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| Few good things in life are as tasty as our northern Chinese BaoZi and Lily's fish dish, ugh.
On Saturday, we decided to make BaoZi, a steam bun we love but we have not tried for a long time. The skills required to make them can be demanding; first, the rising of dough, the resting, and the steaming of the bun is the most critical - we failed many years ago because buns collapsed when we opened the lid. That discouraged us. With my new found skill of making dough, we decided to try again. Instead of trying to rise the flour in a couple of hours as before, we just let it rest for a good 8 hours and fair enough, it raised nicely. Lily's filling, almost exactly as her ZiaoZi, fail-proof. Now we came to the critical test: when we opened the lid, right in front of our eyes, the buns collapsed shrinking from a full, round shape to a crumpled, air squeezed out kind of wrapping. How disappointing! But the second round was a tar better but not much. Honestly, this is a truly thermodynamics problem! Still, BaoZi are very tasty, still. Today I just realized what the proper way to keep the BaoZi remaining in the full and round shape - a mystery that bothers us for a long time. It collapsed due to pressure difference when we open the lid. Instead, we need to let it cool down slowing by removing the steamer from heat, allowing the heat dissipating and equalize the atmospheric pressure inside and outside of the steamer.
As they said, ask the chef to cook a fish dish when you want to test the chef. I have browsed many seafood recipes, and even with all that herbs and spices, still, few can compare with Lily's pan fry fish with vegetables sauteed. Especially when fish in the supermarket no longer commands that freshness; therefore, a strong flavoring method will be required to win over the fishy smell. Most of the baked, broiled, poached, or steamed fish recipes require a high degree of freshness, and the outcome will not be tasty. Obviously, she does not consult a recipe; she does not need to  . I just loved that pan fry grouper with vegetables, soy sauce, mushroom stock and sesame oil sauteed. Loads of scallions, ginger and garlic balance out every ounce of the fish. It tastes really good.
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| Ugh, I just like casserole dishes and pot pies, be it chicken pot pie, pork pie or seafood pot pies.
The idea of a pot containing all you need to eat, simple and straight without fuss, without dips, sauces etc. appeals to me. One pot for all with all the vegetables, meat or seafood comes with plenty of freedom with regard to the ingredients. Oops, we run out of tomatoes, so what, we can do without it or use other vegetable. It's perfect meal to clean the refrigerator .
Today I went home with a big plan - to try a pork pie, another British food of the fame. A recipe from videojug.com suffices all the details I need. But we're going to eat it right away hot instead of cold over night. I remembered seeing some ground pork in the frig; besides, I have had many left-over crumbs of my failed trials of pie crust using canola oil - no butter for our family. So I was planning to clean out all these to make a large pie crust for my pork pie. Also, I'd like to make vegetable soup again since it was so tasty last time after a suggestion of cabbage soup from Joyce. Since none of us are vegetarian, my secret in making tasty soup lies in the stock - I use left over shrimp peels, slowly simmering, to make a tasty stock for my soup - a tip learned watching the minimalist video from NYT.
While I got my soup going nicely, simmering to soft - I actually like the veggie crunchy but my customers (ha, family members) want it soft so I let it go soft. Now that ground port was no where to found to my surprise. So I would go for shrimp pie. Secondly, attempting to combine all the left over crumbs of pie crusts to make one or two pie crusts failed miserably. They just didn't stick together. Change plan fast. Shrimp casserole with vegetables. Lay the crumbs over the top of my sauteed shrimp and veggie. Bake and just in time when my gymnasts came home hungrily after their daily exercise.
Soup tastes great and shrimp casserole made through tummy too.
Being a herb and spice man, soup has to start with a couple of bay leaves, dashes of oregano.
For my shrimp casserole, by Alton Brown, a dash of curry powder goes a long way.
OK, no picture of the dishes today but we ate healthily.
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| After reading Mark Bittman's "No Knead Bread", the Minimalist from New York Times, I have been making bread for more than three months. The result, now, I can call it My Bread with consistency . Two secrets: the extra long sitting time ( a day!) and adding more water than usual for the yeast to work takes the kneading out of the equation; the baking inside a covered pot takes the complexity of baking and crusting out of the equation too. I even eliminated the need of the second raising from the original receipe - I know, I know, when do I ever can follow an instruction? Nope, just have to make some difference here. You can see the result in the folloeing three pictures:
  
Of course i will not just use white flour; I just can't . I always add a cup of whole wheat, or corn flour, or rice grain flour etc. Oh spices, I just cannot let the bread go without trying to tinker it with spices. So far, fennel seeds seems to taste best giving that pungent kick from bite to bite. I also always add some poppy seeds or mustard seeds, sunflower seeds, and many different nuts. Of course, each time I add different mixture of these spices and seeds to just make it more interesting, always different . Somewhere I read that adding coriander seeds was common during the English Elizabethan time so I tried it too; not bad.
Now we walk past the bread shelves fast in supermarket; we just can't look at those white breads any more. Just read about adding herb to bread, rosemary bread anyone? I will try it.
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| Why am I so interested at spices, suddenly?
Like many interests one will have coming and receding as waves: can it be just another title wave that eventually vanishes near the beach?
What's the big idea?
Spice up your dishes? Spice up your life?
Spices, supposedly used only sparingly, just a teaspoon, a dash, a notch and it makes all that difference. Like physical exercise, a simple short 30 minutes everyday makes a long and lasting difference. But few people exercise; few use spices. Few read Euripides - I just have to say it. Spices, tiny things, use sparingly, take no effort but make huge difference - wouldn't you use it? Without spices, one just misses all the flavorful tastes, and misses out all the adventures and enjoyment.
It becomes urgent for me to rush out to collect all the spices I can find filling up the cabinet - that's just me. Reading what I can find hungrily, now the question of using the spices in cooking challenges me.
I know cumin/coriander goes well with lamb and fennel harmonizes with seafood but the proper use of spices rests on individual tastes and there's plenty of room for innovation. That will be part of fun in cooking, be adventurous. Using 8 or 10 different kinds of spices as in Indian cooking can be just overpowering, overpowering the food itself. I would rather try one or two on each dish to seek that perfect balance.
As suggested by my dear Joyce, I am going to write a blog on my cooking adventure with spices, .
Stay tuned.
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| To do, we are limited to what we are doing,
we are belittled by the what we have done.
To idle, we are open to an infinite possibility of outcomes,
we are glorified with magnificent ego boost what we could have been.
To become Newton, or none,
an idealist's dilemma.
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