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We all know that I like dessert.
No scratch that, I LOVE dessert!
So, it was very important to me that I had recipes in the book because I'm an avid baker
I used to be a homebaker at one point which is why I championed so many of them on my website
So each chef has given two recipes, they are a mix of savory and sweet
and for me, I contributed, or rather I included in the book
eleven recipes of sweets that I like to eat.
The flagship recipe in this selection, of the eleven is my cheesecake recipe.
This cheesecake recipe is very special to me because it was the recipe that I used to make the cheesecake that I was selling when I was a homebaker.
It's a recipe that I've been tweaking, perfecting for about, maybe, since I was in my 20's
It's a cheesecake that, it's a plain New York Cheesecake but it's about 5 inches high with a very special nut crust.
And everyone I've served it to falls for it, hard.
So I'm finally sharing the recipe in my book, but I had to think long and hard about whether I was really going to do that.
Because, you know, it's my baby, it's a thing that I nurture from the very beginning and I didn't know if I was ready to share it with the world but...
that's what the book is about, sharing, so...
Well, producing the book took fourteen months.
It was a long and challenging journey.
It composed of three parts, the essays, the chefs' profiles and the recipes
so in order to cull my best and my favorite pieces from the blog, I really chose those that were most popular and my favorite, as well.
How much is new material? That is really interesting, I haven't really thought about that.
I would say about probably 75% is new material, so and the remaining percentage is..
"stuff we already love"
oh, that's a nice way to put it, stuff we already love, or stuff that my readers already love.
and know about, yeah.
There are two recipes in the book which, they just make me drool every time I think about it.
One of them is a recipe by Chef Him Uy de Baron, it's called the "Braised Wagyu Beef Cheeks"
but its secret name is "Lori's Cheeky Ramen"
This recipe is something that Chef Him created for me late last year when I had oral surgery and I could only
I was on a soft food diet so he serves this in his restaurant and it's basically braised wagyu beef cheeks in a milky broth
and its got noodles and right dead in the center of this noodles, milky broth and the beef cheeks is this delicately poached egg.
You pierce it, and the golden yolk just flows out into this incredible ramen.
Okay, I desperately wanted that recipe in my book because Chef Him had created it for me
but apparently the broth takes 12 hours to make and that wouldn't be very friendly for readers of the book so...
so he adapted the recipe for me so instead of a ramen, it's really just dry noodles with braised wagyu beef cheeks
and the recipe is there and it's easy enough to do, and I have a variation for it in the book to serve it with a side of roasted bone marrow
so good! Okay?
and the next one, the other recipe that I really love in the book, is a simple banoffee pie
contributed by Chef Ricky Morelos of Dulcelin
you know we all have recipes for Banoffee Pie, this one is so different
First of all, the entire pie is baked in a, or rather is constructed in, because it's a no-bake pie
it's constructed in an 8-inch pie pan, so that already makes it very squat and dense
and it's an oreo cookie crust, it has dulce de leche and then bananas and then a dark chocolate ganache.
and then nutella and then whipped cream overall.
it is the best banoffee pie I've ever had, it is so good, I already made it 5 times.
since I submitted my manuscript, it's that good.
Ok, let's cut, let me just...
Every writer's greatest dream is to write a book and after 8 years of Dessert Comes First, blogging...
I just thought it was high time for me to put my best work to date in a bound and tangible form.
Basically hard copy as opposed to soft copy and my readers have also been asking for years for me to write a book
so I thought that it was about time and the stars aligned and I was able to do it.
So the book is a journey through nostalgia for me
I was able to unearthed a lot of the old things that I used when I was a kid, growing up
This page is a particularly poignant for me because it illustrates a lot of my old things, things that I forgotten about
So over here is my first "Cookbook" that I had made, when I was 9, it has a grand total of 4 recipes
and obviously at 9 years old I was very proud of it already coz it says there "Lori's Special Cookbook"
Try it, with a gold star! Says there.
And then these are my measuring, my very first ever measuring spoons and cups as you can see is so banged up
They don't even have these anymore now I think, it's like an old-fashioned egg ***
and up here is obviously I would never use ever again, cannot ever use ever again
It's like a rusty grater that I used to grate stuff before
Well, I shot all the pictures in the book myself, at least all the food and travel photography
When it comes to taking photos of food or when it comes to taking photos of things that I can't eat, I'm no good at that so
somebody else took the photos of the chefs for me but I took all the pictures of the food
A special part of the book that I'd like to share with you are what we call tip-ins
So these are, there are 16 of these tip-ins in the book
There's a pull quote or a pertinent quote taken from the succeeding essay, that is printed on the tip-in
and these tip-in signify into the reader that they are entering a new chapter of the book
I love this, because this is a picture of an egg and in the book I dedicated an essay to my love for eggs
You know, a perfectly soft boiled egg, I mean, its golden yolk, just delicately cooked and then you pierce it
and that yolk comes like oozing sexily towards you and then you hit it with some truffle salt?
Oh my God!
I know, when I start talking about food, it really takes a lot out of me coz I get so involved with it
Like, I just kinda have to remind myself to rein it in, rein it in...