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I had attempted something similar awhile back, but didn’t have squid ink linguine then. After acquiring some lately, I decided to give it another shot, and document the recipe if it tastes good. Even though I would not attempt to compare it with my favourite crab meat squid ink pasta from Valentinos, I do think that my attempt to reproduce the very popular pasta dish was a rather good one. Perhaps the next time, I will try using crushed tomatoes instead, and see if that improves the flavour. For now, here’s version 1.
Crab Meat Squid Ink Linguine Serves 2
Ingredients: 4 oz dried squid ink linguine 3 [...]
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My mother surprised me a couple of weeks back by requesting that I bake her a fruitcake this year. She does not have a very sweet tooth, and hardly ever requests for any baked goods and so this was indeed surprising. I didn’t even think she liked fruitcakes! Anyway, it was too late to start soaking fruits in brandy then, so I decided to make one that didn’t involve any soaking of fruits. The cake however, should be stored for a couple of weeks before eating. As I type this, my loaf of fruitcake is sitting in the refrigerator, nicely wrapped in plastic and foil. I know that fruitcakes [...]
Read More Tis the season for the fruitcake…
It was one of those days where we had potatoes to spare after making mash potatoes for dinner the previous night. We wanted something simple – a one dish meal paired with perhaps a salad, and so a gratin seemed like a good choice. When making potato gratins, I find that boiling the potatoes in milk or cream gives them a melt-in-your-mouth texture, and also improves the flavour of the entire dish. For gratins or baked rice/pastas, Swiss cheese (Gruyere especially) is the preferred choice as they yield a creamier result. I couldn’t find any Swiss cheese in that particular supermarket and chose to substitute it with Gouda, which [...]
Read More Potato Mushroom Gratin
Ever had those days where you needed a dessert but had too little time? Well, yesterday was one of those days. Hubby and I had a wedding to attend in the afternoon but were also invited to dinner at a lovely couple’s place. Determined to bring along something home-baked for dessert and so started browsing through my collection of recipe books in the morning. I decided to try something from Nigella Express, a cookbook I rarely used. I had but one “small” problem. The recipe called for canned pears and we had none. Canned pears are not very common around here and I knew that I could probably only [...]
Read More Chocolate Pear Pudding Cake
I really wanted to try to bake one of the popular Christmas breads this year. After flipping through a few recipe books, I initially settled on the one from Joy of Cooking. Something went wrong however, during the mixing process. The dough just didn’t seem to come together sufficiently for me to shape it (or knead the raisins) into it. It just felt wrong. Not wanting to waste any more time or raisins, I decided to dump that batter and try again with another recipe. This time, it worked perfectly. The result? A lovely sweet bread filled with raisins and a wonderful reminder of Christmas. The icing sugar on [...]
Read More Christmas Kugelhopf
I was looking through the photo albums on my computer a few days ago and realised that there were many pictures (and recipes) that I meant to write about but never found time to. So this is catch up time. Hopefully, I will be able to put up as many recipes and pictures of the food we cooked/baked this year before the year ends.
This warm chocolate tart was seriously, hands down, the best one that I’ve made. I attribute this not just to the excellent quality of chocolate used (I used Valrhona Manjari), but also Pierre Herme’s superb sweet tart dough recipe. This can be made with or [...]
Read More Warm Chocolate Raspberry Tart
I baked these some time ago for a gathering of students at my place. If you are a chocolate fan, these brownie cupcakes will be straight down your alley. Sinfully rich and chocolaty, they are bound to fix your chocolate craving. The best part? They are not difficult to make at all! The ingredients are simple, but the sheer quantity of butter, sugar and eggs may shock you. Well, they are for a large batch of cupcakes afterall, and didn’t I say earlier that these were sinful?
Brownie Cupcakes (Makes 60 cupcakes) Recipe adapted from Gourmet, Dec 1999
Ingredients: 16 oz unsalted butter, cut into cubes 8 oz [...]
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The dates had been sitting in the fridge, unopened in their package for many many months. It’s a good thing that dates keep well as I have a bad habit of buying stuff and not using them. One Sunday afternoon, after flipping through a few recipe books, I decided that I would use them in a sticky date pudding. The recipe looked simple, and so, thinking that I had ample time to complete it before dinner, I busied myself with other things. To my horror, I realised a few hours later that the chopped dates needed to be soaked in hot water for an hour before they could [...]
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I looked through my shelves recently and realised that there were cookbooks I owned, from which I have never tried a single recipe from. I was determined to conquer at least one recipe from each book (so that I could have the excuse of buying more books), and decided to start on a bread making book – Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day.
I bought this book because of it’s interesting descriptions, good reviews, and of course, the hope that bread making could indeed be that simple. Well, I was fooled. It didn’t take five minutes a day. But having said that, the book does offer simple [...]
Read More Sundried Tomato and Parmegiano Reggiano Bread
I didn’t manage to take a decent photo of these cookies when I baked them – the photo that you all see above does not look very appetising but I guarantee you, these are really good chewy cookies.
The slightly modified recipe below is taken from one of my favourite books – Desserts By The Yard. The troublesome part about these cookies is that the raisins (that makes them oh so good) require special preparation. The good part about these cookies is that the dough freezes really well, and can last about a month (or slightly more) in the freezer. When you want to eat freshly baked cookies, [...]
Read More Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
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