November 2, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Cake, Cupcake
These mini cream puffs are great to invite friends visiting our home. They look so cute and can be eaten whole at a time 
They are made with choux pastry, filled with cream and some berries. I used whipped cream as this is what I often have in my fridge.
Drizzling the puffs with some melted chocolate made them more flavorful to eat.
I have no taste for strong Indian curry but I rather like Thai curry for the usage of ingredients and herbs that are familiar to Vietnamese cooking. I have observed this way of making curry before when my Indonesian friends came over to my home and cooked us some traditional Indonesian dishes, one of which was a curry dish. Some herbal and root ingredients are processed into paste – which is the curry paste itself. The way of using coconut milk instead of water to make the slightly thick soup is very authentic and typical to this kind of curry. Coconut milk makes the curry more flavorful though the soup is also fatter, but this is crucial to bring out the genuine taste.
Some prefer the soup to be thick but I’d rather cook it just slightly thick by using thinner coconut milk, which I feel more pleasant to eat. I also use fewer chilies to reduce the spiciness. Besides, I also cook with less oil. It is great to have this curry with hot steamed rice on cold days.
October 30, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Cake, Cupcake
I made the "King of cakes" for the first time. I was curious about this cake when I first saw them in the book "professional baking". I was first introduced to cakes with lots of thin layers by my Indonesian friend who gave us a box of "kueh lapis" – a traditional cake to Indonesian Chinese during Chinese New Year. That kueh lapis is more moist and softer than this baumkuchen. What is amazing about these two multi-layer cakes is that I can "peel" one by one layer easily. It is very interesting to do that, of course when you have some time to spare while chitchatting with friends.
It takes lots of time and patience to make this cake. I had to stand by the oven all of the baking time until I finished the last batch of the batter- each batch was only 30g. The method of baking this cake is very new to me, so I over-baked some layers, that’s why my cake didn’t have a uniform color. Still, I felt happy with this first trial as the cake looked more natural. How time consuming and complicated the baking process is, it is not comparable with the traditional way of making this tree cake with the turning spit.
October 28, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Featured Content, Main dish
We do not often eat spicy food, but this spicy mackerel still helped me easily and quickly finish two bowls of steamed rice. If you like it very spicy, you can use tiny (Thai) chilies, which are often very hot. If you like it even hotter, I think tabasco pepper sauce or cayenne pepper also go well with this Vietnamese dish. (Though most Vietnamese people don’t know of tabasco pepper and cayenne).
King mackerel is very lean and, if not cooked into a good dish, it is not so palatable to eat. In general, I like fish more than meat, so I am always eager to try more new dishes with fish. This is one of the recipes with king mackerel that I love.
This pasta soup is easy to make. In fact, this is the first time I made pasta soup. At first I wanted to make something with butternut squash and I came across this recipe. It was just perfect as I like both pasta and soup.
October 24, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Featured Content, Salad & Vegetable
In the past, when I didn’t like the taste and flavor of bell peppers, until I learned to cook them myself in a proper way and I became a fan of bell peppers. I hardly eat them raw (like eating an apple), but when they are chopped and mixed in salad, I really appreciate the freshness, juiciness and crispiness of those small bits. When cooked in stew dishes, their taste is so palatable and easy to eat. My sister used to refuse any dish with bell peppers, but then I cooked her some pasta dishes with bell peppers and she adores bell peppers so much now.
As much as I like bell peppers, this is the my first time trying the taste of roasted bell peppers. The taste is so good, so sweet and a gentle smoke smell enhances the taste. When it comes to this salad, the sweet taste blends with the fragrant sourness of balsamic vinegar to bring out a very special flavor. This is another dish that leverages the taste of bell peppers.
October 24, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Featured Content, Mousse, Flan, Pudding
This cake and mousse is just perfect. I love the way this dessert is presented. This is another first experience of mine with using ring mold to make dessert. To remove the mold after the mousse set, I used the blow torch to warm up the ring mold from outside just a little bit, then I could pull the ring up easily.
I always love the combination of raspberry and chocolate. Not only the combination of taste but also the marriage of the two classic colors made me fall deeply in love with this dessert.
The recipe can be found here.
October 21, 2009 by Kokotaru
Filed under Main dish, Soup, Noodle, Porridge
It’s great to have this stewed beef soup on winter days. The soup is served hot right from the stove and warms us up by its deep taste and fragrant flavor. I like this kind of soup with both meat and vegetables. In the lack of time when I cannot cook more than one dishes, this stewed soup still provides me enough substances. During the cooking process, I still can do other things and just need to attend to the soup several times until all are tenderly cooked.
