food, fun and travel
Halloween came too quickly this year and I’m completely unprepared and unmotivated for one of my most favorite holidays. What makes things worse, Bulgaria doesn’t really celebrate Halloween, they have their own dress up “scary” holiday in February. In the spirit of things, last night I decided to make toffee apples, they look and taste amazing!
Hot spice toffee dipped apple in 72% dark chocolate and almonds.
Dark chocolate covered apple with dry roasted peanuts.
Deep purple vanilla toffee.
Dry roasted peanut dipped apple with black/purple toffee.
I originally wanted to make hard candied apples but I don’t have a candy thermometer and was afraid of over cooking the sugar and burning everything. Instead I ended up with toffee apples! They taste great, look great so who really cares if the candy is hard or not.
Holy smokes this was a fantastic dinner, one of the top 5 dinners of all time according to my husband. Let’s start with the rava thosai; my friend Alisa who is lives in Kuala Lumpur sent us a dry powder mix of rava thosai a while back. You mix the powder with water until you achieve a crepe batter-like consistency. In a hot pan fry onions until translucent then pour the mix onto top. It’s exactly like making crepes or pancakes except the rava thosai turn out super crunchy, spicy and delicious. The trick is to only flip it once.
For the eggs: hard boil egg, peel and place in a soy, water, ginger and brown sugar mixture for minimum 30 minutes.
The dumplings (could be filled with just about anything): fry finely chopped onions and mash together with cooked mung beans and salt. Roll into little balls and put in fridge for 30 minutes. The dumpling themselves are made from equal parts white flour and tapioca starch, a little bit of oil from the fried onions, salt and warm water which is mixed in slowly. The dough will have a smooth, bouncy consistency. Roll a little ball in your hand, flatten it in your palm then place the filling in the center. Pinch shut and roll smooth. Place in boiling water then wait until they float the the top (stir occasionally so they don’t stick to the bottom).