hasselback potatoes

Say hello to the easiest potato dish ever! Yet somehow so impressive, with the fanned out slices of roast potato. These tiny taters are perfect party food, ready to be nestled in the corner of your plate piled with pot luck goodies. They are from my new-to-me Nigella Lawson cookbook, Forever Summer. Nigella's recipe is simple and unfussy, but contains a gem-like tip for slicing the potatoes for this recipe.

weekend links #14

food reading links:
--Bagel cutting for the mathematician (from George Hart).
--A review of the book Home Dairy, which I now want to buy (from Eat Make Read). I wish to make my own cheese. Mmm, cheese.
--Are plastic food containers too toxic to reuse? Mr Green replies (from Hey Mr Green).
--How many ways can you combine five ingredients into pairs? Indexed shows the diagram for cinnamon, sugar, salt, pepper, and mint (from Indexed).

recipe links:
--Limoncello is easy to make at home, with only two ingredients (from Sugarlaws).
--Cake baked inside (real) egg shells (from Delicious Days), reminds me of those chocolate-filled egg shells you can buy at Maison du Chocolat.
--A cake that may be the royal wedding cake (from Baking Banter at King Arthur Flour).

off-topic links:
--Making your own photo collage in Picasa (from petit elefant).
--A review of an Indonesian restaurant in Hong Kong that makes me want to visit (from Mochachocolata Rita).
--A place to get inspired--Pinterest. Here's the food and drink front page.

ingredient spotlight: kumquats

Please welcome the fruit with arguably the strangest name: the kumquat. I bought them by the bag-full in the Chinese wet market nearby. I get my weekly fruit and vegetables from a wrinkly lady who knows her produce but can't communicate with me at all besides showing me numbers on her calculator. I make it a policy to try something new to me each time I go there, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised with the results.

red cabbage with carrot curls

A friend from work is going to Singapore in a couple of weeks for a girls' spa weekend. This makes me a bit jealous, I have to be honest. They are going to a snazzy hotel and she was telling me about the treatments they have lined up: the massages, the pedicures, the body wrap. How relaxing does that sound? And then they will shop and chat... and eat great food. When I think of spa food I imagine it to be healthy, colourful stuff, packed full of nutrients. It's the kind of food that you want to put in your body after the exfoliating wrap and the cleansing facial, the kind that rejuvenates you from the inside out.

beetroot brownies

I brought these beetroot brownies in to work to test them out on my colleagues. I'm experimenting with beetroot as an ingredient in baked goods. (It's analagous to carrot in cake. Or parsnip in cookies.) I asked the other maths teachers for constructive feedback on my new recipe idea. What did they say?

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

I admit to being predisposed to disliking this book. I have watched Anthony Bourdain on TV once--on his show No Reservations. In the series he travels around the world and films documentary-style about food, cooking, and eating. He is loud and brash, very opinionated, and self-centered. The food did look delicious, though. So when Bourdain's Medium Raw was selected as March's Kitchen Reader book, I was a bit underwhelmed.

mushroom pizza on water chestnut flatbreads

This month's Fresh from the Oven challenge (hosted by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours) was to bake something with locally made flour. That proved to be quite a challenge for me, here in Hong Kong. However, after a long hunt, I found this water chestnut flour. How intriguing. What is this stuff?

weekend links #13

food reading links:
--Useful things to freeze in ice cube trays (from The Kitchn). The great ideas just keep coming as you read down into the comments.
--The periodic table of desserts (from E-blong). I think there are several geeky bakers in my life who might like this poster as a present.
--A helpful article about food photography--tips that are simple to understand and actually very useful (from Food Blog Forum).

recipe links:
--An oatmeal brownie, expect is's not a brownie, it's a hot quadrilateral (from 5 Second Rule).
--Stunning and easy Hasselback sweet potatoes (from Roti n Rice). They are almost pretty enough to be a party centrepiece!

off-topic links:
--Which house plants will clean the air in my Hong Kong apartment? Here's a list (from re-nest). That assumes that I won't kill them, of course. Which might be hard for me.
--Can a fluorescent lightbulb be beautiful? Maybe so (from Remodelista).
--We like boundaries and deadlines: enforced freedom (from Sarah Wilson).

black sesame soft pretzels (whole grain baking)

As part of the Velveeters group, I made pretzels for the first time this month. I was thrilled to try out a whole wheat recipe, especially since I recently picked up some vital wheat gluten. This makes whole wheat bread dough more fluffy--and this dough recipe was so fluffy it overspilled the bowl while it was rising. The result is a soft, chewy pretzel that's also amazingly 100% whole wheat.

special rice

I recently read the book The Language of Baklava (see my review). The Jordanian family who populate the pages are constant hosts for numerous uncles, cousins, and friends, who frequently just happen to show up at meal times. This rice recipe is such a simple idea that takes a basic side dish and makes it into a special part of the meal. I was amazed that adding just four ingredients to the rice made such a difference.