65°C

I always love the smell of yeast and flour on my fingers after kneading.

Often times when I eat bread, I wonder how they made it soft, or how like the ones you buy from neighbourhood bakeries where you can see strands of bread straddling across as you peel it apart. Now I finally know.

It's called the 65°C 汤种. Apparently it was a Chinese method of cooking flour with hot water and was used in making dumpling skins and noodles since ancient times and had its use extrapolated to bread-baking in recent times. The mixture is cooked to 65°C, at which point gluten in the flour absorbs the water and is leavened. Adding this as part of the ingredients results in a softer and more moist loaf. The Japanese seems to have a somewhat similar method, but I have yet to find out how.

Indeed, my previous tries at bread making were less than stellar and the bread would turn out to be a little too dry.

See the fluffy, gluten-y texture...although I think it can be better. Actually used cream and full-cream milk to bake it but the milk taste wasn't there.

A cheddar cheese version. Somehow the texture of this was even softer.

Read more...

I did a French

Well, not quite in that sense. Had lunch with cknewsstand at Bistro du Vin. It was my first time having French food, or at least, a sort of proper one. I thought the service was fairly good, not to mention the cute waitress, although my dining partner would probably beg to differ since the pretty caucasian manager made no attempt to speak to him.

As there were certain dishes I wanted to try, I went for the ala carte option instead of the set lunch. Pardon the sub-par images from a crappy smartphone.

First up, French Onion Soup. The soup was sweet and rather savoury, topped with cheese and bread. It was quite salty, but as my dining partner explained, the saltiness of it was meant to bring out the sweetness of the onions, and indeed the soup did taste pretty sweet.

For mains, I had the Confit de Canard or Duck Confit. It was a duck leg, cooked in its own fats, then pan-fried and baked (once again explained by my dining partner). The meat was quite tender and moist (or maybe oily?). Anyway, it was pretty aromatic. While I usually eat my poultry without skin, this time, it was really tasty that I ate most of the skin that came with it. The skin was a little crispy on the outside and I couldn't taste too much of the fatty, oily texture so it was pretty palatable. The fries were good as well. I do not like fries which are over-fried to the extent that I cannot taste the potato texture within, but these were just right by my standards - crispy outside, and still able to taste the potato on the inside.

Since I was already there, I decided to indulge. For dessert, I had Profiteroles - Choux pastry with vanilla ice cream, generously drizzled with warm dark chocolate sauce and some almond slices. The ice-cream wasn't overly sweet, and the bittersweet of the dark chocolate sauce balanced it all, although I could not quite taste the vanilla, or maybe the chocolate overpowered it. The cold-warm sensation of the combination was comforting just like ice-cream on hot brownies.

Overall, it was a good meal and I enjoyed my first French meal, although this one meal alone probably seriously screwed my calories for the day. Have not tried more high-class French yet, so I have no basis for comparisons, but it's a place I would be happy to return to. Did I mention the waitress was cute?

Read more...

Happy Chinese New Year!

After a one-weekend hiatus, I'm back with a vengeance. Not in a mood for something overly sweet, especially when I still have not finished the chocolate cake from the previous post so...tada!! I made pineapple tarts. Took me 5 hours to do up 100 tarts, of which 2 hours was spent making the paste alone. Yes! I made the paste myself and not some store bought ones so that I can control the sweetness.

Then I cooked my own dinner - Keftethes - Greek meatballs. Only catch was they were supposed to be fried, and since I do not have a deep fryer, I baked them in oil. Didn't turn out all that bad.

Super easy main dish - Cha Soba. おいしいですよ！

Read more...