What have you been eating?

[Jubal]

Some more cake A basic chocolate cake with melted dark chocolate on top and an apricot jam filling (chocolate and apricot jam is a fairly Viennese cake combination, being the basis for sachertorte). I'm surprised at how not-chocolate-coloured it came out despite me putting quite a bit of cocoa powder in, maybe it needed even more.

[Glaurung]

That looks amazing, and I imagine it tastes amazing too.

[Jubal]

Yeah, it turned out with quite a nice moist sponge, and one can't go far wrong with the taste combination.

[Leafly]

What a great cake and interesting ingredient mix too!

[Jubal]

One of the nice things about travel and living in different places is picking up different flavour combinations I guess Do you cook/bake much?

[Leafly]

Yes, travelling must mean you pick some great cooking ideas! I try to sometimes bake, at the minute its cupcakes I seem to be baking every now and then 

[dubsartur]

Cooked chicken in a pommegranite-bacon-onion-cinnamon-pepper sauce.  These sauces make a great mess in my frying pan ... is there a trick or a type of pan which is better for things which will be on the heat for a long time?

[Jubal]

What kind of pan do you use?

[Jubal]

So, I had a salad recently with some purslane from my garden, plus lettuce, gorgonzola, prosciutto ham, pear slices, and a white vinegar/olive oil mix dressing. Worked well



Also I made crumpets! I've had crumpet rings sitting around for a while. They went fine, a bit flatter than I'd hoped and I'm not sure why that is, but still basically crumpety, they tasted right. I didn't try keeping any to toast later this time, but may do on a future occasion. I had a few with jam/honey to start with (Caradilis dropped by for the first time in months and also found them edible), and then did the below ones with cheese, herbs and walnuts for supper.

Unfortunately one of the rings broke when I washed them which is a bit rubbish - the joins in the metal seem a bit poorly made.

[Tusky]

Good effort! That salad looks healthy

[Jubal]

Given the quantity of ham, cheese, and oil involved, it may be a deceptive appearance! It tasted nice, whatever the nutritional value

[dubsartur]

Vietnamese-American ginger beef (with vinegar instead of fish sauce)

[Glaurung]

That looks interesting. What's the recipe?

[dubsartur]

450 g beef (thin sliced sirloin or hamburger)
Canola oil
3 cloves garlic
1 large yellow onion
1 cm long piece of fresh ginger
*1 stalk lemongrass (I more often use this in a similar recipe with white pepper replacing the ginger but I wanted to use it up)
5 mL sugar
30 mL Vietnamese clear fish sauce
Dried and hacked coriander leaves

Hack onion, lemongrass, and ginger fine.  Oil frying pan and sautée beef and ginger until lightly brown.  Throw in vegetables and spices and stir fry about 3 minutes.  Garnish with coriander leaves and serve over rice. 

[dubsartur]

Gilded another chicken in egg yolk-flour batter spiced with saffron, ginger chunks, salt, and pepper after the Harleian MS (Pleyn Delit 2e no. 94 Chike Endored).  I found that this was not such a success, the batter ended up too thick and baked into a hard dough instead of a soft moist crust.  It probably works better if you apply the mixture immediately after mixing it and use a brush to spread it over the bird.