Puff Pastry

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Video from Otago Polytechnic on how to make puff pastry.

How to make puff pastry was a complete mystery to me whilst growing up, even though it is one of the few things I’ve always enjoyed in a myriad of foods from the savoury to the sweet. Puff pastry beef pie and chicken pie popped into the microwave oven was something I quite often had for lunch after school in Singapore. In Sweden smördeg as it is called with fruit and custard, drizzled with icing sugar is a relish to have at breakfast or at tea time.

Puff pastry dough with a cross on top.

The base dough for puff pastry, marked with a cross on top, ready for rolling out.

Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

As I’ve discovered what many others who make puff pastry have known, it takes more patience and time to make puff pastry than skill. Puff pastry has a much higher fat content than other types of pastries, using an alternating folding and rolling technique to create the layers of dough with air trapped between them. The pastry puffs up during the baking process and generally makes anything you serve on it / with it look fantastic!
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Coloured eggs for the Easter basket

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Coloured Easter eggs, Easter Lilies, Sweden.

Easter lilies and coloured Easter eggs.

Photo © Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

One of the exciting events to look forward to in school when I was young during Easter week was the Easter Egg Hunt. The teachers would hide colourfully painted hard boiled eggs in one of our school gardens – the smaller gardens of the school – and the girls simply had to roam the gardens in search for them. Each girl who found an egg had a present to look forward to.
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Coffee cinnamon chocolate chip cookies

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Coffee cinnamon chocolate chip cookies recipe; kaffe och kanel chokladkakor recept.

Brightening up the Easter table.

Photo © Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

A staple Easter goody is chocolate, so I thought I’d put together a variation of the chocolate chip cookie, with coffee and cinnamon added. These like most chocolate chip cookies, are best eaten when just out of the oven or when slightly warmed with coffee or a tall glass of cold milk.

It takes about twenty minutes to prepare the dough and about 30 minutes baking time.
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Steamed chocolate cake using whipped cream

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Steamed chocolate cake using Valrhona cocoa powder and whipped cream

Steamed chocolate cake.

Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

This is one of the easiest cakes to make, the preparation time being just about 7 minutes and the cooking time, which is steaming, is ca. 35 minutes. It’s delicious just after it has cooled, served with a little whipped cream (or plain vanilla ice-cream). In Singapore, this cake is most often served with a lush chocolate ganache over the top, or if you have the cake layered, the chocolate ganache can come between the layers too.

Steamed cakes most likely came out of Chinese kitchens as it is the Chinese who have most variations of steamed foods from buns to dumplings, vegetables to fish and meat.

There are variations of the steamed chocolate cake recipe around the internet, though the variations are in slight proportions. Since I’m a chocolate anything fan, this chocolate cake is one that I make often when I’m not in the mood to use the oven for baking or when I want a slight change in chocolate cake texture.
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Strawberry cheesecake in a glass

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No bake strawberry cheesecake in a glass at Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Something sweet for a quiet evening.

Photo © Cheryl Cordeiro-Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

There come days or evenings that I’ve felt I’ve over eaten for the next few days and what I’d really like is something sweet, but nothing main meal substantial like a full plate of chicken breast with pasta or a beef steak with salad on the side.

It felt like that this evening, so I whipped up one of my favourite desserts but in minimalist portions (or controlled portions at least) – strawberry cheesecake in a glass.

BBC Good Food has an excellent tried and tested recipe for this easy to make dessert that doesn’t need any baking time in the oven. Given below is my variation of it, with a small tub of Philedelphia cream cheese and grated lemon rind. This will render just 4 wine glasses of strawberry cheesecake dessert, just enough for a cozy dinner of four or a small household.
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T-bone Bistecca alla Fiorentina in Sweden

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T-bone steak cooked in the style of bistecca all fiorentino, Sweden

T-bone steak in Bistecca alla Fiorentina, Sweden.
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Cordeiro-Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

One of our favourite ways of collecting travel memories is to bring back food ideas and inspirations. Its a nice way of revisiting your favourite spots without even leaving the comfort of home. I think the most memorable meal of our visit to Florence (2008) was at Trattoria Quatro Leoni that served up one of Florence’s best Bistecca alla Fiorentina. The steak came with spinach and fried potato wedges and a bottle of local red. The meal made for a most marvelous evening spent under the full moon of Tuscany, Italy.

Seeing a gorgeous T-bone meat slab weighing in at about 8 lbs (4 kg) in total at Svenskar Gårdar’s stall at the recent Food Fair Passion för Mat 2010, we couldn’t help but want to have T-bone steak, Tuscan style!
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Louis Vuitton Monogram Vernis Minna Street in Framboise

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Louis Vuitton Minna Street in Framboise, small sling bag.

Louis Vuitton Minna Street in framboise monogram vernis.

I am not one for small bags and neither are most of my girlfriends, most of whom were schoolmates from more than a decade ago. The preference for larger bags probably came about through functionality and the practically of having a bag big enough to accommodate our daily items. When in school for example, it was all about carrying textbooks, exercise books, gym wear and whatever else you needed for the day. So big bags the likes of weekend carryalls were always the talking point for us girls back then. Once school days were over, shopping (a Singaporean hobby) took over and big bags continued to be popular for us, where I’ve often found myself sitting and chatting with my girlfriends over the latest carryall that could most fashionably hold our daily essentials and bought items.

This Louis Vuitton vernis monogram Minna Street in raspberry pink or framboise, is not a big bag. In fact, it’s so compact, you can hardly fit its matching vernis Koala wallet into it and think to find room to put your keys in too. It does however, contain a roomier main compartment than the slimmer, more rectangular vernis Mott that has a flap closure outer pocket (see ref. 1. Mott review, 2. Mott outfit, 3. Mott in background).
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Nowruz at the Rösska museum in Gothenburg Sweden: in celebration of spring and the Persian New Year’s

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro in Karen Millen and Cartier at the Rösska museum Gothenburg, Göteborg Sweden

One in the crowd, listening to Tina & Ice Band’s rendition of Persian songs at Rösska’s Now Rooz exhibition .
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Cordeiro-Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

Nowruz signals the first day of spring in Persia and the Persian New Year’s. In celebration of this event that begins tomorrow, the Rösska museum of Gothenburg has set up Now Rooz, a 3 week long exhibition (13 March to 18 April 2010) of the fashion and design of the Persian culture during their New Year’s celebration (also featured in GP).
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Boysenberry vinaigrette, an exotic flavour from Sweden

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Lars Schönemyr at Gourmet Sverigeskafferiet AB

Lars Schönemyr of the Gourmet Sverigeskafferiet AB demonstrating some of their new Swedish “exoctic” flavours at the recent Passion for Food fair in Gothenburg Sweden, 2010.
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Cordeiro-Nilsson
for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

A few years ago I hadn’t even heard of boysenberries. On a late summer’s day however, just after a quick dip in the clean seawater off the Swedish West coast, I was introduced to the berries in their own habitat right by the beach, basking in the afternoon sun! These berries are black and boisterously brimming of flavour, vitamins and energy. Unabated by the fact that they are fiercely protected by more thorn filled branches than any other berry I have ever known, I went about picking a handful of them to eat by the beach in a small fruit picnic. The berries were in various stages of ripening and the ripened ones were everything juicy, sweet and purple on the tongue!
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Pineapple Tarts, a daunting tradition

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Pineapple tarts in tupperware, Singapore-Sweden

Pineapple tarts with a pinched pastry base.
Photo © JE Nilsson and Cheryl Cordeiro-Nilsson 2010

Every year, it is with mixed feelings that I begin looking around for ripe pineapples for the annual Christmas batch of pineapple tarts. All things considered I think this is one tradition I grew up with in Singapore that I would consider giving up if my northern Swedish husband had not grown an unexpected liking of them. As it turns out, he loves pineapple tarts and most other exotic fruits including durians.

Done in the traditional way it is a very, very time consuming task to make pineapple tarts. The failure rate is also high and the rewards questionable, except the fact that however criticized your delicate small masterpieces would be, any number of them still finish within minutes!

When it comes to pineapple tarts, as with other traditional food such as American apple pies and Swedish meatballs everyone’s an expert and we all have our own favourite method of making it – which by definition is the best – and it is not before all have been tasted that you can decide which your favourite flavour, size, crust, color of jam, with or without “crown” etc., is. Personally I love it when the jam turns out crisp and caramelized on the outside and moist on the inside when sitting on a lightly golden browned pastry base.

Anyone in Singapore – Malays, Peranakans, Chinese and Eurasians – will have a ready answer exactly on how a perfect pineapple tart should be. And they will all be different. For the true fan it is worth the effort trying all varieties, because both pastry and jam do have different consistencies and tastes. It’s like wine. Nobody would settle for just “red”. Depending on who made them, they are all different.

Today pineapple tarts are available at some bakeries all year round in Singapore and Malaysia, however tarts are still most abundant during festive seasons. In my culinary background I inherited the Eurasian Sugee Cake from my father’s side, while my mother taught me how to make Pineapple Tarts.
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