One of the things I love about Daring Bakers is that it stretches me to do things that I normally wouldn’t. After co-hosting last month’s Daring Bakers challenge I was pleased to see how many felt the same way and I thankfully witnessed very few meltdowns. As I tell people, you join Daring Bakers to step out onto the proverbial baking ledge – or perhaps more appropriately, you step out on the ledge of a hot oven door. After all the name Daring does suggest doing something a little extraordinary.

When I saw this month’s challenge I was excited as I had never made Vol au Vents before. I’ve eaten my share of them often buying them from the supermarket but I’d made puff pastry (which is about a million times better than any puff pastry you will get at the supermarket). So whilst I was happy I wanted to try to do something that I hadn’t done before so I thought hard about a nice filling for my Vol au Vent and decided on a Quail’s egg salad and asparagus topped Vol au Vent with a fresh Hollandaise sauce to go with it. My friend Miss America had warned me about Hollandaise before, telling me that it was notoriously hard so I was suitably fearful. Thankfully it worked out just fine and I can cross another item off my list. Unfortunately as there was so much soft butter involved in my left hand and whisking in my right that I neglected to take any pictures of the Hollandaise although let me assure you that it’s much, much easier than I thought it was.

Le Puff

With the Puff Pastry, I dutifully watched the video of Julia Child and Michel Richard (no not Michael Richards or Kramer from Seinfeld ) make it and after that it was absolutely clear. I know the instructions seem endless but please, do not let that put you off. I think if there’s one pastry that I think is so worthwhile making from scratch, it’s Puff. The reason is the layers, From one 4mm layer of uncooked puff dough you can get a rise of 5-7cms and if that doesn’t fill one with a sense of baking accomplishment I don’t know what will. Also using the best butter you can get your paws on will help – much like buying the best chocolate when making chocolate truffles, the best butter will absolutely show up in the flavour of the puff.

As for the taste? Ambrosial and buttery. Sure it’s not light on the calories given the butter in both the puff and the Hollandaise sauce but when you use good butter, you really notice the difference. I ate one and was moaning with pleasure so I ate another and another after that. I had to stop as I was dangerously close to having nothing to serve for dinner. Picture my dilemma: the pastry sits on my left shoulder saying “eat me” and a devil sits on my right shoulder also encouraging me to eat it saying “Yes you could whip up something quickly and no-one would ever know that you ate them all”. I did a quick calculation of the amount of butter in the entire batch and resoundingly frightened I put them down and set to work again.  I also made a sweet version easily filling it with some rose flavoured mascarpone topped with a sliced strawberry which my husband adored.

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever eaten a whole batch of anything or come close to doing so? And what was the item?

Oh and my wonderful friend Duckie from A Duck in Her Pond has featured me as a Creative Woman of the Pond! She’s a master storyteller and a published writer and has just started a story that I love called “The Old House on Elm Street”. You can guess the theme right?

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Click here to read the full story

The new Toyota Prius ITech aka the Kitchen!

This was my second such brush with destiny. A Manifold Destiny to be exact. I first tried cooking on my car relatively early on my blog on a trip to the Blue Mountains and I was ambitious: I tried cooking prawns and sliced potatoes. Little did I know that the 1.5hr trip would barely cook the edges but the urge to cook on my car has never left me. I don’t mean frying an egg on the car roof as I’m not totally crazy (hmmm perhaps another idea though) but wrapping food in foil and placing it around the manifold of your car engine.

The cooktop ahem the engine

So when Mr NQN and I were planning a trip to Canberra to see the Vanity Fair Photographic Exhibition with Queen Viv and Miss America I knew I wanted to do it again. But with a twist of course. I decided to give it an enviromental theme and try cooking on a Prius. So summoning up my courage and anticipating a quick, sharp rejection, I asked the friendly peeps at Toyota expecting them to laugh and back away slowly thinking that I was a lunatic (”these damn food bloggers” they’d mutter). Amazingly they said yes. Not only could I borrow a Prius but they’d loan me the latest one to test drive and cook on the engine. Yes and they know I’m a Learner driver too!

A close up of the foil food parcels on the engine

We set about devising an environmentally friendly meal so keeping this in mind, vegetarian was the best option and also would probably give us less food poisoning that eating rawish meat as we’d all prefer not to die in the quest for a meal which I should think it would get us a listing in the Darwin Awards for Stupidest Ways to Die (although would I get a painting in the Food Blogger Hall of Fame for dying in the services of a food blog?). We set about buying locally grown produce to go with the environmental theme so we visited Alfalfa House in Enmore.

The meal pre cooking: Organic Swiss Brown mushrooms and cabbage flavoured with dill, lemon and garlic

We bought some Swiss Brown Mushrooms and Cabbage and flavoured it with fresh dill (ouch $4.50 a bunch!) and all were grown in NSW. I added some Hunter Valley grown Patrice Newell garlic and some slices of lemon from my friend The Second Wife’s lemon tree in a neighbouring suburb. The oil and pepper was Australian but less local and salt was Maldon which is from the UK so there were some concessions.  We added a little homemade stock and wrapped everything up in foil and there were also wholemeal rolls that we packed up in the foil. We  stashed it in various parts of the engine, hoping to find the best space to cook it. Make sure to pack it in tightly or you may risk “losing your lunch” on the road. The first time we did it, I spent much of the trip looking backwards for little packets of foil on the road behind us fearing that our meal had become roadkill.

Wholemeal roll

We started up the engine and drove and drove and drove while I was reading the Prius manual. I’d been to a Prius event a few weeks ago and tested the Self Park function that was my favourite feature and yes it really can park itself-I’m not joking. Now if only they would let me use it in a driving test although the fact that I wouldn’t be touching the wheel while it is turning and manoeuvring would probably give it away. I also loved the heads up display where the speed is illuminated on the windscreen so you don’t have to look down to see your speed which I constantly have to do as L and P drivers can’t go over a certain limit or they will crush you and your license. The seat warmers were also a god send considering how bitterly cold Canberra gets and Mr NQN loved the cruise control radar which controls your speed according to the distance between you and the car in front of you and helps you to brake if you get too close. He also liked the solar cooling and “moon roof” aka sun roof. Queen Viv and Miss America were rather impressed passengers and wondered if the car could float a la Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The Heads Up Display

Slightly cooked after 2.5 hours

We reached our destination 2.5 hours later and peeled back the foil. Not much had happened to our meal as expected as we knew that the engine was cooler than others as it is a Hybrid engine so we carefully repacked the foil and drove around with it completely forgetting about it until our return trip home. We didn’t have time to stop at any cool cafes and we try and avoid the fast food places that dot the highway drive home from Canberra to Sydney and we were halfway home when we both realised that we had a meal on the engine. But had it cooked? We stopped the car and peeled it back. Praise the food gods it had and it smelt wonderful! Had anyone driven past us they would’ve seen two freezing souls jumping about in joy. The bread rolls had dried out too much and had to be thrown out but the packets of vegetables were perfectly cooked and smelt inviting. Because we carry a fork at all times (yes a sign of a Food Bloggerus), we tucked in greedily. Of course it’s not haute cuisine and I’m sure a chef would probably pooh pooh it but given the choice of the overpriced fast food en route or the car I pick the car. And the fuel consumption? 4 litres per 100kms!

Tada!

Manifold Destiny reached I feel satisfied that it can be done. And thankyou to Toyota for allowing me to loan their precious Prius for my crazy experiments! Do I have to give it back now?

So tell me Dear Reader, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve cooked or the weirdest way you’ve cooked food?

I’ve also uploaded my interview with the charming Stephie and Ellie on 99.3FM. It’s about 10 minutes long and was a lot of fun to do (although I always cringe at the sound of my own voice). You can listen to it here!

And if you’re not already sick of me, Sneh from the lovely blog Gel’s Kitchen interviewed me here!

My mum’s favourite dish would have to be noodles. After all she is from Singapore where noodles in every way, shape or form inevitably make their way onto lunch and dinner plates and bowls. One of her favourite noodle dishes is a “wet” noodle dish using rice noodles called “Hor Fun” which features rice noodles soused in a delectable sauce. As we are staying with them while our place is being renovated, I am taking the opportunity to have her show me the recipes that I like best and this noodle dish is one of those. She is only too happy to share her recipes with me now and whilst she won’t let me put a current picture of her on my wesbite she did let me put up these old black and whites up of her.

My Mother on left-I love a cup of tea too!

My Mother on right and her sister on the left

Usually made with beef, this is also a dish which unravelled a little history to it. My grandmother made the Rice Wine 20 years ago and it’s now stored in an old Ribena bottle. My grandmother was a woman who had 6 children and my mother was the youngest of the lot and therefore the “baby”. My grandmother was a strict woman, after all being widowed after the war with 6 kids meant that she needed to show some discipline in order to keep her brood in check and she made sure that they all went to university and made a good living for themselves. She was strict but of course caring in her own gruff way, making sure that you got the best pieces of a dish before anyone else. And notoriously hot tempered which has invited some comparisons between me and her! Who moi?

My grandmother’s Home-made Rice Wine

I know it seems like an inordinate amount of ingredients for a simple dish but if you look closely, they’ll probably be things that you already have in your pantry. The key is to have everything ready and then once it’s ready, it’s a relatively quick dish to cook which accounts for why you see it at so many outdoor stalls and at food festivals. The dish smells absolutely wonderful whilst cooking it and I defy anyone to resist it. The taste is just as wonderful as the scent suggests, the slippery noodles drenched in an aromatic sauce with a generous surplus of meat and noodles. And there’s no shortage of “best pieces” here.

Funnily enough, I found this photo of my mum and her friends. Looks like an early sighting of the Foodus Bloggerus!

Foodus Bloggerus sighting 1960

So tell me a bit about your mother or grandmother Dear Reader!

Click here to read the full story