Request Line - GW

Move over Max Brenner. You've just met your match!

A while ago GW sent me over a recipe for Molten Chocolate Baby Cakes. I had a quick squiz at it, and while I thought it sounded great, I wasn't too sure if the recipe was going to work.

Part of the problem was that some parts of the recipe didn't make sense, and moreover, there was an ingredient missing. Namely, sugar.

So today, when I finally had some time to do a bit of recipe testing (and fill in the blanks work), I decided to give this a go.

Little did I know, that after tweaking bits and pieces here and there, the end result turned out to be almost identical to my beloved Max Brenner Chocolate Souffle! It brought tears of delight to my eyes (being Asian and all, my first thought was Hey! Now I don't have to pay 10 bucks for this stuff!)

The journey throughout this recipe though, was a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs.


This is my silicon muffin tray. I got it as a part of my 18th birthday present years ago, and till today, I've never really had a chance to use it. (Not much of a muffin person)

However, given that the recipe originally asked for 6 pudding moulds, I thought I could put this to good use. Since I'm just testing and all, if it doesn't work, well...then it doesn't work.

Note about silicon trays: I placed mine in another metal tray because the bendiness of silicon makes it very hard to move the tray without the messing up the mixture and the melts.


I also had some dark chocolate melts left in my pantry and I decided to put it to good use as well. As you can probably tell from the picture, I'm really not very neat when it comes to pouring things out.

And it's not like it really matter anyway.

Now from here until the final product, I didn't take any photos. Here's why.

1. The recipe asked for the batch to be cooked for 10 minutes. I can guarantee that it was NOT done in 10 minutes.
   
2. After an extra 10 minutes, I pulled it out, and the melts were starting to get a little burnt. I stuck a skewer in to see if it was cooked. The skewer came out gooey, but tasted good nevertheless. So I turned the oven off and pulled the tray out.
3. The mixture was way too soft for it to be removed from the tray, so I left it to cool in the tray for about 5minutes.
4. Thinking that it was the moment of truth, I gathered around a lot of of teatowels just in case everything fell apart when I flipped them onto the cooling rack.
5. I took a deep breath, and flipped it around. And to my absolute surprise, everything not only stayed in shape, but didn't even crumble! They were perfect!

I was really over the moon.

So now that the recipe is complete, it is here to be shared.



Molten Chocolate Baby Cakes/Max Brenners Chocolate Souffle
Serves: 6

Buy:
50g salted butter
350g dark cooking chocolate
4 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup plain flour
1/2 cup caster sugar (roughly. As mentioned before, this was left out of the original recipe, so it's guesswork on my part.)
6 chocolate melts
6 pudding moulds, buttered (or 1 deep, silicon muffin tray, as pictured)
Baking paper

Bake:

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees
2. Grease the trays (not necessary if you're using silicon) and cut out small circles of baking paper to line the bottom of each mould
3. Melt chocolate (microwave/double boiler both okay), and rest aside to cool slightly
4. Cream butter and sugar until light in colour
5. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract
6. Add sifted flour and gently fold into mixture
   
7. Add melted chocolate and fold until smooth and evenly mixed
   
8. Divide into moulds and top with a chocolate melt in the centre of each one
9. Place into oven and bake for 20 minutes (keep an eye on it after 15)
10. Remove and let it rest in tray for 5minutes
11. Tip onto cooling rack, but serve warm with cream/strawberries/drizzled chocolate sauce/ice cream -- whatever rocks your boat.

Nom it while it's hot.

Request Line - SJ

Disclaimer: I'm technically not meant to be cooking+blogging, but I need a bit of de-stressing which only cooking will provide.

Aaah, the classic stir fry. How many times have I failed thee.

It seriously took my father years before he worked out the secret to making a good stir fry. For a while, every dish he made would either have overcooked beef which was tough and chewy, or undercooked vegies which were dull in flavour and colour.

And then one night, sometime during his late 30's, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a vital step to this whole stir-fry bizzo which we didn't know about.

Steaming.

The idea works the same way as parboiling your potatoes before you bake them. Except you parsteam your vegies before you throw it into your stirfry so you don't end up with undercooked vegies. This is homecooking we're talking about, so don't start telling me about how they do it differently in the restaurants. Most homes simply don't have enough flame to heat the wok hot enough to cook the vegies through before the meat simply dries up and dies.

And yes, I equate badly cooked meat with killing the animal a second time round. Please, please don't do it. The animal deserves a dignified path to the next part of its life.

Another key to good stirfrying is knowing the order to cook everything in. Because of the speed of everything, once you throw your first piece in, you really don't have much time to think about what should go in first or what not. It has to be done right, straight away.

So how does it all work?

Things which will withstand a fair bit of cooking - try and get these in the pan first:

• Dried and reconstituted mushrooms. (These buggers don't seem to die in the pan and will retain its shape even after HOURS of cooking.)
• Firm tofu, tofu sponges, deep fried tofu (soft tofu will retain its shape, but it will release a LOT of liquid during the cooking process, and even after the cooking has been done - so try not to use them for stirfrying purposes)
• Black fungus
• Dried shrimp
• Ginger
• Chicken (unless you're really really slow at getting the ingredients in the pan)
• Onions

Things which require pre-cooking:

• Un-bicarbed meat (if you don't use bicarb during the marinating process, make sure you give the meat a quick fry until its NEARLY cooked, take it out of the wok, and rest aside until all the other ingredients are cooked, then just throw everything together in the wok.)
• Vegetables (as I said before, steam, then throw into wok at the end.)

Things which can't stay in the pan for long:

• Beef
• Pork
• Prawns
  

I thank my father for discovering the procedure in his 30s so that I didn't have to.


Classic Pork Stirfry Cheat guide
Serves: the family

Buy:
1 tblsp Mushroom Dark Soy Sauce
1/2 tsp Sugar
1/8 tsp MSG (optional)
1/2 tsp Bicarb Soda (optional)
1 tblsp Oil
Oyster sauce, to taste

2 Small Sticks of Choy (any type will work)
250g Pork Fillet, sliced thinly
1 clove Garlic, crushed
1/2 chopped onion
5 Shittake Mushrooms, reconstituted and chopped in half
a handful of Black Fungus
Oil to cook

Marinate:

1. Combine pork fillet, bicarb soda, tablespoon oil, MSG, sugar and mushroom dark soy together, making sure every piece of the pork is nicely coated
2. Leave aside for 5-20mins

Cook:

1. Steam choy for 3mins, or until choy is brightly coloured
2. Remove from steamer and set aside
3. In a wok, heat oil until almost smoking, add black fungus and shittake mushroom and stirfry for about 2 minutes. (Please be careful, this stage the wok will spatter out a lot of oil.)
4. Add onions and garlic and toss around for another minute or two.
   
5. Throw in marinated pork and add roughly 2~3 tablespoons of oyster sauce (or to taste)
6. Stir fry for about 3minutes, or until pork is cooked
7. Throw in steam choy and turn off heat. Toss everything around so the vegetables are nicely coated in the sauce, and serve straight away. If you leave it in the wok the vegetables will keep cooking and turn yellow.

Nom it good with a bit of rice.

Request Line - SK

This post is dedicated to a friend currently on exchange in the U.S.


I can't remember the first time we talked about the tomatoegg dish anymore. My assumption is that the conversation came up some time during work, and caught between professing our love of tofu and the dinner date at Temasek which never happened in time before her departure.


It's not like we haven't kept in contact while she's been over there. In fact we've been keeping each other updated with EPIC emails (the length and detail of which puts War & Peace to shame), but somehow, somewhere in the epic emails, the recipe for this dish got lost, and the dish never eventuated on the other end.

Luckily for her, she has a foodie friend. A foodie friend would never let a friend starve, even if they were 9000kms away.

So here's the recipe, again. With love.


I made this last night. For those who have been following the posts, you would be aware of the sad state of my fridge.

Well, at the time of making this, the problem had not yet been resolved, so the eggs pictured above were the very last normal chicken eggs in our house. (I still had mini chicken eggs from my own chickens, but they don't work so well for this dish).

Oh and they were the last two tomatoes as well. The one in the middle of the picture was bruised. But you don't know that.

Good news is, the randomly missing member of my family is back today. She never lets the fridge run empty. In fact, I think it goes the other direction...which gets annoying at times as she takes up all your jelly-making space in the fridge. And then you can't make jelly. And that's just mean.

Either way, this has always been one of my ABSOLUTE favourite dishes. I've told my parents many-a-times that I'd rather have a plate of tomatoegg to go with my rice than abalone or lobster. I'm a weird child like that.


TomatoEgg
Preparation time: <2mins
Cooking time: roughly 10mins

Buy:
2 medium sized tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp chicken powder (or MSG)
1 1/2 tblsp fish sauce (feel free to use cooking salt, I think you'll need about a teaspoon or two?)
1 1/2 tsp sugar
Oil for cooking

Cook:
1.) In a frying pan, heat oil for frying.
2.) Fry the eggs in the pan until just cooked. Do not scramble and break it up into little pieces just yet. Remove and set aside.
3.) Add oil to a wok and heat.
4.) Add tomatoes to wok and let it sizzle. Turn on high heat and toss it around a few times.
5.) Quickly add chicken powder and fish sauce. This will help collapse the tomatoes and extract liquid from them to make the sauce. Turn down heat and let it simmer for 3 minutes.
6.) Add sugar. This will help thicken the sauce. Simmer for another minute.
7.) Turn the heat up and add cooked egg. Break it up into smaller pieces while coating it with the sauce. Cook quickly and turn off heat as soon as egg is coated and broken up.
8.) Plate it up.

Nom it while it's hot.