Judy gave us some of the leftovers from the sponge dough and pate fermente from class(on 26th) ，and she said those who take back must practise ar!
So YY decided to make panini using sponge method(the sponge cannot be kept for long) before the sponge dough goes bad. After doing some calculations to convert the recipe, here I am doing panini on my own! It's my first time doing bread, all on my own, using hands only.
*All pics are taken by K
The initial mixture before adding olive oil.
After adding olive oil and some kneading, the dough starts to look smoother.
After some more kneading and "beatings", the 'window pane' is out! *Tired arms*
1st fermentation...
30mins passed...the dough grew ABIT -_-'
Punched down the main dough and divided into 4 portions. Rolled them out and hmm~ they look horrendous -> pimpled face. Duno why =(
2nd proofing requires the dough to rise double in size before baking. Here it is..looking quite puffy and soft.
Woot!! Finally out of the oven and don't they look cute >.<
On sidenote, I wonder why it looks dry on the surface..why??
Today's lesson teaches another new concept of bread making:
Using master sponge and pate fermente(old dough).
We are making three kinds of bread today:
- Black Pepper Cheddar Bread
- Rye Onion Turban Walnut Bread
- Potato Cheese Bread
We started making the black pepper cheddar bread first.
The old dough is mixed into the main dough only when the main dough is almost done.
While waiting for dough to proof for 30mins, let me introduce the ingredients: 90g of cheddar cheese cubes and rough black pepper bits.
The dough was finally out after 30mins of proofing in the proofer. To mix in cheese cubes, fold them in by hand.. pretty fun hehe~
K's hand in action.
The next bread to be done in a similar method is the rye onion turban walnut bread.
I hate walnuts @_@''
Mix the walnuts in at the end ~
And fold in the onions by hand. Seriously, the onions were really irritating at this stage cos they kept sticking out. But what we do not know next is..we are going to roll this into a 14" stick -_-'
While other stuf were proofing, its time to start making the potato cheese bread. This bread uses MASH POTATO O_O, white pepper and grated cheddar cheese.
While the potato bread went into the proofer, we took out the onion bread and separated them into 6 portions. Then these dough got rest disobedient -> refused to go where we rolled them..so they had to rest >=0
Rolling that round dough into a 14" stick took us sooooo long -__-
We were supposed to use the 6 sticks (3 by 3) and plait them into a turban fit for a Sikh.
After plaiting the turban, it went straight into the proofer..no pics there. The potato bread is finally ready for more action.
Judy wanted us to separate the dough into 8 bits of 25g dough..to make daisies! There you go, our daisies. The two separate small doughs are leftovers.
Sifting semolina flour onto the cheddar cheese bread, then cutting 4 slits on its surface.And off to the oven it goes!
The turban by K..looks better than mine :@
The final products, clockwise from top left: The potato bread (overall); onion turban bread; closeup on the daisy; black pepper cheddar bread.
These are lean doughs that are even suitable for diabetes *no sugar added* but slightly hard in crust. I hope they(family) will finish it this time round and not throw it into the bin >:0
Some of us from SGSB III met up for a movie gathering(20th Century Boys) @ Cineleisure and here we are after the movie, at Orchard Plaza for dinner. Thanks to Guan for recommending this place to us.
Ken Japanese Noodles House. The menu says that the soup broth is boiled for 8hours at least and contains no MSG. O.o
K ordered the Charsiew Ramen, $12 as shown above. As for myself, I ordered the stewed egg ramen, for $12 also. Side dish, gyoza for $5..hmm~ gives 5pcs of dumplings.
The broth was really quite good, or at least I felt it was better than Menya Shinchan's in terms of flavour..cos I like heavy flavoured stuff.
Texture of the char siew is not hard nor tough, pretty ok..but I prefer Marutama's version.
The noodles at Ken's is quite interesting, eggy noodles that are springy and chewy but never overwhelming as we finished the bowl of noodles + soup.
Oh and before I forget, I ordered the stew egg ramen that came with one egg that was 3/4 cooked in the centre. It's not bad but it actually lacks the soy sauce taste which makes eggs(or rather the yolk) more tasty. But overall, there was only 10% service charge and there's no GST!
Wee~ low priced ramen with great quality, who needs Ajisen?
Address:
150 Orchard Road
#01-17/18 Orchard Plaza
(Across small road, next to Centre point)
Operating Hours:
Mon-Sat: 12noon - 2pm, 6pm - 2am
(Closed on Sundays)
Update:
We went back again on 28th Oct. Ordered Miso Ramen and Cold Noodles.
Miso Ramen has a different soup base from Stew Egg and Charsiew Ramen, its more salty though. But its yummy miso soup :D
For cold noodles, the noodles are harder than the ramen style but its pretty good too.
It has been weeks since we had our last advance bread lesson. In lesson 2, we are doing:
1.) Hot water dough
You actually pour boiling water into the flour, then chill that piece of dough. Afterwhich, defroze till its 6 degree celcius then mix bit by bit into the rest of ingredients.
2.) Turtle Streusel Cardamon Bread
This is a very sweet dough..there's condense milk, lotsa sugar and honey in it >_<
3.) No time dough
As the name suggests, you don't need to proof this for long..normally bakeries fill this kind of bread up with tasty fillings.
The high sugar dough is so watery and soft.
After some 20mins of churning, the 'window pane' is finally formed..which means we can round the dough for proofing.
K's busy washing the stuffs, so I tried my best to round the dough.
Meanwhile, the 'Hot water dough'(part of it) is finally out of the freezer. To let it gain temperature to 6 degree celcius, Judy suggested that we can cut it into smaller pieces and mix it into the main dough..bit by bit.
The hot water dough is finally combined..rest and ferment.
This is the 'No time dough'..looks pretty tough to me. Yes, I rounded this dough as well.
Meanwhile the 'High sugar dough' is to be divided into separate portions to make TURTLES! But it didn't grow very much..makes me worried, cos my rounding skills might be quite poor.
After doing 2 main turtles, we had extra dough left o.O
So I used my "agaration" skills to make one baby tortise and an egg w.o using the weighing scale --! So there you have 2 adult turtles, 1 baby and 1 egg.
Clockwise from top left: Before baking, the turtles were coated with egg wash; the turtles after baking (had sprinkled some nuts and chocolate in the shell's cavities; close up on baby tortise; underneath of baby tortise. It's actually no good to bake the small doughs together with the big ones, cos they get cooked faster -> chao ta looking.
Once a upon a time,
there were 2 adult turtles who wanted to play mahjong. So they waited for another two players, their children. Days passed, rain and shine..the baby turtle grew up and joined in the wait for the one last player, his brother/sister. But the egg did not hatch and so the turtles waited till they became chao ta from basking in the sun.
- The End -
This is the hot water dough, its to be folded and dipped into water then bread crumbs. This is to be baked with bread crumbs..interesting~
Meanwhile, K got busy with the stove. He's cooking the black pepper chicken fillings that is to go into the 'No time dough'.
After filling up the 'No time dough' with black pepper chicken(cooled of course). Pic above shows the bread before baking and below pic shows the final product.
The 'Hot water dough' baked with bread crumbs.
And filled with tuna+mayo+celery+onion in the middle! YUMMY!!! =D
The lesson was real hectic, despite starting on time with others..we still ended up as one of the last few to leave class. So we conclude the reason being..we didn't go and fight for oven space with the AUNTIES, that's why we were always the last few.
Does this make sense?
K decided to cook dinner on a Saturday so we got our stuffs from Cold Storage and got down to work at 6pm plus =X
Dinner menu:
Soup - Butternut soup
Main Course
- Pan fried salmon with spaghetti in Aglio Olio style.
Side dish
- Baked potato with sour cream and bacon bits.
- Asparagus wrapped in bacon.
- Baby carrots
The butternut frm Cold Storage, expensive veggie for about $8. Weird serial number.."This is ButterNut #4759 reporting, Sir!"
Other ingredients: Baby carrots, asparagus, bacon, salmon.
We got down to some serious work..
From top left, clockwise: K skinned the butternut; the butternut was cut into two and half was used for the soup; meanwhile I wrapped the bacon around two "sticks" of asparagus; one whole potato for each person.
The butternut soup was finally done after blending the butternut pieces in the blender and cooking it with water,onions. Since we had no chicken stock, K threw half a pc of chicken cube into the soup..O_O
K had this pan grill that can create grill marks on the meat, so we used it to pan fry the salmon. It was unfortunate that there were no salmon steak on sale, so we got whatever there was for about $7.50 and cut it into 2 portions. K was very careful to prevent overcooking of the salmon.
One side is finally done~ now for the other..
Meanwhile, I used the next stove for pan frying the carrots..but they never seem to get soft, until K suggested using a toothpick to try poking through to see if they are done. I would suggest to boil this directly next time -_-' * yy is not patient*
Finally some food were ready to be placed on the serving plate.
I picked up the pan and started "grilling" my asparagus that were wrapped by bacon, using low heat. But somehow..this wouldn't get soft :@ In the end, we baked this XDD
We were finally done for dinner at 8pm plus *sweat*
A few things we did wrongly..
1.) To use chicken cube in a butternut soup..gives that chinese taste *bleh*
2.) Pan frying the carrots, asparagus *or anything that is round for that matter*
3.) Using some light sour cream that didn't melt on the potato.
But overall, the salmon was well done except the skin could have been crispier..but K argued the cooking of the skin maybe result in overcooked salmon. I was glad that the carrots and asparagus were edible after stir frying/baking them =D
I was surfing hungrygowhere.com for Nirai Kanai's reviews when I saw someone mentioned "Mimigar" being much better. So on friday night, we decided to make a trip down to Mimigar Okinawa Japanese Homemade Dining Restaurant. After some 15mins walk from a bus stop, we finally arrived at a dark alley beside Gallery Hotel.
Mimigar..in midst of some renovating building and Gallery Hotel.
After walking in, we realised there were quite a number of Japanese patrons. Quite surprising actually, as it was not obvious from outside Mimigar. The 2 main chefs were a guy and this lady above..quite young looking o.O Mimigar is filled with red, orange and yellow colors with warm spotlights.
We were seated at the counter, with lots of special dishes before us. There's potato with bacon, kimchi cabbage, long beans, miso stewed mackerel, vermicelli and hijiki..etc
The waitress came and laid our table. Hmm the utensils were pretty interesting..
Coral as a chopstick rest O_O
Having seen pictures of Okinawa with clear waters and white sandy beaches, this coral kind of reminds me of the sun, soft sand and clear waters =D
Interesting decorative items along the counter.
Nice glass for plain water (left) and exquisite teapot(right).
Since we are at Mimigar, we have to try rafute of cos..Upon comparison, I would say this tastes like what we cooked during our past cooking expedition >.>''' Mimigar's version of rafute is pretty tough, fats did not melt in the mouth and the sauce was not viscous either. And its very salty. This costs $12 for the above portion of 2 slices, its lesser than Nirai Kanai but at the same cost.
Nirai Kanai 1 - 0 Mimigar.
We got quite tempted by the 'Special Dishes' so we ordered Potato with Bacon, $10. It came in a small plate and I think I can literally count the pieces of bacon with the no. of fingers on both hands. And ok, its not THAT special to me =(
Another dish we ordered was the Okinawa Special Tofu, $9. The waitress above was using a butan gas stove to 'make' the tofu on the spot, probably some cogulating agent with the soy milk. It's described in the menu as being fluffy, something out of your expectations.
The soup was bonito flavoured(with bonito powder) with lotsa spring onions, which tasted good. The tofu was not so much of being smooth, it was in chewy chunks.
We ordered the somen (which Nirai Kanai offers as well) for comparison purposes. Mimigar's version has got pork bits in it and it was much more dry..before we knew it, the noodles were clumped together -_-
The fine pork bits left a horrible feeling on my taste buds cos the noodles weren't smooth and felt like there were tuna bits in them. $12 for this but this is served in a small plate unlike Nirai Kanai which offers somen at a larger portion for the same price.
Final verdict:
Nirai Kanai 2 - 0 Mimigar
Nirai Kanai FTW!
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