No Knead Bread - Cranberry Walnut Wheat Bread

Kneading dough is a labor-intense task that doesn't always guarantee 100% satisfactory results.  When I first discovered the no knead bread making method, it was such a great surprise to me.


I was skeptical at first, but this recipe has never failed to produce delicious results.  All you need is a casserole dish and the following ingredients:

1.      330 g bread flour

2.      60 g whole wheat flour

3.      ¼ teaspoon salt

4.      1 teaspoon Active Dry Yeast

5.      10 sugar

6.      330 g ice-cold water

7.      30 g dried cranberry

8.      60 g chopped walnuts

Directions:
1. Combine the bread flour, wheat flour, salt, yeast, and sugar in a mixing bowl.  Add in water and mix with hand or a dough whisk.  Very wet dough is formed when dry ingredients are completely incorporated with water.
2. Add dried cranberry and chopped walnut, and fold in with a rubber spatula.
3. Cover the mixing bowl with a plastic bag and seal the opening.  Let it sit in room temperature for 12-16 hours (no more than 20 hours).  At the end of the rising period, the dough is filled with big bubbles and great sweet fragrance.
4. Transfer the dough onto a well-floured surface, dust some more bread flour on the dough, pat the dough or roll with a rolling pin to make flat oblong dough (about 1 cm thick).
5. Fold the dough at one-third to center from both sides of the long end, and fold it in half, dust some more whole wheat flour on the dough, cover loosely with a saran wrap and let it rest for 15 minutes.
6. Shape the dough into a round dough and transfer to a well floured (whole wheat flour) cloth (or into a well floured mixing bowl).  Cover with towel and let rise about 1-1/2 hours.
7. When the dough has risen for 1 hour, preheat oven with covered casserole dish in it to Fahrenheit 430 degrees.
8. Transfer the risen dough into the casserole dish, and bake with lid covered for 30 minutes.
9. Remove cover; bake for another 8-10 minutes.
10. Let cool completely on rack.

The bread comes out with crispy crust, soft and tasty inside.  I love it and plan to make more.




Reference - No Knead Bread Making: Breadtopia

Deep-fried Mixed Vegetables

It was in Indonesia when I had this dish for the first time. That was many years ago, my husband had a job assignment in Indonesia and our daughter was only few months old, we resided there for less than a year. We had very nice easy life there with housemaid and chauffeur.

One day our maid made this dish, my husband and I both liked it very much.  The maid told us it was called “goreng sayuran” in Indonesian, it means “deep-fried vegetables” in English.  This is a very common fast food sold at local street vendors.  Normally Indonesian they like to dip with hot chili sauce that was made with various chili peppers.  For us, we like it simply dip in soy sauce with chopped garlic.  This is the best dish I’ve learned in Indonesia though, one because the ingredients needed are very common, secondly, our whole family all love it.  Until now, every time I made this dish, it reminds us of our Indonesian maid, a lively and courteous young woman with very dark skin.

Normally, I like to use carrot (red), potato (yellow), green bean (green) and onion (white) these various vegetables with different colors.  Have them all cut or shredded into strings at about the same size.  These will not only look colorful, have the same texture, and they all get cooked in about the same time.  Sweet potato can also be used to substitute carrot (orange flesh) or potato (white flesh).


Ingredients:
1. 2 cups shredded carrot
2. 2 cups shredded potato 
3. 1 cup green beans, cut in 1.5” long sections
4. 1-1/2 cups onion strings
5. ¾ cup flour (all-purpose flour or cake flour)
6. ¾ cup ice-cold water
7. ½ teaspoon baking powder
8. 1 tablespoon oil
9. Frying oil

Seasonings:
Dash of salt and ground pepper

Dipping sauce:
2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon chopped garlic

Directions:
1. Have all vegetables cut and shredded, mixed in a big bowl (soak shredded potato in cold water for about 30 seconds, drain and pat dried with paper towel before mixing with other vegetables, this will prevent it turns brown before cooking)。
2. Lightly mix ingredients item 5 through 8 to make batter in a small mixing bowl (stop mixing as long as there’s no big lumps).

3. Heat the frying oil to very high, and then lower to medium high.  Add dash of salt and ground pepper in mixed vegetables and mix them well (don’t add too much salt and don’t add it too early, this will prevent too much liquid coming out of vegetables).  Add half of flour batter into the big bowl of vegetables, mix well with a big spoon, make sure every piece of vegetable is coating with flour batter.  A little more can be added until every piece of vegetable is coating with a thin layer of flour batter.  Pick up some batch mixed vegetables with a shallow cooking spoon (about ¾ full, don’t pick up too much batter, Tip 1).  Slowly let the vegetables slide into the oil against the siding of wok with a little pushing by chopsticks, hold the batch with chopsticks for several seconds until the vegetable is being set and formed.  Push the small batch away from siding of wok when one side is turning golden brown, flip side and continue frying (about 1-2 minutes each side). Remove, drain oil, dry excess oil on paper towel.  Do the same for all vegetables, little batch after little batch.
4. Best to serve with dipping sauce while it's warm.

Tip 1: Every small batch of vegetables should weave and stick together consisting of various colors.  Do not fry with too much batter in each spoonful that will form a thick cake at bottom and won’t get the crispy taste.

(pieces on the right are the bottom look with minimum batter)

Fried Bun with Sesame and Green Onion

This is an easy making bun which requires limited ingredients and simple procedures to follow, almost impossible to fail.  This bun is pan-fried with some oil at medium low heat, so the outside of the bun tastes crispy.  However, the inside of the bun is slowly cooked though during that time (like baking procedure), it tastes soft and fluffy. With sesame and green onion in every bite, it comes with unbelievable fragrance and flavor.  You can have it go with a meal, eat as a snack or as breakfast.

 
Dough Ingredients:
1. 600 g all-purpose flour
2. 315 g milk
3. 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
4. 2 tablespoons sugar
5. 1 teaspoon salt
6. 2 teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
7. 1 cup white sesame


Bun filling ingredients:
1. 3 cups chopped green onions
2. 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3. 1 teaspoon salt
4. ½ teaspoon ground pepper


Directions:
1. Have all dough ingredients (Tip 1, except white sesame) mixed in the mixing bowl, mix them well and knead into a round and smooth dough (or using Stand Mixer dough hook to knead for about 15 minutes).  Leave the dough in the mixing bowl covered with a damp cloth, and let it raise for 30 minutes.


2. Mix all filling ingredients in a small mixing bowl.

3. Cut the dough into small pieces, about 65 g to 70 g each. With a rolling pin, roll out the smaller dough to a oblong flat dough (about 6”x 7”), place one tablespoon green onion filling at one-third of the long side near your body (crossing the short side), brush the dough surface with some of the filling juice  (leave the edge dry), start wrapping up the filling and rolling the dough from your body toward outside.  Round the wrapped dough into a snail-like shape or gently tuck one end under another one.  Place the snail-like dough on a surface generously dusted with flour or lined with parchment paper to raise for 30 minutes.

4. Heat up 2 tablespoons oil to medium low temperature in a frying pan.  Place white sesame in a plate, pick up the raised dough while holding both ends together, dip in the sesame to have both sides covered with sesame, then place it in the frying pan.  Fried until one side is turning golden brown, flip over to another side and continue frying at medium low.  When second side is turning golden brown, gently press the bun with a spatula to see if the inside is still soft.  If both sides are brown but the inside is still not firm enough, lower the heat to let it stay in pan for another few minutes to make sure the dough inside is thoroughly cooked. You can also pick up the bun with a pair of tongs and roll the bun vertically at bottom of the pan to have siding slightly browned as well.  Remove and place it on a paper towel to absorb the excess oil.  Do 3 or 4 buns each batch, add oil if needed.

See the layers inside the bun!

Tip 1: Keep 20-30 g milk and add in gradually while kneading.  Various brands of flour may need different quantity of liquid.  Adjust flour and milk quantities until you can have a soft and smooth dough.

Pumpkin Soup with Leek

It’s filled with Halloween spirits everywhere in October. In North America, pumpkin is a very important, traditional part of the autumn harvest. It is used not only in Halloween decorations; it is also often made into various traditional festival foods, such as pie, bread or soup, for Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday.

Pumpkin is not only loaded with Vitamin A, it’s also a very good source of Vitamins B6, C, E and Dietary Fiber. This food is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol and Sodium. Passing by the loads of pumpkins on sale, I cannot help to get one for the pumpkin soup I’ve been craving for. I use two other ingredients, leek and celery, to balance out the heaviness and richness in pumpkin taste without adding much seasoning.

Ingredients:

1. 1 small pumpkin (around 2.5 lb.)
2. 1 bunch Leek
3. 1 stalk celery
4. 1 can (14 oz.) low sodium chicken broth
5. salt, ground pepper

Directions:
1. Put the whole pumpkin in steamer to steam for about 50 minutes or until tender. Cut the pumpkin in half, spoon out and discard the seeds and stringy portion. Peel the pumpkin, cut it into small pieces, put them into a food processor or a blender; puree with 1 can of low sodium chicken broth.
2. Cut leek diagonally in thin strings. Soak in water for a while and wash off the dirt.
3. Cut celery horizontally in 0.5 cm thin sections.

  


4. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in pot. Drain the leek and add it into pot, stir-fry until tender and fragrant. Add celery pieces, stir briefly. Add pumpkin puree and one can of water, season with salt and ground pepper. Once the soup comes to boil, lower the heat to medium low and simmer for about 3 minutes. Remove and serve.

Simple Version of Dry Cooked Green Beans

Dry Cooked Green Beans (亁煸四季豆 Gan-Bian-Si-Ji-Dou) was originated from Western China (like Sichuan or Hunan foods).  Normally it cooked with a small quantity of ground pork, heavy seasonings and using lots of oil to deep fry the green beans first.  Since small quantity of ground pork is not always available, and also for a healthier concern, I developed this simply version of Dry Cooked Green Beans.  This dish is not only easy to cook, it would also please the kids who normally don't care for much vegetables.

Ingredients:
1. 1 lb. green beans
2. 1-1/2 tablespoons minced garlic
3. oil
4. salt

Directions:
1. Remove ends and veins on both sides of green beans, break them into 1-1/2" to 2-1/2" long sections.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons oil to hot, cook the green beans with constant stirring to avoid burning (Tip 1).  Stir-fry the green beans until they turn soft (show wrinkles in appearance) and light brown in color, add salt (Tip 2), lower the heat to medium high and continue to sir-fry briefly.  Push green beans to one side of the wok, add 1 tablespoon oil and stir-fry minced garlic until fragrant.  Mix green beans and garlic, remove and serve.

Tip 1: 1 tablespoon water can be added when necessary to avoid burning, but don't add too early in this cooking process, otherwise it will take longer for the green beans to turn soft and brown.
Tips 2: Sprinkle a thin layer of salt first.  Taste and add salt if needed after mixing with garlic.