My Best Bread Recipe

Life has been crazy for me. To think that I'll be less busy after the girls' school exams; not knowing there'll be the school talent time, the various events the girls' will be performing in, their involvement in all the different examinations I have signed them up for.

Anyway, despite the busy schedule, I'd been baking bread rather frequently, and this is the recipe I like using as it yields beautiful European style bread with crispy crust (when it's just out of the oven). It's my best recipe for this kind of bread.



♥Recipe adapted from Richard Bertinet♥

Ingredients:
For the ferment：
350g flour
180g water
1/2 tsp yeast

For the dough:
450g strong white flour
10g yeast
340g water
50g olive oil (I sometimes use avocado oil)
15g salt

Method :
For the ferment :
1) Mix ingredients for the ferment together (I use hand) for a bout 5mins until you have a rough dough.
2) Place in bowl, cover and leave it to rest 8hrs or overnight.

For the dough:
1) Put the flour in a mixing bowl and add in the yeast. Scoop the ferment into the bowl, then add the water, oil and salt, mixing well until all combined; knead for 4-5mins (I use the Thermomix and knead for 4mins; but you can use hand or a mixer with dough hoook).
2) Remove the dough, and transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, forming it to a ball, cover
3) Leave it to rest for 1.5hrs
4) Flour your work surface generously with flour and turn the dough out in one piece. Divide the dough equally into 2 portion. Shape the 2 pieces of dough lightly and gently (it's very soft but supple) into a ball or loaf.
5)　I use proofing baskets, one longish and another round, so I shape one into round, and another into a loaf. Dust my proofing basket generously with flour, and gently place the dough into the baskets. (If you are not using a proofing baskets, you can place the formed dough onto your baking tray generously dusted with flour). Cover with tea towel and let the dough proof for 45mins to 1hr until double in size.
6) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 240C. When the dough is ready, spray the inside of the oven with a water spray and then pour out the dough from the proofing basket onto the baking tray (heated). Turn down the heat to 220C and bake for 18~20mins.

And there, a nice airy loaf of bread with a crust.


Here are some photos on the ferment and the dough before it went into the oven.
The ferment at the initial stage.


The ferment after 12hours or more.


The ferment when pulled, lots of bubbles and elasticity.


Mixed dough with ferment.


Mixed dough after resting, which has doubled in bulk. (Photo taken with phone under low light, not so nicely taken)


Dough proofing in baskets.


Bread before entering the oven.

Absolutely Delicious Almond Cookies

I bought a pack of wholemeal almond flour from iHerb, and it was about to expire. Remember a recipe a friend shared with us a while back, I made some almond cookies with the flour.

A delicious, crumbly cookies, it's tough to stop munching on them once started.


♥Recipe For Almond Cookies (from Melyssa)♥

Ingredients
120g almond meal
180 flour
45g castor sugar
45g icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
120ml peanut oil (I used rice bran oil)

Method
Preheat oven to 180C.
Combined all the dry ingredients, then add in the oil to form a dough.
Shape them into small balls and bake for 15mins.

Simple and easy recipe and you'll get a lovely melt in the mouth cookies with nice almond taste.

Homemade Salted Vegetable / Hum Choy / Kiam Chai / 自腌咸菜

Nothing beats homemade.

After seeing some videos/posts on how salted/preserved vegetables were made commercially, I'd actually try to limit purchasing of salted or preserved vegetables.

So I decided to make my own using a simple recipe I got from Best-ever Cooking Of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia & The Philippines. This is the 2nd time I'm making it, the end result is a crunchy salted vegetable with no chemical after taste like those you get from store bought ones.

♥Recipe for Homemade Salted Vegetable♥

Ingredients
1/2 cup of rice (actually this can be any amount, just make the amount you will be eating as porridge for that day)
5 cups of water (adjust the quantity according to how much rice you'll be cooking, 'rice water' is what we'll need to preserve the mustard green, and it has to be enough to submerge the vegetable)
500g mustard greens
35g salt

Method
1. Wash the rice, bring to boil in a large pan with the water. Cover and simmer for 12 minutes. Drain the rice, saving the liquid and letting it cool. The rice itself is not used in this recipe, so you can have the porridge like rice as a meal served with another dishes).

2. Wash the mustard green in lots of water and dry thoroughly. Using a kitchen towel to pat each leave and stalk. It's important that they are fully dried.

3. Cut the mustard green into smaller stalks and mix with the salt in a non metallic bowl. Leave it for 30 minutes, then squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Salt will cling to the leaves.

4. Place mustard green into a jar, and pour over the completely cooled rice water, make sure the rice water submerge the leaves. Place the jar in a cool place for 4 to 7 days.

5. Drain the salted vegetable. Use immediately or store it in a container and refrigerate for later use. It can be stored up to a week in the fridge, but will taste better if used immediately. These homemade ones are not so salty, so you do not need to wash them before cooking or serving it straight as a dish.





Not too difficult right? The most tedious part of making this is the cleaning of the mustard green (they have lots of sand) and patting them completely dry.

Here are some photographs to document the steps.

Step 2 (Most tedious step) - Wash and pat them dry




Step 3 - Cut them, sprinkle with salt and let it sit for 30mins.

Cut the mustard greens

Mix with salt and leave for 30mins

After 30mins, the liquid in the mustard green will be drawn out

Step 4 - Place them in a jar with the rice water for 4 to 7 days.

Day 1

Day 7

Ready to eat

So how did we eat ours?

Cut a few stalks up and add into a bowl of noodle as condiment.


Stir friend them with chili, minced chicken with some salt and sugar, and drizzle a bit of soy sauce at the end.


(photos without watermark were taken from the phone, hence the bad quality)

Making Zong Zi (粽子) or Glutinous Rice Dumpling

I love to eat zong, probably because I love glutinous rice.

My early memory of zong was my Ah Ma's (maternal grandma for Hokkien), with black eyed peas and fatty pork, which is out of this world. I remember she made them all by herself during the Duan Wu (端午节）or the Dragon Boat Festival or as and when someone was visiting my uncles in Taiwan, and she wanted to bring them some.

I remember she would prepare the ingredient, put them in small little bowls, then she would sit on a stool, meticulously filling each one up and wrapping them into pyramid perfection.

As I spent my first 3 years of primary education living with my Ah Ma, my early childhood memory of food was her cooking. Her simple but delicious kon-loh-mee (干捞面）ladened with deep fried lard cubes and a sprinkle of ajinomoto; and her dried vege pork soup (菜干汤) were some of the best food I'd tasted. Her bak zhang (Hokkien for pork zong zi) was also a legacy, no other zong zi I'd tasted later are up to par.

My Ah Ma has passed away many years now due to her grief for the loss of my mum (who lost her fight with cancer). I didn't learn up her bak zhang's recipe, as I wasn't interested in cooking back then, when both the family's greatest chefs were still around. My loss really.

Due to a vow I'd made I'd not been eating pork for almost 20 years now, finding a good tasting pork free zong zi is very difficult, most of them were expensive with not much fillings except for glutinous rice.

So 4 years ago, I decided to make myself, using good ingredients, replacing pork with scallop following a pork zong zi recipe, and I used split mung beans instead of black eyed peas like my Ah Ma's.

The difficult part in making zong zi is not in preparing the ingredients, but in the wrapping. The 1st year I made them, it took me so long just to wrap them properly and secure them with strings (yes, most of them have to be tied with 2 strings or more!); and about 1/4 of them burst open during boiling. 2nd year was better, but still took me a long time, and a couple still burst opened.

Last year, I watched this recording from Wendy Kong, and that's when I really learnt how to wrap them properly. With right technique, I spent less time wrapping them, they are better secured and fewer zong zi unwrapped itself during boiling.

Last Sunday, while the whole world is celebrating Father's Day, I decided to use that free day to make some.

This is the recipe I used, adapted to our taste over the years.

(Estimate to make about 30 zong zi, but can be more or less depending on the size the zong zi, so usually I'll prepare more ingredient except for rice and split mung beans, mission is accomplished when the rice is all used up)

Ingredients:
1kg glutinous rice (rinse and soak in water for ~4hrs）
500g split mung beans (rinse and soak in water for 3hrs, then drain thoroughly)
30 chestnuts (soak overnight, pick out the skin and boil until soft about 1hr)
hand full of dried shrimp (rinse and soak in water for 10mins then drain, then fry till fragrant)
30 dried small scallop (rinse and soak in water for 20mins then drain, then lightly fry till fragrant)
30 salted egg yolks
30 mushrooms (I soak overnight, then stew them in some sugar, salt and oyster sauce)
60 bamboo leaves (soak overnight, wiped and clean each leave and I usually prepare more just in case any of them are torn)
30 strings

Spices for the rice
9 tbs oil
12 cloves garlic (remove skin and chop)
15 shallots (remove skin and slice them thinly)
3 star anise (rinse)
6 tsp oyster sauce
1 1/2 tsp five-spice powder
6tsp light soy sauce
6 tsp sugar
4 1/2 tsp salt

For the rice
1. Heat up oil in wok, stir-fry garlic, shallot and star anise until fragrant. Add in oyster sauce and stir until fragrant. Add in drained glutinous rice and stir well.
2. Add five spice powder, stir fry until fragrant. Lastly add in soy sauce, sugar and salt, stir evenly. Set aside.

Wrapping and cooking zong zi
1. Wrap and tie Zong Zi following this recording, fill the cone with a layer of glutinous rice. Add other filings, top with split mung beans and cover with another layer of glutinous rice.
2. Base a big pot few bamboo leaves (I used the torn ones), add in 2 tsp of sea salt and water (3 cm from the dumpling surface after they're placed in), bring to boil over high heat. Add zong zi, bring to boil again. Switch to medium heat, continue boiling for 2hrs.
3. Remove one to check if the rice has been thoroughly cooked at the end of 2hrs, if not cooked, continue boiling for another 15, 30mins (adjust your time accordingly based on your observation of the 1st zong zi).
4. Hang the zong zi in a well ventilated place in order to allow the water to evaporate.

In photograph, these are what we used.
















Wrapping them take some skills and will improve with practice.




Boiling them take some time.


Hang to let the water to evaporate.


Viola, home made zong zi adjusted to our taste.


Duan Wu is almost 2 weeks ago, this recipe came a little late for this year, but who said you can only eat zong zi during Duan Wu? As long as you can find the leaves, this can be made any time of the year and adjusted to your own preference.

I'd made some according to the girls' liking as well. Zara didn't want the salted egg yolk, so I made a few without yolk for her, and double the amount of mushroom. Zaria didn't want anything except a slice of mushroom.

Zaria asked as well, "Why do you make the dumpling using the same ingredients every year? Why can't you change? Like putting sausages or bacon (what she likes), and instead of green beans, why not put baked beans?" Maybe I'll accommodate her next time (but not baked beans zong zi though, that's just too YUCKS).