Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Could not resist buying this book at long last.

The movie "Julie and Julia" is a really great movie for cooks. Saw this movie twice (once at home) and both times, it seemed so inspiring (Meryl Streep was marvelous).

smoked duck breast soup

Had 2 smoked duck breasts from Phoon Huat.

Also had some duck bones from before.

So I made smoked duck soup.

1. Make duck stock the usual way like I do with chicken except with the duck bones.
2. Pour into pot, the duck stock over the smoked breasts.
3. Bring to a vigorous boil. Put in thai fish sauce for the saltiness.
4. Put pot in oven at 62C for 2 hours.
5. Take breasts out. Boil the soup again and put in the veg.
6. When veg is done, put duck back in, sliced.

Variation of original spelt cake

This is nicer according to mw.

1. 150g of flour, but this time 2/3 spelt and 1/3 whole wheat.
2. 35-40g of flaxseed plus half handful of dried raspberries and prunes (chopped).
3. 120g of liquid comprising lemoncello, lemon juice (one whole small lemon) + maple syrup and brown sugar (as usual my measuring system is "a dollop" and 2 tablespoons.). There's more lemoncello this time (prob about 6 tablespoons).
4. 2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
5. dash of cinnamon powder + nutmeg powder.
6. 1 teaspoon each of baking powder and baking soda.
7. 180g unsalted butter (soft)
8. Solution of lemoncello + icing sugar for after baking.

Mix all dry ingredients well.
In a mixing bowl mix all wet ingredients.
Then mix in the dry ingredients just enough to get them all mixed. Do not overknead.
Bake in 170C oven. First 10 mins on light steam injection. Then about 20 mins or so without steam.
Watch the whole thing brown nicely, then take out and measure temp. Unfortunately, this time my thermometer was spoilt so I aga aga.
Let the cake cool a bit.
Poke holes all over.
Spoon over the lemoncello/sugar solution well and watch it sink into the cake.

Serve warm (not hot).

Breakfast of champions

Interesting color combination. Dragon fruit and homemade yam cake.

Steak dinner

steak was from chuck, the toughest but most flavourful meat. The toughness was taken care of by cooking it at 58C for 24 hours with a bit of butter, salt, oregano and rosemary.

Steak sauce was bacon and finely chopped onions sauted. Then add chicken stock and wine. Finally add butter to mount. Salt and pepper to taste.

Fairly nice.

For the salad, stewed dried prunes in sweet wine, then chopped the prunes. The leftover sweet wine is augmented by lemon juice, then mixed with olive oil. The veg is spinach and chopped bell pepper. Add hard boiled egg with soft center and foie gras (bought in France 2 years ago in a can). Turns out it is easier to blow torch the foie gras than to sear it in a pan. When I tried the first sear, a lot of smoke and a thin black skin formed. Luckily I could remove the black skin and restart, which I did with a blow torch.

The foie gras, sweet prunes and the sweet wine vinegrette was very good and went well with the wine, a Barolo we bought 10 years ago in Italy. The Barolo also went well with the meat.

Had to decant the Barolo in the morning to let it breathe in the fridge.

Green bean soup with tumeric

We had this green bean soup with ginger fairly recently in Bintan. It was quite nice, only a minor variation of our version, and I thought I'd recreate it but with fresh tumeric.

It actually isn't too bad, but the amount of fresh tumeric I used was a bit too little. Fresh tumeric only has a slight gingerish taste. Need to add more next time.

For a 1/2 cup of green beans, I used 1-1.5 cup of water and an amount of tumeric about half an index finger. Next time I'll try one full thumb worth. Sugar used was cane sugar (gula melaka is probably better). Only a bit of coconut cream was used - just enough to give a hint of the coconut.

Roast pork belly with crackling (after a long hiatus)

I've tried getting a good crackling on my pork belly before, but never did do it quite so to my satisfaction.

This version seems good for both crackling and meat. Unfortunately, I cocked it up later when reheating.

1. Dry brine the meat (next time I will wet brine with skin above fluid to try for more juiciness) with salt and 5 spice for about 24-48 hours.
2. Prick the skin deeply all over. Then also score the skin about 2cm apart (will make for easier cutting).
3. Wipe down the skin (but no special effort, just normal wipe down. The long cook will dry it out).
4. Cook in 115C oven until internal temp reaches about 80C (i think it was 2 hours or so).
5. Reduce oven temp to 90 and cook until meat is tender but still chewy (I think it was 2-3 hours).
6. Take out meat, and let a fan blow over the skin for about 15 mins.
7. Store in fridge for at least 3 hours to let the skin dry out further. Overnight is fine - I was extra paranoid by making sure the only things touching the (already sterile) pork was clean.
8. Turn the oven to 300C and preheat. Once it hits 300C, switch to broiler on high. Let it heat for several mins more.
9. Place pork close under broiler. Watch it carefully! Took it out when the skin is starting to turn black in places (bottom pic).
10. Let the pork cool. Then using a small knife, scrap the black char off.

Up to now, it was good. Then I stored some of the pork overnight to reheat the next day. When I reheated, I was afraid the pork would dry out and turned on some steam - big mistake. I tried to recover by re-broiling: unfortunately, I didn't watch it carefully and the crackling burnt badly. Ah well..... this was luckily a cheap cut I had in the freezer for a while. I cut off the skin and all good, just no crackling.