Japan too long

http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/the-101-signs-you-have-been-in-Japan-too-long

Success: Bread

FINALLY. It still wasn't anything fantastic, but it WAS bread.


My oven is still absolute crap, so of course the tops got a little burnt, even with a tin foil cover. "Your oven: is it bigger than a breadbox?" No, that's why I can't evenly bake anything. With the bread rising half an inch from the top of the oven, that's what you're gonna get no matter what you do.


One thing that's floored me in this whole process is that nobody makes handmade bread anymore. Finding a decent recipe that doesn't call for a bread machine at one point is like finding a needle in a haystack. I was lucky enough to finally unearth some at allrecipes.com. I used this recipe.


The big difference this time was kneading. Kneading kneading kneading. Ten relentless minutes. I also made sure I was adding enough flour. Something just kept feeling wrong when I would stick to the recipes and I figured there was some innate understanding among the recipe writers that I hadn't been grasping. My process wasn't working like all the videos I'd seen of people kneading bread dough. The dough wasn't dynamic. I was covered in flour but not in the productive way. The dough was sticky. So I floured the bejeebies out of the dough and went to town being all confident and violent like bakers I'd seen before.

Also, it seemed to make a difference letting the yeast sit in the sugar and water to foam up for 5-10 minutes. Later, I also let the mixed bread dough sit long enough. I'd heard things about letting dough rest in order for the gluten to develop, and I'd been doing that, but apparently not for long enough. Once I felt the difference in elasticity between dough that was ready and dough that wasn't, it really drove the point home. Furthermore, I've recently read things about how some people leave their dough overnight and I can vaguely remember back to the old fast food pizza place I worked at in college and how the managers there too would set the dough out overnight. I think a lot of that had to do with thawing the pre-frozen dough, but there could be something to that still.

And something about all this worked. Other than my issues with baking the loaves evenly, the crumb grain was good and the finished product was neither too wet or too dry. It looked like bread. It tasted like bread. I made bread. Finally.

And another success I had, though not very impressive, was with these whole wheat pancakes. Wheat-y, butter-y, and reminiscent of the North American South, they're less like the cakey pancakes I'm accustomed to and more like griddle cakes or flapjacks. One cannot deny their deliciousness. In fact, they were we good I didn't even get any pictures before they disappeared! Pancakes aren't different, but it was only my second recipe using wheat flour and I'm a little touched by its success.

I'd promised myself not to attempt it until I thought there was a chance I could succeed, but I think I'm actually ready to experiment with the honey oat wheat bread I've been itching for >:D

Success: Poached Eggs

Don't ask me why I've never made or even eaten a poached egg before yesterday. I have no good excuse! It's just never come up.

 

I'm going on vacation tomorrow, but last weekend I accidentally bought an extra dozen eggs thinking I'd forgotten to buy some, and then I only ended up using a third of what I thought I'd use. In short, I didn't touch either of the new cartons and had 24 eggs to eat in 4 days. I'm doing some baking with some of them, but it's been quite an egg frenzy otherwise. When scouring the internet for ways to get rid of eggs, I stumbled across someone who said, "Experiment. Use it as an opportunity for the kids try things they'd probably fail at." But wait, who says it has to just be the kids? I fail all the time! What a grand opportunity to try poaching an egg.

 

I found this recipe, coincidentally, which helped me use up other things in my fridge I had to get rid of. http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=monburan&rls=com.microsoft:ja:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7TSHB_en&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=ja&tab=wi&biw=1259&bih=627 I subbed in nattou for the tofu and regular rice for the black rice. It was pretty good with some extra ponzu and mustard.

 

And most importantly, the eggs turned out! I used the method where you strain part of the egg white off to reduce flyaway. My strainer is deep, so I broke a yolk or two but it was all right, I had eggs to spare, right? I also put a splash of vinegar into my water to firm up the whites. I did try the vortex method for the first egg, where you spin the water around to make a whirlpool before you slide the egg in. I forgot about it after that, but come to think of it my first egg came out perfectly and the rest were a little more variable. I'd recommend trying the vortex, if for nothing else but the cool name. I'd also recommend putting the egg into the water as slowly and completely as you can - with my last egg the yolk accidentally slipped in first which separated it from the whites and made the whites fly away all over. I still managed to maintain the yolk and get all the whites in a clump when I was finished, but it was pretty sloppy looking.

 

I decided that I like poaching eggs. I don't usually like raw yolk much but when poaching you can make a partially done yolk, which actually brings it to the perfect consistency in my eyes! 2 minutes for runny, 4 minutes for hard. Not exactly rocket science! Obviously there's not as much flavor as other egg preparation methods that use a ton of butter or oil, but it's enough fun just eating a pillow-y poached egg that I think I will continue doing it! I should try the Japanese "Onsen Tamago" ("Hot Spring Eggs"), a form of slow poached egg. Apparently the whites stay fluffier and the yolks get custardy because you cook it slowly in luke-warm water for a good half an hour. They key is maintaining the temperature though, so maybe I'll wait until I get back to my cooking thermometer in the US before I try it.

 

I didn't think to take any pictures, but my eggs looked just like any other poached eggs (go me!) Instead, I leave you with this: http://www.iloveegg.com/egg_english.htm

Success: Lemon Curd

This condiment actually created quite the existential crisis for me.

When looking for a good lemon curd recipe I stumbled across both an Alton Brown recipe and a Shirley Corriher recipe...AND THEY WERE DIFFERENT! NooOOOoooo!

Recipes are different all the time, you say? How is this a crisis? Well, Alton Brown was my original foodie idol. I felt like he could do no wrong with his science and dependable explanations of How Food Works. He became quite the icon for me in my formative cooking years, especially having been the first to take the role of "chef I could really trust." Such a nice contrast to the Rachel Rays of the world! (yeugh.) But time passes and Alton's been kinda quiet the last few years.

And then Shirley Corriher came along, practicing the same logic and science approach that made me fall in love with Alton Brown. As a biochemist and Vanderbilt Alum, her book, Bakewise, treats everyday recipes with a methodical play-by-play problem solving approach. She knocked me off my feet. She's been my Deity of the Dish since I discovered her last fall.

But now, these two giants meet? The differences were subtle, but how can techniques differ between two people who are both renowned for always having science on their sides? O.O

How could I decide whose recipe to follow? Well, it was easy actually. I went with laziness. Corriher follows what she calls the "5, 4, no 3, 2, 1" method for lemon curd. 5 egg yolks, 4 lemons (plus zest), no 3, 2 cups of sugar, and 1 stick of butter. Dump it all in a sauce pan and double boil it. Bam. Put plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd so no air touches it as it cools. Finished.

I left in the lemon zest because I thought it gave it a rustic touch. Perhaps someday I'll try to strain it off. The yolk-only nature of this recipe meant my lemon curd came out gooey, sticky, and beautifully yellow. Two cups of sugar and enough lemons also meant VERY flavorful. I'm sure there are people who will prefer using the whole egg and not quite as much sugar and lemon, but I've always preferred flavors that punch you in the face. It's definitely more dessert-y than breakfast-saucy (we make up words in this blog now, don't worry about it).

Alton Brown's recipe is mostly the same, just it calls for one less cup of sugar. It's his methodology, however, that varies a little. He wants you to start by just whisking the egg yolks and sugar in a cool bowl until smooth, then later you add the citrus (with enough cold water to get you to 1/3 cup if your lemons don't give you that much juice), and only after all that is finished do you put it over heat. The cooking time and done-ness test is about the same as Corriher's. Then another major twist is that you add the butter only after it's finished and has been taken off the heat. Again, it finishes with plastic wrap directly on the surface.

It makes sense to me to mix things in an ordinal fashion like Brown does, I like methods to madness...but like I said, I was just too lazy. Perhaps next time around I'll give it a try, even though I enjoyed corriher's recipe so much and I think it's a winner. I owe this to my first love, right? 

Fail: Rice Flour Bread

F-f-f-f-f-fail! Capital F.

There were multiple elements of absolute fail here. I tried to make a Japanese recipe for rice flour muffins, which I won't even include because it was such a flop. It was a simple recipe that called for nothing more than rice flour, baking powder, yogurt, honey, beans, and soy milk. Which, in hindsight, does actually sound terrible - but the picture looked nice and I just wanted it to work so badly!!

I imagine maybe it flopped because I used blueberry instead of sweet beans like the recipe called for, but I don't know. I don't feel like blueberries would make the recipe *that* much wetter. I also used more blueberries than the amount of beans it called for, but that also shouldn't have had such a severe effect. The muffins were completely unset in the center, even though I baked them for about triple the baking time it called for. I used foil cups, but my friends have had success with that so I doubt that was the problem.

Also, they were gritty (ew!) which I chalk up to the chalkiness (haha!) of the rice flour. I don't even know if I'm using the right kind of rice flour, maybe that's the problem. And I don't know what it is about these frozen blueberries I bought, but even though they were still frozen when I put them in the dough and even though I coated them with flour first, they STILL bled all over the place instantaneously. I can only imagine that this brand of frozen blueberries is totally loaded up with artificial coloring. Needless to say, pretty gross overall. They even tasted like baking powder, on top of everything. This may have been my biggest fail since coming to Japan.

The thing I hate most is that I spent over $5 on a handful of frozen blueberries, so you bet your ass I plucked out and ate each blueberry before throwing the muffins away! (But I digress, this blog is about my cooking trials, not my self-destructive quirks).

I had enough ingredients left over and enough frustration to fuel another baking attempt. This time I tried making a loaf instead of muffins, and with a little less liquid and raisins - something drier - rather than blueberries. I added too much vanilla, which was my first mistake, but it was also still fairly underdone and therefore tasted pretty bad. The top also got super crispy and began to split even though the center was underdone. The tricky thing was, my tester came out dry when I put it in, so rice flour must just not stick to things. This attempt was definitely more edible than the last, but still a grand failure I wouldn't serve to anyone. Well, at least this one was edible (to me only) when I toasted it.

Maybe I'll try a yeast bread with rice flour yet, but I'm giving up on the rice flour quick breads. I would not be surprised if such things were just not meant to be based on the contrast between the chalky gluten-free nature of rice flour and the moist richness of a quick bread. So much for my dream of becoming the patron saint of gluten-free baking!!

Success: Quiche

Since the days of pie crust obsession I've been meaning to make a quiche. In fact, ever since my trip to America back in December I've been carrying around my pie crust recipe in my day-planner at the ready lol (Yes, I've been carrying a pie crust recipe for 5 months...) I'd had a lot of luck with this recipe before, though usually I sub out 2 tablespoons of shortening for butter, to give it browning and flavor, and I've learned that in my house 5 T is always too much water so I go for 4 T.

 

I'd been meaning to try the Shirley O. Corriher approach to crust making where, rather than cutting the fats into crumbs, one rolls them out into flakes. This intuitively makes a lot more sense in terms of what you're going for with flakey pie crusts! To do this, you mix together the dry ingredients, then add small chunks of shortening to the bowl, mixing them so they're well-coated, then you freeze all of it for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, pull it back out and just dump the contents of the bowl out onto a floured surface and roll it out as-is with a rolling pin. This will result in longer, flour-coated, fats forming a dough. Scrape it all back up and freeze it again, this time for 5 minutes. Repeat this process about 3 times until you have fats like flaking paint. Freeze the dough for 10 minutes, then add the liquids per usual. When you've got a good dough, freeze it in a plastic-wrapped bowl for 30 minutes before rolling it out for your pie.

 

I really liked this method in general, because I felt like when my dough got too wide or too irregular I could just fold it in half and roll it out again, since the goal was to mix it by flattening it, thus eliminating the stress of turning out a winning sheet on the first attempt without over-working the dough. I will admit, however, that I misread the directions and added the liquid at the beginning by mistake. All the same, I still ended up with a flakier crust than usual using this method. I can only imagine how flakey it is when you do it properly. An important part of having a tender, flakey, pie crust is to get the fats covered in flour first, and to keep the fats in chunks so when they melt they create air pockets. Cutting the fats with a pastry cutter will give you a much more blended final product, thus killing the pockets.

 

When I made this crust for Thanksgiving something happened - maybe I overheated it? - and the crust melted, thus losing its design and falling off the plate and onto the bottom of the oven. This time, I increased the flour I used while rolling out the dough, which seemed to help. It was still pretty greasy, but not nearly as much and the scalloped edge held its shape in the final pie. Of course, after shaping the raw dough I let it rest in the fridge for 10 minutes, and then I did a blind bake with it too, since I didn't want my crust to end up soggy from the egg filling. For some reason, however, my pie crusts still have a lumpy appearance after I bake them. I should figure out how to prevent that. It gives it a homemade look and it's okay I guess, but so many pie crusts I see are smooth, flakey-looking, and beautiful. I'd like mine to be that way, too.

 

For the filling, it just so happened that I'd bought a fancy cheese from the international grocery for everyday eating, not knowing that the emmental I bought is a kind of swiss. I decided it was better to bake with it and it was quite good in my quiche lorraine. I pretty much stuck to the recipe, except that I added mushrooms (treated myself to button mushrooms, as I thought Japanese mushrooms would have too much flavor and overpower the dish) and I sauteed the mushrooms and onion a little prior to baking. I also layered tomato slices on top before baking to add some color and appeal. I really, really loved the cayenne pepper in this recipe. It was not enough to make it spicy, but just enough to give it a little something extra. Using Hokkaido's plain milk, it made quite a rich egg filling that gave me pause when I first took a bite, especially paired with my beloved crust.

 

 

I think my pie plates are a little shallow, however. Every time I make a pie my crust ends up way too thick and way too high and I always have way too much filling. It was really delicious biting into such a thick crust, but it seems a little wrong. My biggest problem, however, was when I noticed a low side on my crust that had come from the blind bake AFTER I poured the filling. At first it was fine, but as the liquid settled it began gushing out the side of the crust and all over the counter top! After enough raw egg mix had spewed out in a scene reminiscent of something from I Love Lucy, I was finally able to get into the refrigerator and pull out some bread crumbs to dam it. That worked, thank god, and I poured the excess egg filling into a small pan to make a little breakfast frittata for the following morning. Yum!

 

 

All's well that ends well, though. I think I learn more about pie methodology every time I do it, and every time I also get better at making it look pretty. I was a little put out, however, that nobody noticed my lunch the day I brought my adorable little quiche to work, and yet on the day I brought a disgusting-looking dumpling soup I managed to attract a small crowd of onlookers. Maybe I'll just have to make another quiche!

Success: Peanut Butter Cookies

After all the heinousness of breads and cakes and tuile cookies, just making something as simple and sure as peanut butter cookies was a major relief.

 

I still had leftover peanut butter mousse and whipped cream from the tuile cups, so I decided to whip up some peanut butter cookies to decorate. My first attempt at the candy balls had failed - I tried to add shortening as an afterthought, stupid - but of course I couldn't throw it away. I never throw something away if it's made of food! So I added a little of this and a little of that and baked them until they became some intentionally delicately flavored peanut butter cookie boats to complement my mousse. Let me say, I am pretty proud of myself for having learned so much about sweets that I can now do such things.

 

 

They were much prettier before I added the candy balls, but hey, you can't ignore deliciousness. It couldn't be avoided.

 

Then, the very next day, the International Club sprung it on me that the following day would be our recruitment party for new freshmen. THANKS FOR THE WARNING, KIDS! We were having a snack party, so I decided to whip up something easy and unique. How about peanut butter cookies? They'd be transportable, they'd stretch a long way, and they'd be a rare flavor for Japan. Settled.

 

Easy as it was, I'd never made peanut butter cookies before - What? There are other things I like more. Anyway, that's why I decided to give it some thought. I dug through a bunch of recipes, weighing the merits of their ingredients, and settled on this one.  My mom always made rather short peanut butter cookies, so I altered the recipe to half butter, half shortening. When I realized I only had half as much peanut butter as I needed, I also changed the recipe to half peanut butter, half nutella! It was a subtle change, but it was as delicious as one would expect! I also added a dash of salt and sprinkled the tops with sugar.

 

 

They turned out really well and I made them small, so I had something like 130 cookies! Enough for International Club, enough for English Conversation Class, AND enough for my Yosakoi Dance Troupe...And enough for me to snack on the burned ones. Burned ones? Yes. My stupid oven-range from hell gets so hot in the center of the pan that it couldn't NOT burn the middle cookies. Well, I'm ashamed to admit it took me quite a few batches before I realized I should just NOT PUT COOKIES IN THE CENTER OF THE COOKIE SHEET. Problem solved! It was hard not doing that though, since my small oven meant I made about 10+ waves of cookies as it was. Thank god the cooking time wasn't very long.