Cinnamon Buns

...or as I like to call them in Chinese, 肉桂屁股 rou4 gui4 pi4gu3. Haha, just kidding. 肉櫃捲 rou4 gui4 juan3 is a better name, literally Cinnamon Rolls. I made them this morning for class. Chapter 2 is about food so our assignment for the week is to bring in some food and present it (describe the ingredients, how to make it, etc). I made a couple batches over Chinese New Year break as well but forgot to take pictures.

I like to use the Sweet Dough recipe from the Good Housekeeping Illustrated cookbook (which is handily not in my possession, but in storage at Angie's house). It's a large batch of dough (8 cups of flour, I think) that you end up splitting to make multiple recipes. Since I don't have it with me, I found the dough recipe on the internet, cut it in half and then just winged the rest of it.

Cinnamon Buns
Lots of people like a glazed bun, but I find the extra sugar makes it too sweet. The filling is to taste - I put a healthy dose of cinnamon, a sprinkling of sugar, and lots of raisins. If my consumers aren't against walnuts I put them in. I think they're better with but some people are allergic or just aren't a fan.

Dough

• 2 1/4 t yeast - 酵母 xiao4mu3
  
• <4 c flour - 麵粉 mian4fen3
  
• 1 t salt - 鹽 yan2
  
• 1/4 c sugar - 糖 tang2
  
• 1 egg - 蛋 dan4
  
• 1/8 c butter, melted - 奶油 nai3you2
  
• 1/4 c water - 水 shui3
  
• 3/4 c milk - 牛奶 niu2nai3
  

Filling

• butter - 奶油 nai3you2
  
• cinnamon - 肉桂粉 rou4gui4 fen3
• optional: pinch of cloves (to enhance cinnamon), nutmeg (to complement), cardamom (for different flavor)
• brown sugar - 黑糖 hei1 tang2
  
• raisins - 葡萄乾 pu2tao2gan1
  
• optional: chopped walnuts - 核桃 he2tao2
  

1. Place dough ingredients in bread machine and set to dough cycle.
   Note: The following steps take up to 2 hours, depending on your rising time.
   
2. Punch dough down. Flatten/roll out to rectangular shape. 12"x20" or 16"x21" would do.
3. Spread melted butter on surface followed by the rest of the ingredients. A healthy spread of raisins will do.
4. Start rolling the dough (from the long side). Be sure to roll tightly so as not to have any air pockets.
5. Cut the log into 9-12 pieces (depending on the size of your baking dish).
   
6. Place in greased pan. Cover and let rise in warm, moist environment until nearly doubled (30 min - 1 hour).
7. Bake at 180C for 20-25 min or until golden brown.
8. Serve warm for breakfast or cooled down for a snack!

I brought the dish into class, still warm from the oven. With only 9 pieces in the square dish I used, we had to cut them in half to have enough for everyone (11 people incl the teacher). I think I could have eaten half the dish but held back and ended up with half a roll.

My class continues to be wildly entertaining and I am so grateful for having this teacher and these classmates. Class change period is over, and my class has settled its roster. There was an older American man from Los Angeles trying to get in, but in the end, the school said 10 was the limit for a class. A few others also just peeked their heads in to see if there was room. It's quite a popular class. I feel some concern about the next quarter when I plan to take a month off. The school has changed their policy...instead of letting teachers go at their own pace (with a guideline of 5 days per chapter, 3 days for intensive), they are required to reach and not surpass a certain chapter. I think this will make it more difficult for students in the end and possibly limit our class. So far, I've always been in a class that has gone faster than others -- it's a shame the school is slowing us down.

The Accidental Diabetic

After talking with Popo for FOUR straight hours yesterday, I went to IKEA which is practically across the street. I bought a 12 cup muffin tin - a bit of a splurge, but for lack of bread pans, I thought a muffin tin would do the trick.

So I decided to use up some old apples by making apple muffins. Only, after 20 min of cooking, they were so light in color, I thought they couldn't possibly be done. I left them in 5 min more, and they looked the same. That's when I realized I forgot to add the sugar! But because I had tripled the amount of apple the original recipe called for, and added some extra spices, they turned out tasting alright.

So here's the version of the recipe I made, without the half cup of sugar called for.

Apple Raisin Muffins - No Sugar Added
These make a nice snack or breakfast. They're a bit like pancakes in a muffin form. Just chock full of apples. Since there's no sugar, you get the sweetness from the apples and raisins and extra flavor from the spices. They bake to a very light color - not a nicely browned muffin like other recipes.

1 c all purpose flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1 t ground cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of allspice
dash of ginger
1/2 t salt
1 egg
1/2 c low fat milk
1/4 c oil (I used olive, but you could use melted butter or canola or even applesauce)
3 c peeled, chopped sweet apple (most call for tart but for lack of sugar the sweet apples I used did the trick - I used 2 small apples)
1/4 c raisins

1. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, spices and salt. (If you wanted to add some sweetness, this is where the sugar would come in.)
   
2. Combine the egg, milk and oil. Stir into the dry ingredients just until moistened. Do not over mix!
3. Fold in the apple and raisins.
4. Fill 12 greased or lined muffin cups.
5. Bake at 375F/190C for 20-25 min. Cool for a few minutes before enjoying!
   

Ricotta

I had some leftover ricotta and didn't feel like making lasagna. There were just a few spoonfuls missing from the small 15 oz container, so I looked up a standard Ricotta Bread recipe and used all of it. Yum! Here's my version with some slight modifications.

Ricotta Bread
This makes an excellent bread just for eating, but also great sandwich bread. It has a nice, dense texture.

2 t yeast
3 c bread flour
4 T sugar
1 t salt
1-2 t dried Italian herbs
8 t melted butter
2 eggs
6 T milk
10-12 oz ricotta (1 1/4 to 1 1/2 c)

Place items in bread machine in order listed and set it to go. 2 lb (large) loaf, medium crust.

Q3: 1st Day of Class

I just started my 3rd quarter at Shida and had a great first day of class. The teacher is older, speaks quickly (in a natural way), and jokes a lot, making for a very entertaining class. There were 8 of us there today (Ting Zhou was missing b/c he's still in Japan). The others included:

• Canadian who has a degree in history
• Guatemalan who is pursuing his master's in TW
• Japanese woman from north of Tokyo
• French woman who studied Chinese art history (or something like that)
• American from Minnesota who studied economics and government, and likes the British accent
• Indonesian hua qiao (Chinese descent) whose parents also did not speak to him in Chinese when he was growing up
• Spaniard - hmmm, can't remember any details about him

The teacher joked around about us finding a partner in Taiwan. Since the population growth has slowed down a lot, she was encouraging us to marry locally and start having babies. We are also using the second edition of the book, which has the bopomofo and now two types of pinyin. One is the type commonly used in Taipei and the rest of the world. The other was mandated by the Green party, who will likely only be around for 3 months longer. They've instated a lot of expensive changes that don't seem to have a lot of reason.

The teacher talked a lot about the history as we went through looking at some of the new photographs in the new edition. She was saying in Ch 9, of the beauty pageant picture, that there is no longer a national competition, but just smaller county ones. There was something about the national winner going off to Las Vegas and taking off her clothes and how the TW didn't think that was so great. Also, they no longer wear the "Chinese" style dress - Taiwan is promoting Taiwan culture - except no one knows what that means. For the competition, they started using aboriginal clothing colors (bright blue and red) but it's not characteristic enough of Taiwan.

Another interesting difference between China and Taiwan is married life. Our teacher was saying that in China it's common for the husband to do the cooking and child rearing nowadays and the woman to come home from work and just relax by reading the paper. Since the one child policy created a higher percentage of males, women can be choosier. "Not you, not you, can you cook? ok, you." haha

She ended the class talking about all the slang in Taiwan. When she was a kid, one of the vocab words was new - "bang". When she used it, her mom didn't understand her. This book has a lot of informal type language since the premise is of an American campus. She also talked about current day slang, especially on the computer. 520 (wu3 er4 ling2) means I love you. 3Q (san1 Q) sounds like Thank You. 81 (ba1 yi1) sounds like Bye, so they also use 881 (Bye bye). Orz is a pictograph. The 0 is the head, the r is the arms and the z is the legs. So it's someone bai-bai-ing, ie praying, on the ground.

I've switched back to the 2 hour class and what with all the laughing and interesting tidbits, class just flew by. It also helps that the weather is beautiful again - going to class when it's sunny and coming out it's still sunny.

Birthday Recap

I borrowed my friend Craig's bike. It's a Dahon - which means it folds up so you can take it on the train. If you have a non-folding kind, you either aren't allowed to bring it on the train or are forced to pay an extra full fare - lame! Dahon bikes fold up and come with a traveling case. They fit nicely in the luggage compartment on the trains and the train officials won't give you any hassle. Unfortunately, I forgot to borrow Craig's bag so had to do with some large garbage bags instead.

Tainan
We took the high speed train from Taipei Main to Tainan. From there, we caught the free shuttle into town and got off near the university and started biking around town. I enjoyed seeing a new city - the fourth largest in Taiwan. Once we got to the water, we enjoyed the sun setting. Afterwards we happened upon a street market where I got to buy a variety of eggs - I think they were salted duck eggs, but maybe they were century eggs. Anyways, they were really good - with that yolk consistency that I can gobble up - sort of creamy instead of thick and choking as in a plain boiled egg.

We also made a stop based on the line outside a store. The sit in line was all the way to the road and then some. The take out line was much shorter. So we hopped in there before even knowing what they sold. That's the Taiwan way - follow the line. It turned out to be a good choice - they specialized in jelly dou hua, which is a tofu pudding with small tapioca balls. 安平豆花 An Ping Dou Hua on Anping St.

We wandered around looking for a place to eat dinner. This turned out to be quite tough - there were a lot of mediocre looking places - catering to tourists or chain restaurants. Finally, we went back to an alley near our hostel that had some fresh seafood outside. It turned out to be an excellent choice. Inside were lots of local families and they served us the best squid I've ever had. It was roasted just right so as not to be chewy. We also got a special kind of vegetable (shan cai) that was oh so delicious. (If you want to find it, it's on your way south on Nanmen, near 259, down an alley on the left [east], on the north side of the alley. You can't see the dining room from the street, but it's quite large and has about 10 bottle openers on each wall.)

Tainan City Labour Recreation Centre
261 Nanmen Rd (a full block past 259)
886 6215-0174
They only had a 4 bed room for $1200NT when we arrived. They called another local place that had a room for 2 at $800 NT. We went to look for it but couldn't find it so came back. Then the lady offered us a room with just one large bed for $570. The room was HUGE - big bathroom with tub, TV, refrigerator, extra blankets, couch, desk, etc. It had plenty of room to store our bikes. Hot water is only 6pm-midnight. There's an elevator and Chinese newspapers in the lobby.

Kaohsiung
The next day we rode from Tainan to Kaohsiung. We were mostly on busy roads but eventually got off the highways onto smaller roads and smaller towns which made it more enjoyable. I saw a sign for hand made noodles and we stopped for lunch. I tried a 麻將?麵 ma jiang mian, which was tasty. This was technically brunch, so when we go to the Kaohsiung train station we stopped for lunch. We were biking looking for the tunnel to the other side of the station where the buses are, and happened to hear a lot of noise coming out of a nice, simple looking restaurant. A couple of large round tables were filled with family/friends getting drunk. It looked like just the place to try - filled with locals. They did not disappoint. We asked for their special dishes and got this beef one - oh so tasty, along with a tofu dish and rice. Yum.

The tunnel entrance happened to be hidden by some parked cars just opposite the restaurant, so it was lucky we stopped to eat. We hopped to the other side to get some bus tickets. The first place wanted to charge full fare extra for each bike (even though they fold). So we walked to the next one where they said we could put it in the bus storage for free (as expected).

Kending/Kenting
We got dropped right in the middle of the night market and made our way to the Catholic Church just off the road. Since we had bikes they put us on a first floor room to make it easier for us. $800 for one night. The first room was quite large with 2 double beds and a large bathroom. We decided to stay another night instead of biking with all of our gear - but the second night they moved us across to a smaller room with 4 twin beds and a shower that gave us hot water only once. However, the room suited, as it was right by the night market but without any of the noise.


We spent the next day biking all around the park, including to the southern most tip of Taiwan. There is a park that charges 40 NT entrance fee, but access to the tip is just a bit further up the road down a long bricked path - and free. I went to the park last year with Tuyet when we were on our tour of Kending. You can walk along paved roads lined with grass fields, see an old light house, and then look off cliff edges. However, if you've got a bike, it's better to just bike to the tip and then around the rest of the (free) park. At the top of one particularly grueling hill there was a truck with a load of coconuts. A nice reward for hard work. It wouldn't have been so tough except for the strong winds that Kending is famous for. They come in gusts and nearly blow you off balance unless you're quick to react. Luckily there isn't much traffic, so you don't have to worry about being blown into a car that often.

On the NW side of our ride we stopped at the natural fires. Tuyet and I stopped here last year and had some eggs and di gua. This year there was still a man there selling food illegally, but the stones that had formed a circular pit around the fires were now all in heaps around individual fires. It had quite a different feel, but was still fun to witness. Apparently, there are natural gasses trapped underground that come out bursting into flame.

Reverse
We made our way back to Taipei by doing the whole thing in reverse save the ride between Tainan and Kaohsiung. You just wave down the bus on the main road in Kenting if the ticket sellers haven't opened yet and pay on the bus. We rode from Kaohsiung Main Station to the High Speed Station (even though there is a shuttle) so that we could pick up breakfast/lunch on the way. And we high sped it back to Taipei to make it in time for disc.

Overall a great weekend! I'm ready to get my own Dahon -- except that there's a wait list and even if I order now may not get one til June! Til then, I'll try to keep borrowing other's.