Archive for March, 2008

Passion Nut?

Posted by Candace on Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Its time again for another Daring Baker post! This is an especially fun one, as there was quite a bit of leeway in the flavoring and decorating. So expect to see many many fancy layer cakes in the blogosphere today! The hostess this month was Morven from Food Art and Random Thoughts, and the recipe is from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours. You can find the recipe here.

When I saw the crazy amount of egg whites used in the cake and butter cream, I immediately knew I would fill the cake with some sort of curd. What better way to use up those yolks? Instead of the usual lemon, I chose to make passion fruit curd. I haven’t made curd with passion fruit before, so it was a bit of an experiment. Can we say yummy? I basically replaced the lemon juice with passion fruit puree in a basic lemon curd recipe. Easy peasy…

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March 30th, 2008 by Candace / Filed under Bakery, Daring Bakers, Sweet Tooth / 55 Critiques

Kona Kampachi Sushi

Posted by Candace on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

One of my favorite things to eat is sushi. Although I’m half Japanese, I was a wimp and didn’t try sushi until I was in my early 20′s. I was always afraid of eating raw fish, but after my first taste, I was hooked. With all the different things I cook and bake, I’ve never made sushi until the other day. I had the perfect opportunity to make sushi with the Kona Kampachi (Yellowtail) so I figured it was time. Of course, I winged it as usual, and ended up with a ridiculous amount of cut veggies and not enough rice. Who woulda thought it took so much rice (and so little veggie) to make sushi? I really wanted to make Nigiri-Sushi, but I ran out of rice before I got to it. Oh well… we still had more than we could eat.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ll make sushi again, as it was really quite labor intensive. We also have a little family owned Japanese/Thai restaurant close to our home that has fantastic sushi. I try to go there at least once a week to cure my sushi cravings. However, the flavor was unbelievably good. The fresh Kona Kampachi with the just cooked rice… you can’t get that, even in the best Sushi restaurant. OK, maybe I’ll make sushi again if I have an amazing piece of fish that warrants home made sushi!
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March 26th, 2008 by Candace / Filed under Asian, Seafood / 14 Critiques

Egg-celent cookies

Posted by Candace on Monday, March 24th, 2008

I just wasn’t feeling Eastery this year.  We didn’t even have an Easter dinner… just a little homemade guacamole and Coronas while watching a movie.  I know, I’m a bad wife, but we’ve been so busy with Stephan’s business, it just slipped my mind.  Its definitely Wedding season in South Florida!  Anyway, instead of making Easter Dinner, I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to make my favorite sugar cookies.  I used the same recipe from my Halloween cookies, but ommitted the baking soda.  I spent some time decorating them with pink, blue and yellow Royal Icing.
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March 24th, 2008 by Candace / Filed under Bakery, Holiday Fare, Sweet Tooth / 6 Critiques

Fishing Online?

Posted by Candace on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Since I’ve experienced the joys of online shopping, my days at the mall are few and far between. I’ve recently started to buy some food related products online, and it’s just opened up a whole new world!

I received an email from Kona Blue and was quite intrigued. They asked if I’d like a sample of their product, which is Kona Kampachi. After a little research, I found its more common name is Yellowtail, which happens to be my favorite fish when eating Sushi or Sashimi. So I said… bring it on! I was expecting to receive a little fish, you know, maybe a pound or so.

Imagine my surprise when I got a large box that contained a huge fish! I was excited, then terrified, then came full circle back to excited. I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. The only time I’ve cleaned a fish was in culinary school, and that was almost 10 years ago! So I sharpened my biggest knife, and decided to cut it into steaks instead of filleting, as it was big enough to do that. In the end, I was successful, but my counter looked like Tony Soprano had whacked someone on it.

I’ll admit, I was a bit wary of having fish sent to me. However… it arrived, surrounded by quite a few ice packs, and was very very cold. I decided to keep my dinner simple since the fish was so fresh, and chose to pan saute the fish steak and serve it with an orange-passionfruit glaze. Fabulous, absolutely fabulous. The quality is out of this world. Next time I’m in the mood for some fabulously fresh fish, I will definitely be ordering from Kona Blue.

I was too scared to try making Sushi or Sashimi this time, but will definitely try another day. Hmmm, maybe even ceviche. Come back to see what else I do with it… as I’ll be able to make several dinners from this one fish!
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March 18th, 2008 by Candace / Filed under Dinner, Product Review, Seafood / 6 Critiques

Blueberry Galette

Posted by Candace on Thursday, March 13th, 2008

As usual, I had something on the verge of going bad in my fridge (blueberries) and decided to salvage them by baking something. I found this galette recipe in my Essential Baker cookbook. It’s my kind of recipe… very easy, and not labor intensive. I wish I had the time to make complicated, many step recipes, but its just not in the cards for me. To make this even easier, I made the dough the day before I baked it, and let it rest in the fridge overnight. Can’t get any easier than that!
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I’m entering this photo in the September Photo Event, This blog clicks (Crusts.)

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March 13th, 2008 by Candace / Filed under Bakery, Sweet Tooth / 23 Critiques
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