Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Bars

I made these cheesecake squares for a birthday party a few weeks ago. I don’t like showing up to a party empty-handed. Cake makes perfect conversation-starters, especially if you're shy around a new group of people and love being showered with compliments. Besides, who doesn’t like to celebrate their birthday with a little sweet treat? 

These bars are delicately sweet, the filling is velvety smooth and rich, it sits on top a thick graham cracker crust flavoured with a hint of cinnamon. I prefer cheesecake with a thicker crust for some textural contract to the cream cheese and these seal the deal. Also, you might have noticed the flaky sea salt, everyone at the party loved it. The combination of salty and sweet never gets old. Happy December!

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Eggplant Tarte Tatin with Black Pepper Caramel

Eggplants were one of those foods I despised as a child. My face twisted in disgust when I saw that my parents had ordered them at a restaurant, they looked like fat worms slouched over each other, lurking in a dish smothered in some sort of gooey sauce. I hated their weird silky texture and imagined how easily they could slip down my throat, latch onto my esophagus and multiply by the dozens. Ugh. I begged my parents not to scoop any for me (along with onions and cooked carrots, my other childhood food aversions).

Then as I grew older, I started to enjoy the purple vegetable. I don’t exactly remember the turning point, but suddenly stopped dreading the sight of them when we dined out. I actually liked their slipperiness, how they slithered in my mouth bursting with a salty, chili sauce riddled with ground pork. That’s still my favourite way to eat them, especially with a bowl of rice soak up all the garlicky sauce. 

I’ve never had them in a sweet dish and I think we can agree, eggplant rarely comes in a dessert form, but thanks to my friend Claudia who sent me this recipe, here we are with eggplant tarte tatin. Does that sound heavenly? It tastes awesome by the way. 

The vegetable is shredded then sliced into thick matchsticks, boiled with butter and sugar until golden. The eggplant turns into luxurious pieces, reminding me of ripe pears but still retaining that familiar peppery bite. Blackened bits of eggplant clung to edges of the tart, which I picked at uncontrollably. The puff pastry is a superb vehicle for holding the eggplant candy (Ha! Never thought I’d use those words together) and besides, everyone loves flaky crusts.

Who would have thought caramelizing vegetables, let alone the humble eggplant, would transform it into a toffee-like substance? These could totally count as your serving of daily vegetables. 

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Whole Grain Upside Down Cranberry Cake

I’ve spent the past few days giggling a lot, most times with my dad, at my dad and also behind his back. If you met him, you would know right away he’s a funny man, he doesn’t try to be, he just naturally is.

My friend Bonnie loves to tell the story of the time when she called my house looking for me. My dad picked up the phone and for fun, crooned in a high-pitched girly tone, “moshi moshi?” (Japanese for hello on the phone). Bonnie burst into a fitful of giggles and between breaths asked for me, my dad blushed and handed over the phone to me. We proceeded laughing for a good five minutes and ten years later, we still laugh about it.

The photo above was taken in Beijing during my summer vacation when I was visiting my parents, just in time to catch the Olympics. My dad still works in China and visits every year, though it's not easy to living on opposite sides of the world, we Skype everyday, sometimes with webcam (then again my mom and I can't help but poke fun at his baldness so he rarely turns it on). My mom hates it when we go out and people say we look nothing alike, they never guess that we’re mother and daughter. What do you think? I look a lot like my dad, the same eyes, the same round face, I talk like him too sometimes and I like to think I got his DNA for seeking adventurous foods.

Last week was his birthday and of course, I love birthdays because that means food. We shared a 5 lb lobster cooked in soy sauce plus lots of garlic and scallions, and soon enough, our plates were teetering with gnarly lobster shells and legs. There was a look of deep concentration hanging on my mom's face as she wrestled out succlent pieces of lobster meat, because even though we were there for my dad's birthday, my mom had long since planned to go to this restaurant for its lobster, it's definitely her favorite food.

When we got home, there was a cake waiting. I’ve been meaning to make this cake since I cracked open Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food and nothing says it’s the holidays quite like cranberries. In keeping with my experiment of whole grain flours, I switched out the all-purpose flour with a mixture of oat, spelt and whole wheat flours, dialled down the sugar in the cake just a tad and added orange zest to the topping for a little kick.

 

We invited my parents’ friends over to share some cake and of course, they obligingly said yes. They wolfed down their first slice and asked for seconds, I don't blame them, I had it for breakfast everyday with a dollop of plain yogurt. It’s a nice cake to have when you don’t want something too cloying, when you crave some fruit and something low-key and rustic. The sour fruit is brought to life with orange juice and a caramel topping and then paired with a moist cake batter that is just right, not too sweet and not too dry. The flours give the cake a nutty, grainy texture that crumbles to bite-sized pieces, perfect for your fork to stab at.

It might not be the prettiest cake, but when you make it for someone who you haven’t seen in a while and manages to cheer you up instantly when you had a bad day, it doesn’t matter.

Happy holidays folks!

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A Dinner to Please Any Crowd

One major epiphany I had in my university days as I swam languidly in cookbooks, finding my passion for food and cooking, was the magic of something called slow-roasted tomatoes. I don't recall exactly how I came about making them, but I do remember sinking my teeth into one, still warm from the oven. My heart skipped a beat, I couldn’t believe the candy-like juices swirling in my mouth and how the flavor of seemingly innocent everyday tomatoes had increased ten-fold while sunbathing in the oven. It was like my first kiss, that excitement, that rush to do it again, how it wasn't at all like what you expected.

Cooking tomatoes at a low temperature for an unusually long time concentrates its sweetness, turning even butt ugly tomatoes into the white swan of all tomato cookery. You don’t even need a recipe (but I'll give you one anyway), just fresh, meaty tomatoes, the Roma variety will do the trick. All you need to do is halve them, gut out the seeds and juices, brush with minced garlic, sea salt and olive oil, roast at 200°F for at least 5 hours. It will look pretty dull for a while, but soon, its skins will shrivel and the peppery scent of tomatoes will linger as you cook the rest of your dinner.

I served them as crostinis for my friends this weekend as an appetizer. I rubbed garlic onto baguette slices, topped with slabs of the wrinkled tomatoes adorned with basil. There was a loud orchestra of crunching and bread munching across the table, including a mumbling words that sounded vaguely like “Mmm...SOO...good!” If there was a tomato god, I suspect he would approve and feast on these crostinis everyday.

For the main course, I decided on parsley risotto with roasted mushrooms. I don't make risotto often, but I've always been obsessed with its creaminess, its warmth, its comforting goopy texture. I like trying new recipes and wanted to take a swing at Jamie Oliver's risotto for a while, and it did not disappoint. The herb does duo duty with its vibrant pop of color while perfuming the rice with grassy notes, and when it reaches your mouth, it releases its sharp, clean flavors, reminiscent of dashing meadows and sunshine. Button mushrooms enhance its earthiness, adding a slight meaty texture to the otherwise smooth risotto.

  

But no dinner is complete without a side of vegetables and roasted cauliflower could be your new best friend. They were crispy on the outside, yet still soft to the teeth, caramelized even, and entirely transformed from your old stand-by of raw vegetable sticks. Despite the explosion of miniature white trees descending on the counter, when I chopped them into bite-sized pieces, they charmed me 30 minutes later, sizzling in the pan, fiery hot and seared to golden perfection. 

When the time came for dessert, oohs! and ahhs! chimed from the dining table like a christmas choir as I unfurled the Earl Grey-Infused Chocolate Tart. Then, as if on cue, the salted caramel sandwiched between the chocolate ganache and the pâte sablée (short pastry) oozed out like hot lava, only it wasn't hot, it was a cool, dark liquid, sticking to your fingers the way only good things should.

As I sliced triangles onto mismatched dessert plates, my friends exchanged excited chatter. Sadly, I lost a good amount of the caramel, as evidenced by the pool of copper liquid moving amoeba-like from the pan, to the cutting board, to the granite tabletop.

Armed with forks, we dug in. Though it was more like we hammered in. The pâte sablée was rock solid and stubbornly refused to break apart, but oh dear gawd, was it goood. I could feel every muscle, every ligament, every bone in my body relax. Even my brain shut up.

The ganache was cold to the tongue, but it melted ever so slowly, teasingly, just like Lindt truffles do so well. The caramel cut through the sweetness of the chocolate like a knife, bestowing it with notes of amber and a hint of salt. The buttery crust added a stark contrast to the silkiness of the other layers, its crumbly, sandy, even nutty texture, reminded one friend of the Almond Rocha candies. 

For a few moments, it was quiet. There was only the clinking and clanging of forks scraping empty plates for caramel. There's no denying it, this is a sinfully rich dessert and may leave your friends clamoring for more, but one thing's for sure, I will definitely be making this tart again and again.

But the best part of all was the rhythm of chit-chat, the eruption of giggles, the tension when someone reached the climax of a story, and the undeniable chemistry between my friends was something I haven't felt in a while. At least not in my own home. The last time I hosted a dinner party with friends was nearly two years ago, in Montreal. It was something I loved, bringing friends together made me very happy, very satisfied, solidifying my home. It's taken sometime and a few unexpected turns to get to this point, but I can safely say, that I've settled in Toronto. It feels like home.

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