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.