Taro Yong Tofu (Tofu stuffed with Taro paste)

I ate something similar to this at Baba Laksa House in the Grace Hotel a few months ago. This is my take on the recipe for a taro yong tofu (stuffed tofu). Normally, restaurants will use a fish paste to stuff the tofu so here's a vegetarian version. I've tried to make a sauce for this from things I had along the way. To start, I washed some rice but kept the rinsing water for cooking the taro later. Steam the rice while you are doing the rest.

• 250g taro
• 1 packet of firm tofu (if you are in Sydney, Nhu Quynh made in Yagoona is a good option)
• 4 stalks of spring onions
• Nob of ginger
• 6-8 rehydrated shitake mushrooms (soaked for 1 hour in boiling water, reserve the water)
• 1 chilli
  
• soy sauce
• salt
  

Grate 3/4 of the ginger and fry with the chopped up spring onions and a pinch of salt. Once cooked, set aside in a medium-sized bowl.

Peel and cube the taro. Fry for a couple of minutes in a medium saucepan with the remaining ginger that has been smashed under a chopping knife. Pour in the water that you rinsed the rice with so that the taro is well covered. If there isn't enough, add a bit more water. Add the shitake mushrooms that have been diced and the finely chopped chilli. Cook until tender, which should take about 10 minutes. Towards the end, save 6-8 tablespoons of the thickened water to form the basis of a sauce later. If there is still any left over liquid, strain the taro and then mix the taro with the fried ginger and spring onions that you reserved earlier. Mash up the taro to form a paste. Add more salt to taste.



Cut the tofu so that it is in two layers. Then cut into squares. Sandwich the tofu in between two layers of tofu. Fry for a couple of minutes on each side until brown. Then take the reserved taro water, add some of the water used to soak the shitake mushrooms to thin it down and add a splash of soya sauce. Poor the sauce on top of the fried stuffed tofu and cook for a minute or two on a high heat. As a variation, you could use two different types of tofu. An egg tofu or silken tofu might be a nice contrast.

Serve the taro yong tofu on steamed rice.

June Brunch

To celebrate the start of Winter, it was time to have a brunch. I've been meaning to try Crepe Suzette for a while now. For crepes, I always use a modified version of James Peterson's recipe from "Essentials of Cooking":

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 3 large eggs
• 2 1/2 cups soy milk (Bonsoy if you have it)
• pinch of salt
• 100 - 150g butter
  

Put the flour, eggs and salt in a bowl and gradually combine together with a fork or whisk, then keep mixing while gradually adding the soy milk in batches. Don't skimp on the soy milk as the mixture should end up the consistency of heavy cream. Brown the butter in a frypan and incorporate into the mixture at the end for a tasty healthy-heart batter.

Cook all the crepes first. The mixture above is supposed to make 16 10" crepes. Maybe James has a different measure for 10" as I've never got 16 out of a batch. Then follow the instructions in the link above to make the orange sauce for the crepe suzette, cook them together while dousing each crepe as you add it to the pan to get a nice sticky rich sauce. Yum!



I tried creating a new dessert I call "gedamisu", which translates roughly to Ged Me Up! I took 2 hachiya persimmon (the soft ones) and blended up the pulp. Don't be too conscientious to get all the pulp off the skin. If you scrape too much, you'll get the stuff that makes your tongue go funny from just under the skin. In a saucepan, heat 150g of coconut cream with 75g sugar. Add the coconut cream to the persimmon pulp after it has cooled a little. You could add some finely diced fuyu persimmon for texture and maybe a little gelatin to help the pulp set. I didn't try the gelatin so can't guarantee if that is a good idea. Put the pulp mixture at the bottom of some wine or cocktail glasses.



Then I made a mascapone mixture from a tiramisu recipe (250g mascapone, 100g sugar, 4 eggs) and add that on top of the pulp. Refrigerate overnight and serve topped with fruit. I used dragon fruit for some colour but there is something strange about having tropical fruit in Winter.

Cooking Catch-up

Here's a small selection of stuff in my cooking backlog. Let's see if I can keep more up-to-date from now on...

Coca de Recapte - Catalan Flatbread

Well! This is my first post in a LONG time. It's not that I haven't been cooking, just too disorganised to blog. Maybe I'll upload some photos to prove this. Today's dish is a catalan flatbread that I made with the help of Mr and Mrs Barcelona, who could also verify its authenticity.

The recipe for the coca de recapte dough came from Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish's "Rustica" with some minor clarifications and my ever perceptive notes. :-) The ingredients for the flatbread are:

• 500g plain flour - no need for fancy flour as catalan peasants would never have used 00 flour
  
• 1 packet dried yeast, 7g
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2-1 teaspoon sea salt
• 330ml lukewarm water
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
  

Put the yeast into the lukewarm water, dissolve then mix in the sugar, salt and olive oil. Cover and set aside in a warm place for half an hour. Don't be tempted to add more yeast like I was as you are making a flatbread, not a focaccia... Combine the flour and the wet ingredients in a bowl using a fork and once it has come together, tip out onto a clean bench. Knead by hand for 10 minutes until smooth. Although you could be a big namby-pamby and use a mixer with a dough hook, kneading let's you release some frustration and is good for the soul, so do it by hand! The dough is a little wet but not so sticky that you need to flour the bench. After the initial kneading, let it rest covered for 5-10 minutes and then knead for another 5 minutes. Cover and rest another 30 minutes and then it's ready to go. Divide into 6 portions, roll out into "tongues" and let them sit for a while on oiled baking paper that's been given a good sprinkle of polenta. The polenta gives the bottom of the flatbread a nice crunch and also prevents sticking. If the dough rises after 10 minutes, flatten it out a bit more as you want it fairly thin so that it bakes crisp. You might like to poke the tongues with a fork before loading the topping so that it doesn't puff up while cooking.

In between kneading the dough, prepare the toppings. You can use pretty much anything but it's nice to caramelise some onions and cook with thinly sliced garlic, a little chilli and bay leaves in a frypan with a pinch of salt. Make sure you add some of Mr Barcelona's signature herb: thyme. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Other toppings might be best roasted with salt, pepper and olive oil.



Whatever you choose for your toppings, don't overload the tongues. Sometime less is more. Cook in a preheated oven at 220C for 15 minutes until nicely browned. Drizzle with a good olive oil and top with some torn parsley. In Barcelona, they serve coca de recapte cold but I think they are best eaten straight from the oven or at least while they are still warm. Here are some alternative toppings, although the list is endless:

• za'atar and labneh
• mushroom, garlic and nutmeg
• thinly sliced potato with rosemary and sea salt (some caramelised onions would also be nice)
  
• roast capsicum, eggplant and tomato
• tomato, torn zucchini flowers and ricotta (add the flowers after cooking)
• roasted kumera, cumin seed and pesto
  

Potato Salad and Mushroom San Choy Bao

In an attempt to spice up some leftover mashed potatoes, I added mushrooms fried in garlic and some lemon rind to some lettuce leaves. Unfortunately, although the lettuce I used (no idea what it is called) looked nice like little soup spoons, they were a little bitter and quite tough so I wouldn't recommend them. Stick with cos lettuce, you'll be a lot happier.

Apple and Blackberry Crumble

This turned out surprisingly well considering I'm pretty rubbish at baking. It came from a newspaper clipping I thieved from a cafe so it's heritage was probably one of the weekend papers.

Filling:
8 large apples (mix of golden delicious and granny smith) - peeled, cored and roughly chopped into wedges
150g frozen blackberries (thawed) or other berries
1 vanilla bean
300g sugar
100m water
1 lemon zest

Crumble topping:
100g plain flour (give or take - not sure exactly how much)
100 to 120g of cold butter diced
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
100g rolled oats
50g almond meal
100g brown or demerara sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g nuts (almond slithers or macadamia or walnuts or pecans ...)

Put the sugar, water, lemon zest and vanilla bean seeds into a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil then turn down and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the apples and cook for 10-15 minutes until soft on a low to medium heat. Strain away the liquid and then add to the bottom of a 25cm round cake tin with the blackberries. Pack it down a little.

Rub the flour and butter together in your finger tips to work the mixture until it forms a lumpy consistency. Don't overwork or it won't be crunchy. Add the cinnamon, rolled oats, almond meal, brown sugar, baking powder and nuts. Mix together until it forms clumps. Put this mixture
on top of the apple blackberry mixture in the tin.

Place into a pre-heated oven at 220C (200C if fan forced) for 20-25 minutes until golden on top.

Some variants I found when doing a bit of poking around on the interweb:

• Rhubarb & apple crumble: Omit the cinnamon. Replace the rolled oats with 35g (1/2 cup) shredded coconut. Reduce the apples to 2 (about 210g each). Add 1 bunch (about 550g) rhubarb, leaves discarded, ends trimmed, washed and cut into 5cm lengths, with the apples in step 3. Replace the lemon juice with 1 tbs fresh orange juice.

• Peach & walnut crumble: Replace the ground cinnamon with ground nutmeg. Replace the rolled oats with 55g (1/2 cup) good-quality walnut halves, roughly chopped. Replace the apples with 6 (about 1kg) freestone peaches. Cut a small cross into the base of each peach and place in a large heatproof bowl. Cover with boiling water and set aside for 5 minutes. Remove the peaches from the water and use a small sharp knife to peel and discard the skin. Cut the peaches in half, remove the stones and cut each piece in half lengthways. Place the peach quarters, cut-side up, in the greased dish. Omit the lemon juice.

Blood Orange and Blossom Cordial

This recipe is modified from Fouad Mum's recipe he posted on The Food Blog. Although I didn't have real orange blossoms to work with, in my first attempt I tried this with hand squeezed oranges. The next time round, I decided to snazz it up even more and used blood oranges to get the beautiful red colour. Here's the recipe:

4 cups of blood orange juice (you'll need somewhere between 3 to 3.5 kg of oranges)
8 cups of boiling water
2 tsp orange blossom water
1.5 kg of sugar (and even a little more might not go astray!)
1 tsp citric acid
The rind of 4 lemons plus their juice

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water and keep boiling for another 5-10 minutes with the lemon rind and then let it steep for a further 5 minutes. Let it cool a bit so you don't cook the orange juice so you might as well juice the oranges in the meantime.

Juice the oranges to make at least 4 cups. I double-strained the juice through a fine sieve to remove most of the orange bits. No point wasting the lemons so juice those and add that in as well.

Add the blood orange juice, lemon juice and citric acid to the sugar mix and stir well. Finally, add the orange blossom water. You'll find the orange blossom water contains a lot of oils so it floats and doesn't mix too well so you need to be aware of this otherwise the first bottle of cordial will have much more orange blossom water in it that the last bottle.

I sterilised the bottles in the oven by placing them in a cool oven, bringing the heat up to 160C and left it there for 5 minutes before turning off the heat and letting the bottles cool. The bottle tops were sterilise separately by boiling them in water for 10 minutes.

I found that the cordial needed to be added at a ratio of about 1 to 4 (or even 3) with water as it is not anywhere as sweet as store bought cordials. It's good with lots of ice.

Some things to try next time are: use mandarins or tangelos instead of oranges, maybe try pureed and then strained mangoes or strawberries when they are in season, oh, and what about blood plums. The possibilities are endless!

Summer Lunch

After a long respite, I'm finally back and posting some meals I cooked in the past few months. Summer kicked off with a party for plenty and here were some of the dishes we ate.

In order of appearance, there is Lemon Infused Olive Oil, Herb Coated Labna, Dukkah, Baba Ghanouj, Carrot and Orange Salad, Spinach and Ricotta Roll, Flourless Orange and Almond Cake.


Baba Ghanouj
The recipe for baba ghanouj comes from the Lebanese episode of Food Safari. I was a little skeptical that just charring the eggplant over an open flame would cook it properly but it gave the dip a smokey taste which went well with the creamy texture.

2-3 medium sized eggplant
1½ tbsp tahini
1 tbsp lemon juice
1-2 cloves garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp paprika
Parsley, finely chopped
Tomato, finely diced

Grill the whole eggplants over an open gas flame, turning with tongs until the skin is evenly blackened. Do worry if it looks a mess, you'll peel the charred skin off shortly. Soak in cold water for about 10 min to cool.

After soaking, peel off the blacked skin and leave to drain in a colander for 15 minutes. Whizz up the pulp in a food processor with tahini, lemon, garlic and salt until creamy.

Place the mixture in a serving bowl and make a well in the centre just deep enough for the oil to be poured in. Sprinkle paprika, parsley and tomato on top.


Carrot and Orange Salad
This recipe came from the Moroccan episode of Food Safari. I had great hopes for this but it turned out too sweet and really didn't get much attention from anyone at the lunch so I don't know if I'd recommend it. If you are interested, you can find the recipe here.


Spinach and Ricotta Roll
Can't remember where I got this recipe from. I'll have to do a search.


Flourless Orange and Almond Cake
This comes from the Jewish episode of Food Safari. It's an amazingly moist flourless cake great for the gluten intolerant and lovers of desserts. The following is lifted from the Food Safari website with some minor comments added:

2 oranges
6 eggs
250g caster sugar
250g almond meal
1tsp baking powder
Extra caster sugar for dusting before baking
Icing sugar for dusting after baking
Margarine or oil spray (for greasing the pan)

Wash oranges and place unpeeled, in a pot of boiling water for 2 hours. I suspect that it could be cooked for much shorter but haven't tried this. Drain the water and allow the oranges to cool. This can be done ahead of time.

Preheat oven to 190°C.

Break 6 eggs into a mixing bowl or blender. Add caster sugar and beat or blend together. Place the two oranges into the egg mix. Break up the oranges and then blend together to a smooth consistency. Add the almond meal and baking powder and blend.

Grease a 20 cm spring form baking pan with margarine (or vegetable oil spray) and dust with caster sugar. Pour batter into the pan and sprinkle caster sugar on top and bake for 1 hour to an hour and a half or until the top is golden brown.

It's best to leave the cake overnight to set, but people don't often tell you this step. Dust with sugar before serving.

Garden Bean Salad

This is a great recipe that came from the Good Weekend. Blanch the following for about 1-2 minutes each in separate batches:

• Broad beans (double shell them after blanching)
• Borlotti beans
• French beans
• Spring onion bulbs

You could also use: butter beans, snake beans, snow peas, ... The borlotti beans came from my brother's garden.

Make a dressing by finely chopping brown shallots and macerating them in a good red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar for 15 minutes. Give them a good squeeze so that the sharpness of the shallots get broken down. Add a pinch of salt and sugar, olive oil and if you have it, some walnut oil.

Dress the salad and then top with toasted walnuts and goat's curd. If you want to really impress, also top with some edible flowers like bean or pea flowers.

Cheat's Spinach and Ricotta Open Lasagne

I've seen a few cooking shows that use wonton wrappers in a lasagne. Well, it just doesn't quite taste right. When you bite in, it tastes like you're having an eastern meal until you get to the ricotta and spinach when you get a clash with the west. Maybe gowgee wrappers would work better.

It's a shame since the spinach came from my brother's garden and the ricotta from Paesanella in Haberfield.

Potato Salad and Radish Omelette

Just getting rid of some potatoes. Need to find a better mayonnaise or try making my own next time...

Freestyle Fritters

It seems you can make fritters from anything. For this, I had some left over potato, parsnip and carrot mash. I dumped in a tin of corn kernels, some flour, an egg and some parsley.

Peach and Blackcurrent Filo

Filo and puff pastry are great for making simple desserts. All I did with this is put a heap of layers of filo down brushing every odd sheet with melted butter, then spread some blackcurrent jam on top and cover with peaches, then add more layers of filo. Bake at around 180C for 20 minutes.

Toasted MANwiche Stack

Some days you like to have a more refined meal like risotto with minimal ingredients. But on other days, you have to bring on the MANwiche and pack it with every flavour in the pantry.

For my toasted MANwich stack I took lebanese bread, heaped on the ingredients, folded it in half and dry-fried it in a pan. Here's a good start for the filling:

• pesto
• bocconcini
• feta
• parmigiano
• roasted red peppers
• mixed mushrooms
• capers
• flat-leaf parsley

Make two of these, cut each in half and stack them. Mmmmm.

Mushroom Risotto

It's been a long time since I've made risotto but with the horrendous weather recently, I decided that no other comfort food would do.

Cook a plain risotto, that is, just the rice with wine and stock. At the same time, cook the mushrooms separately with a good lump of butter, half a red Spanish onion and garlic. When the risotto is ready, stir in the mushrooms and a generous handful of parmigiano. Let it sit with the lid on for 10 minutes and serve with a little flat parsley. That it! With risotto, less is best.

I used vialone nano risotto rice which can take a lot of liquid before it loses shape.

Next time, I'll try roasting the mushrooms in the oven so it has a smokier taste.

Fried Polenta with Mushroom and Jerusalem Artichoke Ragout

I've always liked polenta but was having trouble finding anything but the tasteless "instant polenta" that is the only choice at most supermarkets. In Byron Bay there was a great store called Santos with organic polenta in the bulk bins. Unlike the processed instant stuff, this is a bit more coarse and takes about 15 minutes to cook.

I usually use these proportion and make up as much as I need. To fill a cake tin, each part would be about 1.5 cups:

• 1 part polenta
• 1 part soy milk
• 2 parts water
• salt
  

Put all the ingredients into a pot stirring regularly over a low flame. Polenta has a nasty habit of bubbling all over the place so once it starts boiling, you need to keep stirring. It will seem really liquid but within 10 minutes will start to thicken. Keep going for about another 5 minutes. Then stir in a big handful of parmesan and/or something like gruyer. Once the cheese is melted, pour into a cake tin and allow to set for at least an hour, or even better, overnight. To serve, cut into slices and fry.

The ragout I used was a bit too dry. I think this works better with a sauce that is more liquid. Italians often serve the polenta without frying. They just pour the polenta onto a wooden board, put the sauce on top and then serve after it's been given a few minutes to thicken up. This is a great communal way to share a meal.

Za'atar Manakish

Following on from my Middle Eastern explorations with labneh, I thought I'd make some za'atar as well. This is a mixture that is often served on flatbread like a pizza and is called za'atar manakish.

The basic recipe consists of sesame seeds, dried thyme, sumac and salt. The exact amounts are not terribly important so adjust for your tastes. The proportions I tried came from combining recipes from multiple sources:

2/3 cup toasted sesame seeds
1/2 cup dried thyme
1/4 cup sumac
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried marjoram
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp paprika

In a mortar and pestle, grind together half of the sesame seeds and all the other ingredients. Do this in batches as there will be too much to do in a single go. Mix in the rest of the sesame seeds. This can be stored in an air-tight container in the fridge for a few months.

The za'atar can then be used in heaps of ways and goes well with many different food:

• Brush turkish bread (pide) or flatbread with olive oil, cover with za'atar and put under the griller for 5 minutes to make za'atar manakish. I added some blobs of lebneh to make it tastier.
• Dip bread in good olive oil and then into the za'atar for a tasty snack
• Add to scrambled eggs or roast tomatoes topped with za'atar
  

I was also thinking of using half my batch to make dukkah. To get the taste right, grind some cumin and coriander seeds, roughly crush some roasted hazelnuts to add to the za'atar mixture. A project for the weekend...

Labneh (Strained Yoghurt Cheese)

At the Pigg's Peake 2008 wine release, I tried labneh for the first time and it was awesome! Labneh is a strained yoghurt common in the middle east and southern asia that retains the sour taste of the natural yoghurt. You can go to a "gourmet" store and pay $14 for a small jar or make you own for much less, it's pretty easy (but requires patience) and would surely get you big brownie points if you brought some to a dinner party.

Just take 1kg of natural yoghurt, add 1 teaspoon of sea salt and mix in well. Pour yoghurt into a large piece of really clean muslin cloth, tie it tightly with string, put this in a strainer and hang above a large bowl in the fridge. Leave it to drain for at least 2 days until the whey stops coming out but be careful to ensure the strainer stays above the liquid.

When it gets to the consistency you like, form into small walnut-sized balls and leave in the fridge for a few more hours to dry out a little. Bottle in sterilised jars with light olive oil and add some goodness like rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and chilli.

I was possibly a little impatient and should have waited three days rather than two. The yoghurt I used was pretty thick to start with so I might try a more liquid yoghurt next time. Naturally, different yoghurt will give you different tastes so don't skimp and never ever use low-fat!

I think a nice way to serve it would be to take turkish pide spread with za'atar, mint, tomatoes, blobs of labneh and drizzled with olive oil before baking for a few minutes. This blog suggests serving labneh with macerated apricots for brekkie. Or you could serve it like hummus, spread on a plate with olive oil and paprika. Options are endless!

Broccoli Soup with Parmesan Toast

I figured this would be a good way to get rid of the woody broccoli from the Pyrmont Grower's Market. This pretty much convinced me that broccoli is better placed in anything but soup. Not sure why people like this but it was worth a try.

One recipe I saw recommended drizzling with chive-cayenne oil made by blending 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup chives and some cayenne powder. Sounds like this would be great on mashed celeriac or on good bread.

Crème Caramel

This recipe definitely needs a bit more practice. Rather than a smooth texture for the crème caramel, I somehow ended up with a lumpy flan. One theory is that you need to tap the tray before cooking to get rid of air bubbles. Also, you are meant to pass the egg mixture through a sieve to smooth out lumps but I only had a strainer in the house.

So, here's the recipe that came from a friend of my brother's:

6 Tbs sugar
6 eggs (if 700g dozen), 5 eggs if bigger, 7 if smaller
1/2 rice bowl of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 rice bowl of sugar
3 rice bowls of milk

Gently heat the 6 Tbs of sugar in a shallow round metal tin till it bubbles and then goes brown. Ideally, avoid using a non-stick as it is hard to cover the bottom of the tin. Allow the toffee to cool and set.

In a separate bown, mix together the condensed milk, sugar and milk until well blended. Pass mixture through a sieve into the round tin and tap the tin to remove any bubbles. Place tin into a water bath with boiling water and cook in a 150C oven for around 1.5 hours. If it browns too quickly, reduce temperature to 120C. If you have a fan forced oven, don't use this, go old school.

Allow the crème caramel to cool and refrigerate before serving.