Chilled Dessert Recipes

JC100: Chocolate Mousse

May 17, 2012 – 7:00 am

I am very excited to post my first recipe from Julia Child in cel­e­bra­tion of her 100th birth­day! I was asked to par­tic­i­pate in JC100, a cam­paign launched by pub­lisher Alfred A. Knopf to cel­e­brate what would have been Julia Child’s 100th birth­day in August by cook­ing her recipes. One of her recipes will be revealed each week and we would make it and write a post about it. As an avid home cook, it is my plea­sure to try any inter­est­ing home cook­ing recipes, let alone French ones. This week’s recipe is Choco­late Mousse.

Chal­lenge Accepted.

This mousse recipe doesn’t use any whip­ping cream, instead it uses beaten egg whites to pro­duce its light and fluffy tex­ture. The orange liqueur also com­pli­ments the choco­late very well.

Print
Choco­late Mousse by Julia Child

Ingre­di­ents

    Yolks and Sugar Mixture:
  • 4 Egg Yolks
  • ¾ cup Gran­u­lated Sugar
  • ¼ cup Orange Liqueur (I used Grand Marnier)
  • A pan of not-quite-simmering water
  • A basin of cold water
    • Choco­late Mixture:
  • 6 ounces or squares Semi-Sweet Bak­ing Choco­late (I used 72% cocoa)
  • 4 tbsp. Strong Coffee
  • A small saucepan
  • 6 ounces or 1½ stickes of soft­ened Unsalted Butter
  • Optional: ¼ cup finely diced, Glazed Orange Peel
    • Meringue:
  • 4 Egg Whites
  • Pinch of Salt
  • 1 tbsp. Gran­u­lated Sugar

Method

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until mix­ture is thick, pale yel­low, and falls back upon itself form­ing a slowly dis­solv­ing rib­bon. Beat in the orange liqueur.
  2. Then set mix­ing bowl over the not-quite sim­mer­ing water and con­tinue beat­ing for 3–4 min­utes until the mix­ture is foamy and too hot for your finger.
  3. Then beat over cold water for 3–4 min­utes until the mix­ture is cool and again forms the rib­bon. It will have the con­sis­tency of mayonnaise.
  4. Melt choco­late with cof­fee over hot water. Remove from heat and beat in but­ter, a bit at a time, to make a smooth cream.
  5. Beat the choco­late into the yolks and sugar, then beat in the optional orange peel.
  6. Beat the egg whites and salt until soft peaks are formed; sprin­kle on the sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed.
  7. Stir one fourth of the egg whites into the choco­late mix­ture. Fold in the rest.
  8. Turn into serv­ing dish, dessert cups, or petits pots. Refrig­er­ate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Notes

Excerpted from Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing by Julia Child. Copy­right © 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted with per­mis­sion from the pub­lisher Alfred A. Knopf, a divi­sion of Ran­dom House, Inc.

http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​5​/​1​7​/​j​c​-​1​0​0​-​c​h​o​c​o​l​a​t​e​-​m​o​u​s​se/

My step-by-step gallery:

I thought it would be inter­est­ing to serve the mousse in a mason jar, it seems like a trend now to serve desserts in jars. :) I have also topped it with some whipped cream, shaved choco­late, and fresh mint leaves. I found that the mousse is best enjoyed at a warmer tem­per­a­ture because it will have a very smooth, light, and creamy tex­ture. I had some right out of the fridge but the tex­ture was close to a choco­late ganache. I used an extra dark choco­late (72% cocoa) instead of semi-sweet because I just love the flavour of dark choco­late. The choco­late, orange and cof­fee flavours in the mousse — so deli­cious together! This was quite easy to pre­pare, most of the ingre­di­ents are likely already in your pantry, so give this a try!

Tags , , , , | JC100: Chocolate Mousse" rel="bookmark">Permalink | Comments (4)
Freestyle Recipes Soup

Easy Vegetable Beef Barley Soup

May 16, 2012 – 2:45 pm

Besides bak­ing, I also love mak­ing soups because they are super easy to make and of course they taste much bet­ter than their canned coun­ter­parts. For me, there is really no rea­son to buy canned soups when it is so sim­ple to make and it is much health­ier. Unless of course if you are tak­ing it to camp­ing. In this recipe, I have used my home canned toma­toes, in which the recipe can be found here. But you can always use store-bought, it would taste just as good. I have also used pearl bar­ley, which needs to be cooked before adding it into the soup. Alter­na­tively, you can also add quick-cooking bar­ley directly into the soup and sim­mer for a short time until it is tender.

 

Print
Easy Veg­etable Beef Bar­ley Soup

Ingre­di­ents

  • 1–2 tbsp. Veg­etable Oil
  • 1 lb. Stew­ing Beef, cubed
  • 4 stalks of Cel­ery, diced
  • 1 medium Car­rot, diced
  • 2 medium Onions, diced
  • 1 cup Pearl Barley
  • 500 mL Canned Tomatoes
  • 4 cups Hot Water
  • 2 Beef Bouil­lon Cubes
  • 2 Bay Leaves
  • 2–4 sprigs of fresh Thyme

Method

  1. Cook bar­ley if you are using pearl bar­ley — I cooked 1 cup of pearl bar­ley in 2 cups of water in my rice cooker.
  2. Dice all the veg­eta­bles to bite size.
  3. Heat oil in a large heavy pot or dutch oven on high heat. Sautee stew­ing beef until browned on all sides — this will give the soup more flavour.
  4. Add diced veg­eta­bles and sautee for about 3–4 more minutes.
  5. Pour in the hot water, canned toma­toes, bay leaves, thyme, and beef bouillon.
  6. Bring the soup to a boil and reduce heat and sim­mer until the beef is tender.
  7. Add cooked pearl bar­ley and cook for 5–10 minutes.
  8. Remove bay leaves, and thyme sprigs.
  9. Salt and pep­per to taste.
  10. Optional: Gar­nish with chopped parsley.
http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​5​/​1​6​/​e​a​s​y​-​v​e​g​e​t​a​b​l​e​-​b​e​e​f​-​b​a​r​l​e​y​-​s​o​up/

This flavour­ful soup makes a great lunch or din­ner com­pan­ion. I love the chewy tex­ture that is left in the cooked bar­ley and the earthy aroma of the thyme. I’ve used good qual­ity, organic beef bouil­lon cubes but of course beef stock or veg­etable stock will also work well in the recipe.

 

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comments (2)
Eat Out Restaurant Review

Suika Snack Bar

May 4, 2012 – 2:19 pm

Chan­de­lier made with Sake Bottles

I vis­ited this restau­rant with some friends a while back, I was pon­der­ing if I should write a post about it because it has been…a while since we went there…like more than a month ago. I decided that I should still write about it because I think it is worth post­ing on my blog — our expe­ri­ence was quite good.

I bought two din­ing passes called “Suika-to-me” from VanEats. The site offers great din­ing deals around town (Van­cou­ver). I got the pass for $18/each and it includes a Salmon Carpac­cio, Steak, Oxtail Ramen, and a Pump­kin Crème Brulee. Since there was a total of four of us, we also ordered some other dishes to share.

Cute Menu with Doraemon’s Face

Suika is located on West Broad­way. The inte­rior of the Iza­kaya style restau­rant is very Japan­ese, so is the menu, I actu­ally felt like I was in Japan. “Suika” means water­melon in Japan­ese, so don’t be sur­prised if you see ran­dom water­melon related objects in the restau­rant. It was busy the night we went, prob­a­bly because it was a week­end so it was good we made a reser­va­tion in advance.

Oys­ters $1.80/each

First came the oys­ters, they were served on ice, topped with some ponzu jelly (Japan­ese cit­rus based sauce), chopped spring onions, and a wedge of fresh lemon. It tasted very refresh­ing — the oys­ters were fresh and the flavours worked well together.

A-ge Renkon (Fried Lotus Root) — $3.80

The lotus root had a crispy exte­rior, I think they were coated some kind of starch or flour before they were fried. They were dusted with some salt and Chi­nese five-spice pow­der. The dish was very sim­ple but had some nice flavours and a good texture.

Salmon Carpac­cio — “Suika-to-me”

The Salmon Carpac­cio was part of the din­ing pass, the salmon was very fresh and the dress­ing was tasty as well — a deli­cious and refresh­ing starter.

Ton­toro Yaki — $6.20

This was a grilled pork neck meat, this cut of meat usu­ally has a chewy springy tex­ture and it is great for grilling. They have also topped it with some sweet “oroshi” (grated daikon) and chopped green onions with a light tast­ing sauce. It wasn’t too dry and grilled quite nicely with a lightly charred flavour.

Ika Kara-age — $8.80

Oops…this was already half-eaten when I took a pic­ture of it. This is the squid ver­sion of the chicken kara-age. It had the usual kara-age flavours of gin­ger, gar­lic, and soy sauce. It was nice and salty and sur­pris­ingly, the squid was quite ten­der and not over­cooked. It was served with some shred­ded green onions on top.

AAA Beef Filet Steak — “Suika-to-Me”

The steak was part of the din­ing pass and it was served on a hot plate with wedge fries. The meat was very juicy with the soy onion sauce, ten­der, and had a good fat con­tent in it. Fries were like usual fries with Shichimi spice pow­der and served with a dip­ping sauce, I couldn’t really tell what was in the sauce but it was a bit spicy. The fries were good on their own anyways.

Kakuni Bibim­bap — $8.80

“Kakuni” is a Japan­ese style braised pork, usu­ally the belly. So this rice dish had some kakuni, sweet dried shrimp with spring onions served in a hot stone bowl. As the server mixed the rice and its con­tents in the hot bowl for us, I could already smell the dried shrimp com­ing though the steam. I per­son­ally thought this tasted a bit sweet and the rice was a lit­tle mushy but I did enjoy the charred rice on the bot­tom of the bowl. In terms of flavour, I think it might need some­thing refresh­ing in there to freshen it up.

Oxtail Ramen — “Suika-to-Me”

When I saw ramen, I was expect­ing a big­ger bowl, but this was just a lit­tle big­ger than a reg­u­lar Asian rice bowl. But size wasn’t a prob­lem because we were quite full when it came. This took a very long time until it reached our table, we sus­pect that the wait­ress (seemed like a new­bie) has given them to the table next to use which also hap­pened to have the same din­ing passes as we had. So we asked the wait­ress and waited for a while and it finally arrived. The broth had a very deep, rich beef flavour, it was very savoury and tasty. The noo­dles had a good bite in it and the beef was very ten­der. I actu­ally fin­ished the broth. (Yes, I prob­a­bly had too much salt that day.)

Pump­kin Crème Brulee — “Suika-to-Me”

I liked this crème brûlée because the pump­kin (I think they used the Kabocha squash) added a good tex­ture and flavour, but it was still very smooth and creamy. Besides the sweet­ness com­ing from the sugar, I could also taste some sweet­ness from the pump­kin purée.

I haven’t been to an Iza­kaya for a while but I love Iza­kaya food. It reminds me of the days I spent in Japan as an exchange stu­dent, hang­ing out with some good friends at an Iza­kaya as we enjoyed their cheap drinks and food. I miss cheap Yaki-Tori…seriously!

Suika serves more mod­ern style Iza­kaya food and we all enjoyed their well-prepared dishes with sim­ple flavours and com­bi­na­tions. I would love to go back and try some of their other creations!

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 4/5
Food: 4.5/5
Hospital­ity: 3/5 (New­bie Server)
Value: 4/5


Suika on Urbanspoon

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Local Food Events

Indulge n’ Dance: I was a Pastry Maker!

April 20, 2012 – 2:20 pm

The Yummy Work­shop Booth

The Indulge n’ Dance event hap­pened last Sat­ur­day but I wasn’t in the shape to write about it until today. Noth­ing is worse than catch­ing a cold in this unpre­dictable Van­cou­ver spring weather. Any­ways, the event was orga­nized by Social Bites. It fea­tured seven pas­try chefs where they each pre­pared treats to be served at the event and after the indulging, par­tic­i­pants could dance to 80s/90s music thus Indulge n’ Dance.

I was invited to par­tic­i­pate in the event as a pas­try maker by Annika, the owner of Social Bites. I was kind of sur­prised to receive the invi­ta­tion of course, because I have never sold or served my treats to a big crowd. Bak­ing is my hobby and I would feed my friends and fam­ily with my good­ies but I haven’t thought of tak­ing my hobby fur­ther (just yet). I was invited because of a post I wrote back in Feb­ru­ary about my food swap­ping expe­ri­ence. I blogged about my expe­ri­ence, the jam and mac­arons I brought. Two days later, I received a mes­sage from Twit­ter from Annika ask­ing if I would be inter­ested in the event because she saw the pic­tures of my mac­arons. (Cool, right?)

Before the event actu­ally hap­pened, Annika also orga­nized work­shops for the seven pas­try chefs for them to learn about ways/tips to improve or start their bak­ing busi­nesses from the pro­fes­sion­als. I learned a great deal from these work­shops, learn­ing from the pros’ was just won­der­ful. On the first work­shop, I met the six other pas­try chefs and they are all very tal­ented with some of them being pro­fes­sional bak­ers. So…I was the only one NOT pro­fes­sional, don’t have expe­ri­ence or pro­fes­sional train­ing, or even an online shop. I just have…a blog.

The big day came and I thought, “Here I go!”

Choco­late Ganache Tarts with Salted Caramel

I made Choco­late Ganache Tarts with Salted Caramel. Peo­ple loved the dec­o­ra­tions on the top, some specif­i­cally asked for the ones with the smi­ley face or the heart. I have to say I am quite proud of myself because it was my first time mak­ing larger quan­ti­ties of treats and served them to a big crowd. My tarts also won the runner-up for the “Best of Show” of the event! The “Best of Show” was voted by par­tic­i­pants based on pre­sen­ta­tion and taste of the treats from each baker.

The line up of Pas­try Mak­ers and their goodies:

Apple Caramel Pie Pops by The Pie Hole

I love the pie stands — so pro­fes­sional! The pie pops were very cute.

Matcha Mac­aron with White Choco­late Yuzu Ganache by Kawaii Eats

So pretty, don’t you think? Melany (baker) told me the dec­o­rat­ing is quite a bit of work, but she did a good job!

Dark Choco­late Baked donut with Whiskey Orange Glaze by Hyggelig Bak­ery

They also have a gluten-free and vegan ver­sion, I tasted one and I couldn’t tell there wasn’t flour in it, it was also very moist!

Molasses Spiced Cookie Ball coated in Choco­late and Rose­mary Short­bread Cookie by Rosy’s Bake Shoppe

The dis­play had such a pretty style.

Pina Colada Cup­cakes by Guava Jelly Cupcakes

This dis­play was so…tropical, a per­fect theme for Pina Colada.

Vanilla But­ter­milk Cake Pop Coated in White Bel­gium Choco­late & Can­died Maple Bacon by Some Kind of Wonderful

These cake pops were so pop­u­lar it won the “Best of Show” of the event! Congratz!

Annika — Our won­der­ful organizer

A peek behind the booth, it was a busy night!

The event was so much fun, I brought three friends there and they all enjoyed it. One of them even won some wine from the event spon­sor! After clear­ing the treats off our tables, we danced for a bit and had fun. I had the oppor­tu­nity to meet some local food­ies and media peo­ple, it was a plea­sure to meet them.

I was offi­cially a Pas­try Maker that night!

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Eat Out Restaurant Review

Bistro 101 at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts

April 11, 2012 – 7:42 pm

Bistro 101 has been around for a long time, but I have never been until recently. Bistro 101 is located just out­side of Granville Island, in the Pacific Insti­tute of Culi­nary Arts. Their dishes are all pre­pared by stu­dents for their culi­nary arts pro­gram as part of their practicum. They also have Bak­ery 101, where stu­dents of their pas­try arts pro­gram pre­pare the baked goods. One of the rea­son why this is a pop­u­lar place is that you can enjoy qual­ity dishes or baked goods with­out pay­ing very high prices. A three-course din­ner is $24 and they change their menu daily. I finally got to use my two-for-one coupon.

After we were greeted at the door and have sat down, a stu­dent chef intro­duced her­self and served us from begin­ning to end. Appar­ently she was grad­u­at­ing in a week, and that serv­ing cus­tomers was the last bit of train­ing. Congratz!

The envi­ron­ment of the restau­rant was quite com­fort­able, and there cus­tomers can see the stu­dent chefs through the kitchen win­dows as they dili­gently pre­pare the meals.

Menu

The menu wasn’t very big, it had three items to choose from each cat­e­gory includ­ing a starter, an entrée, and a dessert.

Bread Bas­ket

After we placed our order, the bread bas­ket came. It had many types of good­ies, even savoury choux pas­try and savoury short­bread. The but­ter was very good too. Accord­ing to the server, they even make the but­ter. (a lot of whipping?)

Thai-style Oxtail Soup

I had the Thai-style Oxtail Soup, it was very flavour­ful. The oxtail was very ten­der — almost melted in my mouth. It also had notes of cilantro and lemon­grass — the usual sus­pects when I think of Thai food. The tangy lime taste and toma­toes also bright­ened up the soup.

Baked Mus­sels & Pink Scallops

My mom had the Baked Mus­sels and Pink Scal­lops. She really liked it because the mus­sels and scal­lops were cooked just right so they were won­der­fully ten­der and sweet. The sun-dried tomato and roasted red pep­per were tasty and were a good tex­tural ele­ment. The pea purée was also a nice touch.

Grilled Pork Ten­der­loin Medallions

Next came the Pork Ten­der­loin, it was moist and juicy. The pear purée under­neath was very tasty as well. I loved the pine nuts here (for some rea­son), maybe because it added a very nutty, toasty flavour and a crunchy tex­ture. On the other side of the plate were some crispy mashed pota­toes with some roasted red pep­pers. The mashed potato was like mashed potato spring rolls. I think they filled the pota­toes in a fried shell. After all the breads and the starter, I was pretty full after the entrée.

Braised Veal Cheeks

My mom had the Braised Veal Cheeks. It was served on a bed of bar­ley risotto, some veg­gies, and some red wine reduc­tion. The veal cheek was VERY ten­der and fatty. How­ever, it was under-seasoned, so we had to ask for the salt shaker. The risotto was sur­pris­ingly good, unlike the risotto made with rice, this one felt less heavy and it had some bite in it as well. The red wine reduc­tion paired with the meat quite well.

Flour­less Choco­late Cake

Our server strongly rec­om­mended this cake, so we had to try it…and it was very good. It had good choco­late flavour and a good tex­ture. To my sur­prise, it wasn’t overly sweet with the white choco­late ganache on top and wasn’t very dense. Choco­late lovers would prob­a­bly enjoy this. The fruit coulis flower was visu­ally pleas­ing. The cook­ies fly­ing off the cake were light and crispy. I was.really.full. after the dessert, but I was smiling.

Almond Lemon Layer Cake

The menu said there was sup­posed to be a peach meringue, but I think it became a lemon sor­bet instead..haha. The cake was very rich in lemon flavour and the sauce added some mois­ture too. I per­son­ally would have liked it more if the cake itself was lighter and less dense but nonethe­less it tasted good.

It was my first visit to the restau­rant and I can def­i­nitely see why Bistro 101 has very high rat­ings. Their food is very tasty, the envi­ron­ment is ambi­ent, the ser­vice is also excep­tional, and at $24, you can’t expect more. At the end of our meal, we were asked to fill out a sim­ple com­ment card address­ing how we felt about our expe­ri­ence and I felt pretty good about my visit.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 4/5
Food: 4/5
Hospital­ity: 4.5/5
Value: 4.5/5

Bistro 101 (Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts) on Urbanspoon

 

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Richmond 365

365 Days of Dining Richmond, BC

March 31, 2012 – 4:19 pm

There has been a lot of talk about amaz­ing foodie oppor­tu­nity. If you haven’t heard about it, you can find more details here. Rich­mond, BC (my home) is recruit­ing a full-time food blogger!

Today (the last day to apply), I have finally applied to the 365 Days of Din­ing Rich­mond, BC. There are more than a thou­sand appli­cants, but I am still very excited by this dream job so I decided to ded­i­cate my first ever comic strip to my appli­ca­tion! Regard­less of get­ting the job or not, I am proud of sub­mit­ting my appli­ca­tion and post­ing my first comic strip. :)

Best of luck to every­one who entered!

Tags , , , | BC" rel="bookmark">Permalink | Comments (2)
Eat Out Restaurant Review

Shanghai Morning Restaurant

March 14, 2012 – 5:13 pm

Inte­rior

I am writ­ing another restau­rant located at the Alexan­der Road, oth­er­wise known as the “Food Street” of Rich­mond. Shang­hai food is another one of my favourite Chi­nese foods of all times, I like it because it is mild tast­ing (although Can­tonese dishes are even more mild) and it can be found in many places in Rich­mond! Shang­hai Morn­ing Restau­rant serves Shang­hai style Chi­nese food, as we entered the restau­rant, I instantly saw a famil­iar face. It turns out that the owner is actu­ally the old owner of Chen’s Shang­hai Kitchen located at No. 3 and Buswell. My fam­ily and I fre­quently vis­ited Chen’s so we chat­ted a lit­tle. The owner lady told us that she sold Chen’s and went back to Shang­hai for some time and now back in busi­ness in Rich­mond as Shang­hai Morn­ing. The restau­rant used to be Twin­kle Bub­ble Tea, although I’ve never been to Twin­kle, it seems like the new owner hasn’t changed much in the inte­rior of the restaurant.

Self-serve menu sheet

Menu looks almost exactly like Chen’s.

Beef Roll — $4.75

This is one of my favourite dishes, the flour wrap­per was ten­der and warm. There was also enough flavour­ful beef with the Hoi Sin sauce and cucum­bers. It would have been even bet­ter if there was more brown­ing and crust on the wrap­per though.

Pan Fried Pork Buns — $4.95

Almost all Shang­hai Chi­nese restau­rants serve this dish with the bun usu­ally soft and fluffy, but their style is sort of one-of-a-kind as they have a very crunchy crust on the bot­tom and a chewy exte­rior — just like Chen’s sig­na­ture pan fried buns. You can burn your tongue so eas­ily when eat­ing this because there is so much hot juices inside so I usu­ally wait until the heat man­age­able for me to eat.

“Tan Tan” Noo­dles — $6.25

“Tan Tan” noo­dles is orig­i­nally a Sichuan dish, famous for their spici­ness and bold flavours. It always has peanuts in it, which is why the broth is so tasty. Some restau­rants, though, don’t even serve it in a broth and there is about a mil­lion styles of this noo­dle dish. In all the ver­sions that I have had, it doesn’t con­tain any meats. The noo­dles here were cooked to the right tex­ture and the broth was also rich and deli­cious. How­ever, it was a bit too hot for me, as you can see from the orange colour of the broth. Oth­er­wise, it was tasty.

Spring Rolls with Red Bean Fill­ing — $4.25

Yes, sweet spring rolls. They were quite crispy and had a nice and warm red bean fill­ing. Fill­ing is prob­a­bly house­made because of the tex­ture and the added aged man­darin peel flavour. I am a fan of red beans so I enjoyed it.

Bill

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3/5
Food: 3.5/5
Hospital­ity: 3.5/5
Value: 4/5

Shanghai Morning Restaurant ??????? on Urbanspoon

Tags , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Baking Macaron Recipes

Matcha Green Tea Macarons with Chocolate Ganache

March 3, 2012 – 4:33 pm

I’ve heard so much about how dif­fi­cult it is to make mac­arons, as a bak­ing enthu­si­ast, I’ve set out to tackle this bak­ing mis­sion. :) It started out, of course, unsuc­cess­ful, I wanted to stran­gle the per­son who invented this evil dessert (just kid­ding). At my fifth attempt, they finally look like good mac­arons. If they turned out right, they should have a slightly crispy shell, a ten­der and slightly chewy cen­ter. I can’t say I am an expert at mak­ing these of course, I am sure I will encounter more problems.

I’ve always liked the flavour com­bi­na­tion of Matcha (Japan­ese high qual­ity green tea) and choco­late, it is the per­fect match of east and west flavours in my opinion.

So this recipe was adapted from My Food Geek’s “Almost Fool­proof Mac­arons” recipe. It uses the Ital­ian meringue method, it requires cook­ing a sugar syrup and com­bin­ing it with whipped egg whites, cre­at­ing a meringue. One of the advan­tages of the Ital­ian meringue is that it is more sta­ble than the French method (whip­ping together sugar and egg whites) because the egg whites are cooked by the hot syrup.

Print
Matcha Green Tea Mac­arons with Choco­late Ganache

Ingre­di­ents

    Mac­aron Shells:
  • 120 grams Egg Whites (room temperature)
  • 35 grams Gran­u­lated White Sugar
  • 150 grams Ground Almonds
  • 150 grams Icing Sugar
  • 2 tbsp. Matcha Green Tea Powder
    • Syrup:
  • 150 grams Sugar
  • 50 grams Water
    • Choco­late Ganache:
  • 115 grams Semi Sweet Choco­late — chopped (I used melt­ing wafers)
  • ½ cup Whip­ping Cream
  • 2 tbsp. Unsalted but­ter, cut into small cubes (room temperature)

Method

    For the mac­aron shells:
  1. In a small sauce pan, cook syrup: com­bine sugar and water and cook until the tem­per­a­ture reaches 230 F/110 C.
  2. In a stand mixer, beat 60 grams of egg whites and 35 grams of sugar until it forms soft peaks.
  3. When the syrup is ready, with the mixer on low speed, slowly pour in hot syrup. *Be care­ful as the syrup is VERY hot.
  4. Slowly increase mixer speed to the high­est set­ting, beat meringue until it cools down and becomes shiny. (10–15 minutes).
  5. Blend ground almonds and icing sugar in a food proces­sor, sift mix­ture into a large bowl, mix in matcha green tea powder.
  6. Add in the other 60 grams of egg whites into the almonds and icing sugar mix­ture — no need to mix together. At this point, you can also add in gel food colour­ing into the egg whites to boost the colour (optional).
  7. When the Ital­ian meringue as cooled down, gen­tly fold it into the ground almonds mix­ture. Mix with a spat­ula until it has reached a “lava” stage. *This is where it might be tricky because it is easy to over-mix or under-mix.
  8. Scoop meringue into a pip­ing bag with a plain tip (10 mm), pipe out 4 cm rounds.
  9. Tap bak­ing sheet to get rid of large bub­bles, let them sit on the counter for 30–40 min­utes so the tops get dry.
  10. Bake at 325 F/160C for 10–15 min­utes. After about 5 min­utes, the mac­arons will start to develop their “feet”.
  11. Let cool and care­fully remove from bak­ing sheet.
    12. For the Choco­late Ganache:
  12. Place choco­late in a small mix­ing bowl.
  13. In a small pan, heat whip­ping cream just until in boils, pour hot cream into choco­late. Let it sit for about 30 sec­onds, untouched.
  14. After about 30 sec­onds, you can start mix­ing it with a spatula.
  15. When it becomes smooth, you can start mix­ing in the cubed but­ter lit­tle by little.
  16. Refrig­er­ate mix­ture until it is the right con­sis­tency so it can be piped.
    17. Assem­bling:
  17. Match the size for each pair of mac­aron shells.
  18. Pipe in the appro­pri­ate amount of fill­ing, care­fully press them together until the fill­ing reaches the sides of the mac­aron shells.
  19. Refrig­er­ate for at least 24 hours (maturation).
  20. Mac­arons are best con­sumed at room tem­per­a­ture so before serv­ing them, take them out of the fridge and leave at room tem­per­a­ture for about 1 hour.
http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​3​/​0​3​/​m​a​t​c​h​a​-​g​r​e​e​n​-​t​e​a​-​m​a​c​a​r​o​ns/

Trou­bleshoot­ing from my experience:

These are some of the prob­lems I encoun­tered when
bak­ing macarons.

  • Cracked Tops: oven tem­per­a­ture was too high from the bot­tom, so I had to used 2 stacked bak­ing sheets for these.
  • Pro­trud­ing Feet/Tops Slid­ing Off: I think I under-mixed this batch, they are a bit high in height. The slid­ing tops might be a result of my bak­ing sheets hav­ing an uneven surface.

  • Sticky Bot­toms: I have way over-mixed this batch, it was too liquid-y when I piped it. They also turned out VERY thin and impos­si­ble to get off of the bak­ing sheets with­out destroy­ing them.
  • Uneven Feet: I have no idea what caused this, I think I have over-mixed a lit­tle because they are quite thin as well. I also think I did a bad job of mak­ing the sugar syrup because there were lit­tle chunks of sugar in the meringue.

Notes that I have for suc­cess­ful mac­aron baking:

  • Invest in an oven ther­mome­ter. My oven is prob­a­bly more than 20 years old so the tem­per­a­ture is always off so hav­ing a ther­mome­ter is help­ful in determing the right temperature.
  • Know your oven VERY well. Okay, every oven is a bit dif­fer­ent so you will need to adjust tem­per­a­tures, racks, bak­ing times etc. accord­ing to your oven at home.
  • Don’t over-mix or under-mix. As you can see from my pho­tos above, get­ting the meringue in the right con­sis­tency is one of the impor­tant fac­tors. Too much will make the bat­ter runny and too lit­tle might cause weird feet. I can’t really tell you in words what is “right” so you will need to exper­i­ment a bit.
  • Get good bak­ing sheets. Non-stick sur­face bak­ing sheets are actu­ally very bad in con­duct­ing heat and may warp eas­ily so I got myself alu­minum bak­ing sheets which are much bet­ter in con­duct­ing heat and the sur­face is nice and flat. I also bought sil­pats, it is not nec­es­sary but it saved me a lot of parch­ment paper.
  • Give your meringue a lot of LOVE. Mac­arons are quite del­i­cate so if you treat it with care, they will turn out nicer (It’s TRUE!).

Myths:

    • Pow­dered Sugar vs. Icing Sugar — you don’t HAVE to use pow­dered sugar (100% sugar), icing sugar (con­tains up to 5% corn starch) will work fine.
    • Aged Egg Whites vs. Fresh Egg Whites — I have tried bak­ing with aged and fresh — they both work, just make sure they are at room tem­per­a­ture and isn’t con­t­a­m­i­nated with any yolk, oil or water.

[UPDATE: Mar 6/2012 Food Geek has given some extra help­ful tips located in the com­ment sec­tion below!]

Finally, happy bak­ing! :D

Macarons

Tags , , , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (10)
Eat Out Restaurant Review

Claypot Hot Pot Restaurant: Dim Sum

February 28, 2012 – 1:09 am

Indi­vid­ual Tea Set — $1/person

It’s about time that I write a post about one of my favourite Chi­nese foods, Dim Sum! They are like lit­tle delec­table trea­sures. Some say that they are the essence of Can­tonese Cui­sine — I agree to some extent.

My fam­ily and I love Yum Cha (usu­ally a week­end brunch), so we are always look­ing out for good restau­rants that serves up deli­cious Dim Sum. Clay­pot Restau­rant is a hot pot restau­rant located on Alexan­dra Road, known as the ‘Food Street’ of Rich­mond. We’ve never tried their hot pot before but we finally vis­ited this restau­rant for Dim Sum, and we were sur­prised by the qual­ity and fresh­ness of their food.

How can you have Yum Cha with­out a good cup of tea? After we sat down, we were asked what kind of tea we would like to drink and it turned out they have a good vari­ety of Chi­nese teas. They offer indi­vid­ual tea sets for those who like to have self-serve brewed teas or you could also have them brew a pot to share (like what most restau­rants do). Not many restau­rants have this ser­vice and I per­son­ally enjoy it but I know some find it too much work.

Dim Sum Menu

They cur­rently have a daily $1 (great deal) Dim Sum spe­cial in cel­e­bra­tion of their one year anniver­sary. We went on a Sat­ur­day so we had the Steamed Beef Meat Balls.

Steamed Beef Meat Balls — $1 (spe­cial priced)

I nor­mally don’t enjoy this dish too much because it is some­times too soft and it feels like you are eat­ing some mys­tery meat. But it was pretty good, not too soft and had good beef flavour, it came steam­ing hot.

Steamed Veg­gie and Shrimp Dumpling — $3.98

This is always one of my favourites because I like the dif­fer­ent tex­tures. There was so much fill­ing and the wrap­per wasn’t too soft and it was a bit chewy the way I like it. The veg­gies in the fill­ing were crunchy and tasty.

Pan Fried Chive and Shrimp Dumpling — $3.98

This was tasty as well, the shrimp was fresh and the chives had a good flavour. It would be even bet­ter if they were more crispy.

Steamed Chi­nese Sausage Roll — $4.68

This is one of the older style Dim Sum dishes, so it is not served in many restau­rants. It is sort of like a Chi­nese hot dog. I liked that it had enough sausage in it because I’ve had some that had a lot of bun and not enough sausage.

Steamed Egg Tofu with Shrimp and Herbs — $3.98

This actu­ally tasted bet­ter than it looked. The brown strands are a kind of Chi­nese herb (don’t know what it is called in Eng­lish) that doesn’t have a very strong flavour. It was a steamed egg tofu topped with shrimp balls, herbs, and fin­ished with a sauce. This is good for those who want to go for some­thing lighter — it had mild flavours but still good with­out too much grease.

Rice Roll with Crispy Fish Fill­ing — $5.38

Kirin Seafood Restau­rant makes this dish too and does a good job. It was basi­cally a crispy deep fried fish paste wrapped in a bean curd sheet and rolled in a thin steamed rice noo­dle sheet. This tasted a lit­tle dif­fer­ent here (in a good way) because they added diced squid into the fish paste so there was another tex­ture. The inside was still nice and crispy when it came to the table.

Hot Pot Setup

The only thing that I found not so con­ve­nient was the hot pot stoves in the mid­dle of each table so you have to place things around the stove and have to move them around if you are eat­ing in a large group.

Good food but not too expensive

Shu Mai Dumpling with Quail Eggs

We went another time and had this. I think this was sup­posed to be a retro dish as well. It was like the reg­u­lar Shu Mai Dumpling topped with a quail egg — yummy.

BBQ Pork Pastry

We also tried their pas­try. They did a good job of this too — so but­tery and flaky.

I def­i­nitely enjoyed the fresh, made-to-order dishes as well as their indi­vid­ual tea sets. This one of the few hot pot restau­rants that also serves good Dim Sum. Over­all, we had a good Yum Cha expe­ri­ence there, and would like to go back for more.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3/5
Food: 4/5
Hospital­ity: 3.5/5
Value: 4/5

Claypot Hotpot and B.B.Q. ???? on Urbanspoon

Tags , , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Local Food Events

Food Swap Burnaby — my first food swapping experience

February 22, 2012 – 4:45 pm

Last night I went to the Food Swap Barn­aby event, it was also their first event ever. I had lots of fun and swapped a lot of good­ies. The Food Swap Burn­aby is an event where you can swap home made food such as jams, baked goods, pre­serves, etc. with what other peo­ple brought. It is like buy­ing with what you have brought. Their Face­book page is here. First we got to min­gle, taste some sam­ples, and then we started swap­ping. I for­got to take my cam­era :( but still man­aged to take some pho­tos with my phone.

I brought home­made jams and macarons!

TaDa! This was my sta­tion, I swapped my peach jam and mac­arons, sam­ples pro­vided too! Peo­ple asked me if I sell them, actu­ally I have never sold my mac­arons, maybe I should con­sider. :)

Sal­sas

Some seri­ous can­ning here.

 

Home­made Pottery

Some­one brought pottery!

 

Honey

Some­one keeps a bee hive in their back­yard and har­vests the honey — good stuff!

 

Crack­ers and Granola

Home­made crack­ers and gra­nola with nuts and dried fruits. I swapped a bag too!

 

Coun­try Bread

They look pro­fes­sional, and tasted deli­cious too!

 

In return, I took home these:

Swedish Crisp Bread & 4 Cit­rus Marmalade

Coun­try Bread & Home­made Kimchi

Pie Dish & Sour­dough Bread

I had a fun expe­ri­ence at the food swap, I def­i­nitely want to go to more swap­ping events!

[UPDATE Feb. 24/2012] More pho­tos of the swap can be found here at the Burn­aby New Leader!

Tags , , | Permalink | Comments (7)
Eat Out Restaurant Review

Hong Mi Korean Restaurant — Richmond

February 22, 2012 – 12:38 pm

I got the chance to visit this sort-of-new restau­rant in Rich­mond, Hong Mi, located on No. 3 Road. I actu­ally vis­ited twice, once for lunch once for din­ner. I totally for­got the prices for these, and they don’t have a restau­rant web­site, but I remem­ber that it wasn’t very expen­sive. The restau­rant is quite big and had comfy seats. They have a BBQ sec­tion and non-BBQ at the restaurant.

Appe­tiz­ers

The appe­tiz­ers we had included kim­chi, bean sprouts, sweet soy sauce with sea­weed (great with rice), and a jello-like slice with soy sauce (don’t know what it is called).

Beef Rib Soup

This was part of the lunch we had, sliced beef in a beef broth and it comes with steamed rice. The swirly things float­ing on top are the red dates and sliced pan-fried eggs. The beef broth was rich and tasty.

Bibim­bap

They have the Bibim­bap (mixed rice) with or with­out the hot stone bowl, I had the one with­out the heated bowl. Of course it was served with the sweet chili sauce. I liked that there was a gen­er­ous amount of top­pings, espe­cially veggies.

Seafood Pan­cake

This was our one of our din­ner dishes. The seafood pan­cake was crispy on both sides with a good amount of seafood top­pings and was served with the pan­cake soy sauce. It had a lot of scal­lions which I liked. I was also sur­prised that it wasn’t too oily, I’ve this else­where and it looked like it was almost deep fried.

Gin­seng Chicken Soup

This is another pop­u­lar Korean dishes. It had a small chicken stuffed with gin­seng, gar­lic, dates etc. braised in a rich chicken broth with rice. The soup was like con­gee except it had a very tasty broth. The chicken was also ten­der. It was served in a hot bowl so it was still bub­bling hot when it was brought to our table — a very warm­ing dish.

The restau­rant had good ser­vice in addi­tion to the tasty food. I would love to go back for other dishes.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3.5/5
Food: 4/5
Hospital­ity: 3.5/5
Value: 4/5

Hong Mi Korean Restaurant ?????? on Urbanspoon

Tags , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Baking Biscotti Recipes

Maple Pecan Biscotti

February 20, 2012 – 2:29 pm

I tried this recipe from the book “Ricardo: Meals for Every Occa­sion”, by Ricardo Lar­rivée a Cana­dian celebrity cook/chef from Que­bec. I per­son­ally enjoy his shows in Food Net­work Canada, but why I decided to buy the book was because of its design and pho­tog­ra­phy. It is very Cana­dian in style and has inter­est­ing illus­trated typog­ra­phy. Of course, it also has great recipes. I really like bis­cotti and this is one of my favourite because it is very good and easy to make.

Print
Maple Pecan Biscotti

Ingre­di­ents

  • 1 cup Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
  • 2/3 cup Gran­u­lated Maple Sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. Bak­ing Powder
  • 1/4 cup Cold Unsalted But­ter, cubed
  • 1 Egg, lightly beaten
  • 1/2 tsp. Vanilla Extract
  • 1/2 cup Toasted Pecan Halves
  • Milk for Brushing

Method

  1. Pre­heat ovenn to 350°F (180°). Line a cookie sheet with parch­ment paper.
  2. In a medium bowl, com­bine flour, 1/2 cup maple sugar and bak­ing pow­der. Add but­ter and use a pas­try blender to cut but­ter into small pieces.
  3. Add egg and mix until a dough forms.
  4. Mix in toasted pecans and knead dough with hands.
  5. Shape dough into a 20 inch log and place onto bak­ing sheet.
  6. Bake for 30 min­utes and trans­fer it onto a cut­ting board.
  7. Let cool for 15 min­utes. Brush with milk and dust with the remain­ing maple sugar.
  8. Using a sharp knife, cut diag­o­nally in to 3/4 inch (2cm) slices.
  9. Arrange slices on the bak­ing sheet and return to the oven for about 20 min­utes. Let cool on a rack.
http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​2​/​2​0​/​m​a​p​l​e​-​p​e​c​a​n​-​b​i​s​c​o​t​ti/

The maple sugar can be pricey to buy but I think it is worth get­ting because its sweet­ness is very dif­fer­ent from reg­u­lar gran­u­lated sugar — like maple syrup. The flavour of the maple is so deli­cious with the toasted pecans. I made these with Cana­dian organic maple sugar but you can use what­ever you can find.

Try out the recipe some time!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Tags , , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)

Next Page »

Next Page »


Hit Counter provided by professional seo company