WFF 10 - On a bittersweet note...

It's finally here, my long-awaited trip home!! I'll have a brand-new nephew to spoil rotten (and pinch), several bloggers to meet, lots of food to stuff my face with and lots of pictures to take! It goes without saying that I'm bursting with excitement, but life being as unfair as it is, something always has to mar my quest for happiness... Thus I have no choice but to start off this post with another mega-rant unrelated to food (well, there will be food at the end! :) ).

Ever since I booked my plane tickets, I had been counting down the days to the 29th - the date of my flight (but of course I only arrive in Singapore on the 30th). Last Sunday, I thought I'd check out Sistic's website (Singapore's entertainment ticketing booth) to see if any interesting concerts were in store... Hoping against hope, I typed "Sonu" (for Sonu Nigam) in the search field. My heart raced when there actually was a result!! I started shrieking when I saw the date and was gushing to myself in excitement that I'm going to rush from the airport, dump my bags, freshen up, and dart off to the concert in a yet-to-be-acquired hot pink sari. I was already looking at seating arrangements and trying to decide where I wanted to sit when I looked at the search result again and it sank in - 29th April, 7.30pm. Wait a minute, that would be 1.30pm in France, Sunday, when I'd still be languishing in the boarding area at CDG instead of touching down! I briefly failed to realise that I'd only arrive the day AFTER the concert! Aaaaarggghhh!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

My hubby was suitably puzzled when the excited shrieking segued into head-banging (and not in a classy heavy metal way), and took a look at the screen. Long uneasy silence. He promptly reminded me that I'd already seen Sonu 6 months earlier and even managed to grab his hand when I crept up to the stage. I was even seated close enough to the stage to take such pictures:








So what? Even though I can watch snatches of his concerts on Youtube, and even if he sang exactly the same songs (which I'm sure he will), something like that is frustrating enough to justify a hunger strike!! To say that I'm really and truly pissed is tantamount to saying I only "like" Sonu Nigam. Sigh. All I'm hoping for now is that he will do some sight-seeing and that I'll bump into him in the streets of Singapore, haha... (3 years ago, on another trip home, the IIFA Awards happened to be held there, and I saw Sanjay Dutt in the flesh, entering his hotel! I was lucky that the year after, it was held in Amsterdam, just 3 hours away from where I am, so got my fill of all my favourite stars!)

Other consolation - Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy will also be in S'pore in May, and their performance will be a week later. I might just make it if I can find someone to go with me to drum up the hooting decibels, heh heh. Somehow hooting at a concert when you go alone seems slightly mental to me. :)

It has been unseasonally sunny here, so I could not stay mad for long. Besides, I'd gone to the market last Sunday and found some beautiful sun-gorged fruit, so ended up doing this to them:


I've always been in awe of people with hands so deft mere fruit become masterpieces, and I suppose if I won the lottery and didn't have to work, I'd flood this blog with nothing but pictures of my attempts at carving, heh heh..

As for this week, hmmm, funny how comments from some of you on my last post dug into my conscience.. ;-) apparently, most of you assumed that I was clearing my freezer to make way for new dishes I would whip up and freeze to nourish that hubby while I'm away for a month. The original plan was for him to go out and buy microwavable meals, which I was in fact making space for, but after all the undeserved praises heaped on me about what a good wife I was perceived to be, I felt like pure scum accepting all that credit on credit, and had to do up a few can't-go-wrong favourites of his that were simple and pretty much made from other processed food, so please, don't make me go back to feeling like scum. I didn't really cook this weekend, I merely assembled various ingredients to arrive at a more elaborate end, heh heh. :)


The pies - tuna
and ham & tomato


Gnocchi - chorizo and 2-cheese & ham


What I did not make from scratch: pie crust, tomato sauce and gnocchi.
What I did do: cut ham, tomatoes and chorizo; cook gnocchi; half-fill 1 ice-cream tub with bottled tomato sauce and another with cream, blue cheese and grana padano. As for the tarts, I followed Michael Jackson's advice to "Just Beat It", haha.

There's not much "how to" for me to share with you here that doesn't sound like previous posts with tarts, but the tuna tart is one of my hubby's favourites, so apart from the crust, the rest of the ingredients are : mustard (to coat the base of the pie crust), tuna+lemon juice+plain yoghurt and/or cream+grated gruyère or emmental+eggs.

I might not blog much during my vacation, but keep writing! :) Thanks for your encouragement, everyone!

WFF 9 : Dill Mangta... sai bhaji and more!

The other day when I made Besan dal, I mistakenly said that it should be served with a methi pulao (fenugreek rice). Oops! My bad! The friend who gave me the recipes (including today's, which I'd distorted to my convenience) kindly pointed out that it would be better for Sai Bhaji, aka Sindhi Palak, a spinach dish I definitely didn't do justice to, as it has just come to my attention that it doesn't look one bit like how the Sindhis do it! Eeek!! (hides face in shame)

Nonetheless, for my efforts, I'll post a picture!


How to: Would you really want to learn it from me? haha!! :)

UPDATE:

Ingredients (quantities to adjust to taste): 3 tbsp channa dal (soaked), a few cloves of garlic (crushed), ginger paste, green chillis, 1 chopped onion, 1 potato (optional), 2 big tomatoes (chopped), 400 - 500g spinach, a pinch of turmeric.

Fry garlic in some oil, then add chopped onion and ginger paste and spinach, fry until fragrant. Add turmeric, channa dal and tomatoes and fry for a few minutes. Add potato and about 1/2 cup of water and transfer everything to a pressure cooker and cover. Cook until channa dal is soft. Add salt to taste and whisk. Garnish with dill weed and serve with a pulao and yoghurt..

Body Count: 0

I still had some duck leftover from the little I used last week on my mini tartlets, and made these Hachis parmentier aux petits pois et canard. Hachis parmentier is pretty close to a cottage pie, except that pre-cooked leftover meat is usually used, and in recent years, adventurous chefs have replaced the usual beef with other meats, and the potato with other floury vegetables. In my case, I wanted to inject some colour into the dish and made it with a base of garlic, olive oil and potato mash, confit de canard in the middle and a broccoli & garden pea topping, garnished with shallot chives and a pea.


Lastly, a desperate attempt at eating light before heading home - a Chinese tofu stir-fry with baby corn and straw mushrooms. The sauce consists of oyster sauce, light soya sauce, water, corn starch and Chinese cooking wine, I believe, THE generic gooey stir-fry sauce. And of course, loads of crushed garlic!



Why do I want to start eating light? Some people being the way they are, ie, ill-mannered, on previous trips home, I've had a few of them telling me in my face that I'd put on weight (yes, of course, I no longer weigh what I did in 1995 when I was still a teen, idiots!), in varying degrees of tact and of indiscernible good intentions. While I know deep down that I shouldn't care what people think, negative remarks on my weight, no matter how unjustified, tend to make me self-conscious, and the last person to say something like that to me had his business card scribbled on and deposited in a very strategic location with an unambiguous exhortation to call for services I have no guts to elaborate on in a food blog, haha.

So no matter how confident I feel now, I hate to admit that the onset of a holiday mood has brought back in full force a habit I thought I'd dumped - snacking on chips. Sigh. I guess I'll have to stick to wearing black, heh heh..

Easter WFF Part 2 - Not just my stuff

I'll try to make this quick since I'd already covered the stuff I made in my previous post. This post merely serves to show what goes on in a typical French 5-hour lunch and how expandable our stomachs really are! :)



Before we sat down to eat at this pretty table at my in-laws' place,






we gathered for the apéritif, which is not considered part of the official meal - a pre-appetiser if you will - but does its bit to squeeze out stomach space nonetheless, at this table:

From top to bottom: My foie gras (duck or goose liver) macarons - with or without alcoholic raisins, smoked salmon and blinis with tarama, crackers with egg and tapenade (a paste made of black olives), and slices of toast with foie gras and grapes. This is not the first time my MIL and I have had coinciding ideas, in this case, foie gras with grapes!




with champagne, what else? ;-) Remember, there were only 6 of us adults to eat all this, and we weren't even able to clear all these plates!






I had to take a picture of my place setting because no matter how hard I try, I am incapable of such attention to detail, so a round of applause for my MIL! The napkin ring/belt is just precious! As for the little purse next to the green-stemmed glass, it contained a couple of chocolates that mysteriously disappeared when I was attending to my kid!



There was still no need for me to loosen my pants when the cold starter was served - a scallop and salmon tartare with cubes of Madeira jelly, courtesy of my sis-in-law and her hubby. It was really good and I would have been contented to end my meal there...





...but of course the eager beaver that I was, I disobeyed my MIL's instructions to scrap the warm starter, so we had to eat my warm starter (the duck & orange tartlet) AS WELL AS the reason she wanted me to scrap my tartlets - the huge white sausage in the foreground called a "boudin blanc". :) Boudins blancs are made of pork, egg white, mushrooms and I don't know what else, and I like them a lot, but would have been happy to share it with the inquisitive chick instead, hee hee!



Did you hear me say "starter" twice? Yeah, a main dish was also waiting in the wings - a tenderloin on a bed of creamy mushrooms and a crispy crêpe. The side dishes from left to right - string beans wrapped in Parma ham, baked carrots & parsnip and a vegetable patty. See the chick-o-meter? My sentiments exactly! heh heh.. the little guy read my mind! :)





Just in case those pangs continued to act up, we each had a cake, too! :) When my MIL informed us there was a comprehensive cheese platter to be had, the other 5 of us raised our verbal white flags and voted her off, haha! In fact, I didn't even eat my cake straightaway! I came back for it after a 2-hour break!





Errr, it turned out we weren't allowed to leave without having dinner (lunch ended past 4pm), so the cheese platters - I hadn't noticed there were 2 of them, each containing 8 different types of cheese! - made their pungent appearance. My other picture, of the bigger platter, was blurry, what a pity! There were even cold cuts and assorted types of bread to go with it! I have trouble refusing cheese, so indulged in a few of them. Do you know some of those things can contain up to 40% fat?!


Whew... such extravagance! I knew my mom-in-law was finally convinced of our satiety when I saw the Périgourdine - basically a coffee and walnut ice-cream cake with bits of meringue and chocolate shavings that my father-in-law fought with to get 6 portions, haha!


I couldn't help noticing how thirsty I was at the end of the day, and now that I look back on all the dishes on offer, I'm not surprised - where in my belly could I fit in my daily quota of water?? :)

Easter WFF Part 1 - my stuff

I'd mentioned earlier in the week that my mom-in-law loves my macarons, and Saturday, she called to tell me not to bother making the warm starter as planned for Easter Sunday since she went overboard on her purchases. Before hanging up, she asked me in a tiny voice if I could make some macarons instead. Heh heh, I found it rather cute and had to tell her she'd just ruined my "surprise". I hadn't made any macarons in ages because the novelty wore off for me long ago and I have little patience for all that sifting biznazz, but knowing she liked them, I was intending to make some ON TOP OF the warm starter and told her as much. Needless to say, she was thrilled, except that I refused to reveal the flavour and was already halfway through making the warm starter.

I was flattered by her compliment and happily went on to make the macarons, but that happiness soon gave way to some slamming of kitchen utensils, hurling of assorted instruments, unguarded language and a serious desire to kick in the door of my oven so that it would never open again. People, you have no idea how miffed I get when my macarons look like this:

instead of this, according to the laws of nature:

Of the two batches I made, only a minority turned out looking like those in the second picture, so my hubby's repeated assurance about his mom liking them for their taste instead of their looks was met with a steely gaze, enhanced by another real and dangerous source of steel - you know, the kind that can cut and cause blood to spill?

Hmmph! Anyway, I was in no condition to attempt a third batch, so went on to make them as planned - with a foie gras filling, and a couple of embedded vodka-steeped raisins (by the way, the yellow one was flavoured with saffron and the brown ones with chicory):

As for the warm starter, fortunately, it turned out satisfactorily enough to not warrant anger management classes for me! These are my very own Tartelettes au confit de canard et à l'orange.

"Confit de canard" is duck slow-cooked for hours in a bath of duck fat (its own and from other ducks, I suppose) and herbs until the meat is so tender, it falls off the bone at the slightest prodding. It can easily be found in cans here and is what made me a duck convert. I'm really not all that adventurous when it comes to meat and I've always found duck a bit strong, but when I first tasted confit de canard, I was willing to give duck a second chance and to taste it in its other incarnations! :) It's a mess, though, fishing out the meat from the canful of fat! Not something I buy often!


How to: For a change, I made the tart crust myself, but won't bother sharing it with you because it was really oily and crumbly, so I'm not sure I'll use the recipe again! I blind baked the crust in individual tart moulds, topped it off with a mixture of marmelade and lime juice, put it back into the oven to caramelise the marmelade, then garnished each tartlet with shredded duck.

Body Count: About 2 duck thighs.

My mom-in-law and I certainly have our differences, but one major thing we have in common is our fear of not feeding our guests enough! :) If you think my previous WFFs are excessive for 2 people, wait till you see my next post (whenever that will be!) on all that we had to eat for Easter, keeping in mind that there were only 6 of us adults, two of whom (my sis-in-law and myself) have bird appetites!

Oh, it being also spring, my MIL spring-cleaned her fridge, too, and so I am stuck with quite enough leftovers to last me until April 17th, I think if my calculations are correct. Great, since I have been staying later than usual in the office these days and have no time to cook when I get home, but not so great 'cos none of the leftovers can be frozen and I am quite sure some things will turn bad at my hands! :(

Unwitting WFF 8 - Cooking like clockwork

Hmm, I just realised that I never did specify what constitutes a WFF (for latecomers, that means "Weekend Feeding Frenzy", where I attempt to cook so much on one day of the weekend to avoid cooking on a weekday in a foul mood :) )... Now I will! I'll set the minimum number of dishes to 3, not counting desserts and accompaniments (e.g. plain rice). It's actually quite easy to accomplish!

The weekend started out stressful enough for me (ahem, it had to do with proving I could be trusted with a car), so food wasn't really my priority, but as it progressed, I found myself at the supermarket buying nothing, really, with dishes materialising under my nose! Am I turning into a - gasp! - machine?!?! I didn't even make a decent list of what to cook, or what to buy, but somehow I managed to make at least 3 things! I'm losing control!

Bread is a big part of life here, so when I was at the baker's buying a baguette, (a.k.a. ficelle, a.k.a. flûte, depending on where you buy it), I chanced upon this cute "crown" of bread and ordered one without missing a beat. ;-) Naturally, without having a concrete idea what to do with it! I was simply swayed by the alternating poppyseed and sesame buns.

Fortunately, I always have a few cans of tuna in my pantry to fall back on, and made a tuna salad from a recipe that was passed on from an aunt's friend, to my aunt, to my mom and then to me. Originally, it consisted of tuna in brine, mayonnaise, hardboiled eggs, chopped gherkins, 1 chopped onion and 1 chopped apple. For this time, I skipped the onion and replaced the gherkins with capers. As for the apple, I only eat green apples since they're always guaranteed crunchy. I hollowed out each individual bun and filled it with the tuna salad, saving the crumbs for something indeterminate at the time.

Variations: There aren't many things I wouldn't eat with tuna! Well, except strawberries, I guess.

Body count: 1 can of tuna

Then I remembered I had 6 green apples that had been lying around for more than a week, initially purchased for a potato, apple and camembert terrine. I only needed one for the tuna, but went on to skin the other 5, cut them into sixths and sauté them in a liberal amount of butter. I had cheddar-potato mash and a ready-made pizza crust languishing in my fridge, too, and put them to good use - together. There and then, the idea of a terrine became a pizza!

I spread the mash on the pizza crust, arranged the buttery apple slices on the mash and thinly sliced a whole camembert, which went towards adorning the apples. Baking time - 15 mins at 210°C. It may sound like a strange combination, but I didn't make it up - the recipe for the terrine came from one of the oldest cookbooks in my possession. I merely transferred everything onto a crust.

Body count: 0.

With all the apples used up, there was still a lot of butter left in the pan, which I sponged up with the crumbs from the hollowed-out bread crown. I really didn't want to, but the buttery breadcrumbs ended up as a crab stuffing for raviolis! Last week, when I made Maultaschen, it was the very first time I'd used my pasta machine even though it's been two years that I've had it. Making pasta turned out to be more fun than work, so I was itching to use it again and watch the pasta sheets getting churned out. The Maultaschen experiment was also the first time I'd heard of using bread to make stuffing, so there you have it - Crab & saffron raviolis.

Dough: 350g flour, 3 eggs, 2 capsules of powdered saffron, 2 tbsp of olive oil, salt. The Kitchen Aid did it all for me this time. Ordinarily, I'd knead it myself given the insignificant quantity.

Stuffing: 350g crabmeat, 150g of breadcrumbs, 30g butter (I think), 1/2 a bulb of garlic, crushed, salt and Martini for moisture. I'm unable to specify how much Martini went into it, but I just poured until I got the right consistency. I think I forgot to add salt, though!

I don't suppose I need to explain how to make raviolis, but I boiled these for about 7 minutes or more, and served them with a garlicky tomato & basil sauce.


Body count: 3 cans of crabmeat.

During the grocery shopping trip, I decided to treat myself to a bottle of Amaretto. When pouring myself a shot on the rocks Saturday evening, it suddenly occurred to me that all my favourite drinks came in squarish bottles! Just take a look for yourself to see what I mean:


Coincidence? Clever marketing? I'm not ashamed to proclaim that I get zero help from my hubby in drinking any of these, but I am sure the low levels in each bottle have more to do with evaporation than consumption! Oh, definitely!

WFF 7 - Muzzle up!

Many moons ago, I had a love affair with German - the language. Unfortunately, I was swiftly snared by the rules of grammar and those dreaded distractions called gender and boredom. This was way before I knew how to cook anything, so the attraction was strictly intellectual. If I'd never set foot in Germany, I most certainly would never have had the opportunity of discovering Maultaschen (literally, "muzzle bags"), a speciality of the Southern region of Baden-Württemberg. I'm unwilling to say anything disparaging about German cooking, but let's just say that "dainty" is not my favourite adjective when describing German food. Nonetheless, Maultaschen is for me, as dainty as it gets! :) Some call it German ravioli but I demur. There are more folds in Maultaschen, making them bulkier but with more reliable seams. Absolutely necessary when they take about 20 minutes to cook!

In 2005, when I made a trip to Tübingen, a quaint university town where the current Pope hails from, I got out of the car ankle-deep in snow and was not pleased about it. I was starving but not to the extent of yearning blood sausages, and deliberately learned how to say I didn't want any in German! :) Seeing the word " Spezialität" beside "Maultaschen" on the menu in my hotel's restaurant, I decided it sounded safe enough to order, so the fact that I made them yesterday means I thoroughly enjoyed them! These are just the uncooked ones. I will be doing a separate post during the week showing how I folded them and the different ways of consuming them.

How to: I basically got my recipe from here, but tweaked it a bit here and there. The amount of flour I used for the dough was closer to 400g than 500, and I used 350g of pork instead of a mixture of beef and pork. I was very very contented with the result, and it helps to have a Kitchen Aid!

Variations: Exists in salmon and vegetarian versions.

Body Count: 350g of minced pork

If you remember my dear friend from this post, I had a long chat with her last Sunday and I asked her for a few Sindhi recipes. The sweetie that she is, she dictated 4 to me, and to be cautious, I started with the easiest - Besan dal, or better known as Sindhi curry. She practically had me from the moment she mentioned "besan"!

How to: Dissolve 3 tbsp of besan (chickpea flour) in 2 cups (500ml) of water, adding water in small quantities to ensure there are no lumps. Soak some tamarind to get a paste. Chop 3 green chillis, 2 large tomatoes, 2 carrots and about 150g of okra (in North America) aka ladies' fingers (in Asia) aka gombos (here and in West Africa). Heat some oil, and fry 1/4 tsp of haldi (turmeric), 1/4 tsp of methi (fenugreek) seeds, 1/2 tsp of jeera (cumin), a pinch of hing (asafoetida) and a few slices of ginger. Add the besan suspension and keep stirring until mixture thickens. Add vegetables, about 4 tbsp of tamarind paste and let vegetables simmer according to how firm you prefer them. Add salt and curry leaves to taste and serve with a methi pulao (which I was too lazy to make, because as you can see, I have quite a lot to eat! :) )

Variations: My friend says potatoes can be added, and the quantities of the tamarind and vegetables can be adjusted to taste. I didn't have any hing on me, and I believe the curry would have been even better with it.

Body Count: 0 (vegan)

It has been 3 weeks and I still have not gotten over the potato-in-microwave phenomenon, so I had to find more excuses to use the 2.5kg sack of potatoes I bought to that effect. Last week, I mashed hot potatoes with a crumbly cheddar and couldn't get enough of it with my stuffed jalapenos, so I had to make the same mash again this week, but this time, to make cups containing chilli con carne, as in these Chilli pots:

How to: My chilli has always come from this recipe, but I added one diced capsicum. I spied a few cans of corn in my pantry, too, and decided to empty one of them in into my chilli. For the pots, I crumbled 200g of cheddar with 3 microwaved potatoes and shaped them into crusts according to the muffin tins I used. Then I filled the pots with chilli and baked them at 180°C for half an hour.

Variations: You know, I think I should have added some flour to the pots to make them firmer, crispier and easier to handle. Just a thought for the next time I attempt this!

Body Count: 500g of beef.

I'll be darned if I still have to cook during the week after having made this much, but to hammer another nail into that imaginary sealed coffin, I made one more dish - Lor Mai Kai। Literally, it means "glutinous rice chicken" in Cantonese, and it's really just that, with of course, the usual sauce-pects (sorry, couldn't resist it!). Lor Mai Kai is something I occasionally had for breakfast in Singapore, which is significant in that A) I seldom wake up in time for breakfast and B) if I do, I usually skip it anyway. Strangely, though, I prepare it for dinner over here on a fairly regular basis.

How to: Soak about 400g of glutinous rice in water overnight or for at least 2 hours, then drain. Marinate about 500g of chicken meat with a few slices of ginger, equal quantities of sesame oil, dark & light soya sauces and oyster sauce (I'd recommend 2 tsps, but I didn't measure). Add white pepper and corn starch, and mix well. In a wok, heat a few tablespoonsful of oil and fry some shallots (I had pre-fried shallots) until they're crisp. Add rice and a tablespoonful each of Chinese rice wine, oyster sauce, light soya sauce and sesame oil. Add a few drops of dark soya sauce if you'd like some colour, then add about 300ml of water, 100ml at a time, stirring constantly. When all the water has been absorbed, remove rice from heat.

In individual bowls, line the base with chicken meat and top off with glutinous rice. Steam for about half an hour or until rice is fully coked. Serve with chilli sauce.

Variations: Black mushrooms or raw groundnuts can be added to the rice. For a vegetarian version, mock meat can be used, with a vegetarian oyster-flavoured stiry-fry sauce.

Body Count: 500g of chicken

WFF 6 - Gee, it's getting stuffy in here!

Am I alone in vapidly going goo-goo-ga-ga over stuffed things? Would you prefer eating whole jalapeno peppers with a heap of cheddar dumped unceremoniously on the side or would you prefer those peppers stuffed with said cheddar, and oozing like lava when bitten?

What is it about disguising one element in other that transforms the appeal of certain vegetables? Personally, I feel that the apparent effort put into filling the cavity of a fruit or vegetable is enough to make the whole (or hole!) look tempting, especially when you make it yourself, never mind if the taste is dubious!

This weekend, all I wanted to eat was finger food, and being the ruler of my own kitchen, I didn't need to ask if anyone minded (snigger, snigger). It started off with these Identity-crisis Jalapeno Poppers. First and foremost, I almost never see chillis for sale at Carrefour, and wasn't even looking for them, so when I stumbled upon them, cheddar inexplicably fell into my basket as well. Except that I wanted at all costs a bhaji coating, but who's stopping me? :)

How to: For 16 peppers, mash 200g of cheddar with as much potato mash (does anyone spot a "phase" in the making?). Add salt and pepper. Slit peppers on one side and scoop out seeds and white centre. Wetting hands, fill cavity with cheddar-potato filling.

For batter: Mix 2 tsps each of besan, rice flour and all-purpose flour with 1 tsp each of baking powder, ground fennel, cumin and coriander. Add water to obtain a thick paste and add an egg if desired.

Heat oil, and when hot, dip stuffed peppers into batter and gently lower into oil. Fry until golden and drain on paper towels.

Variations: Other firm "stuffable" vegetables (capsicum, zucchini, small onions, okra, etc). Egg & breadcrumbs instead of bhaji batter.

Body Count: 0.

Note: This is something I could eat every single day (a very tall order for someone who makes a pastime of getting bored), if it wasn't the greasebomb that it is! I don't know if it was the potato or the batter, but I'd never seen the level of frying oil dip like that!!

The next on the list was totally unplanned. I thought I didn't have any more prunes in the fridge, and when I saw that I did, I remembered the time my mom-in-law came over for a dinner I was hosting, and to avoid coming empty-handed, brought exactly the same apéritif as the one I had prepared - prunes with streaky bacon! We had a good laugh about that, but ahem, somehow mine disappeared faster! :)

I only had lean bacon or very fatty rosette (which is what you see on the right), so what do you think happened? See those paper-thin slices dotted with saturated fat? They're bad for your heart but hey, if the industry continues to thrive, I imagine it only takes you to the threshold of a heart attack and not beyond! Whew!

before

How to: Folded into a band and tucked into the opening of a pitted prune, rosette, like many other fatty cured meats, confers its delicate flavours on the dried fruit and the fat provides a certain amount of moisture.

Place prune & rosette bundles on a heatprof dish and grill for a few minutes until meat is crisp.

after

Variations: Any fatty deli meats - bacon, speck, Parma ham, chorizo, you name it. Any dried fruit - fig, apricot, date, or grilled vegetables - capsicum, eggplant, sundried tomato.

Body Count: A few slices of rosette.

Since those prunes got me started on the whole dried fruit trail, I had no choice but to fiddle with a few apricots, to make Peppricots!

2 weeks ago, I'd used 2 other different flavours of Boursin, but didn't take pictures of the box. Today's flavour is black pepper!

How to: Mix a 150g dome of Boursin with a tablespoon of cream. Split dried apricots without separating the halves, and fill with Boursin. Serve.

Variations : Boursin exists in so many flavours, I've lost track. Nonetheless, they're all good for stuffing dried fruit, eg, dates, figs, prunes, etc, provided you have the patience!

Body Count: 0, not even rennet!

I promise this will be the last of the dried fruit foray, but dates were in fact what had been nagging since the start of the week. I'd never bought them before this week and so have never cooked with them, so it wasn't easy coming up with Deglet-Nour date burfi.

These were so easy to make I even managed to hold a phone conversation with a friend while making these, with the phone wedged between my shoulder and ear!

How to: Make a date paste by boiling about 20 dates in enough water to cover them in a saucepan. Remove stones, if any, and whizz to get a smooth paste. In another pan, heat 150g of ghee or butter. When it melts, add 3tbsp of sugar and 200g of besan and stir, breaking up lumps and cooking until besan smells slightly roasted. Add date paste, stir until even, then pour out onto wax paper and leave to cool before cutting into diamond shapes.

Body Count: 0

Note: Sorry to inflict psychedelic sugar dinosaurs on all of you (click to see them better)! As you can see, the date burfi does not have a very attractive colour, and the plate did nothing to help, so I was hoping those dinosaurs could perk things up! :)

I'm running out of breath, so for now, I'll post the last of the series, but will do the how to, variations and body count at a later date. In the meantime, please be satisfied with just pictures of my Grasshopper Tiramisu!

Update: For as long as I can remember, I've always liked the association of chocolate with mint, and when I became of age to drink, that appreciation moved on to Grasshopper cocktails (crème de menthe + crème de cacao + craem, I think). :) Somehow, the tiramisu version was very watery, so I don't know what went wrong despite doing things the same way I did for the past few weeks! :(

How to: Place a layer of chocolate pound cake at the bottom of each serving glass and drench it with crème de cacao (chocolate liqueur). Whip 2 egg yolks with 100g of sugar until frothy, then add 50g of whipped cream, 3 tbsp of crème de menthe (mint liqueur), 250g of mascarpone and colouring, if necessary. When mixture is smooth, spoon a layer onto chocolate cake and repeat layers (it was too watery for me to do so). Garnish with thin chocolate sticks to create "feelers".

Variations: Way too many! :)

Body Count: 0