Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This

October 7, 2006 at 12:18 am · Filed under house events, sweet treats

In Asian culture, desserts are not an integral, structured part of the daily meal. Unlike Western cuisine where the mains are finished off with a slice of cake, pudding or a scoop of ice cream, many Asians end their meal simply with fresh fruit. It’s not that we are deficient when it comes to sweet dishes; it’s just that they are eaten less formally, as an afternoon snack, a tea-time treat, or really whenever we feel like it.

This lack of emphasis on desserts as an end to a meal could be one of the reasons for the pathetic choice offered in most Asian restaurants in Melbourne. While there is a huge, almost ridiculous variety of rice, meat and vegetarian dishes, desserts will almost certainly consist of banana fritters with ice cream, fried ice cream or canned mango slices with ice cream. It’s all a bit sad really.

Last month, a close friend came over for lunch. As both of us are sweet-toothed ( I say it like it’s a serious medical condition), I knew from very early on that the most important part of the meal would be the last, and although I dedicated an adequate amount of time in preparing appetizers and the mains, it is in dessert that I was most interested.

Instead of baking a big, heavy cake, I opted to make two, smaller dishes, chocolate cannoli and strawberries coated in caramel. I have always found the concept behind cannoli a bit overwhelming, this hollow wafer filled to the brim with a creamy cheese filling. How could anyone tolerate mouthful after mouthful of such rich, sweet cream?

In fact, the thick layer of cream cheese is balanced quite perfectly by the crunchy wafer shell. If you could think of the common biscuit-base cheesecake as analogous to thick crust pizza, then cannoli is its thin crust, cigar-shaped equivalent.

Originally, the two main ingredients for the filling were to be ricotta cheese and white chocolate. However, my itchy hands could not resist adding coffee essence, which resulted in the unsightly brown-on-brown color combination. However, the lack of visual appeal was more than compensated by the beautiful coffee flavour of the ricotta mixture.

For the strawberries, I pierced the fruit with bamboo skewers, dipped them in caramel and hung them from a raised platform. The caramel drips and eventually hardens, resulting in caramel stalactites that cling tightly to the strawberries.

I love the golden, glass-like quality of the caramel coating. The air bubbles encased in the hardened stalactites give the impression that time has been frozen, and we on the outside are free to observe the momentary entrapment of air.

Unfortunately, caramel hates moisture and heat, and even in spring, when the climate is temperate, the stalactites begin to melt after no more than an hour. It would be almost impossible to make them in summer, when the berries are in season and at their best.

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The Housewarming Birthday Event

April 12, 2006 at 11:59 pm · Filed under house events

Last weekend I said goodbye to adolescence and a carefree childhood and ushered in, rather reluctantly, the prospect of adulthood. I am now 21. This defining coming-of-age coincides very neatly with the new-found responsibility of living on my own, and carrying the responsibility of taking care of the house, paying the bills on time and most importantly, making food for myself. It seems a very obvious fact to state at first, that if you don’t make food then there won’t be anything to eat, but somehow there lingered this infantile, childish hope in me that a plate of hot piping dinner will miraculously appear out of nowhere, as long as I believe in myself, like they do in the movies.

I decided to hold a housewarming to coincide with the eve of my birthday. It was going to be a housewarming party first, and birthday acknowledgement second. Not a birthday ‘celebration’, simply an ‘acknowledgement’. I am not looking forward to turning 21.

Most 21st celebrations Down Under are defined by flowing rivers of alcohol, with equal amounts of vomit thereafter. I may be in Australia, but I celebrate like a true Malaysian, with lots and lots of food.

The highlight of any birthday is the cake. I made two cakes that day, Nigella Lawson’s Nutella Cake (or more fancily, Torta Alla Giandula) and New York Cheesecake. Nothing can quite compete with bread fresh out of the toaster and spread with a judicious amount of Nutella. Actually the bread doesn’t even have to be hot and toasted. Cold bread taken out chilled from the fridge will still taste good with the hazelnut spread. A cake version, therefore, was an obvious choice for the housewarming. There are literally hundreds of cheesecake versions out there, ricotta, oreo, white chocolate, lemon, coffee, blueberry cheesecake, but my all-time favourite is the New Yorker, lured by the soft and light texture of the cake. It was amazing! I had to make it, not so much for my friends to try but more for me to indulge on my birthday.

But man, did they take forever to make. The Torta Nutella was quite straight-forward, although still time-consuming, but the cheesecake was something else. Nigella specifically asks of the eager baker to bake the cake with the door unopened (quite impossible, from my experience) for a good hour and a bit, and then leave it with the door still unopened for another 2 hours, after which the cake should be left for another hour with the door opened. Of course, then you have to chill the cake for a few more hours, all while battling the temptation to cut a piece, if only to exact revenge on the attention-demanding cheesecake.

Thankfully, my friends need no coaching when it comes to exacting revenge on cheesecakes.

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