From Gastrolab with Love: Cranberry-Orange-Oat-Flax Seed Scones

The holiday season brought me ample time and a well-stocked, usable kitchen.  I was thinking of things to do to kill time, and baking comes to mind.  

On New Year's Eve, I got a text from my brother asking whether I would like to head to his friend's place for a Space Needle firework viewing New Year's Eve party.  The conversation went approximately as follow: 

Bro:   Friend has a New Year's Eve party.  Wanna come?  By the way, are you making scones?

Me:    Yeah.  I was planning to test some substitutions on a recipe.  

Bro:   What are the scones for?  

Me:    Killing time?  

Bro:   That reminds me:  I need to bring some stuff to the party and I don't know what to bring...

Me:    I can make extra...  

Bro:   Can you?  By the way, is this plain or with stuff in it? 

Me:   Cranberry oats.  

So...  That's how I got committed into making the scones.  I was a bit hesitant because this is truly a new test recipe that I haven't tried and I'm about the release the kraken...  

The exact recipe I used is as follow.  This should cut about 16 normal size scones, or 24 mini scones.  See the description after the procedure on how to simplify the recipe.  

340 g  Whole wheat bread flour (~ 2.4 C)

150 g  Flax seed meal (~ 1.1 C)

100 g  Sugar (~1/2 C) 

1/2 t     Salt 

1.5 t     Baking soda

2 t        Baking powder 

5/8 C   Unsalted butter, cold (that's about 1 stick plus 2 tablespoons)

6 T       Virgin coconut oil, room temperature (solid) 

120 g  Rolled oats (~1.5 C) 

2          Zest of oranges, chopped into fine shreds.  No white parts from the orange please!

1 C      Plain Greek Yogurt 

1/2 C  Milk 

1 C     Dried cranberries 

1/4 - 1/2 C Coarse sugar (demerara, sugar-in-the-raw works great) 

Now, the procedure: 

1.   Coat the dried cranberries and orange zest with a little bit of bread flour 

2.   Mix bread flour, flax seed meal, salt, sugar (not the coarse sugar), baking powder, baking soda, and rolled oats together 

3.   Add dried cranberries and orange zest to #2.  Mix.  

4.   Cut butter and coconut oil to small pieces and dump into #3 

5.   Using your hands or pastry cutter, knead the butter and coconut oil into #3.  Make sure the fats are thoroughly cut into #3.  If it's properly kneaded, you should be able to form the mixture in the fist of your hands when you squeeze on it.  

6.   If it's hot outside, place #5 in the fridge to chill so that the fats would solidify again.  

7.   Mix Greek yogurt and milk together until smooth 

8.   Preheat your oven to 375F.  Line baking trays with parchment paper.  

9.   Pour a thin layer of coarse sugar on a flat plate and set it next to your dough-working station. 10. Mix #5 with #7 with your hands until the dough just formed.  Adjust liquid level as need to make sure the dough is not sticky or too dry.  DO NOT OVER-KNEAD!

11.  Toss #10 onto a lightly floured working surface.  Cut #10 into somewhere between 16 - 24 pieces in the shapes you like.  I usually do round disks or triangles.  

12.  Press the pieces from #11 onto the plate of coarse sugar individually.  Try to press and coat around all sides except the bottom.  Place sugar-coated pieces onto baking trays.  Add more coarse sugar onto the plate as-needed.  

13.  Put baking trays in the oven for ~15 - 20 minutes, or until the scones are done.  

As you can see, the recipe is a bit more complicated than normal.  You can make the following changes below to turn the recipe into a simpler one:  

A.  Replace whole wheat bread flour and flax seed meal entirely with all purpose flour.  

B.  Replace virgin coconut oil with butter

C.  Replace milk and plain Greek yogurt with plain drinkable kefir, and adjust the total liquid level down to approximately 1 1/3C, depending on how the dough looks.  

Of course, if you make changes on A (and maybe B), the scones would not be as "healthy."  B is debatable depending on the current reputation of "healthy fats" a.k.a. butter vs. coconut oil:  what's healthier? media hype.  I call the current version "sugar-coated poison" because it is mostly healthy minus the heaping loads of sugar.  

Also, the flax seed meal part can be substituted with oat flour (tried and works), almond meal (haven't tried, but should work), or any other non-gluten filler material.  This works because the whole wheat bread flour contains just enough gluten to hold up the scones, but not enough to make it bread-like.  That is why if you remove the flax seed meal, you should use all purpose flour instead.  The texture would be all wrong if you use all bread flour.  

As for the coconut oil, I notice that it doesn't soften like butter when touched, but rather have a sharper phase change point.  You may need to work a little harder to break the coconut oil into pieces during the kneading fat process (step 5).  I haven't tried using all coconut oil on this, but in theory it should work.  I think the pastry would be less flaky though.  

If you happen to have buttermilk around, you can also use buttermilk in place of plain kefir.  I just figured that you can drink the kefir/eat the Greek yogurt but can't drink the buttermilk so I make that change.  My family would not drink kefir so I bought Greek yogurt and milk which I know would be consumed before expiration date.  

Keep the dough somewhat chilled before you place everything in the oven would be a good practice as the fats would melt and the gas-forming reactions would be faster under warm temperature.  Chilling the dough would slow the reaction somewhat and keep the fats from melting.  

Hope you enjoy this recipe and happy new year!  In case you wondered, the scones were a hit!

PS  Thanks family and friends for being my guinea pigs!  Your feedback is greatly appreciated!  

Happy new year! Time to write a post...

Wow!  It has been a year since I wrote!  I traveled a lot past year and didn't have time to update this blog...  

This Christmas/winter holiday season I was finally able to live the life of a rich wife*:  shopping, resting, and partying galore!  Also, I was able to spend some time making food.  I'll be sharing a scone recipe in just a moment.  

*Rich wife only in the sense that I contribute to our economy by spending money on various things...  not that I actually married some rich guy.  

Sorry for not posting....

I have been neglecting this blog for a while.  There're some big changes happening in my life right now which have prevented me from posting anything.  The closest-to-acceptable excuse is that my trusty MacBook Pro finally bites the dust (literally-- I believe the dust clogs up the GPU fan, which causes the board to overheat and died).  As the MBP follows the path of the dust to the graveyard, all the photos I have taken for various soon-to-be published entries has gone with it.  I'm working on getting my info from the hard drive, so hopefully I can pull those photos out of food heaven and bring them back.  I still need a new computer though, but would have to pace myself on the purchases, much like pacing yourself at a buffet counter....


Stay tuned for more updates.  I will have them somehow...

What a Feast: Rosemary Focaccia (vegetarian)

I just realized I haven't posted on this blog for a very (!) long time.  My jet-setting life has prevented me from doing some serious blog posts, so here's a short one.  I bought some awesome deli meats from Goose the Market in Indianapolis, IN (official website, yelp review) on my latest escapade.  I picked up some very soft baguette in the Italian Market area of Philly, but I made sandwiches with all of those.  I came home staring at the deli meat and realized I had no more bread to make sandwiches with!  While the fruit-and-meat plate (no cheese, because I don't want to be suffering all the time) idea is always classy, sometimes a little grain goes a long way in the stomach.  I wanted to buy some focaccia for the sandwich, but then the cold weather made a total wimp out of me and grounded me at home.  I looked for a recipe online and found this, which was simple enough.  


I did use dried rosemary instead of fresh because I don't have fresh ones on hand (and did you miss the part where the weather kicked me in the groin real hard so I was staying in to lick my wounds?).  Also, since I don't have all night to wait for the bread to rise twice, I split the rising between 2 different days.  I kept the dough in the fridge in between so that it doesn't ferment (and the mice won't get to it).  I suspect that the original recipe asks for fresh spices for a practical reason (and a slightly food-snobbery reason)-- dried-up leaves and twigs tend to catch on fire easily.  Since I let the dough sit for over 20-some hours, the dried rosemary should have a little bit of time to hydrate, saving us from having Smokey the Bear coming out of the oven.  


Here're two shots of the finished product:  

Close-up shot of the grains.  Bun height is low because I didn't have enough dough and probably didn't let it rise for longer (I did leave it out for at least 3 hours, but the dough was cold so go figure).  I do like the slightly denser texture of the bread though, so letting the dough rise longer may not be an option.  

Top-down shot.   My hungry self already trimmed the end to " test the product out" by dipping them into high quality extra virgin olive oil (thanks Mariana and Domingos for bringing me the highest quality olive oil back from Portugal!).  The dimples on top are very nice.  For some reason, my oven won't brown the top of my bread.  I took matters into my own hand-- I used the broiler to achieve the "oven-fresh" look.  Without that, my bread looks like a stereotypical computer science geek's skin color-- white-washed.  


When I baked the bread, I started smelling the rosemary around like 16 minutes in, which lead me to believe that my rosemary hydration therapy worked (look for that in your local pharmacy's skin care aisle!).


I'm very happy with the way this comes up except the height issue.  I did not document how I make this bread because...  I don't want my phone to have dough on it...  Now I just need to try this with the fancy deli meats.   


Bon appetit!    

Let's talk about: Tofu (Part 1)

Tofu holds a special place in a lot of East Asian hearts.  I would dare say that for every non-Asian who despises tofu for its “lack-of”s, there will be at least ten Asians who would staunchly support tofu.  All East Asian cultures have some sort of specialty meals featuring the by-itself-flavorless-but-oh-so-versatile “soy meat.”  It’s an ode to joy for many vegans or vegetarians who may have struggled to maintain good protein levels prior to tofu’s introduction to mainstream America.  

Besides the usual firm and soft varieties that most Americans can purchase from their local mega marts, there’re also tofu “flower”, fried tofu, dried tofu, and countless other variations readily available on the shelves of Asian markets.  If we present all these varieties to a non-Asian, he would first get dizzy, then picked out the fried tofu for their stir-fry.  After all, fried food is always the most popular item in any menu-- especially if the other option is “unknown,” or worse yet, “bland.”  “Blandness” seems to be the worst offense that plain tofu can commit, but those in the know would use this “blandness” and turns it into something beautiful.  

Because of its “blandness,” regular tofu is much like an unpolished diamond-- there’re a lot of potential waiting to be unlocked in this ugly-looking rock.  When paired with the right partner, this block of ugly-looking rock will shine much like a correctly-faceted diamond.  One of the most famous Cantonese renditions of this diamond-in-the rough story is “Magistrate (Jiang)’s tofu” (太史豆腐).  It looks nothing special, but once you bite into it, you will be greeted with a luxurious mouth-feel like sleeping naked on silk sheet and a luscious chicken and ham taste mingled with a taste of soy.  To create this contradiction, the tofu is simmered in a rich chicken and ham broth (this is a standard stock in the Chinese food repertoire) for at least 30 min (the longer the better), until the flavor penetrates into the tofu block.  Heat control is important because heavy boiling would destroy the tofu block.  This process is controlled by diffusion, and the whole process feels almost like a dialysis procedure.  As the name implies, this dish was invented in Magistrate Jiang’s kitchen.  Speaking of Magistrate Jiang, his kitchen was probably THE kitchen in its time, inventing many great dishes that most unfortunately didn’t get passed down due to their complexity.  His kitchen was famous for turning common ingredients into a spectacle--  mostly because Magistrate Jiang was sick of cuisines made with exotic, expensive ingredients.  

If Magistrate’s tofu is not your cup of tea, there are other ways to turn tofu’s blandness into a canvas for flavors.  Ma Po tofu, a fairly famous dish even in American lexicon, uses tofu as the carrier of its heat and spices.  Ma Po was not some fancy Chinese spice-- she was a widow with freckles on her face (some said her face was slightly pock-marked-- but whatever makes a better story).  She invented this spicy and tongue-numbing tofu dish and sold her creation in a small street side stand to laborers.  The tofu dish was named after her nickname, Ma Po, which described her visage (and the fact that she’s a lady... an older lady).  This is made with star anise, sichuan peppercorns (this creates the numbness), and spicy doubanjiang (spicy fermented bean paste, wiki here).  Meat was a requirement in the original dish, which can be omitted for vegetarian consumption (it’s not as good without meat...).  After cooking the doubanjiang, tofu is added to the wok to cook for a couple minutes (tops.. tofu has a tendency to excrete water into the sauce the longer it cooks).  After adding cornstarch solution to thicken the sauce, the dish is now ready to eat.  

In comparison to the tofu in the two dishes above, tofu flower (豆腐花) is much harder to find in the US.  It is much softer, silkier and “looser” (just like a delicate flower), which makes it very hard to transport and consequently difficult to be placed on the supermarket shelf.  If eating regular tofu is akin to eating a 300 thread count Egyptian cotton sheet, then eating tofu flower is like eating real silk-- it has a much smoother texture.  Usually, a tofu manufacturer (including shops that specialize in all non-sauce soy products) is the place to find tofu flower. Typically, tofu flower can be made into a savory or sweet dish, with the sweet version immensely more popular than the savory version.  A savory version typically includes dressing the tofu in soy sauce, meat, shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and sometimes pickled vegetable.  This goes very well with a bowl of rice.  

The sweet version deserves special attention.  No American would have imagined to turn tofu in a dessert (besides making it into protein shakes), but the process is really simple:  add sugar and voila, you have gotten yourself a bowl of sweet dessert with a rich, fresh soy taste.  My mom would add a sugar syrup made with brown sugar and ginger (ginger is there to reduce the “chilliness” of the tofu-- this is some Cantonese folklore...  I can’t quite explain it) to the tofu flower to smitten it up.  However, my favorite rendition is adding slightly chunky brown sugar directly onto the tofu flower.  The chunky crunch on the brown sugar contrasts with the silkiness of the tofu makes it a very fun dessert to eat.  A combination of both a very light syrup and crunchy brown sugar would be paradise-- light gingery taste combined with soy and the complex flavor of brown sugar would lift any spirits up.  When I was living the high life in something-similar-to-Section-8 housing in Hong Kong,  I dreamed about getting this much-anticipated-but-low-supply dessert whenever the opportunity arose.  Back then, the building did not have gate or security guards, so hawkers would come into the building, going floor to floor to sell the treats.  They didn’t come very often-- I would say maybe once a month tops, with decreased frequency over time (hence the much-anticipated-but-low-supply).  When they reached the floor, they would yell “tofu flower” repeatedly while wheeling their cart to the entrance of different wings in the common area so the hallway would project their voices and they would be heard.  After begging and nagging my parents a little bit, they would issue a “go ahead” and I would run out the door (and gate-- we all have gates in front of our doors), money in hand, with the largest bowl we have (usually, that’s the common soup bowl) then dash straight to the cart.  The cart sells both cold and hot tofu flower, and the cold one is usually pre-seasoned with sweetness.  I would ask the hawker to fill the bowl with the hot tofu flower (my mom thinks hot is better because it’s less likely to contain salmonella and is “fresher”).  He would take out his thin, round metal “spatula” with a parabolic shape (it’s more like a bent up piece of metal..) and proceed to “peel” thin layers of tofu flower, and gingerly but swiftly deposited it into the bowl.  He would then ask if I would like to have it sweetened-- which I giddily obliged.  Then, he would pile on several heaping tablespoons worth of chunky brown sugar onto the tofu flower.  I would carefully take that back to the house so my family can enjoy the after-meal dessert.  I still remember the last time I had this treat through these hawkers.  The hawker was a lean, middle-aged man with olive skin (clearly a outdoor construction type guy), with his skin-white-as-snow wife, and two very active kids.  The hot tofu flower was carried in a fairly large rice cooker.  As the man dosed out the tofu flower, the little kids ran around, chasing each other, screaming in joy, while the mom tried to calm the two kids down.  As the pot opened, I smelled a burnt tinge, but since I was very eager to have the treat, I ignored the warning sign.  I took the bowl home-- gingerly-- like I usually did, and proceeded to chow down the tofu flower.  Only this time, instead of the crunchy, soy, sweet taste, it left a burnt taste in my mouth.  The guy burnt his whole batch of tofu flower!  How anticlimactic!  My very last bowl of section-8 tofu flower ended with a very burnt note...  

Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding and respect for this diamond-in-the-rough.  With proper handling, the pasty white tofu can turn into whatever you want it to be (and yes, it can do what the pie does in American Pie-- if you heat it up, that is).  Sky’s the limit!  Let its inner beauty shine!  

I'm not a (Ramen) boy... not yet a (Ramen) man...

Japanese ramen has been in vogue for the past several years in New York, Hong Kong and London.  Since Philadelphia is so close to NYC, and we do get NYC’s hand-me-downs, I was wondering why the ramen tornado hasn’t landed in Philly yet (after all, we do have kabob carts now...).  As I was wondering around town over the weekend, heading to Sang Kee in Chinatown (not that Sang Kee in University City, and you know why I won’t go back), I noticed a new ramen joint along the street. My companion and I decided to abandon Sang Kee and gave this new place a shot.  

This brand new place gave me the trendy ramen house vibe.  Wooden chairs, open kitchen, and Japanese greetings from the waiters were are hallmarks of Ippudo at NYC.  Here’s an interior shot:  

Here’s a copy of their menu.  

Seeing that they put their store name on their “ramen boy classic” ramen with tonkotsu soup (see soup choices on wiki), pork loin charshu (wiki here, not to be confused with the Chinese charsiu or barbecue pork in American lingo.  Just like their countrymen, the charsius are really sensitive so don’t get their origins confused!), naruto (a type of Japanese fish cake roll), menma (pickled bamboo shoots), boiled egg, and other fixings, I decided to order that to try it out.  My companion ordered a gyu don (Japanese beef rice bowl).  

After some waiting, the food arrived!  Here’s the ramen: 

So far, so good.  The soup base had a milky-yellow appearance.  Although the charshu on the menu had more roasted surface area, I wouldn’t say I got jipped based on the what I got.  I went ahead and tried the soup first.  The taste test gave me a “it’s almost right, but not quite there” feeling.  Flavor-wise, it was fairly rich, but not quite making it.  My companion made a comment about how it tasted like chicken fat.  I’m not averse to the chicken fat taste, but I think there’s a grain of truth there.  The “meaty fresh” flavor was missing in the flavor profile, hence to my companion, it tasted more like chicken fat.  I think the pork to chicken bone ratio may need to be adjusted.  The soup was also a bit on the salty side, but that’s more of a personal preference.  The charshu had a layer of fat on top of the meat.  The fat was not chewy-- which is a good sign-- but it was a little bit shy of tender and in need of a bump in the cooking time.  Here’s a shot with the ramen from the bowl:  

It wasn’t overly tender but it’s not really al dente either.  When I bit into the noodles, there wasn’t a lot of “bounce.”  I expected something a bit more bouncy.  

Comparing to Ippudo NYC (wiki on Ippudo here, official website, yelp review), everything is almost there but a bit lacking.  Granted, Ippudo is one of the best ramen places around, and there may be some regional difference (Ramen Boy’s Yokohama vs. Ippudo’s Fukuoka) which can explain what is lacking in my mind. Ippudo’s ramen was very bouncy and the soup was rich with a balanced flavor.  Ramen Boy’s rendition just doesn’t quite cut it.  

I would like to make a special mention of their spoons.  See the pictures below:  

To prevent the spoon from falling, these spoons have a notch cut out on the side so you can hang it on the side of the bowl.  Genius huh?  

Onto the gyu don!

It looked decent in the bowl.  I liked that the beef was thinly sliced, but it wasn’t quite thin enough.  However, there wasn’t enough fat on the meat so it ended up a bit drier than it should.  I think it can use a little more punch (not salt-wise, but flavor-wise) in the marinade as well.  The rice is just normal short grain rice, but it was a little bit on the moist and too soft side.  This is a personal preference though.  Adding shichimi tōgarashi (Japanese seven-spices powder, wiki here) definitely enhanced the flavor and I compulsorily recommend you add it.  Speaking of gyu don, I have always had a soft spot for it.  I had my first gyu don at the ripe age of 11 at Yoshinoya (wiki here) in Hong Kong and I was hooked.  While Yoshinoya probably isn’t the best place for gyu don, I liked their slightly fatty beef in their razor-thin slices and their soft but not overly moist rice.  I always begged my parents to take me there whenever we went out, but after the plastic gloves incident, we didn’t go back anymore.  After moving to the states, I didn't have an opportunity to hit a Yoshinoya for several years due to lack of availability in my area-- until I hit Los Angeles. The Yoshinoya in LA was at a very sketchy neighborhood (If I were to come to Hollywood, I don't wanna make it in the neighborhood...).  I went there with my crew... crew... crew... crew... before a Rave dance... dance... dance... dance... several years ago (FYI:  your love music is my drugs.  I don’t do drugs and drugs are bad, m’kay?) to use their bathroom, but they had a coin-op door and we witnessed homeless people sponge-bathing in there.  I didn’t remember their gyu don being very good.  This speaks to the power of how memory changes the taste of food... anyway, I digress.

Overall, I think Ramen Boy has potential, but just like the namesake of this post, it’s not a boy... not yet a man... (Miss Britney sometimes hits the nail right at the head.)  Ramen Boy is stuck in between like Bieber gets stuck in teenage awkward years, where his sweats start to stink, his adam’s apple grows by yards each day, and he can no longer sing “Baby” in a boy-voice to woo the cougars, but some of you not-so-secretly hopes there is no other superstar you know that he’ll be once he’s all “grown-up.”  This is the methadone to Ippudo’s heroin:  if you have intense ramen craving and can’t get to NYC just to wait 1.5 hours (on average) to get ramen, this would alleviate some of the symtoms, but it will not get you high.  I’ll likely go back there and try their other ramen combo to see if they do a better job on those.  Being the only ramen-only joint in town now, I would probably make a visit occasionally, but I won’t be raving to other people about it.  

By the way, Ramen Boy is on its soft launch right now, so expect things to change in a bit.  Also, this place is opened by the same people that opened Yakatori Boy.  Thank you intertubes!  (see news article here)

Easter egg:  See how many music/artist references you can find in my post!  Post it in the comment and I’ll tell if you if you got it all!  

Woo hoo! This blog has > 1000 views!

This is exciting...  My blog has surpassed 1,000 views!  I never anticipated this blog would reach 1000 post count this fast.  That means I gotta work harder to provide contents for all of you, dear readers!  


I apologize for not putting up something in the past week or so.  Something called "life" got in the way, and I was experiencing some "technical difficulties" on the next article I would like to put out.  In fact, I actually finished writing it a while ago, but I was waiting for a proof to come back (yes, we do *real journalism* on this blog!  I get people to proof-read my stuff before I put it up... most of the time...).  Needless to say, that took a bit longer than I anticipated.  


Expect to see the article in the next day or two.  Please don't leave me because I didn't post for 12 days!  I promise I would make it up to you somehow....