Let's Rock Like da Vinci

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Birthday MITARASHI DANGO Making

It's fun to make something different for birthday. I decided to make MITARASHI DANGO for birthday.

As before in previous posts for MITARASHI DANGO, I decided to test cooking the MITARE a bit different. I heated sugar and soy sauce together. As the sugar started to melt, I added only 150 ml of water and cook to reduce. About 8 to 10 minutes into cooking, I mixed the 20 g of potato starch with 30 ml water. Stir. The mixture thickens. This methods seem to have jelled up much faster than the previous few tries.

Prepare the MITARE syrup.

MITARE (sweet sauce for the DANGO)
Sugar 100 g
Soy sauce 50 ml
MIRIN   30 ml   (Japanese cooking wine)
Water 180 ml   - separate 150 ml   and 30 ml to mix with potato starch
Potato starch - KATAKURIKO 20 g    (*or more - test it - DO NOT use CORN starch; arrow root starch is okay.)

The syrup should be thick enough to coat the Mochi Dango completely and not slipping off.

The DANGO Ingredients:

250 g DANGO flour/SHIRATAMAKO
250 g GLUTINOUS RICE FLOUR (green bag)
Add 180 ml of warm water, and have another 180 ml of warm water ready. (You might not need all of second cup of 180 ml warm water.)

Combine with warm water; mix. Add other 180 ml of warm water 1 Tablespoon at a time. Mix in until you have a soft supple dough - as soft as earlobe soft but not wet.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put enough water for the dough ball to float during cooking,
Roll into a ball. Divide into quarters.
Roll one into a rope.
Cut into 14 g pieces - weighed on scale or just equally using cookie dough scoop.

Get a pot of water boiling to cook DANGO.

Hold the dough ball between the palms of your hands. Press down to squash the dough between the palms at the same time you start rolling the dough in a circular motion until you feel the dough has coagulated smoothly into a ball.

Place balls into the boiling water. Cover the rest to keep from drying up.

Notice the water calm down as the water temperature changes after adding DANGO. Stir once to keep DANGO from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Get a bowl of cold water ready. As the water come to boil, notice each DANGO begins to float. Keep an eye to make sure the water do not boil over. Cook the floating DANGO for 2 minutes. Take one tester and cut it open. Make sure it is translucent - no white dough. When the steam clears, taste it.

Transfer the cooked DANGO into cold water to cool.

At this time, if the DANGO is a large size one, you could fill it in to make other type of DANGO.

Skewer to strand 3 DANGO to a serving bamboo stick.

Coat with MITARE syrup. Serve.

TOKOROTEN - Japanese Snack Noodle

TOKOROTEN is not my favorite, but when it comes to hot summer day, it always make me to think about it. I would go to the corner snack store and ask for it. The store lady would bring out a bamboo tool - TENTSUKI and pass a jelly block through and out comes this beautiful jelly noodle. Here is an exlanation from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokoroten

Tokoroten (心太, ところてん) is a dish in Japanese cuisine made from agarophytes.

Then, a special TOKOROTEN sauce dresses it and it is served. The interesting thing about it is that the taste to me is not wonderful or something I would really crave for, but it's like a hot summer without having a ice-cream cone.

I made a short cut and decided to boil this Potato Starch Noodles. Then, I made the TOKOROTEN sauce, sprinkled some dry seaweed flakes.

To make the vinegar sauce:

Combine 3 parts rice vinegar

2 parts low sodium soy sauce.

1 part mirin - Japanese cooking wine.

Sugar can be substituted for mirin in a pinch.

Then, Slurp it goes. Ahhh.... Really good.

Large Muffin Top Breakfast

To overcome some of the COVID-19 stay home and teleworking humdrum, I baked myself the large top muffins.

The original recipe name is Almond Crumb Top Muffins from my friend's aunt. I made some modification to the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Topping - Mix all of the followings together.

2/3 C Flour

2/3 C Brown Sugar

1 tsp Ceylon Cinnamon

5 Tbsp butter, chilled, cut into small pieces

1/4 C Slivered Almonds

1/4 C Raisins

Batter - Mix all of the followings together.

Shift flour, baking powder, baking soda 3 times. Add salt and mix well.

2-1/4 C Flour

2 Tbsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp salt

Mix the following well. Beat egg and add sugar till foamy and pale. Hand mix in milk, sour cream oil and zest.

1 Egg

2/3 C Sugar

1/2 Milk

1/2 C Sour Cream

1/3 C Organic Avocado Oil

1 Tbsp Orange Zest.

Mix flour into egg mixture.

Preheat oven to 375'F - 400'F

Scoop batter equally onto large muffin top pan. *If needed, coat with butter, than, flour to the mold. Spread the topping on top of the muffin equally and bake for 10 min. Check with tester. If it comes out clean, it's done.

Freeze extras for another morning!

Fresh Coconut Meat - Bora Bora Dragonballs - Test 1

This Bora Bora Dragonballs are my first try.

1 Fresh young coconut - after pouring the juice to a glass to enjoy, scrape the fresh meat out.

Process in food processor to shred fine, but not into paste.

Spread and process in dehydrator as much as you can, but not dried.

2 C Bread crumb - Mix with semi-dehydrated coconut meat.

1/2 fresh Chunk Pineapple - processed in mini food processor - till chopped with tidbits left.

Mix in a bowl, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp +1/8 tsp ground Cayenne Pepper, add pineapple bits; 1 TBsp Coconut Aminos; 3/4 tsp dry ginger powder; 1-1/2 cloves garlic; 2 green onions - chopped. 1 Tbsp Pepperocini, or 1/4 chopped Jalapeno; 1 large eggs, 2 tsp rice wine/cooking wine, 1 lb Ground Pork.

Make into balls and dip in bread crumb and coconut mixture.

Fry at low temp till golden brown. Serve with various sweet sauce or chili sauce .

I dehydrated the coconut in my electric oven for about and an hour and half. It is still moist, but not dry.

This is fresh pineapple chunk I saved and froze. Chopped in a mini food processor. Left some tidbit in there, but maybe I will just chop them up with knife to leave more larger chunks.

This is my first time using Coco Aminos I found at the Sprout grocery store.

Mixing all ingredients.

Using 1 Tbsp cookie scoop.

Coat with bread crumbs mixed with coconut meat.

Be careful not to leave the kitchen, even for a short 2 minutes. As you can see from the image, some were burnt.

It's crispy outside and the center melted away in my mouth. I kind of wished that it didn't melt away in my mouth and had more texture. The next time, I need have more chunkier ground pork, that might help.

Simple Quick Morning Sausage Breakfast with SHISO Leaves

Prepare your sausage, Scramble some eggs.

Slice some cucumber.

Clip some SHISO leaves from the garden. Rinse and whipe dry.

Wrap all the ingredients in SHISO leaves. Enjoy!

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Banana Bundt Cake with Spicy Chili Flakes

Prepare Bundt Cake - Butter it and coat with flour

Beat 4 Eggs w 110 g Sugar until Fluffy Pale Yellow in large beater bowl. Set aside.
In smaller bowl, beat 1 stick soft Butter and 30 g Sugar until Pale yellow.
1/3 C Brown sugar.
1 tsp Cinnamon
Add 3 ripe bananas. Beat at low to mix with beaten butter.
Shift 176 g Flour with 3/4 Tbsp Baking Powder 3x.
Add to Butter mixture and mix in till smooth.
Add 2 shakes of Cayenne.
1 tsp of Chili Flakes
2 shakes of Ground Cloves
Mix well with Spatula.
Add 1 C of beaten Eggs into batter.
Mix well.
Then, add another 1 C beaten Eggs into batter.
Transfer batter into the bowl with beaten Eggs.
Mix well with Spatula.
Pour into cake mold.
Bake in preheated 400'F electric Convection oven for 35 min.
This Bundt cake is half full size of the Bundt cakes pan.