Travels via food (8): Burnout via Bagels

In June 2016, I moved to Toronto for a year long critical care fellowship at the University of Toronto. I was drawn to the program because it seemed to be an amazing opportunity to experience living and working in another country. I was particularly impressed by how half of the fellowship cohort would be local, and the other half would be international. My colleagues came from all over the world - UK, US, Argentina, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, Germany, Qatar, Iraq... a very impressive United Nations of Critical Care. I was excited by this kind of collaboration - where I trained in Sydney was an ivory tower, reputing itself as the "very best" but in reality quite isolated from other ICUs even within the same city. 

So much happened during my time in Toronto. A lot of it was wonderful - I made some incredible friends and we made some incredible memories together; I fell in love with chamber music; I learned about this thing called "sourdough" from my friend who was experimenting with her new starter we christened Priscilla (a la Fig Jam & Lime Cordial)... so much of what my life is now is influenced by the short time I spent there. 

But the most profound thing that happened during my critical care fellowship was my burnout, from which I learned that I am human. 

I cannot tell you exactly how my burnout started, but I can tell you about some of the factors that contributed to my burnout. 

First, I had already finished training in Australia and had been working for 10 years out of medical school. The North American system is vastly different and doctors speed through a compressed residency and fellowship. Thus many of my colleagues were just 4 or 5 years out of medical school and a significant proportion of my bosses were less experienced than I was in intensive care. I didn't think this would be a big deal, but it became frustrating when we had disagreements about patient care. The hierarchy in the hospital was stronger than anything I had ever experienced, and I found it disempowering that my clinical experience was less regarded because of my job title. 

One night, I called the attending about a patient that I was worried about. I thought the patient had an unusual procedural complication and was deteriorating rapidly. The boss disagreed with my assessment and dismissed my concerns. Unable to reach an agreement over the phone, I asked her to come in urgently and she refused. Half an hour later, I made a second phone call when the patient appeared to be dying. Soon after that second call and before the boss arrived at the hospital, the patient died. I wanted to inform the family about the procedural complication, but was told to keep quiet. I wanted to refer the patient to the coroner for investigation, and I was told to keep in line and write an alternative diagnosis on the death certificate. In hindsight, this disconnection from what I felt was morally acceptable was the first blow in the development of my burnout. 

Second, I found the medicolegal context of my work extremely challenging. There have been a number of challenging cases in Canada with regard to withdrawal of life support, and this was in full swing when I arrived in 2016. We would frequently be referred patients who were elderly and frail with multiple comorbidities, patients who had lost the ability to advocate for a peaceful natural death for themselves - these were the people we had to admit to ICU because the family insisted that we do "everything". Often, I would scream silently in my head that we ought to do "everything that is reasonable that would be of benefit to the patient". Instead, we were forced to put them on machines and do multiple painful procedures. I felt like I was participating in robbing them of their dignity at the end of their lives. 

One evening, I was called to the Emergency Department to see an elderly lady in her 90s who lived in a nursing home and had advanced dementia. She had had a "Do Not Resuscitate" order in place for several years, but the family decided that it should be rescinded on this particular occasion. She had severe pneumonia and her blood pressure was low. I rang the attending because I felt conflicted about the ethics of this case, but the attending told me to "not make trouble" and "do the usual". The fact that there is an expression of "do a slow code" (ie. you have to resuscitate technically, but don't try to resuscitate too hard) was astounding to me. 

I took this lady up to the ICU - she was clearly dying but I had been given instructions to put her on the ventilator. Her blood pressure was plummeting fast and the oxygen trace was abysmal. To get her blood pressure up before I put her on the ventilator, I had to put a central line in her neck. She was nearly unconscious but cried with pain when I poked her with needles. As I inserted the line, the alarms on the monitor went off. Her nurse had gone on her tea break and the nurse covering was busy elsewhere. No one else was in the room as this lady took her last breath, just as I finished inserting the central line. I took the drape off the patient and felt deeply ashamed that I had participated in this. Her last moment on this earth was one of pain and suffocation under a drape, robbed of the dignity she deserved in death. By then, the alarms had gone crazy because her heart had stopped and a bunch of nurses ran in with the crash cart. The patient looked peaceful, grey and inert. One of the nurses ran to do CPR on her, and the other attached her to the machine to give her electric shocks. The peace was broken by the hubble, and no one believed me when I said she had already died, because she was "full code".  

The crazy hours didn't help either with my burnout. Some weeks were "heavy weeks" -  24.5 hour shifts on Monday, Friday and Sunday, and a normal work day (7am to 5pm) on Wednesday and Thursday, a total of 93 hours in one week. I was told to be grateful to be given so much time off in between the long shifts. With the safe working hours regulations in Australia, I was not used to these hours but they were very much the "norm" in Canada. I was often run off my feet and too overwhelmed to sleep after the long shifts. Sometimes I would queue at the coffee shop and wonder if the lady at the coffee shop got paid more than $1000 for 93 hours. I had never been into money or materialism, but being paid below minimum wage was a demoralising addition to my burnout. 

I thought burnout was something that happened to old doctors - men in their 50s having their mid life crisis. But finally I realised that it can happen to anyone, and particularly young women are at risk. I had protective factors like supportive colleagues, a close group of friends, hobbies outside of work... but at that point in time, the pro-burnout factors were winning. I was far away from my family and my then-partner. Winter was descending, the days were short and I felt deprived of sun.

The final straw that broke the camel's back came in December, when I had a stretch of 17 days of continuous work. I was allocated to do six 24 hour shifts during the 17 days. These were some of the darkest days of my life. Though I remember some moments of joy like a friend dropping by treats she had saved from a party she went to, most of that time was a numb amorphous mass. I felt disengaged and unmotivated. I was embarrassed when I missed things at work, and afraid that others would look at me like I was incompetent. I was not aware that my state of burnout was responsible for these near-misses and misses. I felt like I could not say anything to anyone - how would anyone understand the state I was in? What if I got kicked out of the program? 

The fifth of the six 24-hour shifts started like any other. To look after the 30 bed ICU, I was paired with a disinterested PGY1 orthopaedic resident. I missed home like no other day because disinterested PGY1 orthopaedic residents would never be responsible for the care of critically ill patients in Australia. He was surly, and I was in an even surlier mood. I knew things were unravelling when one of the nurses asked me if I was OK, after I yelled at her for asking me about a blood test result. My heart was racing and I did not know why. 

Shortly after midnight, I was called to the transplant HDU where a patient with a recent lung transplant was deteriorating. As I was about to intubate the patient, another patient had a cardiac arrest and I had to run from the first patient to the second patient. By the time the second patient was stabilised, the first patient had deteriorated and no one had informed me. I ran between the two patients, feeling like I was losing control of the situation and it was all my fault. The first patient improved a little, but the second patient was dying despite all my efforts. As the night dragged on and both patients accumulated more machines by their bedside, I became convinced that a more competent doctor would be doing a better job. 

At 5am, I had the most surreal experience of my life. I was suddenly overwhelmed with an extreme anger that I had never felt before. My body was flooded with a red hot fury that was totally foreign to me. I was so angry at the second patient for being alive - clearly they were going to die anyway, why wouldn't they just die so I can get five minutes sleep? When I witnessed the emergence of this thought from the depths of my mind, I wondered who I had become. Who was this person who had this thought? I went to the on call room and cried. I called my boyfriend in Australia but he did not answer because he was at work. 

Just before the sun rose, the second patient died. The morning doctors arrived for rounds and unanimously shrugged - he was extremely ill so no one was surprised by his death. Nevertheless, I felt responsible for his death, I was scared I had somehow wished it upon him because I wanted to sleep. How could a doctor be so selfish as to wish death upon a patient? I was determined then that I should lose my medical licence, that I was not cut out for medicine. 

After the shift finished, I went to my supervisor and told her about the night. She was nonchalant and said that everyone wishes that sort of thing once in a while, so don't worry about it. I told her that I could not do the sixth on call shift, and she asked me incredulously - who was going to do it then? I told her that it didn't matter who was going to do it, but it wasn't going to be me. Then I walked out and went home. 

That was the beginning of the journey out of the darkness. It was the first time I acknowledged my burnout and the first step towards getting external help and helping myself. I needed to rest and ultimately, I needed to leave the environment that I was in. Everyone always talks about work life balance, but it is so much easier said than done. 

In late January, I had my mid-year assessment with the director of the critical care fellowship program. I tried to tell her about my burnout experience, and she responded with a request for me to consider and remember why I had come to Toronto. I went home and contemplated this - what was I trying to prove by being there? Did I just want the experience 'for my CV'? was it worth sacrificing my physical and mental well being? 

That night, I decided to look for a job back in Australia. Shortly after, I found one and quit the program. Fast forward to now, I have excellent work life balance and work 70% of the time. The rest of the time I play music, bake bread, go for walks, read and write. I have a job that I love and a life that I love - and a greater than ever awareness of self care. 

And so it is that I make these bagels, often the feature of brunches in Toronto. Is there anything better than fresh bagels? 

Bagels.. in Newcastle

(Adapted from the Emilie Raffa sourdough book, the best one there is...) 

120g sourdough starter 

250g water 

500g flour

20g sugar 

8g salt 

Mix into a dough and knead until smooth. This will take about 10 minutes. 

I did this in several bursts allowing the gluten to relax for about 5 minutes in between, it's much easier to bring the dough together this way (or you can use a stand mixer but I don't have one). 

Rise until doubled in size, approx 6 hours in Oz spring temperature. 

I then refridgerated the dough till the next day, but you can proceed on the same day. 

Divide the dough into 8 - 10 balls (depending on how large you want your bagels), shape into a ball shape by tucking the edges in and relax for 10 minutes. 

Poke a hole in the dough and gently stretch it out to a bagel shape (it will start to shrink inwards, so make the hole larger than you think)

Rest covered for 20 minutes 

Meanwhile, bring water to boil in a large pot and add 20g maple syrup to it

Boil 2 or 3 bagels at a time for 30 seconds each side, remove with a slotted spoon onto prepared baking sheets 

Once slightly cooled enough to touch, dip the still moist bagels into preferred seed mixture

Bake at 220 degrees for 25 minutes, flipping the pan half way 

Fresh out of the oven, these were incredibly soft and chewy with a blistery crust.

 

Rather handsome too!

Dream: the assassination

 (I tend to only dream when I am sleeping very deeply and well, which I haven't been for the last few months... so this is the first extremely vivid dream for quite a long time)

In this dream I am a spy. I think I may be James Bond (is there a girl version of James Bond?), a spectacular spy that will get the target with a lot of flair. My sidekick is my friend from real life W who is a very gentle, reserved and non-violent person. 

We are both fairly out of character in this dream. There's a gun strapped to my ankle under my jeans, and I'm wearing lace up boots like I'm in some terrible Western movie. I am driving a small car, which is fairly typical for us as W does not drive in real life. 

He is navigating through Google maps, flicking back and forth between the map view and the 'earth' view where you can see the buildings. He says that the map must be wrong because the address we are going to is not the same as the one in our brief. I look over at his phone, and all I see is a jumble of buildings. 

Just follow the instructions! I snap at him. 

He ignores me and scrolls through more buildings. We drive on in silence and I realise from the billboards we are driving past that we are in Japan. Finally we pull up to a hotel building across the road from the sea. Here the road rounds back on itself, and the hotel is the only building on the bend, as if it was actually jutting into the sea. 

I pull up at a parking spot just across the road from the hotel. I think to myself that we are lucky to have such a great getaway spot for when we have finished the job. 

We can't park here! W says suddenly. It's only 2 hour parking! 

I look at the sign and feel a twinge of irritation. 

It's not going to take us 2 hours to take out this guy, it'll be fine. I try to convince W.

What if we finish the job, come out and the cops have towed our car? He asks sullenly, arms crossed across his chest. 

We argue this point for a while, and in the end I agree to look for another spot. We drive around the bend and the hotel disappears from view. On the next block, we park under a deep shadow that is cast by the buildings. We walk in silence to the hotel, the tension thick between us. It is so unusual of us to fight that I feel displaced from the situation - why are we fighting? I wonder. 

We enter the hotel through the fancy doors, which a silent Japanese man open for us with a curt nod. 

Passing by the busy front desk, we stand under some chandeliers while waiting for the lift. The lift is one of those ancient contraptions that look like it's being pulled by gremlins in the basement. We enter the lift and the doors close. The wooden panels smell musty and we feel slightly suffocated. 

We emerge onto the 8th floor, where the dining room is situated. 

Why is the dining room on the 8th floor? I wonder to myself. 

We are greeted by a lady who waves us into the dining room. Inside there are a few tables of people, but it is easy to spot our target, a middle aged man in a suit reading a newspaper. 

We take a seat at a table far away from him and discuss how we will kill the man. There are families with children around, and it feels odd to kill someone in this kind of setting. 

The waiter comes by with a pitcher of water and glasses.  

You guys better get something to eat or drink, or it will look too suspicious. He says very quietly as he sets down the glasses. 

We get up and go to the buffet, but all the serving dishes are empty. We decide to get some coffee to at least pretend to drink coffee. The coffee machine is an extremely complicated affair with multiple dials and buttons behind a single pane of smooth glass. There is only one lever that can be manoeuvred from the front and it is titled Creaminess. Moving the dial from left to right increases the creaminess, allegedly, but how is this achieved? My eyes follow the complex circuitry and it leads to a dairy cow some metres away, chewing on grass. 

So increasing the Creaminess dial concentrates the milk from the cow? I wonder to myself. 

We start to have another argument about how creamy to make the coffee, and suddenly I feel very tired. I don't want to have W tripping up this assassination anymore. I tell him to leave but he just stands there with his hand on the Creaminess lever. He refuses to leave and we both fall to a silence. The waiter comes up to us and says something we don't understand. 

And that's how the dream ends. We never even end up assassinating the man! 

In my kitchen: October 2020

Spring is here! Whilst my dad has always been an avid gardener, I myself have never been "into it" until this year when Covid hit. Stuck in lockdown, I felt the urge to nurture something green, and now I am addicted!

Hello bitter melon seedling! 

I buried my first lot of Bokashi compost recently. Pumpkin started to sprout from seeds in the compost! I was amazed by the resilience of these seeds - they had survived for months in the bin, quietly decomposing and waiting for their chance to come back to life again. I don't have a huge amount of space in my backyard, but I'm hoping one of these lil pumpkins will make it. 

My dad has a little patch of bamboo on the hill above his house, and one day we went digging for these bamboo shoots. The dog also ate some of these, was he a panda in his last life?

We also ate the last of the loquats from my dad's tree. We had an extra amazing crop this year, probably close to a hundred fruits. 

On the cooking front, I have been doing my Travel via Food project which has been a fun way to revisit memories in my kitchen. In the last month we've been to challah, Myanmar and Sikkim! 

I am absolutely addicted to handmade noodles. They are so easy to make, a simple dough of flour, salt and water rested for an hour or so before rolling out and cutting into strips. It's also easy enough to divide the dough so that they can be freshly rolled the next day. 

This was a particularly beautiful slice of my sourdough. Is there possibly a better breakfast than bread and cheese (and loquat)?

Here are a couple of vegan challahs I made for the Rosh Hashanah celebrations as a present for my friend. 

Finally onto the Food and Music series, my quartet has been taking a break as the cellist was on holidays. 

The cellist and her husband usually go away in winter on a sailing boat race but they holidayed this year in Port Stephens instead. Being quite close to me, I went up for the day to go out on the boat with them. I made this rosemary focaccia (the smell of warm focaccia is like nothing else) - we ate it with smoked salmon and a salad, contemplating how we could squeeze our string quartet onto the boat!

We finally had a reunion towards the end of September and I made these chocolate eclairs. The first batch I made were ruined when I went to the garden to look for slugs and the eclairs literally went up in smoke! They were completely inedible and I had to throw them out. The second batch were much better. We ate these with a couple of favourites, the Beethoven Op 18. 4 and the Brahms piano quartet in C minor. 

Here is a loaf I baked to have with soup and the Beethoven project. Actually, I have two Beethoven projects on the go - my piano duet friend and I are playing all of Beethoven's string quartet arrangements for piano duet. Last month we played the Harp and the Serioso quartets. During Covid, we also started a project to play the Beethoven violin sonatas together, and we finished this project last month. What a feeling it was to play the last note of the last sonata - I never thought this would be possible, having started violin at the ripe old age of 27.

I'm going to finish with these gorgeous rainbow espresso cups that my friend S from Paris sent me. In an ordinary year, I would travel a couple of times overseas to meet up with music friends, but this year all our plans are on hold. It will be the first year that I have not travelled outside Australia for the last 14 years. Nevertheless, we continue to send each other encouragement in the form of words and music. S, a very talented violinist, has been recording all of Bach's solo partitas for violin one movement at a time - a remarkable achievement!

I'm sending this to Sherry, of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen event - Thanks Sherry! 

Travels via food (7): Shanghainese Mooncakes

This week we are making a short trip to my memories via the annual moon festival. 

I moved to Sydney when I was ten years old and I have spent every Moon Festival ever since outside China. It has been so long since my family has celebrated this festival in China that I have forgotten all the traditions. I know we are supposed to go outside and admire the full moon, on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Of course all good festivals have a food component too and we eat mooncakes on this day.

When I was growing up, mooncakes were a real delicacy. I grew up in Communist China in the 80s and early 90s, just at the beginning of China's economic revolution. While we still learned strong Communist dogmas at school, the reality was that the economy was opening up fast. Ration coupons had been in use for decades, but they were finally scrapped in the 80s. Still, the average Chinese family was poor. I remember eating chicken for the first time when I was seven and thinking that it was some sort of food from heaven. Most of the meat we ate was pork, in extremely small portions. My father says that in the old days, each person was allowed 50g pork per week. What could one cook with 50g of pork? He says that the family would usually pool their meat ration together and eat one or two meals containing meat, and eat mostly vegetables and rice the rest of the time. It is crazy sometimes when I think about the Chinese food depicted in the west, these were foods that I had never even heard of when I moved to the West! 

One of my strongest memories from my childhood was when I was six or so and my grandmother asked me to go get some vinegar from the shop. We used to have glass bottles for all the main condiments (oil, soy sauce, vinegar etc) and we would get a refill once we had run out. The shop was about 100m up the road, a tiny hole in the wall all-purpose grocery store with a grumpy man behind a single counter. I took the glass bottle there and the man refilled it, just like any other time I would have gone to the shop. On the way home, I tripped over an uneven part of the pavement and fell over. I grazed my knees badly, but worst of all, the vinegar bottle went flying and shattered all over the pavement. I tried to pick up the glass shards somehow to save some vinegar, anything at all. The sharp fragments of glass must have cut my hands too, but I don't remember that part. I just remember the frank desolation of my terrified six year old self, feeling too scared to go home without the vinegar. It was the first time in my life that I realised emotional pain could outweigh any form of physical suffering.

It's incredible to think of how life can transform so much with time and space. China has seen an incredible transformation in the decades since we left, and the standard of living has skyrocketed beyond imagination. I don't think any ordinary Chinese family would blink twice about buying a bottle of vinegar these days, but in the 80s it was a big deal. 

Since I don't have many memories of the moon festival as a child, I asked my father last week what we used to do to celebrate. He says my grandmother preferred the sweet Cantonese style mooncakes stuffed with lotus paste and salted duck egg yolks, but the men in the family preferred the traditional Shanghai style mooncakes. Outside of Shanghai and the Eastern states of China (Jiangsu and Zhejiang), this style of savoury pork mooncake is hardly eaten. Apparently the queues to buy these from the most famous shops in Shanghai are massive every year. 

So this year, I decided to try my hand at making these mooncakes. They were pretty fiddly, but a fun project to do with my dad. I'm looking forward to making them again with him at another moon festival, perhaps it could be even a new tradition for our family. 

Shanghai Style Mooncakes 

More instructional pics at this recipe (Unfortunately my hands were too oily to take more pics!)

This is an extremely short laminated crust which holds an incredible crunch and shatters into smithereens when you bite into it. The pork should be 2/3 lean, 1/3 fatty to achieve the perfect juicy inside. The recipe has three components - a water dough, an oil dough and the pork filling. The two doughs together form the lamination for the multi-layer effect.

For the water dough:

Plain flour 150g 

Sugar 5g (optional) 

Vegetable oil 60g (I used olive oil) 

Mix briefly together  

Add boiling water 75g (this activates the gluten)

Once cool enough to handle, turn onto floured surface and knead till smooth 

For the oil dough

Plain flour 135g 

Vegetable oil 65g 

Mix together till a dough ball forms, turn onto floured surface and knead till smooth

Rest both dough balls for 30min, covered with cling wrap 

For the filling

Pork mince 250g, preferably slightly fatty 

~1 tbsp each of light soy and Shaoxing cooking wine 

1 Spring onion, very finely shredded 

Combine all together and mix with chopsticks, turning in one direction only (must be superstition but it works) 

Keep turning the filling till it is well incorporated and well aerated, approx 5 minutes 

Use wet hands to shape the filling into 15 balls and place these on a platter 

To make the skins

Divide water dough into 15 portions (20g each), roll each portion into a ball 

Divide oil dough into 15 portions (13g each), roll each portion into a ball

Flatten the water dough into a disc and place the oil dough ball in the middle, then enclose

Repeat till you have 15 balls of oil dough wrapped within water dough, rest covered with cling wrap 10min 

Taking one ball at a time, 

Use a rolling pin to gently roll out to oval shape, then roll into a scroll from the top down 

Turn the scroll 90 degrees so it is vertically oriented, then roll out gently again 

Roll the scroll from top down again, and stand the final scroll up 

Repeat till you have 15 scrolls of laminated dough, rest for 10min 

Final assembly

Preheat oven to 180 degrees (fan forced) and line a baking tray with baking paper 

Taking one scroll at a time, 

Flatten the scroll into a disc and roll out roughly into a round shaped skin, not too thin (just has to be large enough to enclose around the filling)

Enclose a pork filling ball within the skin and pinch to close, placing seam down on the baking tray

(Ensure there are no cracks over the surface or the juice will ooze out during baking)

Repeat till all the mooncakes are made and rest for 10 minutes 

Brush with egg wash and scatter with sesame seeds

 

Bake at 180 degrees for 25 minutes till golden, turning the tray around half way through baking

For sure a special occasion treat, the dog was drooling while we ate too! 

Travels via food (6): Sikkim via thukpa

This week's Travels via Food takes us to the ethnically Tibetan state of Sikkim in Northeast India. 

In 2008, I had quit my job to go travelling for a year. I had been in India for about a month before I decided to get away from the chaos and head up to Darjeeling in the hills. It was a strange time to be in Darjeeling, with lots of loud Gorkhaland protests (the Gorkha ethnic group was fighting for autonomy) and hastily shuttered shop fronts. I stayed at a Tibetan guesthouse, and they pointed me towards a tiny noodle shack where I had some thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup) for the first time since I was in Tibet three years earlier. 

It brought me straight back to the Tibetan countryside where there was often nothing available except thukpa - thick chewy noodles served in a salty broth of heavily oily yak and a scattering of spring onions on top for the “vegetable”. The offering in Darjeeling was far richer, India being more suited to growing vegetables than Tibet with its lower elevation and milder weather.

The guesthouse owners viewed me totally differently after I confessed my love for Tibet. They told me that I had to visit Sikkim, which was really “the other Tibet”. When the Chinese invaded Tibet major, the kingdom of Sikkim had decided to incorporate itself into India. I decided on a whim to go, it was just as well to get away from the protests anyway.

The shared jeep drive from Darjeeling across the border to Sikkim was one of the most spectacular I have ever been on. The road was awful and heavily potholed in parts. Being crammed tight into the jeep helped us to stay inside as we bounced along. At every turn there were expansive vistas of lush green tea fields with the snowy peaks of Kanchenjunga in the distance. It was unbelievably beautiful.

In the jeep I met a Slovakian man, who I would spend the next two weeks travelling with. We were such unlikely travel companions – he had just come from a 10 day whirlwind tour of Rajasthan where he and his friend hired a driver and tried to hit all the highlights in the short space of time they had. He said they had spent such long hours driving that they were exhausted by the time they reached the attractions and couldn’t really enjoy themselves. Worse, they both got sick and started to fight about whose terrible idea it was to do such a trip. In the end, they went their own ways and he decided to come to Sikkim to take photos of rare mountain flowers. Like me, he had quit his job as a nuclear scientist (he had such trouble explaining his job to me that he had to refer to himself as Homer Simpson’s boss), and left his home to live a life on the road.

On the first night in Pelling, Sikkim, we stayed at a dodgy guesthouse on the edge of town. It was dark and cramped, but the worst part was the lack of electricity after hours. It was totally dark as soon as the sun went down. Soon it became unbearably cold and we were stuck inside our rooms under covers, trying to keep warm. Being hungry and cold was even worse than being cold, so I ventured out to find something to eat. I can’t remember what I ate, but on the way back I saw a huge bonfire being lit at a different guesthouse. Without the slightest hesitation I decided to crash the party.

At the bonfire, I was stunned to meet a solo female traveller from Taiwan. She said she had been travelling on her own through India and was really sick of the daily constant harassment, and hence she had come to Sikkim for some rest and relaxation. At that moment, buoyed by the fire, I felt strongly warm towards this girl called Julia.

Julia said she had plans to walk through to Yuksom in northwest Sikkim via a beautiful holy lake. It was going to be an easy two day hike, she wasn’t sure about the route but she had met many travellers who had raved about Khecheopalri Lake. Sounds like “Catch-a-ferry”, I thought to myself. I told her I would discuss it with my new travel companion the Slovakian man, and perhaps we could all go together.

The next morning, Julia, the Slovakian man and I met over breakfast to discuss our plans. Being a nuclear scientist, he was far more prepared. We pored over the giant topographical map of Sikkim that he had somehow managed to buy in some random Indian city. The trail seemed to follow the course of the mountain, reaching the lake in a long day’s walk. From the lake, it was a short half day walk to Yuksom. In the end the Slovakian man decided that he had too much photographic equipment to carry for a long hike when we weren’t sure about the condition of the trail.

There’s a jeep to Yuksom, so we can meet you there. He suggested to Julia. We can catch up there and visit the monastery together, it’ll be fun! He enthused.

But what about the holy lake? I asked. I want to see the lake too if it is a special lake! I also wasn’t sure about my own fitness level. In the end, Julia said she was keen on doing the trail, but she would meet us at the lake for lunch on the second day. That way we could walk there from Yuksom, meet her for lunch, and walk back together.

We parted ways there and then, hugging and promising that we’ll have a huge feast when we meet up again. She set off along the trail with her small backpack. We packed our things and took the shared jeep a few hours down the road to Yuksom.

The next day we set out for our day walk to Khecheopalri Lake to meet Julia. According to the Slovakian man’s calculations, it would take us 3-4 hours to walk there, passing through several small villages. For the first 20 minutes or so, we walked along the main road where new guesthouses were under construction (one of them was called Lonely Planet!) We lamented that this beautiful region with its stunning mountain views and secluded monasteries would soon be over run by tourists.

We found the trail up the mountain and followed it easily for an hour or so. Then the trail seemed to become increasingly overgrown and we had to bush bash just to move forward. Our progress slowed dramatically, and we started to worry that we had taken a wrong turn. Just when we contemplated backtracking, there was a small clearing and a rocky path seemed to point us in the right direction. We relaxed again, laughing and chatting while we walked. It was a beautiful clear day, and we both took lots of photos of the countryside.

Our relaxed state didn’t last too long. The rocky path became increasingly difficult to navigate, with some rocks seeming more like boulders. Soon, we sometimes needed to use our hands to climb over some of the rocks. The human condition for getting used to something is limitless, and we simply got used to this new reality of “climbing” the track. The path became increasingly vertical, to the point where we had to use our hands constantly to prevent falling backwards. My fitness is average at best, and I really struggled with this impromptu rockclimb. The Slovakian man was a lot fitter than me, so he climbed ahead, shouting out reminders to follow where he placed his hands and feet. 

We got to a completely vertical part, where the rock was quite loose. Every time he put his foot down it would dislodge a little shower of rock, fluttering into my face in a reminder of our precarious situation. I was scared, but didn’t know what else to do other than follow him. When I looked down into the abyss, my heart would beat so fast that it was going to come out of my mouth. So I focused on looking up, into the strangely reassuring rocky fluttersprays. He is so kindly to go first to test out the rocks! I thought to myself.

It’s hard to concentrate at these moments, though the mind is intensely concentrating on the placement of the limbs. Often the rock under one foot would get a bit loose and one had to work hard on rebalancing. I must have strayed slightly to the right, because all of a sudden when I looked up, he wasn’t quite right ahead of me anymore. He was just slightly to my left, and I felt the sudden rush of unchartered territory – had I put my hands and feet just where he had been so I knew I was safe? I had no idea. 

At that moment I felt my left foot slip, and in a flash faster than lightning, my right foot slipped too and I was clinging to the rock with my hands. The cracking noise the rock made as it struggled under my weight was sickening. I must have stopped breathing as my life flashed before my eyes. I had never been a believer in “your life flashes before your eyes” until that very moment - it was the fastest Powerpoint show I have ever seen.

"Put your foot on the rock!" He shouted, and I was shocked back into reality.

The reality was that he was holding onto my left hand, which was the only connection I had to life at that moment as my legs dangled free and my right hand held a handful of crumbling rock. The feeling was absolutely serene, as if I was ready to plunge to my death at that very moment.

But I knew I didn’t want to die, not right there. Which foot did I push into the rock? I don’t even remember, but I remember looking down at the rock shower I had created. Sorry! I shouted in my head to my shadow, as if the rock shower was hurting it. With one foot secure, I quickly secured my other foot and regained my hold on life. He was panting quite hard, his feet slipping on the rock.

“You scared very bad.” He said, his English also slipping from him. (Some years later, he would tell me that he had a premonition that I was going to fall.)

There was some sort of solace to this near death experience. My legs were jelly, but somehow we found a ledge to climb onto, and that was the "top". I couldn’t believe that we were actually standing on flat ground again. When we looked at the "path" that we had come up on, we realised that we had climbed along a rocky riverbed and up a dried waterfall. 

That was where I used one of my lives, climbing up a waterfall.

“I’m so happy I can kiss the ground.” I said to the Slovakian man. He got down and kissed the ground, so I did too.

After this moment of exhilaration, we had no way to tell which way to walk. The bush was thick and unmanageable in every direction, and we had lost our bearing since the sun was obliterated by cloud. We stopped to eat silently, wondering how we would be able to find our way back. Going back down the waterfall was definitely not an option. We walked on for several more hours until we came to what looked like a real track. Though we felt enormous relief, we were worried about how quickly the sun sets in the Himalayas – the darkness seems to creep up on you.

Then, in a moment that seemed like a mirage, we saw a young boy. He could not have been more than 5 or 6, and he was skipping along the track some way ahead of us. We shouted and jumped up and down to catch his attention, and he curiously made his way over to us. He didn’t speak a word of English and I wondered what he must have thought of us, perhaps strange alien like creatures. We followed him to his “village”, a scattered collection of half a dozen houses. Everyone came out of their houses to look at us, but there was only one older man who could speak English.  

We asked him to show us where we were on the map, but he said his eyesight was too poor to see the small print. When we asked him where the lake was, he laughed and said we had gone the complete wrong direction from Yuksom! Dejected, we asked him how to get back to Yuksom, and he said we had to hurry since the light was fading so fast. He asked his son, a boy of perhaps 10 to guide us.

The boy could speak a few words of English, and he got our attention by singing “Hello! Hello!” We followed him as he practically ran along the track, lightfooted like a mountain goat. Darkness descended upon us and we had not thought to bring a torch. We were incredibly fortunate that the moon was bright that day, and we could just about make out the track.

After an hour or so, the track suddenly came out on to the road.

“Hello! Hello!” The boy shouted us.

“Yuksom! Hello!” The boy pointed to the left along the road.

Then he disappeared into the darkness, and we walked down the road. The adrenaline surge was over and we ached like crazy. Then we got into Yuksom and had a steaming hot bowl of thukpa, the traditional Tibetan noodle dish.

The story ends with a mystery. We had planned to meet Julia for lunch that day, but obviously we never made it to the lake. We asked our guesthouse if they saw her, but no one had. The next day, we hung around in Yuksom, wandering the streets looking for her. We went up to the monastery on the hill, thinking she might have gone there, but she was nowhere to be found in tiny sleepy Yuksom. The day after, we repeated our quest, asking for “Chinese girl”, and then the Slovakian man would gesture at me “like her, but shorter”. We asked at the only other restaurant in town but they had seen no other Chinese girls. We waited out a fourth day, thinking that maybe she got delayed on the way.

But we never saw Julia again. We debated whether we should leave, and eventually reasoned that she must have changed her plans.

What happened to her? I wonder as much now as I did then. Were we supposed to contact her family or the embassy? I didn’t know her Chinese name or even her last name, how would I contact them saying a girl called Julia was lost in the Sikkimese Himalayas? 

It remains a mystery to this day.  

Tibetan Thukpa (Newcastle style) 

Serves 2

200g Flour

1 tsp salt

Enough water to bring it to a firm dough (approx 100g)

Knead till smooth and relax for 10 minutes, then knead again. Rest for at least an hour, covered with an oiled clingwrap.

Roll the dough ball out to the long rectangle and cut into thick strips ~2cm

 

Pick up the strips at both ends and elongate by banging the middle of the strip repeatedly against the counter

Cook in boiling broth for approx 2 minutes or until the noodles float to the top

Serve with topping of choice (here I had mine with a veggie stir fry)

Garnish with spring onions, coriander, chilli and fried onions 

 

I dedicate this post to all my past transient travel companions like the Slovakian man and Julia. Thank you for all your companionship and fun! Wherever you are out there, hope you are all well!

Travels via food (5): sourdough challah

This week’s travels via food brings me not to a specific place, but to different places within my memory.

Challah at my farewell party, 2019

The story of challah started in 2001 when I started medical school. I became friends with a Taiwanese girl who lived in the Shalom residential college at the University of New South Wales. In that carefree whimsical way of youth, we would spend long evenings and weekends hanging out talking about nothing in particular. This is when I first got to know this Jewish braided bread, served at the college dinners on Fridays. She would often take a little extra so I could taste this rich sweet treat too.

There’s a long gap in this story until I became a sourdough baker in 2017. My sourdough starter Barney was born in my kitchen, gathered from the local yeast in the air of Rapid Creek. Lots of people have askd me how Barney was born, but the honest truth is – he was born out of loneliness. I was living alone in a new city, I had no friends, I was struggling in a long distance relationship and I lacked the emotional energy to break out of my unhappiness. I needed a complicated hobby that required a lot of attention and could take up my weekends. Nothing better than sourdough baking could fit this description!

Watching dough grow brought me small glimmers of hope, and dealing with the dense unrisen bricks afforded understanding of life's imperfections. Sometimes the bread would spread out like a lax pancake on the counter, running over its edges before I could scoop it into any sort of baking vessels. At these times I would cry, a little for the bread and mostly for myself, my tears racing the dough as it flowed onto the floor. But even at their very worst, my loaves filled my kitchen with delicious smells and then still made fine bread crumbs. It may sound extreme, but learning to make sourdough helped me to climb out of the deep dark hole I was in. I got better at understanding the rhythms of sourdough, and I slowly found myself again. Once I emerged into the world, blinking in the blinding light of freedom, I found that bread helped me connect with others. Barney has been a constant presence in my life ever since.

At the end of 2018 I visited Toronto again for the first time since I left. I purportedly went to a medical conference, but spent more time with my friends than at the conference. I had brought a tiny bit of Barney with me to Toronto and together with Emily we made a new starter at her house, which she christened Barmily. Barmily has since died, but since she had given some of it to another friend she was able to resurrect the original Barmily. I showed her the steps to making a normal loaf and she took to it like a duck to water.

One night we were discussing what things I really wanted to bake, kind of like the baking bucket list. Suddenly I thought of the eggy challahs of Shalom college. Why not make a challah? I thought. Everything is possible.

 

We didn’t really understand the needs of challah then, but it still turned out better than we expected. It was so long by the time we finished braiding that we had to curve the ends in just to make it fit onto the baking tray.

Last year I visited Toronto again and by then Emily had perfected her challah approach, quite incredibly by eye without any sort of measurement. She also had a genius idea to add an extra yolk to the dough (makes it slightly yellower) and use the white for the wash.

Here is a challah that we made for her admin assistant Maria, a kind Italian woman. She and her husband lived in the outer suburbs of Toronto in a modest house full of memories and knickknacks. She has “her doctors” over for an annual feast in the winter and I was lucky enough to attend one of these in 2017 when I lived there. It was a super traditional dinner – we would start with a selection of antipasti, fresh bread, then soup, pasta, meat course, dessert and of course coffee. We went over again in 2019 and she put on a similar feast just for us – our Italian mamma and pappa in Toronto!

Last week was Rosh Hashanah. In a strange year where life seems to have turned upside down, I decided to try my hand at making a vegan challah for my friend B to take to her family gathering. She is not able to have the "normal" challah with eggs and honey, so it was nice to make a vegan version for her. I started out researching online recipes, but in the end I was distracted after work and "winged it".

Vegan Sourdough Challah

120g Sourdough starter, at peak activity

120g Aquafaba (from 1 can of chickpeas)

80g Soy milk or water, plus some extra

100g Sugar (can be less, but I used extra for RH)

600g Plain flour

5g salt

Mix the sourdough starter, aquafaba and soy milk until well incorporated

Add the sugar and whisk to combine

Add the flour and salt, bring together to form a dough ball

Add some more water one tbsp at a time if the dough looks too dry

Rest for 30min then turn out onto a bench to knead

Kneading notes:

Approximately 10-15min of kneading is required, I did this in 3 bursts

It helps to rest the dough for ~10min between each kneading burst

This step is very important for gluten development, as this gives the final challah the characteristic soft texture.

The goal is to have a soft elastic dough with no lumps or stickiness – persevere and you will be rewarded!

Spray with oil and cover with cling wrap, rest till doubled in volume, approx 4-6hrs depending on room temperature

Tip the dough onto a well floured surface and separate into 4 parts, shape into balls and rest for 10min (makes it easier to roll) 

If you wish to have plain challah, then roll the balls out into long logs ~40cm

If you wish to stuff the challah with raisins, roll the ball out into a flat rectangle, scatter with raisins and then roll up into the log form. If the dough shrinks, just roll it out again to the desired length

 

Plait into the round shape (I watched this Youtube video)

Preheat the oven to 200degrees.

Rest the dough until slightly puffed, approx 1hr (unfortunately I had to go to work for a while and the dough became over-proofed. If it rises too much it will turn into a big blob!)

Brush the dough with an “vegan eggwash” of soy milk and maple syrup, making sure to get inside the crevices

Scatter with poppy and/or sesame seeds. Bake at 200 deg for 30min till golden brown

Here is a crumb shot, soft and fluffy!

I dedicate this post to Barney, my sourdough starter. May we have many more special baking projects together!