It’s just not the same as it was in Canada, let me tell you.

There’s a shop at the end of our road, about 50 meters away. It’s a small shop, about 6′x6′. When Fahim buys eggs for me from there (he goes because they don’t speak English and would not understand me, or me them), he gets them in a bag. They sell eggs individually, so you can buy one or three or 30.

Oh, yeah, and that stuff on the eggs in the bag? Yeah, that’s straw and chicken shit.

Yes, I always wash my eggs before using. Always.

Eggs at grocery stores are sold in plastic containers, 10 per. And make sure you don’t break the eggs on your way home.

There’s a restaurant that Fahim and I go to every now and then called The Sizzle, and by every now and then, I mean four times in the last year or year and a half or so, and by that, that makes it our most frequented restaurant. Because, yes, we really don’t go out that often at all. I’ve talked about The Sizzle before.

The first time we ate there, we were offered a preferred customer type of card with discounts. We signed up, of course, being the cheap people that we are, using Fahim’s name and birthday.

The discount isn’t a huge amount – 10% off lunches during the week – but since we generally go out for lunches, that works for us.

Recently, Fahim received a coupon in the mail for 10% off for his birthday from The Sizzle, expiring a month after his birthday. Cool! Well, that’s what we thought at first, anyway… (See, that’s foreshadowing… )

See, nowhere on The Sizzle’s coupon did it say anything about not combining it with any other offers, not valid if…, and so on. No disclaimers of any kind. And they know we get discounts because of our preferred customer card, and them knowing Fahim’s birthday because of it, although I doubt they keep track of the fact that we always go at lunch.

So we went to The Sizzle for lunch, we enjoy our food and Fahim gives them both the preferred customer card and the birthday coupon. We get the bill, and…

10% off, total.

No comments or explanations from the server. Not even an acknowledgement that we provided a coupon for 10% off and a preferred customer card for 10% off. Not 10% off for the preferred customer card + 10% off for the birthday coupon. Just 10% off.

And that’s what I call a scam.

And the loss of a couple of customers.

—

As a PS to this, I really really really really really wish The Sizzle would turn the music/sound off on their site. Or at least provide a way for us, the poor hapless visitors (or ex-visitors, in our case), to turn it off. Because, yes, it realy is that annoying. No, it’s not cute, nor does it make us think that our experience at the restaurant will be good because of the sizzle sounds. It really just annoys.

Generally, bad idea.

Ants get into everything they can. Weevils and worms frequently are already inside the flour & grain & lentils & beans & so on bags, so you don’t want to keep a bag of flour for even three months and assume it’ll still be fine – it likely won’t be. Mung beans will have holes mined through them in a month or so. I’ve found tiny bugs inside my unopened cocoa powder bags – cocoa now goes into the freezer. Bit of a pain in the butt, but what are you going to do?

And baking powder! Did you know that there are bugs that’ll eat baking powder? Seriously! I wish I were joking, and I wish it were a fluke, but no, it happened to me twice. In air tight containers. New ones are now stored in the fridge.

Then there’s the humidity problem. Icing sugar cakes, lumps, and gets hard as a rock, and the only way to deal with it is to put it in the whir whir and let that go at it for a few minutes, and even then, you’ve still got lumps left over. And anything with a high fat content goes rancid quickly.

Yeah, and our fridge/freezer ain’t all that big, so you can’t store everything in there. You pick and chose your battles and deal with the fallout as it happens.

Welcome to the tropics.

Ciabatta is the next bread in line for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, and I’d been looking forward to making Peter Reinhart’s version from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice for a while. I’d made a couple of others but wasn’t impressed with the results, so wanted to see how this version would turn out.

Plus I’d love to have bragging rights on a really really good ciabatta.

As usual, I halved the recipe and converted it to grams. And I went with the poolish version using Houdini, my sourdough starter (wild yeast, natural leaven, and so on), 100% hydration entirely in the place of the poolish. I used no commercial yeast in this recipe. I also added some milk powder. I used the maximum amount of water.

My Ingredients:

• 322 grams (11.375 oz) poolish
• 191 grams (6.75 oz) bread flour
• 5 grams (1 teaspoon) salt
• 20 grams milk powder
• 85 grams (3 oz) water

I followed the directions in the book.

This made for quite a goopy dough. Quite goopy. And I did the window pane test just for kicks and giggles and that was quite a mess. But it worked while the dough, ah, poured down.

During the stretch and fold, I was a leetle beet hesitant – not entirely sure that I would do it properly and give it enough stretch, plus I was a bit worried about the excess flour needed to keep the dough from sticking to the surface it was on. Turns out my concern about the flour was warranted – I brushed off as much as I could after the fold and didn’t end up with the line of flour that many others doing the ciabatta got. I did, though, still wind up with little bits and pieces of excess flour lumps here and there due to not getting all the flour off. It didn’t change the flavour of the bread any that I could notice, thankfully.

I went by the rise times in the book – since I use wild yeast, not commercial, it theoretically takes longer to use than commercial yeast. In reality, since our room temperatures are, oh, 30-35C pretty consistently, I do sometimes get rise times about on par with commercial yeast. One of the perks of tropical island living. Although those who prefer sour sourdough would argue with me. Alas, I am not one of them. ;) 

And boy, had that dough risen! Swelled? Uh, no. Poofed. Nearly falling off the cookie sheet. Pudgy. And ridiculously full of air bubbles.

So I shaped it in my fake makeshift couche consisting of a cake pan and towels rolled up on either side of the bread dough and slapped it to rest.

It rose more than admirably well. So I slapped it onto the cookie sheet and shoved ‘er in the oven.

In retrospect, I probably should have slashed it. I likely would have gotten even more oven spring. But the recipe didn’t say to, so, me=sheep. *le sigh*

Still, it got decent oven spring and turned out looking rather nice, I think. Not so much like a slipper, having too much form rather than being a glob sitting on the cookie sheet, but, eh, you can’t have everything, right?

Thar she blows! bakes!

While it doesn’t have the huge holes that ciabatta is known for, it still had respectable holes. Even better, it tasted very nice. Fahim and I both loved it.

Theoretically, I’ll start including a recipe analysys for the ingredients I’ve used in making bread like the analysis below. It ought to help me analyze the breads better and troubleshoot more effectively. And if, as a bonus, it helps you, even better! Please ask if anything is in any way unclear.

I’m also submitting this post to Yeastspotting, hosted by Nick this week. Yeastspotting is a weekly showcase of truly drool-worthy breads. In addition to this being part of Sourdough Saturday here on my blog.

I made beet coleslaw. No, really! And we liked it! Really!

I know, I know, raw beets in a coleslaw – it didn’t sound entirely, uh, well, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not, but I wanted to try something different with my beets, and I love to the point of crave raw veggies, so I figured it was worth the gamble. I wasn’t so sure that Fahim would like it, though.

Turns out he did. Shocker.

Beet Coleslaw

• 3/4 cup beets, shredded
• 3/4 cup carrots, shredded
• 1/2 cup onions, minced
• 1 green chilli, minced
• 1/2 cup coconut, freshly shredded
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Mix to combine.

Nothing complicated. If I’d had cabbage, I could have added that. Really, I could have added a lot of things.

The freshly shredded coconut, it could be argued, could bring this into the realm of a sambol, but hey, that’s just semantics.

The end result was something a lot redder than should ever be found in nature, and we’ll both voluntarily eat it again. Even Fahim said so.

And happiness reigns once again in the land.

This recipe brought to you by CAMC.

Since probably most of you who are reading this have never been to Sri Lanka, I thought I’d tell y’all a bit about what it’s like here.

Fahim and I do most of our grocery shopping at Arpico, a department store with a grocery section and fixed prices.

Why is fixed prices important? Because I’m white. And being white in this country means that shop & stall keepers quote me 3-20x the price they would charge to locals. If my brown Sri Lankan husband were with me, they still quote that much. He’s paler than most Sri Lankans – he’s a programmer, a geek, and you know they never see the sun – and think he’s a foreigner, too. It’s only when my mother-in-law is with us (wearing a sari, no less) that we start getting local prices. She haggles, she argues, all in Sinhala or Tamil, she gets her way, and she knows what a fair price is. And she intimidates people.

But because I’m white, even if I spoke the language and knew what a fair price was, I would never get it here. It just doesn’t happen. And that’s why we don’t shop at the produce stands where all prices are negotioable.

Arpico. And this isn’t Arpico, but all grocery stores, and really, not just grocery stores, but all stores and shops. Sometimes they have something, sometimes they don’t. Stores do run out of things here – inventory control is not a fine tuned art like it is in Canada. And sometimes the produce is good, sometimes it’s iffy. We don’t go grocery shopping on the weekends because a. stores are packed and b. produce is even worse.

When grocery shopping, I can’t plan in advance what I’d like. What we get depends on what’s available and what’s good. And produce doesn’t stay good here for that long. Heat and humidity don’t help, but there’s also bugs, like worms, in the food. Which you probably didn’t want to know about. But I think one of these days, I ought to photograph ‘em and share. Because I am that mean.

The result? I plan what we’re going to eat based on what’s available and what’s good. I also plan our menu based on what produce is going to go bad the fastest. That means pak choy by day 2 or 3, cauliflower by day 3, beans by day 4 or 5, but carrots can usually last until day 7 or longer if they’re not old. Uncut squash can last a month, as can potatoes. Onions about three weeks. It’s an art.

I also stock up – to a limited degree – on things like milk powder, sugar, flour, spices. To a limited degree because of bugs, heat & humidity, mold, and so on. But that’s a whole other topic.

We get some imported food. Mayonnaise. Fruit like apples & oranges. Potato chips. Cheese. Milk powder. But, like all food here, selection is not even remotely approaching extensive – you get what you get and be happy with it or do without. At its most extensive, I saw four kinds of mayonnaise, for example, from two different companies. I’ve only seen perhaps a dozen varieties of imported cheese total in the six years I’ve lived here.

I mentioned Arpico earlier. We shop there most often because it tends to have the best selection and freshest produce. And yet, while Arpico is quite possibly the largest store in terms of floor space, it’s only about as big as, say, four Coles bookstores in the average Canadian mall. Despite selling not just groceries, but household items (plastics, appliances, dishes), gardening supplies, hardware supplies, clothing, furniture, and who knows what else.

Other grocery stores here, like Keells or Food City, are around the same size as an average 7-11 in Canada or the US.

Yeah, not at all like major cities in Canada where the super grocery stores (just the stores, not the parking area) cover a greater area than, say, the huge national zoo here.

I’m a Canadian (from western Canada) living in Sri Lanka for the last six years. Yeah, big change. Huge dietary change, too.

Sri Lanka is the teardrop shaped island off the south east coast of India, but it’s not India. It’s its own country.

CSA, for the uninitiated, stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and in some parts of the world, like the US, means signing up for a season of produce from a local farm, although there are, apparently, grain CSAs and meat CSAs.

Signing up for a CSA usually means a box of produce one a week or every other week for the duration of the growing season and you get whatever’s in season, whatever the farm feels like giving you, whatever’s been growing well. That could mean vegetables you’ve never eaten or cooked with before, so it can be a bit of an adventure.

But, c’mon, who doesn’t love an adventure?

Cooking Away My CSA started with Heather Lalley and a tweet and went from there. If you want to join in, that’s easy enough. We’re on Twitter and there’s a Google group with, at current count, 149 members and very active discussions on what to do with kale or garlic scapes or…

We don’t have CSAs here in Sri Lanka, as in there are no inititiatives to buy into a farm’s produce share for once a week or so delivery, so I’m doing things a bit differently.

I’ll be focusing on locally grown produce only, not anything that’s imported. Locally grown produce include things we’re all familiar with (green beans, carrots, beets), a bunch of stuff that’s familiar but would never be considered local in Canada (mango, papaya, banana, avocado, pineapple), and a whole lot of stuff that I’d never heard of before coming here (dumballa, mokonuvvena, gotukola, snake gourd. lotus root, wing beans, and long beans).

Because I’m married to a Sri Lankan – he is, after all, the reason I’m here – my recipes, my menu features a lot of Sri Lankan cooking. And because I’m easily bored and can’t eat the same thing all the time, it features food from just about everywhere else, too.

I’m happy to be playing with all the other CAMCers. I like having an extra incentive to be a little bit more adventurous and imaginative. And I’m willing to bet I’ll learn a whole bunch and experience better food as a result.

I’ll be using the CAMC tag for all my Cooking Away My CSA-related posts.

Over at Pinch My Salt, Nicole has posted a list of all the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge breads, in order. And she’s adding links to each bread as she posts the entry for each. Great idea!

I have a hard time keeping track of, well, all sorts of things, and this will help! So here it is! I’ll add links to each one as I get the blog entry posted.

Please also note that, unless specified otherwise, all breads I do are made with wild yeast (aka sourdough, natural leaven, and so on).

• Anadama Bread, pp. 108-110
• Greek Celebration Breads (I did Artos), pp. 111-114
• Bagels, pp.115-122
• Brioche (I did Poor Man’s), pp. 123-128
• Casatiello, pp.129-132
• Challah, pp. 133-134
• Ciabatta (I did a wild yeast poolish), pp. 135-142
• Cinnamon Buns and Sticky Buns, pp. 143-146
• Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread, pp. 147-149
• Corn Bread, pp. 151-153
• Cranberry-Walnut Celebration Bread, pp. 154-156
• English Muffins, pp. 157-158
• Focaccia (choose one variation), pp. 159-167
• French Bread, pp. 168-171
• Italian Bread, pp. 172-174
• Kaiser Rolls, pp. 175-177
• Lavash Crackers, pp. 178-180
• Light Wheat Bread, pp. 181-182
• Marbled Rye Bread, pp. 183-186
• Multigrain Bread Extraordinare, pp. 187-189
• Pain a l’Ancienne, pp. 191-194
• Pain de Campagne, pp. 195-197
• Pane Siciliano, pp. 198-201
• Panettone, pp. 202-206
• Pizza Napoletano, pp. 207-212
• Poolish Baguettes, pp. 213-214
• Portuguese Sweet Bread, pp. 215-218
• Potato Rosemary Bread, pp. 219-221
• Pugliese, pp.222-225
• Basic Sourdough Bread, pp. 233-235
• New York Deli Rye, pp. 236-238
• 100% Sourdough Rye Bread, pp. 239-241
• Poilane-Style Miche, pp. 242-245
• Pumpernickel Bread, pp. 246-248
• Sunflower Seed Rye, pp. 249-251
• Stollen, pp. 252-256
• Swedish Rye (Limpa), pp. 257-258
• Tuscan Bread, pp. 259-260
• Vienna Bread, pp. 261-264
• White Breads (choose one variation), pp. 265-269
• Whole-Wheat Bread, pp. 270-272
• Potato, Cheddar, and Chive Torpedoes, pp. 278-280
• Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche, pp. 281-283

Found this video on, where else, but YouTube, showing Peter Reinhart demonstrating his stretch and fold technique. I find watching these videos really helps. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much is a video worth?

This is the next bread in line for the Bread Baker’s Apprntice Challenge.

I haven’t had challah before, nor have I ever seen it. I knew that it was a Jewish traditional bread and a favourite of some Jewish friends, and I knew it was usually braided. And that’s the extent of my knowledge about it.

Was I looking forward to making challah? Sure, why not? Life’s an experiment, after all. And it would be an interesting experiment with me braiding bread dough. I suck at braiding my own hair, so how well can a dough braid turn out?

As it turns out, better than I expected.

As usual, I substituted the yeast with my wild yeast starter (sourdough starter that isn’t sour, Houdini by name) and reduced the flour and water amounts appropriately. I also converted the recipe to grams and halved it. Here’s the resulting ingredients list:

Ingredients:

• 80 grams sourdough starter (100% hydration)
• 215 grams (9 ounces) unbleached bread flour + 55 grams flour added during kneading = 270 grams flour total
• 14 grams (1 tablespoon or 1/2 ounce) granulated sugar
• 3.5 grams (1/2 teaspoon or 0.25 ounce) salt
• 28 grams (1 tablespoon or 0.5 ounce) vegetable oil
• 1 large (47 grams or 1.65 ounces) eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 large (0.625 ounces) egg yolk, slightly beaten
• 60 – 88 grams (3 1/2 – 4 1/2 ounces) water, at room temperature
• 1 egg whites, whisked until frothy, for egg wash
• Sesame or poppy seeds for garnish

And then I followed the directions from there. Of course, my wild yeast starter was refreshed before using and was happily active and bubbling.

The end result was a braided bread that looked far better than I had ever expected, given how bad I am at braiding my own hair. The bread itself was soft, only slightly chewy, and had a fantastic texture. Solid enough for sandwich or bun bread, but not at all heavy.

Fahim loved it, too. This is now one of our top three breads.

In fact, this will likely be the bread dough recipe I use to make things like, oh, sub buns, hoagie buns, hamburger buns, and so on. It’s perfect!

I’m also submitting this post to Yeastspotting, a weekly showcase of truly drool-worthy breads. In addition to this being part of Sourdough Saturday here on my blog.

[pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-00.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-00.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after mixing" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-01.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-01.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after mixing, side view" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-02.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-02.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after first rise" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-03.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-03.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after first rise, side view" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-04.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-04.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after second rise, side view" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-05.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-05.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after second rise, top view" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-06.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-06.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after braiding" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-11.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-11.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after third rise" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-12.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-12.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, after applying egg wash and sprinkling sesame seeds on top" alt=""] [pg-image src="http://pics.laurieashton.com/tn/20090619-14.jpg" link="http://album.laurieashton.com/v/SriLanka/kitchen/20090619-14.jpg.html" caption="challah bread dough, fresh out of the oven" alt=""]