White Chocolate Cranberry Blondies

These White Chocolate Cranberry Blondies are lovely, chewy and rich baked with ground almonds and white chocolate, and then studded with tart dried cranberries.

When I lived in Kuala Lumpur many years ago, my friends and I played Pokeno once a month, taking turns hosting the evening. The host was in charge of the main course, and everyone else brought a side dish or salad or dessert. This is the note I wrote not long after one month that I hosted.


A open letter to my Pokeno ladies:

Dear Friends,
One of you brought a lovely salad to my house which contained dried cranberries. It was delicious! Along with the memories, you also left behind the unused portion of your bag of cranberries. It has been sitting on my countertop, mocking me daily, ever since. Please identify yourself immediately and you will get it returned in the form of these blondies. Just hot out of the oven.

Fondly,
Stacy

Ingredients
1 3/4 cup or 395g sugar
4 eggs
145g or 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons melted butter (This will be just shy of 3/4 cup, if you find that an easier measurement.)
30g or 1/3 cup ground almonds
2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
65g or 1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 cup good quality white chocolate chips

Method
Combine sugar and eggs, mixing well. They should get pale yellow and a little fluffy.

Add in the ground almonds and then the melted, room temperature butter.

Mix in remaining ingredients, minus 1/4 cup of the chocolate chips. 

Bake at 350°F or 180°C for 30-40 minutes in greased 9in x 9in pan (or until toothpick comes out clean.) 

Watch for early browning, cover lightly with foil or turn temperature down if necessary. Do not overbake!  These will be moist and delicious if they are removed from the oven slightly underdone.

Melt the reserved chocolate chips in the microwave (you may have to add a little butter if they are too dry) and spread on top of the blondies.  Cut into squares and serve.

Enjoy! 

Quick Pasta Dinner

So we walked in the door after the flight from Hong Kong.  At 8:05 p.m.  By 8:25, I had dinner on the table. Seriously.  

If you don’t have mushrooms or grape tomatoes, use whatever you have in the vegetable drawer.  Zucchini would work, or finely sliced cauliflower or broccoli, or asparagus cut into pieces, with whole fresh tomatoes or even a can of crushed tomatoes.  If you don’t have haloumi, add feta or some other salty cheese in at the end.  This is not even a recipe as much as a suggestion of how to add flavor to pasta.

Ingredients

250g or 8 oz of dried pasta

3 medium portabella mushrooms

2 large handfuls of grape tomatoes

3 cloves of garlic

90g or 3 1/4 oz haloumi cheese

200g or 7 oz baby spinach

Extra virgin olive oil

Parmesan cheese

Sea salt

Chili flakes or crushed red chili

Method

Put a large pot of water on to boil.  Add some salt.

Meanwhile, slice the mushrooms, the garlic and halve the tomatoes.

Slice the haloumi and fry it till brown on both sides, in a non-stick skillet with a drizzle of olive oil.  

When your water is boiling, add the dried pasta.  Drizzle in a little olive oil and give it a good stir so it doesn't all stick together. 

Push the haloumi to the sides of the pan and add the mushrooms and garlic to the skillet.

Fry gently until they soften.  Add the tomato halves and cook briefly.

Use your spatula to cut the haloumi into one-inch pieces.

Check on your pasta.  When it is within a minute of so of being cooked, add the spinach to the pasta pot.  

Stir well and then pour the pasta and spinach into a colander to drain.

Add the spinach and pasta to the skillet.  

Stir well and top with freshly grated Parmesan and some chili flakes.  

Serve with extra Parmesan and a good drizzle of the olive oil.

The weekend in Hong Kong was wonderful but it’s good to be home and cooking again.

Roast Lamb for Two and Yorkshire Pudding

Who says you have to have a big family to enjoy a roast leg of lamb dinner? Buy some meaty lamb shanks and join me in the kitchen for roast lamb for two and Yorkshire pudding.

Just doing a little shopping in my local grocery store, Hock Choon, yesterday and I came across the biggest lamb shank ever, almost one kilo it was.  And I suddenly remembered an old Nigella episode where she was eating alone and roasted a lamb shank for one.  Ha, I thought, this little baby will do for two of us.  Who says you have to have a big family to enjoy a roast leg of lamb dinner? 

So, on the menu tonight:  succulent roast leg (albeit the lower part) of lamb, Yorkshire pudding, buttered sweet peas and lots of gravy.

For the lamb

Ingredients

1 large meaty lamb shank (800+grams) or, I suppose, 2 small shanks -please adjust roasting time downward accordingly

2 sprigs rosemary

Sea salt

Black pepper

1/2 cup red wine

Olive oil

Ziploc bag for marinating

Method

Pull the leaves off of half of each rosemary stalk and chop finely.  Add a generous amount of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Score the fat on the lamb. By which I mean, cut through the fat in even lines with a very sharp knife.

Rub the salt, pepper and rosemary into the meat.  

Pop it in the bag and add a good drizzle of olive oil and the red wine.  Marinate for as long as you can.  Overnight is best but a few hours will also do.

When you are ready to roast it, preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and take the lamb out of the refrigerator to warm.  

Put the lamb in a baking pan and drizzle a little olive oil all over.  Roast for 30 minutes.  (At this point, make your Yorkshire pudding batter. It needs to rest before cooking so the lamb roasting time is perfect.  See below.) 

After 30 minutes, turn the lamb over and pop it back in the hot oven.

Roast for another 30 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 140°F or 60°C for rare or 150°F or 65°C for medium rare.

Wrap the lamb loosely in foil while you make the gravy and bake the Yorkshire pudding

For the Yorkshire pudding

Ingredients

110g or 4 oz (by weight) or 8/10 cup flour

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 oz milk

2 oz water

1 1/2 tablespoons of fat – oil, duck fat, bacon drippings or some combination of same

Method

Measure all of your ingredients into a blender or vessel for a hand blender.  I always put the egg at the bottom, and then the milk and water and then the flour.  This stops the flour from forming a thick paste at the bottom that sticks to the sides.   

This should be the consistency of thick cream.

 Mix thoroughly.

Leave the batter to rest until the lamb is out of the oven.

Add your fat of choice to the Yorkshire pudding pan and pop it in the hot oven.  I used duck fat rendered from recent pan-frying of duck breasts.  (If you have the opportunity to render and save duck fat or bacon grease for that matter, make sure to strain it through a single layer of paper towel and refrigerate. Most paper towels are two thin sheets. Separate them carefully and use only one as a filter.)

Once the fat is smoking, open the oven door, pull the shelf out and pour the batter into the pan.  (If you want to take photos, this requires two people.  Fortunately my sweetie was home to take over photography duties.)

I told him, No flash! The dark is not his fault. 

Here the duck fat is surrounding the batter. Fear not. I poured some off when I extracted the crispy batter.  It doesn't all soak in. 

Close the door quickly and bake for 20 minutes until brown and crispy.

When you are ready to serve, slice the lamb and cut the Yorkshire pudding into sections.  Add a nice serving of hot buttered peas and a liberally helping of gravy.

That would be our gravy yacht at 2 o'clock. You only have a gravy boat? I'm sorry. 

Enjoy.