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Posts Tagged ‘oven’

Eating My Way Through Winter: Coconut Spice Bread

December 12, 2012 by MaryAnne

This is going to be a new series, if I can get my act together.

At the moment my act is very obviously not together, but more about that later.

I’ve decided that the best way to deal with an unwanted winter is to ignore it entirely, to stay in bed as much as possible, and to bake as if I was in a place full of trees, fresh air and lovely white blankets of snow, rather than in a huge city where the daily pollution readings declare it Unhealthy and where it doesn’t tend to snow but it sure loves to be cold and damp.

This obviously means I need to bake more. I need to make more warm and happy comfort foods. I need to totally regain all of the 8kg I lost doing that detox back in October. I’m nothing if not diligent. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Eating My Way Through Winter, Uncategorized | Tags: Autumn,OMFG Yum,oven,Toast,Toaster Oven,Yeast Bread | 10 Comments
Killing My Crock Pot Softly With Yeast Breads

September 26, 2012 by MaryAnne

I’m not, I admit, one of those pretty food writers. I’m not talking about me and my bad hair and naked face and un-manicured nails, mind you- I’m talking about my food styling abilities, or lack thereof.

I’m also not good at pretending that things turned out okay. Like that time I made those Suzhou hockey pucks. Or the biryani that was a bit, well, stodgier than anticipated. Or the crackers that weren’t quite as crackery as hoped. As long as it’s on the high end of edible, I’ll post it, looks be damned.

Look, irregularly lumpy scones!

Which is why I’m writing about my Great Crockpot Bread Experiment.

Which, well, didn’t go quite as planned. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Uncategorized | Tags: crock pot,OMFG Yum,oven,Toaster Oven,Yeast Bread | 4 Comments
Made in Jiānádà: Suzhou Porky Mooncakes

August 31, 2012 by MaryAnne

Hello. I’ve been away for a while, haven’t I?

It’s been a very hot, busy summer, much of it nowhere near a kitchen to call my own.

We were in Morocco for a month, which was lovely in spite of the fact that it was 46 degrees in the shade AND Ramadan for most of the time we were there. Whoops.

Anyway. I’ve been back in Shanghai for nearly three weeks now and have yet to dust off the oven and check to see if it even still works. Poor thing. I’ve made chili and tacos and a ton of wok tortillas, but those aren’t new things so I can’t exactly re-write posts for them just for the sake of it.

This one… this is one I made back in Canada just before I left, but never posted.

Why?

Because I royally screwed it up. Kind of. I made Suzhou pork hockey pucks.

You know, the Canadian interpretation. Like, say, chop suey or bison fried rice.

Apparently my skillful light touch and intuitive cooking skills don’t apply to pastry.

I love Suzhou mooncakes. In China, however, it isn’t worth the energy to actually make them at home because they are so good, so fresh and so cheap here.

For the past two mornings, on my long, hot trek out to the Entry-Exit Bureau in deepest, darkest Pudong to renew my residence permit, I’ve stopped at a tiny stand at the bottom of our street to buy a little brown bag containing exactly two mooncakes, still hot and flakey and filled with lovely, juicy, umami seasoned ground pork, fresh from the oven. 6 kuai (under a buck) for a very solid breakfast.

I was too busy eating them to take pictures, but below is one I took a few weeks ago when I was actually in Suzhou. See the little red stamp on the ones below? They stamp their mooncakes, yes. Much more low key than all the fiddly crimping and dough-engraving that goes on with the classical lotus paste and duck egg filled Cantonese style ones that are exchanged (and then re-gifted and re-gifted, like fruitcake) during the mid-autumn festival (coming very soon). (more…)

Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Made in Jianada, Uncategorized | Tags: Autumn,Canada,Chinese,garlic,oven,Pork,Toaster Oven | 5 Comments
HangZhou Rearranged Chocolate Apple Cake

October 24, 2011 by MaryAnne

I actually left the flat this past weekend. In fact, I even left Shanghai. For the past two months, I’ve been like the love child of an eccentric hermit and a domestic goddess, holed up in our cozy flat, dusted lightly with flour, filled with coffee, doing odd things, barefoot in the kitchen.

But a girl has to work sometimes. It’s unfortunate but it’s true.

So, sometime on Saturday morning, I went to Hangzhou. Unlike every other time I’ve been to Hangzhou, it wasn’t raining. However, since I was there for work and not for pleasure, the skies and their activities were irrelevant.

Before I tell you more about this trip and show you how to bake a particular cake in which I made substitutions for pretty much every ingredient, I want to show you some photos I took during a previous trip to Hangzhou. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Sweet Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Apples,Autumn,Cake,Chocolate,OMFG Yum,oven,Toaster Oven,Yogurt | 8 Comments
Chewy Oatmeal Cookies, to Stave Off the Ennui

October 19, 2011 by MaryAnne

For those of you who notice such things, my other blog, the impractical one, has been lying fallow for a while now. I have no excuses. It’s not as though I’m swamped with work these days either. In fact, October is turning out to be quite possibly one of the laziest months of my entire life, after infancy and possibly early toddlerhood. No, the blog is just sitting there, all lumpen and bloggy, losing followers because I think I’ve run out of things to say about Shanghai or about expattery or mops or whatever.

We’ve been in Shanghai nearly 3 years now. Three years! And in our current flat for nearly 17 months– a record of stability for me. In Turkey, I changed flats every single year for six years.

But here…things are very stable. We have appliances! We have (get this!) a vacuum cleaner. We have a beer shop around the corner who know me by name (Hiya Cedric! Hi CheersIn!).

We’re kinda settled, at least for another year, if not more. And it’s pleasant. We have a lovely flat. Our neighbourhood is interesting, with old lane ways draped with laundry and feathery chicken executions and floppy fish in baby bath tubs, scores of bound crabs, and lots of bicycles. It’s noticeably China but not overwhelmingly so.

These are our neighbours across the street.

And this is the alleyway next to our building.

But, if you’ve been reading my blogs for a while now, you already know these things. I’ve already written about them. Months ago. Many times, in fact. And I really don’t want to get repetitive here.

As you may know, my career track (*ahem*) has shifted somewhat in the past few months and I now have a lot more free time than I’d anticipated. This month, I’ve, um, marked 17 essays so far. And this weekend I’ll do a day and a half of speaking tests in HangZhou. And next week, I’ll mark about 45 essays. And that, my friends, will be my total output for the month of October.

So you’d think with all this time that I’d be writing up a storm, being productive, finishing my novel about water monsters and goats, going to the gym and making full use of my oft neglected membership (I mean, really, it’s only a ten minute walk away!). But you’d be wrong.

I have nothing to say. Really. Or rather, nothing new or interesting or intelligent to say. About Shanghai. About China. About water monsters or goats. Empty.

About chapatis and aioli and pumpkins, I still have many words left to burble out. Which is why this particular blog is getting a lot more action than the other one. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Sweet Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Chocolate,cookies,OMFG Yum,oven,Toaster Oven | 10 Comments
Woks and Bagels!

September 19, 2011 by MaryAnne

Sometimes I overwhelm myself with impulsiveness. I’m prone to throwing myself into projects head first with great enthusiasm until I get part way in and realize that 1. I don’t have all the ingredients/parts/equipment needed for it; 2. that in my eager haste to dive in immediately, I hadn’t fully absorbed the requirements of the process; 3. I make a great big mess of it all and walk away and make a new cup of coffee.

Kind peoples of the Intarwebs, I’d like to introduce you to my attempt at making bagels in Shanghai. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Bagels,Buckwheat,OMFG Yum,oven,wok,Yeast Bread | 11 Comments
All My Stuff: What I Have In My Chinese Kitchen

September 17, 2011 by MaryAnne

Sometimes I think I’m the world’s worst expat. I live in China now (and before that, in Turkey and South Africa among other places) and yet I still insist on craving and cooking things that are utterly unChinese. If I was a decent human being, I’d immerse myself in Chinese cooking and teach myself how to wrangle tofu skins and beef tendon and jellyfish.

However, when I venture outside the flat, I get enough of that. At home, I want bread and dairy and egg noodles and stews involving Guinness and potatoes. I want chocolate cake. I want peanut butter cookies. I want garam masala and biryani. When I cook, I prefer to make comfort foods. In restaurants, I’ll try just about anything. This blog, as you may have gathered by now, is all about what I make at home. You will not see any chicken feet or bullfrog hotpot here. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: crock pot,equipment,oven,rice cooker,wok | 12 Comments