Now that the roses are blooming, we can start making all the edible rose things. I used a bit of rose extract, lemon extract, and lemon oil in these lollipops, then sprinkled in dried rose petals and luster dust. Fit for a princess.
Now, I really don’t know how you’re supposed to work fast enough to make a whole batch of lollipops before the sugar cools too much. I got about halfway through, and then I needed to reheat, which of course caramelizes the sugar more. So the second batch of lollipops is distinctly caramel in flavor, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but the rose & lemon notes do get lost. I think I’m just not fast enough, and should work in half-batches.
I mean, not that I’m planning to make a ton of lollipops, these were just for the June treat boxes, but still, good to know. Maybe we’ll put them in a Serendib Confections cookbook someday.
More playing with sugar syrup. Now I have to make a cake so I can use some of this to decorate it. Apparently sugar art doesn’t keep very long, tending to melt (you can store it in an airtight container with desiccant to help it last a little while longer, but still), but maybe I can manage some cake for Sunday dinner this weekend.
That third photo is all one piece. It reminds me of Gallifreyan Time Lords.
I had some sugar syrup left, so I thought I would try to do sugar art for the first time. I’m here to tell you, it’s not as simple as they make it look on GBBO! I’m honestly not sure how you’re supposed to get the sugar traceries out of the bowls without breaking them.
The bowls are greased, but the sugar seemed to cling anyway — maybe I should’ve been more careful to grease the rim too?
The sugar also collected at the base, which is okay, but not the tracery I was hoping for. I think that might be because it was still a little too hot and liquid, though — this was at 300-degrees F (for the lollipops), and maybe sugar art should be at a slightly lower temp?
Harvested pansies and violas today after doing the morning’s hour of weeding. We’re getting to the end of the season for them, though they’ll come back in the coolness of fall, so if you pull them out of planters to do summer annuals, do stick them in the ground somewhere if you can. Now is the perfect time to cut some for:
– candying (egg whites and superfine sugar, perfect for the top of a cake or cupcakes)
– pressing (to make botanical art — bookmarks, cards, etc.)
– adding them to cookies (look for pansy shortbread)
– making flower lollipops
– adding them to a Vietnamese spring roll wrap
– just tossing them into salads
I harvested all the pretty ones, cut off all the fading ones, and will probably get at least one more flush before it gets too hot, fingers crossed.
If you didn’t plant pansies or violas or violets this year, do think about them for the fall, or next spring. You can plant them very early, since they can tolerate a little frost, so they really give months and months and months of pleasure. One of the most hard-working flowers in my garden, and so cheery. Now I want to write an ode to the pansy…
Hey, folks. You’re all cordially invited to this event.
Cooking Kale Sambol : Online Event
Thursday, June 11, 2020
7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Travel to a distant, delicious land: Sri Lanka! Waves of immigration from China, England, the Netherlands, and Portugal influenced the unique island cuisine of Sri Lanka.
Professor and author Mary Anne Mohanraj will give a brief introduction to Sri Lankan food history, review key ingredients (including where to order them), and teach you a few recipes from her new Sri Lankan cookbook, *A Feast of Serendib*, which features her mother’s cooking and her American adaptations.
Roti or love cake?? Hey, bakers. So at Serendib Kitchen, we’re planning on two things coming up soon:
– a baking video created as a sort of joint demonstration / interview with Pooja Makhijani (probably no audience / participants for this one)
– a bake-a-long (up to 20 participants who sign up in advance, get the recipe and ingredients prepped, then bake together in a Zoom call)
The two options I’d like to do early on are:
a) roti
b) love cake
If you have a preference for which of those we do for the bake-a-long, let me know? Thanks!
The bake-a-long will be held at 7 p.m. CST on either a weeknight / Sunday, at the request of Gin Grahame, who is in a far away time zone. If you have a preference for a particular weeknight / Sunday, let me know that too.
This first one will be free, but later ones may morph into paid classes. First time around, you are my guinea pigs.
Hope everyone reading had a quiet night. I was grieved to read of a death at the North Riverside mall yesterday; I hope we can swiftly move forward towards justice without further bloodshed.
It’s the last week of school here; I woke up before Anand for a change, and decided to exert myself a bit to make a nice breakfast — waffles and sausages. The kids have done okay with remote / unschooling during the pandemic, but they’ll be relieved when it’s over, and so will we. I thought they could use a little strengthening food as we contend with the final week.
I’ve recently discovered that waffles + seeni sambol + syrup = delicious. You don’t even need butter, as there’s enough oil / ghee in the seeni sambol. It’s so good, if I had a little cafe, I’d put it on the brunch menu. Serve with fresh mangoes if you can.
Plan for today — finish reading Sorcerer to the Crown, which continues a delightful, ridiculous romp. The next book in my queue is the graphic novel, Vanni, centered on the Sri Lankan conflict, which is rather more somber; it helps to have something light to interleave between the darker pages. A little sweetness.
Exercise soon and a walk through the garden, then by 9, I hope to be settled in my writing shed for the first day of summer writing. Minimal goal of 1000 words for the day (about an hour of writing), although I’m hoping to get quite a bit more done, as I have a story overdue to my local workshop; if I can knock that out today, or at least enough of it to be worth showing them, I will. It’s a story about riots and revolution; hoping I have the heart and mind to do it justice.
Wishing you strength and sweetness for your battles today, and rejuvenating rest when you need it.
So, if you remember, I made some badly-overcooked cod. I can’t stand throwing out food, but I also hate eating bad food. I was hoping I could figure out a way to make it vaguely palatable, so I went looking, and it seemed like the uses for overcooked cod mostly fell into one of these three options:
– mashing them up with potatoes, maybe rolling in bread crumbs, and frying them into a cutlet / patty kind of thing
– chopping them up with mayo, etc. for a fish salad kind of thing
– making kedgeree
Well, kedgeree was way more attractive to me than the first two, so I was obviously going to go with that.
“According to “Larousse Gastronomique”, what we call kedgeree originated from a concoction of spiced lentils, rice, fried onions and ginger known as khichiri dating back to the 14th century and eaten across India. The early colonists developed a taste for it, as it reminded them of nursery food. Both khichiri and fish became mainstays of the Raj breakfast table and, in time, their Indian cooks integrated the two. Eggs, believed to have been introduced to the Indian kitchen repertoire by conquering Mughals centuries earlier, were later added as a garnish. When the dish travelled back to Edwardian country homes, via letters and regiments, the lentils were usually left out and flaked smoked haddock added in (the Scots take credit for this). Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria were especially partial to kedgeree.” – 1843 Magazine
I had another problem, though — I’d made a lot of marinade for the fish, and I didn’t want to waste it. All that good onion-ginger-garlic-spiced goodness! So I wanted to turn it into a sauce. Now, remember, you had raw fish sitting in that marinade, so if you do this, be sure to bring it up to a boil for at least five minutes at some time in the process.
But what I did was start with heating oil in a pan, adding the marinade, and trying to sort of sauté it, because the raw onion-ginger-garlic was very intense. That sort of worked? Even after ten minutes or so of sautéing, it was still fairly intense. But then I added some chopped cherry tomatoes, some ketchup, some coconut milk, checked the seasonings, and simmered it all for a while, and eventually, it turned into a reasonable curry sauce.
Then it was just a matter of flaking the fish (it looks nice, doesn’t it? You can’t tell it’s rubbery by looking), adding some frozen peas, simmering that together for a bit, and then stirring in rice and hard-boiled eggs. Kedgeree!
Now, would I serve this to anybody else? No. Because the fish is still chewy and sad. But it’s in tiny shreds and at least sufficiently disguised by everything else that I’m now willing to eat it, and this rest of it is delicious, so we’re going to call this a win.
So, this was kind of a disaster, trying to make Sri Lankan marinated cod, baked in banana leaves, because the fish itself did not cook well. But the overall *process* was okay, I think, so I’m documenting.
I started with some onions, ginger, garlic, finger hot chilies, pureed them in the food processor, added lime juice to make a marinade. Also seasonings. So far, so good, right?
The tricky part was adding the cod to the marinade. I’m not so familiar with this process, but I googled, and instructions said marinate at least 30 minutes, but longer is fine. And I was busy that day, so I ended up marinating for 4 hours or so. Which I think was bad, because I think it essentially half-cooked the cod, like ceviche.
Another problem was that the cod has been previously frozen, and I’ve done a lot of cooking fish from frozen before, like tilapia, but apparently it is trickier to cook cod from frozen? At least when I googled afterwards, I found a lot of people complaining about it.
The sadness here is that the end result had good flavor, but the texture of the fish was terrible. It looks fine, but that’s a lie — even the nice, flaky-looking fish is actually rubbery-sad.
I might try this again sometime, but if I do, I’m going to try it with fresh cod, and only marinate for 30 minutes (before baking for 15-20), and see whether that takes care of it.
Food brainstorming help? Specifically, I’m getting ready to start making items for the Patreon June subscription boxes, and I realized that I’m not sure what food items will be safe to ship in heat.
Especially since even Priority Mail shipping seems to sometimes be delayed a few days due to the pandemic — I’m imagining a box sitting in 90 degrees for several days. Chocolates & marshmallows won’t survive that, even if I included an ice pack.
I’m looking at what Harry & David ships for ideas.
***
I think it should be safe to ship:
– cookies and brownies
– spiced nuts
– jams and chutneys (following proper canning procedures in advance)
– herbal tea blends (tisane)
– and of course, curry powder
***
I’m not sure about how these will hold up:
– scones and muffins
– our milk toffee (which is basically fudge)
– soft caramels
– lollipops and other hard candies
Thoughts? I’m going to spend more time researching food safety guidelines for this, but if I happen to have any experts reading this, would appreciate the advice!