Sconed but not forsaken

Almost everything that I could do wrong, I did.

The butter, instead of being ice-cold, was somewhere just below room temperature.

I used the wrong flour -- on purpose -- despite knowing that wholemeal tends to produce dry, hard, unpalatable results compared to white. But that's the kind of allowance you make once you decide to stop letting white flour cross your doorway.

I added water to what looked like too dry a mixture, only to realise the error in the recipe book that put this step before the addition of the milk.

This left me with, instead of a malleable dough that I could roughly knead and cut, a glob of sticky and stretchy that provided my forearms with a thorough workout as I tried to separate my hands. I began to wonder if I would need to call/go outside for help. I walked further along the wondering trail, which brought me to the question of how I would manage to use my touch-screen phone or open/knock on doors while my hands were effectively glued together, with my fingers embedded in dough.

Fortunately, I didn't come to that. I still don't know how, but I eventually got the dough to stick to the floured pastry board. Still humming prayers that my many mistakes not be visited upon these innocent third parties, I closed the oven door and turned my back.

What do you know, grace shows up again in my kitchen. (Given the slapdash, misdirected way I tend to approach most food preparation projects, I think grace has permanently set up home in there. As you can see, it's a very welcome guest.)

They did take twice as long to bake as the recipe stated, and after the third day had reached a consistency that lent itself more to holding down paper documents than chewing. But still. I'm glad I tried, so now I know they really are easy to make. No longer will I mourn the loss of my favourite savoury scones from the line-up at the bakery; I can make up my own flavours.

Paus for thought

Nothing like poking holes in a freshly steamed pau (none of that hanyu pinyin "bao" business when you're spelling in Hokkien) to start the day on a warm, sweet puff of nostalgia.

When we were children, my brother and I used to ceremonially do this to any pau we were served at the dim sum table. It lets the heat escape so you don't steam your tongue on hot filling. And, in some cases, it brings your pau on aesthetic par with the plate.

White flour, check. Refined sugar, check; thickener, check; saturated fat, check. Aaaaaand we're good to start the day.

More weekend spontaneity

Taking a walk along the Garage Sale Trail with a friend (recent recipient of squarish cookies wrapped in pink foil), saying hello to skittish cats.

Weekend spontaneity

Saturday morning: I pulled it off again, and again not on purpose. Stackable Baked Goods, Part II.

So my ball cookies spread while baking into the one large cookie with vaguely rectangular delineations.

So they aren't your conventional round cookie.

It turned out for the best...

That's because four-sided foil wraps more tidily around four-sided cookies.

(Thanks again, Mich. I finally got around to using some of your fancy foil!)

While raindrops danced

I had so much trouble with this picture. I'd taken it spontaneously, while on one of my usual walks home from anywhere. The late-afternoon light had come up around the corner and smacked me in the face, and I had to try and snatch some of it to keep. What else are pocket cameras for?

But when I got to editing the shot, I found so many things wrong with it.

I wished that those wheelie bins were not there.

I wished those people had parked their cars somewhere else.

I wished the power pole was a few feet behind me so it wouldn't spoil my shot. And the stop sign -- was it even necessary? Don't drivers know well enough to stop behind the yellow line, especially on steeply sloping blind corners?

I wished that my camera was sensitive enough to take in the sight that first got my attention: raindrops being swept upwards in spirals by the strong wind, each drop dressed in luminous gold by the sunlight.

I nearly talked myself out of saving the picture at all, out of posting it here.

But which is worse: to unintentionally capture these unglamorous images of dustbins and strangers' cars; or to give myself no reminder of the moment? To take the best shot I can get, or not to try at all and risk forgetting that life offers us such lovely sights for free?

I think these are the questions I am at present asking, about bigger things than sunlight on street corners. The choice lies open, whether to wait for circumstances and people and equipment to be perfect -- or to accept what is offered to me, and bring home the beauty.

Conundrum (in Mo's words)

Craziest thing, this donkey existence, but someone's got to do it.

So if it's raining rain, you carry an umbrella.

What if it's raining umbrellas?

Another recipe for the sparrow, maybe

My connection with meat is still an uncomfortable one.

(I speak for myself. I hope the meat is well past discomfort or any sensation at all. This observation, I note, is not propelling my inner dispute about eating meat in a useful direction.)

The last time I prepared it was nearly a month ago now. I was still feeling brave after having conquered chicken, so this time I'd darted all the way over into red meat territory.

Lamb.

The more I cook, the more I realise how many of my default misgivings are related to human behaviour and past events, rather than to the food itself. But that's a story for another day.

Today, let's talk about these.

All good stories have more stories behind them, and so the chronicle of the Lamb Skewers of 2011 begins at the end of 2009, when I had my first encounter with plain Greek-style yoghurt. Prior to that, most of my yoghurt experience was restricted mainly to the thickened, sweetened, heavily flavoured substance that might contain some live culture; that's commercial yoghurt in Malaysia -- or what Indian restaurants serve as a beverage or the main ingredient for raita.

In December 2009, I hadn't reached my current state of no-refined-sugar zeal. I wanted fructose in my yoghurt, so help me! Yes, and stabilisers and thickeners and artificial colours too, thanks. This "plain yoghurt" business was so... so... unadorned. And I'd recklessly gone and bought a kilo of it.

So, stuck with a kilo minus the small bowl I had tentatively sampled, I set to finding ways to use it up.

Cakes were baked, following Orangette's classic recipe. A loaf to my pastors, cupcakes to my small group; I baked until I barely had to measure the ingredients anymore.

But still, the jar stood unfinished in my fridge. How could it be that one kilo of yoghurt contained so much?

Finally, one stormy December evening, I set my jaw and determined that this would be the last time I would take the jar off the shelf. This would be the day I would finish the unfriendliest yoghurt I had ever known. Vaguely following recipes I'd seen online, I threw in a few pinches of powdered spices, rolled large chunks of vegetables in it, and roasted them in a deep pan.

That was when I discovered that Greek yoghurt didn't hate me; it just took some... warming up.

Whether in a sweet or a savoury way.

Back to the more recent past, and the presence of raw lamb in my fridge.

And plain, Greek-style yoghurt -- which, by now, I've become accustomed to eating, having won a long battle with my tastebuds.

I didn't use an online recipe to make the yoghurt marinade this time. I couldn't; having just arrived back in the country, my spice cabinet was still bare and I had but two little packets that suggested harmony with the flavour I was picturing.

Cumin and turmeric powder. Added in gradual tentative shakes that grew more uncontrolled as my patience ran out, until the finished product was a deep ochre hue. Then a tiny squirt of honey; a few grains of sea salt. That's all.

The idea of skewering dawned slowly, and the need to pre-soak the skewers bought the lamb nearly a full day to soak in the tenderising embrace of the yoghurt. Remembering how well the zucchini of '09 had yielded to the yoghurt's advances, I'd also chopped one* up and throw it in with the lamb. The red onion slices I credit to a blogger whose page I now cannot locate. If you're going to try this one, don't neglect the red onion slices (lightly oiled just before skewering). They are sweet, and after all that time in the heat they only bite enough to remind you that pink isn't only for sissies.

That first evening, I slid everything off the skewers onto some leftover tomato-and-capsicum rice. The following day, for lunch, it was nestled in a spelt-flour wrap with fresh vegetables.

A couple of meals later, it was on the skewers with tomato-and-capsicum rice again, and then...

Well, what do you expect? I live alone and most of my meals are cooked for one. It takes a while to get through a whole batch of anything.

But I know I've discovered a winning recipe because this time, the lamb ran out before my appetite for it did.

*What do you call one zucchini? Surely not a zucchinus... right? Please say it's not so.

Sunday

Morning: Marinated tomatoes and feta

on very large bread (the plate is also very large)

Evening: Breaking out of the gritty CBD underground section of

the train line to see a rainbow stretched over Sydney harbour

Long quote from Jane Goodall

"The very most important thing we can do to try and get out of the mess we've made on this planet, both social and environmental, is to spend a little bit of time learning and thinking about the consequences of the choices we make each day. What did we eat? How was it grown? Where did it come from? Did it affect the environment adversely, or animal welfare? Is it good for human health? What do we wear? Where was it made? Does this involve child slave-labour or sweatshops? How do we get from A to B? Could we do it in a way that is less damaging to the environment? If we start to think like that, inevitably people make small changes, because very often they do things without having the faintest idea of the adverse consequences, and if people start making the small changes, then you start getting the major change that we must have if we care about the future for our children."

(Jane Goodall, in Wisdom: Life by Andrew Zuckerman)

Image from Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore)

Here is beauty

The synchrony.

The musicality.

The innovative use of costumes as props.

The clean, supportive partner work.

Sigh.