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Monday, March 16, 2009
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Hmmm. This ancient blog template i got since 2005 (!) seems to be in conflict with my limited ability of establishing a comments link and the best i could do was play around with the recommended html (im bad at tech stuff!) and end up with my COMMENTS link on TOP of my blog entries.
Which is really dumb cos noone comments before they read! But anyhow we'll all have to put up with this format now.
Yay! Now from being a "i write as i like" blogger, i have turned into a "i write and ANTICIPATE comments that i like" blogger.
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Sunday, March 15, 2009
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I've just recovered from a nasty fever which robbed me of my appetite (it is possible!). Its near fatal effect set me thinking about my life and my achievements (namely my baking ones). HAHA. no la. I did have a fever though! Im just bored now and have time to blog about my previous baking adventures!
NAPOLEAN OR STRUDEL?
Apparently the french calls it the "strudel", since I did (hand)copy the recipe from a "French" recipe book. But i tried googling "strudel" and it turns out that most of the strudels were more like pastry wraps. The famous German Apple Strudel (or the Apfelstrudel) was just apple baked in a pastry. It didn't make sense then to have cream in it cos well the cream can't be baked? The "strudel", born from the Austrian-Hungarian empire, only seemed to have one similarity to the one i knew from Ritz Apple Strudel back in SG : the thinness of the puff pastry.
" Pertaining to anecdotes, purists say, it should be so thin that a newspaper can be read through it[9]. A legend has it that the Austrian Emperor's perfectionist cook decreed that it should be possible to read a love letter through it. " - Quoted from Wikipedia.com , under "Strudel"
It, however, didn't require chilled butter to be rolled and folded umpteen times like what we know of puff pastry now. Alas! If only i did a "Baking History" module! Then i wouldn't have made the fatal mistake of thickness in my puff. I'll get to that later.
One version of the Napolean, or the mille-feuille, i discovered (!) was much more similar to what we perceive as strudel. Layers of puff pastry alternating with cream and filling. But most of the other versions were petite slices (as suggested by its alias "Cream/Vanilla Slice") with pastries skin-thin, like the one mi friends got me for my bday this year from Gobi @ Central.
So now it boils down to what to name whatever-i-was-trying-to-emulate : as Confucius said, 名不正言不顺. I decided STRUDEL it is! Since it was Ritz who inspired. So,
STRAWBERRY STRUDEL
There's nothing much to say about the filling. It was creme patisserie + whipping cream (less so the cream had more consistency) and well strawberries! (my favorite one from Qingpu - rural shanghai). It was the PUFF pastry that almost killed me.
Many many people have remarked : the Puff pastry is the baker's nightmare. Yeah some people try to dispel this baking myth by uploading youtube videos of themselves looking all matyr-like noble(like a knight battling a dragon) when surviving through the 6 hour process. But of course there's alot of fastforwarding in between and a possibly intentional lack of camera-focus when shooting the final product. So i still believe in the herculeanity of the Puff.
The tricky part, simply put, is rolling out a piece of chilled butter in a dough and folding it and repeating above routine about 12 times, without : 1) tearing the dough; 2) melting the butter; 3) sticking dough to surface-top or rolling pin; 4) killing yourself.
I had a hell lot of problem with that. My dough was leeching madly to the rolling pin despite using maybe 500 gm of flour to dust the pin and table top! I ended up with the dough tearing up so bad , i almost had butter on the outside of the dough instead of the reverse! But then i thought, hey all they wanted was 496 layers of dough/butter , didn't need to care which was outside and which was inside. I think MY biggest problem was the butter melting prematurely. It should remain "at the same temperature with the dough" throughout. I'm lucky its winter, or i might have to return the dough to the freezer every 5 minutes (worsened by the fact i'm a pretty slow worker). Oh wait no. My BIGGEST problem was that i got my instructions wrong. *ROLLS EYES* Not only did i do the roll out and fold in like envelope routine 12 times. I did the roll-out-dough-into-cross-and-fold-in routine 12 times too! That resulted in yes alot of layers but NO-ALOT of tears.
So what i suggest is
1) return the dough after 2 turns to the FREEZER for 20 minutes to save time. Cos i figured that all they need was cold dough and not dough-resting so i save 30 minutes if i use the freezer instead.
2) Work FAST. Like godspeed.
Upon baking, roll the puff REAL thin. Like real thin. 1-2 mm. 1/8 inch. Whatever the measurements are. I think "so thin you can read a love letter through it" is a little bit exaggerating. My pastry was er... 5 mm thick so i ended up with alot of uncooked portions in between. But hey, i'm not complaining cos i was almost crazy at the end of the dough-making, and the fact that puff actually "puffed" is enough to keep me smiling. So look at the photos :
So i removed the top and bottom layer of all my puffs (since i had er 3 puffs to spare) and stacked em up to make me strudel! It doesn't really make sense though, cos if i rolled out my pastry dough REALLY thin, i would have enough pastry to make... 10 strudels? Hmm. I wonder how big a strudel the recipebook was thinking of.
But anyway, after arrangement:
Voila!
(i really should get my comments and counter up, so i know i'm not talking to myself!)
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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yummmy! i miss ur madelines so much i had to go delifrance and get them myself! BOO!
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"my" latest theory :
"When change = 0 , the ease of doing anything is directly proportionate to the time spent doing it."
In other words, "practise makes perfect" or “熟能生巧”.
My body is getting accustomed to the daily workload + gymming on alternate days. That is why i can update my blog again! I seem to be getting better at making my own meals. Chinese cooking is not as scary as i thought it was.
~
After getting some professionl photo-editing help, I managed to SAVE 2 of the photos my brother took of the last major-dinner i had with my family. The previous photos were either seriously over-exposed or too dark. (er i think bro can start thinking of a new hobby to pick up)
The meal was supposed to be a cook-for-my-mum's-bday feast but i realized i probably can't better her main courses so she had to do those still. But still, i managed to churn out 3 appetizers and 2 desserts for 5 of us!
The french onion soup was not spectacular. I think my mum has a better recipe (and of course she reminded me of this fact over and over again. hurhur). I liked the sprig of thyme and red wine addition but i didn't really do the baguette slice and cheese procedure properly. I baked them in advance and just plopped it into the hot soup. The bread was soaking up 80% of the soup! Should have really toasted them to dryness and then place it on the soup . THEN ADD CHEESE and then bake each bowl of soup (with bread) again. There was also the problem of using a too-generous slice of bread. Not thinking yi! Oh but melted swiss gruyere on onion soup is SO good.
AH. Personally i was much more excited about the foie gras. I was just feeling a lil generous and adventurous when i bought mini duck/goose foie gras portions at The Butchery (Holland V). When i told mum about it, she was (for the first time in a long while) apparently elated! And dad knew about it later and they decided to.... BUY a whole chunk of liver. -.-. cos they thought mine was too meagre to satisfy their craving. I was very slightly peeved cos my gesture then became very insignificant but happy too cos i get to make bigger portions of the condiments (which means more fruitful labor) to go with it!
Now, i was planning to replicate the JG foie gras i had for a loooong while and this was the perfect opportunity to share tt experience with the family. The foie gras was to be panfried by mummy who was much better at meat than i was. But i get to do the less technical cool stuff , heh.
JG's foie gras used candied pistachios, dried sour cherries and white port gelee. I had no white port or sour cherries so i had to settle for store-bought cranberries whose scent was too distinctively cranberrish that it weakened its complementing powers ; as for the gelee, i found a grape juice gelee recipe online that sounded authentic and had the most exciting steps : crushing grapes, filtering its juice, adding white port........Wooo~ i like recipes that have infinite steps! I tried it, everything went well until i was supposed to add white port wine. Erm. I din have that. Nor was i about to open an entire bottle of white wine for this. So i had to settle for mum's cooking white wine! THAT WENT BAD. for a moment it smelled like i added shaoxing wine to mi juice. i was so afraid of ruining the gelee that i grabbed additional grapes and squeezed their juices into to stop that foul wine! I think it worked. Or the heating killed that smelly thing.
One mistake i made was trying to cube the gelee before the dinner so i could cut the predinner workload. BUT it turned out that cubing it made it melt a lil, so when i put all the cubes back into the bowl in the fridge, the cubes coagulated into one odd looking lump. Next time, just cube it before u serve la! Oh and the foie gras was served straight from the pan so it melted my gelee!! The photo above captures a glossy layer on top of the liver, its my gelee melting. Next time, serve at the side, far away from mr. hot liver.
As for candied pistachios, we happened to have some leftover pistachios from CNY so it came in handy. Candying things is pretty fun actually! I didn't know we could boil pistachios without ending up with soggy nuts! So the pan-frying actually dehydrated them later. Coooooooool.
Mum, mi bro and his gf liked the little additions but DAD was being AWFULLY rude by eating the whole liver WITHOUT touching any of them. He said he liked the foie gras straight. GROSS. *rolls eyes* Coming from the man who likes his russian vodka with caviar! I think i should have just dunked his foie gras in beer and let him gulp it down.
The cracker platter was fine. Anchovies were too darned salty this time round. I wonder why. Same brand lei. The salmon, tomato puree and cream cheese went well.
Dessert was lava cake AND purin. I used my good Valrhona choc from Shermay's! (thanks to random virtual friend who left tt recommendation!) but it was a BAD idea to use paper muffin cups to substitute my pudding cups. Don't ask. But it was nice to see bro's gf scraping the dish clean anyhow. Bro loved the purin. a little too sweet though! (never add additional egg yolks, ruins the texture - so i learnt recently)
The Angus and foie gras per se was as usual good! Mum's right. Angus is much better to steak than wagyu. W is too fat. Mum has her way with panfrying meat. Must learnnnnnnn.
And finally:
Mum and i at the dinner table!
(it was funny how she was so bored right before dinner cos i was cooking and she kept pacing up and down and settling all the stuff before i could get to it, like washing dishes - thank god)
~
BTW, TMD, 30 minutes after i wrote the first part of the blog (read) , i burnt my dinner. And in dismay, ruined all the later dishes. Now im eating them. RETRIBUTION!! Cannot blog and cook at the same time LA.
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Thursday, February 19, 2009
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"How long does it take to visit all the countries in the world?"
Hmm.
I think what everyone is dying to know is :
"How much does it take to visit all the countries in the world? (in SGD please!)"
"For Singaporean permanent resident Phillips Connor, his visit to 193 countries took 33 years."
WHO CARES. WHO CARESSSSSS how long he took. We just want his account number and PIN please. I don't even know there were that many countries in the world. "Guinea Passau"? Another rodent?
"I was elated but I also felt some loss of focus. This goal has been with me for so long and would no longer be such a large part of my life. What's next?"
I can totally empathise. Like how i felt after my half maration. I felt very lost too! Poor us!
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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I've decided to go a little bit further with my obsession au domestication. for all who already know, you already know. took awhile to get the hang of it and cooking. Compared to cooking, i find baking much more systematic and precise. Of course there are little techniques and pieces of kitchen wisdom that come in handy but its is still by and large a step-by-step logic. But Cooking is all intuition and watching-the-fire and literal salt pinches and seemingly inconsequential spoons of vinegar and soy sauce that just might turn on you in a while. I find that incredibly hard to grasp. My guess is experience pays off. Look at my mum go. 1 hr and a hearty meal of 3 dishes and 1 soup is ready to serve . I struggled to keep my dinner prep time under 4 hrs for the first 3 days without charring anything. But things seem to be getting better. For example the YAKUN Breakfast i tried to replicate:
The first 2 tries weren't abyssmal but i was basically all over the place. Forgetting my toast in the oven, forgetting to set the alarm for the soft-boiled egg, leaving toast crumbs along my trail and at one point i got SO pissed with the vietnam coffee filter (it kept overflowing at the base plate) i crashed the whole thing in the sink which resulted in coffee stains all over the sink, tabletop and wall which i had to clean up eventually. Lesson #1 : no point gen zi ji guo yi bu qu. Three things make up a Yakun toast (for my imaginary non-singaporean readers) :
1) Thin toasts made on a grill - We're saying half the thickness of a toasted white bread. I decided i shall not be too anal about it cos slicing a toast in half, just means more cuts on mi fingers (im gonna dedicate an entire blog entry to my hand injuries). I used good bread from ichido but they turned out chewy. Chewy nice so forgiveable.
As for the butter, i use cold slices of Lurpak unsalted/salted butter , so i think i beat them flat. haha. But the butter can't be too thick. we're looking at 2 mm. I use the bottled yakun kaya LH and ML got so i'm assuming we're using the same thing the shop uses. Yum.
2) Coffee - Yakun has good Hainanese coffee. Superior kopitiam coffee. But i use Trung Nguyen (Hi-5 LH!!) so i guess we meet brow to brow! I have a problem with the filters though! 5 SGD Vietnam filters just dun work too well - i always get coffee powder sneaking thru the filters. But that can be fixed with kitchen towel filtration (that sucks up some of the coffee tho).
3) Soft-boiled eggs : NOW this is what makes Yakun Yakun really. We were thinking bout getting soft-boiled egg makers - the ones where u put the eggs into a dripping bowl which , by the time it gets empty, soft-boiled the egg. But they don't have that, but they have those little steamers that cost about 60 SGD! Too pricey plus i figured that putting 2 or 6 eggs into a steamer will still affect the results so i might as well stick to old trial and error with my bowl and boiling water. I tried 4 min. 5 min. 5.5 min. They were all too raw. So i tried 6:45 today and wow, it turned out perfect! Gorgeous orange yolk clothed in its white. its like the golden timing - 6:45. But just to be sure, i'll stick with the same bowl and water level all the time.
So after a few days of making this breakfast, I finally got the hang of it and understood the principle behind chores and cooking - its all about juggling time. You preheat your oven while you switch on your kettle, and then cut the toast, slice the butter, prepare the coffee. Toast ur bread, boil your eggs, spread your kaya and serve. But i'm YIIIIrrational so i find efficient time management very taxing. I tend to be more whatever-comes-to-my-mind-first so you find me lugging a 10kg rice bag while i remove my shoes when i could have unloaded that first.Sigh.
Here are photos of the first few attempts of Yakun. None captured nice eggs but just for the record:
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 Now that i'm back in Shanghai, i finally have time to upload the two other pics of my humpy little madeleines (read prev. entry) . Forgive the resolution, its only 2 megapixels. Had to settle for my mum's camera phone. MY M-U-M-'S CAMERA PHONE. Apparently the Teh family is terribly tech unsavvy. Anyways watch those humps! |
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
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When faced with an impossible question at 11pm, spend 1 hr getting over the initial trauma, get up, remove contact lens, piss, wash face, moisturize. Tiptoe towards kitchen, stop by wine cooler, get remaining Fifth Leg bottle and wine glass, cut untidy and enormous portions of Leicester and strong cheddar, pinch a few pieces of smoked salmon leftovers, grab a buncha grapes (rinse), get big glass of water for hydration, go to bed with all of the above, watch newest episode of DH online and tuck in.
Its these little things that make ridiculous choices even more ridiculous. I will have to deal with the problem eventually. But by then, i'll have more fat to take the blow.
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Thursday, February 05, 2009
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MADELEINES.
Wikipedia says its full name is "Petite Madeleine De Commercy". A small cake named after Madeleine Paulmier originating from Commercy.
So what are madeleines really? A cake that is only slightly lighter than a pound cake, but has a crisped surface that gives it another texture. At least that is what i gather from the madeleines i made myself, tried at Delifrance and SY who tried some in the US (but from the apparently inferior Starbucks chains) and David (who's French!). The original flavor is buttery and citrusy (normally lemon). The shape is distinctive : a longish sea-shell AND, here comes the crucial part : the HUMP. HUMP. Not BUMP, so its not a gradual swell. Its a CAMEL-HUMP. a LITTLE MOUNTAIN! the ONLY TUMOR i will ever like!
And this hump is the reason why i can only blog about madeleines TODAY. Because after two failed attempts to get this lumpy trademark, i SUCCEEDED today!
Why did I start making Madeleines? It was a month before my Toray 2008 marathon when SY mentioned that she liked madeleines alot . For some reason, i felt compelled to take on the task of making madeleines (she claimed that Shanghai didn't sell any! Ichido and Paris Baguette both do - we found out) I looked high and low for good recipes and finally found one whose author seemed honest enough to share her secrets , but proud enough to assure me of its quality.
I did my first Madeleine Au Citron! It tasted pretty yumz and although it didn't make much culinary sense, i added a chocolate coating as SY requested. BUT no hump! It was flat. SO matter-of-factly flat that i couldn't believe the kind of humps i saw on the photos!
Then i decided to try my 2nd batch of Madeleines that were Earl Grey tea flavored. This time round, i still proudly resisted adding baking powder as the online professionals made the addition out to be some anti-tradition and cheaterbuggy practice. But i added too little Earl Grey tea ( i thought 5 teabags were enough!) and it was too monotonous a taste so i found a lemon glaze recipe that didn't form that nice frost-like color as promised but was just transparent . It did taste pretty nice, soury and sweet. BUT NO HUMP. I tried adding more, i tried adding less. I tried super high heat for 5 minutes and lower heat for another 7. i tried cold batter, chilled silicon madeleine tray. I even........ *bites lower lip* tried adding little bits of baking powder in their little tummies right before putting them into the tray but NO HUMP! I was going MAD. I got really mad and resolved NOT to make any more madeleines. Especially when i made 3-4 batches and each batch took 20-30 minutes because of the small oven i used.
But I knew i had to conquer this fear of madeleines of mine. Especially since back in SG, i knew i had a better chance with that nice and big stove oven at home. I packed my madeleine tray into my luggage.
AND TODAY. 4th FEBRUARY. Despite a little mess i made by sieving my beurre noisette (heated butter) 4 times cos those darned earl grey leaves just kept going through my sieve and the kitchen towel i added to prevent that was too efficient in filtering ; Despite little flour bits being left out of the fold-in ; Despite my cold that was slowing down my brain ; there were humps. Little humble bumps at first but upon spooning more batter into each shell depression........... i got GLORIOUS HUMPS! They rose so much they BURST through the tip of the hump but i couldn't be arsed as these were the HUMPS. THE MADELEINE HUMPS!!
And the only suay thing was my missing camera. Didn't bring it back! Tried using my phone but its so wonky that i can do nothing productive with it. Tried using my backup phone but for some damned reason, it showed only a black screen when i tried taking photos. ARGH.
But i'm obsessive. I grabbed my laptop with my webcam and started taking shots using the webcam. Super lousy quality but i NEED to post these photos up! If i didn't have a webcam at that moment, i think i might have just sat down with a palette and start painting these wonderful darlings.
There. CAN YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE between Madeleine #1, #2 and this authentic little baby?! Can you SEE IT.
Yay. haha.
What did i do differently?
1) I added 4/5 tsp of baking powder for 200 gm of flour. (AHERMS. *whistles*)
2) I didn't flour my tray (don't think its a factor)
3) I used this huge oven (never trusted my small one in Shanghai to reach temps. above 180C)
4) The oven uses topfire! So instead of getting the shell-side of the madeleine browned, my tops part is browner (i personally think it makes more sense to have the shell light colored!) And it might be because of the topfire (and not the lower heat like my small oven uses) that made the top part of the madeleine so vigorous and vibrant, forcing its little hump out before it hardens!
5) I filled my little shell moulds FULLY and not 3/4 as alot of websites advised.
There are a few factors, but i'll personally vouch for the baking powder cos its quite straightforward : More baking powder means more rising, more rising means hump. The filling up of the shell probably catalysed it? But its not a control factor cos i tried filling them up fully in Shanghai to no avail, except a solidified spill-over look. The temperature might be crucial too!
Hmmm the Early grey tea aftertaste is not bad but i'll go for the Au Citron again if i had the chance to perfect it with humps!
So thats so much for madeleines. No wonder the old French saying says that Madeleines will bring you back to your childhood. Look how blissful i am! As long as i hump it. hurhur.
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Monday, February 02, 2009
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As an aspiring epicurean, I firmly oppose the gastrocultural protectionism exhibited by the Italian government's latest ban on ethnic food! A nation must really have no faith in its cuisine if it thinks that an international breadth of food choices will erode its culture. This outright "gastronomic racism" and "culinary ethnic cleansing" might seem ludicrous at first but my heart goes out to all those foodies residing in Italy (native or not)! I cannot imagine Singapore initiating such a law which shouts absurd. I mean, take us for an example, how many of our foods and "traditions" have its roots tapping from Nonya, Chinese, Malay, Indian cuisine. Its a shame that even Italy's Agriculture Minister couldn't look beyond this narrowest definition of "tradition" and "culture".
"Celebrity chef Vittorio Castellani said: 'There is no dish on earth that does not come from mixing techniques, products and tastes from cultures that have met and mingled over time.' He said many dishes thought of as Italian were, in fact, imported.
The San Marzano tomato, a staple ingredient of Italian pasta sauces, was a gift from Peru to Naples in the 18th century. Even spaghetti, it is thought, was brought back from China by Marco Polo. "
- quoted from ST (Singapore) Feb 2nd, 2009
If bolognese had to belong to anyone, its the cow. or tomato-san.
(and to those people calling out to boycott pasta in return : I say "why let your tummy suffer!" )
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Monday, January 26, 2009
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Nothing like a good ol' Chinese New Year.
The significance of the New Year (for distinction, the English New Year) as a festivity pales in comparison.
My family was sitting by the TV as usual to 守岁 and the countdown programme was the usual Ch 8 Mediacorp nonsense: Local artistes strutting around in ridiculously matched clothes, the women in blinding brilliant bright colors and the men this time parading in skinny pants, with a misconception on metrosexualism! Singing and merrymaking and looking silly and giving out the most generous angpows ever (how to register to be contestant!) and shouting HUAT AH! at every opportunity. On the other hand , there was the taiwan countdown on SCV which involved mega outdoor parties with huge stars staging their performances. BUT after a while, I realized CNY was meant to be 俗! All the variety shows and singings on Taiwan TV were quite pointless really since they could be conducted on any other day! CNY is the only day where our artistes can go around wearing a red packet , talking like the Singaporean they are and assuming (correctly) that everyone is only interested in 发财ing. Well-wishes can be repeated without fear of revealing how limited their language abilities are, smiles can be as plastic and exaggerated as they want and WE LOVE IT. This is why i love CNY. Its all about appearances! Spring cleaning? Having goodies at home? Giving out money in a recession AND looking like u are happy to do it? Dressing your best? Smiling till your cheekbones turn Fann Wong-ish? It makes reality seem far away and one can almost really believe that the whole year will be better because this day was good. I visualize the NY mood as a gathering of 气 (qi) that sort of dispels all misgiving, like how that er... China village chased the "Nian" monster away with fireworks! Nobody really loves New Year for ang pows, goodies and gambling (okay, maybe SOME), its reunion without being reflective, extravagance without guilt and is basically a saturation of the characteristics of a Chinese definition of a good day : toiling before, hustle and bustle and flaring celebration!
Its ridiculous to try avoiding 俗ness during CNY. I have seen attempts at being "classy" during CNY, with imported Japanese treats, English well-wishes on 春联s, exquisite and mild decorations. Stifling the whole CNY mood! So silly. I'll rather have my heaty home-baked CNY yummies in their plastic containers with red lids, 大红大喜 decorations and loud CNY songs (ok not 俗 to the extent of CT girls) . 俗 at a higher level is 雅 really!
So happy NIU year (this STILL cracks me up if people pronounce it correctly) and lets hope this CNY mood catapults us into the lunar new year and we fall into and roll around in cushions stuffed with gold dust and luck!
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