Cream Scones

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick), frozen
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 large egg


Heat the oven to 450°F/225C and arrange a rack in the middle. Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl and break up any lumps with whisk.

Grate the frozen butter through the large holes on a box grater; add to the flour mixture and toss until well combined. Whisk the heavy cream and the egg in a small bowl. Pour this mixture into the flour and mix with a wooden spoon until the dough just comes together.

Place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a circle. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to about 1/2-inch thickness. Dip a 2-1/2-inch biscuit cutter in some extra flour, tap off the excess, and stamp out as many scones as possible. Repeat until you have a total of 12 scones.

Place the scones at least 1/2 inch apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush the tops of the scones with cream. Bake until they are puffed and the tops are golden and getting brown around the edges, about 10 to 12 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature with your favorite jam and butter or with some clotted cream.

Pho (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup)

In San Francisco, getting a delicious bowl of pho wasn't really that difficult. There was usually a nice little Vietnamese pho restaurant hidden away in an avenue or at a strip mall in the 'burbs. You could get a large bowl of pho dac biet or pho tai or any other variety for a fairly low price of $7-$9, and fall easily into a pho-induced afternoon coma after slurping past the halfway point of one of these bowls of beefy goodness.


In Wellington, it's a completely different story. First, there are less than a handful of restaurants that actually serve pho. Then, you usually get bland broth with chewy, overcooked beef slices or beef meatballs. I have yet to encounter tendons, tripe, flank steak or even rare steak in a bowl of pho in Wellington. COME ON! What's a bowl of pho without any of that?

So, in desperation, I decided to make pho at home...for the first time EVER. I figured if I paid $10-$12 a bowl at a Wellington restaurant for a very mediocre and bland bowl, I could just as well buy the spices and bones, and simmer on my own to find a good broth base and add to it my favorite ingredients.

This recipe did not disappoint. Tomorrow, I'm off to the butcher's for offal and tendons!

Pho (Based on Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen's recipe)

BROTH
3 small onions, halved, do not remove skin
2 medium sized nubs of ginger, halved lengthwise, do not remove skin
2.5-3 kg or 5-6 lbs of good beef bones, preferably leg and knuckle
1 kg of beef flank, with fat and sinew
6 quarts of water
1 package of Pho Spices [2 cinnamon sticks, 1 tbl coriander seeds, 1 tbl fennel seeds, 6 whole star anise, 2 cardamom pods, 6 whole cloves - in mesh bag]
3 tablespoons rock salt (halve if using regular table salt)
1/2 cup fish sauce
2 large chunks of yellow rock sugar (about 3 oz)

NOODLES AND ETC.
Rice noodles (dried or fresh)
Sliced flank from broth
Handful of cilantro, thai basil and green onions, sliced on the diagonal
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 large jalapeno pepper, sliced
1 big handful of mung bean sprouts
Hoisin sauce
Sriracha hot sauce

Heat oven to broil. Coat onion and ginger halves with vegetable oil and place on cookie tray. Put in oven for 10 minutes and turn to broil for another 5. There should be a nice char that forms on the onions.

Boil water in 2 large pots, one with 6 quarts of water in a soup pot (with about 4-5 inches of space at the top) and the other in a large pot (no need to measure water). Parboil bones and flank meat in unmeasured pot first for 5 minutes, dump water out and place bones into the pot with 6 quarts of simmering water on medium-low. Remove scum that floats to the top.

Add fish sauce, rock sugar, ginger and onions. Remove any additional scum and fat that rise to the top. Simmer for 2 hours.

Add spice pack after 2 hours. Keep simmering for another 3-4 hours. Keep skimming the scum! You'll be amazed at how much scum you'll skim during the entire process.

Cook rice noodles by placing dry noodles in a large bowl. Cover with boiling water for 10-15 minutes. Make sure to stir the noodles to prevent sticking.

Prepare cilantro, basil, bean sprouts, lime wedges and jalapeno slices on plate. Squeeze some sriracha and hoisin sauce in a ramekin. Once noodles are ready, place them with a few ladle-fulls of broth in a soup bowl. Slice the flank steak against the grain and place them with a few scallion pieces in the bowl. Enjoy!

EDIT
Here are a few tips for a better broth:
- After letting your bones and broth simmer all day, refrigerate and scrape off the fat from the top of your pot. Your broth will be less fatty.
- Keep skimming scum as much as you can. You'll have a beautifully clear, amber broth if you first do the parboil and then do as much skimming as you can.
- Add as much fish sauce and salt to your broth as you see fit. Even if it feels like it's a lot, it's probably not as much as you'd get in a restaurant.

Cardamom-Almond Biscotti

I don't usually get pastries or cakes when I have my coffee/tea, but I just love a crunchy and light biscotti. It's the perfect pick-me-up in the afternoon, and sometimes, right before bed.

This is your basic biscotti recipe, but I decided to add cardamom and whole almonds because I love the floral taste and the extra crunch of whole nuts.




3-1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 cups sugar
10 tablespoons (1-1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 cup whole almonds, toasted or blanched

Preheat oven to 350F/177C. Slide rack onto center rung.

In medium bowl, sift together salt, flour and baking powder. In large bowl, mix together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and cardamom. Slowly mix in dry ingredients (about a cup or two at a time) until thoroughly blended. Add almonds.

Divid the dough in half, and roll each one into thick logs that are about 2-1/2 inches (5 cm) in diameter. Place parchment or baking paper on top of cookie sheet and place both logs on paper. Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. The logs will have flattened a bit during baking, and will look like a loaf of ciabatta bread.

Remove from oven and let cool for about 15-20 minutes. Slice into loaves using sharp, serrated knife at an angle, making each biscotti at least 1 inch (2 cm) wide. Put biscotti back onto cookie sheet, on their sides, and bake on each side for another 5-8 minutes. They should be pretty hard when you pull them out of the oven the final time.

Let cool and enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee.

Beef Cheeks Stew

This is a simple dish, made in the style of a "daube," a traditional French stew. Instead of herbes de provence, I used only thyme, building flavor by adding a light sweet/sour element at the end.












1/2 kg of beef cheeks, cut into large chunks
2 slices of bacon, cut into short strips
1 tbsp olive oil
1 parsnip, cut into large bite-sized chunks
1 carrot, cut into large bite-sized chunks
1 onion, cut into large chunks
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
4-5 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup of dry red wine
1 cup of beef or vegetable stock

8-10 brown mushrooms, cleaned and cut into halves
1 shallot, sliced thinly
2 tbsp of rice wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter

Using a medium pot set on medium heat, saute the garlic, onion and bacon until onions are cooked down. Toss in carrots and parsnips and saute for another 5 minutes. Set vegetables aside in a bowl. Using the oil in the pot, put beef cheeks, thyme and tomato paste in pot and brown on medium high heat. Add the wine and make sure the browned bits are scraped off into the wine as it lends flavor to the stew. Put the vegetables back into pot and add stock. Turn heat down to the lowest setting and simmer for 2 hours.

In small saute pan, melt butter until sizzling and then add the shallot. Fry until golden brown and add sugar and half of the vinegar. Add mushrooms and the other half of the vinegar and saute until mushrooms are half cooked. Pour contents of the saute pan into the pot with beef. Cook together for another 30-45 minutes.

The cheeks will be tender and you'll have an amazing sauce for which you can eat with good crusty french bread, mashed potatoes, rice or pasta.