Dutch Cheese cake (non-baked) - Kwarktaart

Description:
This cake is made with fresh curd cheese, which is a very young cheese and tastes like yoghurt. The difficult part is to get the right ingredients in Singapore.

In Dutch this cheese is called "kwark" (pronounce as: quark), in French it's "fromage fraiche" - learn more at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(cheese)

This cake is not oven baked and it needs to stiffen up in the fridge overnight, preferably about 24 hours.

In this case I used strawberries, but other fruits can be used too (berries are best), try not to use kiwi's as they break down the enzymes in the cake - and some fruits don't work with agar agar if you use that instead of gelatin.

I couldn't find gelatin sheets, so I used agar agar, but with 2 packets of it it didn't get the same texture as gelatin - maybe I did it wrongly? If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know!

Ingredients:
half packet of digestive biscuits
50 g butter
2 packets of agar agar (maybe more?) or 10 sheets of gelatin
500 g strawberries
1 lemon (or orange)
500 g curd cheese
150g caster sugar
125ml whipping cream



Directions:
Crush the biscuits and mix it with melted butter to form a dough to stick on the bottom of the cake tray. Coat the tray with butter before plastering the cookie dough on the bottom. Use a spoon to flatten it and make it smooth.

Whip the cream with 25 grams of caster sugar in a bowl until nearly stiff. Fold it into the curd cheese. Wash half of the strawberries and cut them into small pieces, add to the curd cheese mixture as well. Add the remaining sugar to it as well. Give it a taste and make sure it's not too sweet and not too sour.

For agar agar - what I did was: squeeze the lemon, add a bit of water, dissolve the agar agar in it and slowly bring it to a boil. Keep stirring. Add this to the cheese mixture while it is still in fluid form. Mix well.

Add the mixture to the cake form and spread it on top of the base. Cover with plastic foil and put in the fridge. Let it firm up.

If you like, whip some more cream and spread it over the top and add fresh half strawberries for decoration.



Somehow it didn't firm enough and not equally with the agar agar.

This is how you would do it with gelatin: Place the gelatine in a bowl of cold water and leave to soak for about ten minutes. Squeeze the lemon and heat the juice in a pan. Squeeze the gelatine to remove excess water and stir into the lemon juice until dissolved. Allow to cool. Mix it with the curd cheese mixture.

If anyone has an idea where I can buy gelatin sheets in Singapore - please let me know!

[photo courtesy of Upali Kohomban]

Belgian Endives from the oven (witlof uit de oven)

Description:
This is actually my mum's recipe, the way I remember it - and this is my favourite way to eat this vegetable.
It's not very common on this side of the world, but I managed to find it in Cold Storage!
(wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_endive )


Ingredients:
3 - 4 Belgian Endives
sliced ham (I used smoked ham and as the slices were quite small I had 6 slices)
soft grated cheese (I used mozzarella)
a bit of butter to coat the oven dish

Directions:
Clean the vegetable and take out the hard kernel at the stem. Use a small kitchen knife and cut out a cone shape from the stem, leaving the vegetable in one piece, make sure it's not falling apart.

Boil the vegetables till they get soft and turn colour (they are white originally and after boiling they become grayish green).

Drain them well and let them cool down.

Prepare an oven dish that is large enough to keep the vegetables next to each other. Coat the bottom and sides with butter, so that the vegetables won't stick to the dish. If you like you can sprinkle breadcrumbs over it as well.

Wrap the endives in the ham and place them nicely in the oven dish. Sprinkle the cheese over the top.

I cut the endives into 2 pieces each, so that it would be easier to serve it later, but this is up to you, you can leave them whole as well.

Put in the oven at about 180 C degrees for 10 - 15 minutes to bake it off and serve as a side dish.

[photo courtesy of Upali Kohomban]

Coq au Vin (rooster in wine)

Description:
I made this for X'mas dinner, following a recipe from Nigel Slater of the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/nov/25/foodanddrink.shopping

He has some great suggestions on the type of wine, bacon, and what kind of chicken to choose to get closest to the original taste of the dish.

It's a stew type dish, that means you need sufficient time - best is if you have all day to do the preparations and cooking the dish.

You will need wine too and it should be a full bodied red wine - as Burgundy (Bourgogne) wine is really expensive here, I chose a Shiraz from Australia - it will have the berry flavour and body that you need.
I didn't add the cognac - I found some other recipes and it seemed something that is optional.

A rooster is hard to get here, but I choose a kampung chicken and added some extra chicken legs and wings to the dish as well.
Below is my adopted version of Nigel Slater's recipe.

Upali brought his camera along, and I wasn't in the mood to take pictures, so photo courtesy of Upali Kohomban.

Ingredients:
a large kampung chicken, cut into large pieces + added extra chicken legs and wings - kept the neck, feet and some of the bony parts to make the stock.
an onion, a carrot and a few peppercorns for the stock
150g bacon (couldn't get it in the piece - so bought a packet of thick slices)
olive oil
2 medium sized yellow onions
a large carrot
4 ribs of celery
4 cloves of garlic
2 tbsps flour
a bottle of red wine
4 or 5 small sprigs of thyme
3 bay leaves
12 shallots, peeled (whole)

boiled baby potatoes with added herbs and a warmed with a bit of butter, to serve

Directions:
Put the chicken bony pieces, neck, feet and other parts that you don't want to eat into a pot, cover with water, add an onion and a carrot, half a dozen whole peppercorns and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and let it simmer to a stock until you need it.

Cut the bacon into short strips; they need to be thicker than a match but not quite as thick as your little finger. Put them, together with the olive oil (or butter if you prefer that), into a thick-bottomed casserole - one of enamelled cast iron would be perfect - and let them cook over a moderate heat. Stir the bacon from time to time - it mustn't burn - then, when it is golden, lift it out into a bowl, leaving behind the fat in the pan.

Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and place them in the hot fat in the casserole, so that they fit snugly yet have room to colour. Turn them when the underside is pale gold. The skin should be honey coloured rather than brown - it is this colouring of the skin, rather than what wine or herbs you might add later, that is crucial to the flavour of the dish. Lift the chicken out and into the bowl with the bacon. I had to do the baking of the chicken in batches as my pan wasn't large enough.

By now you should have a thin film of goo starting to stick to the pan. This is where much of your flavour will come from.

While the chicken is colouring in the pan, peel and roughly chop the onions and carrot, and wash and chop the celery (I did this before starting the cooking, but if you can multi-task you can do it at this stage). With the chicken out, add the onions and carrot and celery to the pan and cook slowly, stirring from time to time, until the onion is translucent and it has gone some way to dissolving some of the pan stickings. Add the shallots and garlic (sliced), as you go. Return the chicken and bacon to the pan, stir in the flour and let everything cook for a minute or two before pouring in the wine and tucking in the herbs. Spoon in ladles of the simmering chicken stock until the entire chicken is covered. Bring to the boil, then, just as it gets there, turn the heat down so that the sauce bubbles gently. Cover partially with a lid.


Check the chicken after 40 minutes to see how tender it is. It should be soft but not falling from its bones. It will probably take about an hour, depending on the type of chicken you are using. Once the chicken is tender, take out the chicken pieces and put them in a bowl.

Turn the heat up under the sauce and let it bubble enthusiastically until it has reduced a little. As it bubbles down it will become a bit thicker - though not thick - and will become quite glossy. Let it reduce to your liking - I actually liked the sauce and didn't let it get very thick.

Return the chicken to the pan with the sauce and serve with the potatoes.

For the potatoes I used baby potatoes, peeled them, boiled them, drained, then when my guests arrived, I heated them up quickly by melting a bit of butter in the pot, adding the potatoes and a few herbs and tossing them around in the pot for a few minutes, just to get them warm. Don't add too much butter, it's really just to warm them up again - so that you can prepare all and don't need to do too much when the guests get there.