Cooking for one

M has been away this week - he's in the US of A on a work trip and will be gone for two weeks. That combined with the fact that I've been having a hellish week at work myself (think several 1 am nights in a row and you start to get the picture) means I haven't really had much time to cook or bake, much less blog about it.

Since I find cooking for one not much fun, I've been surviving on very simple dinners this week - salads, omelettes, and cereal even. Last night, I decided to whip out the pans and cook myself a very simple something with one of my favourite foods. Mushrooms.

I usually serve this as a side paired with something more substantial, such as a steak or a grilled fish. This time, I simply sauteed the mushrooms and put them on top of a bed of salad leaves. Simple and healthy. In fact, this dish is so simple that it doesn't really require a recipe. Simply heat some butter in a pan, throw in the sliced portobello mushrooms, toss in some Worcestershire sauce and balsamic vinegar and voila! Ready to eat.

Salmon rilletes

The first time I ever tasted Salmon rillettes was for brunch at Bouchon in Las Vegas. At the time, I wasn't quite as into food and as I am now so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. When I enquired of the waiter what it was he described it to me as a salmon pate of sorts. Since I am a huge fan of pate, I decided to give it a try. In hindsight, I am really glad I did. If my memory serves me, the rillettes were served with a side of toasted croutons and I remember thinking that they were one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. It was a creamy spread containing chunks of steamed and smoked salmon and flavoured with Pernod.

When I came across this recipe in delicious., I knew I had to give it a go. As you'll see in this particular recipe, both salmon and trout are used. I'm sure you can substitute the smoked trout with smoked salmon if you prefer. I stayed true to the recipe and thought that it was as exquisite as I remember the Bouchon one being.

The rillettes were a big hit at brunch. Besides me, there were at least one or two others for whom this was their favourite dish. The recipe called for serving it with toasted bagel chips but I chose to serve to it with homemade whole wheat bread instead. If you've never had this before, I highly recommend it. Let me know how you like it if you do. As for myself, I belatedly realized that I also have the recipe for the Bouchon version. I'm definitely going to try that one when I get the chance and compare the two!

Salmon Rillettes
From delicious.

450g skinless salmon fillet, pin-boned
125g unsalted butter, softened
6 eschalots, very finely chopped
1 tbs creme fraiche
250g smoked trout fillet
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 egg yolks
2 tbs Pernod* (optional)
1 tbs chopped dill, plus a sprig to garnish
Clarified butter, to top (see Note)

Place the salmon fillet in a shallow dish and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sea salt. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour, turning the salmon fillet once.

Line a steamer with baking paper, then steam the salmon fillet over a saucepan of simmering water for 8 minutes until just cooked but still a little opaque in the centre. Remove the salmon and allow to cool.

Melt 40g of the butter in a frypan over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until soft. Add a pinch of salt, then cook for a further 2 minutes.

Place the remaining 85g of butter in a bowl and use hand beaters to beat until pale. Add the creme fraiche and beat in well. Break the steamed salmon and smoked trout into pieces and add to the bowl with the eschalots, lemon juice, oil, egg yolks, Pernod (if using) and dill. Beat gently until the mixture is combined but still coarse, then season well. Place in a glass bowl or clip-lock jar large enough to fit all the mixture and cover with a 1cm layer of cooled clarified butter (see Note, below). Top with the dill sprig, then cover with plastic wrap or the jar lid and and chill for at least 1 hour. (The rillettes will keep for 3 days in the fridge.)

Serves 6

Note: To make clarified butter, very gently melt 125g unsalted butter over low heat, skimming any foam off the top but not stirring. When the butter is melted, remove from the heat and leave to stand for 1 minute, so the milk solids settle to the bottom. Carefully pour off the golden clarified butter into a jug and discard the solids in the pan. Allow to cool before using.
* Pernod is an aniseed liqueur available from bottle shops.

From my home to yours

Dorie Greenspan's latest book, From Baking: From my home to yours, is one my go-to books whenever I'm looking for something to bake. Her recipes have never failed me and some of my favourites from this book are the World Peace cookies and Devil's food white-out cake, the cake that is featured on the cover of this book. So, when looking for a sweet treat to serve at our brunch last week, I once again pulled this trusted book from my shelf. Eventually I settled on these Lemon poppy seed muffins.

I was tempted to leave out the icing on these muffins but I'm glad I didn't. As she says in the recipe, the icing really does help to give an extra irresistible burst of lemony flavour.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
From Baking: From my home to yours

2/3 cup sugar
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tbsp poppy seeds

For the icing:
1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
2-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of lemon strong. Whisky in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don't worry about being thorough - a few lumps are better than overmixing the batter. Stir in the poppy seeds. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Cool the muffins completely on the rack before icing them.

To make the icing:
Put the confectioner's sugar in a small bowl and add about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the lemon juice. Stir with a spoon to moisten the sugar, then add enough additional lemon juice, a dribble at a time, to get an icing that is thin enough to drizzle from the tip of the spoon. You can then drizzle lines of icing over the tops of the muffins or coat the tops entirely, the better to get an extra zap of lemon.

Fit for a prince

It’s M’s birthday today! Another year older and another year wiser, or so they say. I love birthdays even if its not my own. In fact, M was just commenting that it seems I am even more excited about his birthday than he is. I mean, what’s not to like? You get to eat cake, open presents, do whatever you like and have an excuse for it, and have people celebrate you just for a day. And did I mention eat cake?

Given how many baking books I have, trying to decide what birthday cake to make for M was tricky. I thought first about making him a Chocolate Praline Mousse cake by Alain Ducasse since M loves chocolate as much as I do, maybe more even! Then I thought about other cakes that I have made in the past that he has liked such as the Devil's Food White-out Cake by Dorie Greenspan. Then inspiration struck and I decided that I would make him a cake from his home country that I know he loves – Princess cake.

I have seen Princess cakes in Stockholm before whenever I’ve gone to visit but have never actually tried it until the wedding of a friend of M’s in July this year. I guess the reason I stayed away was that I was not a fan of marzipan (or so I thought) and the cake was a strange green colour. Since at the aforementioned wedding the Princess cake was the wedding cake, I thought it would be rude not to try.

In hindsight, I’m glad I did because I was pleasantly surprised! The marzipan didn’t have that sickly sweet flavour that I remembered it having as a child and the cake was surprisingly light – probably because of the oodles of whipped cream that gives the cake its characteristic dome shape. I went back for seconds, then thirds and I also ate some off M’s plate. All in all, I must have eaten enough to feed a family of 4 in some famine-stricken countries.

Once I got the idea in my head, I started looking for recipes and was thankfully able to locate one in a Swedish cookbook that M's mother had kindly given to me the first time I visited Stockholm. Given the many different components involved, I needed a game plan in order to make the cake at home without M discovering it. The schedule I came up with in the end was this: I baked the cake layers and created the green marzipan coating on Monday night before M came home from work. On Tuesday, I made the pastry cream. The plan was then to make the whipped cream and assemble the cake on Wednesday night but I was worried that M would get home before me. It was a stroke of luck therefore when M told me that he would be having a work dinner and would be coming home late that night.


Since it was my first time working with marzipan, I was a little apprehensive when it came time to roll it out. It turned out to be pretty easy however, especially if you work quickly before it starts to get sticky. If that happens though sprinkling icing sugar on it works pretty well. I have to confess that I didn’t quite have enough marzipan so after I draped it over the cake, I realized that I would have to patch up a hole at the back. Straightening out the folds in the cake was also a little tricky and I realized belatedly that I should probably have practiced before trying to make M’s birthday cake.

Despite the difficulty and the fact that the end product didn’t look picture perfect, I was still overall pretty happy with the way it came out. M certainly didn’t mind either when I woke him up with the cake and sang him Happy Birthday. We skipped dessert at dinner tonight in order to eat the birthday cake and it was definitely worth the wait. I think we’ll be having more tomorrow before we leave for Edinburgh where I’m taking him to watch the Rugby world cup match between New Zealand and Scotland for his birthday. No sense in letting good cake go to waste right?

Princess Cake
From Swedish Homecooking

Cake base:
4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup hot water
2 tsp baking powder
1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy. Heat the water and stir into the egg mixture.

Mix the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl. Fold into wet mixture. Pour the batter into a round 9 x 3 1/2 inch greased cake pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Cream filling:
1 1/4 cup whole milk
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 envelope gelatin
1 1/4 cups heavy cream

Pour the milk into a heavy-bottomed pan. Add the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch. Warm the mixture over medium low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens. Add the vanilla extract. Dissolve the gelatin in a little water and add it to the mixture. Set aside, stirring it from time to time as it cools.

Whip the heavy cream. Carefully blend into cooled filling mixture

Marzipan:
14 oz marzipan
Green and yellow
Powdered sugar

Put the marzipan in a medium-sized plastic food storage bag. make a little indentation in the marzipan and add 3 drops of green food coloring and one drop of the yellow. Knead the marzipan in the plastic bag until it is evenly colored.

To assemble:
Let the cake cool and slice it into three layers. Spread raspberry jam or place fresh raspberries with a little sugar sprinkled on them on the bottom layer. The second layer gets covered with half the cream filling. Place the third layer on top and then spread the rest of the cream filling on top and down over the sides so the whole cake is covered.

Lay out a large piece of plastic wrap and put the marzipan on it. Cut open a plastic food storage bag so that it is large enough to cover the marzipan, place over marzipan and roll out. This is a great way to avoid having the marzipan stick to the rolling pin.

Roll out marzipan into a thin, circular sheet large enough to drape over and cover the whole cake. Tip: trace the bottom of the cake pan onto paper, then measure the height of the cake and add it to the pan diameter to calculate the total diameter for your marzipan sheet. This way the marzipan is large enough to cover the whole cake.

Peel the plastic bag off the top of the marzipan sheet, then turn the marzipan so the plastic wrap is facing upward. Remove the plastic carefully. Pinch in the edges and trim away the excess marzipan.

Sprinkle the cake with powdered sugar.

Makes one 9-inch cake

Roasted vegetable tart

As I promised in yesterday's post, here is another recipe from the brunch on Sunday - Roasted vegetable tart. While choosing what to make for brunch, I was debating between this and a torta caprese. What ultimately tipped the scale in favour of this was that I have recently discovered the pleasures of zucchini and aubergine. This tart seemed like a lovely way to showcase them.

I haven't included a recipe for shortcrust pastry since you can easily substitute your favourite recipe here. Also, although the recipe calls for low-fat ricotta cheese, I used regular ricotta. I figured the extra 30 minutes in the gym would be worth it.

Roasted vegetable tart
Adapted from delicious.

1 small aubergine
1 red pepper, halved, seeds removed
2 small courgettes
1 red onion
1 yellow pepper, halved, seeds removed
2 garlic cloves, crushed
100 ml olive oil
375g shortcrust pastry (use your favourite recipe)
300g low-fat ricotta cheese
2 eggs
50g grated parmesan
2 tsp chopped rosemary

Preheat oven to 190°C. Grease a 30 x 11cm loose-bottomed, rectangular tart pan.

Cut the eggplant, capsicum, zucchini, onion and sweet potato into 2cm chunks. Place in a bowl with the garlic and olive oil, and toss to coat in the oil. Tip the vegetables onto a large baking tray and spread out evenly. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until cooked through and slightly charred, then set aside.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface. Line the prepared pan with pastry, then line with baking paper. Fill with pastry weights or rice and blind bake for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, beat together ricotta, eggs, parmesan and rosemary. Fill pre-baked tart shell with ricotta mixture and place in oven for 15 minutes or until set. Top with roasted vegetables, then return to oven for 5 minutes to warm through. Garnish with extra rosemary, if desired.

Makes 1 30cm x 11cm rectangular tart