Le nouveau gâteau truffe au chocolat , with soy yogurt

Not your grandma’s usual yogurt, not her salon de thé ‘s truffe au chocolat. I had no intention to remake them. The cake ended up similar just like that as I was improvising. Lucky !

Freshly made soy yogurt

It’s the greatest soy yogurt for me. Commercial soy yogurt are always on the runny side of creamy, or on the jello side. And the Japanese soy yogurt, oh my, I’d never eat that, it’s over-sweetened and flavored with with stevia that I loath.
This one has a texture of… yogurt. And a taste of soy. It’s perfect.
Don’t skip the sugar, it helps maturation and the result is not sweet at all.

Easy recipe :
-make one liter of thick tonyu soy milk (tutorial)
-in a small cup mix 1 tbs of potato starch, 1/4 of agar, 1/2 cup of soy milk. Cook a few seconds in the micro-wave till its thickens. You get a mess.
-in the blender, mix the warmed soy milk, the cup of starch, 1 tbs of sugar, 2 tbs of store bough soy yogurt
-let overnight in a yogurt maker

Tip : you can take a thermos/thick pot with a lid, place glass bin in the middle, very hot water around…and you have a yogurt maker. I do that for smaller batches.

Freshly made soy ‘Greek’ yogurt.
Drained in a cheese cloth (from the pharmacy), let overnight in the fridge. Drink the whey or use it for cooking, it’s full of healthy probiotics.

Other dairy-like ideas : my diary-free diary.

Now, let’s make the cake : I whip all that to make a chocolate mousse.

A nutty biscuit base (just blend all together).

Composition : the base, a layer of mousse, slices of kumquat, more mousse, cocoa.
The result is really bluffing. That’s not exactly looking like those from the pâtissier‘s, but that’s as close as you dream of getting for some sweet you make like that in 10 minutes. Taste is divine…

These kinkan (kumquats) are still in season and visible in the streets.

Gâteau de la bergère. Rum raisin shepherd cake.

Why shepherd ? You could think it’s because it looks like a sheep. It’s a woolly moist cake, deliciously flavored with the liquor infused fruits.

There is a relation with the shepherd pie too. The recipe is a little unusual. Apparently that was done a lot in France in the early 19th century as this ingredient had not been yet type-casted as savory side. Yes, a potato dessert ! And it’s delicious. Actually this is a great base to bake cakes without gluten nor grains nor nuts, so that may be a useful recipe for people with certain food intolerances. Anyway that’s good for everybody to vary.

RECIPE :
Beat in that order :
1 egg yolk + 1 or 2 tbs of sugar
+ 2 tbs of coconut cream + a splash of vanilla extract.
+about a cup of mashed potato flesh
+ water to get a creamy texture.
Mix in 1/4 cup of raisins soaked in rum overnight (there were goji berries too).
Add in 3 times the egg white (beaten and sweetened with 1 tbs of sugar).
Bake at 160 degrees Celsius till top is firm and golden.

Let cool a few hours. Serve chilled.

Nobody will guess what the main ingredient is. That appears like some baba au rhum soaked biscuit.
Well, the presentation could be better. That’s not a good idea to take it out of the mold. Next time, I’ll serve in individual cups or cocottes like a flan.

Daube de cochon (Provence pork stew, why we say “braisé”)

The daube (Provence’s stew) is more often done with beef, or lamb. Well I made it with pork this time.
Daube de porc. Daube de cochon. Pork Daube.

That’s delicious but the main ingredient is time. You nearly need one week :

Day 1 :
Short ribs of pork as the meat. They are marinated in red wine, with carrots, lots of onions, a bit of orange peel (mikan today), a bouquet garni, a few spices…
24 hours.
Then garlic is added, and tomato.

Day 2, Day 3… After searing the flour coated meat in olive oil, I used the rice-cooker as a crock pot. I did one cycle (2 hours + stay hot about 6 hours). Skimmed the fat after cooling. Another cycle the next day.

ENERGY, WATER, EFFICIENCY

You may know, or not that we live in time of “setsuden” (energy cutting campaign) in Japan. Due to some issues with power plants after the disasters last year, we try to reduce energy consumption. I have an energy-saving induction rice-cooker, so this method is the most ecological for long simmering, compared to stove-top or oven. In old times, in Provence, they were saving differently. The dish was simmered in a daubière, a pot designed for daube. Some models were in copper, but the most traditional was pottery, like this :

daubiere Source (read this article in English) in this English language blog about French culinary history.

Why we say braisé ?

With that you have to “braise” as on high heat the pot would explode… In French, “braise” means “ember”. The origin was to put the pot on embers. The lid of a daubière forms a sort of bowl. And one of my cast iron pots has the same shape because it is a braisière. So, they could place embers on the lid, and that would cook from both directions, bottom and top. Convenient in Winter.
But that’s not so efficient as anyway the heat goes up. The second way is to fill it with cold water. That seems weird ? When you simmer your food, some steam goes up and slowly escapes as the lid is not totally hermetic, even with a good lid, you have condensation. And after a while, your stew dries, so you add more water. Well you need to check, to be here. When you cover the lid with water, the lid stays slightly cooler, the steam hitting the lid instantly gets back into liquid and falls back into your stew : it does not get dry.