Kung pao monkey head mushrooms

One of our favourite things we ate in Singapore last year was monkey head mushrooms cooked kung pao style. Monkey head mushrooms have a really excellent texture -- quite meaty, a bit chewy, and a bit spongy so they are great at soaking up sauces.

Following these directions, I soaked the mushrooms several times, then squeezed them out, cut them up and deep fried them. (I didn't soak them in a marinade.) I then made the kung pao, adding ordinary mushrooms and capsicum. (I didn't have any leeks, unfortunately.) I added a bit of water to the sauce, because I wanted there to be enough for the monkey heads to absorb.

With all the soaking and frying, it was kind of a hassle to make this, but it was so good!

Caramelized white chocolate

I really love my pressure cooker, and I love finding new uses for it. One that I've been curious about for a while is using the pressure cooker to caramelize white chocolate. You put the chocolate in a jar, fill the cooker partway with water, and cook. I think I first read about this on Ideas in Food, but it wasn't until I got their cookbook (Ideas in Food), that I got up the nerve to try it out. (Although I am almost totally over any fear of the pressure cooker exploding, it was a little scary putting a closed up jar in there.)

On the left is how the white chocolate started, on the right is after an hour in the pressure cooker. (The recipe called for 30 minutes, but mine had hardly changed colour at that point.) I used the same vegan white chocolate recipe I used last time (with half almond meal and half soy milk powder).

I'll definitely do this again. Caramelizing the white chocolate gave it a really complex and delicious flavour. My favourite discovery came when I mixed a small amount of the caramelized chocolate into the uncaramelized stuff -- say, 1 part caramelized to 4 or 5 parts uncaramelized.

I used most of the caramelized white chocolate as Kamozawa and Talbot suggest: in their Popcorn Gelato. Mine didn't work out that popcorny (partly I think because I used plain popcorn, not butter-flavoured; partly because I wasn't able to strain the popcorn mixture thoroughly enough). However, it did work out white chocolatey and delicious! Here it is as a choc-top with caramel sauce.

Coconut-oil croissants

For the first time ever, I managed to make croissants. (Last time, I ended up with something like croissant-shaped brioche.)

The secrets of my success: (1) Lagusta's recipe and its use of coconut oil, (2) it not being the middle of summer this time, (3) letting the dough spend each rest period in the fridge.

I ended up making mini croissants because I had halved the recipe, but hadn't thought through the consequences when it came to the part where you cut the dough into triangles ready for croissantification. Also, my triangles should have been taller/longer, to make prettier croissants.

I used mostly refined coconut oil, but some non-refined. They tasted great -- not coconutty specifically, just delicious. I found the dough really easy to work -- I think that Lagusta's suggestion of refrigerating it for 10 minutes between turns is really helpful. Depending on the temperature of the house, I think next time I might let them have most of their final rise in the fridge (say an overnight rise, with an hour to warm up before baking.) As it was, although the coconut oil was fairly solid in the morning when I started, by afternoon when they were rising, it was melting out.

Sambhar masala

Toasted spices, waiting to be ground up:

(Recipe from 660 Curries.)