Financiers

I became addicted to come up with ideas for Financiers.  I guess I had never thought of using powder made of nuts until I started to making Financiers.  I love varying the nuts and adding different flavor to it.  

From left top to right bottom : Walnut and brown sugar with tiny bit of soy sauce .... tribute to Japanese sweets, Kurumi-Yubeshi.

Green tea Financier and basic financiers with chocolate shavings.

Basic financiers with chocolate chips.

Hazel nut and chocolate financiers.

Earl Grey Financiers with rose pedals.

Pecan financiers with chocolate swirl.

Strawberry financiers.

Pecan financiers with chocolate shavings.

Chocolate financiers with raspberries.

I love using walnuts and pecans!  Hazel nut is great with chocolate.  Cashew and coconut flake make financier more tropical.  There are so many ingredients to experiment with...  It's sometimes far from financiers.  Shall I call them nut cakes?  

Southern Cooking and Sweets Cooked in March

I am interested in lots of kind of food.  When people ask me what I usually cook, it is very hard to answer.  I do cook Japanese naturally, but now that I'm living in TN, it's not easy to accomplish.  I also cook other Asian dishes....  Chinese, Korean Thai, Vietnamese.  But usually, I cook with more common ingredients so Italian and French influenced dishes appear a lot on the table.  

When I lived in Connecticut, my friends and I sometimes pick a town to visit in NY based on what kind of restaurants and stores available there.  We visited Bronx for Italian food, Brighton Beach for Russian, Astoria for Greek, etc...  When I have a chance to eat something that is from different culture, I am so happy to try it.

Nevertheless, I never liked Southern food that much even though my husband J is from Appalachia.  I guess the richness of frying food is not too appealing to me....  I know J wanted me to learn to cook good Southern food, but I didn't really take it seriously.

But one day, I baked biscuits.  J says that it's not supposed to be sweet like the ones in North.  I got the recipe that is not sweet and tried it.  It came out pretty tasty.  Even my daughter who never liked biscuits like it a lot.  

I baked cornbread other time since J wants to cut down gluten intake, I thought I'd give a try to bake cornbread with only corn meal.  

He also said that cornbread shouldn't be sweet like the ones in North.  So he liked my cornbread that didn't have any sugar in it.  It was fun baking in a pre-heated cast iron pan!

Somehow, now I am more open to cook southern food.  I am not a big fan of frying food, but I can certainly try to make some recipes less rich to suit my taste.  I think visiting Asheville was good for me in the regard.  I don't get to eat southern food in my town because it's not a tourists place so there is not much of Southern restaurants.  But place like Asheville has interesting Southern food.  More modernized, more healthy, more trendy....  Looking at them made me interested in it.  

Grits is one of the thing I picked up there.  It's practically Polenta...  I can put different kind of cheese in it.  I love it with fried green tomatoes!  It's not a heavy combination especially if I cook tomatoes in a little bi of olive oil.

There are lots to learn ....  But it at least started.  It's too bad I don't have hard core Southern relatives around me to teach. 

It's already April.  It was so warm yesterday.  But it went back several step today and I was wearing my coat this morning.  I hope to put it away soon.

So in March, I made these sweets.  I hope to try something new in April...

Smoked Salmon and Avocado Pasta

We are renovating 2nd floor right now.    I have to tell you the house J bought for us is very old.  It's built in mid 40's which is not a surprise at where we live.  But the couple who lived here were old and weren't taking care of this house well besides whatever the renovations they did was very unprofessionally done.  So by the time this house was on sale, the couple was long gone, the house was unattended for years on top of the original messed up conditions.  It is true because of it, we had a such a bargain.  I didn't look at this house until the day of the closing.  I was busy in North East.  So it was such a shock to see the state this house was in....  but we took out the carpeting from entire house, cleaned up, had the kitchen remodeled, painted the wood paneling walls.  It's slowly coming together.  The one thing (which is most important factor to me to pick a house) that I love this place is its size and layout.  It's not huge, but adequate for 3 of us.  It has funny little place or hallway to play around.  So even though it is far from my dream house yet, I'm happily waiting it to be the one someday.

So the entire 2nd floor is demolished to have new electric, air conditioning system and walls installed.  Which is great!  Yet when the lunch time comes, I feel too self conscious about cooking something has strong aroma such as frying garlic.  They are working hard and cooking some nice smelling food and not serving them seems to me not nice.  

But I do get hungry.  And I don't want to eat PB & J every day....besides the fact that we don't keep bread in the house since J is trying to avoid gluten as much as possible and our daughter doesn't care for a sandwich.

So the cold salad pasta is actually great lunch for me to whip up.  All I have to do is to boil the pasta.  It doesn't create aroma of cooking.  I just have to cut ingredients and mix.  

*Smoked Salmon and Avocado Pasta*

For 2 servings

1 avocado

2 oz. smoked salmon 

10 cherry tomatoes

1/4 red onion

2 table spoon capers

2 tea spoon Dijon mustard

2 tea spoon extra virgin olive oil

Freshly squeezed juice form 1 lemon

2 tea spoon white wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Your favorite pasta 1/2 lb.

< 1 > Start boiling water for cooking the pasta.

< 2 >  Chop avocado, salmon, and tomatoes to bite size.

< 3 > Slice the onion into thin strips or mince.

< 4 > Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl.

< 5 > When the pasta is cooked, mix with everything in the bowl and serve.

Both avocado and salmon contains lots of fat, so I hold off the amount of olive oil in this dish.

This actually will be really nice on a hot summer day.  But It is getting pretty nice here in east TN.  I hear birds singing in the morning.  The are very colorful.  I can't wait till spring....

February has passed....  I can't believe it's already March!  Here is the review of the sweets I made in the last month.

There are lots of chocolate sweets because of Valentine's day.  I actually lost a week worth of data because the construction upstairs cuts off the electricity suddenly.  So there should have been more sweets...  However the sweets that I made during the time were actually not really successful.  Especially the tartlets that I baked with raspberry tinted very pale pink pear compote. It somehow resembled too much like a mini chicken breast.  It really did.  Those were called chicken breast tarts by J and our daughter.  It could have been perfect for halloween with some red sauce drizzled over it though.

Steamed Chocolate Buns

I remember making steamed buns in the home economics class in elementary school.  We had the class once a week.  We made aprons, or small bags.  we embroidered them.  We cooked simple dishes.  I remember making English style finger sandwiches.  Japanese curry.  Both girls and boys had to take the class.  A few mischievous boys created a new dish of cream and strawberry sandwiches with sprinkles of mountains of salt and pepper.  They nearly froze their fingers off by competing who can tolerate touching ices longer.  The teacher was frustrated, but the cooking part of the class was everybody's favorite.

Chinese style steamed buns were always available in the winter.  It smelled so nice.  I love the aroma of yeast.  But the steamed sweet buns that we cooked in the class didn't require yeast.  The ingredients were more like the ones for muffin or cake.  But instead of baking, we steamed.  I guess it was easy to do so in Japan around 30 years ago because normal household didn't have a oven.  The people might have had the special compartment for grilling fish, but not the oven to bake cake and such.  

So it is more like a steamed cake.  It's popular because it doesn't require much fat, and all you have to do is mixing the ingredients so young children can participate in the kitchen, too.

So remembering the memories, not having enough butter and eggs to spare for sweets today, yet thinking about my daughter coming home starving everyday, and how she loves chocolate and it is almost Valentine's Day, I decided to make steamed chocolate cakes ...or buns.

*Steamed Chocolate Buns*

3/4 cup of all purpose flour

1/4 cup rice flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

1table spoon of vegetable oil or melted butter

1/2 cup whole milk

< 1 > Start boiling the water for steaming.

< 2 > Put the all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and mix with a fork.

< 2 > Pour oil and milk in the bowl and mix.

< 3 > Divide the dough to 6 cup cake mold.

< 3 > As soon as the water is boiling, place the buns on the steamer and steam them for 10 minutes.

It's very dense cake but not really rich....  I used less sugar so my daughter can put a spoonful of Nutella on it.  

When I was thinking how some people prefer the steamed cakes since they feel guiltless to have sweets that don't contain much fat nor eggs, my phone rang.  My husband who just had his blood checked out was calling me.  He told me that his cholesterol level came out really great.  He even have high level of good cholesterol.  He is following the diet of omitting gluten as much as possible, but not worrying about eating organic animal fat and coconut oil.  Actually, to conventional eyes, it almost seems like he is consuming excessive fat.  

But he is doing better than the time that he was eating low-fat diet.  So he probably wouldn't touch these buns unless I put a chunk of good cultured butter from Vermont.

So I got 10 Meyer Lemons

I went to a market and found Meyer Lemons were on sale.....10 for 2 dollars.  I just couldn't pass the deal so I picked 10 of them not knowing how I am going to use them.

I had left over tart dough at home so I decided to use the recipe that I use for Key Lime Pie filling for the lemons.  It worked great!  I felt like I need some fruits for decoration, so I used blueberries.  

I must tell you that I always preferred cakes to tarts.  I felt like tarts are too much like cookies.  I liked the softness of cakes and cream on it.  But recently, I DO love tarts.  I realized how versatile they are.  You could use any fruits on it, cooked or raw to really enjoy the season.  As for the cream, I can make custard cream, pastry cream, almond cream, or citrus cream like this depends on what I have and feel like it.  I feel like the tarts suit everyday life more.  I still like cakes though!

*Meyer Lemon Filling For 9 inch shell*

1/2 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice 

1 cup sweetened condensed milk

4 large egg yolks

< 1 > Mix the all the ingredients and bake at 325 F in the shell of your choice for 15 to 20 min.

*Note* 

I made 3 4-inch tartlets so reduced the ingredients to half.  A store bought graham cracker pie shell works great for this recipe, too.  You can substitute lemon or lime for the same recipe, but that case, you might want to serve with whipped cream since it will be quite tart.

They were quite delightful.  But I didn't describe what kind of tartlets they are, my husband J was pretty surprised with the tartness.  I'd been making tartlets with custard cream a lot recently so he thought these were the same things.  They look quite similar.

But as he realized that it was Meyer lemon cream, he enjoyed it a lot.  My daughter who loves anything sour was very happy too.  I made coconut whipped cream with whipped cream and coconut milk to serve with the tartlets as desserts.  That was nice combination.

OK, tart filling didn't use too many lemons...  instead it created egg whites left over.  I would usually use them for Financiers but my challenging spirit was rising in the afternoon.  Therefore, I decided to dare try making Macarons.

There are some sweets I consider that I'm not experienced enough to bake.  The macarons were one of them.  But I do have egg whites, and I do have lots of nice lemons to make lemon cream for it.  I just had to do it.  

Well, the result is....  I made the dough too runny so except for few really small ones, they didn't turn out to be a perfect circles.  The texture and taste, J liked it a lot.  My daughter didn't like it.  I, myself.... confused.  

I've only had macarons once in Tokyo a year ago.  They were from a brunch of reputable French pastry shop and tasted great.  But details are far away in my memory.  I guess I need eat them again in order to know what I am after.  Yet in this small town by the Appalachian mountains, it's impossible to find one.  I must put macarons on the list of the things that I must eat in Japan when I visit my family next month.

Yes, the macarons didn't consume the lemon too much either.  So I made lemon cake in Bundt mold to take to Sunday dinner at my father in law's house.  

I also made Greek lemon potatoes at his house to go with Lamb chops.  Now 3 Meyer lemons are sitting in the bowl waiting to be squeezed.  What I am going to use them for today?

Rolled Cake

The rolled cakes are very popular in Japan.  They usually have whipped cream and fruits in it.  But I made one with Mascarpone cheese cream and berry jelly and topped with black berries since I couldn't roll it well at all but wanted make it look pretty somehow.  I thought it would be like rolling Maki-sushi, but it was different.  Now that I think about it, I am not particularly good at rolling sushi either.  But it tasted good.  I guess I'll need to try it again!

Financier Friday - Earl Grey

I love Mariage Freres' Earl Grey French Bleu.  It's not as strong as regular Earl Grey.  But it has very nice complex aroma.  Also, it is so beautiful to look at.  I decided to use it for baking.  I ground it to powder and put it into Financiers.  It gave such nice fragrance.  The moment I bit the cake, the sent of Earl Grey revived in my mouth.  So nice.   

The only problem is that I am not sure what to drink with this.  Coffee will be overbearing.  Earl Grey won't be a nice contrast.  Green Tea is a bit too strong.  Light Jasmine tea?  That might be good.  The flowery fragrance will complement the taste of the Earl Grey.