Category Archive: foodstuffs

Sarap!

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Sun. May 20, 2012

I’m sure you know that I’m very much a fan of Twitter. It’s not uncommon for me to have interesting conversations out there with other Tweeters. It’s been a great source of differing points of view. A few days ago someone in my feed spoke about how the comments section for a recent review of a newly opened Filipino restaurant was getting fairly heated. I replied back that I wasn’t surprised. My reasoning was that from my observations Filipino people have a little bit of a complex when it comes to food. It’s hard to describe. In Toronto, Filipino isn’t quite as ubiquitous as, say, Thai or Vietnamese. It’s not uncommon for my friends to ask me, “So, what’s Filipino food like?” God, I have have such a hard time with that question. I inevitably go off on some explanation about how the cuisine is an amalgam of influences. That explanation doesn’t really explain much in terms of tastes. And without it yet being widespread in this city it will continue to be hard to describe to someone who doesn’t know much about it.

There have been a few times when I’ve brought friends to Filipino restaurants. Each time I’ve been somewhat anxious in terms oh how it’s received. A lot of current restaurants are very ma and pa-like and will gladly serve tasty stuff on a styrofoam plate for $8. Well, that presentation can have an effect, right? My mind goes around in circles: in comparison to other cuisines, maybe the food isn’t X enough, or is different in terms of Y. I don’t know. It’s a weird fear that I’ve got that somehow there’s some underlying quality that’s plainly unlikable. You know what? That’s just plain dumb. I grew up on this stuff. Mom’s cooking is awesome. Filipino food is awesome. If people don’t like it, it’s plainly their loss. More for me, right?

Anyway, my hope is that Filipino food will increase in popularity here. There’s certainly the community for it. Maybe one day pancit will have as much meaning to people as, say, pho does. I need to drop the fear. If I’m being honest, I know that people will enjoy some things and not like others, and really that comes does to personal tastes. I need to trust that this cuisine can fight for itself. I know it can.

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Obscene bread

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Mon. March 12, 2012

Honestly, I was in a rush to slash my bread. It was on the cart and being wheeled away to the hearth for baking. I had to quickly head over with the knife. Not wanting to do anything fancy I just slashed the loaf right down the middle to make a cleft. In the end, the results didn’t turn out quite as expected. I ended up with a loaf of bread that was rather rude.

My baking partner named it “clit bread.” Well, a little while ago I made one that I thought looked like a hat but instead looked like a boob. I know a few other in class have had their share of penis breads. I think pussy bread is a new thing. Uh huh.

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Settling the score

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Fri. February 10, 2012

It’s only natural that as we get deeper into the bread class my shaping gets better and better. Let’s compare three week’s worth of stuff:

The above were the results of week 2. We covered recipes for French bread as well as butter crust bread. The boule that I made ended up a tad wonky due to the cuts I made. I tried to make an epi but the end result seemed to remind me more of a mutant shark than a stalk of wheat. Lastly…I don’t think I’m a fan of lean breads.

On week 3 we made Vienna bread and oatmeal bread. The breads that I made are on the left racks, though I did help to score all of these loaves. I’m still trying to get a handle on scoring techniques. I think that I’m perhaps not going deep enough with some of my cuts. Or perhaps I’m not getting dramatic enough with them. For example the Z-pattern bread looks like I only did half-hearted Zs.

And this past week we did whole wheat bread and multigrain bread. I was a fan of how I scored the boule, but it sort of looks like the scoring didn’t go deep enough. I made another epi and this time it looked like a wheat stalk. The rest of the loaves were scored nicely, though I know there are improvements.

Overall, I know I’m getting better. Sometimes scoring bread is a tough prospect. Sometimes I have to be careful or else the blade gets caught in the dough. This is sort of telling me that I need to work on getting more surface tension. This would mean rolling the bread better and tighter. That way when I score the skin I’m not fighting against the dough. Well, I’ve still got a few weeks of class to get it right, but at least I know I’m on the right track.

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Breaking bread

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Thu. January 19, 2012

Well, after the successful completion of my introductory baking class at GBC I decided that baking would be yet another hobby that I would actively pursue provided there’s enough time and energy to do so. I spent a lot of time looking at the offerings and tried to figure out how each one could fit into my already hectic schedule. Eventually, due to the fact that I seemed to have more events/parties/invitations landing on Saturday afternoons/evenings I decided to take a class scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Between the cookie class and the bread class I opted for the bread one thinking that I might be more likely to meet someone from my old class. Upon arrival…nope: I didn’t know anyone. Actually there was one person there that knows me from Markham RR. Small world, eh? I haven’t coached her (yet) but at some point I gave a talk to her clinic regarding race day preparation. In any case, in the class I ended up with a totally brand new partner and after a slight rough start we were successful with the execution.

Pretty cool, eh? I got to take home half of this. Almost looks pro. There’s something about doing it there in class that I have trouble replicating at home. No, I don’t think I’m imagining it. Perhaps it comes from having a partner there who’s able to act as a second pair of eyes to verify everything. I don’t know. When I try to execute these recipes at home I end up bungling something a good percent of the time. Last night out of boredom (as it often happens) I tried to repeat what I did on Sunday. I didn’t want to do the whole thing so I cut the ingredient weights in half. I had to do a bit of extra work with regards to the yeast. In class we use fresh yeast, but here at home I have the active dry stuff. The teacher said that the conversion was that I’d only need about half of the active dry yeast to replace fresh yeast. Well, all right then. So, I took the weight in the booklet and cut that in half. As things were mixing I added more water to get things going. I really must have added too much. The resulting dough wasn’t all that tough. It was quite soft and sticky. I could have added more flour to balance things out, but I chose to just work with it. Heh. Well, after proofing and baking the resulting loaves were sort of flat. When I ate them they tasted a little odd. The crust wasn’t quite so good. Nope, not a good result at all. I had to analyze my moves to figure out what went wrong. Well, just like the last time I had to do an ingredient conversion prior to cutting the amount in half, I forgot cut the amount of yeast I needed in half. Yeah, and the wet dough made things hard to handle. Eeeeeeeeeeh. I know I can do better. Thing is, I’m now stuck with a lot of average bread. I’m sure I can do something with it like make an awesome bread pudding. All the same…bah! I know that if I want to get better I have to practice, so I don’t mind. In any case, this is something I enjoy. The next few weeks are going to be some tasty ones.

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Jason’s 2011

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Sat. December 31, 2011

I really should have started writing this post a few days ago, but I didn’t feel like forcing myself to do it. The words weren’t flowing. Well, here I am on the final day of the year and I really need to get these words out. This year, 2011, was a bit of a harder one than the last. I remember declaring somewhere that it would be a year of buckling down and riding out tougher times. I was right. That’s not to say that this was a bad year for me. I’m just likely to label it as a challenging one. Did I rise to the challenges thrown at me? I think I did.

Anyway, enough blabber. In depth text follows…after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

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Cake dump

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Sun. December 25, 2011

Eh, what a mess. With plans to visit my parents today I decided to make a cake. It just so happened that the last time I made a black forest cake they didn’t get to try it so I decided to attempt to do that. The recipe for devil’s food cake I have in my book from George Brown produces two cakes, so I had to cut the quantities in half. All was well until I got to an ingredient that I didn’t have on hand. Without milk powder, I had to make a substitution for real milk. Generally the ratio of milk powder and water is about 1 to 4. The book called for 40g of milk powder. So, to replace 40g of milk powder you’d also remove 160mL (water is 1g to 1mL) of water and replace both with 160mL of milk. I mixed it all according to plan. The batter was actually rather smooth. I was kind of shocked. I poured it into the cake pan and put it into the oven. It’s supposed to bake for about 30-40 minutes. By the end of that time i checked the oven but it wasn’t ready. It actually took another half an hour or so before I decided to take it out. After letting it cool I took it out of the pan to discover that it didn’t rise as much as I had hoped. I found it strange but I pushed forward anyway. I took out my serrated knife and started cutting it into layers. Since the cake didn’t rise much the layers were pretty thin. The cake was ridiculously moist and fudgy. Well, I had to find places to lay the layers. I put one on a cookie sheet which was rested on a ledge. That…was a mistake. The cookie sheet tipped over and the layer landed on the floor. The cake crumbled into a heap of stuff on the floor. Well, with only two thin layers I decided to just restart.

I started again and quickly put everything together just like I had done last time. It wasn’t until after I had mixed in the milk that I had realized my error. I had converted the missing milk powder correctly but I forgot to cut the quantity in half. I was using way more liquid than I needed. Well, with the milk already incorporated I figured that if I add a bit more flour everything would balance out. There was an open plastic bag of what I thought was cake flour. I added a handful or two of that to the mix. It wasn’t until after that I realized that the bag contained baking powder and not cake flour. Of course, baking powder is a leavening agent, and with a heck of a lot more of that in there I expected the cake to sort of explode. I tossed in some proper cake flour like I planned and just hoped for the best.

I plopped the cake pan in the oven and waited patiently in my room. After about 30 minutes or so I started smelling something burning. I went to the oven and saw that the cake had indeed risen well above the cake pan. It wasn’t quite as bad as I had hoped though. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, though I did continue to smell something burning. Upon further inspection I saw that the other side of the cake pan did indeed overflow. The batter had spilled onto the bottom of the oven and formed a pile. It looked as if the cake had taken a shit right at the bottom of the oven. The cake dump was starting to smoke. I had to shut off the breaker to the smoke detector. At that point it was already well beyond midnight. I didn’t want to set the thing off. I opened the patio door, turned on as many fans as I could and started venting the oven. I took the cake out, and managed to get the cake dump off the floor of the oven. It so happens that my smoke detector is on the same breaker switch as my bathroom circuitry. I wanted to turn on the bathroom light, but when I did my smoke detector went off. In order to not have it go off at 1 a.m. I had to keep that switch off. So yes, peeing in the dark is about the culmination of a night of bad baking. I have to metaphorically flush this cake turd and move on. Can’t always rock it, right?

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Price of working alone

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Sat. November 26, 2011

Earlier today in baking class I arrived one minute before things began. When I reached my table I saw that my class partner hadn’t yet arrived. She’s arrived late before so I thought nothing of it. Fifteen minutes in it became clear that she wasn’t arriving. By that point I had already scaled out some of my ingredients and was already getting things started. Chef came by to check in on me and asked why I didn’t partner up with someone else who was also flying solo. I just said that I was still expecting her to arrive. And in that moment I basically cemented the fact that I was going to be working at it alone.

In class, things are a little bit chaotic. Everything has to fall into place in a timely manner. It’s not like baking at home where I can afford to take my time. No. There are plenty of others in class. All of us need to get our things done at about the same time so that we can put whatever we’re working on in the oven at the same time. One late pairing can set the whole class back. So, for me today, doing things without a partner was rather tough. There was no moment available for rest, and no moment for hesitation. Luckily, the pairing across from me helped me here and there. And chef came by to assist with things like emptying the mixing bowl into the pans. Still, the whole day wore me out. By the end of class I ended up with twice the food I’d normally get, but at the price of my effort. Outside of class on a bench I started taking my uniform off. The shirt under my chef jacket was soaked with sweat. My feet were aching and sore. I was reduced down to a hobble. You’d think that after ten weeks of this class I’d have a good idea of how much energy all this requires. I guess having someone around to take care of part of the work really does soften the blow. How do the pros do it? It’s amazing.

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Cake walk

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Mon. November 21, 2011

In this past Saturday’s class we covered how to make a black forest cake. As chef was showing us how to put it together I started thinking that it would be rather complicated. I remember thinking “there’s a lot that can go wrong!” However, once me and my baking partner got going the process of assembly was easier than expected. I mean, so much of it was based on stuff we’d done in previous weeks. A few weeks ago we worked on masking a cake. That same week we started working on our piping skills. We got to practice piping further when we made cream puffs and eclairs, and when we did shortbread. With all of that my piping skills have improved a fair bit. Making those rosettes on top wasn’t hard at all. I think the most difficult part of the past week was just making sure that we didn’t fall behind and that we kept moving in an efficient manner. In previous weeks my partner and I had a tendency of falling behind and holding things up. This time we moved swiftly and decisively. It was great!

This cake is visually impressive, but it’s actually not that bad to do. Cutting and filling the cake is one bit. Then masking isn’t so bad. Adding the chocolate sprinkles to the side was kind of fun. Then piping the rosettes and putting the cherries on top didn’t take long at all. The chocolate shavings were entirely a nice touch. So yeah: manageable! And with such a high visual impact this seems to be one of those recipes that’s high value.

When I posted a picture of this up on Facebook it got a lot of great comments. Not bad, right? One of my aunts was one of the people that commented on it. She was joking that I should open a bakery or something of that sort. Obviously such thoughts have crossed my mind. Things is, there’s just no way to switch career tracks at this point and still maintain my current lifestyle. I’m not giving up my condo, for example. So, as much as this would be an awesome thing to pursue I can’t do so just yet. Meanwhile, I can continue taking classes and sharpening my skills. One day a window will open or an opportunity will present itself. I need to keep an eye out for it and hope that when it come time I’ll be able to make the necessary jump.

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