Milan and Burger Buns.

Greetings from Milan !

I am amazed to say I have survived one semester of studying abroad. And right after finals, my friends and I jetted away to Milan. In which two nights have passed and as I write this, I am in the airport waiting for my flight to Paris.

Yes, Paris.

How was Milan ? Well, it is as beautiful as I imagined it to be. The Duomo is beautiful, the people are beautiful (the men are ridiculously handsome. I swear, especially those selling handbags in those suits. Why do people even bother looking at the bags ?) and the food is delicious. I mean, it's pasta and pizza, what could go wrong ?

I haven't actually been here long enough to give a full account of the city, seeing as I only visited the area of Duomo but having spent the day there, I say that you have to go to Duomo. Seriously, jet off there at least once before you kick the bucket. I highly recommend it.

Anyhoo I haven't been posting much because I've been busy with life and such, but I shall now post some pictures of me making some burger buns for some chicken burgers that I sent out of which my friend came back for twice in the same day. I like to think it was these buns that made the burger.

Me (pretending) to be very hard at work.

My friends dropped by to lend a hand.

I didn't alter the recipe and so I shall just direct you to this site. Her pictures are nicer than mine anyway. Heh.

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In relation to the previous post, I think I'm feeling a little better. Well, there isn't any shame in hoping for love.

In the meantime, let me go stuff myself with too many Mars Bars. Who knew one could find them in Milan ?

Tres Leches, Birthdays and a Heartache

Hello hello. Another day, another class, another banana. That's how it's been.

It's nice here actually. I've been making loads of new friends who have taken to coming over to our room after classes and chatting till late night. Normally I wouldn't mind, but I start to shut down circa 10pm (I know - I'm an old lady inside) so I start to yawn and my eyes start closing and then they have to retire to their own rooms. I feel horrible and kinda old but, well, I need to sleep. It's the best sleep I've had in nearly a year, what with my past of being a notorious insomniac.

And exams, oh the exams ! Time has flown and it is now my mom's birthday. September has half passed and I am here procrastinating and writing poetry in the margin of my notebook. I have one more paper tomorrow and all I can think of is

the heartache

of loving someone

who doesn't love you back.

The exam stress is making my brains - and hair - fall out of my ears - and head - but then the ache inside just won't go away. I feel it down to my bones and it kind of makes me want to eat everything and not eat anything at the same time. Sitting feels weird and studying feels fine. My mind is blank and full at the same time. Probably of cotton wool and wine notes. Gah.

Whatever. While I study and attempt to cover up the hole in my stomach, I'll fill up the other hole in my stomach with some cake and churros. How is that a pairing ? I have no idea. It just happened. But it was a damn good pairing as demonstrated by my classmates - and myself - having eaten every single bite of leftover cake off the tray, then munching on so many churros that I didn't have enough to serve to the customers. What did my chef say ? Nothing. Because his mouth was also full of churros.

Crab Cakes and a New Beginning

Greetings from Bouveret !

Yes, I have arrived in Switzerland. I've been here for more than two weeks now, and classes have been ongoing and life has not stopped. Baking, however, has. Momentarily. Because although I have enrolled in a culinary arts program (of the higher diploma sort), I have yet to attend a pastry class. That will probably be during the next semester.

What have I been up to then ? Well I have been going for classes and eating my weight in cheese and potatoes. Hopefully I don't go home as a more rotund version of myself but the the cheese here is cheap and readily available and wonderful and... Oh who am I kidding, I miss my bananas.

I've been trying really, really hard to save up some cash for winter clothing of which I have none. I have recently acquired a pair of Ugg boots which burned a hole in my pocket but are absolutely necessary otherwise I am going to have ice blocks attached to my legs during winter. The rest of my cash has been squirreled out little by little, for my weekly supply of bananas and some chocolate spread for my morning eats. Oh, and figs. Dried figs. And of course soap and softener for my clothes, since I'm being independent and washing my own clothes and all.

People keep taking my bananas. Even after I put them in my room, on my table. They are MY bananas, goddammit.

Anyhoo, I miss home. I miss my mum and my dad and my sister so badly that I'm just walking around with a big hole in my heart. I miss my bed and my dog and my oven. I'm aching to bake some brownies or chocolate cake or cheesecake - which, oddly enough, is missing around these parts given the abundance of cheese around. 

I even miss Taylor's, my old university. I miss the crappy parking and the lecturers and the system they have there. The pace of life here is slow. While it is a good thing - I've never slept so well in my life before - I guess I'm just a city girl at heart. I long for the business of the roads and the malls and the myriad of things to do in the metropolis that is Kuala Lumpur. Bouveret is a wonderful place for a holiday, but I cannot for the life of me fathom wanting to stay here for the rest of my city-loving life. 

Or maybe I'm just pining. Or being homesick, whatever. Life, and classes, must go on. In the meantime, I shall enjoy the cheese and make some good food and astound everyone with my culinary prowess, or more like the lack thereof. 

Classes here would be very Harry Potter-esque, what with having to walk to other buildings for lessons and going to halls for meals and having dorm rooms and all except for the fact that I spend most of the time wrapped up like a burrito in my room and times in between running my legs off at the gym. It's the only way that I can push out all the homesickness, because no matter where in the world I go, I can still run. And hell, I will run. The bed is a good thing because it's nice and comfy and my dorm room is sadly lacking of a couch. There is a stiffish chair that is meant for desk work but I have manipulated the furniture so my desk work becomes bedwork. Takes skill, I tell you.

We are to make a portfolio - a magazine of sorts of the dishes we cooked this term. We have to find our own recipes and plan the menu according to the theme given each week. Last week, I was put in charge of crab cakes with red pepper butter sauce. I needed to make a sketch for the portfolio to prove that I could plan for a fine dining dish and then serve the dish according to my sketch. 

Here is the aforementioned sketch:

Please ignore the cartoony vibe. My laptop charger is kaput and I am left with an ipad, albeit a free one, to figure out how it is that people make masterpieces on this touch screen thingy. 

Here, just so you can admire my handiwork, is the real deal:

It's simple really.

For the crab cakes:

750g crab meat

750g mashed potatoes

100g chopped red bell peppers

A big handful of coriander leaves, chopped

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 eggs

Juice of one lemon

Just mix everything together in a really big bowl. It should be moist enough to hold together when you press it into a patty. This entire recipe should make 16 patties of 100g each. Unless of course, you make them really small. Place them on a tray, wrap with clingfilm and chill it overnight.

To coat the crab cakes:

Panko breadcrumbs

3 eggs

Flour

Place the flour in a shallow plate, beat the eggs and place in another shallow plate. Pour the breadcrumbs into a third shallow plate. Dip a crab cake into the flour, then into the egg, then the breadcrumbs. Gently, gently press the crumbs into the cakes so they stick. Chill the coated cakes for half an hour, or till ready to fry. 

Shallow fry in a an inch of oil until crisp and cooked through.

For the mango salsa:

Two large, ripe mangoes, diced

One large shallot, diced

A handful of coriander leaves, chopped

Juice of one lime

Salt and sugar to taste

Just mix everything together. Add sugar only if your mangoes are really tart. You want it to be slightly tart though, to balance the sauce out later. 

For the red pepper butter sauce:

3 red bell peppers

1 cup of white wine

2 shallots, diced

3/4 cup heavy cream

1 cup cold butter, diced

Salt and pepper to taste

Rub the peppers with a little oil and place on a baking sheet. Bake at 200C for half an hour, or until black and blistered. Remove from the oven and place in a heatproof bowl and cover tightly with clingfilm so they steam. Leave for fifteen minutes, then peel of the skins and remove the seeds. You might want to do this is a bowl of water - it's okay if they're submerged and soaked. Drain the skinned and seeded peppers, then blend them to a smooth purée in a food processor.

In a medium saucepan, sauté the shallots in a little oil until translucent. Pour in the white wine and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer until reduced to nearly a teaspoon is left in the pan - you want it really concentrated. Pour in the cream and bring to the boil yet again. Simmer for a couple of minutes, then take the pan off the heat. Off the heat, whisk in the butter, one cube at a time, until the sauce becomes thick and silky, like a mayonnaise, almost. Whisk hard and off the heat, otherwise it'll split. If the butter refuses to melt into the sauce, put the pan back on the smallest heat possible, just till it amalgamated. When all the butter has been mixed in, strain out the shallots. Put the pan back on the heat (SMALL) and whisk in the puréed bell peppers. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the crab cakes with the sauce and the salsa, and probably a salad. You'll want to feel virtuous after all that butter and cream. But it is good, I tell you. I should know - I practically ate the sauce by the spoonful. You know, a cook has to taste.

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We (we being my classmates - they seem nice !) made some other dishes as well.

 

There was chicken and waffles (!) with some sweet potato purée:

And a trio of sliders of pulled pork, pastrami, mini burgers:

Caribbean prawns in a coconut rum sauce:

Ribs with baked beans and loaded potato:

A deconstructed Waldorf salad:

And the holiest of holies, cheesecake. Oh. I found the cheesecake.

And the theme was North American cuisine, just for the record.

Marbled Tofu Cheesecake

I have exactly eight and a half days left till my flight to Switzerland. Besides the usual "pack all your stuff" (which I haven't done) or "get your documents ready" or "do more research on where you're going" advice, the next best ones I got were "eat whatever you want because you might not be able to find it there." Which, for me, is fried chicken (shihlin's Taiwanese fried chicken to be exact) and anything drowned in cheese. I have a feeling I'm going to be able to find renditions of both over there...

And I've been baking a lot too. Mostly just chocolate cakes and breads to use up the plethora of ingredients I seem to have accumulated over the months. There was a point of time when, with twenty-four days left till my flight, I had four kilos of chocolate left to use up. It wouldn't have posed a problem normally, being left with four kilos of the stuff to nosh on but then this was baking chocolate. That I got on the cheap when I was churning out brownies on a large scale. In other words, not good eats.

I also have a can of chestnut paste, some tubs of cream cheese and some good chocolate left too. While bringing them with me to college is out of the question, baking up some last minute indulgences is not. Just so you know, I LOVE chestnuts. I love eating them roasted or fried or braised or even better, in paste form. Okay that sounds disgusting but in reality, it's like peanut butter, but even creamier and sweeter and nuttier and, I dunno, better. And I think I don't have to explain my obsession with cheesecake or brownies.

So I am faced with a dilemma. How do I use up those ingredients in the yummiest way possible ? Do I make one New York cheesecake with a side of fudgy brownies and chestnut cream (and put myself into a food coma just thinking about it) ? OR should I kill two birds with one stone and make the chestnut cheesecake I've been eyeing in the gorgeous Nigella Lawson's cookbook ? Or maybe a chocolate chestnut cake, also from said book ?

Life is hard sometimes. 

While I ponder this extremely important question, I shall leave you with this cheesecake I made a little while ago. It doesn't have either chestnuts or chocolate.. Or must cheese, come to think of it. Yep, it's one of those OMGICAN'TBELIEVEIT'SNOTCHEESE thingies I found floating around on the internet the other day.

Pretty, isn't it ?

And yes, it is tofu. And it's good. Trust me.

 

The texture won't be a smooth or creamy as your usual cheesecake seeing as there's tofu and gelatin in it. It's more of a sliceable mousse. Not that it's a bad thing, but I'm a New York cheesecake sort of girl. That being said, I find this one a pleasant change from the clagginess one might feel (here I say might because I'm not one of those wimps - I mean - people) after eating a slice of baked cheesecake. Plus, it's tofu. And green tea ! What better way to get your daily dose of protein and antioxidants than in a delicious cheesecake, nonetheless ?

I got the recipe from here. I didn't change anything, and if say, I'm feeling a little chunkier lately but still want something sweet, I'd make it again. Nothing changed. It's good, people.

Banana Cupcakes and Jammy Muffins

I am cringing as I write this.

I've taken the longest hiatus from writing since I started. And while the initial reason I started writing this blog in the first place was to record and remind myself which recipes I liked best (yes, I forget. But that's only because I hoard so many recipes that I can't remember which ones I like and which ones I don't), it makes me flinch to see that I've only written one meager post for June. And it's almost the end of June too, dammit.

But, hello ? Does anyone read this ?

Anyhoo, I've been MIA because I've been preparing to go to Switzerland ! The land of CHOCOLATES and CHEESE and ROSTÏ. At least, that's what I heard, it might be a different matter when I get there, but hey a girl can dream. There has been a million and one things I need to get done and pack. Speaking of packing, my luggage is still empty. Haven't packed as much as a single thing. And only one a half weeks to go !

I'm excited, really. And terrified. The furthest I've ever been away from home is China, and that was with my family, for a holiday. Now I'm going to be on my own (well almost, two of my friends are coming along but you get what I mean) and I'm going to study, and ultimately find somewhere to work. Which probably means it's going to be a long, long time before I get to camp in my own bed again.

Yep, I'm squirming as I type.

So aside from last minute preparations and shopping for stockings and the all important task of decided which stuffed animal to bring, I've been making time to see as many of my friends as possible. Then one day I decided to visit the man who, aside from my family, watched me grow up and taught me to love music.

My organ teacher. Who's been teaching me to play the organ since I was 3.

(Just for the record, I'm 20. Insert gasp of awe here.)

I wasn't too emotional when I met up with my friends recently. Actually I was practically stoic seeing as I mightn't be seeing them for the better part of a year or two or so. The reality of leaving hadn't hit me yet, and since there was a million ways to connect and reconnect with people from all parts of the globe, I wasn't too concerned. And I did what I always did, which is bake for people. And while my friends are perfectly content with cupcakes and brownies and cookies, my teacher whom I shall call Mr G for convenience, deserved something different. I wanted it to be special.

So I thought back to what he liked. After 16 years of classes, I realized I didn't know much about him. I knew he liked tea and yoga. I knew he was flexible and calm and never lost his temper. I knew his glasses were slightly tinted gray and he always wore khakis. I knew he ate sausage buns for lunch somedays. 

My mom heartily discouraged me from making him sausage buns because she said that he'd been eating them for years now, and she doubted another sausage bun was the best thing to give him as a parting gift. She did have a point.

So I made muffins. I made a batch for someone who was helping me with the process of getting into the Swiss school, and there were some leftover. I made another batch of a different kind and packed them into a pretty box and got my parents to drop me off at the music centre.

(I called beforehand. I wanted to surprise him but ended up calling first because I just wanted to check if he'd be around. Okay, I didn't call per se, but I texted to ask and he called me. He sounded happy enough to hear from me, which in turn, made me feel bad for not texting before since I hadn't been going for nearly a year now.)

I had the oddest feeling when I was climbing up the stairs. My throat felt constricted and I could hardly breathe. I passed it off as a not-being-used-to-the-many-stairs sort of feeling. Mr G opened the door for me and smiled as if nothing had happened. I babbled about the muffins and hastily explained about going to Switzerland. He listened patiently and smiled and wished me luck and told me to drop by again when I returned to Malaysia. I shook his hand sixty seven times and waved when I went down the stairs. Then I climbed inside the car with my parents and cried my eyes out. And I don't even know why. Honestly, it's the first time I've cried since I started the whole going-abroad process. 

But I do know that I have him to thank for keeping me sane for so many years. For showing me that music can heal even the deepest sadness. And that if I put my heart to it, I can play any song I want, even when I don't have the written keys. For proving that practice does indeed make perfect. That sometimes, your fingers can still remember what your brain forgets. 

And for showing me that sausage buns, tea and yoga are the key to longevity and a calm mind. Seriously, he doesn't look a day older than when I first met him.

Banana Cupcakes

(Adapted from Cupcakes by Shelly Kadunski)

Makes 12

155g cake flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 large, ripe banana (about 200g)

3 heaped tbsp Greek yogurt

175g light brown sugar

125g unsalted butter

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper cases.

2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. 

3. Mash together the banana and sour cream until smooth.

4. Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary.

5. Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just combined. Fold in the banana mixture just until it's mixed in. Don't overmix the batter at this stage, a lumpy batter is alright.

6. Divide the batter among the paper cases. They'll be quite full, but it's alright because this will give you tall cupcakes (or in my case, muffins. Heh.). Bake until lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the centre of a cupcake comes out clean. Your kitchen will smell like bananas foster with a touch of popcorn, and this will only take 18-20 minutes. 

7. Let the cupcakes cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Jammy Crumble Muffins

(Adapted from Back To Baking by Anna Olson)

Makes 9 muffins

For the crumble*:

1/2 cup all purpose flour

3 1/2 tbsp rolled oats

3 tbsp packed light brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp cool unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1. Stir together all the ingredients except the butter. Using your fingers, rub in the butter until it is evenly mixed in and the mixture is crumbly and forms clumps. Set aside while making the muffin batter.

*this makes a lot more crumble than you will need for this recipe, but it will keep in a container in the freezer for months. Pull it out and make more muffins when you feel like it. 

For the muffins:

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

1 egg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tbsp honey

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup blueberry jam (or any other thick jam that you like)

1. Preheat the oven to 190C. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.

2. In a mixing bowl, whisk the sugar, yogurt, egg, oil, honey and vanilla until smooth and well combined.

3. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and fold together with a spatula or a wooden spoon until just combined. Remember, a lumpy batter makes the best muffins so don't overmix !

4. Divide the batter into 9 of the muffin cups. Using a small spoon, put a tsp of blueberry jam into each muffin cup, pressing it down slightly so it sinks ever so slightly into the batter. This will keep it from bubbling over and burning on the side of the pan as the batter bakes. Sprinkle over a little crumble mixture, using around a tsp of crumble per muffin.

5. Bake them for 20 minutes, until the tops spring back when lightly pressed and they are a nice golden hue. Cool them for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.