... boba (aka bubble tea)! My most recent travels made this quite obvious. On Thursday, Kevin and I were in Portland, and visited (as we always do when we're in Portland) Bubble Maineia. Kev got his standard coconut (warm), but I like to try something new each time I'm there. This time I was feeling particularly frisky and got green apple (also warm). It was surprisingly good! I was afraid it would be too sweet, or too sour, or just too weird, but it was none of the above. The apple flavor was definitely present, but subtle, and it worked well with the warm milkiness of the "tea." Bubble Maineia is a neat little shop, but definitely very gimmicky. The boba is served in cups with Japanimae style designs, and most of the fruit flavored "teas" are nothing more than a milky based (powdered?) drink with flavored syrup mixed in. Nonetheless, it's a fun place to visit. The owner is an adorable little Asian woman, and I'm all for supporting the small business owners in my state.
On Friday I was back in Boston. I had seen a boba lounge featured on "Phantom Gourmet" last week, and I really wanted to check it out. Off we went, in search of "Cassava." If you're in the neighborhood, it's at 1076 Boylston Street, diagonally across the intersection (of Boylston and Mass Ave) from the Hynes "T" stop. There, we found the best boba we've had yet! There are so many choices, it took us almost 10 minutes to decide. Shockingly enough, Kevin got coconut milk tea (warm). I went for one of the house specialties, ginger peach. The coconut boba turned out to be real black tea, blended with coconut syrup and a touch of cream. Heavenly. The ginger peach is a cold boba, made with very strong ginger peach black tea, to which a shot of mango syrup is added. Again, heavenly! It wasn't too sweet, and it was my first time trying cold boba. I may never go back to warm! Well, I'm sure that's not true. But I fell in love with Cassava's ginger peach boba. And with Cassava in general. It has a funky atmosphere, and an intriguing food menu -- crepes, panini, sandwiches, salads... it all sounded so good! Oh, and their slogan is "tea with balls."
Pictured above is a cup of boba I made from my kit I bought a couple of weeks ago. It's a honeydew flavored beverage with my pretty little multi-colored tapioca pearls in it. It's not bad, but it's very sweet. I also seem to be having a bit of trouble with my pearls -- they just don't seem to cook enough in the microwave, no matter how long I leave them in. I think I'll switch to the stovetop method the next time I make boba. I went on the 'net last night and collected recipes for traditional milk tea, thai iced tea, boba sugar syrup, and a couple other things. I can't wait to try them. It will be especially nice to have control over the sweetness. This powdered stuff is really starting to get to me!
"I love to make bread too, but I make the bread, I do not delegate that very pleasant, calming, almost therapeutic task to a machine. Bread machines were devised by the Japanese, a culture that has no historic connection to real bread.
Real bread, of course, is made by hand--it is "artisinal" in the best sense of that word. Breadmaking becomes a craft, one works the dough with one's hands--and arms, and shoulders. You punch the dough, massage it, roll it under your palms. You look in after it, as it quietly sits and rises. You work your life and the life of the bread together, so you can be there when it needs you, to punch it down, to shape it, to bake it.
I have never eaten bread made from a bread machine. I do not want to. Bread is too closely connected to the daily life of humans to let a machine do it, and do such a poor job of it--of bread making--at that.
Do yourself a favor. Make bread by hand. Touch the dough. Make it live for you. Just throwing flour and yeast and water into a machine and then eating the results is more than I can stand to contemplate. -- Ron"
I have no idea who this Ron person is. He didn't link an e-mail address or website to his name. But don't you think it's a bit rude to go to someone's site and leave a comment criticizing her bread-baking methods? I work hard on my cooking and baking, I work hard on this site, I pay for this space on the 'net. Ron, maybe you should take a better look around the site. You would find that I do not eat bread "from a machine" either. When I bought my machine, it was my first real venture in cooking. I had no idea what I was doing. But I quickly learned more and more about bread baking, and grew to depend on the machine less and less as time went by. I do often mix my dough in the machine, if time doesn't allow otherwise, but I NEVER bake in it. When I do mix dough in the machine, I always atleast punch the dough down myself, hand-shape it, and bake it in my oven. I love the feel, the texture and the smell of dough in progress. I totally respect bread and all its wonderful qualities. I am the biggest fan of "artisanal" breads that I know! I even spent almost a month last fall experimenting with sourdough, from flour to starter to bread. I am currently reading "Going with the Grain" (by Susan Seligson) and drooling over all the ethnic bread recipes in it. I can't wait to try making some of the Middle Eastern breads! So please, before you criticize someone's methods and say things like "more than I can stand to contemplate," know what you're talking about. And for Pete's sake, if you do do something like this again, don't be so careless as to post the same comment twice!
There. I feel better. He'll probably never read that. I'm sure he was so grossed out by my writing about my bread machine in my "about me" entry that he'll never come back. Of course, I really didn't explain in that entry that I don't actually bake in my bread machine anymore... but seriously, that really got to me. I saw that comment last night and literally lay awake for quite some time thinking about it. Maybe I have too much time on my hands, if I get that upset over something like this. But that's just me. I always want to please people. I can't stand having people angry with me, or thinking so little of me. Now that I've ranted, I can go to Portland and Boston for a couple days feeling just a little calmer. =) Have a great weekend, everyone!
Earlier this evening, I had a sudden craving for apple spice muffins. A quick glance through my homemade cookbook (my three-ring binder full of clipped, printed, and hand-written recipes) revealed that I didn’t have a recipe for apple spice muffins! After searching my favorite recipe websites, I found this recipe at epicurious.com. I doubled it and made some changes (as usual!). Here’s what happened:
Apple Mini-Muffins
1 Granny Smith apple
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
½tsp salt
6 tbsp unsalted butter
½cup packed brown sugar
¼ cup apple cider (mine had taken a turn for the hard side, but it still worked!)
2 large eggs
Core apple (I didn’t bother to peel it!) and cut into 1/4-inch dice. Into a bowl sift together flour, baking powder, spices, and salt. In microwave, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar. Whisk cider and eggs into butter mixture until smooth. Add to flour mixture, stirring just until combined. Stir in apple. Divide batter among muffin cups and bake 15 minutes, or until golden. Makes 36 mini-muffins.
As I stirred in the apples, I was afraid these would turn out to be too much apple, and not enough muffin. It was an unnecessary fear – they are, in fact, very apple-y, but in a good way! They’re moist, fluffy, and spicy. They’re just what I wanted. I’ve become a bit dependent on Au Bon Pain’s apple spice muffins lately, to the tune of about 400 calories per muffin! These are just as good, and a bit easier to control consumption of. And I don’t miss the suggested glaze at all. I’m sure it’s great, but these truly are fabulous without it. Now I have a favorite apple muffin recipe.
You may have noticed lately that I’ve been on a bit of a “vintage” cookbook kick. Not only is it fun to browse through the cookbook section of a used bookstore, but I love to find books with hand-written notes, recipes clipped from a magazine or newspaper in between two pages, or just weird old recipes that no one has thought about in decades. I bought two such books in Boston last week, and I will tell you about them soon. But today I was in a cookie-baking mood (shocking, I know), and reached for my “Betty Crocker New Picture Cookbook,” published in 1961. After inflicting a nasty paper cut on myself as I flipped through the pages, I found a recipe that would allow me to break in the mini-muffin tin I bought a few weeks ago, and to use my purple mixer. I even had all the necessary ingredients on hand!
Swedish Macaroon Teacakes
They look like tiny tarts. The rich cooky-like crust and the delicious macaroon-like filling are baked together.
1 cup soft butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups SOFTASILK Flour or GOLD MEDAL Flour
Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Beat in egg and vanilla. Measure flour by dip-level-pour method or sifting. Stir in flour. Drop a rounded teaspoonful of batter into each greased muffin cup… pressing batter over bottom and up around sides (1/4” thick… center hollow). Chill. Heat oven to 325 (slow mod.). Fill hollows with Almond Macaroon Filling (below).Bake 25 to 30 min. Makes 2 doz. cookies.
Almond Macaroon Filling
Beat 2 eggs until light and foamy. Gradually beat in ½ cup sugar until well blended. Mix in 1-1/4 cups blanched almonds, finely chopped, and ½ tsp almond flavoring.
My changes were minimal: I used vanilla extract instead of almond in the filling, and I used almond meal from the health food store instead of chopped blanched almonds. I'm sure the filling would have been much paler had I used blanched almonds, but I like the texture and the color of the almond meal (which includes the skin, obviously).
The crust is buttery and delicate, and just a bit lighter than traditional shortbread. The filling is airy, moist, and ever-so-slightly nutty. These were very tedious to make -- I need to figure out an easier way to pres the dough into the cups -- but it was worth every minute. The only thing I would say is "wrong" with the recipe is the yield -- I made 24 tarts in my mini-muffin tin, and I was more than generous with the shortbread dough. Then I had enough leftovers to make 5 of these:
It just so happens that I own some mini tart tins. They're about 2-1/2" in diameter (the mini-muffin pan made 2" tarts). I was generous with the crust for these, too. I could have easily made 36 of the "two-bite tarts," if not more. Not that a recipe that makes more than it claims is a bad thing...!
As I ate a piece of yesterday's mujadara fritatta for breakfast this morning, I was completely mortified over how ugly it is! It's easily the most unattractive food I've ever written about, let alone posted a picture of. I felt a dire need to cook something pretty today. To me, there's not much more on this earth that's more beautiful than bread! I had recently been browsing through my copy of "Bread Machine -- How to Prepare and Bake the Perfect Loaf" by Jennie Shapter, and found a recipe I've been meaning to try for ages: Wild Rice, Oat and Polenta Bread. Just think of all those chewy, crunchy grains... mmm...! Here's my interpretation of the recipe:
Wild Rice, Oat and Polenta Bread
1/4 cup wild rice
1-1/4 cups water
2 tbsp canola oil
1-1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
1-1/2 cups whole-wheat bread flour
1/2 cup stone-ground whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup coarse cornmeal
1/2 cup rolled oats (not instant!)
2 tbsp nonfat dry milk
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp rapid-rise yeast
1. Cook the rice in boiling salted water according to package directions. Once cooked and drained, you should have 1 cup of rice. Drain, set aside and let cool to room temp.
2. I threw everything except the yeast and rice into my purple mixer with the paddle attachment. I mixed on speed 2 just until everything came together, then switched to the dough hook.
3. Once the dough hook was on, I added the yeast and mixed on speed 2 until the dough came together into a big mass, then added the rice. I let it go until the rice was incorporated and the dough seemed... well... ready! It was elastic, but not so smooth because of all those yummy grains!
4. Place kneaded dough into a large, oiled mixing bowl, turning it over once so the whole thing is coated with oil. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour (I think it took closer to 2 hours today -- it's cold here!). When the dough has risen completely, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and gently punch it down.
5. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces. Shape each piece of dough into a mini-loaf, about 5" long. Place the six mini-loaves widthwise, side-by-side into a prepared 9"x5" loaf pan.
6. Cover the dough with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 30 - 45 minutes, until the dough reaches the top of the pan.
7. Bake at 425 for 30 - 35 minutes, until bread is golden and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Turn out onto a cooling rack.
It's another winner! Dense, chewy, nutty, crunchy... there's so much going on in this bread! A word of caution, though, if you decide to make some -- the rice grains on the outer crust get pretty crunchy during baking. Chew carefully!
