Zucchini, Ganache, and a Birthday Cake

Since the whole concept here is sharing stuff, I thought I really should share with you what I discovered on Hannah's birthday.

It is Zucchini Time in my garden and therefore in my kitchen. Last September I posted a recipe for Chocolate Zucchini Cake - a favorite in our house and something of a seasonal delicacy (you know, Zucchini Time and all). Hannah was in favour of having a Chocolate Zucchini Cake for her birthday cake so I turned on the oven and got ready to bake. In last year's post I said that I never frosted the cake because it was simply unnecessary. And it is  but I couldn't bring myself to present her with an undecorated cake in a 9x13 pan as we sang Happy Birthday to her, so I decided to try something different - ganache. mmm-mmm-mmmmmmm. Yes, then. Anyway....

I baked the cake in one 10" round pan and one of my adorable little 6" pans - just because that worked out. (I really only wanted the large cake but who can complain about a cute little chocolate cake?) The baking time was adjusted to 45 minutes for the large cake and 30-33 minutes for the small one. If you haven't made ganache before it is stupidly easy. And it makes a wonderful cake fantastic.

Ganache

(makes enough to frost both cakes)

8 oz bittersweet chocolate

2 Tbsp unsalted butter

3/4 cup heavy cream

Chop the chocolate fairly fine and put in a medium sized bowl.

Heat the cream and butter until it begins to steam. Pour it over the chopped chocolate and let sit for a minute or so. Gently whisk the mixture until it is smooth and shiny being careful not to incorporate air. You have just made ganache. From here you have a number of choices but if you want to frost a chocolate zucchini cake....

Pour a generous amount onto the top of the cake (I really do mean generous - you want enough to do the whole cake in one go) and using a long metal spatula push it over the top and sides of the cake. The ganache is actually easy to work with and if you have a spatula you will end up with a nice smooth surface. Shockingly, I don't have a metal spatula (and I thought I did so I had a pile of ganache sitting on my cake while I looked frantically through my drawers) so I grabbed the next best thing that I could find - my serrated bread knife and used the back of the knife. It worked reasonably well but as you can see, not perfectly. Nobody minded however.

Beautiful Hannah

The first morning I woke Hannah up I walked into the room where she was sleeping and stopped and just looked. She was as perfect as a doll. Absolutely lovely, with her thick, long, curling hair fanned out on the pillow and thick, long, curly eyelashes fanning her cheeks. 

Some people are initially attractive - their physical beauty can even be quite arresting - but they just don't "wear well" and after a while they don't seem as pretty. Some people are so personally wonderful that their inner glow makes physical attributes redundant. And then there are a few people that are just beautiful inside and out. Hannah falls into the last category.

I feel incredibly blessed that she is my daughter by virtue of her marriage to my son. I love her so much that it feels wrong to refer to her as a daughter-in-law. With total respect to her  wonderful mother, Hannah is my daughter too. I am proud of her for many things and enjoy her always. She is a great comfort and a blessing. A wonderful wife and a sweet mother. A budding sewer. A runner. A good friend. A twin. A hard and willing worker. An avid reader. A clever girl. A generous heart.  A true beauty.

Happy birthday sweet Hannah.

My Japanese Knives

Good tools make even the simplest chore enjoyable and often make the most difficult much easier. Whether it is ironing a shirt, sewing a garment, cutting a lawn, fixing a car, or chopping vegetables, well-made, quality tools are worth every investment in resources and time to seek them out. I am pretty much devoted to my beautiful and practical Japanese knives. I have had other knives over the years - of course - but I have valued none the way I value these.

There is an area in Tokyo called Kappabashi. Pretty much a bit of heaven for those who enjoy time in the kitchen and good food. It is the restaurant supply and kitchen wholesale area for the city. I truly believe that one can find and buy the best of anything the world offers in Tokyo - if you know where to look for it. And the place to look for the well-out-fitted kitchen is Kappabashi. After our first stint in Japan I had a few Japanese knives that I had bought in one supermarket or another. I liked them better than other knives I had used but I knew they were not really "quality" knives, so I determined to see what I could see when we moved to Tokyo a few years ago. I took along my trusty interpreter (David) and we rode the subway to Kappabashi for the adventure. You need to know that when David shops for something (anything really) he exhausts the possibilities. Accordingly we visited every knife shop and knife maker in the area. Every one. It took most of a day and we learned a lot. As Japanese knife makers are passionate about their work and product it was a really great day. We didn't buy anything that day but went home and considered what we had learned. To  make a long-ish story shorter I decided that the knives I wanted were the Tojiro Flash knives.

At the outset I certainly was not looking for a "set" of knives. (I am more or less opposed to sets of anything - from furniture to jewellery.) And I had thought I wanted the unique hand-made traditional knives but chose the Tojiro Flash and have been so very happy with them every day for the last five years.

These knives are made of Damascus steel - a technique that originated in ancient Damascus and was refined in Japan during samurai times. The blades in my knives are 63 layers of steel wrapped around an extremely hard core of VG-10 steel. This produces a blade that is incredibly hard but still flexible (holds an edge very well) and is beautiful as well. The wrapping and layering of the steel when ground results in a unique and beautiful surface that looks like moire silk - a work of art.  The elegant handles are made of something called micarta (layers of resin and linen - how cool is that?), I love how they look and feel. They fit my hand very comfortably and add another aspect of beauty and craftmanship.

Being as hard a blade as they are, these are very very sharp knives and deserve to be treated with respect. I always hand wash mine and always, always use a good cutting board (either wood or Richlite - a paper and resin product). The down-side of the extreme hardness is that if one is careless the blades can chip. (Chips can be sharpened out by a pro.) That said, although I do treat mine with respect I don't give them the kid-glove routine and I have really no chips after five years of use.

I have two other Japanese knives that I would be loath to part with. One was quite pricey and the other only about 15.00. One is the traditional high-carbon steel blade that is sharpened on only one side. The other is who knows what? I use both regularly but not as often as I go to my Tojiro Flash. I have two identical TJ knives because I use and love the size and shape so much (and because I hate to ask anyone who might be cooking with me to use anything less.)

And that's my love song for my beautiful handmade knives. I do think they are so pretty.

P.S. Eden has a picture of Tiffany from the wedding up on her blog today. Just one but it is so perfect. Just in case you wanted to know.

Cleaning out closets to make room for Thomas and Hannah - the closet in Merin's old room. Her dance bag stuffed full of old tights and bodysuits. My heart breaks all over again. I miss her. Sometimes this is still so hard.

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho

It's off to work I go.... After our week away the garden is over-grown, the spinach has bolted and gone to seed, weeds have sprouted everywhere, the laundry is piled high, and my house looks like a thread-bomb exploded in it (the inevitable result of weeks of near-frantic-paced sewing). But the week was worth every bit of catch-up needed now at home. Time on the beach with the family, late night discussion with great friends, cousin sleepovers, good food at every turn, the best of Vancouver weather and a beautiful wedding to crown it all.

Mark and Tiffany's wedding was perfect. Tiffany was an incredibly beautiful bride, Mark so handsome and happy. The five little flower girls were adorable in their dresses and the three boy cousins cute as buttons in their suspenders and bow-ties. Sadly I have not one single photo to share. Not one. Can't wait to see Eden's work - always amazing and this wedding is special to us.

It's good to be home again. Now....heigh-ho, heigh-ho, I'm off to work :)

Coconut Milk Panna Cotta

This is a practically perfect dessert - it is incredibly simple, delightfully fast, reasonably impressive and (almost) good for you. (Okay - maybe not quite good  for you but at least it isn't bad.) Delicious too, but then it is dessert which is by definition yummy. The first time I made it I followed a recipe, used cream and buttermilk, and couldn't get enough. This last time I didn't have enough cream in the fridge and absolutely not a drop of buttermilk but it was just what I wanted to have for dessert. Coconut milk to the rescue - again.

I have had these lovely little soba cups forever and rarely use them. They are so perfect for panna cotta that they may become "the panna cotta cups" forevermore.

Coconut Milk Panna Cotta

2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups coconut milk*

1/3 cup honey

1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

pinch of sea salt

2 packets powdered gelatin

6 Tbsp cold water

Heat the cream and honey over medium heat, just until steaming. Remove from heat. Add the vanilla bean and seeds. Cover and let infuse for 30 minutes. Remove the bean and reheat the mixture. Add the salt.

Meanwhile sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water  in a small bowl and let stand for 5 minutes or so. Add the gelatin to the cream mixture and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Add the coconut milk and stir to mix.

Pour the panna cotta mixture into eight custard cups (or ramekins, or tea cups, or something like that) and chill in the fridge until firm - about 2 hours. 

To unmold, run the tip of a sharp knife around the edge of the cups to loosen the panna cotta and unmold onto individual plates. Serve with fruit. (I decided to buck tradition and leave the panna cotta in the molds.)

If you have never tried fresh strawberries with balsamic vinegar and black pepper, now would be the perfect time. It certainly is not a new concept but if you haven't tried it, throw caution to the winds and live dangerously. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper

2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced

4 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Toss the strawberries with the vinegar, honey and pepper. Let stand 30 minutes. Spoon over the panna cotta and serve. 

* Once again - the 'fresh' coconut milk from the dairy case. 

Green Bean, Tomato, and Chickpea Salad

I like green beans. A lot. I always have and I thought everyone else did too. When David and I got married I quite naturally cooked the things that I thought were delicious and so I cooked beans often. Imagine my surprise when I found out (much later) that David in fact did not like beans. At least he hadn't before we were married. He does now - although that may have been simple defeat or self-defense. I think beans are absolutely yummy lightly steamed with a bit of butter and salt but they also "clean up" very nicely - as in this salad. I first had it when Hannah  made it for my birthday a few weeks ago. It was so good that I have been anxious to make it myself and today was the perfect day for that. I made a few simple changes to the recipe to take advantage of the fresh garden herbs and what I had on hand. So, so good. A definite 'make-again'.


This would feed four quite nicely as a vegetarian main course. The addition of some grilled chicken breast and corn bread made 6 adults and 5 "littles" very satisfied at our table today.


Green Bean, Tomato, and Chickpea Salad
(adapted from Everyday Food - June 2011)


1 1/2 lbs fresh green beans
1 lemon, zest and juice (about 3 Tbsp juice)
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive-oil
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered
3 whole green onions, thinly sliced
1 (19 oz) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup crumbled feta
2/3 cup roughly chopped fresh parsley leaves
1/4 cup chopped fresh oregano


Cook the green beans in a large pot of boiling salted water until crisp-tender. (Don't over cook the beans - you really want them crisp and a nice bright green as opposed to limp and gray-ish.)  Drain and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking. 


In a large bowl whisk together the lemon juice and zest, sea salt, pepper, and olive oil. Stir in the tomatoes, onion, and chickpeas. Add the parsley, oregano, and feta. Arrange the green beans on a serving plate and top with the tomato mixture.