Tuna Steaks!

...can't emphasize enough how much I like a good juicy fresh tuna!
Dinner the other night was fresh cuts of fish (tuna and salmon) over a mixed salad, mostly "Nüsslisalat" which is essentially like baby spinach clumps, chopped seared asparagus, sauteed onions and zucchini, with a sweet-soy viniagrette dressing.
My favorite way to do tunasteaks is to marinate them in some sesame oil, soy sauce, minced garlic and wasabi for an hour or two before cooking, and then before cooking (I even leave on the garlic chunks... I really love garlic... and then spread each face of the tunasteak with a bit of aioli sauce and then stick a bunch of crushed pepper, I really like red peppercorns, which have this intriguing sweet-spicy-ness pepper flavor to them. Then sear for just about 1-2 minutes per side (for ~ 2cm thick steaks) in a hot pan (trying to flip them with a good spatula so they retain the most of the browned garlic-aioli-pepper coating), leaving the centers nicely pink...
Granted, it is tough finding a decent cut of tuna in this very inland country! On occasion it looks fresh enough that I give it a go!

Strawberry-Almond Chiffon Cake

My latest cake invention! While on the treadmill (hah!) daydreamed up a cake to satisfy the conditions: {not too sweet, not too fatty, moist, very fluffy, preferrably fruity-influence} and took up the challenge yesterday to make it, and I'm pleased with the results!

A fluffy, light chiffon-style almond-cake, layered with a whipped strawberry-mascarpone cream, topped with a drizzle of chocolate fudge sauce.


My approximate recipe:
Separate 7 eggs-- keep all egg whites in mixer bowl, and reserve 4 egg yolks in another bowl. Beat the 7 eggwhites with a dash of cream of tartar and 1/8ish tsp of salt, until soft peaks, then gradually beat in about 1 cup of raw sugar (~160g), until the sugar is fully disolved and the merengue fairly stiff.
To the egg yolks, I added my homemade ground "almond butter" (containing only almonds ground and a pinch of salt).. probaby added maybe 3/4 cup of it (~170 g). Broke that apart into the egg yolks, added a capful of almond extract to it, and a few tablespoons of water (enough that it'd make a nice smooth paste), and beat that together fully. Then I added a big dollop of the whipped eggwhites to that mix to lighten it up, then poured all of the yolks mix into the whipped whites, and folded it in just enough that it was incorporated. Then sifted about 3/4 to 1 cup of ww flour (~120 g) through a fine sieve, removed the larger wheat germ flakes, and sifted it with ~1 teaspoon baking powder. Carefully folded that into the egg-almond fluff in 3 stages--big folding motions definitely required to prevent the egg whites from falling too much, which worked out also surprisingly well with this cake (as I was thinking that the heaviness of the almond-filled egg yolks and flour might be too much to keep the fluff, but it kept its fluff really well this time!)
Poured that into my angel food cake pan, baked it at about 375F for say 30-40 min, till it was golden brown on top and could tell it was done. Cooled upside down on a wine bottle for a good hour while I made the cream layer.

250g container of half-fat mascarpone (great stuff!) + 100-150 g of a thick quark (essentially a very thick protein-rich yogurt), whipped those together with about 1/3 c sugar, then diced 6 large strawberries, poured them in and beat it more unitl they got smeared into the cream and the cream was a lovely light pink color. Prepped 2 sheets of gelatin in about 1/4 c water (stir, and slighty heat till fully dissolved), let it cool 5 min, then poured that into the strawberry cream and agian beat it in to fully mix through the gelatin. Then let that refrigerate for a good 45min-1hr to firm up.

Sliced the cake with my breadknife to make 2 layers for the cream, and re-assembled the cake layers with the strawberry cream in about 2-cm thick layers betwen teh cake tiers.


Chocolate fudge sauce:
2 Tb butter, 2 Tb light olive oil melted together in a pan with a pinch of salt, and a couple Tbsp. sugar
Brought up with about 3/4-1 c milk until the milk almost reaches a simmer, removed from heat, then dump in ~150 g choopped chocolate, and let that sit a few minutes before stirring it up into a fudge sauce (I overestimated the milk and underestimated the chocolate in my batch, and ended up pouring in the rest of a batch of hot cocoa powder mix I had made which had cocoa powder, protein powder and powdered sugar), which thickened it up perfectly, and I liked the idea of it being a protein-powder-enriched fudge :)

And when hot, drizzled that over the top, and refrigerate!

I hope it's also your piece of cake! :)
Hopefully I'll get to make this one again soon!

Spring(finally!)rolls

That's a dorky title, but I think springtime is coming here finally after a loooong hovering-around-zero-slushy-icy stage! And it does make for a corny pun to make springrolls... actually when I was in the asian store, found a new intriguing product... dried tofu.. or "Tow-Fu" as the package says haha Seasoned to be various meat-like flavors. Essentially like tofu-jerky, but still a bit juicier. I think it could make a great addition to springrolls, so want to try it out.Result...okay their "beef" flavored "Tow-Fu" was scent and flavor-wise equivalent to many dog treats I've smelled (or tasted!), but texture definitely good, and I ended up boiling off their flavor in some water, then re-sauteeing it in some garlic, basil and soysauce to get a good flavor on it.

Rice paper is fun stuff...
anyway I braised halfed-baby-corns, woodsear mushrooms (awesomest mushroom texture in the world) as some of the filling, but also rolled up the springrolls with sweet basil leaves, lots of beansprouts , the "tow-fu" and rice-noodles.
I'd ideally want to dip them into a spicy peanut sauce, but I was too lazy to make that so opened another bottle of Sweet chili sauce, not a bad second-best. I'll bust out the peanut sauce when I get a step-down voltage transformer so that I can use my beloved food processor again to grind the peanuts, garlic and chili together for a sauce...

I've got tons more to fill them with, so making up another big batch tonight, and I think I'll use some more pan-seared real tofu, and some fresh mint leaves, too.

White Asparagus!

My first time cooking with white asparagus! AaaaaaaSo this might not look so appealing from the picture, but man it tasted good! This was a white asparagus-mushroom risotto, used a mix of 2 rice types, a couple onions, and cooked them risotto-style with half and half vegetable broth and white wine, near the end adding in the asparagus and finally the mushrooms into the mixture.
Finished it off with salt and pepper and a thin sprinkling of Grand Padano cheese (cheaper here than parmesan) then mixed through the whole dish..

I was bedridden ill this last week, but had made a huge batch of this (to use up 1.5 kg of white asparagus) just before it got bad, and this dish got me through the week...was a really good comfort food while I was in the slumps!

Nice buns....

Made a batch of these pull-apart dinner rolls which turned out really nice! Great flavor, soft stretchy fluffy interior, and still a bit of a crisp upper crust...

Made them again last night, and tried to recall and write down what I added this time! :)
In a large bowl, mix and let "brew" 1 pack of yeast, 150 ml warm water, 2 Tbsp honey.
If in 5 min it's really foamy--good, it's active enough. Otherwise (like this second time I did it, when there was only maybe 1x the volume of foam as liquid after 15 min, I added half a pack more of yeast before continuing)
Add 200 mL warm milk, 1 egg, ~70g olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, another 1-2 Tb honey, 250 g whole wheat flour +200 g "Ruchmehl" which I think would most be like whole wheat pastry grade flour in the US. (Just a slightly darker, more protein-rich flour, but not much wheat germ flake in it). Knead this mix together (with some sort of electric mixer), while still a bit too-wet and sticky which I find is a good texture to nicely stretch the dough and develop the gluten more easily than with firmer drier dough. Then add gradually 100-200 g more flour until it comes together to a dough that is not sticky to the touch anymore (though still very tacky), and can be at least handled when floured on the surface.
Let that rise in a bowl greased with olive oil until more than doubled in volume. (give it around 1.5 hrs)
Then punch down and roll out into a log, cut equal-sized balls and form them nicely into a lightly olive-oil-sprayed breadpan.
Then let them rise for another while, up to around an hour, until they have joined in the pan, and are turbo-fluffy.

I baked them at about 190-200 C for 30-40 min (depending on pan size).

They made great rolls for stuffing with chicken sloppy-joes!!!

Broccoli tart

Well, ever since my friend Bling Bling posted her vegetable quiche on her blog, I was craving one.

Broccoli became my victim one fine evening, and I also like hers threw it in a nicely seedy-grainy crust, using flax seeds, sesame, ground soybeans, ww flour, salt, garlic and onion powder and some paprika and olive oil.. And filled it with some steamed broccoli, onions, and a pepper-seasoned egg-cream mix for filling.

Craving satisfied.
Would definitely do it again.

Many Merengues

:) Just some fun pictures of merengue cookies... when I was in Oregon, had many leftover eggwhites from making another dish, so of course made my favorite cookie... in abundance. Besides chocolate and vanilla, tried a new flavor having just bought lemon extract for my dad-- Lemon merengue cookies. That ended up being his and his girlfriend's favorite flavor.

The general recipe (in more scaled-down quantities!) :

Preheat oven to a low 275F or about 140 C
2 large eggwhites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 c sugar (sometimes I push it down to 1/2 c, but then has a harder time getting as stiff when baking, so careful!)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat eggwhites and cream of tartar till stiff peaks, then slooowwwwly add sugar while beating, till very stiff peaks. then add vanilla.

.... THEN...
a) if Vanilla --> leave as is (or add a tad more vanilla flavoring)
b) if Chocolate --> add about 1-2 Tbsp cocoa powder
c) if Lemon --> add about 1 tsp lemon extract
d) if hazelnut --> add ground hazelnuts
... the possibilites are endless!

squirt out the cookies from a pastry tube (or if you don't have one, take a ziplock plastic bag, put the merengue inside, and cut off a small corner to pipe it out).. onto a lined cookie sheet (lined with wax paper or parchment paper)
Bake for about 20-25 (or 30 if you made big dollops), until merengus are crisp (on the vanilla ones, until the peaks just start a golden brown of lightly roasted marshmellows color.... mmm)