Golden Cheesecake

Here is a recipe so simple that I wrote it down on a text message. When I get excited, I tend to spend a lot, and then I end up completely broke. That's when I managed to pirate this recipe out of renowned Chinese pastry chef Arron Liu's Desserts 1 book. My text message reads as follows:
340 cheese 60 sugar 2 eggs 10 lemon 70 butter 160 water bath 40 mins
My God, what does it all mean? Fortunately, my instructions here won't be as cryptic. But it will be almost as easy. If you have all your ingredients at room temperature, you can finish the batter in one bowl in 5 minutes. And it will be much easier (and much, MUCH better) than any gelatin-based or instant cheesecake you will ever have. (Recipe follows)

If you have a weighing scale, you can make everything in (almost) one bowl, so there's little cleanup. I just bought a Japanese digital kitchen scale for PhP1000 ($22 or £10.90)! It's so cute. Cute and deadly accurate. If you don't, I have the usual volume measurements here.

In a bowl, add 340 grams (12 ounces or 1-1/2 packages) room temperature cream cheese and beat with a hand mixer, stand mixer, or with your big, burly, Popeye-esque arms until smooth, like a thick peanut butter. Add 60 grams (5 tablespoons) granulated sugar and beat until well-combined. Add 2 whole large eggs and beat until smooth. Add 10 grams (1 tablespoon) lemon juice and beat until well-combined. Add 70 grams (5 tablespoons) of melted butter and beat until smooth. Batter's done!

Unlike "floured" cakes, there's no fear of overdeveloping anything in this batter, so feel free to beat it until there's no lumps.

Chef Liu used a special rectangular dessert "ring" which had no bottom. This batter is too scant for a springform pan, so I used a regular loaf pan (7-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches or 18cm) lined with one sheet of aluminum foil bent to cover all sides. If you have a pan with different dimensions, don't worry; just look out for signs of doneness. Place the loaf pan inside another larger pan and fill the larger pan to 1cm below the rim of the smaller pan with boiling water. Carefully place the whole set-up into a preheated 160°C (325°F) oven and bake for 40 minutes. What you're looking for is for most of the center to jiggle slightly. Take it out of the oven (and out of the boiling water) and run a thin knife all around the sides, then let cool completely. Chill until quite cold, then lift the aluminum foil with the cake out of the pan and serve.

Portobello Mushrooms Stuffed with Sausage

(Funghi Portobello Farci con Salsiccia) You know you're a food nut when spotting giant Portobello mushrooms at your local grocery excites you so much that you don't care about the price tag (okay, maybe just large, but where I come from, they're quite impressive). So, four of these 4-inch (rounded up) babies cost PhP190 ($4.20 or £2.08). Not bad considering I've been aching to make stuffed mushrooms just as good as Italianni's or better (especially since those tiny things are so expensive). I've discovered that I'd sooner trust a food blog than about.com or something impersonal, especially since they might as well have copied those recipes out of an unreliable book. So I was lucky Deb at Smitten Kitchen once made stuffed mushrooms, so I didn't have to be afraid. BUT-- the recipe is something I threw together. Gotta have the meat in there. I'm a guy. (Recipe follows)

I made too much stuffing. This is good for 6 large portobello mushrooms. Clean the mushrooms all around. Ideally you should use a special vegetable scrubbing brush, but some people also recommend a damp paper towel. I find that there's a lot of gook to these mushrooms, so I make do with what I have and gently use a Scotch-Brite. Don't overdo it as the mushrooms are kind of delicate. Remove the stalk gently and place them gill side down in an ovenproof glass dish, then bake in a preheated 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

While they're baking, get to work on the stuffing. The idea was to use a meatball-type mix, but as we forgot to buy ground pork, I used what we had in the house-- Garlic Sausage (I would have preferred to use Italian Sausage like what they put on pizza, but I'm still searching for the proper name so I can ask for it at the deli). Get 3 of them and slice roughly (we had maybe 5-6 inch ones). Mince a clove of garlic. Chop the stalks of the mushrooms roughly.

I picked this one up from Deb: the tomatoes. You can add a tablespoon of tomato paste to the mix, or you can do what we did and soak 8 sun-dried tomatoes in hot water for 5 minutes (skip the soak if they're oil-packed), then take out and dice.

Here's the weird part. We don't have a food processor (friends! Now you know what I want. Just kidding). I used a blender, of all things. But it works, more or less, even if the shape of the pitcher is not ideal. Load the mushroom stalks, sausage, and garlic into your food processor, or batch by batch if using a blender. Pulse (at the Grind setting) until you can't recognize shapes any longer. Place the ground crap in a bowl and add (and this is all eyeballed, by the way) a quarter cup dry bread crumbs, a tablespoon of dried Italian Seasoning (er, Marjoram, Basil, Parsley, and Oregano, I think), a chopped-up quarter cup of flat-leaf (Italian) parsley (a small bunch), the diced tomatoes, a quarter cup grated mozarella cheese, a quarter cup grated Parmesan cheese, a healthy dose of fresh-ground black pepper, one small egg, and though I didn't use it, it could really use a bit of salt (by dad says it's not needed. Up to you). Take your clean hand and squish everything together.

Take out the mushroom caps out of the oven, invert them, and load the stuffing on top. Sprinkle the top with even more grated Parmesan cheese, drizzle with olive oil, and bake again at the TOP rack of your oven for 25 minutes, or until brown, crusty and cracklelicious. (That last adjective was to make it sound less of a skin disease.) Serve as soon as you can!

Fisherman's Horizon

This is a direct digital recording of me playing "Fisherman's Horizon" off the Final Fantasy VIII Piano Collections songbook. I don't know why I was so nervous as there's really nothing riding on me playing this, but I made a whole bunch of mistakes that I didn't do a good job of covering up. Also, right after the part where the music gets soft and quiet, the piece becomes too complex for me to memorize, so I'm going to have to figure out how to jam it into my mind (...someday). In the meantime, I just threw caution to the wind and regurgitated a few parts so the song would be complete.

Click here to listen to my shitty playing.

Why did I choose this particular piece? Because it's an awesome melody and I don't have the chops to play any of the higher-tempo pieces. (I barely have the chops to play this one; in fact I think it's downright fugly.) Also, my fingers began to get really tired after playing it multiple times, trying to get it without errors. The irony of it is, it's the first one that probably had the least errors as I wasn't tired and overthinking it yet!

Really Dumb Things I Like

(Also known as: guilty pleasures.) I think I have impeccable taste. I'm not sure any of my friends will say that I don't. But every now and then, it doesn't hurt to enjoy something that you know is really stupid, but somehow the elements come together beautifully.

1. America's Next Top Model. This show was actually voted as 2007's most guilty pleasure on the TVphile website Television Without Pity. Sure, the winners' successes are rare, the best models get axed for "not wanting it enough," most of the girls are kind of homely, and the photoshoot concepts are incredibly stupid (pose as a famous celebrity couple! You play both people, wearing the world's cheapest, ugliest wigs!), but every now and then Tyra Banks gives you a gem of a television moment (for absolute craziness) and you may even find a girl who's plain looking but models like a dream. I'm talking about Michelle Babin, one of the twins of Season 7, whose picture is above. I know she's a lesbian (or bisexual?) but I really am obsessed with her.


2. American Idol. Half of the winners have limited success. The runners-up fare worse, but sometimes they give a middle finger to the show and actually do much, much better. In the 12 finalists, you can find people with insipid voices, horrible personalities, and fugly looks, but somehow pulling charm out of their ass and making girls cry. But really, I just want to critique their singing/ phrasing/ bad song choices. And sometimes you may also find incredibly beautiful voices that are really so good you kind of tear up. I saw Elliott Yamin singing during his Ayala Mall tour at Glorietta. His voice is unbefuckinglievable. (Note, in the video above, how he points to his eye on the phrase "do I really see..." Cheesetastic!)

3. Sailor Moon. The bane of every true-blue anime lover. Somehow, she risked transforming into her alter-ego in front of the enemy for what must have been 2 minutes, and still ends up looking like her original self! And the magic is that no one can tell it's still her! Not to mention the constant spinning incorporated into each special attack. Worst of all was her really annoying personality. But I enjoyed following the (mis)adventures of 5 (+5) friends battling youmas (monsters) with inexplicably large breasts. Not for that reason, perv! Most of the time the stories were really awful, but there are a lot of weird (though less funny) episodes that were poignant. Who knew?

4. The two big movies of Stephen Chow- Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. Oh God. I just bought a video CD of Shaolin Soccer as it's an incredibly hard-to-find movie in home video. Fifteen minutes into the movie, there's a dance sequence. Seventeen minutes into it, there's horrendous karaoke singing with the protagonists dressed as Shaolin monks. But these two movies are both very critically acclaimed, and with good reason. The fighting scenes are much, much better than the slowed-down crap of American martial arts films (er, like The Matrix), and the anime-style comedy translates to live action with hilarious results. Also, on the video above, Donut (Mr. Staff guy) is insanely cool. (He moves like Seung Mina of Soul Calibur, eh?)

5. Spice. Yes, just the first album. Graeme will probably think I'm a huge bed-wetter but there's something very charming about putting 4 horrible singers + 1 so-so singer together with results that shook the core of pop music during its time. Maybe it's how their distinct voices that wouldn't make it solo (erhm, see: the present) blend into something quirky and, honestly, a lot of fun. The Spice Girls' first album had one hit after another, and in fact a really good song in my opinion, 2 Become 1. Of course, by the second album, they took themselves far too seriously (yes, even at that rate), the songs were quite meh, and Victoria was looking more retarded than ever, pointing all the time at nothing.

6. McDonald's. Their burgers are flat and have nothing more than a pickle and minced onion to accompany their sad patty. But I love them. I can't go for maybe a month without having one. Their spaghetti doesn't sell as well as Jollibee's but I prefer it. And the french fries.... OH, THE FRENCH FRIES. Guilty guilty guilty. Top it off with a strawberry shake and I'm your slave for a few minutes.

Apricot Cocoa Cake

This is a cake I made from extra dessert stuff at home I didn't want to waste by, well, throwing away. I had an extra cocoa loaf cake from making Faubourg Pavés for Genie's mom (hi Tita!) and extra bittersweet chocolate ganache from making truffles. Compound that with the fact that Vany pressured me to bring a dessert to Genie's post-medicine party and here we have an improvised dessert. And you can tell that I'm a real wordsmith by the very imaginative name I gave it. I thought it might have been too pretentious to call it "Manggy Cake" or something, especially since chocolate and apricot is a pairing the Austrians are well-familiarized with. It's my first time to make and use rolled fondant or sugarpaste. That stuff is nastily sweet, but when it comes to the artsy cakes that are in vogue nowadays, it's a must for every decorator. (Instructions follow)

There's a way to get more filling into your cakes than if you slice it horizontally in half. Just cut a wedge from the top; it does take a little care and skill with a knife. Out of boredom, I calculated how much more filling per slice you get:

Scary, no? The Pythagorean theorem rules. Anyway. Cut your cocoa cake loaf as such, and fill the chasm with apricot preserves. Replace the top and paint the outside with ganache. Place the cake in the refrigerator in the meantime.

I pirated my sugarpaste recipe from "Essential Cake Decorating," I forgot the publisher. I just copied the ingredients to my phone and remembered the gist of the methodology. In a microwaveable bowl, sprinkle 5 teaspoons gelatin onto 3 tablespoons warm water and set aside. Measure out 125mL liquid glucose (find it at the baking supplies of a well-stocked grocery) and 1 tablespoon glycerine (found at the drugstore). Ideally, the recipe should be in weight, not volume, since liquid glucose is just a step less viscous than the glass jar it comes in. Its consistency is the same as the glue from a glue gun, after it's cooled. In other words: it's a bitch to measure out in clunky measuring cups. Anyway. Combine these with the gelatin water, mix a little bit, then microwave at HIGH in 15-second increments, mixing in between, until it's fairly homogenous. Take care not to boil it.

In a bowl, add 1kg of powdered (icing) sugar. Yup. It is VERY sickening. Make a well in the center and pour in the glucose-gelatin mixture. Mix the ingredients with your hands, as it's very hard to mix with a spoon. When it's fairly combined, dump it out to your kitchen counter and start kneading until it's very smooth and looks like white modeling clay.

Divide the paste into 3, then color them any way you want using gel colors (I used Wilton sky blue and lemon yellow, leaving the third one plain). Knead the colored masses until the color is well-distributed. Divide each into 8 and roll into a snake. Place the snakes side by side very closely, then roll over them with a rolling pin to form a thin striped slab. Drape it over the cake and trim the excess.