I got my hands on a good sized zucchini squash. I wasn’t sure what to do with so much of it, so I decided on a chocolate cake. The recipe itself was easy to make, and the results were tasty. I did notice, there were some seeds in the cake and there were some strands of zucchini left. Need to do a better job of food processing. The recipe is available here.
In my CSA delivery this week, I was the proud recipient of a bunch of super sized green onions. These are not your grocery store variety; these are mutant weeds. What to do, what to do…
This is the first batch of green onion pancakes. I still have half the bundle left. I think I need to more finely chop my green onions, as they look more like dumplings. But still tasty. 葱油饼 Chong yao beng, in Cantonese. This is pretty close to the recipe I used.
I’ve been making lemon meringue pie for as long as I can remember. But it usually doesn’t turn out runny. Except for today. It can go into the books with my less successful cooking experiments such as the blueberry clafoutis and coconut cream pie.
I bought a bag of organic lemons last week. There six in the bag; I think used one for a recipe. I used two and a half for this recipe, and the rest will go into lemon curd.
The recipe I used was from Wanda’s Pie in the Sky Cookbook. It’s similar to most I’ve seen on the net. I didn’t have any cornstarch so I used tapioca flour. I wonder if that was the problem.
I was being lazy, so I used store bought Pillsbury and used my brand new pie dish. Very suitable for this type of pie.
I was doing really well with the sugar, tapioca and water mixture. I let it just start to boil, then turned down the heat until it started to thicken. I turned the heat off, while I combined some of the mixture with the egg yolk. It continued to thicken until I could barely stir it.
Then I put it back on the heat with the remainder and heated gently until it started lightly boiling again. I removed from heat and added the butter. After that dissolved, I added the lemon juice, zest and vanilla. This is the step where it might have messed up. The recipe called for 3/4 C of lemon juice, but I like mine a little tart so I added a little bit more. Along with some pulp. It become runny again, but I thought it would set.
It looked good in the dish, but after cooling to room temperature it was still runny. Next I made the meringue. I made sure the egg whites were room temperature before starting. I used the highest setting on my KA and the whipping blade. This is the best meringue I have ever made. It was stiff and held its shape; it stayed piled high and fluffy even after baking.
It looked so good after it came out of the oven!
Until I cut it…
And then it ran away. I don’t think chilling it could even save it. But the meringue was spectacular (It floats on top of the runny filling) and the filling tasted pretty good too.
Oh here is my failed blueberry clafoutis in a spring form pan. Note: do not use a spring form pan for a custard.
Here are the results from the bake sale last week. I sent along some red bean paste buns and sea salted caramel cookies.
Looking for dinner or some tasty treats tonight? Come down to the Calgary Farmer’s Market for for dinner and homestyle baking! Support the Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale and the Calgary Foundation’s Flood Rebuilding Fund. Food trucks will also be there.
My mother-in-law is visiting, so I thought I’d make a nice Saturday roast beef dinner. Since hubby is British, I better impress or I may get thrown out of the house. 😉 I bought a nicely marbled Spring Creek Ranch prime rib roast, I suspect it is at least Canada AAA. It’s very tender when roasted and hands down the best prime rib I have ever bought.
The Yorkshire puddings, I usually struggle with, but using a high altitude recipe makes for really good results. They doubled their size. I think I will use the leftovers for popovers. Fill with peanut butter and jam. Tasty.
I found this little gem while shopping at Lucky Supermarket next door. I’m really used to visiting Chinese bakeries with all the predictable Chinese favorites. I suspect, this bakery caters to Vietnamese and Filipinos. They had an assortment of western bread, cookies, pastries and cake. But they also had various sweet rice desserts, and cassava cake. My friend was so happy to find a rice cake that she hadn’t eaten since childhood. They also had the Vietnamese equivalent of lo bok go, steamed daikon cake.
Today’s foray to Indonesian Kitchen reminded me of the great taste of cassava. Cassava is a starchy vegetable that is used as food in a lot of Asian and African countries. It’s used a lot in subsistence farming. There is one ironic thing about this tuber. It is toxic to humans because it contains cyanide. There are two varieties, sweet and bitter. I assume they only sell the sweet variety in the grocery store. It requires proper processing techniques to be safe to eat. With sweet cassava, peel off all the skin (just the white flesh showing), cut off any dark streaks, grate and cook. Most of the poison is in the skin. The bitter variety, apparently has to be soaked for days in water or fermented underground. Then cooked really well. Processed, it is commonly known as tapioca. I usually dislike processed foods, but I appreciate it needs to be processed to be made safe for human consumption.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/foodsafetynetwork/cassava
I’ve modified the recipe below, by substituting the evaporated milk with water, adding some unsweetened shredded coconut, a dash of vanilla extract, and a couple tablespoons of sugar. I’m pretty sure I used around four cups of cassava – I didn’t measure, it was two large tubers. It’s surprisingly tasty, with the rich taste of coconut and a nice caramelized flavour.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cassava-cake/
We had quite the snowstorm today. Stayed in until it was over. Cooked up a storm as well. This weekend, I made: sayur lemak, bok choy and pineapple salad, spicy Korean pork and meyer lemon curd tart.
Sayur lemak is a Malaysian dish. Specifically, it is vegetables cooked in coconut gravy. I fell in love with this dish when there was a Tropica in Calgary. I found that this version is a bit watery, not like gravy should be. Next time, I will add some cornstarch.
Looking around the web for some inspiration, I found a bok choy and pineapple salad. It is similar to gado gado, but the veggies are not cooked. I quite liked this dish. I added some fresh mango and it was tasty.
I felt like making a Korean dish to go with this, but didn’t feel like spending a lot of time. This spicy version of pork bulgogi was perfect. I served it on top of roasted spaghetti squash. I’m trying a mostly veg and meat dinners this week (and last). Starchy carbs make me hungry and fat.
The Meyer lemon curd was delish, but unfortunately did not set. So it was not picture worthy. Will try cooking it on a pot directly on the stove rather than the double boiler method, next time.
Update: After a day or so, I had another slice. Voila! It was set.
I’m going on a ski trip tomorrow, so I was thinking about going to the Chinese bakery to pick up some bao. Scratch that. Let’s have a Chinese Italian fusion bao. Pizza buns. Gigantic ones. Well, I had some problems with portioning the dough so one came out a little small. Great for sampling. Oh I ran out of tomato paste and improvised a second batch with ketchup instead.
I still have that leftover pie crust from last week. I got bored of coconut cream so I tried making a peanut butter cream pie. I substituted the regular crust for the peanut butter graham cracker crust. Still need to work on my crust technique, but this one fell apart less than the previous one. I used all natural peanut butter, nothing but peanuts. It gives a less sweet taste to the filling which I like. I love my new Zwilling saucepan. It holds the heat perfectly for the chocolate ganache. Dessert anyone?
Another successful creation courtesy of Wanda’s Pie in the Sky. That has to be my favorite pie book.
