Italian Tasting & Food

I've decided that perhaps I should post about my wine tasting sessions as well to keep track of the wines my kakis and I have tasted. After all, when there's wine, you'll always find food. ;)

Most of us are not too familiar with Italian varietals, thus to match up with the Italian theme, I made some pasta with porcini mushrooms dressed with white truffle oil.

I used dried porcini mushrooms, fried with chopped garlic. Next I chopped up some english parsley and tossed it all in with olive oil and about 20ml of white truffle oil. Seasoned with sea salt and freshly grounded pepper. I find the flavours lacking, perhaps I'll add in a portion of fresh porcini in future if I make this again.

I also made a 40 cloves Garlic Roasted Chicken. Halve 2 bulbs of garlic and stuff into cavity of chicken, brush with softened butter all over chicken. Season with salt and pepper (cavity as well). Roast chicken in a pre-heated oven at 220C for about 15 mins, remove and add the vegetables and remaining garlic cloves (with peel on). Place 2 knobs of butter on the vegetables and continue to roast for about 1 hour.

Now here comes the bottled participants. :)

The Masi was my favourite for the evening. :)

CookUp @ Home

Invited Fann & Jing over for a small gathering.

For starters we had salad caprese. Pity Jing could not stay for the main.

Followed by nil cream Carbonara - one of Fann's favourite.

Chocolate Raspberries Cupcakes

These are brownies I made into cupcake form. I frosted the cake just before the wedding dinner so did not have time to take pictures before I left. Marc & May, these are made specially for you. Hope you had a smashing time. All the best!

Original recipe was extracted from here.

Donna Hay Raspberry Brownies(makes 12 small mouthfuls)

50g dark chocolate, chopped

60g butter½ cup brown sugar

1 egg

¼ cup plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

1 tbsp cocoa powder

¼ cup fresh raspberries

Preheat oven to 180C.

Melt chocolate and butter in large bowl.

Mix in remaining ingredients except raspberries.

Fold in raspberries.

Spoon into mini muffin pan lined with paper liners.

Bake 20 minutes or til set.

Frosting:

200g dark chocolate

200ml cream

Heat up cream and add chopped chocolate.

Remove from heat and continue stirring till chocolate has melted to form a smooth ganache.

Cool completely and refrigerate prior to piping on cakes.

Decorate as desired.

I made 4 times the quantity listed above and poduced about 20 regular cupcakes.

Note to self: I used 15ml tbsp measurement.