Makin' & Bakin'

Yesterday I went for a walk along the Cheongyecheon, the stream that runs through downtown Seoul.
It was beautiful and crisp out, the leaves were brilliant, and by the time I made it to Gwanghwamun from Jongno-5-ga, I was freezing my toes off.



The main purpose of the walk was to find a nice tree from which to hang some of my holiday ornaments to do a brief photoshoot . The leaves were all yellowing, but I kind of liked the contrast of the color and the bright light of the setting autumn sun.



When I got home, I was so cold, I promptly started baking. I made a pie crust, and I stewed some Korean pears in soju. Nothing more Korean than that, right? This morning I popped the pears into the crust and then the tart into the oven. So nice on a fall day...



I spend far too much time makin' and bakin' stuff. But it's all procrastinatin.' Sigh. Back to work.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Keeping warm

I've been keeping warm by using the oven lots.

Turkeys are hard to come by in Korea, so for Thanksgiving I picked up a small chicken from Lotte Mart and brought it home to roast with some potatoes, carrots and onions. I glazed it with brown sugar and stuffed it with anise, five spice powder, ginger, garlic, and scallions. Thanks for the recipe, Mom! The skin didn't brown too evenly, since I haven't quite figured out all the quirks of this mini electric oven, but overall it was mighty tasty. Sorry the picture isn't too good - it's from my cell phone.


Also, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and made a loaf of No-Knead Bread from Jim Lahey's recipe published in the New York Times earlier this month. I was amazed at how easy it was, and how even I didn't manage to somehow screw it up! In fact, I ended up having to let the dough rise for an extra 5 hours because I realized at the last minute that I needed a 6-8 quart oven-safe pot, and had to run out to Lotte Mart to get one. Yeah, I'm one of those people that don't read directions thoroughly... Anyway, this recipe is perfect for those people who don't have the space or the strong arms to knead bread. Not to mention, it yields a loaf with a nice crunchy crust. I should have read the various blogs and forums about the recipe before I began, but somehow didn't think of it. Anyway, it's true that 1-1/2 cups of water would probably be better than 1-5/8 (my dough was way too wet and sticky), and a 6-8 quart pot is rather too big (the wet and sticky dough spread out across the bottom and resulted in a flatter loaf than I would have liked). Nevertheless, a great bread recipe and one that I'll used again and again.

Also, continuing on my uncharacteristic domestic kick, I got around to making cheese. The easiest cheese in the world to make. Here's the recipe I used to make a small batch of ricotta cheese (I only had a quart of milk, so I quartered the recipe, which worked just fine). Instead of cheesecloth, I used some straining cloth I found at Lotte Mart (normally used for straining soups). The only difficult part of the recipe (if you can call it difficult) is waiting by the stove until the thermometer reaches exactly 200º F (93º C). After that, it's a piece of cake. The milk curdled right on schedule, and after straining and letting it drip dry for an hour, it looked and tasted exactly like ricotta cheese, only fresher and yummier than the stuff I used to buy at the supermarket. I used the cheese to make baked ziti.

In other news:
I picked up a 2-week freelance assignment, so that will keep me busy for the beginning of December. It will also help pay for our planned trip to Thailand. Yay!

I've just completed level 102 at YBM (for the third time!). For December I'm going to take Saturday classes for level 103, to accomodate the freelance job. I'll consider it a major accomplishment if I manage to stay in level 103 this time! Baby steps, baby steps....

Anyways, for my final presentation in Korean class, I talked about four of my favorite restaurants in Seoul. Well, if you know me, you know I spent more time designing the presentation handouts than I did preparing the speech, right? Right!

Pie

Pear Pie
Originally uploaded by annamatic3000.

A few factors set off a short burst of pie experimentation last week. One, a brand new countertop convection oven that arrived a few weeks ago. Two we had a number of leftover fruits – 3 huge Asian pears and 6 kiwis -- from the housewarming we held the weekend before last. Three, a good friend had dropped off some delicious homebaked cookies and I wanted to return the pie pan to her with something yummy in it. And four, the arrival of crisp cool pie-baking weather…

So, I made 3 pies. Two were pear pies and one was kiwi. For one of the pie crusts, I used the Baking Illustrated recipe. They recommend using both butter and shortening. The other two pie crusts were made with shortening only. The flavor of the former was better, but I liked the flakiness of the latter. Maybe some of that butter-flavored Crisco would work best. Oh well, I don’t think I can find that here.

As for the fillings, I preferred the pear to the kiwi. Kiwi is just too tart for a baked pie. Actually, I wouldn’t have baked it into a pie except for the fact that I’m allergic to kiwis unless they’re cooked, so that ruled out the possibility of making a kiwi tart, although I think that would have tasted better. For the pear pie, the pear was the Asian variety, which tends to be waterier and less sweet than, say, a Bartlett pear. As such, it made for a less flavorful pie. So next time I’m going to stick to the tried and true apple filling. But I think I’ll play around with the crust some more.