Tiramisu in a cup

My husband loves tiramisu and every time he goes to a restaurant, he never fails to order the tiramisu for dessert. So one day, we decided to try making our own at home. Little did we know that it is such a simple dessert to make!

We adapted the recipe from here. This version of tiramisu has the eggs cooked which is safer for consumption. The original recipe calls for a loaf pan to assemble the tiramisu. We used that initially but find that using small cups is easier and more convenient (one cup for myself, two cups for my husband, heehee). You just have to break up the ladyfingers into smaller pieces to fit into the cups.

We altered some of the amount of the liquids, mascarpone cheese and sugar because we want the tiramisu to be creamier and also less sweet. You can do your own modification.

Cream Filling:
150 ml milk, divided 100ml, 50ml
100 grams granulated white sugar, divided 50g, 50g
35 grams all purpose flour
6 large egg yolks
60 ml Kahlua
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
57 grams unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
500 grams mascarpone cheese

Ladyfingers

Coffee Soaking Syrup:
100 ml very strong brewed coffee or espresso (4 tbsp)
60 ml Kahlua

Topping:
cocoa powder for garnishing
bittersweet chocolate, grated or chopped


Method:
2 day before you need the dessert, put 100 ml milk and 50 grams sugar in a saucepan. Place over medium heat, and bring this mixture just to boiling, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, in a heatproof bowl, whisk together the remaining milk, sugar, flour, and egg yolks.

When the milk comes to a boil, gradually whisk it into the egg yolk mixture. You must continue to whisk as you pour to prevent the egg yolks from curdling.

Transfer this mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it comes to a boil. When it boils, continue to stir until it thickens.

Remove from heat and strain into a large bowl. This will remove any lumps that may have formed.

Whisk in the Kahlua, vanilla extract, and butter.

Cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap to prevent a crust from forming. Leave it in the fridge overnight to cool.

The next day or once the custard has cooled sufficiently, remove from the refrigerator.

In a mixer with paddle attachment, beat the mascarpone cheese at low speed until it is soft and smooth. Gently beat the cold custard into the mascarpone until smooth.

Custard done, ready to incorporate with the mascarpone cheese

In a large bowl combine the coffee (espresso) and Kahlua.

Place a layer of cream filling at the bottom of the cup. We use a large ice-cream scoop to make sure that the amount in each cup is about the same.

Break the ladyfingers into 3 or 4 parts. Soak each part individually for a few seconds and place it gently onto the layer of cream filling. Do not soak in the coffee syrup for too long or the ladyfinger will disintegrate in your hands.

Ensure that the ladyfingers are in a flat layer. If after soaking the ladyfingers for all the cups and you still have some coffee syrup left, you can brush the leftover syrup on the ladyfingers directly. Again, do not overload the ladyfingers with the coffee syrup or you will get a soggy mess.

One layer of cream filling with a layer of ladyfingers

To have the cup look nicer when you see it from the side, sift a layer of cocoa powder onto the ladyfingers. This is form a dark line in the middle of the cream fillings.

A layer of cocoa powder after the ladyfingers

Put another scoop of cream filling onto the ladyfingers. If you have a taller cup, you can put another layer of ladyfingers and topped it with another layer of cream filling. This is the final scoop for my case. After that, gently shake the cups to even out the top layer.

Final layer of cream filling

You can keep this in the fridge until you need it. We leave it in the fridge for one more night to let the coffee syrup in the ladyfingers and the cream fillings mixed together for better flavour.

Before serving, sift another layer of cocoa powder and grate some bittersweet chocolate on the surface. Do not do it too early or the cocoa powder will absorb the moisture from the cream filling and it will look dark and clumpy.

Roast Turkey with Gravy, Cranberries & Passion Fruit sauce, Bacon Jam

Having a turkey for Christmas dinner is not something we do normally. Usually, we will be celebrating Christmas overseas. However, this year, we decided to celebrate Christmas at home. We prepared a turkey for a small house gathering at my sister's place.

Bacon jam, cranberries & passion fruit sauce, parma ham wrapped stuffing, turkey gravy with the main dish

For the recipe, I searched on the Internet for some ideas and decided to use various ideas and methods to form my own recipe.

First step is to find a suitable turkey and one that is small enough to fit my oven. I settled for one that is around 5kg.

The chosen one

I defrosted the turkey in the fridge for 3 days before taking it out of the package to clean it. For every 2.2kg, 24 hours is needed to thaw the bird.

Turkey that has been cleaned

After cleaning out the bird, I soak the turkey in 600ml of butter milk and seasoning (coarse salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, fresh thyme, sage and rosemary) for one day in the fridge.

Preparing a butter milk bath/spa with seasoning for the turkey

Turkey in butter milk bath. I also want such a good life!

The following day, the turkey is washed again to remove all the butter milk and pat dry. The bird is then dried by hanging it up or left in the fridge uncovered.

Hanging the bird up to dry after the butter milk bath!

After that, I followed part of what Gordon Ramsay did in his YouTube video.

Season the cavity of the bird with some salt and pepper, stuff in one onion (cut into half), one lemon and bay leaves.

In a mixing bowl, put in some butter (room temperature), salt, pepper, olive oil, zest of 2 lemons and their juice, 3 cloves of garlic (pureed) and chopped parsley. Stir to mix.

Use your fingers to loosen the skin from the meat on the thighs and breast. Insert some butter mixture into the areas where you have separated the skin from the meat. Massage the rest of the butter mixture onto the breast, legs and wings of the bird. Sprinkle some olive oil on to those areas.

Coated with seasoning

Put the seasoned turkey into the preheated oven at 220C for 10 mins. After 10 mins, take the turkey out of the oven and baste. Then cover the breast with streaky bacon. Then baste the bacon before putting it back in the oven at 180C. The wings are wrapped in foil to prevent charring before the turkey is cooked.

Bacon wraps to prevent the breast from charring

We take out the turkey to baste and rotate for even browning every 30 to 45 minutes. Cooking time is estimated to be 30 minutes for every kg of turkey. So for my turkey, it took 2 1/2 hours to complete. To see if the turkey is done, check the temperature at 3 places - the breast, the outer thigh, and the inner thigh. They must be at least 74C in these 3 places. If any of them is under 74C, put the bird back in the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes. To prevent the breast from overcooking, shield it with foil. We removed the bacon earlier because they were going to be charred. Use the bacon for making the gravy.

After the turkey is done, rest it for the same amount of time you take to roast it. For my case, I rested it for 2 1/2 hours. Keep the juice from the roasting tray for making the gravy later.

Nice and golden brown

For the gravy, chopped up the streaky bacon, onion and lemon (from the cavity of the turkey) and put them into a pan. Heat up the pan with some of the oil from the roasting tray first. Add in a few sprig of rosemary, 3 chopped tomatoes as well. To have more turkey flavour in the gravy, cut off the wings and backside of the turkey and put them in the pan too. Pour in the juices collected.

In Gordon's recipe, he used apple cider which we don't have, so we added 50ml of red wine instead. When the fluid is reduced by half, mashed up the solids in the pan to extract more flavours. Pour in some chicken stock and reduce again. Once reduced, sift the gravy. Your turkey gravy is now ready.

We also modified our bacon jam by adding in 50ml of red wine, one bay leave and a few sprigs of thyme. Simmer the bacon jam until it is the consistency you want.

Modifying the bacon jam for special occasion

For the cranberries & passion fruit sauce, we bring 340g of cranberries (fresh), 224g of sugar, 120g passion fruit pulp and 180ml of water to a boil over medium high heat.

Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the cranberries have broken down and the sauce is thick. Cool it before serving.

We had the turkey at the gathering and the meat is tender even for the breast. Definitely a recipe to keep.

Enjoy!

Beef Wellington

Beef Wellington

This is a brief post on the Beef Wellington we prepared during Christmas Eve. You can always make one during special occasions or when there's a craving for it.

I modified Gordon Ramsay's YouTube video recipe.

The first step is to season the tenderloin (we bought about 700g) with some salt and black pepper before searing it in a hot frying pain. I used a tablespoon of ghee instead of butter because ghee has a higher smoking point. Be sure to sear all around the beef but don't over-cook it.

Pan-seared tenderloin

Let the beef cool down and pat dry with paper towels before brushing a layer of Dijon mustard on it.

Tenderloin brushed with Dijon mustard

While resting the beef, prepare the duxelles. Mince the mushrooms (400g) with a clove of garlic, season with salt and pepper. Add in chestnuts (handful) to blend as well. I used the frying pan I seared the beef with, since there's still the ghee in it, to stir-fry the duxelles. I added a chopped onion to the hot ghee first and once the onion is softened, I added in the blended mixture.

Stir-fry the mixture with a sprig of thyme. After a while, you will notice that the mixture releases a lot of fluids (mainly from the mushrooms), continue stirring until the mixture is dry. Then add 50ml of red wine and 2 teaspoon of dark soya sauce and continue cooking until the mixture is dry again. Remove from the pan and let it cool down. Remove the thyme from the mixture.

Making duxelles - mixture of minced mushrooms, chestnuts and seasoning

Once the beef and the duxelles are cooled, place a few layers of cling film on the table, then put 1 to 2 pieces of filo dough on the cling film. It is useful to absorb the juices that are released from the beef and prevents the puff pastry from being soggy. Next, layer a few pieces of parma ham (we used 8 pieces). The width of the parma ham layer is slightly wider than the width of the tenderloin by 2 to 3 cm on both sides.

Preparing to wrap the cooled ingredients. Layer of filo dough and parma ham arranged on a cling film for easy rolling

Spread the duxelles onto the parma ham. There's no need to put too much, around 1 cm thickness is more than enough.

Layer of duxelles spread onto the parma ham

Place the beef on the lower third of the layers and roll it up with the help of the cling film.

Tenderloin placed on top of the duxelles

Twist and tighten the sides of the cling film to compact the roll. Leave it in the fridge to firm up before wrapping it with the puff pastry.

Rolled into a sausage-like structure, tightened by the cling film

I use ready-made puff pastry that is made with butter and not margarine.

Using ready-made butter puff pastry

Once the roll is firm, remove the cling film and wrap the puff pastry over the filo dough using the same method as above (with the help of a cling film and tighten the structure). You can then put it back in the fridge again until you are ready to cook it. Before baking, egg wash the puff pastry and use the back of a knife to draw some patterns on the pastry, be careful not to cut through it.

Puff pastry is wrapped over the filo dough, remember to remove the cling film first

In your free time, you can do up some decorations using the leftover puff pastry. :)

Extra puff pastry used for decoration

I roast the Beef Wellington in a convection over at 220C for 10mins, then rotate it and lower the temperature to 200C for another 30 mins. Your mileage may vary.

Beef Wellington done, and decoration in place

Sliced open to reveal medium rare tenderloin

Note:
Beef registers 48.8C to 54.4C on an instant-read thermometer for rare, 54.4C to 57.2C for medium rare.
Cover pastry with foil if it gets too brown while cooking.
You can spread a layer of foie gras or liver pate on the duxelles.

Savory Bacon Jam

I was introduced to bacon jam by a colleague one day. Being a lover of unhealthy food (tasty food is usually unhealthy, haha!), I went to a local cafe (Jewel Café+Bar) that serves homemade bacon jam to try it out for breakfast the very next morning with my significant half, Esther.

Bacon jam doesn't taste like the typical fruit jam at all. It tasted like a fusion of bacon, bak kwa (a type of Chinese BBQ pork jerky) and caramelised char siew (a type of Cantonese BBQ pork). Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the taste of it. It is oily (bacon fat, duh!), sweet, salty, spicy and has a tinge of sourness with an underlying coffee aroma. In the cafe we went to, it was served with chunky slices of baguette (the dish is called Fat Soldiers, haha!). I think bacon jam goes well with everything, but that's just me...

"Fat Soldiers" from Jewel Café+Bar

On the way back from the cafe, I was already googling for recipes of bacon jam. I didn't know that it is so popular yet very simple to make as well. And as a bonus, there can be many variations to it. You need something sweet (sugar/maple syrup/honey), something salty (comes with the bacon), something sour (apple cider vinegar/balsamic vinegar/Worcestershire sauce), something spicy (mustard/hot sauce/paprika/chili powder/pepper) to give some heat and coffee. Most recipes include aromatics as well such as garlic, shallots and onions. You can add whatever ingredient you want as long as you stick to the above criteria. Some recipes even add a touch of alcohol like bourbon.

Being the experimental me, I looked for the most appealing recipe, and added extra ingredients from other recipes to round up the taste. The only "difficult" part of making bacon jam is the simmering and stirring to reduce the mass into semi-solid sludge. You can use a slow cooker for the simmering stage.

Without further delays, I present to you, our experimental bacon jam...

Ingredients
2kg bacon, (we used 1kg bacon back and 1kg streaky bacon)
3 big white onions (sweet variety), peeled and roughly sliced
7 to 10 shallot, peeled and roughly sliced
5 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
250ml pure maple syrup
60ml balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
100g brown sugar
freshly ground black pepper to taste
salt to taste (you can use the drained liquid obtained while cooking the bacon, see below)

120ml strong brewed coffee (how strong you want it to be is up to you, I actually used 2 tbsp of instant espresso)

Water if the jam is too dry during simmering
Alcohol (optional, maybe during festive seasons)

You have to cut the bacon into thin slices and cooked them over medium high heat until the fat is rendered and the bacon bits are brown and crisp. Do not over-cook them at this stage or you will get very tough bits.

Half-way through, there will be a lot of liquid released by the bacon. Drain it out to reduce the saltiness. You can always add some of the fluid back later on. If there is a lot of oil released when the bacon is crisp, you can drain it into a separate bowl as well in case you want to add back some at a later stage. Because we used half bacon back and half streaky bacon, it wasn't that oily.

Sliced bacon in frying pan

Once the bacon is crisp and you can add in the aromatics (garlic, shallot and onion). Cook using medium heat until the aromatics are softened. During this time, you can mix the brown sugar, maple syrup, vinegar, Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce in a bowl and stir to mix.

Cooking the bacon with the aromatics

We had to transfer the contents into a HappyCall pot since it is bigger than our frying pan and is non-sticky as well.

Once the aromatics are softened, pour in the prepared sauce and mix.

Add in black pepper and the salty liquid collected previously. Adjust according to your taste and preference.

Pour in the coffee once you are satisfied. Bring the whole mixture to a boil then reduce the heat to simmer. Cover the pot with a lid to prevent it from drying up too fast. Stir occasionally. You can use a slow cooker at this stage. If the mixture is too dry, don't add any more of the salty liquid or you might end up making it too salty. You can add some water and continue simmering. We simmered ours for about 4 hours. During that time, we were making macarons, so it wasn't that boring. ;)

Once that is done, off the heat and let it cool down before using a blender to blend it. Before blending, if you find the bacon jam not oily enough, you can add in the oil you collected previously when you were frying the bacon.

You can decide on the consistency of the bacon jam. We prefer ours to have some bits and pieces in it so we only blended it slightly instead of blending it into a paste. If you like to drink it like a milkshake, then by all means, blend it at full speed for a few minutes. :p

Bacon jam with garnishing

I think our version looks nicer and tastes better than the cafe's version. But I may be bias.  :) 

The bigger bacon bits were added in just for the photo shoot. But you can actually fry up extra bacon bits and add them after the bacon jam has been blended. There is no hard and fast rules to this recipe.

Bacon jam to complement Eggs Benedict or is it the other way round? :)

Esther cooked up something just for the bacon jam photo shoot. I noticed the Eggs Benedict tasted even better with the bacon jam! She dressed it up so well that she managed to trick her sister into thinking that this photo came from a cafe. LOL!

During the festive seasons, instead of adding water to simmer, try using red wine. We will be doing that and will post how it taste after that.

PS. All things (good or bad) must come in moderation. Please don't eat this everyday and end up with a heart attack!

Baking whole spelt bread using poolish

I have recently started baking bread and have been experimenting with different types of flour like spelt and rye. They are healthier alternative to wheat flour. Being a beginner in bread making, I don't expect pretty loaves of bread coming out of my oven. As long as they are edible, I bring them to work to eat. :)

For bread baking, you need 3 basic ingredients. Flour, water, yeast. Most of the time, salt is added as well. For yeast, there is a choice of commercial yeast or "natural" yeast, aka sourdough.

My previous attempts with sourdough ended with edible bread (how can bread be inedible?) but they are not very well risen. Perhaps it is because my sourdough starter is not fully established or maybe usually I use the sourdough started on rye or spelt flour which do not have a lot of gluten to hold the bread well. Nevertheless, I will continue testing and improve on sourdough bread.

Anyway, I decided to bake a loaf of spelt bread using commercial yeast over the weekend. However, I do not like to use tons of yeast to make the bread rise and end up with a loaf of bread smelling very yeasty. So I went on the internet (like what most people do) to search for a solution. I ended up reading on pre-fermentation. A short description on pre-fermentation can be found here.

A very simple and appropriate quote I came across... "You can have it fast or you can have it good, but you can't have it fast and good."

I decided to use a poolish and below is a picture of the spelt flour I used and the poolish I made.

When you do a pre-ferment/starter using part of the ingredients from a bread recipe the day before baking, you need only a minute amount of yeast. You let the yeast work on the flour and water for a longer time. 

Having a slow rise and longer fermentation, I ended up with a more complex-tasting loaf of bread which definitely tasted better than commercial bread.

Making a pre-ferment overnight is like taking care of a sick baby. In this case, I keep wondering whether the pre-ferment is growing (I used only 0.2g of yeast!) or will it over-flow the container I left it in. In short, I had no proper sleep at all. Thank goodness it grew normally, to around 3 times its size after around 10 hours.

10-hour old poolish

At 14 hours, the poolish looked like what is shown below. If you look carefully, you will see a lot of bubbles on the surface and the centre of the poolish is slightly receding. That usually means the poolish is ready to use. Don't wait too long or it will collapse.

14-hour old ripe poolish

I added in the remaining flour and water (leaving a bit of water to mix with honey and salt). Then, I leave the dough to autolyse for 30 mins.

While waiting, I mixed the honey and salt with the remaining water. When 1/2 hour is up, I added the honey/salt mixture into the dough and mixed it well. I left it to proof to double its size which didn't take long, surprisingly (around 1/2 hour).

I did 3 rounds of stretch and fold with 40 mins rest in-between. I did not knead the dough like what is done traditionally nor did I use a machine to knead the dough. Spelt flour has weaker gluten and I do not want to over-knead it.

Before final proof, I left it in a greased new enamelled cast iron pot.

Dough is proofed and ready for baking. I might have over-proofed it.

I baked the bread at 230C and have the pot covered by the cast iron cover for 20 mins and then with the cover removed for another 20 mins to facilitate browning until the internal temperature is 97C. If you don't have a cooking thermometer, tap on the bottom of the loaf, if it sounds hollow, it is done.

I made wrong choice of using a new enamelled cast iron pot to bake this bread, and ended up having the bread stuck to the sides despite greasing the pot. Maybe I should flour it as well. 

Baking in a cast iron pot with a lid traps the moisture within the pot to allow a better rise and nicer/thicker brown crust. Can't really blame the pot for sticking as it is my fault.

Bread was stuck to the sides of the pot. :(

The crumb of the spelt bread looked like this.

Various sizes of holes, well distributed. Thick crust is seen.

Conclusion of this bread making method is that using a poolish is very fantastic way of reducing the amount of yeast you add. You do have to plan ahead to determine the amount of yeast needed because it is based on the amount of flour you are putting into the poolish and also the duration of the pre-fermentation. And with slow fermentation, you get a more complex flavour in the loaf of bread. You can use poolish for any type of flour for bread baking.

For the next loaf using the same method, I would lower the hydration of the loaf to 66% (currently at 70%), avoid over-proofing the dough during the final proof, use lesser salt, use 38% of flour in the poolish instead of 50%, bake at a lower temperature of 200C and maybe bake in a normal loaf tin.

The recipe I used is modified from Breadtopia
I used one of the comments in the post that substituted sourdough with yeast. I further modify that recipe to make use of poolish. You can learn to stretch and fold the dough from that post too.

Other references that you might be interested in:
Poolish and Biga



Ingredients
Poolish
250g whole spelt flour
250ml water
0.2g of yeast (0.08% by weight of flour used in the poolish, slow fermentation of 14 hours)

Main dough
250g whol spelt flour
100ml water
9g salt
3 tbsp honey

Baker's percentage
Flour 100%
Water 70% (ie 70% hydration)
Salt 1.8%