Carbonated Tea

I haven't drank soda in a really long time--maybe 6 or 7 years! It's not because I dislike the carbonation; it's mainly because I avoid high fructose corn syrup/sugary drinks. Today I made some carbonated black tea, and it was delicious!! It's also super simple to make, so I wonder why there isn't a huge market for it.

All you need is half a cup of really strong and cold black tea, 4 teaspoons of sugar, and half a cup of seltzer water. Swanky hm?

Beijing Restaurant & Spherification

I have been here to get bubble tea, twice, and this time, I was here for lunch with my Advanced Genetics/Molecular Bio professor and 4 other students, at Beijing Restaurant. Penn has some sort of program that dishes out money to professors so that they can take students out to lunch, in order to know students better. It's pretty nice because in a class of 6, 40, or 200, it's really difficult to actually know your professor (and vice versa) if you only get to see him/her for 3 hours a week for some 14 weeks. Since I've been busy for the whole semester so far, I chose to have lunch after class on Tuesday (before the Thanksgiving break) since the only homework I have is programming (well, okay I have studying... but I'm not thinking about that right now)

So, I got a brown rice + vegetables + mushroom + tofu dish which had the name "Buddha" in it (I forgot the name on the menu) and we all talked about biology classes, graduate school, and hobbies. Quite pertinent to me, as I'm interested in grad school... and I never knew that the Rockefeller University was top-notch in the biological sciences! There are just so many possibilities in "food science"...

1. Research genetics of flavour/taste/receptors

2. Molecular gastronomy

3. Food engineering

4. Flavour creating

5. Food safety

6. Food policy

7. Nutrition/research/obesity...

8. Food-related diseases

9. Food companies.

Um, anyway, the rice and shiny glutinous vegetables were pretty nice.

In addition, I found out what the bubbles-filled-with-mango-goo is, in the "poppy soda"  from the Cube Cafe, where I visited this summer. There is a process called "spherification" in molecular gastronomy... in which sodium alginate is mixed with the liquid (mango pulp/juice in this case?) and calcium carbonate or calcium chloride is added to it, to form some sort of outer membrane. Alginate comes from brown algae, and calcium, chloride, and sodium ions are pretty safe at this amount, so I don't see anything wrong with poppy soda at the moment. Either way, I haven't researched this enough and this is a reason for pursuing food science. Not sure where the computer science falls in, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherification

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alginic_acid

Irish Food!

I'm sort of Irish. I was born in Dublin and lived there for two years before moving to Australia. However, I do lack pretty much everything that pertains to Irish culture, so I don't think it makes sense to call myself Irish. Recently, I figured that I should at least learn a little about Irish cuisine. No, not American-Irish food, and not barrels-of-alcoholic-drinks Irish cuisine. I mean legitimate, daily, traditional, Irish cooking.

The internet is not really helping, funnily enough. Something I realised is that U.S. cuisine is composed of manipulations of and additions to other culture's cuisines. For instance, plain ol' sponge cake. From a simple butter-sugar-egg-flour sponge cake, the U.S. has evolved it into some seven layer sponge cake infused with peppermint oil, studded with three kinds of nuts, and sandwiched between tons of buttercream icing with sun-dried strawberries and chocolate-orange ganache and THEN topped with sprinkles and whole chunks of candy bars, AND FINALLY drizzled with a blueberry brown sugar glaze and enveloped in fondant or marzipan. I don't know. It's just that a basic recipe for the commoner gets thrown into a bucket, and comes something that is obviously not simple or traditional.

The irksome part is that it gets labelled as traditional.

So, when I was looking for a traditional Irish soda bread recipe, I found recipes that included eggs, raisins, sugar (a whole cup of sugar? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?)...and they were all labelled as "traditional" or "authentic" or whatever-the-heck. I used a recipe from here, thinking, hmm the reviews look pretty good...

...but the batter was too liquidy. It was like cookie batter, and was un-kneadable. I baked it anyway, and it tasted alright. A little moist, like an unsweetened cake, studded with pieces of dry fruit.

I did find a neat website that advocates the old fashioned soda bread and scorns the ones made with caraway seeds/sugar etc. This website, The Society for the Preservation of Soda Bread, says that the common people back then just didn't have raisins or honey or seeds or whatever exotic stuff to use in their soda bread. Well duh. So, I trusted their recipe and made a nice, doughy, kneadable round of brown soda bread, with a neat X-shaped cut at the top. Like the recipe says, there's a hollow sound when I hit the loaf with a fork. The interior is pretty dry, tastes a bit like baking soda, and is chewy. It's just like crumbly whole wheat bread, really, except that it lacks yeast. The crust, my favourite part of bread, is amazing!! So crispy!

The only problem I had with making soda bread was that I didn't have buttermilk, and I don't really see any point in buying any. For my first batch of soda bread, I needed 500 ml of buttermilk, so I just got 500 ml of low-fat milk and juiced in a lime. The bread rose, so I suppose that worked. This time, I only made half a batch of soda bread, so I used about 200 ml milk and 1 tbsp of lemon juice (we happen to have one of those plastic packets). I was freaking out that there wasn't enough acidity because the milk didn't curdle, so I threw in another tablespoon of vinegar. This batch of soda bread rose, so I guess this works too. The bubbles are pretty small and uniform, which is different from those artisan yeast-made breads, in which the holes really vary in size.

One problem, of course, is that I don't remember ever eating soda bread from Ireland. Oh well.

Knowing the way I cook, even though I intended to follow the recipe exactly, I ended up doing this (and therefore I didn't do the whole metric thing):

INGREDIENTS for one 15 cm diameter x 6 cm tall round loaf of soda bread

1.8 cups of whole wheat flour

0.2 cups of white flour

200 ml milk

25 g butter (because I used fat-free milk. If I had used whole milk, I wouldn't have included the butter)

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp vinegar

1 tsp coarsely ground salt

METHOD

1. Add vinegar and lemon juice into the milk and let sit.

2. Mix all the dry stuff.

3. Rub in butter.

4. Add the milk/vinegar/lemon juice mixture in, around 50 ml at a time.

5. Make a dough that will sort of stick together; it's okay if it's crumbly. Just knead it a little and plop it into a bowl that has been lightly greased with the wrapper from the butter or sprinkled with some flour.

6. Stick a lid on the container and put on the bottom rack of an un-preheated oven. Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees F.

7. Take off the lid and continue baking the bread for 15 minutes at 425 degrees F.

8. The bread's actually basically cooked now, so turn the oven off and keep the bread in the oven for about half an hour.

9. Yay!!

From now on, though, I think I'd prefer to make hand-sized rolls of bread because

1. They cook faster = lower gas bill

2. MORE CRUST!!!!!!

In addition to making Irish soda bread, I also made Irish Colcannon last week. I used the recipe on the back of a sack of potatoes although I used a lot more cabbage than the usual recipe calls for. I think I used about 400 g of dark green cabbage (NOT the sweet, white/light green rounds of cabbage that you find in salad mixes), since it was fresh from the garden. Actually, the potatoes were from the garden too, as were the spring onions.

Nut Crunch

My mum bought this thing from Costco that is basically cashews, pumpkin seeds and almonds, smothered in hard sugar coating. It's a "cashew nut crunch" thing... and I tried to emulate it.

I think I dumped in some baking soda into the corn syrup way too early... it was when the syrup was at the soft ball stage, rather than the hard crack stage. I poured it over the fruit and pine nut and almond and peanut and soy nut mix at this point, and, a few hours later, the whole mixture was still gooey. In other words, it was more "chewy" bar than "crunchy" bar, if I were to liken it to granola bars. So, I started microwaving chunks of it, 20 to 30 seconds per batch. In my first timid batch, the fruit completely burned out from the inside... but the nuts were really crunchy and flavourful. The remaining batches were zapped to a crunchy consistency, but they're still rather soggy, due to the fruit. The sugary stuff has solidified, though, but still isn't crunchy. I need to learn how to make candy. In the past, when I made caramel, taffy, and fudge, I never went past the soft ball stage. I don't think I dare myself to. Next time... however...

I wonder what chocolate gummies taste like. I have some leftover corn syrup and a lot of cocoa powder... this is gonna be interesting, when I try it out.

Plate of Updates.

Here's a plate of updates [it rhymes!]
1. I made an ambigram title.
2. I deleted my "hamster-cute-pet" gadget [at the very bottom of the page] because it spammed my blog. Everytime I came here, it would redirect me to another website. I couldn't even save anything!! I couldn't even delete my gadget; every time I clicked on "Edit" at the gadget place, and the new window popped out, it would redirect. So it was a game of cat and mouse - or should I say, me vs. Spammy the hamster. So, I ended up doing this F5 STOP F5 STOP F5 STOP until I finally stopped on the page JUST before it redirected. And I deleted my hamster. Sigh.
3. My grandpa came from China and brought a lot of food. I'll be updating those, at some point.
4. More gross icing.5. My sister's elementary school Multicultural night! From 6:30 to 7:50 I ate a lot of food. I could see more that I could stomach [hardeeharhar]. Here they are, with captions:
Quince and fresh cheese. QUINCE. "They dined on mince and slices on quince" - The Owl and the Pussycat [which sounds kinda wrong now that I think about it]. I've ALWAYS WANTED TO TRY QUINCE. AND NOW I HAVE!! And it's quite good... it's like a super soft gummy candy. Or, some kinda strawberry jam... I don't remember which ethnicity it was, though. It was next to the Polish table, though.
Spicy samosas. They were pretty good. Indian.
Potato perogies. So. Good. LOVED it. Polish.
Mini pancakes with sweet cottage cheese. Polish?
Soda bread. Irish, of course. I gotta make that one day, since I'm Irish by birth.
Brazilian cheese puffs. They. Were. SO GOOD. Just like the cheese thingy [I wish I remembered the name] at St. Etoile Bakery in Cwb Hong Kong. Apparently, they closed though, so I guess I'll never ever get a chance to taste those again. Actually, does anyone know what they are? These cheese puff thingys, and they also had a green-tea flavoured one.
Challah. I forgot to eat it after I took a picture of it. Israeli.
Potato cakes. Israeli. It was too salty for me.
YEAHH matzoh with hummus. I love hummus. I love matzoh. Even if I had to eat it for a week. I think I'd be okay. Though A says she hates it. Israeli, duh.
The first chocolate coconut macaroon of my life... was okay. Not chocolatey enough. The original flavour one tasted storebought. Actually, it had that anise flavoury thing [I think that's what it's called? It's that flavour in biscotti], and I despise that flavour. Israeli.
Russian rye bread with beet and onion [so yummy, purple]. I forgot what the brown one and yellow one was. Cheese? They all had onion in them, though. The beet one was the best.
A mixing of cultures. Russian, Israeli, and Mehico.
Russian honey cake. It was so moist and yummy and I loved it.
Russian marshmallows. Vanilla, apple pectin... they tasted like light apple jam, not much vanilla, and kinda gritty because of the caster sugar on the top.
Chocolate. CHOColate. CHOCOLATE. Brazilian. I LOVE IT.No gelatin, either!!!! I don't think that I could make marshmallow puffed rice squares with it, though.
Passionfruit pudding, Brazilian. At first, I thought it was mango, because it really does taste like mango. This is the first time I've tried passionfruit.
Rita's Italian ice, which, ironically, was in the "American" food section, along with cookies [below. The image looks like a painting...], Dunkin, bottled water]. This was the first time I tried Rita's [there were only two flavours, mango... and some other fruity flavour], since on the 20th when we went to Rita's [for the "free Rita's"], they were closed :(. I think I had 5 cups of the ice. No kidding. I kept count. In the midst of consuming my 4th cup, I dropped my mini spoon from the passionfruit pudding, and I didn't want to get another one since that would suck for the environment, so I half drank it, half used a ripped piece of the cup. Yes, I am resourceful.
We brought in a aluminium container of fried rice [notice I had nothing from the Chinese or Italian sections... because we eat that too often, even though I do love both cuisines]. Woah the cookie on the bottom right looks VERY painted/drawn. Seriously. I used one small plate, 5 small paper cups, three plastic mini cups and spoons, and one mini cake wrapper. Not terrible considering the amount of food I ate... Oh, I also drank Brazilian soda, Haitian orange and fruit soda, Belgian waffles, cheese, flat Russian pancakes, sugar cane, Haitian fudge, Israeli noodle pudding, and some doughnut. The doughnut wasn't that great though.