Festive Recipe Re-interpreted

Loh Bak Goh 蘿蔔糕, or as CYY calls it, “Robert Go”, is one of those festive dishes we eat during Chinese New Year. Made with shredded white radish (or turnip or daikon) plus a number of other ingredients in a rice flour-based batter and steamed in a deep dish, the dish symbolizes growth (with the word “goh” 糕 sounds like high, or 高 in Chinese). It's often called "Turnip Cake" in English or as Singaporean would say, "Carrot Cake" - but regardless of names, they are all referring to the same thing.

Recipe: Rustic Cake for the Cooler Season

I made this dessert when my friends from New York T and L came over for dinner one evening in October. As the season of fall finally arrived I wanted to do something that fell in the mood of this cooler season. 

Cooking Experiment #1: Potato with a Fancy Name

I decided to take a week off in the middle of summer just to get some rest at home. When we told others about the plan, or rather a "non-plan" of doing nothing, many seemed surprised that we were not travelling anywhere. Well, it’s not exactly a week of “doing nothing”, but I have decided to take this week for some cooking experiments at home.

More Summer Recipe: Skillet Cake

I looked at my new Nambu Tekki cast iron pan and wanted to do something with it, that’s when I decided to make a simple skillet cake, something that is easy to make and I can enjoy all day – from breakfast to afternoon snacks to dessert. This is arguably one of the easiest cake to make – as long as you could mix and stir you should be able to master this rather quickly.

The Timeless Savarin

When our friends R and A asked us to bring a dessert to dinner at their place recently, I decided to do something simple yet classic, making use a small set of readily-available ingredients in the kitchen (hence saved me another trip to the supermarket in a cold winter day).

Farm-to-table Dessert: Tarte Tatin

On my flight home from Milan, I carried with me a bunch of random food items - among them fruits and butter. I am not exactly sure whether I broke any law or regulations by this, but anyway they went home safely.

Let's make some brownies!

Many have said the most difficult part in baking is the precision in measurement. Well no doubt there are solid grounds for that reasoning since baking is more of a science and there are certain rules that need to be strictly followed, especially for stuff like bread or certain types of cakes. But there are baked goods that are more forgiving than the others - and brownies is one of them. Of course every small things you changed will still make a noticeable difference in the end products, but in brownies, those differences are often acceptable. Maybe that's why I love making them at home since there's less pressure on getting everything right all the time.

Belated holiday recipe: Pecan Pie

With a Christmas Eve dinner to host at home and another party at a friend's place a few days later, I decided to bake a couple of pies for dessert, something I could prepare in advance. While many associated Christmas with panatone or stollen, it's more an American tradition (especially those from down south) to have pecan pie as part of the celebration meal (more so for Thanksgiving but also for Christmas too)

Everything looks better in bite size

I have this silicone bite-size brownie pan at home for a while, but I didn't use it that often until I realize it is good not only with brownies (saved you the hassle of cutting that fudgy chocolate sweets into pieces) but many other pastries as well. Bite-size pieces are not only convenient to be carried around for picnic or as snacks in between meals or as party food, they certainly look cuter and more presentable - line them up on a plate, stack them up like a tree, or just pile them in a deep bowl - just be creative!

Cooking at home: When Mexican met Mediterranean

I am planning for a dinner at home for 8 last weekend and I wanted to make use of saffron which we received from a friend after her recent trip to Iran. While a number of countries produce this exotic space known for its special fragrance and color, particularly those around the Mediterranean, it's often said that those from Iran were of the highest quality and the most sort after. Then I came across a recipe on a magazine for a Mexican dessert known as "Tres Leches" cake (which literally means "Three Milks" in Spanish) so I figured it would be interesting to match it with a saffron icecream to bring some sassy exoticity to the menu, matching creamy richness with the unique fragrance; a contrast of off-white and bright yellow colors; a fusion of Mexican and Mediterranean inspired cooking.

Recipe: Tres Leches Cake

Tres Leches literally means three milks in Spanish, because three kinds of milks were used - evaporated milk , condensed milk and the regular whole milk. We Hong Kongers are more familiar with evaporated milk (花奶/淡奶) and condensed milk (煉奶) for their wide use in local street foods and drinks such as milk tea and toasts, but they are almost as common as a cooking ingredient in many Latin American dishes. So for those from overseas, they should be readily available in supermarkets stocking Asian or Latin American grocery items - try find them in those specialty spots.

Day at the Four Seasons (Part 1) - Playing in the Pastry Kitchen

We were excited to have been invited to a behind-the-scene tour at Four Seasons' pastry kitchen in a Saturday morning recently. As much as I like to bake occasionally, I had no illusion that being a professional baker could be an easy job, let alone a fun one. Nonetheless I love checking out how a real kitchen works, and sometimes you do pick up a thing or two in the process that I found it useful when I cook at home.

Cooking at home: Carefree Clafoutis

Come summer time, you saw these succulent cherries calling and screaming for you as you walk by the fruit stalls in the market. Big ones, small ones, red ones, golden ones... well, we don't produce them locally and we have this all year round - in winter they were shipped from Southern Hemisphere places like Chile or Australia - but I still prefer the American ones for they are juicier and tasted better, and to me, cherry is always a summer fruit.

Cooking at home: Focaccia

We are obsessed with our new kitchen toy recently - the KitchenAid food processor. I always wanted one but never had the space for it, but finally, we decided, what the heck, let's try to make some room for it, so we did. Since we brought it home we have been using it almost every other day and keep asking why we didn't get this earlier.

One of the best thing I realize this food processor did best is bread making. Even better and convenient than the bread machine, you may ask? Yes, because of the many varieties it can make, plus I love getting my hands on my dough to feel it. I have already tried quite a few batches of bread recently, but focaccia is perhaps one of the easiest. It doesn't get your hands too dirty with messy dough and with the simplest ingredients. Basically focaccia is an Italian flat bread, just in case you wonder - it's very similar to a pizza dough but usually thicker and usually to be eaten without any toppings or cheeses.

Cooking at home: Rum baba

Rum baba is sort of like a hybrid between a brioche and muffin. It's a small yeast cake soaked in rum syrup hence the name. It can be served either hot or at room temperature, and either with dried or fresh fruits, creme anglaise or chantilly, or in my opinion, it's just as good on its own. And my favorite part is that, it can be baked in advance. Prepare it a day ahead and just set aside. Soak it in warm syrup before it's served and it's almost as if it went straight out from the oven to the table.

Cooking at home: Christmas stollen

Well, it is probably too late for this recipe to be any useful for this Christmas season, but I found this quite easy to make and could probably turn this into a normal bread or fruit cake by cutting down on sugar content. Not a lot of kneading required and so didn't leave my kitchen counter-top with gluey, messy leftover dough to clean up.

I was inspired by my friend Wilson in his recent article in the WOM Guide featuring our chef friend Gregoire (of the Four Seasons Hong Kong) for a cooking demonstration of this traditional German Christmas bread - it's similar to the Italian Panettone or English Christmas pudding as they all involve raisins and some kind of winter spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves etc), but I love the firmer texture and less sweet taste of a Stollen, far better than the other Christmas pastries.

Anyway, unfortunately Wilson's article didn't include a recipe nor ingredient list, so I went around found a couple easier ones on Google which I used as reference, and basically just improvised along the way to suit my own taste and preference. It yielded a big loaf good enough to serve 6-8 people.

Food Experiment - 40-second sponge cake

Friends who came to my place for dinner knew I love doing food experiments with them being the guinea pigs - some of them got the better of those experiments, though most are not so lucky. But the one I did last weekend turned out to be quite decent - more decent than I expected.

I got this recipe idea from a book I flipped through which talked about molecular gastronomy. While most of the recipes inside required use of obscure ingredients or funky equipment, this one caught my eye because it sounded easy to make and no special equipment needed other than a cream siphon, which I considered as a piece of ordinary kitchen equipment - in fact I got 2 at home. Anyway it's called 40-second sponge cake, as it only took 40 second of cooking time, in a microwave. It actually came from a recipe from the El Bulli menu a few years ago - how cool is that. Now let me show you how I did it.