset
Honey Date Cake:

4 tbs honey
¼ cup butter
¾ cup flour
1 egg
½ cup ground almonds
¾ cup chopped dates
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Cream the butter and the honey together, then add the egg and beat well.
3. Mix in all the other ingredients except the dates, and beat till mixed.
4. Mix in the dates with a wooden spoon or spatula.
5. Pat the batter (it should be fairly sticky) into a square cake tin, and bake for 20 minutes or until a pick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
6. When cooled, use a round cookie cutter to cut out circles of cake. Set aside.

Plum and Ginger Compote and Coulis:

8 black plums, peeled, pitted and chopped into cubes. Reserve skin.
3/4 cup honey
2 tbs ground ginger

1. Mix plum cubes, honey, and ginger in a saucepan and cook on med. heat till bubbling and and until you notice plums losing their colour.
2. Remove the compote and return liquid back to the pan.
3. Throw plum skins into the pan. Cook for 5 minutes, or until desired colour is reached.
4. Sieve honey and skin mixture into bowl, discard skins. Set coulis aside.

Honey Sesame Snaps (From www.marthastewart.com):

1 cup confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/2cup white sesame seeds
1/4cup black sesame seeds
1cup all-purpose flour
Zest of 1/2 orange(about 1 tablespoon)
Pinch of salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper, and set aside.
2. In a small saucepan, combine confectioners' sugar, butter, honey, and orange juice. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute.
3. Remove pan from heat, and stir in remaining ingredients. Cool to room temperature.
4. Pipe lines of the batter with a small round nozzle (about ¼ inch) 4 inches apart from each other and bake for 10 minutes.
5. Remove from the oven. When cool enough to touch, but still pliable, wrap sesame sheets around cake rounds and set aside to harden.

Silk Apples:

2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced into wedges about ½ inch thick.
½ cup sugar
¼ cup honey
1/3 cup water
1 tbs peanut or vegetable oil.
1 large bowl of cold water and ice

1. Cook everything but apples in a small saucepan till mixture reaches hard crack stage (or turns amber in colour)
2. Toss the apples into the mixture and coat well
3. Drop coated apple slices into the bowl of ice and water.
4. Remove wedges and pat dry. Set aside.

Assembly:

1. Set cake rounds with their sesame collars on plates.
2. Brush cakes with some plum coulis.
3. Top cakes with plum compote.
4. Fan a few slices of the Silk Apples out next to the cake.
5. Drizzle or drip plate with plum coulis.

Beat the Heat

agar-agar, originally uploaded by emily loke.

Its been absolutely sweltering the past couple of days here in Toronto, and it doesn’t look like its going to be cooling down any time soon. A. and I have been living life as short-distance sprinters the past few days, zipping as quickly as possible from one air-conditioned locale to the next in attempts to limit our exposure to the humidity, heat and pollution – a traveling technique I’ve noticed most other Torontonians have recently adopted as well. It seems everyone has issues with the heat.

The worst thing about the heat for me is that it means my cooking has to be shelved for a while. Though the apartment is (thankfully) air-conditioned, it's so hot outside that when I do come home all I can think about is not subjecting myself to anything that could make me even slightly warm again. Chinatown has been our saving grace the past few days, rescuing us both from having to get too close to a stove or barbeque and possibly suffering a heat stroke while attempting to make dinner. Our fridge is crammed full of white styrofoam containers: rations for the days where walking the 3 blocks to Chinatown seems far too daunting for an ex-Singaporean and an ex-Floridian. Yes, it’s that hot here.

So hot, in fact, that A. was actually turned away last night from a Chinese restaurant while trying to order takeout, the only explanation given being: “Too hot to cook. Go away.”

But I digress.

It might have been due to a bout of heat-induced psychosis, but all I could think about today was agar-agar. Chilled, pink, rose-flavoured agar-agar was one of my favourite ways to beat the heat back home in Singapore. I still remember crunching through mounds of the stuff with my mother on hot days, barely stopping to admire their intricately molded designs, our fingers and mouths stained pink from the dye. When A. called my attention to a packet of it at the store today, I needed no other incentive: we were having agar-agar for dessert tonight.

It took me a while to figure out the proper conversions from grams to tablespoons, but it was well worth the effort – the 6 cool, glistening agar-agar bunts sitting in the fridge tell me so. And that’s not the heatstroke talking.

Rose Agar-Agar

1 1/2 cups water
4 tsp rose water
1 tbs agar powder
10 tbs sugar
red food colouring, if desired

1. Throw everything into a saucepan and heat till sugar and agar dissolve, stirring.
2. Take it off the heat and stir in as much food colouring as you'd like. (I used 3 drops)
3. Pour into agar mold (I used a baby bundt pan, but anything will do.)
4. Leave out on counter to set at room temperature
5. When set, refrigerate to chill.

Happy Birthday, Dolce!

pupcakes, originally uploaded by emily loke.

This post was initially supposed to be a heartwarming, albeit slightly mushy, happy-birthday letter to Dolce, my dog and this blog’s namesake. It was going to be all about his adoption, or rather ‘How I Came to Have a Furry Four-Legged Child’, which was its working title. However, I realized that most of the people who read this blog already know ‘How I Came to Have a Furry Four-Legged Child’, so to spare them from having to hear it again I reworked this post to be a little less gag-worthy. Because we all hate those moms who won’t shut up about their stupid, noisy kids who are really only cute if you like looking at bawling red prunes.

Anyway, for all of you out there who haven’t had the pleasure of hearing ‘How I Came to Have a Furry Four-Legged Child’, here’s the breakdown: we got him from a breeder.

Moving on.

Today is Dolce’s 1st birthday, and neither A. nor I can believe it’s only been a year (minus 8 weeks) since we first adopted him. When he first came home with us, the bedroom and the inside of a few of my purses were his entire world; now all he wants to do is leave the house and explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy (or North America, for starters). When he was a puppy, even other puppies scared him; now he wants to take on German Shepherds (and cars, and horses, and vacuum cleaners…). When he was little, he stuck to us so closely that we used to joke he would crawl into our skin if he could; now he’s too cool to be seen with his parents when we’re out of the house (though he’s not above cuddling when we’re home).

He’s really grown so much in a year that it’s hard to compare it to anything except perhaps, my own growth. Within a year I have learnt responsibility – the kind of responsibility you develop when you realize you have another creature’s life to worry about besides your own. And worry I do, almost every day. Is he eating enough? Getting as much exercise as he needs? Is he happy? The list goes on and on and on. I’ve finally realized what it means to be devoted to the care of another life, and how your life will never be about just you anymore. I realize these aren’t huge revelations to anyone but me: growing up a privileged only child doesn’t exactly bestow upon you a sense of Mother Theresa-esque selflessness. Owning a dog hasn’t quite turned me into a saint either, but I’m a whole lot closer to being one than I was a year ago. So thank you Dolce, for teaching me so much and for asking so little in return.

“My goal is to one day be as good of a person as my dog already thinks I am” – Anonymous

dolce now, originally uploaded by emily loke.

Pupcake Recipe (Makes 20 pupcakes or 1 large bundt cake.)

3 ripe bananas, mashed
¾ cup unsweetened applesauce
3 eggs
1 ½ cup flour
¾ cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

1. Mix bananas and applesauce together, then beat in eggs.
2. Toss in all the dry ingredients, and beat well till mixed.
3. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes if in muffin pan, and for 30-40 mins if in bundt.

Dog-friendly Frosting

½ brick light cream cheese
¼ cup smooth unsweetened and unsalted peanut butter
2 bananas, riced
Small dog cookies/candies or slices of banana

1. Beat all the ingredients together till smooth.
2. Frost pupcakes/cake and decorate with dog treats or banana slices.

dolce eating, originally uploaded by emily loke.