Lemon Olive Oil Cake

The problem with having a hot-headed oven? Your cakes always end up browner on top than intended... especially if you're as forgetful as me and forget to shift your oven rack a notch or two below the middle.

Do you see the brownness? Sigh.

Oh well.

Actually, despite the dark brown top, this olive oil lemon cake (taken from Gourmet magazine, 2006) turned out superbly.  Wonderfully soft, remarkably light,  deliciously lemony, gorgeously moist and delightfully bright ... ok, enough with the superlatives. It's tasty. And really soft. And lemony. You like? I do.

As the name suggests, the cake uses olive oil instead of butter. Extra virgin olive oil if you prefer a more profound taste of olive oil. I opted for regular olive oil as I craved the texture the product brought to the cake, not so much the taste (though I do love the flavour of olive oil). 

Though olive oil helps keep this cake moist, unlike butter (butter when creamed with the sugar) the oil does not have any properties of a leaven. As a result, this cake gets it's rise from carefully whipped egg whites. Just an extra step, not much of a bother and well worth the result

Lemon Olive Oil Cake

3/4 cup Olive Oil

1 cup superfine flour (or measure 1 cup all purpose flour, then take away 2 tbsp of it and replace with corn flour)

1 large lemon

5 eggs (separated; reserve 1 egg white for some other use — like an egg white omelet, maybe?)

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar + 11/2 tbsp to be kept aside

Preheat the oven to 180C with the rack in the middle. Unless your oven is like mine and is extremely hot on top — in which case adjust the rack one notch below the middle.

Grease a 9-inch springform pan and line the bottom with baking paper. Grease the paper lightly. 

Zest the lemon and add 1/2 tsp (or 3/4 tsp if you really like a lemon flavour in your cake) and add it to the flour. Cut the lemon and squeeze 11/2 tbsp juice for the cake. Set aside.

Beat the egg yolks and the 1/2 cup sugar (yes, just 1/2 cup from the 3/4 cup you measured) on high speed until thick and pale. Reduce to medium speed and add the olive oil and lemon juice and mix till all the ingredients are incorporated well. Remove bowl from the mixer and fold in the flour using a wooden spoon. You should have a thick batter. Set aside.

Whisk the egg whites and salt on medium speed until foamy. Add the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and whisk on high speed until the whites hold soft peaks (3-5 mins). 

Add 1/3 of the whites into the batter, folding in gently with a spatula. Add the remaining whites, once again being gentle when folding them in.

Transfer the batter (now quite light) into the greased springform pan. Gently tap the pan on your counter/table to even the batter out. Sprinkle the 11/2 tbsp sugar on the surface of the cake. Bake for 35-40 mins or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Bread in a snap.

The best breadsticks I ever tasted was at an Italian restaurant in Langkawi Island a year ago. They were crunchy and so flavourful, I think I even asked for more and then some more. I ended up getting full on the breadsticks alone and left with ordering just a soup as my main. I can't remember the name of the restaurant — a shame — but I do remember the taste of those breadsticks and for some reason, I had a craving for them for the last couple of weeks. 

I couldn't very well hop on a plane to Langkawi just for the breadsticks so I did the next best thing: I made some myself. I had bookmarked several recipes for grissini (as the breadsticks are known in Turin from where they originate) so I looked for them and decided on a seeded breadstick (poppy seed and caraway seed). 

These traditional Italian breadsticks are basically dried bread that is roughly shaped into a long pencil-like sticks and baked till they're dry and can break in two with a crunch. The ones I ate in Langkawi were literally about as thin as a pencil but these aren't the only size the sticks come in. I decided that I wasn't going to make a skinny stick; nope, mine would be a sensible medium. The actual reason for this? I was too lazy to cut the dough into really thin strips!  

You start out making just as if you're making bread but : the ingredients are more or less the sane — bread flour, yeast, salt, water, olive oil. The process however is much simpler. No need for two or three rises or intense kneading.

The recipe I settled on used a little bit of instant mashed potato mix for flavour along with olive oil and salt and pepper, of course. I decided to stick with the quantities of the recipe (which made 64 breadsticks in total) but divided the dough into two portions: one with the mash mix and one without. They both tasted good but the one with the mash perhaps had a little more flavour. You decided if you want to add the mash mix or not.

Caraway and Poppy Breadsticks

21/2 cups bread flour

11/4 cups tepid water

21/4 tsp instant yeast

1/4 cup instant mash potato mix

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp each poppy seeds and caraway seeds

Pour the tepid water into the bowl of your mixer and add the yeast and a third of the flour into the water. Set aside for the yeast to come alive and the mixture to get frothy — about ten minutes.

Next, add the remaining flour and the mash mix into the yeast mixture and turn the mixer on low (speed 2 or 4). If you omit the mash mix, add another 1/4 cup flour or slightly less. Mix until the dough becomes  elastic. Add the seeds, salt and olive oil and mix till the seeds are evenly distributed.

The dough will be sticky so don't panic.

Transfer the dough to a well oiled bowl and cover to let it rise to double its size — about an hour.

When it's ready, preheat the oven to 130C.

Now turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for just a minute or so. Roll the dough so that it becomes a rectangle, about 1 cm thick. 

Cut strips — the width depends on how thin you want your breadsticks to be. They expand a little in the oven so take that into consideration.

Arrange the strips on a lined baking sheet (you probably need 3 or 4) and bake for about an hour or till the sticks are nice and golden and can be snapped easily. 

Eat them just as they are or stick them in your favourite dips or dunk them in your soup. 

You had me at Aglio Olio

My friend Premah asked me a couple of days ago if I had a recipe for Pasta Aglio e Olio. Unfortunately, I didn't, although the Angel Hair pasta with garlic and breadcrumbs I often make is a variation of the classic Aglio e Olio. Well, it's been two days and I haven't been able to get Aglio Olio out of my mind. Not that I was particularly craving for it, but I was itchy to try and make it. It isn't complicated and it's essentially vegetarian; vegan even as it  doesn't have cheese.

Aglio Olio has neither a tomato base nor a creamy base. It's a simple, straightforward, rustic pasta dish but that really doesn't mean it's a no brainer.

Aglio Olio is Italian for garlic and oil. And that's basically what it takes to make this dish what it is. Parsley is also an essential ingredient as is chilli flakes or dried chillies while seasoning is salt and pepper.

Linguini is supposed to be the original pasta of choice for Aglio e Olio but I had angel hair so I didn't have the luxury of choice.

Cooking the pasta: I decided to cook the pasta in vegetable stock to add flavour. At the World Gourmet Summit I attended in Singapaore a month or so ago, I attended a cooking masterclass by Italian Chef  Andrea Berton who cooked his pasta in stock to wonderful results. So I decided to follow suit. It was a great tip as the pasta soaks up the stock well. I would think a thicker noodle would perhaps be better but I made do with what I had.  As usual, cook in al dente.



In a skillet, heat about 4 tbsp of olive oil and add the garlic (8 cloves, squished and minced) and chilli flakes (2 tsp) and 2 tsp chopped flat leaf parsley (opt for the Italian flat leaf parsley as it's more flavourful).  Toss the ingredients around and make sure you don't let the garlic burn.

When it's all toasty and fragrant add the cooked pasta. You can add the pasta straight from the saucepan or stockpot you boiled it in so that it's still moist. Also add 3-4 tbsp of the stock in with the pasta. Season with salt and black pepper. Toss the pasta so it's coated with the olive oil, garlic, chilli, parsley and the seasoning.

Cook on low heat for a few minutes, adding a little more  parsley. The pasta will be a little wet, but it should never be soupy.

Remove and serve.

Now, this is the basic Aglio e Olio and you will find variations like  adding seafood like  prawns or mussels, tomatoes and sometimes even minced meat. I tried it with some sauteed mushrooms -- it tasted good but honestly, I preferred it plain with no frills.