The Food Monologues

This is a cake I made from stuff that needed to be used up, so I didn't actually measure any of the ingredients. I just went by eye and hoped for the best.

Ingredients
Two pears peeled and diced
About 100g of butter melted
About 100g of sugar
About 100g of plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
About 100g of melted plain chocolate
2 eggs
A few drops of almond essence

Method
Mix the butter and sugar together and then beat in the eggs. Add the flour, baking powder and almond essence and mix until batter is smooth. Then add the pears to the mix. Spoon half the mixture into a 8 inch greased baking tin. Add the melted chocolate to the rest of the mixture and swirl as for making a marble cake. Then add this mixture to the baking tin. Swirl the mix slightly again. Bake in a hot oven at 180C for about 20 minutes or until the cake is well risen and browned on top. Allow the cake to cool before serving. Try it with some nice vanilla icecream.

Labels: Recipe

Yesterday's chocolate ice cream didn't work that well. Somehow, the chocolate didn't melt properly leading to a very grainy ice cream that didn't cling together very well. I think the percentage of chocolate was a bit too high as I have had problems with this type of chocolate before. When I made chocolate truffles with high percentage cocoa plain chocolate, the cocoa butter just separates. I tried making other types of ice cream and sorbets today. The cranberry sorbet worked much better.

Cranberry Sorbet

200g of Cranberry Sauce
50g icing sugar
1 lime juiced
1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
500ml water (250 ml boiled, 250 ml ice cold)

Mix the cranberry sauce, icing sugar, lime juice and cinnamon together with 250 ml of boiled water until well blended. Add the cold water to the mixture and then sieve the mixture. Allow the mixture to cool before putting into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions. Otherwise, put the sorbet mixture into a lidded container and allow to freeze for a couple of hours (or until the mixture is nearly solid) before taking it out and beating mixture to reduce the size of the ice crystals. Return this mixture to the freezer and allow to the mixture to solidify a little more before serving.

We got an ice cream maker for Christmas from Tim's uncle this year and at the moment the machine is churning some chocolate ice cream. I am not sure how sucessful it will be because it looked a bit grainy when it went in, possibly due to the high cocoa grade chocolate Tim gave me to put into the recipe. We are going to add some Triple Sec to the ice cream when its almost done. Verdict on the taste to be reported later as our guests have arrived to sample the dessert...

On my recent business trip to Germany, I got to try some traditional food from the region we were staying in North Rhine Westphalia. One dish was fried pork liver and onions with apple fritters. Which tastes very different to the English liver and onions. Then there were the open topped sandwiches with raw ground beef on top - known as tartare. I don't eat beef, so I abstained from that delicacy. Finally, on a visit to a supplier, we were offered lunch of cold horse meat sausages and before anyone could refuse, the MD's wife came in with a plate of these giant sausages and a bag of crusty bread rolls and some mustard. Each one of these sausages was the size of about 6 Herta frankfurters rolled into one. So did they taste horsey? Its hard to say, having never eaten horse before, but they were a bit chewy, smokey (as they had been smoked) and a bit gamey. It had a similar texture to normal frankfurters. I managed to eat a small quantity as I did not find it that appealing a meal - I am not too keen on cold meats from unknown origins... Too many cases of food disagreeing with me not be careful.