After a brief hiatus from Das Salz in meine Suppe and then an even briefer visit with Calista this summer, in which I was reminded of how awesome she actually is, I have been thinking that it's time to start the blog back up.

And what better way than...Souffle!

I've been experimenting with souffles recently, mostly because I have a link through Adam's work to farm fresh eggs, and plenty of them.  Souffle is surprisingly easy for something that looks and tastes difficult.  I've done two kinds so far - the nut-based souffle and the sauce-based souffle.

The nut-based one was a chocolate almond souffle.  It uses ground almonds as its base, and comes out with a consistency a lot like a flourless chocolate cake but a bit lighter.  It's got a nice flavour, and would be even better with a bit of a sauce to it.  I'm still working on this recipe because it came out slightly heavier than I would have liked, but I'll let you know if I get it right.

The other two I've made were a pumpkin souffle and a cheese souffle. 

 Cheese Souffle
To make the cheese one, you need:
2 eggs
1/4-1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
about 1/2 a cup of any cheese you like, grated or in small pieces
 A pinch of mustard, paprika, nutmeg, or your favourite cheese-related spice

 Preheat oven to 350.  Place a baking pan with some hot water in it into the oven. There should be enough water that it will come about 1/4 to half way up the sides of the ramekins, but not so much that it will get into them.

1.  Grease two or three ramekins with a generous coating of butter.
2.  Separate the eggs.  Put the whites into a large mixing bowl.  Save the yolks.
3.  Make a thick cheese sauce.  Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour.  Add in  1/4 cup milk, and cook until thick.  Add in the cheese and spices, cook until melted and smooth, and then add a little extra milk if you need it.  The consistency should be still liquid, but very thick, sort of like half-cooked pancake batter.  Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.  When still warm but not boiling, stir in the egg yolks.
4.  Whip the egg whites to stiff peak, then take about 1/3 of the whites and stir them quickly into the cheese sauce.  Pour that mixture back into the rest of the whites, and combine with as few strokes as possible.
5.  Pour the mix into the greased ramekins.  Wipe the edges to make sure the batter is smooth or it won't rise nicely.
6.  Place the ramekins in the oven in the hot water bath, being careful not to let any water into the batter.
7.  Bake for 30-40 minutes until brown on top, risen, and not jiggly.

If you only make 2 servings, fry up the extra batter in a frying pan.  It comes out like a delicious cheesy pancake.

 Low Fat Pumpkin Pie Souffle
You can use that same technique to make a pumpkin souffle that takes just like pumpkin pie.  The best thing is, it's really healthy, with almost no fat and surprisingly little sugar.  They're also gluten free if that's a concern to you.  I greased the ramekins with a very small amount of butter, but you can use cooking spray if you prefer.  Omit the sugar in the ramekins if you use spray.

2 egg whites
1 tbsp white sugar
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup pumpkin
1 tbsp maple syrup
1-2 tbsp low fat sour cream
Whatever spices you like to make it taste like pumpkin pie - I went with nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon.

1. Put a baking pan of water into the oven and preheat to 350. 
2. Grease 3 ramekins and sprinkle the inside with a little white sugar. 
3. Warm the pumpkin up in a frying pan.  Add the sour cream and syrup.  Add the spices until it tastes how you like your pumpkin pie.  Again, the consistency should be like thick apple sauce or half cooked pancake batter.
4.  Remove from heat and let cool for a few seconds, just enough so that the yolk won't cook when you stir it in, then add the egg yolk.
5. Whip the whites to stiff peak, then add the sugar.  Stir about 1/3 of the meringue into the pumpkin mixture, then pour that back into the meringue and stir gently with a spatula until it's just mixed. 
6. Pour into the ramekins, then clean the rims so it will rise evenly.   Bake in the water bath about 30 min until brown on top and not jiggly.

Enjoy!  Awesome with a little whipped cream - especially if you put Irish cream into it while you're whipping.  If you're keeping to the healthy thing, cool whip will do too.

Aloha from Brandon, in cake form

After four hours, I have just finished decorating one of the fanciest cakes I've ever done. I'm taking a cake decorating class at Michael's, and although it's a bit basic (they have designed the first course for people who have never before decorated a cake, and there are some in the class like that), I've learned some new things. These include the recipe for white icing that uses vegetable shortening and gets solid without getting hard, how to flatten and torte a cake properly, and how to use some of the odder icing tips in my arsenal. The cake is to celebrate my dad's wedding - I'm planning to show up with it at his house for the pre-wedding fiesta tomorrow. The wedding is Hawaiian themed, and so is the cake. I did the hibiscus in a smooth, colouring-in technique that I'm not sure I'd use again, but it's good to know. What I did learn that was valuable is how to transfer a pattern; you find an outlined pattern, trace it onto parchment, turn that over and trace along its mirror-image with decorating gel (like Dairy Queen uses), and then put that on the top of the cake and press it in with a paint brush. Then when you lift off the paper, it's just a matter of colouring. The palm trees were super fun and let me use some of the tips I've never tried before. Ditto for the grass.The cake itself is butter pecan (mix, I'm ashamed to say), with a rum butter pecan filling.

Ham - Asparagus Rolls

The other day, my Dad sent me an email to let me know that he and my Mom were eating one of my favourite dinners (ham and asparagus rolls) while I was in England, probably eating some form of fish and chips or other, equally English food.

My mother has a row of asparagus that's as long as their house, so I ate a lot of asparagus as a kid, I guess. To be more exact, I ate asparagus at pretty much every meal in May and June for most of my life. It's a flavour that grows on you, really. But because asparagus was so plentiful and free at home, I kind of resent having to pay for it now. So I don't eat a lot of asparagus anymore.

On my lunch break today, I walked in a torrential downpour to the Wednesday market. I found some resonably priced asparagus (which I still resented having to pay for) and some un-labelled mystery-cheese at a really good price. So I bought them both, and here is how I combined them:


Ham Asparagus Rolls
(recipe from memory, with alterations to suit my new English environment)

as much fresh asparagus as you can handle
250g smoked, rindless back bacon
Coleman's mustard
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup cheese, grated
spring onions

Arrange the bacon on a grill pan, and spread each slice with a scant amount of mustard. Grill (broil) until the bacon starts to brown at the edges. Remove them from the oven, and cool so you can handle them. Wrap each bacon slice around 4-5 stalks of asparagus. Arrange in a casserole dish, and repeat until all the asparagus is used. It's ok to pack it in tight, but try to keep it to a single layer.

For the cheese sauce, make a roux of the flour and butter. Add the milk slowly, whisking to incorporate. Simmer until thickened to a sauce-like consistency. Stir in the cheese. Pour this over the ham and asparagus rolls, and top with chopped spring onion.

Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes, til the top is browned and the asparagus is tender-crisp. Serve hot over toast.

Chocolate Banitsa (a variation on a Bulgarian tradition)

Earlier this year, Abbie called me up to see if I wanted to come on a trip with her. She had some vacation time to use up and was thinking of France. Obviously, I'm up for a trip, but I've been to France. And Abbie spent every summer of her childhood in France.

I suggested a game I like to call the EasyJet Lottery, in which you simply choose EasyJet's cheapest destination and go there. But before we did any of the requisite research, I remembered that Bobby was spending the month in Bulgaria, and we decided to visit him. Turns out, it is one of the cheaper destinations anyway, so we did fulfil the spirit of the adventure in cheapness, if not in randomness.

Bobby showed us nearly everything there was to see his city, which he obviously loves. Then we all went to this little village called Melnyk. It's in the Pirin Mountains, near the Greek border, and it's just beautiful there. Bobby (the best host ever) had to go back to the city after one day, but Abbie and I spent a few days there alone, hiking in the mountains and eating all kinds of unfamiliar but delicious foods. They have SUCH good food in Bulgaria!

Granted, the goodness of the food we got in restaurants did decline after Bobby's departure, when we had to resort to pointing randomly into menus.

One evening, we completed the 10 leve challenge, in which we ate dinner for 10 leve or less (about £5 GBP). Browsing the menu, I settled on a glass of Melnishka (a Bulgarian brandy, 2.50 leve), a Russian salad (3.50 leve), and something called Drob Syrma, which was translated to Lamb Specialty (4.00 leve). I tasted everything and got all self-congratulatory. Yay, me! I ordered in a foreign language which I do not understand, and it all tasted pretty great and wow, what a successful meal!

As I ate the Drob Syrma, which was similar to a risotto with little chunks of lamb meat in it, I noticed something about the texture of the meat. On closer inspection, the meat was actually kidney and tongue and stomach. I made myself pretend that the giant chunks of vein were actually macaroni. And I got through most of it. But in the next-to last mouthful, I crunched down on something... that I can only assume was a kidney stone, and PHOOOOO! Pewey! Ptaw! That was the end of it for me.

The best of the Bulgarian food was by far the Banitsa. We went to every cafe in the village in search of the best banitsa. No surprise, the cafe that had the best banitsa was the one we went back to about twice a day. So, banitsa is a pastry that is traditionally made with filo dough, egg and white cheese (very similar to feta cheese) and it's just really really good. Since returning from Bulgaria, I've become a banitsa making fool, and have baked about a million of them. The variation I'm sharing with you now is one of my own concoction, although I suspect a Bulgarian would consider it a banitsa abomination, since chocolate is not something you'd normally find in one of these.

Chocolate Banitsa

2 packages filo pastry sheets
300 grams chocolate, chopped to bits
4 eggs
1.5 cups milk
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
butter

Liberally grease the bottom and sides of a 9x13" baking pan with butter. Fold one sheet of pastry in half, and place in the bottom of the pan.

On a fresh sheet of pastry, sprinkle some of your chocolate. Fold this pastry sheet into an accordion, ensuring the chocolate is distributed among the folds. Place the accordion in the pan, so that the folds are vertical. Repeat the folding process with additional sheets of pastry until you have filled your pan.

Crack eggs into a bowl. Add the milk, vanilla and cinnamon, and beat with an electric mixture until frothy. Next, spoon the egg mixture evenly over the pastry, ensuring that you pour a bit of egg in between the pastry and each side of the baking pan. Drop small knobs of butter over the top of the pastry.

Bake 35-40 mins at 200 C, or until the egg is set and the pastry is golden.

Serve hot or cold, at any time of day. This is especially good served with a hot cup of espresso.

Mexilicious

So, Brandon is surprisingly diverse ethnically. The Maple Leaf meat plant (epidemic free for over a year now!), brings people in from all over the world to work here, and many of them come from Latin America. There are two Mexican grocery stores in town, which means I'm up to my elbows in tortilla flour now!

My mom and Blair came to visit over the weekend, and we did up the Mexican food. We made homemade salsa, got some maseca and did up the tortillas, and made black beans hearkening back to our Guatemala days. We also got a bag of dried chipotles, and I made up chipotle chicken. I've never bought dried chipotles before, and here's what I learned about them:
1) They smell amazing.
2) They're freakin' hot.

And I mean hot. Burn your nosehairs off hot. I made up a sauce by pureeing a whole chipotle (possibly overkill), with 3 cloves of garlic and a can of crushed tomatoes. Did I mention it was hot? So I strained it out, discarded seeds and peel bits, added another can of tomatoes, and mixed it with shredded chicken. After it was watered down a bit it was actually pretty good. The table was beautiful - I can't believe I forgot to take pictures.

I also did up the Arroz con Leche that my friend Nelly taught me years ago. Nelly is a fantastic cook, and her Arroz con Leche (rice pudding) is legendary. The secret is the lime zest, which adds fantastic flavour and a bit of colour. I don't think she'd mind if I shared this one with you:

1 cup rice, soaked overnight (you don't have to soak it but it comes out better if you do)
1 litre milk
1 can evaporated milk
1 can condensed milk
1 stick cinnamon
1 lime, zested
1 dash vanilla (optional)
1 handful raisins (optional but encouraged)
powdered cinnamon for topping

Mix the milks, rice, cinnamon stick, lime zest, and vanilla in a pot and boil over a low head, stirring very frequently. Boil until the mixture becomes very thick and the rice is soft to the taste. Stir in raisins. Pour into a cake pan or serving dish, and sprinkle with cinnamon. Allow to set for about 30 min. Buen Provecho!

Ice Cream

So about a month ago, I moved into a new house and adopted a couple of new house mates. One of them works at a local ice cream shop, G&D's. This shop ought to have an international reputation, it's so good.

One of the perks of working at this shop is that they always make a touch more ice cream than they need, and give it away to their staff. One of the perks of sharing a house with someone who works at this shop is that he brings home a lot of free ice cream.



At one point, we had more than 16 litres of ice cream in our freezer. That's nearly enough ice cream to bathe in. I didn't bathe in it. Instead, I dreamed up other, tidier and more delicious ways to basically waste the ice cream.

The most indulgent result was scooping it into coffee. Mmmmmm, toffee-chocolate ice cream coffee:



The perfect accompaniment to Saturday morning, my couch, and BBC1 for James Martin's cooking show.

Welcome to the kitchen!

Calista and Lindsay met in 1999 at University. They were friends for many years, and in many kitchens. When life put an ocean in between them, they created this, their virtual kitchen.