Baked Lunchbox

Italian 拉面… kinda

I learned a lot from these past three weeks: from food bites to real-life scenarios. Everything was just swell. With busy Saturdays at the kitchen, making and preparing food, mainly pasta and risotto. 

It was incredible how I found passion here in food and now I feel like it’s going somewhere up ahead. I was and still am motivated. 

Early mornings never felt so great and productive; the smell of onions and garlics sizzling, sound of boiling of pasta water and the many hands kneading different pasta dough. 

With head-chef Uli, sous-chef Mike and apprentices Michelle and Maria around, I learned so much from them. But I thank my parents mostly for letting me do what I want to do :)

This Cannelloni was the best dish we made, the Tortellini would be the runner-up. I’ll be going to make one of those again soon and let’s see where I’ll go from there.

Even if my classes are over, I am still going to continue on my kitchen adventures and experiments. This is the only way I’ll be able to keep up and move along. 

But for now, heavy exams and school work up ahead. I’m dead X_X

Chocolate Pull-Apart Bread + LOTR + Mumford & Sons

I was baking 2 things last Saturday, Chocolate Pull-Apart Bread and Ginger cookies (will post later) and it took me until 2AM to wrap up everything! Whew! Good thing The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy Soundtrack kept me company! :) I finished all 3 soundtracks + Mumford And Sons album… imagine THAT’S how long it took me to bake this bread! xD

Mumford & Sons

Anyway, so here’s what happened:

Prepare all ingredients all the time before starting. This helps save time and energy, and it’s just really easy to bake with everything in front of you.

Melt the butter together with the milk on a sauce pan. Bring until just simmer.

Then using a swirl attachment of the mixer, mix the melted butter + milk to the flour and other dry ingredients.

Transfer all the batter into a well-greased bowl. Cover it with a clean humid cloth/towel and let it sit for about an hour until it doubles in size. This is where all the waiting begins!

I waited, but instead I made cookies! Haha! ;)

Prepare your work table and flour it. Flour it all over! I mean it! Or else the kneading will not go smoothly.  So after an hour, knead your dough which supposed to be doubled in size. Knead it properly. If it sticks to your hand, flour it. 

Just keep on kneading even if the dough is very sticky. It’s okay that it’s sticky. Knead. Knead. Knead. Flour your hands several times if needed. 

Until your dough comes together. It’s soft to the touch, not sticky, doesn’t easily fall apart and whole. See my work table, it’s all floured up! ;)

Put this ball of dough back to the greased bowl and cover it with the clean humid cloth/towel and let it sit for about 10 minutes before the next step.

Roll it out to more like a rectangular shape than a square, and sprinkle brown sugar/cinnamon/anything you want to add to the bread.

I also added bits of chopped dark chocolate and white chocolate! Omnomnom!

Slice it up and stack to pre-buttered loaf pan. Sprinkle the remaining sugar mix on top.

Let it sit again! This time, the pan should be standing vertically and also covered with a clean humid towel/cloth. Let it sit for about 45 minutes. 

See how flat the slices are, they’re just the same level with the pan… then POOF! Take a look inside the oven!

I just enjoy watching the bread as it rises up and it looks so cool every time it doubles in size. Just look at that! Before, it was just sticky icky dough, and now it turned to pastry bread! Amazing, isn’t it! :)

All the waiting and effort put to this bread, it was worth it! Because I like how it turned out; soft to the bite and not too sweet. With the right soundtrack to motivate me and keep me company, I can do anything! So you can too! :)

ISCAHM Day 2

Day 2 of the Pasta & Risotto class I’m attending and so far, I’m enjoying every single bits of it, the time spent on cooking and munching on the food when the chef’s not looking ;)

So yesterday, we cooked 5 pasta dishes and 1 risotto dish with 6 different kinds of pasta doughs…

Dough: 

- saffron

- squid ink/black

- spinach

- beetroot

- plain

- chocolate!!

Pasta & Risotto:

- Macaroni and Ham Gratin

- Mushroom and Spinach Raviolo alla Piemontese

- Fettuccine Alfredo

- Ham and Herb Stuffed Tortellini in Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

- Farfalle Pasta allo Scoglio

- Saffron Risotto

The first half of the session, the kitchen was just quiet. Everyone was chopping away whatever vegetables, ham or seafood that needed chopping. 

The second half, we all got hands-on and dirty. With flour, I mean. Busy, busy, busy! Kneaded, sheeted, stuffed, shaped the pasta doughs…

Stuffed Tortellinis (Spinach Pasta Dough)

Bow-Tie Pasta (Beetroot and Squid Ink Pasta Dough)

Ravioli at the back (Saffron & Chocolate Pasta Dough) & Fettuccine (all kinds of doughs)

SECRET WEAPONS: you’ll see…

I can sense a pattern here.. Remember on my old post, Chef Uli also did this trick with slices of garlic bread… and now he used bread sticks. Now we know it’s from Chef Uli if it’s styled like this ;)

Farfalle Pasta allo Scoglio, aka Seafood Ragout, was the one dish that stood out among all prepared. Well, I personally liked the Tortellini but there were just so many ingredients used on this seafood dish that it was the tastiest. The clams were perfect and the bow-tie pasta colors were so cute! :)

What made me like this Macaroni & Ham Gratin was that we used Gruyere Cheese for its sauce. It had this tangy and salty flavors mixed with a little bit of the typical cheese smell, which a lot of people do not like, but I like it. It’s what makes the cheese, cheese! 

We made a lot of Macaroni Gratin! 4 dishes of it and the little white polka-dotted blue dish is so cute!

Toxic morning, but it was all fun and scrumptious. Got to take home a lot of food this time; I was prepared, I brought a lot of food containers xD Next Saturday again for the third and last session, I will miss this class therefore I will spend my time cooking and baking more! :D

This all happened in the morning just in time for lunch time, hold on to those spatulas and knives for more baking adventures that happened on the same day but on the evening. Chocolate Pull-Apart Bread and Ginger Cookies soon! :)