Apicio

Yes Jennahan, warm up the jar if it is too thick. The jar I have has to be chilled so as not to be too runny. The version I tasted had a filling on top and between the layers. And yes, it was encased with a chocolate glace. I think that you will have to chill this to firm up the top layer of dulce de leche (just like a butter cream topped cake) before applying the chocolate glace.

I tasted this chocolate cake when I visited Buenos Aires last April. There was nothing extraordinary about the moist chocolate layer nor the chocolate frosting but I suspect that it was the dulce de leche filling that made it trully special. Argentinians tend to embellish almost every dessert with their merited famous product. They top their creme caramel with a scoop of it and they also have a napoleon-like dessert filled with a layer of dulce de leche that they call Alvear. Very impressive. You can find dulce de leche in most latin or central american food stores. If you are sensitive to the gamy flavour of goat’s milk, try obtaining the Argentinian brands which are made from cow's milk. You won’t have any problem about the spreadability of this ready made ones. It’s when you make your own by boiling unopened condensed milk that you run into the hard-to-correct too runny consistency. Look for a chocolate cake that uses chocolate or cocoa that is readily available where you are such as Cadbury's. Do not be taken in by exotic imported and expensive ones. You will be paying through your teeth just for the tasteless cachet.

What you can rightly claim without fear of being contradicted is that not all Thai curries include coconut milk. All the curries that I tried when I was there though contained differing proportions of coconut milk. They all tasted perty authentic to me.

I noticed the recipe for the regular mooncake crust asking for “lye water.” I also found it as a component of the dough for char chiu bao. As far as I know, only chinese (or chinese influenced) recipes require this ingredient and only those recipes that involve rice or wheat flour. In indigenous Filipino cooking, it only shows up in two items, both of them kueh-type snacks and appears to be as flavouring. A few drops is also used to release the flavour/colour of achiote (anatto) seeds. My question is, what exactly is the role of lye water in Chinese cooking?

Thanks a lot Tepee. Did the orange flavour complement the white lotus paste? The tea and red bean ones look like Frango mints. I think that's the flavour I shall aim for in my trial.

Now Tepee those are lovely. Specially the tea and red bean combination. What recipe did you use for the crust?

Addressing Todd36: Exactly my observation about my experience with dinner invitations in affluent homes in the Philipppines (in another thread about Filipino cuisine.) This concept of familial fine dining is in fact gaining acceptance even in places where the range of choices is truly an obstacle (like in NY) as witness the recent number of articles about cooks who opt to practice their art privately for well heeled clients. It likely parallels a preference among people who can afford to do so to garb themselves in bespoke clothes. A dedicated cook is not very different from a trusted tailor who caters to your total needs (personal or social, etc). An off-the-rack suit, even by as highly acclaimed manufacturer as Kiton, would not quite measure up. The goals are just different.

There is a review of Cendrillon restaurant in today's New York Times. Here is the link: http://events.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/dinin...ews/03rest.html

Anzu, I make the tisane here by boiling a knot of two or three blades of pandan in water. Its ready as soon as the water gets that greenish tinge. I use the pandan knot for several pots. You know, until its no longer imparting any flavour. Simply steeping the pandan blades does not scent the hot water at all. Incidentally, this tisane is the traditional accompaniment to our rice cake that is served around Christmas time in the Philippines. Now, the jasmine rice that are so ubiquitous now-a-days did not exist thirty years ago. You smelled this scent on almost all varieties of rice but only when they were newly harvested. This new persistent flavour is probably a result of, once again, genetic engineering of the scientists of the IRRI (the International Rice Research Institute). I guess they learned their lesson because they concentrated their efforts, at first, at developing high yield rice and were quite successful with a particular strain that they called “miracle rice.” But it was absolutely bereft of flavour that people said that it would indeed be a miracle if anyone liked it.

Thanks anzu for another good thought. Now instead of just tying the pandan blades into a knot I am going to try mincing it first. See if it yields a more intense flavour faster. While still on topic, did you know that the scent of pandan is actually the whiff you get when a breeze passses through a rice field close to harvest time? This is also one of the reasons why South East Asians throw a small blade in to their pot when they cook rice from the previous harvest, presumably to restore the newly harvested fragrance that has faded. Tisane made from pandan also goes very well with the various rice-based snacks (kuehs) we have there.

“You are always surprised by your friends’ choice in love or books.” Andre Maurois Can you predict somebody’s potential in a relationship by their food preference? I doubt it. I have friends whose recomendation for restaurants I will never again solicit but whose dinner at home invitation I always look forward to.

Just to clarify a misconception, salt is added to ice to melt it. Melting point of ice is lower than its solid state. Same reason why we spread salt on our icy roads here in winter.

Thank you so much Sanrensho. I hope to return the favour.

Thanks Trillium. No, I don't like that colour at all.

I have a few questions about pandan myself. What is the optimum way of extracting the flavour from fresh pandan blades? What quantity of water, what intensity of heat, and for how long? I know that pandan extract is available but it would be very helpful to know if it is available as a colourless flavoring. The kelly green colour is a big turn-off for me. Reminds me too much of Saint Patrick’s day celebration related food and drink items. Lastly, a tip: using regular unflavoured gelatin instead of the agar-agar yields a more resilient jell which can also be added to tropical fruit salad with strands of young coconut and those tiny ovoid chewy toddy palm meat (you can get as sweet kaong in Filipino stores).

It seems to me that leche quemada is a close literal translation of crême brulée. No?

For e-gulleters that just caught this thread recently, there was a very good survey of mooncakes in Renee Kho’s blog which has been linked in the early life of this old mooncake thread (that’s how I discovered it) :http://www.shiokadelicious.com/shiokadelicious/festivals_midautumn_2004/index.html/ It touches on a lot of different kinds of filllings, from the traditional to the innovative and also the different regional variations. I suspect that wife’s cake is just one of these regional variations. Besides, the illustrations are lovely and quite appetizing, as opposed to lurid.

Sanrensho, Oh, the filling. The filling is actually made of hulled adzuki that is why it is white. They only get crumbly when they are no longer fresh or if no corn syrup was used. In my shop it is yellow because we use hulled mung beans from Australia which has a stronger bean flavour and we wrap them in chinese puff pastry. I would like to try the real japanese crust and red adzuki bean filling. Filipinos call this Japanese moon cakes. I suspect that it will be more flavourful too and fantastic for afternoon tea. I hope you find a basic recipe that I can use as a starting point.

Sanrensho, yesss! But that is not crumbly to me. It is more soft bready, in fact. Would you have a basic proportion for that?

The Japanese have a pastry filled with strained sweet adzuki bean paste wrapped in a soft crust that feels, tastes and looks like fig newton crust. This is my second favorite from that Japanese pastry shop around the Rockefeller Centre. My all time favorite and which only comes out in winter is the preserved persimon filled with the same filling.

Winter mellon mooncake filling is made with: diced candied winter mellon, bread crumbs, sugar, water, fat and chopped green onions (the white stems and the green leaves). In the olden days when nobody cared about ingesting cholesterol, they also included candied pork backfat, that’s why they call them pork mooncakes in most of South East Asia. Now, winter mellon is a fairly expensive fresh vegetable, if you puree it you will just end up with light green water a process that is not very different from copperizing gold. Candied winter mellon provides that nice crunch that is the main attraction of this mooncake.

There is no method to their madness. You cannot even bring into the US oranges that Canada imported from Florida. Or (I do not know if this is true) Florida oranges to California.

Nhumi, if you check the link that sanrensho provided, it actually gives you the actual proportions for various products. You just scale all the ingredients, which are just whole eggs, flour, sugar and flavoring plus the all important emulsifyer and whip it until you produce this industructible foam. The honey loafs that I mentioned in my original reply turned out to be called Nagasaki Castella in Japan, an obvious reference to the Spanish christian missionaries of the seventeen and eighteenh centuries. You can make all sorts of things with this sponge, even lady fingers and madeleines. Look at how they murdered its spelling. In my shop, we tried using the best eggs we can lay our hands on as the flavour of the end product depends so much on it and of course the best flavourings too. We made pavés which were brushed with melted cultured butter and lightly sprinkled with sugar. Tasted like very light pound cakes.

Renshosan, that's the one!

Tarteausucre, if the sponge cake you tasted came from a bakery, it probably was made from either a commercial mix or a recipe that requires a commercial sponge cake stabilizer that you can only obtain from bakery suppliers in drum or bucket quantities. Commercial bakeries also use them for making sheet cakes for jelly-roll and for the honey sponge loaf sold in Korean and Japanese stores. Its almost impossible to duplicate it at home with conventional sponge cake methods.