Pizza patate

As I've said once or twice, I love the pizza patate at Sullivan Street Bakery. A few years ago, I read about a recipe for it on Smitten Kitchen. But there was a lot of uncertainty -- Deb concluded that there must've been an error in the recipe because the dough would've been way too wet. Reading around about pizza bianca, though, I decided that I wanted to try the original version of the recipe -- it really is supposed to be a very wet dough.

I think the main problem is that the recipe doesn't talk you through the parts that go against your normal baking instincts. The dough really is more of a batter. (After about 10 minutes in the stand mixer, it did sort of pull away from the sides, but when the mixer stopped it slumped right back again.) And the 30 minute baking time just seems much too long for a pizza, but it turned out to be just right.

I let the dough rise for 2 hours. The directions call for you to split the dough in two, and spread it on two baking sheets, but I just used one large baking sheet, so it was slightly thicker than intended. To spread the dough out, I had to rub my hands with oil because it was incredibly sticky.

Overall, this was very very close to that delicious pizza bianca from Sullivan Street. The crust was excellent, like a thin, chewy foccacia.

Secret ingredient

The first time I tried making a passionfruit-flavoured cake, it didn't work very well. I added the amount of passionfruit called for by the recipe, and the batter tasted of nothing. I added more and more, and yet the final cake did not taste of passionfruit at all. (I saved the cake, somewhat, by topping it with a passionfruit ganache that was excellent -- the chocolate-passionfruit combination is delightful.)

Anyway, cut to last week, when I bought some feijoas at the markets. To me, they smelled intensely of passionfruit. (Other people compare them to guava or pineapple.) They tasted okay, but mostly just made me want passionfruit instead. And luckily enough, this week at the markets I found passionfruit on sale.

So, I bring you passionfruit cupcakes (with secret ingredient, feijoa):

These worked out well. The passionfruit taste was definitely there. I topped them with some lemon 'cream cheese' icing which was a nice combination.

1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 feijoa, pureed with soymilk to make just over 1/2 cup total
4 large passionfruits
1 t vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 T flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt

Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Pomegranates

I saw this video ages ago, but I only tried the technique out this week. It wasn't quite as easy as it looks in the video -- the ribs on my pomegranate were a bit wonky -- but I liked pulling the fruit open in this way. You don't lose any arils or make any mess.

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.)