I first heard of saffron when I watched TV shows on cooking competitions, seeing great chefs using saffron as special spice in their dish. I was so curious about these tiny red threads and I searched for more information about them. Then I decided to buy a box of saffron threads. It was rather expensive for a small box of around 50g, but each time only a small number of threads are used, so I think it is quite reasonable and that I will not finish a box like this too soon.

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It’s been quite a time I haven’t cooked or baked anything to update this blog. I was too busy preparing my wedding and I just cooked simple dishes for meals.

In Vietnam, it is a tradition that the wife follows the husband when she gets married to him and the new couples stay in the same roof with the husband’s parents. This is usually a must if the husband is the oldest child as he does the responsibility of looking after the parents when they get older. Nowadays, unlike in the past, each family has only one or two children, and after years of working, parents are able to build or buy a house which is large enough to be lived by two or three generations. It is also a fact that young couples prefer living on their own so that they have more freedom. Some are well-off and they can buy a new house to live there right after their marriage, some are willing to rent a place. Either way has pros and cons. My parents-in-law wish to have us stay with them for the beginning so that we have a chance to know one another more, and to strengthen the family bonds.

In the first place I wanted to rent a house and we would live and work on our own. Then my husband persuaded me into living together with his family, who is also my family now, so that everyone gets to understand the others more. His biggest wish is that I can get along with his family and that I can feel like home when I stay here. So now, his family is my family. Everyday I cook in my mother-in-law’s kitchen and things are going on very fine.

Those are some words about my new life. My new family are very open about my baking. My parents and brother-in-law love my baking products in many ways, and they are often eager to my new baked goods. Now there are more people to try my baked stuffs, to give me more comments and feedback, to give me more reasons to be in the kitchen making something good.

I love lemon the very first time I made lemon tart. These lemon bars resemble lemon tart for the most part. This time I followed a new recipe in the Taste of Home magazine, with some changes to the ingredients.

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This dessert is rather easy to make. It is the first time I’ve ever made this kind of dessert called panna cotta – a kind of Italian cold dessert. I just happened to have some blueberries left and I guessed it wouldn’t trouble me much to make this dessert.

Thanks for the recipe I found from this site, I did make a dessert which is quite interesting to enjoy.

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I do not often have fresh raspberries to make cake or dessert with. Raspberries are expensive here and they do not often look fresh. This time I found them especially fresher than usual, and I couldn’t help buying a small pack of them. Looking at the fresh raspberries in deep red color, I felt so happy. I myself don’t understand why these small things can charm me so much. 

Finding this recipe with raspberries from Tartelette, I decided to make this dessert with puff pastry and raspberries. However, I used the ready-made puff pastry since I didn’t have enough conditions and utensils to try making home-made puff pastry.  

Recipe can be found here. 

This dessert really inspired my fiance to take many photos of it. 

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I tried a new pasta dish with tuna and tomato sauce. Simple, fast to cook yet delicious pasta dishes always inspire me into cooking and trying new recipes. 

This pasta using angel hair is really fast to cook. It took only several minutes for the angel hair to be cooked al dente. The sauce was also quite simple. The true taste and texture of the tuna were preserved as it was. The lemon zest added a special fragrance into the dish. For me, this pasta is quite healthy, which made me very happy and comfortable after finishing the meal. 

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I was expecting a heavy rain for a few days and it is raining heavily now. I like sitting inside the house, looking out through the windows and see the raindrops falling down, trying to catch one another. For many people, cold and rainy weather is unpleasant. For me, it may be wet but I like the mood, the feeling on rainy days. 

Since the air is a bit cool down now, I am wiling to have something heavy for my lunch. (for me, anything that uses too much oil in cooking is considered heavy). For two people, I often cook with 10 large prawns or 12 medium prawns, which is also a large serving for each of us. In order to save the oil when cooking deep-fried dishes, I use a small saucepan which can fry only one or two pieces at a time. Cooking for two people is often faster too.

I like these prawns coated in parmesan and breadcrumbs as they are very crispy outside while still tender and juicy, very tasty inside with the worcestershire and lemon juice applied to them earlier. Just eating them like this without any other dipping sauce is delightful enough. 

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Today is one of my friends’ birthday. We had a very funny party last weekend with some other friends to celebrate her birthday. And a week before that, her husband asked me to make a birthday cake as a surprise for her. 

I was thinking about what kind of cake I would use for this birthday cake. I thought that chiffon cake would be a good choice since the cake is very light, tender and the texture of a chiffon cake often makes people amazed and get excited. I have made an orange chiffon cake before using cake flour. This time I wanted to test another recipe with all-purpose flour to see if I still could handle it. So, after searching, I found a recipe for lemon chiffon from Taste of Home magazine that uses all-purpose flour. 

I haven’t had many occasions to make birthday cakes (this is my first time) and to practise decoring the cake with frosting. Thus, I have few experience with different kinds of cake icing and the decoration tools. It was also a risk to try the new recipe for the first time. Luckily, things turned out smoothy and I was very glad with the final product.

The recipe was suitable for one 10” tube pan, but I had only one 8” tube pan, which I used to make my tiny orange chiffon. So I wanted to try the chiffon cake with normal round springform pan to test the quality and the difference. So I still made with a full recipe and divided the batter into two pans and baking them together. The chiffon cake with the tube pan was perfect, whereas the cake with the springform didn’t rise to such perfect degree since the center of the cake was heavy without a tub for the batter to "lean" on for rising. So I got my answer. 

Therefore, I used the cake baked with tube pan to decorate this birthday cake. I cut the cake into two layers, and made lemon curd as the filling between them. I filled the central "hole" with strawberries dipped in dark chocolate, which made my friends surprised too. For the frosting, I only used whipping cream with icing sugar. I didn’t want the frosting to be too sweet, so I just add enough icing sugar, which made the frosting not too stiff and shiny and caused more difficulties for me when decorating the cake. This is always the problem for me when making cakes since I always look for less-sugar in everything I want to eat. However, I was willing to sacrifice this for the better taste of the cake, which I knew that it would be much more welcomed by my friends. 

We had a very good time at the party. We also recorded what was going on and made into a clip. What a memorable friends-gathering to me.

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