=)

My latest creation

Ear fodder: Libertango - Yo-yo Ma (damn gooood)

So, yet another food post.

Here's pics of my latest baking attempt: Chocolate tarts!

I used the 'Absolute Chocolate Tart' recipe from http://www.chocolateandzucchini.com/ , and improvised a bit on my own.

A pate sablee crust, dark chocolate (Lindt 85%) and creme liquide, to make a wonderful luscious thick ganache. Flavoured with bits of finely grated orange rind, and orange blossom. And a few other things that only the chef knows. =)

Oh, and a chocolate caramel sculpture on top. Shaped hot caramel into little shapes to garnish. Lovely crunchy and melts in the mouth.

Well, it didn't come easy, for sure. My kitchen scale @#$^#@#$ was spoilt, and gave me inaccurate measurements for my flour and butter and sugar. And as you know, even a little difference in the amounts can wreak quite a lot of havoc on the pastry.

The first batch of tart shells I made, just crumbled apart cos it was so soggy. I threw it all away, and decided to follow patissiere extraordinaire Christine Ferber's advice: get in there and feel the pastry.

Which is what I did, adding amounts of flour sugar butter liquid purely by intuition, and a little bit of math of course, et voila, pate sablee! (sablee means sand, the pastry is supposed to resemble grains of sand prior to working into a dough). Though it's not as crumbly as I hoped it to be, at least it didn't sog the hell out of me.

And upon tasting... mmmm. The chocolate didn't make me jelat at all, and the orange blossom, added this subtlety to the taste. Plus the texture was just right, after letting the tart sit for 15 min after taking out of the fridge, the chocolate ganache was... velvety and smoooooth.

All right, next stop, white chocolate tarts, I'm thinking with pecan and raspberry, and trying out Pierre Hermes' recipe for pate brisee. (I'll be glad once I figure out how to use accents for the vowels in French names)

I need willing taste volunteers haha.

Minor update

Ear fodder: Trouble - Dave Matthews

So I haven't updated in a long while. Umm. Oops.

I've started work, and it's a real steep learning curve. Lots to learn of course, given that I'm from a completely different background.

In other news, a good friend of mine is flying off today. Going back to France.

I hadn't spoken to him in some six years, because of a misunderstanding we had. And now that we've made it up, it seems unbelievable that we caught up so fast.

Yes, we've changed. Yet we've seen just how much we've each changed, and we take it into stride in this renewed friendship.

Now he's going back. And the next time I see him will be......... I don't know when. At least 2 years. It seems like all my closest friends are overseas. It's like a second bereavement.

As Joni Mitchell sang: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone." But now, I've to learn what I've lost - twice.

A friendship lost and now found is gold indeed. Now if only it'd stay found.