Homemade Mantou

So I finally got around to making homemade mantou (I said I would in my previous post about Province). I think mine need a little bit of work - they seemed a little denser than I would have liked, but I'm sure my grandma would be proud. I sauteed some scallions in a little bit of teryaki sauce and mixed it in with the dough before forming them into buns. I was hoping that the scallions would add a little bit of flavor since I wasn't going to make them into meat sandwiches. I also toasted some sesame seeds, in which I dipped the buns before steaming.

The recipe that I got off the internet says that it makes 32 buns (I think it really makes 16). I halved this recipe and made 8 buns.

Here's the recipe in full for 16 buns:

1 tablespoon yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water
4 cups all-purpose flour

In a small bowl, sprinkle yeast and sugar over 4 tablespoons of the warm water and leave it for 15 minutes. Place the flour in a bowl and make a well in the center. Pour in the yeast mixture and the remaining water. Mix everything to a dough. Turn it onto a floured board and knead until smooth.

Return dough to the bowl, cover and let it stand in a warm place for about an hour or until doubled in size. Punch down, cover again and let it stand for 20 minutes longer.

Knead the dough again and shape into rolls (I found that using a bit of flour helps the shaping). Bring the water in the bottom of a steamer to a boil. Place the rolls in the steamer, leaving a 1- inch gap between them. Cook for 10 minutes, or until firm and cooked through. Serve them hot.

scallions sauteed

sesame seeds toasted and on plate ready for dipping

the dough mixed with scallions

Since I didn't have a proper steamer, I used this stainless steam vegetable steamer instead.

I turned it upside down and place it in the pot. the three metal prongs acted as a trivet.

the buns formed and dipped in sesame seeds and....

placed in the pot on top of the steamer. Covered and steamed for 10 minutes.

Voila! Homemade mantou buns. Check out the steam rising off those puppies! (I couldn't fit all the buns on one plate so had to make the remaining two on the second round.)

What do you think of the 'atmosphere' of the restaurant?

dinnerinthesky.com


Just read on Mark Bittman's Bitten blog about Dinner in the Sky, where you can have dinner 164 feet up in the air. The table seats-or should I say straps in 22 people and there's space in the middle for the chef and waiters. Dinner lasts 8 hours (not sure why this is?) for the low total sum of $11,444 (this doesn't include extras such as catering and gratuity!).

The obvious question is (and a lot of comments on the Bitten blog have asked the very same), how do they go to the bathroom (and especially with dinner lasting 8 hours)?

The website doesn't offer any answers, but it does have some interesting videos. One showed a separate platform with a pianist and violinist. I suppose music is more important than anyone's bladder.

Kitchen Nightmares

I just finished watching Volume 1 (includes Series 1 & 2) of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Aside from the menacing DVD cover and cheesy opening graphics animation, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the show and now have a little crush on Gordon Ramsay. [Interesting side note: while I was doing research about his background today I found out Ramsay was a professional football player at age 15!]

Kitchen Nightmares has also convinced me that US versions of existing UK shows aren't as good (some would argue that the American office is just as good as the British office, but I'm still not convinced).

Based on what I have seen on Fox of Hell's Kitchen, everyone would probably think Gordon Ramsay is an asshole. Sure, he swears and can be mean in Kitchen Nightmares, but he's giving constructive criticism and I feel that he honestly cares about and wishes success upon each restaurant he's visiting. This kind of sincerity rare for scripted television shows let alone for reality ones - I wasn't surprised to find out that it has won both a BAFTA and an Emmy.

Kitchen Nightmares is still being shown on Channel 4 in the UK and also on BBC America (too bad I don't have cable!). I supposed I could watch the US Kitchen Nightmares, but maybe I'll just wait for the next DVD to be released.

The most expensive coffee in the world comes out of an animal's butt

Sorry for all the posts related to coffee (been obsessed with it lately), but I just found out that the most expensive coffee in the world comes out of the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (pictured left).

They eat the coffee cherries, of which the coffee beans pass through unharmed and are collected from the floor of the Sumatran jungles, and poof! you have Kopi Luwak. Kopi is Indonesian for coffee and Luwak is the local name for the civet.

Apparently (according to Wikipedia), Kopi Luwak ranges from $120 to $600 per pound. A quick search shows that a pound of Arabica roast on Animalcoffe.com is $180. Yowsers!

So why does it taste so good? The civet has evolved to pick out the ripest and best beans for consumption, and also, according to this article, the acids in the civet's stomach breaks down and leaches out some of the protein (proteins are what makes coffee bitter during the roasting process).

Mike the knife sharpener

While walking on Adelphi Street in Brooklyn this weekend, I heard a clanging. I turned around and spotted (my first time!) the green truck. It was Mike the knife sharpener! I had heard about a guy who drove around banging on bell, and people running down from their apartments with knives and scissors to be sharpened.

Apparently, according to reviews on Chowhound, a few people have had bad experiences with Mike's. I was too far away from our house to have him sharpen any of our knives. Have any of you had your knives sharpened by Mike?

Here is an article about Mike published in the New York Times two years ago.