Bastille Day & Dasiwa

Today was wonderful! It's Bastille Day, so the Eastern State Penitentiary had a revolution-themed performance. I suppose the actors were running late, so they had the guillotining occur first (before the storming of the Bastille). This included the beheading of 5 watermelons. I wanted a chunk, but I was too far in the crowd to get one. The crowd's enthusiasm died down after about the 3rd melon, though.

After a bit of improv by the crew, Edith Piaf (acted by a male, part of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret) finally appeared in heels, a dress, and drawn on eyebrows! The songs were mashed up pop/rock songs, with a melange of French (spoken well!) and English, dipped with political humour. They even mentioned "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", which is a term from The Simpsons! I wonder how many others knew the reference. The show was fantastic, with a climax focusing on the lack of bread (preceded by an original song about bread, with a giant baguette who got shot), culminating in the release of over a thousand TastyKakes (Butterscotch Krimpets) from the roof of the Eastern State Penitentiary.

Unfortunately, SP and I were standing too far away to catch any. Later on, someone threw a Krimpet and it hit me with full force on my nose. For a lump of oils and sugars, that surprisingly hurt! I'm also surprised that they expire within a month.

Edith ended the show with "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien", a song I immediately associate with Edith Piaf. As people were leaving, I looked for more Tastykakes, but there were none! However, I saw a bunch of little kids with piles of them, and it probably gives them more happiness than it gives me (my time for collecting mounds of prepackaged cake treats have ended, I suppose). Besides, SP and I were going to eat a splendid sushi dinner at Dasiwa (honestly, IGNORE the reviews from before 2012...they are seriously out of date)!

Dasiwa was neat! It is half cafe, half sushi place. As I'm not really a fan of cafes, I anticipate just coming here for sushi in the future.

In aspects that seem to be big deals for others, but aren't important for me:

1. Appropriately decorated: Beautiful art on the walls, cute bathroom walls and ceilings (fish paintings), and stylish plates.

2. Great service: The waitress was really helpful and showed us what yellowtail and flounder look like. One of the other guys also had a sense of humour. First, as I was about to take a picture of the food, he joked "$5 extra for a picture!", and as we were finishing up, he told us (quoting SP because I was too busy staring at SP's beautiful face) "I've never seen a young couple with such an eye for delicacies! You know how to eat!".

3. Plating: Nicely done. I got a hibiscus flower that smells like ham.

So now, the stuff that does matter for me: foooooooooooooooood taste! So, I guess I do eat fish and possibly other animals now. We first got the salmon maki (roll), the tuna roll, and the octopus sashimi. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was avocado and cucumber in the rolls too!   The sushi was delicious, but I'm not a sushi connoisseur, so I generally appreciate anything rolled up in vinegar sushi rice and nori. SP, however, has more sushi experience than me, and he thought that it was "great!". 

We got 4 pieces of octopus sashimi, even though the menu said that we'd get 3 - perhaps they just sliced the same weight of octopus more thinly so that we'd have an even number of slices to share. One of the pieces looked super squiggly! Octopus is really chewy and a bit tough. I think I prefer squid over it.

Then, we got the yellowtail roll and some squid nigiri. Yellowtail flesh is differently coloured, so our sushi was quite pretty (although this time, there wasn't any avocado). The squid looked like a slice of onion, but it tasted way better! I am quite pleased with myself, because I managed to nibble on more wasabi (or dyed horseradish; I'm not really sure) than I've ever had my whole life (minus the wasabi peas). I'm actually starting to like it!

Before we left, the chef gave us each a spoonful of scallop with melted butter, roe, scallions, and ponzu sauce (with citrus). I didn't catch everything the waitress said, but it looked fancy. I envision myself eating this kind of thing when I'm a millionaire a few decades from now. Or not; I'll probably still be munching on comforting peanut butter sandwiches while working 12-hour days at the lab. It tasted a bit foreign to me: buttery, sour/vinegary, fatty/oily, and orangy. Interesting mix of flavors and tastes.

As we walked back home, we swung by Wholefoods. I was disappointed that the almond flour was $13.99/lb, but we were both satisfied with dessert - some tea cookies from the choose-it-yourself place. I tried the lemon and rosemary biscuit, which was interesting, and the vegan gingerbread with raspberry filling, which was extremely moist and delicious. SP got a cream filled double chocolate chip cookie sandwich (good), a cookie sandwich with ganache (good), and a swirly hard cookie with a dot of jam (dry and bland).

BREAD!

I can successfully make bread (after failing to use yeast in baking 4 times in my life)! Wonderful news. Next semester, I'm going to bring a giant bowl for bread-making purposes. So simple and delicious! I expect to make many loaves of bread when I'm upset (often). Time to get that pound of yeast on Amazon :D

I reckon that I had too many dead yeast when I made yeast-leavened products. I'm not sure why it failed in Food Tech 6 years ago, but I think this is what happened the last three times:
1. Croissants - apparently, I used dead yeast, because there was no dough rise.
2. Croissants - some dough rise, but I probably killed off most of the yeast when I added water to proof it (water was probably too hot).
3. Bread - dough rose, but probably not enough. Then, the recipe said to stick it under steaming water in an oven for 30 minutes, and although the dough did rise a bit more, I promptly overbaked the dough and ended up with a biscuit thing.



Because there will be no more premature murdering of yeast, I now proclaim myself capable of baking yeast bread, using both instant and active dry yeast. Sure, it's not delicious bread yet, but it's perfectly finger-burning hot and mouthwatering. It's also not that difficult and makes my room smell like yeast (while dough is rising), and then bread (while bread is cooling).

So, what have I made?

On the 10th, SP and I used instant yeast to make "Fast French Rolls" by Mark Bittman. SP picked out the author, because he's apparently pretty cool. Notably, bread is something that SP has made before I have (he makes it with his mum).



For simplicity, we modified the recipe  so that I wouldn't have a few grams of yeast just lying around. We ended up with 9 rolls, and it took us 3 hours (of course, we did other stuff when the dough was rising).

Ingredients we used:
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour
2 tsp salt
1 packet of instant yeast (7g)
~2 cups of water (the recipe says to just keep adding tbsps until you get a nice dough. This was not very informative for people who have never successfully made bread before (me).

We followed the Method really closely until we got to shaping the rolls (I wanted to make baguettes, but the pans and oven are all too small). That's when we started squishing a lot of the dough, which probably resulted in our slightly dense bread. I suppose, for bread-making, preheating the oven actually IS important. Unfortunately, our bread didn't have a golden brown crust...but it was oh-so-crusty! I love crust, and SP loves crumb (the inside part of the bread). I envision a lot of bread sharing in the future.




So that was a success! The bread had a delicious crust, a dense interior, and was a bit too dry (a bit like stale bread). It tasted fine the next day, although SP didn't like it as much. I ended up bringing my whole wedge of Asiago cheese and a handful of arugula with me to work because I didn't have time to assemble a sandwich at home. I had to explain this to my co-workers, as I sat there, nibbling at the cheese! Unfortunately, I don't love Asiago - it's hard, sour/salty, a tad pungent, and really sharp. However, it's still a treat.

Today, I decided to make some dinner rolls, using the active dry yeast. Turns out that I AM capable of using both instant AND active dry yeast! I'm not sure which one I will buy in bulk though.

I made half of the recipe, but didn't use any eggs, but also used 1/4 cup of oil instead of 1/8.



Ingredient modifications for 24 SMALL (mochi sized) dinner rolls
1 packet active dry yeast
1 cup body temperature water
A few tbsp sugar
1/4 c oil
pinch of salt
1.5 c whole wheat flour
1 c white flour

I had some minor issues.

• First, my dough was a bit too gooey after it doubled in size. I still don't really know what "good" bread dough is supposed to be like, but this one looked a bit too spongy and soft. I blame it on the excess oil used (1/4 instead of 1/8...forgot to divide this!)
• Second, while making the rolls, I truly thought that 1/24 of the dough was too small to make a roll. Sure, mochi-sized bread is cute, but I wanted a dinner roll, the size of a tennis ball. So instead, I was going to divide the dough into 16 pieces. However, halfway through twisting off the dough pieces (this is probably bad technique), I realized that I'd have to figure out the baking time and temperatures for the bigger lumps of dough. So I re-rolled and twisted off 24 little blobs of dough, hoping that they would rise.
• Then, I decided to do the second dough rise in the non-baking pans (I put those in the oven to warm up). So, when I wanted to transfer the re-risen dough balls onto the oven pans, I ended up squashing every single perfectly round piece. It was a disaster. I was upset. I also merged some of the dough balls together because they were really small (and they baked completely normally). So I ended up with some rolls in the midst of cytokinesis.

I checked the oven every 5 minutes, and turned it off at 12 minutes. I then let the rolls sit in there for 3 minutes and then took the three pans out. They were cooked. Edible. Hot. Sort of crispy exterior, fluffy interior. I guess I wanted a chewy dinner roll. This roll was dry (sigh) and slightly bland. Well! Mini Asiago and arugula hamburgers for lunch tomorrow (minus the patty)!

Not bad for my first two real attempts at yeast bread-making; in fact, these were much better than the Olive Garden breadsticks (the worst, but my sister loves them). My baking can only get better.

Hwang Bu Ja Soondubo Specialty (Korean/Japanese Restaurant)

Last month, my family went to lunch with HM's family. It was the day before I left to come back to Penn, and I completely forgot to document the experience! It was the second or third time I've been to a sit-down Korean restaurant (the first one or two being Korean BBQ when I was...10?), and this one was called "Hwang Bu Ja Soondubo Specialty". It was quite empty during lunch; only two or three other tables were occupied (yet it was Saturday around 1pm). Nevertheless, the owner of the restaurant was friendly, helpful with menu selections, and gave us 4 raw eggs even though there were 9 of us.

The above food items were absolutely delicious, especially the pickled cucumber. I could eat a whole jar of that stuff.

I ordered the Tofu Pot Stew with Sprout Rice in Stoneware. It was a huge bowl of chewy short-grain rice, raw sprouts, tofu, and cucumber. I cracked an egg into it but the egg wouldn't cook! So, I had to press the egg against the edge of the bowl, and it was quite delicious. The spicy sauce was also really good. There was way too much of it so I ended up not finishing it, but that may be because I also ate some of the grilled pancake and I also tried the dish my mum got ("Mixed uncurdled bean curd") and the one my brother got ("Octopus, udon noodle, vegetables and spicy sauce"). I LOVE UDON!

I kind of wish they had a non-animal version of this delectable looking protein item, so that I could try it.

My sister's meal, I think. She took this picture.

The tofu that my mum got. It tasted a bit fermented. Overall, I enjoy Korean food, but I don't think that I am a huge fan.

Bread in the Form of Squashed Rolls

I've always had a floppy experience working with yeast. In Food Tech in Year 9, as a fun end-of-the-year project, we all made some bread. SC and I wanted to make chocolate cheese bread but we weren't allowed to because the combination was apparently ridiculous. We proofed our dough (chocolate and pistachio, a much more conservative combination) in the bottom of the oven, with yeast from the same packet as that of the other groups.

After baking, our asterisk-shaped dough had morphed into a small and stiff blob (insert joke here). It was like vaguely-chocolate flavoured hardtack (seabiscuits!). Conversely, everyone else had fluffy, poofy bread. So, I haven't cooked with yeast since then (except when my mum makes man[2] tou[2] (馒头) - steamed buns. It appears that I will never be able to make or taste the magnificent  creation called chocolate cheese bread.

I know a lot about the yeast we use for cooking. S. cerevisiae. They like to grow at 30 degrees C, and they replicate every 90 minutes. They can have a leu2 selectable marker, because they need leucine. Histone chromatin modifications alter viability and growth, with H4K16 and H4K5 being the ones I researched. I'm also sick of smelling them.

Despite all this scientific knowledge, I still can't bake with them. Or maybe I just picked up a bad batch of yeast. Certainly, the yeast isn't dead, because there were bubbles in the sponge (the yeast+ warm water + sugar mixture), and the dough DID rise and nearly doubled in size.

The brand of active dry yeast that I used was Hodgson Mill. Last month, my croissants failed with them too (but that might've just been because I accidentally killed the yeast during the sponge-making? It did rise a bit).

As I sit here chewing this semi-dense lump of cooked dough with puny air bubbles, I wonder what went wrong. Was it the recipe? I let it rise for 30 minutes longer (1 h as opposed to 30 mins), so did that mess up my bread? I used oil instead of butter, but that shouldn't have affected anything. I think it's time I go and bought more yeast. Real bread must be made, soon.

Yeast bubbling, with a dollop of oil.

Bubbles. I'm not sure whether there is enough live yeast.

The dough, after 1 cup of flour.

After 15 minutes of rising in my bedroom.

After 45 more minutes of rising outside in the sun, covered. The dough has risen, and it felt super soft and spongy and..."correct" textured? I've never touched correct bread dough before, but it felt like a soft marshmallow pillow!

After cutting and rolling the dough...doesn't look too promising.

After 30 more minutes of rising, in the oven with boiling water. Looks like it might work!

After baking. The rolls have shrunk. DECREASED IN VOLUME. HOW COME!? This was a huge disappointment.

I end up with something resembling soda bread. It's a bit crumbly, slightly dense, has little holes, and is not the expected fluffy dinner roll.

Independence Day

This day, I got a lot of free iced tea because Wawa was giving them out. I also got a piece of candy   and a cupcake. There were allegedly 1776 cupcakes (that's what the flyer said, but the flyer also predicted the wrong time for the fireworks), but at around 12:30, the loudspeaker announced that there were over 2500. I was near the front of the line because I had gotten there so much earlier. So many people tried to cut into the front of the line, because, of course, they felt entitled, and they didn't want to wait at the back of the line. Fortunately, the people in charge ushered everyone who tried to cut to the back. So I got my cupcake as planned. It was a very plain cupcake, by Termini Bros. I wonder who got to eat the 5 layer cake.