Passion Fruit Pie - a sweet little piece of sunshine

My husband's recent birthday was the perfect excuse to prepare something sweet. 

Our passion fruit vine has been giving us so much fruit this year that it was meant to be... passion fruit pie. 

It's like a little piece of sunshine... and it's hard to just have one slice. Enjoy! 

Passion Fruit Pie 

Bottom Crust
1 package of butter cookies (about 20)
1/2 cup of melted salted butter
1 teaspoon of water (if necessary)

Easy, just run the cookies in a blender, add the butter and the water and mix for about 10 seconds. Pour everything in a medium size pie mold or any other pan. Press the crust tightly. It should not be thicker than 1 cm (4 inch). Leave aside.

Passion Fruit Cream
1 small can of sweetened condensed milk
1 small pack of whipping cream (38% fat)
10 g of powdered gelatin or 1 sheet
Pulp from 8 passion fruits

Remove the pulp from you passion fruit before you start anything else. Set aside.

Start whipping your cream until firm. Now dissolve the gelatin in a little bit of hot water. Add the condensed milk, the gelatin and the passion fruit pulp to the whipped cream and fold gently. Pour it into the crust you previously prepared and let set in the fridge for at least an hour.

Passion Fruit jelly topping
Pulp from 6 to 8 passion fruit
1/2 glass of natural peach juice (nectar)
1 tablespoon of sugar
10 g of powdered gelatin or 1 sheet

Now that the cream as set, remove the pulp from you passion fruit, add the peach juice and sugar and mix well. As before dissolve your gelatin in a bit of hot water and add it to rest. Stir very well and carefully pour over the cream. Return to the fridge for at least another couple of hours, just to be sure it won't fall apart and you get nice slices. 

Cheers all!

A Carb-less Nifty Little Salmon dish ... and a start up to a thinner you.

It has been a little over a year now that I decided to cut down on my carb frenzy and all I can say is that it has worked wonders on my health. So, no more big bowls of spaghetti and pizza is definitely a treat for special weekends. I feel lighter and oddly enough, more energized, though I suspect there's a lot of psychology involved. (see unusually large smile when fitting in my favorite jeans)

I realized for some time already that the reason why it is so hard to keep eating right is because... well, once hunger hits, I'm not ready to give it a good fight. If I could only have a way to whisk out something really tasty and filling in less than 15 minutes, I would be out of excuses... and that's just what I set myself to do. 

I went out and bought lots of individually wrapped frozen fish fillet (salmon, tilapia, haddock... any as long as it's a 100% unprocessed fish without anything added to it).

 This is what I'm talking about

I also bought chicken steaks and breasts, wrapped each individually and froze them. Also, ground chicken and turkey meat, divided and shaped into individual portions of no more than 150 grams each (about 5 ounces). I guess I'm pretty much covered, protein-wise. 

As for vegetables, cooking time and shelf-life was a problem so I decided to look for frozen vegetables that could also be quickly prepared and had minimal cooking involved. The best choices where frozen spinach, specially those that already come shaped into nuggets for easy use, mixed cut vegetables are also very convenient. Basically, I look for anything that is small enough to be cooked in no more than 5 minutes and also give a big plus to anything that doesn't require boiling. One of my best finds was dried wakame seaweed. All it needs is to be re-hydrated in some hot water and voila! Plus, it's incredibly healthy and rich in omega 3, doesn't spoil and is relatively inexpensive. I try to always keep cucumbers and tomatoes in the fridge, for a quick add-on to my meals.

I also got myself a digital scale to make sure I keep my carbs in check and a good 8 inch non-stick pan that is just the right size to accommodate the meal I'm setting off to cook... and also pretty much eliminates the need for extra oil.

As for carbs, I'm not a zealot. I'm not sure that cutting them down completely is healthy, but it does make things very hard and I realized soon enough that avoiding them too much always made me feel more hungry, so I compensated by eating more protein and soon enough, my cholesterol levels started to go overboard and seriously... I need that little guilty pleasure, even though it's just at 300 g (10 ounces) a day.

So this brings me back to the last post and that nifty little carb-less dish. 

I just whisked out a piece of salmon out of the freezer and let it slowly defrost (about 15 minutes outside), cut into nice bite-size pieces and set aside. I then rehydrated a handful on wakame seaweed in hot water for 5 minutes, drained and lay them at the bottom of a bowl. Added the salmon, one chopped cucumber, green onion. That's pretty straight forward. What really made this dish a winner  were  the topping: japanese dry seasoning and a slightly spicy soy sauce my husband concocted.

The dry seasoning was sent to me from Japan and as I'm quickly running out of it, I decided to try and reproduce it at home. So here's a close up...

 

...and that's what's in it:

• 1 Tbsp of black sesame seeds

• 1 Tbsp of white roasted sesame seeds

• 1 Tbsp of dried bonito shavings

• 1 Tbsp of granulated wasabi (optional) - use crushed wasabi peas for a similar taste!

• 1 Tbsp of chopped roasted nori (seaweed sheets for sushi rolls)

• 1/2 tsp of fine sea salt 

Mix everything well and keep in a airtight container, preferably in the fridge.

Ok, on with the sauce!

This is pretty easy too! Just mix about 1/4 of a cup of soy sauce with 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil, 1 teaspoon of mirin (japanese sweet wine) and 1/2 teaspoon of Shichimi Togarashi, also called japanese 7 spice. Let it sit for a few minutes before using, so you'll get the full taste of that amazing roasted orange peel!

If you don't like spicy, you can freely skip the spicy stuff.

Now, just sprinkle your dry seasoning over the dish and add a couple of tablespoons of prepared soy sauce. 

Here's a wonderfully light meal, perfect for the Summer and so easy to make, there's just no excuse to eat junk.

Have a great week all!

I'm back!

Dear readers, it's been such a long time. I guess life has pretty much got in the way and I haven't found much time to sit down and share what I have been up to!
I recently started to work for a coffee shop and got back to making bread, which I absolutely love!
With little time left, I came up with some pretty neat little dishes that are easy to whisk up and relatively cheap too. One of them is this carb-less super healthy salmon dish. There isn't even any cooking involved and I have to give my husband the credit for it, he came up with the idea one of these evenings. Curious? Take a look!

This dish reminds me of one I made before, the "three way salmon", I just skipped the rice and used rehydrated wakame seaweed and used sashimi quality salmon, cut into nice fat slabs. Cucumber, green onion, a special japanese seasoning and a homemade super tasty sauce.
I haven't written down the recipe for the sauce and the seasoning, but please stay tuned, I'll write it down in the next few days!

Meanwhile, have a great weekend all! ^_^

Daring Bakers' Challenge: Traditional British Pudding - Spotted Dick

The April 2010 Daring Bakers' Challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding, using, if possible a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

...and this is what turned out! ^_^

I decided to go for a traditional English spotted dick, though in a not so traditional shape. It actually turned out very very pretty, though in all seriousness, I don't think I would go out of my way to bake this again. It wasn't bad and I actually had a british friend to come over and have a taste and according to him, this one actually beats most of the ones you'll find in England by miles. 

I'm not yet convinced. 

The warm custard did improve this pudding a lot in my opinion. 

Here are more pictures of the event...

...take a look at the inside.

I will post all the recipe's details this weekend, for all of you out there brave enough!

Ps: Dear Daring Baker's staff, this is my first try at a DB's challenge and just realized I was one day late... oups. 


EDIT:

As many of you pointed out, I have yet to post the recipe for my spotted dick and well, this is embarrassing in two ways. First, I wish this tasted as good as it looked, which it didn't, except for the yummy custard (whose recipe was published in another post). Second, the recipe wasn't altogether mine and now that I'm looking back to find it's author, it seems to have vanished from the web. So I'm stuck with a beautiful pudding, albeit not so tasty and no one to give credit for (though I'm not sure if I would be doing it a favor). My deepest apologies, I hope to be back soon with the recipe!

Toto Restaurant, Tel Aviv

There's a game called the association game, you take a word, draw a circle around it and then, like the sun, draw rays out with associated words. Today's word is: Toto. First things that come to mind are, mmm... Dorothy's dog in the Wizard of Oz, that successful 80's band (Africa!) and Japanese toilets (those that warm your rump and even wash it).

Toto toilet in Japan, not at the T.A restaurant.

But enough with the good things, today's association is a dreadful one, a horror one would believe to exist only in the Grimm brothers' tales.
Ok, that's a tad much! ;-)

Toto Restaurant is a lauded restaurant sitting in Tel Aviv, so lauded it's often mentioned as one of Israel's top ten restaurants. Or is that so...?

As you might have guessed, I'm disgusted, furious and offended by the - for lack of better word - poor excuse of something pretending to be an Italian restaurant. While I thought of writing this review in the morning, I decided to be sure not one detail would slip away and let you know, dear Israeli readers, that Toto is most probably the most overrated restaurant in Israel. 

I am writing this post, sucking on a Tums and literally in pain. Because I love food and respect so much those who pour their heart into it, I feel violated. It's like someone farted in a pan and called it ermm... Green Pasta with Shrimps and mussels. Ohh wait, that's one of the dishes I ate. 

Lets start.

After we were given a menu, we were pretty much left on our own. And let me tell you, whoever wrote that menu should be kicked in the rear. No clear description, no methods of confection, no ingredients, just silly empty meaningless names. Me and my P.I.C called our waiter three times before he came, nonchalantly. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to know anything of what was written in the menu and stared at us (and at the menu) blankly, like a dead fish. We asked what pizza was there on the menu and he said... erm... there's ermm... pizza, with cheese... and additions. 

Additions? 

We had pretty much picked our dishes but decided to ask anyways what he recommended and again, he nodded vaguely and said we had already picked the most recommended dishes. How convenient.

Five minutes later, they brought us a plate of sliced bread, which was nice and served with a variety of olives, olive oil and a tomato sauce, very much like the type served with jachnun.

 Good bread, nice olives, bitter olive oil and jachnun tomato sauce

We decided to order 4 dishes and a pizza, so we could get a good sampling of food. We politely asked that it should be brought 2 dishes at the time, so that it would not all go cold. This was completely ignored.

The first dish, Shrimp Calamari and Octopus Bisque tasted alright, but it was no bisque at all. Bisque is supposed to be a creamy seafood flavored soup (you'll soon realize there is a pattern here). This was just a mess of different things, tossed in a random sauce. Ohh, and there wasn't any octopus there either.

 This was probably the best dish, though it wasn't a bisque at all.

That's basil on top.

Then came the pizza... while our first reaction was a "ohhhh nice", it quickly faded into a "errmm... something's wrong here". The crust was neither crispy or chewy... it just felt like a dense tasteless wet cookie. The tomato sauce was good though, otherwise, if you really feel like getting ripped, just spare yourself the trouble and go straight to Pizzahut.

Pizza: Salami, aged Parmesan, old and wilted arugula and basil on top.

We then tasted the green pasta with shrimps and mussels. Ok, seriously, I never really liked dill that much, except in my chicken soup and pickles, but they really went bananas on this one. The pasta was made with dill, the sauce was made with dill and the whole dish had... you guessed, dill sauce! I'm done with dill for the next few years. Pun intended... I could not dill with it. I would love to meet the guy who came up with this brilliant dish and slap him sideways, up and down.

 Dill, dill, dill and basil.

Thought that was all? Ohh no... this is only going down from here.

Blue Crab with Wassabi Cream (yes, they can't even spell "Wasabi"). Four tiny crabs, hidden under a goo pile of over powering wasabi cream. I bravely started to crack the little beast open and pry anything I could from its tiny body, but I mostly just ate wasabi.

I usually enjoy wasabi, but not as a main dish. 

More basil, purple this time.

Did I mention that every single dish was garnished with basil? If I was Italian, I guess that was supposed to make me feel right at home.

Not.

We also had ordered the black pasta, but, thank goodness, it didn't make it and we never got to see the likes of it. We didn't complain about it.

Time for the desserts. I must say we had high hopes and wished deep in our hearts that this could somehow redeem Toto... after all, it wasn't going too well.We looked liked two bloated wales, washed ashore, determined to live long enough to tell about the desserts. We had nothing else to hope for.

Cake or death?

I'll take the cake, thank you.

Cannoli with Mascarpone for my friend and Tarte Tatin with Whiskey ice cream for me.

Ok, it's just getting late now... I'm tired, my stomach aches and I don't even know how to start with this one.

I ate cannoli in my days, I grew up in Canada in a Italian neighborhood, so cannoli is as much part of my childhood as were Popsicle. What they presented us with was a rolled piece of cardboard. Thick, dry, flavorless and over fried. While I still hoped for a sign of crunch, there's was nothing but an old cookie and within whatever was left of its cavity, they managed to shove some cream. I can't even say if it was good, it was just cookie all over. It was served over a strawberry and cherry salad. But the truth is, it was simply preserved supermarket sour cherries with sliced strawberry and orange zest. They added some pieces of broken meringue on top and that was it. It was sickeningly sweet.

 Rock hard cannoli anyone? The color you see is actually because the thing was overfried.

My Tarte Tatin, which my waiter naively called "tatine", was just sad. The tarte tatin was simply an apple crumble that didn't even taste very fresh, was served with a ball of whiskey ice cream, but all I could feel was the horrible taste of rum extract, the bad one that tastes like medicine. Some whipped cream around to make it pretty and there you have it.

 Deceivingly pretty.

11:00 pm, 500 shekels later and an empty bottle of Tums, thanks Toto.

Did you have a bad experience too? 
Don't get mad, get even. Leave a comment and share your thoughts.


Adenda: I just realized that the chef, Yaron Shalev, was someone I actually worked with when I was at Raphael. Though he probably would not remember me, since he was mostly busy giving hell to anyone below him. If I knew he was the chef behind this restaurant, I would have never ever consider eating there. He was  thoroughly unpleasant and had that holier-than-thou attitude which is the hallmark of a snotty little brat. 
If you wondered, yes, it just became personal.