Pistachio, pear mousse cake.

For a friend's birthday I made a special cake. It consisted of 5 layers (6 if you add butter cream).

1. moist chocolate cake. It was nice and moist but not very chocolaty will have to work on that
2. poached pear layer (flavored with cinnamon, and a little kirsch)
3. vanilla pastry cream
4. sacher torte layer a very thin and denser layer to provide textual contrast
5. pistachio mousse

Notes on the cake
Somehow the chocolate flavor was muted, have to up the flavor quotient a little bit.
I had wanted something more crunchy somehow, to give more contrast with the vanilla pastry cream and the poached pear from the pistachio mousse. Most things that I know will absorb the water and become soggy. There are these chocolate rice crispy type things that might work, or even a sheet of chocolate...
The pistachio mousse was done by lightening the pistachio paste with a pate bombe and italian meringue. (two eggs worth) to one pint of HC, otherwise the paste would probably have been too dense to mix correctly with the HC.
I should have flavored the cake layer with a syrup of some sort, but was afraid of making it too crumbly.

In all it was a successful cake.

1000 year old marinade

Came across this recipe for a 1000 year old marinade from the New York Times. description slightly altered

Time: About 20 minutes, plus marinating

1/2 bottle rich, full-bodied red wine, preferably Amarone

2 tablespoons sugar

6 whole cloves

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon orange zest

2 8- to 12-ounce rib-eye steaks, about 1/2-inch thick

Salt and pepper.

1. In a large pot, boil sugar and wine. Simmer for 10 minutes and add cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and orange zest. Cool

2. In a dish, marinate for a few hours up to a week in a refrigerator.

3. Cook in a hot skillet with salt and pepper for about 2 minutes each side.

Yield: 4 servings.

Rice Cooker

Need to find a new rice cooker. I have a small 3 cups one which works but always has a crust on the bottom of the pot, which I attribute to it being too hot. No matter what I've done, more water, less rice, it always has that crusty layer which the old one didn't have.

Course the trick is the 'new' one is like 15 bucks. Any of the fancier ones that I've seen is like much more expensive. The cheapest I've seen is the Panasonic SRYB05P which goes for 90 here. The next is the Sanyo 5 cup ECJF50S which goes for around 95 in various places. There is the ECJS35K which is a 3 cup model but appears to be recent, and goes for more than the 5 cup model. It's most interesting factor is that it makes bread as well. Maybe I should wait for prices to drop a little.

One aspect that I like about the Sanyo models is that they have a very thick rice pot, which should cook the rice more evenly.

There are sites that have rice cooker specific recipes, practically allowing you to have one pot meals. With the fancier rice cookers, you can cook brown rice, porridge etc.

One negative aspect is that you cannot usually clean all of the machine easily such as the outer lid. Can't have everything!

Mac and Cheese

I was reading some posts on mac and cheese in which some said to use evaporated milk instead of milk, which would give it a thicker texture, and to use gorgonzola (a smelly cheese).

I will have to look into those two things. Blue cheese was originally recommended but since I don't normally eat those, I haven't tried.

The perfect omlette

Was reading an article about creating french omelets and I gleamed a few tricks.

Use small cubed cold butter with the eggs, stirring over medium heat. The butter keeps the proteins in the egg from forming long strands as it melts, keeping the omelet tender.

The eggs, should be stirred rapidly until most of it is cooked and then flame off and covered which will cook the omelet the rest of the way for a minute or two.

Covering will cook the top of the eggs rapidly so the bottom of the omelet doesn't brown and it remains eggs remain soft.

Merlot tasting

Had a nice wine tasting over the weekend of a bunch of merlots. The merlot varied a great deal and were from all over. Two were from Columbia valley in Washington, two were from Napa and two were from Bordeaux. I had brought Newton and the 2nd Bordaeux (not pictured).

The first two I thought were drinkable but not something I would have with food. They both had the touch of leather and the first dark cherry but were somewhat light. The Newton was more complex and certainly good, I had thought it had goon tannic nature and had mistaken it for the Bordeaux (the fourth wine) because I thought it had some cab franc from the salivatory nature. The Chateau D'Aiguilhe was good, despite being 2003 (supposedly not a great year for wine because it was so hot) having good structure and some complexity. I did not taste the cab franc in it. The last was 2005 from Washington that was good, but did not resemble the other Washington Merlot also 2005, though Red Mountain (from which the 5th came from) is an appellation.

The sixth wine was very Bordeaux, had a raw meat flavor and would probably go really well with a heavy dish, and was not my favorite.

I would probably rate the wines in order of preference, 3, 5, 4, 2, 1, 6. If it was just to drink I would proably go 1, 2, 4, 5 and 3

First post of the year.... Salt

I was emailing someone on salt, because there was interest in a salted chocolate, either as a sea salt caramel or a salted dark chocolate when the person asked, if there was a difference between regular salt and sea salt.

Yes there is. There's two common salts table salt, and kosher salt. Both are usually mined, and processed. Kosher salt has larger grains and has no preservatives while table salt can have an anti-caking agent and usually contains iodine to help with lymphatic issues (such as goiter).

Sea salt is dried from sea water, and will contain minerals of the sea in question, though I know that some sea salt has been somewhat processed. I've seen red and black sea salt that I believe has had additives.