Coco-nutty prune candy

A few weeks ago I had cravings for ice cream with hot sauce. That's called a tooth-ache wish. I happened to have a bunch of prunes left over from my chocolate-y meat sauce and decided to boil them in some coconut milk. The coconut milk thickened and adopted the fruity sweetness of the prunes, which turned soft and velvety, being rich in creamy coconut milk.

I didn't eat it all, no matter how serious my cravings were.
I discovered the left-overs later when they had already cooled down. Instead of a sauce there were soft coconut-flavoured prunes. Ding! An idea! I would have walked..well...a mile to have got hold on to some white chocolate to dip these prunes into. It took me a week to get the chocolate, though...


Coco-nutty prune candy
(about 30)

2 dl prunes
2 dl coconut milk
about 120 g white chocolate
about 2 dl coconut flakes

1. Boil prunes with coconut milk for 10-15 minutes (don't cover).
   
2. Remove from heat and let the prunes cool. If there is too much coconut milk left, you can just pick the prunes out.
3. Melt chocolate over a waterbath. Prepare a small bowl with coconut flakes to roll the candy in and parchment paper/foil/silicone sheet to place the candy on for cooling.
4. Dip each prune into white chocolate, let excessive chocolate drip off, roll the candy in coconut flakes and place onto parchment paper/foil/silicone sheet to cool. (I used 2 teaspoons - one for dipping and one for covering so I didn't get a chocolate-coconut flake mess)

The candies can be stored in the fridge and taken out only some time before serving - that way it's better to eat them in several bites. If they're kept at room temperature, it's better to eat them in just one bite - or pieces might fall off them and...that's just not that comfortable.



How long should you boil the prunes? I have boiled them at quite a high temperature. The first time I made the candies, I used a small pot - the prunes didn't fit in one layer. I boiled them for 15 minutes and the coconut milk was still quite light-coloured. The second time I used a saucepan - the prunes didn't fill one layer. After 10 minutes I removed the saucepan from heat, because the coconut milk was quite brown already. So I recommend using a pot that just holds one layer of prunes and keeping an eye on it - don't let the coconut milk turn that brown, the taste will be better.

The candies have a mild coconut taste and are very velvety inside. White chocolate adds additional sweetness and makes the overall impression quite sweet. If you're an extreme sweettooth, try adding dark syrup when boiling the prunes. Using toasted coconut flakes would make the nutty accent yummily overwhelming.
Do try this at home!

TGRWT#5: Meat with chocolate - are you kidding?

To try and eat meat with chocolate – that’s no easy challenge. Like – no way. But the more I thought about it, the more tempted I felt. Not only to test myself but also to shock others to see what they’d say and if they’d have anything to say at all. Well, they had. Amrita’s challenge for this months TGRWT#5 – combining meat and chocolate – has been the most intriguing one this far.

A traditional mole would have been a safer choice, I guess, because it’s widely known that it has chocolate in it and people actually eat it and like it and they actually do. No mole this time, amigos. I used an Italian recipe (Cinghiale in agrodolce) that actually called for wild boar (not a good idea to spend a pile of money if you’re mixing meat with chocolate for the first time – trust me), but used pork, I also lessened the amount of red wine vinegar. Otherwise I followed the recipe, word for word. Quite a scary afternoon.

Pork in chocolate and prune sauce
(adapted from Hans Joachim Döbbelin’s ’Italy’)

100 g prunes
75 g big raisins
600 g pork chops
75 g bacon
3 tbsp olive oil
salt
50 g bitter chocolate
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 dl red wine vinegar
3 laurel leaves
cinnamon

1. Soak prunes and raisins in lukewarm water
2. Cut the meat into slices
3. Chop bacon and heat it with olive oil until transparent
4. Add pork chops and fry them on both sides, then add salt and fry for additional 10 minutes on lower heat.
5. Drain prunes and raisins and grate chocolate (for me it was easier to just chop it into little pieces)
6. Heat sugar, laurel leaves and red wine vinegar on a pan until sugar dissolves, then add the mixture to the meat
7. Also add raisins, prunes, chocolate and some cinnamon, then heat almost until boiling point (don’t let it boil!)
8. Mix meat and sauce well and heat everything for another 15 minutes, not letting it boil.
9. Serve with pasta or be a traitor like me and serve with rice instead.

I don’t imagine eating something like this with pasta. Really really really. Pasta with sweet and sour chocolate sauce? No. Rice was definitely much better.

Cooking this dish filled the kitchen with overwhelming vinegar smell – that was a bit alarming, especially for my mother. ’If I had known you were going to use it for meat, I wouldn’t have bought you this bottle of vinegar,’ she said when she came home. And also – ’If you asked me to buy meat I thought you’d be making something really good, but you made something sour.’ Okay, not a very bad start.

The dish is best described as sweet and sour chocolate meat. The taste of chocolate, most of all, is strange. It may be strangely good, but it’s still strange, strangely chocolate-y. What I actually like the most, are the prunes – delicate, soft, somehow maintaining a good balance between tastes. I’d rather eat the meat and pick out the prunes (into my mouth, of course), adding some yoghurt to my rice instead of chocolate sauce! The meat has an interesting accent to it, but isn’t flavoured by the sauce in a taste-killing way.

When my parents came home, I kept repeating, ’Really-really, you don’t have to eat this, you can just have rice with smoked chicken, really. Really.’ But strangely this time they wouldn’t listen, although I refused to reveal the components of the dish and hid myself in my room, doing all kinds of, you know, important stuff. After they’d called me for several times to go and explain the mystery, I heard the words ’this meat was good’.

I’m in awe. I’m confused. Something’s wrong in the world.
My parents liked meat in chocolate sauce.

Sweet bread puddings with condensed milk, peanut butter and plums

Making the Estonian bread pudding Saiavorm has certain rules for me.
It's half soft. It's half crunchy. It's got something with sour taste in it. It has sugar sprinkled on it. It is flavoured with vanilla (is there something that ISN'T flavoured with vanilla at this house?). Its top is golden brown. It's eaten with cold milk poured over it. Its serving size is really big just big enough to fill the belly.

But who actually cares? I may add berries, pears or even salted fish into my bread pudding if I want to (the salted fish was a metaphor, really). I do love to add some curd cheese, cream cheese, sour cream or yoghurt to the egg and milk mixture to make the lower part of the pudding taste more than just...divine tasting soaked bread. This time the quantity of bread is much smaller than usually as I used a muffin pan, but at the same time the dessert has a gourmet-like twist in taste. I'd call it progress, wouldn't you?:)


Sweet bread puddings with condensed milk, peanut butter and plums

100 g white bread
100 g plums (fresh/frozen)
1 tbsp peanut butter
3-4 tbsp sweetened condensed milk
1 1/4 dl milks
1 egg
1 yolk
vanilla
sugar for sprinkling

1. Chop the plums and divide the pieces between muffin pan holes (there's no need to melt frozen plums - they'll do just fone on their own).
2. Dice the bread and add to the plums.
3. Mix the rest of the ingredients (except sugar) together and pour onto bread.
4. Sprinkle the puddings with some sugar and bake at 190C until baked from the inside and golden brown on the top, circa 25 minutes.
5. Serve warm with cold milk.



The sweetness of the puddings comes from the condensed milk, but as there's not much of it, you may add sugar to taste. Peanut butter mysteriously makes the taste better from the background, it can't be noticed right away, but makes its every effort to improve your eating experience. And yes - half soft, half crunchy. Easy, it is, but someone should explain that to the cooks of the school diner too - there's so much more to saiavorm than just soaked bread (and they should know that for heaven's sake!).

I'm only worried about one thing. The only peanut butter that is sold in every bigger store here in Tallinn was peculiarly runny this time. There's nothing written about it on the jar, but if they're adding more oil to it now...
Argh.