A Taste of Yellow

Finally updated with photos..........

Barbara of Winos and Foodies has organised this one off event in support of LiveSTRONG Day.

LiveSTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's (LAF) grassroots advocacy initiative to unify people affected by cancer and to raise awareness about cancer survivorship issues on a national level and in local communities across the country. LiveSTRONG Day 2007 will occur on Wednesday, May 16.

The A Taste of Yellow has been approved by the Lance Armstrong Foundation as an official LiveSTRONG Day event. Barbara is organising the event to raise awareness of cancer. However if you wish to make a donation you can do so by visiting the Lance Armstrong Foundation donation page.

Barbara's challenge was to make something using a yellow ingredient and the first thing that sprung to my mind was of course cake! I had 6 egg yolks left from the latest Daring Bakers challenge which just cried out to be used for a "yellow cake". Unfortunately I wasn't really paying attention to the recipe which called for sifted flour as opposed to flour, siftted and yes it does make a difference. The first clue was when the batter was so thick my beater was struggling to mix it. Usually when I have a bit of a disaster I just tell everyone that my recipe was experimental and I've never had any complaints but this cake was a little on the dry side. I thought that if I slathered it in chocolate frosting people might not notice but even frosted with a delicious chocolate "gana-icing" (a combination of some leftover ganache and some icing sugar) the cake was not good. In doing my research on yellow cakes I discovered that the traditional frosting is chocolate and I can't quite work that out. The taste of the cake is plainish with a hint of vanilla. I would have used a lemon frosting.


Since I was getting ready to go on vacation time was marching on and I worried that I wouldn't have anything to contribute to this event but then I remembered something I'd saved as a draft. It's a potato and lentil curry and the lentils are the yellow kind so technically it still fits with the theme. The recipe is from Taste magazine and you can find it here. Basically it's a thick, soupy concoction of spices, lentils, tomatoes and potatoes. It's quite delicious and I'll be making it again especially now our weather is getting cooler.



I served it with poppadums and some raita which I made without a recipe. The instructions go a little like this.

Raita

Ingredients
Lebanese cucumber
Plain unsweetened yoghurt
Pinch of chilli
Salt
Cumin seeds

Method
Grate a quantity of Lebanese cucumber and squeeze it with your hands to expel as much liquid as possible
Mix in plain yoghurt to desired consistency
Season to taste

OK so I weakened; I really wanted to do something cakey for this event. I had some bananas in my fruit bowl which were going nicely spotty and soft. A banana is yellow is it not? I used Dorie Greenspan's recipe which I first heard of through Lisa. It is THE moistest banana cake you'll ever make. Due no doubt to the cup of sour cream in the mixture. Most of Dorie's recipes call for a 12 cup bundt pan and mine is a lot smaller. As luck would have it my mother recently gave me - ok - so I spied it in her cupboard and said "oh look a baby bundt pan" and of course mum offered it to me. It belonged to Nana and is one of those old fashioned light coloured aluminium ones. The combination of my regular bundt pan and the mini one were perfect for Dorie's recipe.


You can find the recipe on Lisa's blog at La Mia Cucina. I know I'm being lazy today but I guess that's what being 2 hours away from catching a plane does to you.

I'm leavin' on a jet plane....

... don't know when I'll be back again.

Well actually, I'll see you in a couple of weeks; and dammit, now I have an earworm of that song.

Our first stop is Kentucky where I'll be catching up with various friends for a week and reacquainting myself with all those good old Southern dishes I used to enjoy when we lived there - ribs, cornbread, chicken fried steak and some iced tea to wash it down - sweet of course.


Then we are off for a few days R&R in Las Vegas. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you where we're staying in Vegas so I will save that for a trip report. We're hoping to go and see The Blue Man Group, do a little gambling (25 cent slots for me, blackjack for him) and enjoy the sights.


Y'all be good while I'm gone won't you.

Hey Hey It's Donna Day #11 - Mousse

mousse
[MOOS]
A French term meaning "froth" or "foam," mousse is a rich, airy dish that can be either sweet or savory and hot or cold. Cold dessert mousses are usually made with fruit puree or a flavoring such as chocolate. Their fluffiness is due to the addition of whipped cream or beaten egg whites and they're often fortified with gelatin. Savory mousses can be made from meat, fish, shellfish

Some people,like me, are squicked out by the thought of eating raw eggs and some
people, like me, are put off at the thought of working with gelatine for fear of ending with something that feels like rubber. So when Helen of Tartlette named mousse as the theme for Hey Hey It's Donna Day #11 I had a wee challenge ahead of me - to find an eggless, gelatineless mousse recipe.

I now present to you the easiest lemon mousse you will ever make. No seriously! It is dead easy and takes just minutes to prepare. No eggs, no gelatin and only three ingredients. The recipe is courtesy of my mum and she can't remember where she first saw it but has been making it for years and receives rave reviews. It's an ideal recipe to remember if you get caught and have to make a dessert at the last minute. As long as you can run to the store for some cream, if you have lemons in the fruitbowl and a can of condensed milk in your pantry you are good to go.

The Easiest Lemon Mousse You'll Ever Make

Ingredients
1 can sweetened condensed milk - not lite
150-300 mls cream (less will give you a thicker end result)
Juice of 4 lisbon lemons - this recipe does not work with meyers and I can't vouch for any other varieties
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons


Method
In a medium sized bowl, beat the cream until soft peaks form
In another bowl mix together the condensed milk, lemon juice and lemon zest
Fold the cream into the lemon mixture until combined
Pour into your chosen serving dish/dishes and refrigerate until ready to serve
The mixture will thicken up on standing and will be quite stable for several days
It is particularly nice served in a brandy snap basket or as a filling for brandy snaps themselves. The brandy snaps will melt if left too long so it's best to fill them just before serving

For a recipe to make your own brandy snaps check out the Chelsea Sugar website here. Or, for a brandy snap basket recipe see here.

Cuter than Scooter?

I don't think so!

I'm in the process of making a couple of baby quilts which need to be made quickly due to my leaving things til the last possible moment. Procrastination should be an art form I tell you. The babies are due 11/04 and I leave for my holiday to the US on 19/04 so perhaps I should be sewing rather than writing this post? I pulled out this quilt to use as my reference and laid it over a nearby chair and naturally any quilt or garment that is laid over a piece of furniture becomes an instant cat bed.

Why can't I just give this quilt away and only have to make one more? Well this quilt won a blue ribbon at the Georgetown County Fair - from memory I think the ribbon was for the quilting which was just an all over, meandering stipple pattern. The quilt sentimental to me and I haven't had the heart to give it away.

Here's a sneak preview of my efforts so far.....


Because the quilts are being given to friends in the US I wanted to use a New Zealand theme and have chosen some fun fabrics for the feature squares. For the first quilt I chose Buzzy Bee which is somewhat of a New Zealand icon. Buzzy Bee has been around since the 1940s and almost every New Zealand child would have had a Buzzy Bee pull along toy. Now you can get plush toys, stationery, key rings and buzzy bee themed clothing - it's just not the same. The other quilt will have little cartoon kiwis (as in the flightless birds, not the furry fruit) as the feature fabric and will be in similar colouring.

Blogging By Mail - The Easter Edition

A big thank you to Emma of The Laughing Gastronome for organising another round of Blogging By Mail.


I was delighted to receive a box of Easter inspired treats from Barbara of Winos and Foodies. Beautifully wrapped in pastel coloured tissue paper were all the fixin’s to make Easter biscuits. Barbara sent me cocoa, icing sugar, a set of food colourings, some silver cachous (AKA dragees or non pareils), the cutest little bunny shaped cookie cutter and a pretty tin to keep the finished biscuits in. To top it all off a tiny, gold wrapped, Lindt chocolate bunny. Thank you Barbara for a very thoughtful box of goodies.

I don’t have a tried and tested recipe for cut out cookies so I sent an SOS to my friends The Daring Bakers and received a very prompt reply from Quellia at All Things Edible. I couldn't find the recipe on her blog so I've reproduced it here. Hope that's OK Quellia?

Quellia's Sugar Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup butter at room temp (1/2 pound or 227 grams)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 2/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Method
Preheat oven to 350F
In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar together until fluffy (I used a wooden spoon)
Beat in egg and vanilla
In a small bowl, sift flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg and add to butter, sugar and egg mixture
Mix well until a ball forms
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently for 1 minute
With a rolling pin, roll dough out to a thickness of about 1/4 inch
Cut with cookie cutters (you can sprinkle with colored sugars here if you want)
Bake on a non-stick cookie sheet for 9-12 minutes
Let cookies cool slightly on a baking sheet, then move to a rack to cool completely

I chilled my cookie dough for an hour but two would have been better as it's a softish dough.

Quellia's recipe was for cookies with a hint of nutmeg but because Barbara had sent cocoa powder and I wanted to make chocolate bunnies I substituted 1/3 of a cup of the flour with 1/3 cup of cocoa and I added a teaspoon of cinnamon to the mix. The combination of brown and white sugar in the cookie mixture gives a really good flavour. I love their texture - crisp but not hard. I will definitely add this recipe to my collection.

A friend needed to give her husband some quiet time to study so she came to my house to help me bake and decorate the cookies. Because the cookies spread a little and also because I only have two cookie sheets we had to bake them in several batches. It's a wonder we didn't burn more of them because we were so distracted with our decorating and chatting that most of the time I forgot to set the timer. Our decorating skills leave something to be desired and I was a bit generous with the food colouring but hey I'm a bright kinda gal. We experimented with some coloured sugar, 100s and 1000s (jimmies or sprinkles) and the silver cachous, but we didn't care for the look very much so they didn't make it to the photo shoot. It was a lot of fun and I can see why kids enjoy this kind of baking. How cute are these bunnies?

Limoncello

My lemon tree is still fruiting although what's left on the tree is overblown from having been on the tree too long. The fruit is huge, juicy and somewhat mutant. My photo sucks but do you know how hard it is to hold something in your palm and then try and take a photo one handed? I think perhaps my lemon tree may have had a liaison with a grapefruit tree somewhere in its history.


I have no idea what variety it is but I think it's probably a Meyer as the lemons are extremely juicy but not as acidic as a Lisbon. Food Reference tells us this...The Meyer Lemon (Citrus meyeri) is thought to be a cross between a lemon and an orange. They are thought to have originated in China about 400 years ago. The Meyer Lemon was introduced to the U.S. from China by Frank Meyer in 1908. Meyer lemons look like a large orange, with a very soft edible skin. They are sweet, juicy and fragrant, and are excellent in vinaigrettes and sauces, or sliced skin and all in salads.

I made some lemon curd but the egginess (eggyness?) of the flavour icked me out just a tad. So what else can you do with an abundance of lemons? Most cake recipes don't use enough lemon juice to make a dent in my supply and I don't have room in my freezer for juice anyway. The warm weather this summer made me dream of lolling about beside the pool with a nice cold drink and I thought Eureka! - Limoncello I guess in my case that should be Meyer! - Limoncello.

Limoncello has long been a staple in the lemon-producing region along the Italian Amalfi Coast in Capri and Sorrento. The Amalfi Coast is known for its citrus groves and narrow winding roads. There are a number of New Zealand producers of limoncello and I have a bottle of Vin Alto in my cellar. A bad limoncello tastes like rocket fuel - or at least what I imagine rocket fuel might taste like. Lemon Z make theirs from Yen Ben lemons and spring water. Bella Verde use Villa Franca lemons. Check out their recipes including one for limoncello fudge - can you say mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? There's also VinAlto and they have a few nice sounding recipes too.


Limoncello
Source of recipe forgotten - oops!

Ingredients
12 lemons
2 (750-ml) bottles of 100-proof vodka, divided (see note below)
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
Makes about 9 1/4 cups limoncello
Total time: 30 minutes, plus at least 3 weeks infusing time

Method
Remove the yellow part of the lemon peel with a sharp peeler or fine grater, carefully avoiding the bitter white pith. If any pith remains on the back of a strip of peel, scrape it off
Put the yellow peels in a jar or bottle, add 1 bottle vodka and seal tightly
Leave the bottle to steep until the peels lose their color, at least two weeks (I left mine a month)
Put the water and sugar in a saucepan and boil until it turns clear
Let the syrup cool
Strain the vodka from the peels and mix it with the remaining bottle of vodka and the syrup
Put the liqueur in bottles, seal tightly and let the components marry for at least 1 week before using
For drinking straight, store the limoncello in the freezer

Note: My liquor store salesperson told me not to waste my money on high end vodka (like Absolut or NZ's 42 Below) for making limoncello and I took his advice and bought something mid range.

Cuisine magazine offers some great suggestions for using limoncello including a fabulous dessert recipe by Julie le Clerc for limoncello roll with lemon conserve.