Food in Bangkok: Sweethound

Posted on 27 January 2011 by christao408

Yes, several of you are eager to see the photos and video of the food adventures I’ve had while Andy is in town, but it will take a day or two to process the videos since we’ve been eating the whole time! In the meantime, let me leave you with some food porn…

Last Friday evening we had dinner with some of Tawn’s university friends, followed by dessert at Sweethound, the dessert branch of popular local chain Greyhound.

It was a pleasant evening for sitting outdoors as Tawn, Bim, and Pat played with their smart phones.

A double-chocolate mousee with whipped cream.

Crepes Suzette. Orange sauce. No flambe, sorry.

Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Rich and moist.

Chocolate banana cake.

Waffle with peanut butter, chocolate, and chopped peanuts. Unlikely dessert but tasty.

Chiang Mai Strawberries and Whipped Cream

Posted on 23 January 2011 by christao408

To celebrate the completion of our bathroom re-tiling project, we celebrated with a special dessert: fresh strawberries from Chiang Mai (in the north of Thailand) and some hand-whipped cream.

Beautiful, aren’t they? Unlike some of those mega-monster strawberries we get from California, which are all pale inside, these strawberries reminded me of the strawberries of my childhood – smaller and sweeter. Of course, they still weren’t as nice as the strawberries we tried in Japan two Aprils ago. (Video of that experience here.)

Gray Salt Caramels

Posted on 3 January 2011 by christao408

While connecting in Seattle last month on my way back to Bangkok, I did some shopping in the airport stores. Seattle-Tacoma International has a surprisingly good collection of shops for a US airport. While there, I decided to load up on specialties of the Pacific Northwest: cherries, smoked salmon, and gray salt caramels.

Seattle seems to be turning into a mecca for quality handcrafted chocolates. My friend was the part owner of a shop there and I’ve read countless articles about other artisanal chocolate makers in the region. Sadly, my friend’s chocolate shop is now out of business, but that didn’t stop me from picking up two boxes of these gray salt caramels in dark chocolate, made by Fran’s Chocolates.

Salt caramels were the “it” confection in 2010, I think. Little delicate crystals of salt that contrast both in flavor and texture with the rich chewiness caramel inside. It is a lovely combination. I wonder what new combination will greet us this year?

New Year’s Eve Food

Posted on 1 January 2011 by christao408

What better way to start the new year (not to mention, what better first post to write) than to prepare some good food? While Tawn was away at his family’s annual New Year’s Eve party and didn’t return home until ten minutes before midnight, I hosted a missionary friend from Chiang Mai and one of her friends who is visiting from the US.

Kari and Brandi were wonderful company and we spent almost four hours visiting and eating. For dinner, I prepared a simple meal that thankfully used up the last of the lasagna ingredients that I produced earlier in the week. Remind me next time not to double an already large batch of pasta and bolognese sauce!

To begin with some Thai style pumpkin soup. Made with homemade stock, this soup features tumeric, fresh ginger, and a little bit of coconut milk to add richness. Garnished with a few drops of garlic-chili oil, which was enough to give it a definite kick.

An interesting recent discovery, a vegetable called kanaeng in Thai. An American restaurateur friend calls these “baby cabbages” on his menu, but they are more akin to loosely wrapped Brussels sprouts. I followed his preparation, stir-frying them with garlic, soy sauce, and crispy pork.

Probably a little heavy on the crispy pork, but is anyone going to tell me you can really have too much pork? I think not! (Well, okay, Dr. Zakiah, Lalima, and a few others will, but that’s for religious, not flavor reasons!)

The final dish of lasagna. I added a bit of meat and more tomatoes to the bolognese sauce to make for a richer, meatier dish. It worked out beautifully, except that the bubbling sauce burned on the handles making for unsightly presentation. The guests liked it enough to bring a few slices back to the mission house with them, though.

Homemade bread, a rye-wheat combination. Notice the faint lines running along the length of the loaf? Those are from a banneton. I’ll write more about those soon.

Dessert was a chocolate chip and pecan bread pudding served with creme Anglaise sauce. Very tasty, although perhaps a touch rich after this filling meal. But why not end the year on a rich note with the hope that the new year will be equally rich and satisfying?

I hope your celebration was just as wonderful as mine.

Chocolate Raspberry Torte

Posted on 18 November 2010 by christao408

A little bit more about the cake I baked for my 40th birthday. For all the cooking I do, I don’t have a lot of experience with cakes and cake-like desserts. I’m more of a bread man, myself. Nonetheless, I decided to make a cake because it is always a good experience and there was a recipe for a Revamped Chocolate Torte in the November-December issue of Cooks Illustrated that looked worth a try.

I started the recipe on Thursday afternoon with a little prep work, then did the actual baking on Friday afternoon. Overall, I think the cake turned out okay although it is such a rich cake – nearly flourless – that it wouldn’t make my list of favorite cakes. But then, I’m not a big cake person. One challenge is that the recipe uses a food processor, which I don’t own. Instead, I used a stand mixer. Things seemed to work okay, but I don’t know if the slower speed of the mixer affected the texture at all.

I’ll give you a rundown of the recipe and the preparation process:

The first step was to make some almond flour, basically finely-processed almonds. You can buy this in some markets (it is used to make macarons, for example) but the recipe explains how to make it yourself since you use a relatively small quantity. Take 1 cup (4 ounces) of sliced almonds and lightly toast them.

Then process in a food processor for a few pulses until finely ground. You then add 1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces) of flour and 1/2 teaspoon table salt and process it a few more seconds to combine. Not having a food processor, I used a coffee grinder attachment for my blender and it seemed to work okay.

Note on food processors. I had one in the US and didn’t seem to use it often. But nowadays I keep encountering recipes that call for a food processor, especially in the making of quick and easy pastry dough. I may break down eventually and buy another food processor. Cooks Illustrated recommends the 12-cup Kitchen Aid model.

Next, melt 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate with 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) of butter in a bowl set over simmering water. After smooth, remove from the heat and cool to room temperature, adding 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and 1/4 teaspoon of instant espresso powder. Not having that, I had to use instant coffee.

While the eggs are cooling, process 5 large eggs in the food processor until almost doubled in volume. Not having the processor, I whipped them with the mixer. I think this may have made the texture a bit more dense than had I used the food processor. As the eggs are being whipped, slowly add 3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) of granulated sugar. What you see here is the almond/flour/salt mixture, the egg/sugar mixture, and the chocolate/butter mixture.

Start by gently folding the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture using the whisk. This does not have to be thoroughly incorporated.

Next, gently whisk in the almond-flour mixture. Divide the batter between two 9-inch cake pans lined with parchment. The pans were not buttered and floured.

After baking about 15 minutes at 325 F. Allow the cakes to cool in the pans and then remove.

Spread a filling made of 1/4 cup raspberry jam and 1/2 cup raspberries (I used frozen as fresh are way too expensive here), mashed together.

Add the second layer of the cake, inverted so the bottom of the cake is facing up, giving you a relatively smooth surface with which to work.

To glaze the cake, melt 5 ounces of bittersweet chocolate with 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream over a simmering pot of water. Then pour the glaze onto the cake and use a spatula to spread it evenly over the cake.

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You can then add almonds to the side of the cake. I think I was supposed to use lightly chopped almonds but all I had were the sliced almonds. This is kind of a messy prospect. Also, you can decorate the top of the cake with fresh raspberries, which I didn’t have. The biggest challenge for me was that the glaze didn’t have a smooth, liquid consistency. Maybe it needed to be melted a bit further or have just a little more cream in it so it poured over the sides in a smooth motion? This is where my inexperience with cakes comes in.

Per the recipe, I put the cake in the fridge for a few hours to let the frosting set. I didn’t get it removed early enough, though, and when it was served it was still pretty cool and the ganache was solid. When I arrived at the restaurant I should have asked them to leave the cake out rather than put it in the fridge. Anyhow, it was tasty enough and considering it was for my own party, I think it turned out pretty nice.

I hope you enjoyed this cooking adventure and encourage you to try the cake yourself.

Food in Hong Kong: Isola Bar and Grill

Posted on 22 October 2010 by christao408

After the Korean lunch, I took the MTR over to IFC. IFC is the International Finance Centre, a large multi-use complex built atop the Hong Kong Airport Express station. There are two office towers, a hotel, and a nice mall in the complex and it could be a model for the development that might happen around Bangkok’s Airport Express terminal at Makkasan station in the future. While at IFC, I dined at Isola Bar and Grill.

Isola Bar and Grill is a two-story restaurant adjacent to the Lane Crawford department store. It has a fantastic outdoor dining deck offering sweeping views of the harbour and West Kowloon waterfront and Thursday was a perfect day for sitting out there. The restaurant was suggested by Angel, a Xangan from Vancouver who comes to Hong Kong frequently on work.

Since I had just had lunch and he was flying out in a few hours back to Vancouver, neither Angel nor I was in the mood for a full meal so we settled instead for dessert. Thus, this entry isn’t a fair review of Isola.

My hazelnut creme brulee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was okay but I found the hazelnut flavor to be kind of muddy.

Angel had a chocolate cake that, if I’m not mistaken, had ground nuts in it. It was the tastier of the two desserts.

The service was passable, the dessert was passable, so not much to say there. The view was sweeping, though, and the company pleasant, so that made the appointment well worthwhile.

Macadamia Nut Cream Pie – Attempt 2

Posted on 12 October 2010 by christao408

Please feel some sympathy for my tough plight. My attempts to find the macadamia nut cream pie of my childhood is forcing me to bake and eat pie after pie after pie. Oh, the horror! Yes, the quest continues and this past weekend I made another MNCP (let’s abbreviate, shall we?) using a recipe that Aaron graciously sought out from his sister.

Just looking at the recipe, it struck me as being pretty close to what I had in mind. The custard filling has cornstarch to thicken it and the ground nuts are added at the end of the process, so they aren’t cooked too much. Macadamia nuts seem to lose their flavor when cooked. The one thing I wanted to change was the shape. Her recipe is made with a shortbread crust in a 9-inch square baking dish but I wanted to use a traditional pastry crust in a pie plate. Other than that, though, I followed the recipe religiously.

The ingredients are simple: milk, sugar, corn starch, pinch of salt, eggs, vanilla, macadamia nuts, and a pre-baked pie crust.

I have a lot of trouble with pie crusts and need to practice more. This one shrunk on me something fierce. Too much water, I think. Maybe time for a food processor. (Wishful thinking with my lack of counter space.)

The larger portion of the milk and sugar are heated until near-boiling. The smaller portion of milk along with the eggs and corn starch are mixed together. Then you add a bit of the hot milk-sugar mixture into the milk-egg mixture to warm it up. This is called tempering. Then you pour the milk-egg mixture into the milk-sugar mixture, cooking for another five minutes or so until it thickens. Add the vanilla (there was too much at two teaspoons – tasted too vanilla-y) and the chopped nuts. It is then added to the pie crust and allowed to set in the fridge for at least six hours.

Looks pretty, despite my lame decoration with whipped cream. Maybe I should buy a more decorative tip for my pastry bag? But the real question is, how did it turn out? A short video answers that question:

In short, good taste but still not set. Thinking this through, I have a theory about the problem. I think it is the eggs. The eggs here look smaller than the ones in the US. It that is the case, then the recipe doesn’t have enough of the protein from the eggs to help give it structure. The two egg recipe probably could use a third egg. Anyone want to validate that theory or am I going to have to cook yet another pie and suffer through the experience of eating it, just to test the theory?

Yeah, woe is me, right?

Lavender Lemon Panna Cotta

Posted on 16 September 2010 by christao408

Nearly two weeks ago I made a greek yogurt panna cotta for a brunch dessert. Since then, I have done some cooking with lavender and lemons. Looking in my refrigerator, I saw that there was some yogurt left as well as some more lemons on the counter and plenty of lavender, so I decided to revisit the panna cotta but this time with lavender and lemon as the flavoring.

I added lavender to the cream and sugar mixture, brought it to a near-boil, and then let the lavender steep for two hours off the heat. Afterwards, I strained the flowers and reheated the cream. Taking it off the heat again, I dissolved some hydrated gelatine into it, then whisked the yogurt in.

For fun, in addition to putting it in ramekins that could be unmolded onto a plate, I poured some of the mixture into shot glasses. These were put in the refrigerator overnight to set.

The next day, I made another mixture with lemon juice, sugar, and gelatine. This was poured on top of the panna cotta and allowed to set for a few hours. Upon eating it, you had a sweet-tart lemony jelly on top of the lavender panna cotta. Quite nice and it makes for interesting presentation. A garnish of mint would have been nice, too, but I didn’t have any.

Miso Glazed Fish Fillet and Apple Cobbler

Posted on 22 August 2010 by christao408

When trying to think of what to make for a meal, I often turn to cookbooks. Not so much for the recipes themselves – I have a habit of not following those very closely – but for an idea, an inspiration of something that sounds good and fits the constraints of time, money, and interest. So it was that Thursday afternoon I was flipping through Martha Stewart’s Dinner at Home which Tawn had left out.

“Menu 8: Tofu and Scallions in Mushroom Broth; Miso-Glazed Fish Fillets; Seasame Brown Rice and Cabbage; and Caramelized Persimmons.”

Two words from that over-ambitious menu leapt off the page: Miso-Glazed.

The concept was simple enough: prepare a glaze made of just four ingredients: mirin (Japanese sweet rice cooking wine) or, not having that, sake; rice wine vinegar; miso paste; and sugar. I keep miso paste in the fridge because it lasts pretty much forever and is a handy flavor enhancer. Sake and rice wine vinegar are nice items to keep in the cupboard. And instead of sugar, some maple syrup would add a nice touch.

Salmon would have been a fantastic choice of fish, too, but Martha suggested black cod. I went with her suggestion, taking a single good sized fillet, placing it on a baking sheet. To make clean-up easy, I lined the baking sheet with some parchment paper and lightly oiled it so the fish wouldn’t stick. Brush a generous coating of miso glaze on the fish and then put it under the broiler for about 6-8 minute, or until the top is nicely browned and the fish is opaque throughout.

I served the fish on top of some mashed potatoes with a chopped salad on the side. I make my mashed potatoes with butter, an ingredient that some people like to demonize but I think a little butter will go a long way to making your potatoes nice. I also added some leftover sour cream and some chopped fresh rosemary to give it a tang and a nice piney aroma.

For dessert, an apple cobbler. I used pink lady apples, chopped small with the skin still on. Cooked them in a saucepan for a few minutes with a little bit of sugar, a little bit of water, a little bit of corn starch, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Cook until starting to soften and add a little more water if necessary in order to get a bit of a not-too-thick sauce with the apples.

Put the apples into an over-proof dish. I topped it with a homemade sweet biscuit dough, similar to what I use for shortcake. Flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and a little sugar. Cut in some vegetable shortning (Crisco) to the size of peas, and then add either buttermilk (or, if you don’t have that, milk) and stir just until combined. Put the dough on the top of the fruit leaving a few openings for steam to escape. I put a few slices of butter on top of that and sprinkled on some raw sugar for a nice visual. Bake in a 350 F oven for about 25 minutes or until the juices are bubbling and the crust is golden. Serve once cooled to room temperature with ice cream, whipped cream, or just a little pour of fresh cream. Key word here: cream.

Almond Tuiles

Posted on 15 June 2009 by christao408

Last month Sheldon broke in his new kitchen with a batch of almond tuiles, a crisp, wafer-like cookie made with almond flour. They looked beautiful and since I had some extra almond flour left over from the macarons, this seemed like a good opportunity to use it.

The tuiles (pronounced “tweel” – I had to double-check this as my French has all but been replaced by Thai) are basically a mixture of almond flour, all-purpose flour, sugar and salt, moistened with egg whites and melted butter. They are spread very thin on parchment paper and then baked.

The name “tuiles” comes from the French word for “tile”, so these cookies are means to be shaped similarly to the terra cotta tiles you might find on the roof of a home in the French countryside.

To do this, you have to slide them off the baking sheet while piping hot and, working quickly, drape them over a curved object like a rolling pin. Even with only six on a tray, by the time you are pulling the third one off it is already beginning to cool and stiffen.

Frankly, I’m inclined to follow Sheldon’s lead and not curl them as they taste just as lovely flat and they store better.

One challenge I encountered with the recipe was that it calls for 1/2 cup of almonds, ground. This is not, I imagine, the same as 1/2 cup of ground almonds. Since my almond flour is already ground, measuring 1/2 cup of it may have been too much. But I didn’t want to tamper with the recipe until I had tried it once.

The cookies turned out a little chewier and “cakier” than I think they are supposed to be, which leads me to suspect that “1/2 cup of almonds, ground” must measure out to less than 1/2 cup of ground almonds.

I still have plenty of almond flour, though, and these were pretty easy to make. I do need to get a metal spatula, though, as the plastic one seems to be an attractive surface for macarons and tuiles to stick to as I try to remove them from the tray.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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