[Food][Baking] No Knead Bread My Way

Original recipe from The New York Times: Recipe: No-Knead Bread Published: November 8, 2006 on The New York Times
recipe ideas and cooking methods reference from FoodNetwork :Michael Smith's No Knead Bread


First attempt.

Ingredients:
All Purpose Flour 3 Cups
Quick Rise Yeast 1/4 teaspoons
Salt 1 & 1/4 teaspoons
Water 1 & 5/8 Cups

Mix all dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl.
Slowly add water into the mix, stir with a chopstick or spoon, until everything turns into a very wet dough.
Cover with plastic wrap, sealing the whole bowl.
Place it somewhere that it won't get disturbed, let the dough sit for 18 hours.
(Get the mix ready at 10pm at night, you can continue to next step at 4pm on the next day.)

After 18 hours, punch or press the dough to release the gas inside.
Scrape the dough that is sticking to the bowl and slide it into a mould of some kind.
If you have a mould for the standard loaf, that would be great. If not, any rectangular mould would do. (like the Pyrex meatloaf baking dish I used in this case.)
Cover it lightly with plastic wrap, let it rise again for approximately 3 hours.

Preheat your oven to 425 Fahrenheit (or 220 Celsius).
Wait until your oven gets up to temperature, remove the plastic wrap on top of the dough, set the dough (which is in the mould) into the middle rack in the oven.
Bake it for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes remove it from oven.
What I did was let it rest in the mould until it cools to the touch, and then un-mould it and place it on a cooling rack to cool down completely.

This is the link to the photo album at Flickr for the first attempt at No Knead Bread

The bread seems to have a lot of air hole inside.
The crust is pretty hard, like a European style bread, you know, those tasty crusty bread.



My second attempt.

Ingredients are little bit different this time:
All Purpose Flour 3 Cups
Quick Rise Yeast 1/4 teaspoons
Salt 1 teaspoon
Water 1 & 3/8 Cups
Homogenized Milk 1/4 Cups (milk @ 3.25% fat)
(basically just replace some water with milk)

A little different on the methods too.
After the first 18 hours, don't remove the dough from the bowl, just punch-out the air and let it continue to rise in the bowl for 3 hours.
Once it's finished, transfer the dough into the mould, and bake it in a 425 Fahrenheit (or 220 Celsius) oven for 45 minutes.


The crust this time is a bit crunchy and the bread inside doesn't have that much air holes.
May be it's the milk? The crust had a slightly bitter taste, like it's some burnt milk. But it also taste like some roasted malty drink. Hmmm, still room for improvement.


Third time's the charm?

Ingredients were changed again:
All Purpose Flour 3 Cups
Quick Rise Yeast 1/4 teaspoons
Salt 1 teaspoon
Sugar 1/4 teaspoons
Water 1 & 3/8 Cups
Homogenized Milk 1/4 Cups (milk @ 3.25% fat)

Changes in methods as follow:
Dissolve the salt and sugar in half cups of hot water.
Once it's mixed, cool down the mixture with cold water and cold milk, until it's just slightly warm.
Then mix the flour and yeast with the liquid mixture to form the dough.

Allow the dough to rise in the bowl for 18 hours, then release the gas by pressing it, and let it continue to rise for another 2 hours.
Rub butter on the inside of the mould, then lightly dust the mould with flour, covering the inside of the mould.
Transfer the dough into the mould and let it rise for 1 hour.

After 1 hour in the mould, bake the dough in a 425 Fahrenheit (or 220 Celsius) oven for 45 minutes.


The results were Terrific!
Slice the loaf, bake the slice in toaster for 3 minutes, spread some butter on the toast, it tastes like the best store bought sliced bread you ever had.
Perfect!
With added sugar, the bitter burnt milk taste was gone.
And with this method, the bread looks very much like the standard loaf you get at stores.

What should I make next time? May be something to go between the bread. ;)

My sister's blog

this is a link to my sister's blog.

bake from scratch

Please visit her blog! Thanks!!!

[Food][Cooking] Fried Chicken with Herb

This dish is a Taiwanese famous snack, and probably the easiest to re-create. Also it's just fried chicken with herb, western culture should have no problem accepting this to be sell at street vendors.
But you don't see it being sell at your street corners, hack, you almost don't get to see any street vendors these days in Toronto.

Since fried chicken are being sell at a ridiculous price (ie KFC popcorn chicken?), to make it at home you can eat till you drop and it's probably the same price or less. And it's always tastier and fresher to make fried chicken at home, right?



To make this fried chicken, first you have to marinate the small pieces of chicken leg meat overnight. (Well, you can just whip it up at anytime you feel like some fried chicken, but it will be much better in taste if you marinate it for a some time.) marinate the chicken meat with soy sauce, sugar, white pepper, cornstarch, sesame seed oil.

Before you fry the chicken, let it sit for half an hour in room temperature to make sure the meat get to cook more evenly.

For coating the chicken, we use sweet potato flour. The texture of the sweet potato flour is the key to this dish, when the lumps in the flour gets into the hot oil, it will turn into little crunch sticking to the meat. The flour makes a nice crunch on the surface of the meat, and the flour lumps sticking on top, the double crunch makes this dish stays crunchy even cooled. (yeah, right. like it can get a chance to cool down before it got into someone's mouth.)

Mix the sweet potato flour with salt and white pepper. Make sure the chicken gets coated on all sides, then set it aside on another plate to sit for a minute. This will ensure the flour sticks to the meat for good.

This dish should be made with Taiwanese Basil-like herb, since there isn't any available here in Toronto (at least I don't see them in supermarket), you can use Basil or Thai Basil instead. Coat the herb just the same as the chicken.

Heat the oil then turn it down to medium-heat, as the chicken has to well done, a medium-heat is a safe way to make sure the chicken is cooked through and avoid the coating gets burnt.

Fry the chicken for 3 to 5 minutes depend on size, then turn the heat up so that the oil drawn out of the chicken pieces. Also adding the herb to fry with the chicken for a minute, drain the oil and place them on some paper towel to remove any excess oil.

Sprinkle some salt and white pepper on the chicken while they are hot. Add some chili powder for an extra kick.




Chinese version posted at:
http://chichican.blogspot.com/2008/06/fried-chicken-with-herb.html

[Cooking] Beef Stir-fry with Oyster Sauce (Video)

Food related blog post not limited by words and pictures only.
Now we can have video too~

Wanted to make a "Beef stir-fry with Green Onion". But after missing lunch at work, all I can think of is to have a dish with lots of sauce, so I can mix it with the rice (and eat it mouthful after mouthful~).
Therefore, I made a "Beef stir-fry with Oyster Sauce".



Not alot of Ingredients, but it's better to have them all ready to go before cooking.

Main ingredients: sliced Beef (marinated with Soy sauce, Sesame seed oil, Cornstarch and Sugar), White Onion, Green Onion.

Sauce mixture: Soy sauce, Oyster sauce, Cornstarch and Water.


heat the pan, add sesame seed oil when it's hot.
put in White Onion when the oil is hot.
stir-fry the onion.


Keep on cooking the Onion until it's soft.


Add Beef to the pan, place them evenly on the pan to cook. cook it for a minute.


When the Beef is half cooked, toss it. Then add the sauce mixture.


When the sauce thicken, add Green Onion.


Toss it until the Green Onion are mixed with the sauce.


Ready to plate. Time to eat!


Let's take a closer look.

It's really easy to make, and it's really tasty! Best served with Steamed Rice.

This blog post entry was to test the flickr video in blogger. It would only work perfectly in FireFox or other browser, but in IE? Just like it's name, Internet Exploded!!

man, I hate IE7.

Chinese version posted at:
http://chichican.blogspot.com/2008/06/beef-stir-fry-with-oyster-sauce.html

[Food] Fake McRib (I'm Faking It~)

Of course I can't stand having something so simple with such a high price tag. (Especially the taste didn't completely satisfy me.)

So I have decided to make my own McRib-like sandwich.
Only a few ingredients: Minced Pork Meat, Chopped Onion, Sliced Pickle, a Bun, and most important of all, THE Barbecue (BBQ) Sauce.


First we mix little salt and pepper into the meat, then we form it into a square patty. (you will see why in just a second)


The meat patty was made into the same size as the sliced bread. Why sliced bread? It's just because I don't want to spent extra on the bun, so I use something that I would have in house everyday. (Also, bun comes in a pack of 8, and I'm just having one sandwich. what am I going to do with the rest?)
I should have make the patty slightly larger than the sliced bread, as the meat will shrink. (As it shrink, the center of the patty will get thicker! It's good to keep the patty thin.)


Look at this! Fried to perfection! (But a little bit too much oil around...)


Well, you can use the oil to fry some Onion. It's all done by using the remaining heat in the pat.


The patty I made was a little thick, to make sure it's cooked inside, and to get rid of some of the oil, we put it into a oven to bake it for 5 minutes.
See the oil on the right side? It's almost 2 teaspoon of oil right there.
Now we are sure the meat is done, and much less oil going into the final product. (Which means this sandwich is much more healthier than you would think, or you would get in one of those fast food chain.)


This is a slice of Cucumber, marinated in a quick brine. (This will turn into the sliced pickle that we need.) It's really east to make!
Slice your Cucumber to the thickness you like, but thinner it is, the quicker it will become pickle.
Sprinkle salt and sugar all over the Cucumber, and put in some Red Wine Vinegar to cover all of it. (You can use just normal vinegar, but I don't have any of it in the house, and I think the Red Wine Vinegar brings in both flavour and colour to the pickle. A nice touch~)
Let it sit for 30 minutes. (You can do this at beginning and take it out of the brine at the time you assemble the sandwich. But it probably don't need that long, if you slice it as thin as the slice in the picture.)


Tony Roma's Hickory Barbecue Sauce.
Got this from Costco, love the taste as it's not really sour, a nice sweet taste with a bit of smokiness is perfect of Ribs!
This is the key flavour (probably the only flavour?) for this McRib-like sandwich.


Now put some BBQ sauce on the meat! Both side!!


See the thickness of the meat? It's real meat! NO fillers!
With the sauce on it, it's just so attractive~


Add some fried Onion on the top. Fried Onion has a slightly sweet taste to it, and it smells great!


Now add some raw Onion, so we can have two different taste of Onion.
The raw Onion gives the sandwich a little bit of a kick, and the sharpness of raw Onion can cut through the sweetness of the BBQ sauce. A nice balance in the sandwich.


But we still need to put more BBQ sauce on the Onions.


As we need the BBQ sauce to make the pickle slices sticks to the whole sandwich.
Using four slice of pickle because I like the sweet and sour taste it brings into the sandwich. (You don't have to add as much.)


Now take a Big bite into it!

With this done, I can really careless about McRib coming back for a limited time or not. I can have this McRib-like sandwich any time I want. Now you can try it at home and...Enjoy~


Chinese version posted at:
http://chichican.blogspot.com/2008/04/fake-mcrib.html