Cosima Underwater

We were up at seven this morning. I am still trying to teach little man the concept of sleeping in on weekends … lol.

But we made up the early start by spending a few lazy hours afterwards in our PJs. Little man told me in detail last week’s school adventures, we simulated space shuttle lift-offs, and tried to transform his new transformer toy without breaking it. It took a while, was only slightly simpler than solving Rubik’s cube, but finally we managed to change the police car into a robot.

Before little man could say “and now please transform it back into a police car”, I suggested making pancakes. This was happily accepted.

Pancakes are our preferred lazy morning food, and little man has gotten quite good in helping me to prepare them. We make the European variety, thinner than American pancakes with more eggs. In German, they are also called “Eierkuchen” (egg cakes).

It’s funny how everyone has a slightly different recipe for these very simple dishes. Naturally, little man and I think ours is the best in the whole wide world :D.

Mix 200 grams of non-raising flour, 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, and three eggs in a bowl until the mixture is reasonably smooth. Then whisk in milk little by little until you have thin, smooth pancake batter. The amount of milk needed varies, but I would say it’s about half a liter. Let the batter stand for 10-20 minutes, to make it more elastic and avoid excessive flour taste, then whisk one more time.

Little man has become an expert at whisking. He started whisking before he could talk… lol. Attracted by the cool kitchen toy, he demanded a share of the action very early in life. I am glad to say that the spillage is now down to a minimum. This morning, he also cracked an egg… trying to fish the egg shell out of the batter slowed us down a bit.

Then the frying begins, and getting the temperature just right, makes a good pancake in my opinion. I have a gas stove, which lets me adjust the temperature instantly. I start by heating up the skillet at maximum heat for several minutes, only then I add a teaspoon of oil. When the oil is hot and evenly distributed in the pan, I turn down the heat to a minimum and add batter, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan after a little bit of swiveling. Heating up the pan thoroughly avoids the infamous first spoiled pancake.

After all the liquid has evaporated, I turn the pancake. I am a chicken and use a spatula, but one of these days I have to learn the cool throw-it-in-the-air trick to impress little man. The kitchen ceiling needs a new coat of paint anyway.

Little man tops his pancakes with extra sugar or orange jam, but I think they also taste good on their own. The recipe above yields about eight 7-inch pancakes, which we didn’t eat all at once… really.

I have a thousand things to do, but can’t get anything finished. It feels extremely frustrating. In theory, now that little man goes to school, I should have more time, but the last week felt even busier than the ones before.

Most of the things on my to-do-list are important matters for Cosima Inc. Until now it was a small scale business, to even call it a business feels like an exaggeration, but my partner and I have been making steady progress and gained experience. It’s time to do it on a larger scale with a bit more organization. Now that my son is in school for most of the day that should be possible… in theory. The first thing to do is to bring organization and scheduling to my grand plans, and afterwards get an office.

Working from home has its advantages, but there is not enough space in my flat. My bed, the one you also see as the backdrop in most of my HNT pictures, has been serving as the headquarters of Cosima Inc for the last year… I am not kidding. The choice is between a bigger flat with one more room or a separate office. Both options have their pro and cons, but my gut feeling tells me to rent a small office space. There are too many distractions at home, and it is also harder to finish for the day and enjoy your private time. On the other hand, I am worried about the cost of renting an office space and the commuting time. A small space near an MTR station, not in the glitziest part of town, would be ideal. Will be interesting what I can find when I get around to it. Maybe next week, after I have taken care of all the other pressing things.

This evening, so many thoughts went through my head, and I would have liked to go for a walk to get them all sorted out, but the kitchen was one big mess and I still had to prepare little man’s lunch for tomorrow. First I cleaned a mountain of dishes to gain working space, then I cooked little man’s lunch (pork chop, carrots, and noodles), and afterwards prepared pumpkin soup. While the pumpkin soup was simmering (small pumpkin, 4 carrots, big onion, 3 cloves of garlic, chunk of ginger, one red chili, chicken stock, tomorrow I will add lentils to the mix), I cleaned the kitchen once more. It looked so nice and clean. Pristine. Then I took out the hand-held blender to puree the soup…

Me and the blender have been at war for a long time. There have been incidences before, but I thought I had figured this wicked machine out. Not so. Pumpkin soup sprayed across the stove, floor, and cupboards. I opened my mouth to scream, but all that came out was hysteric laughter.

So I cleaned the kitchen for a third time. It’s now so clean that you can eat sushi from the floor.

Image: “The Key” by Jackson Pollock

No, these are not bizarre sex toys ;D.

Neither are they weapons. Although the skin is quite tough, the inside is too soft to knock someone out with it. They are called angle luffas and taste similar to squashes, gourds, or okras.

Last week, I cooked them for the first time, and loved their texture, which is slightly different from other squashes, not as soft and soggy. Why I haven’t tried them earlier is a puzzle to me. Whenever they are in season, they are flying off the supermarket shelfs like hotcakes here in Hong Kong, and I have always been fascinated by their huge size and unusual shape… they stand out among the other veggies.

Last week, as I was standing in line to get price stickers for ginger and carrots, no less than three women in front of me were buying them, so I asked the lady in front how she prepares them. She told me to fry them in a wok with garlic. I also decided to add some ground pork and red chilies to the mixture.

At home, I peeled and cut the two luffas, deseeded and finely sliced two fresh red chilies, and also crushed four cloves of garlic with a garlic press.

Then I turned on the wok flame of my gas stove, which can heat the whole flat in winter, it’s that big. First I put some oil in the wok, and after it was hot I added half a pound of ground pork, chili, garlic, and salt. After the pork turned gray, in came the luffa. It took only a few minutes to cook them.

Mmmm… the luffa soaked up the flavor from the meat, chili, and garlic, and had such a nice texture.

While surfing around for other Asian recipes, I found the two food blogs below. The first one is written by two expat journalists living in Malaysia, and even if you are not that interested in cooking, the photos of markets, food stalls, people, and produce are worth a visit. The second blog is all about what the title promises, and also has a very good ingredients glossary for Asian foodstuffs.

I am stuffed.

We went to the swimming pool this morning, to while the day away with swimming, playing and relaxing, but our plans were cut short by a thunderstorm in the afternoon. So we did the next best thing, and went to the supermarket, stocked up on groceries, and spent the afternoon cooking and eating.

First, we feasted on salad and pork chops, which were finger-licking delicious. I may have found the perfect way to prepare them…

I bought four pork chops, thick cut, with bone.

1)I washed and patted them dry,

2)sliced the edge of fat every inch, to prevent curling,

3)rubbed in salt and pepper on both sides, and

4)prepared three plates for the coating.

5)The first one with corn starch, for a light coat that ensures that the meat remains tender and the rest of the coatings don’t fall off during frying.

6)The second, a soup plate with one beaten egg and two cloves of garlic, crushed with a garlic press.

7)The third one with Japanese bread crumbs, which are flakier than normal ones and give a much nicer texture.

8)I heated quite a lot of oil in a big frying pan, and

9)lightly covered the chops with each coating, before

10)putting them into the pan and frying them for about 8 minutes on each side.

The coating was thin and not too greasy, taking nothing away from the taste of the soft and juicy meat. Little man ate a whole pork chop, and told me that it was very, very yummy. There is nothing better than getting compliments from him, because he is equally honest if things are not to his taste.

And we didn’t stop there. For dessert, we had mangos from Hainan. Like Lecram, I am a fan of yellow varieties. My supermarket mostly stocks yellow mangos from the Philippines, which have a clean citrus taste, and are ideal for making sorbet. Just puree the fruit, mix in sugar to taste, and pop it into the ice-cream maker or freezer. But today, I bought mangos from Hainan, which is an island off the South China Coast, similar in climate to Hawaii. The mangos were quite small, had a nice sweetness, and were incredibly fragrant. The scent was better than perfume, and my fingers still smell of them.

Inspired, I did a little research on the internet about Hainan. It’s just an hour away from Hong Kong by plane, and looks like an ideal spot for a beach vacation.

Yeah… I can picture myself on that beach, eating mango or drinking fresh coconut milk.

Yesterday’s South China Morning Post had an interesting article on the red-white-blue fabric mostly used for cheap travel bags, first mentioned in The Revenge of Louis Vuitton. Apparently, it’s so hip that several haute couture houses came out with clothes and bags made out of it. See… I told you it’s a winning design… call me Coco from now on ;).

What I didn’t know, is that these travel bags originated in Hong Kong, not on the Chinese Mainland. They were first sewn together by a Hong Kong bag maker (82 year-old Lee Wah, still working in his workshop in Sham Shui Po) and quickly copied by a lot of other manufacturers, because they were ideal bags for transporting presents to Mainland Chinese relatives, when times were still a little tougher.

The fabric has taken on a symbolized meaning for many Hongkongers. A Canto-pop star even wore a red-white-blue suit for a comeback concert. Yes, it’s cheap, but resilient and flexible too, and that symbolizes the Hong Kong spirit so well. The article also featured Hong Kong artist Stanley Wong, who works with the fabric (see pic above), and even exhibited at the Venice Biennale.

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I made potato salad with green asparagus, which I ate for the first time in a restaurant in Basel, together with fried fish. The fish was good, but the potato salad, with crunchy asparagus added to it, was the real highlight, so simple but delicious. Although mine tasted a little different, it was yummy too. Don’t ask me for a detailed recipe with quantities, but here is what I tossed together:
- cooked baby potatoes halved or quartered with skin, as it is very thin it’s ok to eat
- blanched green asparagus, sliced into bit-size pieces
- a finely-sliced red onion
- fresh coriander leaves, chopped
- two smallish tomatoes for color, diced
- dressing made of fresh lemon juice and olive oil
- salt
…tasted even better on the second day.

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I rented a handful of movies over the last days. I had quite a lot to do for Cosima Inc, and watching a movie after little man went to bed was the ideal way to wind down at the end of the day. I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which I had never seen before. Paul Newman left me oddly cold. Don’t know what it was exactly, but he just seemed too pretty to play the broken alcoholic, and Elizabeth Taylor played him against the wall. One day, I would love to see it as a theater production with modern interpretation.

I also rented Cyrano de Bergerac with Gerard Depardieu. On the IMDB message board one female commenter remarked that he is one of the few actors that are ugly but still sexy. Well… I don’t find him ugly. True, he doesn’t have the baby face that’s currently in fashion in Hollywood, but in every role he exudes… energy. Don’t know how to better describe it, not the kick-them-in-the-face and jump-out-of-a-burning-car energy, but true vitality, and that’s sexy.

What else did I see… oh, a really beautiful and lush movie by Vietnamese/French director Anh Hung Tran. At the Height of Summer is a slow moving film, but a quicker pace would spoil the stunning visuals and nuances. The film shows the life of three sisters living in Hanoi during one summer. The lushness of Hanoi during the rainy season, Halong Bay, lots of food, beautiful music, and a really interesting view on life’s twists make this a wonderful film to watch. It doesn’t have a conventional plot line, and I am sure some of the allusions got lost in translation, but it still touched me. I have been to Hanoi ages ago, and this film made me want to visit again. It also made me want to see more movies by Anh Hung Tran, as well as Mark Lee, the cinematographer of the film. He was also behind the camera for In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai, which is another visual stunner.

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And in other news… our washing machine seems to be near the end of its lifetime. I was ready to leave the house, clad in heels and business suit, when I remembered that I hadn’t taken the washing out of the machine. I opened the door – it’s a front loader – and a gush of water flowed over my pants and shoes.

I am used to antics by this Diva, the broken door hinge exactly two weeks after the warranty ran out and frequent foamy leakages have kept us on our toes, but this was a stunning culmination of events. And it didn’t happen at a good time either… but it never does, does it?

Thankfully, the washing machine stands on a kitchen balcony with a drain, and I didn’t need to mop up the floor. In the evening, the Diva worked normally, tricking me into believing that everything was well. This morning, I tried to take out freshly washed clothes, pulled the door handle, and suddenly held the entire door in my hand. The Diva still works, if only grudgingly. I can put the door back into the hinge and close it, it only leaks a little. I am pondering with what kind of washing machine to replace her with. The dream candidate would be a manly Miele, the Rolls-Royce of washing machines. Unfortunately, it almost costs as much as one. I guess we better put some money to the side, while Diva is still inclined to get her hands wet.

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Boy, that was a lot of pent-up writing. Sorry, that it all came out in one gush :).

Is there a similar saying in English? So true, isn’t it? There is nothing better than sharing an intimate dinner with a loved one, exchanging the latest gossip with a good friend over lunch, or having a noisy and joyous holiday dinner with the entire family.

One of the good things of not having an office job is that I actually have time to cook lunch. When I still worked I used to come home at nine in the evening, and the only thing I managed to do was open the refrigerator and eat whatever looked appealing. Then I had my baby, and ate whatever had stuck to his bib after I fed him :).

Although my lunches have improved since then, I really need to become a better cook. I tend to stick with the dozen or so dishes I know how to cook well, and it’s time for more variety.

So I was thinking about doing a self-imposed cooking challenge. One new dish every week, a dish that I have never cooked before. I don’t know if I will have the time to do it every week, but at least the intention is there.

Yesterday, I pulled out a mouth-watering recipe book of Middle Eastern dishes. Most recipes are Mezze, little appetizers, but a few of them can also be eaten as a full meal.“Apricot chicken with pistachio couscous” looked especially yummy, and called for ingredients I could actually get in my local supermarket.

Ingredients (Serves 2 for lunch):

400ml fresh orange juice

½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon

1 pinch of chili powder

1-2 pinches of paprika powder

100g of dried apricots

1 large chicken breast (250-300g)

salt

3 ½ tablespoons of olive oil

fresh coriander for garnish

1 small twig of fresh rosemary

1 ½ teaspoon of dried green pepper

1 spring onion

50g of pistachio kernels

100g instant couscous

¼ teaspoon of ground turmeric

150ml chicken broth

1. Warm the orange juice and season with cinnamon, chili and paprika powder. Add dried apricots and let them soften for 2 to 3 hours.

At this point, I really regretted to not have read the recipe before, as it was 12 o’clock and I was already hungry. Luckily I had bought very moist apricots and letting them sit for one hour in the juice turned out to be ok.

Strain apricots, thereby catching the juice. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2. Cut a pocket into the chicken breast from the short side. Season inside and out with salt. Fill chicken breast with half of the apricots. Fry chicken breast in two tablespoons of olive oil, then transfer frying pan to the middle rack of oven, cook 10-12 minutes until done.

I also put kitchen thread around the chicken breast to close the pocket, which held the apricots in place during frying.

3. Wash and dry herbs. Pull off coriander leaves. Pull off and finely cut rosemary leaves. Pound green pepper in a mortar (which I don’t have, used an old coffee grinder). Clean spring onion and cut very fine. Grind 30g of pistachios very fine, and hack rest coarsely.

4. Heat seasoned orange juice, add rest of the apricots, and puree with a blender.

You cannot imagine the mess in my kitchen after I pressed the on-button on my hand blender. The sauce pot was obviously not made for blending. After wiping off a quarter of the sauce from my stove, kitchen cabinets, coffee machine, and floor, I turned off the oven as the chicken breast was already done but the rest of the dish wasn’t… oh well.

Add one tablespoon of rosemary and one teaspoon of crushed green pepper to the sauce. Cook in an open pot for 10-15 minutes until sauce has thickened.

5. Mix couscous with ground turmeric, finely ground pistachios, half a teaspoon of crushed green pepper and one tablespoon of olive oil. Fry onion in olive oil until soft, add chicken broth, and cook until boiling. Add couscous, and let sit for 5-7 minutes.

6. Loosen couscous with a fork, and add coarsely hacked pistachios. Put into cups and turn over onto plates. Cut chicken breast into pieces and put next to couscous. Add sauce. Decorate with fresh coriander leaves.

Hold your applause… this is the cookbook picture, reality is down below. I left out the “put couscous into cups” part, and forgot all about the “decorate with coriander leaves” before taking the picture below. Don’t say anything, I know it looks not as pretty as the picture in the book, but I bet their food was already cold when they had finished all the arrangements. I also think they cheated on the couscous. Mine looked a lot greener from all the pistachios. Heck, I need to become a better photographer too.

But please believe me, it actually smelled and tasted good, which is the really important part, isn’t it? The sauce especially is a keeper. Although there is rosemary and green pepper in it, I could also imagine it to be a good accompaniment to sweet desserts. The fruitiness of the orange juice and apricots go really well together with the spiciness of the green pepper.

Ideas for next week anyone?

The recipe is from a German cookbook called “Mezze - Ein Genuss” by Bettina Matthaei and Mohamad Salameh, 2005, Graefe und Unzer.

So much to do, and so little time…

I am sorry, but I have to take you shopping and cooking with me today, otherwise I will not get done nearly enough ;).

That’s how the seafood section at my local supermarket looked this morning. It’s only the “already dead” display, the “still alive” basins are behind it. At the upper left edge you can see the man, who fished my shrimps out of a basin. Some of them tried to escape by doing a courageous high-jump out of his catch net. It was quite the show. But it didn’t help. Poor buggers were returned to the plastic bag.

The shrimps were the main ingredient for a salad I made today. Below you see the rest of the ingredients. It’s supposed to be Thai …sort of. Because the cook is German it’s really a Thai-German fusion salad :).

-2 dozen white shrimp (kicking fresh)

-2 cloves of garlic, fresh ginger, and salt to cook the shrimp with

-125g mung bean vermicelli

-2 handful of fresh bean sprouts

-1 bunch of fresh coriander

-½ red onion

-1 salad cucumber

-1 carrot

-3-4 small tomatoes

For the dressing:

- 6 tablespoons fish sauce

- 2-3 teaspoons of brown sugar

-juice of 3-4 Thai limes (which my supermarket didn’t have, so I took one lemon instead)

- fresh ginger

- 2 cloves of garlic

-1 fresh red chili (larger, less hot variety)

1. Prepare the shrimps by rinsing them under cold water. Cook them together with two cloves of crushed garlic, a few slices of crushed fresh ginger, and salt. Oil is not necessary. Take from heat when they turn pink.

1. Put mung bean vermicelli into a big bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let stand until they become soft, then drain.

1. Peel and dice onion. Peel and quarter cucumber, remove the seeds and finely slice into inch-long strips. Peel the carrot and grate finely. Pick off coriander leaves and coarsely cut to release juices. Dice tomatoes.

1. For the dressing combine ca. 6 tablespoons of fish sauce, 2-3 teaspoons of brown sugar, and the juice of 3-4 Thai limes. Add two crushed cloves of garlic, several crushed slices of ginger, and one finely sliced red chili. I don’t use the seeds, but by all means add them if you like the salad to be really hot.

1. Peel cooled shrimps. Mix all ingredients together in a big salad bowl, and let the salad stand for at least half an hour.

Enjoy!

PS: While I was dicing and slicing away, I listened to Prince’s 3121 on my iPod. I don’t know if it was the music, but I couldn’t stop thinking how sexy it is when men cook for their women. A candle-lit dinner at a restaurant is nice, but think about all the possibilities for dessert if you stay home…

If you are in need of sweet temptation, go to the recipe for Cosima’s Sachertorte.

To round off your Musical Monday gourmet experience, may I suggest “Satisfied” from Prince’s 3121 ;)

Get music codes at Bolt.

Health warning: recipe yields 12 pieces of orgasmic cake. If you have to watch your weight or cholesterol, invite at least six people over. Birthdays and anniversaries are ideal occasions. Try not to groan too loudly, while eating.

Equipment used:
-24cm springform pan
-a large fork (although I recommend a fully automatic kitchen machine or at least a whisk, if you can find one…)
-2 bowls
-a wooden skewer, to test whether cake is done
-2 large knives with wide blades
-large cake plate
-small cooking pot for warming jam
-large cooking pot, and bowl that fits inside for softening couverture

Ingredients (use the best quality you can get):

Dough:
-200g unsalted butter, softened
-200g brown sugar
-mark of ½ vanilla bean, alternatively use 2 teaspoons of vanillin sugar
-8 eggs (mine were on the small side, I bet the recipe works with 6 too)
-67g fine cake flour
-33g cornstarch (replacing 1/3 of the flour with starch gives finer texture)
-2 teaspoons of baking powder
-pinch of salt
-8 tablespoons of unsweetened cacao powder (at least…)

-1 tablespoon of unsalted butter to grease cake pan

-approx. 100g apricot jam without fruit pieces

Icing:
-200g of high-quality dark chocolate couverture (buy more to be on the safe side)
-1 tablespoon of unsalted butter
-warm water to soften icing if necessary

Combine softened butter, sugar, and vanilla in a bowl. Blend with your fork until evenly mixed together. Add one egg at a time to the dough and blend well, repeat until all eggs are added.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt, and unsweetened cacao powder. Then slowly, spoon by spoon, add the dry mixture from your second bowl to the butter/sugar/egg mixture in your first. Blend well. Dough should be relatively soft and dark brown.

At this point in time, it’s absolutely essential to try the dough. If you don’t like it now, you won’t like the cake. Add sugar or cacao powder to make amends. Don’t eat too much!

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (approx. 350 degrees Fahrenheit)

Grease springform pan with butter. Add dough and distribute evenly.

Bake for approximately 40-60 minutes on middle rack. Insert wooden skewer in the center of the cake, to test whether cake is done. If the stick comes out clean, remove pan from oven.

Remove the side of the springform pan, and let the cake cool down.

Now comes the hard part. Take a large sharp knife (or a specially designed cake thread if you are well equipped) and cut the cake into two layers. Separate the top layer from the bottom… without breaking it. I used two huge knives with wide blades to lift the top layer and put it on a strategically placed cake plate right next to the cake pan (pearls of sweat were forming on my forehead). If you have the equipment or ingenuity to think of something better, by all means use it. Because I nearly died of a heart attack.

Warm the apricot jam over low heat until soft, and distribute evenly over bottom layer. Place second layer on top.

Heat water in a large cooking pot over medium heat. The water should not boil. Place a bowl inside the cooking pot. Chocolate couverture needs to be heated gently, and a bowl over a bed of water is the safest way to do it. Put chocolate couverture and a little bit of butter inside the bowl. Stir until melted, add warm water if necessary. Couverture should run easily over the back of a tablespoon, covering it.

If you don’t have couverture, you can also use a mixture of unsweetened cacao powder, icing sugar, and butter. In fact, I only had 100g of couverture and added the above mixture to get enough icing. Unfortunately, I only had brown lumpy sugar, and spent one hour stirring the icing to dissolve the sugar…

Spread icing over cake. Add additional decorations to your heart’s content.

Guten Appetit!

tags: recipe, cake, sachertorte