Real Bread

"Real" bread is hard to come by in Taipei. Sure, there is the overly sweet, oily bakery breads on every corner. And there is the delicious steamed bread in the form of mantous and baozi. But when you are craving a nice crusty French baguette, they are nowhere to be found. You might think you see them, as there are similarly shaped productions in some bakeries. But when you bite into it, you realize it's been buttered, sweetened or in some other way tampered with to be nothing close to what you were expecting.

So tonight I made my own...

Bread Machine Baguettes
The original recipe called for splitting the dough into 2 pieces. However, the mini oven I'm using doesn't have that much room, so I split it into thirds, making 2 baguettes tonight and saving one piece in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch. This bread is best eaten fresh, as there aren't any preservatives and you want a crisp crust and a chewy inside.

1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 t)
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups warm water

1. Place ingredients in bread machine according to manufacturers directions. Start dough cycle.
2. Remove dough with floured hands and cut in thirds on floured surface.
3. Take each piece of dough and roll to make a loaf about 12 inches long in the shape of a baguette. Taper ends.
   
4. Place on greased baking sheet and cover with a towel.
5. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
6. Preheat oven to 450°F/230°C. Place pan of water on bottom rack (This ensures a nice crust).
   
7. Make diagonal slashes about 2 inches apart down each baguette.
   
8. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.
9. Cool. Eat immediately - plain or filled!

Holiday Season

Unlike last year when I nearly forgot about the holidays, this year it was much clearer that xmas was approaching. Around town I saw a few lights, decorated trees and store workers wearing Santa hats. As ever, the holidays do not hold a religious meaning for me but is an excuse to spend time with friends and eat lots of food. So today's entry is dedicated to more recipes!

Lasagna
Finding lasagna ingredients in Taipei is nearly impossible. You can buy the lasagna sheets in the basement supermarket of Shin Kong by the Taipei City Hall MRT. You can find zucchini there also (and much more expensive ones in Jason's, in the 101 basement). You can get Ricotta at City Super in the SOGO on ZhongXiao Fuxing. Mozzarella is more easily available in regular stores, as are eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes. I could not find spinach anywhere, either fresh or frozen. So I substituted some Chinese greens that looked a similar leafy green for my usual recipe. Everything here is to taste - if you like a lot of cheese, load it on. If you hate mushrooms, leave them out.

• 9 lasagna sheets (boiled or use the no-precook kind)
• meat sauce (choice of meat: turkey, beef, pork, chicken; seasoned with garlic, onions, italian seasoning, crushed red peppers or tabasco)

• ricotta
• 1 egg
• leafy greens, chopped (I prefer spinach, but anything will do)
• mushrooms, sliced
• zucchini, sliced
• parmesan
• mozzarella

1. Prepare meat sauce.
   
2. Mix ricotta, egg, parmesan and leafy greens.
   
3. Layer meat on bottom of 9x13 baking dish.
4. Layer 3 noodles. Top with ricotta mixture. Add sliced vegetables. Sprinkle mozzarella.
   
5. Repeat layers: meat, noodles, cheese, veggies, more cheese.
6. Top with last 3 noodles and top with remaining ingredients.
   
7. Top with lots of mozzarella and a sprinkling of parmesan.
8. Bake according to package instructions. Usually once the mozzarella is melted and slightly browned it is ready. If there is a lot of liquid, it should be visibly bubbling. If preparing ahead of time, you can refrigerate after the previous step. Baking time will increase.
   

Oreo Cheesecake
I usually make a pumpkin cheesecake, but it's impossible to find graham crackers in Taipei. So I used oreo cookies to make a crust and decided to try my hand at an oreo cheesecake instead. One large box of oreos from Wellcome suffices for this recipe (it has 2 rows of cookies), though for a thicker crust you could go for another small package.

14-20 oreo cookies (without the creme filling)
1 T butter
4 packages of cream cheese (nearly 1 kg), softened
1 cup sugar
1 t vanilla
4 eggs
12-15 oreos, broken into quarter pieces

1. Crush oreos (in a plastic bag with your hand or a jar) and then pulverize (in a blender or food processor). Add butter and beat thoroughly.
2. Press into bottom of springform pan and bake for 10 minutes at 165C.
3. Cool in freezer.
4. Beat cream cheese and sugar at medium speed.
5. Add vanilla. Beat eggs in one at a time at low speed.
6. Stir in broken oreos.
7. Spread evenly in pan.
8. Bake 1 hour at 165C.
9. Cool in refrigerator over night (at least 4 hours). Garnish with additional oreos.
   

Optional: For a layered version, after beating in eggs, mix a portion of the mixture with pulverized oreos. Put this dark layer at the base, and then top with the light layer.

Healthy Pumpkin Bread
Since I still had that can of pumpkin to use, I decided to make a loaf of bread. I started making pumpkin bread in college. My original recipe had a lot of sugar and oil. After a few years I decided to cut back and found this recipe. It also uses whole wheat flour for some extra nutrition. If you don't have any, you can just use all white. It turns out moist and flavorful. But most recipes do, as pumpkin is just an excuse to combine cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.

1 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 t soda
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/4 t ginger
1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
2/3 cup brown sugar, lightly scooped
1/2 cup milk + 1/2 t lemon juice
1 egg
2 T butter, softened
1/2 cup raisins

Mix dry ingredients (up to ginger) in a large bowl. Mix remaining (wet) ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix wet into dry, stirring just until flour is moistened. Pour into 8x4 greased bread pan. Bake at 350 F/175 C for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until done.

Pumpkin Raisin Cake
I had some leftover pumpkin from the bread so used this muffin recipe to make a cake. It was my first time using this particular recipe. It came out ok - next time I would add more spices, and maybe a little more pumpkin.

1 c sugar
1/4 c vegetable oil
1 egg
1/4 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 c milk
1/2 c pumpkin
2/3 c raisins
1/3 c walnuts
1 1/2 c flour
2 t baking powder

Mix all ingredients together. Bake in greased muffin tins at 375 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or 8x8 glass dish for 35 minutes. Easy, moist, freezes well. Makes one dozen muffins or one cake.

Fresh Mozzarella Dish
I love fresh mozzarella. My sister got me hooked on it when I visited her 6 years ago in Paris. Along with tomatoes and basil and seasoning, you just can't go wrong no matter how you eat it - plain or on a cracker.

Fresh Mozzarella
Tomatoes
Fresh Basil
Fresh ground black pepper
Salt
Olive oil

Dogsitting

As I've mentioned, I spent last week dog sitting. I met this dog when I first got to Taiwan and then he ran away (well, the longer story puts the owner as being slightly negligent due to...well, let's say the influence of some friends...but let's just say the dog ran away). I didn't think he'd come back but nearly 2 months later and an animal shelter called my friend to let him know he'd been found - traceable thanks to the chip inside of him.

So Bargearse came back. He's named after a character by the same name in a TV show that was dubbed by a comedy group. My friend Becca calls him Badgers and I've taken to calling him Bodgy. His owner has an Australian accent and it sounds like "Bar Jazz" when he says it.

He's sometimes a trouble maker, like when in sight of other dogs or plastic bags moving in the wind. But overall, he's pretty well behaved, and his floppy ears and endearing way of being cute when expecting food or a walk make up for any wrong doing. He also spends time chasing his tail. It's one of the cutest things ever. He can do it for quite some time. Today he was going in such fast circles, I thought he was going to take flight! I haven't caught it on video though as his ears perk up when I or the camera make a sound.

Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

Oh ya, last night I also baked cookies. Where I'm dogsitting has an oven so I'm taking advantage (they're very rare in Taiwan - it's only a very small sized one). It's the second time I've made them here and this time I took a picture of the results.




Chocolate Chip Cookies
I have been making this version of cookies since high school. It provides a thick and soft cookie, just the way I like them. I usually put crushed walnuts in but this time used plumped craisins. I also use a recipe with reduced sugar and butter. The *ed items have been reduced from the original.

• 1/2-3/4 cup packed brown sugar*
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar*
• 1 cup butter, softened (not melted)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• a dash of cinnamon (optional)
• 12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or 1/2 cup craisins

1. Beat sugars and butter in large bowl on medium speed until fluffy, about 5 min. Beat in vanilla and eggs; beat in flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon on low speed. Stir in chocolate and nuts/craisins.
2. Drop dough by large spoonfuls onto cookie sheet. Flatten slightly if you want a final smooth look.
3. Bake at 375F/190C until edges are light brown, 11-14 minutes. Cool on grocery bags or paper towels (to soak up excess grease).
4. Makes 20-40 cookies, depending on size.

Ketchup

Yesterday I took part in a sort of study. I saw an ad on the bulletin board at school. It was advertised as some local students wanting to talk to a small group of ShiDa students. I thought it would be interesting so I signed up. The organizer emailed with some questions about why I want to learn Chinese and what the hardest thing about it was. That seemed fair enough and I was expecting a small room to talk with some other people.

However, when the 7 of us entered the room, we were surprised to see a big presentation screen in front with 2 long tables for us to sit at - with name cards and small plates of food for each of us. In the back of the room was a video camera, the front a podium with a man with a portable microphone, and the class was filled with students. I was taken aback, as was everyone else. Had I known there would be public speaking involved, I probably would have backed out. And had I know that I would have to speak Chinese on camera - whew -- well I would have waited until I had more than 3 months of Chinese on my back. Everyone else there had studied for much longer and didn't seem to have as much trouble understanding the emcee as I did. Oy.

I did as I usually do in a time of stress in public - blumbered my way through it. It's akin to blacking out while seemingly fully functional. I can't even control what comes out of my mouth, smile too much and become repetitive. I also focus all eye contact on one person. What a disaster! I really should learn to handle myself better - but it's still not something I jump to do. The last time I had to present something was to complete my major in college. When speaking my native language I have the added habit of speeding up everything I say - so if I prepare a 30 minute presentation, I somehow finish it in 15 minutes from sheer nervousness.

Luckily, afterwards, we paired up with another waiguoren and went to talk to smaller groups more intimately. This part was the fun part. I had an easier time understanding the Chinese and could speak to their questions. Some of them were about what methods my teachers use are best, what Chinese holidays I know about, what I think a good use of video is for language learning.

I am supposed to go back two more times - hopefully we'll skip right to the small groups and not have to do microphone speaking. Or maybe by then my Chinese will have improved enough so I don't have to feel so embarrassed about being in the dark. I know I shouldn't be embarrassed about my language skill - I am after all just a beginner. I guess I feel bad that they ended up with me instead of someone else. I think my old classmates Li Juan and Ke Rei would have done a lot better since they can listen and speak better than I can. Oh well, at least they are getting a spectrum.

I did the study right before class - it was my first full day with the new teacher. She's growing on me - I think she still hasn't realized it's HER class and she needs to take control, but hopefully by next week she'll have it down, instead of wanting to rely on the previous teacher's materials. We also agreed that we would take Feb 4 off so that we could have 10 straight days off for the Chinese New Year break. To make up for it we'll be adding a half hour to each class for a week. Unfortunately, one of those days is one I already plan on missing to go to Bangkok. I also found out one of my classmates travels internationally for tournaments, too. He plays pool! I was impressed and glad to hear it - as last semester I felt a little out of place always talking about my international tournament travel. I think at least the other guy can understand.

Today I have a break from dogsitting. Bodgy is a great dog most of the time and other times drives me up the wall. For example, I took him on a big walk last night around Daan park for over an hour. He got off leash twice, was running around in the street, and eating disgusting food off the ground. I don't think he's getting enough exercise but I just don't have the time to give him a proper run during the week. Hopefully going to disc tomorrow will use up all his energy. This new teacher doesn't assign as much homework, so I think I will stick with intensive. I was worried before about being able to manage my time and not burn out. Hopefully I can stay with it - and hopefully it's not a problem that I haven't paid for it yet!