When Chocolate meets Orange in Paris made in Bahrain.

I wanted to make a pie. But I read online that making tarts will be more satisfying. Well, maybe because it was much more simpler and less fuss to do. So I made a tart. I wanted to use my oranges that has been on the table for quite some time. I don't want to waste it, so I made Orange Tart. I know oranges and chocolate goes really well, like a beautiful relationship swimming in our tongue. Sounds dirty. :P

Plus, my husband is not the "any-kinda-dessert" person, but do sometime enjoy having to eat anything with chocolate in it. Dark chocolate to be precise. Chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, hot chocolate and, urm, and.. hmmm.. I think that's it. But not chocolate bar. Like Cadbury or Galaxy or Godiva.

So I went online and did my research and found a great french tart base and a delicious orange & chocolate filling. Or maybe I should call it orange filling. No. Orange curd. Yes, the right word for it is orange curd. I just checked back the website I found the recipe.

Here's the recipe.

French Tart Base by David Lebovitz.

90g (3 ounces) unsalted butter (cut into pieces)

1 tbsp vegetable oil

3 tbsp water (I use room temperature)

1 tbsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

150g flour

1. Preheat oven 210'C. Heat butter, oil, water, sugar & salt for 15 mins in the oven till butter is bubbling & sugar starts to brown at the edge of the oven proof bowl.
2. Pour hot butter mixture (be careful as butter mixture may explode) to flour. Quickly stir flour & butter mixture till forms into a ball. 
3. Transfer to pie/tart pan and wait to cool. Once cool spread dough evenly.
4. Baked for 15 mins or until golden brown. 

Simple and quick. Which I like. And it taste good. But really. Be very careful when taking out the heated butter from the oven. I almost jumped when it errupted and you can hear the "blop blop" sound. No kidding.

For the chocolate layer base I used (another simple and quick recipe) :-

Chocolate Ganache by Pastry & Sports.

100g dark chocolate (original uses 50gs only)

100g cream (original uses 50gs only)

1. Heat cream (not to boiling).
2. Pour warm cream on finely chopped dark chocolate.
3. Stir till smooth.
4. Pour on cooled tart base. Refrigerate till set for about 30 mins.

Last, the orange curd. 

Orange Curd by Pastry & Sports.

2 whole eggs (room temperature)

10ml orange juice (100g) (I used freshly squeezed juice of 1 orange)

50g sugar

75 butter

Zest of 1 orange (I reuse the one that I squeezed)

1. In a small sauce pan, add sugar, zest, orange juice & eggs over gentle heat. Stir till thickens. But do not boil it. Cause it will end up like making scramble eggs. (LOL!)
2. Out from the heat, add butter and whipped till incorporated. 
3. Leave to cool. Then pour it on the cooled tart base with chocolate ganache layer.
4. Let it set for 2 hours or more in the fridge. Not the freezer. 

I had a problem with the curd. Maybe because my eggs were not room temperature as I took it from the fridge straight to the sauce pan. Or maybe I should have whisk the eggs and sugar together before I pour everything (like instructed from the Pastry & Sport blog) in one go. But then again, the taste is just delicious. Because nothing goes wrong when chocolate meets orange base in Paris... :)

Enjoy & good luck.

Good Morning.

Well, I woke up early today after Subuh (around 3.20am) and slept back for few hours before woken up by my food alarm. I woke up at 7:30am thinking I should do my morning workout, but urgh! I hate it when the pillow is so cozy and the blanket is so warm and the aircond is blasting cold since its the starting of Summer. I should set a timer to my aircond. So it can shut off on its own and it will make me uncomfortable to sleep back again. lol!

Homemade.

Being a housewife, we tend to learn how to cook. It's not that I don't know how to cook, but I never seem to take the opportunity to cook when I was young. Back home, my kitchen was big enough. But it doesn't seem to attract me to cook. I baked. Cookies & cupcakes. But mostly, it wasn't that successful. And plus, the mess. My mother is a cleaned freak. She likes her house cleaned and untouched, you can say. So, she barely cooks in the kitchen. She buys most of the time. Maybe, that's why it didn't interest me in using it.

Anyways, I started to learn to cook by myself. I enjoy watching cooking/baking show a lot. As much as I love watching DIY interior related. I remembered when in high school, I used to cook in my friends house instead off mine. I used whatever ingredients that's there and make up something that is edible. Pasta & cheese, sandwiches, fried rice & etc...

After I got married, my husband brought me to Hong Kong to start our new married life. And Hong Kong was a challenge when it comes to food. It sort of force me to learn to cook. I mean, I am a typical Malaysian who misses Malaysian food very much. But I can live without having to eat them everyday. It's just that, your tongue knows what it wants. Plus, my husband is Malaysian. He is just like my dad. The rice man. Lol! As long as there is rice on the dining table, it will be enough. Hong Kong didn't have some of the things that we Malaysian loooove to use. Or maybe, we couldn't find any.There's no cili boh, kicap pekat, fresh santan or even pandan leaves. But we survived from the land of pigs. Now that's another story to tell . :)

Here in Bahrain, Alhamdulillah, so far it's welcoming. Managed to find and get things that wasn't available in HK, and most importantly, HALAL. I've up my cooking and challenged myself. I wanted my cooking to taste like how it was in a "kedai-tepi-jalan" style. I wanted the taste to be like the Malay-Thai cooking. And not only that, I even challenged myself to do Western style. heheheheheh. So here I am, posting this blog and posting my "agak-bangga-lah-jugak" photos. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as eating them. It ain't perfect, but the taste is enough to make my husband tummy, happy.

 

 

Summer heat.

It's the summer in Bahrain. Hot. Well, I don't feel the heat, cause I'm always at home with the aircond, but my husband gets the heat pretty much everyday. Pure sandy heat. And stuffy. Hazy. And stuffy. Sand dust. And just plain stuffy. Have I mentioned that yet...?

Though there is loads of wind, but, it only blows loads of hot air. Sea heat, sandy heat, just heat. And the sucky part of it, is that, Bahrain's sands - no. Bahrain's construction sites have loads of sand used for construction (of course - duh!) and when the wind blows, sands are blown away. You can make sand castles in a week in your home bathroom floor. And those fine sands get into our eyes easily. My husband's having an eye infection right now. And I think, I'm getting one to. Swollen, puffy eyes. Itchy.

Stop it! Stop complaining! Remember. To "Think Positive"! New motivation.

*moment of silence*

*breath deep....*

I'm grateful with what is given. Thank you, Allah....