Chocolate taste testing

G and I get given a lot of chocolate, because most people know that we love it!  However, we don't eat it everyday and quite often we build up a 'stash'.  So the other night we decided to sit down and try some of the weird and wonderful chocolate we have in our house.

Clockwise from top left: catanie, cherry tomato and salt dark choc, dark lindt, apricot and rosemary dark choc, and dark raspberry chocolate.

Least favourite: the tomato and salt

It had no chocolatey smell, was a pretty blah chocolate taste, and the aftertaste was ok salty/sweet.

The best?  a tough call between the catanie and the apricot and rosemary dark chocolate.

The catanie is an almond covered in praline or marzipan and cocoa and had been handled too many times when I took the photo of the plate above because you can see where some of the cocoa has come away,

The dark chocolate with apricot and rosemary came from Shop Handmade (their blog) and is by a company called The Curious Chocolatier (their site) and the illustrations on the packaging is just gorgeous!

Hainan chicken

Mark Bittman calls this Hainan Chicken (from the Hainan area in China), but I have eaten this in Singapore as Chicken Rice and it probably has some other names too!

It required a fair amount of time to prepare and put this together, but not that much work.  A lot of the time is just waiting (for the chicken to poach).

Poach a whole chicken and then tear it up:

then do pour hot peanut and sesame oil on grated garlic, ginger and chopped spring onions and chilli:

mix together:

Amazingly delicious!

Recipe here, but there are probably hundreds of other recipes out there!

Americolor Gourmet Writer Food Decorating Pen

Goodness me, I would love to get my hands on these!

You can get black, Christmas sets (red and green), 10 colour sets...  and there are some amazing pictures of how very clever people have used these.  One of my favourite examples is the decorated cookie.

I particularly liked the post about drawing on hardened fondant to make themed cupcakes (post here) but there have also been a number of posts about using the pens to decorate marshmallows (post here).  I love how simply you could decorate a cake or cupcake and really make it something special with these pens, some corn syrup and some sparkles!

Now to find somewhere to buy them in Australia...

May Delicious - the Italian issue

Everything in this issue is so tempting... but given it is already mid-May I am going to limit myself to just a few recipes:

• crisp fried cheese ravioli
• gorgonzola cheesecake
• broccolini and chilli pasta with pangrattato
• lamb caponata
• mushroom lasagne
• roast pumpkin rotolo
• lemon and prosecco cake
• frittatine (frittata cooked with white wine)

Let's see how far I can get...

Jean-george's fried rice

I do love fried rice - I make Bill Granger's Thai Fried Rice regularly - onion, vegies, fish sauce, rice and an egg.  It's pretty simple, and delicious.

Even simpler is Jean-George's fried rice - courtesy of Mark Bittman and cooked by G (recipe). Rice, ginger, garlics, leek topped with a sunny side up egg.  Of course, no meal is complete without vegetables in my house, so G kindly served it with some stir fried greens/mushrooms:

Topped with the egg:

Running a little late with April Delicious

There were a lot of things I wanted to make from the April magazine (as detailed here).  Disappointingly, I didn't manage to get through about half of the ones I had planned, for a variety of reasons.  I actually think there were too many sweet things that I wanted to make, and not enough office birthdays/family occasions to warrant making them.

• Apple tart
• White chocolate scones
• Chicken cacciatore (which I can make from a packet!) - I can make it from a packet...
• Pistachio meringues - actually really simple and not that exciting sounding once I read the entire recipe
• Hot cross muffins - Easter had already passed by the time I thought about this, maybe next year

Then of course, there were the recipes I did make:

• Orange drops - delicious, easy, more interesting that plain butter biscuits
• Pan fried mushrooms - not filling enough as a dinner (not that I can blame Jamie for that one)
• Stuffed mushrooms - pretty delicious
• Risoni salad - too much risoni to salad even though I followed the recipe
• Chocolate mousse - probably the best recipe in the issue
• Blue eye with a sun dried tomato crust - delicious, and quite restaurant looking for an at-home dish, and the crust was fantastic stuffed in the mushrooms
• Oven baked risotto - my first successful risotto!

Of course, I didn't get anything made from the Food for Friends booklet that accompanied April Delicious...

Orange drops

G rates these as pretty awesome - one of the best biscuits I've made:

The recipe calls for more ingredients than I would normally expect to see in a biscuit, but the flavours made it entirely worthwhile - almond meal, orange, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, baking powder and vanilla.

The strangest part was the egg wash at the end - a beaten egg with some water brushed over the top.  It really made the biscuits super shiny and delicious looking.  G absolutely gilded the lily by dipping the cooked biscuits in whipped cream - they made a delicious addition to a very civilised afternoon tea: