Special Occasion Cake with Marzipan Pears

A few weeks ago, I made this marzipan pears at home for our ARC Clulinary class' cake project. It turned out quite beautifully. I love the Almond Paste that Gabi posted at her site - http://www.thefeastwithin.com/2009/11/04/almond-paste-easy-and-homemade/. It works much better and tastier than the ones I have tried.
Here is my photo journal of my Marzipan pears and how it looks like on a special occasion cake.

Stir Fried Eggplants with Chicken and Shrimp

Baking breads are lot of work, but there is a quiet period while waiting for the dough to rise.  So, I got some ingredients out of the refrigerator and here it is:  Stir fried eggplants with bell peppers, garlic, cilantro, chicken and shrimp, served with Gen-Ji-Mai brown rice.

Ingredients:
2  ea     Chinese Eggplants, washed, cut in halves, cut into 2 inch triangle wedges
1/4 C     Cilantro, washed, stemmed, and chopped
1/2 C     Bell peppers, red, green, yellow, cut in strips 
                        (For ease, use frozen, sliced bell peppers)
263 g    Chicken tenders - approx 5 pieces, cut into cubes
145 g    Shrimp, raw, peeled with tail - approx 10 pieces, washed in salt water and rinsed
2 cloves Garlic, peeled and chopped finely


Seasoning:
1 tsp    Salt
1 tsp   Japanese MIRIN or cooking wine
2 Tb    White Vinegar
2 Tb    Low Sodium Kikoman Soy Sauce
1 Tb    Sugar
**MIX all seasoning above together in a bowl.  Set aside.

1/4 C  Vegetable oil to saute eggplants
2 Tb   Vegetable oil to saute Chicken and Shrimp
2 Tb  water + 1-1/2 tsp cornstarch   mix and set aside.  Stir again before use.

Procedures:
Wash the shrimp in salt water and rinse thoroughly.  Strain to dry.  Set aside.
Place cut eggplants on a large plate with 2 tablespoon of water.  Cover with microwave oven proof cover.  Microwave it for 3 minutes.  Check for tenderness.  It should not be cooked through (not translucent), but 1/2 way.  Set aside.
Heat large wok over medium high heat.  30 to 35 sec.
Add 1/4 C vegetable oil.  Heat  until when you drop a small piece of eggplants, it sizzles.
Add eggplants and cover with lid.
Cook for 2 min.  Open and stir.  Flip each eggplant to face the opposite side down.
Cover.  Cook for another 2 min.  Open, Add bell peppers.
Stir.  1 min.  Eggplants should show signs of tenderness.
Transfer to a bowl and set aside.
Return wok to medium high heat.  Add 1 - 2 Tb of oil.
Make sure the oil is hot - add a piece of garlic, it sizzles.  Add Chicken.
Stir fry.  2 min.  Add Shrimp.  Stir fry.  1 min.
Add eggplants, garlic.  Stir.
Add seasoning mixture.   Stir.  Cover. Cook for 2 min
Open, Stir, Add cornstarch mixture.  Stir gently to help cornstarch to thicken.
Add Cilantro, but save 1 tsp and set aside.  Stir.
Remove from heat.  Transfer to a serving plate.  Top with cliantro.

GEN-JI-MAI - Nutri-whole grain Brown Rice
Prepare enough Gen-Ji-Mai as directed in its cooking instruction.
Note:** wash your rice, any rice thoroughly, until the water turns clear as much as possible.  Nothing is worse than eating a bowl of rice that is gunky and smelly other than the true rice.
GEN-JI-MAI is really great tasting.  I like it much better than the usual brown rice.  Like it says, it has much better texture, and much softer.  Yet, it has 64% more fiber and 400% more antioxidants... well at least that's what it claims, but I will stick with the taste bud test.

Bread Adventure - Pita Bread

I've tried Pita Bread recipe before, but always turn out to be too thin and too crisp that you can't really do anything with it, except to eat it like an over-sized cracker with soup.  This recipe from our class turned out very satisfying.  (Sorry about the picture resolution.  Sometimes I forget that the lense is covered with flour.)

Bread Adventure - Baguettes

Baguettes are great for breakfast or for sandwich.
Home testing 1 & 2 produced dense texture; but today, it turned out just the way I would like.
These test baguettes contain Starter that has been cultured for 10 days.  This particular Starter do contain 15 g of fresh yeast and is meant for Sourdough Multi-grain Bread.  Since I have been babysitting it for 10 days, and 360 g of it needs to be discarded, I decided to use it as pre-ferment dough called for the Baguettes.  Since I don't want too much of one type of bread getting stocked up in my freezer, I made them into round sandwich bread... might have qualified as Boule, if the size is at least 8 in.  But this one is brushed with olive oil and topped with poppy seed.

Previous Baguettes testings.  The outer crust is softer texture than today's.  Lots of spraying and steaming added to its result, but Baguettes only require 2 seconds of steam.  So, I did too much work for these, but now I know how to produce the crust that is soft:

Bread Adventure - Sourdough

In baking, I find baking bread the most challenging.  The yeast, the kneading time, the dough texture-smooth, elastic, enough salt?, steam injection, baking temperatures, all constitutes your final Bread.  Can you eat it? or use it as a paper weight.  With a lots of help from some of the baker blogsites and baking pracitce, I bake twice a  week at home, I think I am finally getting to know the personality of the ingredients involved.  Just like Canneles de Bordeaux or any other French recipes thus far I've tested, the ingredients are very basic, but the outcome of the product is determined by the baker's knowledge and experience with the process, techniques, and heat.

My breads use both home made natural Starter and or pre-ferment with dry yeast.
Baking Adventure Notes:
1.   When the home made Starter (natural grape juice as agent), the Starter dough helps form a very creamy and sticky dough when mixed with the main dough ingredients.
The natural Starter has enough power to ferment the dough the 1st time, very well, however, it seems to fail at the subsequent proofing.  The dough would sit there motionless after hours or even after a day.
This is a science that I will leave for other bread expert blogger http://www.breadcetera.com/
until further testing, . .  
2.  When the home made Starter is mixed with main dough that contain yeast, the dough proofing at 2nd rise is stabilized.
3.  Overall, my 325 watt Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer is no match to our classroom's commercial mixer.  I finally let my mixer just knead till the true window pane - see through membrane is formed, 20 - 25 min vs 8 - 12 min.
4.  Not enough salt will cause not enough browning.  Not enough kneading will cause dense texture.

Sourdough with Poolish -

Sourdough - Long - not enough oven spring, . . .not enough kneading . . .
(The scoring is not to the traditional.)

Sourdough made with home made Starter -