dough Tag

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

easy laminated nutella morning buns

speed-folding-nutella-bun28

LONG, LIKE WAIST-DEEP

GANDALF GONE WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE…

LATELY, I’ve been running into the same remark that brings attention to something I would not have otherwise noticed. Not on my naturally rustic… understated beauty, nor my deeply reflective overstated fashion. But, people have been saying to me that they didn’t realize – shit, even I didn’t realize – that my hair has grown, ungovernably… looooong. Yes, yes they are loooong. Not prince-bait-golden-Rapenzul long, or mysterious-darkness-of-the-night-Pantene-commercial long, but like, waist-deep-Gandalf-gone-Where-The-Wild-Things-Are long. Staring at my almost-fire-hazardous self in the mirror, I have come to the unlikely yet true explanation for such disregard …

Simply, I don’t have time for hair-salon.

Madness! What have I – a mid-30 unemployed female who doesn’t believe in happiness before 1 PM because that’s evidently sleep-deprived illusions – any excuses to look like a historical ruin? Upon the horrid awakening, I was forced into re-examining, what exactly, consumed my otherwise abundant span of the day. Then, I realized they are all utterly meaningless, yet indispensable, segments of tasks.

09.25.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets, updated recipe

SPEED FOLDING, PEANUT SUGAR MORNING BUNS

“JUST TWO FOLDINGS, GUYS. TWOOO FOLDINGS!”

I literally cannot wait, cannot put another wasted minute between you and this recipe. Cannot contain the overjoy in the fact that I have fulfilled the purpose of why I was put on this earth, my designated service to humanity… it is all done, right here, after I push the “publish” button. I can die now and be accepted into heaven and I shall be in peace.

Yesterday, armed with skepticism, I entered the kitchen with an unlikely theory. A few hours later, I came out lit-up like a Christmas tree. This rarely happens, but it did.

03.12.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks, Vegatables

MULTI-LAYERED SCALLION FLAT BREADS

Do you have things that you tried and tried and tried making, and it. Just. Doesn’t. Work? In the kitchen, I call them my culinary nemesis, and they can be summed up by two words, “chewy” and “layers”. You whisper these words to my ears in the middle of the night…

I pee my pants.

12.06.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy

THANKSGIVING ROUX BREAD

For the innocent sake of running an adequate food-blog, I’ve been slowly sucked down to a rabbit hole passing the disorienting stage of flying pies and falling biscuits, deep down to the world of cultivating gas-farting micro-organism on my kitchen counter (quite deep when you actually think about it). My falling journey has brought to you and myself, things I wouldn’t even think of doing just a little shy of 2 years ago, things like palm sugar brioche, dreamy Hokkaido milk toast, Taiwanese gua bao, Roman Bonci’s pizza, creamy carbonara pizza, clarified butter English muffin, pillow beignets and this rocking potato roll.

If I look into the mirror right now I wouldn’t recognize myself.

11.22.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy

(RE)MODEL BAKERY’S ENGLISH MUFFIN

Oh I don’t feel bad telling you this… I don’t. In just 2 days, I will be packing my bikinis, loading up the sunscreens and dragging my waxed legs across the Pacific to the realm where no toxic fume blackens my lungs and shameless line-cutter haunts my footsteps! Aloha~ HAWAII, here I come! Gimme a hug gimme a hug please! Oooh I can almost taste the air of freedom… where real earth should feel like… where I don’t fantasize plotting the murder of anyone… of every day… of every minute… (Hear that? The dude who spitted next to my feet in the restaurant dies-dies-dies so gruesomely it sounds like an unicorn-pony lullaby…). Where I can be the non-mental me again you see?!! Oh please do it now!! Eject me out of China right now! Cannonball me outta here!

09.27.2013

In All recipes, Meat, Seafood, Snacks, updated recipe

insights to your shrimp dumplings

There are days, you know, not everyday, but days when I really… hate this. I mean, what is this anyways? A self-published “web-blog” about me making dinner. Talk about being a loving sponge when it comes to self-absorbing not to mention a shameless evasion from unemployment. Oops, did I not mention that? As many more dignified others who might do this as a hobby aside, I on my other sorry hand, just do this. No other self-sustaining professions at day, heck or even a non-profit charity to excuse myself of, it’s a testimony of prolonged immaturity and chronic, explicit laziness, hardly anything to be carved on my tombstone. So yeah, as this self-absorbing continues, sometimes I really hate this.

09.09.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

accidental strawberry pot pies

I’m mega-watt sick guys. Really. STAY AWAY on the other side of the computer and try not to touch the screen I am highly contagious! This is like the 100+ times I’ve gotten sick since I moved to Beijing because my unevolved Canadianess is no match for China’s uber-advanced virus. My further disrespect for it led me to go out for a night of harmless chatters over my favorite Sichuan face-torching/throat-choking dishes, which left me MUTED after I came home. MUUUTED, people. Paralyzed and powerless even when I saw a lift of a leg at the sofa across the apartment (!!!!…!!!!….!..). ZIP! I am Ariel without a fairy tale… well plus… a couple other things but you get my point.

04.01.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Vegatables

Deathly Scalloped Potato Pizza

It’s barely spring and the apartment isn’t even warm yet, but these days every root vegetables in my kitchen seems to be in a hurry to grow up. There’s a pot that my cleaning lady set by the window with green stalks surging so high that I almost thought she was bribing me back (aww, you shouldn’t have…). No, the bottom lies the shallots I bought a few weeks back. And there’s those deceiving heads of garlic cloves each hiding inside its white jacket, only to be exposed when smashed open that they were secretly stretching out mini antennas to listen in on my conversations with my doughs (puff now, my little one… hush hush). Then there’re these baby potatoes. Oh my potato-babies… how it hurts me that they are in such hurry to grow up and leave my loving nest.

03.21.2013