Beef Ribs at Warisan

The four of us (Wid, his bro, bro's wife, and I) went to Warisan to check out their beef ribs after we heard good things about this dish. We ordered the three person portion of the dish which came with 1.75 kg Black Angus beef ribs, salad, and French fries. We also ordered the French onion soup, warm shredded duck salad, a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, dessert platter, and some sort of cold vegetarian lasagna with balsamic vinaigrette which turned out to be a salad layered with flat noodles (looked like wonton skin to me). The onion soup was all right (I had better, like the one from By the Docks in Maryland) but I think their garlic soup is still much better. Too bad the garlic soup isn't in their regular menu anymore.

The main even was the beef ribs and they were wonderful!! I have to say it's the best beef I had in Bali so far. The meat was tender, juicy, and very flavorful, both smoky and beefy. The raw material itself was high quality and the chef did an excellent job of cooking the meat. The red wine complemented the meat perfectly. I also thought they did an excellent job of cooking the French fries. The desserts were great as usual and it's always good to end a meal on a high note.

The meal for the four of us ended up costing around 2 million rp. Most of the cost came from the beef (990,000 rp) and the wine (440,000 rp), but it was well worth the price because we had an excellent time and the food was fantastic. This meal was definitely much better than my previous experience at Warisan (they ran out of duck confit and the duck dish I ended up ordering was so salty that I couldn't eat it). I still don't know what happened with the previous time because all the other times we've been to Warisan, we had really excellent food.

I told Wid's dad about our experience and now he wants to try the beef. Hehe.

Warisan

Last night to celebrate my birthday, Wid took me to Kafe Warisan a French Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. We've been wanting to try this place out for months, but for various reasons we never made it there. The place is on Jl. Raya Kerobokan in Kuta. The ambiance was quite romantic and pretty, like we were in a antique store surrounded by rice paddies. There were a bit of a mosquitoe problem, but they provide some Off mosquitoe repellent for their clients.

The restaurant had an extensive wine list, but we only ordered water and a margarita. Wid liked the margarita from Bubba Gump's more because it's more slushy. For dinner Wid ordered their special of the day, which is toro tuna with fois gras and asparagus, while I ordered the duck leg confit, sauté potatoes, caramelized shallots, honey and balsamic garlic sauce as well as garlic soup with coutons and Swiss cheese and country bread. The garlic soup was surprisingly mild but still tasted of garlic. The lightness of the soup reminded me of the mushroom room recipe I got from Pepin's Fast Food My Way. The country bread was warm with crunchy crust and soft inside. The duck was crispy (skin) yet moist and tender (meat). It's a bit saltier than I liked, but it paired wonderfully with the sweetness of the sauce and the slight bitterness of the greens. Wid really enjoyed his tuna as well. The tuna was much lighter than my duck with a hint of Asian flavor.

For dessert we decided to try the sampler, which ended up a very good decision because everything was very delicious and filling. The sampler consisted of millefeuille (puff pastry with vanilla cream), crème bruleé, chocolate profiteroles (I think?), and lemon meringue tart. There were little cream puffs filled with ice cream also. Wid said the creme brulee is the first he had in Bali that actually tasted like creme brulee. I still like the one from La Dolche Vita better, but this one was very good also. I also really liked the puff pastry and the lemon tart also.

In the end the price is close to that of Ku De Ta, but we think it's worth it considering Warisan used ingredients not easily found in Bali and the dishes are actually something interesting and not commonly found in other restaurants. For the two of us, the meal was around 600,000 rp with drinks, dessert, soup, and two entrees.

For lunch I had noodles with eggs and veggies, a standard dish on birthdays for Chinese. :D

Bavarois (trial #2)

Accepting Wid's request for bavarois, I tried making the dessert again on Monday. This time I reduced the amount of sugar by a quarter (60 g to 45 g). I took more care in dissolving the gelatin and in reheating the mixture after the addition of the egg yolk. When I served the dessert to Wid, I added a bit of the leftover ganache from the chocolate cake. No whipped cream this time because I didn't want to open up the 1 L box. He really loved the second batch because of the combination of the good chocolate and the slightly less sweet cream. He also thought the texture was better though I do not know if the lessening of sugar contributed to the change in the texture.

Since Ana and Hadi came to dinner for the Taiwanese deep fried pork chops, I gave them the dessert too. First they shared the one cup of bavarois. Then, Hadi came into the kitchen and asked, "So what other desserts are there?" We gave him the second cup of bavarois and a slice of the chocolate cake. He seemed to like the chocolate a lot even though normally he hates chocolate (it gives him a head ache).

So I guess mission accomplished. Next French dessert on the list is eclair. I need to find more ways of using the ganache before it goes bad.

Gâteau au Chocolat (Chocolate Cake)

While I read reading my new book Jacques Pépin's The Complete Techniques, I came across a recipe for the basic sponge cake (génoise) that's very versatile. I decided to try out the recipe because I'm a fan of sponge cakes. The recipe called for two 8-inches round pan but we didn't have any in the house so I ended up using two 9-inches pan instead. What I thought was interesting was the first step where you heat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla over boiling water or the burner to make it lukewarm. Then you "over beat" the mixture for about 10 minutes because you need to add the melted butter at the very last stage. Flour was then sifted and folded into the mixture. Because the oven temperature is almost impossible to adjust, I ended up baking the cakes at around 170-175 C. When the cake came out of the oven, it looked gorgeous with this wonderful golden brown color. The smell was lovely also. Wid's mom thought the cake was a bit undercook, but it looked and felt fine to me. It was a bit hard to get the cake out of the pan, but maybe I was a bit too impatient while waiting for the cake to cool a bit.

After thinking for quite a bit about what sort of cake to make (fruit with cream, chocolate, or tiramisu), I decided on the chocolate cake filled with whipped ganache and coated with more ganache. The next day I assembled the cake. I cut each cake into halves. I couldn't cut the cake into thirds because it was too thin. I made two batches of ganache with semisweet chocolate (instead of half bitter/half semisweet because it's impossible to find bitter chocolate here) and heavy cream. First batch was whipped and flavored with a bit of rum, and I used this to frost each layer of the cake and all over the cake once it was assembled. The second batch was allowed to cook to room temperature which was then poured all over the cake to make the shell/coating. I wanted to follow the direction in the book to make the white frosting, which was used as decorations, but because we ran out of eggs I couldn't make the frosting nor could I make another frosting that I used for neapoleon because we can't find corn syrup. In the end, I combined a bit of powdered sugar with a bit of honey, water, and lime juice to make something that's workable. Unfortunately, I found out later that it doesn't cool well, but at least I got to decorate the cake.

It was really fun trying to frost and decorate the cake (a first for me), but the best and messiest part of the experience was dumping a large amount of ganache on the cake and letting it run off to the counter. The cake looked very amateur-ish, but it tasted great. Widhy really liked the taste of the cake. I thought the chocolate and the sponge cake went well together and not overwhelmingly sweet, but I'm not happy with the texture of the cake. My mom's sponge cakes always been softer and finer in texture, but all the cakes I had here are coarse. I'm pretty sure one of the reason is that the local flour is inferior to flour from US. Maybe once I mastered basic cake making techniques, I can switch to imported flour to make a better cake.

It kind of sucks to be handicapped by not so awesome ingriendents and bad equiptments. It's very frustrating. Well, at least the chocolate was awesome and it did produce really awesome results.

Bavarois

Wid, his parents, and I returned from our trip to Singapore. I managed to find lots of ingredients for Chinese cooking as well as gelatine for cheap. With the last ingredient in hand, I decided to make Bavarois or Bavarian Cream Monday afternoon. The recipe I used was from my mom's Chinese-translated cookbook on creating desserts without an oven. Since the oven in the house is still broken, this cookbook comes in very handy. I already tried Blun's Mangen, which Wid really liked a few months ago. I read in several places on how to make Bavarois and they all seemed to differ in terms of the order of the steps. For this attempt, the steps were modified based a bit. I first soaked the gelatine powder in water. I warmed the milk and the sugar on the stove until the sugar melted. I then added the gelatine. I then beat two egg yolks in a glass bowl and slowed added the sugar-milk mixture to the eggs. I poured the mixture into a sieve, though I think the sieve was too coarse because everything simply passed through it. Instead of immediately putting the mixture on ice, I returned it to the stove and cooked the cream until it coated my wooden spoon. When I was able to draw a line on the spoon with the coated cream, the cream was the correct consistency. What was interesting is when the cream was almost done, I could hear the change in the sound of the spoon hitting the side of the pot. I let the cream cool in an ice bath as I beat the whipping cream. In my first attempt at beaten the cream, for some mysterious reason, the cream started to curdle like when milk and something acidic were combined together so I had to redo the batch. Once the cream was whipped, I had trouble incorporating the cream and the whipped cream. I think the problem was I added the whipped cream to the cream instead of vice versa. Eventually everything was mixed in nicely and I placed the dishes into the refridgerator.

To serve the Bavarois, I added freshly whipped cream and a piece of Hersey Kiss on each dish of cream. Everyone seemed to like it, but it might be too sweet for Wid's parents' pallet. I thought it was not too sweet, but next time I'll decrease the amount of sugar. I'm also tempted to make a chocolate version later.