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Green Tea Cake

Green Tea Cake

This is my second attempt to make a Green Tea Cake. I am a big fan of green tea and I have been having a slice or two with a glass of milk for breakfast since I made this. Sweet yet deep favour coming from the bitterness of the green tea powder. Almost like a bitter sweet chocolate. Except it is tea. The texture is soft and light.

Tropical Paradise

Tropical Paradise, a photo by IceCatSeoul on Flickr.

I finally got time to complete an entremet which encompasses flavours of the Tropics. Think of a nice beach vacation in a cup. This is what I got: Tropical Paradise - Coconut and Mango Mousse with Soft Coconut Lime Biscuits. It didn't end here yet. Just to add an intensity to the exotic, I paired the mousse up with Passion Fruit Curd.

Spicy asian food for this weekend.

It had been some time since I had Tom Yum Gung. I missed the hot and sour taste of the seafood broth. That Friday morning I walked to Chinese quarter at Guillotiere to pick up some fresh lemon grass, galangal as well as herbs like cilantro and spring onions. On the way back I picked up some fruits from the morning market. There were so many seasonal fruits to be spoilt for choice. The dark cherries from nearby farms, the strawberries from spain, the fully ripe apricots with lovely shades of red and orange.

Voila, afternoon lunch menu was Tom Yum Gung with Rendang Lamb, with market fruits.
Making tom yum gung is pretty simple. It was my first attempt but a success.

Recipe: Tom Yum Gung(Thai hot and sour shrimp soup)

Ingredients:

• 400G of shrimps
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste
• 5 small red chillies, deseeded and chopped
• one inch of galangal, sliced
• 4 stalks of lemon grass, lower potions cut into 1 inch length and pounded to release the flavour
• 10 Dried Kaffir lime leaves
  
• I tbsp Dried tamarind, soaked in 1/2 cup of hot water; strained and reserve the water
• 1 cup straw mushroom
• 2 tomatoes, cut into wedges
• 6 tablespoon of Fish sauce
  

Garnish:

• chopped cilantro
• chopped spring onion
• limes wedges

Remove shells and heads from shrimp. Put the shells and heads in a pot and cover with 1 litre of water. This is to make a shrimp broth. Let it boil and simmer for 10 mins.
Strain broth and discard the shells and heads.
Boil the broth and add the rest of the ingredients except the shrimp. Let it simmer for 10minutes.
Add the shrimps and let it cook for another 1min.
Serve it in a bowl, topped with chopped cilantro, spring onions and a wedge of lime.


I made Lamb Rendang with premade Rendang sauce from Malaysia. It was just as simple as adding some onion and diced lamb cubes to the sauce and simmer for 30 mins. Served with white rice.

Here is my dessert for the weekend, les fruits du terroir - Abricots, fraises, cerises.

English lemon cake

After my trip to London, I still dream about the lemon cake from the natural history museum cafe. The cafe has a nice ambiance with exhibit displays of dinosaur and panda. In the center of the cafe there was a long table with an elegant arrangement of English cakes. The Englishs must have bestowed afternoon tea with great importance. The museum was awesome with so many different zones to visit. Since Ced and I arrived 2 hours before the closing time, I just did the blue zone - Dinosaurs, Fish et mammals- and I briefly glanced through the other zones: Darwin and the precious stones.

Back to the lemon cake, it was very moist and soft in the interior with a fresh citrus tang. Pure simple delight.
So when I came back to Lyon, I scoured though recipes online before I found one, similar to the english lemony ones, at Tentations gourmande de Chris.