Matcha Madness #3: Matcha poached prawns with light bisque cubes, citrus emulsion

From my two previous posts you might know what is going on: Matcha Madness. A contest started by Catty of The Catty Life to help spreading the knowledge about matcha and push its healthiness in our lives.
I decided to work on three recipes to enter in the contest, that is:

• Braised cucumber served with White Jade, served with matcha flavored braising liquid and chives;
• Cod mousseline disk topped with a sprinkle of black nigella seeds and matcha foam served with a matcha flavored dashi broth and wakame seaweed;
• Matcha poached prawns in their broth served with light prawns bisque cubes, egg yolk-citrus emulsion and matcha crisps;

and now it is time to share with you the last and more elaborated of them.

Matcha Madness #2: Cod mousseline disk with nigella seeds and matcha foam

As continuation to the Matcha Madness cook-off, it is now time for the cod mousseline. What is a mousseline? It is simply a farce, a mixture of protein (mostly fish) and cream used in classical French cuisine for quenelles (dumplings) or to make terrines.
It is a very simple and versatile preparation that can even produce elegant and delicate sausages; a perfect ingredient for a dinner party.
What is Matcha Madness  you ask me now? Matcha Madness is a recipe contest that Catty from The Catty Life started for the month of July. We were asked to produce something featuring matcha green tea to win a tin of Teapigs’ matcha powder . If you want to know a bit more about matcha read my previous post.
I decided to cook something savory and after fighting with something like 10 different dishes I chose three of them:

Matcha Madness and the Green Fairy

At the beginning of this month, Catty from The Catty life  announced a new recipe contest: Matcha Madness. If you are familiar with her blog you would agree with me that she is the Green Fairy, as she is mad about matcha. For its flavorfulness and healthiness this ingredient is in effect a must of every refined pantry and palate.
What is matcha?

White Jade aka Almond Tofu

What is that nut revered and featured in many ancient cultures cuisine in the highest festivities? That nut that divided Medieval courts aside the white granular gold? The nut that is cited in the Holy Bible with pistachios?
Yes, you got it right it is the almond.
Its mellow, round, heady aroma refreshes us during summers and titillates our palates with little delicacies at coffee time year round. It was introduced in Europe most probably by the Phoenicians through the south of the Mediterranean countries and it has been for centuries a status symbol. Combining them with the precious

The health paradigm

Tofu is healthy.
Everybody knows that, they keep on telling this to us from any available source promoting vegetarian eating (and not only) last but not least even Lisa Simpson from her yellowy world praises the loveliness of a mock-turkey made with the bean-curds as deign substitute for the feathery alter-ego in a Thanksgiving dinner.

So for once, let’s be healthy and, as always, adventurous; shall we?
For this month the four Velveteers, in the person of Pam, have chosen to have a lovely trip to the far-east. Furthermore from this month on we (Aparna, Asha, Pam and me) decided to open the Velveteers challenge to all our fellow bloggers so don’t be surprised to see more tofu’s posts in the next days. If you want to join the Velveteers club, just email us or join our Google group.

PaperChef 54 with a magic quartet

Zucchini, raspberries, beans and cereals; these are the actors of today' show.
As every first weekend of each month, it is PaperChef time! If you remember I have already taken part to this creative challenge, quite a few months back. Voids of memory and travels have impeded me to rejoin the happy crew for the monthly ride.
Miraculously this month I remembered of it and checked the dedicated blog  even before the host and ingredients were disclosed; I told you it had something of a miracle, no?
This month host is Karen of Prospect the Pantry and she is the responsible for the weird combination of toys I had in front of me. To be honest, fate is the responsible but, have you read of the power of thoughts on stochastic event? if not, it is a pretty cool scientific/philosophical topic to delve into. Anyhow, the whole ingredients list (Zucchini, raspberries, beans and cereals) didn't look so strange if it wasn't for the raspberries.

Orange cake: one and a hundred

From the records of this blog, you might have realized that I do not really bake that much; I usually do so more for catering than for private appreciation.
It is more than one year already that a friend of mine asked me to bake for her a weekly orange cake. I worked over the recipe she gave me to bring it to my liking (though still I could tweak it) but after the beginning excitement it all looked quite repetitive.
As usual, I do not really like to repeat my things over and over again if not for the purpose of development so I ended up producing quite a certain variety of orange cakes. The cake is a really nice one, neither too sweet nor too rich but very aromatic and satisfying and different garnishing add specific accents to the orange flavor; Chinese rice wine, rose’s petals, rose water and orange blossom water, tarragon, pink pepper, gooseberries or rhubarb played all a role in one version or another.
This post serves the purpose to show how versatile a single cake recipe can be, without the need of including a frosting or pastry cream of any sorts.

Basic and delicious Orange Cake