Weekend = Cooking Storm

Weekends are for me to catch up on cooking. I enjoy doing it in leisure & I know I'll hate it if I have to do it for a living. So guess I'll stick to being a scrub nurse & if I ever have the extreme good fortune of winning big in lotto, I'll go to veterinary school, set up my own practice & use the profits to provide free services to animal shelters. Until then, I'll just continue dreaming. Lol.

Sourdough baguettes baked just before we left for New Norcia.

I wake up very early even during weekends, many a times before 6 am. That's when I do all my baking. So the night before I'm to bake a bread, I'll prep the sourdough for use the next morning. That way, we can have freshly baked bread in the morning. My 1st sourdough trial went to the baguette I baked before we left for New Norcia last Sunday. It turned out really well.

The failed half bread, half cake that turned out tasting like huat kueh.

Becoz I had success, sometime during the week, I decided to "invent" a half bread, half cake hybrid. I used the sourdough again but this time combining self raising flour, currants & sugar. This didn't turn out too well. It's not that it's bad. It's definitely edible. Just not fantastic. It tasted very much like huat kueh.

Another fail from yesterday morning. Over proofed wholemeal seeds & nut load.

Yesterday, I tried yet another invention. I took a pain de mie recipe, swapped out 40% of bread flour for wholemeal flour, added sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds & walnut to it. I suspected that it would have been perfect if I hadn't went out to sell Eba & the dough over proofed. Another failing factor was that the loaf pan was too big for the recipe. So I can either double the recipe or get a smaller pan. The taste is great. Just that it is not perfect.

Finally, a hit. Champagne sorbet with orange rosemary shortbread.

The hit came from dessert. I had so many bottles of champagne & hubs doesn't drink wine or champagne. If I open a bottle, it'll lose its carbonation if I don't finish it. So I had a glass & turned the rest into sorbet. It was icy & refreshing, just what I needed for the heat yesterday. I took a basic shortbread recipe & added orange zest to it, hoping the citrus flavour will complement the champagne sorbet. I still felt it was a bit too simple & I decided that by adding a herb, I can amp up the flavours & fragrance. I only have 3 herbs in my pot. Thyme, rosemary & chives. Chives is definitely out. Rosemary won only becoz I've never harvested it before since I started growing it.

Cooking is not difficult. I suppose as with anything in life, nothing is too difficult if your heart is in it. I especially enjoy creating from basic recipes based on what I have in my pantry. It's like a science experiment. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. But the process & experience is invaluable.

Strawberry Pilgrimage 2015

2nd year running. Perhaps it'll become something of a yearly pilgrimage. We're early this year, thanks to Jen's heads up. The strawberry fields had just been opened as of yesterday to the public. Immediately, I texted hubs, "Let's go tomorrow (today)!" Great minds think alike. Apparently, Nix had already asked hubs to join them today.

Happy man with the biggest strawberry we could find.

Based on last year's experience, I chose to wear slippers as I badly dirtied my track shoes & not to mention the discomfort of having sand in my shoes. I also brought a pair of scissors to cut the strawberries rather than using my nails to pinch the stems off. I had a hard time getting the dirt out from under my nails last year & it just won't do for a scrub nurse to have grubby nails.

We still paid $10 for the tray but it was evident that it had shrunk in size. Also, this year, we have to pay cover charge of $2 per head. It was explained to Nix that groups of people came in together & bought 1 tray. But along the way, they picked & ate so much strawberries that they decided to charge $2 for every person without a tray. Since the tray had shrunk, we decided to have a tray of our own.

Strawberry almond crumble with strawberry ice cream.

I had already sourced out a couple of recipes that utilises strawberries, 1 of which being strawberry ice cream. So last night, I stuck the ice cream tub into the freezer in preparation for today. Looks like there'll be plenty of desserts coming up.

Doing What I Love

The entire week has been just crazy. Hub's car broke down last Friday morning. I received a "Help! My car broke down!" call from him not 10 mins after he left the house. It was 5.10 am. I made a snap decision to just get ready for work so instead of ferrying him back home, I would send him to work before going to work myself. By 5.15 am, I was out of the house, having brushed my teeth & changed my clothes. He had managed to reverse his car into a parking lot outside someone else's house by putting the car on neutral with the handbrakes off. Off we went. We just passed the town centre when I asked him if he brought his work shoes. Alamak! I had to turn back the 4 km we came. By the time I got to his work place, he was already half an hour late. Even I myself took 50 mins to get to my work place. I chose to go by Frementle over Kwinana becoz of its notorious bad traffic. It was beautiful. I had views of the Swan River & the Indian Ocean. That was the start of a week long of waking up an hour earlier & driving to work from Bibra Lake, then from my work place to pick him up before heading home. For me, it's 2 extra journey but for hubs, it's a 4 hour wait from the time he knocks off to the time I do.

I'm just gonna cram several weeks of cooks into 1 post. Surely by now you can tell I'm really very lazy. Lol. 20th June was 端午节 but I didn't make the "zhangs" until the 21st. Anything that's labour intensive is only worthwhile if you make them in huge amounts. Besides, they require 3 hours boiling time. 10 dumplings is 3 hours. 40 dumplings is also 3 hours. Let's not waste gas. I've made rice dumplings for 3 years consecutively only missing last year's. I've only made bazhang once in the 1st year as I prefer nyonya zhang & they're easier to make. This is the 4th time I'm making them & I'm doing it without my recipe coz my notebook is still in Sg. My 1st batch of nyonya zhang was not sweet enough but as I had a lot of filling left, I topped up the candied melon & made another batch.

The other thing that was labour intensive was the png kueh. I casually mentioned to hubs that I'll make it 1 day & the next thing I know, he had gone out to buy 甜酱 to go with it. See lah! No choice but to make it. We got the mould for it that very week & I made it just this Monday when I didn't have to work. I only have the ang moh steamer that could steam only 6 at 1 go. So it took a few batches before I was finally done. I also had to add 5 mins of steam time as the steam wasn't powerful enough to cook the skin. I followed the recipe but the skin was not ideal as it hardened tremendously once it cooled down. The only remedy was to pan fry it so the skin becomes crispy. Still, the recipe for the rice mixture is good enough on its own as lor mai fan if you don't want the added task of wrapping it up with the skin.

21st June 2015: Ingredients for bazhang. (Not in photo, nyonya zhang.)

27th June 2015: Profiteroles. Choux pastry is actually not difficult to make. But you have no control over how it'll puff up & most of the time you'll end up with only half that looks good. The other half just looks like pacman. 

28th June 2015: I saw it once at my local seafood shop but I didn't buy. I never saw it again. While touring a few cash & carrys along Bannister Road, I finally laid eyes on Monkfish once again. Needless to say, I bought it.

28th June 2015: Spiced monkfish with chives & hot smoked salmon mashed potato. The recipe for the monkfish is from Gordon Ramsay's cookbook. The side was a Mediterranean style potatoes. But my chives were growing so wildly that I decided to harvest it & made a mashed potato which I had craving for instead.

28th June 2015: Kahlua chocolate berry tart. I hate making pie or tart pastry but I know I must master something so basic somehow if I want to be a good cook. I feel that a good home cook must be able to utilise what you have available on hand. When I 1st started cooking/baking when I was 19 (Gosh, now I feel so old.), I used to follow recipes & buy so many ingredients that are used just once & subsequently kept till they expire. I had frozen mixed berries, I had kahlua from a previous tiramisu attempt & I had cocoa powder. So this is the tart I came up with to "clear some stock".

6th July 2015: Png kueh. Looks good but looks can be deceiving.

Increasing Daylight Hours

The days are getting longer. When I 1st started work, it would still be dark as I drove into the car park & it would be completely dark by 6 pm. Recently, I noticed that the sky has been turning light when I'm leaving home & it's bright enough to see without lights at 6 pm. Winter is coming to an end. Though spring starts on 1st Sept officially.

It's been 13 weeks since we 1st step foot on Aussie ground. I still have no sense of job security. I don't know if I ever will. I guess it stems from my inability to get a job. I know if I lose this current job, I most likely have to go back to SG coz nobody else will hire me. In SG, I can jump from discipline to discipline without fear coz someone will definitely take me in. But I know being too senior can be a problem. Dolly is having a hard time finding another job becoz her salary range is too high. My salary range is even higher, so perhaps me too, will have problems finding jobs if I'm still in SG.

Lack of security though, keeps me on my toes, always thankful for another day of income, thankful that I can still manage to stay here. Hubs still haven't found a job. It's the usual emails that say "Sorry, you're not successful on this attempt." J suggested getting a forklift license. The 2 days course cost $550 & I know hubs. He won't even spend $10 getting proper food so why will he spend $550 on something that can't even guarantee a job?

It's Sat but I've been awake for an hour. Your body gets used to waking up at a certain time & you just can't sleep in even if you want to. I shall go bake some cinnamon rolls then. It's a craving brought on by James Patterson's book. Seems that warm, sticky cinnamon buns are "the best" breakfast made by Alex Cross's Nana Mama. Yep, I love them too.

Carrot Cake

While I have no desire to do so professionally, I love baking & cooking & I do so every weekend without fail. A few weeks ago, I decided to take a break & I felt so restless. There was simply something missing.

Been wanting to bake a carrot cake for as long as I can remember. The recipe calls for ingredients measurable in cups & I've always felt that grams would be a more accurate measurement. It turned out pretty well despite it being my 1st attempt. I halved the sugar stated in the recipe & I'm glad I made that decision as the cake was sweet enough as it is. I added orange flavouring & sugar to the cream cheese (to taste), as well as some yellow colouring. By the way, please excuse the photo as I'm a nurse, not a photographer.