Bánh Mi Brunch

Posted on 2 April 2012 by christao408

A few weekends ago we had friends over for brunch. I had slow-roasted a pork shoulder and thought it might be nice to thinly slice the meat and make Bánh Mi, the Vietnamese style sandwiches, as a main course.

Appetizer: cubes of fresh mango (so sweet this time of year!), drizzled with plain yogurt and sprinkled with some homemade granola.

Homemade Bánh Mi: Baugettes from Le Blanc bakery on Sukhumvit Soi 39 with sliced roasted pork shoulder, corriander, mayonnaise, pickled carrots and daikon radish, hot peppers, and a splash of fish sauce. In this initial round, I didn’t add enough pickles. The next evening I made another batch, this time with more pickles, and the results were much closer to authentic.

Fresh papaya and watermelon for dessert.

And a loaf of homemade banana bread, served with some whipped cream cheese and butter.

Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

Posted on 26 March 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to show her how to make pie crust. When I asked what kind of pie she wanted to make, she suggested a sweet potato pie. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve never had a sweet potato pie. Nonetheless, I agreed and sought out a recipe. Ultimately, I settled on a combination sweet potato / pecan pie.

The sweet potato pie isn’t that far off from a pumpkin pie. You roast sweet potatoes, skin them,then mix the flesh with sugar, a little salt, and an egg. That filling is put into an unbaked pie shell and topped with pecans and a pecan pie filling – a sugar syrup and egg mixture. Bake it until set.

End result with freshly made whipped cream. Turned out nicely!

Attempt to Bake Gougères

Posted on 16 March 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago, I tried my hand at making gougères, a French pastry that the ever-helpful 101cookbooks.com describes as “golden pom-poms of cheese-crusted magic.” They use a dough similar to the choux pastry dough used to make éclairs and cream puffs but are supposed to be easier to make. Here’s what the finished product looks like, according to 101cookbooks.com’s recipe:

Beautiful, right? So I decided to make some for a brunch I was hosting. The recipe wasn’t too hard to follow: bring a mixture of beer (or water, if you prefer), milk, butter, and salt just to a boil. Add a mixture of all-purpose and whole-wheat flours, stirring until smooth and slightly toasted. Cool slightly then mix in the eggs, one at a time. Finally, mix in grated cheddar cheese and portion onto a baking tray, cooking immediately.

Following the recipe, I made my dough, measuring carefully and mixing in the eggs as indicated. The mixture seemed a little loose, though. Instead of following my instincts and trying to thicken it by adding more flour (which would have given it a taste of raw flour since it hadn’t been toasted along with the rest of the mixture), I proceeded with the dough as it was.

Portioned onto the parchment-lined baking sheet, the dough confirmed my fears. It started spreading too much. Undaunted, I sprinkled a little more cheese and some anise seeds on top and put them into the oven.

The end results were decidedly flatter than the ones in the recipe’s picture. The taste was okay, but they didn’t have the “poof” I was looking for. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I did wrong but I would like to try again.

Making Chocolates at Baker Republic

Posted on 12 March 2012 by christao408

In February, a new store opened on Sukhuvmit Soi 49. Called Baker Republic, it specializes in the supplies candy and cake-makers need to produce the finest desserts. In the run-up to Valentine’s Day, they offered complimentary chocolate making classes, for which Chow and I signed up.

Fresh flowers add a touch of elegance to Baker Republic’s light-filled store on the second floor of the 49 Terrace shopping center.

The shop is owned by a family whose business is importing packaged foodstuffs. Since many of the brands they import sell goods used for baking, opening a shop like Baker Republic was an obvious next step. On the right side of the picture is their climate-controlled chocolate storage room. Like a humidor for fine chocolates, this room ensures that the chocolate you buy is at its very best.

As part of the class, we were invited to conduct a chocolate tasting, working through different brands and different percentages of cacao. As hard as it was, I forced myself to put up with this tortuous task! By the end, I had confirmed that I prefer darker chocolates to lighter ones and more expensive chocolates to cheaper ones.

Some of the other baking supplies offered at Baker Republic. From candles to sprinkles, fillings to flours, they seemed to have just about anything you would need in order to bake. Now, an interesting question arises here: do enough people in Bangkok bake to really give a shop like this a chance to survive? Most city homes don’t have ovens, at least not full-size baking ovens.

Our instructor started with white chocolate, melting it on top of a bowl of simmering water in order to “temper” the chocolate. I had heard of the process before but hadn’t understood it. Tempering is the process of controlling the size of the cocoa butter crystals. When the crystals are of a uniform, small size, the surface of the chocolate will have a uniform sheen and it will snap when you break it. Untempered chocolate will have irregular, larger crystals and the surface will have a matte appearance, crumbling when you break it.

There are a few different methods to temper chocolate but the result of each is that you bring the chocolate to a high enough temperature to melt all the cocao butter crystals, then cool it slowly to a point where the medium- and small-size crystals form, stirring all the while. Finally, you again heat the chocolate, but only to a temperature where the medium-size crystals melt. Yes, it is a little tricky.

To make different colored chocolates using the white chocolate as a base, we added food coloring. The secret, though, is that you have to use an oil-based food coloring with chocolate. Water-based colorings, such as those you use when baking Red Velvet cake, won’t work.

From left: the powdered food coloring mixed with a small amount of melted cocao butter; the resulting paste dribbled onto tempered, partially-melted white chocolate; and then the color being stirred into the chocolate.

Parchment paper bags were filled with the chocolate and we started filling the plastic molds. Above, Chow tries her hand at filling the molds so that there are no air bubbles.

One thing I quickly learned is that you don’t have nearly as much control over the squeezing of the chocolate as you think you do. I suppose it takes a practiced hand to build sufficient technique.

Trying to get fancy, I add layers of different colored chocolate, popping the tray into the refrigerator for a few minutes in between each layer to help it set.

Mid-way through the process you can see some filled molds as well as others where I’ve tried to add squiggles that will then be topped with chocolate of a different color. Trying to create fine, thin lines of chocolate was a challenge.

The goal was to not have any air bubbles, so after filling the trays we would tap them on the counter several times, then hold them up and inspect them. You can see several bubbles around the yellow squiggles where the purple chocolate hasn’t filled in the spaces completely.

Next, we moved to dark chocolate. Truth be told, I don’t much care for white chocolate, although it can more easily be colored.

Close-up of my chocolate molds. Again, you can see the challenge with air bubbles. As you tap the trays on the counter, the bubbles work their way to the surface. But if the chocolate has cooled too much, the shape of the popped bubble holds and you don’t have a pleasantly smooth surface. These are the very chocolates that appear (finished) in the first picture of this entry.

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After about twenty minutes in the fridge, the chocolates popped right out of the molds. You can see where those bubbles on the purple and yellow striped chocolates never went away. The chocolate was nicely tempered, though, and had a nice sheen and pleasant snap.

The other two students, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day, used heart-shaped molds and piped the letters L-O-V-E – backwards and upside-down, nonetheless – to create this cute presentation.

After this experience, I’m inclined to think that, just as with baking macarons, making chocolates is one of those skills for which it is better to just pay for someone else’s expertise! That said, I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about chocolate making at Baker Republic.

Weeknight Dinner

Posted on 23 February 2012 by christao408

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, and rosemary, ready to go into the oven and roast for forty-five minutes.

Some pork sundried tomato sausage I made earlier this month and froze. Boiled it for a few minutes in beer before putting it on top of the half-cooked vegetables to finish in the oven.

Prepared a healthy salad of red leaf lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes with some feta cheese, dried cranberries, and pecans. Served with a Japanese style sesame dressing.

The roasted vegetables and sausages come out of the oven, ready to eat!

Finger Food at Tawn’s Label Debut

Posted on 18 February 2012 by christao408

Saturday evening, Tawn officially launched his Tawn C label of women’s clothing. About two dozen friends and former fashion school classmates came to our house to view and try on his collection, see the website, and click “like” on his label’s facebook page.

All that was asked of me was to prepare the food and drink for the guests. Tawn wanted only easy-to-eat finger food and appetizers, so I scoured my recipes and cookbooks and spent the day making several dishes. There are two or three more I would have made had time not run out. Here’s a closer look at them:

Pastry puff strips baked two ways: with Italian cheeses or za’atar, the Middle Eastern spice made with sesame seeds and various herbs.

Toasted baguette rounds with smoked ham, whole grain mustard, Spanish olives, and cherry tomatoes.

Toasted baguette rounds topped with a roasted beet and green apple salsa, improvised from a Martha Stewart recipe.

Toasted baguette rounds (I toasted a lot of those!) topped with wasabi cream cheese spread, smoked Norwegian salmon, avocado, and capers. I had purchased shiso leaves that I was going to include on this but forgot them!

Repeat of my watermelon, cherry tomato, feta cheese, and mint salad from a few weeks ago, except this time I used a yellow watermelon which made it so much more colorful.

Sunday Brunch

Posted on 12 February 2012 by christao408

Sunday morning we hosted brunch for a group of friends, all of whom work (or used to work) in the aviation industry. Needless to say, the topic of conversation frequently turned back to shared work experiences. Despite this, we still had time to enjoy a relaxed meal of salad, sandwiches, and dessert.

A ripe, juicy watermelon from a roadside stall in Korat province provided the inspiration for a cool, refreshing summer salad. Trying to scoop melon balls while avoiding seeds was a challenge, though!

Based loosely on a recipe by the New York Times’ Mark Bittman, this salad features just four ingredients: watermelon, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, and fresh mint. I didn’t dress the salad with a red wine vinaigrette as Mr. Bittman suggests, because when I tasted the combination I found the flavors already beautifully balanced.

To make the main course, I first baked a batch of focaccia bread, the light, airy, rosemary infused Italian style bread. This batch was based on a recipe in the Los Angeles Times by La Brea Bakery owner Nancy Silverton. The problem is, the recipe is missing the last step: how long to cook the bread and at what temperature! Critical information, methinks. Referencing another recipe, 450 F for 15-20 minutes was sufficient.

Despite the absence of time and temperature information, the loaf turned out nicely and when paired with some herb smoked ham from Soulfood Mahanakorn, provolone cheese, and a roasted red bell pepper and onion relish I made, we had some beautiful paninis.

For dessert, I made one of Tawn’s favorites: banoffee pie. This British import features a layer of rich toffee on a cookie crumb crust, covered with freshly sliced bananas, whipped cream, a drizzle of coffee flavored syrup, and chocolate shavings. Instead of making a cheat version of the toffee, I made it the old fashioned way: boiling tins of sweetened condensed milk in a water bath for three hours until the contents caramelize. Care must be taken to keep the tins fully submerged, otherwise they will explode and spray your kitchen with boiling hot caramel.

The end result – my first ever attempt at this dish – had its ups and downs. The crust hadn’t been made with enough butter so it didn’t hold up well, collapsing under the weight of the filling. The toffee, which was insanely tasty, was too much – one can would have been plenty. I didn’t whip the cream quite enough so it didn’t hold its shape and instead spilled through the collapsing crust.

But, despite all that, it was really tasty. I’ll try again one of these days and refine the recipe.

Big Bite Breakfast

Posted on 7 February 2012 by christao408

The morning after attending Big Bite Bangkok, I decided to make myself breakfast using some of the ingredients I had purchased.

Bagel sandwich with scrambled eggs, Provelone cheese, a slice of ham from Soulfood Mahanakorn that had been cured in a dry rub for four days then smoked of Thai herb cuttings, and some salsa made from Adams Organic tomatoes. Add to that a latte and it was a pleasant start to the day.

Speaking of Adams Organic, I was invited to visit their farm in Korat so yesterday made the drive up there with Chow and Ken. Lots of footage to share so I need to take several days to digest the information, write the entry, and fact-check. Stay tuned!

Baked Donuts

Posted on 25 January 2012 by christao408

A few weeks ago a couple of friends came down from Chiang Mai and so I invited them over for brunch. Since they don’t have an opportunity to enjoy good old fashioned American breakfasts that often, I decided to make something special for them: baked donuts. (Recipe here at 101cookbooks.com)

Left: the dough about half-rised; Right: freshly-cut donuts starting the second rise.

Baked donuts start out very similar to their more common, Krispy Kremed cousins. They are a basic yeast dough that is allowed to rise, is rolled and cut out, and then allowed to rise a second time before cooking. But instead of going through the hassle of deep frying (and having your house smell for days afterwards), you put them into the oven. While you can glaze them, I opted for a brush of butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar. The end result is fluffy and delectable – different from deep-fried donuts but still very enjoyable – and with the cinnamon-sugar, it has a classic element.

We couldn’t be bothered with a tripod so as to fit all three of us into a single picture.

For dessert, I thought it would be nice to do something refreshing and relatively healthy. It was a bit of a splurge to buy raspberries and blueberries, both of which are imported, but they were really sweet and juicy. Paired with a bit of natural yogurt and homemade granola, the berries made for a very celebratory parfait and a tasty concusion to a special brunch.

Baking Pecan Tarts

Posted on 20 January 2012 by christao408

Every time I visit the US, I make a trip to Costco and buy several pounds of pecans and walnuts. Nuts (with the exception of cashews, peanuts, and macadamias, all of which are grown locally) are very expensive here in Thailand and I enjoy adding nuts to salads, pestos, and of course desserts. Recently, I perfected a pecan pie recipe that makes wonderful two-bite-sized tarts.

The recipe started out from one contributed by an unknown source on the Food Network’s site. As such, they warned that the recipe had not been tested. Certainly not, as I found out after an initial mishap. Let’s put it this way: adding beaten eggs directly into boiling sugar syrup makes for sweet scrambled eggs – not a proper pecan pie filling!

Instead, I rewrote the directions and, after testing two batches, made some adjustments to the ingredients to reduce the sweetness and richness of the filling while adding some depth of flavor thanks to the use of maple syrup.

Pecan Pie or Tarts
1 stick butter (4 oz or 115 g)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup¹
1/2 cup maple syrup²
2 eggs plus 3 egg whites, beaten well
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (or 1 cup plus whole pecans to layer the top of the pie)
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell, or 12 small tart pans lined with pastry dough³
Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). In a saucepan, melt the butter but don’t let it brown. Mix in the sugar, corn syrup, and maple syrup and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.
Temper the eggs by slowly pouring the sugar mixture into them while whisking continuously. Stir in the pecans then pour the mixture into the pie or tart shells. If you want to decorate the top(s) with whole pecans, you can do so.
Bake 1 hour or until firm when shaken. Let cool before serving. If you are making the tarts in a muffin tin, you should carefully remove them to a wire rack after ten minutes of cooling, so they do not stick.
¹ Note that the corn syrup you buy in the store (like Karo brand) is not high-fructose corn syrup.
² I think the Grade B maple syrup, which has a richer flavor, is nice to use. If you have only regular maple syrup, that is fine, too. You can also substitute corn syrup if you do not have maple syrup.
³ Instead of tart pans, you can also use a muffin tin.

Pecan pies and tarts freeze beautifully after they are cooked. They can be warmed up in the oven for about 15 minutes before serving and they’ll be just as nice as if they were freshly-baked.

christao408

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

Tag Archives: cooking