In my kitchen: September 2020

Instead of going to Paris to play music, I had a staycation for two weeks. It was a wonderfully lazy stretch of time filled with writing, violin, baking and gardening... I started a writing project where I revisit a travel memory by making a dish from the region - so far I've done El Salvador, Mexico & Wuhan! 

In my garden...

 

Shiso is sprouting, auto-regenerating from the year before. How interesting that it was a purple shiso plant, but the new leaves are green. 

This winter I've really enjoyed so much lettuce from my own garden, and picking my own snow peas for salad. 

My dad grew these loquats. There was a loquat tree in our old family home in Shanghai, and eating these takes me straight back to my childhood.

 

On the baking front... I had plenty of time to bake whimsical things! 

Baguettes are my latest obsession...

Getting a crisp outer and a soft interior with an open crumb is quite tricky - shaping baguettes is heaps of fun!

I had some pumpkin leftover so pureed it and put it into a spelt loaf in the shape of a pumpkin. It's easy enough to shape with kitchen string, and the bread rose well around the string forming the pumpkin shape!

I've never been much into baking sweets (I'm really a bread baker at heart), but making these eclairs were really fun. The choux pastry was much easier than I expected, and I had a lot of fun filling them and dipping them in chocolate. Of course the best part was eating them as I went along... 

This was a birthday "cake" that I made for my friend's daughter's 10th birthday, using a cinnamon scroll dough layered with apple. I made this once in May and this time it was much easier to assemble.

Onto Food and Music...  

I made this matcha scroll for my friend who I play piano duets with. It's a Hokkaido milk bread dough, which I divided in half and kneaded half with matcha powder till it turned green. Once proofed, I rolled the two doughs out to rectangles, layered them together and rolled it up to a loaf. This worked really well with a beautiful soft crumb thanks to the tangzhong technique! We ate this with a dose of the Beethoven Op 59 No. 1 String quartet impromptu arranged for 4 hands, and later listened to the Beethoven Op 131 String quartet on an original LP...   

Strawberries have been great this month and I took the chance to make this strawberry tart for my other piano duet friend's birthday. We ate this with the cheery Beethoven Violin sonata no. 8.

Finally I'll finish with one of the many best things I ate this month. Miso eggplant really is so easy to make and delicious. I microwave my eggplant for 5 minutes, then drizzle with olive oil and roast for 10 minutes. Meanwhile I mix up a sauce of white miso, mirin, rice vinegar and sugar, whisking till smooth. I paint the whole lot on and grill for 10 minutes. It is so delicious I could eat this every week!  

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the In My Kitchen series. Thanks Sherry for the opportunity to review all the food highlights of the month!