Dhanggit's Kitchen

My French Kitchen/ Life Stories / Photographies

Perigordine Walnut Chocolate Mousse Cake

Posted by Dhanggit Sunday, January 17, 2010 comments (26)





Time flies at "damn" accelerating rate since the day hubby and I decided to leave France for our adventure in the tropics. It's just hard to imagine that in few days will be flying to Philippines to start our totally new thrilling venture. I can still remember few years back when we both agreed to leave Tokyo for my complete immersion of French culture. It was so hard for me to leave Japan back then for my job and friends and I really love that country . Right now, I have no regrets bidding goodbye to France (maybe just for a moment ) , for it was a totally a fullfilling experience. In a way I have mastered their language and understood more their philosophy and their thinking. France has awakened my passion too for food and has contributed a lot in influencing me to venture into blogging. And now to finally have the courage to take a plunge into the world of food industry . I know it's not easy but after all life is all about taking risk. I can't wait to share with you what it will be but for the moment I need to keep my lips close until everything is in place.

My next post will be definitely 100% published from the archipelago of the Philippines.See you then!

This was the cake I bake for our December birthday celebrants. Perigord is the region in France famous for their foie gras, duck and walnuts. This is a very easy cake to do that you can prepare for birthday or other celebration by adding some "entrements" like mousse or ganache.





Perigordine Walnut Chocolate Mousse Cake

for the cake
250 g of coarsely chopped walnuts
120 g of butter
4 eggs separate the white from the yolks
250 g of brown sugar

Preheat the oven at 150° celsius. Melt the butter, then whisk in the sugar, 4 yolks and the chopped walnuts. Whisk the white egg and gently fold into the mixture. Bake roughly for an hour or less. You should check it from time to time by inserting a knife if it comes clean then its ready.

Chocolate Entrement

75 g of sugar
half a glass of water
4 egg yolks
200 g of dark chocolate
20 cl of heavy cream

In a casserole make a light syrup of water and sugar. Whisk the egg yolks with this mixture until they become creamy. Add your melted chocolate slowly and mix well. Pour gently your cold heavy cream and continue mixing.
Chocolate Ganache
200 g of dark chocolate
20 cl of heavy cream
50 g of butter

Melt your chocolate in bain marie. Add in the melted butter and heavy cream. Reserve

Assembly of the cake:
You need to have a big ring the size of your walnut cake. If you don't have one you can make one using a carton wrapped with parchment paper. Pour the chocolate entrement let it stand for about thirty minutes before adding your last layer of chocolate ganache. Put it in the fridge overnight. Decorate it next mornign with some chocolate butter cream, or cookies around.

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Cheese Puffs (Gougère au Gruyere)

Posted by Dhanggit Tuesday, January 12, 2010 comments (19)

"We need to push ourselves to make as many reductions as possible in our own energy use first.. and that takes time. But we must do this quickly.. the climate will not wait for us. - Rupert Murdoch"

When we woke up this morning, my daughter and I were dazzled at a beautiful scenery that greeted us. An imaculate white snow blankets our entire garden and all around our area. I tell you this thing happens rarely in Provence. The old granny who lives next door swear that the last time she saw this kind of snow in region was about fifty years ago. All the kids in the neihborhood were glad to play outside to enjoy this rare moment. It's not that I'm being an "Auntie Scrooge" while everyone else are having fun but I can't help and wonder what more alarming global changes is in store for us. Will it snow in Africa in the future or how about if all the ice in the north pole melts? Are we really prepared for this?
I still remember back then when I was still learning French, the very first essay I wrote was how we human beings could turn like Dinosaurs in the near future if we won't take drastic measures in protecting our environment. Already much has been said about "global warning", massive campaigns all over the world has been donen it about time we take those words into real action.


I am sending some of these cheese puffs over at Maninas at Food Matters, this weeks host of Weekend Herb Blogging. This is one of my favorite weekly blogging event were you can enjoy an array of delectable herb dishes and desserts. This even was created by Kalyn but is now in the caring hands of Haalo of Cook Almost Anything.

Gougere are French cheese puffs that are very easy to make and yet delicious. They are perfect entrée that you can serve with some salad. This is the basic recipe that you can modify to add up your favorite cheeses like goat cheese, mozzarella and others.


Basic Gougere Recipe
for about 30 pieces

125 ml of water
40 g of butter
1 teaspoon of salt
70 g of flour
2 large eggs
100 g of gruyere cheese grated
some herbs and chopped chives

Preheat the oven at 220° celsius. In a casserole put your water, salt and butter. Let it melt but not boiling the water. Wait until there's little bubble in the water. Cut the fire. Add the flour gently. Mix well. Put it back on a low fire to dry up the mixture. You just need to see that the mixture doesn't stick to the casserole anymore. Out of fire, add your eggs one by one. Continue mixing. If it's too wet you can put it back in fire to dry it up a little. Once the mixture is ready put your grated cheese, chives and thyme. Scrape the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a wide plain tip and pipe the dough making each about the size of a small cherry tomato. Bake for ten minutes. Then lower the temperature at 190° celsius and bake for another twenty minutes.





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white new year

Posted by Dhanggit Thursday, January 7, 2010 comments (24)


My New Year celebration was white, but not cold. We've been busy with long chit chat over non-stop dinner flooded with "I swear to God" I'll only eat once a year filled with lots of calories and guilt food and alcohol of course. I hope yours was a fantastic one too.

Come January in France Gallete de Roi (King's Gallette) is a typical dessert we eat in family or with friends. A tradition to honor the Three Kings visit to the holy manger. In the Southern France we boast of our Brioche de Roi (Kings Brioche), a fluffy brioche perfumed with orange flower that is topped with candied fruits.

I maybe a little bit busy for awhile for our big move to the tropics but I'll try to catch up on you guys. Happy Happy New Year to all! May this new year be filled with lots of hope and peace for everyone else!








Photos above are taken at Villard de lans in the region of Isere in France.

Kings Brioche

Ingredients:
330 g of flour
1 tsp of yeast
20 g of sugar
6 g of salt
4 eggs
24 cl of milk
170 g of butter
1 tablespoon of water of orange flower (eau de fleur d'oranger)
1 teaspoon of rhum
zest of one lemon
100 g of chopped orange confit

For the decoration:
30 g of fruit confits (candied fruit) chopped
1 tablespoon of crystallized sugar
1 tablespoon of apricot jam mixed with 2 tablespoons of water

In a bowl put the flour, yeast, sugar, salt and egg yolks and add the milk little by little and continue mixing until they become homogenous. Add the butter and continue kneading the dough until they dont stick to the hands. Let this dough stand for an hour. Flatten the dough to release the air and add the fleur d'oranger, rhum and chopped fruit confit. Continue kneading again and let it raise for another hour. Butter your brioche mold and put the dough inside. Brush it with egg yolk and egg mixture. Pre heat the oven and bake it for 20 minutes at 200° celsius. In microwave oven heat up the apricot jam with water. Using a brush glaze the top of your brioche. Decorate it with sugar and fruit confit.

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My Warm Christmas in the Prairie

Posted by Dhanggit Saturday, December 26, 2009 comments (21)

What is Christmas like in our family?

This year's christmas family celebration was like old times filled with laughter, tons of gifts and lots of mouthwatering food and excited children running everywhere.

For a change our family decided to rent a big house in the prairie instead of doing it in our ancestral villa. The place was really magical! It rained all night the eve of Christmas but the sun eventually dropped by on the Christmas day. We had a big chimney that warmed us up all day and night. As usual champagne, white and red wines were flowing, foie gras in all it's form were consumed, delectable dishes of veal, beef, turkey, lobsters and crabs were at rendez-vous without counting of course the endless amuse-bouche we had before taking the main dish. And what is Christmas without chocolate in all it's splendor, French patisseries and cake a real great way to end the evening. After having our coffee we all slept at around 3 in the morning.

If you have a big family like ours, three day celebrations like this requires one heck of a organization and lots of imagination! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!








Photos: The view outside the prairie, the frozen kaki in the garden, the waggling dog, teh tired mayumi, some of the desserts we had and our christmas decoration. Photo below: Mayumi with this cousin



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Cheers to all...

Posted by Dhanggit Monday, December 21, 2009 comments (12)


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Vegetable Bouillabesse and a Dinner date with mon Cheri

Posted by Dhanggit Thursday, December 17, 2009 comments (5)


Remember I promise you a week ago about this romantic "tete à tete" dinner with hubby. Well we finally succeeded in getting a reservation last night to this two starred Michelin restaurant. And I'm warning you this is the first time for me to eat in such classy gastronomic restaurant who's regulars are celebrities (French that is), local politicians, well-off old couples and some food lovers who saved their hard earned money or probably just a lucky couple who received a gourmet check as a farewell gift from some generous colleagues. We fall on that last category of course.

The restaurant is bewithchingly situated at the foot of the famous Les Baux de Provence. Imagine this, a castle and fortress that is spectacularly set a top a rocky hill of the Alpilles mountain overlooking the beautiful Provence. We arrived at the restaurant around 8 in the evening with a temperature of minus three degrees outside. Fleeing the nippy weather with a high heeled shoes wasn't reallly practical specialy if one wants to adore the charming garden of the restaurant. All I remember was that I made a small reflection when I saw a flock of swan swimming comfortably in a Siberian like pond. "How the hell do they do that?" Even the fountain was half frozen. Anyways, it was such a refuge to enter in the warm lobby of the hotel leading to the restaurant. The decoration was sober, nice and clean sans too much frou frou. The table was solely decorated with a long stemmed white rose, the cutleries were not even placed. They were actually dressing our table and bringing in the silver cutleries for every service. I must admit that I have never seen so much people attending to us. The manager brought us to our table chatted with us for few minutes to make us comfortable and propose to bring us a glass of champagne. Then another guy came and brought us the menu card. I'll save you the delicious "blah blah" he made explaining every course. We chose our dishes then came the "wine specialist" holding the wine menu card and then goes our wine orders.

Now are you ready for the real spectacle?

The first set of our amuse-bouches were brought on the table. It started with green olives fait maison (home-made). I brine my olives but I have never tasted anything like that before it was really good and the color was bright bright green. Interesting! Next was a long rectangular plate of three mini-amuse bouche. There was a ginger spice cracker topped with beet root gelée, a spoon of creamy tapenade and black radish stuffed with tuna rillette. They were all beautiful to look at. These three bite-size goodness of different texture was really amazing. After few minutes another girl came with a small verrine of very cold nutty like cream with bubbling concoction on the top. I didn't get the name, hubby told me they were ancient vegetables very commonly used during the Middle ages but is now rarely seen in the market. It was my favorite it was really astonishing how the low temperature of the soup brought a completely different taste.
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Then came our first entrée; A velvety like creamy soup of pumpkin with bruscheta of onion confit and slices of fresh black Truffles. What was interesting was how dramatically artistically it was brought on our table; first the semi-concave plate adorned with a bruschetta lightly buttered topped with some onion confit and cream chantilly then after came another serveur to pour delicately the creamy pumpkin soup. Every spoon was really comforting.

The next service was the fish plate. It was red tuna perfectly grilled à la plancha served in the bed of vegetable tagliatelle and bits of Parma ham accompanied with a sauce of balsamic and red wine reduction. I rarely eat fish but this was really good!

The third service was our meat dish, it was a classic lamb dish braised tenderly in red wine, tomatoes and black olives. The meat was accompanied by a creamy polenta in parmesan. The dish was really good but I must admit I regreted for not choosing the other dish proposed by the Chef for it was less traditional.

Of course we needed some pause...... but then few minutes later the serveur arrived with a cart of cheese of all types and of all sizes you could imagine. My special favorite was the creamy fresh goat cheese with fig. Really really good! They have special toasts of raisin bread (pain au raisin) to accompany the cheese that I would really like to know the recipe :-)

Before we had our dessert the serveur came again with a small verrine glass of cream of passion fruit topped with a spuma of coconut cream. This wasnt part of the dessert this was just something to make us busy while waiting for the chef to prepare our dessert.

The grand finale was naturally a chocolate dessert. It was a three layered dessert of three chocolates of different taste and temparature. It was served in an aquarium like glass were in the first layer was an intense chocolate soft biscuit topped with a warm dark bitter chocolate and a very cold mousse of chocolate au lait. There was a praline of hazelnuts on the top of it and scoop of dulche de leche ice-cream beautifully adorned with a long thin piece of black chocolate. If heaven had taste I'm sure it was close to this :-)

We had some coffee and then "again" the serveur brought us a plate of mini mignardises (sweet stuffs) there was Rosemary creme brulée (an interesting taste), Raspberry madeleine and strawberry sablé (biscuit).

It was an amazing delicious night.Verdict; considering the price, this is something we will do again once a year unless some rich kindhearted fellow will offer it for us "again"!

Vegetable Bouillabesse
for 6 persons

Bouillabesse is a traditional Provencal fish stew originating from the city port of Marseille.

1 liter of fish stock (about a kilo of fish carcasses)
1 celery chopped
1 carrot
1 onion
1 fennel
one cup of chopped pumpkin
2 tablespoons of Pastis (anis based liquor)
Some boiled vegetables of your choice: broccoli, potatoes, carrots, etc
some olive oil

In a large casserole put your fish stock, celery, carrot, onion, fennel and chopped pumpkin. Bring them to boil. Pass them all together in a mixer and strain. Put it back in casserole, add your pastis, olive oil, salt and pepper and boiled vegetables. Bring to boil. Serve with some croutons.






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Beef Wellington Mushroom & Chestnuts and Sauce au Foigras

Posted by Dhanggit Monday, December 14, 2009 comments (20)



What was the last embarrassing moment that you had?

My list is long but let me share you the latest one. Imagine this: Christmas shopping rush is everywhere. This is my favorite time of the year not only because of the gifts that I will receive but I always feel great to offer gifts to people I care. And besides who doesn't love shopping, aside from our husbands (of course :-) ). I was garbed with my favorite winter outfit, my bag, my list and my wallet. I decided to go early morning so I have plenty of time to choose before really buying them. I entered the first shop, and there the sound goes, "beep". I disregarded it and continued looking around and eventually decided to go. There the sound went again "beep". I just made few steps and there the security of the shop stopped me. Explaining that I "beeped" and stuff. I gave my bag and everything and they found nothing and let me go. I was disgusted and told them their security alarm must be broken or something. Then I went to go to the next shop. And the same thing happened again ,the security alarm "beeped" once again. So I said "I must leave", but there goes the security to check my stuffs "Again". Believe it or not after the fifth shop and I had the same "beeping" incident I finally decided to go back home. My worst nightmare, in reality. What must be beeping on me? My keys, my bag, my sweater? I have really no idea...Well I'll just be shopping gifts online I guess. I bet you have a lot of embarrassing moments to share too.

By the way, I would like to invite you to check out the beautiful feature write-up about Dhanggit's Kitchen on Femina Magazine. Thanks again Rajani for this!

I am sending a slice of this yummy Beef Wellington with Mushrooms and Chestnuts over at talented Haalo of Cook Almost Anything, this week's host of Weekend Herb Blogging #214, that delicious event pioneered by Kalyn now under Haalo's caring hands. If you want to participate please don't forget to check out the link.




Photos from top to bottom, left to right: The beef freshly cut, the two Mayumi's playing in the kitchen, the plate of beef with veggies before serving, the beef with the knife, and Mayumi trying to write her name.

Beef Wellington with Mushrooms and Chestnuts in Sauce au Foiegras
serves 6- 8 persons

This is a very easy and yet delicious festive dish you can prepare for this holiday.

about 1 and half kilo of beef tenderloin trimmed
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
15 g of butter
4 pieces of parma ham
shallots chopped
about 80 g of chestnuts (i used fresh chestnuts that i boiled and mashed)
250 g of mushrooms (champignon de paris) finely chopped
salt, pepper and lots of herbs: rosemary and thyme
1 roll of puff pastry
1 egg yolk

for the sauce:
15 g of butter
1 small shallots finely chopped
2 tablespoons of olive oil
100 g of bloc de foiegras
60 ml of veal stock
1 tablespoon of heavy cream

On a pan with oil and butter brown the beef briefly on all sides. Add salt, pepper and herbs. On the same pan, fry the shallots, mushrooms and chestnuts, add some salt and pepper. You can pass this on a mixer to have a fine consistent texture. Roll out your puff pastry , put your parma ham, spread evenly the chestnut-mushroom mixture and put the beef on the top. Closely evenly the sides of the dough. Be sure you seal tightly the edges. With the brush spread evenly the eggyolk. YOu can make some the designs on the top using your knife. Bake this on a preheated oven at 250°celsius for 20-25 minutes. Set it aside and let it rest for about five to seven minutes before slicing it.

For the sauce, on the pan brown your shallots with olive oil. Add your sliced foeigras. Pour the veal broth and let it simmer for few minutes. Put some salt and pepper. Just before turning off the heat. Add the butter and heavy cream to thicken the sauce.







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