Guinness Chocolate Cake

Oh Guinness. My friends love Guinness. I just like to eat it. I love how it adds a distinct depth to the flavor of a dish especially when it's chocolate based! And so, I decided to make Nigella's Guinness Chocolate Cake for some of those Guinness-loving friends.

This cake is pretty easy to put together in that you just throw all the ingredients into the saucepan and then dump that into a springform pan. How hard is that? It makes washing up a snap too! So then, does the lack of effort show through in the taste...or lack of? Well, I found the cake to be very moist and dark tasting (probably due to the Guinness), and a bit on the sweet side for me which means it's probably fine for most folks. As for the frosting, I'm never a big fan of frosting, but I'm making this for friends, so frosting there shall be!

Curiously enough, I found the that the frosting made the cake taste boring as if it was whipped from a box mix! Yet without the frosting, the cake actually tasted more complex. It was as if the frosting were overwhelming the the more subtle flavors of the cake. Another minus for the frosting is that without it, the top stayed nicely crunchy. Yummy. If you do make the frosting, be prepared to have leftovers to use on something else. It just made way way too much. I can't imagine eating a cake that used all of it! =O And I didn't even add all the heavy cream called for. I put in a mere fraction! Sometimes, her recipes just aren't quite right so do be careful when following them.

Like many cake recipes, this one would also be great as cupcakes especially since you wouldn't need bother with a springform pan, and the cupcake liner would mean you get a nice wrapper to hold it all together. But hold off on the frosting. It's just a waste of your ingredients or use your favorite frosting recipe instead. Behold the cake still in the pan fresh from the oven:

American as Apple Pie?

Well, I wouldn't say so in this case since this Individual Apple Pie recipe is from Nigella Lawson's Feast. First off, it's not your typical apple pie crust as she uses sour cream and cream cheese in the pastry dough. Yes, pastry, not pie dough. Sounds tasty being called pastry instead of pie dough, right? Like using French terms to name a dish. Well, I had way too much leftover dough so I cut them up and slapped some jam between two slices to make "cookies" out of them. Alas, they tasted very bland which was surprising as I've made similar cream cheese/sour cream type of doughs that turned out delicious. Uh oh...I hope the pies will be fine...

So this pastry dough not only tasted underwhelming, it gave me a lot of work to do! I had to make the dough twice because her instructions sucked. It never came together into a "silky dough" as she puts it so I overprocessed it (I wasn't surprised). Plus, she never tells you to flour the work surface so it stuck like mad. I always follow her instructions since she can be quite specific. Plus, there's a difference between heavily and lightly flour. I've done doughs that really didn't need any flour. So, I listened to her. Stupid me! I wasted a batch of dough for nothing! And let's not include the time! And my frustration! To add to all this, she never tells you to add water to the egg to make an egg wash. I completely forgot about adding water until I tried slathering it on. Ugh!

Since Easter is around the corner, I decided to decorate the tops with little bunnies. That was the only good part. Upon eating the pie, it wasn't great. The crust was too thick in the mouth which turned it into a blockage of sorts by sticking to my mouth and being paste-like. The apples weren't very fragrant despite the cinnamon and clove. The bunnies were tasty because they were nice and hard (and thus almost flaky from the fat content). Otherwise, this was a total waste of time. I was wholly disappointed. No one liked it. =( The only positive comments were a) the crunchy bunnies and b) the crust tasted buttery. This one definitely looks better than it tastes.

Magnificent Maggi Muck!

In looking for some tasty and interesting treats for an extended road trip to Canada, I came across some sweet, no-cook porridge cups at an Asian market. The logical part of me screamed for me to stay away. The curious part of me was eager to discover whether it would taste just as bad as it looked and to subject my travelmates to this misadventure. As usual, my curiousity won the better of me. I chose two flavors: chocolate for my travelmate (you can't go tooo wrong with chocolate, right?) and coconut & corn flavour (ooh, sounds weird).

Fortunately for my travel companions, we never had the chance to try these out even though I brought along means to boil water. They were also lucky in that I was not successful at pawning it off on them either. See, they know better. I do too but I don't listen to myself. About a week after my return home, I had the munchies and decided to try one out. Let's go mundane and so chocolate it was.

But chocolate it wasn't. According to the ingredients, it was chocolate, but it was the most foul tasting, artificial chocolate wannabe flavour I've ever encountered. The overabundance of sugar (clearly, the source of energy as proclaimed on the packaging...just wait for that crash after the rush, right?) didn't help one bit. To top it all off, the texture of this fake rice porridge was chewy and just plain artificial. I had to do a doubletake to assure myself that I wasn't eating shredded styrofoam peanuts. I tossed it after forcing myself to eat 5 spoonfuls. I was hopeful that I merely had a bad first impression.

A few weeks later, I still haven't thrown out the other flavour and again, I have the munchies. I spy it out of the corner of my eye and decide to subject myself to more torture. This time, I didn't add as much water as the last version was incredibly watery. After the instructed 3 minutes had elapsed, I dug in! Ah, no better. That's not true. At least this coconut and corn flavor doesn't taste as disgusting as the chocolate. The artificiality of the coconut makes it taste like some coconut candies I've had. Unfortunately, due to the decreased amounts of liquid, this cup was at least twice as sweet. I only ate two bites. The second bite I just had to do in order to find the corn. I took a while of scooping around to get one kernel that looked as dehydrated as before the addition of boiling water.

When I subject myself to these instant meals/snacks in a cup, I wonder how it is possible that people would a) actually buy it b) buy it again and c) enjoy it. I've had some pretty awful (and not cheap!) ramen in a bowl that looked fancy and had many packets for the soup (more is better, right?) yet tasted worse than the 25 cent ones. Despite this, they remain on the supermarket shelves year after year here stateside. I can only imagine the shelves in Japan not only fully stocked, but stocked with other flavours and other brands that do an equally poor if not worse job. I shiver to think such horrid thoughts of malnutrition and tastebud torture.

To each his own, but this will be my last foray into Maggi's instant products...for now.

Potatoes Transformed

I could not stomach the thought of eating any more of that sour cream/mayo mess of potatoes and mushrooms. But I couldn't bear the thought of chucking the innocent potatoes! I'm just too much a potato fan. I had to salvage this dish somehow! So, I decided to scrape off the curdly mess and pan fry the dish to add a bit of a crisp crust to the taters along with a sprinkling of gravlax (yes, I still have a few pounds in the freezer from my experimentation days), paprika and freshly ground pepper. Success!! It was certainly edible. I threw in a few dashes of leftover Heinz Chili Sauce from the crockpot pulled pork, but that didn't really do anything for me. Perhaps for other folks who love ketchup-like condiments on their potatoes it'd be delicious, but it's just not my style. Hmm...maybe some Indonesian/Malaysian/Singaporean hot chili-based condiments might have been an interesting twist...Nevertheless, the gravlax added some nice saltiness to the mix that enhanced the crisp edges of the potatoes while the salmon flavour helped to drown out any leftover sour cream/mayo flavours that lingered.

Score One for Meat!

It's rather peculiar and inconvenient that as a vegetarian, the meat dishes I whip up inevitably taste better than the veg ones. My friend would proclaim it's a sign that I should end my vegetarianism. He already remarks that as the "chef" I should taste everything I make. He laments it's just not right that I never have an inkling of what the dishes taste like. I always have to ask the diners for their opinion whether the recipe needs tweaking. It's one reason I'm loathe to do steaks and such as I never know whether I've turned medium into overdone or underseasoned into overloaded. As much as I sniff the aromas, or I poke or squeeze the steak to ascertain its doneness, I have no basis to gauge what it translates to in terms of mouthfeel and of course taste.

That brings us to tonight's meal. For the carnivores at the table, I finally convinced the diners to let me make lamb. Being that Easter is around the corner, what better time of year? And so I eagerly set to work on Nigella Lawson's Sweet Lamb Tagine. Unfortunately, I was unable to procure a boneless cut of meat which led me to waste time cutting around a bone that was truly multidimensional and shaped. All those curves and angles made it difficult and time consuming which led to a late meal. Overall though, this dish is easy to put together though it has a long stewing time. I accidentally misread the instructions and left the lid on but realized my mistake with a half hour left in cooking time. Thankfully, the stew was a bit on the soupy side rather than just plain soup! My fearful diners were pleasantly surprised with the flavour of the dish and the tenderness of the meat. They even doused the rice with the soupy sauce. They all agreed that next time, the prunes should be left out as they're not big fans of sweet fruit mixed into their salty foods. On a small scale it's fine but big prunes and plenty of them is just a bit overwhelming. Next time, I'll either leave them out or throw in a small handful (possibly cut in half rather than whole as well). Or perhaps I'll just use raisins.

As for the failed dish of the evening, I tried out a cartoonified recipe from the local paper. Every week, I see a new recipe presented in a colourful and drawn fashion but I decided to try it out since I had the ingredients on hand. Actually, I really needed to use up two of them (mushrooms and leftover sour cream) before they went bad. I was also eager to try it out as I've been on a longtime quest for a delicious rendition of the potato au gratin and plokkfiskur from my Iceland/Sweden trip. Yes, they're not the same thing but I was hoping for clues that would help me tweak my recipes. Unfortunately, the Sour Cream Scalloped Parsnips just turned out tasting as ugly as it looked. Though I used potatoes instead of parsnips (again, I was just looking for clues), the mayo/sour cream/heavy cream mix was disgusting. If I keel over from a heart attack, this last meal was not worth the damage to my arteries. It was just heavy with all the fat and heavy from the flavours of mayo and sour cream. I could have saved myself about an hour of cooking time if I'd just baked up some thin slices of potatoes and ate each slice with a dollop of mayo and sour cream. There was no real melding of flavours that turned into something special. The only things that helped this mess go down were the cumin that lightly flavoured the creamy fat and the mushrooms that helped cut the heaviness. I actually sauteed up extra mushrooms to throw on top as the 1 cup called for was a piddly amount. However, it added undesirable water to the mayo/sour cream mix which gave it the appearance of being curdled.

So, should I throw it out or eat the remainder? Well, I love potatoes so I'll just scrape the fatty crud off and eat it with the mushrooms. Maybe I'll even pan fry them a bit to give the potatoes a bit of a yummy crust and crunch. I think I would have been better off eating the lamb!

Beyond the Oven

After the initial success of making pulled pork, I felt the urge to try another recipe! This time, I tried a crockpot version from 150 Best Slow Cooker Recipes by Judith Finlayson which was pretty easy to make. Incidentally, I already had this recipe lying around. This version of pulled pork was even easier to make because I didn't need to mind the crockpot. Plus, the sauce is cooked up at the same time the pork is so there is no need for that extra step.

The verdict? My parents said it tasted similar to other one while my mom added that the other one tasted a bit better possibly because the other one was more tender. Well, at least it was still good. I also served these up on Moomie's hamburger buns again except this time, they inexplicably tasted even more delicious! Hooray! The downside of using the crockpot is that the fat oozed out into the sauce and had to be removed whereas in the oven version, I just plucked the meat out of the fat as the sauce is made separately. Like last time, I had already defatted the thickest slabs of fat. My mom also said the sauce on oven version was better too so I guess overall, the other recipe is superior. At least both methods are easy to make but with the crock, I'd feel better about leaving it alone for 6 hours than an unattended oven. This is definitely a great alternative when time is short (or at least effort per unit of time). It also meant it was easier to manage the oven since it wasn't occupied with pork before the hamburger buns go in. Behold the meat in the midst of being pulled:

Oven Overtime

It'd been a long time since I'd stumbled across a pulled pork sandwich up in these parts so I decided it was high time I make one! After a bit of searching around for a recipe, I settled on Florence Tyler's Oven-Roasted Pulled Pork Sandwiches on the Food Network website. I didn't bother with the whole coleslaw part as I knew my family wasn't in to it. The pork part, though, was great.

After trimming out some of the most heinous hunks of fat from a 5.25lb pork butt roast, I slapped on the dry rub and threw it into the refrigerator overnight. Ok, that was easy! The next day, it went into the oven for a 6 hours. While that baked, I prepared Moomie's Hamburger Buns from the King Arthur's Flour website. There was no way I'd put my cooking efforts onto inferior store-bought buns! As soon as the pork poppped out, I threw the buns into the oven while I shredded (pulled) the pork. The most work in this dish is really the shredding as it's a lot of meat. As for the sauce for the pork, I ended up using the recipe as a base to start with and tweaked it with multiple tastings to get the right combo of ingredients. My folks aren't into the sourness of NC style so I had to sweeten it a bit. By the time the pork was ready, the buns were done and cooled down enough to eat. They came out HUGE, about 4" which this picture shows if you look at the baking mat's measurements. Alas, the sesame seeds all fell off. Regardless, the buns are super easy to make and taste absolutely wonderful!

Putting the pulled pork on to these hamburger buns were a great idea especially over the store-bought stuff. Everyone said the meal turned out yummy! I now want to want to try more pulled pork recipes for the "perfect" taste or just use different marinating rubs for variety. The buns were great as is, and you can't beat the ease of making them! I just need to figure out how to keep those sesame seeds *on* the buns. Here is that delicious meat (crusty on the outside, moist on the inside) as I started tearing in to it:

Gobo Restaurant NYC

My friends decided to take me to Gobo in NYC being the token vegetarian around. They'd gone before and really enjoyed it so it was high time I tried it out too. Many years ago, we'd also gone to Angelica Kitchen, but not all of them liked it. I liked it and other friends I dragged there did too but of course it's not for everyone. Ultimately, you can't really compare Gobo and Angelica as they're just completely different takes on vegan/vegetarian food, both of which I enjoy. =9~

Gobo though appeals to more people because it is based around the fake meat idea, but done really well. Over the years, I'd tired of the fake meat products out there whether in the supermarket or in restaurants. The soy protein products out there were just getting worse and worse, saltier and just plain unhealthy for anyone. Even TVP was never my favorite, but it was easy and convenient. I've always preferred seitan which Asians in general have eaten for a long time so it's not concocted in a lab. I've made it at home before!

Anyhow, Gobo was very tasty and the chef balanced the flavors really well to create dishes that never seemed to be "missing" meat. Texture-wise, there was none of that rubbery soy protein stuff either which is supposed to mimic meat. I don't know about you, but I've never eaten rubbery shrimp. Gobo enhances the experience of dining on dishes where vegetables shine like this Salt & Pepper King Oyster Mushroom Fritter. Mushrooms never tasted so good and different!


My impression is that the chef purposely stayed away from soy protein because of many reasons including those I mention above. I don't recall seeing it on the menu. The use of seitan though is far wiser as it is versatile and easily flavored for different dishes. It also does not have that rubbery texture of TVP variants which I think made it easier for the chef to work with for the textural component. I enjoyed everything we ordered except dessert. I think 98% of the menu is vegan while all the desserts are vegan. Because the owner is Taiwanese, many of the dishes have an Asian touch to them. Here is what we dined on:


Smoked Italian Eggplant Spread & Whole Wheat Pita


Smoked Beijing-Style Seitan With Chinese Broccoli and Kabocha

Seitan in Ginger Marinade


Gingerbread Soy Ice Cream.

We also ordered a pudding which was much better. I look forward to returning here!

"Italian" Night

No pictures to accompany this recount as they didn't quite turn out well.

For dinner, it was a two-fer for Italian fare tonight, though I'm sure there are Italians out there shaking their head at my meal. It was a meal of convenience with no thoughts of well-roundedness in flavor or presentation. For the main course, I slapped together Jamie Oliver's Pasta in Sweet Tomato Sauce with Baked Ricotta. This was actually round 2 of this recipe. The first time, it was ok but the baked ricotta was a mess. Not until later did I figure out that there is the soft stuff for lasagna etc in tubs at the market, and then the solid stuff. Well, not surprisingly, the soft stuff didn't firm up as per the recipe. I accidentally found the solid stuff and bought it immediately to retry my hand at this. I seasoned it and doused it in olive oil as per his direction and this time, the ricotta did crumble though I overbaked it which resulted in a rather firm (didn't exactly melt) hunk. At least this time around, it was much tastier. The salt stayed crunchy which provided a fun texture but it also went well with the blander, "sweet" pasta.

As a side, I made Eggs in Purgatory from the Sopranos cookbook with the leftover tomato puree from the can for the pasta recipe. I'd been wanting to try it out of curiosity for the longest time but never remembered to when I actually had leftover puree. The tomato part of the sauce was nicely garlicky and infused with basil flavor though the egg was a bit bland. Well...I think I cooked off too much sauce and didn't have enough to begin with. I also overcooked the eggs as I was too busy taking pics of my dinner. ;P It's a nice change of pace for an egg but nothing that wowed me. I think it'd be great as a snack or breakfast item on a nicely toasted crusty slice of bread. It certainly is easy enough to make and probably healthier than a fried egg but it's different enough where I wouldn't replace it as my breakfast egg.