Dinner

We had Margot and Joanna over for dinner, and I made chicken adobo, rice, pumpkin fritters, no-need bread, chapatis for the adobo, a cheese plate and lemon mousse pie. We played a lot of Nintendo Wii and watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. Mike and I had a double TKO in Wii boxing, it was amazing. Margot and Joanna each scored a run and tied in Wii Baseball.

Fritters:

Bread:

Ooh gourmet!

English blue cheese, brie, honecomb, quince paste. We also had white truffle porcini mushroom oil and hawaiian black sea salt for the no-knead bread.

New placemats cause the old ones were getting grungy.

Fight!

Swing batta!

Keep your fork, there's pie!

Lemon Mousse Pie

I had another batch of the yummy lemony crust from the lemon tart last week, so I thawed it and made it into a lemon mousse pie.

Weighting down the crust to prebake it. The rice helps keep the dough from puffing up.

Dissolving gelatin in lemon juice, mixed with rind. I then creamed together confectioners sugar and cream cheese, then added to the lemon gelatin. I next whipped heavy cream, and folded the two batters together after the gelatin had set for 15 minutes in the fridge. The pie had to sit for 2 hours after assembling.

Pie crust cookies are always a good leftover (and they make good garnishes!)

Coconut Pudding

This was supposed to be a gelatin/jello kind of dessert but it never solidified. I guess not enough gelatin. I boiled coconut milk (the light version), vanilla, anise and pink food coloring with some cane sugar.


Poured into vintage tin molds after straining out the anise seed. It was a very good pudding but not what I expected. I served it with chocolate covered bananas.

Lemon Tart

Another recipe from the Silver Spoon cookbook. I have to say I was disappointed in the filling -- maybe I used the wrong pan tho, because I used a removable bottom tart pan and my filling leaked out. My bottom crust was very soggy and the filling was very concentrated because so much leaked out. But it was extremely tasty!

Here is the crust. I am going to use it for a lot of things. Oddly, there was no water in the recipe. I had to add some! It wouldn't hold together with just butter and egg yolks. It contained a lot of sugar, and lemon peel as well.


Even adding a scant 1/4 cup of ice water, it was still crumbly.


Here is the filling, basically butter, eggs, sugar, lemon juice and lemon peel.


Baked. You can see the second pie plate under to catch what leaked out.


Dusted w/ confectioner's sugar.


Food porn close-up!

Pumpkin Pie

I had some leftover pate sucre from making a strawberry custard tart a while ago. I found low-fat sweetened condensed milk and some pumpkin on sale at the grocery store, so pie it is!

Pie crust does not have to be round!! Really...!


Pumpkin, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, 2 eggs, and sweetened condensed milk. Topped with pie crust cutouts dusted with cinnamon.


Fresh from the oven!

Golden Semolina Batard

This bread's flour is only semolina -- durum semolina. Light golden colored, grainy, and delicious. It makes a very thick and crunchy crust and a very soft crumb. (The container in this picture is a Polly-O Ricotta cheese container from my grandparents. Just mentioning that in case a Salerno reads this post ;) )

The starter is allowed to ferment first -- the flour, water and yeast are covered by a blanket of flour+salt. I like to leave it outside in the sun to rise,


The starter has fermented and bubbled up out of the flour blanket,

After the whole mixture is gently combined, it is kneaded and allowed to rise until doubled,



It is then turned out into a batard/torpedo shape, risen again and then baked,


And here it is plated, topped with sweet butter and a drizzle of honey,

Coconut Rice Pudding

I wanted to make bibingka but I wasn't in the mood for any of the recipes I found. So I compromised and made stove-top rice pudding with coconut milk. If I made this again I would use shredded coconut as well to bring out the flavor, and top with toasted coconut I think.

Ingredients assembled, raisins soaking in rum,


Milk and spices added to cooked rice,


Raisins (and the rum too, why not) and butter and vanilla added,


And plated,