Lavender Lemon Buttermilk Scones

Posted on 17 September 2010 by christao408

This is turning into some sort of an Iron Chef thing where I get inspired by a certain ingredient or combination of ingredients and return to them day after day. In this case, I had pulled the lavender from the back of the cupboard and resolved that I had better start using it before it went bad, combined with a good price on lemons at the Gourmet Market at Emporium. Continuing on the theme, I decided to try a recipe for Lavender and Lemon Buttermilk Scones.

Now, buttermilk biscuits are one of my specialties, one of the few recipes that I can make (and actually follow the recipe!) from memory and that I can turn out consistently, time and time again. Scones and biscuits are relatives and the biscuits I make reminded a former British roommate of mine of scones, so I figure I can move from one to the other pretty easily.

The recipe I used was from the EatLocal blog on WordPress, but like many similar versions of the recipe I found online, this one was credited as being adapted from Leslie Mackie’s “completely fabulous” Macrina Bakery Cookbook, so that’s maybe where credit is really due.

Lemon Lavender Scones

2 cups flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp grated lemon zest
2 tsp dried lavender, divided use
4 tbsp chilled butter
½ cup nonfat yogurt
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

Heat oven to 400°F. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, lemon zest, and 1½ tsp of lavender.

Cut butter into pieces and cut into dry ingredients with a pastry cutter, or crumble in with your fingers. Separately, whisk together yogurt and buttermilk. Combine wet and dry ingredients to form a dough that will be wet and sticky.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead a few times, then shape into a square about 1′ thick. Using a kitchen knife, cut the dough into eight triangles. (As you can see, I used a biscuit cutter for a round shape.)

Transfer to an oiled baking sheet (I just used parchment paper instead of oiling and brushed the tops of the scones with cream) and bake 20 minutes, or until scones are golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool on baking sheet. Meanwhile, dissolve powdered sugar in lemon juice and mix in ½ tsp lavender, then drizzle over scones.

I wasn’t terribly patient – we were hungry and had a condominium juristic meeting to attend – so I put the sugar-lemon glaze on while the scones were warm, so instead of glazing it just absorbed. Still, they tasted really good. The tops also cracked, which leads me to believe I should have turned the oven down a little. My oven is a convection and I think you’re generally supposed to cook at a slightly lower temperature but I don’t always heed this advice.

Anyhow, hope you enjoy these scones as you begin your weekend!

Lavender Lemon Panna Cotta

Posted on 16 September 2010 by christao408

Nearly two weeks ago I made a greek yogurt panna cotta for a brunch dessert. Since then, I have done some cooking with lavender and lemons. Looking in my refrigerator, I saw that there was some yogurt left as well as some more lemons on the counter and plenty of lavender, so I decided to revisit the panna cotta but this time with lavender and lemon as the flavoring.

I added lavender to the cream and sugar mixture, brought it to a near-boil, and then let the lavender steep for two hours off the heat. Afterwards, I strained the flowers and reheated the cream. Taking it off the heat again, I dissolved some hydrated gelatine into it, then whisked the yogurt in.

For fun, in addition to putting it in ramekins that could be unmolded onto a plate, I poured some of the mixture into shot glasses. These were put in the refrigerator overnight to set.

The next day, I made another mixture with lemon juice, sugar, and gelatine. This was poured on top of the panna cotta and allowed to set for a few hours. Upon eating it, you had a sweet-tart lemony jelly on top of the lavender panna cotta. Quite nice and it makes for interesting presentation. A garnish of mint would have been nice, too, but I didn’t have any.

After the Rains

Posted on 15 September 2010 by christao408

It is rainy season here in Thailand and true to norm, September is proving to be the wettest month. Almost every evening we have heavy rains here in Bangkok and we’re even having several days with on and off showers. The air is cooler than normal, which is nice, but the humidity hasn’t been below 65% in two months. Still, I prefer rainy season to the hot season.

Here’s an audio clip I recorded last night about midnight after the rain had stopped. Various creatures are croaking and chirping in the background as the occassional drop falls from one palm frond to the next.

Somewhere between Pride and Gluttony

Posted on 14 September 2010 by christao408

I know pride is one of the seven mortal sins, so I’m going to try to write this entry in the least prideful way possible. Going through my photos of food I’ve cooked this year, I thought there were several pretty pictures so I posted them all as a Facebook album. When I was looking at the main page of the album, I was pretty satisfied with the way it looked.

Looks pretty professional, right? Of course, looks can be deceiving! But since they are all about food, I’m not sure if the sin I’m committing is more one of pride or one of gluttony.

Preserved Lemons

Posted on 14 September 2010 by christao408

Limes are a popular fruit in Thai cooking, are plentiful, and are generally inexpensive. Lemons, on the other hand, are none of these. In fact, there is no word in Thai for “lemon” – they just use the same word as lime and, when necessary, say “yellow lime” to distinguish. That’s one reason you are likely to order an iced lemon tea only to remark at how much it tastes like lime. But I recently found a reasonably good price on lemons, about half their regular cost, so bought a dozen in order to try preserving lemons.

Preserved lemons are a staple of Moroccan and other Middle Eastern cuisines and provide a certain unique flavor that fresh lemons cannot provide. One food writer said that if you couldn’t find preserved lemons, it was better to substitute capers rather than fresh lemons, so different are the tastes. Curious, I decided to try preserving my own lemons, something that several recipes promised is easy to do.

The ingredient are simple: lemons, salt (I used sea salt from Samut Songkhram province), and spices – coriander seed, cloves, bay leaf, pepper corns, and cinnamon were recommended and I decided to add some cardamom pods, too.

After purchasing a Fido pickling jar at Muji and washing and sterilizing it, I cut about 1/4 inch off from each end of the lemon, making them flat. Then I cut them into quarters, slicing down almost the entire way but leaving the quarters connected at the bottom. I then liberally salted the insides of the slices.

After lining the bottom of the jar with a few tablespoons of salt, I mushed lemons in, alternating each layer of lemons with a generous sprinkling of salt and spices. I kept layering until the jar was tightly packed and then added the juice of two additional lemons to fill up the remaining space. Close the lid, shake a few times to help the salt dissolve, and that’s it.

Now all I have to do is wait. I’m supposed to leave the jar on the counter at room temperature for a week or so, and then can transfer the jar to the refrigerator for at least another three weeks before using. I’ll keep an eye on these and once they are complete, will write a follow-up entry.

After finishing this process, Tawn told me that we can buy Chinese preserved lemons (used in some Cambodian dishes among other things, I understand) at local markets here. But where would be the fun in just buying them?

Hands

Posted on 12 September 2010 by christao408

Last year I finished a project of having all of my old 35mm negatives scanned, some 200 rolls from high school and university. From time to time, I have reason to go in and browse the files, sometimes finding things that I think would be interesting to share. So it was with these two black and white photos of a hand in water. The photos were shot in 1993 in front of the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C. and the hand belongs to my boyfriend at the time, Bruce.

We were in the District of Columbia for the March of Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, a protest rally in April 1993 that saw crowds of several hundred thousand gather on the Mall. I was in university at the time and traveled there with Bruce, my former professor and faculty advisor, Karen, who was by that time studying her doctorate at Ohio University, and two other people. We drove from Athens, Ohio to DC, spent two nights there, and then drove back.

In those days I was definitely in the fifth stage of the Cass identity model. Everything was gay this and gay that and I was in a place where I needed to be loud and proud, to the exclusion of most everything else that made up my larger identity. That’s okay, that’s part of the process of coming to terms with one’s identity as a GLBT individual. And I’ve been safely in the sixth stage – Synthesis – for a dozen or more years now.

While we were in DC for this march, I had the opportunity to shoot a lot of black and white, a format that DC seems well suited for, what with its monuments and stark, governmental buildings. The lack of color makes it easier to focus on the textures. That is perhaps the perfect metaphor for this political city, where everything really is a shade of grey!

These two pictures have long been favorites of mine. I had them framed a few years later, despite going through a bad breakup with Bruce, and they’ve been on my walls almost continuously ever since. In fact, Tawn likes them so much (despite to whom the hand belongs!) that they are propped up on either side of our TV in the Annex.

Making Xiao Long Bao with No Roadmap

Posted on 12 September 2010 by christao408

One of the training classes around career development I’ve written for my company lays out the premise that you can’t get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are going and how you will get there. Having a clear destination and taking the time to plan your route are important of course, not just in career development but in cooking, too. So it was all but certain that my desire to make Xiao Long Bao (Shanghainese soup dumplings, hereafter abbreviated as XLB) was bound to fail as I had no clear road map for getting there.

I definitely had my destination in mind! XLB are my favorite Chinese dumpling and my favorite place to have them is at Din Tai Fung, a chain originating in Taipei. In fact, here’s a little video about Din Tai Fung’s XLB from my November trip to Taipei with Tawn to visit Andy and Sugi.

The destination was clear, but as I started reading the recipes and learning about the technique, I realized that this was going to be a lot more effort than I was ready to expend for some weeknight dumplings. Surely, I thought, I could just find my way through the wilderness without a map. Couldn’t I just, you know, feel my way to the XLB?

(Yeah, you know where this story is going, don’t you?)

I started with what I did know about XLB: the filling was a mixture of minced pork, ginger, garlic, green onions, soy sauce, rice wine, and white pepper. Easy enough. I gathered those together.

The “secret ingredient” of these soup dumplings is that you gelatinize broth and mix the cubes of the gelatine into the filling so that the broth melts as the dumplings steam, leaving a nice pool of juicy goodness to slurp up as you eat the XLB. So I used some broth and some gelatine and made broth jell-o. Easy enough.

When I mixed the cubes of broth into the pork mixture, though, the kitchen was too warm and they started melting. Before you knew it, I had no more cubes but instead had a watery filling mixture. Oh, no!

The next step was to fill the dumpling wrappers with that perfect twisted pleat, shown above in the handiwork of the Din Tai Fung cooks. I was using gyoza (potsticker) wrappers purchased premade at the store. Even before I started filling them, I had a suspicion that my lack of a road map was going to lead me down a dead-end street. Sure enough, I couldn’t get the gyoza wrappers to hold that pleated shape.

Getting hungry, I just went with a simple half-moon fold, trying to satisfy myself with being able to keep the runny filling (thanks to the no longer gelatinous broth) from leaking out.

The end result wasn’t pretty but actually tasted just fine. Nobody in their right mind would confuse this mess of a dumpling with XLB, but for a weeknight it was good enough. Sometimes, driving without a road map takes you somewhere other than you intended, but a place that is perfectly suitable nonetheless.

More Dining on Sukhumvit Soi 38

Posted on 11 September 2010 by christao408

More than a year ago I wrote about Sukhumvit Soi 38, a small alley near the Thong Lo BTS Skytrain station that is lined with food shops that are open only at night, at which time they spill out into the street. Soi 38 offers a lot of variety, freshness, and affordability, even if “fancy” isn’t on the menu. The other evening we went there for dinner and I thought I’d share a glimpse of the tasty dishes we enjoyed.

Guaytiaw kua gai – Stir fried wide rice noodles with scrambled egg and chicken.

Guaytiaw kua gung – Same as above but with shrimp.

Yam woon sen talay – Vermicili salad with seafood, dressed with a mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, and chili.

Bami giaw moo krob – Egg noodles with wontons and crispy pork

Noodles in Thailand always come with condiments – the final seasoning is up to the diner. The four most common condiments, usually served is a container with four glass or ceramic jars, are soy sauce (in this case, served in a Coke bottle!), sugar, crushed red chili flakes, and fresh chilies in vinegar. Also notice that the egg noodles, which I ordered “dry” (they could also come in a broth) are served with the broth on the side.

Drafting to Classical Music

Posted on 9 September 2010 by christao408

My work is pretty much all computer-based, sitting in front of the monitor for hours a day. I enjoy having music on in the background or some NPR podcasts (what’s a day without Fresh Air?) but since a lot of the work I do is technical writing, music with lyrics and shows with interviews and opinions can interfere with my writing. So recently I returned to classical music and opened a can of memories from secondary school drafting class.

Drafting was a large part of my secondary school life. After an initial mechanical drafting class in 8th grade, I studied architectural drafting for my three remaining years and became quite good at it, winning a prize at the county fair and participating in some statewide competitions through VICA – the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America – kind of a 4-H for the vocational set. It is now known as SkillsUSA.

Me, Mr. Geraci, and Marie Brown with our Santa Clara County Fair drafting trophies.

My teacher was Mr. Frank Geraci, without a doubt the teacher who had a greater influence on me than any other. In addition to teaching his students about drafting, he taught them about so many other important life skills: organization, preparation, patience, respect for the “right way” of doing things, leadership, communication, etc. He even taught us about constitutional law: though he was a faithful Catholic, he was also a staunch believer of the separation of church and state and when we would recite the Pledge of Allegiance (the the US flag) he would remain silent for the words “under God” as he believed they had no business being in there.

High school classmates Joyce and Scott.

Anyhow, back to classical music. After giving whatever instructions and announcements he might at the start of class, Mr. Geraci would set us to work and turn on the radio, which was tuned to KDFC 102.1 FM, a 64-year old San Francisco Bay Area institution that is the most listened-to classical radio station in the United States. So we would work away for the fifty minutes or however long the class period was, to the strains of Mahler, Mendelssohn, and Mozart.

Except for Fridays. On Fridays, Mr. Geraci would cede control of the tuning dial to the students so we could listen to our choice of stations, provided he could retain control of the volume dial.

So once again I find myself listening to KDFC as I diligently work, this time by streaming over the internet instead of over a decades-old stereo, making the hours go by pleasantly. And as I listen and work, I find waves of memories from nearly a quarter-century ago lapping over me.

Would Someone in Al Qaeda Be Allowed to Burn a Quran?

Posted on 8 September 2010 by christao408

Two weeks ago it was the furor over the inaccurately named “Ground Zero Mosque”. This week, everyone is up in arms about a small-time Gainesville, Florida preacher’s plans to burn copies of the Quran on September 11th. Reverend Jones, leader of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center, has received oversized attention for someone who leads so small a flock. Surely we are giving him more attention than he deserves.

With such a deep hatred of Muslims and an uncivil way of expressing it, Reverend Jones is a world-class jerk who doesn’t live his life as an example of the teachings of Jesus Christ. There is no loving of his neighbors, doing unto others, etc. that we would reasonably expect from a man who claims to be a man of God.

But there is one point I find very interesting in all this fuss. While burning a Quran is a rather stupid and insensitive way to express his beliefs, isn’t the fact that the wrong Reverend Jones has and can freely exercise freedom of speech actually a big raspberry in the face of those who despise the freedoms that America represents?

Wouldn’t Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda ilk like nothing better than to see Americans stifle our own civil liberties and freedoms?

While I’m sure there will be plenty of people in Muslim lands and elsewhere who will be outraged at the sight of an American “Christian” minister burning copies of the Quran, I have to wonder if there won’t also be a whole lot of people who will be amazed that there is a country out there where someone can express contrary opinions without fear of persecution, repression, or execution by the authorities?

That is not the case in many countries out there, certainly not the ones where Al Qaeda likes to spread their poison.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Evelyn Beatrice Hall

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Monthly Archives: September 2010