“Fall” Baking

I suppose it’s kind of fall. It was only 86 degrees Fahrenheit today with a nice breeze, so that counts for something. Talia and I have taken advantage of the cooler temperatures to bake; (though the heat didn’t really stop us before, as there’s no central AC so it’s always hot in there.)

When we got a pumpkin at the market we made it into a pie (for once, instead of portioning it out for soups.) Here, what is called a pumpkin is a bumpy, green acorn squash at home. It tastes the same as pumpkin, though.

Our friend said Khmer people do something that tastes similar to pumpkin pie: hollow the seeds out of a pumpkin, fill it with a mixture of eggs, coconut milk and sugar and bake it letting the pumpkin be the crust. It sounds like it makes a custard-like filling. I'm up for trying it!

We also made black bean and potato empanadas. The electricity went out around 5:30 that night, so we enjoyed them by candlelight as that’s when it’s been getting dark lately. I suppose it’s a good thing that it gets dark so early so we don’t miss good places for the kids to play so much. It’s dark not long after the boys get home from school.

Talia enjoyed incorporating learning how to flood cookies with icing for a homeschool lesson.

Here’s our new-to-us fruit for this time: rose apple.

Have you ever tried one?

Morning Glory/Water Spinach, Vietnamese Persimmons/Golden Apple and Guava: New-to-us Khmer Food

I've learned several new fruits and vegetables lately. I thought I'd share them with you.

Below you see the water lily stems that take special talent to harvest. When you pinch off the stem, if you are not careful, mud will be drawn up the stalk. The Khmer lady who sells these has four children depending on her at home and something happened to her husband. She walks around town with a big basket of these carried on her head calling out the name of them in Khmer. Our neighbor said she uses these to make a salad with thin strips of the water lily stem, chicken, lime juice and herbs.

Water spinach, or morning glory, are the stems of the sweet potato plant. They are used in soup the same way you would use spinach and with a similar taste. Many times it is used in a soup with rice noodles.

I had no clue what these were when my friend gave them to us. My Vietnamese friend helped me out with the Latin name: Diospyros decandra, or a type of persimmon. One way the Khmer eat these is with the flesh mashed in a mixture of milk, sugar, and chia or basil seeds. The pulp is pretty astringent in the mouth, so all of that can be pretty necessary!

Here you see a guava. These were really popular in Mexico, but the ones I saw were smaller, many times made into preserves. Here guava is enjoyed dipped in salt, sometimes with garlic powder, chili or sugar.

The kids all tried a bite and thought it was good, but even better, the pasabulong from our Filipina friends who came home from holiday and were so kind to think of us:

The biscocho is from Iloilo and the piaya is from Negros Occidental.

Yep, it was yummy!

Elias had fun trying on his father's shirt... it'll be a few years before it fits.

 

The boys love to help cook! Here they were making cinnamon rolls:

 

One of them wants to be a fireman who owns a restaurant on the side when he grows up. The other one wants to build "helico'ters." I can't wait to see what they become!

Thinking Outside the (Oven) Box

A way I typically cope with homesickness is through baking. It's my favorite thing to give as a gift or a just-thinking-about-you sort of thing. Since, unlike running or hiking, it's something I can do while very pregnant, it's something I've missed more than normal lately as I near the 37 week mark. (Think of all of the postpartum freezer meals you've seen that require an oven... Much of it just doesn't work well without it.)

Ovens are rare in this side of the world. The expense of the gas, lack of many traditional baked things, and cheap bakeries for the things you do want baked, keep many from exploring this style of cooking. Some of the newer apartments that are aimed towards foreigners (you can tell by the prices) include an oven, but it's definitely not mainstream.

This doesn't mean, however that everything baked is impossible to make; you just have to think about cooking it in a different way: cookies flipped in a skillet pancake-style, a double boiler with brownies in a pot, microwave mug cakes or pudding, finding different ways to make similar flavors when something just won't work... It's all possible.

The gas ovens that typically ARE available here are very gas-inefficient, non-convection and have lots of places for the heat to escape. This means a recipe that normally takes 10 minutes in an electric/convection oven takes more like 30 minutes and is likely to have the bottom burned and the top not browned. Our gracious landlords gave us one they weren't using and we found out for ourselves just how quickly it could go through a 3 foot canister of gas. (About 3 weeks, instead of the normal 3 months, baking about 4 times and otherwise doing normal stovetop cooking.)

In India, a unique solution to baking on a stove top is a type of double-boiler- like pot that I haven't seen before: the bottom pot holds salt or sand to evenly disperse the heat and the top pot is greased and then filled with anything from cake to pizza crust and cooked over (usually) a medium flame.

Here is a favorite chocolate mug cake that we make with the kids for a special occasion. It makes enough for 4 small mugs, (it rises so only fill halfway.) We got the recipe here: https://youtu.be/7jAFFEt_HkM. And modified it because we didn't have self-rising flour.

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 cup milk

1 egg

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup flour

1pinch of salt

Powdered sugar to sprinkle on top

Microwave one minute then let it sit until cool enough to enjoy.

December Happenings: Wrapping up 2016

2016 is drawing to a close and, though we are on "winter" break, it doesn't really feel like winter here, though it is cooler. The rainy season is mostly over, with only an occasional outburst and the weather is low 80s and high 90s each day.

We tried a traditional Khmer restaurant because of their excellent prices the other day. It reminded us a lot of Abu Dhabi's traditional way of eating: dense cushions on the floor with really low tables. Of course, I doubt these cushions were filled with camel hair, like in the Middle East. (I'm not sure how Cambodians in their third trimester comfortably sit that low!) The drink was jasmine flower tea and we had a chicken curry with rice and a beef soup with a dominant kafir lime flavor in the broth. The menu included things like frog, snake head fish and other things.

The kids have been playing with a neighborhood cat since it was a tiny kitten. I think Talia especially has it almost tamed. It belongs to a neighborhood store, so we don't care for it, but it's the perfect pet for expat children: you get to love it but not worry about it if you have to leave or pay for the medical/food and other expenses.

The kids were really excited to open presents from their teachers at school. We hardly ever buy candy, so finding chocolate was very exciting.

We've been chopping it up a little at a time and using it in recipes to make it last longer. Talia made chocolate chunk, oatmeal cookies with part of it.

I'm at almost 35 weeks with our little girl on the way. We are all getting really excited to meet her next month. Looking back at all of the changes that have come from moving from Mexico to Cambodia and the new cultures and challenges associated with that, we are content to close this year feeling it is stuffed as full as it could be. And, as 2016 comes to a close, we already have a lot to look forward to in the New Year!

Paying for the Rosca

Christmas is celebrated in Mexico with a variety of different slants: some of my students believed in Santa, some did not (try being the one they go to to settle that argument) and some waited until the Day of the Kings; or Dia de Los Reyes to get gifts. (Some received gifts BOTH times.) this celebration of the wise men arriving to see baby Jesus is traditionally accompanied with rosca, or king cake. Inside the cake are little figurines of the baby Jesus, and if you get one, you (here) are responsible for bringing tamales the 2nd of February.

Of course, I got one. The owner of the school took care of the tamales so instead I made cinnamon rolls. 75-80 of them. I filled the original rosca container- it seemed fitting, and was big enough to transport them covered.

Ben ALSO got a figurine and his job was to bring champurrada, or hot chocolate. Elias helped him with it this morning:

Out of the 75-80 I brought, only 7 made it back home. It was a fun experience!

Homemade Fig Newtons

The squirrels and wasps and other creatures were really enjoying the figs from our tree, but there were enough untouched ones to make something with, so we decided to try to make one of my dad's favorites: fig newtons.

We looked at two recipes; one from food.com and one Healthy Green Kitchen and combined the ideas.

 

They came out delicious! However we decided it only needed a half cup of sugar in the crust and a half cup in the filling instead of the full cup it called for in both to not be too sweet. It's worth trying again!

Butterfly Birthday

For her birthday party this year, Talia chose a butterfly theme. She looked through my recipe book and chose a yellow cake recipe and a chocolate whipped cream recipe for the frosting. She also chose a pineapple jam filling. We looked up how to make circle cakes cut and turned into a butterfly shape and she helped decorate it with fruit.

We used this cake recipe: http://divascancook.com/moist-yellow-cake-recipe-old-fashioned/

And something like this frosting recipe: 

http://duckysalwayshungry.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/chocolate-whipped-cream/

It was a lot of fun to make and then to share. The flavors combined nicely!

Ramadan, Date Harvest and Date Cake

It's Ramadan and summer at the same time. What that means in the produce section of stores is that you will see large crates of dates for sale everywhere.

During Ramadan, able-bodied Muslims fast throughout the day and break their fast at night with a few dates, typically. In addition to this, it's harvest time for dates all over the country. Date palms line the miles of road between Ruwais and Abu Dhabi, are planted throughout the city, in every park and green space. Typically the dates have a mesh bag around them to catch the dates and protect them from birds or other things.

 

Dates are really filling, have a lot of nutritional benefits, are supposed to help a woman have shorter labor, aid digestive issues and, depending on who you ask, are given as a remedy for just about everything here.

When Ben brought home 2 huge boxes of them I began looking for a way to use them beyond eating fresh since we have so many. This recipe for date cake was one Ben and a teacher he works with liked with had good things to say about. The kids loved it, too. Dates have a caramel-like flavor when ripe that comes through in this cake without the odd resemblance of, well, whatever you think an actual date looks like...

Most of the boxes of dates are fresh, still yellow and smooth, but quickly turn brown after a day or two, but not the brown, dried version you're probably most familiar with. If not used soon, within a week the dates start oozing and have interesting reactions with baking soda.

(Can this fall under home school experiment?)

Date Cake

Ingredients

• 3cups/500 g dates pitted
• 1 cup water
• 1/2cup / 100g brown sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 1/10 stick - 125 g Butter
• 1 1/2 Cups Self raising flour
• 2 tsp Vanila
• 1 tsp Bicarb.

Method

• Preheat the oven 180 or 160 fan forced.
• Add the dates, Butter, sugar & water.
• Cook it till it boils
• Add bicarb and leave it to cool down.
• Whisk the eggs.
• Add eggs, self raising flour,vanila and mix well.
• Add the mixture in to a baking tray and bake 40 min.

Sweet Potato Streusel Muffins

With the new mall in Ruwais, an option I finally have again is sweet potatoes! One of our favorite ways to use them besides regular mashed or baked potatoes is to make sweet potato streusel muffins.

Vanilla Yogurt Streusel Loaves- (Or, More Fall Baking)

Getting a cinnamon candle would probably save calories if my aim were only to make the house smell autumny. Except, couldn't that backfire? Then, I'd be smelling the cinnamon which would inspire desire for the baked goods, right?

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of Oil
½ cup of rawSugar
1 cup of Yogurt
1 tsp of Vanilla
1 tsp of Baking Powder
½ tsp of Baking soda
¼ tsp of Salt
2 Eggs
2 cups of wheat Flour

 

For the Streusel Topping:

½ cup of Brown Sugar
¼ cup of Raw Sugar
1 1/12 Tbsp of Unsalted Butter, melted
½ tsp of Cinnamon
¼ tsp of Salt

I'll get back to you after I finish running...

Cinnamon-Apple-Stuffed Bread; (or the 'I Miss Fall' post)

My mom sent me a video of colored leaves falling, not leaves falling because they were so thirsty from the desert sun, but because it was fall!

 That made me start thinking about fall.

Abu Dhabi is particularly nice at this time. The 120 degree temperatures have dipped down into the 70's-at-night-90's-by-day' range and should stay there until April or May... it's gorgeous weather! It's just not fall. So, we compromised by filling the house with a different kind of fall: the smell of baked cinnamon and apples put inside of a braided bread.

This creation, inspired by eatliverun.com, begins with three peeled and cored, and then sliced apples.

 

 Then, if you have a good helper like I do, get them to squeeze 2 teaspoons of lemon juice on top.

Then, they can add the 3 tablespoons of raw sugar, 2 tablespoons of cinnamon and mix it up.

 

While the apples are baking at 350* for 15 minutes, mix 2 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup of raw sugar, 1 tablespoon of instant yeast, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, 1 cup of warm water and 2 1/4 teaspoons oil.

On a greased surface, knead the dough and roll out into a 12x16 inch rectangle. Use a pizza cutter to make strips leaving 1/3 of the center solid. Fill the center with baked cinnamon apple mixture and then braid it up!

Bake at 350* for 25 minutes or until brown. Enjoy the fall smell while it's baking. 

For a simple glaze, I just melted a little butter and added raw sugar to brush on the top and finished by sprinkling with cinnamon... it was not super sweet this way, but still tasty. The original recipe has a glaze if you're interested.

And then take a bite!

Chocolate Tarts

While Chel was visiting us in Abu Dhabi she decided to make chocolate tarts. She never follows a recipe exactly... And that's usually a good thing. This time it was complicated by having limited measuring utensils, only whole wheat and raw sugar, but it was still delicious.

Here is the recipe we sort of went by:

Preparing the filling.

Preparing the dough.

Portioning the dough.

Adding the filling.

Ready to bake.

Iced...

This is a Talia-approved recipe!