Now that I have purchased 5kg of bread flour, I really need to get rid of it by making more bread. The frugal no knead bread is definitely simple and delicious as the recipe only calls for flour, salt, yeast and water. I don’t think it can be simpler than that! This time I tried to be more ambitious and gave the brioche recipe a try.

Brioche is a French bread which is famous for its high egg and butter content. It is definitely not recommended for those who are on a diet but I guess everyone needs a treat once in awhile. Just don’t come back and complain if you can’t fit into your skinny jeans! I have used a simple recipe from a blog called La Tartine Gourmande. The recipe calls for 1 stick of butter for a small 10” loaf! It is definitely not something that I can make frequently. The instructions on the blog is rather simple but I do find the dough to be extremely wet, so I have added around 2/3 cups more to the mixture in order to make the dough more workable.

Simplest Brioche

Ingredients:
2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs (at room temperature)
1 Tbsp dry yeast
2 Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup warm milk
1 pinch salt
1 egg yolk for glaze

Directions:
1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the yeast.
2. Make a hole in the middle of the mixture and add the warm milk into the mixture.
3. Add the sugar and a pinch of salt. Then, add the soft butter, piece after piece, waiting each time that each piece is mixed thoroughly.
4. Then one by one, add the eggs, mixing well between each. Work the dough until it is elastic and detaches from your fingers more easily.
5. Cover and let rest in a warm place, away from drafts, for two hours, until it doubles in size.

Since it’s still rather chilly in the house, I have place the bowl on top of some hot water to help the yeast do their job.

After two hours the dough should look like this:

6. Work the dough again for 10 min and divide it in four balls. Place them in a greased rectangular mould and cover. Let rise for an hour again.

7. Preheat the oven at 400 F.
8. Brush the brioche with the egg yolk mixed with a dash of sugar. With a pair of scissors, make small cuts at the top of each ball.
9. Place in the oven to bake for 10 min then reduce the heat to 350 F and bake for about 20 to 30 min.
10. Remove, unmold and let cool on a rack.

The final product is rich and buttery, kind of like a piece of unsweetened cake. However, I do find that there are too many kneading involved. I started making the dough after lunch and by the time that I finished baking, it’s already evening. I have to say I truly admire people who can make fresh bread for their breakfast!

If you want to make brioche as well, you can also checkout this tutorial from melissamakesbread.com:

Making bread always seems like a difficult task. It usually calls for kneading the dough for multiple times and then you need to let the dough rest for a few times. With everyone’s busy schedule, who has time to make bread for scratch? Well, with the no knead bread recipe, first published by the New York Times, you can let time do the hard work for you. All you need to do is to stir the ingredients together and to bake the dough. Even a four year old can probably make this bread.

Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 5/8 cups water

Directions:

Step 1: Prepare the Dough
1. In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast and salt.
2. Add water and stir everything until blended. Dough will be sticky.
3. Cover bowl with plastic wrap.
4. Let the dough rest for 12-18 hours in a warm room.

The dough will look like this after 12 hours:

Step 2: Work on the Dough
1. Remove the dough from the bowl and put it on a work surface that is slightly covered with flour.
2. Quickly shape the sticky dough into a ball.
3. Cover the dough with a cotton towel and let if rise for about 2 hours.
4. When the dough is ready, it will be more than double in size.

The dough will looks like this after 2 hours:

Step 3: Bake the Dough
1. Half an hour before the dough is ready, preheat oven to 450F.
2. Put a heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats.
3. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven
4. Turn dough over into pot.
5. Shake pan if dough is unevenly distributed.
6. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes.
7. Remove lid and bake another 15-30 minutes, until load is beautifully browned.
8. Cool on a rack.

* Note: Make sure you don’t put your hot ceramic pot or Pyrex pot onto a cold surface. The shock might crack the pot. Unfortunately, it happened to me when I was doing a chemistry experiment long time ago.

The resulting bread doesn’t look too amazing but it tastes pretty good. The crust is very fragrant and the inside is soft and fluffy. This recipe doesn’t take a lot of work but the result is surprisingly good. I will definitely make it again but I think I will bake the bread for the full 30 minutes to make the crust crispier.

You can also checkout this video posted by the New York Times:

I have read an article in the National Post regarding the Toronto a la Cart project yesterday. It reminds me of the fond memories that I have for the street vendors back in Hong Kong. I just love the spicy curry fish balls, stinky tofu, mini pancakes, roasted chestnuts and yam that I used to get on the street when I was small. Today is a little bit chilly compared to the past few days. However, the slightly cold temperature wouldn’t soften my determination of finding the Toronto a la Cart. With a food adventure on my mind, I took a short walk to Nathan Philips Square during lunch time. Little did I know that I forgot to read the fine print, “…will begin selling their wares by the long weekend in May”.

The Toronto a la Cart project has been going on for more than a year. The provincial Health Minister has been talking about relaxing the law that forbids anything other than pre-cooked sausages and hot dogs being served on the streets since July, 2007. And yesterday, they had only managed to announce the 8 lucky vendors that would be allowed to sell food on the street. Selling street food is not exactly rocket science. Many Asian countries have them. Even our big brother, the United States, has them on the busy downtown streets in Manhattan. How come it has taken so long in Toronto? While I understand food safety is a serious issue, can we just get inspector to make sure their food hygiene is up to the standard. It shouldn’t be much different than inspecting a real restaurant. Moreover, a uniform branding is definitely not necessary. Personally, I think this is a marketing agency’s cash grab. Why can’t we let the vendors have a little bit of room for their personal flair?

While I was at Nathan Philips Square, I did notice the fries and hotdog truck that parked on the street had a huge sign for shish kebab kubideh. After looking at the menu more closely, I found that the item was nowhere to be seen on the long list of food. I wonder if you need to say a secret password to order that item. This truck gives me an excellent idea. If existing trucks are capable of selling food other than hotdogs, we can just build more of those instead of spending so much consulting money on developing the Toronto a la Cart project. I have seen a few of these trucks in the city. There are a few in the University of Toronto area that sell Chinese lunch boxes and there is also another in the Korean Town that sells roasted chestnuts. The truck model would certainly work better in Toronto because of the harsh winter weather that we have. A small cart would not be able to keep the vendor warm during winter. While trucks do take up more space, we can just designate certain area for these food trucks just like what we are currently doing anyways. Regardless, I do hope these vendors would be successful in their new business and I am looking forward to try their exciting offerings!

Like most customers in a Japanese restaurant, the first thing I do after I have got a seat is to rub the chopsticks together in order to get rid of the splinters. Little did I know that is actually impolite since it seems to suggest the restaurant’s utensils are low quality.

My friend found this article on thestar.com regarding sushi etiquette. It has a neat video demonstrating how to do it right and there are some helpful diagrams to help you remember the simple steps.

In general, you should:

• Use pickled ginger between pieces of raw fish to cleanse the palate.
• Eat nigiri (bundle of rice topped with raw fish) with your fingers.
• Dip nigiri fish-side down into a small amount of soy sauce.
• Eat nigiri fish-side down so you can taste the flavours in the correct order.

And you should void doing the following:

• Don’t put a pile of pickled ginger on top of your sushi.
• Don’t use chopsticks while eating nigiri (but it is alright for maki and sashimi).
• Don’t dip the rice-side of the nigiri into the soy sauce.
• Don’t eat it rice-side down.
• Don’t rub chopsticks together. It is better to remove the splinters with your fingers).
• Don’t leave chopsticks standing straight up in a bowl of rice since it resembles incents that are burnt during funerals.

I am happy to follow most of the rules in order to get an authentic sushi experience but I think I will leave out eating nigiri with my hands. Sushi rice tends to be a bit sticky. Eating with my hands would mean spreading the stickiness to everything on the table. Definitely not a very pretty sight! The chopstick rubbing addiction is probably a bit difficult to kick as well. One of the commentators on the Star has mentioned, “Better to rub them than swallow a splinter”, and I totally agree with him. In order to get rid of the splinter problem, maybe it’s time for the Japanese restaurants to switch to reusable chopsticks. After all, it is a more environmentally friendly option and it will probably save money for the restaurants in the long run.

While most people refer chewy chocolate chip cookies, my family prefers the crispy kind. There are not a lot of choices for crispy chocolate chip cookies. Most gourmet bakeries tend to sell the more chewy kind. Therefore, most of the time, we just get the ones from President Choice. They are one of my favourite afterschool snacks but I still find that something is missing from these readymade cookies. While the cookies are crispy, you can never get that fresh out of the oven feeling.

I did a search online and found Anna Olson’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies. The original recipe is intended for chewy-centred cookies but I have modified it based on her recommendations for making crispier cookies.

Anna Olson’s Chocolate Chip Cookies (Crispy Version)

Ingredients:
¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
8 oz (224g) bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream together butter and sugars until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and blend in.
3. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in chocolate chunks.
4. Drop by tablespoons onto a greased baking sheet and bake for around 15 minutes, until golden brown around the edges.

*She recommends adding 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and replacing the baking powder with baking soda if you prefer more chewy cookies. The baking time can also be reduced to around 8-10 minutes in order to get more cakey cookies.

The recipe is rather simple and it produces great results. I have made chocolate chip cookies a few times before using different recipes but they tend to be very cakey (kind of like an elaborated muffin top). However, this recipe definitely gives me the kind of cookies that I enjoy. These tips will help you along the way if you are a crispy cookie lover like me.

Tips for Making Crispy Cookies:

• Don’t add water to the dough even though it might appears to be really dry. Just use your hands to knead them together.
• When shaping the cookies, use the back of the spoon to make the cookies a little flatter. Thinner cookies tend to be crispier.
• Bake the cookies for a little bit longer but make sure you get them out before they get burnt.

Happy Baking!

Today is another cold and windy day. The occasional flurries seem to be reminding us winter will arrive any moment. Well, as long as I don’t get out of the house, you really can’t bother me. I can bake muffins indoor while you generate all that nasty wind outside. While the muffins were baking in the oven, the muffins remind me of a nursery rhyme that goes:

“Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man?
Do you know the muffin man, who lives in Drury Lane?

Yes, I know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man;
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man, who lives in Drury Lane.

Then two of us know the muffin man, the muffin man.”

The first time that I heard about this song, I pictured muffin man as a muffin with arms and legs. Only until later on that I realized it’s talking about a man who delivers muffins door-to-door.

Well, I made the same mistake when I was doing this music assignment. We listened to this song about a Sandman who sprinkled sand into the eyes of children at night in order to lull them to sleep and we had to illustrate a scene with the Sandman. I thought the Sandman is a man that is made out of sand, so he must be something that resembles a gingerbread man. It turns out I was totally mistaken. He is supposed to be a man with a bag of sand. How boring!

You can see an animated version of Sandman here:

Don’t know about you but I doubt anyone can sleep after watching it.

Anyways, I have to stop adding arms and legs to everything! LOL

I have met a few celebrities throughout my life, e.g. Jackie Cheung, Andy Lau, Christine Cushing, to name a few. However, I have never asked anyone for an autograph. Maybe I just find it a bit embarrassing to ask or maybe I am just not too crazy about them. But when I saw the poster for the book signing event with Jamie Oliver, I have decided immediately that I have to go!

The line up at Indigo was super long. It went all around the bottom floor of the store. I figured I probably won’t be able to get an autograph but I decided to stick around for a bit longer. When there was fifteen minutes left for the event, I was around twenty people away from the cut off line. It was a bit disappointing but I figured there will always be another book and I can come again next time around. So I quit lining up and tried to get closer to the stage in order to take a few pictures. One of the Indigo employees was super nice. He helped quite a few customers to take pictures in the “restricted” zone. Otherwise, I could never get any decent shots with my height and without any high heels. When the event ended, Jamie happened to pass by my area and signed my book! I just couldn’t believe being so lucky! I can’t help but smile through out the day. People probably think that I am crazy. LOL

Jamie at Home is not exactly a new book since it has been out for around a year. I love how it relates food to their source. Nowadays, a lot of people can tell what kind of fruits and vegetables are actually in season. With the abundance of food imported from all over the world, we lose sight of what food can be grown locally in the current season. When I was small, my mom would buy watermelons in the summer, persimmons in the fall, oranges in the winter and cherries in spring. However, you can find so many different kinds of fruits all over the year nowadays since they can be imported from all over the world. The problem is that the long commute to get the food to arrive at our supermarket means that usually these fruits were picked when they were still green. I especially dislike those imported American strawberries. They are huge but they are so sour that they don’t taste like strawberries at all. Jamie’s book also gives lots of tips about gardening and neat (and simple!) recipes that you can make with your crops. It will definitely help me to get rid of those numerous zucchinis and tomatoes that I get from my garden next year!

Anyways, it’s time to watch Jamie’s Kitchen Australia!

I tried their hot pot noodle this time and it was a great dish for a chilly autumn afternoon.

You can put additional spices into the noodle by using one of the following bottles. We ordered four hot pot noodles and each of them came with a bottle in different shape and size. It was a fun exercise just to figure out how to open each of these bottles.

If you order a lunch combo, the meal comes with a dessert of your choice. My favourite is their blueberry cheesecake. I never get tired of them. I wish I can have them everyday. LOL

The green tea creme brulee that my sister ordered was great as well. I don’t usually like creme brulee since I found them a bit too sweet and thick. The bitterness of green tea powder reduced the sweetness of the creme brulee and it tasted just right. I might ditch my cheesecake and try this next time.

If you want to try out Le Cafe Michi as well, they are located at 1802 Pharmacy Avenue and their phone number is 416.490.9688. It is located in a rather sketchy plaza but don’t be fool by its appearance. Their food is well worth the risk.

Even though I have been in Canada for a long time, I have never made a jack-o-lantern. My family usually buy pumpkins but they always turn into soup before I can get a chance to carve it. Maybe it’s because the concept of playing with your food is still quite foreign to my parents. This year, the company that I am working in is having a pumpkin carving contest. It gave me a good excuse to tell everyone not to cook the pumpkin that I picked from the farm last weekend. Since I’m a beginner in pumpkin carving, I decided to make it into a Domo lantern since Domo has simple lines and I am confident that I can make it work. The fresh of the pumpkin is harder than I thought. It took me quite awhile to open up and clean up the pumpkin. Once the pumpkin was cleaned, the carving part went smoothly. I am pretty happy with the final result!

The pumpkin itself will not be edible anymore but I saved the pumpkin seeds so that I can make toasted pumpkin seeds. I remember having them at the Blackcreek Pioneer Village when I was on a school trip and they were quite delicious. By making this snack, at least part of the pumpkin can be eaten. I mixed a little bit of oil, salt and maple syrup to the dried pumpkin seeds and toasted them on a pan until they turn golden brown. I have to say they are pretty yummy.

When I am toasting the pumpkin seeds, it makes me wonder what kind of seeds are kwatji (瓜子), the red seeds that we usually eat during Chinese new year. My mom thinks that they might be seeds from watermelons but how would you harvest the seeds from the watermelons? I hope they don’t just collect the seeds that people spit out while they are having watermelons.

I am a sucker for snacks and cute packaging. Snacks in pretty packaging are simply resistible which leads to the occasional unfortunately disgusting snacks. But I guess I finally got lucky! I bought this Taiwanese snack called 張君雅小妹妹 which is basically fried noodles reshaped into little smalls. The idea is very similar to the Japanese version of Baby Star Crispy Noodle Snack but the Taiwanese version is easier to eat. And the best part is the packaging is really cute! I love the puffy face girl. You can even download emoticons from its website. How can you not love a snack that comes with cute emoticons?

This commercial is kind of cute too: