Giving Feta a 2nd chance...

The 1st time I tasted feta was during my secondary school days. Back then, whenever I'm at the supermarket buying stuffs for mom, I would 1 or 2 ingredients tht brings out E curiosity in me. :p Most are ingredients used in western cuisines. French mustard, different types of pasta, salad dressings...etc2. I love cheese, so I gave feta a try and it was terrible! My niece would say it's "grosstique"! I tried a few other cheeses too but was disappointed most of the time, thus I stick to those few common ones. Mozzarella, cheddar, ricotta and Parmesan; just to name a few. It would be great if I can appreciate and enjoy all the cheese normally found on a cheese platter. Wouldn't it be lovely to sit in the front porch of your house, enjoying a cup of fruit flavoured tea with bread and a cheese platter? :D

Anyways, last week, I was shopping at Cold storage which is my favourite favourite supermarket btw! Somehow I was at the dairy products and a bottle of feta in olive oil caught my eye. I thought the taste would be disappointing again, so why bother? Then again, I remember Jamie Oliver crumbling the feta in his watermelon salad and there was also Nigella's feta in omelette. Possibilities were running in my head and I had to give feta a 2nd chance.

Back home, 1 took a bite of the salty, slightly bitter and I was disappointed again. I kept the whole bottle in the fridge and I didn't even remember about it!

So, the previous night I was clearing my fridge coz am going to my brother's place and would not be coming back for about 2 weeks. I wanted the fridge as empty as possible. Once it was almost empty. it was totally impossible to ignore poor little miss Feta! I went online and search for recipes using feta. There were lots of course but I decided on a simple 1 and best of all, I had almost all the ingredients.

Yes, this is E same Greek salad that turned me into a convert for life. The feta compliments the salad so so beautifully. E salad was so light, refreshing and aromatic! I loved it tremendously! It's just like a beautiful song...where both the music and lyrics are in harmony and compliments each other. I'm already planning to get more feta so that I can try different variations of this salad :)I have to let my family try this salad. Let's hope they too gonna demolish every bit of the feta, lettuce, tomato and olives!

I shall update the recipe tomorrow :)

Caramel-y Creamy

Ingredients:

2 cups of heavy cream
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 cup of milk
1 cup of white sugar and another 1/2 cup for the caramel sauce
3 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
A pinch of salt

Method:
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Heat the heavy cream and milk in a saucepan on medium heat until you see small bubbles on the sides of the pan.
Whisk 1/2 a cup of the sugar, egg yolks and eggs together in a medium bowl.
Whisk the hot cream and milk into the sugar and egg mixture.
Pass the mixture through a sieve and into a measuring cup. Stir in the salt and vanilla extract.
Place six 6-oz. ramekins in a deep baking dish and keep to one side.
Pour 1/2 cup sugar into a clean saucepan.
Add enough water to dissolve the sugar, and put the pot over high heat. Stir for one minute.
Mix the caramel around to ensure caramelization is even.

Pour the caramel into the ramekins

Divide the mixture so that the bottom of each ramekin is covered with a thin coat of the caramel. Pour the custard into the caramel-bottomed ramekins, and fill the baking dish with water so that the bottom halves of the ramekins are under water; cover the dish with foil.
Bake until the custard is set, which should take around 20 to 45 minutes.
Let the custards cool down in the water bath. After they've cooled down, remove the ramekins from the baking dish, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 2 days.
After the custard has been refrigerated, run a knife around the edge of each ramekin and invert the custard onto a nice plate, making sure you get all of the caramel out.

Note: Alternatively, you can bake the custards and pour some caramel over it.

Nk came over on Tuesday for a very much needed baking session. Half of her holidays are gone! Let's hope we make good use of E remaining 1.5months Nk! We should do more sweet treats. Vanilla ice cream with triple chocolate chip cookie dough next on E list! :)

Anyways, we made Martha's chewy old fashion oats cookies (I didn't remember to take pics!) which smelled incredible coz of the maple syrup and cinnamon. An encore should be coming up soon!

We also made sugar cookies. We decorated the cookies with some royal icing. We definitely had lotsa fun! :D

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

100g Butter

200g sugar

400g all purpose flour

1 egg

1tsp vanilla

Method:

Cream butter and sugar till creamy.

Add in egg and vanilla

Mix in flour.

Wrap in cling film and chill for at least an hour.
Roll out dough and cut into shapes.

Line on a baking tray and chill it for 20-30mins.
Bake for 15mins.

Royal icing:

2 large egg whites
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
3 cups (330 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

1 tsp vanilla

Method:

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the egg whites with the lemon juice. Add the sifted powdered sugar and beat on low speed until combined and smooth. Add in vanilla and your preferred colouring. The icing needs to be used immediately or transferred to an airtight container as royal icing hardens when exposed to air. Cover with plastic wrap when not in use.

:)

My last post was about a month ago. U.N.B.E.L.I.E.V.E.A.B.L.E I have to say. It all started with my eldest brother being hospitalized. A month had past....he is still in there. He is recovering though. Due to this swine flu thingy, visiting was such a chore. I pity some of his friends who came all the way to SGH to visit him but ended up leaving the hospital without even getting a glimpse of their friend aka my brother. Sighs....I can go on and on, but I shall put a full-stop for now :P I didn't bake for quite some time coz I spent more than 2 weeks at my brother's place. Now that I am home and every1 in the family is happy again to see my brother recovering rapidly, my spirits are back. I baked these over E weekend for an order...

These are actually chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache. I had to top it off with some cream coz the customer wanted a pink and red theme.