Experiments: Wheat bread

| Khursten Santos

A friend has challenged that my knack for familiar things has made me “incapable of becoming a Junior Master Chef.”

While it was said in a joke, I said CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

So last weekend, I chocked up the courage to make my own bread. *w*) I made whole wheat bread with… a breadmaker. And while it’s not particularly exceptional, it’s still something done!

The result was… not good actually. It was too hard and quite salty. It turned out that the yeast was too old.

Next time… Put live yeast. T^T)b

Third time lucky with Ramen Bar

| Khursten Santos

It took a while for me to write this review because it was quite hard to assess my emotions with this restaurant. When it comes to talking about restaurants, I always have two reactions. First, the restaurant is great and this reaction is always something that’s clear to me after the first bite. Second, it’s horrible and it’s possibly something I’ll never recommend to friends or even spend some time writing about. Again, that’s a reaction garnered from the first bite.

Somewhere in the middle was this restaurant which everyone who had gone with me, and everyone who has blogged about it were singing praises for and for me… I just couldn’t seem to sing the same praises.

I’m not saying Ramen Bar is bad but if it claims to be an authentic Japanese ramen and put it against the best ramen in Japan, it’s not good enough to cause a Ramen boom.

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A true New York bagel

| Khursten Santos

I was never a big fan of bagels. Back when I worked in Starbucks, bagels were items that were thrown out of our pantry because they quickly grew stale. And by stale, I mean rock hard. I’ve had my fare of eating stale bagel and I swore I’d never touch the damn thing after 10 a.m. It would take more than the help of an article writing service to convince me then how awesome bagels can get! However, a trip to the Big Apple and a strong recommendation of a friend prompted me to give it a try — especially when she’s actually pimping me a Zagat approved bagel: the best in New York.

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Thank you, Mr. Sugawara.

| Khursten Santos

I first met Mr. Sugawara when he invited me to join them for a family dinner at Kikufuji. His daughter and I had been good friends by then and while our brand of fun seemed to have finished early (and they had room for one more) I would assume that he thought it was possibly nice to join them for dinner. What happened afterwards was a mouth-opening experience as he showed me a whole new flavor palette for Japanese food. Fresh fish, a great balance of rice, wasabi and vinegar makes amazing sushi. Of course, there was also balance in terms of textures, colors, and flavors that by the end of the evening, I could never imagine myself eating at any other Japanese joint.

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The Perfect Steak

| Khursten Santos

I’m not a beef person.

Yes. I’m not a beef person.

The hierarchy of my love for meat goes like this: pork, lamb, chicken, fish, seafood, then beef.

It’s not that I hate beef. It’s just that there’s some stringy bits which I always hate among other things that I completely do not enjoy. I’ve had my share of well done beef steak and I always just ending up chewing more than I should be eating. Needless to say, beef’s one meat I couldn’t cook well either. I don’t know which parts are tender and which ones would work.

Hence, when I saw those kids in Junior Masterchef (yes! I’m still watching!) cook up some amazing dishes like steak… I just had to cook steak.

Of course, they didn’t give me the lowdown. I had to turn elsewhere. I went you tube hunting and checked various recipes and videos for steak only to find the cutthroat technique of Gordon Ramsey really gave me the best opportunity to cook and eat steak the way I want it. No fancy marinades and all that. Just some simple tips done in a few minutes.

After this, I got to say, I love steak and I’ve officially raised my love for beef.

Cookalong Live | How To Cook A Steak | Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4

Frying Kalabasa flowers like they’re in Tuscany

| Khursten Santos

For the longest time, I had seen Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Mario Batali, and them likes fry up zucchini flowers like it was nothing. It was nice and orange but I never could imagine how it tasted. I hardly ate flowers. I see a rose petal on my soup from a wedding — I take it off.

That said, it took a trip to Italy two years ago to find out that there’s something nice and lovely about this zucchini flower dish. I fell in love with the balance of the herbs, the nice gooey cheesy ricotta, and the crunch of the flowers. As soon as I got home, I was wondering how can I do it… can I even do it?

Since then, I’ve been trying to chance upon some zucchini flowers but never really managed to find anything close to it until last week when my uncle cooked pinakbet with some squash (kalabasa) flowers. It looked like the zucchini flowers but I wasn’t quite sure it would work. So I gave it a shot today and the experiment was a success. I think I’m ready to be a chef!

Fried Kalabasa flowers ala Tuscano

I took after this recipe and modified it a little to my tastes. Rather than using ricotta cheese, I mixed parmesan and quickmelt cheese. Herb choices were slim in the market but they had lovely leeks which I just minced and put it in the cheese concoction. The flowers were also smaller so I had to use lesser batter.

We had no egg this morning but I figured that if I just make a tempura-consistency for my batter, it might just work. Mix cold water with the flour, season with some salt and pepper, and voila!

This dish turned out to be a really nice, even better and crispier treat compared to what I had in Tuscany. Blame it on the tempura batter or something but in the end, it was a sublime gooey snack. It wasn’t as laborious as I had imagine either. Needless to say, my first shot at localizing something I had abroad with supplementary local ingredients worked wonders.

What would I have cooked up if I was 12.

| Khursten Santos

I’ve been seeing the advertisements of Junior Master Chef Australia in Star World and while I had an impression that it was just kids dishing out kiddie experiments, the final product of their dishes were not short of amazing.

Wow. These kids just know their stuff. And I’ve only seen the advertisements! I mean lamb wellingtons and nicely cooked fishes are just possibly part and parcel of what they’re capable of cooking. And they’re just half my age!

The show will start on January 16 at Star World and I was just thinking on what I possibly cook if I was 12.

At that time, the only thing that I was cooking was spaghetti and some lamb. I love lamb but I can’t say I’ve perfected lamb. At that time, my family would buy the “Buy 1 take 1” lamb chops from Rustan’s and I would cook it up either as a stew, ragout, or just beautifully seared. Of course, these pieces of lamb is pale in comparison to the lambs seen abroad. More so, our family is just in love with overcooked lamb. No moist, sweet, pinkish parts. I think I’m the only one who liked my lamb pinkish.

But I think at 12, I would have cooked up a wicked spaghetti. The spaghetti was the first thing I cooked on my own and I think, since I was 10, the spaghetti has always been assigned to me as my Christmas duty. Every year the tastes changes because I experiment with the flavors. I think at 12, they would have tasted a spaghetti with an asian flair of soy sauce. It ain’t much. It ain’t even spectacular. But I knew for a fact that at 12, it tasted awesome. At least my family loved it.

I’m excited to watch the start of Junior Master Chef Australia. I know it’s long gone finished, but I think the show might just help me think of what I would have done if I was 12.

That sounds like a series of posts there…