Fruit lasagna: 4th chapter

24/3/2011: Today we enter the 4th week of our experimentation and so far, the results of our work have been bearing fruit (pun unintended). Today we're using the same fruits as yesterday and the same underliner but with a few changes, of course.

Task implementation

Before the task
The ingredients we are using today are not much different than the ones we used last week. The difference lie in the end product, a double portion of the sweet dough ingredients and an extra ingredient: grapes. But first things first, mise en place.

Ingredients

Filling
Pineapple 2, peeled and chopped
mangoes 3, peeled and diced
brown sugar to taste

Custard cream
1cup custard powder
1cup castor sugar
7cups milk

Sweet dough pastry

500g all purpose flour

220g butter

150g icing sugar

2 eggs

10g salt

Other

Popiah skin (as much as needed)

806g red grapes

sugar to taste

During the task

1. Mix the flour, butter and icing sugar in a large porcelain bowl until the mixture becomes crumbles. After that, add in the eggs and salt. Keep mixing until the mixture clumps together and does not stick to the bowl. And then cover the dough with a clean wet towel and let it rest for half an hour.

2. Peel and chop/dice the pineapples and mangoes and then cook them in a pan with sugar until they turn golden brown

3. Cook the milk in a pot over a low heat and stir. Add the custard powder and sugar into the milk and keep stirring. Keep stirring until the custard becomes thicker. Once it has reached proper thickness, remove from heat and keep stirring for a few minutes before stopping.

4. Boil the popiah skins in water and collect in a bowl

5. After the dough is done resting, flatten it and cut the dough into rectangular shapes (any basic shapes will do)

6. Blind bake the shaped dough in an oven set at 150 degrees celcius top and 170 degrees celcius bottom until they develop a brownish color. P/S: You can make them in pie tins if you want.

7. While waiting for the dough to bake, seed the grapes and then blend them in a food processor

8. Mix the blended grapes with sugar and then cook the mixture in a pot until it becomes a viscous sauce

9. Mix a bit of the mango and pineapple with a bit of custard in a small bowl

10. Once the dough is done baking, take one piece and spread the mixture on step 9 on top of the piece of dough.

11. Place some boiled popiah skin on the mixture (on step 9, mentioned in step 10)

12. Take another piece of sweet dough (of the same shape as step 10) and place on top of the mixture (so that the mixture will be sandwiched between the dough pieces)

13. Decorate with the grape sauce.

14. Serve

After the task

We didn't use the pie tins (except for when shaping the dough) and yet we're still able to make it hold it's shape.

As for the taste, the Chef says that it should have a bit of acidity in order for it to be delicious. Otherwise it is just straightforward sweet.

Recommendation

Try to find a way to increase acidity

Conclusion

It seems we've run into another success but the chef thinks it still has room for improvement. It is important that we keep looking for new ways to improve the dish anyway for we have still not found the right combination. We just hope that in the future we will find the perfect combo of ingredients.