Creamy mashed potatoes (pomme purée)

Tags

butter, cream, french style mash, mash, mashed potatoes, pomme puree, potato ricer, ricer, roast, sides, sieve

Yes I know, there could’ve been a better picture of it. I should have done it justice and posted something that represents the texture and creaminess of it all.

As it stands, I’ll just post the recipe for it so someone else can have a go and take food magazine worthy photos of this decadent side dish.

So here goes:-

Ingredients (Serves 6-8)

• 2kg Yukon Gold potatoes (washed and scrubbed)
• 2 cups heavy cream or more just in case you like it creamier
• 450g salted butter
• salt and white pepper to taste
• You will also need a ricer for this recipe

Place the potatoes in boiling water and reduce the heat to medium low. Cover and cook until tender (1/2 to 1 hour).

Drain and cool the potatoes.  Peel the skin off.  Pass the potatoes through a ricer.
This is a new toy of mine. It ensures that the mashed potatoes stay fluffy and airy since you don’t have to mash it do death by hand, and therefore it also keeps the potatoes from getting gummy.
Potatoes all pressed through the ricer!  Pour the cream into a sauce pan and bring to a simmer. Slowly mix/whisk in the butter until sauce is emulsified. I actually used more cream than what is stated in this recipe.
Then stir in the potatoes, and season with salt and pepper. Eyeball the creaminess and add more cream if you wish.

After which, I sieved the entire pot of mashed potatoes. And the result? The fluffiest, creamiest mash ever!
  

❤

Quick post: Roasted chicken thighs!

Tags

butter, carrots, cast iron pan, chicken gravy, compound butter, cream, gravy, gravy from scratch, mased potatoes, mash, pomme puree, potato rinser, roast, roast chicken, sieve, thyme, young carrots

Been a while since my last post! Coming up: myhumblefood recipes for pomme purée (basically an incredibly light and creamy French version of mashed potatoes), chicken gravy from scratch and the roast chicken. 

 

Green tea mochi cream with azuki red beans

Tags

azuki beans, cream, dessert, flutinous rice flour, green tea, green tea cream, green tea ice cream, green tea mochi, green tea mochi ice cream, green tea mochi ice cream with azuki beans, japan, japanese desserts, mochi, red beans

 

 

Truthfully I’m not a great fan of mochi, I do like the Chinese mua zhee (glutinous rice flour cakes tossed in sugar and peanuts) as well as tang yuan (glutinous rice flour balls boiled in a pandan,ginger and sugar syrup), but otherwise mochi and mochi ice cream were never really far up my list of cravings.

These days the trend is mochi ice cream. I never understood it. The mochi is hard and chewy and the ice cream just didn’t seem to go well with it. And then I tried “Mochi sweets” in Kuala Lumpur. Now THIS is good mochi. It isn’t exactly mochi ice cream, its more of a mochi with cream inside I think. They’ve got everything down perfect, from the mochi, to the temperature it has to be consumed, to the ratio of mochi to fillings.

Now I thought I’d try to replicate it, but I still have some ways to go instead of the actual measurements, because I eyeballed the amount of cream and red bean used in each mochi T____T. Pleased with the way the mochi turned out, soft, smooth and chewy and super easy to make. In fact you can just use this mochi recipe and create your own fillings 😉

 

Ingredients

For mochi:

• 1 cup Glutinous rice flour
• 200ml water (room temperature is fine)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp green tea
• pinch of salt

For the fillings:

• canned azuki beans (You can boil your own red beans in some sugar and water but this is so much more convenient!)
• 2 tbsp sugar (or more if you like the cream to be sweeter)
• 1 1/2 tbsp green tea
• 200ml cream
• pinch of salt

Instructions

• It is advisable to do the fillings first. To prepare the cream , pour the cream into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and green tea and blend with a blender until stiff peaks form.

 

• Using a teaspoon, place some cream onto the centres of small squares of cling wrap. Twist the loose ends so you’ll end up with this:-

 

 

• The whole point is to create balls of cream and place them in the freezer. It is so much easier to handle frozen cream as it doesn’t ooze out of the mochi as easily. So into the freezer it goes for about an hour or until it has completely hardened up.
• Next, place the azuki beans in a blender and add the salt

 

• Blend into a chunky paste. If you’d like the paste to be smoother then just blend it a little longer. Set aside until you’re ready to make your mochi.

• Now to proceed to the mochi. Place the flour, green tea and sugar into a bowl and mix to combine
• Add water slowly, and stir into the flour using a rubber spatula

 

• Make sure that there are no lumps in the mixture

 

• Cover the bowl loosely (don’t cover it completely!) with some cling wrap.
• Microwave the mixture for 1 minute at 1000watt. Remove the bowl from the microwave and stir the mixture before covering the bowl (loosely) again with the cling wrap and microwaving it for another 1 minute at 1000 watt.
• You should get the following end result:

• Prepare a tray and dust it with potato starch.
• Scrape the mochi mixture onto the potato starch and sprinkle more potato starch on top of the mochi

 

• Remember to put enough potato starch on the surface so it doesn’t stick to your hands. Flatten the mochi down and cut into 12 equal pieces.

 

• Take one piece of mochi and cover the rest with cling wrap to keep it from going dry
• Here’s where you can experiment with the proportions! Once you’ve pulled the mochi to your desired thickness, brush off the excess flour from the mochi, otherwise it’s going to be pretty hard getting it to stick and close up after adding the filling later on.
• Add a dollop of red bean paste to the mochi and top with a chunk of frozen cream. Add more red bean paste on top and close up the mochi, making sure none of the red bean and cream spills out. Then you can gently pat the mochi into shape with the help of some potato starch. Place the mochi into the freezer.
• Repeat with the other pieces of mochi.
• The below method of placing the filling in the middle of a round circle and attempting to close it up from there was pretty messy! I preferred pressing the mochi out into a longer strip, and placing the red bean and cream on one end and I’d fold the other end on top and seal the edges that way before arranging it into a round shape.

 

• Before serving, remove the mochi from the freezer to sit at room temperature for 15 minutes. This allows the mochi to get back into a soft and chewy, rather than a rubbery texture, while still allowing for the cream to be somewhat like an ice cream. If you prefer it as a cream then just leave it for 20-25 minutes or so 😉

 

Serve alongside the extra red bean paste.

Uni cream pasta (Sea Urchin)

Tags

angel hair, butter, chives, cream, cream pasta, dinner, fusion, ikura, lunch, mains, Noodles, parmesan cheese, Pasta, prawns, salmon roe, sea urchin, shrimp, sinful, uni, uni cream pasta, uni pasta

Sea urchin roe is one of my favourite sashimi! So rich and creamy and briny <3. I tried  sea urchin pasta for the first time in Japan a few years back and it was amazing as well. And of course I had to try to make it myself, but I always feel heartsick at the thought of throwing all the expensive uni into pasta when I can just have it as sashimi and savour every single bit of it. That’s why on my first attempt at uni pasta, I just used a few bits (see the following 3 pictures).

I probably used a quarter of the package of uni. The box of uni in itself is already really small, so the uni flavour in the pasta wasn’t as prominent as I would have liked it. But the pictures were way better as I took them during the daytime, whereas my 2nd attempt photos were dependent on dim lighting =(.

Pleased to say that on the 2nd attempt, the pasta came out creamier and more luscious! I sacrificed the whole box this time… just for myself *guilt*. I also omitted the seaweed as it got in the way of the flavour of the pasta. It goes better with mentaiko pasta I think.

The recipe was adapted from http://www.eataduckimust.com/uni-pasta

Ingredients (For 1 greedy person)

• 1/2 cup thickened cream (the original recipe calls for 1 cup cream per person, you could just adjust accordingly. I’m just trying to make myself feel less guilty)
• 3 prawns shelled and deveined with tails on (Reserve the prawn shells and heads)
• 20g butter
• 1 package uni (sea urchin)
• 1 chilli padi, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 egg yolk
• chives for garnishing
• handful of parmesan cheese
• Angel hair/instant cook spaghetti or other pasta noodle of your choice
• Ikura (as much as you like)

• Melt the butter over low heat and add the prawn heads/shells in. Crush the prawn heads so that all the flavour comes out into the butter. Take the pan off the heat so that the butter doesn’t brown and continue crushing the shells.

• Pour the butter and shells into a sieve and squeeze out all the juices/butter into another pan (you’ll use this pan to make the cream sauce)

• Meanwhile, sear the prawns and set aside

• Throw in the chilli padi and the minced garlic into the pan with the prawn head butter and fry until the garlic turns golden. If you like, you can also add a little more butter.
• Add in the cream and bring to a simmer before switching it off. Don’t boil the cream.
• When the cream has cooled a little, pour into a blender. Your cream shouldn’t be hot as this would cook the uni and scramble the egg later. The uni needs to be soft, raw and creamy while the egg yolk needs to be silky.
• Save a few pieces of the uni for garnishing, and add the rest to the cream.

• Blend the uni and cream (just need to give it a few pulses) and pour the mixture back into the pan.
• Add the beaten egg yolk and stir it in.

• Add a tablespoon or so of parmesan cheese into the cream and heat the mixture up again (I’m guestimating here, adapt to your own tastes ;p) . Taste it and season with some salt. (I didn’t put pepper as I thought it might overpower the uni)
• Add in the freshly cooked pasta and mix it into the sauce. If you have strong wrists, toss the lot to combine.

• Dish out the pasta onto a serving plate, top with the prawns, raw uni, some chives, a bit more cheese and as much ikura as you like~

So silky and creamy and decadent 😉

Now that I’ve seen the amount of sea urchin, prawn head brains and cream that went into the dish, my heart is starting to palpitate at the sheer amount of cholesterol that went into this meal ;(

To the gym!

Truffles Part 5: Cream of Mushroom soup with creme fraiche and truffles

Tags

appetizer, black truffle, brown mushrooms, cream, cream of mushroom soup, creme fraiche, dinner, hand blender, mushroom, mushroom soup, Soup, starter, truffles, western, white truffle oil

I love mushroom soup. Even though I’ve been eating canned Campbell mushroom soup for most of my life, nothing beats freshly made cream of mushroom soup. I attempted it for the first time as part of my truffle menu and used portobello and those nice swiss brown mushrooms. Other recipes call for er… wilder varieties of mushroom but since its just me and my helper, I decided to just use mushrooms that I’m used to. The end result should be a creamy thick soup of mushrooms and enhanced just by some chopped parsley, truffle shavings and perhaps a drop or two of truffle oil.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

100g butter

500g mushrooms (I used 250g portobello and 250g swiss brown mushrooms)

350ml chicken stock

400ml water

100g cooking cream

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbsp of creme fraiche per bowl of soup (you can adjust this if you like)

Fresh truffle shavings

1 tsp chopped English parsley per bowl

Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Instructions

1. Wash the mushrooms thoroughly and drain.

2. Slice the mushrooms to the same thickness (otherwise you’ll get inconsistencies in texture after blending)

3. Melt the butter in a sauce pan large enough to hold 2 litres of water. I used a wok as I’m more comfortable with it.

4. Fry the garlic and mushrooms together for 5 minutes. The mushrooms will release some liquid.

5. Add chicken stock and water and bring to the boil before turning down the heat. Cover with the lid and let it stew for about 30 minutes.

6. Add the cream and let it simmer for another 3-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

7. Blitz the soup with a hand blender. Be careful when you do this as you don’t want the hot liquid to fly all over the kitchen and onto you! 

I transferred the mixture into a mixing jug for blitzing.

8. Blitz until your desired consistency. I like mine slightly chunky

9. Ladle into soup bowl and top with creme fraiche, truffle shavings, parsley and a little white truffle oil if you like.

Serve with bread!