The Cooking Ninja

I've decided to help BloggerAid's to put together a book to help raise funds for a good cause. BloggerAid's is a fast growing group of global food bloggers coming together in a common goal to help raise awareness of world hunger. Besides raising awareness about world hunger, they are collecting original recipes from fellow bloggers around the world to publish a cookbook to be put on sale on Amazon.com by this year end. 100% profits from the sales of this book will fund School Meals for underprivileged children all over the world, a program of the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations front line agency.

The dish I'll be contributing to the book is a family dish called Pommes de Terre Au Four, and has been in my darling's family for a few generations. This time around, no recipe will be shown here until the book is out later on this year.

Ever since I became more confident in my baking skill, I have always wanted to make this delicious dessert that is so well-known in the French region of Auvergne. I even bought a packet of pralines from the supermarket a few months after we moved here, but I never quite got the courage to use them. After scouring the Internet for many different recipes, I chickened out again after reading the word 'kneading' as all the recipes use bread machine to make this brioche and I was kinda daunted by it. However, my recent success on No Knead Bread renewed my interest in making this brioche again. For days, I kept pouring over all the recipes that I have gathered from the net and comparing one from the other - all techniques and quantity are similar yet different. Finally yesterday night I gathered all my guts together and 'JUST DO IT' like the Nike Ad.

Voilà, may I present you my very own Brioche Aux Pralines freshly made this morning.

I'll post my recipe for it soon. So be sure to look out for it.

The past few days the weather has been rather wet, and after a big storm the other day we could almost smell the mushrooms sprouting everywhere in the forest. So yesterday afternoon, we went mushrooms-hunting, hiked up in the forest and stared hard at the ground as we walked, making sure we weren't stepping on some precious mushrooms. It takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the light in the woods and differentiate the moss, dead leaves, good and bad mushrooms. Mushrooms were everywhere - well lots of bad mushroom anyway. My heart beats with excitement like a little kid on her first treasure hunt... suddenly I spot my first edible mushrooms. Once you find them, you will most likely find the whole bunch sprouting near each other. I enjoyed myself thoroughly... it's like treasure hunting... you never know what you will find next - big treasure or small treasure. Well I can't say the same for little ninja who missed her afternoon siesta and was whining throughout the whole trip.

Look at my lovely treasure !

Can you tell what type of mushrooms I have in the basket?

Hmm...what kind of dish do you think will I be cooking these lovely mushrooms?
Psss: we have another bucket full of wild mushrooms

No recipe today but I'd like to present a fabulous delicacy that we bought today on our holidays and that is unique to the French region of Auvergne : the brioche aux pralines. It's a regular, albeit somewhat dry, brioche, infused with chunks of praline and sugar. Sold in some bakeries around the area (haven't seen it in any other part of the country), they are more or less rich in pralines, but of course the more the better. It makes your fingers sticky but it's so delicious...