Almond Cake
While cleaning the dishes, she was telling me about an Almond cake she made earlier in the week that had no flour and no (explicit) sugar. But she said it came out a bit flat (later I learned it was because she got lazy and didn’t whip the egg whites! =P). I decided to whip up a batch then and there. The recipe is here at Anja’s Food 4 Thought. I think it turned out wonderfully. I only made a few small changes: added 1/4 tsp of vanilla essence and orange essence and instead of toasting and grinding almonds, I used almond powder which resulted in a finer (cake-like) texture, but no toasted almond flavor.

More deliciousness after the jump!

Scallops
Truly delicious scallops…possibly the best I’ve eaten (and most probably the quality of Whole Foods fresh bay scallops and a lucky perfect sear than anything else). Pretty standard preparation for the scallops…Quick rinse, patted dry with paper towels. Seasoned with salt and pepper on both sides. Non-stick pan with canola oil (I would have used grapeseed if I had it on hand) heated on medium-high until the oil starts shimmering. Then I took a tablespoon of butter and cubed it and tossed the cubes into the pan. Right after the butter stopped foaming I added the scallops. Since they were medium sized (9 scallops in a pound), they took about 3-4 minutes on the first side and then 2 minutes on the second side and voila! The fun in this dish was making the spice oil…I will have to add the recipe later, but basically it was grinding some fresh spices (black peppercorns, cumin, salt, paprika), then heating them in oil until it just starts to bubble for 2 minutes, then removing it from the heat and pouring it over some fresh lemon zest and minced garlic. After cooling add some lemon juice and salt to taste. Served on a bed of chopped flat leaf parsely and cilantro, this dish was sublime.

Fresh fettucini with roasted heirloom tomato rustic pasta sauce
I’d like to think my cooking has become more refined over time. I think my strongest case would be making homemade pasta. After traveling to Italy last spring and taking a cooking class, I was hooked to fresh pasta. You just CANNOT compare fresh pasta with dried pasta. I was shopping with the family this weekend and we walked into a Williams-Sonoma (overpriced, I know, but whatever) and I finally just paid up and bought a pasta machine. The pasta was easy enough to make…I’ll go into detail in another post, but the sauce was a lot of fun. I bought a carton of heirloom tomatoes, halved them, drizzled with some nice EVOO and some basil chiffonade and threw them into a 225F oven for 3 hours. Yes 3 hours. Seriously? Yes. Trust me, it was worth it. I took everything off the baking sheet (even the drippings) and lightly crushed the tomatoes with a spoon before adding more fresh basil and a little salt/pepper. Tossing the fresh fettucini in this sauce and topping with fresh chunks of mozzarella was heaven. MUST try this a lot more in the summer.

Homemade ravioli
We had a few extra hands in the house, so we made another batch of pasta dough and used the ravioli press we bought in Italy last spring to push out some fresh ravioli. We didn’t really feel like going to the store and buying ricotta since making these was an afterthought, so my mother had a great idea to just throw random stuff inside. We ended up using some finely chopped spinach, arugula, parmesan, pecorino, mozzarella, nutmeg, salt, pepper, egg and a touch of sour cream to help bind the filling. Topped with some fresh olive oil, parmesan and pepper.

the fish

Dad picked up 5 filets of tilapia fish from Whole Foods, and was thinking about making parchment paper fish with lemons. I told him that it works very well with halibut, but tilapia cooks extremely fast…and I wanted something sweet and spicy. He did some googling and we eventually landed on a quick and simple recipe.

For 5-6 filets (rinsed in cold water and patted semi-dry), just mix 1 c (minus 1 Tbs) of brown sugar, 1 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 tsp cumin, 2 pinches of salt and 2 pinches of garlic powder. Coat filets with it, put into a buttered dish (greased, to be precise) and bake at 375º F for 12-15 minutes or until it falls apart easily when a fork tries to pry a filet apart (should be white inside).

the chicken

Chicken is so awesome. My mom saw Tyler Florence cook this recipe on tv while she was at the gym and decided to make it. It turned out very good, but she should have let the crust sit on the chicken for 40 minutes before she baked it so the crust stayed on tighter. We also didn’t have enough panko, so we mixed whatever we had left with some crushed crackers.

the cake

This cake was pretty rockstar. If you remember the brand of cake flour I used for the angel food cake, on the back of the box was a recipe for ‘Moist Chocolate Cake’. *We made 1/2 the recommended recipe because we wanted to see how it would turn out…and we wanted a thinner cake since we were doing an upside-down twist. Below are the measurements we used (aside from the upsidedown-ness, you could double all the measurements for a normal chocolate cake):

Read on young padawan and when you make the inevitable journey to the sky, hopefully by that time angel’s food won’t be a surprise to you — ambrosia is another story.

Normally, I put videos at the end of the post, but because Alton’s episode analyzing the ins and outs of angel food cake is so absolutely fantastic, I recommend that you watch it before reading the rest of this post.

Hmmm, so there are a few important tips to remember when making this cake. Below, I’ve outlined what I ended up doing in the recipe.

comparisons to other cakes

chiffon cake

Uses vegetable oil instead of butter in traditional cake recipes, so shelf life is longer and cake is moister. For this reason it is used in most shelf-products (Hostess, etc.). The wiki is pretty good.

devil’s food cake

This is a cake in between a traditional chocolate cake and angel food cake. It is much airier than standard chocolate cakes and uses cocoa as opposed to melted chocolate. The wiki entry does justice to the cake.

red velvet cake

If you see the devil’s food cake wiki entry, you will see that the original red tint came from non-alkalized (non “Dutch Processed”) cocoa powder reacting with baking soda. These days since alkalized cocoa powder is more prevalent, people add red food coloring to achieve the redness.

references and other media

sites

1. the wiki
2. alton’s recipe
3. google images

pics