bluffin' with my muffins

I wouldn’t usually talk about baking. Not that I don’t bake. Baking just seems to be more common knowledge to a lot of people, and there is lots of good information on cakes, cookies, pies and the like already - it makes me feel that adding my two cents won’t amount to much (although I guess it’s been a while since two cents amounted to much). Still, the mood strikes me every once and a while. Muffins!

Muffins are like sandwiches, or cookies, or bread itself – there are so many styles and types that it’s more of a category than it is a specific thing. What I want to share here is a simple – but effective – recipe that I’ve been using for a while as a base for other recipes. It’s crumby, soft, and buttery - somewhere in between a muffin, a cupcake, and a pound cake:

so crumbly

250g flour

150g sugar

1 egg

110g butter (melted)

lemon zest

200ml milk

1 tsp vanilla

Bakes 15 to 20 minutes at 190 C. Get a good bit of lemon zest. That really gives a fresh, delicious punch to the finished product. Also, consider other citrus for unique flavors: orange, grapefruit, lime. 

It’s fairly simple to leave it at that, but it’s the upgrade from a simple morning muffin into something approaching a dessert that will make this feel decadent – and we are going for decadence here. I mean come on, it’s a dessert. There’s no diet dessert in my book - the very fact that you’re eating dessert should jump you past worrying about calories (yeah, diet soda, I’m talking to you too).

If we slathered icing on top it would feel like a cupcake. We don’t want that: the post title clearly says “muffins”. Let’s attack it from the inside. Making some kind of pastry cream filling is not too difficult a task. Whipped cream is another easy substitute. This time though, we’ll do a mascarpone blueberry jam filling - because on top of managing to sound inspiringly fancy, it’s a breeze to make. If you don’t have a pastry bag, you can always use the old cutting-a-corner-off-a-Ziploc-bag approach:

2 parts mascarpone cheese (you could use cream cheese)

1 part jam (went with blueberry this time)

Combine in a bowl until it's one cohesive color. Couldn’t be simpler. You could bulk it out with whipped cream if you need more (and don’t want to pay for the mascarpone). Pipe that in either through the top or bottom of the muffin, and enjoy!

Thoth Coffee

Whenever I stumble across a humble little location serving up what it does the best it can do, it kind of just gets me right here. Thoth coffee is a small coffee brewery and coffee shop that offers original blends, antique coffee-ware, and light meals. The service is friendly and speedy, and the atmosphere is clean, natural chic.

basil and meat sauce doria

For lunch I went with the basil and meat sauce doria. Doria is a dish in Japan that is made by baking cooked rice with various ingredients and cheese - I know this may not sound very typical of Japanese cuisine, but it is a version of a food that they imported from France - it can be thought of as a sort of gratin made with rice.

It was served piping hot (actually too hot to eat) and speedily, in fact I was surprised at how quickly the meal arrived after my order. The flavors were ok without being spectacular, but the coffee more than made up for it.

there's a raccoon in my perfectly heated 55 C cappuccino

Along with the cappuccino I had ordered, I finished the meal with a slice of orange chiffon cake that had a dollop of cream on it - very light and airy but pleasant with the coffee. The cappuccinos at Thoth are served at exactly 55 degrees Celsius, which is the perfect temperature at which the aromas of the milk and the coffee beans can both be savored, as well as consequently being just the right drinking temperature on arrival.

On my way out, I couldn't help but pick up a bag of their dark roast blend, upon which they offered to grind the beans to a variety of specifications. And all-around wonderful experience. I went with grinds for drip-filter, by the way. Hats off to them!

If in the Kagawa area, Thoth Coffee can be found at -
769-0201 Kagawa-ken Ayauta-gun
Utazu-chō Hamaichibancho 3-8

can I truffle you for a drink?

With Valentines Day approaching, I have not-so-surprisingly had chocolate on my mind. There's probably nothing so perfectly balanced between decadent, elegant, and simple to make as are truffles. Better still, handmade truffles more faithfully fulfill their original intention than do perfectly-shaped machined ones. Chocolate truffles try to mimic their fungi counterparts - treasures dug up out of the dirt. The dusting of cocoa powder here represents the loamy fresh soil that you would have to dig through to find such a prize.

truffles try to look like they were just dug up like buried treasures

I make my truffles with this ganache recipe that I talked about a bit ago. Spread the ganache from that recipe thin into freezer-proof trays and put it in the freezer. This time the bain marie is unavoidable. Melt some dark high-cacao level chocolate – something sultry in the above 70 percent range – in a stainless steel bowl over a pan with hot simmering water in it. It’s important that the bowl doesn’t actually touch the water. Leave it there for a while and then give it a stir with a spoon. If it comes together it’s ready.

Roll the now chilled ganache into balls and drop these into the chocolate (might want to let it cool a bit, off the pan, first). One way is to use a melon baller, but I tend to find two spoons work pretty well. Pluck out the coated ganache balls with a toothpick and drop them into another small bowl of cacao powder, rolling the bowl around until completely coated. Pluck again and drop on wax paper, and let them chill in the freezer until set. These keep for a long time, and are stupidly delicious. For wine pairing, red or semi-sweet sparkling (like, not brut) works equally well, but I tip towards one or the other depending on the ganache flavoring. I recommend Chambord flavored ganache with merlot or another red wine that has sweetness and berry tones like malbec. With something like Grand Marnier, you might want to try an Asti Spumante or a semi-seco cava - wine with a little sweetness always goes nicely with chocolate. So easy, yet amazing!

pan-searing scallops - take off those feet

Quality scallops are one of my very favorite treasures of the sea – I definitely prefer them over hijiki, by contrast – and can be eaten raw. Note what word I chose to begin that sentence with. Don’t settle for second-rate seafood. Look at it, smell it, don’t buy discounted old stuff - all the common-sense rules apply. With seafood, freshness is everything. That, and maybe avoiding mercury contamination. The key here though: don’t fear the natural product. When searing scallops you’re not trying to cook these things through, far from it. All you are aiming to do is caramelize the outside. The whole process should take around a minute, maybe less.

 

a little fancied up

Remove (if it hasn’t been done already) the tough muscle shaped like a little foot on the side of the scallop. If you are using frozen scallops, which by the way are quite good these days, bring them to room-temperature-ish before searing. You can eat the foot by the way; it just doesn’t have a nice texture. Get a fry pan going on high heat until it’s very hot. Put some high-temp cook oil in there (like grape seed oil or canola oil), maybe a couple of tablespoons, and when the oil is also hot place your scallops in there. Make sure you hear that sizzle! It’s the sure sign that the oil is hot enough to give you a good sear. Stay on high heat and check your scallops after about 20 seconds. If it’s golden and browned, turn. 20 seconds the other side. Cut the heat and take those guys out of there, they are finished. If you want to sear a flavor in, try a dry-rub beforehand instead of a marinade. You don’t want them wet before searing. Wet things don't sear. Me? I like them with a little salt, and maybe some turmeric or Cajun seasoning. Or sometimes a bit fancier.

chocolate ganache

The method that I use is extremely simple but also very effective, so give it a try. You'll want to have:

cream (whipping cream, heavy cream, double cream, whatever you know it as)

chocolate (the better the quality the better the flavor, but even Meiji bars work in a pinch)

*liqueur (optional but amazing as always)

So 2 or 3 ingredients. Can’t be too hard, right? Break your chocolate up into smallish pieces and leave them in a bowl (preferably metal). Pour over your liqueur if you’re using it. You could also use coffee. Heat the cream in a saucepan (low or medium heat, please) stirring so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom and die – if you have a nice thick bottomed pan this probably won’t happen though. When bubbles start, well, bubbling, around the outside edge, you’re almost ready. Give it a bit longer, so that it’s just started boiling, and pour it over the chocolate. Now, leave it be! Just for a minute or so, then you can stir it up. Use a spoon and stir until it goes from ugly duckling to molten chocomagic. If the cream wasn’t hot enough, and the chocolate doesn’t melt all the way, you have to do one of those annoying bain marie things where you put a metal bowl on top of a saucepot with hot water to cook it with steam heat. So, what I'm saying is, just make the cream hot enough the first time around.

Wait, how much cream and how much chocolate, you ask? Ganache is used for many things, from truffle cores to cake icings, so it’s not set in stone. I think an icing ganache is pretty nice when the cream is just enough to cover the chocolate pieces. A runnier ganache can be made with more cream, or a truffle ganache with less. Just try it out. Get a feel for it. I would say as a rule of thumb that it doesn’t take as much cream as I usually think it will.

For the liqueur, you only need enough so that the flavor comes through a bit. I use around a shot. Anything will work, including classics like Grand Marnier, or something fruity like Chambord, or nutty like amaretto. Split your chocolate up and try a sampling of different flavors for an elegant wine tasting time!