Salmiakpastiller

Strong candy, beautiful Finnish packaging

If you hadnt guessed from my Piparkakut recipe, I enjoy Finnish food, culture, and people. I had a chance to visit in 2003 traveling from Helsinki to Mantyharju to Rovaniemi to Pyha in Lapland and back. A beautiful trip filled with lakes, trains, reindeer, hiking, coffee, beer, and lots of great food. My travel companion and I stayed with Jaakko Matilla who led us berry picking in the countryside. Afterwards I pulled together a blueberry pie with the small blue berries (like the Maine variety) that no one has ever forgotten. The rest of the trip was filled with herring (creamed, pickled, fried, and stuffed in bread) and lots of liquorice treats.

Lapin Kulta, a not so fancy beer I enjoyed in Finland, 2003

Jaakko is visiting NYC this week, and Ive been treated to an impressive ring of ruis rye bread from Nordic Breads NYC. Im told is better than the kind in Finland. Jaakko also brought a bag of Salmiakki, or should I say Super Salmiakki candies. Salmiakki contains ammonium chloride (salmiac) which gives the already aggressive flavor of black liquorice a salty flavor. The candies are beyond chewy. The texture is more like a hard gummy candy that clings to your teeth and tongue with a vengeance. The flavor is only slightly sweet, nearly savory, liquorice with a bite of table salt taste and an unexpected menthol minty flavor. Im eating them in small quantities. The flavor lingers on for an hour or more, jammed in my molars.

Reindeer in Lapland.

I havent traveled abroad in a few years now. Jaakko has made it clear that NYC and Americas new foodie tendencies toward organic foods, CSAs and sustainably produced foods would be welcome in Finland. Ive been elected to help. I cant make promises but its a thought to grow on. Finland must be doing okay. Jaakko tells me that you can split a whole or half reindeer meat share.

Cloud Like Biscuit Recipe

Never have I been so pleased with a biscuit recipe

I bake a lot. I bake for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, picnics, bar mitzvahs, weddings, special occasions, and on. I also bake for me. When Im out of whatever, or sick of eating whole wheat pita, oatmeal, and wild rice I like to bake up some carb-heavy, gluten nasty flat bread, zucchini bread, cake, cookies. I am adding this biscuit recipe today (and Ive made a lot of biscuit recipes) to that list of quick breads.

The batch you see above is the 4th Ive made since January, and all have been a success out of the gate. My cloud-like, fluffy, cant do anything but rise biscuit recipe is adapted from Gregs Southern Biscuits, which I found on Allrecipes.com. The main difference is mine dont have lard or bacon drippings, but only because I dont have that food in my kitchen. You bet Id make them with good lard if I had good lard. Also, this is a great recipe for using up leftover, extra buttermilk.

Cloud-Like Biscuits

1/2 tsp butter
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
(I use Bakewells which I order from the King Arthur Catalog)
5 1/2 tblsp cold butter
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with 1/2 tsp butter. Mix flour, salt, soda, and powder in a medium bowl. Cut butter into 1/4 inch chunks and add to dry ingredients. Blend butter in by pinching and rubbing with your hands. Butter should resemble a fine meal when ready. Make a well in the mixture and pour buttermilk in. Mix with your hands lightly until just combine.

Lightly fold and turn the biscuit dough to build layers

Scrap the dough, its a little sticky, out on to a floured work area. Pat dough out about an inch with your hands. Fold the dough in half, turn 90 degrees, pat gently, and fold again. Repeat 3 more times. This builds the biscuit layers up. Now pat or roll the dough out to one inch. Cut biscuits with a 2 1/2 inch round cutter. Its important to push the cutter straight down and lift straigh up. Turning the cutter will seal the edges preventing the biscuits from rising. Use a spatula to move the cut biscuits to the buttered baking tray. You should have 6-8 biscuits.

Now you are supposed to pop those in the hot oven and get baking, while ignoring the rest of the dough. The more you handle the dough the tougher it gets. I simply can not bring myself to do trash the dough. Readers with lots of biscuit experience, what do you do with that excess dough from the first cut? Maybe Im cutting my biscuits wrong. I squish and re-pat the dough one or maybe two more times to maximize the dough. Serve the virgin first cut biscuits to good company and hoard the second and third batches for yourself.

Bake all the biscuits for 15-18 minutes. Biscuits are ready when theyre so light they nearly fly out of the oven, and have beautiful browned bottoms. Move to a cooling rack immediately. Serve with a hunk of butter on top for breakfast, lunch, tea, or dinner.

Gadget Notes Hulu What I Watching Tonight

Date:  Feb 15, 2016

Netflix has stirred up a lot of noise lately.

1.  Netflix has enter the International market.  You thought it is good, but end up you get a lousy collection of movies/TV shows.  According to news paper reporting, you get only 10-15% of the US library.  That is because there are many movies and TV shows has copyright, and Netflix simply cannot bring it to outside of US.

2.  Netflix has vowed to stop non-US location to get their US movie library thru VPN.  So, they are going to crack it down so that you, who is located in Singapore subscribe to watch “Singapore-version” of Netflix.

My friends asked me what am I watching nowadays.

I told them, I am watching the latest US TV series thru using the Hulu App on

1. Apple TV

2. Amazon Fire TV.

3.  iPhone / iPad / iPad Pro

I love Hulu more than Netflix!

I used to hate Hulu.

I hated it so much that I refuse to watch anything on Hulu.

Because last time, to watch their show, you are forced to see their advertisement. 

And oh boy, their advertisement are really long.

Just as you thought you have finished watching the advertisement, there are more advertisement in a show.  About 4-5 advertisement.

Recently, they have come up a “No Commercials” version.

Paying another US$4.00 more.  (US$11.99 per month instead of US$7.99 per month).

And after I have changed my subscription, I love Hulu.  

With Hulu, you don’t need to download from Torrent anymore.  It is the right way!

Hulu is competitor to Netflix.

Hulu is joint venture or joint investment from some major TV powerhouse in US.  All these network work together on a single platform to give you the latest TV shows.

All shows are latest.  You can’t get these from Netflix sometimes.

As it is somethings exclusive on a certain Network, such as Fox, ABC, etc.

Let me show you what I am watching, then you know why I love Hulu so much.

[Caution!!] You need a VPN to watch Hulu.  If you subscribe to ViewQwest with Freedom VPN or other equivalent from other ISP, then, you are all set.  Subscribing to Hulu should be easy, once you are in Geo Lock unlock environment, you can access to the Hulu sign up page.  There, you simply key in your credit card (without even change the ZIP code, you can place your Singapore credit card there.

The X Files.  Nice to catch up with Fox mulder and Scully.  They look very old, aging in the show.  But the conversation still fun!

My sons are watching Master Chef Junior.  Season 4.

This is the TV series for Tom Cruise’s movie.

NBC only has one TV show I am following.  But they have a lot of cool old 70’s and 80’s TV series.

Although is a bit slow the story line but I still enjoy watching the latest series of Heroes Reborn.

Don’t miss the Saturday Night Live.  Have you seen the episode where they have Adam Driver, The Star Wars Kylo Ren going undercover.  So funny!

Battlestar Galactica.  The original series.

Don’t make me angry.  You won’t like me when I’m angry.  The Incredible Hulk.

From Comedy Central, you have the South Park cartoon.

ABC has the most show I am watching.

Learn from the doctors.  

Agents Carter.

Who is the terrorist from Quantico?

Agents of Shield.

Some cartoons from Nickelodeon are not bad too!

Kung Fu Panda.

The Penguins of Madagascar.

CW network.

Legends of Tomorrow.

The Flash

Arrow.

The 100.

Watching Ancient Aliens on The History Channel.

Documentary.  National Geographic Channel.

Animal Planet.

Discovery Channel.

Anime.  Some dup, some sub.

Korean and Japanese shows.  In English subtitle.

Look what I found.

And Gatchman.

That is how I spent my free time, when I am not teaching my sons, not playing with them either, not exercising, not sleeping, etc.

I already got hooked on Hulu.  I have not even check out the movie sections yet.  All these TV programs will eat up all my time.

 

Insulation added to the Greenhouse

With the upcoming weather changes for fall/winter approaching, I decided to bite the bullet and put up some radiant type / bubble insulation with an R3.7 value. I placed all of this on Saturday last weekend and stapled it in place using a an Arrow T-50 stapler. I used approx. 8 - 2 x 25 rolls, and a single roll of 4x25 for the IBC Fish Tanks. This material was placed along the end and side walls, and also along the roof trusses. This also provides extra reflective light back onto the plants for added growth.

We had a cold snap this morning which dropped the temp down to 52 degrees outside. With the insulation in place and the greenhouse closed up the temp stayed a balmy 74 degrees.

Not bad for this amount of insulation, of course winter has not set in yet, so for added protection I have purchased a small ceramic based heater which I will use to supplement the natural radiant heat of the greenhouse. I also have purchased a digital dual 500 watt Titanium aquarium heater unit which will be placed in the Fish Tanks to regulate the heat during the winter.

Next up, the building of an Aeroponics cloner/seedling starter system.

Sarma Grapeleaves

Sour and savory grapeleaves filled with rice stuffing and steamed

Some of you know stuffed grapeleaves as dolma, but in my home (half American-half Armenian/ Lebanese) we called them sarmas. The reason? Sarma means rolled and dolma means stuffed. I have an ancient memory of my father telling me that. My sarma has shredded vegetables, white wine, and parsley. Not traditional ingredients, but flavorful. I hold no recipe sacred. No food is safe from my kitchen meddling.

This isnt an easy recipe. It involves multiple steps, and a little bit of a guessing game (How much rice goes in each leaf? How long to cook until the rice isnt chewy or too soft? Why is there extra water left in the pan) and time to manually roll each leaf. The good news is even if you mess up you will probably get something that tastes great. Make it for a special occasion, or a good party. If youre making grapeleaves, then you ought to show them off, er, um, I mean share.

Sarma Grapeleaves

1 medium onion
1 medium zucchini
2 tblsp vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 tblsp tomato paste
1 tsp dried mint
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 bunch of parsley, stems removed, chopped
2 tsp white wine
1 1/2 cups uncooked medium or long grain rice

1-2 jars of grapeleaves
olive oil
2 cups of water
1/2 lemon juice
1/2 cup pickle juice from jar of grapeleaves
more olive oil and lemons for presentation

Shred onion and zucchini. I used the slicing disks on my food processor. Alternatively, can pulse the vegetables in the bowl of your food processor until its in little pieces, or the old fashioned on the large holed of a cheese grater. Add vegetables to large skillet with salt and oil. Cook over low-medium heat until very soft. Dont brown. Brown chunks in the grapeleaves looks kind of funky. Add tomato paste and mix to coat vegetables. Cook for about one minute, stirring. Stir in spices and mix until combine. Add white wine, scraping the bottom of the skillet to remove any of the flavorful bits that cling to the bottom. A wood spoon is a great tool for this. Turn off heat, and stir in rice. Mix until the rice is evenly coated. This mixture will be the filling for the grapeleaves. It can be prepared 3-5 days before rolling the grapeleaves and stored in a sealed container. When Im in full on party planning mode I make the filling up to 2 weeks in advance freezing it in a good container.

A good set up makes the work easier

To roll and cook the grape leaves youre going to want to set aside a good 1-2 hours. Have some fun music playing while you dirty your hands, maybe invite some friend over to help. First find a large pot, 4 qts are more, to steam the grapeleaves in. You will need to keep a plate on top of the grapeleaves while they cook, so make sure that you have a plate that fits snugly over the opening before you start rolling grapeleaves. Find a nice clean workspace to roll grapeleaves where you can place the pot, a surface for rolling individual leaves (like a plate), the stuffing and leaves within comfortable reaching distance.

Remove the grapeleaves from the jar and rinse. Dont throw out the pickle juice the leaves are packed in. Cover the bottoms and sides of your pot with grapeleaves. Try to use the large leaves, which may be tough or hard to roll the sarmas with. The leaves will provide an ideal steaming environment, and help prevent sarmas from burning on the surfaces of the pan. Slosh a few glugs of olive oil on the leaves, and youre ready to sit and roll.

Stem facing you, veins up

Spread an individual grapeleaf on a plate, stem end pointing towards you, veins up. Using a small spoon plop a clump of filling across the wider stem end of the leaf. Around 1 tsp of filling per leaf. You dont want to over fill the leaves. They will explode, and you will have wasted all your hard work. Fold the sides of the leaf over the filling and roll away from you. Push/fold any wild leaf edges in towards the center as you roll. You are trying to make a nice little rice and leaf package that is not too tight, with a little lose space for the rice to expand. Tight packages may explode when cooked. Place each rolled grapeleave loose edge down (important) in the pot. Continue rolling and neatly packing grapeleaves in rows in your pot. You can stack 2-3 rows of grapeleaves.

Rolling grapeleaves never takes me less than an hour, and usually I get bored and antsy. Do not give in to the urge to overfill the grapeleaves to get done faster. You may just be messing them up, making them pop when cooked. I wish I had take a photo of my exploded grapeleaves, but theyre so gory and sad.

After youve rolled all of the sarmas, and stacked them in your pot, gently pour in the water, lemon juice, and pickled leaf juice. Cover with an inverted plate, and place a weight on top of the plate. I use my Pyrex 2 cup measuring cup filled with water to hold down the plate while the grapeleaves expand. Place pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and lower heat to medium low.

Sometimes it takes 30 minutes to steam the sarmas sometimes over an hour. Im not sure why. I suggest tasting a sarma after 30 minutes for doneness, and every 10 minutes there after. The rice should be tender, not chewy. Remove from heat, and drain any fluids that may remain. Move sarmas to storage container to help cool. Be careful they will be really hot. Use tongs. Squeeze lemon juice on top, and another glug of olive oil. Serve at slightly warm or at room temperature. Enjoy all your hard work, and know it gets a little easier every time you make sarmas!

Bread and Burritos in Springy San Francisco

San Franciscos best Tartine bread basking in 4:59 pm light

I havent been updating Cantaloupe Alone much, but I have not stopped eating. I know some people love to blog, twitter, and post while on vacation, but Im in my element away from electronic devices. Today is my first day back from a quick 2 day trip to San Francisco visiting good friend and food lover / artist extrodianare Ava.

First stop: Tartine. Hands down the trip could have ended after a morning of sampling 1 gougère (light and cheesy), 1 scone (just nice), 1 almond croissant (monstrous and delicious), and 1 morning bun (the classic). The morning bun was so much more sophisticated then I imagined. Flaky croissant dough with crispy caramelized top with crusty and sweet bottom, hints of orange, rich but not overpoweringly decadent. Worth waiting in line for. Perfect with their bottomless coffee. I didnt remember my camera!

Tartine bread several minutes old

The next afternoon we happened to be biking home from nearby Dolores Park at approximately 4:50 pm. Several minutes before their famed bread comes out of the oven. In perfect time we snagged a loaf with zero wait. Fortuitously Josey Baker Bread happened to bike by for a with a 3 gallon drum of flour under arm. A real San Fran moment in gluten history. I found the bread incredibly flavorful with a great sour dough tang. Our bread was still steaming inside. We were perhaps a few minutes too early cutting the loaf in half before the hot moisture finished absorbing into the thick loaf, as explained by Mr. Baker Bread. Later on when the bread was cool I found the texture silky and soft with a big chew. Easily one of the best bread experiences ever.

Ceviche from El Farralito

You cant visit San Francisco without eating Mexican food in the Mission. I had a veg bean burrito with drips and drops of all the different salsas from El Farralito. Avas ceviche was the winning item at lunch. California has some choice produce and seafood that make every flavor bigger and fresher.

El Farralito burrito

Other food moments of note included sushi from Japantowns grocery store, Italian food in North Beach, Its It ice cream sandwich, ice cream, ice cream, more ice cream, and homemade spaghetti, and numerous sweet California oranges. Ill have San Francisco on the brain for a while. Its a great city to get to know. I was lucky to see so much in a short time with the help of two bikes and a fun friend.