Hamburgers

I whipped these up pretty quickly while I was watching TV from the kitchen. We had some ground beef and I felt like having hamburgers, so I minced up a couple of onions and mixed it with the beef, plus some cornstarch and soy sauce that was around. I added some ginger powder - it takes the gross smell from the beef away without having bits of ginger in the meat (I dont like biting into pieces of ginger in food). I heard there is a trick to mixing ground meat - you have to stir it in ONE direction, it helps make it stickier faster instead of crumbling. I don't really know but it's what I hear.

The buns were the first googled recipe I clicked on that didn't require milk (cause I didn't have any milk at the time), and I didn't make exact measurements of the ingredients. I didn't expect them to look so nice. I wonder which recipe it was? I suppose I can find it again if I needed it.

The recipe needed one egg and one egg yolk for the egg wash, so I took out two eggs. I separated one yolk into a bowl, and added the extra egg white to the recipe.

I think I've figured out how to make a proper egg wash now. (dont laugh) After I had the whole yolk by itself in a bowl, I popped it and pulled out the skin that covered it. The remaining yolk was just the nice and smooth liquid portion inside, and once mixed with about a tablespoonful of water, looked proper at last, and worked beautifully when brushed onto the risen dough. How come recipes never tell you this stuff? Maybe I am just reading the wrong recipes.

Likewise with the sesame seeds - the recipes I've seen all say to roll your bun in the seeds, but they are not that easy to handle and lift. I experimented by sprinkling sesame on some, and spreading it on with a rub of my hand with others - I think I got better results from rubbing than sprinkling.

Anyway after I grilled the hamburgers and sliced the buns, the end result was really nice. It's too bad we didnt have any lettuce around, it would have been picture-perfect if I added some lettuce and a couple slices of tomato. Kathy and I gobbled these burgers up right quick, stopping only to take a quick snapshot first on her suggestion. We ate these with ketchup, mustard, and pickles. There is a plate of broccoli that you see the corner of, slightly off to the side. Yes, really, it's there, honest.

Maybe I should have cleaned up the crumbs first, but I was too anxious to start eating

Here are the others staying warm in the oven

Dinner Banquet Speech Ettiquette

Last week I was at one of those fancy dinner parties for a friend's association event. It was held at a nice Chinese restaurant, with a 10 course meal. I was rather looking forward to the dinner and the events they had scheduled.

However, before the dinner and events actually started, the various VIPs of course had to give their speeches and greetings. None of them kept it simple - everyone had something to say about everything apparently.

Dinner was supposed to start at 6pm but by 8:30pm, there was no food other than a couple of tangerines and soda pop that were on the tables already. So everyone was drinking the pop on an empty stomach, getting hyper on sugar and caffeine, and generally not hearing what the speeches were about. I didn't understand much of what was said, but I was told that the speeches were about the Chinese New Year, and that each section was being repeated in both English and Cantonese for everyone's benefit. The bass level on the microphone was way too high, but no one really cared cause we were all so hungry.

Eventually the restaurant got tired of the speeches and just started serving the first appetizer course to all the tables, to the cheers of all present. They followed up very quickly with 4 more courses, so quickly that we hardly had time to finish each new platter (despite the fact that we were polishing them off at a swift, famished pace.) I guess the food was starting to pile up in the kitchens and they had to be served before they got cold.

Anyways, if you are holding a dinner banquet, dont let the old codgers talk until a little food has been served, people will be much more receptive to listening to them speak BETWEEN courses rather than when starving at the beginning of dinner.

Allen.

P.s. One dinner guest at our table ate before he came to the dinner, because HE EXPECTED THIS TO HAPPEN. Apparently this is a common occurence. Sigh.

Chen Style Tai Chi (太極拳) term 2

This Sunday, our 2nd term starts for Chen Tai Chi. Hopefully we will learn some of the names of the moves we are doing - I like the class taught by Sifu May, but I wish we knew what the steps were called so we could refer to them properly.

Ji Hong Tai Chi had an open house last week. Kathy and I were part of the demonstration routine for the Chen 1 class, to show what you could accomplish in just 1 term. There were also demonstrations for the Yang style beginner class, and advanced demonstrations for Chen and Yang - they looked very nice and we were very encouraged about what we can accomplish in the future.

At first we were wondering if people were going to show up on such a cold day, but they did, in surprisingly large numbers. There were so many people that the benches and chairs were not enough to seat them all. It's nice for the school but I wonder how they are going to manage all the potential signups.

One nice thing about Ji Hong is that the people taking the classes are all relatively young for tai chi people, average age is about 35 I think. Compared to some places where the average age is perhaps 70, Ji Hong feels like a pretty energetic Tai Chi place. (My opinion of course)

Allen.

Bread FAIL

I made a batch of standard french roll dough and brought it over to my mother's place to bake, figuring I'd show her how I can bake bread. Wow, it went badly. First, the dough sitting in the car for the 2nd rise did so over 4 hours in cold temperatures, and I didn't let it warm up to room temperature. I just cut it like usual and formed the baugette shapes. The oven at my mom's seems to be hotter, so I over baked it too. The end result were some weird twisted burnt shapes that exploded along the side. I was pretty annoyed about it. The end result is - don't change variables and expect the end result not to change too.

Allen.

what the heck happened?

eeeewwwwww =(

Kill me now... oh, you did, thank you

Even my yeast starter experiments looked better than that - here is the latest one for comparison:

Our crayfish thinks he's a monkey.

From on high I survey mine domain.

Well he seems to like to climb the vegetation in the tank, anyways.

Btw the vegetation in the tank is just some watercress we stuck into the gravel, and it seems to be taking root.

Shaping a Baguette

I had to look this up on the net... it seems that what you do is basically punch down your risen dough, fold it into a big square and cut it into 3 strips. Then fold them over a few times, and hide the cut areas' seams on the bottom.

Forming them wasn't as easy as I expected... Here's a couple of pictures - first a good one, and then another where you'll see where I didn't get one of the seams on the bottom properly.

Allen.

Looks pretty decent, though the recipe is a bit fluffy for a baguette.
That cut portion on top is toasted and became my breakfast, haha.

Flip it around though, and you'll see the baguette in the front is not right at all, the seam was supposed to be on the bottom to avoid this. The other ones are fine though.

Burst seam, oh noes!

How do I cook these?!

Well, I do know I am supposed to stir fry these rice cake slices, probably with some julienned pork and some napa, but I don't know if any preparation work goes into them before they hit the wok.

We bought them from a Korean supermarket from their fresh section - they are rubbery and not soft, so I'm wondering if they are meant to be cooked as is, or if we have to do something else, like soak them, or boil them.

Going to have to experiment a bit.

Allen.

edit - okay, Kathy said they boiled nicely in soup and softened right up. That's a relief!