Backyard Project 2011

I’m at it again.   

These are my delightful 3-week old babies which I carefully nurtured with lots of tender loving care. It’s a wonder what water and sunlight can do.

Long beans

Corn

Only 2 and a half of the 6 cucumber seeds I sowed made it.....

Red chillies

Extra hot bird-eye chillies (cili padi) - these are bought from the market

Last but not least, my absolute winner for the 3rd year running……..my strawberry plants and its many babies which survived the winter cold! I reorganised the baby plants into bigger pots and incorporated as many as I could into the main pot.

Please ignore the abundance of weeds all around

But hey, the weed is pretty too!

Proof that shows the strawberry plants are doing well

More proof (",)

Over the next few weeks, I will be gradually transferring the baby vege in pots onto our new patch which Terry painstakingly dug and filled with proper potting mix. To the left will be our little corn field and in the box would be rows of beans, chillies, cucumber and possibly potatoes and more greens at a later stage.

Looking forward to a delightful harvest in a few months time!

Bread Winner (Part 1)

My bread making journey has not been an easy one. I think I have about 10 failed attempts so far. Or at least 3 kgs of flour gone to waste!

During my first attempt, I was very ignorant and equated making bread to baking a cake, with a dough taking the place of batter. I glanced through the recipe for a basic white bread without looking at the actual methods involved. Yes, you guessed it, I baked the dough without proofing *blush*! In the bin it went.

The next attempt, I thought everything would work out after letting the dough rise for an hour. It doubled in size like the recipe stated and I was very confident! It was like a PlayDoh right out of the oven but turned stone hard after it cooled! I made bread crumbs out of this batch instead.

I tried again and this time, I let it rose twice! A-ha…..it must work this time! Again, still like PlayDoh.Very dense and heavy. Hardly edible. And it turns stone hard when its cold. So, more breadcrumbs at the end of the day.

I checked and checked the recipe. No, I did not miss a step or ingredient. I cross-referenced various other white bread recipes but they are all very similar.

(Step number 3)

I decided it must be the flour I was using. Over the next few weeks, I tried using a different (high protein) flour, adding an egg (or not), used vegetable oil instead of butter (and vice versa), adjusting amount of yeast, prolonged kneading, proofing twice (or thrice!), baking at different temperatures…..you name it, I tried it! My buns always come out too dense, heavy and gets stiff and dry when cooled. I could never achieve the soft, puffy and light texture of the sweet buns in bakeries. They stay soft even overnight. What was their secret?

After some serious trouble-shooting on the internet and chatting with a friend who is an avid baker, I had a good idea what I was doing wrong. Of course, it had to be the wrong ratio of flour and water content in my dough. The basic white bread recipes I have tried all have this line – add flour until you have a workable dough and knead. Being a newbie, a workable dough to me was like….well, (ironically) PlayDoh. Not a hint of stickiness. I must have added too much flour. But how do you knead a sticky dough if it keeps sticking to your palm? However, I was pretty sure this was my problem – adding too much flour.

All puffed up after proofing an hour (Step number 4)

I started searching for no-knead recipes and found one by The Pioneer Woman. I love her! Recipes with pictures, you will never go wrong! Her recipe calls for 9 cups of flour, and I halved that. Knowing that if I failed again, it won’t be too much of a waste. (Original recipe here.)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used vegetable cooking oil)
• 4.5 cups self-raising flour (or add 1 teaspoon baking powder/soda to plain flour)
• 2 teaspoons dried active yeast
• 1 tablespoon salt

Method:

1. Pour milk, sugar and vegetable oil into a large saucepan and heat it until it bubbles and remove from heat.
2. Let cool for 45 minutes or until lukewarm (~45 degree Celcius) and add yeast and stir. Let it sit for a minute.
3. Add 4 cups of flour into milk mixture, stir to incorporate well.
4. Cover and let rise for an hour in a warm and humid place. I usually rise my dough in the oven (not switched on) which also has a baking tray filled with boiling hot water at the bottom rack. Very effective in winter.
5. After an hour, it would have risen near to the rim of your saucepan. Add in remaining flour, salt and stir to combine.
6. Shape into balls and arrange in greased baking tray. Cover and let rise for another 20 minutes.
7. Bake at 200 degrees Celcius for 15-20 minutes. Brush bun tops with melted butter right after baking for a soft crust.

The dough was very, very wet and sticky; almost impossible to handle. I was glad it was a no-knead recipe. It was elastic though, so I knew it had proven well. Because it was so sticky, I lathered my hands with lots of oil and literally just splat them onto the baking tray without properly shaping them into balls!

Ugly "splats"!

But at last, softer and more edible (albeit ugly and wrinkly) buns. However, it tasted more like muffins than bread. The springy-chewy texture of bread wasn’t there (aaaarghhhh….!). Terry said it was too “wet”. The buns turned very dense and heavy after cooling so it wasn’t a real success yet. The taste was good nevertheless. I will reduce the amount of milk if I attempt to make this again.

This recipe gave me the “feel” of the right dough texture and I became more confident in handling softer and slightly sticky doughs in my next attempt. Stay tuned for Part 2! 

Anyone’s got any bread-making stories to share? Recipes? Tips??

Half-successful buns

From A Potato To A Worm

I knew I had to do something with myself when I realised that I spent most of my time at home on the bed watching TV. From 7.00 pm to as late as 11.00 pm I am stuck on my bed, looking at the TV screen every weekday. Sometimes even more on weekends! On days when my favourite shows are not on, I stick by the TV like a loyal servant flicking through channels of nothingness until I feel sleepy. Such a waste of time!

After reading through Shinloo’s entry about a book she had just read – The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, I was reminded of a time when I used to be an avid novel reader too. When I was between high school and university, I picked up some serious reading. By serious I meant books with lots of text and no pictures haha! And I remembered how I enjoyed painting the pictures of the stories in my head page by page. I especially enjoyed crime novels by Sidney Sheldon. Soon after starting university though, I stopped reading due to the infamous “I am busy with studies” excuse.

And then by the final year of my university days, Shinloo lent me one of her favourite books, a birthday gift from her friends she said – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It was a page turner and I recalled finishing it within 2-3 days. I still remember much about the story until today.

I haven’t read one single book since.

That was when I knew I must pick up reading again. Replace TV time by reading time. A.S.A.P!

Wasting no time and feeling all enthusiastic, I decided to start right then and there. I switched off the TV, jumped out of bed and marched out to the lounge where I knew there were a collection of novels belonging to Hannah and Murray. I glanced through the titles and decided to pick the thickest one – Desperation by Stephen King and started reading that night. It was a nice read. Not mind-blogging awesome but good nevertheless. Mr. King’s imagination is amazing. In layman’s terms, he has a twisted mind to come up with all these supernatural stories. But hey, I wasn’t complaining. I finished it in 5 days and wanted to read more.

So the next day, I headed down to the public library to borrow another novel. I got the library card since last year and I can’t believe I haven’t used it even once although everything is free! Anyway, I marched into the library without a plan on which book to get. No worry, I told myself. pick any bestseller, it should be good. Do you know almost all books ever published is a #1 bestseller? Shelf by shelf I looked and every book has a #1 bestseller tag on its cover!

Determined to have a book to read on that night, I told myself I have to pick a book. I must! So which book? Stephen King. That was all I could think of. So, I picked up Insomnia and began reading that night. It was yet another supernatural horror story but it wasn’t as fast-paced as Desperation and I got bored after 300 pages. It ends at over 900 pages! I took over a week to finish it (with a few nights in between where I dozed off halfway reading ) After the last page, I was just glad I managed to finish it. No feeling of “Whoa!” or “That’s so awesome!”

Before my next library visit to return Insomnia and to pick up more books last Saturday, I did some research beforehand. Well of course! I should borrow The White Tiger that Shinloo blogged about! So I went in search of the author name Adiga at the library – none! What a disappointment. Ahh well, let’s pick something else up then. More Stephen King? Nah….two in a row is enough for now. So where to start?

I knew what I like. I like an old-fashioned story. Like flashbacks. Or backstories. Otherwise, I always enjoy crime novels like I enjoyed Castle, The Mentalist or C.S.I. on TV. I picked up – The Lost Diary of Don Juan by Douglas Carlton Abrams simply because it’s a “diary”. An old-fashioned story-telling book. Plus the picture of the author at the back looked really handsome!

Then I scouted somemore at the crime novel section. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. Hey isn’t that the movie starring Leornardo DiCaprio? I haven’t read a story in a book and watch it being re-lived in a movie before. Many friends said its a pretty cool experience. Plus I heard a lot of good reviews about the movie. So I grabbed that too. And planned to watch the movie after.

Still a little disappointed that I didn’t get what I was looking for, I decided to look somemore around the library to see what else was interesting before heading home. And there staring at my face was The White Tiger, in large print nonetheless! I took it off the shelf happily and checked out all three books. I finished The White Tiger in 2 days and loved it! It’s very intriguing! Recommended!

Tonight I start reading about Don Juan

What are you reading now? Any books you think I should read? Please recommend!