Merry Christmas

There are a few things signalling the arrival of Christmas where I spend my usual Summer holiday in New Zealand – Pohutukawa, so called ‘Kiwi Christmas Tree’, and Christmas plums.

I’m going to show you, for the first time, the secret place, a place of serenity, love and happiness, in which I welcome the first day of the new year every year.

Omokoroa in the low tide

When the tide is out and an endless stretch of beach exposes itself, it’s the perfect time for a freesbie, kicking and  throwing a ball around- any kind of beach activities, or swimming out in the channel.

The advantage of the beach, however,  play its best on star-studded nights. New Zealand is one of the luckiest countries where you can watch stars and Milky ways with the naked eye. The sight is so beautiful that it makes me feel almost naked, overwhelmed by the panoramic beauty, then you take a deep breath and all the thoughts,  greed and vain evaporate into the sky, and all that I feel inside me is love and passion.

One of highlights of this Christmas was to see real Santa.

And lots of presents to encourage my cooking. I get really excited when I think about what I will be creating  in my tiny kitchen in 2009.

To save energy and get recharged for the cooking in the new year, I pretty much stayed away from a kitchen. In addition to the first lame excuse for my laziness, I wanted to be inspired by observing how other people cook, which I think is important when your purpose of cooking is to please not only your taste but also others.

The only contribution I made to this party was ‘Shrimp Pancake’, which went very quickly according to the host and others who watched it. I think the biggest reward for your cooking could be the sight of the empty dish you served your food in, and maybe, the sight of people licking their fingers even……:-)

Getting back with Yeast

I haven’t worked with yeast since I made this so called ‘a seedy bread wannabe’. It pretends to be seedy by wearing a coat of various seeds, but when you look inside the loaf, seeds are nowhere to be seen – because I ground them You would probably be asking me why I quite often grind nuts or seeds.

Well, I don’t like seeds getting stuck in my teeth for a start, and the dough with seeds or nuts is hard to kneed – they’d fly all over the place.

The slices look quite nice under the morning sunlight. Nothing would beat eating the freshly baked bread by itself with a dollop of butter.

I used to bake all different kinds of bread back in Windy Welly, either by hand or with a bread maker. Using a machine saved a lot of time and energy going into the kneading, which is the reason why I have such strong hands and fit upper arms. *! !* One thing I miss about Welly is that it was so easy to get all sorts of flour such as rye, millet, soy and about a dozen others.  Coming home with bags and bags full of different types of flour, working out in my head what to bake was a fun part of my life in Welly.

But here in Sydney it’s harder to come across a flour speciality shop, and I haven’t really found a shop that sells a big variety.  Ever since my experience with fennel bread and blue cheese at ‘Taste’, I had been planning to make it myself.

I have made Bavarian Rye Bread with Caraway a few times before, and it used to be everyone’s favourite to have with cheese.

Seeing dough rising is the best part in bread making. Below is the formula I made with Mood, Size of dough and Time.

M=(S/T)²

It explains that whether I would be in good or bad mood depends on how much the dough rises.

So was I in good mood in the end that day? What is your guess?

Yeah, I was in prettty good spirits that day, he he ;-O It could probably have compared with having won a lottery.

Rye Raisin Bread with Fennel

Some people who was lucky enough to get their hand on this gorgeous, aromatic bread would recognise the blue cheese. I hope you liked my instant setting for the photograph. One day I rushed home after work only to have the photo taken during daylight, and on the way home I compulsively bought some flowers, which I wouldn’t get even for my birthday! But only for the sake of a photo! Do you think I’m getting too obsessed?*:-$*

It’s all right, I suppose, because nice looking photos seem to make extra efforts worthwhile. Besides, tt doesn’t happen very often that I go that far, anyway. You can start worrrying when you see a cake display or cupcake  stand on my blog. I spotted them at a kitcheen store and nearly bought them.