leaves on a pie

i made rose's designer cherry pie, which used a flaky cream cheese pie dough. it is quite tasty, but the dough seemed to leach out a lot of oil; maybe from the cream cheese? my pie crust shrank and slid down the sides a lot, but it was ok because my pie filling was (horrendously) scant. but i love the idea of cutting leaf shapes from the pastry to distribute over the open-faced pie.

blue flash

tonight's the first night in a long time that i'm opening the windows in my bedroom. it's just so cold now that there's no need for air-conditioning. so tonight is a celebration of december atmosphere, of fresh night air.

how time passes

waking up at 10am to the sound of a storm is almost desirable. the cars on the road are going swoosh over and over again.

time seems to have decide to move incredibly fast now, because it has already been two weeks since seibu stopped by, and then it has been almost just as long since i fell down and cut myself all over.

it's quite scary how july is comng so quickly. i think it has to do with living a life in chunks of seven days.

and that is how time passes.

mouth full

sometimes some stories are so perfect until the last minute, where something changes and everything falls apart. then again, only that would make a really great story; why else would a story be good, if everything went as planned?

true organic

i am suddenly thinking of the mangoes we ate in camp. the ones that came from the trees which no one waters or feeds. they just grow from the rain and sunlight everyday, and maybe all that vehicle exhaust.

in her moods

when it rains at night, the view outside becomes brighter. not because the sky is a bright orange, but because the water on the streets reflect the lights more.

when it rains in the day, all i hear is the swoosh of vehicles driving on the road.

french dinner

another entire day of french cooking a la julia child.

aïgo bouïdo:
this is the garlic soup which didn't taste very much like garlic. i tasted the olive oil a lot more instead. maybe it's becuase i halved the recipe directly, and half the amount of garlic just doesn't give the kick needed. the soup use yolk-oil emulsion enrichment which i've never tried before. but tended to separate into layers upon sitting.

sourdough:
ok this is not a julia child recipe. but there was soup, and there must be crusty bread, so i made the nigella sourdough again. anyway, the starter has been dormant for a long time. i have managed to work the dough the french way (slapping instead of kneading) and i was quite happy with it. one of the tricks is to reduce the amount of water slightly. (i have been trying the past few times to reduce the water until it was easy to work the dough and still have the bread remain edible.) and i managed to achieve gluten window! i also like scoring it with a 'claw' pattern.

épinards étuvées au beurre:
there was so much work involved for this, because the recipe used only the leaves. and i had to rip the leaves from 1kg of the spinach to obtain those little clumps of spinach (though it is a lot to stomach). rip, wash, drain, wash, drain (because there was a lot of sand in them). then boil, refresh, drain and squeeze dry. squeezing the clumps of leaves dry was quite comforting, but not as comforting as chopping them. these felt so soft/firm when i minced them up.

purée de pommes de terre à l'ail:
this is a mash potato dish that is so unusual because it is not served with sauce drenched over it, but beaten into it. the potatoes were mashed plainly, while a garlic butter sauce was cooked separately. there was a lot of garlic in the sauce, but the long cooking in the butter mellowed it; flou and milk was added to turn it into a roux, then a sauce. after beating it into the mashed potatoes, it felt like they developed some gluten strength, and the potatoes remained in one soft piece that refused to break apart.

tarte aux fraises:
i didn't quite follow the julia child recipe all the way. but the pâte sablée and the crème pâtissière were her recipes. i finally got to use some old shortening for the pâte sablée. and it was the debut of my square tart pan which i recently bought when jinquan and i went out. the crème pâtissière was odd because it used flour as the thickening agent. it felt a little like eating unbaked choux paste. but the strawberries were pretty and the tart turned out well. i employed beranbaum's technique of egg-white-glazing to waterproof the crust, and it worked well.

final pictures:
this entire dinner took me from 10am to 630pm. and i skipped lunch; i ate sugar cookies that i baked from the excess pâte sablée.